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

That's all well and good Afaslizo, but that isn't really relevant to my point.

So your point is difficulty/optimization which you want to counter with a larger body mass. It seems to me a better way would be an indepth tutorial teaching you about mobility, stealth, surfaces and utility spells in a way the ship prologue fails to do. Imagine learning all these different aspects which you claim you do not have and do not get to progress and learning them. Do you need the bigger party still if you would know how to apply all these things?

His point is that how much do you like each one of the current characters is not the topic at hand here, I guess.

Yes, that was my point.



I think that a better tutorial is sorely needed for this game, that's true but even ignoring the fact that there's still going to be a learning curve before players are going to be implementing all the tools at their disposal to the fullest, a game shouldn't be balanced around the minimum a player needs to make it through. Even as someone who has been playing cRPGs for close to a decade, I doubt I'd be playing this game at the level where I don't need a tank and healer until at least my third playthrough and I shouldn't have to wait that long to be able to experience a wider variety of charcater stories and interactions.

6 characters don't slow combats... Combats are faster if you can kill ennemies... faster...

EA is way too late in the development cycle for this. We are talking about a beta build that Larian felt confident enough to open up to the public. You only go to open beta when you have everything finalized and ready for testing. Sure, they can change some things around, but the sort of change you're talking about here is to go back at least partially to the drawing board.

Of course, that's pretty much all my own opinion. I prefer smaller parties in my DnD because they're easier to manage (as a DM), and better for more in depth RPing (as a player).

Z.

No, its' not.
We aren't talking about a massive redesign, we are talking about UI tweaking and eventually rebalancing encounters, which is something that will go on for a while regardless of any change to the party size.
If modders could find a (fairly half-assed) way to introduce six party members in DOS, Larian with full time paid devs and a gargantuan budget compared to their previous productions COULD absolutely achieve this type of change with relative ease, IF they want to commit to it.

I love how Tuco is all over the forums. Just posting like he's been training for this his whole life.
Tuco, you have more posts on this than the original poster - you probably care more about this as well XD.
Go you!

I DO care about getting the best game we can.

Not sure why that should be a problem for you.

No problem at all. I thought a was friendly enough.. but writing always come across as more aggressive than intended.
The smile was genuine and the "Go you!" was genuine as well.
I was not being cynical.

I did the "local LAN game" trick to create four custom characters, and I was almost immediately struck with decision paralysis. My main character is a Rogue (AT), and I'm taking a Cleric as well, and then I had two slots to decide on some combination of Dwarf Fighter, Human Warlock, and Tiefling Wizard.

Can a Cleric alone be my front-line fighter? If I take the Warlock, how will he be able to see in the dark without the Light cantrip? I eventually went for Rogue/Cleric/Warlock/Wizard, but now I am worried if this is actually viable, because If I'm wrong, there's no way I can fix it later. Especially if I tried it in the full game where the rest of your companions go away.

Some people say that you don't need a dedicated Cleric or Rogue in the party, and you can multi-class and use backgrounds to cover roles... but how are people unfamiliar with D&D 5e supposed to understand the right way to build characters to do that? The choices made at character creation cannot be easily undone.

I really feel like I need at least 5 people in the party to feel comfortable. Four is too small.

****

In terms of the UI, the game already perfectly handles 6 portraits at the lower left. Lal'ezl and Us were added to my 4-person party without issue.

For the character panels, that's also not impossible to workaround. Display 4 panels as normal, and arrows at the edges so you can shift to show the other two. Like so:

[A B C D] E F
[B C D E] F A
[C D E F] A B
[D E F A] B C
[E F A B] C D

You'll still be able to compare any two party members together.

Thank you for that addition to the thread, it's exactly my point and done so beautifully.

By they way it need to be adressed there will be 12 classes (13 if they include the Artificer) in the game. How am I going to feel only being able to choose 3 more classes out of those 12 and have a good agency of my part if I'm really restricted? Multiclassing? Sometimes you don't wanna multiclass specially if BG3 will go until level 20.

