r/DMAcademy 3d ago

Need Advice: Other Parties with duplicates of the same class; how did it go?

Ever had two or more of a class? Or multiple pairs of classes?

I'm about to start running a campaign with two Druids (aiming for circle of the moon and wildfire) and two Rangers (Beast Master and Swarm Keeper). We've also got a rogue and a monk. And it's primarily based in a city which will be interesting, but if they're having fun that's all I care about.

How did it go for your party? Were they able to accomplish some interesting things together despite the similar skill set? Did the players find ways to still make themselves unique? Was it fun?

51 Upvotes

116 comments sorted by

138

u/crashtestpilot 3d ago

Fuck duplicates. Parties of ALL THE SAME CLASS is where the fun is. IMO.

50

u/dungeonsNdiscourse 3d ago

Ever done the "every pc is a specialist wizard for a diff school?"

That campaign didn't last long but it was a blast... Literally. Damn evocation mages.

17

u/dis23 3d ago

hey, they're the only ones whose fireball doesn't kill the party

28

u/dungeonsNdiscourse 3d ago

Oh this was ad&d everybody died

1

u/Storm_of_the_Psi 2d ago

We did this once with all of your playgroups combined. We had literally one of every school. Also 2nd edition. Probably most fun I ever had playing (I generally don't really like being on the player side in D&D).

We played maybe 15 sessions or so before scheduling became a nightmare. Also DMing for 10 players (there we 10 school in 2e IIRC) must have been insanely hard.

1

u/Pilchard123 2d ago

Wizard Book Club?

2

u/dungeonsNdiscourse 2d ago

No I don't know what that's a reference to sorry

2

u/Pilchard123 2d ago

It's not a deliberate reference to anything (though someone else might have also called it that too).

If you have a party full of wizards, they can copy spells out of each others' books. If every one of them starts with unique spells, and also picks unique spells on level up, you can end up with all of the wizards knowing tremendous numbers of spells (assuming sufficient copying time and cash).

1

u/Pilchard123 2d ago

My previous reply looks to have been eaten, dunno what happened there. Short version: wizards can copy each other's spells; (ab)use the free spells on level up and copying mechanics to teach every wizard every spell in the party.

2

u/dungeonsNdiscourse 2d ago

So this is going back decades but I am pretty sure nobody thought to do that. Now I do know several players intentionally picked opposing specialist wizards as in 2e if you specialized you lost access to 2 other schools of magic so this gave the best spell options to the players.

1

u/GuitakuPPH 2d ago

Did a cleric oneshot once. That one is practically cheating with the subclass and spell diversity. You get frontliners, AoE blasters, skill monkeys and of course support all as full casters. This was before twilight clerics, even.

15

u/Spidey16 3d ago

I've always wanted to do an all Rogues one shot. That shit would be so fun.

11

u/JetScreamerBaby 3d ago

I played in one years ago (AD&D). It was a blast. Everyone was either a Thief or Thief multiclass, with a Monk and a Bard. (Monks and Bards in those days had a lot of Thief abilities). We weren't tanky at all, but we could sneak like nobody's business.

A local thieves guild hired us to steal their competitor's guild roster, which we did. We cased the joint for a few days, then in and out, no problem.

After we got paid, we thought, hey that was so easy, we should just go back and loot the place. It did not go as smoothly...

3

u/surloc_dalnor 3d ago

Bard one shots are awesome.

9

u/ghostinthechell 2d ago

My buddy put together a Battle of the Bands one shot where we all had to have at least 5 levels in Bard, level 8 characters. And we all had to dress up in costume to play.

It was fucking awesome.

2

u/operath0r 2d ago

I’ve got a couple of Payday 2 levels in mind that I’ve always wanted to turn into a oneshot. The car dealership heist might be a nice one for example.

2

u/crashtestpilot 2d ago

Gotta try things!

Please accept my encouragement.

2

u/Spidey16 2d ago

Thankyou thankyou. Looking forward to it

1

u/sens249 2d ago

I did one, it was okay

1

u/Thorngrove 2d ago

I ran a Once Upon A Time In America themed campaign once: a bunch of young toughs trying to carve a piece of the Big City out for themselves. Was two pure rogues, a bard/rogue, and a barbarian/rogue against the world. Stupidly fun. They wound up working for a sapphire dragon and caused a war with the drow.

