Do we need 5 or 6 characters per party?

You didnt really bother much to search ... did you?
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=672266#Post672266

Another +1. 😁

Even if larian sticks to only 4 players. I think mods will allow for extra members.

Honestly, no, not really. There is so little identity to classes that I never miss having someone in my party. It’s just irrelevant - no matter what party I have the game plays more or less the same.

Perhaps the benefit of 6 party would be that having 1/6 of your party pushed to death would be less painful then 1/4.

Yeah there is fascinatingly little in terms of class diversity here. Everyone can cast spells and many class features are gone or tweaked and all that...

Yeah, it is too small for several reasons and under several metrics, but we already discussed all this what feels like a million times.
It's not really a matter of difficulty, either. It's just that a 4-men cap feels awfully restrictive in a big ass CRPG where you'd hope to meet new characters left and right, try different compositions, experience as many companions sidequest at once as possible, etc.

That's mostly a problem tied to playing with low level characters capped at 4.
That aside, class variety is just part of the discourse here.

This is kind of how I feel about it. However fine tuned the encounters need to be for a certain party size, the bigger draw for having more party members is seeing how they'd interact with each other and the the world.

I even wouldn't be totally opposed to a slightly unrealistic system where every one in the roster was 'present' for dialogues and banter, but only a few were 'on deck' for combat. You might even go full JRPG and have a system where you swap people in and out during combat. Maybe that's a bit too much.

I think a problem with a lot of RPGs is how you could find a good party composition and never really veer from that for the whole campaign. I'll give BG:3 some kudos, a lot of encounters become less difficult if you match the right people to the challenge, it's just a bit of a hassle swapping them in.

This is how Tower of Time did it, and it worked really well IMO.

I don't particularly like this approach. I never understood why you would journey together and NOT fight together.

Big mama boss spider. You COULD have 6 people fighting together to kill it but for no reason you just fight her with 4... So that it's more of a challenge? If you COULD have 6 fighting tough enemies, why wouldn't you? It just bugs me in video games. I don't mind if there's a logical story reason, but when there is no legit logical reasoning, it bugs me.

That's why party of 4 in BG3 bugs me. The whole, "You're full up" with only 4 people makes no sense. None. It might make sense for a stealth mission into the goblin base, but if I'm wandering a hostile countryside, the more party members, the wiser you are. And especially if you know you're going up against a serious for, like a Gith patrol, why would you NOT bring everyone?

I just think it should be left up to the player to decide. The game should not limit you for no good reason.

Now, if they gave us a reason, like you need to leave people at camp to guard it or random encounters might occur and you might lose food and resources, that makes more sense. But again, that should be a player decision, not the game forcing you.

+1 This is usually my headcannon for games with more companions than party slots. Everyone is there and fighting enemies offscreen while you're fighting, but you only manage 4-6 characters against a subset of the enemies.

In this approach (at least my version of it), everyone is fighting together. The combatants are just limited to [4, 6, or X] for gameplay reasons. Take DAO: real-time combats while managing ~10 characters, with combat encounters that are balanced for 10 characters? Ugh that would be terrible: the combats would likely either be long&tedious or incredibly swingy because of high enemy damage to compensate.

This dialogue means that this "4 person limit" is an in-universe thing, which is incredibly dumb. If the game just brought you to a party select screen with only 4 total party slots, that'd be better. Games can and should have limitations (something something "players will optimize the fun out of a game"), but not all limitations need to be explained in the game world.

By that logic the game would allow player to run with every companion and mercenery possible in the game. Even games where you manage a whole army have some kind of cap - be it a "supply limit" or "upkeep" cost. A hard cap of "you can have X number of characters" might be a crude limitation, but I don't think a game like team-based RPG need a more nuanced system. You pick 4/5/6/8 characters for your team, and that's it. Easy for player to understand, predictable for devs to design around.

gather your party.. of 3... which of course the total including yourself are 4. the original baldur's gate both 1 & 2 has 6 party characters. 4 is too restricted. i really like the original 6.

I agree. You are right. I was only speaking to the mechanic working well in terms of party interactions. But I also was rather bothered by the immersion-breaking nature of it, and have posted as much on their game forum.

I also do not like this concept of everyone is fighting, you just can't see them. You only see and control 4. Why?

Because only the 4 are wounded, use spell slots, and use items. Everyone else is full everything no matter how many battles you fight.

For people like you there is only one possible answer ... no answer, deal with it.

A big reason behind this I'm assuming is Larian is pretty noob to DM'ing actual DnD and every monster is rated against a party of 4. Makes the balancing of DnD pretty easy in that sense. Of course, all this is out the window when they go and homebrew the shit outta the rules and even the monsters.

Mods will be the answer. I'm pretty much banking on relying on mods to even make this remotely DnD 5e tbh. Sure, I would like them to make it correctly but I have faith mods will set me straight.

It does feel small to me. But the total number of recruitable party members is only going to be 8, if the party was any bigger the small roster would get really noticeable, IMO.

Source?

Datamining, Larian's statements. All companions are going to be origins characters, and there are only eight origins characters. Aside from the five we have, there's . Which itself is deceptively large, because unless Larian changes their plans, we'll be losing a minimum of five of them at the end of Act I ala DOS2.

Depressing if this turns out to be true but not really surprising at all, given that every interaction is cinematic. A poor, poor decision to insist on Origins characters only and a pitiful number of companions at that.

that's the price to pay for going full cinematic and full VOs. cut and limited content tailored for cinematic and voice overs. the best they can do more are probably just like codexes, books, etc. branching dialogues, options, banters, all would have to be sacrificed for cinematics. of course the total number of companions. many would argue quality over quantity. yep. let's wait and look at the quality. and of course those are subjective and arguable as well. you may not like x and think it's bad but someone said it's top notched.

Given that I couldn't stand any of the currently available companions in EA, it would appear that if I ever played the game again I would be stuck with the remaining 3 companions. That is a stark contract to the previous games where there were probably only a couple of characters I never travelled with.

It was fun to swap out your party members when required and exciting that on first play through you never knew when you were going to meet a potential new companion. In BG3 we meet all companions in a very short period of time.

This thread should really be in the megathread.

Party of 4 - can't have ANY origin characters in the party if you play 4 player multiplayer.

Party of 4 - monsters need nerfing and don't have proper stats and behaviors.

Party of 4 - you don't get as many dialogues as you adventure.

