What does a good party need?

[Rfkannen]

What do you think makes a good/optimized party? What role/traits/abilities do you usually want?

If you were to make an optimized character for an already existing party of 3 characters and wanted your character to fill any niches the party is missing, what would you be on the lookout for?

[Amnestic]

As long as they're engaged and enjoy their character? Pretty much anything.

If you're concerned about party balance then I think that ideally a party will have its members cover the following areas*:

"Face" - Charisma skill focus, ideally all 3 of the Intimidate/Deception/Persuasion trio covered but at least 1.
"Offensive caster" - Usually control/debuff/blaster focused.
"Defensive caster" - Usually support/summon/buff focused.
"Ranged damage dealer" - Consistent ranged damage (eg. EB Warlock, dex fighter, bow rogue)
"Melee damage dealer" - Consistent melee damage (usually comes with the expectation of taking damage in return, to protect squishies behind them, so solid AC/HP as well).
"Scout" - Someone who can move ahead of the group unseen if needs be to get a lay of the land, high perception too, ideally thieves tools proficiency while they're at it but not necessary.
"Bigbrain" - Arcana's the 'most important' knowledge skill I think but I'd normally want at least some, if not all, of them covered by the party.

A character will usually dip their toes into at least 2 or 3 areas, sometimes more.

So if I'm coming into an existing party I'd see if they're lacking in any of them and see what I can do to fill the gap.

*deliberately super-specialised parties like an "only paladins" crew excepted, of course.

[JonBeowulf]

I was going to just reply with "It just needs good players", but that's not what you're asking.

It's pretty easy to get pulled into a party optimization rabbit hole, but you don't need full optimization. You just need a group of individuals that cover each others weaknesses.

Instead of asking what they need, look at what they need to do. Primarily, a party needs to deal damage while diminishing the damage they take. Healing, sneaking, facing, etc. are all secondary to, and supportive of, those first two. It doesn't matter if it's a Rogue sneak attacking a single target to oblivion or a Wizard blasting a cluster of mooks to dust. The Rogue also brings stealth and skills and the Wizard brings utility.

Three of any class can be "a good party" if played correctly.

[kingcheesepants]

As long as they're engaged and enjoy their character? Pretty much anything.

If you're concerned about party balance then I think that ideally a party will have its members cover the following areas*:

"Face" - Charisma skill focus, ideally all 3 of the Intimidate/Deception/Persuasion trio covered but at least 1.
"Offensive caster" - Usually control/debuff/blaster focused.
"Defensive caster" - Usually support/summon/buff focused.
"Ranged damage dealer" - Consistent ranged damage (eg. EB Warlock, dex fighter, bow rogue)
"Melee damage dealer" - Consistent melee damage (usually comes with the expectation of taking damage in return, to protect squishies behind them, so solid AC/HP as well).
"Scout" - Someone who can move ahead of the group unseen if needs be to get a lay of the land, high perception too, ideally thieves tools proficiency while they're at it but not necessary.
"Bigbrain" - Arcana's the 'most important' knowledge skill I think but I'd normally want at least some, if not all, of them covered by the party.

A character will usually dip their toes into at least 2 or 3 areas, sometimes more.

So if I'm coming into an existing party I'd see if they're lacking in any of them and see what I can do to fill the gap.

*deliberately super-specialised parties like an "only paladins" crew excepted, of course.

Honestly I think you got it down. Even if you were in an all-whatever party I'd still try to cover offense, defense, ranged, and skill coverage. Be that in subclasses, spell selection, feats, items or whatever other means you have to make one paladin different from another.

Additionally as a general rule I like to have every character be excellent in at least one of these areas and be good in another 1 or 2 of them and for those areas of excellence to not overlap with each other too much.

[Naanomi]

I usually like...
-someone who can survive on the front line
-someone who can heal/remove status effects at least a little
-someone proficient in thieves' tools
-someone with a reasonable persuasion skill check
-someone with robust ritual casting
-someone with a decent stealth ability

Not all seperate people, obviously... Could easily be covered by two characters with planning

[Easy e]

Beer, blackjack, and hookers....... that's a good party!


I will get my coat, but I think Amnestic covered the basics.

[Psyren]

I don't see any glaring holes in Amnestic's list. Covering the listed roles will usually/organically also cover the ability scores needed to make those checks.

[Odessa333]

I approve of the list as well. And if you are trying to make a character who can fill any role no matter what the other three are, I think you're looking for a bard or a cleric. They are the most versatile classes (in my humble opinion at least) and can fill near any role.

