Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback How many companions?

Seconded.

I dont really care how many companions, what classes or races we get ...
I only hope we will have enough tanks, healers, and crowd controlers ... for every possible gameplay. :-/

I would hate to find out that my evil/good character will have no cleric, nor paladin, or druid ... or w/e else can heal properly ... just bcs none of them can stand him.
But if i recall it corectly, there should be some mercenaries, that should be "allways aviable" so that kinda solves it.

Origin companions are such a horrible design decision.
Everyone is super duper mega special awesome and rare.

Yet they all ended up in this legendary mindflayer ship.



In hell

And survived.


Being attacked by githyanki elites


With dragons.
And crashing
Bg1, bg2, DA:O thats how you design companions.

First, nothing sets this particular mindflayer ship as "legendary", other than it seeming to be a holdover from a lost era - of course, it could be just one of a huge fleet that has been rebuilt- we know nada at this point of its origins.

I also don't see all the Origin characters as "awesome and rare". Lae'zel is one of a gazillion Gith - only thing special about her is a tadpole. Wyll has a pact with a devil? Hmm...seems I've seen plenty of those in D&D modules, books, comics and the like - nothing special there, other than a tadpole. Astarion? His being around for centuries certainly isn't special - he's an elf - Vampire spawn? Again not special - BG2 had plenty of those - can't recall a Faerun city that DIDN'T have a vamp or 3 dozen. Shadowheart is another in a long lime of religious representatives wrestling with faith - though her backstory of secrets and enemies everywhere at least intrigues me a bit ( I seem to recall Viconia having some potential faith issues back in BG2). The only one I would really characterize as having being awesome and rare might be Gale, due to his hobnobbing with gods and the like - and again he's just an example of the old tale of being too ambitious for his own good - will he gain the wisdom necessary to atone, make amends and turn his life around. All of this is basic hero stuff.

Your character is not attacked by Mindflayers, Githyanki or Dragons on the ship - they are way too busy fighting each other, thus providing you the opportunity to escape, low level that you are. Doesn't matter if they are fighting in hell, heaven, Faerun, Realmspace, or Elminster's Outhouse - they are too damn busy to bother with you.

And as you aren't anywhere near the only survivor of the crash, it clearly wasn't a miracle that you survived. How often to we read about an auto accident where 3 out of 4 in the car were killed, and the 4th survived with minor injuries. So again, nothing too outrageous.

Somedays it seems that if Larian doesn't have exactly the plot/characters/mechanics/events and so on that a poster envisions, Larian is guilty of "horrible design decisions" And somehow they are expected to meet the million competing ideas of this game that a million different folks envision, simultaneously.

I think it would be a real shame if there wasn’t a companion for each class in the game (so 12 total). Having them all available would let players dabble in trying out the different classes and what they can do without having to build their own character and restart the game to do so. It’s also a great way of giving the players the flexibility of having a particular party composition that works for them, so they can try interesting combinations and avoid overlap.

Now this here I can fully agree with only I wouldn't want them all in the party at the same time. Would make the party to large and t hard to manage IMO

Yeah well that just you choosing not see it.
Nautils are Legendary and thought gone so when one shows up you expect it to be treated like a MF TRESURE filled with guards and elits not just low level trash.
Maybe its just me reading to much into it.
There is a Red dragon like 1m next to HERO breathing fire.
The imps that attack kills a full fledge mindflayer but is easly killed by the Hero.
One devil and One mind flayer left at the helm WOW so lucky.
See it just keeps adding up we could easly been killed here but saved by randomness.
YES ITS POSSIBLE! but not very beliveble it became silly instead of nervwrecking.

Lae: Nothing special about her besides being Gith that is pretty special on its own but its ok in the setting just rare (wixh will add up)
SH: Half elven Shar pristess kind of rare but its heavenly hinted that she is so much more.
Ast: Elven Vampire spawn (super rare) But he lost all game breaking powers and curses (now ait that just lucky) while still being level 1.
Gale: Seems to be some kind of former choosen ex archmage who lost hes power for being stupid (another very rare almost impossible back story)
Wyll: The folkhero, the joke, the moron. A Warlock pretenting to be a "fighter" even tho HERO is a Warlock and confronts him he still denices it. (very rare to that stupid)
Picked up by the Nautilus by random in Baldur's Gate

There are no reason to all of this special things. Specially since the game is supposed to be lowlevel only. If we have dragons and mindflayers now what will we have in the expansion. Archdevils and Gods?
Ast: Could been just a elven scout or spy
Gale: the mystra ex lover part really grinds my gear get it of it and boom fits in the campaigne
Wyll: Make him a bard or something that fits his character.

Maybe it's just me, but I tend to think most people have some quality, experience, personality quirk and so on that is "special" to them. But hey, f you wanna think of most people as meaningless nothings, go right ahead and do you.

People are not meaningful because they are weirdoes tbh. Being completely normal would in fact be so outstanding that it would be special in it's own right.

Of course, then you have the problem of defining "normal"

One person's/culture's normal is another's completely bizarre.

Exactly, so we arrive at the point of normalcy being bizarre. So the conclusion: We must have normal characters because they are outlandish and exotic.