Party of 4 - you have to constantly switch out party members just to do basic side quests related to certain characters.

Party of 4 - characters sit at camp "idling away the hours" when they have tadpoles in their heads and should be helping you not die against tough enemies like the Gith patrol.

Party of 4 - the grove is getting attacked and everyone is going to die, but characters like Wyll don't participate because you left him at camp. Guess he really didn't care that much after all, eh?

Come on. Party of 4 makes no flipping sense in the game. The only time I'd actually ONLY travel with 4 is if I was on a stealth mission. If I have 6 party members at camp, I'm gonna take all 6 to face potentially difficult situations like having to defend a grove against a goblin horde led by a bloodthirsty Drow cleric lady... Or if I'm going to waltz into and raid a goblin camp and kill their 3 supposedly big bad leaders and then face 30 minions as I'm trying to escape.

We dont exactly know if what we have right now is "all" companions ...
Actualy, concidering datamined info, and some old interviews ... we can be quite sure it isnt.

But yes, we meet them all pretty soon ...
And many of them we can also pretty soon either loose, or even straight forward kill with our own hands.

I still dare to presume that we will leave most of our party (in my honest opinion everyone except single Origin character we will follow to Act II.) ... since once our tadpole problem will be solved, we would no longer need to stick together.

Agreed ...
I asked for merge few days ago, but sadly no response. :-/

Its basically directly tied with how little companions we will get in the game, aka, less than 10. (probably 8??).
Also tied to, yet again, the baffling decision to make a Baldur's Gate game dialogues... ALL into Tell tale cinematics; the work involved is probably HELL.

At the very least, 5 playable and around 10~12 companions would of been a perfect balance imho.

Larian, remove 40% of USELESS cinematic dialogues, use voiced text. And redirect the work into NEW COMPANIONS. Its that easy. Keep SUPER HIGH QUALITY cinematics for key storyline moments, emotional moments, action scenes etc...get rid of the overwhelming slooooow cinematic FLUFF in this game (its everywhere!!) to produce more quality content.

And then be acused (and found guilty) from not delivering what you actualy litteraly promissed ... its that easy.

Also what do you all have with that 8 companions? Where did you get that? O_o
There is 12 classes after all. O_o

+1
i think pathfinder wrath of the righteous has it about quite right. full VO and cinematics for essential chapters and important events only. Others doesn't need full cinematics IMHO. doesn't need full VO too. full VO might be nice for the first or 2nd playthrough. i find myself skipping conversations and just directly choosing the dialogues after 1st or 2nd playthrough. more content can be added, more branching dialogues, decisions and consequences vs cut content for the sake of cinematics. Even with full cinematics, game feels weird for me too as a silent protagonist.

more companions are actually better as it increases replayability with different party composition. so far we have cleric, rogue, fighter, wizard, warlock.
left are paladin, monk, ranger, druid, sorcerer, bard and barbarian. there may be some missing classes from companions unless main character assume that role. has larian confirmed how many total companions would there be in bg3?

I haven’t seen anything recently about number of companions, although I would like to know! A couple of years ago, one of the writers said that there were at least 8 companions, possibly more and possibly nonorigin characters.

For me full VO is essential and cinematic dialogue is strongly preferred. I want more companions, too, though. I want it all!

You have to be really careful with the 'wanting it all' philosophy though because that is sort of the definition of how scope management disasters happen right!

As for full voice acting - there's a really interesting game developer post-mortem with Josh Sawyer where he argues that full voice acting was so so bad for POE2. In many ways it's actually Larian who set the market expectation that cRPGs now have full voice acting with Divinity Original Sin 2. It's a total disaster for writing complex branching/reactive narratives though and can take focus away from other parts of the development cycle that are just very likely much more important to the overall quality of the game. I'm actually incredibly worried about this trend and I think Larian going full VO for something with lots of reactivity like BG3 was very likely a mistake.

The tradeoff is likely to be that you get a more cinematic feel but inevitably some reactivity and choice and consequence will go which is basically always a terrible trade - because the former ages rapidly whilst the latter is timeless.

Let's take a poll. Go to the megathread and give your answer.

Who wants party of 6? If you do, go to megathread and post +1. If not, -1.

No reasons. Just +1 or -1.

We as final consuments are actualy the only one in whole development process who can affor wanting everything.
Disasters happens only when someone higher will take that wish too literally.

BG3 isn’t POE2, and I think BG3 having full VO will work out well for Larian. 😊 AAA games have the budget for it.

He argues pretty much the opposite and his point is only that their pipeline to implement it a the last minute was incredibly stressful.

This seems the opposite of how it should work. I would think that adding voice acting at the last minute - after all dialogue is ~finalized - is much much better than recording voice acting first, then having to re-record lines when dialogue changes..? Can you explain so I don't have to search through that video?

As long as all the companions get classpools that fit with their story and arnt hard locked i think it'll be fine.

If we get dos2 level party restrictions without having atleast a portion of the classing wiggleroom it'll be rough.

But if we can roll shadow as a cleric/paladin/Sorcerer

Or wyll as a warlock/fighter/bard/ranger i think it'll be fine. Every companion has atleast 3 classes that would fit

I was about to respond to that, but I think @agad meant that. And if not, then yeah - ship combat/relationshipmechanic/topic system were far more damaging then full VO.

It's not because dialogue doesn't record itself. For details: go here, time stamp: 41:50

Thanks for the timestamp.

However, that's not my takeaway from this talk. He says it was so stressful mainly because of time pressure due to fast-approaching deadlines as owners wouldn't push back the deadlines. Obviously there's a relation between starting VO earlier in development and having less deadline-related stress, but it's not clear if that compensates for the additional work due to having to re-record things and take away time from writing early in development ("the writers aren't writing any more [...] because they're recording VO and that takes all of their time.")

If he was given 3 additional months from the start to put into VO, removing the main source of stress, would he put that near the beginning, middle, or end of development? I don't think this question is answered by (at least that section of) his talk.

So funny to me people defending less content is GOOD nowdays...Shows the state of the industry. People are so used to it and auto-equate this to better quality?!
ooooh 4 is fine! ITS HIGH QUALITY. 8 companions no problem! ITS HIGH QUALITY. Fewer classes great! ITS HIGH QUALITY. Why have more? Its already so HIGH QUALITY! And simple! And you can make MODS ! and we have DLCs ! Its perfect!