[Psyren]

I approve of the list as well. And if you are trying to make a character who can fill any role no matter what the other three are, I think you're looking for a bard or a cleric. They are the most versatile classes (in my humble opinion at least) and can fill near any role.

Artificers also, especially Armorer and Battlesmith. They're also great force multipliers for the party by being able to Infuse specific items!

[Nidgit]

I'd argue that a ranged attacker isn't really needed. An archer or an Eldritch blaster will never hurt, but it's far less essential than the other roles since all it really provides (damage) can be just as easily covered by other roles as well. Outside of specific builds, ranged damage doesn't offer the defensive control that most melee attackers do.

[Leon]

Anything works with anything else, what it needs is a group of players willing to work together to make that happen ~ broadly you want people to cover a range of skills, support and combat ability.

[Psyren]

I don't know if they're mandatory necessarily - but without a ranged attacker on your team, it can be really annoying facing off against flying enemies and enemies separated from you by an obstacle (across a gap, on top of a wall etc) before you have the ability to reach them with your own melee.

[Dienekes]

I'd argue that a ranged attacker isn't really needed. An archer or an Eldritch blaster will never hurt, but it's far less essential than the other roles since all it really provides (damage) can be just as easily covered by other roles as well. Outside of specific builds, ranged damage doesn't offer the defensive control that most melee attackers do.

You can kinda make the case that any isn’t needed. I’ve played games without an offensive caster, defensive caster, and frontline before and it worked fine enough.

But for the record I would sort of reframe the categories a little.

I’d replace melee damage with Frontliner. Kinda gets what their point usually is, and I’d replace ranged damage with Striker, and point out that in theory any class that specifies in removing the primary target from the battlefield no matter what takes this position. It’s only that 9 times out of 10 I’d rather have a ranged damage dealer fill the role rather than say, a Monk, who very much is designed as a class around getting to key points on the battle and removing high priority targets far more than it is an actual Frontliner even though it is strictly speaking a melee damage dealer.

[Kane0]

What do you think makes a good/optimized party? What role/traits/abilities do you usually want?

If you were to make an optimized character for an already existing party of 3 characters and wanted your character to fill any niches the party is missing, what would you be on the lookout for?

A good social character, the 'face'
A force multipier, the 'controller'
Somone to fix up compromised PCs, the 'healer'
And everyone should be able to deal respectable damage. Better than average damage output is usually either the 'bruiser' if they can also take it in return, or the 'glass cannon' if they can't

There is also the 'leader' focused around preventative measures and enabling other party members rather than self-sufficiency and the 'tank' that seeks to take attention away from more fragile party members while also surviving said attention.

My choices for a 'mystery party' character are artificer, paladin and warlock with honorable mention to cleric and druid.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I'm going to take a different tack here and say an optimized party is one that can collectively exploit one or more tactics to basically trivialize large sections of an adventure, leaving them ample resources left to deal with the parts they can't trivialize.
Examples would be an entire group built around stealth, fighting in a specific condition (such as magical darkness), kiting, etc.
In that case the 4th (or any extra) character would likewise have to be proficient in whatever the rest of the party is using or they'd be deadweight.

[Eldariel]

Generally:
- access to as many different spell lists as possible is valuable since they tend to provide lateral solutions to problems
- access to as many spell slots as possible is likewise great
- access to extremely long range combat and scouting is good for many types of challenges that can be trivialised with long range
- access to stealth tactics is great because that can trivialise many an encounter
- access to all the mental stats plus Guidance & Enhance Ability is great to deal with skill-solvable issues
- access to vision denial strategies (such as Darkness or Fog Cloud/Pyrotechnics) and the ability to abuse said effects one-sidedly is superb
- access to something that can take hits in a pinch (be it a high durability character or two, summons or whatever) is very valuable

[Sorinth]

In 5e I don't think there's anything that you absolutely need. You can be 5 Barbarians with no stealth no charisma no ranged weapons and still manage to succeed your quest to save the world/defeat the BBEG.

The roles are just a way to handle a situation but you can always have/find a different way of handling the the situation. Need to get by a guard you can talk past, stealth past, fight, use magic, take a different route, etc...

Obviously the more roles you cover the more options you have so you might be able to take an easier route.

[Eldariel]

In 5e I don't think there's anything that you absolutely need. You can be 5 Barbarians with no stealth no charisma no ranged weapons and still manage to succeed your quest to save the world/defeat the BBEG.

