Have you ever gamed with a player who horned in on your territory? I'm talking about stuff like comic related.
I suspect that the classic lineup of fighter/cleric/wizard/thief is popular not simply because it works, but because it gives everybody a clearly defined role. Fighter is the best at fighting. Thief gets to be the skill guy. Wizard and Cleric handle offensive and defensive magic respectively, and everybody feels like they’re the best at their own thing. Having a well-defined role in the group allows you to carve out your own little chunk of conceptual real estate. You’re the lord of your chosen domain, and that feeling ties straight into the lizard brain power fantasy at the heart of this hobby. Finding out that some Johnny-come-lately has come to kick you off of your property makes your character feel lesser: less powerful, less interesting, and certainly less special.
So here's my question for discussion. When there is conceptual overlap, how do you resolve it? Is it better for one player to specialize elsewhere, or should you learn to let your twin dudes live side-by-side?
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My party has 7 members and a temporary playtest character Arkus. Overlapping roles are almost inevitable.
The old-hand group in my current campaign is halfling rogue Sam, elf ranger Zinfandel, gnome druid Stormdancer, and gnome rogue Binny. Fortunately, Sam has the scoundrel racket based on Diplomacy and Deception and multiclassed to draconic sorcerer to become a magical trickster, and Binny has the thief racket specializing in Stealth and Thievery and acts as a sniper archer.
When I went online in March 2020 due to the pandemic, we gained three more player characters: goblin champion Tikti, catolk monk Ren'zar-jo, and leshy sorcerer Honey. Honey's bloodline is fey rather than draconic like Sam, but she is also a high Charisma diplomat and tricky with magic. And her spells are primal, overlapping with the druid Stormdancer. I see no problems with Sam and Honey working together, because the players are a lot like each other, mother and daughter, and like working together. And Honey and Stormdancer have taken opposite roles in their spells. Stormdancer does damage and Honey does healing.
Arkus and Ren'zar-jo have an overlap as athletic melee characters, but multiple martials don't really conflict. They roleplayed a minor rivalry in their first session together, but when Ren'zar-jo saved Arkus from falling down a cliff, they became friends.
Furthermore, we have a Pathfinder 2nd Edition twist on this. The teamwork tactics that are strong in PF2 work well if each PC is different, yet can work together. When a particular ability will exploit a monster's weakness or nullify its strengths, then the characters with that ability become the spearhead of the party and the rest of the party plays support. Having characters like my party, different yet overlapping, is optimal.
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Nowwdays I think the old 4 class roles are not that adequate for niche protection in the classic Dungeon Crawling Team Game because...
1)Everyone in the party must join in combat encounters to survive anyway, so Best At Fighting should be split into multiple in-combat roles to excel at (melee/ranged weapon, meat shield, debuffing, damage prevention, etc.).
2)For non-combat encounters like Research, Scouting, and Negotiation, you usually need one specialist (especially viable in PF2 as Follow The Leader is a thing supported from the start/CRB) who rolls all important skill checks relevant for each event, so it's not wise to roll them all in one basket(PC, usually Rogue in the old model).
3)As magic was nerfed hard already, this might be the historic chance to mold them into what I think was its intended role (other than the occasional mega-sized Oomph), patching up holes not covered in the party and rare utility which can logically only be done by such (breathing in water/space, intercontinental teleportation, etc.).
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I think this is most dominantly determined by the number of players in the party.
If you have three players, there are so many different roles, you'll be hard-pressed to have all of them covered at all. With four players it gets a bit easier but you still have to allocate well. With five players you have to do a bit of planning to make sure you don't overlap too hard. Finally, with six and more players you really start to get collisions.
Second, I wouldn't say the classic four food groups division is the best one. Rather, I'd say in combat everyone has a role, and out of combat everyone has a role.
Out of combat: the social one, the jock (Athletics..), the sneaky one, the academic, the healer, the nature/outdoors person...
In combat: the front-line anvil/hammer, the ranged attacker, the skimisher, the supporter/healer, the controller/blaster...
Since both in-combat and out of combat stuff can take a big chunk of your game time, I think it's better to ensure everyone has a fun role to play in both, rather than saying "the rogue does the out of combat skill monkey stuff". Nah, out of combat the wizard is doing the Intelligence-driven academic stuff, the cleric dabbles in Nature and Survival too because Wisdom makes it easy, the bard of course has social stuff, it turns out the Barbarian also has Survival and Nature because he wanted a good Will save...
