Here's my thoughts on what roles are in the party, and what each layer really does in the group

okay.. this is just a loose model.

I've got 14 categories here, and they are very debateable, but it's good enough for what we need. so let's just agree to disagree for sake of expedience at this time.

Things lieke aurok being a save or lose... tha's not quite true, but if he performs a chargin leap attack, he is gonna kill virtually anything he hits.. so that stands true in my book.

Vintereth is NOT listed as divine or arcane buffing.... that's simply because I do't see Vin really shelling out a lot of spells in combat to buf other people on the team. Tht's just what I observe at the moment. this may change in the future. it doesn't matter.

sul could be considered a save or lose if he possesses... I just chose to call that debuffing

I don't se Vin really being a tank... although she can certainly go toe to toe with a number of foes. Sul could be considered a tank, because i he posesses something, he can have it fight til it dies... good meatshield, really.

but I had to draw the line somewhere as to what are these characters REALLY likely to be doing with most of their time and resources.

The poit I'm trying to make is... Assuming the four characters in game typically perform these roles, what exactly does the team still need?

Here is my hypothesis:

if these are all viable roles in a four man team as gestalt, then we should have at least one person fulfilling all of these roles.

but we don't have 4... we have potentially 8.

so double the numbers. we can have at least 2 people performing each of these roles, and generally, a gestalt character can fulfill 3-5 of these roles pretty comfortably, and still allow for a lot of variety and uniqueness in builds

.

some of these categories are "more is better".. simply because you can't really have enough of it. You can have too many people buffing every round. You only need so many dispells per round, or how many folks really need to be a utility mage in the partY? most of these roles are good at 25% of the party can do it. the "more is better" simply has no problem if more than 25% is taking these actions on a conistent basis.

so we know what we have (roughly) and we see how many are performing those roles... so we know what is missing. the #'s 1,2,3,4 are hypotheitcal characters. As noew players lock down what they want to play, we can insert their roles into the chart to see how the team is balancing.

For example"

#1 is a straight forward cleric.. maybe cloistered or whatever.. that doesn't eat up much of a gestalt.. so there's lots of room to do crazy outsider stuff if wanted.

#2 is like a wilder//sorceror... lots of raw power, lots of dispels, some utility and support.

#3 is like a wiard/psion... maybe using biofeedback loops and lots of control spells with psi crystal abuse?

#4 is a gishgod at both close and far damage.

These are just examples... I' not encouraging them or necesarily think that is what should be done... just examples of what COULD be done.

debate as you see fit.