Me and My Pals - Selective Combat And Story Party

Inspired by [b]Sit This One Out 2 (STOW 2) by MycroftJr[/b], which lets you keep a large party around for dialogue, banter, and story without having everyone pile into combat.

I loved the idea, but I still had one problem, making companions invisible doesn’t necessarily remove their impact on normal exploration. They can still physically behave like followers, and with a big enough party you basically have an invisible small army squeezing through rooms, ladders, jumps, narrow spaces, and every other bit of traversal BG3 throws at you.

What I wanted was something closer to older party-based RPGs, where the wider cast is still travelling with you in the story, but only a smaller active group is physically present during normal gameplay.

So [b]Me and My Pals[/b] sets out to simulate that approach-ish.

[b]Noncombat Companions[/b]
You can mark a companion as Noncombat and they remain a real member of your party, but effectively disappear from normal exploration.
[u]While Noncombat, companions are:
[/u]
[list]
[]Hidden.[/]
[]Intangible and heavily protected.[/]
[]Removed from normal follower traversal.[/]
[]Kept near the active party rather than independently navigating the world.[/]
[]Completely excluded from combat.[/]
[]Automatically skipped during Turn-Based Mode.[/]
[]Still available for dialogue, cinematics, camp scenes, companion conversations, banter, and overworld remarks.[/]
[/list]Since hidden companions are kept fairly close to your active character, their ambient comments and banter also tend to remain easy to hear.

One of the biggest differences from STOW 2 is how hidden companions behave during exploration. STOW 2's invisible companions still behave more like ordinary followers, following you, climbing ladders, clogging stairs if you don't have a group climbing mod, while Me and My Pals deliberately removes them from most normal traversal and keeps them gathered around the active character instead.

[b]Companion Controls[/b]
[i]Show All[/i] - Temporarily reveal all Noncombat Companions for 20 seconds.
[i]Show Talkers[/i] - Reveal Noncombat Companions who currently want to speak with you.
[i]Hide All [/i]- Immediately return temporarily revealed companions to their hidden state.
[i]Set Others Noncombat[/i] - Mark everyone except the currently controlled character as Noncombat.
[i]Clear Noncombat[/i] - Remove Noncombat from everyone and regroup them with you.
[i]Park Noncombat Companions[/i] - Temporarily remove Noncombat Companions from active travel.
[i]Recall Parked Companions[/i] - Bring Parked companions back to your current location.
[i]Exclude Noncombat From Dialogue[/i] - Prevent Noncombat Companions from being automatically selected for normal dialogue where possible.
[i]Restore Dialogue Participation[/i] - Allow excluded companions to participate in dialogue normally again.
[i]Reset Companion Presentation[/i] - Occasionally you would find your Noncombat Companion visibly rendered again despite their status. This allows you to "Refresh" all of them without losing your current settings.
( Relevant options are found within passives too)

[b]Parked Companions
[/b]Park is different from ordinary Noncombat behavior.
A normal Noncombat Companion still travels with you invisibly.
A Parked companion does not.
Parking temporarily takes that companion out of active travel entirely. You can then teleport, change areas, explore somewhere else, and leave them Parked until you decide to recall them. Basically, " Parked Cars"

[b]Exclude From Dialogue[/b]
This is another optional layer on top of Noncombat.
A companion with Exclude From Dialogue enabled still travels with you exactly like a normal Noncombat Companion, but the mod attempts to prevent BG3 from selecting them as a participant in normal conversations.
This allows you to decide, for example, that Shadowheart is still travelling with the group but should not appear in the conversation you are about to start.
However, BG3 does not use one single system for every cinematic in the game. Some heavily scripted scenes can explicitly stage party members regardless of normal dialogue availability, so this option cannot currently guarantee exclusion from absolutely every cutscene.

[b]Requirements[/b]
Script Extender
Something like [b]Party Limit Begone by SildurFX[/b], or another equivalent party-limit mod

---[b]Known Quirks and Stuff to Fix(?)
[/b]
[list]
[]Hidden companions still appear on the minimap.[/]
[]Hovering directly over the hidden companion pile can sometimes detect their invisible world hitbox and interfere with clicking the ground underneath. They do not block movement as you can walk straight through them.[/]
[]Hidden companions are heavily protected, but unusual scripted falls, chasms, or forced transitions may occasionally bypass those protections.[/]
[]BG3 can sometimes forcibly change companion presentation during particularly scripted cinematics. In rare cases, a Noncombat Companion may become visible again after one of these scenes. The mod attempts to automatically repair their hidden state, but a few unusual sequences may still win.[/]
[]Exclude From Dialogue works for normal dialogue candidacy, but certain heavily scripted cinematics may explicitly stage companions anyway.[/]
[]Hidden companions can still make normal overworld remarks and banter. This is intentional.[/]
[]During Turn-Based Mode, hidden companions remain where they are rather than teleporting after the active party until Turn-Based Mode ends. Their turns should normally be skipped automatically.[/]
[]If you manually press Cancel End Turn on an automatically skipped Noncombat Companion, you may temporarily regain control of that turn. Automatic skipping resumes normally on the following round.[/]
[][b]If confused and want things to just " work normally", just remove the tag from all companions. They should return to the default behavior of whatever party limit remover you use.[/b][/]
[][b]Boat to Grymforge can make things wonky. I recommend removing noncombatant tag from all companions BEFORE you get on the boat. Or better yet, go on the boat alone then return to the beach and fast travel to Grymforge fast travel point.[/b][/]
[][b]At the beginning of Act 3 before the astral prism is invaded, PLEASE DISMISS ALL OF THEM AS NON COMBATANT else things can get REALLY weird[/b][/]
[/list]---You're welcome to leave remarks about glitches you encounter beyond what is mentioned here, because I am 100% sure there is still some deranged BG3 edge case hiding somewhere that I have not encountered yet.