There I go thinking again...

[Grizzled Gryphon]

So, I thought what you needed for a balanced party was:

-Tank. They can take a bunch of damage, and try to keep the baddies of his squishy friends.

-Caster. There really isn't a short-and-sweet fitting comment about this guy. Too many possible roles.

-Healer. Makes sure the Tank stays alive while entertaining the ravenous thing trying to eat the party.

-Skill Monkey. Removes the spleen of the ravenous thing trying to eat the party while its not paying attention, and takes care of those annoying things parties keep running into, like locks, traps, and lone sentries.

I am getting the impression that isn't really the case anymore. Anyone care to give me a run-down of a parties composition?

[Shadroth]

Easiest way to compare is to look at the Order of the Stick!

Roy - primary melee combatant.

Durkon - backup melee combatant, caster, primary healer.

Belkar - backup melee, ranged, skill monkey.

Haley - ranged, skill monkey.

Elan - general support and backup caster.

Vaarsuvius - ranged combatant, primary caster.


You can easily cover all the bases with four, or three characters in the party. Fewer, if you're clever about it, but with less room for error, and depends highly on starting level.

[Allanimal]

At the tables I play at, the party consist of whatever the players bring to he table.

One game, we have a mounted fighter, an archer, a knight, a ninja and a spirit shaman. Somehow we blunder through without an arcane caster or a bona fide healer...

[Chester]

Personally, I don't go for the "typical party."

My current party: Duskblade, Dread Necromancer, Rogue/Bard.

No tank, no healer. It forces us to get clever when it comes to encounters.

[HammeredWharf]

I think the only roles that are highly recommended to have are Skill Monkey and Person Who Kills Stuff Good. Many skill monkey can also kill stuff quite good, so you only need a single character, really. Other roles that are good to have filled are Crowd Controller (not a tank, could be a God Wizard) and maybe Healer to remove ability damage and such out of combat. However, a decent skill monkey can heal just fine via UMD.

[Gwendol]

It depends on the campaign. Healers aren't strictly needed, you can get by with a bard, crusader, or similar. I think there are other ways of dealing with problems than what you listed initially: "face" or social interactions, incorporeals, invisibility, flying, magic, darkness, etc (all changing depending on setting, campaign, and most importantly level).

[Uncle Pine]

To be honest, I don't think that you need to fill any of the "tipical roles" to get a balanced party. However, parties that lacks a role will have to adopt different strategies to deal with encounter.
- All the "tipical roles" filled: tank (1st row), skillmonkey (2nd row or last row), caster & healer (last row or 2nd row).
- Lacks of a tank: parties without a tank will need to invest in initiative and/or break the action economy, or resort to summons.
- Lacks of a skillmonkey: parties without a skillmonkey will need to think outside the box to complete difficult tasks with their limited skills or to have the right spell on hand when needed (scrolls, spontaneous casters...).
- Lacks of a healer: no one needs a healer (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=3kk1r6rnqs3775m4g8437i7981&topic=8965).
- Lacks of a caster: the lacks of a caster could be a minor or a major problem. If both the party and the DM aren't optimizing and the campaign won't hit medium-high levels, it couldn't even be a problem at all. However, if there are chances that the party will eventually face a hostile T1 properly built and played, gishes or very sneaky character will be needed. Note that this applies even if there is a caster in the party.

To sum up, whenever a party lacks a role, it doesn't necessarily hurts the party's balance. Instead, a succesful party will overrun obstacles by use different strategies according to the party composition. Or use more magic.
That said, at the moment we have a kineticist, a voce warrior, a rogue, a swordsage and a barbarian who think of himself as a wizard in our group and we did well so far.

[Grizzled Gryphon]

Interesting, and thanks for the replies. The reason I ask is I am about to start running a PF game, and so far I have a Tengu Rogue (I don't think the player realizes that crows like shiny things), and a Vanaran(?) Monk, or to put it the way the player does, a Monkey Monk. He was rather disappointed when I told him that "flinging poo" can not be used to deal damage.

Anyway, I am not sure if there will be any other players, so I will probably DMNPC something to fill the party out a bit. I could do two, I suppose, but I would rather not.

So, any ideas on a single character that would work here? I was thinking a Druid or Cleric.

[sideswipe]

the uber optimisers here will probably say the main 4 roles in a party are...

