This interesting thought came to me a while ago. Considering there are 12 classes, and a party is considered ideally to have four members, the answer, without going into the math, is 495. Some of these will be, shall we say, less viable than others. :-) I suspect that some, such as the iconic Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, will turn up more often than others in actual play. But considering all of them might bring up some interesting yet heretofore unconsidered possibilities. Any thoughts?
There are probably some odd groups that work well (all Rogue/Monks trained in Stealth), but for a beginner non-optimizer, I'd say you could make a functional group with these classes:
(1) Front-liner (Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian)
(1) Skirmisher (Rogue/Ranger/Monk)
(1) Healer (Cleric/Druid/Alchemist)
(1) Magic-User (Wizard/Sorcerer/Bard)
That's a lot of combinations, not accounting for sub-builds (Healing Bards vs. Summoning Bards).
Interesting. Yeah, that looks good. 81 combinations, I think. My math may be off on that.
How's this for a party for the playtest: Paladin, Ranger, Alchemist, Wizard? We gonna get TPK'd in the first encounter? :-)
Well, you're doubling up on healing, and your ranged attacks are excellent! I'd recommend the Paladin uses a shield, and that the Wizard focuses on utility spells like Summon Monster or Read Aura. If you're playing "In Pale Mountain's Shadow", I'd suggest training in Nature and Survival, to compensate for lower Wisdom scores.
Thanks. We'll see how it goes.
Considering there are 12 classes, and a party is considered ideally to have four members, the answer, without going into the math, is 495.
Only if you forbid having more than one of any given class in the same party.
Otherwise, it's 1365.
Good point, Matthew. Still, I think it's a reasonable assumption. I suppose it might be fun to make a party with four characters all the same class and see how far they get — once. :-)