Does this ever happen to anyone else.
Sometimes I'm the last person to decide on a class or join a game that's in the middle of a campaign. Normally I'll ask "What kind of character's is everyone else playing?" and I get answers like, 'A Fighter, a Rogue, a Ranger and a Paladin' and my first thoughts are, "This party is gonna die." so I roll up a wizard or cleric. Sometimes I come in the middle of a group where no one can cast or replicate Restoration, and I know how annoying that can be. Sometimes its almost no casters with 5th level spells, sometimes its a party of all full casters with low HP. Essentially the party lineup before you get there has some kind of giant glaring hole, no synergy, or one fireball away from a TPK, so you wind up throwing something together that will keep the group alive instead of the thing you were thinking about playing.
I developed this instinct because early in starting to play I joined a group without knowing what everyone else was doing and within the first session it turned out that nothing anyone was playing could handle a horde of Wights. Having a divine caster, martial or even just a caster that could target something other than will saves would have been helpful. The biggest hole always seems to be divine casters, healers and beatsticks. The beatstick particularly; I've seen plenty a group fall victim to the monk NPCs vs a party of full casters with laughable CMD, or the gang of rogues with alchemical weapons and nets. When the worst classes in the game can pants you easily something's wrong and too many times a regular ole tank could have solved the problem. That and Kobolds. The flavor of Kobolds implies traps and guerrilla warfare. When the GM takes this to heart and you have the wrong party makeup Kobolds are frikkin scary.
While I can't say that a dedicated healer class is absolutely necessary... you had better have someone with UMD and have room in the budget for wands and scrolls.
The lack of divine casters is probably because no one wants to be a healbot (but going back to above- make a heavy metal cleric of asmodeus and grab a wand of CLW- make it clear that you have other concerns than healing)
I can vaguely understand why the beatstick thing happens- because melee characters do not have as much leverage as casters, they underestimate the importance of the role. Generally, you want someone to be able to wail on enemies crippled by the casters who are not using up resources like blast spells. That, combined with some mundane but resourceless tactics (reach builds are good) changes things considerably.
Also, some people think that AC is useless later on; sure, eventually, you will not be able to stop the full BAB iterative...but AC stops you from being victim to the BAB-5 and BAB-10 hits; the way hp scales means that the single guaranteed first hit doesn't matter much...but making every single attack in a full attack guaranteed means you are in trouble. So it is usually best to get at least a modest AC...and maybe have one person that makes AC one of their general goals- this game is built around classes having different forms of defense (different saves, lighter armor builds tending to have better touch AC, etc.). Neglecting any of the basic forms of defense as a party sounds like a bad idea overall, and encourages normally weak builds to exploit your weakness.
I would disagree with the dedicated healer thing, mostly because of everything but HP damage. Status effects annoying to have and ability damage is even worse. We were playing one game with a large dungeon and it seemed like every other monster could do something way worse than HP damage. At the point I feel like Restoration NEEDS to be in the party if nobody has a similar effect. Then there are effects that will outright remove your party beatstick from the fight that usually requires a will save. When I play Oracle or Cleric I generally play the wetnurse and I can understand not wanting to play that but when I played a reach divine caster with emphasis on combat and summoning all of a sudden the status effects seemed to multiply.
The plus side is that when you're trying to fill a space you at least have 40 options worth in the game.
So don't sweat it, and try picking out what you'd like to play next during a current game and be first in line next time.
There is one time where I just kind of handed my character concept to someone else. I wanted to be a Hawkeye, arrow Alchemist. When the rest of the party was Barbarian, Witch and a worse built alchemist with everyone having some kind of snowflake concept I switched to Oracle because if not so there would be two alchemists and an average diplomacy check of -2.
I prefer my groups play the characters they [i]want[i/] to play rather than being forced to fill in a role. If no one is playing a healer, I'll hand out healing potions like candy. If no one is playing someone with arcane knowledge, I'll throw in a friendly NPC with arcane capabilities or reduce the amount of magic they may face.
As a player, though, I really don't mind filling in that last role unless there's a very specific character I've been wanting to play. Which actually just happened recently, because I've been wanting to play the enforcer class from Super Genius Games.
I actually enjoy playing clerics. But I make it clear that I'm not a healbot, too. In fact, there are few roles I don't enjoy playing so I often do choose last and fill in a hole but I don't mind it.
I also find on occasions where I don't do this, players who choose after me will make characters without concern for party makeup. And will complain that the GM should adjust. We didn't make anyone who can handle traps? Oh, the GM shouldn't put traps in the game! I disagree with this philosophy... so I don't choose early anymore.
I actually enjoy playing clerics. But I make it clear that I'm not a healbot, too. In fact, there are few roles I don't enjoy playing so I often do choose last and fill in a hole but I don't mind it.
I also find on occasions where I don't do this, players who choose after me will make characters without concern for party makeup. And will complain that the GM should adjust. We didn't make anyone who can handle traps? Oh, the GM shouldn't put traps in the game! I disagree with this philosophy... so I don't choose early anymore.
I agree with this, which is why I generally wind up filling in gaps.
The Charisma thing is terrible. I've died once from allies in PFS that way. Then it happened again and my character left the party to die in a pit of Entangle full of fire. But then again I've had a lot of bad luck with PFS in this regard. One time I play a halfling cavalier with 14 STR and had the highest STR score in the party. We encountered a ghost in Crypt of the Everflame and nearly died. It didn't help that half the party were wielding guns and somehow we kept crossing things with good touch AC, plus there were no divine casters so every pile of undead took way longer. Twice we had a whole party of martials and the first thing that happened were swarms, then someone in heavy armor fell into water and drowned and nobody could do anything because they were wearing heavy armor too. Then the time we died because again half the party were gun wielders vs a bunch of undead with DR and no divine casters. In fact the only times I've died in PFS were times when the party was nowhere near well rounded.
Does this ever happen to anyone else.
More times than I can count. Mainly it's due to the fact that I play games with players who have a widely varying level of system mastery (and i'm usually on the higher end of that slider bar), although sometimes it's because I play with people who don't care about table balance.
That and Kobolds. The flavor of Kobolds implies traps and guerrilla warfare. When the GM takes this to heart and you have the wrong party makeup Kobolds are frikkin scary.
there's a 2nd edition module called Dragon Mountain (a fairly high level one, at that) in which Hordes of kobolds factor in significantly. and in which I have seen several groups of adventures end in less than glory.