1. druid
2. cleric
3. wizard
4. psionic class of some sort with full casting progression.

:smallsmile:

personally i feel that a well balanced party is where characters are not tripping over each other in the same job role.
if there are two melee fighters and they both are similar intention but one is vastly superior then it is not balanced.

there should be a character who excels in one area over everyone else. and is not as good in other areas as the other specialists.

[ZamielVanWeber]

t

personally i feel that a well balanced party is where characters are not tripping over each other in the same job role.
if there are two melee fighters and they both are similar intention but one is vastly superior then it is not balanced.

This. Dnd is about having fun as a group. Sometimes lacking stuff stinks while other times it is a fun challenge. The imlortant part is people enjoy what they are doing and do not marginalize each other.

[Knaight]

the uber optimisers here will probably say the main 4 roles in a party are...

1. druid
2. cleric
3. wizard
4. psionic class of some sort with full casting progression.

:smallsmile:
Yeah, no. That is a selection of highly powerful classes, but the preference here tends to run towards tier 3 classes - the sheer options involved in all of these is considered a detriment for most games, with it being useful for a particular high power style.

As for the main 4 roles, it's not really that much of a necessary concept. You can pull off most anything, and while it might be fairly difficult to, say, have a party of four similar martial combatants who are decent but not spectacular with both blade and bow it's very much doable.

[rmnimoc]

"tipical roles"

the uber optimisers here will probably say the main 4 roles in a party are...

I totally mistook that for "Tippycal roles". Now I'm stuck contemplating the sheer terror a party of Tippy-like players would wreck on a typical D&D world. That said, one good wizard can be a:
-Tank. They can take a bunch of damage, and try to keep the baddies of his squishy friends. Via summoning or enchantment or necromancy.
-Caster. There really isn't a short-and-sweet fitting comment about this guy. Too many possible roles. Yeah, that fits Wizard.
-Healer. Makes sure the Tank stays alive while entertaining the ravenous thing trying to eat the party. Wizards can do without. Or dominate/charm someone into it.
-Skill Monkey. Removes the spleen of the ravenous thing trying to eat the party while its not paying attention, and takes care of those annoying things parties keep running into, like locks, traps, and lone sentries. You can buff yourself up enough to be one. Plus int is your main stat anyway.

So a Tippycal party is:
1 Wizard who is never even there, just a group of astrally projected turtles who strikes from his own empire of demiplanes.
1 Wizard that can shoot fire spells capable of killing things with fire immunity.
1 Wizard who heals by casting miracle as a swift-action cantrip (granted I haven't seen Tippy do that yet but I honestly wouldn't be surprised).
1 Wizard with an infinite army of ice assassins who can shuffle their skills and feats every day to be a master of any task they need doing.
Then they hit level 2.
Fear the Tippycal party.


I am getting the impression that isn't really the case anymore. Anyone care to give me a run-down of a parties composition?
You aren't really wrong, the game tends to function far more smoothly if you follow those guidelines. I've played games where we are a barbarian tribe, no skill monkey, no healer, no caster. Just a bunch tanks with a plan to stab all the things. It wasn't optimal, but all it took to make it work was teamwork and not having a DM who just wanted to slaughter us all. Right now I'm running a game with five commoners. They have no healer, no caster, no tank, and any skills they have are evenly divided among the five of them. But it works because they still work as a team (though their luck doesn't hurt.) They manage to avoid stomping each others toes simply based on the fact that they all suck equally, and it is only through insane amounts of teamwork and strategy that they get anything done. You don't need a good team comp to get things done (though it does help), you just need creative players who are willing to work together.

[sideswipe]

rmnimoc

i approve of your last post. it made me laugh.

the tippycal party should become a thing.

[icefractal]

All you really need is the ability to:
1) Deal with obstacles.
2) Survive while doing so.

Now those obstacles almost always include combat, but can also include social situations, traps, lack of information, and things being in inconvenient locations.

Let's take combat as an example. You need:
1) Somebody who can actually kill enemies. Now, also having:
2) Someone who screws with and softens up enemies (such as a BFC caster) can be quite useful, especially for enemies it takes more than a round to kill.