Expectation are now so low even shit smells like roses.

Just watch everyone lose their minds when Larian announces A SINGLE NEW COMPANION! OMG THEY DID IT! LARIAN YOU TRULY ARE THE BEST ! See nay-sayers, they delivered!
I mean common, as we've seen just adding a SINGLE class to the game gets its own special <world event> LOL.

Remember that Sony PS1 conference when he went up to the mike and dropped the "$299" Bomb?

Where is the :

"30 companions"
"party of 6"
"103 subclasses"
"500+ spells"

game? (Pathfinder WoTr came the closest, and BRAVO for that!) Thats what I expected from a new age BG3 game. In a cRPG more is definitely better. BECAUSE THE QUALITY CAN IMPROVE.

BG2 was designed from the start to have a boat load of content. And thanks to that base concept even 20 years later the modding community is strong, the game better, more fun and longer for it. Yes it aged, but like a fine wine; and not everyone drinks wine...sadly...homebrew new age beer is more popular

I'm not sure you're arguing the same thing. Building tall is not equal to building wide. Party size is about combat encounters and dialogue bandwidth, and doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of either except as a matter of preference.

More is definitely not always better. I'd rather have handful of meaningful choices presented to me rather than 103 classes and be expected to go through each and every one to find something I like. Wotr has way too many classes, feats and whatnots and it suffers for it. A lot of the content is buggy and reading through hundreds of options is a tedious. I'd rather they have 20 classes/subclasses at max and make those actually work well and be different from each other. Make the world react to your chosen class, present unique options etc.

i finally cant subside for my desire for dnd5e.. hence i'm starting solasta. i really hope that the bg3 companions given can synergize and compensate each other to form a party composition that i want for my playthrough. solasta doesn't seems to have multi-class so kinda hopeful and excited for bg3.. but on the other hand, the reactions and homebrew rules by larian kinda put me off a little. i hope larian continue to stay true to dnd5e. i don't like the +2 attack on elevation. since the ruleset mentioned advantage it should just have advantage instead. also the bonus action, etc.

pathfinder wotr is truly a masterpiece and a gem. i had myself a collector's edition and sadly.. due to the on-going conflicts. i hope i'll get it one day. the only thing i'll blame for mediocre framerates due to my aging GPU. still hesitant to pay up $750USD for a new GTX3070ti. the only thing i'm hating myself for disliking pwotr is punishing myself on a hard playthrough. already completed angel with core. haven't try newer other mythics. basically loving the game every bit. larian on the other hand... they have the right tools .. their engine, budget.. unfortunately personally i think they are not that quite the right team to work on the franchise.

They started of with High Ground Advantage (plus Disadvantage if you're on lower ground), and it was hated by many. It placed WAY too much emphasis on those things in combat, with the effective +10 difference between a character on high-vs-low ground. Additionally, many options were essentially invalidated: "oh you have a cool skill that gives you advantage on an attack, probably that has a resource cost? Well I can just climb 2 feet up a hill and get advantage that way!"

D&D 5e already has rules for giving +2 to AC in half-cover, so there is precedent for flat numerical bonuses. Since cover isn't implemented in BG3, just think of High Ground +2 as inverse half-cover.

would that be due to the design of the overall encounter has high ground availability? if one can just easily climb 2 feet up a hill to get an advantage would probably also mean a design encounter issue. or this could also mean that d&d5e ruleset does not translate so well into a game. but d&d is d&d. changing the ruleset basically means it's no longer d&d. also, is that a technical issue where half-cover could not be implemented? just curious.

Partially it's due to encounter design, yes, but I don't think it's an issue. A big limitation of PnP D&D is that verticality is hard, both to represent on a 2D battlemap and it adds additional math/bookkeeping. A video game solves all of these issues, and so BG3 would actually be worse if it didn't make use of high ground. It was always the High Ground Advantage (HGA) that was the problem, not the high ground itself.

Adding bonuses for things (even adding Advantage) isn't "changing the ruleset." The DMG (PHB?) specifically notes that the DM can grant Advantage for certain situations, which can easily be extended to giving a smaller flat bonus. The problem, again, was that HGA was so easily obtainable and so powerful that it overwhelmed many other things.

As for cover: the way I see it is that BG3 suffers from: a) not being on a grid and b) from every part of an enemy being targetable. Thus, to determine the amount of cover gotten (none vs half vs 3/4 vs total) BG3 would have to calculate every single possible path from you to all parts of the enemy, then report on the % of enemy that you can draw the projectile path to. That percentage would correspond to cover. This sounds a bit computationally expensive. (Whereas Solasta, on a grid, can simplify the calculation because everything takes up a whole 5x5x5 block. Thus you only have to draw a line from the center of your block to the center of the target block: if object in the way = full cover; if person in the way=half cover). BG3 would then also have to change the targeting system - otherwise people would complain about the enemy getting cover bonuses even though they can clearly draw a line to e.g., the enemy's hand.

You don't have any advantage in Solasta when you're higher. You both know the rules better than I but if I remember well it's not written that you should have any bonuses if you're higher.

That said, as Mrfuji said it was REALLY an issue in BG3. The difference between death and victory.
Now the verticality of the map is interesting and the bonuses/maluses are balanced.

This change was a great move and in my opinion it's probably one of the only combat mechanics in BG3 that should inspire Tactical Adventure.

I think he would need to get into more detail of how process of writing no/partial audio differs from full-audio. Outside sheer scope and exhaustion, what else was rushed in order to meet the deadline? I have ideas but they would all but empty speculation. The general gist is that full VO itself wasn't a problem, but way it was handled was. That said, at the end Josh said that with proper implementation he would do it again "because it is an expectation, which kind of suck but that's what it is". Why it sucks is what interests me - my guess is that it's drawing resources away from stuff that actual makes the game click, but that's just my subjective player's perception.

Solasta doesn't have high ground bonuses but it does have cover bonuses which seems easier to calculate with its grid system. (Edit for clarity: I'm saying Solasta's grid system makes cover bonuses easier to calculate than in BG3, not that cover is easier to calculate than high ground within Solasta)

Agreed that changing high ground to +2 in BG3 was an excellent decision. +1 or +2 seem absolutely perfect for a high ground bonus (cough cough Pathfinder gives a +1 high ground bonus), and importantly that bonus stacks with - and therefore doesn't invalidate - other sources of Advantage.

