How Important is Party Composition Really?

[Corginin]

Hello there!

I am looking to start some discussion as I always see posts of people talking about the 'perfect party composition' with the right ratio of martial, casters, and support.

For a specific example, my group is giving our DM a break and we will be running Curse of Strahd. We will start with Death House and each get a free 1st lvl feat. Our party consists of a Sword & Board Battlemaster with the Protection fighting style who plans on taking maneuvers such as Commander's Strike and Maneuvering Attack. We have a pair of Half-Elf siblings playing an Artificer Gunsmith and Bladesinger Wizard, and a Pact of the Tome Feylock (originally I was told that this person was playing a Druid, but they changed their mind last minute). I will be playing, created under the impression that the Lock was going to be a Druid, a Pact of the Blade Hexblade.

As we won't have a single person with access to divine/healing magic I am going to change up my character a little bit. I will be taking the Healing Elixir spell at first level as well as the Healer feat and most likely at a latter level (or if I somehow can start as a Variant Human) Inspiring Leader. This will at least provide a tiny bit of healing and temporary HP. If our Wizard focuses on control spells it will certainly help. I expect a few character deaths, possibly even in Death House itself.

How do you think this group will fair? How important do you really think that is to an adventuring session and what success might you have had running or playing in non-standard parties?

[DivisibleByZero]

As we won't have a single person with access to divine/healing magic I am going to change up my character a little bit.

If Artificer and the Healing Elixir spell are allowed, and your Fighter is a BM, then literally every single person in your party has some form of healing at their disposal (although the Fighter's is temp HP granted by Rally, or real healing on himself via Second Wind). They just have to choose to take these options, just as you have.
BM: Second Wind @lvl2 & Rally @lvl3
Artificer: Cure Wounds @lvl3
Bladesinger & Warlocks: Healing Elixir

As to your question, party composition is much less important in 5e. What is more important than party composition is party cohesion. Classes don't matter. Having at least one person that can handle any given situation does matter.

Tank - covered
Ranged damage - covered
Melee backup for tank - covered
Arcane caster - covered
Healing - potentially covered
Party Face - covered
Trapper - doesn't matter much in Barovia

Looks good enough to me, assuming more than a single warlock takes advantage of his healing options.

[Corginin]

If Artificer and the Healing Elixir spell are allowed, and your Fighter is a BM, then literally every single person in your party has some form of healing at their disposal (although the Fighter's is temp HP granted by Rally, or real healing on himself via Second Wind). They just have to choose to take these options, just as you have.


Holy cow I am dumb, I forgot Artificer had access to cure wounds. I don't believe our fighter will have any charisma actually, but maybe I can convince everyone to take Healing Elixir for their own benefit. If not, I will just let them die. :)

[Sigreid]

If you want to make your DM nuts, all be paladins. The auras overlap and you benefit from all. +20 to all saves anyone?

[DivisibleByZero]

If you want to make your DM nuts, all be paladins. The auras overlap and you benefit from all. +20 to all saves anyone?

I think you meant to say, "if you want your DM to immediately house rule that auras don't stack, all be paladins."

[Sigreid]

I think you meant to say, "if you want your DM to immediately house rule that auras don't stack, all be paladins."
Or bury you all in his back yard.

[nickl_2000]

I think you meant to say, "if you want your DM to immediately house rule that auras don't stack, all be paladins."

Or just have an army of bards and druids casting heat metal all day long

[DivisibleByZero]

Or just have an army of bards and druids casting heat metal all day long

That's easy to work around.

[ThurlRavenscrof]

In curse of Straud, a healer is actually pretty important - especially in the death house. But your particular party seems to have it kind of well covered. Just don't forget that temp hp don't bring you back from unconscious...

[DivisibleByZero]

I don't want to give any spoilers, but I will advise that someone in the party should have a familiar if/when you enter Death House. I'm not going to give anything away, but I'll tell you that having a familiar with you will likely save the party at a certain point.

