Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Losing Companions

OK. There have been some threads on this already, but this one is maybe slightly different (granted, I haven't read all the similar threads so I don't know how different it'll really be).

It's been said that for Act 2, Larian is going to lock us into a party of 4 companions. This I will NEVER like. If they do this, I will be pretty upset. I want MORE companion options and a party of 6, not less companion options and stuck with a party of the same 4 characters for the entire rest of the game. That would totally suck.

That said, what I would understand is if YOUR choices - YOU THE PLAYER - determine if companions leave or not. So, in a sense, it's similar.

For example, in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, you choose a certain path and you get different companions, right from the very beginning. One path grants you the halfling and the fighter, and the other path grants you the undead elf lady and the dwarf.

This could work for BG3 as well, and it would make sense from a story perspective.

So, here's how: Lae'zel's personal quest is to get the tadpole removed from her head, and she's dying to get to her creche to do that. Each long rest that you take that you didn't do something to move towards that goal, like interrogate Zorru or just go to the Gith Patrol or whatever, you lose relationship points with her. Ignore her and not go to the patrol at all, and eventually Lae'zel's relationship reaches the level that she decides to leave you permanently.

Wyll is another example. He is dying to get you to kill the three goblin bosses. Every day that you ignore this quest and go around doing other things and you lose points with Wyll. Eventually, ignore him enough and Wyll leaves the party, frustrated that you are ignoring his desires and his ultimate objectives. "You and I simply do not share the same priorities," he says, and he leaves.

Of course, there would be warnings in between, with a final warning before they exit. "Either we do something today, or I'm out of here," on the morning that is your last chance. So you either start to do things to further their quest that day or they are gone.

So, just to be clear, there would be plenty of opportunities to keep them in your party and further their quest. Going to the windmill and confronting the goblin captain there with Wyll in your party would increase his relationship back up and make him happy enough to stay in the group. Interrogating Zorru would make Lae'zel happy and increase your relationship with her so she remains in the group, etc.

And, of course, situations that make sense from a story perspective should remain. If I help Minthara, it makes sense that at least Gale and Wyll would leave; at least based on what I know about them. If I help the tieflings/druids, no one should leave because no one would feel that strongly about it that they'd be angry that we helped them as opposed to killed them. So this currently makes a lot of sense that they've done already. I wouldn't want them to change that.

And, if in the future of the game, they also have such a moral dilemma that it would cause people to leave the party, that makes perfect sense too. So let's say they allow you to travel with Halsin, but you killed his grove, Halsin would refuse, and if you are traveling with him and you later butcher a bunch of druids or animals, he might leave you at that point too. Or if Shadowheart is with you and you kill a bunch of Dark Justiciars, she might leave you (provided she hasn't converted to Selune by that point).

But I'm just saying, I think there should be more consequences for player actions in terms of party members staying than there are currently. If you aren't aligning with the character's personal quest, you should lose relationship points with them. If you don't give Gale items to consume, he starts using his own, and your relationship suffers. If you don't keep working towards helping Astarion get free of Cazador, he'll eventually leave. Things like that.

And, did I mention... I want MORE companion choices. Minthara, Sazza, Halsin, Karlach, etc. Don't take away our companion options, PLEASE!

You do know that they will leave if you treat them badly? And not following their personal quest does have consequences? I won't spoiler the hows, but you can really piss people off in EA so they leave.

I love it, I'm trying to romance Gale without feeding him in my current playthrough, but I like playing evil so it's hard (it's awful, I have to do good deeds to please Gale to compensate for - basicly - killing him).

No see? That's exactly my point. If you are not moving forward with Gail's quest, you shouldn't be able to do things to keep him in the party. So what I'm saying is that the relationship points should be much higher when it comes to the characters quest. If you aren't moving in the direction of helping your companions with their personal quest, you should start losing major relationship points. So much so that if you do everything else right, you can't keep them in the party. That's how important their quests should be to them.