Agreed. I'd be interested in a full account from a dev on their experiences with no/partial/full audio, possibly taking into account the timeline of VO relative to the rest of development. And that's my guess too: that full VO just requires so much work and time.

Both, I think, are very good approaches. Solasta's map aren't as focused on verticality, so giving someone bonus because he is standing one square above an enemy makes little sense - on the other side grid allows for good implementation for cover bonuses. BG3 high ground has been working very well since they nerfed it to +2. I wish they wwill reign in the remaining homebrew so it adds tactically enhances the game, without overpowering it.

thanks for the well thought analysis. then in my opinion, it seems dnd5e is not well adapted or translated to a game compared to a pnp rpg. the high ground advantage is just one of the highlights. i can see the frustration of HGA but can be resolved with proper encounter designs. they should throw in some variety where not every encounter must have high ground?. i don't recall in pathfinder wrath of righteous having alot of encounters with the use of high ground. also what do you think about reaction? or bonus action? everyone can have bonus action wasn't that changing the ruleset?

You would do well to go play Solasta, if you haven't. It will give you a good idea how D&D 5e COULD be well translated into a video game. It'll teach you 5e way better than BG3. It'll also show you how verticality can be done well in a video game with wizards even being able to cast fly and spider climb, etc.

Ugh. Every time I play Solasta I think how much more awesome BG3 COULD be if they did combat and just basic movement mechanics better.

just got it installed and created up my party <3

😁👍

Keep in mind, much lower budget. I will say, there are maybe a few good models, but a number of really not good ones.

Overall, though, a good, fun game.

For a 5e experience, use Authentic difficulty.

5e does have a lot of problems, I'll admit. The randomness of the d20 isn't great when there isn't a DM to adjust things on the fly or fellow players to joke and commiserate/share joy with. It's simplified to the point of losing a lot of tactical options too. I'm a big proponent that video game adaptations should add back in a lot of the small bonuses that previous/other rpgs have, since a videogame can add them all automatically.

WoTR has some areas with high ground, but a.) I don't think any bonuses are given and b) I think it's literally impossible to jump/be shoved off those cliffs.

Those are pretty broad questions. I think reactions are incredibly important to the 5e experience, and having full control over them is vital. Giving everyone a bonus action isn't necessarily a terrible idea, but you have to be careful about stepping on other classes' toes. A generic bonus action should be weaker than all class/race-given bonus actions.

I enthusiastically second the suggestion to play Solasta. It represents the best of 5e combat. Have fun! Try to think of the terrible character models and sometimes bad voice acting as adorably-bad instead of offensively bad :P And remember, it's designed as a mostly linear game.

I really enjoy Solasta but for some reason I prefer the combat in BG3. I haven't been able to completely pinpoint why. I think the high ground and environmental factors add a layer of strategy that requires me to think about the battleground differently, and it's just overall more engaging. And I like how challenging some of the encounters can be - I actually preferred how punishing some of them were in earlier patches. Yes, I know there are mechanics that can be exploited, but I don't really utilize them, and I'm sure they can be tweaked so that they aren't so powerful in the final version. I'm really interested to see how they implement reactions - I can't think of a solution that is any better than the Solasta pop-up window, which I don't really mind.

With Multiplayer a core part of the design, Larian Studio will never increase the number of players in the party.

Never say never.

Besides, it's BECAUSE of 4 player Multiplayer that they SHOULD increase party size max. You literally cannot play with 4 players and do ANY side story quests with ANY origin characters. You miss out on a huge amount of story and character development, as if being punished for playing 4 player multiplayer.

Ah, but that's because you aren't playing as Larian Origins. Everything is perfectly fine if all players just play as characters they didn't create in a D&D crpg.

It depends doesnt it?

I mean ... i wonder about this since day 1 ... how will conversations lookalike when playing as Origin char.?
Will our avatar pick its choices and dialogue turn into cinematics ...
Will we have suggested or limmited options ...
Or will we have option to pick anything we want no matter how it fits the character just as we can now?

You get me right?
There is no quest progression if your Astarion just decide to keep feeding on animals, if your Shadowheart actualy know meaning of the word "secret", if your Gale go straight with his condition, or if your Wyll admits that he have more than general reason to hate Goblins.
And our characters certainly should know those things ...

The only way i can think of would be rewarding players for revealing their secrets in same time as NPCs would ...
Wich in Shadow case is still stupid bcs you get rewarded for failing yor mission. :-/

The main problem with 4 person parties is that you might miss out on some of the interesting NPC's because you don't want to swap out characters which you have already invested in leveling up and equipment and story options.

So what do we do? Look to Narlen Darkwalk! Design NPC encounters where they do not necessarily fall under party control, but yet will participate in adventures with your character. Isn't that the ultimate single-player goal, to not need a "party" at all?

Replay the game with different party?

Seems prety clear that is something Larian presumes ... i mean just look at all those possible outcomes!

I don't really know who Narlen Darkwalk is, but I will say that what you suggest isn't really the "ultimate single-player goal." If a game is designed to include a party of characters that you control, then the goal is to make those characters enjoyable to play as/with and interact with.

Every time I have ever played D&D, I played only my own character. Is that uncommon?

For me it gets really tedious at high levels when you have to manage spells, magic items, combat options, special abilities, etc., for every single person in the party. I tend to just not use them at their full potential most of the time. I suppose the turn-based system makes this a little more manageable, I don't know as I have not bought BG III yet.

Narlen Darkwalk is a thief in Baldur's Gate City. He speaks the thieves' cant, and you don't control him but he does do a couple heists with you.

Depends on game ...

Oddly no. It surprises me how many people play that way. You just might be an outlier, just like I am with my obsessive micromanagement of every unit on the other side of the spectrum. I would die of boredom if I played with a single character.

This is an interesting turn in the thread! I always thought the single-player party concept in CRPG's was created just because the artificial intelligence (AI) was just not good enough.

The books suggest only a single character per player, at least in the beginning:

From the old AD&D PHB, "The Dungeon Master is advised to limit player characters to one per participant at commencement of the campaign, though as play progresses, additional player characters may be added in a judicious manner."

The 5E Player's Handbook uses singular language, "Your first step in playing an adventure in the Dungeons & Dragons game is to imagine and create a character of your own ... Once completed, your character serves as your representative in the game, your avatar in the Dungeons & Dragons world."

