Roleplaying is one of the most important parts of an RPG, particularly those of the tabletop variety. At its core, tabletop RPGs are about putting yourself into a role and determining what decision your character would make in a given situation. Although the topic of roleplaying is incredibly important and is something I will likely discuss in-depth in a future article, there is a second type of role in RPGs, one that I’ve touched on a bit in the Idle Rolling series.
Today, we’re going to discuss party roles and some of the misconceptions that surround them within the gaming community.
The “Ideal” Party
Most GMs and players are at least passingly familiar with the stereotypical example of a D&D party: a party of 4 consisting of a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric. Just about every edition of D&D (and Pathfinder) was, from a balance perspective, designed with this stereotypical party of 4 in mind, and each of these four characters fills a unique role within the party. The fighter dishes out melee damage and keeps enemy attention off of the the party’s squishier members. The rogue provides a range of non-combat skills to help with exploration and information gathering (e.g. disabling traps) and can add large bursts of damage in combat via sneak attacks. The cleric heals and buffs the party, and the wizard possesses a range of various utility and crowd control spells.
In most games, the party will generally have a tough time if they lack this balance of roles. A party with nobody to fill the “frontline fighter” type role will have nobody to keep enemies off the party’s more fragile members. A party with no healer is going to struggle to sustain themselves in combat, and a party with no utility caster is going to struggle to keep large groups of enemies under control. Particularly at high-level play, there is usually some form of expectation among the players that they are going to each contribute to this balance of roles to prevent the party from having any glaring weaknesses.
Sometimes, though, the community takes this balance of roles too far. Some groups and players look down on classes that don’t neatly fit one of these stereotypical roles or are a suboptimal choice for one of these roles as are many oddball and suboptimal multiclass builds. On the other end of the spectrum, some players like playing silly or oddball characters, or build characters that end up being unable to meaningfully contribute to the party in combat. This causes the rest of the party to have to pick up the slack, possibly causing an unplanned increase in difficulty if the GM doesn’t adapt to it, and might also lead to the optimized character feeling like a burden to the party, which is never a good place to be in.
Depending on who you ask about character balance, you might be told that “filling the party’s needs” is more important or that “playing what you want” is more important. In reality, though, both of these things are important, and in most cases, they actually aren’t mutually exclusive. The problem is, most players often don’t realize that these two considerations aren’t mutually exclusive. This is because there are a lot of misconceptions about party roles within the gaming community, and most of these misconceptions come from an overly simplistic view of the roles a character can fill within a party.
Breaking Down Roles
To go back to the stereotypical D&D party, the combat roles implied by the standard party composition of a fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard within a party is often broken down into “tank, DPS (or, more accurately, DPR), healer, and utility caster.” Many times, there are also other factors that groups consider, such as having a mix of melee and ranged characters or a mix of divine and arcane casters. Obviously, there are also noncombat roles on top of all this, primarily revolving around skills, but since combat is such a large part of the game and usually the location where a “useless” character is going to impact the party the most, I’m just going to focus on combat roles for now.
If we look at combat as a whole, we find that combat can really just be broken down into a couple of fundamental concepts. Consider the most basic example of combat – a straightforward fight to the death between the party and an equal number of foes. Now, lets say that all the involved combatants are functionally identical – everyone involved in this fight is a level 1 commoner with no weapons, armor, feats, or any other customization options. Let’s also say that the terrain is completely neutral and that both sides are exactly equal in terms of tactics. In this theoretical example, we would expect both sides to have approximately an equal chance at victory. Obviously, the dice will end up favoring one side or the other, but if we were to run the exact same combat scenario a large number of times, we would expect to see the win ratio for each side to be about 50 percent.
Now, obviously, the combatants don’t want the difference between victory and death to be pure random chance, and this is where classes and character builds start to come in. All of our character customization options allow us to improve our odds of coming out on top. Though these many options can take many different forms, ultimately, for them to be useful in combat, they have to help us more efficiently accomplish our goal in combat – namely, to reduce our enemies’ HP to zero before they reduce our HP to zero. If we want to better accomplish this goal, we need to take options that either help us reduce our enemies’ HP to zero quicker, help us survive longer so we can deal more damage and get our enemies to zero quicker, or improve our allies’ ability to do either or both of these things. These three methods of accomplishing our ultimate goal in combat can effectively be summarized as damage (DPR), control, and support.
