Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General 4 Character Party Limit Too Small?

But the request for a bigger party size has hardly anything to do with difficult management, so this is a spurious argument.

And even the common rebuke "You can more or less get on with any party composition" is super-weak, because the point isn't "getting on". It's covering a vast range of options.

I WANT a larger and more diversified party not because I need it, but because I enjoy several aspects of it:
- benefitting from a large variety of different loot (rather than spending half playthrough going through "Oh, here's another mace/heavy armor/pole weapon/spell/magic-item-with-a-weirdly-specific-bonus that I will never have any use for").
- Enjoying the freedom to include hybrid/suboptimal classes without having to kick out a proper "mainstay" from the party for the sake of experimentation
- Accessing and going through MORE companions quests at any given time.
- being more reliant on broad planning than on lucking out the RNG on every micro-managed action.
- Feeling more comfortable in "rolling with the punches" with the occasional failures, rather than being compelled to reload as soon as things go south.

Etc, etc.

Of course, once again none of these arguments is NEW, because as usual they are answers to the same old tired objections people already did in the past.

I would also add 'greater opportunity for more party banter' to the above list.

The Pathfinder companions in WotR having actual full blown conversations with each other and with NPCs instead of only taking when they are attempting to influence your choices is a freaking work of art.

^This.

And BG2 also had lots of party banter and 6 character parties. I'm still all for turn-based and all that, but I want 6-character parties.

Probably being necrotic, but someone mentioned the BG1&2 was six characters and I'd forgotten that. It probably helps explain why four wasn't enough in my mind. That, and, perhaps, my own D&D experiences from 30-40 years ago where six people plus a DM gave me the most fun. It is probably safe to write this now, but perhaps the most frustrating thing for an original BG player was having to shoehorn two lovable characters from them into a party of four. I mean, who do people leave out? What are they missing out on if they don't?

I think this is part of the replay value of BG3. You actually see a lot of new scenes when you choose other characters.

It might be part of the explanation why the number of players is still unusually high.

I did try the mod to increase party size, to run with six characters a while and get a feel for it. Besides the mod working in a kinda awkward roundabout way (you get "spells" that add or remove party slots) it simply felt a bit unnatural once I was playing six characters. Probably because I've already spent so many hours playing the game with four characters.

Anyway, what Tuco said above in May '22 (giggle) strikes true - with a party of six there is more room to experiment with less optimal classes and to push through a streak of bad RNG, without the entire encounter resulting in a wipe. With less characters you will often dance on a tightrope on higher difficulties, a single resisted spell or broken concentration can often mean disaster. I am still in awe of how quickly a fight can go from me feeling comfortably in control to a TPK, just from some nasty RNG. Just yesterday my run ended at the undead encounter in the Mountain Pass - a string of crit misses, failed saving throws, then the shepherds' turns. It was all over in a couple of rounds. (That encounter is horrible)

This is also my experience. With 6, you can afford to "miss" an action, so you can take a little bit more risk to make the encounter more amusing. Case in kind for me is vicious mockery. I love that spell, but it's not very effective, especially when you go to higher levels. So in a party of 4 I almost never used it. Yet in a party of 6 I can use it often, just for the "acoustic" effect and bringing joy to the game.

I never tried to extend the party size limit, but I was switching through group members like a fiend! I would have loved a dialogue option for dismissal, like "Go back to camp, and tell [companion] to meet me at [fast-travel point]." Instead it was drama, tantrums and heartbreak every time.

This is relatively new, but if you go to camp and ask someone to join you, you can tell them who to replace. No drama

Thanks! Yes, that did catch up with me when I was in Act 3.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I was making a half-assed attempt at a new playthrough with the release of Patch 8 and I found myself thinking about the party limit again.


For something that Larian was absolutely adamant in not conceding, with the excuse that they would "leave it up as an option to modders". I have to say that they almost went out of their way to make the experience miserable for the player.

Let's put aside for a second the atrocious default control system and the baffling lack of "drag to select", the game is RIDDEN of "bottlenecks" where activating a larger party brings game-stopping bugs.

The usual boat in the Underdark is a notorious one, but now the modders confirmed that the long rest bug that could eventually brick your save is caused by having a party limit above 4. Even using the party expansion mod available on mod.io you'll have disable/ungroup the extra companions every time you rest to avoid technical issues.

That's why I tend to be annoyed by "modders will fix this" rhetoric some folks default to when faced with criticism. It shouldn't come a surprised that a party size that the game was not designed to support creates issues. Larian hasn't designed BG3 to be played with more than 4 party members, so it is natural that some of it's aspects break when the party size is increased.

That said, with small companion pool, clunky maintenance heavy UI, general lack of tactical depth in BG3s combat I personally don't see an increased party size as something I would want to experience. With final patch being out, I will probably go for my 2nd BG3 playthrough, and the first thing I will be looking for is if any modder managed to solve a mess that is the hotbar. My hardcore playthrough ended quite early when I got bored of sorting UIs. Games from 90s have better UX then BG3.

As many criticisms as I have of this game, the one mod I considered to be *essential* for me to be able to at least modestly enjoy playing this game was the mod to increase party size. So, hearing that it causes so many game-breaking problems is so incredibly aggravating.

Wich mods are you using?

I have party adjuster and its works just fine ...
Sure, my companions get removed from party before each Long Rest and invited back after ... but i never had to do that manualy. O_o

I wouldn't be surprised if the 4 member limit is mostly due to the "Toilet Chain" which is either someone's pride and joy or so embedded into the Divinity Engine as to be unfixable. How else to explain Larian's absolute refusal to improve it.

