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

1) no. Because the experience is shared equally among player, less companions = stronger companions. That how its worked in the original game.

2) They may have to do that. So what? its merely changing stats. Nothing gamebreaking here.

3) that's already the case . Actually, I don't know a single C-rpg that has perfect balance over all its fight.

4) No, its may actually make it faster. When you are fighting 26 gobelins, having a couple of more companions to quickly kill the trashmobs will reduce the number of turn the enemy take; To balance it out, you can make big enemy stronger. And anyways, when you have fight that are 4vs 26 , and you have to wait 3 minute every turn for the enemy to act, I don't think a couple of more companions are going to be much of a problem time wise.

5) Making the enemy 30% stronger isn't such a drastic change that they ll instagib character. Instead of doing 7 dmg, they ll do 10 . Instead of doing 20 , they ll do 26 . Instead of doing 2 dmg, they ll do 3 . This ll barely change the number of hit you can take.


But more character will benefit the game in many way :

A) more interractions between party member, In BG1 and 2 , Party member would often banter, quarrels, initiate friendly talk and whats not.

B) more battle combo options, synergic option.

C) allow for more exotic pick outside of cleric/rogue/fight/wizard usual core picks.

D) allow to discover more companion in a walkthrough. Personnally, I'm not a fond of redoing the whole game just to change one or two companion s(assuming you ll maybe keep one you like most).

E) may add replay values, as , as Iv said before, you have more synergy and battle option to work with.

F) allow for stronger single ennemy, which add to epicness and challenge.

H) Feels more like Baldurs gate. BG always was six character.

I) Give a better sense of scale for the fight.

6 Characters in a party would be fine, IMHO.

Thanks for the detailed answer, may be you convinced me. But it will depend on how many characters there will be in the game.

I want everyone to be well worked out, the quantity is not at the expense of quality. They must have own rich stories, dialogues, personal quests, romance opportunities. Companions like "we" from the prologue and mercenaries are not needed

If Larian can do it all, then it will be very cool

Your welcome . Yeah, I agree ! Would be great if we could have these companions with the quality you described. I'm hopeful, I think such an experienced and skilled team can pull it, but they may favour other stuff.

lol this argue again
what game they need to rebalance?
there no balanced game, all we have is EA which not balanced at all

Agree with Arion. Most of the encounters are terribly balanced in multiple ways atm.

The good news is even if Larian doesn't increase the party size by default, I am confident the modding community will due to the obvious demand.

Not saying I don't want Larian to include it themselves, but still it's something.

just a note

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/21267-ideal-party-size

and good explanation why there no place for hybrid class in 4ppl party composition

https://ludusludorum.com/2016/10/16/perfect-party-size/

Just put in a checkbox option in the game.
This is supposed to be an adaption to D&D any GM would be able to acommodate between those party sizes.
The code can allready handle it , i just made a playthough with 2 of my friends and kaezeland & Us joined the party as a 4th & 5th party members in the tuturial.

Checkbok for partysizes please (alongside alot of other checkboxes for us to customize the game)

1. Party size of 4
2. Party size of 5
3. Party size of 6

I've seen some people say this regarding the companions in BG3 being well written and have secrets and whatnot (imo they're not. they're pretty generic and uninteresting with some being terribly written and just sound overly exaggerated and forced. Gale is the saving grace so far, but not by much) and use this as an argument for why 4 people in the party is the right amount.
Now, not to say that you can't enjoy what you're seeing in BG3 regarding the companions, but this really makes me feel like you haven't played a game that really did this properly. For instance, I'dd wager you never played the originals. You certainly haven't met Edwin, Korgan, Minsc, Keldorn, Jan, etc. Characters in BG2 had SO MUCH more depth and flavour than the ones seen here. Their writing and voice acting is so many times better than here... And guess what, they were absolutely amazing in BG2, especially in a 6 man party.

As to "slowing down the combat"... I've talked about this in other threads already but this is so wrong that it pains me how it's not immediately obvious to everyone. More companions would not only increase the pace of the combat encounters since you'dd have more tools at your disposal to deal with the opposition as well as make it much more interactive as you would have more turns per round due to more characters to play. Take for instance the fight against the Kuo-toa, or any other fight vs a significant number of goblins.. It feels like ages until I can do something in the fight again. Having to suffer through the time those buggers take throughout their turns becomes boring after some time, especially because they're meaningless trivial fights without any risk or difficulty. Most of those fights I thanked my lucky stars for having two monitors, as I did my turn and then could watch something else in the other monitor while the AI tries to do something. If people feel combat is slow (which it is) it is due to the nature of making this a turn-based game. In DOS turn based made sense since any one of your characters could do a bunch of actions in a single turn and had almost free movement skills that covered the entire battlefield. I feel it is not really suited for a DnD computer game since there really isn't a lot a character can do in a turn so you spend most of your time waiting for the AI to finish their stuff.

Someone also mentioned as an argument vs 6 man parties the fact that it would include more micro-management. I mean... I don't even really know how to respond to this as I feel this is just completely silly (for lack of a better word). You're complaining that you don't like having to do actions during your turns or that you want to have the minimum number of turns possible in a game like this where the whole point of these games is the complexity they have and the things you can do. By that logic let's just turn this into a clicker game where it plays by itself and you collect the coins. Fuck it, let's just make the max party size = 1, hey, it's less micro-management!

What you don't get my man is that all these ppl just want a watered down version of D&D which is precisely why Larian went for 5e in the first place. In other words they really just wanted D:OS3 instead of what we have atm. So you could say we even got lucky.

Yeah, and even if it was. I don't think it would be terrible difficult to add some kind of dynamic balacing to the game that accomodate for your chosen party size. Maybe set it as a starting option when you start a new game. Choose between solo or 2-6 party members. And once the game is started the balance is set and you're locked to the maximum party size of your choise.