These three concepts are the true “combat roles,” and our “stereotypical party roles” are really just different combinations of these three concepts. The frontline fighter can attract enemy attention and withstand hits that would be devastating to other members of the party (control) while dishing out melee damage. The rogue puts out bursts of sneak attack damage, and usually flanks or disorients foes in the process, making them easier targets for the rest of the party (support). The cleric can buff and heal allies, improving their ability to survive and deal damage (support) or debuff foes, making it harder for enemies’ to strike at the party (control).
The wizard boasts a wide range of spells that can contribute in all three areas – powerful AoE spells can deal large bursts of damage whenever enemies are caught in a group, buffs and healing spells support the rest of the party, and certain other spells debuff, disable, or lock down enemies (control). However, the wizard is usually not as efficient at these roles as other classes, or might have the effectiveness of these spells be more conditional – AoE spells deal lackluster damage against single targets, buff and healing options are not as plentiful as the cleric’s, and control spells are often conditional and usually rely on the target failing a save to be fully effective. The wizard also has to determine what mix of damage, control, and support he wants when he prepares spells – he doesn’t have full access to all three roles at the same time.
Damage (DPR)
The damage role is the simplest of the three roles to understand for the sole reason that it is the most straightforward. The goal of combat in its purest form is to bring the opponents to 0 HP before they bring the party to 0 HP. In order to bring the opponents to 0 HP, the party has to do damage. And in order for the party to bring the opponents to 0 HP before the PCs themselves are brought to 0 HP, they need to deal more damage than the enemy. The more damage the party can deal each round, the quicker they will bring their opponents to 0 HP and win the combat.
In my experience, the damage role is also the role most appealing to a plurality of players, if not a straight majority. Part of this is because of it being the easiest to understand – virtually every tabletop player realizes that dealing more damage each round will, generally, end combats quicker. More than that, however, the damage role is also the role where its impact is the most obvious. When a PC lops off an enemies head, explodes a group of foes with a fireball, or gives some poor foe a third eye socked with an arrow, the impact can immediately be seen. The sense of satisfaction from a damage role is immediate: you hit something, and it either dies or takes a huge chunk of damage.
Most damage-focused builds primarily use one of three approaches: the brute, who focuses on maximizing the power of his strikes, the striker, who tries to get as many attacks in as possible, and the blaster, who focuses on attacks that can deal high damage to many foes at once. Though most builds will have some combination of these three, there will almost always be one approach that a damage build will most closely identify with.
Brute
The brute wants to make every attack count. Most melee DPR builds tend to take this approach and combine it with control elements: characters with extremely high Strength who wade into the thick of battle and strike their foes with all their might. The traditional idea of a “tank” is really a “brute” DPR build with a emphasis on control, and such a character will usually aim to draw enemies attention, shrugging off their attacks while dishing out damage themselves. With the exception of those “tank” builds that might use a shield for more AC, most brutes focus on a two-handed weapon to maximize damage per attack, sometimes even using an oversized weapon for this purpose.
The most extreme form of this approach is characters heavily built around Vital Strike. These characters forego extra attacks in order to concentrate all of their power into one single swing. More usually, though, this approach is combined with elements of the striker approach, where a character might use full attacks when able but switch to Vital Strike when dealing with enemies that have high defense or when more mobility is needed. Alternatively, a character might just forego Vital Strike and stick with their normal iterative attacks, but focus on maximizing the damage of each of these iterative attacks rather than finding ways to gain additional attacks on top of these.
The main advantage of the brute lies in his ability to overwhelm enemy defenses. The brute doesn’t have attack penalties like those from Two Weapon Fighting or Rapid Shot and sometimes, in the case of Vital Strike builds, makes all of his attacks at full BAB. This means that the brute will hit more frequently against enemies with high AC. On top of this, by maximizing damage dealt per strike, the brute is less affected by other defensive abilities such as damage reduction, and is also still capable of dealing high damage even when unable to make a full attack.
