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

If nothing else, because
1- It gives more targets to the enemies to chose from, possibly even parting their damage more.
2- It gives you more chances to intervene in the queue of enemy actions instead of staying a passive witness.

Which is why "concerns" that a six-men party would "slow down the game" are mostly an uneducated nonsense.

Anyone who complains about 'balancing issues' when an idea is presented is a selfish moron. It's like the argument "It would take too much time to impliment" from people with no coding experience and surmounts to "I'm happy with it so why should I accomodate your idea". How something is balance is a task for the devs to consider not the playerbase and is a completely irrelivant criticism to make. Anything can be balanced if done right and is done after the fact, not in spite of it.

You have made a lot of really solid points and I agree with all of them. Especially the idea about giving 'party experience' instead of 'individual experience'

Something I'd like to add is that a large issue, due to Larians current creative decisions, is that every single fight is mapped out and planned. Nothing is really 'randomised' and thus you end up with a pretty static game after multiple playthroughs due to the lack of 'living world' elements. I've made these points in the 2 suggestions in my sig. Random encounters,respawning / repopulating enemies, coding dynamic encounters that increase/decrease the enemy numbers in response to party size. (For those that want to whine about cannon, it'd be easy enough to add 'priority units', like commanders, that carry a warhorne they can blow to summon reinforcements) are all elements I feel like Larian need to include

I could not have said it better. I agree 4-man party should be where it is at.

So don't play in a 6 man party. What he's advocating for is the ability to do so. I think you're both shooting down the idea in spite of the fact that the game will be balanced around 4 people anyway so your experience wont change

Read the topic please.
=> combats would be faster if you don't add ennemies. You don't have to add ennemies. That's not primarily how you balance a game difficulty.
=> it would increase replayability because you'll have way more possible combination. That's mathematics.

That's facts so please, try not to base your thoughts on invalid arguments...

If you balance the game around 4 characters but allow a party of 6, everyone will have 6 characters in their party anyway, and this would make the game too easy. If you want to go that route, it makes more sense allowing this option with a mod instead.

If the combats would scale their difficulty automatically based on party size, I think the option of 6 is fine. That being said, it's a tall order for Larian, which makes me doubt they will take this route:

• Balancing this system would be very work intensive
• Companions are very well fleshed out. Having to add more is once again very work intensive. And allowing hirelings just to fill out a party of 6 seems... odd.

EDIT
If people feel combat is too hard, that is a different problem in my opinion. That does not necessarily need to be solved by adding more party members. It could instead be solved by making the encounters easier.

And here my first multi player play through was with just 3 members.
My current playthrough don't have the rogue, Gale has 14 dex, he can pick those locks.


While I get the idea, and wanting to cover all the bases, I think that's the exact reason why you shouldn't have it. DnD 5e is interestingly balanced. You can play almost any combination of classes, and still win.
Larian has done a great job of adding "many ways to Rome" for most situations.
Many classes can fill two roles too. Clerics are great tanks, Warlocks and Wizards can do lots of sneaky things (especially a Wizard with invisibility and high Dex)

What I think is more needed is the ability to respec the origin characters, because their stat distribution is... not god.

...in trash basket

Let's be honest though, either way the controlling of the party has to be improved and ten fold if we are to integrate more paty members.

I need to dig Tuco's other thread out, because having now played the EA, managing the party is a nightmare. I will save the sailient points for the other thread, but if we are going to have more obstacles/surface gunk, then party management is king. SO Yes to more characters in a party, but ONLY in combination with improvements to the handling of said group. Otherwise I will reduce my party to solo or MP with friends so that my stupid party members don't run back and forth to a new leader just because I didn't unchain them all and decided to move jump them individually around obstacles.

Yeah, as you can imagine I agree. There's a reason if I said in previous replies that better party control should be basically perceived as a pre-requirement to even BEGIN to discuss party size (and frankly as a necessity even if Larian stubbornly decides to stick with 4 men as absolute limit, despise the overwhelming amount of people who started asking for six since the first reveal).

How do you know?



Why do you care if it makes the game easier for a group of 6? You're not asking for this feature so you have no business talking about balance

Also, I should point out that in divinity, the number of people who did lone wolf duo's seemed to be just as many people looking for 4. In fact, I'd be interested in the ratio between the number of 2:3:4 man games played. I would put money on the fact that full 4 man runs would have the lowest percent as it seemed impossible to find a group of 4 people to actually commit to the entire game.

