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

Warlock is a great class, he has access to some spells that trivialize some fights. You can also multiclass him with paladin or sorcerer.

Really ?!
For me its anoying having to Switch characters to see there stupid quests..
and worst of all having to tolarate a Bunch of quests and conversations with characters that i dont Care..haha

Nowadays Gale always stay in the Stone, Karlach i always Take her Head off for the Sword, Wyll i never even Talk i just Let hin Training the Kids and when i Kill Karlach he vanish from the Game and Halsin i always Left hin in the Shadowcurse or let the Goblins Kill Hin becouse he is Useless and i cant Save the Shadowcurse without having to tolarete hin Trying to lay down with me for the rest of the Game when i already refused 300 times. haha
Jesus i cant..

Its Anoying Having so Much people in Camp For Real.
BTW the camp get Super Ugly Too with so Many Open Spaces and i will not Bring those Losers just to fill up the open places. comoon.. i cant anymore..

It's difficult to care about characters if you don't engage with them.

After a while, I'm bored of the same classes in fights and the same commentary from the characters. I prefer to switch them up.

Well i already beated this game more then 20 times and i already Tried all of then as party compositions in many different Ways..
and like i Said Before..
The only Ones i Trully enjoy and Like were Shadow, Astarion, Lae'zel, Minthi.. the Rest its just came along for the Party..
Never care or Liked any of then..
And after Trying the First Time Never Again.

Thats why i always Felt that The Larger Camp was a Mistake.. like i told in my Post..
If they Never wanted a Bigger Party this was a Mistake..
Becouse Gave People Hope.
In other BG games yu could Have 6 man..
Having a Bunch of Companions Made Sense..
Here its Useless.. its just for people say that has Variety..
and BTW some of then Get a Poor Quest Line i bet becouse of that..
Becouse has Tooo Many companions for no Reason..

Like Wyll dosent have nothing going for hin, Gale, Halsin, Karlach..
All of then have a Shallow quest and incomplete stuff.. making useless and anoying briging then..
and thats why has a Bunch of Posts of people Pissed of becouse of that and wanting more from those characters..
Thats the Problem..
Less is More Larian..
If they Stick with only the 6 on the Cover i bet all of then would Have a Great Tale..
If Halsin were a NPC only and Karlach, Minthi would Have been Playble in Both sides of the Tale from the Get Go
and we would Have Balance becouse 2 Druids in Hero Path its Stupid.. sorry.
Yu dont Need Halsin becouse yu can Have Jaheira witch is a Much more stronger Druid.
And i can even Point More reasons for WHY having so many companions Sux. haha

1 Game that Made this Ok at Least was Dragon Age inquistion..
In that Game having all of then would Make your Inquistion Stronger.. Here thats not the Case.
Since yu Cant Bring all of then its Useless.
and Increasing the Party size like i Told Before.. its Double Down on the Mistake..

If yu Dont Belave in Me.. Give a Try with the Mod and Play in the Harder Difficult..
With 5,6 party Members yu will blaze tru the Game no Joke.

I have now multiclassed him with Paladin and a dip in Sorcerer (for the flying-feature) now, put some light armour on him and that amulet with the Shield spell. Shield-Spell desquishyfies everyone. And it started getting fun.

I like my camp full, but - in case this is how it works now - I will gladly switch Halsin for Minthara after lifting the curse in Act 2.

I play for story not for challenge. I'd really like a custom difficulty option to have a larger party. Personally I want 7. The 6 origin characters and your player character.

It's odd to me that the 6 characters that have the largest stakes in this adventure, 3 of them sit on their hands all day. I wouldn't. Lae'Zel? She's not the type to allow you and ShadowHeart for example leave her behind and just wait till we get around to the Crèche.

I want them to all be present giving their likes and dislikes, advice and cross conversations, special dialogs and cut scenes, all together.

If I sound crazy maybe I am. But I just have a really hard time choosing between all these characters. I'm also still in act 1, but I feel like my opinion still has a place. Personally I also just dont see how someone could argue against the inclusion of the opinion, if it's OPTIONAL. You know?

It continues to feel so astoundingly stupid to ever leave anyone in camp.
There is simply no good narrative reason for it, and in turn that means there is no good reason for the game to have been designed with a party cap any smaller than "everyone you can recruit + you at once".
At this point because of how dumb it is, I don't want to play through the game with people waiting at camp anymore, at least none of the origin characters, maybe I can tolerate teammates who could easily have been non-party allies, like Halsin.

So now the question is, do I only recruit 3 of them every run, leaving whoever I don't pick unrecruited, or do I go through the effort and put up with the bugginess of combining a mod to bring everyone with me at all times and a mod that removes all but 4 people from every fight (because I don't want to turn the game into a roflstomp)?

Anyone have any thoughts on which of those is the choice more worth pursuing?

One option that feels natural is to play an evil Dark Urge. Depending on decisions and urges, you can wind up with far fewer companions than in a regular game. And should you happen to cross the party limit nonetheless: an evil person has ways to restore balance.
It is nice to have a team of four that always stays the same. Wasn't that one of Larian's original ideas? It has its merits.