The disadvantage of the brute is that his damage ceiling is typically not as high as a character that invests in obtaining extra attacks, and his damage tends to be more swingy. The brute may be less likely to miss than most strikers due to having less attack penalties, but whenever he does miss, he loses out on a large chunk of damage. In particular, a Vital Strike character that misses his attack ends up dealing no damage during that turn. In comparison, a striker is much less likely to have turns where they deal zero damage due to having so many attacks, even if their chances to miss are greater than most brutes.
Striker
The striker takes the opposite approach of the brute when it comes to maximizing damage – rather than maximizing the damage of each individual attack, the striker focuses on getting as many attacks as possible and builds around abilities that add extra damage on every attack. Characters specializing in Two-Weapon Fighting are the most common example of this type of approach – just between the TWF feat tree and normal iterative attacks, a full-BAB class will have seven attacks once their BAB hits +16.
Abilities that add a set amount of damage on each hit synergize extremely well with characters built around extra attacks. By far the most common of these, and perhaps the most powerful, is Sneak Attack in 3.X/Pathfinder, adding a fistful of d6’s on every successful hit so long as the enemy is unaware of the attacker or otherwise caught flat-footed. Some striker builds can also work extremely well with abilities based around critical hits. For example, a TWF build with seven attacks per full attack, Improved Critical, and wielding weapons with a normal critical range of 19-20 has a 20% chance of threatening a critical on each hit. With seven attacks, that build has a 79% chance of threatening at least one critical hit each round (though of course, the attack in question still has to beat the target’s AC if it isn’t a natural 20).
The striker’s advantages and disadvantages are the reverse of the brute’s. The maximum damage the striker can deal each round is usually higher than the brute’s, but is reliant on successfully landing many hits, and individually, each attack from the striker is less likely to hit than an attack from the brute. Most strikers are also completely reliant on full-attacking to get any decent damage put out in a round, which can present mobility and action economy challenges. The striker also has a much harder time dealing with high AC enemies or breaking through damage reduction than the brute.
Blaster
The blaster is a more unique approach compared to brutes and strikers, and aims to maximize damage through the means of a third variable that usually isn’t relevant for brutes or strikers: the number of targets hit. Rather than focusing on traditional attacks, the blaster focuses on splash weapons, area-of-effect spells, or abilities that let them hit multiple enemies with a single attack, effectively multiplying their damage output by the number of targets hit.
The blaster is capable of outputting massive amounts of damage each round against clusters of enemies, but is also the most situational of the three approaches to the DPR role. Usually, area-of-effect weapons, spells, and abilities deal less damage to an individual target compared to brutes or strikers. If a blaster is only facing a single foe, or if the enemies are not positioned correctly or scattered too far away from each other, the blaster is not going to be able to hit a large number of targets with their attacks and loses out on a lot of potential damage each round.
Control
The control role is all about manipulation and battlefield awareness. Even if the party is capable of out-damaging the opponent, most battles are more than just “two sides hit one another until one wins.” Enemies aren’t going to just sit around and let the party dish out damage on them – intelligent foes are going to try to position themselves on the battlefield in a manner that plays to their strengths and will try to use tactics that let them use their full potential in combat while limiting the potential of the party to react and stop them. Even if a party can considerably out-damage a group of enemies, they could still very well lose if the enemy controls the battlefield. For example, if the party’s main sources of DPR are melee characters, they could very easily lose a fight against a group of ranged enemies if the foes are in a fortified or elevated position far enough away from the party for the melee characters to easily reach it.
It is the job of the control role to disrupt the enemies’ tactics and force them into a position that is favorable to the party. In my experience, this is the most difficult role of the party to play, as more so than any of the other roles, it is heavily reliant on tactics, analysis, and strategy. Effective control players know the strengths and weaknesses of each of the PCs and the party as a whole, and use that information to react on-the-fly to combat situations to put the party in the best position to take advantage of its strengths and cover up its weaknesses.
Most ways of controlling the battlefield fall under some combination of three different concepts: debuffing, lockdown, and battlefield manipulation.