This is how it has always been for me. I have never played a D&D game, TT or video game, without playing a character I created. Having said this, when it comes to my companions in a party-based video game, I only play with the provided NPCs and never ever custom-created "mercs" (unless there is no choice like in the IwD games).

The problem in my opinion is the AI which often has less "I" in it than desired.

I like party games. I always want to roleplay one person, but that does not mean that I want to play only one class per playthrough. For me the party of 4 is the best compromise. I get some interactions with companions and I can (as meta) play several classes at once without having to play several campaigns (which I don't like). Four party members are manageable. One of the many aspects I didn't like in P:WotR (or PoE 2) was the need to play so many (in case of Pathfinder bloated and overcomplicated) classes.

What interests me not at all is playing as an origin character, for me it's wasted time on the side of Larian.

There are 3 configurations I will want to play this game with, 1, 4 & 6 and confident mods will allow them all and keep a balance.

People having to expect to relie on MODS to do this is sad. Larian isn't an Indie dev anymore. Gives us options. This is a 60$+ D&D/baldur's gate RPG game.

For an D&D RPG tactical game yea its way too small. Wish we had 5, 6 party members. Archer , rogue, wizards, Cleric, Barbarian, Paladin all have a chance to shine. More options more interesting battles. I just cant understand why people are in the <less is better> camp for that element.

Maybe because nowdays people have been tricked that less content = better quality.....great way to divide the game up and sell it in bits and pieces via <season pass> schemes. We are so used to this now.

But for a Larian game, the way they designed the game and its encounter content...sadly it fits. I mean, there isn't going to be more than 10 companions anyways. And its a cinematic Telltale game.
5~6+ party games like NwN2, Pathfinder Wotr or BG2 have 15 plus companions so that works. Or games were you can create your own party like Wizardry 8 (8 playable!)

The saddest part of all is because of BG3 ULTRA cinematic nature, nearly impossible to make extra NPC mods that goes with the story. We are stuck with that LOONEY TUNES group Larian makes. For the exception of one maybe...I completely HATE every single characters. And guess what? Thats all we get.
Meanwhile its totally feasible to do this with Pathfinder WoTr for example. Or expand/rewrite some poorly written characters. Though for WoTr I already love 5, 6 characters out of their 15. Thats the complete BG3 roster. lol.
Point being, MORE OPTIONS MORE LOVE.

No it's not way to small, the larger the group the more pointless each member becomes. You are basically asking for the game to be Warhammer and the "party" being an army. That is not the game we have seen in EA so far, battles is not the main objective of BG3. Most of the battles has a way to entirely avoid them, what are you going to do with those 10 party members?

This isn't a combat simulator.

Complete and utter nonsense.

Not even just the overall conclusion.
Basically every single one of your individual claims in this post is questionable on a best day and possibly a complete joke in general.

I guess "utter nonsense" is much worse than regular "nonsense". There is still a good point to make here, which is that large parties for me become very tedious as the levels increase. There is only so much party operation that I am willing to manage during each combat round. For high level parties, I tend to forget the 112 spells known by my mages/clerics/bards, and the 14 different weapon proficiencies and potions my fighters have, etc. So if you look at the issue from that point of view, maybe it is better start with a slightly larger party at low levels, then drop a few of them off at higher levels ... unless the AI is good enough where I can just give general commands and don't have to manage every little detail.

What I observed in my playthroughts of ranger and druid in Baldur's and with my playthrough through Divinity OS2 is that making balanced party that is varied is much more harder with 4 party members.

I'm personally a player that wants varied party. Early in game you get cleric, rogue and wizard, exactly in that order. Now, in order to try druid class you have to recruit Lazariel, but I personally am not keen on kicking someone out of my party.

It is. By a long shot.

I don't see the good point? In fact, it's the exact other way around for me.
The more the game goes, the more a smaller party feels like an unbearable restriction that CRIPPLES tactical variety. Always using the same limited number of classes, always having too little room to allow for different party composition and experimentation, always feeling basically pressured to reserve most of the available slots for critical roles, rather than feeling encouraged to experiment with different things.

Also "more characters to manage in each round" typically means having to go through LESS rounds in general, as you'll tend to synergize better and dispatch more enemies quicker.
It also means having more incentives to deal honestly with your own failures and misses, because having two characters put to sleep/incapacitated in a party of six is a relatively minor annoyance, having it in a party of fours can mean being forced to a reload.
And the claim that the combat in D&D "isn't supposed to be a combat simulator" is highly questionable in itself and only justifiable if you accept a very narrow definition of what "simulation" is supposed to mean in context.
because that's exactly what it is: a tactical combat simulation inspired by old war games in its core mechanics.

Well, these are just few of the twenty or more different arguments I could (and I already did) throw on the plate of this specific topic.
There's also the little incentive to make use of a larger variety of loot, there's being precluded from experiencing a larger number of questlines, there's not being allowed ANY room for "role redundancy", etc, etc, etc.

Are you serious ?! ROFL.

"(in an RPG game) The larger the group the more pointless each member becomes"
<Larian BG3 forums- May 2022>

Are you trying to compare controlling an ARMY from a strategy war game to a D&D Baldur's gate like story driven RPG game with a potential party of 6 that has dialogue, variety of builds and classes???
Talk about taking things to the next level of idiocy.

Lets just have a single character then in our tactical RPGs to deal with then ?
Its so much more interesting. Oh but wait, 4 is FINE you say? Uh, and why is that?
lol.

Six characters is nothing compared to old-school D&D parties; back then, groups could easily reach higher numbers with or without accompanying NPCs.

And lets not forget all these <failesd?> RPG games that have parties of 5+ :


Might and magic 3
Wizardry 7, 8
Ultima 6, 7
Planescape Torment
Baldurs gate 1, 2

Icewind dale 1,2
Shining force series
Fire emblem series
Lunar 1, 2
Lufia: the Legend Returns
Final fantasy IV, V, VI
Persona 1, 2
Neverwinter Nights 2
Temple of elemental Evil
Arc the lad 1
Romancing SaGa 2, 3
SaGa Frontier
Unlimited:Saga
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song

Suikoden 1, 2

Final fantasy tactics

Tactical Ogre
Dark Rose Valkyrie
Wasteland 2
Etrian Odyssey
Pillars of eternity 1, 2
Pathfinder Kingmaker / 
Pathfinder WoTr
Advent Dark Force
Lords of Xulimia

"because having two characters put to sleep/incapacitated in a party of six is a relatively minor annoyance, having it in a party of fours can mean being forced to a reload" That is a very good point!

