5E has enough exploits normally held back by other party members that I think tier-zero optimal parties are going to be 100% gimmick builds.

1 Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock's extreme kiting ability doesn't matter much, because every enemy who can't target him can target the PC that didn't invest in the gimmick.

A 100% Araakockra Spell Sniper Sorlock Party is basically guaranteed no-risk victory against the vast majority of encounters, and because of that can safely nova through all other encounters without worrying about their depleted resources becoming relevant later.

Similarly, stealth is often constrained by the least stealthy party member. But a party that goes all-in on stealth, such as 3 AT's and one Trickery Cleric 3 / AT 17 doesn't even really need to let the vast majority of encounters happen. And those few monsters that pose anything like a serious challenge (e.g. Aboleths with their Detect legendary action) can, again, be safely nova'd to smithereens without worrying about needing those resources later.

The goal of the original thread gets into the mathematical complication of Shapley Values. In "fair" parties playing "normal" DnD I'd argue most of the differences in value comes from two places:

  • Reliance on other PC's to not die (-)
  • Ability to assist the party in recovering from or averting TPKs (+)


This is because generally most encounters and adventures are highly winnable, with very little upside for "winning more", and the biggest risk IME is cascading character failure.

Which is why I kind-of agree with a lot of the controversial choices in the original thread.

A single PHB paladin on his lonesome will do alright. If he's added to the party later, lay on hands is enough to bring someone back from zero (recovering) and occasionally his nova will bring a threat down (averting).

A single non-bladesinger wizard isn't going to make it very far on their own. This means that a lot of their apparent contribution to the group is substantially attributable to the other party members that keep them alive. While they do have some ability to avert disaster (e.g. force cage the baddy away), there's much less value add if they're redundant (e.g. because there's already a Lore Bard with Force Cage) and they have basically no ability to directly recover the party from disaster via healing. Wizards are extremely powerful, but that doesn't actually mean that that much of party success is due to them.

The main areas where I then have to disagree with the original thread (outside of the issue of having too much in-class variance) is the low ranking for clerics.