Debuffing
Debuffing is fairly straightforward – the control player uses a spell, ability, or poison to apply a status effect or similar debuff that directly worsens the opponent’s ability to be effective in combat. Some debuffs might do things such as applying a penalty to the opponent’s attack rolls, making it harder for them to deal damage to the party. Other ways of debuffing, such as poisons might cause ability damage, which can directly impact the target’s combat effectiveness – a poison that does Strength damage, for example, will greatly cripple a melee-focused opponent by hurting both their melee chance to hit and melee damage.
Many debuffs also provide elements of lockdown and/or battlefield manipulation. For example, one character build I’ve written up on this site, the “Hand of God,” is heavily based around stacking fear status effects through free demoralize attempts in combat. Most of these fear effects have a debuff element to them, applying penalties to attack roll, saving throws, and/or AC. Some of the higher level effects, however, also lock down opponents. Cowering, for example, prevents the target from moving or taking any actions for the duration. Less severe effects, such as panicked, don’t fully lock down the target but do force them into taking certain types of actions by making them run away during their turn when it is possible for them to do so.
Debuffs tend to rely a lot on the opponent failing a save to be effective, and the majority of them are single-target abilities rather than area-of-effects. This leads to some different strategic challenges depending on the opponent/s. When fighting only a single foe, successful debuffs have a greater impact on the battle, as that debuff is affecting the entirety of the opposition rather than only certain enemies. On the other hand, however, a single opponent may be tougher than the foes seen in a battle against multiple opponents, and as such, might have a better chance of saving against individual debuffs. The control character will need to consider what type of save the foe is most likely to fail and which of their debuffs have the greatest chance of succeeding. Against multiple opponents, each individual foe is likely to have lower saves than the single opponent scenario, so this question is less important, but the control character must instead figure out which target will allow the debuff to have the greatest impact on the battle.
Lockdown
The lockdown element of control considers the ability of a character to prevent a given target from taking action against the party. Rather than debuffs, which directly worsens the target’s ability to be effective in combat, lockdown tries to prevent the target from meaningfully contributing to combat in anyway. The simplest example of this is a melee character using the Dazing/Stunning Assault feat line. Until an opponent is able to save against the daze/stun attempt, they will be unable to take any actions on their own as long as the lockdown character keeps hitting them with melee attacks. The target in question is completely denied the ability to contribute to combat.
Lockdown effects can also simply restrict an opponent’s actions. For example, fear conditions like panicked, as discussed earlier, can restrict the affected opponent to only being able to run away. Other methods of locking down an opponent might not disallow them from taking a certain action at all, but makes it so that the opponent cannot take that action without risk of a significant cost. For example, there is nothing stopping an opponent from trying to get past a character built around attacks of opportunity. However, if the opponent does so, they risk taking serious damage by provoking attacks from the AoO-focused character. This crossbow/readied action build is an example of this type of build.
Lockdown is generally more powerful than debuffs, but less flexible. There are considerably more options for debuffs then there are methods of locking down opponents, and most lockdown abilities are even more reliant on the opponent failing saves than debuffs are. Generally, most debuffs require only a single failed save to take effect, while most lockdown methods, in comparison, will usually offer a new saving throw each round. Dazing/Stunning Assault, for example, only dazes/stuns for 1 round, thus requiring the control character to successfully daze/stun the opponent again each round to keep them locked down. The shorter durations on most of these lockdown effects also means that most of the time, the lockdown character is only able to focus on a single opponent at a time, while a debuffer can spread the focus of their debuff abilities across multiple foes if they so choose.
Battlefield Manipulation
While debuff and lockdown methods of control directly impact the opponent’s ability to act efficiently in combat, battlefield manipulation aims to do this same work indirectly. Rather than applying penalties or locking down the opponent, battlefield manipulation abilities alter or otherwise interact with the battlefield itself in way that is detrimental to opponents. This can be done by physically changing the terrain, interacting with environmental elements, or even just altering the opponent’s perception of the battlefield (e.g. illusions).
