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In a party of 3, one character can cover 2 roles at maximum, so even if he has the best stats in three of four roles, he is forced by RAW to leave one of them to another party member, correct?

Correct

A ranger could take ways of the wild and cover extra roles if they were best at lots of them.

A ranger could take ways of the wild and cover extra roles if they were best at lots of them.

Yes, that's why I asked, since this Virtue wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

Ok, new constellation, new question:
The CRB just covers the exceptions of parties with less or more than 4 party members. Besides that, the only rules seems to be:
"A travelling Company must cover all four available roles."
So in a party of excactly 4 companions, according to RAW, it's fine if two companions cover two roles each, because they are the best in these skills and it wouldn't make much sense to let them handle a task they are not made for (not much difference between a character not present at all and thus forcing others to take on multiple roles and not capable of doing it, so why make a difference here). This shouldn't be a problem because the exceptions already allow it per se. And I don't think, Aragorn asked one of the four Hobbits to do any of the 4 journey role tasks but rather covered all four of them.

I don't read it like that. For a party of exactly four, each would only cover one roll unless they have a Virtue that allows them to cover more than one. The initial paragraph about The Travelling Company on page 109 explains that the journey role summarises what each character is doing during the journey. The example Journey Log shown on page 110 also helps, as it shows all members of the company being assigned a journey role.

Aragorn did appear to cover all four roles, but I'm sure the hobbits weren't completely useless. They appear to have been quite competent at setting up camp, suggesting at least one of them was covering the Scout role. And I do remember Aragorn specifically asking Sam to help him look for Athelas - maybe he took the Hunter role?

The main advantage for the company of having a role covered by more than one character, is that the player making the role can be assisted by another player-hero covering the same role. In the examples above, I would expect Aragorn to have been making the roles, but I don't suppose he would have complained if the hobbits spent Hope to give him an extra die.