On console I have found that the " Adjustable Party Limit" Mod (especially when combined with Tactician Enhanced) to be excellent, and well designed. However they still aren't able to solve the many issues created by the Toilet Chain and in fact make them worse.

I don't have any problems. I gave party limit begone and you only have to separate the party once on the boat ride to Grymforge, because there only four party members can go. But the rest was totally fine.

I had a lot of fun in Act 1 with a party of 5, and next time I want to play it with a party of 6. The "toilet chain" is annoying at times, of course, but you can also approach the encounters with two mini-squads a la Jagged Alliance 2.

The Dank Crypt Chapel is the best example of this. I ambushed Gimblebock and Friendos from two sides. But when I jumped through the cracked floor, the “House-to-house combat” becomes confining. But overall I just like having more options due to the larger party. I wish Larian would support a larger party or mods for it much better.

Let's see how “messy” it gets with RTwP when all mods are ready and the game remains stable:

I did get the problem of a party member becoming invisible (they 're there and you can move them arounbd by clicking on the ground, but you can,'t see them) in several different PT's. But saving/quitting/reloading made them visible again. Anyway, even with this i,convenience, I prefer to have all the companions in the party (except Halsin) to see them interact and react in cutscenes/

The core problems with a larger party:

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a) In BG1+2, especially on high levels, you needed two tanks, two healers, and two wizards, because you would quite frequently be attacked from two sides.

And on highlevel the routine was: the wizard gave the tank Improved Haste, the healer gave the tank Regeneration, and the tank would attack the moment he got these two buffs.

That was because AC didnt do much on highlevel anymore. This wasnt fixed in D&D3 either and was only finally fixed in D&D5. Unfortunately I would have to argue that D&D5 fixed it too well and now we have the problem if you really invest in AC you hardly get hit anymore at all.

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b) Another problem why you had to have a larger party in BG1+2 was YOU HAD TO HAVE A THIEF.

Both AD&D and D&D3 literally forced you to have a thief in the group, otherwise you would be helpless against traps, and locks could be a huge problem as well.

This was a horrible misdesign that also got finally fixed in D&D5.

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c) Once you have figured out combat in BG3, it is unfortunately most of the time completely centered around 1. going first and 2. killing or disabling the opponents before they can act.

The abilities of the opponents are just too awful to tolerate allowing them to trigger, and going first/disabling the opponent is very doable.

This completely destroys the need for any sort of strategy for many later battles.

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d) Furthermore healing is a complete PITA in this game. There is no equivalent to the Regeneration and Heal spells in past iterations. Even the best healers hardly manage any healing at all, and getting healing potions is also not easy.

Your best bet in this regard is playing classes that simply negate most damage. Which ironically is also a possibility - Wildheart Barbarian (7), Bear, Stallion, with Thief (5) for a second bonus action (so you can refresh the temporary hitpoints every round) and Uncanny Dodge, and then linked to an Abjuration Wizard.

But really the easy strategy here is mostly just doing ranged damage and avoiding getting hurt at all in the first place.

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So the bottom line is BG3 just doesnt need a bigger party, because there is such a simple basic strategy that almost always works. Which is a very sad state of affairs.

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What do I personally want from games like all three Baldurs Gate games ? A group of characters, each with a couple douzen abilities, where I have to actually think what ability to use next. BG1+2 gave me that on some spellcasting classes (Mage, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid), but there was no such complexity for warrior classes.

Its basically what WoW offered, combat wise, though they made IMHO some very poor choices, like allowing people to completely reskill their characters to different party roles. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes offered this really well, especially in the late stages of the game, however its gone now and people dont even seem to know anymore why it was so great (awesome class design, awesome dungeon design, awesome raid design, a huge game world with realistic viewing distances and no instancing - a classic MMORPG "done right").

D&D5 has fixed some important shortcomings of previous iterations of D&D, but the fun the Larian game devs had with playing around ended up in a strange place where you have an extreme amount of choices but many are objectively quite meaningless, because winning Initiative and killing the opponent with spike damage or disabling them with spells is the dominating superior strategy.

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Unfortunately one-sided and misleading, because your arguments may be correct in terms of difficulty and the thief, but the bottom line is that it only leads to relativization by ignoring many other previous arguments (see megathread) as to why BG 3 supposedly doesn't need a larger party size.

How many times have I been in a situation where I wanted to use this or that ability but didn't have it and was annoyed that I could only use a standard attack or the next turn started and the opponent repositioned...? How many items have I found and thought were cool, but I don't have a suitable party member for them. And in terms of RP, I would also have more answer options.

As has been clearly and repeatedly elaborated in the megathread, it's about the fun factor. Making a larger party smaller to have an increased challenge/difficulty is always possible. In addition, it was already foreseeable at the time that future mods would always include additional mobs, NPCs, bosses etc., as with any game, which automatically contribute to an increased level of difficulty. The other way around is not so easy without a workaround for bugs which partly lead to broken save files.

I am not criticizing your counterarguments per se. I just want to sensitize you to the fact that your POV unfortunately only allows for one unsolidary direction: namely the aforementioned relativization and thus argumentation as to why it is not needed. That's probably why Larian didn't even think about adapting vehicles and elevators, etc. in the core game to avoid major annoying bugs e. g. Underdark boat. I think the modding scene would have been happier with that alone...