Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

Warlock is a great class, he has access to some spells that trivialize some fights. You can also multiclass him with paladin or sorcerer.

Really ?!
For me its anoying having to Switch characters to see there stupid quests..
and worst of all having to tolarate a Bunch of quests and conversations with characters that i dont Care..haha

Nowadays Gale always stay in the Stone, Karlach i always Take her Head off for the Sword, Wyll i never even Talk i just Let hin Training the Kids and when i Kill Karlach he vanish from the Game and Halsin i always Left hin in the Shadowcurse or let the Goblins Kill Hin becouse he is Useless and i cant Save the Shadowcurse without having to tolarete hin Trying to lay down with me for the rest of the Game when i already refused 300 times. haha
Jesus i cant..

Its Anoying Having so Much people in Camp For Real.
BTW the camp get Super Ugly Too with so Many Open Spaces and i will not Bring those Losers just to fill up the open places. comoon.. i cant anymore..

It's difficult to care about characters if you don't engage with them.

After a while, I'm bored of the same classes in fights and the same commentary from the characters. I prefer to switch them up.

Well i already beated this game more then 20 times and i already Tried all of then as party compositions in many different Ways..
and like i Said Before..
The only Ones i Trully enjoy and Like were Shadow, Astarion, Lae'zel, Minthi.. the Rest its just came along for the Party..
Never care or Liked any of then..
And after Trying the First Time Never Again.

Thats why i always Felt that The Larger Camp was a Mistake.. like i told in my Post..
If they Never wanted a Bigger Party this was a Mistake..
Becouse Gave People Hope.
In other BG games yu could Have 6 man..
Having a Bunch of Companions Made Sense..
Here its Useless.. its just for people say that has Variety..
and BTW some of then Get a Poor Quest Line i bet becouse of that..
Becouse has Tooo Many companions for no Reason..

Like Wyll dosent have nothing going for hin, Gale, Halsin, Karlach..
All of then have a Shallow quest and incomplete stuff.. making useless and anoying briging then..
and thats why has a Bunch of Posts of people Pissed of becouse of that and wanting more from those characters..
Thats the Problem..
Less is More Larian..
If they Stick with only the 6 on the Cover i bet all of then would Have a Great Tale..
If Halsin were a NPC only and Karlach, Minthi would Have been Playble in Both sides of the Tale from the Get Go
and we would Have Balance becouse 2 Druids in Hero Path its Stupid.. sorry.
Yu dont Need Halsin becouse yu can Have Jaheira witch is a Much more stronger Druid.
And i can even Point More reasons for WHY having so many companions Sux. haha

1 Game that Made this Ok at Least was Dragon Age inquistion..
In that Game having all of then would Make your Inquistion Stronger.. Here thats not the Case.
Since yu Cant Bring all of then its Useless.
and Increasing the Party size like i Told Before.. its Double Down on the Mistake..

If yu Dont Belave in Me.. Give a Try with the Mod and Play in the Harder Difficult..
With 5,6 party Members yu will blaze tru the Game no Joke.

I have now multiclassed him with Paladin and a dip in Sorcerer (for the flying-feature) now, put some light armour on him and that amulet with the Shield spell. Shield-Spell desquishyfies everyone. And it started getting fun.

I like my camp full, but - in case this is how it works now - I will gladly switch Halsin for Minthara after lifting the curse in Act 2.

I play for story not for challenge. I'd really like a custom difficulty option to have a larger party. Personally I want 7. The 6 origin characters and your player character.

It's odd to me that the 6 characters that have the largest stakes in this adventure, 3 of them sit on their hands all day. I wouldn't. Lae'Zel? She's not the type to allow you and ShadowHeart for example leave her behind and just wait till we get around to the Crèche.

I want them to all be present giving their likes and dislikes, advice and cross conversations, special dialogs and cut scenes, all together.

If I sound crazy maybe I am. But I just have a really hard time choosing between all these characters. I'm also still in act 1, but I feel like my opinion still has a place. Personally I also just dont see how someone could argue against the inclusion of the opinion, if it's OPTIONAL. You know?

It continues to feel so astoundingly stupid to ever leave anyone in camp.
There is simply no good narrative reason for it, and in turn that means there is no good reason for the game to have been designed with a party cap any smaller than "everyone you can recruit + you at once".
At this point because of how dumb it is, I don't want to play through the game with people waiting at camp anymore, at least none of the origin characters, maybe I can tolerate teammates who could easily have been non-party allies, like Halsin.

So now the question is, do I only recruit 3 of them every run, leaving whoever I don't pick unrecruited, or do I go through the effort and put up with the bugginess of combining a mod to bring everyone with me at all times and a mod that removes all but 4 people from every fight (because I don't want to turn the game into a roflstomp)?