See, currently I have a problem with the fact that if I don't spare Arabella and save her then people disapprove of me. Meanwhile others approve of me. And it is because of these minor Little things that build up over time that I might have a good relationship with one of the characters. Meanwhile, I can ignore their personal quests that means so much to them and it's not as big of a deal has maybe it should be. Gail has a nuclear reactor in his chest. The only way to stop it is to provide him with artifacts. That should hold a lot more weight with him than whether or not I save Arabella. It should be so much so that he leaves after a few days if you don't provide him with some sort of artifact, especially if you have a bunch of them in your inventory.

Yeah, +1 towards needing to actively pursue quests to keep companions, though you’d need a safety valve to make sure the player isn’t left stranded all alone.

On a related note, I never swap out characters from my party with the backbenchers, unless I want to steal their gear to sell it or give them pants when I’m rich and tired of seeing nudists in my camp. I pick a party and stick with them, so I wouldn’t mind if the leftovers were scraped off the plate of life at the end of act I.

In fact, culling the hangers-on at camp would cut some of the awkwardness around the “wait for me at camp” mechanic where these naked strangers somehow know what I did all day like they were hiding in the bushes while me and my real friends risked our lives.

I personally prefer games where you have a moderate to large party selection option, and *each* character has a few personal quests that are not central or integral to the core story. The point at which they tell you about them should be relevant to the progression and relation of your core story, and the lock-out windows for doing them should, similarly, not be time based but progression based.

This encourages players to switch their party around intermittently and experience differing styles of play with different party make-ups, but it also doesn't force you to do that, if you're the sort to just switch pertinent characters in solely for their quest arcs, and then bench them again after.

In my mind, relationships have progression that you advance and develop socially by actually interacting with them and having conversations with them, which you both participate in (rather than just being ranted at by an npc...), and these allow for variable ways the relationship can advance (not all need to be positive), but at specific break points (likely the breaks between acts) relationships determine their broader evolution paths within which the finer detailed stuff expands - these are determined by major decisions made in the act, and whether or not you helped the character out with their personal stuff, and possibly how you helped them out (the outcome and choices you made for their personal stuff). Some of these branches may well be terminating if your interests don't align badly enough and the character simply isn't getting what they need here.

The idea of forcefully eliminating everyone not in your immediate party via some deus ex machina at the end of the act is anathema to good story telling, and to roleplaying games in general.

I'm deeply curious about what Swen meant by saying that you "just have to choose" just "like in real life"... like, what, honestly, is the psychology there, and how unhealthy is it?

I definitely agree there needs to be more interaction and less nagging. My wife and daughter hate Lae'zel because all she does is nag about getting to the creche. I'd like some options to reason with her or something. I mean, I get that she's a single-minded person, like she has blinders on, but dang. She is a bit too naggy.

But that's part of this. I'd rather have her nag less and just notice visible changes in her demeanor and stance. Then, all at once, after a day or two, "Why are we STILL not going to find my creche. Were you not listening to me? Are you not taking me seriously? We will TURN INTO MIND FLAYERS. Skin sheds to gore. Jaw splits. Remember? Either we go soon, or I'm done with you.". That would be way better than, "Do I mention the creche. The creche. We need purification at the creche. Remember, the creche?"

And again, I cannot stress this enough, it is EXTREMELY unrealistic that these characters would NOT stick together. They all have the same flipping condition, and they may not even like each other, but they certainly would stick together unless they absolutely had a good reason not to.

Again, if I know I'm going into the Underdark, I'm gonna bring as many friends as I can because I could encounter a serpent that can crawl on walls and breathe lightning, a behir, or Umber Hulk's, or Mind Flayers, or Drow or beholders or whatever. The more the flipping merrier, I say. Better my chances of survival. That's also why I don't like the "you're full up" bit. 4 people is not full up when going to fight 30 goblins at their base camp. I'd like an option to recruit the whole dang Grove for that one. Not really, but my point is, in real life, if I'm going to invade an enemy camp to kill their leaders, I'm gonna bring as many as I can.

