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    Titan in the Playground
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
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    Default Re: Does a party NEED to be "Optimized"

    Quote Originally Posted by SpicyBoi_Nezu View Post
    The DM that is running the next campaign grew up playing D&D with his direct family, and apparently because of that, they naturally fell into the respective roles of an "Optimized" party whenever they played. My friend seems to think that due to his nature, he constructs campaigns that are only survivable with an "Optimized" party, and has been pressuring me to play a role that will fit that mold.

    Our current party consists of:
    Ranger (Melee Dps)
    Ranger (Ranged Dps)
    Sorcerer (Blaster/Debuff)
    Bard (Buffs)

    According to my friend, I am not allowed to play tank because that is what I usually play (and quite well if I do say so myself). What else could I play that doesn't "Step on any toes". My friend said that I pretty much HAD to play as the healer role, "If we don't have a dedicated healer, we won't even get out of the early levels" he said. I argued that the bard could heal, but apparently the bard chose no healing spells, mostly utility and buffing spells.

    In my opinion, a party can have two melee dps without many issues, because there are less enemies to hurt the rest of the party if half of them don't make it past round one. A second ranged dps would allow for more than just one of the further away enemies to be dealt with, allowing the melee dps to focus on the closer enemies without worrying about using all of his movement in order to get all of them. If the party has a tank, that is quite good at defending the spell-caster and ranged dps, enemies pose less of a threat to the typically squishier members of the party (Except for necromancers, they are quite "thick" so to speak). You don't take damage if all of the enemies are dead almost immediately due to the fact that they can't get a hit in after being swept in the surprise round by a party with 3 dps stacked with buffs.

    Do I NEED to play a healer?
    Do we NEED to have an "Optimized" party in order to survive?
    Does anyone ever REALLY NEED an "Optimized" party? Especially when you're starting at level 2.
    A party doesn't need to be optimized but you do need to roughly match the optimization level of the party. So you are the odd man out and yes you need to optimize a bit rather than forcing multiple others to not optimize. Otherwise you're making it harder on the DM who wants to challenge his players, and hard on the other players who want to play a challenging game. Now if everyone wants to play an easy campaign then that's another story, but this is all part of getting along in a group.

    You don't need to play a healer though. There are other ways. Heck you have 3 party members who can use a wand of cure light wounds. At level 2 that's less of an option. But you could for example play a battle cleric or druid, and provide temporary healing until the party can afford wands. Without devoting any of your build towards it, only spells temporarily. If you can't heal at all, then that's going to cost the party a lot of expensive potions (expensive at level 2 anyway). So I'd say you do need at least minor healing. Perhaps even a tanky paladin with lay on hands and the heal skill (to double rest HP), but that's a bit of a stretch.

    It isn't fair however that you are the one forced to do the healing. Perhaps someone else should take that role. It is totally fine for you to play a tank if you want to and it fits well enough with the party. If you really loathe healing you may want to discuss with your group, not us, about someone else perhaps taking a divine caster and at least doing temporary healing. Because at the same time it's not fair to force someone else to heal. You have to talk about this with each other and hash it out. Worst case perhaps an NPC could do it.
    Last edited by ericgrau; 2019-10-23 at 09:59 AM.
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