Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Camp Management

Let's try this again. This is NOT a thread about party size. This is about camp mechanics:

1. Magic pockets. At some point in the prologue, probably in the first 2 chambers, a cutscene should show the MC finds a set of 4 magic pockets. These can be traded to new party members if they are swapped in. However, since there are only 4 pockets, it works best to only have 4 party members. The MC could even make a brief comment to that effect. If they do 6 characters, then 6 pockets, etc. If they start with 4 and upgrade to 6, MC finds more magic pockets.

2. A cutscene upon gaining your fifth party member. During this scene, the MC asks the new member to join. The new member then moves to join the others but the MC is the one to suggest that the party size might be now too big. "Perhaps a smaller group would be better," the MC states. "We might draw too much unwanted attention with more than 4 (or 6 depending). Besides, we could use someone to stay and watch over the camp." Then another member like Astarion might say, "Oh! And maybe they could handle all the boring things for us, like fishing and gathering and cooking and cleaning. You know, the peasant tasks that unimportant people do." Then a party management window would pop up allowing you to choose who you want to keep in the party and who to send to camp.

3. Food, water, and camp maintenance. During the first night at camp, a quick tutorial could explain that anyone you leave at camp will spend their days finding food, water and taking care of other camp maintenance like cooking meals, etc. The more characters you have, the more food and water and camp maintenance will be needed to survive. Thus, a simple camp mechanic could be done where the player chooses which party members will join the quest and which will be assigned to camp duties. Camp duties would be gathering food and drink first, then equipment maintenance. If you don't leave enough people at camp to manage this, penalties start to occur.

So 6 total members? 4 in party and 2 at camp satisfies the requirements. Prior to 6 members, 1 at camp satisfies the requirements. So kinda a 1 at camp for every 3 total members. Later, when you get even more members, maybe then increase party size to 6 with the MC stating it might be good to now take more members with. So 8 members total, 5 in party and 3 in camp meets the requirements. 10 members, 6 in party and 4 at camp. Prior to having a full party of 4, the player could still leave 1 at camp if they didn't want to worry about finding food, etc. or weapon maintenance for that day. Otherwise, they'd have to find food and fresh weapons or suffer penalties.

Failure to meet the requirements, such as when you are first starting, would start with a lack of weapon maintenance. Nonmagical weapons should receive penalties if used and not left at camp to be resharpened and maintained by a camp party member. You certainly find enough weapons in the game, so why not a simple system of having party members switch out damaged equipment at camp leaving them with a party member to fix. If there is not enough party members assigned to camp, weapons and equipment don't get fixed. This makes storing more weapons and such at camp, instead of always selling, more meaningful so party members can switch out gear each day leaving damaged gear behind. I'm talking small penalties for damaged gear like -1 to damage or AC. Nothing major. Again, only nonmagical and only items that were actually used in combat. The penalty wouldn't apply until the next day and only if the damaged item was taken with to continue adventuring.

As the party gets even bigger, they really need more to remain at camp. If they don't, food is no longer provided by camp party members. And so, the party had best have gathered enough that day to compensate or suffer a penalty the next day on their questing. Again, I'm talking maybe a -1 to rolls for adventuring on an empty stomach.

Food should also spoil after a day or so, thus making finding fresh food in the game more important and so forth. Again, you find a lot of food in the game,, so why not?? This would make it even more important to gain party members and have them assigned to camp so you don't have to worry about these kinds of things while adventuring. Then it would make sense to have fewer in the actual adventuring party so the rest could handle the mundane tasks that are still necessary to adventuring. The bigger the party, the more people who are needed for camp maintenance so they all continue to have food and such to survive.

And, I mean simple mechanics. I wouldn't want this to bog the game down. Each new day, player gets a camp maintenance window. They pick who does what with defaults set to match what they did the previous day, and weapon swap would be a button the player hits, electing to swap out damaged items only for identical nondamaged items. One button, all swapped at once, and if there is no replacement, the player is prompted to pick a replacement from the collective inventories. And any spoiled food would just disappear from your inventories. No need to keep it around or micromanage it.

Fun fact: that already has a megathread as well.
Not saying that you can't start whatever, but I just wanted to point it.

Also, I'm still not sure why you are so hellbent about getting an "in lore" explanation for a stupid game mechanic.
No matter how you sugarcoat it and how many throw-away lines you put into the game as some handwave "Oh yeah, it happen for that reason", it fundamentally remains a contrived gamey restriction.

1.) I'd much prefer Magic Pockets not have an in-game explanation. It's similar to the Portals: it'd be much better if it was normal fast travel where we skip the tedious walking instead of using these magical portals that no one else seems to notice. "Oh, you conveniently found these magic pockets that there are only 4 of in existence and no one else has access to? Wow so lucky!"

