4 is such an arbitrary low number, like I know it’s multiplayer but cmon, theres absolutely no room for npcs in a human party. Also what’s the point of locking the appearance of the hirelings if they don’t get a backstory? Pillars of eternity 2 let you create custom party members and they had custom made companions that werent like full party members but some of them actually talked.
I know mods can fix this but I would really like to just be able to create 4 custom characters at the start even if im not playing multiplayer. Also maybe let us change the race and appearances of the hirelings if they gonna be blank slates.
I believe the battles etc all balanced for a party of 4. For games like this, creating a challenging battle for a larger party typically elongates the combat duration waiting for more enemies to make their moves or enemies becoming damage sponges. This may make the game's combat a bit too exhausting/boring for the general audience.
There maybe overhaul mods that could allow for larger parties without impacting or even increasing difficulty, e.g. long war for xcom EU and xcom 2.
Personally I would prefer a bigger party since I want to use more classes in my party, or troll around with a 6 paladin crusader party for the LOLs.
I believe the battles etc all balanced for a party of 4. For games like this, creating a challenging battle for a larger party typically elongates the combat duration waiting for more enemies to make their moves or enemies becoming damage sponges. This may make the game's combat a bit too exhausting/boring for the general audience.
Yeah, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous still has an option for real time with pause (like the old Infinity Engine games) that makes it work with a larger party. It'd get painful to play turn based combat with a larger party and pets etc for trash mob fights.
I agree, though, it's frustrating to see the BG3 camp grow full of characters that I know I'll sideline until a new playthrough.
I just wish there was a better way to change party members besides talking to them
Its such a pain
All of them whine when you bench them too
Like dude you have 1 hp left and no spells slots left, see you tmr
Wait, you can swap companions out to help pad out time until needing to long rest?
I never thought about doing this - I have way too many camp supplies. Granted, swapping in a backup divine caster might be useful.
It's the year 2000, my D&D game has six character parties, it's hard as shit, and it is a renowned masterpiece of gameplay and storytelling. Jon Irenicus scares the shit out of me. His hot vampire sister also scares the shit out of me idk if I'm even in to it. Will spawn the beloved Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II that will be named the best squad level tactical combat games of their era, challenging players to achieve mastery of Black Isle's excellent implementation of the AD&D 2nd Ed system in the Infinity Engine. Remastered decades later to enchant a new generation of players. Boots of Speed go Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I can count to 4!IMO they probably chose four party members because there are a gorillion dialogue options and interactions to account for in story mode. I do wish there were two more slots though.
Balance reasons. It's probably pretty fucking hard for them to create open-world acts where you can run into all sorts of trouble and shenanigans, and have them be challenging instead of just allowing you to steamroll them with your 8 party members. Or, imagine if the world was designed for a larger party. Enemy counts would have to be that much higher to compensate, and battles could take much longer.
They had to compromise somewhere. 4 was a good amount in DOS2. It works for BG3 just fine.
Oh yeah, I've been playing with my friend and it's fun to each have control of a second character. But then we had a third friend join us and it was pretty weird having just one of us with the extra character. It's probably just much easier to balance the game around 4 characters instead of scaling to arbitrary numbers.
D&D has bundles and bundles of rules for scaling encounters going back 40 years. There is no mechanical excuse what so ever for restricting party size to 4 and if one of the devs tries to say there is throw your drink at them and accuse them and tell them they're a bad DM. All of the problems with running combats evaporate when a computer is handing all the dice rolls.
have you gotten to end game where you’re fighting 20+ guys? No thanks
I mean, hold person/monster a bunch of them, time stop, meteor swarm, force cage, maze, dominate, backstab a couple of people in to chunky salsa, cast haste on the fighter/rogue dual wielder and set him to "frappe", let the barb off the leash, summon CoDzilla if it's one of those editions, summon a few dozen bears, and maybe turn in to a dragon or a balor for good measure.
IDk how 5e works, I took one look at the mess of a rule book and went and bought Pathfinder 2e, but back in the day high-level fights often turned in to rocket tag, where whoever won initiative wiped out half of the opposition on the first turn. In the old Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games I had so much alpha-strike I could melt most monsters at end game, and when I couldn't things often got really, really bad.
Tactically sound but I’m talking about how long it takes for npc’s to take their turns. It’s a minute between each of my party members’ moves at end game
Really? A whole minute? That's awful. I'm pretty sure BGII would let you speed up or skip opponent turns.
I think it’s a lot of pathfinding processing. I’m playing a misty step heavy party so it’s constantly having to solve for how to get up terrain and around obstacles.
But yeah. Older crpg’s were a doodle compared to the oil painting that is BG3
Idk why they insist on making tactics games with only 3-4 characters. It's absurd, you can't do anything with that many. That's not enough to pull a flank attack, do fire and movement, anything. Any mistake becomes disasterous - If one character goes down you lose 50% of your force - The character who died and the character you have to detail to revive them.
And, of course, Baldur's Gate didn't have this issue bc you could have 6 characters in a party.
I wish I could access the inventory of characters not in my party at the camp. One of the larger reasons I've been mostly running the same party the whole time is I don't want to deal with shuffling gear around and talking to people to get them to leave and join the party.
I like the QoL features from the Owlcat Pathfinder games' inventory system. Even having the ability to access all your companions character sheets and individual inventories at your home base makes a huge difference.
Definitely for balancing purposes, but yeah, if all 4 people have a custom character, the only NPC storytelling you’re getting is in-camp or by meeting them outside your party.
It’d be awesome to see an update or mod that allows for 6-8 characters and increased enemy density.
if all 4 people have a custom character, the only NPC storytelling you’re getting is in-camp or by meeting them outside your party
Yeah, but then you have 3 friends to do regular old RPG storytelling with.
Very very true, it is pretty much just a 5e campaign with extra sauce.
Yeah, but then you have 3 friends to do regular old RPG storytelling with.
