IMO, for a party game like this, the design mentality should always be "the player should be able to form a well-rounded party just with the companions alone". A well-rounded party is one that can handle majority of situations in the game, both in and outside of combat. You can form a well-rounded party, both skill-wise and general role-wise, from just your companions, if you want, and you have the freedom to play whatever role and whatever skill you want. So to answer the question "is filling the gap how RPGing should work?", I'd say no - it shouldn't be that way. In fact, ideally, the game should allow the player to form a well-rounded party as soon as possible.
First and foremost, the devs themselves should establish what a "well-rounded" party for their game should look like, and whether it would be a great idea to have such a party, then design the companions' kits around that. If the devs believe that a so-called "well-rounded party" doesn't exist, or doesn't need to exist, for their game, then that's a different story.
For games like Kingmaker and WotR, I do believe it is a great idea (and would make the game more enjoyable) to have a well-rounded party. Skill checks come up very often and of a wide range, both in the environment and in dialogues, and they affect outcomes greatly. There are also attribute score checks and saving throw checks. Combat-wise, it's also much better to have a well-rounded party than not, unless you're playing on easier difficulties. Kingmaker does this quite well, I think. On the other hand, I wish WotR had given you a brute force fighter or some other type of character that has reliable hit rate against the sky-high inflated AC values in the game. Though, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the devs intentionally refuse to give you a companion of classes like Magus or Alchemist, because they didn't want such companions to trivialize their "difficult" encounters.
Even if you say that in this game you don't "need" anything combat-wise, I would still like to have a well-rounded party to handle the checks in dialogues and in the environment. And I would prefer to be able to form a party like that without having to factor in my main character. A "face of the party" persuasion guy, a trickery/dexterous guy, a perception guy, a "smart" intelligent guy, a "more brawn than brain" guy, and so on.
EDIT: just noticed, with this post, my forum rank has finally gone from addict to old hand. Woooo!
Last edited by Try2Handing; 19/10/21 11:07 AM.
