Baldur’s Gate 3 is all about gathering a party and venturing forth, but there is a strict limit on how many people you can take with you. This is partly due to balancing issues with the Dungeons & Dragons 5E rules, though developer Larian Studios could have been a bit looser just to give players a few more options in combat.
D&D codified the rules surrounding party composition, which persist to this day. A fantasy party usually has a Tank (a melee fighter who draws aggro), a Healer (someone who restores health and buffs the party), a DPS (usually a spellcaster with AoE attacks and debuffs), and a Striker, who is a sneaky guy with skills that work outside of combat but can deal a ton of damage under the right circumstances. The ideal D&D party usually has one of each, though you could easily add another Tank or DPS if you have more players.
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How Many Characters Can You Use In Baldur’s Gate 3?
In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can have four characters in your party at any one time. If you want to change party members, you need to go to the camp, ask individual members to leave your current line-up, then go to someone else and ask them to join you.
It’s a shame that developer Larian didn’t allow you to take five or even six characters, as was the standard in the old Baldur’s Gate games and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. This would have allowed you to use more of the characters you like, and the developers would have had more freedom to make the combat trickier. You also wouldn’t have to make hard decisions about what party members you have to leave in the camp.
One of the issues with a four-person party is that it makes some character classes less effective than they should have been. Warlock is an excellent class in Baldur’s Gate 3, but it works better as a secondary caster alongside a Sorcerer or Wizard. Meanwhile, the Paladin has some healing powers, but nowhere near the same degree as the Bard, Cleric, or Druid, meaning you’ll struggle to keep up unless you keep resting.
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It would be nice if Larian increased the party member limit in Baldur’s Gate 3’s DLC, but it might be too much of an adjustment from the base game to be feasible. This means that you’ll likely be leaving beloved party members in the camp for the foreseeable future unless someone can mod the game to the point where you can have more people in your group when you venture forth.