Anyone have any thoughts on which of those is the choice more worth pursuing?

One option that feels natural is to play an evil Dark Urge. Depending on decisions and urges, you can wind up with far fewer companions than in a regular game. And should you happen to cross the party limit nonetheless: an evil person has ways to restore balance.
It is nice to have a team of four that always stays the same. Wasn't that one of Larian's original ideas? It has its merits.

Why do you assume that mods equate with 'bugginess' (and with six-patch BG3 of all games)?

There are several excellent mods that convert the game to 5e and RAW rules which increase the difficulty and improve the game compared to Larian's ridiculous system. On normal mode, a party of six with 5e/RAW was more difficult than a party of four with Larian.

Disclaimer: I haven't played the game since Patch 4 broke it so the situation may be different now though I doubt it.

Because I looked up those mods and they're both buggy on their own and when interacting.

WOW! What a great megathread! I have read every single comment here with interest and everyone here has clever arguments. However I am with the six party side. I am a D&D veteran and played many D&D games like Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale series, Neverwinter Nights series etc (but not only D&D, I generally like other party sized RPGs like ShadowRun series or even the great SpiderWeb Software games) so I have much experience. To play the devil's advocate 4 party sized tend to be good and more balanced and their biggest strength is their replayability. You replay the entire game with different party members -classes so in each playthrough there are different experiences, different dialogues, different choices, different strengths and weaknesses in terms of gameplay, etc. It is an RPG game after all!
However their biggest strength (replayability) to some people is the biggest downside! I personally do NOT like to leave not even a single companion out of the adventure. I want to FULLY experience the plot and all companion's dialogues-interactions between them in a single playthrough. And I personally prefer that ALL companions learn & react about my choices in the adventure... To make matters worse real time limitations, busy schedule + other RPG games are limit factors that force many people not to replay an RPG game. After all the biggest percent of the game (main plot) you have already experienced it, why then spend hours and days again to experience some other NPC party interactions which is just a small % of the game? Plus it just does not feel right plot-wise to leave companions in the camp, especially Origin companions - what are they doing? Taking a nap all the time?? while you go to adventure, saving the world etc. You are a party, and all party members are supposed to be together or else they are not party members, just visitors!
Reading all the discussion in this megathread I understand that Larian will never implement 6 party. Moreover I understand by increasing the party size to 6 the game might be to easy (I dislike RPG games that are easy even in harder difficulties) so I want to report you all some quick research about the many mods available:

First of all some of you might already know the existence of "Party Limit Begone". However this mod is a pseudomod. What I mean is that it indeed increases the party limit in terms of gameplay, but in terms of plot-wise the party stays at 4 members. So in many situations like cutscenes the party is only 4 members, and in all situations like choices and party interactions, only 3 characters closest to the main hero are counted. A user at "Party Limit Begone" post-discussion at NexusMods site at 26/2/2024 named MufasaIllegitimateSon reported that he combined the "Party Limit Begone" with "More Reactive Companions" and with "Everyone In Dialogue" mods in order to limit those gaps. He said that he had enjoyed that combination of mods. However according to current data it does not worth to play with those mods because they are pseudomechanisms (as far as I personally believe). The plot is designed with 4 total characters and by increasing the members some companions might not participate and only appear in the party virtually. It is better wait for complete bug-free versions of those mods or when Baldru's Gate 3 is fully finished (with all patches, potential DLCs etc Do not forget that even the 20 years old Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are being patched to this day)! So to be frank I never tried these mods, so I report them to search if anyone has some experience with these mods!
If you play with increased party members, then it is mandatory to increase the difficulty by installing those mods below: By some quick search I have found some nice difficulty mods to have are: "Tactician Plus", "Combat Extender", "Lethal AI Enemies", "Immersive AI", "Stronger Bosses and Enemies" which its author recommends other difficulty mods "BG3 Fixed - Fixes and PnP Rules", "Tavern Brawler Rebalanced", "True Initiative (D20 Initiative Rolls)", "Configurable Enemies (Script Extender)", "Enemies Enhanced" which has two versions, the normal "Enemies Enhanced", and the other one is the "Enemies Enhanced (Honour)" combined with "Enemies Enhanced Correction Patch". Another noteworthy difficulty mods are "Additional Enemies - Bugged Clone Fix", "Death March - Enemy and Combat Encounters Overhaul", "Nightmare Difficulty", "Absolute Wrath". Finally, a nice difficulty mode is "The Epics of Tavs" mod which is large and automatically contains other mods like "Party Limit Begone", "Lethal AI Enemies" "Stronger Bosses and Enemies" etc. Moreover there are other gameplay mods that improve the content, but we must make sure that all of those mods I have written are compatible together especially some years later when Baldur’s Gate game and its mods are reaching in their final versions. Such mods are "Extra Feats At Low Levels", "No Inspiration Point Cap", "UnlockLevelCurve - Level 13-20", "5e Spells" and all other spells mods the author of 5e spells reports. "Zerd's Rules as Written (RAW)", "Homebrew Spells", "War Caster 5e", "5e Spells - Larian Durations", "5e Spells References: Valdacil's Spell Adjustments", "Secrets Scrolls for 5e Spells", "Actual Green Flame Blade", "Spell List Combiner", "Minthra's Configurable Enemies")