You also need to survive enemy attacks, but there are a lot of ways to do that. For example:
1) Have someone tough enough to soak them up. Either a PC or summoned creature.
2) Be able to heal up quickly enough from them not to die.
3) Everybody is moderately durable, and mobile enough for one person not to get focus-fired.


If you're talking minimum requirements, I've seen great success from a two-person party:
1) High powered combat type, kills most things in one round.
2) Versatile caster, deals with things that can't be hit.
For healing, wands and scrolls. And killing foes before they can act.

[TuggyNE]

the uber optimisers here will probably say the main 4 roles in a party are...

1. druid
2. cleric
3. wizard
4. psionic class of some sort with full casting progression.

Those aren't really roles, and at mid-high op they are largely interchangeable.

An actual example of (very) high-op teamwork is found in Team Solars, where all members are casters, and all contribute their own set of persisted buffs in one way or another to the party's buff suite. However, it's likely

[zlefin]

Interesting, and thanks for the replies. The reason I ask is I am about to start running a PF game, and so far I have a Tengu Rogue (I don't think the player realizes that crows like shiny things), and a Vanaran(?) Monk, or to put it the way the player does, a Monkey Monk. He was rather disappointed when I told him that "flinging poo" can not be used to deal damage.

Anyway, I am not sure if there will be any other players, so I will probably DMNPC something to fill the party out a bit. I could do two, I suppose, but I would rather not.

So, any ideas on a single character that would work here? I was thinking a Druid or Cleric.


Given the perils of dmnpcs, I'd recommend letting them pick a hireling of their choosing to help them out if they feel the need for more power.
In order to not step on their toes or outdo them too much I'd recommend a meatshieldy fighter; one way to help emphasize the npc part is to just pull them from the npc list directly.

The 2 man party you described, with no additions, would be rather weak (unless it's high op) and would need cr's adjusted accordingly (also for the fact that it's just 2 people).

[Ramza00]

the uber optimisers here will probably say the main 4 roles in a party are...

1. druid
2. cleric
3. wizard
4. psionic class of some sort with full casting progression.

4. Would be beguiler or some other good face class with either trapfinding or the domain / domain granted ability that gives trapfinding.

[HunterOfJello]

The original default party is:

1. Fighter
2. Rogue
3. Cleric
4. Wizard

however this is a very different party than what other games might make you think.

Fighters have backbone damage that is readily available on almost all enemies and have a lot of potential when buffed up by the encounter-appropriate spell(s) that are tossed onto them by the party's cleric or wizard. They have lots of options for actions to take in combat and can take hits fairly well. Many people would replace a default level 10 Fighter with another class in a party today, but the original class for this role is the Fighter (or Barbarian). Fighters are similar to "tanks" from video games except for the fact that they often don't particularly have very much more AC than a rogue or cleric and they don't have any particularly useful aggression generating mechanics.

Rogues have high damage, good scouting ability, can handle social encounters well, and can fullfill anyone's temporary skill-monkey needs. They can attack from range or use flanking and other methods to attack in melee. Rogues suddenly become nerfed to hell when fighting an enemy who is immune to sneak attack (although there are options to help them out significantly in splat books), but they can still contribute in fights like those by using creativity, skills, and wands/staves through Use Magic Device.

Clerics are much different than any typical divine spellcaster in video games. They have lackluster healing which is occasionally useful in combat (until they finally get the Heal spell), amazing divination abilities, crazy buffs, a wide assortment of situational and utility spells, decent melee in heavy armor, and can specialize into interesting options through their domain spells and domain abilities. They also have access to the same summoning spells that wizards do, which is always an option for them.

