I understand what you are saying. Thank you for your input.

From my experience as a reader novels tend to use just one or the other. I have never read a novel with the structure I am proposing.

I am trying to refrain from being stubborn and for the sake of gaining greater understanding to the specificites that may aid my manuscript I would like to state the following.

The story of the novel is about these characters interacting with the protagonist and merging into a single character. The primary antagonist seeks to do the same but lose to the protagonist. At the beginning they were seperate. Its literally different characters, not personalities merging or anything like that. Its a creative experiment I've been working on for years. I just want it to be done as envisioned. The goal is completion of the work not financial success. Changing it all to a single 3 limited feels to me like it may destroy the essence of the work.

Despite this I may just being stubborn and making my work more difficult for me than it needs to be. Aim of the post is to get other writers persepctives on the matter.