Bored. And the fact that he's a vampire (who got his freedom!) has a very strong effect on his personality. You can't just make him a spy elf and leave his love of bloodlust, violence and entertainment. You will have to rewrite its entire history, it is also unlikely to be noble in this case.

A handful of "normal" companions could be decent, but I like companions partly because they can have unique perspectives that I could never have and their ability to expand the world purely by existing. So a couple human companions that are like Fighter and Rogue could be nice to have, especially if they have a background that gives them that unique perspective, even if it is because they come from some place far away from Baldur's Gate or they have had run ins with the Zhentarim. But tbh I would love a large quantity of companions with a varied cast of races and classes with their own perspectives (even with some being shallow, heck shallow ones help the deeper ones shine even brighter but also gives people option to have less active party members), heck there are a bunch of NPCs that already exist that I would love to be able to recruit, although most all of them are unique in some way and therefor standout and I discussed them elsewhere. (Also I would love party size to increase to 6 so that we can play around with these companions.)

Also there is the misconception that Level 1 means the character is close to being a villager, but level 1 characters are typically people who have trained or have had a past of previous exploits that gave them the skills they have at level 1.

I think the biggest misconception is that a race or class determines whether something is boring or not. Good writing being coherent, consistent, and engaging, etc make a good character. People think mashing a bunch of stuff makes characters exotic or special. Using Astarion as a brief example. People think he is good character when, at least so far he is so inconsistent that he sticks out like a soar thumb. A variety of complaints ranging from story, to lore, to gameplay. Now look at Laezel. I'm not sure but I think she is the least complained about companion. I think its because, again at least so far, she is consistent.

When you go to far to mash things together you just end up hurting the story. For some its hard to ignore. I personally don't care since he won't be in my party. So I could care less. If his fans don't care then screw it.

First I think having Helia around will normalize Astarion a bit assuming she is not crazy changed or axed. Second I think in another topic someone suggested an origin tutorial instead of a squid ship tutorial and I 100 percent believe that would make game better.

The personality, choices, resilience, willpower, wisdom(not the stat), etc are what make good characters. Not class or race or bs background mashup. In my opinion.

Not always but often, special or exotic characters are a hallmark of lazy writing. The character lacks any personality so the author has to create all sorts of special traits to make the character unique. It’s why people dislike Mary Sues. Take away their perfect talent and face, they have no personality.

The irony is, Astarion may have been more interesting just being a low level snobbish noble elf caught up in all this mess. He could still be whiny and annoying but it would fit his character. Even his sarcasm and sadistic curiosity would work since an inexperienced pampered noble wouldn’t know how to deal with all that’s happening.

I agree Lae’zel is the most consistent companion.

Good points. It seems to be a symptom of Larian's penchant for the extreme. In another thread there is a quote from an interview with Swen where he essentially says that the Bless spell is boring and people want fireworks and damage, which is why they tend to create overpowered spell mechanics, etc. This template for the extraordinary seems to carry over in the personalities and stories of the companions we have so far (though I would agree on your points about Lae'zel).

I still baulk at the notion that one of our future companions will be a werewolf too; I mean, really...a vampire thrall and a werewolf in the same party? It's just a little too immature for my own liking, even though I realise some people hold the totally opposite opinion.

For me what is important is having a wide array of different alignments to play with. I would love to be able to have companions enough to build up a full good-aligned playthrough, one for more neutral-grounds and another for evil aligned. Or a mix of everything for the extra spice.

They do seem to have a tendency to go overboard.

I can’t wait to watch the vampire and werewolf vying for Shadowheart’s affection...

What do you mean by "Mary Sue"? I've seen that term thrown around and have to assume what they mean. Do you mean like chosen one? Thats usually a good template and easy to do. Having the character measure up to other peer preasure characters. You can have the chosen one fail and boom character development arc lol. Or you can put the chosen one in a position to make a choice where you can't save everyone and you have to play the rest of the game being haunted by that choice.

Or instead of chosen you meant perfect at everything? If that's the case you can go spoiled brat route like Tales of the abyss. The MC was the cause for an entire population to be killed. The entire party legitimately was so disgusted and ashamed of him they abandoned him and left the party. The MC had to earn his way back as well as other reflective redemption stuff.

Dark stories are mostly not better by default either. That usually boils down to shock factor which by nature is hit or miss. Happy endings are important too since psychologically people will always crave closure. I digress.

I love stories. As a kid I had made libraries books I collected, played a lot of games, seen a lot of movies. So i guess i'm use to a wide variety of stories and ways to make and execute.

Mary Sue as in perfect in every way. Now if they fail, sure that’s a story but by definition MS can’t fail. That’s why they are story killers.

There may be some semblance of a struggle but you as the reader knows ultimately there’s no real danger to the MS. Failure implies growth through learning from the experience.

I love Superman as a person but as a character he’s boring. So boring the writers had to artificially create weaknesses. People seem to like Batman more since he’s more vulnerable but I think even Batman is starting to move to MS territory. He went from a clever man with ingenuity to the most smartest man in the universe. Even Batman is getting boring.