The roles are just a way to handle a situation but you can always have/find a different way of handling the the situation. Need to get by a guard you can talk past, stealth past, fight, use magic, take a different route, etc...

Obviously the more roles you cover the more options you have so you might be able to take an easier route.

That depends on game difficulty too. I can imagine plenty of campaigns that would require extreme luck to succeed with 5 Barbs where a solid rounded party would actually have the tools to succeed fairly reliably.

[stoutstien]

Echoing the belief you don't need anything to form a good party past everyone enjoying the game. Concepts that are nice to have

-bad roll protection. Low rolls can be fun but so can having forms of clutch rerolls/additional values to counter them. Doesn't need to take it to an extreme to see the impact.

-action denial/reversal. Sure removing the threat is the best way to ensure your safety and to overcome the challenge but the next best thing is just preventing them from doing anything.
Stopping movement is a good example on sapping valid action choices.

Prehealing- THP, aid and form shifting for buffer HP. Saves actions and can soften 'opps' moments.

Information control- scouting, info finding spells, solid ability checks, and also the way to counter the inverse.

Damage- Nova, burst, and constant are all important. Sometimes you just need to fix problems with violence.

Redundancy- having roles can be fun but in reality the more you spread out the responsibility the harder it is to be countered. Everyone should think they are the *insert role* because it's going to happen.

[Amnestic]

In 5e I don't think there's anything that you absolutely need. You can be 5 Barbarians with no stealth no charisma no ranged weapons and still manage to succeed your quest to save the world/defeat the BBEG.

I think that depends a lot on what the BBEG is. 5 barbarians with no ranged weapons are going to struggle against anything that can fly, like...a dragon, or any spellcaster with the Fly spell. It might not be fast but strafing breath weapons will wear the party down.

5e is perhaps kinder than previous editions to "gimmick" parties that aren't looking to cover all areas, but it still has limits unless the DM is bending the world around you.

[Sorinth]

That depends on game difficulty too. I can imagine plenty of campaigns that would require extreme luck to succeed with 5 Barbs where a solid rounded party would actually have the tools to succeed fairly reliably.

I think it's more a question of style then difficulty. That party of barbarians might find a intrigue/social based game very difficult but that's not because that game is inherently more difficult then say a meatgrinder type game it's simply a clash of styles.

There's also the fail forward aspect to most D&D campaigns, the lack of social skills or stealth might mean you have to fight something another group could avoid but it's not likely to really lead to failure.

[Naanomi]

Artificers also, especially Armorer and Battlesmith. They're also great force multipliers for the party by being able to Infuse specific items!
Celestial Pact Warlocks can fit also... Healer, Face, Ritual Casting, ranged damage output, reasonable stealth and a familiar both possible... Checks a lot of boxes

[Eldariel]

I think it's more a question of style then difficulty. That party of barbarians might find a intrigue/social based game very difficult but that's not because that game is inherently more difficult then say a meatgrinder type game it's simply a clash of styles.

There's also the fail forward aspect to most D&D campaigns, the lack of social skills or stealth might mean you have to fight something another group could avoid but it's not likely to really lead to failure.

Well, even in combat a 5 Barb party leaves a lot to be desired, especially higher up. All are short range damage only characters; no way to pick up downed characters, no way to avoid heavy AOE CC, poor ways to deal with kiting enemies, poor tools to deal with hordes of low level enemies, etc.

There's more to even combat encounters than just damage and durability.

[Lunali]

It depends on the group. A group of people where no one is playing a 'face' probably doesn't actually need one. No one was interested enough in social interactions to focus on being good at them, which means the group will likely minimize the amount of time interacting socially. Similar arguments can be made for a variety of other roles.

[Sorinth]

I think that depends a lot on what the BBEG is. 5 barbarians with no ranged weapons are going to struggle against anything that can fly, like...a dragon, or any spellcaster with the Fly spell. It might not be fast but strafing breath weapons will wear the party down.

5e is perhaps kinder than previous editions to "gimmick" parties that aren't looking to cover all areas, but it still has limits unless the DM is bending the world around you.

Sure, but it's not just a question of the DM bending the world for the players, the players have choices, maybe they don't accept the quest to go after the dragon and decide to go somewhere else and do something else.

[Amnestic]

Sure, but it's not just a question of the DM bending the world for the players, the players have choices, maybe they don't accept the quest to go after the dragon and decide to go somewhere else and do something else.