Why do you assume that mods equate with 'bugginess' (and with six-patch BG3 of all games)?

There are several excellent mods that convert the game to 5e and RAW rules which increase the difficulty and improve the game compared to Larian's ridiculous system. On normal mode, a party of six with 5e/RAW was more difficult than a party of four with Larian.

Disclaimer: I haven't played the game since Patch 4 broke it so the situation may be different now though I doubt it.

Because I looked up those mods and they're both buggy on their own and when interacting.

WOW! What a great megathread! I have read every single comment here with interest and everyone here has clever arguments. However I am with the six party side. I am a D&D veteran and played many D&D games like Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale series, Neverwinter Nights series etc (but not only D&D, I generally like other party sized RPGs like ShadowRun series or even the great SpiderWeb Software games) so I have much experience. To play the devil's advocate 4 party sized tend to be good and more balanced and their biggest strength is their replayability. You replay the entire game with different party members -classes so in each playthrough there are different experiences, different dialogues, different choices, different strengths and weaknesses in terms of gameplay, etc. It is an RPG game after all!
However their biggest strength (replayability) to some people is the biggest downside! I personally do NOT like to leave not even a single companion out of the adventure. I want to FULLY experience the plot and all companion's dialogues-interactions between them in a single playthrough. And I personally prefer that ALL companions learn & react about my choices in the adventure... To make matters worse real time limitations, busy schedule + other RPG games are limit factors that force many people not to replay an RPG game. After all the biggest percent of the game (main plot) you have already experienced it, why then spend hours and days again to experience some other NPC party interactions which is just a small % of the game? Plus it just does not feel right plot-wise to leave companions in the camp, especially Origin companions - what are they doing? Taking a nap all the time?? while you go to adventure, saving the world etc. You are a party, and all party members are supposed to be together or else they are not party members, just visitors!
Reading all the discussion in this megathread I understand that Larian will never implement 6 party. Moreover I understand by increasing the party size to 6 the game might be to easy (I dislike RPG games that are easy even in harder difficulties) so I want to report you all some quick research about the many mods available:

First of all some of you might already know the existence of "Party Limit Begone". However this mod is a pseudomod. What I mean is that it indeed increases the party limit in terms of gameplay, but in terms of plot-wise the party stays at 4 members. So in many situations like cutscenes the party is only 4 members, and in all situations like choices and party interactions, only 3 characters closest to the main hero are counted. A user at "Party Limit Begone" post-discussion at NexusMods site at 26/2/2024 named MufasaIllegitimateSon reported that he combined the "Party Limit Begone" with "More Reactive Companions" and with "Everyone In Dialogue" mods in order to limit those gaps. He said that he had enjoyed that combination of mods. However according to current data it does not worth to play with those mods because they are pseudomechanisms (as far as I personally believe). The plot is designed with 4 total characters and by increasing the members some companions might not participate and only appear in the party virtually. It is better wait for complete bug-free versions of those mods or when Baldru's Gate 3 is fully finished (with all patches, potential DLCs etc Do not forget that even the 20 years old Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are being patched to this day)! So to be frank I never tried these mods, so I report them to search if anyone has some experience with these mods!
If you play with increased party members, then it is mandatory to increase the difficulty by installing those mods below: By some quick search I have found some nice difficulty mods to have are: "Tactician Plus", "Combat Extender", "Lethal AI Enemies", "Immersive AI", "Stronger Bosses and Enemies" which its author recommends other difficulty mods "BG3 Fixed - Fixes and PnP Rules", "Tavern Brawler Rebalanced", "True Initiative (D20 Initiative Rolls)", "Configurable Enemies (Script Extender)", "Enemies Enhanced" which has two versions, the normal "Enemies Enhanced", and the other one is the "Enemies Enhanced (Honour)" combined with "Enemies Enhanced Correction Patch". Another noteworthy difficulty mods are "Additional Enemies - Bugged Clone Fix", "Death March - Enemy and Combat Encounters Overhaul", "Nightmare Difficulty", "Absolute Wrath". Finally, a nice difficulty mode is "The Epics of Tavs" mod which is large and automatically contains other mods like "Party Limit Begone", "Lethal AI Enemies" "Stronger Bosses and Enemies" etc. Moreover there are other gameplay mods that improve the content, but we must make sure that all of those mods I have written are compatible together especially some years later when Baldur’s Gate game and its mods are reaching in their final versions. Such mods are "Extra Feats At Low Levels", "No Inspiration Point Cap", "UnlockLevelCurve - Level 13-20", "5e Spells" and all other spells mods the author of 5e spells reports. "Zerd's Rules as Written (RAW)", "Homebrew Spells", "War Caster 5e", "5e Spells - Larian Durations", "5e Spells References: Valdacil's Spell Adjustments", "Secrets Scrolls for 5e Spells", "Actual Green Flame Blade", "Spell List Combiner", "Minthra's Configurable Enemies")

I know that they are too many, I have never tried them, so I want to learn which combinations of those difficulty mods are the best to be combined with Party Limit Begone. Can all of them be combined? If not which combinations are the best?