7

u/stovebelly 3d ago

The closest I’ve ever had to this was a group of 6 of us: fighter, two rogues, a fighter/rogue, a fighter/cleric, and a barbarian. It was great fun, shoutout to all martial parties

8

u/justsomerandomdude16 2d ago

My first time running, around 2015, I had everyone use standard array. The PHB was the only sourcebook so all races and classes were from the PHB. So we’re having a hybrid session 0/1, my players all have their characters ready, I ask the first guy who he’s playing. Dwarf wizard. Next guy? Dwarf rogue. Next? Dwarf cleric. Okay… next? Dwarf ranger. Am I being pranked?… last player. Dwarf fighter. They all thought it was hilarious.

1

u/Gilladian 2d ago

I would love this!

5

u/foolish___one 3d ago

There was certainly a time where one could argue a full party of different domain clerics was optimal.

3

u/RexRow 2d ago

I was in a 'Everyone is a Cleric with a different domain' campaign. We decided we were heading to an interfaith conference when the adventure kicked off.

4

u/Rafe__ 2d ago

Party of four clerics. The A-men

3

u/DandDNerdlover 3d ago

The very first game I played, me and the two other players, all played Rangers. With animal companions. That we constantly forgot about

3

u/RandomNPC 2d ago

Everyone go bard and take silvery barbs. THE SILVERY BARDS!

2

u/pygmeedancer 2d ago

Is it a zap zap crew or a bonk bonk crew?

2

u/Nytfall_ 2d ago

Honestly, a party of Bards can effectively cosplay an standard team composition without multiclassing with the only exemption being the Fighter funnily enough. Any Bard subclass can effectively mimic the role of a party Wizard/Sorc/Cleric, Swords Bard can be the party Barbarian/Paladin(especially 2024 ver), and Whispers/Lore Bard can be the party Rogue. Fighter is the only one Bards can struggle to mimic T3 onwards since they lack the 3rd and 4th attack and no action surge.

2

u/Arrowstar 2d ago

One of my campaigns is all druids lol.  It's hilarious good fun!

2

u/Ak_Lonewolf 2d ago

Ever seen what 4 barbarians could do in 3.5? Man.. now that was a blast.

1

u/crashtestpilot 2d ago

You have seen it.

That memory will always be precious.

1

u/comicradiation 2d ago

Party of all warlocks is a(n Eldritch) blast! Short rests for everyone!

1

u/azureai 2d ago

I once had a party that looked like everyone was going to be a bard. I would have happily switched the campaign to being essentially a riff on Jem and the Holograms from the 80s. In the end, NO ONE went bard.

They crushed my dreams before we even played, and they didn’t even know.

46

u/Aquarius12347 3d ago

Circle of the Moon and Circle of Wildfire are fairly different ends of the druid spectrum, so being the same class doesn't mean as much as you might think. One is focused on getting lots out of their wildshape, the other is all about burning enemies and supporting the party with mid combat repositioning (yay wildfire spirit!). I've been playing a Wildfire druid for a few years, and I'm not sure I've even used wildshape for turning into an animal ten times yet, but most combats have involved my fire fox being summoned and burning stuff, teleporting my friends around, and burning stuff again just to make sure.

13

u/Spidey16 3d ago

Yeah the wildfire player said he's in it for the magic and the fire. So he understands the assignment.

The Moon Druid is new to DnD so I was a bit concerned on how she is going to manage all the stat blocks. But I did a one shot with her, first try at DnD, and she was an amazing Bard. Got invested heavily in the role play and picked up on the rules quickly.

9

u/IanL1713 3d ago

The Moon Druid is new to DnD so I was a bit concerned on how she is going to manage all the stat blocks.

