Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General According to Sir Tolkien, a party size is 6.

Admittedly, D&D is an exception because it holds tight to classic class designs and it is heavily focused around teamwork and filling roles. I could see reducing down to three relatively easily, but going down to two leaves a lot of holes in capability and means adapting a bit from standard D&D adventure design. Which is why I think they've settled on 4 being the default party size as compared to many other games. Matt Mercer being able to handle 7 to 8 players at any given time is a marker of how great a GM he is more than it is a statement as to what D&D performs with.

You can see it a lot of the 5e art too. 3.X had a lot of party art with 5 or 6 members. But in 5e the group pictures tend towards groups of 4.

I will also admit that there are things I disagree with about some of the way the current design of D&D towards 4 players. I suspect that is part of why a lot of monsters out of the book feel a bit too easy for my liking with 6 party members. Action economy is just so heavily against any big monster at that point, even with Legendary actions. Matt Mercer also heavily modifies his monsters I think because of this reason.

As to whether it's a trend.

Monster of the Week has two sample parties, one of 2 players, one of 3, it starts to over-burden at 5. Fantasy AGE has a sample party of 3. Scion average party size seen played online is around 4, judging by fiction, and the list of pre-gen characters, 4 seems to be what they're aiming for as well, though they already have discussions on how to do 1 player campaigns. City of Mist sample party is 3 people. Savage Worlds, average party size is about 4 from what I've seen. Fate Core, example party is 3. Hero System still leans towards 4-6 but its system hasn't changed substantially since the 80s and it can also handle groups of 2 or even single player. The Fellowship feels a bit lacking at 2, but seems to find its pace at 3 or 4 and feels a bit overburdened at 5. Storyteller, also averages around a 4 person group, which may just be a social limits thing because game design points to 5 what with their 5 X by 5 Y type design format in Chronicles of Darkness. Masks runs well at 2 to 4, it starts getting overburdened at 5 too. Sentinels Comics (to be released) also has a sample party of 4. Call of Cthulhu seems to assume 3 to 4 judging by play examples.

Granted, some of those are PbtA games and one thing about PbtA is that each character adds significant chunks to the worldbuilding and lore and at around 5 people you're starting to see a very busy world setting for a single campaign. But this, again, seems to be toward a general design environment where I suspect a lot of designers have been developing in an environment of scheduling conflicts, short sessions, and small group sizes and so they designed around what they have. Hence the increasing number of games where the example party size is 2-4 people and the first big signs of breakdown occur around 5.

I cannot say that this either a good trend or a bad trend. I just think it is a trend and that it is based on the average age of players being older, the average player having more responsibilities, and other such things. I enjoy large group games and have been in them quite often, but small group games have their own appeals as well, and I've been in campaigns ranging in size from one-on-one to one GM and 13 players and even 5 GMs and 30 players.

As a side note, group sizes above 4 is where you start to really see efficiency break down. I believe I heard that's why the base US military team is a 3 person fire-team, with a squad being 3 teams, and a platoon being 3 squads, and on up...sometimes with 3 + leader or 3 units + command unit....this I have only indirect experience with though (3 of my siblings were military and this topic came up someetime in the past). Outside the military, into my personal experience, this is why I get a little antsy setting groups of students larger than 4 because you start to get a lot more off-topic behavior once that happens. Three person teams are best, four person teams are what I usually ended up seeing while I was teaching. I think mostly because it resulted in fewer groups.

People who know each other very well and work together very well deal with this and so a 7 person group (GM + 6 players) is easily doable when you're comfortable with each other.