I even wouldn't be totally opposed to a slightly unrealistic system where every one in the roster was 'present' for dialogues and banter, but only a few were 'on deck' for combat. You might even go full JRPG and have a system where you swap people in and out during combat. Maybe that's a bit too much.
+1 This is usually my headcannon for games with more companions than party slots. Everyone is there and fighting enemies offscreen while you're fighting, but you only manage 4-6 characters against a subset of the enemies.
I don't particularly like this approach. I never understood why you would journey together and NOT fight together.
In this approach (at least my version of it), everyone is fighting together. The combatants are just limited to [4, 6, or X] for gameplay reasons. Take DAO: real-time combats while managing ~10 characters, with combat encounters that are balanced for 10 characters? Ugh that would be terrible: the combats would likely either be long&tedious or incredibly swingy because of high enemy damage to compensate.
That's why party of 4 in BG3 bugs me. The whole, "You're full up" with only 4 people makes no sense. [...]The game should not limit you for no good reason.
This dialogue means that this "4 person limit" is an in-universe thing, which is incredibly dumb. If the game just brought you to a party select screen with only 4 total party slots, that'd be better. Games can and should have limitations (something something "players will optimize the fun out of a game"), but not all limitations need to be explained in the game world.
