D&D 5E How Many in your Group?

[Hussar]

Something that was a bit contentious in the change from 2e to 3e was the presumption of party size. AD&D presumed a pretty large group with about 6-8 PC's being the standard used for a lot of modules, plus various henchmen, retainers, and other hangers on. 3e drastically reduced this and made the 4 PC party the baseline from which the game was largely designed. Monsters were benchmarked vs 4 PC's, treasure and whatnot presumed 4 PC's and modules were also baselined at 4. 4e rolled around and increased the baseline to 5, and then proceeded to design from there.

5e, with it's much looser mechanics and presumptions, seems to be benchmarked at about 4-6 PC's. Six might be a bit high, but 3 PC's is going to have a pretty tough go of adventures and the DM's going to have to work fairly hard to not overwhelm the party.

I'm just curious though. I've seen a lot of posts lately (and it might just be my own confirmation bias) of groups of 6-8 PC's. I know my current group is 6 PC's as well. I'm just wondering where things are falling out.

And, if 5e groups are trending larger than before, (if they even are), what about 5e makes it easier to play with large groups than, say, 3e or 4e?

 

[Zardnaar]

My group waxes and wanes. Currently at 5, sometimes we get 4 next week might have 6. I can't really grind them down from hit points it seems without going overboard (to much healing).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As I've said elsewhere, had our first session tonight, five first-level characters. Four zombies wrecked our shizzle, and it was sheer luck that nobody had to roll any death saves. (The zombies got crazy lucky on their "keep fighting" rolls, surviving at 1 HP for over 4 rounds each, but neither lucky nor unlucky on their attack rolls.)

 

[S'mon]

My 5e group is 3 + an occasional. My 4e group is 5, my PF group is 4. My Classic D&D group is 5 + an occasional.

 

[delericho]

5 PCs, largely because that's the number of available chairs.

My last 3e campaign started with 6 PCs, although we dropped one fairly early on.

 

[Hussar]

Hrm, in hindsight, maybe I should have made the poll multiple choice. I didn't consider people playing in multiple groups. Sorry, I fail at poll writing.

 

[Azurewraith]

Got a group of 6 i totally miss counted on the pole option and clicked 5 -.- so that makes 5pcs and a gm seems to work ok pretty consistent group.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Hrm, in hindsight, maybe I should have made the poll multiple choice. I didn't consider people playing in multiple groups. Sorry, I fail at poll writing.

Heh. Yeah I voted 7 or more. One of my groups has 8 players (we had 9 at one point). The other two groups I run are 5 and 4. I think 5E is the friendliest edition that WOTC has produced for running a larger group.

 

[PnPgamer]

our group has 3 pc and 1 dm controlled party npc, which I count as 1 pc as well.

 

[iserith]

I have a large circle of players that always want to play, but I never run games with more than 4 players. Typically I have four regular players for a given game, plus two stand-by's in case a regular can't make it.