Also, as I've said in a previous quote, and countless times, balance is a completely pointless criticism to an otherwise reasonable and valid suggestion / request. It's not your job to worry about such a trivial task. Anything can be balanced after the fact.

Opposing a feature request because you 'worry about the balance' is childish and annoying. It's a deadweight opinion based on an entirely selfish desire to cockblock others for no reason whatsoever.


TL;DR, I've yet to see any valid reasons to oppose this idea. If your only concern is balance, just say "I'd wouldn't mind as long as the balance is done right". Don't go round saying "I oppose this because I worry they might ruin the balance for a situation I never intend to play". It's really selfish. Stop offering dead weight opinions and use your head. There is a very simple solution to this and would be trivial to keep everyone happy.

It's especially jarring as a bogus argument because, among other things, it seems to assume that currently the balance is in a state of Holy Perfection and nothing should be done to upset it, which is obviously silly at best.

I'm only opposed to it until the devs come out and say that it is something they will be able to manage along with all the other improvements they want to make. Until then it is a possibility, no matter how much you shout, scoff and name-call, that this could use up resources that could be better used elsewhere. For me and many others the extra party size isn't that big of a deal.

Balance is a valid concern. Calling a point of view moronic or selfish because it doesn't line up with your's is unhelpful and hypocritical.

So with 6 people, you'd have 50% more firepower.
So now to balance that you'd need 50% more or stronger enemies. Which would negate any time saving. At best, fights would last just as long

Now with 6 you also have 2 more people you have to gear up and manage their build and relationship. That can add a lot to play time in a game that already has a slow pace.

Playing DOS2, Lone Wolf games went noticebly quicker than 4 player ones.

DOS2 also had more freedom with its rules and could balance out lone wolf with double stats and more AP

Now with BG3 they're more restricted where the more they stray from dnd rules, the more upset people could be. That's where balancing can get complicated. So add more ideas to help with that, rather than leaving it up to the devs or throwing insults.

Maybe less EXP for bigger parties and more for smaller ones

That's exactly how it works in D&D and in the old BG.
I'm sure Larian know it.

I don't mind a 4 person party. It's not the worst thing in the world. But 5 would be far more comfortable and also make for more diverse party compositions.

I'm going to make a comparison to MMO's. Completely different genre, I know and that might not be fair. But the Problem is very similar and relates. Particularly compared to FFXIV Online. But it is a problem many "new" (post WoW) MMO's have.

That is called the Trinity. Let's say you have a raid, you have 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS. There are no utility jobs. Or if there are, they are niche and not desired to be in the party. But in most cases with MMO's nowadays, again, using FFXIV as an example, a Bard is considered a DPS. A red mages is a DPS, and so on. It's a set group of those 3 kinds of jobs. No room for a true support job. Those classes may have support abilities integrated into them, but they're still a DPS. Certain jobs are preferred over others. Because there is no room for a class that doesn't offer the maximum amount of optimal output.

Final Fantasy XI Online did it extremely well. A standard party is 6. A tank, mage, healer, 2 DPS, support job. In that game there were several support jobs. You were encouraged to experiment. Much of the content in that game required support based classes.

Granted BGIII isn't a MMO but I feel a similar can occur. Instead of a Trinity we have a Rectology? lol. Or Rectangle based system. By having only 4 members, you limit the ability to designate someone to a utility/support job. Granted we can still have a varied composition of members, but many people are presumably less likely to experiment with classes. The average player will probably go Warrior/Rogue/Damage Dealer x2. Otherwise they might think their damage output is too low. Or survivability. Adding even 1 extra slot to party members creates a possibility of so much more diversity and party experimentation. I hope 5 members at the very least get considered.

More specifically, since in Larian games basically only the main character levels up and others simply keep up with him, what you are supposed to do is to adjust how much exp he gets according to how many partners he carries around.
Which is the norm. People talking about it as an obscure method that would require the longest, most elaborate inspection when it has been tried and tested over YEARS of practical use are ridiculous.


Vaguely legitimate worries, if any, would rather be that:
- you can eventually exploit this system levelling up faster and THEN grouping more companions anyway.
- at some point all characters are going to hit a level cap anyway.

