Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 262 - Work Together

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

This week, we're diving into how players can best work together in TTRPGs. From character building to in-game tactics, discover how to form a cohesive team and make your adventures unforgettable. Tune in to learn how to turn challenges inside out and achieve success together!   #rpg #ttrpg #dnd #pathfinder #gmtips #playertips #tabletop #roleplaying   Resources: Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast www.taking20podcast.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/taking20podcast  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/taking20podcast  Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/taking20podcast.bsky.social  Invincible Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/invincible-the-roleplaying-game 

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. By building your character in a way that can compliment or even enhance your fellow player characters, you make each of you more powerful. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 262. Advice for my players out there on how they can best work together. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Clouds. I love studying Clouds. but I do so to learn.

I mean, I take my weather seriously. We have a coffee, K-O-F-I.com slash taking-20 podcast. We're about 65% of the way, wait, no, 67% of the way toward covering all of our costs for 2025. Thank you, David, by the way, for the contribution a few days ago

that I just now noticed. I know times are tough for a lot of us financially right now, but if you enjoy the podcast and want to support it and help keep it alive, please consider a donation even as small as $5. Individuals who donate can suggest topics that float right to the front of the line, so if you have a hot-button topic you'd like to discuss,

please consider a small donation to help keep this podcast going. Also, there's an interesting Kickstarter going on right now for a superhero RPG based on the Invincible Universe from the comics and Amazon animated series. I'm a sucker for superhero RPGs and played villains and vigilantes and Marvel superheroes way back in the day. I remember being low-level heroes trying to save a local ice cream shop

from a group of mafia enforcers. I mean, in a lot of ways, high fantasy games like D&D and Pathfinder are power fantasies where we get to live out a made-up life as a larger-than-life figure who can do things that we can't in the real world. Superhero games are no different.

They just crank that feeling up to 11. Anyway, the Kickstarter is going on and I'll put a link in the description. I'm not associated with the project at all. They didn't ask me or pay me to mention it, but I love the comics, I love the Amazon show, and superhero role-playing is always welcome at my table, and I would love to see it make a huge comeback.

It should be obvious to anyone who's listened to more than one episode of my podcast. Generally, I prefer it when people get along, elaborate, set aside differences away from the table if they exist, and work toward the common good of fun games for the players and the DM. If everyone arrives at the table with that common mindset, then the game is probably just about as good as it can be. Yes, I am an old softie when it comes to role-playing games. Generally, I feel like we're better off as a society and as a species

and as gamers when we behave that way. While friendly gaming is critical and could be an episode all its own, that's not what this episode is about. Today I'm going to talk about a different benefit to working together, creating a cohesive team that can face whatever the world and the DM throws at them. Turn that challenge inside out and go through its pockets and look for loot's change. In general, RPG groups that work together can get more done, faster, and better than those groups that are just a bunch of individuals.

Gaming at its heart is collaborative storytelling, working together. In the vast majority of games, the game is better when the PCs are cohesive. That's not to say there aren't exceptions, by the way. You could be part of a story-driven campaign built around heavy role play, where one character doesn't like another, or it's a group of misfits thrown together a la la the movie's Suicide Squad or Thunderbolts. But most of the time, working as a team is the better option and results in a better game. But how do you work together?

How do you go from a fighter, rogue, bard, and cleric to the Heroes of Last Wall, or the Vanguard of Justice, or the Emerald Tower Hugs and Kisses friendly Snuggle Time Club. Whatever your group name is, is fine, by the way. No judgment here. How do you form that cohesive unit? It requires players and characters

who can set aside the individual and work toward the collective good of the entire group. Yeah, that's great, Jeremy, but give us some specific examples. Thank you, I will, annoyed voice in my head. There are a ton of ways that players and by extension characters can work together, and they start before the first

die gets rolled. Players can coordinate with each other while building their characters. This could be from complementary character builds with abilities that support one another. One of you could be a tanky fighter who wades into groups of enemies to threaten as many of them as possible while your friend makes a sneaky, sneak, sneak, rogue that can do sneak attack damage to enemies engaged in melee with the tank. Could each one survive individually? Absolutely. But by using their abilities in a supportive fashion to one another, each of them is more powerful and more capable. Or one of the spellcasters has learned spells that can control the battlefield with walls of ice and fire or areas of difficult terrain or other features that keep enemies grouped

up while the fireball specialist sorcerer proceeds to nuke the shit out of the grouped up enemies. By building your character in a way that can complement or even enhance your fellow player characters, you make each of you more powerful. Another way you can work together is to make sure that the major needs of an adventuring party are met. No one can pick locks and you're just now building your character? Well, how about somebody good with a lock pick? Could be a rogue, other options depending on your game system.

