I have an idea... but it might be insanely hard.. I'll let you decide ^.^
About the chars, right now we can only fit in 3, how about making a sort of ring menu-ish effect where you scroll through the characters, like 3 chars display at a time, but press the right arrow button and all the characters move one position to the left, making charcter 4 now visible where char 3 used to be. Some ppl use up to 6 party members, so... this would be perfect for them.
I know i didnt explain all that well, if need be, i can revise it somewhat :/
Lol, just an idea tho ^.^ b