I am currently creating an RPG(who isn`t?) which has up to 30+ PC`s in the game, but only 4 party members can be active at a time. So, considering this, I have came up with these design elements: 1. At Save Points, all dead characters will be revived with only 1 HP. The player can use the Save Point to change party members. When looking at a party member during the party exchange, player can choose to unequip the character to allow other characters to use the equipment, or can simply unequip all party members(active or inactive). 2. As the game progresses, all inactive PC`s(not in party), will level up a little, but not much. This is so that the player will have to have a character participate in battles in order to make them strong. The level up is simply to give them an edge against the power of the enemies in that stage of the game. My issue is with the reviving a character because if that character is just not able to battle, then he should just be switched out for a more healthy character, however it will not be very user friendly since in the beginning of the game, not many PC`s will be available, probably none depending on the route the character takes in the game. So, I need some refinments, if you see any, or approvals(if it`s ok.)

I don´t know anything about your game mechanics, so I´ll just assume that HP are sufficiently difficult to regenerate for the 1HP upon revival to be a sufficient deterrent (from wasting characters in battle).

Levelling up seems a bit more difficult - if you have a clear main character then I´d simply have all inactive characters at character level minus one or two (when they are activated), that way you get the whole tedium of levelling up a horde of 10 characters out of the way.
Any harsher restrictions on levels will force the player to make a deceision pretty early on - the whole character swapping thing will become pointless.


Pretty hard to say anything else since all that pretty much depends on how steep the levelling curve is, what kind of gameplay you want, etc.