Party optimisation philosophy

[LudicSavant]

The Holy Grail of one approach to party optimization (Punching Above Your Weight Class) might be "a party build which is so strong that, when played by skilled players, it can fight its way through an army of 5000 orcs and mind flayers and then kill Tiamat at 1st level at least 50% of the time, without even taking a short rest."

The Holy Grail of another approach (Avoiding Catastrophe) might be "a party build which is so reliable that you can run 10,000 Adventurer's League tables with this build through the same WotC adventure without a single TPK."

The Holy Grail of a third approach (Minimizing Incompetence) might be "a party build which is so reliable that one semi-competent newbie and three covertly-malicious saboteurs who are actively trying to TPK by displaying abject cowardice (Dashing away instead of fighting) and mistakes like Fireballs which 'accidentally' harm more PCs than bad guys will still successfully complete a typical WotC adventure at least half 90% of the time."

I am reminded of an exchange we had in another thread.

It's not for every situation / party composition (for example, it can occasionally ruin your own Bard's day), but it's something I'll see optimizers who wanna fight 6+ Deadlies a day with Tucker's Kobolds / OSR Gygaxian meat grinder style DMs actually prepare, unlike other spells you gave similar ratings.

I like this way of thinking about usefulness.