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What are the examples of good justification of party size limit?

PrettyDeadman

Guest
There's no party size limit in King's Bounty, and your party size is limited by your leadership points.

As in "you can have 10000 dragons, but if you have 1 knight, 1 peasant, 1 wolf, 1 mage and 1 barbarian you can't add 1 fairy but can add 92343 wolfs".
That actually seems pretty logical.
A pilot can fly
but If he want to fly
He will have to pass a qualification exam.

If you can command 999 knights, 999 peasanta and 999 wolves - doesn't mean that your hero is qualified enough to command 1 fairy, or if you can command 5 different types of troops at once - doesn't mean that you can command 6 different types of troops at once, since each and everyone requires its own strategy, coordination and etc. Not every commander is capable of that.
 
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vivec

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I think most people confuse a wargame with an RPG because of the similarity of mechanics. An RPG is a more focused, mission-centric game, where you are supposed to be able to get into places an army can not. Playing high-level D&D too much can confuse retards into thinking that they are more powerful than an army in an RPG.
 

Serus

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Not an actual example but could work as a reasonable limitation of party size: A fantasy crpg with story based on a prophecy of a hero with X companions saving the World/kingdom/whatever. If your party or at least the leader originates from the culture where the prophecy is considered part of religious dogma and thus cannot be disputed it would make sense to limit yourself to the number of companions given by such prophecy.

Other reasonable explanation is in dungeon crawlers (was already mentioned):
If the corridors in the dungeon in question have width of X then party size of X multiplied by the number of rows that is considered practical should be the maximum number and is reasonable.

Another case is when you are given a pre-made party and there is no opportunity to add anyone (say Betrayal at Krondor = you just start with 3 people. then are sent with 3 people on a mission, etc...) Can make sense - at least to a point.

A more general explanation would be the ability to actually coordinate a larger group. After a certain point you would need to create sub-units, one person cannot realistically command large amounts of people directly - this is the reason armies have hierarchical structures. But if the party lacks true leader or reason to create and follow such hierarchy, it is limited to a number a single person can comfortably order directly. It doesn't explain any particular number (why 6 or 8 or 10) but it does explain need of limited party.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Imagine if your are a team of spies sent behind enemy lines. You can't add local people to your party because they then will find out who you are and report you to police.
This justification is my original idea and a result of my creative work. Do not steal.
It is perfect and suitable for any setting (in medieval setting they will report you not to police but to sheriff nitingham or royal guard).
 

Serus

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Imagine if your are a team of spies sent behind enemy lines. You can't add local people to your party because they then will find out who you are and report you to police.
I came up with this justification.
It is perfect and suitable for any setting (in medieval setting they will report you not to police but to sheriff nitingham or royal guard).
I would argue that for a setting in any (historical or fantasy) in a pre-nationalism era it could be disputed. In feudal medieval societies loyalty was not directed towards a "nation" or a an abstract but towards people you directly had contact with. You could still find someone who has no reason to be loyal to towards the person you are spying on and recruit him/her.

For any modern-ish settings however your idea could work.
 
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vivec

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Imagine if your are a team of spies sent behind enemy lines. You can't add local people to your party because they then will find out who you are and report you to police.
This justification is my original idea and a result of my creative work. Do not steal.
It is perfect and suitable for any setting (in medieval setting they will report you not to police but to sheriff nitingham or royal guard).

Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
 

Hobo Elf

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I like Etrian Odyssey's 5 man party limit. After playing the games long enough it becomes apparent that it is a well thought out design decision to have that many members due to the way party building works. You will always be one man short from having all your bases covered and so you have to make a hard decision as to what combat element you think is worth sacrificing.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
 

Naveen

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I dunno, I always assumed you are the leader of a group of very specialized "soldiers," and past a certain point, small unit leadership becomes a bit chaotic or something like that. 6-8 people also seems to be the psychological limit for players/readers/spectators to care about the individual characters, their names, motivations, and so on.
 
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vivec

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Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
Because a hard limit is *idiotic^. The story should determine the flow of the game and not mechanic. Mechanics exists for specific encounters.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
Because a hard limit is *idiotic^. The story should determine the flow of the game and not mechanic. Mechanics exists for specific encounters.
Unfortunately computer doesn't understand soft limits, and until feminists and their soft science experts will invent their own she-puters, crpg will have to be designed with hard limits and with hard science.
 
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vivec

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Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
Because a hard limit is *idiotic^. The story should determine the flow of the game and not mechanic. Mechanics exists for specific encounters.
Unfortunately computer doesn't understand soft limits, and until feminists and their soft science experts will invent their own she-puters, crpg will have to be designed with hard limits and with hard science.

Wow. Lack of understanding of integers detected. What soft limits? You can keep adding units. Hard limit only means capping at a point. Also, nice strawman linking stupidity of feminazism with something totally unrelated.
 

kris

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Best justification--Fallout 1, 2, and Arcanum: Party size is determined by charisma; ugly people have fewer friends. Makes sense to me. Not a big deal for Fallout because there are so few useful people. In Arcanum it's more noticeable because of the larger roster.