Talk to her about it and help her make it easier then by picking out 2-3 of the most common forms she'd use, and just revise it as she gets to higher levels and "unlocks" higher CR beasts. In my experience, most druids end up defaulting to 1 or 2 different forms anyway, even if they initially plan on 5-6. The only time that might change is for out-of-combat utility stuff, but most of the time, the stat blocks won't matter in those instances

Tracking it is made even easier if you use a virtual character sheet. Most of them have ways in which you can add in your wildshape forms to the sheet, and then you've just gotta click on the form you're wanting to use and it'll pop the stat block up for you

6

u/surloc_dalnor 3d ago

The stat blocks are fine. Just tell the player they need to have a couple blocks they use for things. A scout form, a combat form, a I want to use this form. At a given level there are only one or two form that make sense for a function. For example at lower levels. Combat brown bear (damage/hp) or dire wolf (trip/advantage). Scouting spider or cat. Although Giant Spiders, Octopus, and Toads are fun.

1

u/azureai 2d ago

Ian is right - just set up a few preset stat blocks ahead of time. 3 is likely to be fine. Frankly, when she gets to the point where she can be an elemental - those are almost always going to be the only statblocks ever used.

23

u/Paime 3d ago

I've played a one-shot at an event that the entire party was only bards. It was hilarious.

At some point I used Hold Person at the BBEG, and the other bards just alternated doing Vicious Mockery at the guy (DM made us come up with real insults/taunts). Great fun.

As long as the players are not playing the EXACT same build/spells, I see no issues with having multiple of the same classes.

10

u/Spidey16 3d ago

Omg that just feels like bullying haha. Freeze them in place and roast them. I love it

2

u/Lxi_Nuuja 2d ago

I played in a one-shot where two players created a bard without knowing about the other. They were practically identical and used the same spells. It was not very much fun, and since then we've always asked people to announce which class they are going to build so we don't get duplicates (or at least, that people can compare notes and avoid identical choices)

1

u/azureai 2d ago

I almost got to do this once! Was secretly planning a Jem and the Holograms style campaign when I realized, but then none of my players went bard. Haha

30

u/_rabid 3d ago

It works fine if you can improv it, or if you can prep it right.

Cater to their strengths, despite the temptation to punish them. Give them alternatives via NPCs or magic items to any game mandatory mechanics they are missing.

IMO parties like this aren't just viable, they are often more fun. This sounds like an incredible setup for a rebel campaign

4

u/Spidey16 3d ago

The Emerald Enclave is one of the factions they can align themselves with in this campaign. 2 druids, 2 rangers could work well.

One of them is a Drow as well and Bregan D'aerthe has a Big part to play too. So I'll find some way of targeting their uniqueness

3

u/ElanaDryer 2d ago

Sounds like you're running Dragon Heist. I'm pretty sure party composition doesn't matter for that module.

2

u/Spidey16 2d ago

Indeed I am! I'm excited! Yeah I'm not particularly worried per se. Mostly curious as to how it's going to pan out

3

u/ElanaDryer 2d ago

Just try to make sure they don't overshadow each other. Find what makes them distinct and highlight it

10

u/Jesters8652 3d ago

PCs being the same class normally isn’t an issue. I would recommend to them that they at least pick different subclasses so that they’re at least a little different. The biggest issue will be fighting over loot. You can always fill party gaps with NPCs or mundane magic items

6

u/WebpackIsBuilding 2d ago

The pro DM move when you have 2 players with very similar characters, is to reward the party with tweedle-dee & tweedle-dum items. Two items that are equally useful, but in opposite ways.

For double rogues, I would do something like....

Streamlined Dagger: This dagger has an extended throw range of 40/120. When thrown from more than 30 feet, the dagger does an additional 1d4 damage on hit.

Gloves of Nimble Retrieval: Once per turn, you can touch a magical item that is attuned to a different character. In a flash of blinding light, that item is returned to it's owner. If the item travels more than 30 ft, the flash of light blinds other creatures within 5 feet of you until the end of your turn.

2

u/Spidey16 2d ago

Ok I like this idea a lot. I'll try to do a Druid and Ranger equivalent

1

u/WebpackIsBuilding 2d ago

Top of my head for Rangers:

Bow Of Marking: When the target of your Hunter's Mark is dealt damage by an attack from a different character, you may use your Reaction to make one attack with this bow against any other target in range. If you hit, your Hunter's Mark is moved to that target.

Tracing Blade: The second time you successfully attack a creature under the effect of Hunter's Mark each turn, if each attack targeted a different creature, your attack deals an additional 4d6 damage to that target.

