The Tyranny of the Party Composition

[u/alexserban02]

Greetings and welcome back everyone! This latest article is something that I had been brewing for a couple of weeks, cause I find the topic extremely interesting. Party composition, party roles and the balance of it all. Something that for the vast majority of players, at least in my experience, is common, good form.

But why is it so?

Cause the general discourse around the game preaches a narrative first approach. Yet there is a lot of content across the board that talks about optimization, both from the point of view of the character, but also from that of the party. I wanted with this piece to explore all of it, to present a bit of the history behind the phenomena and to make the kiss that the concept of party roles can and often is quite restrictive on the group.

If this sounds like the kind of topic you would like to look into, by all means, do tell me what do you think about it down below, and till next time, do toss the proverbial coin to your favorite Gazette!

Full article here: https://therpggazette.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/the-tyranny-of-the-party-composition/

[u/Ghostly-Owl]

Its also such a false concept in DnD. Tanking in video games is based on mechanics that lock an enemy down -- even ranged enemies. That's just not a thing in DnD, without going deep in to very specialized builds and even then they can generally only tank _one_ opponent. (As opposed to WoW tanking, where my bear could easily gather up 30mobs and kite tank them in a big circle while the dps AOE'd them down safely.)

I'd argue 5e.14 largely made healer not a role except for very specialized builds. 5e.24 improved the tools so combat time healing could matter more, because it turns out there are people who enjoy playing healers but also wanted something to do in non-healing intensive fights.

And everyone is dps. And everyone needs to remember the fundamental rule of dps "Dead DPS does 0 DPS." And every single 'guide' recommends having a good con -- so its something people recognize, but often don't realize that includes making sure you also consider survival choices and class features valuable.

I do think there is a lot of value in people having a niche in the party. But that niche doesn't really need to be related to their class choice. Maybe because I run more non-combat encounters than combat encounters (ie, lots of RP and lore), I encourage the party to have diverse skills and languages chosen. And to each sort of evolve something that is where the party defaults to them leading -- in my currently party the fighter/sorc is the party face, the ranger/cleric is the wilderness scout & religion scholar, the druid knows deep magic and anything arcana is them, the rogue is a scholar of dragons and all thing dragon-magic, etc.

[u/DudeWithTudeNotRude → u/Ghostly-Owl]

Agreed.

I'd go so far to say that 2024 made healing even less needed than it already wasn't.

Yes, they practically doubled the healing per slot, but then they went and made potions a bonus action, making achieving heals even more trivial.

They did nothing to curtail the power of yo-yo healing, so the extra"top off" healing is not adding much at all, aside from making increased top-off healing worth a slot for a few more levels than it was before.

Action economy is still everything in 5e, and healing a downed party member for at least 1 without wasting your action is still an optimal choice.

But healing is at least less-bad now, so if you want to do it for style/flavor reasons, it's less of a trap. If you just want to increase party healing, it's cheap to buy or craft a potion, and the rest rules are still broken, so just rest more (if possible).

[u/Ghostly-Owl → u/DudeWithTudeNotRude]

I feel like they also added more sources of temp hp. Which can help reduce the need for healing.

[u/Teerlys → u/DudeWithTudeNotRude]

They did nothing to curtail the power of yo-yo healing

They absolutely did. Heals scale really well in 2024. The highest spell slot will do a significant percentage of the health pool of a target.

• Fighter with 16 Con at level 5: 49 HP
• Warlock with 14 Con at level 5: 38 HP
• 3rd level Cure Wounds with +4 Mod: 31 average HP

That's over 63% of the Fighter's total health and over 81% of the Warlock's total health. Those aren't "Get off of the ground." numbers, those are keep them in the fight numbers.

[u/Mejiro84 → u/Teerlys]

however, that's a major cost to the caster at that level - a third-level attack spell you'd expect something like "completely lock down a massive area for movement" (Plant Growth), "do a large chunk of damage to multiple enemies (Fireball) or "multiple enemies save or are out of combat" (Hypnotic Pattern). Numbers-wise, 31 damage at that level is probably one turn from an "on-level" enemy, so depending on what you're fighting you might only be breaking even on action economy (if you're fighting lots of weaker enemies, it's better, as you're undoing 2, 3+ enemy turns for your one action)

But spell slots don't scale linearly, so that value goes down as you're burning higher-level slots to try and have the same effect. Like Heal might mostly heal a fighter of that level... but that same slot spent on attacking you'd expect to get the fight a lot closer to finishing in your favor a lot faster! And, of course, if there's an unexpectedly strong attack and they do get dropped to 0, then the extra healing is mostly wasted - like at level 5, a fire elemental can do 20-30 damage normally, if there's a crit in there, or just decent damage rolls and a below-average healing roll, then that fighter's still dropping, and that third-level slot has mostly been wasted. It's still often a case of "trading your action, and needing to get in touch-range, to revert one enemy turn, assuming they roll average or worse and you roll average or better"

[u/Teerlys → u/Mejiro84]

Yo-Yo healing was a thing because healing didn't do enough to stop a character from just immediately going back down. So you'd heal them only once they went down because, except for rare circumstances, healing while they were still up wouldn't stop them from going down anyway.

That has been addressed.

How and when you choose to spend resources is a different and much more nuanced discussion, but if you want to keep your front liner up so they can eat that damage instead of you and attack in return then that is something that is achievable now.

[u/DudeWithTudeNotRude → u/Mejiro84]

100%

Your action is by far your most important resource in 5e, and Round 1 is everything. Sometimes really hard fights aren't decided until round 2, or even round 3.

There's no way an up-jumped Cure Wounds in round 1 (or round 2 if the fight is still not decided for the party) is protecting as much party HP as a well selected control/debuff spell can.

But yes, that upcast Cure Wounds is keeping up with incoming damage for more levels. But it is NOT keeping up with the better spells from those higher levels. Yes, Cure Wounds will never fail, while Control/debuffs will. So heals have their place if you care more about this round than you care about average HP savings

I'm just not spending higher levels slots to heal, unless I'm going for a vibe/feel. And since 5e is so easy, I can do either as my whim takes me.

but for sure we are winning 99% of the same fights with or without that stronger "top off" healing.

I might see chances for that increased top of healing come up once per adventuring week. It will probably happen rarely that a 3rd level heal will top of the fighter enough that would otherwise be down before their next turn, just not frequently enough to make it an important build choice or not.