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

[PorkyThePaladin]

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.

Just admit that you play your RPGs as pure combat grinds, and character personality and thinking doesn't matter at all. The whole party thing is an archaic left-over from PnP days, where parties actually made sense, since people played with their friends. Parties make zero sense in single player computer games.

 

[laclongquan]

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.

This!

If we play "which party size is best" then I vote on the range of 4-6, with the above as limit on the max.

If you manage 7th char, it would become pretty blur, and we/I might forget one. expand to 8th char, and I might forget 2. Note that particular case in Jagged Alliance 2: we certainly can play large platoon but it's a hassle to command beyond a small squad.

 

[Average Manatee]

IRL military forces all have settled on dividing people into groups of 3-4 people for fireteams who combine into a squad of 8-12 people. This is considered to be a fairly optimal amount of people for combat tasks that every country has learned through millions of deaths in WW1/2 and so on. Beyond this a group simply can't function well and react to threats in a consistently good manner. Taking this into account, 4 is a good number for first person games where the player is taking part and operating the fireteam while 8+ works for more strategic games.

Simply getting a group of dozens of people together and throwing them into a battle does not work IRL without a good command structure (which it's assumed most player groups don't have, being adventurers or w/e). The offense would quickly degenerate into a simple unruly mob charging the enemy and then running away if things looked bad. In game terms it would be unmicroable with everyone acting on their own instincts. Which is kind of what the enemy parties are doing in most RPGs, just a random mass of enemies charging the player characters who are expected to win by fighting more effectively.

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.

Charisma is more than just being pretty. It's a good general stat for how well the player takes charge of the group, is able to smooth out problems and otherwise keep people in line through good nature and force of will. Without it people start bitching at each other from the normal annoyances they have traveling with others and the group ends up splitting.

 

[Luckmann]

Even Jesus had a party size limit of 12. I don't remember how it was justified in the lore, though.

12 is a "powerful" number in the lore:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+7:5-8&version=NKJV 12 tribes of Israel
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+21:12&version=KJV 12 gates on the New Jerusalem guarded by 12 angels
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+22:2&version=KJV 12 fruits on the tree of life
And so on.

So having 12 party members was Jesus powergaming.

Jews abusing numbers. Colour me shocked.

 

[Carrion]

Best justification--Fallout 1, 2, and Arcanum: Party size is determined by charisma; ugly people have fewer friends. Makes sense to me.

It's also one of the best uses of the Charisma attribute, but it doesn't really make all that much sense: would you rather join a lonely ugly guy, or an ugly guy that already has a few (probably less ugly) people travelling with him? If your face looks like a baboon's backside, gaining your first friend seems like a tougher task than gaining your fifth.

Still, I like the system and can't think of anyone doing it better.

 

[Darkzone]

Even Jesus had a party size limit of 12. I don't remember how it was justified in the lore, though.

I think that there was something about the requirement of 12 male grown jews to open up a synagog.

 

[Spectacle]

Charisma isn't really about appearance though, more force of personality and natural leadership talent. Having high charisma lets you smooth over the personality conflicts that will inevitably pop up when you have a group of various people in stressful situations, enabling parties to work that would have broken apart under a less able leader.

This can be abstracted as allowing a larger party.

 

[Darkzone]

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.

This!

If we play "which party size is best" then I vote on the range of 4-6, with the above as limit on the max.

If you manage 7th char, it would become pretty blur, and we/I might forget one. expand to 8th char, and I might forget 2. Note that particular case in Jagged Alliance 2: we certainly can play large platoon but it's a hassle to command beyond a small squad.

It is about optimal efficiency of command and control, or the meeting place of this functions. The less people you have under your command, the more control you have above them, but then you require more leaders. The intersection point between this two functions (span of control) is around 6 to 7, but it may differ due to the quality of the leader and the required interactions between team members.
If you wish more control over the teammembers, then you have to reduce the team size, making 4 a good choice. Naturally this applies to the real world, but this team archetype seems to be reproduced in the fantasy and digital worlds due to the abilities of the player which takes part of the leader.

 

[mondblut]

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?

Man the harpoons, we've got a larper here.

Ontopic - there won't be any reasonable justifications on limits imposed primarily by screen space real estate availability, or by tradition stemming from screen space real estate availability some 30 years ago. Just like it is pointless to ask why a character in game X can only carry 18 items regardless of their size (guesstimated by common sense) and weight (often told explicitly), but never 19. Because that's how the gui works, duh. The only way to bypass that limit is very inconvenient scrolling, like in Challenge of 5 realms (party size of 10 iirc, some being 5-men army squads).