2.) I don't want my MC to say things I didn't tell them to say. It'd be much better if the companions brought up a valid reason to keep the party size at X (where X is any number 1-8).

3.) Not a terrible idea, but definitely needs improvement. Given the vast amount of wealth acquirable, it doesn't make sense that companions have to find food/water. And really, setting up tents takes 16 hours per day? I suggest that, since apparently we go back to the same camp each day, we need to leave behind people to guard it. Failure to guard it means...idk, I can't think of anything that wouldn't either be trivial or too punishing.

You suggest "Failure to meet the requirements...[results in] penalties." This implies that I should be able to take all my party with me in exchange for getting these penalties.

I'm not hellbent, Man. What is with people out here. It was just a suggestion and I didn't like it getting swallowed up by the tedious dead horse topic of 4 or 6 party members. I just thought it would be fun to incorporate explanation into the story.

You know what, I'll just go back to letting you all endlessly, pointlessly debate all the same game mechanics over and over and over again instead of trying to come up with something somewhat new to discuss.

Well, look at that. Aren't you touchy?

Anyway, just to recap the point: no, I don't want an "in lore" explanation for an arbitrary limit because it implicitly legitimates and finalizes the choice.
I don't want to give Larian an excuse to say "At this point is set. We even recorded dialogues about it". Fuck that.
I prefer the characters to not say a single thing about it, both in general and ESPECIALLY if the limit is supposed to be four.

Fine. Whatever. I'm growing to hate this game not only because Larian is endlessly silent but because I can never freaking post a suggestion without getting crap from people like I'm their enemy. This post was NOT about your crusade for 6 party members!

Did you realize that no one is stopping you from posting it, right?
And my real crusade is about shitty controls, anyway. The party limit is just a side hobby.

Hmmm…I am not a fan of this idea (but not opposed to the post!)

Lazeal would wreck my camp by flinging pieces of her hunts willy nilly about the place, drawing flies. She would also only sharpen her own weapons and leave ours to rust. If I left Asterion with her, they would likely bang all day…evil thirst and all.

But honestly …there is no way Lazael would stay in camp to polish my swords and do dishes, especially once she found out where her creche was.

In fact…having a mechanic like this in the game would further emphasize how unlikely it is that any if these personalities would stay with your char, given their own motivations. One already has to take it with a grain of salt that u r the leader. This mechanic would make a grain more like a heaping tablespoon.

Honestly…I prefer to do what I used to do in these types of games. Pretend the whole party are with me all the time, and use camp selection for the battle skills I want. Ie, the camp folks are simply nearby hunting or something. The problem with this is the VERY BAD existing mechanic that makes me have to deal with a cutscene from companions when i want to switch them out. So I can’t even pretend that I am not leaving anyone behind. It also gets really old really fast for organizing equipment.

I really like the general idea of narrative limits on party sizes rather than mechanical ones. I agree with you that having Lae'zel stay at camp polishing your spare boots while the real heroes are out adventuring is probably not the best choice though.

In my ideal world, the limit would be neither 4, nor 6, but rather whatever served the story at that point in time. I think it would be great if in some parts of the game you can only have 2 people in your party, while others let you have 6, while still others have you leading an army of thousands.

There were only two invitations to the ball, so Mal had to pick one crew member to come with him to the shindig. One team had to go to Endor to shut down the energy shield while the others blew up the Death Star. There are narrative reasons in literature and cinema to split up teams and limit party sizes so that not every character in the entire franchise is in every scene. I can't think of any reason that those devices wouldn't work just as well in video games.

Okey, lets see ...
This would be acceptable ...

This sounds like nonsence ...
You are after all heading to openly attack goblin base camp at one point, so more the better for sure.

This would never work ...
Our companions are too smug to accept such attitude, Lae'zel for example would after such comentary probably either leave, or cut his throat ...

Same reason as abowe ...
Can you honestly imagine Lae'zel, Astarion, or Shadowheart to bring food for everyone?

We still dont even know how many companions would we have in the end, so any numbers are kinda pointless ...
Also, in Multiplayer there is allways potentialy +3 ppl. :-/

The rest of the post seem to be pointless to react, since premise itself is rejected. :-/

Nah, Lae'zel would talk a big talk, but then actually just follow him around like a lost puppy. Even if a Tiefling told her exactly where to find her Githyanki friends, she would forsake her Queen and everything she professed to believe in if Tav would just let her tag along with him instead. I could totally see her sitting at camp, polishing Tav's spare set of armor, daydreaming that one day he will take her along on one of his adventures...

Narrative reasons like this would be cool, especially if you could switch back and forth between each group’s independent missions.