Busty Aerith

[A Black Falcon]

In D&D party-based games it's pretty clear... you need a theif for unlocking doors and chests and finding and disarming traps. You need a cleric or druid to heal (and, if you're playing a level 8/9+ party, a cleric specifically because druids don't get Ressurection...). You need fighters or fighter-types to be on the front line. And, like with Clerics, when you get to higher-level play (7, 8, etc), you need a Mage -- otherwise you'll have major problems with spell protections (that is, spells that mages cast on themselves that do things like make them harder to hit, or invulnerable to normal (or even enchanted) weapons, etc... without spells to break those it can be a MAJOR pain to kill mages despite their low health...


The other way (party-based RPG) games go is to not give you much choice -- like Skies of Arcadia. Or, for PC RPGs, Torment. I mean when most of your party is pretty much set for the game (not just the main character or something). You get a couple of choices, sure, but most of the time you'll have the same parties if you did replay the game. That makes things a lot simpler, but restricts what you can do... but if it allows for a tighter story it can work fine. Torment even barely allows for customization of any party members, even the main character, but it allows for it to do more storytelling than most PC RPGs (where typically the main character is created by the player), so it works great...

But it is a good question. Set the characters you can play as more, and increase storytelling with them, or allow for more customization but make the necessary sacrifices you'll have to make in story (particularly inter-character relations)... I think probably the best way to deal with it is to make some games one way and others the other. Black Isle sure did go from one extreme to the other with Torment and then Icewind Dale...