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

Yikes. With matrices, you can have equations with as many variables as you want, but there's no guarantee that it's going to be meaningful, especially if the variables aren't behaving uniformly. You can't just set the difficulty level of a party of 4 at a certain value and see if the other party size can be set equal to it and check the variable values because the game experience might be completely different. There's a way to have average damage output be the same across party sizes, and average health, and average success rate, but who knows how literally EVERYTHING else might respond to that. There goes the die-rigging and nerfing idea. Trial-and-error the only way?

not-popular opinion. I would like more team of 2, like it was in NVN. It would simplify many things like combat and the game itself.

You can already do this by only including two characters in your party and leaving the rest in camp. No need to limit others gameplay for it though.

In general, I think if you want a constant/consistent experience at release, it is wise to have a small party on lower difficulties, and a larger party at higher difficulties. It won't cancel everything out, but it basically means you get a bit of extra challenge if you are taking an advantageous party, or a little bit less challenge if you are limiting yourself. Or a very easy mode with a large party at easy mode, paired with a traditional Lone Wolf Tactician mode for hard.

101 page of this discussion!!

Reverse this. I mean, the first part. Yes to the last part. Keep the enemies as is. On Easy, allow a party of 6-8. On Normal, a party of 4 max. On Hard, a party of 2 max. On Extreme, Solo.

This would require less effort for the devs, and everyone should be happy.

But whatever the case, they need to do away with the whole "You're full up" comments. They just bug me to no end. You are in hostile territory. You're invading a goblin camp. A party of 4 is stupid when you could have 6 or more to face 30+ goblins and their allies.

So I think we can all agree that the right way to increase party size without ruining game balance is to tie it to difficulty in some fashion.

I do agree that changing the party size (in isolation) will naturally change the difficulty so will necessarily be tied to it in some fashion, and that this should therefore be recognised in game in some way if Larian do make it configurable.

This may not be what was being suggested, but I wouldn’t, however, be happy with a Hard mode that forced me to take a smaller party and would want other ways to up the difficulty in the full release while still running with a party of four. Having party size as one of a number of configurable difficulty settings would make more sense, and probably is what was meant, and I do think this more flexible approach to difficulty settings would be preferable to just having a number of pre-defined modes.

But I would understand if Larian still didn’t want to make larger party sizes possible as part of difficulty settings. It’s not free for them to do so. We naturally have higher quality expectations when it comes to official game content than mods and I wouldn’t expect Larian to feel comfortable releasing something that wasn’t thoroughly tested and issues fixed, which would of course take time and resource. Though I’m sure that has already been said many times over in the last 101 pages.

I guess we’ll see on release, or when they tell us, whether they’ve judged that there’s enough demand for the ability to make larger parties across the wider player base to warrant them prioritising work on this.

Though I admit, it will make my life far harder if they do decide to permit larger parties. I’d be SO tempted to pick this option in order to get more opportunities for my characters to interact with the pre-built companions, but all my other preferences when it comes to party composition, balance, and so on would be pushing me towards four.

Basically what @The_Red_Queen says above. I don't want party size to be tied to difficulty levels. People who want to play on harder difficulties shouldn't be restricted to 1-2 party members, and people who want to play on easier modes shouldn't have to play with 6-person parties. (or vice versa).

Larian should implement a party of 6 option (hidden in game settings, with a warning that this is not the intended BG3 experience) without changing anything else, or Larian should scale xp such that parties of any size (1 to 6) see similar levels of difficulty due to leveling up at different rates.

Any other options (making a party size of 6 the default, tying party size inversely to difficulty level, making 2 separately-balanced games for party of 6 vs party of 4, etc) are a combination of too much work and/or would make the game experience worse for more people than it helps.

Hidden setting is also nice.

I actually totally agree, but I'd settle for any party of 6 option right now tbh. The present party of 4 just feels so limited. SO limited. And it makes no sense with the whole "You're full up" line.

I'd so much rather have a party select screen that tells me I can only have up to X number of party members. I switch people in and out. Done. No unnecessary convos or "Well, if that's what you think is best. I mean, I question your judgment...". No thanks. Just quick select and done.

Well, much as Lae’zel’s “Dismiss your weakest warrior” line makes me giggle, I do largely agree with this. I’d at least prefer it if we could ask the fifth person to join, they’d agree, and then the game forced us to pick one of the party members (including the new one) to send to/stay at camp, rather than us having to manually remove someone first.

For me, that’s the minimum. I do think there are plenty of other potential improvements to the way we can manage our party at camp, but that’s off topic here and covered elsewhere so I’ll not try to derail us.

What @mrfuji3 said. Nobody else's game balance, or anything else for that matter, is in any way affected by my using an OPTIONAL toggle to increase my party size in my single-player game.

Just keep it out of the game reviewers hands and all will be okay.

What I don't get is, some people are dismissing 4 man parties as fundamentally flawed because of its supposed limitations. Is there even a single 4 man parties CRPG out there that pleases those persons?

Even in games like XCom and XCom 2, it starts you at 4, but MAN I hated that. One of the first things I did was increase unit size to 6. Huge difference between 4 and 6 in keeping the game moving forward. 2 people die? That's not a major loss with 6. Even 1 PC getting taken out is huge with party of 4. Drives me nuts.

Give me party of 6 any day over 4.

Not me. Even Dragon Age games, which I like very much, I would strongly prefer a 6-person party. And the reasons are very simple and the same for all games: 6 over 4 means I get to use more of the available companions actively, and to have more companion interractions, banter, roleplaying, and connections to the world.

If I remember correctly, all the Dragon Age games have a party of four.

Not sure if this has been suggested before because I haven't read the entire thread but I seem to remember hearing that part of the difficulty of having >4 in the party would be due to the complexity of inter party interactions with the characters. It seems that this could be reduced by having 2 types of companions. Tier 1 companions are what we see them as now. Banter between themselves, conflicts, camp dialogs, etc.
However if they allowed more than 4, the remaining could be Tier 2 companions more akin to what we see as familiars now. No dialogs, no interaction with NPC's, etc. because they're just part of the muscle, not part of the main party really.
So really just good for expanding combat situations.

I will say this: I don't mind having a party of four, what exasperates me is *having* to leave someone out of the party, for the reason you listed. Unless it is a stealthy mission, my brain cannot cope with why I shouldn't bring everyone with me.

But this is a problem I have with every single RPG, not only BG3 :P