Don’t split the party: an oft-repeated maxim in D&D groups. Whether as a guideline or hard rule, the sentence gets thrown around frequently when it comes to tabletop advice! And not without good reason, I think. There are a lot of perfectly good reasons to keep the party together, either as a DM or as a player.
When the party is split, depending on your situation, the individual members can find themselves at a disadvantage.
In combat, front-line fighters need the support of back-line combatants, and vice-versa. Challenge Ratings (CR) of monsters assumes a party of around four PCs, and fewer characters means fewer hits. Your support characters can’t heal or buff other characters when those characters are missing, and there’s more pressure to deal damage when you’re one of two instead of one of five.
This extends outside combat, as well. Dungeons & Dragons assumes that you’re working with a group of diverse individuals, each possessing certain abilities and filling a certain “niche,” so to speak. And I’m not just talking about parties that have a traditional composition, either! Each player character has their own backstory that gives them a unique connection to the campaign world.
Even broader than that, each class and subclass give a character abilities unlike any other character in the party. The pact of the fiend warlock interacts with the world differently from the evocation wizard or the battlemaster fighter. They have different tools in their toolboxes– spells, proficiencies, equipment, even.
I prefer keeping the party together. But, sometimes stuff happens, and it makes more sense in-fiction for the party to split off from each other for a while.
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