High level characters are much more complex to manage, no doubt, and after a certain point I just do not enjoy that, so I under-utilized the rest of the party in BG II. I don't have a multi-tasking brain, I guess. The Neverwinter Nights single campaign really tried to let you focus on just your PC, and I liked that aspect of it, but it felt really lonely because you could have only one other NPC join at a time. I don't have BG III yet, how is the party AI? As I said before, maybe the turn-based system makes this less of an issue, I just don't know.

Nevewinter Nights (2002) excelled with its multiplayer component, though.

Yes that is true ... my dial-up bandwidth out in the mountains was not very good back in those days, so I had to live with the single player campaign.

My only complaint with NWN2 party sizes, was actually with the Mask of the Betrayer expansion campaign, where they let you have a party of 4, but then gave you only four npc companions. At least in the original campaign you had a bunch of extra characters to mix and match, but in Mask you were leaving only one person behind all the time, which was just the most unnecessary restriction. We can double up in the tents or something. Okku/One-of-Many doesn't even need a tent anyway.

If you're going to give me 8+ npc companions to pick from, I'd understand the party size restriction, because taking everyone would be an enormous party, but if your party size limit is four, and you only give me four or five npcs, that's unnecessary, just let me take all of them.

So your argument is that party size in BG3 should be bigger because I exist?

There isnt any AI ... is it? O_o
Companions simply follow you (unless they are told not to ... and sometimes they stuck), when you are out of combat ... and you get full control over them in combat ...
You can also get full control over them outside of combat and make certain choices with them ... funny enough, those choices can be in direct contradiction with their believes and prefferences ...

Like:

For me the turn-based system makes managing multiple characters in combat more fun in BG3. 😊

I find the whole discussion repetitive and increasingly uninteresting but your post is a bit of an overreaction, and unfair.

If there are more people to deal with, the intensity of interaction with each has to go down in a given timeframe. If the difficulty remains, the meaning of any party member in combat dwindles, and the friends of "6" always claim that the game has not to be rebalanced (while denying problems for the highest difficulty tier). That we have not seen a game where big party numbers count, is obvious (cause they don't exist), so the cited poster here is wrong when he said that the game is not about combat. I don't know wether most fights are avoidable like the cited poster said, but a lot are, and I had to reload a lot to get my combat which I avoided against my will by "luck" of the dice; for the question "4" or "6" the possibility to avoid combat is however not important, ok.

But to the core of the cited poster's post, when you say, in a later post, that having 2 of 4 put to sleep is much more of a catastrophy than having 2 of 6 put to sleep, you are right but at the same time contradict your statements in the first and following posts, because obviously the game is much harder with 4 (given the same encounters), so in a group of 6 each char is not that important and the contribution less.

So although the poster you cited is not completely right in my opinion, you are even less in your answer. The state of discussion remains; some want 4, some want more, each side has arguments.

Its true that Tuco can be sometimes unnecesary harsh ... but this dont seem to be the case. O_o
Basicaly nothing Miravlix said was truth ... so how else would you call it, if not nonsence? :-/

As for the rest ...
What are you talking about? O_o

"The larger the group the more pointless each member becomes."
Neither logical nor true.

"You are basically asking for the game to be Warhammer and the "party" being an army."
Nobody has asked for this, and six is lightyears away from being an "army." Ridiculous.

"... battles is not the main objective of BG3. Most of the battles has a way to entirely avoid them ...."
From everything I've seen in the EA portion of the game, battles *are* the main objective in the game. And battles being avoidable is mostly a farce because the game clearly incentivizes the combat option over any and all other options.

"... what are you going to do with those 10 party members?"
How did six become ten? Again, who here has asked for ten?

So, exaggerations, strawmen, and false claims all over the place.

I swear, If Larian had implemented a party of 5 or 6 and 10+ companions...NOBODY here would of been complaining "Its way TOO MaNy...complicates combat and sTufF....we should of had 3 or 4..." (except Rag and Ice of course)

Dont you really have anything better to do?
Licking poisonous materials for example?

Certainly the players will always have the option to choose fewer than the maximum number of allowed party NPC's, so yeah 6 or 8 or 12 is fine with me if Larian can write them. I can say that in BG-I I was good with six, but in BG-II I found a full six was cumbersome and I was generally happier with a core group of only 4 or 5, depending on whether my PC was multi-classed.

But I do find much encouragement from Icelyn's comment that the turn-based system is still fun even with a large party. This will be something new for me, and I look forward to trying it out!

That's the second time (at least) where you've insinuated/implied that someone should kill themselves; you once told me to go play in traffic. Arguments here can get heated, sure, but there's no reason for you to behave as a child.

Hopefully you will like it as well!😊

If the difficulty is unchanged, then it's important for a 6-person party to be an option in settings, with a warning: "This game is balanced for a 4-person party. Your experience with 6 may vary." Then if people complain that the balance changes while playing with 6...who cares about their opinions? They were warned. Also, if the difficulty is unchanged, the meaning of each party member in combat remains the same (or increases). Combats will proceed faster because now the entire party is 1.5x as strong (more actually, because synergies -> "whole is more than the sum of its parts").

If the difficulty is changed for 6-person parties, then last part of your claim is moot. However, yes, in this case the relative effectiveness of each party member won't be the same as in a 4-person party. E.g., if each encounter has 1.5x as many enemies (or each enemy has 1.5x stats) then each party member effectively becomes ~1.5x less effective in combat. Although, again, you have to account for additional synergies between the 6-person-party, which increases overall (and individual) effectiveness.

I mean.. does it make any sense? No, but most RPGs out there have a cap on the number of companions you can bring along (DA, ME, NWN, IWD etc). Even in the original BG games, only the cap was at 6.
In my opinion, the best approach is to have a few highly characterised companions who you can bring along all together instead of having tons of them and just travel with the usual 3.

I think Larian has chosen a party of four because is the realistically maximum number of people you can recruit for an online cRPG campaign. They are going for the Multiplayer experience first, sadly, because at the moment we have 5 companions, so a group of six will be more than plausible.


Not a fan of it, I prefer to venture forward with all my companions, but if I could tolerate it in Dragon Age: Origins, I think I can tolerate it here.

Still, again, not a fan.

