Preferred RPG Party Size?

Pretty self-explanatory: what is your favorite number of characters in a party in your RPGs? I personally prefer four, as it allows dedicated roles for tanking, healing, and damageers, without redundancies.

all SMT games besides Digital Devil Saga (and the first two personas I guess) have 4 party members and they are the best RPGs thus 4 is the best RPG party size.

Four seems like a good round number and it's what I'm used to. I just wish the ME games allowed up to a total of four.

four seems to be a magic number for me, including main guy. it tends to allow enough flexibility without getting overly complex. depends a lot on the game and how things work in it, though, of course.

5 because then I could have Chie, Yosuke, Yukiko and Kanji!

@Sooty said:

5 because then I could have Chie, Yosuke, Yukiko and Kanji!

um Teddie > Yukiko

@Animasta said:

@Sooty said:

5 because then I could have Chie, Yosuke, Yukiko and Kanji!

um Teddie > Yukiko

My foot > your toes

Depends on how many characters I like. I only use characters I actually like in rpgs, regardless of how good they are or how difficult my selection makes the game. In something like Lost Odyssey for example, I loved the entire cast, even the kids, so in my stupid, crazy, yet perfect world, my party would be huge. Having to choose only 3 characters made it quite difficult for me. In something like Dragon Age 1 or Mass Effect, I only really liked a few characters so 3-4 worked for me there.

If I had to choose, I would go with 6 just in case there's quite a few characters I get attached to.

One

...what? Sue me! This must be why I like Oblivion and Skyrim so much more than most of the RPG's I play, though I do enjoy Dragon Age Origins a good bit.

4 is the golden number.

Six. The more the merrier!

@believer258 said:

One

You and three henchman.

I went with six as my two favorite RPG's (Suikoden 2 and Baldur's Gate 2) use six person parties. I like having overlap with character roles because I never feel like I'm totally screwed if one or two characters die during a fight.

Four seems like a good round number and it's what I'm used to. I just wish the ME games allowed up to a total of four.

7

4 is a good solid number. Suppose Baldur's Gate and the like got me used to that. Could divide then into a 2 x 2 formation. 2 to scout and the other 2 to follow and support.

4 right amount for roles to devople any more it gets busy

Six, the classic Suikoden number.

4: 2 DPS, 1 Tank , and 1 Healer. This way I get all my roles filled and the party isn't unwieldy.

I chose 3 because I like to have a party where every move is very important, and I don't feel games offer that when you have 4 moves you can use. I recently played through ff9 again, and felt like it took too long to get around to the people I wanted to use and that there was a lot of redundancy among the roles. Admittedly 3 can feel limiting if you're forced to use your main character, if the white mage is useless outside of healing, or if you're in a situation where one of your dudes is down and can't seem to get back up. However I feel that these things can all be designed around, and when at their best 3 man parties are the way to go.

5 for DnD based RPGs. 4 simply is not enough.

For turn based JRPG's I like 3.

Four. It's what I've become wired for although three is not so bad either.

4 since its the easiest to manage with a variety of combat styles I wouldnt mind a 6er but you have to have some really interesting characters to make me care bout them

Four is the right number for me. Any more than that and it becomes far too chaotic on screen. To deal with that devs tend to go with an isometric perspective, and that's just flat out gross.

Mass Effect does handle three man parties quite well, though.

I like 5 but prefer 4.

In JRPGs it should definitely be four, one for each elemental. Western RPGs, it's a bit more up in the air, but I'll go with four anyway.

3. I cant think of any other game that has a 3 party system other than FFX..... FFX is pretty good guys...

4 Cause you can fill all roles and bring another character along just for fun.

I prefer 3, works for most final Fantasy Games I like, Mass Effect, and Rainbow Six

Six since it's been burned into my head as the normal party number. Thanks FFXI.

Come to think of it, I can't imagine a game like KotOR or Mass Effect with more characters than they already have, simply based on the way combat is designed. I guess a plus with three character parties is that, since dedicated roles are less necessary, you can have pretty much whoever you want in your party, whereas in games like Dragon Age or even Persona 4 it becomes more about who is useful in combat than who you actually like. Even though I really liked Naoto as a character, she was completely useless in combat because all her abilities focused on 1HKOs and massive damage spells, which I found useless. Likewise, in Dragon Age, I was pretty much forced to always have Leliana or Zevran in my party in fear of being unable to unlock a chest, and I didn't especially like either of those characters. Even worse, in Dragon Age 2 the only viable tanking companion was Aveline, who I found to be rather boring. In three party systems, each character is more rounded. In KotOR I could take Carth and T3 on a mission, and then Mission and Bastilla on the next without really changing how I play. In Mass Effect I would switch up parties all the time so I could see each character develop. Maybe 3 character parties are best.