But the game pushes you to kinda naturally divide the roles. You get only so many skill boosts over your career, and there are more skills than that. A rogue can top out on around 6 skills, others around 3. A four-player party covering all the food groups thus gets roughly 3+3+3+6=15 skills fully covered, assuming there's no overlap (there'll be some). There are 16 skills.
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I think there's a clear shift in focus from "niche specialists" into more well-rounded characters.
Just a couple simple observations:
Spellcasters have gone from "couple of nukes per day" into a more sustained mode, with cantrips being perfectly viable combat routines that you can cast all day long.
AC/AB/saves between different characters should be way closer to each other than in 3.X-PF1. Specialists will still have noticeably higher stats than those who've decided to ignore some aspects, but there's no longer situations where you have an AC 40 monk tanking and a AC 16 wizard on the backline.
Biggest difference is in skills, however:
3.5: Something like 35 different skills. Practically speaking, party will have gaps in skills even with considerable investment to skills. My pet peeve is Monk - already a very MAD class gets just 4 skillpoints and has to decide between such things as "Do I want to see traps or creatures or maybe listen well instead? Should I be able to hide or move silently? What If I want to be an athletic guy, which one do I want to drop: Swim, Climb, Balance, Tumble, Jump, Escape Artist?"
PF1 was a considerable improvement with 26 skills (Said Monk could be both athletic, stealthy, AND perceptive! Whoo!)
PF2 has vastly different approach. Class ability score focus has moved considerably from Multiple Attribute Dependant towards Single Attribute Dependant so it's easier to invest in intelligence. All characters get 1 skill (and 1 lore) from their background, and all classes get at least 4 skills and (I think) all races have an ancestry feat option at lvl 1 to gain 2 extra skills. That's 5 skills on minimum. There's 16 different skills (plus lore). A party of 4 should easily have nearly all skills covered even without a skill monkey - they might not be "the best" in all skills, but they certainly should be able to at least try.
In addition, anyone can pick up some elemental attacks with cantrips with a spellcasting multiclass dedication (or in case of some races, an ancestry feat). Anyone can be a perfectly capable healer by investing in medicine, you're no longer dependent on clerics or CLW wands or potions.
I think there's been a clear shift in focus of the game. It's no longer a team of highly specialized one-trick ponies/specialist - In 2e, it's more often a team of highly capable professionals who're complementing each other and patching up each others weaknesses, being able to often fill their main specialized role AND perform adequately in 1-3 other roles too - and it doesn't even take a lot of effort to accomplish that - I feel like it comes naturally from the way 2e character building is done.
Instead of worrying about niches and stealing shtics, I think players should focus on being a bit more flexible instead of focusing on one trick. If your sorcerer casts a fireball and my monk/wizard MCD responds with "That's a good idea! Fireball too!", I don't think that's stealing your shtick, that's complementing it by switching from my single target damage punches into AoE mode to suite the party's tactics.
EDIT: Just wanted to add to the 3.5->PF1 monk comparison the note that my 2e monk has (at lvl 8): Religion and Nature (11), Society (13), Acrobatics, Deception, Occultism, Stealth, Thievery (14), Arcana (16) and Athletics (17). I lack Crafting, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Medicine, Performance, and survival. My style + shield gives high AC; wizard dedication gives elemental and ranged options. I greatly enjoy the way 2e enables players to make this sort of well rounded characters, and so far the adventures seem to encourage it too.
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Oh.
There's one caveat here. Sometimes, you only get one try (or have to wait a while until you get another try), such as Medicine to treat wounds (1 hour cooldown). In those cases, you should probably just talk it through with the group if the "trained, wisdom 10, no skill feats" fighter wants to use medicine when you've sank considerable resources to become -the best at it-. Even then though, it's less about stealing shticks and more about party coordinating effectively: Instead of the fighter trying to heal the badly wounded barbarian and thus locking you and your continual recovery out, the fighter can complement your skills by acting as an assistant: While you're spending the next 30-40 minutes taking care of the near-death barbarian, the fighter could try to take care of the wizard and sorcerer that took light wounds from a stray AoE blast.
Personally I feel in PF2 this isn't a huge issue. I think it is more important to just make sure every player is having fun. For example in PF2 characters can be so different and versatile that two Rogue's can actually play quite differently.
For example would could use the Champion Dedication / Bastion and actually be the team "tank".
The other Rogue could take Dual Weapon Warrior dedication and dish out as much damage as possible.
Even two Rogues taking the same multiclass dedication can be super different. For example would could take all the shield feats from champion while the other one takes champion reaction + lay on hands to support the party.
So for combat it is very unlikely that even same classes will have the exact same role. Also I kind of find it fun if players sometimes overlap. I find it boring if EVERY group is Tank>DPS(Bow Or Melee)>Healer>Magic Character.
