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

It's not about what you do. After all, you can mod the game to be unrecognizeable and nobody will care.

It's about Larian actively supporting choices that break the integrity of characters. This is not like DOS2, where classes are just loose collections of starting skills and say little about the characters you assign them, and where characters' stories did not require specific abilities in almost all cases.

I think it's more like Larian supporting gameplay, and knows that an option like this can improve replayability.

My initial reaction to the OP was "no" - but I then remembered who I dual-classed Imoen into Mage (like 90% of players did).
However, she had little backstory - quite natural for a teen orphan brought up in a village supporting a library-monsatery - in BG3 the Origins have much more background and are in some way defined by their Class.
Also, in Bg1/2 you could dual (or multi)class inside a narrow band only (Race, Allignement and Ability restrictions) while here simply anything goes ... and ASI can mold the Character into somebody else - making them a totally different "person" - hence I'm of two minds ...
I suppose that Shadowheart could make a good Rogue or Bard, Lae-zael could put her attitude to good use as a Barbarian (she is raging most of the time anyway) - but other classes don't seem right to me for them.
Now I'm in the "don't care" camp, and maybe I'll use it to a small degree. But not likely.
I'd change my vote if I could

Can you elaborate on how it improves replayability in your view? If I can try any class and any party composition at any time I want in a single playthrough, that's one less reason to replay the game.

Not only that, because features like this gets Implemented, other features get cut.
See Halsin-Helia.

So because some whiny people want to minmax the party and don't care about the lore and story of BG3 we are missing out on things like rolling srats ect.

...don't question the dogma. Restrictive rules and standards are oppressive lol. Replayability is an incredibly overrated aspect of most games given the average game is completed by only 10-20% of gamers according to statistics. Replayability is for the miniscule minority of really vocal hardcore gamers happy to sink multiple 100s if not 1000s of hours into games.

How does rolling stats fit with lore? Cause we all know most players always roll for maximums.

You kidding right?

Your regular reminder that we should keep things light and civil, and people can play the game however they wish without judgement.

(And in case of any doubt, calling people “whiny” is not civil!)

I don't really get the "try any class and any party composition in a single playthrough" thing. If you respec a character at level 10, you haven't played that character from level 1 to 10, you haven't played that party composition and classes during the playthrough. I mean, unless you save and reset before every fight and every section respeccing everyone to try every possible different permutationts, but doing so your run would last easily 10.000 hours.

The way I would use this is playing the game once, maybe twice, as it is, THEN making weird runs where I change companions into something else. I would change them from the get go and bring them all the way through, with those classes facing the whole game in a different way. I would be able to do the same thing with faceless hirelings, obviously, but I find that hirelings are kinda boring so I rather respec the companions.

Abo
Tbh I think Helia was scratched for Durge and Halsin is a plus one basically.

I don't get, what you mean with the last part. What has respeccing companions to do with rolling dice?

There is only so much time to implement and test features.
To make sure that complete origin respecs works and do not screw up cutscenes some other minor feature was not implemented or not tested.
Development is a 0 sum game limited by time and money. For everything added something else gets left out.

I think I see what you mean. The question is, do I need to replay the whole game for another 100+ hours to truly experience a class? Given how much reactivity BG3's gonna have, the answer may as well be yes. In other games I'd be inclined to think if I play a barbarian until late game and then switch to bard, I've pretty much experienced the peak of what it feels like to play a bard and there's no reason to spend another 100 hours in the game just to try a new class. That could arguably be a good thing, it sure saves time, but in context of replayability it would take away a major reason to start over.

It can definitely spice up companions on subsequent playthroughs, though I think that could already be done through subclass selection, feats, equipment, multiclassing and, most importantly, story decisions.

I can't believe they are caving in before entitled players who want to have everything their way, even if it doesn't make any sense.

Isn't this an RPG that is trying to tell a story? In that story Shadowheart is a Cleric of X and Gale is a Wizard. Period. The gameplay absolutely has to match that. This is not a case where the player gets to tell their own story where Shadowheart was a Bard instead, because the narrative doesn't and shouldn't bend that much. Larian should pride themselves enough in this and assume it's better for the player, in the end, to experience the game as a cohesive presentation where gameplay and narrative support each other rather than giving player tools to mess it all up in a sandbox fit. Help teach kids they can't always get what they want.

The interview with Sven yesterday said that the Dark Urge had been planned for some years to be in the game, so I don't think that's the cause of Helia's removal.

That said, I don't think we know why Helia was taken out. Maybe it was for Halsin, but that's just a guess. These are the kind of questions I wished folks had asked Sven in the interview, rather than the repetitious comments about choice and permutation and whatnot.

Well, Larian has never been masters of immersion and world-building. Even in this early access of BG3, it lacks atmosphere, and Tav is an anonymous and random guy with nothing to tell. I agree that changing the classes of companions is a mistake. Choosing the subclass seems like a much better balance between freedom and narrative fidelity.

What’s wrong with Larian supporting choices that breaks the integrity of the characters?

Because it requires development time that could have been used for something that keeps and enhances the integrity of the characters instead.
It also sets a bad example of what is important in BG3/RPGs and what not.

It probably did not take any extra development time. They were going to give us the ability to respec our player characters and hirelings. If anything, excluding companions from this system would have taken slightly more development time (by a few minutes of coding) than just making the system universal to all characters.

That is entirely due to Tav being a player-generated character and therefore a blank slate. Tav is intended that way. Other than tadpole removal, there's no personal stake [yet].
They've implemented other options, but mention them here, and you'll be met with 'Rrraaa rrraaaa I want only Tavs in my party rrraaaa rraaa Bad Game rrraaaaa He should be a gnome rrraaaaaaaa'


Well, that *is* true, but that doesn't mean they haven't grown in that department. The company has grown tremendously for the development of this game. Surely, they'va added people in charge of that? We've only played an Alpha state of partly the first chapter.


I don't necesarily see the problem here, to be honest. It does go against how I'd want to experience the game, however so I'll never touch it.