In the bad old days, the ideal party, quote unquote, if such a thing existed, was a wizard, fighter, thief, and cleric. Tabletop RPGs have come a long way since then, and there are numerous builds that can provide necessary capabilities to an adventuring party. A few years ago, I ran a short three-session adventure for some friends, and four of the five showed up wanting to play, bards. In that game system, bards were very flexible, by the way, and could be tanky warriors or support characters or even healers.

So what did they all do? They all adjusted their builds just slightly to have a tank, damage dealer, a healer, and so forth. The fifth player showed up with a different character, but bought in and made a bard as well. By the way, the fifth character, if I remember right, made a social-focused bard and proclaimed himself the manager of the band. If I remember right, the group called themselves the bearded bard bastards or something like that,

which I still love, by the way. Especially since three of the members were female and only one of them was a dwarf of the beard. I guess it's kind of like the band Zizi Top where only one band member didn't have a huge beard and his name was Frank Beard. That's enough of 1970s and 80s band trivia for now. I'll tune in next week where I'll talk about the storied history of ACDC and Dexie's Midnight Runners. The point is, the players adjusted what they were playing to fit what the party needed and wanted as a group. They put their initial ideas aside to play something beneficial to the cohesive whole.

Does this mean, am I asking you to suffer through playing what you don't want to play? No, I'm not asking you to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm. If you have a character concept that you really want to play, say it to the group. Don't just go along and be miserable. Adjust if you can in a way where you can still have fun and possibly still meet needs that the party has. Another way PCs can work together before the game starts is to have shared elements of their backstory. The options here, by the way, nearly endless. The two characters could be related like their siblings or cousins,

or they could have known each other growing up and their friends or classmates. Maybe they were rivals when they were younger, or they belonged to the same company or organization now. Both of them were Pathfinders, or both of them belonged to the Thieves Guild, or both of them worked for the same mail delivery service whose routes have been foiled by those damned werewolves for the last time. Camera flash to one holding up a silver letter opener, and another postal carrier wields an alchemical silver mailbox. Yet, like, as a warhammer, like post in all, with dirt stuck to the bottom. Little red flag goes up after every single kill. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

stays these couriers from kicking wholesale werewolf ass. I'm sorry, I think I know what I'm playing as my next character. The simplest way your characters can work together is to have a common goal. You both want the same thing, even if it's for different reasons. The parents of one character were brought to financial ruin by the Big Bad, while the nephew of another one died in the sulfur mines on Titan because of the shitty safety measures used by the Big Bad's company. Regardless of the reason, you both want to make the Big Bad pay, and trust me,

nothing builds friends like shared hate. Editor Jeremy here, with the benefit of hindsight, I think the statement is a bit problematic, especially given the modern political climate. My intention behind the statement is that a common enemy can bring people together with a common purpose. In no way am I condoning hate on the basis of race, identity, gender, or war. whatever. It's really as simple as Konar the Destroyer fucked with both of our families, so we're going to fuck him back.

Editor Part 2, Jeremy here. In no way am I condoning sexual assault. The intent wasn't fuck as in sex, but more as in bother, damage in some way, harm, less I'm going to force myself on the big bad and more Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with. Editor Jeremy here yet again. Did you ever have one of those episodes? There's a problem with that Wu-Tang Clan. reference as well, and I just can't win today.

Please just assume I don't mean those phrases in the worst possible way, and let's just move on so I don't make another bad reference and have to insert a fourth editorial paragraph. The problem with the group joining together solely because they dislike the big bad is that the unity it creates can be temporary and unstable, but that could make for a lot of fun in a role-play-heavy campaign. The classic, I hate you just this much less than I hate the big bad. Bad, so let's team up until the Big Bad's gone. Okay, let's hope I don't step in anything as I talk about how PCs can work together during

the game. During the game, working together usually means finding some way to set teammates up for success, and that can take a number of forms. The first way to work together is to consider using some of your actions to assist with the teammates' future roles. In 5E, there is the help action, where your character uses their action to grant an ally advantage on their next ability check or attack role or provide the same benefit to an ally performing a skill or tool check. There are limitations such as in combat you have to be within five feet of

