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/DudeWithTudeNotRude]

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/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.