this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Just for clarification - you don’t want ensure your party has, say, someone with the ability to talk to people, but you also don’t want to talk to your DM ahead of time to ensure you’re not playing a politics heavy game where a face will be absolutely necessary to make any progress?
Not everyone needs to be specced into being the perfect version of one of those four basic archetypes. Like you mention, “dedicated healer” is essentially gone in place of short rests and healing word spam. But won’t it feel awful goofy to have a player die as the three other 8 wisdom barbarians fail their medicine checks to stabilize?
Some basic discussion of what the adventure or campaign is going to be about is of course necessary. A full-social adventure with a party of dedicated murder hobos won't work. But if the characters fit mostly within the requirements of the adventure then everything else can be adjusted.
Let's say the GM wants to do an adventure where the characters will investigate a murder of a member of the city council, which will lead into uncovering and fighting a cult that is infiltrating the city's upper echelons. The players are only told that the adventure will involve investigation, combat, and high society interaction.
The players come up with a detective, a brawny priest, and a politician who likes dueling. So they've got the investigative and social skills, the priest and politician do reasonably well in combat, the priest can even provide some healing, but there's no ranged firepower and nobody can break into anything. The GM can tailor the adventure to match that; there's no need for anyone to redesign their character so that the party can engage flying enemies or obtain evidence from a locked room.
Likewise, if the party were to consist of three wizards from the local college, the adventure could still work. One of the players is suggested to hold a teaching position at the college to provide social clout, one should ideally have some experience with investigation or political scheming, everyone is recommended to keep Mage Armor prepared, and the cult now favors ranged combat. The plot might move a bit slower because of less plentiful healing opportunities and frequent rests.
All of this assumes a GM who primarily wants to work with the players to tell a story. If the GM wants to do an unforgiving grind where the players will need to use every advantage (in and out of game) to survive, this won't fly. Bring an optimized roster or perish. (Of course, most unforgiving GMs I know won't allow magical healing so that character injuries actually mean something.) I probably wouldn't join that game but some people roll like that.
On the whole, I don't find it that goofy when characters die in combat. At least not goofier than when parties always just happen to consist of people whose skills perfectly complement each other, especially ones that form by happenstance.