Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General POLL: Replacing companions' starter class

I think it's bad enough that you can multiclass Companions without restrictions in the first place. It shouldn't be possible. Class is about who that character actually is. Gale might work as a sorcerer or a wizard but he won't work as anything but an arcane spellcaster. For Druids or clerics their class isn't an occupation it's a calling. You shouldn't be able to change that without a significant story event.

This is not about any reasonable interpretation of player freedom in an RPG. The only character who is who you want is your character. Anyone else is not for you to shape. Not in class, not in race, not in anything. Except through story events, and those, too, are controlled by the GM and not by you.

So, here's a firm "No" to the question. And I would go further and disallow multiclassing companions at all. I won't get that and I can live with it, but it's my firm position on the matter nonetheless. I you don't want those restrictions, you could make your whole party from custom characters. But you shouldn't be able to destroy the pre-made companions.

Edit:
Somewhere above POE2 was mentioned, where you could choose between three differnt class combinations for a companion when they joined. That was indeed an acceptable compromise. Companions could be different but you couldn't spec them in ways incompatible with their story or presented identity.

I mostly agree, but I think Gale as a Warlock has a lot of potential!

Anyways, I do not actually like multiclasses at all - since most do not really make much sense to me RP wise. This, of course, colors my opinion towards multiclassing companions. Though I know that many people disagree with me on the topic of multiclassing.

Why not?

Yet another example of somebody wanting everyone else to have to play the game they way they want it played.

If you don't want to multiclass, then don't. If you don't want to respec origin characters then don't.

The parts relating to story events are just nonsense. All the characters in the game had a life before the game begins - so what? I've played with Gale as a cleric and Shadders as a paladin - it worked for me.

something something artistic vision?

I’m all for games being driven by a specific creative vision, and BG3 is. Where other games give you prompts and choices, BG3 gives you systems and tools. That’s the underlying vision of the game.

Me wanting to turn Minsc into a wizard doesn’t compromise that vision. In fact, it’s in complete alignment with the central creative vision. Larian builds games so they can be broken. And me having the option has no impact on anybody else’s enjoyment of the game.

It just baffles me why anybody would be against this.

Minsc is iconically a ranger/berserker (certainly a martial class) - *defender* of the witch Dynaheir. His introduction in BG1 explains this setup and that is how most people encountered him. Sure, you can add some other class to his initial choice later, via multi/dual class, but to remove the original martial/ranger part from his 'kit' (and make him a wizard) is to rewrite his backstory and pretty much disregard FR canon.

Some may be fine with that - others who have an attachment to BG quite likely won't. I'm certainly not.

As for the origin characters, they have stories which seem clearly linked to their class - some, like Gale, more tightly than others - and simply deleting that class identity will, in my view at least, weaken the coherence of their stories. Laezel as a bard for examppe? :o No...

If people don't want to play an origin character - create a bespoke character/party. Larian have provided for that.

Its finaly confirmed. ^_^
Roleplay and mechanical sides are separate ... so we will be able to respec Origin characters however we want, but in story and dialogues they will still remaian what they were origialy.

Love it! What did they say specifically? What was the question?

Only paraphrasing:

Question was about respec our companions in general.
And Swen replied something like: There are subclasses of two companions that stay locked, but beyond that you can respec anything you want.

My understanding is that Wyll cant be speced into GOO/Archfey Warlock ... and Shadowheart into non-Trickery Cleric ...

//Edit:
But i wouldnt read it as "including race" ...
I think that was just poor wording on Swen side, and it was just about classes.

Not a single word about Hirelings tho ... and all my questions about them was automaticly filtered. -_-

Did he mention Shadowheart? Because I would have thought Karlach was more tied to berserker than Shadow is to trickery domain.

No, he didnt ...

Thats the reason why its not in same row as "Swen replied with" ...
And also the reason why there is written "my understanding is" before that ...

I dont really know how to say it clearer. -_-

Wasn't ragging on you, Rag. It's just that if he didn't explicitly say the locked character was Shadow, then I would have thought it would have been Karlach, with her special rage, which sounds rather more class specific than anything Shadow has. Or so I would imagine. But you've played this game 20 times more than I have and you're keeping better track of things than I do, so there's always the chance I'm missing something that you're not.

If it helps, imagine I ended that comment with a question mark.

That could be a good thing actually. If it was a simple "No - no customizable hirelings or companions." answer, they would probably have allowed it, as they did with rolling for stats. But if it is something that they are going to reveal later on in one of the next Community Updates, maybe even after launch, they probably want to wait to introduce it in it's full scope and not in this way. YES, I am naively holding on to the idea that OF COURSE they are going to add this feature! It is a no brainer! And Larian has a brain... a big brain! So we just need to keep calm and wait for release!

I honestly doubt there was any allowing ...

When automatic moderator blocks your message, its bcs you used some word that is written on its black list ...
Like in WoW, when we are talking czech in our guild chat ... it filters off the word "nazi" for obvious reasons ... but this word in Czech means just naked, it have nothing to do with any extremist group.

My bet is therefore that the word "hire" was concidered bad, for simmilar reasons.

Well, I mean: allowed it into the questions for Swen. I saw people in the chat ask about "custom companions" specifically. But yeah, allowing something in a chat or not is more or less irrelevant if it is not going to be answered anyway. But; I remain hopeful!

I don’t see what’s wrong with me disregarding or breaking FR canon if that’s how I want to play the game. It has no impact on anybody else’s game and there is no mechanical advantage to it, so if you ignore this feature you miss out on nothing.

I have no idea why this feature needed to be a priority, but apparently rolling your stats didn't make the cut.

I guess this means you can make Minsc an actual barbarian which would be more lore-accurate to his character than the ranger class he got saddled with since the OG saga, but otherwise this seems like a pointless immersion breaking option. It was one thing in DOS2 where they wrote some leeway into the characters so you could justify them being whatever class you wanted, but the classes for the companions in BG III seem very tied to their characters. It's an odd choice, to say the least.

I wonder how this will effect quests and dialogues and so on where class tags are used.

Just odd. So very odd for Larian to go this route.

Well, they developed a system where hirelings and player characters can be fully respec’d, so I would guess that implementing this for all companions doesn’t actually take much extra work.

People have been saying that companion respecing doesn’t effect dialogue, so if it’s just as easy as taking something already built for some characters, why not just implement it for all, right?

It will effect dialogue. Every class has tags associated with it that impact dialogue options. So hypothetical barbarian Gale would lose his [Wizard] dialogue options, keep his [Gale] dialogue options, and gain [Barbarian] dialogue options.

Of course this will only be seen if cutscenes/dialogues are initiated with them so it's somewhat avoidable if you aren't playing as them.

But the fact that Gale can become a Barbarian and lose spellcasting entirely, but like he'll still be casting spells and so on in cutscenes and his abrupt and dramatic change in profession is never addressed is pretty jarring IMO.

Feels very jank.