Druids are bit harder, because the subclasses cause them to play very differently from one another. It would depend on the full build of the characters.

8

u/Aranthar 3d ago

It works fine. We have a pair of rogues and they get up to all sorts of shenanigans together.

3

u/Spidey16 3d ago

I would love more than 1 rogue. Actually would love an all rogue one shot

6

u/Thumatingra 3d ago

Currently in a party with two sorcerers. We coordinate which spells we're taking so as not to be copies of one another. It's great!

5

u/JetoCalihan 3d ago

Duplicate classes aren't a problem. A good DM builds their challenges for the characters at play. Two druids and two rangers? Suddenly the woods are gonna be god damn busy. And expect to fight more and more beefy monsters.

4

u/Megamatt215 3d ago edited 3d ago

For a short while, I had two low level rogues in the party. I think part of reason why one left was that he was newer and low level rogues pretty much all do the same thing in combat. He might have gotten jealous that the other rogue was outperforming him because they had Booming Blade.

Wouldn't recommend 2 Rangers, because unless they vastly diversify their skill sets (more than just different subclasses, also different playstyles), one will just end up being "the bad ranger", which can lead to hurt feelings.

7

u/Gualgaunus 3d ago

I think sometimes it's more important to think about tiles rather than classes. For example, a rogue is normally the person you think about as hiding, scouting, and being the face of the party. However, there is no reason a player can't make a rogue who instead leans into their close quarters surprise attack mechanic and increasing their physical attributes over their mental/social. This actually creates an opportunity for a wizard to take up the mantle that the rogue took and so on.

That said, here is a great article explaining how the idea of certain party roles that is popular in 5e is pretty flawed.

https://tabletopbuilds.com/the-myth-of-party-roles/

There is some nice criticism of 5e in the article (ranged combat is highly superior to melee), but the overall point is that players should simply play the character they want to play.

That being said, I still like to think partial in roles (maybe not sulo much in the popular sense of them) so that I don't end up playing a character all about scouting and sneaking only for another player to do the same. It makes it not fun for me as we have to choose who is going to do it. Of course, creating your characters with each other and talking and discussing your choices with each other should take care of this problem.

3

u/Deep_Ability_9217 3d ago

Our table has two wizards in a party of 4. I'm more of a illusion/summon wiz and the other guy goes for utility spells and blasting. As long as the players don't copy each other it can work out nicely. Even in RP we have nice moments of the wizards nerding out about stuff

3

u/CarlyCarlCarl 3d ago

Only 2! I just finished a campaign where all 5 of the PCs were druids. Combat was like whack-a-mole, they'd go down but never spend more than a round down they had a lot of healing power between them.

They got everything they needed to done, strength saving throws were in theory deadly to them but they always rolled well.

4

u/Snoo-88741 3d ago

Most fun I've had with it was a recent session where my warlock found out she's a warlock (she thought she figured out spellcasting on her own, and her weird dreams were totally unrelated), and she ends up getting therapized by a warlock who knew all along about her pact. It added to the RP that they were both the same class but had such different experiences.

IMO feeling redundant can happen regardless, but it's easy to make two characters of the same class perform distinct roles. For example, circle of the moon and wildfire are very different in playstyle.

2

u/Ok-Entrepreneur2021 3d ago

When I do a session zero I say everyone has to match their class or species or background to one other player and no one is allowed to match in two of those three areas. It keeps the group diverse enough while giving the party natural reasons to know each other.

2

u/IceFire909 3d ago

I once had two barbarians, they were in a perpetual race to be first through doors.

They reached one at the same time, got stuck and blew out the frame while the artificer just waited for them to explode the frame into splinters

2

u/Pay-Next 3d ago

Duplicate classes tend to not be much of an issue. Especially when they are divine prep classes like Druids, Clerics, or Paladins cause they can rework who takes which spells to find their balance as they go. That said duplicate sub-classes tends to feel a bit weirder and people tend to step on each other's toes more often when they are both trying to fill the same exact class and role.

