Greetings, all!

In Wiz8, what are the main negatives (cons) and positives (pros) of each party size on Expert? This is what I understand:

[General]
-Carrying capacity matters more the smaller the party. In a typical 4+ member party, a burly Lizard or Dracon or Mook will likely carry most the group's gear. This is less guaranteed for smaller parties.

-The smaller the party, the easier it is to get outnumbered. This may also mean it's easier for your party to go last or first depending on your group's builds.

+Leveling generally happens faster in smaller groups due to each character getting more EXP per influx and getting more sklll increases due to getting more actions (for most skills) or for being targeted more (for Stealth).

+Anything that's level-dependent (mostly meaning access to spells and to skills requiring 100 in a base stat) is generally available sooner in smaller groups.

[1/Solo]
=You are The Chosen One - to grind everything to 100 ASAP. Multiclassing is expected to cover all relevant roles. The famous Fairy/Faerie Ninja/Bishop likely does this well.

-You get one action per round. Enemies get more. Certain status effects are instant game overs (like Instant Death) while others don't matter that much (Turncoat). You may need to borrow NPCs to handle certain tasks your main can't, like item identification.

+All the EXP is mine! Mwahahaha! More seriously, party management is generally simpler.

[6/Standard Size]
=The 6 main characters, possibly also with NPCs, go on adventure, much to the delight of the game's authors who expected a party size of 6.

-Leveling and combat skill grinding are generally much slower with 6+ members than with smaller groups.

+It's easier to cover more roles. Each party member need only cover fewer roles for the group to cover everything expected. There is more ability to have (nearly) redundant characters - like a Fighter, a Lord, and a Valkyrie - in a large group.

[Thus]
With that said, what are the main cons and pros of party sizes of 2, 4, and 6 - assuming no NPCs? Soloing the game and playing with 6+ are fairly well-understood. I heard duoing the game was the most difficult way to play due to Turncoat. I assumed that a group of 4 would be able to handle all relevant roles while still leveling notably faster than 6+.

What say you? Why?

Thankee!

Also:
- A certain idol can't be picked out without hiring an RPC or kiling an NPC; otherwise your solo character will go missing after a certain event.

(If your solo character is a Mook, will visiting that one Mook building in Arnika end your game? If so, this could require an RPC to get past, and entering the building is mandatory (unless there's a glitch I don't know about.)

If you go for the cane of corpus you have no ranged attacks, so the glasscannon must charge to melee,
while one of the main advantages of ninjas are thrown crits.

By default PCs can get a max of 3 base attacks/turn with up to 3swings,
and an addtional attack from very high speed&snakepeed values.
Whenever an attack hits the selected target the remaining swings for that attack are lost.
So a PC can kill up to 4 enemies a turn unless (s)he misses the selected target
and accidentially hits&crits another one, one or more times
Melee atttacks quite rarely miss the selected target at all, while ranged attacks do it frequently.
Local record of 14 kills in single turn was set by lvl 26 elven ninja vs low lvl Rapax patrols in castle main lvl,
by selecting the one that is most covered by others,
respectively the group which has the most members standing behind others. Sols faster skill grinding is partially well compensated by the "It's easier to cover more roles"
as the safety of bigger party from spread attacks and heal&buff support of front line from behind
does not limit training to specific opponents
(imagine party @continous combat in crevasse with single GA protected PC in front, attacking GA protected target with no hit anim on succesful hit, may make training > 6 faster than doing that with solo @turn based.
This is also valid for mid&late game spell training,
as multiple portal casters allow a quick jump to trynton fountain, or trader to "recharge" the mana stones. Tells me that you @dtgreene either did not watch any of the 3 (or so) last w8 speedruns by biogoo,
or did not realize how he used quicksave&reload cheat to overcome that hurdle.

That's incorrect; you can hit the same enemy more than once with an attack if you have multiple swings. (Maybe you mean "kills" instead of "hits"?) Or you could just cast Quicksand, which works particularly well in this particular situation. (Other instant death attacks also work well, though remember that all enemy targeted spells are blocked by walls.)

What about a party of 4 vs 6?

Sorry for my mistake, of course i meant "whenever an attack kills the selected target" It was about max kills/turn for physical attacks, limit for instakill spells is more like wysiwyg,
but they dont contribute to kills, unless the victim was already injured.

I find parties of 4 to be ideal. Positioning is easier because you don't have as many people clogging various facings, you get 50% more XP per person than you would in a 6-man group, and you've still got enough variety to cover most or all of the magic schools. You also don't need as much gear to be effective. It's really the best of both worlds. Groups of two or three can also work, but it's harder to cover all of the various roles the fewer players you have.