Did anyone ever play a final fantasy game and ask why only four characters can be brought into battle? 
 
Well I have and I have thought about this for a long time now. In final fantasy, and most rpgs in general, this is not a huge problem in my eyes.  After all, the games generally focus around a small group of people changing the world in one way or another. 
 
Now that I have been playing my way through dragon age: origins, this question has again been entering my mind.  With how far I am in this game so far (have only been to one place so far) it appears that a major theme in this game is building an army to face the blight.  Thats no problem, but i have about eight party members and I am only allowed to use four of them.  In a game that is all about the big battles and building an army as fast as possible, it just seems extremely out of character that my dwarven noble says "No, you four stay in camp, we don't want this to be TOO easy."
 
Why can't a game let me use all of my party and scale the amount of enemies to that amount? It seems like a simple enough idea and yet i cannot think of a single game that does that.  
 
Can anyone tell me a reason why this shouldn't happen besides an arbitrary decision to make four the limit? 
Are there any games that have ever toyed around with this idea? If so, did it work?