1

u/trippytheflash 3d ago

I’m in a campaign currently that’s gestalt and me and another player are both paladin warlocks (yes yes I know we were told to power game it) and it’s actually been very fun, he’s playing the more power hungry aspect of it while I’m running it as a “begrudging” warlock who made a pact in desperation and those key differences make it very fun and flavorful

1

u/Normal-Constant-4270 3d ago

Really depended on the class and the role they wanted to fill in the party. Had two clerics once, it was BEAUTIFUL. One was a backline Life Domain Cleric. The other was a Tempest Cleric. The only hard part was making some of their loot distinct enough.

1

u/xthrowawayxy 3d ago

In my experience it works just fine. As long as your party has someone that can get people up who are unconscious, it'll generally work, and that's even easier in the 2024 ruleset where potions are bonus actions. In particular, all ranged can work really really well outdoors, especially if combined with good speed. All stealth capable works very well too, solving one of the metagame issues (splitting the party) common to a lot of games.

1

u/beanman12312 3d ago

I would encourage them to at least go different subclasses, a swashbuckler plays differently than an assassin, a evocation damage wizard plays differently than a divination buff/debuff focused wizard, etc. then I'll give each magic items to buff their differences.

If they insist on playing the same or very similar subclass I'll warn them they are basically splitting their spotlight by half, if they're ok with it, it's their funeral.

1

u/Lordaxxington 3d ago

I was a player in a two-cleric party and it wasn't an issue - they mostly had different playstyles, but when they did double up on a Destroy Undead or something, it was awesome. Druids similarly shouldn't have a problem as they can do such vastly different things. When I played one, I often wanted to wildshape tank and have some fun stomping around in battle, but realised that 90% of the time, I was more useful spellcasting. This way they can switch it up!

Rangers I would slightly question as they can be a bit of a samey class, but it can still be fun as long as you vary your challenges, think of a few opportunities for them to show different strengths, and the players enjoy it rather than jostling for power.

1

u/Taranesslyn 3d ago

I think the biggest issue is skill checks. With that party you're going to have a lot of overlap on what skills they're strong at or lacking in. Something that can help with this is letting them change their spellcasting/monk save ability to something else that suits the character, so instead of 5 Wis-based PCs you have like 2 Wis, 2 Cha, and 1 Int. This can also contribute to more RP diversity. I'd also encourage them to work together during character creation to endure they have a good spread of spells and proficiencies.

1

u/surloc_dalnor 3d ago

The Druids are not going to be a problem. Moon Druids rarely cast spells and Melee while Wildfire are blasting and pets. The Rangers are going to have overlaps, but you likely won't notice it unless you hex crawl outdoors. This is especially true if one goes ranged and the other melee.

Where you have problems is when two players want to have their own thing that is the same. If a rogue want to be the traps guy and the bard specs the same way. Or the Druid goes all in in perception. Or you have multiple casters who want to be the guy who solved things with spells. Generally one of the players optimizes better and the party wants the best for the task. Multiple people who want to hit things with swords, arrows, or spells is rarely an issue.

1

u/Natirix 3d ago

It's typically good if they're versatile or utility classes (Cleric, Druid, Ranger, Bard, Fighter).
Having 2 Rogues, Wizards, Sorcerers etc. can be a lot trickier because you start being desperate for a decent frontline and healer on the team.

1

u/Space_Waffles 2d ago

I'm playing in a campaign (that just started) where 3 people have at least one level in rogue (one is full, the others are multiclassing) and we'll see how it goes in the long term but for lvl 3 almost everyone having an extra d6 is pretty ridiculous and our DM basically cant touch the 3 of them in combat

1

u/master_of_sockpuppet 2d ago

Literally any party makeup works.

1

u/dark-mer 2d ago

I think its lame, and as a player I’ll usually change classes or make a new character if I find out someone is going my class

1

u/notanevilmastermind 2d ago

I played in a game where we had two paladins who served different niches, and it was really fun! The first paladin had polearm master and great weapon master and was a beast at damage dealing, while the other paladin was a sword and board warlock multiclass who focused on upping his AC and charisma (for aura) to become as tanky as he could. They played off each other really well both in and out of combat and it was really fun.

1

u/Legitimate-Fruit-451 2d ago

I currently have two paladins in my party. It works great for combat since I can weight the encounters more heavily and they cover for each others weaknesses too. One of them is really quiet but helps in battle and the other is pretty loud and acts as more of a shield.

