Interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone with you

[rusty_shackleford]

That way, you can have enemies that are actually different from each other, and we can still adhere to the misguided idea that everyone must be able to finish the game (even though 80% of them won't regardless of how easy it is) by allowing them to retreat to camp and bring the cleric and paladin to the "Lich's Barrow". Are they required? No.

QUESTION

what's the reason you can't just bring everyone with you

Well?
Come up with the most interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone in your party

[AmericanMonarchist]

That way, you can have enemies that are actually different from each other, and we can still adhere to the misguided idea that everyone must be able to finish the game (even though 80% of them won't regardless of how easy it is) by allowing them to retreat to camp and bring the cleric and paladin to the "Lich's Barrow". Are they required? No.

QUESTION

what's the reason you can't just bring everyone with you

Well?
Come up with the most interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone in your party

Kotor: The Republic sent Bastilla with an army and the sith were able to sense her presence. Afterwards they tell the PC to assemble a small strike team to avoid making as large of waves in the force, staying incognito. You do not bring 10 people with you since a crowd that size would stand out.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It depends on the context.

I am playing Trails Beyond the Horizon, the third Trails game in the Calvard arc. In this arc, the main protagonist is Van Arkride, who is ostensibly an underworld fixer who takes on extra-legal jobs that people don't want to go to the police or the Bracer guild for. Much of the sidequests you do are sensitive that people obviously don't want to become public. Like a guy who works at an insurance company who was looking at porn on the company computer that was networked and now the company's database has been hacked, and he wants you to fix this before his boss finds out. Or you are working for a politician who has a delinquent son and he wants you to try to keep this under wraps so that the news does not pick up on it and end his career. Or a celebrity actor who has an affair with a fan. Etc.

The thing is, it gets pretty ridiculous by the end of the first game, as Van is walking around and meeting his client in secret and listening to their secret stuff... while he has his posse of 7 or 8 party members standing over the client's shoulders.



I think we are more likely to intimidate the client fellas.


It also gets ridiculous in Cold Steel 3. There is a much memed scene where you are on the Imperial Intelligence Division's list of persons of interest for dissent. The day after the Emperor is shot, everyone is on the lookout for traitors and Calvardian infiltrators, people are hiding in their homes, bookstore owners are taking Calvardian books off the shelves for fear of being accused of being unpatriotic, foreigners are becoming the target of hate and are scrambling to leave, etc. You are grounded by the military as suspects at a location outside of the capital. You and your posse of THIRTEEN PARTY MEMBERS are brazenly waltzing around the capital in broad daylight meeting with fellow dissenters (who are also on the list). The ID should be receiving so many phonecalls about you and sending the elite guard to get you.

So in these cases when making important contact, tact is needed, and it would make more sense to split the party so you don't look conspicuous or intimidate weak, nervous strangers. For a systemic CRPG styled game, there should be something like KCD's conspicuousness stat, but it takes into account your whole group.


In most other circumstances, you should be fine walking around with your large posse, like in Suikoden where you play as a rebel leader or a prince surrounded by his retainers, trusted confidantes, advisors, etc.

[rusty_shackleford]

Idea: stargate like transportation but it can only transport three people at a time and requires immense amounts of power with significant cool downs between usages

[Val the Moofia Boss]

There are also infiltration segments where you take people who would be most appropriate/unscrutinized (read: people who look young, naive, and weak). Suikoden 2 where to infiltrate and liberate an occupied town from within, you pose as students or faculty of the academy. So you can only pick the young party members to go with you. FF7 where Don Cornello wants young women, so you can only go with young women (or disguised as one). Or Trails Beyond the Horizon where you are infiltrating a hospital managed by vigilant, corrupt managers, so you only go in with feeble young looking characters who look like they will do what they are told rather than the manly guys.

[J1M]

Magic travel.

Water or other consumable.

[wndrbr]

Anachronox regularly came up with different reasons depending on a context (like 'someone needs to stay back and guard the ship').

[methoxetamine]

It depends on the context.

