Driddle said:
Interesting. One guy wants to do everything, while the other guy(s) expect him to fulfill a very specific, narrow role.
In this case, I'd say the fault lies on both sides of the table. No one has any respect for cooperative play balanced against individual style.
The problem is that against hard encounters you need 4 specific roles fulfilled in 3rd edition:
Someone who does damage
Someone to heal and increase the power of the party
Someone who has enough hit points to take a couple of hits and not die
Someone to disadvantage the enemies, take some out of the combat and do area of effects
It isn't a coincidence that these ended up as the 4 roles in 4th ed.
Without one of those, your party will lose against SOME hard encounters. It depends which one you are missing and the nature of the encounters as to which ones will be hard. For example, against a lot of small creatures, you can do without a defender. The hit quick with area of effect tactic will likely win against them before you need someone to take the damage.
However, I think it's reasonable to expect at least one of the party members to fulfill the healer/leader role since it will be needed against a lot of encounters. If the only cleric in the group is not going to fulfill it then who will? When the fighter yells out "I just took 120 damage this round and they can do it again next round. I'm down to 20 hitpoints and won't survive. I need at least 110 points of healing THIS round." and the cleric yells out "Sorry, I'm not that type of cleric." and the whole party drops dead, then whose fault is it?
But I think that's the point. Some people don't want their actions to be decided for them simply because someone will die next round unless they heal 80% of the time.