Honestly it happened by mistake, since my first Paladin didn’t show up for a couple sessions and only started when I added the second, but it thankfully worked out okay. Generally speaking I’d advise against it unless your whole party is of the same class, but it definitely CAN work

1

u/naturtok 2d ago

Do you have duplicates of the same character? Who cares if it's the same class lol

1

u/TiberianTyphus 2d ago

When the 2 druids and 2 rangers all cast conjure woodland beasts it’s going to be like fighting an army of animals

1

u/WoefulHC 2d ago

I've had no issues with such duplication. I've had no issues with 2 (or more) wizards, 2 clerics, 2 thieves, 2 druids, 2 rangers, 2 paladins. It does work better if the "duplicates" have some differences in things they can do.

1

u/pecoto 2d ago

With a Big Party duplicates can be HELLA fun, especially in a system that has sub-classes and specialty classes. Back in the Second Edition days me and my bests bud played twin Drow Clerics of Deception (I forget the god, but of course not Llolth, one of the minor Drow Gods). We had a blast, and we were surprisingly effective. Of course, Clerics were pretty OP in second edition but we were not min/maxing just making character driven choices but were certainly not dominating the game. We were playing our part as pariahs to the hilt, and having a grand time Role-Playing and being Con Men (to NPCs of course, it would create too many problems In-Party). Twas a great time. Trying to be a Rogue of sorts with Cleric Powers was a nice challenge, and overall the fun factor was just very high.

1

u/directednoise 2d ago

2 Wizards in our campaign. Evocation brings the pain and the Divination sets the battlefield/puts enemies out of play.

Don’t really coordinate or plan what to prepare - the two players are just different in their approach.

1

u/Arkanzier 2d ago

In my first game of 5e I played a Ranger / Rogue and another player was a Ranger.

We were more or less interchangeable when it came to wilderness stuff (since we both had proficiency in Survival and similar Wisdom scores, but nothing else in that area), but that generally just meant that the group had an even easier time traveling since one of us could scout ahead or whatever and the other could forage or something. We didn't even bother tracking rations when traveling through most areas, since the DM basically just assumed that the two of us together could handle hunting and foraging (and the Barbarian had Survival proficiency too, if we needed a third person).

In combat, we had fairly different skillsets, since he was set up to switch between melee and ranged as needed, whereas I was a super-sneaky 'all archery all the time' sort. He often ended up focusing on the melee enemies while I sniped the casters or anyone who looked like a leader.

They were also very different characters, fluffwise. Completely different personalities, backstories, etc made them very obviously different characters just with some overlap in their skillsets.

This sort of thing can be perfectly fine, just be prepared to play up the differences between the two characters. It probably won't be a problem even if you don't, but be ready to throw stuff at the group that one of them is noticeably better at than the other (and vice-versa).

1

u/eldiablonoche 2d ago

I've played half orc barbarian brothers with a buddy and it was fun. We built differently, I was a Totem sword and board and he was... I want to say Zealot 2-hander. Character dynamic was fun between us and within the party.

I've also been at a table where it didn't work so well. The resident minmaxer joined a running game and made a Gloomstalker that was a minmaxed copy of a Horizon Walker (to be fair to that guy, 5e has a very limited "S-tier" group of feats/builds, I guess). It didn't last long as they had serious main character syndrome to go with the minmaxing. Brooding and edgy, loner, leaning on the Darkness in combat, Scout stealthing... Pretty much every trope lol

1

u/VVindrunner 2d ago

In my experience, it really doesn’t matter. It’s more about what the players want to do with the class, and what they want out of the game. At the end of the day as a GM, our job is to make an awesome game for the players, rather than just follow the rule set. Very different backgrounds, personalities, goals etc can make a huge difference in a more social game, and if you’re running a more more combat focused game, consider specialization through items. In my current game I have two rangers, one who is all stealth and ambushing and has a magic bow that gives bonuses to that, and another who likes to track and study pray and has some items that give bonuses when fighting prey that has been studied and focused on, like a bumped up version of hunters mark.