[Corginin]

I don't want to give any spoilers, but I will advise that someone in the party should have a familiar if/when you enter Death House. I'm not going to give anything away, but I'll tell you that having a familiar with you will likely save the party at a certain point.

I am pretty sure I know what you are talking about, I actually was prepping to run Death House myself for our group a few months ago. I myself won't have one, and I am going to play mostly in the background through Death House to avoid any metagame knowledge.

[Armored Walrus]

From what I've seen at table, the only in-combat healing that tends to get used is done to pop someone up from unconscious. From what I've seen on streams, lack of divine magic can suck if you need to replace a lost limb, or cure a disease/remove a curse, etc. But whether those things ever afflict you in the first place is DM/campaign dependent.

[Spiritchaser]

If you want to make your DM nuts, all be paladins. The auras overlap and you benefit from all. +20 to all saves anyone?

I still can't understand how anyone could ever think that was ok

I'd seriously like to try a standard unmodified one shot adventure just to see if this ends up being as daft as it looks.

[Corginin]

If you want to make your DM nuts, all be paladins. The auras overlap and you benefit from all. +20 to all saves anyone?

Might as well get to lvl 7 too so you are all immune to charm and have resistance to spell damage.

[Sigreid]

I still can't understand how anyone could ever think that was ok

I'd seriously like to try a standard unmodified one shot adventure just to see if this ends up being as daft as it looks.

It's actually pretty nuts, but I doubt it comes up much in most groups. At least in mine no one has yet played a paladin at all.

[Nifft]

Or just have an army of bards and druids casting heat metal all day long

Initially I thought you wrote "bards ... casting heavy metal all day long".

I'd play that game.

[Lombra]

Talking by personal experience, not having a cleric is going to hurt, on top of that not having a tank is pretty harsh, it doesn't make the adventuring day impossible, but it's hard to endure more encounters before a short rest.

All around party composition can be skipped if the DM isn't tossing hard or deadly encounters regularly.

[MaxWilson]

If you want to make your DM nuts, all be paladins. The auras overlap and you benefit from all. +20 to all saves anyone?

They don't stack. See a new-ish copy of the DMG, or the DMG errata: http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/DMG-Errata.pdf


Combining Game Effects:

Different game features can affect a target at the same time.
But when two or more game features have the same name,
only the effects of one of them—the most potent one—apply
while the durations of the effects overlap. For example, if
a target is ignited by a fire elemental’s Fire Form trait, the
ongoing fire damage doesn’t increase if the burning target is
subjected to that trait again. Game features include spells,
class features, feats, racial traits, monster abilities, and magic
items. See the related rule in the “Combining Magical Effects”
section of chapter 10 in the Player’s Handbook.

Therefore, Aura of Protection does not stack with Aura of Protection. No +20s for you, I'm afraid.

[DivisibleByZero]

Talking by personal experience, not having a cleric is going to hurt, on top of that not having a tank is pretty harsh, it doesn't make the adventuring day impossible, but it's hard to endure more encounters before a short rest.

All around party composition can be skipped if the DM isn't tossing hard or deadly encounters regularly.

What do you mean, not having a tank is going to hurt?
They have a S&B Protection Battle Master. It doesn't get much tankier.

They've ticked all the boxes that matter. As long as a solo warlock isn't the only one who takes a healing spell, they'll be fine.

[90sMusic]

In my experience, healing magic is largely useless to "heal" people with in combat because you're always going to be taking way more damage than the cleric is going to be able to heal it back. Also players tend to dislike spending their whole turn doing nothing but curing the other players. Typically players only use healing abilities to bring someone back after they lose consciousness and whether they get 6 hitpoints or 20 hitpoints, it will probably only take one turn of being attacked again to knock them out again.

There is a dragonmark feat in unearthed arcana and if you pick the healing mark, you can cast cure wounds once per day. It also upgrades at 5th level to cast lesser restoration, and eventually revivify. All once per day, but that is pretty good. There is also magic initiate that lets you pick 2 cantrips of your choice and a first level spell of your choice that you can cast once per day that you could use on Cure Wounds.

