Hmmm…I am not a fan of this idea (but not opposed to the post!)
Lazeal would wreck my camp by flinging pieces of her hunts willy nilly about the place, drawing flies. She would also only sharpen her own weapons and leave ours to rust. If I left Asterion with her, they would likely bang all day…evil thirst and all.
But honestly …there is no way Lazael would stay in camp to polish my swords and do dishes, especially once she found out where her creche was.
In fact…having a mechanic like this in the game would further emphasize how unlikely it is that any if these personalities would stay with your char, given their own motivations. One already has to take it with a grain of salt that u r the leader. This mechanic would make a grain more like a heaping tablespoon.
Honestly…I prefer to do what I used to do in these types of games. Pretend the whole party are with me all the time, and use camp selection for the battle skills I want. Ie, the camp folks are simply nearby hunting or something. The problem with this is the VERY BAD existing mechanic that makes me have to deal with a cutscene from companions when i want to switch them out. So I can’t even pretend that I am not leaving anyone behind. It also gets really old really fast for organizing equipment.
I really like the general idea of narrative limits on party sizes rather than mechanical ones. I agree with you that having Lae'zel stay at camp polishing your spare boots while the real heroes are out adventuring is probably not the best choice though.
In my ideal world, the limit would be neither 4, nor 6, but rather whatever served the story at that point in time. I think it would be great if in some parts of the game you can only have 2 people in your party, while others let you have 6, while still others have you leading an army of thousands.
There were only two invitations to the ball, so Mal had to pick one crew member to come with him to the shindig. One team had to go to Endor to shut down the energy shield while the others blew up the Death Star. There are narrative reasons in literature and cinema to split up teams and limit party sizes so that not every character in the entire franchise is in every scene. I can't think of any reason that those devices wouldn't work just as well in video games.