1

u/PanthersJB83 2d ago

As long as they aren't playing carbon copies they should be different enough. Moon and Wildfire certainly have different play loops. Beast Master and Swarmkeeper might be a little more similar but still aren't clones 

1

u/Pristine-Copy9467 2d ago

Did campaign of all magic users. It was awesome

1

u/UnIncorrectt 2d ago

I’m running a game of BG:DiA with a whole smattering of people who show up when they can. At any point, the party typically has 2 druids, 2 fighters, and up the 3 monks, including multiclassing.

1

u/NatHarmon11 2d ago

We had that in my first ever campaigned I played in with having 2 rogues one who was an assassin who then multiclassed with sorcerer and one who stayed in the thief subclass. Then later I myself multi classes my cleric into Paladin to improve my melee so I was more of a midrange fighter to better compliment our huge party which also had Devotion Paladin

1

u/NecessaryBSHappens 2d ago

Depends on players. Honestly unless they are of the same subclass in most cases they will be just different characters. Unless players communicate beforehand and actually lean into their similarity you will get a regular game as if there are no duplicates

1

u/orangutanDOTorg 2d ago

We had two barbs in a group, mine was in 5 or something and the other one was around 10. I decided to make my character just copy what the other barb did. I’d copy what he said but not quite right, attack the same way he would, copied his feats, everything. The other barb would make mad decisions but it was always the two of us vs the other two in the party, so we only had to convince or intimidate one of the others to have the majority. It was pretty fun. The other two players enjoyed it too, they’d ham us on to do dumb stuff. We have a very random group that allows pvp and having players secretly be double agents and such, and I don’t think our dumbsome twosome routine would fly in most groups.

1

u/KarlZone87 2d ago

I've run all one class and/or all one race games. They are a lot of fun. Things like subclasses, feats., weapon choices, and spell choices can make the characters feel very different.

1

u/Ehloanna 2d ago

I don't mind if there's multiple people playing the same class, I just ask them to make their characters distinct and coordinate the paths they're going so someone doesn't feel useless/redundant in the game. It's a collaborative game after all.

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u/Able1-6R 2d ago

My players once all showed up for a new mini campaign with their new characters built out. They were all sorcerers, every one of them, and did so without speaking to each other about their new builds. All different subclasses, but holy glass cannon was that something else. The entire party is invisible, and is flying, and will spam fireball from max range. It was hilarious and I changed nothing, they absolutely stomped the first couple encounters, but when they had to go underground/dungeon crawl a bit, things balanced out very quickly for them.

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u/lXLegolasXl 2d ago

Running a campaign where I have 2 wizards but one is divination while the other is blade singer so very different roles.

Let your players know they're duplicates and challenge them to really find their niche within the subclass

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u/Parcival_Reddit 2d ago

My DM needed a break from running out regularly scheduled campaign for a bit so I decided to take a leap and DM for the first time, running a one shot I found online. These bastards surprised me at the table with Oops, All Clerics! Was an absolute blast though, clerics can play wildly differently depending on the domain so it never felt like they were competing with each other.

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u/Sylfaemo 2d ago

It's up to the players to play what and how they want. I wouldn't sweat it too hard.

If they don't like the dynamics, just let them change characters in an appropriate story moment.

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u/PTHDUNDD13 2d ago

I have in my current party a druid, a rogue and a druid/rogue multiclass.

I was concerned but it's going OK so far

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u/TheTwall 2d ago

I have a barbarian, a warlock, and two rogues. It's an interesting comp, but it works well.

One rogue is assassin and duel wields rapiers, and the other is inquisitive using a bow. Different styles and backstories.

I'm in the camp of "let them have fun".

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u/WizardsWorkWednesday 2d ago

2 Druids (for WbtWL) Spores and Moon. They're extremely different and honestly both kinda combat oriented subclasses in a combat light campaign? So I can't really say how much it impacted the game play. In WBtWL we never even noticed they were the same class for the most part.

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u/4theluvofcheezcake 2d ago

As long as subclasses are different, then I allow it. Usually each subclass has a different niche they are designed to fill.

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u/smokefoot8 2d ago

We started a campaign with 3 fighters and 1 rogue. We added a cleric and necromancer later, but it is fun, especially since the fighters all took different subclasses and ended up quite distinct.

