D&D General How do you handle doubling of classes?

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm just curious how other people handle the idea of having, or potentially having, multiple PCs of the same class in a party: two fighters, two sorcerers, etc.

Do you ban, or at least discourage, it?

Do you find that players are likely to back down and pick something else if someone else expresses an interest in playing a class they've chosen?

Has your group ever played with doubled-up classes, and how did it go?

Have you ever been one of the doubled-up classes, and how did you feel about it?

In practice, I haven't found doubling to be a problem so long as there's an ability to like "cover the bases" in the party - i.e. someone who can do melee, some ability to damage at range, some ability to heal (much less needed in 4E/5E), etc.

The very very first time I played D&D we had me and my bro, and we were both Speciality Priests - him of Torm, me of Mask (yes, like a buddy cop movie, though we didn't think of it at the time), and I think ever since them I've never particularly frowned on it. I do vaguely recall once suggesting people reconsider when 3/4 players wanted to be Wizards in 2E, but that worked out fine because two of them just went to MC Wizards. 2E's MC rules meant doubling was sort of constant but harmless.

In my experience players do tend to naturally counter it by changing classes if someone else wants to be a specific class, but honestly I encourage people to play what they want to. Personally if I see someone else wants to be something I usually change class (well, 100% of the time so far).

There are non-D&D RPGs where I might mildly discourage it - particularly some PtbA games where classes have even more distinct identities than D&D and less ability to customize, but there are other PtbA and BitD games where it'd be fine.

 

[Blue]

I prefer not to have characters who step on other character's toes. That said, class isn't always the best proxy for that. An archer and a sword and board tank could both be fighters but cover very different niches. And the flip side is that the a ranger (hunter) and the a outlander rogue (scout) might step on each other with very similar combat styles and exploration abilities.

 

[Burnside]

Have you tried talking to the player who always plays bards, to see if they might be willing to try something else? They might be more open to a change than you think. Bards are my favorite class as well, and if I was FORCED to only play one class for the rest of my life it would be the bard. But I'm still perfectly willing to play other classes.

In terms of doubling up, I've run for a group with two wizards (one divination, one evocation) - no problem whatsoever, both felt very valuable, they just focused on different spells but even when they had a few of the bread-and-butter spells in common it was a non-issue. I currently have a group with two rogues which is also fine but DOES feel like the party would be better off if one of them was doing something else - they are an inquisitor and a mastermind, but tbh neither has a great handle on their subclass abilities. They do both feel like they are filling pretty much the same role, but everybody is having fun so whatever. These are both large groups with 7 players.

I am also a player in a campaign with an Oath of Watchers paladin and a Twilight cleric, and I will say there is a surprising amount of overlap/redundancy between those two subclasses. So much so that two different kinds of cleric, or two different kinds of paladin, might feel more different from each other than these two do, even though they actually are different classes. The Twilight cleric is kinda like the Oath of Watchers paladin, but more powerful.

 

[Laurefindel]

I’ve seen and experienced doubling of classes often without any issues. I can think of a few that brought a fun dynamic that may not have been there otherwise, actually.

I’ve had more bad experiences with players competing for the same role, even if characters were of different classes. Then again, I’ve seen this work and being fun too...

 

[77IM]

(replying to OP) It's not about class, it's about role-playing. You could have two players whose PCs had the exact same stats still seem very distinct through their personalities. In older editions that's kind of what it was like having multiple fighters in the same party -- your choice of equipment was the biggest mechanical difference, so you really had to distinguish yourselves through personality and behavior. Your example of the two bards is the modern-day equivalent of this.

 

[jayoungr]

Have you tried talking to the player who always plays bards, to see if they might be willing to try something else? They might be more open to a change than you think.

No, the player has explicitly said that bards (specifically glamour bards) are the only class she is willing to play for the foreseeable future--i.e. "until things get less stressful," whenever that might be. She knows how they work, so they're her comfort zone. I think it's been about two years and five games since this person played anything else, and a large percentage of her characters were glamour bards even before that.

But that wasn't the only reason I was curious about how other people handle this situation. Just to explain where I'm coming from:

The other thing that made me think about it was when our group was putting together characters for a new game that just started. One player leaped in and said he wanted to play a warlock and even had a firm concept for it. I mentioned that I was also interested in playing a warlock but would choose a different patron if I went with that. At that point, the original person said, "No, I'll go with one of my other ideas. Warlocks tend to be all the same at the table." I'm feeling a little bad that I made him back out of his first choice,

So one the one hand I have the bard player encouraging me to still play that bard that I want to get back to, but me not wanting to have to worry about competing with her character for bard-y things. But then on the other hand, when I tried applying that principle to a warlock, thinking that different patrons would give the characters very different flavor, the other guy opted out. So that got me wondering whether other tables ever have this problem and if so, how they deal with it.

Is it just specific classes that create this problem? I can see how two fighters (for example) might be easier to manage.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm just curious how other people handle the idea of having, or potentially having, multiple PCs of the same class in a party: two fighters, two sorcerers, etc.

Do you ban, or at least discourage, it?

Nope. Nobody at my table cares. Had one game with 4 wizards.

Do you find that players are likely to back down and pick something else if someone else expresses an interest in playing a class they've chosen?

Nope. See above.

Has your group ever played with doubled-up classes, and how did it go?

Double has happened a fair amount. Never had a triple, but I did have one quadruple. That games went just fine.

Have you ever been one of the doubled-up classes, and how did you feel about it?

Yep, and I didn't care. My mantra is that everyone should play what they like and just have fun. It doesn't matter what someone else is playing.

 

[77IM]

You mentioned not wanting to compete at "bardy things," so could you team up? Be an entertainment duo, maybe collaborating on back-story? One of you could be the straight-man, the other the funny-man. Or one the good-cop, the other the bad-cop. There are several bard colleges that I think would complement Glamour quite nicely in a stage act.

 

[Maxperson]

I must admit one reason I asked is because one player in my group never plays anything but bards. Never.

And I have a bard character that I'd really like to play again someday, but there is no game where I'm a player that this other player doesn't already play in, and I don't really want to be "the other bard." I feel like it's harder to double up on bards than some other classes, because then they're jostling to be the "face" of the party.

I DM'd for a group with two bards (one of whom was this mentioned player), and I could see that the lore bard usually hung back and let the glamour bard do the talking.

I don't believe in the concept of a "face" of the party. It's completely unrealistic to expect that someone with average or even below average charisma is just not going to talk to people, even if someone like a bard or paladin is around. It's also not realistic to expect that the lord(or whoever) is just going to ask one person about things and not the others as well. In social situations, the NPCs talk to whoever makes sense, "face" or no, and my players ask questions that they would ask, regardless of their charisma.

 

[ad_hoc]

It is soft banned in my games.

There are enough classes for everyone to have their own. It just makes characterization and spotlight time much easier to do.

I like that D&D is a class based system and having multiples of the same class diminishes benefits of that.

It's funny to me that the player sees Warlocks as being samey because to me they are actually one of the most varied classes. I guess if everyone wants to power up Eldritch Blast and go with that I can see it though.

A fae chain Warlock and a great old one tome Warlock almost play and are thematically different classes.