I should also say that, this limite on party member will be so hurtful to the RPG aspect of the game people are actually going to min max choose which ones they bring and which characters they create (yeah hey you Shadowheart I like you but your stats are a mess for a Trickery Cleric). When more companions come around we might see some companions just never being a part of any playthrough only because you're so damn much restricted and forced to choose into specific roles instead of having one or two jack of all trades spot (hello bards).

So you want to talk about balance? Like when I did not need the rest of the party for the hardest encounters in the game (Goblin camp, Minotaurs, dark grove) because they made the fights harder compared to doing them solo? Where is the balance at all at that? If I would need to take whole six slot party like in pillars or classic bg/pt/iwd I think I would need a tank as well because the balance is not around the party size but who you bring to the fight. I guess if playing without a rogue six party members would be better. Instead of nerfing the rogue now buffing the rest would be better and then you would not feel the need to bring more people because the people you have will be enough.

There is no balance. There are classes who are far better than others. But I suspect the better ones will be nerfed first till the system breaks and then rebuild from the ground up instead of buffing the weaker ones and making them viable too.

+1

This is important. And the reason why they let every class to read scrolls probably. So we don't "have" to get a mage/cleric/etc. Same with disabling traps. I want to have a fighter, ranger, rogue, wizard, cleric and warlock, but I can't. I have to renounce the warlock and rogue. It takes me out of immersion when my ranger is the trap disabler and behaves like a rogue. If I had Astarion, I would have to take the fighter out, and now who takes the hits? the cleric? she's supposed to hold Bless, but now she gets hit always and concentration is out, so she becomes a worse fighter. It's just frustrating.

Well to talk about balance, firstly this is early access and this is probably the least balanced the game will ever be because fine tuning that balance is part of the point. Second, yes you still need a tank in pillars of eternity but the point is because you have a large party you can take a tank, a healter AND STILL have room to bring along three other characters that can help but are primarily there because you like them or think they're interesting from a mechanical perspective.

Let me give you another example. The game Greedfall. It's an action RPG, you get 6-7 possible companions and you can only take 2 at a time. Much as I'd like to be able to take more companions at a time because I think they're cool and I like spending time with them, I never felt like I NEEDED to take a specific character to get through the game. It was constructed in such a way that you could flexibly take any character and while there were certainly some situations where a fight was particularly hard and I felt the need to have a specific party makeup, those moments were few and far between, and I could generally take any combination and be able to get through 90% of the game. Because of the way D&D classes work, you can't do that until you have a really good grasp of strategy and tactics and all sorts of stuff like that. And the only way to get that grasp is to play and practice.

you are totally right, some modders did enlarge the size of party in DOS2, if i remember correctly, the only things that prevented Larian from making a 6 man party was the time and funds, now they got the funds (They cannot say the EA wasn't a success), i hope there is still time for it, so we need our voices to be heard by Larian.

If we got more companion later 4 is extremly few and lacking, especially if u make your own hero (and why the hell not) . Plus yes I not really bothered the updated DOS engine + combat, and to be honest I think its really fitting for BG3 and close to the tabletop type gameplay BUT with bigger party size would be mor BG for me too.

I would absolutely LOVE at least 5 player size team. 6 would be acceptable but 4 doesnt feel right for the volume of baddies that take turns. Each turn consists of one relevant action (unlike DoS where you do all kinds of stuff) and they even went so far as to overtune the action economy by giving everyone overpowered bonus actions to makeup for the lack of bodies taking turns.... but thats a different discussion(or hell, maybe its relevant here, its absurd to think every class should need bonus action disengage/hide/shove). Overtuned bonus actions wouldnt be needed with a larger party size, they could re-balance around that if needed. If they go and add all the PHB classes and most the subclasses... then having those two extra party slots are going to feel so nice for group composition

+1

The more I play the more that I feel at least one extra party member would make a huge difference in the diversity of my team, especially when all the extra class come out.