I love the slimmed down 4-player party. I despise the idea of having every available option to handle any situation that may come my way. I want to have to make an intelligent and involved decision on how I'm going to round out my party for whatever my intention is during that playthrough. I don't need the "perfect" game where I pass every skill check, unlock every door, or persuade every NPC successfully. I enjoy playing through a dense game like this multiple times to see how different setups and characters react to each other. I feel as though being forced to have access to that all at once would somehow cheapen the experience for me. I'd likely intentionally make two characters as useless as possible or keep them at my camp so that I wasn't provided so many options.
Please read previous posts in a topic before posting, this is backwards logic, I'm not going to explain why this makes no sense yet again. Small party = worse for replay value, think through it logically and if you're struggling the actual logic for it has been gone over many times, twice in this thread alone. It has nothing to do with a "perfect party" or "perfect playthrough" or passing every skill check.
Originally Posted by SpawnLQ
You guys wanting 6 chars are looking at this all wrong. You seem to be basing the need for a 6 char balanced party on older games based on older versions of DnD where a tank and healer were crucial to party survival. 5e classes are more customizable and more self sufficient. You can easily run a group of 4 with no dedicated healer. Self heal options, potions, food heals, etc. are easy to come by. Anyone can attempt any skills, and can be proficient in them depending on background including lockpicking. Even without proficiency you only lose like +2 in the early levels, not a big loss.
I have no tank, just dps fighters (GWF EK and BM Dual Wielder), and the cleric has only used her heal spell like twice when i was level 1. I used the rogue primarily for sneak attack as it seems all of my characters dont really have much trouble picking locks, then swapped him for dual wielding battle master who just provides more toughness and dps overall. I have not had any issues swapping out specific role members just trying a different party makeup as i still dominate pretty well in battle and handle anything else outside of combat just fine.
Pretty much any combination of 4 is totally doable guys even if you need to be a little tactical about it
What i'm reading here is, "the game is too easy and forgiving and i love it" This is exactly what i talked about earlier in this thread in regards to balancing game difficulty for a 4 man party. The only way to make 4 man parties viable outside of the cookie cutter role filling is to make the game too easy.
Larger party means more appropriate game balance, means more interesting choices, means more replay value. I know my posts are a wall of text but really you can't explain the logic without actually explaining the logic, most arguments for 4 man party are based on three premises: - I don't like difficulty - Illusion of choice is better than actual choice - I can't apply mathematical concepts taught to 10 to 13 year olds (Basic probability and ratios) to this problem.
I feel like i'm writing 2 + 2 = 4 on a blackboard and every now and then someone comes in a says "I like that 2 + 2 = 3" Not a single comment advocating for a 4 man party has put any thought into whether their statements make sense. And when someone goes through it step by step they don't even read it.