Wizards are a wide range of characters who range from lackluster blasters to Gods. Their job is to bring whatever is necessary to the battlefield in order for the party to win.

~~~~

It's also worth noting that this party configuration is both the default party and also a setup that isn't necessary in any way whatsoever. Any party can survive with any of these rolls missing or with everyone playing a single one of the classes. Magic items and the splat books provide such a massive variety of options that a group of 4 Fighters or 4 Rogues have the full potential at conquering and completing any campaign while having plenty of fun doing it.

No configuration is wrong and the only real flaw that a party can have is the flaw of not everyone having fun.

[Grizzled Gryphon]

The 2 man party you described, with no additions, would be rather weak (unless it's high op) and would need cr's adjusted accordingly (also for the fact that it's just 2 people).
High OP? Not exactly. One player has been playing since Advanced D&D, and couldn't care less about how optimal his character is, and the other player is starting role-playing with this game.

I did let them use the heroic stat rolling option, though.

[Drachasor]

I think MMOs have made a negative impact here. There's no tank or healer role in D&D. Even in 2nd Edition Clerics were worthwhile melee combatants (and could do ranged decently). Front-line melee isn't about sitting there and taking hits whilst you distract the enemy -- you also need to be dealing enough damage to be a legitimate threat. Putting it into Tank / Healer terms (given MMOs) misses the point of how the front-line melee works, and makes people think that healer is something someone should be absolutely devoted to (and it isn't).

[Bigbeefie]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i5hWkHXHOetRlpLOmxbpoEWod77psN0JcwFvxClNrGc/edit?pli=1

This is an Article on the Forge of Combat...It basically Stemmed from the old Idea of "Balanced party" of Wizard, rogue, Fighter, cleric.

The Balanced party needs 3 things:

A Hammer, an Anvil, and a Arm. If you have a character who can do one role well and dabble in another you are even better off.

The Ideal party will have:

2 hammers
1 anvil
1 arm

One or 2 characters can dabble in other paths Like your Anvil the "God" wizard could easily throw out a heroism to the main hammer thus doing a typical Arms job of Buffing the hammer to help the hammer to hammer the fight to Victory.

[Morphie]

Our group's typical party consists of:
1 divine caster
1 arcane caster
1 specialist in traps & locks (aka skill monkey)
1 front line fighter (not necessarily the class)

Since we have 6 players, the other 2 end up being gishes/multiclass PCs, or a variation of the above 4 (bards, monks, rangers, druids, paladins...)
We usually talk between us to decide about the roles, if someone really has his mind set on trying something, there's usually a couple players that are flexible enough to just adapt and fill the roles that are missing on the party.

+1 to not stepping on each other's toes while we play, even if people choose the same class we try to have something that sets us apart.

[Alent]

I think D&D party compositions make more sense under the PSO/PSU model of freeform chaos rather than the EQ holy trinity of inexplicable unfailing order that somehow became the norm despite it making no sense.

You have Offense, and Support. Support makes Offense do more damage, recovers their HP, gives buffs, and in general hinders the enemy's ability to harm you. Put another way, Support is any mix of Control, Healer, Buffer, crafter, and skillmonkey. Offense's job is, through any means, survive and beat the crap of the enemy. Within limits, the higher your personal skill and character level, the more you can resemble the other role when you choose to.

Something that people who are into the holy trinity are adverse to is offense taking care of itself, because they tend to think healing should come from the healer. In general, every member of a group should know when to tag out, back off, and drink potions, or class feature heal, or generally do something to ensure their survival. D&D survival has more in common with Diablo 2 than it does with WoW in this regard, but that just comes back to what I opened with: Freeform Chaos is Better than Order.

Many classes can Dabble or specialize in one of these pools at once, some can specialize in both at once. Not all fall to one extreme, being average at both. (Eg: bard) Not all actually succeed at their job (Fighter, monk), some do their job so well they also do everyone else's (Tippycal Tier 1.).

I don't think a party face matters that much, but you need to have a decent balance of offense to support, and some cooperation. Nothing more. When it comes to the party face role, your DM will just sort of naturally have NPCs gravitate towards interacting with the most persuasive roleplayer as party face if no such persuasive character exists in the party as far as charisma and skill points go.

[Scow2]

The perfect 2-man party is a Wizard and Cleric.

The Cleric is Front-line Defender+Scrapper(City of Heroes terms, to use an MMO). The wizard is the utility+controller.

The druid is the ideal 1-man party, being a Defender, Scrapper, Controller, and Utility guy all in one.