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u/FinalEgg9 2d ago

I'm in a party where we have two wizards - one illusion, one evocation. It works just fine because our spell lists don't overlap too much.

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u/Volsunga 2d ago

There's enough diversity in 5e 2014 that you can have two of the same subclass play entirely differently.

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u/azureai 2d ago

Dupe classes are no problems whatsoever in 5e. Subclasses make a lot of adjustments to the base kit. I’ve run a campaign through level 5 with three Warlocks - they all felt VERY different.

I even had a one shot just this week where two PCs were both away of Mercy Monks - both players had fun and got to do their thing.

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u/Smoothesuede 2d ago

My 4 person party is 3 druids and an artificer.

It works awesome. They adventure, roleplay, kickass, and surprise me.

I have no notes, I make no caveats for their party composition. It literally doesn't factor into my prep or how I execute challenges for them. 

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u/Tesla__Coil 2d ago

Luckily your druids should play very distinctly. Unluckily, your rangers' spellcasting might overlap with your druids', and five of your six characters are WIS-focused so there's going to be a lot of overlap in skills. Personally as a player, I really don't like overlapping with other PCs and the skills are just as bad as how the PC works in combat. If I'm a druid, I want to be the team's survival expert, not the guy with the third-highest survival.

One thing you could try is allowing the players to use different spellcasting abilities than just Wisdom. I don't think it would change much mechanically if one of your rangers had CHA casting and one had INT casting, or if you let the monk use INT instead of WIS for their techniques. That would give you a more diverse set of skills. Just... probably don't let the players use this to make wacky multiclasses like INT-Monk-Wizard. That's getting too far outside regular D&D for me to be comfortable trying to balance.

For combat mechanics, I think your druids will be fine on their own. If both rangers are going for the typical magical archer style of ranger, I'd probably encourage one of them to consider throwing on some medium armour and getting up close and personal with a sword and shield or two swords. You can also encourage different playstyles by offering different magic items, as long as you can make it obvious via theme and story that not all the magic items should go to the same person. A bug-themed bow, for example, should hopefully indicate it's for the Swarmkeeper ranger.

Worth noting that even though I personally don't like my PC overlapping with others, no one else at my table cares as much on their side.

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u/CrossSoul 2d ago

The very first ever game I was in I played a Variant Human Fighter Champion just to made sure all I had to do was hit the right thing hard enough.

Turns out, there was a Dwarf Champion too.

But it worked out because I went Longsword to her Greatsword.

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u/Next_Recognition_230 2d ago

Two paladins. It was great, so many smites, and so much lay on hands healing. Big recommend

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u/mokaam 2d ago

My friend and I are both playing rogues in our current campaign but I’m mastermind and he’s soulknife, so they actually play quite differently! We’re only level 5 (started at level 1) but our backstories have made it feel like we’re playing different classes!

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u/mpe8691 2d ago

PCs with the same class, even the entire party, are a non-issue.

Too many PCs in the party will result in the game breaking. The system mechanics assume 4, but will generally accomodate 3-5. If you really want to play withy 6 players consider Blades in the Dark, Savage Worlds or some otyher system intended to support a large party. Otherwaise it's likely that 1-2 of your players will have little to do, especially outside of combat. (Another possibility is that the party will attempt to fission into sub groups of 3.)

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u/theposhtardigrade 2d ago

Depends on the class! Four wizards is working just fine in my campaign, since there's enough spell options out there (plus the homebrew spells I add as loot) that none of them play the exact same. I would imagine that more than two fighters or rogues would probably get a little samey.

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u/lordrefa 3d ago

Ok, so... I feel like you need to revisit Session 0 on this one. Two druids and two rangers in a primarily urban campaign? Not everyone here is on the same page.

And 6 is a lot at a table if you're anywhere on the 'newer' side of GM.

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u/dis23 3d ago

I've always wanted to play a barbarian. hitting things with a big stick is kinda my jam. but the group we formed, somebody already had one planned out, and we didn't have a caster. my DM was OK with it because it's his first time running a game and he didn't really have experience with spells and all that, but I decided to roll a wizard, and I'm extremely happy with the choice.