Crothian said:
So, do filling certain roles just make it easier on players to choose clases or what? We haven't heard much from the 24 people who vated all roles must be filled
Ok, fine, I'll bring in the minority opinion.
From a PC perspective, the party is just going to be better off if thier is someone that can fulfill every role. A party without a healer is just asking for trouble, and if that healer is not a cleric then they better be as useful against some common monster type as clerics are usually useful against undead. A party without a front line fighter/tank is likewise looking for trouble, because at some point invariably you are going to end up in a situation where only alot of hit points and massive damage output per round will do. A party could do without a thief in 1st and 2nd edition, but its really hard to get buy in 3rd edition without someone who has alot of skill points to spot for the party and search for the party, and fulfill either the role of party diplomat (bluff,diplomacy,sense motive) if no suitable cleric/paladin is available or party scout (climb,jump,move silently) if the tanks are skill light and the wizard has limited mobility. Open locks and disable device still remain handy, if only to avoid attracting more attention than you want. Lastly, an arcane spellcaster is increasingly nice either as artillery (if you don't have a solid archer) or a buffer (if the cleric isn't focused this way) as you get into the higher levels. You can kinda forgo the spell caster in favor of another tank or tank/archer if you want, but you are going to have extra problems against magical effects and highly magical opponents. At high levels, you are really going to want badly things like Greater Dispelling, Wall of Force, and such if you dont' have a spellcaster.
Once you have all the bases covered, a party tends to be best benefited by a couple more tanks, and adding another healer if the party goes over six.
It's possible to cludge together a party from classes that get at the roles of healer/buffer, front-line fighter/tank, scout/problem solver, and artillery/panic button in different ways. For instance, you could probably distribute healing amongst a Ranger and a Druid, cover the artillery problem by having two skilled archers, split scout duties between the ranger and a bard, and maybe get a little arcane ability from a rogue maxed out in Use Magical Device, and get around having a tank by having everyone in the party be at least decent in close (Ranger is a good fighter, Druid can wild shape, Rogues can be built with really high AC's, and the Bard will at least not roll over and die the way a Wizard would in melee)/
But even if you are doing something odd like that, you are still trying to cover all the holes. You can't build a successful party where noone can stand up to a straight up fight, or noone has the ability to scout, or where everyone's social skills tend to cause helpful PC's to go cold, and indifferent PC's to become hostile, or where noone can deal with a magical effect and noone can do damage at beyond 5' range, or where noone in the party can heal faster than the normal rate unless the DM goes out of his way to make the campaign not exploit your weaknesses. Party cohesion is essential to a successful dungeon crawl in particular, and to a successful campaign in particular. Alot of party cohesion is experienced players that no how to get the most out of thier characters and are willing occassionally to take one on the chin for the group, but part of party cohesion is building up a characters that compensates for the other character's weaknesses. You do have to think things like, "You know, there isn't anyone in this party that can deal with invisible creatures. I'm going to have to up my listen score and maybe take blind-fighting, lest the DM throw something at us that noone will be able to handle.", or "That Dire Bear was a big problem. We spent way more party resources dealing with that encounter than we should have had to. We definately need someone with Power Attack and Close Quarters Fighting, and it wouldn't hurt if the rogue took a few more ranks of Escape Artist."
That said, there are several classes with are broad enough, that you could potentially run an entire party in just that one class. A party of pure rogues specialized at various tasks (diplomacy, scout, combat, use magical device) could probably make up for its weakness by being very very stealthy and cautious, very very quick and very very brutal with sneak attacks. Even better, a party of pure clerics could end up looking like a party of the four classic archetypes by taking the appropriate domains and specializing in thier builds. A ranger party could eventually go all tank by relying on thier own healing skills. But even so, the rogue party would be dependent on the DM making healing items available, the cleric party would have a serious problem with mass Reflex saves, and the ranger party would have a similar problem with mass Will saves.
As a DM, the problem that I have is that an unbalanced party pressures me to avoid throwing things at the party that I know that they don't have an answer for. Effectively, being an unbalanced party changes the CR of everything. Whatever threats they are specialized for become really really easy, and whatever threats that they lack answers for become really really hard. Breezing through one encounter in no way gaurantees that they'll be more ready for a very hard one. I'm willing to modify the campaign to the player's interests and let the player's shape what the campaign is about, but I'm not willing to completely throw away my internal versimilitude or my own ability to bring my ideas to life. I don't want to pamper the party too much. If there are supposed to be undead in them thar hills, then by golly if you go into the hills expect to meet nasty stuff. If you don't have negative energy protection, undead turning, and the ability to cure ability damage, or anything to deal with undead I'm going to be really torn about playing the monsters stupidly just so you can get away. Ultimately, with an unbalanced party I feel that the party has too many legitimate reasons for rejecting every plot hook I come up with. An unbalanced party is pretty much completely dictating to me what heroic stuff they want to do based on what bad guys they are set up to fight. A balanced party on the other hand is much more open to take on whatever comes thier way.
