History Main / ArbitraryHeadcountLimit

Many [[RolePlayingGame Role Playing Games]] have this as well, centered around the three-to-five-person size of the active party. In addition to the HandWave explanations common in RealTimeStrategy games, [[RolePlayingGame Role Playing Games]] can use the plot to explain the size limit. For example, in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV,'' every time it looks like the party will grow beyond five, one of your current members will discover pressing business elsewhere. Or ''[[ThePlotReaper die]]''. Or reveal that they had been [[spoiler:a monster in disguise.]] This version has something of a real world justification: many groups would keep a reserve behind to prevent the entire unit from being wiped out in one fell swoop.

* NipponIchi games generally have limits: The ''VideoGame/{{Disgaea}}'' games limit you to ten on the field at once (though you can switch between them), and ''PhantomBrave'' limits you to 16 units, including weapons, and the characters also have an Arbitrary Time Limit (Ivore Island, Marona's home, has an Arbitrary Limit of 50 Things, whether that be items or Phantoms).

* {{Hand Wave}}d in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': When you gain a fourth party member (the maximum number of people allowed in your party are three), one of them has to stay behind to hold open a door, later on, when you're all together and travel through a time gate you end up at [[spoiler:the End of Time]]. There you learn that no more than three people can travel to an era without getting redirected, so the remaining party members have to stay while the others are adventuring. However, you can switch them at will, and anytime you go to the [[spoiler:End of Time]], you can find them standing there.

* In ''StarWarsTheOldRepublic'', each character eventually accumulates six companions in their party. Only one companion may be active at a given time. Potentially Justified if you assign your other companions crew skill missions to accomplish.

* In the ''StarWarsBattlefront'' games, bots are limited to a maximum of thirty two per side. However modders have found that by altering a few lines of script in their mod maps, they can have battles with over a hundred troops on the battlefield at any given time. Granted, a hundred soliders on the Tantive IV would probably be overkill, but it would make sense for those large outdoor levels.

* ''StarWars: EmpireAtWar'' and its expansion are interesting with this. There is both a population cap and a reinforcements cap. The population cap increase with every planet captured and every Space Station built and/or upgraded. The larger and more powerful a unit is, the more population it takes up (but heroes always take only one point). However, the tactical battle cap is different. In Space Battles, one can bring in 20 (Empire) or 25 (Rebellion) points' worth of ships, with each starship/fighter squadron/hero requiring the same amount of points they require in the Galactic Map. Land units always take one point (but most consist of multiple troops/vehicles), and there's a different system: the defender's limited to ten units, while the attacker is limited by the number of Reinforcement Points they capture; each contains a different number of points, and they are still limited to ten population points. It is justified, however, in that that there is a limit to how many units a certain amount of systems can support while still functioning normally.

* ''StarWars: Rebellion'' has "maintenance points". Every planet you control gives you a certain amount of maintenance points. Planets also generate raw materials in their mines. Raw materials can then be refined with refineries; you have to pay a one-time cost in refined materials, but it also takes maintenance points, which return to you after the object is destroyed. You're further limited to eight ''groups'' of capital ships and four ''groups'' of starfighters. But that's not an actual limit on the size of your fleet; it just means you start having to conflate different ones. (In the case of starfighters, they're typically arranged by model, with the most popular model being split into two or three (or if all that model, four, as can happen when you're the Empire and your only decent fighter is the TIE Defender) groups. Finally, you can only have one Commander, Admiral, and General in a given fleet.

* In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun The Lost Age'', you eventually acquire a party twice as large as the cap of 4 in battle, the result is the ability to switch a single character from the team in battle with one in the 'on hold' team per turn, and should all 4 of your party get knocked out they would instantly be swapped with the back team. [[note]]The most likely explanation for this is that because there are so many large and powerful spells being thrown around, UnfriendlyFire would be an issue if more than four members are attacking at once.[[/note

**** Possibly this is a JustifiedTrope in this instance: irregardless of how much money you have, there's only so many mercenaries in your part of the world who are willing to take your money to engage in open combat with Shin-Ra regular forces: it would be basically like looking for mercenaries to defend Three Mile Island from the Pennsylvania National Guard. Regardless of how much cash you've got to throw at the problem, you're just not going to find many takers in the area on short notice.

* In ''StarWarsTheOldRepublic'', each character eventually accumulates six companions in their party. Only one companion may be active at a given time.
** Potentially Justified if you assign your other companions crew skill missions to accomplish.

