In any given RPG, there is some idea of how a functional party should be built. There
seem to be are some stereotypical roles that classes get lumped into, regardless of system. Keeping with the general theme of D&D, we have a few classes that fill particular roles, and I'm going to look at some in 2e
and 3.X, namely the roles of tank (the meat shield), damage (the cannon), support (the fix-it guy), and healing (the resurrection guy). With a lot of parties I have played in or DMed, there is a very solid mix. Take, for instance, the current 2e group:
Al the Rogue: Support
Caelrath the Ranger: Damage
Elirail the Ranger: Damage/Tank
Erikr the Paladin: Tank/Damage/Healing
Florio the Rogue: Support
Skurn the Cleric: Support/Healing/Damage
Theophilis the Wizard: Support
In this seven-person party, there is a good mix of characters who can take a hit and are usually up front, characters that can dish out a good amount of damage, characters who can heal in a pinch, and characters that are utilitarian enough to take care of other tasks (setting up camp, tracking people,
pissing off NPCs being diplomatic, etc.). This party usually works well enough to handle the situation at hand, no doubt because the party is multifaceted enough to adapt readily. In situations where the expertise of one character is needed but the other characters would be useless, the party finds ways to compensate. In last session's game, the party was setting up an ambush and had the guys in bulky heavy armor and big weapons hide while the others drew the ambushees in. Could this have worked the other way around? Probably. But it played out well and after some initial confusion the party was successful.
In many other systems we have played, the dynamics of the party are more malleable. When we had our little forays into All Flesh Must Be Eaten, there was ultimately no impact on the group makeup. In one campaign, we had almost entirely norms and we played it out until we got tired of the campaign. In another, we had a mix of survivors and norms, and again the game was successful. It wasn't until the historical and amazing campaign James ran that the party truly had a lot of problems, being nearly all survivors (and James
being a moron not knowing what he had gotten himself into) we ended up going the route of "we are all badasses and can handle this, Duke Nukem style". This obviously got us killed by
the Director giving up and using a stupid vault door thing giving us no way to go once we reached a certain point.
I think it will be a lot of fun to play around with a few more systems and to see what can happen when a group of people tries to play a new system without any class coordination.
Hmmm.....
