Forum > General Discussion
How many player characters in your typical group ?
MisterK:
I'm interested in knowing how many player characters (characters, not players, in case each player plays more than one character) are in your typical party.
I've not seen this poll in the archive - so if it has already been posted, a moderator can point me to the appropriate post and close this one :)
Vladimir:
From personal experience, I'm more comfortable with a party of at least four PCs.
In combat, I like to deploy 2 front line and 2 in support roles.
In RP I like a decent consensus to make important decisions, just in case we may have missed a point.
I've had more than my share of solo campaigns while the largest party I have ever gamed with was 19 players at the same table. To maintain order, the party was divided into squads and I led the support squad of archers, mages and healers. Coincidentally, both myself and my frontline squad counterpart served as squad leaders in the US Army, so had no trouble assuming command of our respective elements.
jdale:
We generally play with six. As the number goes up, each player gets less attention and it's harder to keep focus. If the number is lower, they are better about making decisions and progress but it's harder to fill all the necessary roles and a single character being incapacitated can be a disaster.
It's useful if the players pick characters who do a good job of filling all the key roles. Neither of the parties I am GMing for have done a good job of that. One party has only a single real melee character (who's a semi at that) plus an archer and four pure/hybrid casters. The other party has only a single pure caster who is the healer, which leaves them without much magical support (at the moment they have an NPC hybrid caster, but that was very short term and she will likely be gone by the end of next session). In the latter party, you'd expect that would at least permit them to establish a good melee line, but you'd be wrong. Vladimir would be appalled by their lack of tactical cohesion. :)
Frabby:
What Jdale said.
In our group (on hiatus because of the pandemic) the core is four players plus the GM, so I've selected four as typical. We had more at times. At one point we had a campaign with six players playing altogether 14 (iirc) characters. But when the GM basically tells you to bring more than one character you know character deaths are to be expected…
Cory Magel:
Averages out to five, but we've ranged from 4 to 6.
We've had as few as 2 and as many as 11 or 12 once.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page