I am playing Trails Beyond the Horizon, the third Trails game in the Calvard arc. In this arc, the main protagonist is Van Arkride, who is ostensibly an underworld fixer who takes on extra-legal jobs that people don't want to go to the police or the Bracer guild for. Much of the sidequests you do are sensitive that people obviously don't want to become public. Like a guy who works at an insurance company who was looking at porn on the company computer that was networked and now the company's database has been hacked, and he wants you to fix this before his boss finds out. Or you are working for a politician who has a delinquent son and he wants you to try to keep this under wraps so that the news does not pick up on it and end his career. Or a celebrity actor who has an affair with a fan. Etc.

The thing is, it gets pretty ridiculous by the end of the first game, as Van is walking around and meeting his client in secret and listening to their secret stuff... while he has his posse of 7 or 8 party members standing over the client's shoulders.



I think we are more likely to intimidate the client fellas.


It also gets ridiculous in Cold Steel 3. There is a much memed scene where you are on the Imperial Intelligence Division's list of persons of interest for dissent. The day after the Emperor is shot, everyone is on the lookout for traitors and Calvardian infiltrators, people are hiding in their homes, bookstore owners are taking Calvardian books off the shelves for fear of being accused of being unpatriotic, foreigners are becoming the target of hate and are scrambling to leave, etc. You are grounded by the military as suspects at a location outside of the capital. You and your posse of THIRTEEN PARTY MEMBERS are brazenly waltzing around the capital in broad daylight meeting with fellow dissenters (who are also on the list). The ID should be receiving so many phonecalls about you and sending the elite guard to get you.

So in these cases when making important contact, tact is needed, and it would make more sense to split the party so you don't look conspicuous or intimidate weak, nervous strangers. For a systemic CRPG styled game, there should be something like KCD's conspicuousness stat, but it takes into account your whole group.


In most other circumstances, you should be fine walking around with your large posse, like in Suikoden where you play as a rebel leader or a prince surrounded by his retainers, trusted confidantes, advisors, etc.

Imagine rolling through the Reverie Corridor with the entire squad

[UltraFan123]

Anachronox regularly came up with different reasons depending on a context (like 'someone needs to stay back and guard the ship').

I always felt like this was the most sensible and believable reason in games and settings where you have a base of operations.

If you bring your entire party with you, then your headquarters would be left undefended.

[Norfleet]

Well?
Come up with the most interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone in your party

Can't all fit in the Skyranger, some members of the team are recovering from damage sustained in the previous mission, or other members of the team are executing a simultaneous mission elsewhere. The most interesting reasons are the ones where there is an actual mechanical reason that supports this (not just an arbitrary head count BECAUSE YOU CAN'T limit).

If you bring your entire party with you, then your headquarters would be left undefended.

What would make that cool is if, while the party was out, the headquarters could get attacked and you'd defend the base using the troops you left behind. Y'know, like can happen in X-Com. Or Ribaorld, where you CAN deploy as many people as you want (outside of annoying special quest missions that demand unreasonably large numbers of people when there is absolutely no use for them in accomplishing the actual mission, that I actually had to make a thing to fix), but the limit of how many pawns you send is decided by you, since you don't want to stop all work in your base.

[Norfleet]

The thing is, it gets pretty ridiculous by the end of the first game, as Van is walking around and meeting his client in secret and listening to their secret stuff... while he has his posse of 7 or 8 party members standing over the client's shoulders.

Why doesn't rest of his party just merge into his body and disappear from sight until they are needed to pop out as is traditional?

[DemoGraph]

They're all mercs, you have to pay them.

[TKVNC]

You're being stalked by a rapist, but he only attacks groups of more than 4.

[Norfleet]

Anachronox regularly came up with different reasons depending on a context (like 'someone needs to stay back and guard the ship').

And it would be cool if that was actually true and something actually happened there. Imagine if you actually DID have to really defend a rear asset, with no arbitrary limitations of how many or who has to do it, left entirely up to the player. If it wasn't just an excuse and you actually got to play that out, and boy would you be sorry if you didn't believe them.

They're all mercs, you have to pay them.

Is that really an arbitrary headcount, though, if the player is actually choosing what the headcount is by his tolerance for budget?