That...doesn't really seem like they're saving the world/defeating the BBEG if they simply choose not to engage with it at all. Seems like the world is doomed if they do that to me?

[stoutstien]

I ran a barbarian only game from 1-16 prior to Tasha and for the most party they were fine. Honestly the fail point was just the lack of valid alternative approaches to challenges that ended it rather than a failure. Rage needing attack or damage to maintain really makes it difficult to do the weird stuff we all enjoy in TTRPGs. They did challenge the 3 hells to a wrestling tournament and almost won....

[arnin77]

For me personally:

3 person party I’d focus on Combat, Skills and Magic

4 person party I’d focus on the cardinal 4 (fighter type, rogue type, cleric type and wizard type)

5 person party I’d focus on the main abilities (Strength character, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha characters)

But that’s just to get an optimal party - 5e doesn’t really need to have optimal parties from what I’ve seen.

[f5anor]

What do you think makes a good/optimized party? What role/traits/abilities do you usually want?

If you were to make an optimized character for an already existing party of 3 characters and wanted your character to fill any niches the party is missing, what would you be on the lookout for?

There are many types of abilities that you can focus on, based on the type of gameplay you prefer, however the two most basic and essential ones in my view are battlefield control, and damage dealing.

Keep in mind that D&D is built to be able to play and be effective without specific niche abilities such as a face, or certain kinds of skills. These things may be very entertaining and can open up great alterative opportunities to play the game, but they are not essential. In my view, this also includes healing, due to the way of how healing mechanics operate in 5e.

There are different ways of how you can can achieve battlefield control, various classes excel at it, some examples include magic users mostly druids/wizards/sorcerers, martials/clerics/druids as tanks or grapplers, and more innovative ones such as Conquest paladins with various fear mechanisms, but also Arcane Archer (Grasping Arrow) and others.

Damage dealing, can be either melee or ranged, with ranged being of course far superior in terms of mechanics in a wide and open environment, however melee has great synergy with tanks, and nova damage potential.

Be aware that many battlefield control tactics may be specifically favouring melee or ranged damage, e.g. grappling/proning may not be so good for ranged attackers, whereas area of effect spells such as Plant Growth are not so good for melee attackers.

In order to be effective, you need to ensure that you can always bring to bear both battlefield control, and damage dealing in a way that can benefit from this control.

[LudicSavant]

What do you think makes a good/optimized party? What role/traits/abilities do you usually want?

To me, an optimized party is...

- Well-suited to the nature of the campaign.
- Difficult to counter. They'll have answers for a wide variety of status effects, giant mook armies, casters, kiting foes, alpha-strike ambushers, vision control, walls, enemies with basically every kind of resistance (whether it's legendary resistance, magic resistance, high saves, high AC, whatever), you name it, they've got something for it.
- Resilient against iterative probability. They're not gonna fold just because they get a string of bad rolls. They have to fail in layers in order to actually fail.
- Able to take on numerous Deadly foes/challenges a day.
- A synergistic team that's more than the sum of its parts.


If you were to make an optimized character for an already existing party of 3 characters and wanted your character to fill any niches the party is missing, what would you be on the lookout for?

Look for synergies with existing party members, and/or situations that the existing party members wouldn't be able to deal with effectively.

For example, if they don't have anyone good at dealing with swarms of mooks, that's bad and you might wanna grab some AoEs or other form of crowd control. If they don't have anyone who can cure a certain persistent status effect (like, say, "dead"), you might wanna grab someone that can.

For another example, if you see that you have, say, a grappler or telekinetic on your team, maybe give them some hazards they can drag enemies into. You see someone with blind-fighting or Alert, maybe take some vision blockers for them to use. Or vice versa. That sort of thing.

I like to avoid broad brush role stereotypes and look for specific synergies or vulnerabilities.

[MrStabby]

I'm going to take a different tack here and say an optimized party is one that can collectively exploit one or more tactics to basically trivialize large sections of an adventure, leaving them ample resources left to deal with the parts they can't trivialize.
Examples would be an entire group built around stealth, fighting in a specific condition (such as magical darkness), kiting, etc.
In that case the 4th (or any extra) character would likewise have to be proficient in whatever the rest of the party is using or they'd be deadweight.

I think I would agree strongly with this... but with a couple of additions.