Come to think of it, I can't imagine a game like KotOR or Mass Effect with more characters than they already have, simply based on the way combat is designed. I guess a plus with three character parties is that, since dedicated roles are less necessary, you can have pretty much whoever you want in your party, whereas in games like Dragon Age or even Persona 4 it becomes more about who is useful in combat than who you actually like. Even though I really liked Naoto as a character, she was completely useless in combat because all her abilities focused on 1HKOs and massive damage spells, which I found useless.

@MikeGosot: True, but in that scenario you had two ice guys and two melee guys, which was rather inefficient. It's also pretty necessary to have at least Yukiko or Teddie in your group, in order to heal. I mean, if someone wanted to, they could play Dragon Age or Persona 4 with whoever they wanted, but it would makes things a lot more difficult than having a more structured party. I liked Kanji a lot more than Yukiko, but it wouldn't make sense to switch them out because my group needed a healer. In other words, even though you may like a character, you won't necessarily like them in combat, and vice versa. Perhaps less variation between companion characters can actually be a good thing.

@MikeGosot: True, but in that scenario you had two ice guys and two melee guys, which was rather inefficient. It's also pretty necessary to have at least Yukiko or Teddie in your group, in order to heal. I mean, if someone wanted to, they could play Dragon Age or Persona 4 with whoever they wanted, but it would makes things a lot more difficult than having a more structured party. In other words, even though you may like a character, you won't necessarily like them in combat, and vice versa. Perhaps less variation between companion characters can actually be a good thing.

3-4

Wait, why so limited alternatives and no "other"? I think the most manageable party size is 8, like in the Wizardry games (at least Wiz8 had 6 user made characters and two companions/NPCs). Wasn't that also the size in Fallout Tactics and the first few Might & Magic games? More than 8 tends to get a bit much though. Or at least more than 10, though I think I might have played some with 12 party members.

a preferred party size of one? thats pretty lonely. 4 seems to be the magic number, it worked well in dao and most old school rpgs.

@phampire: iirc most old school dungeon crawlers had 6.

It really depends on the game doesn't it?

Really depends on the combat, you know? In a game similar to that MMO-style like Dragon Age, FF12, Xenoblade etc I like 4 which bums me out slightly about the latter two but FF12 was amazing and Xenoblade looks to be great so I don't mind too much I suppose.  
 
For games with traditional turn based combat I actually prefer a party of 3. Classic turn based combat with 4+ members can drag on a bit, I am playing DQ8 right now and normal battles feel like an eternity at times when 5-6 enemies and 4 party members are all taking action per turn. It was only worse in Lost Odyssey (as much as I loved that game) with 5, especially near the end of the game when you got double-item/spell and longer spell animations. 3 characters double casting endgame spells could lead to 1 turn lasting a few minutes... 
 
In more action focused RPGs (Mass Effect, Skyrim, KH, Souls, etc) I actually prefer to just have 1 character. NPC party members are useless half of the time and do so many annoying things.

Final Fantasy Tactics party size was 5 so... 5

@believer258 said:

One

Four to Six. Suikoden's 6 member system was great and it's a shame more large-roster games don't let you use 6 characters.

Five or six for some good ol' pen-and-paper D&D. I see a lot of people saying four because of Tank, Healer, DPS, DPS -- but what about crowd control? What about buffer/debuffer? What about that guy you keep around just to disable traps and open locked doors? Four just isn't enough, I say!

Five or six for some good ol' pen-and-paper D&D. I see a lot of people saying four because of Tank, Healer, DPS, DPS -- but what about crowd control? What about buffer/debuffer? What about that guy you keep around just to disable traps and open locked doors? Four just isn't enough, I say!

Four plus summons.

@NekuCTR said:

3. I cant think of any other game that has a 3 party system other than FFX..... FFX is pretty good guys...

I know Final Fantasy X-2 does and I think XII had three at one time as well.

I said four because I remember plenty of times while playing FFX where two of the three characters I had out would get knocked out at the same time.

Five, because you put a question mark next to it.