the creature being attacked, after which your ally's first attack role and first attack role only gains advantage if they attack before the start of your next turn. For ability checks, it's similar. You have to have proficiency in the skill or the tool you're using and the way you assist has to make sense to the DM and the advantage lasts until the ally uses it or before the start of your next turn. Pathfinder, by the way, is a similar mechanic. It only just grants a flat bonus to the next attack or skill role. Similarly, the aid has to make sense and the onus is on the player to say what skill they want to use and how it'll benefit this particular skill check. When I GM Pathfinder, by the way, I tend to be pretty lax about ruling on this because

it makes sense that, for example, engineering lore could potentially help with a lock pickerel. In combat, there's moving into positions to flank your opponent. In Pathfinder 2E, if you are in melee, directly across an opponent from your ally, that opponent is considered off guard to both of your attack. In 5E, though, it's not so clear cut since the flanking rules have been removed entirely from the 2024 edition of D&D. People have made the point that it's very situational and easy to get and exploit, but if your DM allows for it, consider moving that extra 5 to 10 feet to give your ally an easier chance to hit that monster. Working together benefits both of you when you attack in this fashion.

If your DM doesn't allow flanking, then find out from them what they will allow as far as actions that would benefit or assist others while attacking. However, many times there are abilities that will benefit your teammates indirectly. For example, in Pathfinder 2E, the frightened condition on

an opponent, incurs a penalty to their ability checks, ability DCs, and saving throws. So if you have a spellcaster in your party, making their potential targets of their spells frightened by demoralizing them, or otherwise hampering their ability to make saving throws against spells and spell-like abilities could mean the difference between a success and a failure on a saving throw,

or at minimum a difference between crit success and success. That scared bandit you intimidated suddenly critically fails a save, flees into the woods rather than just being weaker in attacks for a round. Never mind the other things you can do like grappling and tripping creatures, using a tower shield to provide cover, protecting spellcasters from attacks, and various class abilities that can make opponents weaker or your spellcaster stronger. Speaking of class abilities, another way characters can work together would be in the way they build their characters. In a lot of game systems, we have a lot of choices when building our characters.

And some game systems have things like teamwork feats, which grants special actions when multiple party members have the same feat or do the same thing in the same round. Some archetypes even give characters support options or creative ways of working together during combat. look at your game's mechanics to identify ways that you can build characters to complement each other. An example of this, by the way, would be a size tiny spellcaster. My brother-in-law ran while I played a size large, O-Fish fighter. His little character was the brains, my character was the brawn, and my character carried her around and protected her while she would cast spells.

It was a fun little master blaster type concept for those who understood that reference from Beyond Thunderdome. Another thing you can do to have the characters work together is by balancing skills and abilities across the adventuring party. If the party has a weakness in knowledge, religion, or thievery, or society, or whatever, consider taking some ranks in it so someone is capable enough to possibly make a check if the adventure module calls for it. In a recent Pathfinder adventure path I played, the player's guide that was made by Paiso even said, society won't be that important of a skill. So what we do? none of us put ranks into society, but then during the game, we started having to make more and more and more society checks of that game,

and I think, yeah, it must have been 50. My gosh, it was so many by the end of the campaign. None of us started with any ranks in that scale, but by the end, four of us had put points in it. All of us were willing to sacrifice a bit of our build to make sure we had a necessary skill covered. Tabletop RPGs work best when the characters work together. Unlike video games, which are often built for single,

players, tabletop RPGs are built to run adventuring parties, and a cohesive team is critical to success so you can overcome those challenges, solve those puzzles, defeat those formidable foes together. The most memorable moments often arise from clever teamwork where each player's unique skills and character traits will contribute to the group's success. While it may be fun to play the loner who doesn't trust or need the rest of the party, do your best to work together, tactically, strategically, and even as you build your characters. If you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your fellow players would have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening.

Please like, rate, and subscribe to the podcast, and follow us on social media. I'll include links down in the episode description. In two weeks, I'm going to give some GMs out there some tips for running DMPCs, if, when, and how to use them. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Clouds. It's hard not to feel bad that we usually only see the bottoms of clouds and never the top. I guess that's why sometimes we feel under the weather. This has been episode 262 advising players to find ways to work together.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is Copyright 2025 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.