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Don't you know? You never split the party!
Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty,
The wizard in the middle, where he can shed some light,
And you never let that damn thief out of sight...
— Emerald Rose, "Never Split the Party"
The reverse of Let's Split Up, Gang, this is when the whole party decides that they aren't going to split up under any circumstances. Sometimes it can be taken to indicate at least a minimal level of genre savvyness, for example, in situations where splitting up means that one group will later have to go find the other group. It may be achieved by telling Commander Contrarian or The So-Called Coward, " Fine, You Can Just Wait Here Alone."
At other times, it's clear proof of Genre Blindness; if there's only one Big Bad, and the group is running from it, staying together means that the whole scene becomes the punchline of a joke: "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you." Additionally, staying in a group in that case makes it much more likely that when The Chick trips and falls, she'll wipe out at least one other person as well.
This trope is extremely common in Tabletop Games and related media, where splitting up the party can make the game a headache to run. Almost always, a split of any length will result in some players sitting around doing nothing because their characters are not present, not to mention an overworked gamemaster trying to track and manage different locations at once. For this reason, tabletop groups often won't split up even when it would be tactically advisable to do so from an in-setting standpoint — or, indeed, when they have no logical reason to continue sticking together whatsoever.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- During the Axis Powers Hetalia Bloodbath 2010, Iceland had a feeling that something bad was going to happen and pleaded with Turkey to stay with them as it would be the safest. Of course, in the background, the rest of the Nordics got kidnapped while Iceland was talking.
Comic Books
- The Dungeons & Dragons comic published by IDW states it word-for-word at one point.
- One of the early DC Comics for Scooby-Doo has a fictional story about aliens transforming into humans. This causes tension within the Mystery Inc. when Fred orders a split up. For once, they don't split up. As usual for Scooby-Doo and his friends, the aliens are fake.
Comic Strips
Fan Works
Literature
Films — Live-Action
- In Horror Express the two British scientists (Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee) on a Trans-Siberian Express train tell everyone to stay in pairs for protection against whoever the film's monster has possessed.
- The initial plan of the cast in Stage Fright Aquarius is to stick together in a locked room, for they are locked up in a theatre with a killer. But then Mark remembers that there's a skeleton key in the caretaker's room, but they are unable to go there together, as it turns out that Alicia's ankle (which had sprained earlier in the film) is acting up again. Then they split up.
Live-Action TV
Music
- YouTube has several music videos of a song by Emerald Rose called "Never Split the Party."
Don't you know? You never split the party!
Clerics in the back to keep those fighters hale and hearty,
The wizard in the middle, where he can shed some light,
And you never let that damn thief out of sight...
Tabletop Games
- The trope gets its name from a joke amongst tabletop role-players:
- In more dungeon-crawly games, splitting the party screws with the Game Master's balance (i.e. two Player Characters stumbling into a fight tuned for five). Plus nothing spells headaches like a GM trying to run two games at the same time, one on each half of the table. The inverse, Let's Split Up, Gang, is lampshaded in many RPG groups as "... we can take more damage that way."
- Wizards of the Coast (the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons) used this phrase in an advertisement for Dungeons & Dragons products.
- Can be averted in certain settings of TORG, but usually isn't. In Orrorsh, in order to overcome the Power of Fear there is a game mechanic called Perseverance which can be obtained in a variety of ways. One of them is having someone (a party member, for example) die horribly — but only if it happens offstage. Of course, gamers being what they are, no one wants to be the one that dies horribly so they'll try to arrange that it happens to an NPC.
- Most White Wolf STs in any kind of hacky-slashy situation will cackle with glee if the party is split up simply because they know that they will be eating character sheets for dinner when the PCs split up in a combat situation.
- The exception is those running Adventure! who love it when the party splits up, because dramatic editing rules assure that the split party will rejoin up at exactly the right moment. Chase scene? A car with the rest of the party comes flying out of a side street, sideswipes one of the pursuing cars, and open up tommy-guns on the others. Fight scene? They swing in on a chandelier with sabres! Shoot out? One of the masked gun-men is the absent member of the party, and the moment the major villain unmasks himself, so too will the "henchman".
