Hey all I would like to also chime in and saying that I also agree about keeping the party size to 4. Here is a quote from the DMG in 5e.
The game of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and its encounters is balanced on two basic premises.
Each adventuring day, a party of three to five adventurers should be able to handle six to eight Medium or Hard encounters (DMG, page 84). Most combat encounters should last 3 rounds on average (DMG, page 274). This means that the characters playing the game should have enough resources–including hit points, spells, special powers, etc.–to last roughly 18 rounds of combat. In addition, the party should take at least two short rests per day to recover a portion of their spent resources.
So basically Larian has took the average of what the balance is currently made for. Its NEVER 6 players if you do that you actually have to make the game HARDER by changing the CR by tweaking numbers all across the board on top of much higher DCs for everything.
If they raised it to 5 players, it wouldn't be terrible as the raw states its balanced around that. Another observation is the game has many more traps and environmental effects that put a lot more damage out than regular tabletop DnD. So having a 5th party member I could see an argument for. ( Would rather not have any or rare environmental effects )
If you note tho, it also mentions (2) short rests between combat. Larian needs to try and do more 5e by the book stuff than not. Increase short rests, remove food that heals completely, if they want to keep that "healing" in the game, put it in forms of a potion of healing only. Lets keep this DnD please.
DnD 5e is VERY balanced and all the pieces fit together like a tiny jig saw for a reason.