Worst--Dungeon Siege 2. You only get 2 party members until you pay a ridiculous sum of money to an arbitrary guild. Then you get 3.
You got it all wrong. There is no justification why only supermodels can have big parties. Do you think all ancient generals were supermodels? How could they lead hundreds of thousands if people with best possible charisma could only lead like 6 people? Fallout 1,2 and Arcanaum are all wrong.

You got it all wrong if you think that "Charisma" is a trait for supermodels. that would be beauty, that even is in the game. You should be ashamed by your post, int is not a dumb stat.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
Because a hard limit is *idiotic^. The story should determine the flow of the game and not mechanic. Mechanics exists for specific encounters.
Unfortunately computer doesn't understand soft limits, and until feminists and their soft science experts will invent their own she-puters, crpg will have to be designed with hard limits and with hard science.

Wow. Lack of understanding of integers detected. What soft limits? You can keep adding units. Hard limit only means capping at a point. Also, nice strawman linking stupidity of feminazism with something totally unrelated.
You could only add so much units untill your buffer get overflowed. No amount of feminism will change that.
 
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vivec

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Congrats you hit upon an age-old idea used in all P&P sessions since decades. Playing bad cRPGs does this to you.
P&P sessions doesn't require a party size limit. Even if some session might've had similar circumstances as described above, they certainly didn't use it as a mechanic/justification for an arbitrary party limit.
Because a hard limit is *idiotic^. The story should determine the flow of the game and not mechanic. Mechanics exists for specific encounters.
Unfortunately computer doesn't understand soft limits, and until feminists and their soft science experts will invent their own she-puters, crpg will have to be designed with hard limits and with hard science.

Wow. Lack of understanding of integers detected. What soft limits? You can keep adding units. Hard limit only means capping at a point. Also, nice strawman linking stupidity of feminazism with something totally unrelated.
You could only add so much units untill your buffer get overflowed. No amount of feminism will change that.

You are truly an idiot.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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There's no party size limit in King's Bounty, and your party size is limited by your leadership points.

As in "you can have 10000 dragons, but if you have 1 knight, 1 peasant, 1 wolf, 1 mage and 1 barbarian you can't add 1 fairy but can add 92343 wolfs".

Yes. You can have the quantity but not the variety.

Now answer the rest of the post.

Further more, your original question was:

What are the examples of good justification of party size limit?

Whatever your views on KB games, they do offer an excellent example of "good justification of party size limit". Being offended that someone mentioned a KB game and moving the goalposts to how much variety one is allowed is annoying to say the least.
 

ilitarist

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Whatever your views on KB games, they do offer an excellent example of "good justification of party size limit". Being offended that someone mentioned a KB game and moving the goalposts to how much variety one is allowed is annoying to say the least.

You're probably talking to yourself as I didn't see anyone offended by a KB game or denying it has a justification of party size limit.
 

Spectacle

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There's no party size limit in King's Bounty, and your party size is limited by your leadership points.

This is, of course, only a hybrid RPG which blends strategy with RPG, and more than one entity can occupy the same square, so there's that.

On a practical level, surely there's going to be a limit to how many party members can fit on the screen, particularly in grid-based games where a square cannot be occupied by more than one entity, and some entities take up more than one square, and then you'll have to leave room for an opposing posse that will make the combat in some way challenging. It'd be quite a tedious game if the game was just constant bottlenecks of hoards and only the front 2-10 characters could act each turn, having to click end-turn on the other 234 entities each turn. Also, who's going to write individual characters for 250 entities?
You don't really have a Party in King's Bounty though, you have an Army.
 
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One player = one character party size limit. Otherwise, it becomes strategy gaming. Role playing a party of more than one is kinda like schizophrenia, isn't it?
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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One player = one character party size limit. Otherwise, it becomes strategy gaming. Role playing a party of more than one is kinda like schizophrenia, isn't it?

Only if you consider playing the same game again with a different character also "kinda like schizophrenia". If you're capable of roleplaying more than one character why couldn't you do it in the same game rather than drag it out over multiple plays?
 
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One player = one character party size limit. Otherwise, it becomes strategy gaming. Role playing a party of more than one is kinda like schizophrenia, isn't it?

Only if you consider playing the same game again with a different character also "kinda like schizophrenia". If you're capable of roleplaying more than one character why couldn't you do it in the same game rather than drag it out over multiple plays?

Personally, I don't, as I prefer to play a character with a personality to match my RL one, so I don't replay stuff until years pass. But still, that's different, as one can imagine role-playing a single personality at a time, but not 4-6 at once.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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One player = one character party size limit. Otherwise, it becomes strategy gaming. Role playing a party of more than one is kinda like schizophrenia, isn't it?

Only if you consider playing the same game again with a different character also "kinda like schizophrenia". If you're capable of roleplaying more than one character why couldn't you do it in the same game rather than drag it out over multiple plays?

Personally, I don't, as I prefer to play a character with a personality to match my RL one, so I don't replay stuff until years pass. But still, that's different, as one can imagine role-playing a single personality at a time, but not 4-6 at once.

Get gud.
 

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