History Main / ArbitraryHeadcountLimit

* ''VideoGame/TotalAnnihilation'' was released with a unit limit of 250 units per side. A patch was released that raised this limit to 500. The large modification community for that game had even found a way to increase the unit limit to 5000 units per side. Given that the game allowed for easy adding of new unit types up to 256 different units, 512 with a community made fix, that means you couldnt build one of unit avaible.
* In the ''VideoGame/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 ''VideoGame/RomeTotalWar'', 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). The armies in the first two games couldn't have more than a given number of units (with the exception of crusades and jihads in ''Medieval'', that could have 4 times the standard number, however only standard-number units could take part in battles at the same time, with the rest trickling in as reinforcements over the course of the battle when other units were killed off or routed off the map). The third and fourth game feature both this unit limit, but also a limit to how many individual soldiers can be in one army regardless of the unit count. To be fair, the soldier thing is more of a technical issue, and can be expanded by tweaking the game files.

* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'' doesn't limit the size of the fleets, but it does limit how many ships that can participate in a battle at each moment. Each side gets command points based on on the size of the command ship (if any), some technology upgrades, and if they outnumber their opponent; when a ship gets destroyed (freeing up associated command points), new ship(s) will arrive as a reinforcements from the reserve. You are also limited to only one flagship-type dreadnought.

** The ''WWE Day of Reckoning'' games for the UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube also had this limit. This would change following the release of the [=PS2=] Smackdown vs. RAW, which would up the limit to 6 playable characters on screen at any time (depending on the game and system, the non-playable Referee would or wouldn't also show up), which would persist through most of the series' following lifespan.

* In ''VideoGame/AliensInfestation'', the player is initially given control of one of four Colonial Marines who form a fireteam, and which can be switched around at various rooms throughout the playable locations. If and when you encounter any additional Marines (survivors who have either holed up in an isolated area or are behind [[{{Metroidvania}} initially-impassible doors]], they will tell the active Marine, to a T, that although they lost the rest of their fireteam and presume they are dead, they will refuse to join you (due to the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS' hardcoded party limit). This occurs even in dire situations, such as when the [[spoiler:U.S.S. ''Sulaco'' is in imminent danger of being destroyed due to the player character setting it on a collision course with Mars to destroy the xenos aboard]].

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' game for Super Nintendo limited how many runners you could hire based on your charisma. The UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis version limited Joshua to hiring no more than two other runners at a time, period.

* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateIII'' restricts your party to four (you plus three companions). While this isn't quite as much of a problem since the game is still in Early Access (so you only have five companions total), it will inevitably become more noticeable when the game is fully released and all companions are available.

* The ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' Trading Card Game is a rather... alternative version of this. There are several rules for constructing one's Deck, and they change quite often to fit the newest anime-rules. Currently, there must be ''at least'' 40 cards in a deck, 60 at most, and a player can only have 3 copies of each card with the same name in their deck, regardless of how many cards they have. Then there's the Extra Deck and Side Deck (the latter of which only serves as extra cards to switch with between matches), both of which are currently limited to 15 cards, though originally, the Extra deck could have 30 and the Side Deck was unlimited. And just to add to the arbitrarity of the rules, some cards are Semi-Limited, Limited or Forbidden, reducing the maximum number of copies you can use by 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Yes. That's right. The producers have made cards that are so powerful nobody is allowed to use them. And then there are some rather less potent cards on the Forbidden List as well. A few of those cards, however, only remain on the Forbidden List because their OCG-versions are still utterly broken.
** Then there is the other limit: 5 monsters, 1 field spell, 5 other spell/traps[[labelnote:*]]Some trap cards become monsters when activated. Generally speaking, they usually take up both a monster AND a spell/trap space.[[/labelnote]]. And now, 2 Pendulum cards. All of these are limits for what can be on your side of the field.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':