Well, Yeong's suggestion kind of reminds me of Pokemon where you can have 2 on 2 battles. You still have a full party of 6, but the downside of switching is that the character that was switched doesn't get to attack and the incoming Pokemon is open to take a hit. This can however also be strategic depending on what you switch to.

Oh no i didn't mean that at all. I think 12 is a bit much tbh. That was just the only example that came to mind with switching between active characters. As you pointed out, most rpgs don't do this.

Yea I agree, I think 12 in a party at once would be a bit cumbersome though.

1200 bytes isn't that big if you only have 300 bytes of it out of the appvar at a time.

I'm thinking that if the character data includes a 16x16 sprite, it would take at least 32 from that alone, plus the name, then the stats, equipment, and abilities.

How will character data take 100 bytes The maximum data it will take is probably around 30~40 bytes each. Also, if switching from A→D takes too long, maybe ability switching the other way can fix it? so that from A, you can switch to either B or D.

I also want to point out (as I did in my previous post) that most people seem to be favoring an action rpg as opposed to a turn based one. Other concerns aside; how would this system work out in an ARPG?

I also can't stress enough how important I think it is to have a combat system that is more simplistic and easy to use, and honestly an action RPG would be well suited to simplicity.

I guess the biggest question we really need to answer right now is turn based or action rpg. Then if we do an action RPG, do we implement a multiparty system, and what is the best way to go about that?

Isn't party members also a bit of a story-line thing? Our currently storyline has only one party member....

For ARPG, which hugely favors one party member RPG game, I can only think of few ways of implying multiparty system:

1) Press button to change to different party member (prolly 4 max)
2) Party members move based on an AI, and only the "selected" party members can be moved manually
3) LoZ: four swords

A combination of 1 and 2 was what I was thinking if that were the route we were to take (action rpg+ multiparty)

Our current story would allow for an ambiguous number of party members. Party members and allies help with the depth of the story, so it should be important that we have them in some form.

This could still work within the confines of an action RPG. In addition to your main character, party members that join and leave the party throughout the course of the game could follow AI patterns. I would probably have a max party size of 2 or 3 at any given time in order to keep things simple and not slow things down too much in this case though.

*Edit* Actually you could have an action rpg where you have mutiple scenarios occurring and you switch between control of the main characters as the plot progresses. When the characters paths meet, one (or more) of them could become AI controlled members of a single party. If they diverge, you could split them again and switch between scenarios as needed. This would be another way you could implement a multiparty ARPG.