Originally Posted by Sordak
on what dnd is designed for:

varies by edition.
ODnD and early ADnD was designed for very large parties, this doesnt mean it was neccesarily played that way, but older editions ofthen had more than one person DMing, basically they ofthen had a "handler" whose entire job was asking the players what they do sot he process wasnt so damn slow.

Naturally this might have been just a convention thing, not relay my area of expertise.

5e is designed for 4 playersplus DM, but when the infinity engine games came out, this wasnt the case and it wasnt in subsequent editions, i think 4e was balanced roughly for 5 PCs, 4 was the bare minimum required to make the combat design work as intended.

Video games have the added benefit of additional characters not slwoing the game down as much as an additional player.

my personal record was 8 players plus DM, maybe 9, i forgot. I can tell you that takes some time to manage.
Yet, theres a great utility in this number of players.
With such high numbers of characters you can truly tell stories of raiding parties, of heroic fellowships.

I dont see how DnD beeing designed for 4 players translates to "a game shoulD be designed around 5 players". so im gonna disagree there.


Of course its not like modern Obsidian understands this.
They simply default to larger party sizes because its convention, for they are surprisingly conservative for a bunch of progressive hippies.


To say that 5e is designed for 4 players + GM is to me, misleading. Unless I am mistaken, most officially published 5e adventures clearly state that they are built for 4-6 players.