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Poll: What's your ideal size for a harem?

What is your ideal harem size?

  • Total voters
    285
Lord_Indoril_Nerevar

Lord_Indoril_Nerevar

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As the title says, what do you consider to be your ideal size for a harem? What would be the maximum of members you will be willing to accept?

For what reasons do you consider your size option to be the ideal fit? What would you consider the downsides from the other options?

I want to hear the opinions of the people, because currently I am undecided about the limit that I should put for a new story I have on the works.

So, it is important for me to get some feedback in order to come to a decision.
 
My answer is from one to five with the possibility of expansion depending on the result. If he is disposed to expand, you can have mistresses, eventually raising them to members of the harem.
 
To be honest I don't see how anyone could even think that a harem of more than 10 people is okay. For me, 5 is already enough and maybe even too much.... And don't get me started on 50+ oh god, what a pain in the ass.
 
2 to 5 women, realistically. I think it's what a person could, at least plausibly, handle.

Harems in stories get way too big quite often, and it gums up the story telling by having too many chefs in the kitchen, so to speak.
 
2-3 or 50+. The former may be few enough to have intimate relationship as life partners if monogyny is not taken. The latter is for indulging in excess and male privilege.
 
Five or six sounds good. Going higher can be done, but combinatorial explosion kicks in with a vengeance (Who are you, again? How'd you meet MC-kun? How do you feel about Female Lead, Best Girl, or Haremette #17?).
 
Only way I would ever have more than 5 girls in a harem is if I had some shadow clone type ability otherwise there would be a major lack of intimacy and I would be more an occasional sex toy for them than a husband.
 
If it's harem of normal people with their own agency, then anything more than 1-5 is not worth the trouble of managing it.

If it's a harem resulting from some brainwashing app or something else that can handwave away actually having to build a maintain a relationship, you could probably get away with 50+.
 
I see a question like this and I immediately just start trying to get the context. First of all, having more than 1 relationship without any extra talents or controls would probably be a disaster, so if I'm getting a harem, what are those? How is said harem acquired? All at once or are you building it? After that, what's the general idea or purpose of said harem? What resources or alterations are available to support having a harem? Have you been isekai'd?

All that said, probably 1-5 for a personal harem without any extra conditions, 5-10 if it's a Battle Harem and fighting is a factor.
 
1-10 depending on your situation, more than this and it's best if there is something to wash away all the problem and/or that the harem is to some degree independent
 
Kerainos said:
I see a question like this and I immediately just start trying to get the context. First of all, having more than 1 relationship without any extra talents or controls would probably be a disaster, so if I'm getting a harem, what are those? How is said harem acquired? All at once or are you building it? After that, what's the general idea or purpose of said harem? What resources or alterations are available to support having a harem? Have you been isekai'd?

All that said, probably 1-5 for a personal harem without any extra conditions, 5-10 if it's a Battle Harem and fighting is a factor.
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Ah, yes. Battle will indeed be a constant factor. The girls, well, you will meet them one after another ornin groups at constant intervals during a single combat situation, a quest of sorts. You will have to build a rapport from the ground up since there will be no control methods, but you will have a supernatural allure on your side.
 
Seeing how this question is made in regards to writing a story (I assume anime harem hijinks rather than Chinese Emperor politicking), I'd err on the side of caution and put 1-5 at most, maybe up to 10 if you're really confident in your writing skills. Anything more than that tends to bloat the cast to a level where it's going to be very difficult to balance it, unless you're fine with a harem consisting of mostly one-note names with boobies attached to them and maybe a small handful of actual characters.
More than 5 (heck, more than one or two) also becomes increasingly complicated on a plain interpersonal level, as others have already pointed out.

Now if we're talking historical harem, then the sky (or at least your political and economic power) is the limit, but in that case most harem members are really more extensions of their families or whichever backers got them into the position rather than them being individually important.


As for my personal preferred harem size... 1. Harems are, as far as I'm concerned, a nice little escapist fantasy, but their appeal breaks down fast once one considers the stress and financial burdens they bring with them outside of a perfect fantasy world. Thanks, but no thanks.
 
Dozla said:
As for my personal preferred harem size... 1. Harems are, as far as I'm concerned, a nice little escapist fantasy, but their appeal breaks down fast once one considers the stress and financial burdens they bring with them outside of a perfect fantasy world. Thanks, but no thanks.
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i agree, if I did ever try to build a harem I would look for Bi women able to take care of themselves. The Bi part is extremely important cause you can easily convince them its their harem instead of yours. This will help you change the narrative so you are a haremette that needs to be appeased instead of the appeaser. Manipulative but if you want a harem you need to do what you gotta do. Then after shifting the harem keeper title to best girl, tell her your straight and are a bit possessive, and you're fine if she adds as many women as she wants, but you wanna be the only man in her heart.

And thus the gamble of if she places her lust for other men above somebody who is essentially saying marry me, and you can have as many mistresses as you want.

likelihood all the stars align for this set up? Very very unlikely. And chances of ruining the relationship youre in with it? Very likely.

Still fun thought experiment. :)
 
It's gotta be limited by biology, so really it depends on how many holes/appendages you're working with. Otherwise someone gets left out and has to wait their turn.

Imagine how sad it would be if the group could never all cum together :(

On the bright side as technology advances that number gets bigger! Then maybe we could all be part of the same Borg-y
 
zup said:
That is part of the appeal of a large harem, making it inherently more about my pleasure than that of the women. Feasibility and consequences may vary.
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Huh. I guess I can see that.

I mean that's a totally alien mindset that I'll never really understand, but I can sort of imagine the appeal I guess. It's a fantasy about being desired and fought over, and reaping the rewards of competition.

Nooooooot for me, definitely. Assimilate me into the collective where all my harem brothers and sisters can suck and fuck with no one ever left out ever again. Fully automated luxury gay space cummunism!
 
Realistically? 1-5 would already barely be viable.

If everything is perfect, and all the responsibilities of a harem are moot? Well, I'd like it to span the whole universe.
 
I have seen awful 1-5 harems. So my opinion is on the quality of the author.

The Last Sovereign is a good example of an author, who knows to write harem.
 
Depends on what your writing. Is the Harem the focus, or are you doing another plot line beside it? How big are your plans, a short story, a novel, a series of novels? How confident are you in your character writing? Personally, the place I'd start is with 3 confirmed members within the first arc, with another 3 potentials sprinkled about. If the story seems like it will go on longer, you can add them to the actual harem, and introduce more possibilities. If you have enough time and focus, pretty much any number is possible to do well.
 
maybe if the Harem is the actual story, as in Harem politics, getting favor from the Guy and Backstabbing the others to get ahead like in ancient China then its okay to have many of them. otherwise just 1-5
 
On reading a story, assuming the writer has the skill of casualfarmer I would see four or five people in one relationship. There are about twelve to fifteen characters that have major importance in BOC so they need to leave room for the rest of the cast to exist that is why the harem is so small.

If it was me IRL three would be the maximum. Spending time with three people and getting to know their hobbies and tics would be a lot of work while allowing for outside friends as well.
 
Normally 2-7 personally BUT i have seen larger ones pulled off before. For example gamer of the void pulls it off pretty well, dedicating at least SOME time to each member developing them. And older memberd arent just forgotten and thrown away.

In all honesty it depends on the author lol.
 
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