Something I've been thinking about is that I might limit the actual fights to teams of five, meaning that if I accept more than five there will be substitutions from fight to fight, so to speak. There would be a few reasons for this. One, gladiator schools/teams vary greatly in size (House Valens used to have over thirty training there) so it makes sense to keep the number they can use in a fight even. Two, presumably fighting repeated battles can be physically draining, meaning there would be a strategic element to who you use to fight now, and who you sit out so they can be used later, that sort of thing.

And three, fights involving seven or eight different people can get very chaotic and confusing to write. Five to me feels like a nice number that will allow for lots of interaction between fighters as the battle evolves, while also not being too difficult to keep track of everything.

All of this is to say, having more than one person on the team that fills a similar role isn't the worst thing, as we can vary up our team composition so to speak from match to match depending on who we're facing, the arena type and conditions, and who sat out last time. Everyone takes breaks, myself included, and everyone gets their moment to shine.

Does that sound reasonable?