How big is your party?

[Shadowdancer]

We have four players, but five PCs to get all the basic classes covered. Two of the players don't like playing any type of spellcasters. So we have three fighter/rogues, one fighter/cleric and one bard/sorceress. The other two players (me and another guy) take turns being DM. While we are DMing, our characters are basically NPCs. I'm the only person running two characters.

 

[darklight]

Currently our group consist of 5 players, but usually we are 4 attending each session. The party has 5 pc's and one npc (former pc of player who left the game).

Actually, in my experience (since 1989, on and off, mostly as player) the best gaming group/party size has always been 3 players/pc's and one DM. The campaigns/adventures where we were 3 players had a much better flow, and were generally much more fun. We have never used henchmen or cohorts, and only rarely npc party members, it just detracts to much from the roleplaying IMHO.

The current campaign isn't going that well, so I'm considering either ending it, and starting a new one with fewer players, or adding one more player (my gf) and splitting the party into two groups of 3.

darklight

 

[Balrog]

6 Pack please

I guess our group averages 6 PCs. In the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil we just finished, we had 5 players running 6 PCs and one cohort. Now that is finally finished and i have gone behind the screen to start a homebrew campaign i have been working on. For that, we have myself as DM, and 6 players running 7 characters, as well as an NPC that i have been running.
But as many other people have noted, attendance is never constant, and i guess about 50% of the time we have one player missing due to scheduling conflicts.

And i also noticed that many D20 publishers seem to be assuming a 6 player standard as opposed to WotC's 4 standard (which i dont like), and thats good because i tend to use more d20 products to integrate into my campaign than i do WotC products. Products in this case meaning stand-alone adventures, not Core Books......

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

After humble beginnings with myself DMing and two players, we've grown in the three and a half years we've played to a group of six--with three girls and three guys. Balance among the sexes at our gaming table... YIKES!

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

3.

3 players, that is. 1 DM.

A total of 4.

The perfect number.

 

[Airwolf]

We have 6 characters and 1 cohort. Most of the players make it all the time. It makes it much more fun that way.

 

[the Jester]

Well, let's see- the party I'm running has as its mainstays:
Spukoni (bizarre halfling changed by chaos magic, rog2/sor8/eldritch master 1)
Clambake (psion 4/cleric 4)
Krunkshank of the Earthen Fire (elementalist 8; this is a custom class)
Droidi (half-dragon/half-halfling druid 3)
Horbin the Holy (cleric 8)

Other frequent attendees include:
Vito Stealyerstone (halfling cleric 5/rogue 1)
Bolfol Shadowstrike (rogue 6)
Turk (cleric 5)
Stone Phillips (cleric 6)

Usually we have five players. I keep sign in sheets for my games so it's easy to check; we had 7 last time but 5 every time for the last four games before that! There are also the occaisonal drop-ins. Not too long ago we had eight pcs pretty much every game for a while.

The Warhammer Fantasy dnd game I play in (3e in WF's world) has the following main characters, who all try to be there unless work or something gets in the way:
Dworkin Darkhammer (dwarf rogue/ranger 6/7; that's me!)
Ling Lui (the Chosen One, a 9-year-old girl; psychic warrior 1/sorcerer 1/psion 11, I think)
Vlad Lugosi (fighter/cavalier, 10th level I believe)
Guido Sarduccee (evoker! I think he's like 7th level.)
There'll be two more, but they just died. Again, with occaisonal drop-ins.

I guess I'm closer to the six-person group than the four-person group, but do you think that has something to do with 3e bringing new players in and bringing old players back?

 

[LostSoul]

Used to be 3, now it's 2.

3 Players is perfect. It gives the DM a chance to run very personal storylines for each PC.

 

[bwgwl]

one group is 4 PCs.

another group i'm in just jumped last session from 5 PCs to 7. i feel it had a negative impact on the game. (i like the new people well enough, but with that many PCs, things slowed down a little too much.)

when i DM, i prefer 4-6 PCs. i won't ever DM more than 6 at a time.

Trevalon Moonleirion said:

we've grown in the three and a half years we've played to a group of six--with three girls and three guys. Balance among the sexes at our gaming table... YIKES!

heh. i've gamed with two different long-running groups that had more females than males. definitely a different experience.