I only run into issues when the work is poorly managed and communication is dropping. Ideally, if we are all working together, then very few merge conflicts happen regardless of how many branches. Ideally, if you can roll out a system to handle a larger team, then that works too.

On the project I work on now, I have master and dlevel. We all branch off dlevel for new features, bug fixing and so on. Each commit is handled with care and used with Git tagging. Essentially, every commit has a version number and can be rolled back when conflicts do arise that cannot be easily fixed. Merges happen daily.

My typical workflow entails refreshing the repo, going into JIRA, branching from right there in the task and banging away commits right off the bat.