If Three is a Crowd, Six is a Stampede

I've played many RPG's with varying party sizes.  Some might just be your character and a companion while others sit at a comfortable four member group.  Thes smaller groups are relatively easy to control and manage.  But what about a group of six?  My newest adventure in Pillars of Eternity has pushed my party numbers up and requires some serious management.

I started off with myself and my one companion.  It was pretty easy managing my little group, but two characters just wasn't cutting it.  Encounters with multiple opponents were a roll of the dice, so I hesitantly decided to expand my group.  I was hesitant because it felt weird making all my own party members from scratch--many of the RPG's I had played before included party members that were part of the storyline and who joined at various points.  I'm still a little boggled about this as I have two characters in my current party who are story characters.  Even though this is a little strange, I have to admit that I am enjoying the ability to design my own characters rather than simply choosing from pre-made adventurers.

How can you go wrong with six people in your party?

As my party has gotten larger, combat has become increasingly easier but also more difficult to manage.  Pausing to issue commands is happening almost constantly.  It can be difficult to continually command party members to change targets or activate and re-activate certain abilities.  I still haven't figured out how to have a sort of tanking character draw and keep the attention in large groups of enemies.  My poor rogue continually gets pounded and has spent much time unconscious during many encounters.

Learning the ropes of this complex RPG system is taking some time and I hope that I am making the right choices.  Pillars of Eternity is definitely not the simple RPG that I play so often and that has become popular as gaming expands into the masses.  Playing a complex RPG is a nice change--even with the gigantic party.  The more, the merrier, right?