* ''SecretOfMana'' and ''SeikenDensetsu3'' have this for the enemies, only allowing up to three on screen at once. [=NPCs=] also count against that, so there's one mountain trail where [[IntrepidMerchant Neko]] will sometimes appear, but only if there are two or fewer monsters currently active.

* ''SecretOfMana'' and ''SeikenDensetsu3'' have this for the enemies, only allowing up to three on screen at once.

* In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun The Lost Age'', you eventually acquire a party twice as large as the cap of 4 in battle, the result is the ability to switch a single character from the team in battle with one in the 'on hold' team per turn, and should all 4 of your party get knocked out they would instantly be swapped with the back team.

*** The SegaGenesis version limited you to three, period.

*** The headcount limit comes up in VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumAlliances, where even the buildings have a limit.

** ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect|1}}'' does it too, and there's no particular handwave for it. Four of the NPC's aren't even part of the ship's crew, so it's not like they are needed on board. The other two are ''marines'', so they wouldn't be much help in a starship battle. It's never explained why Shepard can't take the entire group of 6 with him/her. Especially when the entire universe is in the balance. In fact, the only person in the party who would have a logical reason to remain on the ship is the PlayerCharacter him/herself, as he/she is the ship's Commanding Officer.

* The 2012 remake of ''{{X-COM}}'', ''[[{{VideoGame/X-COMEnemyUnknown2012}} XCOM: Enemy Unknown]]'', limits your squad to 4 members, later upgradable to 6, and a single [[CoolPlane Skyranger]], allowing you to only respond to one crisis at a time. Apparently 6 soldiers in 1 plane is enough to defend the entire world from a hostile alien menace.

** In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'', the three-companion limit is justified for most of the game by the fact that most of Hawke's companions are established as having their own lives and things to do outside of running around with Hawke. Aveline has a day job with the city guard, Anders runs a clinic in Darktown, Varric is a writer and is implied to have other business going on as well, Merrill is working on restoring the Eluvian, Isabela is trying to track down her relic and Sebastian is working for the Chantry; only Fenris and (in the first act) Hawke's sibling seem to have nothing better to do. However, on the two separate occasions when all hell breaks loose all over Kirkwall and the survival of potentially everyone in the city hangs in the balance, it makes considerably less sense that half your friends see fit to sit this one out.

** This limit is pushed to the extreme in the [[SuperRobotWarsZ "2nd Z"]] games, which include a whole game's worth of a new cast, while including every included series from the first Z. While only around half or less of the previous game's cast return, it does include all the best units from each series. However... There is no squad system. The result is well over 100 deployable units, and enough deployment slots for around a quarter of that, until getting the extra slots during very last stages. You cannot even deploy a single character from each series without hitting the limit.

* In ''TheSims2'' and ''TheSims3'', you're only allowed to have eight Sims per family. The game still works just fine if you use a cheat to raise the limit.

[[folder:4X Games]]
* The first ''VideoGame/ImperiumGalactica'' game caps the size of an individual fleet at 28 capital ships and 180 fighters, and fleet flagships can only carry a limited number of tanks for planetary assaults. However, the former cap can be easily circumvented by merging fleets. The sequel drops the fleet size cap and removes flagships; each capital ship now has its own tank limit.
[[/folder]]

*** Averted during the final BossBattle. Normally, the player controls one group of 3 characters during a battle, but when fighting the BigBad the player is allowed to equip ALL 8 characters and may cycle between them at any point in the battle, if it seems like one group is struggling to make progress alone. Not unique, but certainly unusual among [=RPGs=] to allow the entire cast to take part in a fight.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' limit you to three characters at a time. X uses a LazyBackup tag system so if all three characters get KO'd, you're screwed, but XII allows the "sideline" characters to rotate in at any time.

*** It should be noted though that you can also rotate in your sideline characters during the middle of a fight in FFX, you just can't rotate out a KO'd character unless you revive them first.
** Simultaneously played straight and averted in Final Fantasy: All The Bravest. You start with an astounding ''12'' party slots, and as you level up or post to Facebook or Twitter through the game, you gain more party slots, until you end up with a grand total of 30 party members. All of your party members fight with you at once. (Shame they all die in one hit...)

** Possibly averted in ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia''. You can only have four party members onscreen during a battle... but you can swap an inactive party member with an active one ''mid-battle''.

* Completely and totally averted in the case of ''[[VideoGame/LunarTheSilverStar Lunar: Silver Star Harmony]]''. When you enter battle, all party members participate and can be controlled.
** Of course, the game actually DOES have an arbitrary headcount limit, it just conveniently removes certain party members due to the plot, such as a magical effect incapacitating the female members of your party so a GuestStarPartyMember can join up. Really, the game uses practically every party-splitting trope imaginable at some point. [[spoiler: Except, surprisingly, KilledOffForReal. Unless you count the BigBad.]]