The "Scrapper" role is all your offensive and defensive ability in one - hits like a truck, takes it like a champ. A "Defender" is what most want to be a healer, but he's not a mere healer - He's party-support. He takes care of conditions and other debilitating effects proactively just as often as he does reactively.

[Drachasor]

I think D&D party compositions make more sense under the PSO/PSU model of freeform chaos rather than the EQ holy trinity of inexplicable unfailing order that somehow became the norm despite it making no sense.

You have Offense, and Support. Support makes Offense do more damage, recovers their HP, gives buffs, and in general hinders the enemy's ability to harm you. Put another way, Support is any mix of Control, Healer, Buffer, crafter, and skillmonkey. Offense's job is, through any means, survive and beat the crap of the enemy. Within limits, the higher your personal skill and character level, the more you can resemble the other role when you choose to.

Something that people who are into the holy trinity are adverse to is offense taking care of itself, because they tend to think healing should come from the healer. In general, every member of a group should know when to tag out, back off, and drink potions, or class feature heal, or generally do something to ensure their survival. D&D survival has more in common with Diablo 2 than it does with WoW in this regard, but that just comes back to what I opened with: Freeform Chaos is Better than Order.

Many classes can Dabble or specialize in one of these pools at once, some can specialize in both at once. Not all fall to one extreme, being average at both. (Eg: bard) Not all actually succeed at their job (Fighter, monk), some do their job so well they also do everyone else's (Tippycal Tier 1.).

I don't think a party face matters that much, but you need to have a decent balance of offense to support, and some cooperation. Nothing more. When it comes to the party face role, your DM will just sort of naturally have NPCs gravitate towards interacting with the most persuasive roleplayer as party face if no such persuasive character exists in the party as far as charisma and skill points go.

Indeed. I absolutely despise the Holy Trinity because it's completely, ridiculously nonsensical...and yet people often act like everything follows it.

I'd add that "offense" is really split up into a number of categories. In the ancient world, it was often spearmen, archers, and cavalry (though there were others). In D&D, cavalry tends to be downplayed, but you certainly have melee, ranged, and then various magic-based offense as broad categories. Debuffing and Buffing are often mixed into class features, so you rarely see someone dedicated to support (even a Bard does more than that). Support in general has a ton of methods in D&D and it would be very difficult to classify them all -- offense is easier, I think.

I think a big problem with non-combat is that it has generally lacked good mechanics combined with a variety of methods of engaging others. Instead you typically have a person good at everything and then people who are just less capable. Or you bypass the whole thing with magic. Neither is very compelling.

[OldTrees1]

The 3 roles:
Get us there (often a skill monkey)
Defeat there (often a warrior or mage)
Have us Survive/Recover from there (often a divine caster)

[Devils_Advocate]

Having skimmed the thread, let me offer up my own opinion. There are four basic roles that the core classes fall into:

1. Skill monkey. Broadly speaking, this is someone good at doing types of things that actual human beings can do, albeit superhumanly well at high level. (Example: Rogue)

2. CoDzilla. Able to fight better than the supposed "fighty" classes and do a bunch of other useful stuff besides? Yeah, we got that. (Examples: Cleric, Druid)

3. Captain Miscellaneous. I once saw this "role" described as "toolbox caster", which is silly and doesn't give a good sense of what this is. (It does not in fact involve casting toolboxes. :P) Heck, the divine casters get a bunch of tools their darn selves.

No, what we have here is basically a character who gets to do all of the stuff not set aside for other classes but that the designers decided that they wanted parties to be able to do. Turns out that that includes ridiculous, potentially game-breaking things, like teleportation, for some reason. "Balanced" by "only" getting a smorgasbord of crazy-go-nuts superpowers. (Examples: Wizard, Sorcerer, Psion)

4. Sucker. Ostensibly a combat specialist in a combat-centric game where everyone is given means of fighting... and in fact the other classes are given a wider variety of more interesting means of fighting. Like, even stuff that a mundane fighter could totally conceivably do, like blind or frighten someone, gets given to spellcasters but not mundane fighters, what the hell is up with that?

Anyway, they conceivably could have balanced things so that these classes were slightly better than everyone else at the core activity of combat at the cost of not being good at anything else. But they didn't do that, so the primary role of this type of character, relatively speaking, is to... well, suck. :/ (Examples: Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, Paladin)

Outside of Core, these seem to be popular:

5. Jack of All Trades. Given a variety of useful powers to call upon, but without the cheese of Captain Miscellaneous, or at least with less cheese. Usually not a spellcaster, but that's not really the meaningful distinction here. (Example: Binder)

6. Captain Non-miscellaneous. Someone whose superpowers have a theme, and thus is less powerful than the core casters, who are allowed to do any darn thing. (Examples: Dread Necromancer, Beguiler, Warmage, Healer)

[jedipotter]

I have never liked the supposed balanced party. It is just something people say as they think they are supposed to say it. As if the game must have some sort of imagined balance.

I've done games with lots of mixes of characters. One of the worst things in character creation/game set up is this:

DM: "The group is a Half orc fighter, a human bard, a human wizard and a half elf ranger.

Player #5 "Oh, well, ok, then, guess I have to be the cleric (sigh). Um, ok, I'll make a cleric...darn I so wanted to be a wizard, but oh well.''

So now Player Five feels he is forced to be the cleric heal bot as the group ''must have'' one. Maybe he will embrace it, but most of the time you get: ''Oh, everyone is hurt again, sigh, ok, whatever, I heal them, sigh.''

[Uncle Pine]

Interesting, and thanks for the replies. The reason I ask is I am about to start running a PF game, and so far I have a Tengu Rogue (I don't think the player realizes that crows like shiny things), and a Vanaran(?) Monk, or to put it the way the player does, a Monkey Monk. He was rather disappointed when I told him that "flinging poo" can not be used to deal damage.

Anyway, I am not sure if there will be any other players, so I will probably DMNPC something to fill the party out a bit. I could do two, I suppose, but I would rather not.

So, any ideas on a single character that would work here? I was thinking a Druid or Cleric.

I'm afraid that pairing them with a Cleric or Druid DMPC would make them feel even more useless. With this party composition, they could be fine using hit-and-run/guerrilla tactics to slowly weaken their enemies, but they should also evaluate carefully wether or not they are powerful enough to face an opponent and always try to outsmart it to avoid dire situations like "face to face with a BSF" or "very distant from a fireball-shooting wizard".
Also, since there are only two PCs, they should generally face opponents at ECL-2.
Instead of using a DMPC, what about presenting them the opportunity to hire help when needed? For example, when entering a new city, you could specify that there is a mercenary/warrior guild or something like that.
If the players are a bit reckless, you could give them Combat Intuition (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-adventurer--54/combat-intuition--398/) as a bonus feat, or just roll every time they face a particularly dangerous foe to see if their character notice "how much powerful its aura is".

EDIT: I just thought that a relevant link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=314701) could help in the debate over roles and party compositions.

[Sir Chuckles]

The big thing is that balance is nothing more than illusion.
Fighters can put cross class ranks in UMD, and suddenly you have a Cleric without metamagic. Wizards can put preventative measures on the Rogue (Miss Chances, DR, Energy Resistance), and turn him into a Fighter. The Cleric is designed to be a pseudo-Fighter. And so on.

The list of reasons why the typical MMORPG class setup (Smashy Guy, Healbot, Blastbot, angsty teenager in leather) is infinitesimal, and growing with every other idea about DnD.

In an ideal, heavy-OP game, all you need for "balance" is one mid-level "primary" caster.
In WotC's ideal world, Clerics shoot holy stuff at bad dudes while yelling about Pelor, the Fighter is always doing damage, the Rogue, during this encounter, is stealing treasure, and the Wizard is making jazz hands to shoot fire.

In the real world, the Cleric is 30ft tall and shoot fire out his eyes and lightning out his arse, the Wizard is doing the same as a 12-headed Pyro hydra, the Fighter is being pelted with tomatoes for failing his everything-that isn't-Strength check, and the Rogue is a Beguiler, invisible and praying the enemies have a low enough HD to affect.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The only balance you need to worry about for your players' party is their abilities relative to one another. You don't want anyone hogging the spotlight or making other party members feel useless. What classes they choose to play is nearly irrelevant to meeting this type of balance.

What you're really asking about is what they should play for survivability. However, since you decide what kind of foes they face you can simply choose not to hit them with something they have no reasonable chance of overcoming except once in a blue moon. Even then they should be able to escape.

This is not a computer game and most foes are unaffected by the party's composition.

[nedz]

Personally I like parties of Multi-threat characters where everyone can do something in every encounter. Now this doesn't have to be Tier 1's, though they tend to be able to do this better than most — hence T1. It's far more fun, IMHO, to make T3's fit this bill.


Given the perils of dmnpcs, I'd recommend letting them pick a hireling of their choosing to help them out if they feel the need for more power.