One of the most straightforward examples of this is one of D&D/Pathfinder’s most well-known spells, Grease. Though Grease can cause some immediate impacts to opponents by potentially knocking them prone if they are in the targeted area of effect when the spell is cast, the lingering effects of the spell changes the battlefield. For example, say the party is infiltrating an enemy fortress and encounters a group of soldiers in a hallway. The party wizard uses Grease to make a section of the hallway between soldiers and the party slick. Due to the narrowness of the hallway, the soldiers only option to reach the party is now to run through the grease. If the soldiers only have melee weapons and the party has even just one or two characters with strong ranged attacks, the party is now at a huge advantage in any subsequent combat.
The “Tank” Role
Though I’ve mentioned it a couple of times in the DPR and control sections, what many players think of as a “tank” doesn’t really exist in D&D/Pathfinder. You can build a defensively-focused character where you dedicate everything to AC, saves, and other forms of resistance, yes, but that type of build, on its own, is not actually very strong against any GM that properly uses tactics and intelligence when controlling enemies (which good GMs should be doing most of the time). This might sound a little strange to hear at first, but I’ll explain.
A lot of the misconception about “tanks” in D&D comes from the world of video games. In a lot of video games, the “tank” is a valid and often essential part of a team. For example, in many MMORPGs, characters that can aggro enemies and tank their attacks help keep those attacks off of the squishy members of the party, which helps those squishy DPS characters and healers to stay back and dish out damage or heals while remaining relatively safe. There is one critical difference when comparing video games with tabletop RPGs that allows for these builds to be so effective in the video game world. Namely, video games don’t have a GM.
As strange as it is to say considering the incredible technology that exists in our world today, computers are actually pretty dumb. They are better than human minds are at processing large numbers of calculations quickly by many orders of magnitude, but they are reliant on instructions provided by a human in order to carry out a specific task. Though artificial intelligence might change this one day in the distant future, games today have enemies that are usually limited whatever basic tactics that have been programmed by the game’s developers. This basic form of enemy AI is simply not capable of responding to every unique scenario – there are simply too many of them for a developer to program a response every single individual scenario an enemy might find itself in. Even if the developers were somehow able to program a response to every single possibility, they would still be constrained by technical limitations – an AI that complex would require more computing resources than most gaming consoles have available.
Tabletop RPGs do not have this restriction. A good GM is capable of responding intelligently to any situation that might develop, even if they hadn’t planned for it. By extension, GM-controlled enemies will often possess tactics and intelligence that are impossible to replicate in the video game world. GM-controlled enemies are not necessarily going to constantly flail at the character that was built for pure defense while ignoring the party members that are actually dishing out damage. If the defensive character isn’t capable of providing a pressing threat to the enemies, there is nothing stopping them from disengaging from the “tank” to focus on the squishier party members that are actually dealing enough damage to pose a threat.
What all of this means is that you can’t build a pure tank in most games and expect it be effective. If you want to build a defensively-oriented character, you have to have some level of DPR or control. Enemies have to have a reason to keep attacking you, or all those defenses aren’t going to mean anything.
Support
As mentioned in the beginning of this article, ultimately the fundamental idea of combat is to bring the opposition to 0 HP before they can do so to the party. The DPR and control roles both focus directly on this concept, either by bringing the opposition to 0 HP quicker (DPR) or by making it harder for the opposition to bring the party to 0 HP (control). The support role does neither of these things. Instead, the support role dedicates itself to helping the DPR and control roles carry out their respective tasks.
The support role lives and dies by its teammates. Most support-focused characters are not strong at direct combat on their own, and will usually be at a disadvantage if they have to fight on their own. Though their buffs and heals might help them in such a fight, they often aren’t as effective as they would be on an ally who is built for direct combat. When their allies are present, however, a good support player can help accentuate an ally’s strengths to make them even more efficient in combat, or help cover for an ally’s weaknesses to help them survive.
Most support builds have some combination of two elements: buffing and healing.
Buffing
Buffing is the inverse of the control character’s debuffs. Rather than making it harder for opponents to act efficiently in combat, buffs make it easier for allies to do so. Unlike debuffs, buffs are not reliant on saving throws (unless an ally wants to refuse help for some reason). This makes the buffer’s job a bit easier in that they don’t have to consider whether a certain target is likely to save or not. This is countered, however, by the fact that there is generally a wider range of buffs available than debuffs, which puts more emphasis on the buffer being able to determine the best buff to apply in a given situation and which ally to apply it to.
