Party of four in IA, avoiding 4-party burnout Options

[kilolima2]

My last few games of BG2 I have used at most 4 party members (including the PC) with a few "guest npcs" for special sections.

I feel that any number over 4 makes control difficult. I also like to use powerful npcs (like Valen or Solafein) which make other npcs dead weight. In the beginning of the game a small party can make the game very difficult and a tactical challenge. But since they gain more exp per kill (even using multi-class characters), by mid-game my party is way over-powered and the game starts to get boring.

However, the appeal of a < 6 party is the increased exp reward, so I don't want to use a reduced experience mod. Can IA provide a satisfying gameplay experience for a small party from beginning to end? (or will my 4-member party just get their collective butt's kicked?)

I guess this question doesn't really have an answer, but I'd like to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience.

cheers,

kilolima

[thetruth]

A solution could be to make the Ranger/Mage specific quests available only to someone who uses the Multiple Strongholds component of EoU.

[Sikret]

A solution could be to make the Ranger/Mage specific quests available only to someone who uses the Multiple Strongholds component of EoU.

One potential problem here is that if a player does all quests (of all classes) in a single game-through, the XP gained in those quests will stack and we may lose our control over the difficulty of battles (in later stages of the game). Some players will have multiple strongholds and will be able to do all quests, while some others will not have the multiple strongholds and will only do quests of their own classes and we will not know whether to design the battles (of the later stages of the game such as TOB) for the former group of players or for the latter.

There was a similar problem in IA v3 in regard to WK. WK was not sufficiently difficult and some players could go and sweep it to gain lots of XP. This problem is now solved in IA v4 (specially with my recent additions to it) and WK is adequately difficult to make sure that low levels parties cannot go there to hunt easy XP and levels.

Another problem is what goes on in each of those quests: dialogues and other things, I mean. You have played The Mystery of the shimmering light, thetruth. Will it really make sense for an assassin protagonist to do that quest? It really makes me laugh. This was one of the problems of multiple strongholds component of EoU in its generality even regardless of IA's quests. A paladin having the thief stronghold or a theif doing paladin or ranger quests don't seem right to me.