I know that they are too many, I have never tried them, so I want to learn which combinations of those difficulty mods are the best to be combined with Party Limit Begone. Can all of them be combined? If not which combinations are the best?

This get's the jumbo sized embed for this particular megathread! hehe



I was happy that Aoife and Wolfheart chose a Mod called "Adjustable Party Limit" to showcase as the first up on the Channel from Hell. I think it demonstrates reasonably well how having a larger party works/looks/feels here, without busting the game.

The mod also addresses some of the issues like the Boat transition in Act I and Long rest antics, which caused headaches with some others, like where the player would have to know in advance or meta-avoid those transitions while using a party of more than 4. There was mention of a difficulty mod to pair with the increased party limits, which right now are handled via a spell-like toggle. I haven't tried it with a multi-class Sorcerer yet, but seems like a pretty good solution to me. Hopefully more like this! My search results for a "Scratch" mod showed no results, sadly, but it's good to see Shovel up in the mix!

Ok I finally finished this, took forever. It can live here...

Shows the BG3 party composition for the 10 recruitable companions, without repetition.

Party of 4

(player +3, no repeats)



Party of 5

(player +4, no repeats)



Almost twice as many comps when we include a 5th party member, like in the Adjustable Party Limit mod mentioned above.

For a Party of 6 there'd be 42 more comps on top of that, but you can get a sense for the pattern. I still think 6 would be optimal, but just having a 5th means that there are significantly more Comps for the active party, even if keeping the companions at 10 total in the roster.

The question/challenge would be, does each of those potential comps feel distinct enough? Like does a given specific party combination provide sufficient unique interactions or endings, or something to set it apart from the other active party combos? When all the characters are available at camp, not as much, but there is still the equipping and banter, the roving commentary and the final ascent to face the Brain. Also if keeping the Characters' default Stats/Class (say no respecs) then each potential comp is more consequential.

I did the break downs there by the likely recruitment order, along the most straightforward/obvious path to grabbing the companions.

The downside of the Adjustable Party Limit Mod is that we have to Dismiss companions back down to 4 before Long Resting, but it's not too bad and the Mod reminds us. For me this lightly encourages pushing the Long Rest, which seems thematic, especially at the start of the campaign.

Overall I prefer the gameflow this way. Combat seems faster to me and the encounters run pretty smoothly, even with the somewhat lackluster pathing and lack of formation control. Difficulty/Challenge is a separate issue, purely from the standpoint of pacing and party comp variability I think going up to 6 has a lot to recommend it, but even going up to 5 makes a big difference.

spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!in case it wasn't known



in a similar vein, i feel like the party limit should be more or less removed/increased when the endgame comes. it always seemed kind of odd to me that the active party were the only ones taking on the netherbrain in the finale while the rest of the companions just kind of... idled? as you go to the morphic pool, the boat fits the current party of 4 to make the journey to stop the brain. stopping the brain fails, hell (hells?) breaks loose, etc. by this point in time you can't go back to camp (which makes sense), but what is everyone else doing? it'd be neat if, in addition to the gathered allies in the room, the rest of the companions are at the very least there to show they exist. at this point, it makes sense to be able to bring as many of them in to your active party as possible since there's nothing left to lose, in addition to generally upscaling the difficulty of the rest of the game. it makes sense to have some people at camp during most of the game to tend to it (ie gale watching the cooking pot) but by this point that's not really something to do.

i can see it being an issue on general performance (especially with everything out there all at once) or if the player(s) didn't bother leveling up/gearing other companions, though you could argue it's not worth mentioning in the cases of having low level characters during certain moments (notably a low level astarion when the vampire spawn attack camp or whoever is captured by orin).

it may also be problematic if the player generally didn't have any companions to begin with, but you could also correlate that to not having any allies gathered as well.

I’d be happy with the ability (mod or native) to just summon them in the upper city like you can the owl bear, Zevlor, etc.

Would love to summon Minsc and let him run wild.