I like those sorts of choices, but right now the big 'choice' between party composition is whether you side with the goblins or the tieflings, and so far (keeping in mind what we know from datamining on the identity of the remaining origin characters and some specific dialogue lines Karlach says) It looks like you lose half your companions/romance options by choosing one option, & don't lose any companions or romance options by choosing the other option. It's rather baffling that it's presented as a choice at all.

We know there's another cull at the end of act I that will result in our 'final' party, which makes me wonder if post act-I if we are going to have any real sort of party conflict where we have to choose one character over another.

I really enjoy how dynamic party compositions can be in other rpgs, so I hope we get more conflicts/choices post act I, but I also hope we have more party members available to join after act I as well to shake the dynamic up a bit (particularly if they go with the Act I party member cull that's been talked about). And I really hope our major choices later in the game don't so blatantly favor good-players down the road, because honestly the whole goblin/tiefling dilemma right now is really awful (IMO).

Maybe the joker strapped a bomb to his girlfriend at one end of the city and to the district attorney at the other end.

When I chose my girlfriend I had my twentyeight prospective partners compete against each other Bachelor style until there was only two left, making the choice much easier.

There is more than one point in this topic and i would like to express myself to them separately:

For one i dont believe we will be "locked" in that party ... since Swen allready confrimmed mercenaries.
So just from that fact there logicaly must be some way to futher adjust your party members.

And just like Flooter i also dont switch my party members unless i litteraly have to bcs of story or quest reasons ... so personaly i dont mind the idea so much either.

On the other hand i would also like MORE companion options ... and i believe there is a way to please both us and Larian in this matter.
As i said countless times in all those simmilar topics ... the best way would be in my honest opinion ... both. or compromise of you like:

That mean let us commit to origin companion we want to follow (and the rest become NPCs, that we WILL meet later ... acording to our relationship either as friends or foes) ... and once we will be commited, let us recruit non-origin followers.
(Halsin, Minthara, Ragzlin, etc. etc.)

Agreed ...
Choices should close some opourtunities but also open new one ... baybe ot allways but right now thy never do and that is bad.

For example if you play Evil githyanki you are stuck with single companion ... Lae'zel ...
Astarion attacked you ... so you logicaly fight back and killed him ...
Shadow refuses to follow you and Lae'zel...
Wyll will leave you after attacking the grove ...
And Gale will either too or will a little later when you dont give him any artefact bcs you simply dont care about him at all ...
That sucks. :-/

I like this ...
Nothing more to say.

I belive this would be great opourtunity for re-recruit them if they leave you earlier.
It would make sence that they continued on their journey allone and you just catch up with them.

You know something like:
Have you finaly come to your sences?
Dou you understand now why i insisted we should adress this matter as soon as possible?

Or something like that.

Here i disgree conpletely. :-/

Breaking points should work for everyone ...
Just as Wyll and Gale get so many disaprovement so they leave if you kill Tieflings ... so should Astarion and Lae'zel if you help them.

I mean they both made it clear that they dont want to be involved ...
Astarion dont want to help anyone nor he want to remove the tadpole ...
And Lae'zel clearly see this whole thing as a waste of time.

The only companion that shlould stay with you on both sides is Shadow since she dont want to get involved BUT also want help from Halsin so she would potentialy understand it as necesary evil.

Agreed
I would like to see origin companions for every class that joins us bcs of their tadpole problem.

And then non origin companions that can be litteraly anyone else who will join us as part of his reward for us.
I mean Grove and Goblin camp are bpth litteraly FULL of potential companions.

That unfortunately happens when one decides to write a lot of text for a character with one or two identifiable traits.

Cut her some slack. I'd be naggy too if my whole culture was built around solving the exact deadly problem afflicting everyone in the party. Stop talking to squirrels and looking into barrels, it's friggin tadpole o'clock!

