Appreciate all the replies, I got a lot of good info out of this.
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I usually give the player two characters for the first two or three chapters then go two or three without any joining and after that I do a steady stream, one or two every other chapter or something.
Purely from a game design standpoint, I think any setup can work as long as other elements of the game are designed around them.
In terms of my personal preference, I tend to like it when there’s a steady stream of new characters over the course of the game, with the player being given a starting posse of, say, four to seven units or so counting the Lord. New party members are one of the coolest types of acquisitions to look forward to as one progresses through a game, at least for me, so having new recruits every so often does a lot to keep me invested in getting further on the gameplay side of things.
As well, it also serves a practical purpose of making it harder for the player to truly run out of viable units by regularly giving them new characters who are fairly well-scaled to the current chapter.
You might want to consider that frontloading party member acquisition too much may not play nice with permadeath or ironman runs, due to having very few competent units to step in and replace any strong allies who may fall.
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