Quote Originally Posted by Eldariel View Post
This is a tangent that was spawned in the thread about Chinese views on optimisation/Chinese tier list. I found the topic rather interesting, so I'm making a thread for it as opposed to taking bandwidth from the thread that mostly focuses on how the Chinese community views class balance.

Initial chain of conversation:

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I largely agree with what Max is saying. Every class has some at-will power in the game (for casters, cantrips; for mundanes, attacks), and how much at-will you've got depends on your classes. Similarly, every class as resources though how you recover them and what they provide you with varies. There are especially some harder to adjudicate "nearly-at-will abilities", such as Animate Dead, Tiny Servitor, and company, and some "with sufficient slot investment can be kept up all day"-abilities such as Conjure Animals, Holy Weapon, etc. (largely spells with a duration between ~1 hour and 4 hours - not all dayish like 8 hour+ but not "immediate" like 1-10 mins) Those tread the fence between At-Will and resource consumption; they do consume resources, but essentially you use resources for an all-day at-will offensive power in the first case, or are able to get multiple encounters' worth of time from a single slot in the second one to the point that you can get all-day coverage for said ability.

Honestly, a framework of class at-will ability would be interesting to establish; it could then be expanded with a framework defining their short rest and long rest ability. Such a system could then be used to analyse the all-day contributions a class is capable of in different parties and how the party dynamics depend on the resources available and being used. I'm thinking it wouldn't be that difficult to process in practice and it could actually provide the most useful "Tier-like system" to date.
I think Max has solid points.

Personally, if I'd optimize the entire party, I have the following guidelines (c/p from earlier optimization challenge thread):

o An obligatory paladin (+5 to saves are just too good)
o One or more sources of temporary HP or extra HP (aid / heroes feast), preferably both
o The option to solve encounters trough fight, talk and stealth. The latter requires all characters to be at least somewhat proficient and have a decent dex, and support spells for this are nice as well.

In addition, you want to cover all roles (healing, single target, area of effect damage, utility spells, etc.), and want all characters to have decent defenses (at least ac and hp - saves are taken care of through the paladin, at least for a large part)


To make it a bit concrete, for a party for 4, I'd start with a dex ancients paladin (for party defenses, healing, nova potential), add a glamour bard (face, temp hp, healing, spells) OR sheperd druid (temp hp, healing, lots of melee potential through summons, scouting with wildshape). From here, I'd add to the bard a tempest cleric and a battlemaster fighter (optinal mutliclass EK fighter/ shadow sorcerer). With the druid, maybe a wizard and a fighter, though I'd try to get more skills (and bonusses to skills) through racial abilities - or maybe replace the wizard with a warlock with chain pact and scouting invocations.