1) Some tactics can trivialse (or avoid) an encounter and don't need the team - just one person. Divination spells, polymorph, fabricate, zone of truth (yes they are all spells and yess spellcasters are awesome)

2) The converse is true - that some effects or abilities can trivialise an encounter for the PCs' enemies. Covering these bases is also important. Abilites like great perception or ways round hard to kill enemies (magic weapon vs non-magic BPS resistant enemies for example), ranged attacks vs flyers, area of effect vs hordes.

[MoiMagnus]

What do you think makes a good/optimized party? What role/traits/abilities do you usually want?

If you were to make an optimized character for an already existing party of 3 characters and wanted your character to fill any niches the party is missing, what would you be on the lookout for?

For combat, there are 4 roles I consider: DPS/tank/crowd control/heal. (Most characters cover multiple roles at once). And in 5e, by "having tanks" I mostly mean "not everyone in the team is a glass canon".

Then, I find that the skill list covers all the important roles. Stealth reminds you that having a scout is important, Persuasion that having a face is important, etc.

Then, it mostly depends on your GM to know which skills are actually useful and which can be covered without needing proficiency. So you don't actually need one character with high ability score AND proficiency for each skill. But that doesn't make the skill list less relevant to catch if there is some missing role.

Oh, and a ritual caster. Ideally a wizard or someone with the feat, but most full spellcasters are good enough at it too.

[Pildion]

1) Front Line, some kind of tank, get in the big bads face.
2) Healer, some kind of healing, restorations.
3) Control, some kind of control caster.
4) Face, the party CHA character that handles the talking.
5) Scout, the party "rogue" that stealth's ahead, looks for traps, tracking and has good use of Thieves' Tools.


Of course the real answer is!

Beer, blackjack, and hookers....... that's a good party!

[Easy e]

I'm going to take a different tack here and say an optimized party is one that can collectively exploit one or more tactics to basically trivialize large sections of an adventure, leaving them ample resources left to deal with the parts they can't trivialize.
Examples would be an entire group built around stealth, fighting in a specific condition (such as magical darkness), kiting, etc.
In that case the 4th (or any extra) character would likewise have to be proficient in whatever the rest of the party is using or they'd be deadweight.

That sounds like a specialized party, not an optimized "all-comers" style of party.

This is an age old discussion in Wargames too. What is better, specialization or generalization?

[Sorinth]

Worth pointing out that a lot will depend on the DM's style. A scout that detects traps doesn't matter too much if the DM rarely uses traps. Or for a tank, if the DM doesn't really try to have enemies run past the frontline then what makes a tank a tank will be very different then a DM that plays it more tactically and tries to go after the squishy backline.

[Eldariel]

That sounds like a specialized party, not an optimized "all-comers" style of party.

This is an age old discussion in Wargames too. What is better, specialization or generalization?

TBH in this game even specialised parties can be generalists due to specialisation generally coming from spellcasting and spellcasting offering easy versatility at very little cost. For example, you could easily build a stealth abuse version of a Bard/Cleric/Wizard/Druid party; make the Druid a Moon Druid so they have natural access to Blindsight, have the Wizard and the Bard pick up Alert and AOE spells so that they can attack with abandon and enemies have disadvantage from not being able to see them and the Cleric can pick up either Eldritch Adept or Alert or Fighting Initiate and profit. None of these characters have to invest tremendously into it; they can just naturally abuse such effects for mass disadvantage on all enemy attacks and advantage on most of the meaningful martial attacks (the Cleric does need to see the allies to Spirit Guardians though so it's not entirely free), while also still having some of the most potent spell lists in the game for literally anything else.

If we went with a more specialised version of e.g. Darkness/Devil's Sight, say, all Warlocks, that's still just one of their Invocations; they still have all their spell slots and cantrips and other invocations to work with for everything else. And since a specialised strategy tends to be fairly efficient, they tend to have more resources than a comparable non-focused party might. Of course Darkness has more weaknesses than Fog Cloud (Devil's Sight & True Seeing both work against it) but it's also easier to wield as it moves with you and can be shut down with an object interaction action or higher level light spell: this would trivialise most encounters a party might face (same with e.g. a "4 minionmancers"-style party, such as the mentioned Bard/Druid/Wizard/Cleric; when you're walking around with a veritable army with just few spell slots, action economy suddenly gets swung to your direction to an absurd degree to the point that even encounters with heavy AOE might struggle to actually get as far as the party in the first place).

[Athan Artilliam]

Every party needs a mascot, a banner, & a name. It doesn't matter how you optimize or what role you try to take. If you make ingame reasons to add party cohesion like above, then the party will naturally start coming together into a machine, instead of four guys trying to get the biggest numbers.