I'm someone with several years of experience with cRPGs, a modest understanding of D&D and I certainly do not think I could make it through the game without Shadowheart and Lae'zel.
I killed Lae on my second character because I hated her on my first try because she is a stupid evil rage machine. Shadowheart is useful for acting as a bind tank and I take her along for that (she got Lae's plate armor) but her spells fail most of the time or do not matter so I don't really care for her(her personality is at least a bit wittier than the vampire torture porn fetichist and the aforementioned stupid evil warrior so I do not cringe every time she opens her mouth). The wizard is stupid but useful for crowd control. The warlock is useful for starting encounters. I can't bring myself to care for them beyond their carrying capacity and body mass to trick the AI in wasting turns they should use to take me down.
The game is beautiful, the plot interesting and I love cthulhumanoids but the party has far less personality combined than the red prince from Divinity Original Sin 2 and I loved that you could play the original characters in multiplayer. If that would be possible in this game I guess I could even like stupid Githyanki and emo vampire because playing as them might endear them to me. And i don't like Astarion either, thats why my PC is a rouge so I don't have to take him, I'm almost to the point where I recruit him and I'm hoping one of the options lets me kill him.
At some point the origin characters will be playable, they are even options in the character creation screen they have just not been implemented yet. I can't say anything about multiplayer as I haven't tried it but I don't see why they wouldn't be options when you can pick them to play as in single player.
Originally Posted by Alon Binyamin
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!
Yes Tuco is great, so many people are better at articulating my points than I am, and if I have nothing to add to someone else's comments I tend to just move to the next. I have found myself really wishing this forum had some kind of rating system as so many comments on here would get a thumbs up from me. This is a topic I am passionate about and I believe that Larian has the staff, budget and ability to add six player parties to the game as an option without it too much of a hassle and them relying on modder to force it into the game wrong, too many developer on pc seem to have "let the modders fix/do it". This is a full price AAA relese and at that point it is Larians responsibility not modders. but unfrotunatly my time is limited so I can't spend as much time as I'd like arguing this point on here, I've only just recruited Shadowheart in game so I haven't even had much chance to play sadly.
Originally Posted by HeavensBells
Originally Posted by Stabbey
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).
Larian has already confirmed that the level cap is 10 and I know you really want Artificer, I've seen you bring them up a few times but I think if it is added it will probably be post launch and as most likely as a DLC since it's not one of the 12 announced classes for launch. But heres to hope, the more classes and choice the better.