To actually recover all your hitpoints, you'll need to be spending hit dice on short rests but in combat you can use these once-per-day spells to bring folks back. The dragonmark is especially useful because you can heal someone back to consciousness and later on if they happen to die for real (or anyone else dies) you can quickly run over and bring them back so it's like two second chances.

You can flavor it up any way you want to explain your power, based on the game world.

[Sigreid]

They don't stack. See a new-ish copy of the DMG, or the DMG errata: http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/DMG-Errata.pdf



Therefore, Aura of Protection does not stack with Aura of Protection. No +20s for you, I'm afraid.

I'm remembering back to a ruling for something I've never done, but I believe the ruling was that the auras from the different oaths were not the "same" so they did stack.

I'd not spend any time trying to convince a DM to allow this. I mostly ignore their rulings as I agree with very few of them and my brain is a perfectly good tool for interpreting rules.

[JAL_1138]

I'm remembering back to a ruling for something I've never done, but I believe the ruling was that the auras from the different oaths were not the "same" so they did stack.

I'd not spend any time trying to convince a DM to allow this. I mostly ignore their rulings as I agree with very few of them and my brain is a perfectly good tool for interpreting rules.

The level 7 auras are different from each oath (and do different things, for that matter), and could thus stack. The level 6 auras are the same class feature that all Paladins get regardless of oath, and would thus not stack.

[MaxWilson]

I'm remembering back to a ruling for something I've never done, but I believe the ruling was that the auras from the different oaths were not the "same" so they did stack.

I'd not spend any time trying to convince a DM to allow this. I mostly ignore their rulings as I agree with very few of them and my brain is a perfectly good tool for interpreting rules.

I mostly ignore Sage Advice rulings too, but I treat anything written in the PHB or DMG with more respect, since those are the basic rules that all players can be expected to be familiar with (unlike Twitter).

YMMV.

[Squiddish]

In literally any campaign other than curse of strahd (or maybe something similarly undead heavy, but you could get by), I would say that the lack of divine magic is no big deal.

In CoS, it is a big deal. Not cripplingly so, but there are a lot of big deal magic holy symbols and a lot of undead. Also, a lot of things that hurt you. Random encounters are brutal. With that being said, you've probably got healing pretty much covered.

[djreynolds]

I was really sad when our party in CoS...... had no paladins. I had expected like 6 paladins to show up.... and not a one.

It is really fun, as I played a cleric, turning vast amounts of undead. Its the one adventure where you get to use "turn undead" on a regular basis

Its fun smiting and turning undead and in Barovia.... you get to do this.

[Lombra]

What do you mean, not having a tank is going to hurt?
They have a S&B Protection Battle Master. It doesn't get much tankier.

They've ticked all the boxes that matter. As long as a solo warlock isn't the only one who takes a healing spell, they'll be fine.

I was just sharing my experience on the general argument of party composition.

[wilhelmdubdub]

Imagine the 6 bards at the table vs the BBEG:

They all cast the same spell using the legendary actions until it sticks, then move onto the next step.

Bestow curse (wisdom)

Then bestow curse to waste its turn doing nothing

Then polymmorph

Then grapple into bag of holding

Casts a spell? counterspell x6
Makes an attack roll? cutting words x6

[JAL_1138]

Imagine the 6 bards at the table vs the BBEG:

They all cast the same spell using the legendary actions until it sticks, then move onto the next step.

Bestow curse (wisdom)

Then bestow curse to waste its turn doing nothing

Then polymmorph

Then grapple into bag of holding

Casts a spell? counterspell x6
Makes an attack roll? cutting words x6

Good luck trying that on Strahd. (Spoiler: it won't work.)

[wilhelmdubdub]

Good luck trying that on Strahd. (Spoiler: it won't work.)
Spoiler: shapechangers automatically succeed on the saving throw