Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Steady increase of companions SLOTS through gameplay

Well, at the moment yes. But none of the interactions will be missing once Origins will be in - it’s just your friends will be able to lead those interactions rather then AI.

“Oh, but none of us will use origins. Creating your character is half of the DND fun!”
Good on you for getting the appeal of the D&D. I wish I could say the same about BG3.

You're all wrong. Volo is a bard. He just isn't a Bard.

Limiting party member 'slots' by level or whatever feels very artificial and I'm not crazy about it. However, I do think that party members should be spaced out more than they are. Right now it's looking like all eight companions are going to be available pretty much right at the beginning of the game, before we are even halfway through act I. And if Larian follow through on their 'party member cull' at the end of act I that they had planned, we'd might be looking at fixed party composition post act I. I'm not a fan of either of these. Compare to BG I or II (or indeed, most rpgs). You pick up companions as you journey along, either in sidequests or as part of the main quest. Everyone remember how you had to rescue Dynaheir before she was available as a party member, or you had to help Nalia was a questgiver who asked for help with the family keep? It was much more organic, IMO. And it was helpful since it was very possible that party conflicts and/or character death could leave you a member short of a party, which meant that 'spares' were great to have around. What happens if in BG III if Lae'zel and Shadowheart come to blows in act II and one of them dies? or Gale's hunger for magical items pushes him into deeds that make you kick him from the party? Are we just going to be one person short a party? Are we going to have to make do with personality-less 'mercenaries' like DOS2 had? Neither of those possibilities feels great to me.

That's not entirely true though. In BG2 you can get almost all companions after linear intriduction bit, except for Imoen for whom you have to progress through the story. In BG1 more companions are gated behind chapters, but that's not terribly good - you want players to be able to compose party to their liking, especially on subsequent playthroughs.

Of course, BG1&2 have rather different structure then BG3. While in games like BG2 or Deadfire you CAN get any (or almost any) companions you want from the get go, they will be introduced more gradually on your first playthrough. Personally, I think companions in BG3 stick out less, because how early they are introduced, but becaues like PC the are not part of the world you are exploring. I think Laez and Shadowh work fine, as they are introduced in the intro as well. But continually running into tadpoled characters who also survived, scattered across the map feels off.

Gale, in particular, feels like he could be gated later in the story. He basically walks out of teleportation rune and starts feeling you out for a possible tadpole solution. That could happen anywhere, since he apparently got off the nautiloid somewhere else and just happened to stumble on you after using a teleport rune.

As far as spacing out companions, I do get why Larian would want to get all the companions introduced quickly. The later you introduce a companion, the less time the player has to get invested in them. Plus as far as storytelling goes, it makes sense to introduce all the main cast of characters early. I'd say that Larian could still space companions out more, but having them be introduced within the first third feels like the right call.

You're absolutely right. I just wish we wouldn't get all of them (that we've been introduced to so far) within half a kilometer of the crash site.

Don't forget that they are all playable and can be picked as your character (or your companion character). So like D:OS2 all companions are tied to Nautiloid. I do wonder if they will revise opening before 1.0 to include more future companions, like D:OS2 did.

This seems likely. They added the ability to rescue Shadowheart, and there are a few other things that indicate there will be further modifications. During the first meeting with Astarion, he acts as if you'd abandoned him on board, and Gale says he'd seen you "in a crucible's worth of blood" with "an Intellect Devourer nibbling at your ear", even though nothing of the sort ever happened. The final version of the intro may end up being very different to what we have now.

So far we indeed dont have any, nor any indication that there will be possible companion that isnt aswell origin character ...

But what would stop it? O_o
I mean except Larian dont wanting that ofc.

That's one of the big limitations of the origins system with the tadpole plot Larian is using. Since each Origin character is getting character development and plot stuff going on for them, and since they all are getting the same backstory of getting abducted on the Nautilus, they can't really feasibly be spaced throughout the acts. If we had non-origin characters, this would not be so deep of an issue IMO, it seems weird that the only people who will join us as party members are those who have a worm in their brain, were on the same ship as us, and we can meet and recruit in the first 20 minutes of the game. Very artificial.

I wouldn't want companions spaced out between the acts, personally. I don't see what the benefit would be.

If some companions only become available late(r) in the game, odds are, by the time you get to them, you won't need them. You've already worked out your party composition, decided who you liked personally, maybe even got invested in their storylines – a newcomer doesn't stand a chance. They're more likely to get benched and ignored for the rest of the game, save for their personal quest.

Plus, having less options for constructing your party from the beginning, you may feel pressured to play a certain way or a certain class to plug holes. It's a problem BG3 already has, and spacing out companions will only make it worse.

The premise of the plot doesn't seem implausible to me either. You've all been abducted by the Mindflayers, you've all got tadpoles. Sticking together will raise your chances of survival, so you stay even if you don't like each other. You can't have outsiders in the party – you can't keep the tadpoles a secret forever, and without the threat of their own tadpole hanging over their head, any outsider is liable to try to murder you because by all accounts you're a danger. Makes enough sense to me.

A huge +1 to all of this. Agree completely. I HATE getting party companions late in a game and never ever use them other than to complete any quests specifically associated with them.