Yeah, well, that's one of the collateral effects of always bringing up the same old talking points: you'll get the same old answers.

Oh, but this is the easiest argument to retort:

A hard cap to six characters allow both groups to be satisfied and play how they want, while a cap to four simply does not.

Ahh, but you are forgetting the fact that i don't want you to be satisfied, it tarnishes my enjoyment of the game if you are enjoying it in your way instead of my way.

+1

party size constrained to four is kinda a deal breaker for me tbh - 5e is too big/dynamic to limit players to four slots

so after playing solasta.. 4 party limit is really restrictive for me. i'm planning my 2nd playthrough and was really messing me up like.. paladin or fighter? i already had paladin on my first playthrough but paladin smites were so good. if i choose paladin i'll miss out trying fighter and all it's goodness. sorceror or wizard? if i choose sorceror and i'll miss out crafting and identify but i'll get metamagic goodness and twinning. cleric are so good can i ditch it without one? seems like i'll be smacking myself if i were to do so. i had ranger and the goodberry basically saved me all the hassle on ration encumbrance. i get it that the system is meant to "force" you to choose and live with compromises. but why not both? game can be equally challenging with you having 6 party members you can easily find that game as pathfinder wraht of the righteous.

I don't think it's a coincidence that just about everyone in here that was around for Pillars of Eternity downsizing party members from 6 in the first game to 5 in the second game really want the party member cap to be raised in BG3. A lot of the concerns about the difficulty balance being out of whack or turns taking too long are really just theoretical at best.

However, the downsizing had a pretty interesting effect on how certain classes were perceived. Even losing 1 party member slot resulted in party build discussion veering drastically towards min-max considerations rather than plugging up strategic holes or strengthening your specialties further. For example, Druids went from being considered a great utility caster in the first game to being a gimmick class that doesn't do anything particularly well compared to Wizard and Cipher in the second game. This also had the unfortunate side effect of Teketu seemingly being the least used party member in Deadfire by a pretty wide margin.

(As far as I'm aware, Serafen is probably the second least used party member, but not because his class is considered bad. His case is more accurately attributed to Ciphers being one of the most popular player character classes, and Serafen's personal Cipher class having a very bad RNG mechanic tied to his spellcasting that player character Ciphers don't have to deal with.)

I'm actually very interested to see what the party class breakdown would even look like in BG3 with the 4 party member limit. For example, I suspect Lae'zel is going to be completely ditched by the majority of the community once the Paladin class or the companion are available. Even in Solasta, I immediately felt the sheer loss of utility going from a playthrough where my main frontline tank was a Paladin to a playthrough where that role was taken by a Fighter.

I made this argument almost a whole year ago, but it does kinda bear repeating again.

With a 4 party limit, my plan is basically this:

- PC archery-focused Bard
- Gale
- Shadowheart
- Karlach only if she's a Paladin, otherwise I'll go with Wyll, shift my Bard and Shadowheart into being hybrid ranged/tank, and just focus entirely on cheese stealth alpha strikes like I've already been doing in the EA.

With a 6 party limit, I'd probably shift to the below instead.

- PC archery-focused Bard
- Gale
- Shadowheart
- Karlach as either Paladin or Barbarian
- Wyll because I legitimately like him
- Minsc or Halsin (assuming Halsin becomes a party member)

Yeah, I heavily favor magic and archery setups, the limit in this case basically controls what my front line would look like.

Tight restrictions force you to be more creative. You don't always have the option to pick the best option with no downsides when faced a problem. Even in Original Sin 2 you probably had on average 3-4 ways to solve any given problem. Your playthroughs will actually become different, since you don't have a Wizard at hand to dispel a magical barrier every time, but have to find another way around. I highly doubt that the game difficulty requires you to have a minmaxed superparty obliterating everything on first turn. Getting through the game with an ill-suited band of misfits failing every other d20 roll might just be the greatest adventure you can have.

Fighters don't have as much utility, but Larian is adding plenty of stuff you can do besides swinging a sword even if you don't have any class features for it.

I think D:OS2 is a horrible example, as armor system and lack of RNG for stuns greatly simplified the gameplay, at least for me. Essencially every character specializes in physical or magical damage - once you burn through armor you can stun lock the enemy with whatever stunlocking skill you have. The goal is to make more DPS then your enemy aka. burn through their armor before they burn through yours. Half-team dedicated to physical damage, half to magic damage. Some utility spells like healing/armor up/positioning if particular development path supports it. That's it. I attempted three playthroughs (one completed) and no the game played very much the same. That game got incredibly repetitive after just couple hours. I don't think that game was every designed around party play - more around 4 coop players being able to do well without cooperation of their partners. That is also where Larian is taking BG3, I think. I don't think their additions are there to expand tactical possibilities, but for individual classes to be less reliant on support from others.

Yup, this is the one big thing I continue to dislike about Solasta. My two other big issues of no multiclassing and levels capped at 12 I have over time come to accept as things I can live with, but the party size of four issue is utterly aggravating.

Completely agree.

With a party of four in BG3 you are always forced to engage in stupid min-maxing and there is no place within your party for a weird-but-fun build or even for roleplaying. It's just a very boring calculation of what is the "best" party. And yes, there is such a thing as the "best" party in BG3. It is fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard. That is the party everyone should always play with. Deviate from this party and you are shooting yourself in the foot.

with less party characters there's no room for utility or simply no roleplaying for the character you want. just completed solasta the final battle was kinda tough for me. i was on authentic mode though. i can see that's how most battle will be as we'll probably be bombarded with swarms of very fat hitpoint sponges that can have 3-4 attacks every turn on your character. it was brutal. paladin smites are limited and can only use carefully. having a paladin, a dual wield ranger as my DPS. if anything i would say a fighter/battlemaster would really help with min 3 attacks and follow up strike as compared to my dual-wield ranger. only in final battle that i actually gulp a fire giant potion, potion of speed and greater invis on my dual wield ranger. not sure how they would balance for the encounter for weaker party setup .. well maybe other than say.. cheese

Why are you so concerned about min-maxing and shooting yourself in the foot? The game difficulty doesn't require you to run optimized party. You can complete D:OS2 with all kinds of parties if you don't play on the highest difficulty. This is a single player role playing game. Not a competitive first person shooter or moba. Whats the point of playing with the "best" party? If you want the game to be easy, just lower the difficulty?