In order to not step on their toes or outdo them too much I'd recommend a meatshieldy fighter; one way to help emphasize the npc part is to just pull them from the npc list directly.

The 2 man party you described, with no additions, would be rather weak (unless it's high op) and would need cr's adjusted accordingly (also for the fact that it's just 2 people).

I kind of agree with this, except I think you should consider giving them two characters each: a Hero and a Sidekick. The Sidekick should be weaker so as not to overshadow the Hero. Support casters are good for this (Bards, Healers even). If you give them two Protagonists then they lose character definition. Free leadership is another option.

This is far better than DMPCs because those clutter the role of the DM, who has enough to do.

[Grizzled Gryphon]

Hmmm... I don't think letting them play two characters will work. For one player, this is his first time gaming, ever.

I think I like the "hire an NPC of their choosing", except I don't know what to stat up, then.

Meh, I will just go with a Human cleric, and call it a day. Although, another idea that came to me was the friendly monster. Like in the Grey render description, they sometime 'adopt' someone, and follow them around, helping when they can. Of course, it would have to be something that doesn't speak, and can start out and scale well with players from 1st level.

This is a Pathfinder game, just so you all know, so the players aren't nearly as bad off as they could be.

[Mithril Leaf]

To be honest, I don't think that you need to fill any of the "tipical roles" to get a balanced party. However, parties that lacks a role will have to adopt different strategies to deal with encounter.
- All the "tipical roles" filled: tank (1st row), skillmonkey (2nd row or last row), caster & healer (last row or 2nd row).
- Lacks of a tank: parties without a tank will need to invest in initiative and/or break the action economy, or resort to summons.
- Lacks of a skillmonkey: parties without a skillmonkey will need to think outside the box to complete difficult tasks with their limited skills or to have the right spell on hand when needed (scrolls, spontaneous casters...).
- Lacks of a healer: no one needs a healer (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=3kk1r6rnqs3775m4g8437i7981&topic=8965).
- Lacks of a caster: the lacks of a caster could be a minor or a major problem. If both the party and the DM aren't optimizing and the campaign won't hit medium-high levels, it couldn't even be a problem at all. However, if there are chances that the party will eventually face a hostile T1 properly built and played, gishes or very sneaky character will be needed. Note that this applies even if there is a caster in the party.

To sum up, whenever a party lacks a role, it doesn't necessarily hurts the party's balance. Instead, a succesful party will overrun obstacles by use different strategies according to the party composition. Or use more magic.
That said, at the moment we have a kineticist, a voce warrior, a rogue, a swordsage and a barbarian who think of himself as a wizard in our group and we did well so far.

Please update links accordingly.
You do not need a healer (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1520).

[upho]

Tank. They can take a bunch of damage, and try to keep the baddies of his squishy friends.I think it's worth noting that in 3.5 there's, AFAIK, a total of one class (crusader) with mechanics designed to succeed at that job. In PF there's none (but DSP soon releases the Warder which seems to be an awesome tank).

Unfortunately, this lack of supporting mechanics makes the tank a mostly theoretical role, one often talked about but rarely seen in game. It also means that the classical supposed tank classes (such as the fighter) often becomes forced into a DPR/striker role, unable to remain effective at much else than damage dealing. Tons of durability means next to nothing (in terms of combat roles) unless accompanied by 'hit me'-mechanics forcing the enemy to waste attacks on the tank.

Just a thought.

[Karnith]

I think it's worth noting that in 3.5 there's, AFAIK, a total of one class (crusader) with mechanics designed to succeed at that job.
Also the Knight, from PHB II, though it's not that great of a class.

[upho]

And the knight, of course. Tend to forget about that class, view as not much except an example of the right idea poorly executed.

[zlefin]

Hmmm... I don't think letting them play two characters will work. For one player, this is his first time gaming, ever.

I think I like the "hire an NPC of their choosing", except I don't know what to stat up, then.

Meh, I will just go with a Human cleric, and call it a day. Although, another idea that came to me was the friendly monster. Like in the Grey render description, they sometime 'adopt' someone, and follow them around, helping when they can. Of course, it would have to be something that doesn't speak, and can start out and scale well with players from 1st level.

This is a Pathfinder game, just so you all know, so the players aren't nearly as bad off as they could be.


that's why I recommend using the npc list for the hire of their choosing.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s

then the stats are already done for you.