Exactly. "I want more tension, where party members might leave if we don't do their thing, but I don't want them to nag us about doing their thing" seems to sum that up pretty well.

I'm not a fan of the idea of losing the comps at the end of Act 1, arbitrarily. I could, however, understand them leaving on their own if we abandon them to their tadpoles while we push on to a cure. They could pull a Citadel DLC move, with the "All hands on deck" scenario they used leading up to the final conflict, or the Suicide Mission scenario in ME 2 even. That might even be more fun to do. That was disappointing in DoS 2, as well as taking me completely by surprise, since I did everything I could to do all of their missions before leaving Fort Joy. So I hope it's avoided here.

LOL. I like Lae'zel. I know a lot of people don't. I understand her and where she's coming from and why she is the way she is. Or at least I think I do.

I guess it is true that she's only as naggy as you make her. You don't have to talk to her all the time and therefore get her lines about going to her people. And if you do talk to her, I guess it makes sense that she would constantly be about why aren't you going to her people. I guess it just feels more naggy than it truly is.

To your point, she knows better than anyone in the party what might happen and for her it is the biggest abomination in the entire universe to be infected by one of those tadpoles. It would be the equivalent of a Christian being possessed by Satan. They would want to do everything in their power to get rid of him and they would be constantly trying to urge their companions to find a healer. Since she thinks she knows who that healer is, she wouldn't be able to see any other logical Road to take. So I guess it does make sense that anytime you talk to her she is kind of like what the crap are you doing. why aren't you getting your butt moving to the obvious cure that I told you would fix us?

But I guess that's just proving my point all the more. If that's how she feels, you should lose relationship points fast if you are ignoring her questline. She should get frustrated pretty darn quickly if you're not moving towards her people for the Cure.

I can't tell if you're trying to point out a contradiction. If the characters leave that solves the nagging problem neatly.

As for the part about locking out some characters, I think the reason why it doesn't really make sense for Astarion and Lae'zel to leave the party if you help the Grove is because I don't see them as particularly caring. Both of them would just maybe shrug their shoulders and accept it as just some petty thing and maybe an annoyance, but I don't see them being particularly ticked about it. Joining the goblins and murdering everybody in the Grove is definitely something that would go against the grain of the other two, so I can understand why they would leave.

I guess someone could make a case that by helping the Grove you are wasting precious time that could be being used to find a cure or to learn how to control the tadpoles. So the two of them might leave simply because they feel that you are not taking your condition serious enough and you are just wasting time helping a bunch of people. However, if you helped Lae'zel confront the patrol, I could see her being a bit more tolerant especially if she thought that maybe by helping the Grove you might potentially get cured by Halsin. She may not put a lot of stock in him that he can cure them, but she might be a bit more open if she felt betrayed by her own people.

And Astarion would probably be the same way. If by helping the Grove he might learn how to control the tadpoles, he might be a bit less against it.

I guess I don't mind if they lock out certain characters as long as it makes sense. If at some point you have to make a choice, and by making that choice it makes sense that you alienate a couple of origin characters, I'd be okay with that. Like I said, I want more options for more companions, but if there is a story element that really makes sense, then that would be fine.

So, for example, if at some point you have to make a choice between joining the absolute or rejecting the absolute, and two characters are all four joining the absolute well two characters are absolutely against it, with one character being on the fence, which might be exactly what they're planning since you are bound to meet the absolute at moonrise towers, I guess that would make sense. Which path are you going to take? Are you going to be evil and join the absolute, or are you going to be good and resist? Two characters want to be evil and two characters want to be good. I still think that's a bit too black and white for all these characters, but I would get it if they did it that way. And again, that's really no different from Pathfinder right at the very beginning where you are choosing companion characters based on some sort of story decisions. I might not really like it that way, but as long as they explain it and it makes sense from a character development standpoint, I won't be too mad about it.