- Mutant City Blues, a low-powered sleuth game, presents an interesting technical reason to keep the party together. When everyone are playing uniformed detectives it's not very easy to conceive of 4+ detectives all working on the same case in the same scene. But the system says that clues on the scene are automatically (or semi-automatically) available only to those with the right skill off the long long list, which is only feasible to 100% cover with the whole party. Therefore, if 2 detectives go one way and 2 other go the other (which would, in real life, make perfect sense), the first group on their scene will automatically miss all the clues tied to the skills of 2 other detectives, and vice versa, possibly rendering even a relatively straightforward case unsolvable.
Video Games
- Subverted later. "Sometimes you have to, er, break up the team."
- One mini-game in the Hundred Acre Wood section Kingdom Hearts II has you going into the depths of a spooky and potentially dangerous cave. Sora and the Winnie-the-Pooh gang insist on sticking together through the cave. You have to ensure that you and your friends stick together, or else you'll waste valuable time—and you'll have to go hunting your buddies down in order to move forward.
- In Left 4 Dead, break up the team and you will die, no exceptions. So it's better to never break up. Because if you do, the Director spawns Hunters. Just for you. Smokers (and Chargers and Jockeys, in the second game) also tend to be used for this purpose, as all three require a teammate to rescue the pounced/constricted/grabbed Survivor. Additionally, trying to do everything alone, such as setting off panic events to get ahead, may actually bring harm to the rest of your team, which they will gladly yell at you about if you decide to run ahead. More angry players may shoot you to death or boot you from the game. Naturally, a Griefer thrives on this kind of deviant behavior before being booted off the team. If you get people who are really spiteful, they will actually let people who run ahead to keep going and if they get pounced on, the rest of the team will just take their time as the Rambo player is being killed.
- In Dead Rising, if you leave a survivor in a different area, their health will slowly sap away until they die. The sequel makes the survivors wave for attention if you get too far away when you tell them to stop following you. They can't stop waving so they won't kill nearby zombies until they're attacked.
- Knights of the Old Republic averts this in most cases, only allowing you to have between one and three of your party members (your party can reach nine or ten characters in the first game and eleven in the second) in play at a time, but it doesn't let you transition to the next area unless your three party members are close enough to the transition point.
- Baldur's Gate: You must gather your party before venturing forth.
- Most multi-player Beat 'em Up games rigidly enforce this trope. Ultimate Alliance and X Men Legends, and some similar games, do it by teleporting any character who wanders too far from the majority of the players back to the group (or if there's only one player, the NPCs will be always appear right behind them wherever they go, even if they couldn't make it there on their own). This can be merciful, like when the only non-flyer of the group can't find a way up to the ledge the others have landed on; and it can be frustrating, like when the only flyer in the group is trying to reach a high ledge to collect a power-up. Other Beat Em Ups will simply disallow any character moving too far from the group, as if an invisible bubble surrounded them at all times. Both types may have the "camera" pull back, expanding the field of view to allow the players a bit more distance before their countermeasure kicks in.
- In the first Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game, no matter where the players go, the camera stays with the party's chalice, a magical device that dispels the miasma that covers the world. There's nothing preventing any of the players from wandering offscreen, but they will die within a few seconds without the chalice's protection, forcing the party to stay together. If your character dies and becomes a ghost, however, being already dead, you can wander wherever you damn well please. Not that you'll be able to see where you're going if you're not the one with the map, though.
- After awhile, this becomes key in League of Legends (and by extension, most MOBA games). Late in the games, the key damage dealers can either insta-gib one champion or unleash massive sustained damage on the entire team if allowed to live. However, they also crumple like paper if caught alone. Being down that champion is a major blow, such that one mistake caused by splitting the party can decide the game.
- Kha'Zix has this as a mechanic. If his target is alone, his Q ability will deal more damage to them. Splitting up when there's a 'Zix lurking about is a great way to get yourself killed.
- While it doesn't enforce it, in Metal Gear Online it's a bad idea to split up from a group if you are going to enter combat. If you don't have coordination with the group, then you are a lot more likely to die because the enemy will most likely come in a group when you face them. Unless you are going for a stealth attack, you will always benefit from a team mate or a couple of team mates in combat. In certain areas it lends its self better to split up and sneak rather than stick around for an outright assault.
- In Sweet Home, you have five characters who can either operate independently or in groups of up to three. However, it's usually best to keep everyone in teams, as a character who is working solo can easily get caught in a trap that requires the help of an ally, or get cursed or poisoned by a monster and be left completely helpless as their health fades away (and characters who die in this game are gone for good).
