Party of 10 that could be fun, not really sure how much affect it would be difficulty wise vs smaller party, there are pros & cons to both, depends a bit how you play- but I think ctrl-j might be mandatory??
@SionIV It would almost certainly make the game harder, not easier. 10 low levels chars are worse than 6 mid level ones.
It would only until you hit level 2-3 and then it would be a breeze. It would completely break BG2:EE with all the quest experience flying around. There is enough experience in BG:EE so that every party member would reach 120 000 - 130 000 experience and that would let almost all of them reach the highest level.
It's only at the start the game is harder when you have more people.
Imagine a ToB party with Sarevok, Anomen, Minsc, Valygar, Keldorn, Imoen, and Dorn. that just basically wins u the game without even trying.
@SionIV It would almost certainly make the game harder, not easier. 10 low levels chars are worse than 6 mid level ones.
It would only until you hit level 2-3 and then it would be a breeze. It would completely break BG2:EE with all the quest experience flying around. There is enough experience in BG:EE so that every party member would reach 120 000 - 130 000 experience and that would let almost all of them reach the highest level.
It's only at the start the game is harder when you have more people.
Imagine a ToB party with Sarevok, Anomen, Minsc, Valygar, Keldorn, Imoen, and Dorn. that just basically wins u the game without even trying.
If you don't have to try, what fun is that? Plus, you'd have to disable their conflict dialogs (e.g., Keldorn and Anomen vs. Dorn), so you're taking the RP out of it too.
So, I could actually coincider adding a Bard to the party? Interesting LOL
Seriously, I usually run with at lest one multiclass for balance. You could split them into separate characters (Take Edwin and Vicky over Aerie) with out taking a mammoth xp loss to the party.
Massive fights are not necessarily that pleasant. For example, the biggest SoA fight must be the one in Red Wizard enclave (in the main room, if you solve it the hard way) is either horribly hard if you go ham unless you are very high level, or terribly easy if you cheese it. Last time I did it, it was with my Shadowdancer/Mage. I usually do not cheese too much with invisibility=>Cast=>invisibility etc... but this time I had to, I simply spammed AoE (skull traps and cones of cold) and destroyed them. But I definitely never would have won the fight using any other tactic with my level of experience (about 1.4m exp on everyone)
Interesting. I've never had the desire to play with anymore then 6 but 7 might be fun. To me 10 sounds rather tricky to manage, especially since vanilla BG2/ToB has what, 17 NPCs? So you'd need a very odd party composition to make it work, not to go into the whole balance issues. Or the fact you could play it twice and have used pretty much all the NPCs.
Would it affect replayability? Part of the reason I keep playing is because I still haven't tried every party combination.
Moot point however since I don't think we'll ever see it in the EE games to be honest. For modders it's a labour of love to make things like this happen, for a professional company it's a matter of time, resources and money being worth the result and in this case I don't think they would be.
You could mix and match npc's for play thru content with other player made characters besides charname.
IE you could have a pali main character and be running a good group and not like your thief or mage options that much. So you add minsc and mazzy and create a player made mage and thief characters to go along with:
CharName Pali Valygar Keldorn Anomen Mazzy Minsc Player created thief Player created mage
Interesting. 10 sounds way too much, but 7-8 sounds interesting. I often end up feeling like I've left a tiny little bit out in a 6 men group, and adding a 7th character might be just what I need. And maybe possibly an 8th.
Actually, running around with a small army sounds pretty fun. At least for one playthrough.
Comments
No idea if that ever got finished or not, but it would be pretty cool with an extended party mod.
The one thing that I felt missing from BG2 (and Black Pits II in particular) is more 'gauntlet' fights.
Something where you fight increasingly powerful waves of continuously spawning enemies.
SCS's Siege of Ust Natha was the pinnacle of this kind of design mentality (and it was GLORIOUS!!).
So, basically, HoF mode + 10man parties + respawning enemies = epic fun!
I still can't figure how people can play with 6../
Inventory management is such a PITA with anything less than 6.
At least until you get a bag of holding.
that just basically wins u the game without even trying.
You forgot Korgan
Seriously, I usually run with at lest one multiclass for balance. You could split them into separate characters (Take Edwin and Vicky over Aerie) with out taking a mammoth xp loss to the party.
IE you could have a pali main character and be running a good group and not like your thief or mage options that much. So you add minsc and mazzy and create a player made mage and thief characters to go along with:
CharName Pali
Valygar
Keldorn
Anomen
Mazzy
Minsc
Player created thief
Player created mage
Actually, running around with a small army sounds pretty fun. At least for one playthrough.