** Justified in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3D'', where you can have a maximum of 99 dream eater allies, but are only allowed to have two active ones and one reserve at any given time.

* Justified in ''BlueDragon'' - the protagonists are a FiveManBand, so the limit is five.
** The sequel is a RTS which allows you to use all 14 characters at once. Shu, Jiro, Marumaro, Zola, Kluke, Fushira, Jibral, Marumira, Marutora, Toripo, Szabo, Sahila, Poo Snake, and Yasato can all fight, as well as Nene and Himiko briefly.
* Played with in ''Videogame/ShiningTheHolyArk'' where only four characters can appear at a single time in battle. However you could freely switch characters over, so if a character is killed you could replace them provided you had another character to take their place.

* A lot of [=MMORPGs=] have a particularly weird variant in that the number of people in the party ''depends on what you're doing.'' In ''VideoGame/TheLordOfTheRingsOnline'', for example, some things can only be done by a single person, some can only be done by groups of 3 or less, some are only possible in groups of 6 or less, and some in groups of 12 or less. Especially egregious in that, depending on the classes of the players involved, there could potentially be up to twice that number of actual combatants in the party. though half will be [=NPCs=] (pets/henchmen).

** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that, by definition, these type of games involve an small elite unit trained to take hostiles in different enviroments as quickly and silently as possible. Sure, they limit the number of operatives you use; if they didn't have said limitations during the operation, why not send an entire army and solve the problem just like that?

* Averted in ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion II''. Each of your star bases would generate a certain number of "Command Points" for your empire, representing the capacity of your logistics to manage, maintain and command ships. All the military ships in your empire counted against the number of Command Points you had, with larger ships costing more. If you happened to exceed your Command Points through overbuilding or loss of facilities, you had to pay for the difference in cash, every turn, until you either replaced/recaptured facilities or reduced the size of your fleet.
** But not pay all that much. A gaming magazine's retrospective featured an image of a fleet of death stars, with the caption "This is what they were trying to avoid."

* [[AvertedTrope Averted]] by {{Harpoon}}. You can recreate a scenario like 3 or 4 US Carrier Groups escorting a massive amphibious assault convoy vs the entire Soviet Navy. Or you can recreate an attack by North Korea, China and Eastern Russian forces vs South Korea, Japan and the USA if you like. The only limit is your computer processing power.

* Both averted and played straight with the TotalWar games. You can build as many units as you want, provided you can maintain their upkeep. However, in battle, you are limited to twenty units per army stack. On the maximum scale settings, this can give you a maximum of 4800 soldiers to command in a single battle. In Rome, this is a bit of FridgeBrilliance, since that number isn't far off from the total number of fighting men in a Roman Legion. (Not counting the thousands of support soldiers)

** It's worth noting that in ''Supreme Commander'' everything you build (except walls) counts as a unit- not only tanks and aircraft, but power generators, point defence and radar systems.
** It's also worth noting that for both TA and SC, these are purely technical, not balance, constraints---you could pump out hundreds of gigantic superunits (Krogoths, Monkeylords, etc.) rather than little tanks if you had the insane economic prowess required.
*** One could extrapolate that this is the maximum capacity of control for an ACU. However, doing so is just justification for what is, as stated, technical constraints. Otherwise calling in sACUs would theoretically raise such limits.

** FanWank - your forces are meant to be EliteMooks, so it's likely it would be difficult to maintain any more for your faction. The fact they are instantly replenished? Well, it probably goes under AcceptableBreaksFromReality for most, which is the best I can come up with.
* StarWars: EmpireAtWar and its expansion are interesting with this. There is both a population cap and a reinforcements cap. The population cap increase with every planet captured and every Space Station built and/or upgraded. The larger and more powerful a unit is, the more population it takes up (but heroes always take only one point). However, the tactical battle cap is different. In Space Battles, one can bring in 20 (Empire) or 25 (Rebellion) points' worth of ships, with each starship/fighter squadron/hero requiring the same amount of points they require in the Galactic Map. Land units always take one point (but most consist of multiple troops/vehicles), and there's a different system: the defender's limited to ten units, while the attacker is limited by the number of Reinforcement Points they capture; each contains a different number of points, and they are still limited to ten population points. It is justified, however, in that that there is a limit to how many units a certain amount of systems can support while still functioning normally.