I'm not so sure about that. Baldurs gate was complicated, but not THAT complicated. I did the game as a 7years old. Anyone could do these game if he tried. If anything, people might be afraid of the ''relative complexity'', but once you try it, its not hard at all to catch on to the system and learn as the game goes. CA, THACO, party size, active pause, Turn by turn, whatever, all of that is easy enough for kids, so grown up should have a easy time learning it.

About the whole micro concern :. Micro refers to the controls of one unit. For example, there is a tons of micro in LoL : you re always controlling one champion, after all, and clicking like a madman to use spell and move. You micro all the time. Is it hard ? no. But its certainly harder than doing two actions in a Turn based game like BG3. Micro is only hard in games like STR where you have several units you need to control at once. That is not the case in BG3. BG3 micro is very easy. Controlling 4, or 6 heros one at a time is extremely easy. Because you can control one character at a time, at your own pace, there is no stress, there is no fast reaction or fast thinking needed, you can take your time.

+1 i think this would be a really good idea too - something like a 'Behind the DM Screen' pre campaign/character creation screen where you would be able to designate a variety of options that would carry over into the full campaign, many of which could potentially speak to a variety of the discussions and alleviate some concerns on these forums and could be really helpful when setting up a mp campaign specifically.

things that you could possibly toggle that would impact the campaign's 'difficulty/balance', but im sure others here could add to this list
-stat allocation - roll, buy, array
-feat at first level (id argue this could really open up gameplay but could warrant an overall campaign challenge increase)
-classes/races/feats/spell filter etc (more mp oriented tho)
-party size 1-6, but could see why 1,2,4,6 may be more feasible to include and 'balance' at this point (id argue that players should always be able to have a max of 6 open party slots bc enables more player choice and allow players to decide themselves to go 4 or 6, etc.)
-use healing potion as a bonus action
-scale of surface effects
-show/hide dice rolls - im not sure its a good thing to know a dc of a skill check or see that you failed that perception roll, but that being said id rather the dc be set and apply my bonus to the die roll instead of reducing the dc as i think it currently works (id also think this systems presentation may need some tweaking - not a fan of jumping away from the dialogue to just fail a die roll)
-limit info that can be gained from 'examining' npcs and enemies, such as hp or ac
-party interaction during dialogue and trading/bartering (maybe more mp tho)
-more specific class tweaks as the 'dm' allows (ie swapping warlock spells, respecs, multi-class requirements)

i feel the above list (outside maybe the scale of the surface effects) are all common dnd 'house rules' topics you discuss around the table that could also really work to refine an bg3 campaign to fit each persons playstyle. obviously this is all just thoughts/theorycrafting suggestions but i think in particular the discussion regarding having 4v6 party slots and possible required balancing could find solutions for both perspectives with a toggable pre-campaign dynamic balance as mentioned above by peranor

also, maybe tangentially related, but i think balance should be focused around encounters not party size or level - i want to adapt to the challenges and world of bg3 not the opposite way around

They can't have failed to notice by now that it will be a real sticking point for a lot people. This is already one of the longest threads in this feedback section, and its been brought up in many others.

I'm not terribly inspired by the idea that if the devs don't do it, then motivated modders will be able to solve everything. This doesn't strike me as a game that will be particularly easy to mod. NWN was basically a modders dream, but lack of party control, with henchmen instead of a full party kinda sank it, despite all the other innovative things that were done. It was a perennial disappointment there even with like 3 expansions and a sequel, that we never got a party control system there. And that one was by the same developer. Larian is so much closer, much much closer to the BG vibe than NWN ever was, but they are kinda shooting themselves in the foot by hamstringing us with a party limited to 4.

4 makes it feel like Valkyrie needs food!

6 is what we want lol

Divinity has a simular mod available and the games are largely based on the same coding. You can expect the same level of mod support for BG III as they really embrace their mods, even adding a large number of them in free updates to the base game.

Again, I am not saying I wouldn't prefer them to do it themselves, but at least you can be somewhat assured you'll have the ability either way.

"Don't worry, mods will fix it" has always been a bullshit "comfort argument", anyway.
1- There's no guarantee it will happen.
2- IF it happens not having full access to game code and dev tools limits strongly how well modders can make it work.
3- It's bound to be a sub-optimal, unpolished experience prone to bugs and UI limitations compared to something that a developer addresses dirctectly.

Also, for the people who were worrying about "having to redo everything from scratch", Swen has been on record openly stating that they already have the UI in place to scale up to six men, they just weren't confident on the idea to make it the default mode (never mentioned before because it's a video interview he made during a streaming that I never watched until few hours ago), so there's that too.
Let's hope this amount of feedback in favor of six will serve to give their "confidence" about this a boost.

And if anything, let 4-men party as the default for console players. AS people who never played a CRPG with a good control scheme, they may even be able to appreciate it the most.

You can already achieve a party of 5 possibly 6 in the tutorial.

If you play 3+ multiplayer and recruit the brain and Lae'zel.

Yeah, I've read something of that sort by Shabby.

I'd be interested to see how the CURRENT default UI behave in that case.
Do you have any screens?

No but we finished the tutorial with no issue. My party was 3 PC's and Lae'zel and Us. I imagine it would work with 4 PC's the same.

+1

I would really like to see 6 member parties as well. Loved the BG games which also had 6 party members. Even if 4 are custom created, and 2 slots for the in-game companions One thing I figure is that if it is bumped to 6 member parties, as I hope, the encounters will have to be modified to balance the combats, but it would be great thing. Wasteland 3 executed this wonderfully, basically going through the first section of the game with 2 team members then after the first area allow the creation of a couple more.