Skills are a different story but as long as your GM is taking notes he can tailor your game to the skills you are are lacking though. For example if no one has intellect they shouldn't make a puzzle part of the main storyline that requires Arcana/Occultism/Crafting...
The nice things about skills is all you really need is a starting 14 or higher then you can be great at 2 or 3 skills of your choosing. I definitely prefer it when everyone is good at different skills in a group though.
Then again it can be kind of interesting when players have to do other tactics to get around obstacles. If no one has Charisma your group just has to tell the truth and get townspeople to like you through action rather than diplomacy checks!
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I think there's a clear shift in focus from "niche specialists" into more well-rounded characters.
Absolutely.
As a matter of fact, I'm somewhat rolleyes-y at the whole concept of "steals your schtick." It presumes there's a schtick, that one can somehow own a schtick, and that someone could steal it.
Every character should be good at 2-3 things.
Gone are the days where wizards get 1d4 hit points. Sometimes they just need to pull out a dagger and stab someone in the neck.
The worst offenders have to be bards, who get 8 hp/level and some type of weapon and armor proficiency, and still stick to "their schtick" like they're like the other spellcasters with zero armor proficiency and not even all simple weapons.
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I mean, you can have schticks. You could have a rogue and a cleric both diving on the medicine skill feats and with Ward Medic, one of them is quickly becoming redundant.
So a bit of coordination is good, because two people taking redundant abilities in a small party, means you're missing out on something else.
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I sometimes play PFS with a friend who always has good ideas to benefit optimally from the system, such as using a trident as a Paladin, or taking Assurance in Athletics as a Wizard.
I am very tempted to take this with my own PFS characters, which means we will, for example, have 2 paladins with tridents in the same group.
I think if anyone finds it too copycatty, I will change my character accordingly, even if it means they become less optimized (and thus less fun to play since they are more likely to fail in their attempted endeavours).
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Well sometimes having the same role isn't a downside. The Age of Ashes party I play in for example has a fast-moving melee fighter, fast-moving melee monk and (comparatively slow) melee rogue, and me as flexible cleric in the background.
That's a lot of melee, but it works pretty well. I've shifted my spell selection to usually keep some flying or water-walking spells in the pocket to counter any deeply problematic terrain or enemies, and get our melees back in the game.
A little off topic but I think it would actually be really fun to play in a very specialized group. For example a super stealthy charismatic group would be super fun.
Not only would you be able to actually stealth as a group but you could talk your way out of a lot of situations!
Pretty much every TTRPG I have played there is always one or two players that just ruin stealth for everyone :(
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A little off topic but I think it would actually be really fun to play in a very specialized group. For example a super stealthy charismatic group would be super fun.
Not only would you be able to actually stealth as a group but you could talk your way out of a lot of situations!
Pretty much every TTRPG I have played there is always one or two players that just ruin stealth for everyone :(
I believe in PF2 they only ruin it for themselves.
I mean, you can have schticks. You could have a rogue and a cleric both diving on the medicine skill feats and with Ward Medic, one of them is quickly becoming redundant.
So a bit of coordination is good, because two people taking redundant abilities in a small party, means you're missing out on something else.
Bolding mine. I want to emphasize that part - I totally agree on "a bit," meaning "some, but not a lot".
In an extended campaign, some coordination is good. But redundancy isn't the end of the world, and not even bad all the time. In your example, redundancy prevents one freak crit on a cleric from snowballing into a TPK. Definitely not worth a rogue investing ability boosts and investing skills to the Ward Medic level in some vain effort to keep up with the healing output of a cleric, but enough for a 10-WIS rogue to, say, take Battle Medicine and Assurance (Medicine) as two of the 10 billion skill feats a rogue gets.
Additionally, having people overly specialize with no redundancy means that if a character dies, the replacement character has to be nearly the exact same build. If the cleric dies, and nobody else has redundant healing abilities, the replacement character has to be drawn from a pretty small list of character types. Parties need to learn how to deal with holes in their skills.
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And in PFS, where the party composition changes with every scenario, redundancy is even more important, because there's a very large, positive utility increase between 0 healers and 1 healer, relative to the small, negative utility drop between 1 healer and 2 healers.
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I think the absolutely required skills in PFS are Athletics, Medicine, Society and Survival.
I expect rather a lot of redundancy, at the expense of the other sometimes but not always needed skills.
Don't forget Thievery. By the time you get into Expert tier traps, not having a progressively trained Thievery player marks an instant TPK against complex hazards.