For me this is a very bad and not fun party. I am assuming this is the "traditional" version with fighter as melee, rogue as mostly melee, and cleric melee when not healing? I do not enjoy this playstyle at all, the enemies need to die before they get in melee range. Tried to make myself like it, even having just one melee (fighter) but it didn't work.

I find fighter completely useless because they do not get crowd control spells like ranger does, and the enemies tend to die before they get a hit in if I play them as melee. Rogue I always play ranged but even they are unnecessary because anyone can pick locks. Cleric healing can be a good thing depending on if I screw up spell placement, but I always keep them ranged.

My best and favourite party (custom) so far was ranger, rogue, sorcerer, wizard. With vanilla companions it was ranger, rogue, wizard, cleric (because I always forget that short rests are a thing for warlock.) Probably at higher difficulties I will play ranger, sorcerer, wizard (or another sorcerer,) cleric, since the ranger will pick locks and scout. All stealthy, especially for traveling and ambushes, and ranged with strategic use of crowd control spells and positioning. A 4 sorcerer party would probably be just as fun and efficient, but I would miss Spike Growth and Ensnaring Strike too much.

On one hand, I would normally agree.

But after witnessing what effect the downsizing from 6 to 5 party members had on the Pillars of Eternity community... From a pragmatic standpoint, people are ALWAYS going to be seeking out min-max strategies. The harder a game is perceived to be, the more the community will push towards that mentality. Just look at the literal hundreds of build guides that exist for the Pathfinder games.

And let's be real, people LOVE to parrot out the idea that DOS:2 was a hard game, when it really wasn't after you realize that most of the difficulty consisted of gotcha-style encounter design more than anything else.

Pathfinder games also have insane amount of options and complexity to them. DnD 5E is much more accessible, you don't need to read through 100 feats in character creation.

If people find these games too hard without a min-maxed party, they should just play on the easiest difficulty instead of asking for a bigger party size.

Eh. 5e's system is pretty flexible on party composition. As long as you have someone who can Healing Word, someone who can be frontline, and someone magic-y, you're fine. Bonus for having thieves' tools proficiency I suppose, but you can always brute force or get Knock.

There are vastly fewer debilitating effects in 5e that require a Cleric (e.g., Pathfinder's permanently blind/crazy and ability score damage/drain).
Healing conscious party members is practically useless, further reducing the need for a Cleric.
Anyone can get proficiency in thieves' tools through backgrounds, or training in-game, so a rogue isn't required.

^This. @Saito beat me to responding here.

It's not that I WANT to min-max. I hate min-maxing. But with a party of only four I HAVE to min-max or else struggle with many of the encounters. And no, lowering the difficulty is not as easy as that, because difficulty settings don't only just lower the difficulty of killing your enemies. They always also come with a range of other gameplay elements that get changed in some way. The game should allow people to be quite successful in all encounters on "normal"/"core rules" difficulty setting without having to min-max (including playing with a completely oddball party).

See, people keep saying this, and initially I myself bought into it, but now that I have had the chance to actually play 5e myself, through a lot of Solasta but also a lot of virtual-TT play of 5e, I strongly disagree with this. At a minimum you MUST have a dedicated healer with lots of healing or else you stand to have most if not all of your (small 4-person) party go down during a battle. And rests don't help with respect to keeping your party alive DURING a battle.

Solasta is a bit different in that it's a video game, so I expect encounters to be more deadly because failure means reloading instead of permanent loss of character. So having more significant healing can help if you want to reload very infrequently, but imo all parties still do fairly well if you're willing to reload maybe once every ~5 encounters.

In my tabletop 5e experience, I've played in/DM'd for plenty of different 4-person parties with very few character deaths across the campaigns. Of recent 4-player Campaigns (level 1 to at least 6), there's been only 1 death, and we're usually able to tackle all out-of-combat encounters just fine:

• Fighter Druid Artificer Rogue - level 3 to level 11
• Paladin Rogue Bard Warlock - 1 to level 11
• Barbarian Ranger Bard Monk (ranger died at level ~6)
• Barbarian Monk Bard Sorcerer - level 6 to level 14
• Fighter Cleric Monk Sorcerer - 1 to level 6
• Barbarian Rogue Bard Warlock - 1 to level 6

These parties are pretty diverse. I suppose all parties have either a rogue or bard, and then either a Fighter or Barbarian or Paladin. I'll agree that a healer of some sort is necessary. But that healer can be any of: Cleric, Bard, Druid, Paladin, which still allows for a lot of flexibility.

All that said, I can't deny your tabletop experience, so not really sure where that leaves us. Maybe I'm playing in less deadly campaigns. Are you playing in campaigns where enemies attack downed party members? If so, then yes pre-emptive healing is much more important.

Yes, in the games I've been in the DM does provide for enemies attacking downed characters somtimes, depending on if it makes sense. They also get to suffer from area effects. So not even just stabilizing a downed character is enough. You need to get them to a reasonable number of HPs or else they just go right back down again the next round.

DnD 5E is more or less based around the idea that preventing damage is far more effective than healing it. The real value of a cleric isn't based on the healing they can do, although it's a plus to outright prevent a death for a downed character. It's the crowd control options and defensive buffs they offer.

Spells like Shield of Faith are actually really powerful when used on a character that already has high AC to begin with. There wasn't much that could hit my Bard with direct attacks after I increased his AC to 21 when I last played the EA about a year ago. At the same time though, having high AC isn't the be all end all tactic in BG3 compared to Solasta purely due to things like field effects and the prevalence of thrown items/special arrows, some of which don't have saving throws to prevent their effects. It's actually interesting to see if this becomes a major balancing problem as the game goes on, or it leads to much needed tactical variety. Considering the lack of proper reactions and the idea that it makes concentration spells way harder to use, it currently lands in the former category.

Your avatar reminds me of Subaru Kujou.

That's fair. Cleric and somewhat Paladin are the classes that excel at healing a lot with a single turn.

Agreed. Which is party why other classes can easily replace a Cleric imo. Druids and Bards, and to a lesser extent Paladins, Wizards, and Sorcerers, also have CC & (de)buff options that can replace a Cleric.

The most important role in D&D imo is a tanky frontline fighter. A party without such can work, but they'd need a lot of caution and tactics.

In BG3 there are lots of healing potions you can use during battles. I never min-max and just select the companions I want. 😊
An all caster party works great as well!

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.