Who should be part of my main party Fox or Mona? Also should I keep switching my party up or just stick to one core group? I'm at the end of Madrame's Palace.

I swapped Mona out until late game when he gets much better heals.

You will get two abilities from hanging out with people. One gives non party members XP, and one that lets you switch party members in battle. So don't worry too much, just use whoever you feel like. Although the enemy pool in each dungeon is very limited so you will find some party members just don't have the right elemental spells for a certain dungeon.

Use who you need at a given time. Early on I used Mona a lot because I needed his strong heals on hard, but late game I use Fox more for his good physical skills. But if I need wind damage or need to avoid fire damage I'll use Mona instead.

It's much more advantageous to make use of everyone in P5 than trying to stick to a set team.

Your best bet is to switch people around as needed. You can get abilities that will allow you to do this easily as mentioned above. Everyone should be within one or two levels of each other easily, so there's no reason not to use everyone. It'll help you manage your sp if you swap people around, and you can avoid weaknesses if enemies or bosses happen to be spamming one type specifically for the course of a dungeon.

That being said Mona is the best healer in the game, so he's pretty critical if you're on the harder difficulties.

FUCKING SPOILERS BRUH

@reputatsioon: Those are code names, they're hardly spoilers.

Switched out Mona asap since I actually like Fox, but also because Mona can still be useful not on the main team. I just use him to heal up after every battle. I rarely need heals mid-fight so it works real well and helps my main team maintain SP

In my position, Mona is the only one with group heals. Yeah Joker can double as a healer, but I spend most of my SP covering weakness gaps that the rest of the part leaves. For the time being, Mona is a permanent member.

Just going to point out you can still use skills of characters outside of the current party through the menu.

Keep Mona in background. Heal with him in between battles. You're welcome.

I like Mona but Mona exists as the Square button outside of fights and nowhere else.

Eh, I do a bit too much healing in battle for that to work. And putting my MC on healing duty mid battle is a waste of his damage versatility. Mona also gets Me Patra and Revives in addition to damage boosted wind spells as well, so he offers a lot of utility mid combat. His "lucky" skills can also give you an easy fight against enemies that don't have weaknesses and treasure shadows. There's really no reason not to pack him in your team unless you just don't like his character as much.

I used Fox so Mona could heal outside of battle but immediately dumped his ass once I got the next team member.

You typically won't need to heal much in the middle of standard battles in my experience, and since Fox deals more physical damage (conserving SP), I used him over Mona until boss fights. Mona also takes a beating compared to your other party members. I'm not sure the specifics of what each stat does, but no only does his Persona have some low endurance, it's also harder to find armor for him with as much defense as the rest of your team, so he took a back seat unless I desperately needed the revive skill.

The good news is that it's a few button presses to swap party members, and later in the game, your backup members will share experience, so your party choice really doesn't matter all that much in the long run. Bring who you like the most. I finished the game with everyone at the same level except the protagonist, who was a level higher I believe. So don't worry about experience distribution.

I'm not very far into the game, I just got Fox and I've already switched out Mona for Fox. I'm using Mona to heal

You reach a point in the game where this type of question becomes irrelevant, thanks to the abilities mentioned by others in this thread. This is really the first party based RPG that feels like the whole party is involved all the time.

Obviously party size limits are a game design decision, but it's something that always clashes with the story for me. I always have this thought in the back of my mind, in both Western and Japanese RPGs, "Why wouldn't the whole team go on every mission/quest/operation/etc?" Most games either don't acknowledge it at all or handwave it with some thin explanation.

Persona 5 manages to have its cake and eat it too. It gets to a point where, even though you can still only have a party of 4, it feels like the whole team is always present and contributing. It's just one great subtle thing in a game full of great things that I really appreciated.

I dropped Mona for Queen immediately upon getting her and I've never used Fox a single time (unless he had a forced first battle like the others that I don't remember, in which case I've used him one single time).

I'm in the sixth palace now and I haven't felt any pressure to need to be swapping out any characters mid-dungeon or mid-battle yet and I've finished every palace except for the first in the minimum number of days.

Mona sucks and I booted him the first chance I got. My god he's annoying. I just Mona to heal outside of battle. Only thing he's good for.

I keep Mona around for the healing. I have a few personas that can cast Bufu skills but I still kept Fox around when I was doing Madarame's Palace cause I just wanted to put Ryuji on the bench as fast as possible.

I used both and switched out Ann until late game.

There was a time when I had both of them on the team but after Queen Fox had to go. Right now my team is Panther, Mona and Queen. I chose them because they had the highest Magic stats.

doesn't really matter either way, as long as you make sure your protag has all the spells your party members don't. Personally took out Morgana cause I didn't want to waste his SP using attack spells, he's basically my out-of-combat healbot.