How many characters in your party, then and now?

[Lanefan]

Second in a series, this time dealing with party size.

Include full-party-member NPC's if your game had such, but please do not include henches, rescued prisoners, etc. How large were your parties, on average?

Please vote twice, once in the first batch of options to reflect your 0-1-2e parties, and once in the second batch to reflect your 3e party size.

Lanefan

 

[Wik]

For some strange reason, parties got larger in 3e. I think it was because we felt it was more necessary to "cover a base" that wasn't covered by a PC, and so we had to add an NPC to fill it.

 

[kaomera]

Well, I voted 10-12 for 1e, but that's just a guess at the average (and 8-9 for 3e, but that pretty much is the average). We typically started out (in 1e) at first level with 2 or 3 PCs per player, and whittled it down to one each by third level or so. That's for like 10 to 12+ players. Up to say 7th to 9th we stuck with that, and then we started getting more NPCs added in. Some of these henchmen where definitely "in the party", but others where really just there so we could split the party without having the PCs split up, so it's kind of hard to say for sure exactly. In 3e it's pretty much just one character per player, with maybe an NPC added. In my current game the only real "party" NPC ends up getting left back at base 90%+ of the time, anyway.

 

[Wombat]

Back in OD&D days we had usually 3-5 people in the party, though there was the one memorable night when we had 15 people at the game...

When I last played D&D 3.Wombat, we had about 15 characters, including NPCs, because the group had a large base; this number did not include servants and suchlike.

Now in Ars Magica we have a community of over 100 characters, but only about 20 are active.

 

[diaglo]

older editions we had 14 active players with about 8.5 showing up per session.

newer editions we avg about 8 players with 5.5 showing up per session.
edit: the number of characters varies too much to answer this poll correctly. there was a lot of PC death in the older edition campaigns in my experience.

 

[KB9JMQ]

In the old days I had 3 players who played two characters each.
Now I have 6 players playing 1 apiece. Which I like better.

 

[loki44]

older editions we had 14 active players with about 8.5 showing up per session.

newer editions we avg about 8 players with 5.5 showing up per session.
edit: the number of characters varies too much to answer this poll correctly. there was a lot of PC death in the older edition campaigns in my experience.

Do halflings only count as .5?

 

[kenobi65]

Do halflings only count as .5?

Depends. By height, they only count as 1/2; by weight, they only count as 1/8 (judging by the effects of Enlarge Person).

 

[Lanefan]

edit: the number of characters varies too much to answer this poll correctly. there was a lot of PC death in the older edition campaigns in my experience.

Doesn't matter...how big was the average party at any given time? Or, if there was lots of death during each session, how many were there when you started each night?

I'm not looking for the *total* number of PC's the campaign had over time (in my game, that number's now well over 130), just how many were in the played party at any given time (usually about 10-12 in my game).

Lanefan

 

[Arnwyn]

In previous editions, we averaged 7 members in a party.

In 3e, we average 6 members in a party.