I thought about a scenario where it would make sense for Astarion, for example, to insist upon joining the absolute. If you absolute was to promise him total freedom from his master, I could see him saying goodbye to the party if they don't join the absolute. It would not make sense for him to stay in the party at that point.

Oh. This is a serious potential. This may be what they're planning based on what we've been told. And we might be surprised at who we would be stuck with based on the decision of whether or not to join the absolute. I could see Wyll joining the Absolute.

Think about it. Lae'zel would likely refuse to join the Absolute because the Absolute is using Ghaik tadpoles. Astarion would probably join the Absolute if offered total freedom from Cazador plus the ability to walk around by day, etc. Wyll might join the Absolute if promised freedom from Mizora. Gale might join the Absolute if promised some way to fix his condition or to get back into good graces with Mystra. Shadowheart, I don't think she'd join the Absolute, for like Lae'zel she is totally devoted to Shar. However, if the Absolute proved to her in some way that she was really a Selunite and Shar's people have twisted her mind, she might be willing to join the Absolute at that point... maybe. Even Lae'zel, if her faith was totally destroyed in Vlaakith, maybe, just maybe, she might also side with the Absolute.

Interesting prospect anyway since we know that Moonrise Towers is probably the end of Act 1 and Minthara tells you, if you side with her, that you'll meet the Absolute at Moonrise. Hmmm....

I could accept this kind of thing, I think, if done right. If done right.

At that point, who knows who you'll really have in your party. Maybe it is characters you don't even have the option to have in your party currently. After all, they did say we were starting with the evil companions, didn't they. Perhaps none of the current origin cast will continue with you if you refuse to join the Absolute. Maybe you'll be with Karlach and Halsin and who knows? Hmmm... Very possible. Very possible.

I am. It's true though, if they leave, there's no more nagging. But when I see things like this, I'm reminded of Sten, from Dragon Age Origins, who will outright try to kill you if you're not doing what he thinks you should be doing. Leliana and Wynne from the same game, at the Urn of Sacred Ashes comes to mind as well. With the last two, however, there's a specific trigger that fires that off, and it can be avoided, if you built your Warden a specific way.

That said, I'm still not down with just removing them because they're not in the party at a specific point, unless there's something that can explain it besides "but we like to do this".

Can you honestly see any of the companions NOT nagging even if they're in your party? Wyll maybe, but that's because he is just there and doesn't really do anything and maybe Gale, but everyone else?

Let's be honest, limiting the number of companions is probably Larian's least popular decision. This is so unpopular that I doubt the idea will survive until the premiere, but that doesn't mean we can't complain about it (just to be sure).

Just for the sake of explaining how it worked at Kingsmaker.
At the end of the prologue, you had a short dialogue and which companion was joining you depended on choosing one of the options.
This was a bit of a problem because you actually had a choice between a priest / tank and a bard / inquisitor.
Those who didn't join you in the prologue still do it after 2-3 hours.
I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

Personally, I would prefer whether the companions stay or go depends on my choices. Unfortunately, many games do this in an extremely stupid way.
An example would be Kingsmaker in which you had to complete the companions' quest in one particular way, otherwise the character would die.
It would be nice if your companions actually react to our actions, not like when you are a deadly demon and some goddamn paladin in your party doesn't care (guess game)

As for leaving the character from the party. If you think about it, evil characters should not leave the group. As long as you murder the village, it makes sense to offend a good character, but what about evil characters?
The evil character (unless it's a comic book level of evil) shouldn't care if we save the village or not as long as it pays off. Due to the fact that good behavior most often pays off in games, there really is very little sense in letting a character leave the group.
Baldur's Gate may have been a good game, but the reputation system there didn't make sense. While it can be understood that a character was leaving the party due to a low reputation, it made absolutely no sense that bad characters were leaving the game group's reputation was too high. It was so much fun that maintaining a high reputation actually made the most sense in terms of the big profits.