How many important characters does you novel have?

I've got 4, but one of them has a wife who may gain prominance, and I'm thinking about introducing a super-villain. I might just make one of my originals the villain, though.

So, 5 or 6.

Three so far, and I have one that should become a major character when I introduce him. I also have one that seems to want to become major, but she isn't there yet.

Yes...So I guess you are playing around with 5-6 characters, which seems about right without becoming overwhelming or monotonic. Thats the stage I am at right now...

Six. A five-member team (I blame the Power Rangers of my youth) plus the foreign girl whose job is to get the other characters to infodump. XD

I have two primary characters. one representing ultimate good, and the other representing ultimate evil that has a major shift in status around the first third of the book. There are about 4 supporting characters including a truly psychopathic/sociopathic bad guy with an attitude. I wasn't sure if i could realistically handle more than three or four people. Doing humans is hard since they are so damned unpredictable.

I've already had two of my characters do stuff that was WAY outside of what i though they would do. I guess that's what the pro's mean when they say that the characters will come alive and tell YOU how the story is supposed to go...

....so i have about 40 characters of equal importance...
it's just that two of them are more equal than the others

So for there are 3 that have been shown to be very important. At least one other will become very important.

Two thus far. It was gonna be three, but he kinda disappeared and never came back. I will be introducing another one shortly who'll be important, though, and then one or two more.

Two main ones, and a half. Plus an incredibly minor character that I believe shall play a major part later on, but I don't know yet, thats up to her.

4 main ones, 2-4 secondary ones.

I thought I had about 3 or 4, but when I finally got a plot two days ago, it shifted to six. Only one of which was originally a main character.

I have two main characters, two villians who warrant some description and a whole host of minor characters who each bring something important to the story. Some will only gain a cameo, others will slide in and out during the course. At least three I never saw coming until their scene showed up and there they were.

Three major characters. As of right now, I have about 3 supporting characters.

I started really late. Right now I have a plan for 3 main characters and one that doesn't play an active role but rather helps the reader digest some of the events. I think I will have two add a few transient characters to make transitions where I will have a major jump in the story.

On how many it takes to make a story dramati: From my reading experience I'd say a minimum of three. I thought about trying to have two characters that are connected via a third one who never is active in the on-going events, but only the recollections of the two active characters.

I have:
1 main main character
4 main characters
4 main supporting characters
5 supporting characters

After I got done, I realized that I have eight main characters whom I have tried to build quite deeply.
I also realized that I have one main plot and three subplots. Anyway there's too much editing to do, but that what it looks like now.