 

[dag0net]

Darklands had you the dudes meet in the blurb, ryt?

Idky an rpg would need anything else..these dudes, they are the PC's, they meet and begin an adventure, this is the story.

In any story with more than one char, certain characters are sent off to m or d to do x or y, because their presence at f when u happens would fuck up the plot. Why does an interactive story need to be different?

Pplz who aren't satisfied with that should be given their own multiplepersonalityfantasyworldmedicationsimulator genre..muppetwombs for short.

Mechanically there are plenty of excellent reasons

 

[ilitarist]

IRL military forces all have settled on dividing people into groups of 3-4 people for fireteams who combine into a squad of 8-12 people. This is considered to be a fairly optimal amount of people for combat tasks that every country has learned through millions of deaths in WW1/2 and so on. Beyond this a group simply can't function well and react to threats in a consistently good manner. Taking this into account, 4 is a good number for first person games where the player is taking part and operating the fireteam while 8+ works for more strategic games.

This is a good explanation. I guess in a fantasy/magical setting it would also make sense if most spells were adjusted for usage on the specific number of people, i.e. lorewise Party Heal would be a specific version of Heal spell with some incantations added to focus it exactly on 3/4/5/6/8 people, same with default First Aid kits, hotel rooms, carriage sizes and so on. It's sort of how it works in Final Fantasy series but it's not explicit and it doesn't work with spells, at least offensive spells in this game either affect 1 person or unlimited number of enemies.

Charisma isn't really about appearance though, more force of personality and natural leadership talent. Having high charisma lets you smooth over the personality conflicts that will inevitably pop up when you have a group of various people in stressful situations, enabling parties to work that would have broken apart under a less able leader.

This could work in a story-focused games. E.g. in a game with a limited number of followers and a suicide mission (so you can justify lack of people who just join you for money) you can have many companions who don't trust any of others and don't trust a player character. So that if you're autistic you can have 1 friend as a companion, if you have a normal charisma you can have couple of more people who don't mind each other but to have more people you have to talk them through their issues with each other so that you can have Bob in a party even when there's Charlie or Diane(hated by Bob) in the party, but, say, he'll still rebel if there are both Charlie and Diane in the party. It'd be probably too complex in a real implementation and only work in companion-focused games.

 

[Siobhan]

Note that particular case in Jagged Alliance 2: we certainly can play large platoon but it's a hassle to command beyond a small squad.

That's just because the gui in vanilla JA2 limits squad size to 6 mercs, so using more than that in a mission requires you to switch between multiple squads, which is a pain. Play 1.13 and you'll see that a squad of 12 works just as well as one of 6, as long as you don't move them along as a single blob and then get annoyed that there isn't enough cover for everyone.

would you rather join a lonely ugly guy, or an ugly guy that already has a few (probably less ugly) people travelling with him?

That could be implemented by party-level stats that are derived from the attributes of the party members. I like the idea, at least for an RPG where you can only recruit characters rather than generating them yourself (and maybe there's not even any stat or skill increases).

Suppose your party can have stats like fearsomeness, group cohesion, loyalty, and so on, that depend on party size, the attributes and personality traits of its members, and in turn affect conversations, fighting morale, etc. Then you would have a lot more things to consider during party building:

- Do I go big and risk some people abandoning the group at the sight of a really dangerous foe?
- Do I really want to take this guy who is an amazing fighter but will seriously upset the rest of the party?
- Alrik is completely useless for anything but diplomacy missions, but he's too well-liked in the party to replace him with somebody more capable. But wait a second, isn't he also extremely afraid of undead? Maybe I can go to the Black Marshes and grind on skeletons, if Alrik flees often enough the rest of the party will start to hate him and it's bye-bye for the useless diplomat.
- I really want this teenage witch to join us, but how do I make this work seeing how I also have a barbarian that is basically a serial sex offender? Maybe I can convince her to pretend to be a boy, or maybe there's an item I can find to lobotomize the barbarian while keeping his fighting skills. (Or maybe I'll just accept that running a single-sex party is much easier and forget about the witch.)

And these factors can also play a major role in quest selection. You might reject a quest because it is almost impossible without a thief, but your party morale is just too low right now to take on another guy, in particular one who most party members will consider likely to betray them at the first opportune moment. Or maybe you accept an easy quest just to give your group a morality boost. Or you want to recruit a character, but all the quests you've done so far have been stealthy, secret missions so your reputation is 0 as far as that guy is concerned.

