I'm really okay with anything between 3-5 what ever is necessary for the story IMO. Unless it's one of Stewy's sexy parties and then as many as possible. - Geoff Schultz

3-4 is the best party size hands down. - Bartek Ciszkowski

I like FF10 where you have three in a party, but can switch party members out at will during combat. - James (@willia4)

3 - Mattb4rd

For the sake of completeness, party of one is also a possibility as in the original Dragon Warrior or the Pokemon series. As I plan to have a fairly large playable cast I think that leaves out the party of one (except for certain special story events), and the Pokemon system is really tightly bound to the core mechanics of the game itself. - Brooks Bishop

Brooks -- How about a party of one where the main character as multiple personalities (each with their own abilities) that can be swapped out during combat? Then the story can tell about why the hero is like that. - James (@willia4)

@James Ooh. That is indeed a fascinating concept. Would take a very specialized game with mechanics tightly interwoven with the story to make it spectacular. - Brooks Bishop

That is a pretty cool idea! James gets a gold star today. - Geoff Schultz

Heh. I get 10 points for inspiration and 0 points for execution, because I'm certainly not going to build it. ;) - James (@willia4)

I like Chrono Cross a lot too, I think it just turns most people off because the plot is _really_ convoluted (which can be partly chalked up to the fact they gutted a lot of the more interesting Trigger related stuff), and because it kills off the Trigger characters. The soundtrack is still something I listen to regularly as well. But this discussion would probably take its own thread, hehe. - Brooks Bishop

Hrmm, I love party of 6 because it's fully well-rounded. Of course, that's only when each character is a specialist in one thing. If there are more multi-functional classes, then a smaller party is great. I like party switching. Sometimes I hate the fact I have to leave other characters behind, doing nothing. :P I suppose party size should be tied to the challenges of combat and any puzzle solving that may be involved (I love the RPGs where party composition does not only revolve around combat). - Arlan Koizumi

I loved Secret of Mana's implementation of the 3-party approach in which each character could be controlled by a human via the unforgettable SNES multi-tap (thank you Bomberman Party!). - Nicholas Kreidberg

Secret of Mana is an interesting special case. The Mana series uses action based combat instead of menu-driven turn based which allows it to implement the multi-player gameplay. While it's easily possible to do a multi-player menu/turn based combat system, that just raises its own questions about how enjoyable that would be for everyone playing. In fact, I think that deserves its own daily question! Let's save this thought for later. - Brooks Bishop

I'm also a big fan of the D20 system in console RPGs. Bioware executed in perfectly in Knights of the Old Republic. - James (@willia4)