THOUSANDS
Planet Thundersnow
1
it doesn't so much matter how many you have as long as each of them are developed accordingly! the only problem with having too many characters is when all of them start to compete with each other for 'screentime' and the creator is unable to compensate with adequate plot to keep them happy. for parlor tricks, candel and i have about 15 major characters planned so far, but they came into existence according to their purpose in the story so we know theyre all going to get some time to shine.
so yeah! don't worry about quantity, just get it rolling and have fun!!
Right now, I have three main characters, five important secondary characters and a handfull of minor supporting ones.
I try not to get sidetracked too much and focus on the three main, but I do plan to have secondary characters share the spotlight at some point. Don't you sometimes find it's hard though to not get carried away with too many characters? XD
Not a lot. Numb1 has 3 main characters and 5 other ones, not all of them revealed properly yet. So it's a 8 member cast.
Oh man, I get a little carried away with characters sometimes, but Paisley Brickstone2 has 9 current "main" characters, but by the end will have had about 40. I wanted it a large class sizeworth cuz the school is based on the highschool I went to and we had pretty massive class sizes. I'm trying to spoonfeed things to the audience, though, so hopefully it'll be easy enough to keep track of. (I do purposely limit how many characters are hanging around at any given time, though, and a lot of time was put into trying to make sure each character looks different and recognizable.)
Perilous Journey only has 2 currently, and there will only be about 3 or 4 reoccurring side characters. It's also intentionally a much smaller story and even from the beginning I never planned it updating much longer than a year or two. (I'm currently sitting down and forcing myself to write the script in it's entirety just to force myself to keep it small as I can go off the rails if I'm not careful.)
I just launched 18 Saints are 18 Sinners1 yesterday and currently the plan is to keep everything centered around the 1 main character with about 50 currently planned reoccurring characters (this number may shrink as about 10 of them are super tentative and I'm trying to decide if their inclusion would mess up my plot structure). I don't normally write stories, especially long stories, about just 1 character, but I'm kinda going for one of those stories that's about someone who'd normally be a side character as he's not super involved in the main events going on in the background.
Now that I look over this again, these numbers aren't TOO bad as far as active characters go that are important for readers to remember. Some of my old stories I tried creating got a little ridiculous, so I think I'm learning B)
Goblins of Razard has 3 main characters. Hawk, Reign and Nodin, who travel together. We mostly see the story from their perspective, and they are the focus of the story. There are 2 main villains who are King Laird and the evil wizard Zilck, with several sub villains who support the main villains, like the Goblin Queen and the mutant rats. There are also supporting cast members- members of the wizard order, Hawk's wizard teacher, Zilck's sister, goblin friends and such. As long as all the minor character's storylines support and move forward the main storyline, I think its a good thing.
I do think that for slice of life comics, gag comics and such (Like 'Chicks' or 'Suddenly Burbs') having too many characters overwhelms people. It's better to have a small very recognizable cast.
I have two main characters and a cat that is like the mascot of the series.
Then I have three supporting characters and then a few others that come way later.
My comic is a longer one. I've never really thought about how many characters there will be exactly because there are still some characters that are yet to be created I'm sure, even if the main story is completely finished there will be some side characters that I haven't thought of yet.
But in terms of main characters, there are 6. For sub-main there are around 8. All the characters though, even the main slowly are introduced through time so currently there are only 2 main and 1 sub haha but my comic is still only in the first chapter on tapastic 
I just started and i have 3, but almost 50 more, waiting to enter the story. At this point i am considering to add more in the future. Anyway i think it depends on the type of story you are making.
There's currently only been 3 named, speaking characters in my comic. But the comic is still in its early stages, and my other project is an animated show with a cast of like 70+(mind you around 50 of them are tertiary, one off characters) so I like getting a chance to work with a smaller cast over here. Keeps me from getting too stressed and keeps the narrative concise.
At the moment I have introduced three-four characters, but I think all in all we will have about 8 in the end. It's a small cast ^^
From what we've recorded, we have about 65 named/recurring characters. Not that all them are intertwined with the plot, a fair amount are for "flavor" and fleshing out the world as a... world? Like giving main characters families, friends, and co-workers that you get to know in a limited capacity but by and large aren't delved into.
For main cast:
1 main character (story is centralized on them)
2 primary characters (large impact and involvement in overarching plot)
10 secondary characters (gets screen time and development character wise but may or may not be a cog in the plot)
20 tertiary characters (recurring, but doesn't contribute to plot in a huge way and mostly functions as support)
The scope of my story is a lot larger than what I've commonly seen though, so I'm not surprised. It's interesting seeing everyone elses answers on it!
