Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Hirelings : confusing and limited. We need full customisation. Also, full Custom PC parties in SP.

When you start a new game, at character creation theres 4 + + + + currently used to invite friends.. I feel like instead they could be used so you click on it and get 2 options: Create additional characters or invite friends.

This could also be used for multiplayer if you play coop with a friend and want 2 custom characters each..

As for hirelings they are pretty much premade characters like the origins and cant fully customize them. Honestly, I feel like they were a waste of time and ressource and the devs completely missed the point that some players want a full custom characters party (including myself). Also sucks that you cant have them right at the beginning of the game.

I like a lot this game has to offer, but hate, hate, hate the mercenary system. As has been mentioned many times, you can't customize many aspects of the character, but you also have to listen to head canon breaking dialog. They don't just say, "Yes?" when you talk to them. They talk like zombies "what command do you have for this vessel?" and crap like that. So you basically can hire zombies.

I really wish they just let us create 3 additional characters at the outset and put them in the world. It wouldn't have taken that much work and if you choose a merc, you don't need great dialog. Just the bare bones is fine and a lot better than zombification. They could have sprinkled the custom characters into the game pretty easily (maybe one is left for dead somewhere and you heal them, one is waiting in prison, one is a wanderer who shows up when you camp, or something like that). It would have been soooo much better if we could freely spec the party.

I was under the imression that everything could be customised from the race and background, appearance, class, stats etc.

When respeccing companions, you can't even change the stats where the +2 and +1 are applied - like Shadowheart is stuck with +1 in strength.

In Bg1 / BG2 you could just play a local multiplayer game and fully customise a full party, there wouldn't be any story but by the point players got around to doing that they'd already beaten the game like 100 times over or so.

I agree, the hirelings/mercenaries are, quite frankly, utter trash in the way they are handled. Sorry to say that, but Larian really dropped the ball with the hirelings and I'm not sure mods can/will fix that.

Party management is awful, and hirelings are an embarrassment. Want a cleric? Well, talk to someone, dismiss them, have to confirm that yes, you want to dismiss them, THEN you talk to Withers, and then your hireling is a generic cleric that will go back in the box when you dismiss them to switch to another companion.

Who thought that was a good system in any way? If you wanted to force people to use the origins, just remove hirelings entirely.

There's SO much good with this game, I can't stop playing it, but some of the decisions are head scratching.

I know it is illogical, but I am considering giving up on the game because of my inability to create the party I wanted. I wish it weren't so because the game is obviously good. Unfortunately, it is not enjoyable because of that. Weird, I know. I'm trying to get over it.

Just tried out the hirelings and it is extremely bad. You have to use the appearances given, can't change the background, limited sub race selections (no wood elf and others), its very poorly implemented.

Being able to make a full custom group is an extremely fun procedure which was possible in BG1 and 2 using local LAN multiplayer.

Another reason for disappointment.

Something I was surprised about was looking through some early 'class tier lists', a lot of people are rating rangers the lowest.

When I made a ranger in EA it was one of the strongest weapon damage classes, even more damage than rogues and they can also trap. I was literally just wanting this one build for a hireling, but I can't pick the correct race and background.

Come on Larian, give us fully customizable hirelings!! Surely it is possible? If not, I would love to hear the creative or technical decisions as to why custom party members aren’t happening in this game. It is a game about creating a party. It is a no brainer that there will be people wanting this option, why not just give it to them. Let the player have agency over their parties. Also, custom parties help with the longevity of game. Yes, I will complete this game and might play it one more time after that, but probably won’t pick it up again because at some point I want my own party.

It's not illogical at all - me and my brother are long time D&D players and we assumed fully customisable teams would be a given, with the option to engage in parties with Origin characters if you wanted to opt for Larian's narrative journey.

But realistically - most D&D players are fine to craft their own journeys and want the options to play out multiple character builds in one go. My brother has 6 builds and I have 8 - I really don't want to have to run 8 playthroughs to experience all the builds I've developed over the years.

Fully customisable teams was the one thing I was looking forward to (It was even mentioned by the developers at some point) D: and I'm not even sure I'll be able to do the multiplayer work around as I'm on PS5.

Fully agree!

Surely this would be most easily fixed by just adding full appearance editing to the respec screen for every character. It should be easy to implement, and I see no potential issues other than political ones (e.g. some people might make Wyll white) but since you can already break the story with respec (e.g. making Wyll not a Warlock or Shadowheart not a cleric) I don't see why this would be a big deal.

And allow changing their background.

You can definitely change companion's +2/+1 distribution. Shadowheart should not be stuck at +1 Strength.

There is a workaround for playing custom party, when starting a new game:
- Create a new Multiplayer game. Select "Internet" and "Direct Connect". Copy the Server ID.
- Open another instance of BG3. You might need to open the game .exe directly from the game folder. If you're using BG3 mod manager, you can also use the Launch Game button from there.
- Join game via the Server ID. You can repeat this process until all party slots are filled, but you won't be able to dismiss player characters, so you might want to leave a slot open so that you can access companions.
- Launch the lobby, create the desired character on each game instance and ready everyone up to start the game
- As soon as your party is on the nautiloid ship you can close the game on your non-host characters, it will transfer control of them to your main player

This won't be possible for PS5 though?

Is it possible to mod this is if the Dev's won't do it?

Hello Larian, would love to see if we could ever get to make our own 4 party group to play the game. I think this would at to the replay value to the game.

Another OP weighing in here. I'll agree the Mercenary System has it's problems yet I also concede that there are potentially game breaking issues with a fully custom party and dialogue encounters. You can miss out on huge amounts of character-specific dialogue that were crafted in the Old Belgian Style over thousands of hours of coding, writing, editing and voice acting.

All my companions +2 / +1 are stuck, mercanaries arent.

So I'm having to use 14 str / dex / con on Shadowheart instead of 16 dex and dump str.

I think this a largely a request by those who are narratively minded on their own accord and that can fill in the blanks. For those who of us that want to experience a more custom game - I would get more enjoyment out of navigating a surface level experience of the world with a groups of custom players I already have some narrative framework for.

But if you're a player that wants character-specific dialogue and narratives designed by Larian surely you can opt for the Origin character choices.

Are you sure this works anymore? I know you could do that in EA but I can't make it work anymore.