I think this is now my optimal party:
1. Human Wolf Barbarian: Great Weapon Fighting to bore through both hordes and high-HP threats. Just as importantly, gives advantage to melee allies vs anything within 5 feet of him.
2. High Elf Conjuration Wizard: Spams the battlefield with low-CR multiattacking critters -- brown bears and the like -- that are going to hang around the Barbarian to greatly inflate their value (advantage on their low attack bonuses) and actually form something like a front line.
3. Half Elf Valor Bard: Five OAs with advantage for every casting of Dissonant Whispers? OK!
4. Human Battlemaster Fighter-6/Thief Rogue-4 or 5/Etc: Archer build with Healer feat and humps a -bunch- of field dressings. Kite around and neuter the biggest threat with ranged Goading Attack, while using Cunning Action to keep the 6 Bs (Barbarian, Bard, bear, bear, bear, bear) between it and you. Now it has disadvantage to hit anything it can reasonably reach. As necessary dart in and bonus-action heal a teammate (or a bear!).
Everyone is stealthy with no heavy armor wearers. Intelligence skills are fairly covered (not enough slots for all of them ...). Charisma skills are in fine hands. The Fighter/Rogue can afford Wisdom 14 and has the slots for Survival, Insight, etc. The Barbarian brings uberAthletics for the fine art of breaking stuff.
Out-of-combat balance, lots of utility, and a crap ton of leveraging the action economy in a fight. What's not to love?
EDIT: Yea OK, I'm a dork. The conjured creatures have to be elementals, because for some reason Conjure Animals isn't on the Wizard spell list. No bears here. We're going to have to teach the Water Elemental to balance on that big beach ball ...
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
Nope. Your missing a Druid so you can actually have a bear :P
Make sure the bard picks up inspiring leader.
Cause THP.
Yunru wrote:
mellored wrote:
Yunru wrote:
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Oh I get the logic of using the bears (or whatever), but from what I see, the wizard never gets Conjure Animals, nor anything besides elementals.
So at 8th level, the wizard is finally able to use both (all) of his 4th level spells to create 4 CR1 elementals. If you want to be able to do this twice in the same day, need to wait until 11th level and use a 6th level slot.
Am I missing something?
Also begs another question... how do we find out the stats for a CR1 elemental??
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
To be fair, he could use a single lvl4 spell to conjure 4 CR 1/2 elementals.... but are CR 1/2 creatures that useful by level 7+? (Might be, haven't played there in 5E)
Coredump00 wrote:
Wow, no duh, that's entirely my bad. I read the Conjuration abilities and just assumed that of course any class with so many features specifically related to Conjure x spells would have the suite. Never bothered to look!
Well, damn. The party concept still works just fine with elementals -- as soon as we get a suite of low-CR elementals to choose from -- but ... my bears. I wanted bears. Mostly for the lulz, but still. 
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Rancid_Rogue wrote:
Not gonna lie. I was immediately disappointed when I saw that the first line was a Wolf Totem Barb in a bear pun party. I was expecting a Bear Totem Barb and a Wildshaping Druid to complement the team :P To fix the lack of Conjure Animals on the Wizard list, have the Bard grab it instead via Magic Secrets. If you need to run a Wizard, you could run Transmutation to turn your familiar into a bear.
ZHDarkstar wrote:
That said, the image of a bunch of really pumped-up, really bass hooting getting louder and louder just before feathered hell breaks loose is kinda funny ...