** Maintenance actually comes not from planets, but from the resource units: Mines and Refineries. Each pair of Mine and Refinery you have gives you 50 units of maintenance, even if they're on the other side of the galaxy from each other. Mines and Refineries are the ONLY units that do not require maintenance to build. An interesting deviation is that you DO in fact need the maintenance to keep your stuff alive: if your maintenance for whatever reason ever goes negative, EVERY UNIT AND STRUCTURE YOU OWN is in danger of spontaneously exploding. A further variation is that if a planet is blockaded, all resources from that planet are blocked, which can send you into negative maintenance if you're running it too tight. Being able to sabotage pretty much anything, capture planets, bombard their structures into slag, incite uprisings to take them, and a few other ways of generally screwing with them; means that deliberately depriving your opponent of maintenance is actually an EXTREMELY effective strategy. When they've got nothing but characters left, they can't really fight back. And as for the space battles...the key thing there is the groups are just semi-arbitrary divisions for the purposes of mass-assigning orders, and can be of arbitrarily large size. The capital ship groups you can redesignate, and even order ships around individually. Fighters on the other hand...not so much. Of course, when you realize that each one of those on-screen fighters is actually an entire SQUADRON and you have over 100 of them...
* Heavily averted in ''Cossacks: European Wars''. Apart from having adequate housing, population is limited by food, which is a harvestable resource that is tracked, just like gold or iron, and is depleted continuously based on population. If food reaches zero, units start to starve to death.
** It's not averted at all, the game still has an 8,000 unit limit (bigger in the expansions), it's just that with all the units costing food (except the mercenaries, who cost gold) you rarely have enough of the stuff to 'reach' the limit.
* Mostly averted in "Empires: Dawn of the Modern World" which allowed games with up to 75,000 population.

*** In the single player, you may have only 4 squads or units out at one time. On the other hand, they are [[OneManArmy Space Marines]] which at a point explicitly state that they recently suffered a horrendous defeat that depleted their chapter's manpower, so its arguably [[JustifiedTrope justified]].
**** The general shortage of numbers perhaps but not the need to chose 4 units out of 6 for deployment.

** Averted, or rather worked around, in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars W'', where your ships could gain the ability to switch out active and reserve mecha during battle. The game also had the "Support Request" ability, which allowed characters to call in a reserve character for a supporting attack, as if they had been right next to them the whole time.
** Averted in ''Mugen no Frontier''. Out of seven units, only four can fight, but the other three can do Support Attacks, which can be helpful - maintaining comboes, finishing weakened enemies without wasting a turn, and increasing the [[LimitBreak Frontier gauge]] as a bonus.

* Averted by ''MagicTheGathering'', whose headcount is for far from arbitrary reasons. Early in the game's development, people built decks consisting of 20 or more of a given single card (Llanowar Elves, Plague Rats) before the current rule (maximum of four of any given card per deck, except for basic lands) was adopted.

[[folder: Visual Novels]]
* It's hard to put more then 3 characters on the screen at a time.
[[/folder]]

* The inversion of this trope is parodied in [[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2008/06/10/episode-1003-not-up-to-code/ this]] ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'' strip.

* {{Homestuck}} averted it, as the characters recruit tons of ghosts to fight {{The Big Bad}}

* [[TvTropes This website itself]]. Only one person can edit a page at once.
** This is a common computer problem actually. People expect computers to be perfect all the time. But what happens when two or more things edit the same piece of data?

** ''FalloutNewVegas'' continues this tradition, with the added wrinkles of [[spoiler: the Lucky 38 Presidential Suite]] where your extra companions can stay (and complain about being stuck there while others are doing stuff) and that for a non-humanoid companion, you have to choose between Rex and [=ED-E=]. (Rex does not like [=ED-E=].)

* A lot of [=MMORPGs=] have a particularly weird variant in that the number of people in the party ''depends on what you're doing.'' In TheLordOfTheRingsOnline, for example, some things can only be done by a single person, some can only be done by groups of 3 or less, some are only possible in groups of 6 or less, and some in groups of 12 or less. Especially egregious in that, depending on the classes of the players involved, there could potentially be up to twice that number of actual combatants in the party. though half will be [=NPCs=] (pets/henchmen).

*** The Sega Genesis version limited you to three, period.
* The ''LordOfTheRingsTheThirdAge'' has a very strange one: Any person on the battlefield can switch out for any one not on the battlefield at any time, but only three can actually fight at one time. And if someone gets knocked out? Nobody will fill in for them. They just lie there, taking up a perfectly good slot. To make matters worse, there are occasionally guest characters who can't be switched out, even if they're very poorly suited to whatever enemy you're up against at the time.