How many mains/secondaries/pockets are too much?

[My name is Space]

i think 5 is borderline

 

[Zerp]

It's a bit subjective, since it differs based on the person, the time it takes to learn characters is different for everyone, but I've always seen 4-5 characters as the general point where it's kinda crossing the line. Three characters is enough to cover basically every relevant match-up, and while it's feasible to put in enough time to both master 3 characters and keep them at a competitively viable level, I'm not really sure how realistic it is to go past that point. Consider this, time-wise to master 5 characters, if you put equal time into all your characters, you'd be splitting your time up in a way that limits your character as having 1/5th the amount of time it could receive compared to someone solo-maining that character. That number only gets worse the more characters you have, since the fraction would just get smaller and smaller. If you can learn faster than most people you could probably handle it, but it's still a limiting factor since you'd still be putting in less time to your individual characters than you could be.

However, that's really only something to be worried about if your into the competitive aspect of the game, if you don't care about that and just want to have fun, you can really main however much characters you want, 2 characters, 16 characters, 53 characters, whatever floats your boat.

Edit: Grammar

 

[FamilyTeam]

It's called a *ahem* "main" for a reason. Your best character. Your absolute best one. So, it should be only one.
As for secondaries: I think also only 1 is enough, 2 is the limit and 3 is pushing it. Something like Mario and Sheik already covers the entire roster very nicely, so there's no need too many characters.

 

[MarMarTheGreat]

I think my list is a great example my most dangerous and best results wise is ZSS

My most explored and well known character is Marth

Fox I put a lot of time in and is just super offensive and quick very good for me

I get better results with Corrin over Fox but I feel my skill with Corrin is based of just how good I am with disjoint characters in general and I feel going autopilot whenever using Corrin it works but Fox covers stuff for me Corrin doesnt

And all my Pockets have a decent amount of time invested but they wouldnt prioritize over my main ad secondaries anytime

I lack matchup knowledge for all my pockets bassically but I know how to use them decently and they are good counterpicks for some situations because my fundemental and neutral game is so good that I can kick ass with them most of the time online