You're being stalked by a rapist, but he only attacks groups of more than 4.

Terribly unconvincing: Players either want to see that, or want to kill that and get the loot.

[rusty_shackleford]

Come up with the most interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone in your party

Power armor or mecha based rpg and you either have a limited number, don't want to risk damaging too many simultaneously, limited fuel, etc.,

[Havitner]

Crippling social anxiety

[asf]

well, cant bring the ****** because he smells, and the *** because i am not bringing **** in my part, and women because they whine, etc.

[Lhynn]

Just make all companions women, then force the player to leave them in the kitchen before going to the mission.

[DemoGraph]

They're all mercs, you have to pay them.

Is that really an arbitrary headcount, though, if the player is actually choosing what the headcount is by his tolerance for budget?

It is, if you're but enforcing the will of some corporate committee.

[Tweed]

Chrono Trigger - More than three people in the warp at the same time makes it unstable and dumps you at the End of Time.

[Tangerine]

Chrono Trigger - More than three people in the warp at the same time makes it unstable and dumps you at the End of Time.

That was always a weak excuse since you could have the entire party present for story events. There's nothing stopping them from going in groups of three a few minutes apart.

[rusty_shackleford]

Any rpgs where your party members go off on their own tasks when not in your party?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Any rpgs where your party members go off on their own tasks when not in your party?

Trails in the Sky, Trails of Cold Steel 3, Trails into Reverie, and Trails Beyond the Horizon. Party members come and go and then come back as their motivations deem fit, rather than staying glued with you for the entire duration of the game. Like Olivier briefly joining and then going off on his mission for a couple chapters before you run into him again, etc.

In the Suikoden series and the Trails of Cold Steel sequels and the Calvard Trails games, you get access to a base or an airship where party members who be if there are not slotted into your party. For the Trails games, as the plot progresses, the NPCs and your party members in the base will move around and their stories will update, rather than sitting in their spot saying the same stuff for the whole game like in most other RPGs.

[Norfleet]

Any rpgs where your party members go off on their own tasks when not in your party?

It's not THAT uncommon for party members to depart on personal business. This, of course, raises the issue about them taking your LOOT while off on their business, because, as we all know, all the cool gear you find belongs to you, the player, not to any specific character. Either this equipment gets returned to the inventory pool when they leave, or players have to resort to creative solutions to prevent it.

What would be more interesting is if there was a reason to let them actually keep their stuff, like improving their success on said personal business. Perhaps even making that business a playable mission.

[MrTwinkls]

That way, you can have enemies that are actually different from each other, and we can still adhere to the misguided idea that everyone must be able to finish the game (even though 80% of them won't regardless of how easy it is) by allowing them to retreat to camp and bring the cleric and paladin to the "Lich's Barrow". Are they required? No.

QUESTION

what's the reason you can't just bring everyone with you

Well?
Come up with the most interesting reasons for why you can't just bring everyone in your party

Because sometimes they don't want to. For example I liked what devs did in Pathfinder: Kingmaker's prologue where your decisions in the beginning will always be disliked by some of would-be companions leaving you with only half of them till the end of the mission. Companions in most RPG's lack independence, strict moral codex and stubbornness sadly.
The other reason is because they died. Killed by me for their independence and stubbornness.

[Demonic Fate]

I love it when games ask you to tackle two missions at the same time so you have to assemble a Team A and a Team B. Usually it only happens once or twice at the endgame, though.

You could build a whole game where sidequests have tight time limits, so in order to tackle most of them (and gather the rewards) you need to split off some of your guys and send them into the haunted house or whatever while you go do the more important stuff. You play both quests in sequence, but you only get to make dialogue/story choices for your protagonist; if you sent off a Team B the designated leader will pick resolutions based on his personality, so you may end up with a more violent or less violent side quest outcome than you'd like.

[Norfleet]

I love it when games ask you to tackle two missions at the same time so you have to assemble a Team A and a Team B. Usually it only happens once or twice at the endgame, though.

It's lihe the old joke:

Q: How many D&D players does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: All of them! Never split the party!