It also encourages role-playing to some extent: rather than making your choices based on optimal outcome (more money, special items), you now have to also consider how your decisions will be viewed by other party members. Your paladin will want to see the necromancer executed, no matter the cost. And your rogue will hate your for declining a reward just because the quest giver told you some phony sob story. Both will think you're an idiot for seeking a peaceful solution with some savage tribe.

Now of course there's a risk of basically creating "The Sims: Squad-size combat expansion pack", but I could live with that just to see how well it works in practice to treat the party as the central object for stat optimization while the actual characters are disposable resources.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Best justification--Fallout 1, 2, and Arcanum: Party size is determined by charisma; ugly people have fewer friends. Makes sense to me.

It's also one of the best uses of the Charisma attribute, but it doesn't really make all that much sense: would you rather join a lonely ugly guy, or an ugly guy that already has a few (probably less ugly) people travelling with him? If your face looks like a baboon's backside, gaining your first friend seems like a tougher task than gaining your fifth.

Still, I like the system and can't think of anyone doing it better.

You're right; when I said ugly people have fewer friends I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. In fact Arcanum has a Beauty stat so charisma specifically isn't your looks in that game, it represents personality and gravitas.

In any case I think making party size a derived attribute is a neat idea, regardless of the statistic/ability used.

 

[Severian Silk]

3 character parties in KOTORs was due to the influence of the Force.

 

[laclongquan]

Note that particular case in Jagged Alliance 2: we certainly can play large platoon but it's a hassle to command beyond a small squad.

That's just because the gui in vanilla JA2 limits squad size to 6 mercs, so using more than that in a mission requires you to switch between multiple squads, which is a pain. Play 1.13 and you'll see that a squad of 12 works just as well as one of 6, as long as you don't move them along as a single blob and then get annoyed that there isn't enough cover for everyone.

Wrong! I played both version so I know. To command up to 7th, or 8th char, is a hassle and the more we have to command, the more we will forget.

In tactic, it's ideal that we only have to control 2 squad of 3 (so max 6) to pincer attack. a squad of 4 would require slightly too much cover which is not always available. Even if we can use 1-2 sniper for long range attack, it's still possible to overlook enemy's approach. A sniper thinking himself smart will feel pretty stupid when they drop a mortar round on his head.

 

[Siobhan]

That you can't figure out a way to use more than 6 mercs efficiently does not mean that there is no such way. There's many maps where it pays off to attack with multiple squads from several directions, in particular in Arulco Revisited, and you can't do that with 6 mercs.

 

[Dorateen]

Fellowship of the Ring was a party of nine. That's a pretty good metric to go by if there must be a limit to party size. Historically, some of the best computer role-playing games have had eight character parties.

 

[Beastro]

Fellowship of the Ring was a party of nine. That's a pretty good metric to go by if there must be a limit to party size. Historically, some of the best computer role-playing games have had eight character parties.

Four under leveled, twinked Hobbits = one decently leveled Man so that's a 6 character party~

 

[Tigranes]

The hobbits weren't playable characters, they were familiars

 

[adrix89]

The hobbits weren't playable characters, they were familiars

The hobbits weren't familiars, they were luggage.

 

[dag0net]

The hobbits weren't luggage, they were allegories.

 

[Dorateen]

Bad hobbits are hard to break.

 

[V_K]

IIRC Magic Candle games only limited the number of characters that could actually travel with you at any given point. You could have any number of them training, making money for you etc, and they were technically still a part of your party.
There's also the experimental RPG Towers of Twilight that has no party size limit at all.

 

[pippin]

All I know is that stuff like NWN ended up hurting the game quite a lot, since most of the fun of DND, which was making crazy builds and watch them evolve, was lost. One character was just too clunky and felt too much like shit to play the game properly.
The minimum I've always see when people play pnp is 3 players, but I still think that's not enough. 6 is the perfect number for a classic crpg like the old MMs, Wizardry or even Icewind Dale. Dark Sun had less characters, but that was ok since Dark Sun is a setting that was made to powergame everything since the lore allows it. Besides, the Dark Sun games kind of expect you that you, at least, dual class your chars.
I'd say 6 character parties plus a pool of characters is a good choice.

 

[Average Manatee]

Fellowship of the Ring was a party of nine. That's a pretty good metric to go by if there must be a limit to party size. Historically, some of the best computer role-playing games have had eight character parties.

The Fellowship also fell apart from in-party fighting after 1 dungeon and a handful of random encounters.