Hot take: get rid of the "balanced party" paradigm

[Desdichado]

I'm a strong believer in the idea of chucking the "balanced party" paradigm. If a GM is passive-aggressively punishing players for playing the characters that they want to by making them fail if they don't have all of the roles from classic D&D TV Tropes party, then he needs to take a step back and reevaluate his game, or touch grass, or whatever the cool kids are saying these days. You're responsible for the game. If it doesn't fit the characters that came to the table, then that's a significant failure of GMing. I'm equally a strong believer in bright, sharp lines between the domains of the players and GMs, and GMs essentially "soft-mandating" a balanced party is them making a hostile, aggressive foray into the territory of player agency. One of the earliest and most important pieces of player agency is that within the context of the setting and what is available, they can play whatever characters that they want to.

I've played games where every character was a rogue. I've played games with no healing. I've played games with all magic users. I've played games with all fighters. They all work. They may require a bit of rejiggering on the GM side, but... so what? That's the job.

 

[Retreater]

GM has enough responsibilities than to need to rebalance the game, restructure the flow of combats, figure out how to give non-magical healing, etc.
If the players don't want to play the game on its terms, then the GM might need to pick a game that's not based on team-oriented play. Do Call of Cthulhu or something.
But in D&D where it's a core assumption of the system you're interacting with? If they die, they die.

 

[TwoSix]

Game type matters here a lot.

In the classic paradigm, where the focus of play is "make a character that can survive and beat this session's dungeon", generally in pawn stance, then playing a character that would provide a skill set that the party required was part and parcel of "skilled play". And in that paradigm, skilled play was a featured virtue. This is generally also true in OSR, although branches of the OSR are also focused on experiencing and appreciating randomness and serendipity.

In a trad paradigm, player agency is more important, although that agency will be secondary to making sure the PCs are following setting conventions. If the DM is doing trad-storypath play (running a published "campaign") with a lot of challenging combat encounter "gates", then providing necessary skillsets may also be relevant.

In the more currently dominant OC/neotrad paradigm, where agency over character concept is paramount, I would agree that the DM has as a generalized principle of play the goal of framing challenges in ways suiting whatever party concept the players create.

 

[payn]

IDK, this feels like yesterdays hot take. 3E's vast gulf of effectiveness in system made GMing it a nightmare (and I say this as someone who prefers PF1 to this day). I think the complaints of unbalanced parties was entirely justified and expecting a GM to correct everything is a big ask. Modern designed games have been much better, albeit in some confining ways, at making the gap completely manageable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm a strong believer in the idea of chucking the "balanced party" paradigm. If a GM is passive-aggressively punishing players for playing the characters that they want to by making them fail if they don't have all of the roles from classic D&D TV Tropes party, then he needs to take a step back and reevaluate his game, or touch grass, or whatever the cool kids are saying these days. You're responsible for the game. If it doesn't fit the characters that came to the table, then that's a significant failure of GMing. I'm equally a strong believer in bright, sharp lines between the domains of the players and GMs, and GMs essentially "soft-mandating" a balanced party is them making a hostile, aggressive foray into the territory of player agency. One of the earliest and most important pieces of player agency is that within the context of the setting and what is available, they can play whatever characters that they want to.

I've played games where every character was a rogue. I've played games with no healing. I've played games with all magic users. I've played games with all fighters. They all work. They may require a bit of rejiggering on the GM side, but... so what? That's the job.

As a DM I've never exerted pressure on the players regarding what "roles" they want to fill in the party. That's up to them. That said, many players I've had exert that pressure on themselves. Usually the new players decide what they want to play and the more veteran choose to fill in.

 

[TiQuinn]

If we’re talking about games like 5e or most modern games, I feel it’s hard now to make a truly ineffective character anyways. In the past, it was more of a worry but I never considered healing to be a huge issue as a GM. Throwing a few healing potions or an NPC who can provide healing is not a lift for me as a GM. Many games have healing more built into the system than it being a specific role that one player needs to fill too.

 

[Desdichado]

But in D&D where it's a core assumption of the system you're interacting with? If they die, they die.

No thanks. Not interested in that kind of game.

In the more currently dominant OC/neotrad paradigm, where agency over character concept is paramount, I would agree that the DM has as a generalized principle of play the goal of framing challenges in ways suiting whatever party concept the players create.

I consider my style a derivation of trad. I also question the wisdom of OC/Neotrad truly being dominant. It just seems to be because OC/neotrad is heavily weighted towards online representation, giving us a strong perception bias that it's much more dominant than it really is.

IDK, this feels like yesterdays hot take. 3E's vast gulf of effectiveness in system made GMing it a nightmare (and I say this as someone who prefers PF1 to this day). I think the complaints of unbalanced parties was entirely justified and expecting a GM to correct everything is a big ask. Modern designed games have been much better, albeit in some confining ways, at making the gap completely manageable.

Could be; I've had little interest in any D&D version since 3e. But I had this paradigm already during the entirety of 3e's run (which for our group was 2000-2016 or so) and throughout the 80s and 90s.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

If this was 3.5 the DM would need to have a session zero where he everyone would agree to play a rogue or wizards or whatever and the adventures would have to be different and cater to a different playstyle. Four 1st level rogues aren’t going to go into a dungeon full of undead.

In 5e, it literally doesn’t matter. There’s so many ways to heal and do damage and things have less immunity versus a class’s abilities. There’s hardly any risk at all. Lock picking and finding traps is no longer the sole domain of the rogue class either.

In games other than D&D, it depends on the game. Shadowrun and FATE are different beasts that may require a different amount of tweaking by the DM.

 

[TwoSix]

I consider my style a derivation of trad. I also question the wisdom of OC/Neotrad truly being dominant. It just seems to be because OC/neotrad is heavily weighted towards online representation, giving us a strong perception bias that it's much more dominant than it really is.

I don't know if it's wise or not, just my observation.

My perception is guided by the fact that 5e is still the currently dominant game within the space, and I perceive that ruleset to be more heavily biased towards neotrad priorities. (Character concept focus versus setting immersion focus is where I view the distinction between trad/neotrad.)

But this is a tangent from your OP topic, and I don't want to distract the thread over it.

 

[payn]

Could be; I've had little interest in any D&D version since 3e. But I had this paradigm already during the entirety of 3e's run (which for our group was 2000-2016 or so) and throughout the 80s and 90s.

I realize now that this is TTRPGs general and I answered in a D&D way, but its true not every game has/needs this paradigm. I'd argue its pretty iconic to D&D though, and I think 5E found a sort of middle ground where it is present but can be leaned out of for GMs/group who choose to do so.