Do you believe in a balanced party?

[TheAuldGrump]

It helps. If you are missing any of the basic types, you'll wish you had it covered. But you can still adventure without them all. The only thing I consider an absolute necessity is the healer, and that only if you're away from civilization for a significant time (like a typical dungeon crawl) -- for short vignettes even the healer is dispensible.

That about sums it up, and a cleric can stand in pretty well as the fighter as well as the healer.

Wizard - nice, but you don't need him.
Fighter - having somebody who can stand up to combat is nice, almost necessary, but the cleric can cover it.
Rogue - Nice, but not needed, though they will certainly wish that they had one.

Weird as it sounds, the role that I deem most nearly essential is also the role that it is hardest to find any takers for....

The Auld Grump

 

[kyloss]

Do I believe that a balanced party needs to fill all four basic roles-yes and that how I voted do I feal that it is necessary for a good game- no as long as everyone knows what there in for from the begining-ingluding the dm. As a matter of fact one of the most fun campaigns Iv ever been in had an elf wizard, an gnow illusionist bard, a human psion and a human barbarian. Balanced-no but tons of fun and very creative to get around some situations that would have been simple with a more "balanced party" but were we effective-yes just ask the armies we faced.

 

[ByteRynn]

I think, special campaign types aside, you need someone with trapfinding (typically rogue, but now we have artificer, scout, ninja, and spellthief) and either someone with a boatload of healing (healer, cleric, favored soul/shugenja with focus on healing) or a combination of characters with a little bit of healing (paladin, bard, druid, shugenja, favored soul, etc.)

After that, everything else is up for grabs.

 

[The Shaman]

I had to think about this one a little.

In the games I run an adventuring party must be prepared to deal with melee and ranged combat, social interaction, healing, spellcasting (particularly divination and abjuration), and the ability to detect and neutralize traps.

One way to provide these necessary skills and abilities is through classes/roles among the party members, but it's not the only means: hirelings, cohorts, magic items, and mudane gear may provide some or all of theses functions in support of the adventurers.

So I suppose my answer is, the party does not need to be balanced with respect to classes but should be prepared to provide a full range of skills, abilities, and/or tools by other means if they're not.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

The only case I can think of where the roles would be truly needed is if you're running a module "by the book".

That said, the core four are pretty effective.

 

[Arc]

With the massive flexibility offered by various splatbooks, as well as the inherent flexibility of almost every spellcasting class, I think that almost any combination of character classes can succeed, as long as each character is sufficiently different. If you have a group of four straight fighters, then you have a problem. If you have a fighter, a scout, a swashbuckler, an eldritch knight, and a ranger or paladin, then you've met all your needs for a party, even though every character is concentrated on melee.

Regardless, if the party contains a single cleric or a wizard, then the rest doesn't really matter, since both classes are very good at emulating the benefits of other classes through spells. Who needs a rogue when you can cast Find Traps?

 

[Thanee]

I actively discourage my players from playing a class, including a healer, just because the party "needs" one.

Yeah, me too. But some people just prefer to fill a meaningful role more than playing a certain concept.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Who needs a rogue when you can cast Find Traps?

That spell doesn't really help much with those DC 20+ traps where you need the rogue for.

Bye
Thanee

 

[I'm A Banana]

I expect my players to adapt to the challenges I throw at them, for the most part. I give them a monster, and it's up to them to figure out how to deal with the thing. There are always rescources, but there are some more effective ways to deal with the usual challenges than others.

The Core Four (The Eagle (tank/melee monster), The Owl (stealth/skills), The Falcon (speed/mobility), and The Rooster (magic/healing) as I like to call them) are able to fairly effectively overcome any challenge in the game. They're assured of being able to handle most anything between the four of them. You can play with the archetypes a bit (moving healing from the weak Rooster and onto a strong Tank, like the typical D&D cleric, is a handy way; moving Speed onto the Owl like a typical D&D rogue is another), but those four cover all the bases, however you distribute them.

If they don't have that, then they are more likey to have to search outside of their own party for the essentials. Without an Eagle, they're going to have trouble tackling physical beasties. Without an Owl, they're going to be walking targets. Without a Falcon, they're going to be stopped by the first fjord. Without a Rooster, they won't be able to deal with enemies who can deal heavy damage from a distance and recover from incapacitation. The most common method for my PC's to get these is either to hire adventurers, or to get the Leadership feat.

It's not essential. But it's the most effective.

 

[abri]

Well, sorta...
I often find that a cleric improve the groupa as a whole, not just with healing but with spells that affect the whole team (Bless is really nice at low level). In the realm campaign I play we have 2-3 clerics depending on who died recently, and then a distribution of rogue, wizard and tank, but a little light on the tank side.
In the darksun campaign I DM it's 1 cleric, 3 tanks, 2 spellcasters, 2 rogues.
So we pretty much always have all the base covered... But with 8 players that tend to be always the case.
On the other hand we just started an Eberon game and have no cleric, two roguishs, 2 fighterishs, 1 wizard, one psion. But the campaign looks to be more mistery than fighting.