Web Comics
- The perils of this are a major theme of the fourth major story arc in Rich Burlew's The Order of the Stick, to the point where Don't Split the Party is the title of the book compiling that arc.
- Darths & Droids
- In strip #436, the players manage, somehow, to fail at this completely and get split into four groups, despite the fact that they only have three players present.
- This becomes a Running Gag; in the commentary for strip #832, it's noted that you can always split the party further. "If this involves independently moving disembodied body parts, all the better."
- Penny Arcade highlights the concept in their Conflux arc, noting that game masters will often split the players' party. Tycho notes that they can instead force the players to split their own party. (This turns out to mean make them quit playing.)
- From MeatShield, Dhur might be an Idiot Hero, but if there's one adventuring lesson he knows, it's that you don't split the party.
Web Original
- The Spoony Experiment
- Referenced in Spoony's riffing of the Dungeons & Dragons-spinoff board game ''Dragon Strike'': "Seriously, if you split the party, I'll wring your stupid neck."
- Also mentioned by him when reviewing Mazes And Monsters, when the party, surprisingly enough, decides to split, he repeatedly chants 'don't split the party.' Naturally, something bad happens to the characters shortly thereafter.
- In the D20 Live at Con-Bravo:
Spoony: (to Linkara, after the latter suggests going to investigate the plot hook on his own) You're splitting the party. Never do that. Big Mike: Well, I've only mentioned thieves about five times, what's the worst that could happen? Spoony: He could get shanked in the kidneys and die.
- Several stories of the Whateley Universe have this, usually in Team Tactics class. Caitlin's biggest gripe with the other teams is splitting up, it gets to the point that when Team Kimba choose names for their tactics, splitting up and tackling tasks separately is deemed 'the anti-Caitlin'.
Western Animation
- The crossover also references the old joke theory that Fred always went with Daphne because they were off making out while Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby did all the work.
Real Life
- This is what the expression "defeat in detail" was invented for. Breaking your forces up into units spread out too far to support each other lets even a numerically inferior force attack your units separately with the advantage of numbers in each encounter.
- Custer's Last Stand is an example of the above. He split his group up at Little Big Horn and that battle did not go in his favor.
- The Battle of Midway was a US victory because Admiral Yamamoto had carefully split his fleet in a manner that would allow each successive element to come to the aid of the one before it...assuming that the US forces were as he believed them to be. Unfortunately for him, US Naval Intelligence had cracked the Japanese codes and the Americans knew what to expect, so they sent more and stronger forces. Meanwhile, the Japanese were completely in the dark about US movements. This allowed the American task force to destroy Admiral Nagumo's flotilla well before the flotillas of Admirals Yamamoto and Kondo could come to their rescue.
- Sun Tzu mention this on the sixth chapter of his book The Art of War. In the moment of ignorance, the enemy force will likely split his army into several units in hopes that they'll cover more ground, but this will just bring the opportunity for the other side to use his whole army to crush these units one by one.
- Being Sun Tzu, he also subverts this by explaining exactly when one should divide one's forces (baiting a trap, for instance).
- And, of course, there's the Older Than Feudalism military credo, Divide and Conquer.
- Surprisingly, this trope was totally averted during The American Civil War at the Battle of Chancellorsville, wherein Robert E. Lee split his army in two facing a union force that outnumbered his own two to one and proceeded to give the Unionists one of their most humiliating defeats of the war. I guess if your as good a general as Lee, you can pull whatever stunts you want.
- It happened on J.W. Powell's exploration of the Colorado River in 1869. After passing the dangerous Lava rapids by portage, they were on their way home when O.G. Howland, his brother Seneca, and William Dunn split from the main party - and were never heard of again.
- There was also the German invasion of the USSR during WWII. Hitler, anxious and impatient to conquer his hated Russian enemy, split his forces in order to attack three disparate targets at once: Leningrad, Ukraine and the Causcus, and Moscow. Instead of focusing on any of these, which would have greatly aided his invasion plans, he split his army into pieces and ended up enveloping Germany in a prolonged and bloody war of attrition that simply could not be sustained.
- Or, alternatively, the Ruskies would have attacked from the flank that Germany hadn't, resulting in the entire German army being enveloped.
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