Healing
Healing is pretty straightforward. The party’s goal in combat, as previously mentioned, is generally to get the opposition to 0 HP before they can do the same to the party. By restoring lost HP to a party member, the opposition now has to spend additional time taking away the restored HP before they can get that party member to 0 HP, thus giving the party more time to defeat their opponents or otherwise end the encounter. Perhaps more importantly, timely healing can also prevent the opposition from killing or knocking unconscious any individual member of the party, ensuring that the party doesn’t lose an important source of DPR or control in the middle of combat.
Some players and groups tend to think of healers as their own individual role. Especially in older editions of D&D, just about every capable party had a single character almost exclusively focused on healing. At the time, most healing-focused classes were not as flexible as those in more recent editions, so this wasn’t necessarily an incorrect decision. Prior to 3rd edition, for example, clerics didn’t have the ability to spontaneously cast cure spells. The only method of healing available to them, aside from magic items, were spells, so every non-healing spell prepared by a cleric would cost the party a spell slot worth of healing.
In modern editions of D&D/Pathfinder, this is no longer true. Just about every healing-focused class has access to abilities that allow them to be more flexible with their healing. Both Pathfinder and 5e have variations of “Channel Energy” that can be used as a method of healing by some clerics, and both also have abilities that make it easier to cast or prepare healing spells. Pathfinder, for instance, lets a good cleric spontaneously convert a prepared spell to a cure spell of the same spell level, while 5e allows a cleric to cast Cure Wounds as many times in a day as they have spell slots even if they only prepare it once. This flexibility means that even the most healing-focused character can prepare non-healing spells to give them the ability to fill other roles for the party without giving up the ability to cast heals.
Balance and Redundancy
You’ll notice that the stereotypical party has a fairly even balance of these three major roles. More importantly, multiple members of the party can fufill each of these roles – the party does not rely on a single character to provide each of these roles. Each character will generally focus more on one particular role depending on their build – for example, a fighter built around defense and combat maneuvers has a greater focus on control then damage. If the party’s fighter becomes disabled or otherwise removed from combat, the party’s control capabilities will suffer, but they won’t be removed completely. Without the fighter, the enemies would be able to turn their attention to the more fragile members of the party, but the party isn’t completely defenseless against this – the cleric or wizard could use spells to debuff the enemies and make it harder for them to attack the rest of the party, or use spells to try to stun, root, or otherwise disable their opponents before they can reach the rest of the party. Depending on each character’s build, these options may not always be as effective as the fighter’s ability to attract attention and soak up damage, but the party does still have control options available.
Certain classes, of course, are more suited to specific combat roles than others, but the beauty about most of the commonly-played editions of D&D/Pathfinder today is that most classes have enough flexibility between class options, archetypes, and feats to build towards any of these roles. The rogue, for example, can trade sneak attack damage to apply status effects that lock down enemies and help control the battlefield. Most martial classes have the option of either building towards a more damage-oriented focus or a combat maneuver-based, control focus. Wizards and sorcerers can focus on maximizing their damage spells for a more glass-cannon build with high DPR rather than your typical wizard with more of a support and control tilt. These builds might not always be the most efficient build that class is capable of, but unless you’re playing in a game that has been balanced around extremely highly-optimized characters, you can generally find some way to help fill the party’s needs with whichever class you desire to play.
In the overwhelming majority of games, the most important thing when it comes to building an efficient party comes down to having both balance and redundancy. A party with bad balance between these three combat roles will have weaknesses enemies can exploit. Similarly, party that relies almost entirely on a single character to provide a specific role risks getting into a great deal of trouble if that character is ever separated from the party or disabled in combat. In most games, as long as the party has a good balance of these three roles and has at least some redundancy for each role, the party will be able to manage fairly well regardless of the individual classes of each PC.
Building Around Roles
Knowing that balance and redundancy are both key elements of constructing a well-rounded party when it comes to combat, when deciding on what kind of character to build, the party’s current balance of these roles should be one of your primary considerations rather than shoehorning yourself into a certain class based on the idea of an “ideal” party composition. If the party is lacking in a particular role, you will likely want that missing role to be one of the primary facets of your build.
