I’ll admit I’m in the prefer 6 group, but other than nostalgia for the BG series, do I need more than 4?
5e supplied so much crossover that I don’t quite need the quantity of characters to cover the skills like you needed in 2e.
To boot, Larian have already said we can get mercenaries or tag along a later on that temporarily bolster the group size.
So do we want 6 for nostalgia, for the party interaction maybe?
I’m also actually not against losing characters, because frankly the concept of people waiting at a camp location until you the protagonist come back pretty offensive. It’s lazy in this day and age and makes zero sense.
At least Dragon Age inquisition had a castle and other tasks that had to be done, so you got the concept of splitting up but keeping choice.
NWN 2 had a tavern that we used as a base, and I see no reason that the same can't be done here. The selected party clears the way, and the rest follow later. Whether it's a tavern, or some other base doesn't really matter, but having that base, which is already implied via the current camp, makes perfect sense. In fact, once we're "out of the weeds", the base camp could switch to the current base, whatever it may be. With the added benefit of there are no wasted story beats. All of the party members are there, and can do their stories, depending, of course, on whether or not some beats interfere with others. Maybe doing X's story means that an NPC needed for Y's is either dead, or won't deal with the party any more.
