One of the early Dungeons & Dragons adventures suggested a ratio of 40% fighters, 30% magic-users, 20% clerics and 10% thieves for a good proportion of character types on that adventure. It is a ratio and a concept that has stayed with me: the ideal of the party that can take on all challenges!

Back in those days there was a smaller selection of classes, of course, and due to the fact that we rolled randomly for ability scores and you needed high scores to take the various subclasses, the majority of characters were of those classes.

Of course, how often did a party have nine or ten player characters? Even the wandering NPC party in the AD&D DMG had 2-5 player characters and the remainder of the nine made up of level 0 men-at-arms or lower-level henchmen. Yes, if you were playing Against the Giants with a tournament group, you likely were of that sort, but by the time I got to the game, a group of 4-6 players (and likely no henchmen) was more common than not.

The ideal, for me in later years, became more: You need two heavily armoured characters to stand in front to protect the magic-users. You need a magic-user to deal with threats only magic can overcome. You need a cleric to heal. And you may need a thief to deal with traps.

But with the plethora of classes available today, once a group gathers together, can you be assured that you can deal with everything that gets thrown at you?

Likely not.

Or maybe you can?

A lot comes down to the challenges you face. If everything you face is a combat against something that has no immunities, then I am going to guess you could overcome everything in the adventure.

But if you come to a locked iron door, what then?

Honestly, this is a problem that afflicts even early D&D with its more predictable classes. The thief might – very likely – fail the open lock check. The wizard might not have knock prepared.

If I came up against a locked door I absolutely needed to get through – and there wasn’t a way at hand – I would take the party out of the dungeon and go in search of someone to hire. But that ceases to be an option in time-dependent adventures or ones where you are far from home.

Dungeons & Dragons does not have to be about winning all the time. There can be things that defeat you, although you hope that the reason you failed to save the world wasn’t a locked door!

You’d like to think that the situation you’re in allows you other options. That the DM can reward creative tactics so that you don’t have to use the One True Way to get past a door.

But still, there are assumptions in what a party can handle. And if everyone goes their own way when creating a character, should the DM change the game to fit the party, or let the pressures of standard D&D play cause you to find the game more difficult than otherwise?

Consider a party where no-one has a higher AC than 12.

Consider a party where no-one can heal.

Consider a party where everyone is specialised in ranged weapons.

These are the outlier groups compared to what you expect in a game of D&D, and they change which scenarios they can handle.

Although there is trouble in running published adventures for such groups, is it also more difficult for a DM to create challenges for them?

It’s hard. I have no answers. How do you write challenges for such a range of characters? And should a player create a character to fill a gap in the party, or instead just to play their dream character?