Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback 5th Party Member

Here is what I was describing above, but presented instead as a visual.

The current BG3 party comps using a sample set of 3 (ie. party of 4: Player +3 other characters.) I arranged them in order of likely recruitment, although the first 4 companions can be recruited in whatever order, but just going off the path of least resistance something like so...



I wish I had the energy to do the same for the party of 5 (sample set of 4, or the player +4 others), but it gives an impression at least. Also helps probably to suggest which party comps are less likely owing to the requitement sequence. Characters that we meet later on, this is reflected in the likeliest comps just going down the columns and rows.

Also, here's something fun...

It shows the character portraits for pretty much everyone in the game. There are 1,634 total thus far on the wiki, broken down in pages of 200 portraits, arranged alphabetically by character name.

*spoilers*

https://bg3.wiki/w/index.php?title=Category:Character_Portraits

As the pool of recruitable companions climbs it's basically a 'grains of rice on the chess board' scenario. The number of potential Party Composition combinations starts increasing to the point where it's really not even possible to fathom anymore, cause the numbers are so large. The pool of recruitable companions is more important than the party size for that, but at the low end party size also makes a pretty significant difference. The closer it is to the split, the higher the number of potential combinations without repetition.

Not that one needs that many. Just imagining what it would look like if one were to say, add an Alfira, or a Viconia, or a Sarevok the numbers climb quickly even with just a couple additions there.

Here this will have to do, it visualizes the party of 5 (Player +4) only for the parties including the player + Shadowheart without repetition, so corresponding to just the top left Triangle in the 4 party comp image (player +3) shown in the post above...



Already the number of potential comps has pretty much doubled, just for the parties that might include Shadowheart. And that's before going through and doing the same for player + Astarion, player + Gale, player + Lae etc.

Same number of total characters at 10, but there are more various party compositions available without repetition when there is a 5th party member.



I think it shows the scale up for the mix and match fairly well. Like you can see what I mean right?

Again having 10 characters chilling at camp all at once sorta undermines the variability for the active party comp, at any party size. People were pretty vocal about not wanting to see us locked into a particular party for the final Acts, so I'm sure that's probably why they did it the way they did. The Camp does overshadow things a bit though, since all the main story driven stuff is delivered there for the most part. Everyone levels to match the protagonist, everyone can change their class and attributes via Wither's respec etc. We're not really losing out on much if we back bench somebody temporarily, cause they'll probably still get their lines in somewhere hehe. Active party composition would be more for the core party during final finale I guess, or for re-players who are interested in pursuing this stuff from a mechanical standpoint, say with restrictions based on the companion defaults maybe.

Anyway TLDR, with a party of 5 we'd have had an additional 90 party comps available. A Party of 6 would have been 132 additional party comps available, compared to a party of 4. Still just using the same 10 peeps in the roster. Ballpark almost twice as many parties just from adding a 5th slot on the active team.

I expected BG3 to suck because there are only four party members.

Unfortunately it doesnt have the necessary depth to make a larger group necessary.

Mind its a great system but D&D5 lost some of the depth of D&D3. Why they stripped stuff like Delay (move backward in the Initiative queue such that the group can really act as a group) is not really understandable to me. I miss Delay all the time.

In turn though four party members kind of works out fine.



P.s.: Oh and you can "emulate" Delay by giving everyone Alert. It doesnt work reliably though.

'm not sure I'd have needed a whole lot of depth to make this work. For me it's more of a nuts and bolts mechanical thing. The reason I like thinking about it this way, the party comps w/o repetition, is because that gives us some hard numbers to work with.

For example, say each party comp shown in the first image above had an associated ending or finale sequence. During the final ascent, the party chosen would result in a full on conversation similar to the one that we got when the Tadpole was first consumed. Except instead of each party member just spouting off their generic lines, expressing their misgivings about the tadpole or their desire to make use of it pragmatically, we might have commentary from the crew regarding the final battle and everything that's happened to bring us to that point (the big stuff). We get that set piece pump up rally at the end, but that's all focused on our Allies, and not so much the active party. I'm talking about stuff specifically for the chosen active party.

If it's 120 potential combinations for the party of 4 (player +3), then each one of those comps could have had a unique ending/finale run with it's own final banter-thon. Even with doubling or tripling to account for the various ascended vs love interest vs good vs extra evil permutations for each companion character, that's still way more manageable than like 17,000 endings or whatever they teased to that one journalist who spilled the beans. 120 seems manageable, or at least it's a place to start. 210 would be better in my view. More party comps means more replay to my way of thinking.

The issue I see is that, in the course of the campaign, the player probably runs multiple party comps at once, perhaps seeing each of the comps listed at least once per campaign, since the active party is completely overshadowed by the camp collective. We can switch out party members with ease, and the game encourages this with the personal quest switcheroo.

The only point where that dynamic changes at all is during the final ascent, where we lose access to the camp and have to choose which 3 people are going to join us while facing the Brain. If there are 120 combos for that, each one should feel very different right? But I don't know that they do really. Like it barely matters who we brought along for that, since we'll get similar post game recaps at the camp celebration regardless. Everyone who didn't die still gets to make an appearance and say their piece. The companions we bring along interact with us (Tav/Durge) but not really with each other. So bringing Shadowheart or Lae'zel or Astarion, we'll get whatever story stuff they have to offer individually, but we don't get a special option where bringing those 3 together as the final crew gives us something unique. Compared to say Shadowheart, Lae'zel, and Karlach with a different scene, cause now Shadowheart and Lae'zel are reacting to having Karlach as third puzzle piece in that comp, instead of Astarion. It would have been simpler to achieve with things like running commentary from banters rather than full on cutscene sequences probably.

Is there a real point to trying to completing the game again with each possible party comp in BG3? Not really, because they all overlap already. If you've played the game with Lae'zel and ascended Lae'zel, you've basically seen all the Lae'zel stuff already. It's not going to make a meaningful change, just cause Shadowheart is also part of the final party comp too. I'm not really sure how they planned all this out, doubtless the flowcharts are massive and the ven diagrams pretty ridiculous, but I think they lost focus on what would probably have been a simpler approach had they simply started with the party comps as the floor or foundation to build from.