Really? There are plenty of folks in EA you can talk with that are perfectly friendly and helpful already. It stands to reason there will be more allies down the road. IMO the notion that 'can't have non tadpoled party members cause they'll cut our throats in our sleep' just doesn't hold any water. I mean, already we have Volo, Halsin and Wroot tagging along with the party-of course we *could* have non-tadpoled party members, and IIRC Larian is already planning that through the mercenaries mechanic as far as we know. Besides, Lae'zel already will literally try to cut our throats in our sleep and we can keep her around, so I don't see why this distinction of party members having to have tadpoles is a necessity.

As for the rest, It's one thing if it's an 11th hour party member in a jrpg, but the BG games...and BG III in particular have a lot of party conflict, with-as I mentioned earlier-lots of ways to lose party members. We are going to lose a lot of party member interaction when the cast gets culled at the end of Act I (even earlier if you side with the goblins) That party member interaction is going to be a lot less spicy and dynamic in act II if you only have 2-3 party members for the rest of the game.

BG II did it best with many party members tied to side content and quests. You get enough to get started and pick up the rest of your party as you adventure pretty organically, since there's a party member tied to a lot of the side quests and areas you'll be visiting anyways.

Most rpgs don't dump all your party members on your lap for the rest of a 100+ hour game within the first 20 minutes for good reason though, IMO.

I agree that companions should be somewhat front-loaded, but there is a risk of them being too front-loaded. I don't want all ~6-12 companions to be recruitable by the Druid Grove. The pacing/companion overload can handle maybe 1 more companion by the time we reach the Grove, so any others should be split throughout exploring the rest of Act 1 - overland main map, underdark, Creche, Grymforge - and maybe even into the beginning of Act 2.

Also, I want some companions to NOT have tadpoles. We could still find them in Act 1 sure, but it'd be nice if we had some companions with different motivations than "get this tadpole out of my head" or "learn to harness this tadpole's power without it taking me over."

From the standpoint of the player with metaknowledge, maybe. Most people indeed have a rather lackadaisical attitude regarding the tadpoles, much more than they should in my opinion. I mean, you tell Wyll that the tadpole is going to turn him into a Mindflayer, and he shrugs it off. You'd think he wouldn't hang around in the middle of a populated settlement, knowing that he might become a danger to everyone around him, but well. Anyway, as players we know that no matter what we do, we can't mess up too badly. So with that mindset, yes, the threat of strangers doesn't hold much water. But from the standpoint of characters, who aren't aware they can't lose, who don't know how anyone will react? I think it's reasonable to keep away from strangers and stick to other tadpoled people only.


We don't know for certain that the cast will be culled. It was the initial plan, yes, but I believe Larian have stated they are considering other options due to the backlash. I'm holding out hope that there won't be a party lock-in after all. It really does seem inane that we'd be restricted to three companions only when, as you said, there are so many potential ways to lose them.

The way I see it, if Lae'zel kills Shadowheart, for example, and I have a good roster of companions from the beginning, I can just replace her with the next best option. But if Lae'zel kills Shadowheart and companions are spaced out (and thus I have fewer to begin with), I might be stuck with an empty slot for however long it takes me to get to the point in the story where I can recruit someone else. So it's the same problem of less companion interaction, just from another angle.

In general, it's not as if BG3 drowns you in companions right away either. At the beginning you get Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Gale – just enough to fill your party and have one man in reserve. Wyll is in the Grove, which you may go to right away, or may only get to after clearing Withers' tomb. Karlach is further away, and depending on the route you take around the map, you may encouter her rather late. No word on where the remaining two are going to be, but what's there is hardly an unmanageable tide.

I think it makes more sense as a story if companions are spaced out. You get to Baldur's Gate and meet X, who hears your story and offers to join you to help defeat this Absolute cult, or to help you take it over. It really wouldn't make sense if everyone that can join was available from the beginning.

Personally not into meeting all recruitable companions within the first 30 minutes of playing the game, both from a narrative and immersion sense. I like spontaneity and surprises. And I like a large pool of companions from which to recruit, swapping out as I see fit...but then again it's just what I'm used to from previous games. Hopefully Larian will dispense with the God awful notion of party locking after Act 1.

This is fine, but only if the game provides a large pool of companions, which is exactly what BG 1 and 2 did for us. Then, those people like you who are okay/like recruiting companions late in the game can do so. And people like me can recruit just the early companions and ignore the late companions while still having a full and balanced party to play with.

So the bottom line is that yes, it is quite fine to distribute companion introductions well into the game, so long as they give us enough companions in a balanced spread of classes early in the game to fill our party. And no, mercs that we can create do NOT count. I want real companions, and will not play with empty-suit mercs in a game like this one.

I think the ideal situation is when none of the potential companions are gated behind tenths of hours of progress, but unless you go out of your way to gather them, they will be introduced gradually and organically. When replaying the game if you have a party in mind you can gather the team in BG2 and Deadfire as soon as "the game proper" begin. Still in both cases I have been running into new companions in 10+, 20+ hours (Deadfire is still awkardly frontloaded with companions - it doesn't have BG2 convenient hall of mercenery setting, that allows for introduction of muliple companions in a way that feels natural).