How to Create Custom Party Members in Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 and PC

You can technically only create a custom character for yourself in Baldur’s Gate 3, but there’s a workaround that some players are using to create a full party of four custom characters.

While you won’t be able to have romance between the custom characters, building every aspect of all four characters in your party is an exciting prospect. Here’s how to create a full custom party in Baldur’s Gate 3.

How to Create a Custom Party in Baldur’s Gate 3

To create a custom party in Baldur’s Gate 3, start a multiplayer session. The easiest way to get a full party of custom characters is to have three friends join your game and have them follow your custom character directions. I recommend chatting on Discord and having each friend share their screen to make directing the character customization process easier. You can then do this with all four friends in the friend group, so everyone wins.

When you start the game, you’ll have all four characters with you for the rest of the adventure and your friends can leave the game, giving you free reign over your new custom party. It’s a double-edged sword that custom characters made in any save file can’t be transferred over to other games or games in progress, but it’s cool that you can make a full custom party this way.

Related: Baldur’s Gate 3 – 9 Essential Beginner Tips

If you can’t get three friends to start a multiplayer game with you, there is a way to create a custom party on your own. After creating a multiplayer session, you have to start another instance of the game. To do this, navigate to your install directory and run bg3.exe while the game is already running.

Note: You’ll need a powerful PC to do this technique.

Then, join your hosted multiplayer session using the new Baldur’s Gate 3 window you just opened. You’ll be able to create a second custom character as if you were joining a friend’s game, although they’ll become controllable party members when this is all done. Repeat this process for a third and fourth time if you want additional custom characters.

Related: Baldur’s Gate 3’s NPC romance options are more limited than players thought

When all of your characters are created and ready to go, start the game on your primary instance of Baldur’s Gate 3. Once you’re in the game with all of your custom characters, save the game and close the other instances of the game. With the other windows closed, you’ll be left with your character and three other custom party members for you to control.

This method is understandably very taxing on your hardware, so I recommend you lower your graphical settings before attempting it. Turn the graphics down as low as you can and bump down the resolution if your computer is not a top-of-the-line machine.

The more custom party members you try to create, the more computing power you’ll need as each custom character requires its own instance of the game. Also, this method only works on PC, because you cannot open multiple instances of the same game on that platform. If you want a full custom party on console, you need to make three Baldur’s Gate 3 friends.

Can You Create Custom Party Members on PlayStation 5?

Yes, technically you will be able to create custom party members for the PlayStation 5 version as long as you follow the first portion of this guide with multiplayer sessions. Since the logic of playing the game together has not changed from the PC to the PlayStation 5 version, you will be able to create a custom party as long as you communicate with friends about what characters you’d like them to create for you.

Related: Is Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam Deck Certified? Answered

However, you will not be able to use the solo method for creating custom party members on PlayStation 5. This means that you will have to stick with the regular co-op to have unique party members in your playthrough if you can’t find anyone to do the method with. Now that you know how to create custom party members, you can hop back into the game and prepare your party!

Recruiting Custom Hirelings

Although not as optimal as the previously presented solution, you can recruit hirelings by talking to Withers and then change their appearance to match whatever you want them to look like. These hirelings are empty echoes of past heroes, and Withers will be the one doing the talking through them. This is an interesting way to have a mysterious character in you party that will have an appearance of your choosing. If your issue with hirelings was just the way they look, Patch #4 of Baldur’s Gate 3 has addressed that.