To both the most appropriate response is "SO FUCKING WHAT?"
It's irrelevant. Just more fake concerns, in practical terms. These games are never "finely tuned" to make possible barely edging them. There's always a massive headroom making them completable at any skill level with a far from optimal setup.

Hi, I am also in favour of having a maximum of 6 party members.

As many people have already argued here, using the argument that it slows down the game is silly. What slows down the game is the fact that they turned this into a turn based game (I think it's a horrible approach, but not gonna get into that here). The combat is already incredibly slow and dull with a 4 man party. And guess what... It's even slower and duller the more you reduce the party size because you have to wait longer and longer for the enemies to finish whatever they're doing before you can play again. So, if the issue at hand was merely the fact that it would "slow down the game", it would in fact improve it in every way as you can dispose of enemies faster, have more synergies and most important of all, you can actually play more often during combat.

Using balance as an argument is pretty uninformed (I guess it's the best way to put it without using other less cordial terms). Balance is something for the developers to worry about. We as early access players giving feedback are pretty much a sweat-shop QA team. Our job as individuals who want to better the game is give the suggestions we feel would do exactly that. We are not here to babysit them and say "oh, but the poor lonely devs already have other Jira cards open in their dashboard... let's not give them more work". That's... stupid. A 6 man party would better the game for a great variety of reasons which have already been stated here, so if you're gonna argue, use arguments that actually have an impact in the GAMEPLAY AND THE PLAYERS, not the developers. This is their job, they are paid to do it, and you pay for the end product.
Not to mention that balancing in this area of party members has been done for many years successfully. As anyone who's played the original Baldur's Gates can tell you, and they are over 20 years old.

With these issues aside, I feel the biggest problem with having a 4 man party as a maximum is that it is extremely restrictive to the player. Most people will want to have a balanced party. I don't care if you can make Gale into a swiss-army man and have him lockpick, disarm traps, charge a boss on a flaming unicorn wielding a staff and magic missiles. To me this just seems like I'm playing DOS 2 again, where every character does everything. This just removes uniqueness from your companions and the idea of roles (which I feel most people who enjoy DnD games like) kinda goes out the window. DnD games are amazing for many reasons and party management is one of them. 4 man means you're locked into a core that you can't really change without gimping yourself in effectiveness and/or fun. You'll most likely want a front liner to deal melee damage and/or tank (say a fighter), a support which can buff, heal, disable (e.g. cleric or druid), someone with utility for exploring, scouting, lockpicking, disarming traps, etc. (like a rogue) and a spell caster. Sure you have a party that can finish the game but you have no room for imagination or fun.

Also, regarding the mods argument: Sure, eventually modders can make a mod for the party to have a maximum of 6 members if Larian does nothing about this, but it is much better to have the actual people who are developing the game and have the insight and ability to fine tune it and balance it properly to do so as it would no doubt lead to a much better experience for everyone.

At some point the origin characters will be playable, they are even options in the character creation screen they have just not been implemented yet. I can't say anything about multiplayer as I haven't tried it but I don't see why they wouldn't be options when you can pick them to play as in single player.


Yes Tuco is great, so many people are better at articulating my points than I am, and if I have nothing to add to someone else's comments I tend to just move to the next. I have found myself really wishing this forum had some kind of rating system as so many comments on here would get a thumbs up from me. This is a topic I am passionate about and I believe that Larian has the staff, budget and ability to add six player parties to the game as an option without it too much of a hassle and them relying on modder to force it into the game wrong, too many developer on pc seem to have "let the modders fix/do it". This is a full price AAA relese and at that point it is Larians responsibility not modders. but unfrotunatly my time is limited so I can't spend as much time as I'd like arguing this point on here, I've only just recruited Shadowheart in game so I haven't even had much chance to play sadly.

Larian has already confirmed that the level cap is 10 and I know you really want Artificer, I've seen you bring them up a few times but I think if it is added it will probably be post launch and as most likely as a DLC since it's not one of the 12 announced classes for launch. But heres to hope, the more classes and choice the better.

That is true. You could level up with 2 early on and then turn act 3 into butter with your high level group of 6. I like a more challenging and less exploitable game. I think DOS2 had extra game options you could select that would change the game, but disable achievements. Maybe they could do that for 6 player party mode