Once you know what the party needs, if you have a specific class or type of character you want to play, you can then consider whether it is possible to incorporate the needed role into your desired build. For example, if you really want to play a melee damage oriented character and you know that the party already has a ranger (DPR) and a cleric (support), you know that the party’s biggest need is control. Considering that, you might rework your desired build slightly to focus primarily on control with a secondary focus on DPR – for example, a “tank” build that deals enough damage to keep enemies focused on him rather the party’s squishier members, or you might trade some damage potential to use feats such as Dazing/Stunning Assault to lock down foes.
Non-Combat Roles
As a final thought for today, you’ll notice that we’ve mainly discussed combat roles. When it comes to party balance and the “ideal” composition, combat is generally the main area where a poorly-built character can drag down the party in a bad way. There are, however, two main areas of non-combat roles that most parties will also want: the party “face” and the “skills monkey.” The face primarily focuses on social encounters with skills such as Diplomacy or Bluff, and usually has a high Charisma, while the “skills monkey” boasts a large number of skill ranks that let them focus around many skills commonly used for skill challenges, such as Disable Device. Usually classes such as the bard or rogue can handle either of these roles, and some builds of these classes might handle both.
With that said, non-combat roles aren’t intended to be the only role of a particular class or build. It is possible to make a non-combatant build that works, but these types of builds usually work because they still have some means of providing meaningful contribution to combat. For example, this Brewmaster build has high Charisma and numerous skill ranks, making it an excellent choice for a party face, and also has a heavy focus on crafting, mainly with potions and alchemical items, though the build could easily be modified to pick up more item creation feats. All of this gives it great utility outside of combat. The character himself has poor physical abilities and would generally not be of great use in a direct fight, but he can still provide meaningful contributions to combat via the ability to throw potions and draughts from a distance. Despite being a “non-combatant” character, he is still able to provide meaningful contributions via support and control roles.
A non-combat build that provides no meaningful contributions to any of the three major combat roles will only be a burden to the party when it comes to combat. If a four-man party has such a character, they will effectively be taking on combat challenges meant for four characters with only three useful characters, and on top of that, will have to worry about protecting the non-combatant. This puts the party at an inherent disadvantage in combat compared to a party where all four members are able to provide meaningful contributions.
Some groups and players might be okay with having a true non-combatant on the team, or might even find the extra challenge or roleplaying opportunities brought by such a situation interesting, but many others will simply feel like the non-combatant character is just a burden and may have their own enjoyment of the game ruined. If you feel like you absolutely must play a true non-combatant build that can’t contribute to any of the three major roles of combat, you should talk to your group first and make sure that your fellow players are okay with the combat downsides.
This last point applies to more than just non-combat builds. It’s important that you play a character that you like and find interesting to play, but you aren’t the only person at the table. Everyone at the table, including the GM, is there because they want to be and because they find the game to be enjoyable and entertaining. Ultimately, you don’t want to ruin the game for the rest of your group. If you are thinking about running a character who could bring serious downsides to the party, or who could regularly ruin the enjoyment of the game for the rest of the group, you need to make sure the rest of your group is okay with it.
At the end of the day, everyone at the table is there to play a game that they enjoy, and everyone at the table has a responsibility to avoid ruining the game for the group. Your enjoyment of the game should not come at the expense of the rest of the group’s, and if you build a character that does this and takes away enjoyment of the game for the rest of the group, your fellow party members might not find the game to be enjoyable enough to keep playing and you might find yourself without a group. At the same time, you shouldn’t play a character you don’t want to play or don’t find enjoyable solely for the sake of the party. If you do that, you’re just ruining the game for yourself. If you absolutely can’t find a build that you want to play that doesn’t ruin the game for the rest of the group, then you might need to find a new group. Sometimes players just aren’t compatible with a group or with each other, and trying to force things on either side won’t go well for anybody.
When building a character, always remember – both personal enjoyment and the group’s enjoyment are important, but neither can ever completely overrule the other. Just like how an good party has a balance of DPR, control, and support roles, a good character balances your wants with the group’s needs.