Usually run with a party of 3 where the two players with the least experience build what they want and the player with the most experience builds his to cover whatever gaps he feels need plugging.
I played in an all fighter campaign (5e, 5 players). It was glorious. We all used different weapons, all decided on different feats, we all played a different way and our character's personalities were VASTLY different. It didn't feel like we were stepping on each others toes at all.
Fighters are one of the most versatile classes and there are even several "fighter" classes (in addition to the base Fighter class): Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger and Monk, each with their own archetypes. However, 5 druids, 5 bards or 5 even Paladins wouldn't play as well because more specialised classes benefit from a more diverse party.
Nick Faga sorry for resurrecting the comment, but that's what us clerics do ;) I frequently play a cleric because I like the way they typically have the best "I do not lose" buttons rather than "I win" or "I stole yours" ones.
My favorite is paladin or druid serving as a damage sponge because no one protects the healer. Its not that I hate healing its that shooting the medic happens a lot.
I'm the same, I love the healer types whether it be in tabletop or PC RPGs. I've even played healers in games that killed the healer role...just make sure you can protect yourself as well as everyone else, and hope your allies appreciate the value and squishyness of your character.
I hate having to shoehorn players into specific roles, but I had this situation come up in my current game. We had someone who wanted to play a fighter, but just ghosted on us before the first session ever happened. Thankfully, another player had a friend who was willing to jump in at the last minute. When I talked to him about what character he should bring to the game, I didn't tell him "Play a fighter." I told him "We have a healer, we have spellcasters, we have someone who can handle traps and locks. We need someone who can deal damage and take hits." That gave him the freedom to make whatever he wanted with the knowledge of what was already in the party (fighter, barbarian, tank druid/ranger as examples). I hate the "we need to have a cleric, a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard" party system. As long as the archetypes are there, the classes don't matter. Someone needs to be able to heal damage, someone needs to be able to deal damage (preferably one each of physical and magical), someone needs to be able to take hits, and someone needs to be able to deal with dungeon hazards. 5e especially is awesome for this way of thinking by adding the backgrounds. Slap the criminal or urchin background on anyone with a decent Dex score and they can open locks (our party has two lock pickers, but only one rogue). Slap the hermit background on a character and they can keep you from dying. It's not about the class, it's about the role that you fill in the party.
With NPCs, Hirlings, and henchmen options, why would a party "need" anything? Finding a meatshield is the easiest NPC to find, INT and Wisdom not required.
D4bbl3zGaming - I like that you didn't force him to play a fighter but I even disagree with the whole "we need X" The most creative tactics come from players who need to approach encounters from a different angle. I had a party of all front line low Dex types and a party of all ranged classes with mediocre AC. Their formations, their information gathering, their encounter initiation all changed to make up for their weaknesses. Not every time obviously but when you don't have a caster with dispel or see invisibility you don't laugh at the rogue who pulls out a bag of flour.
You could always find a cleric at Traveler’s Inn willing to go into the Caves of Chaos with you. He even has a couple of flunkies to act as meat shields, fantastic!
It sure was nice in 4th edition where the cleric could play as a melee class or a ranged DPS caster (laser cleric) and take a turn to perform an attack or whatever else, then use a minor action to do the healing instead of having to devote the whole turn to just healing. 5th edition includes a handful of weak healing abilities that can be used as bonus actions, but nothing with the punch of either the 4E healing ability or the combination of healing players while also performing another task (like attack spells that also healed the party as a part of the magic of the spell).
DON'T YOU KNOW, YOU NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY! CLERICS IN THE BACK, KEEP THOSE FIGHTERS HALE AND HEARTY THE WIZARD IN THE MIDDLE SO HE CAN SHED SOME LIGHT AND NEVER LET THAT DAMN THEIF OUT OF SIIIIIIIGHT!!~~~
Every video I watch on this channel is preceded by a razor commercial. In a channel where everybody has beards, with an audience that's likely often-bearded. Good job, TH-cam
Back in 4E, my favorite 4 person party was: Damager Paladin (With Mordenkrad, Fullblade, or Execution Axe) Healing Paladin (Longsword, Spear, or Mace & Shield) Controlling Paladin (Holy Symbol & Polearm weapon) Tanking Paladin (Flail, Battleaxe, Warhammer, or Broadsword & Shield) A variety of weapons, races, feats and magic items made this not only viable, but fun.
Class can mean little based on a good player. I DMd a campaign, everyone wanted to be fighters, so they made a backstory of a merc unit. One was a swordsmaster, one an archer, a martial artist, a troubleshooter (jack of all trades, master of none), and a tank. Worked out. I have seen a Cleric who was more like a Paladin, Wizard who played like a Ranger, a Rogue who was the best warrior I have seen. Most interesting was the Barbarian, who was more of a thief than the Rogue...lol. Good times.
The thing about 5th edition is there is SO much healing/temporary hit-point gaining. Even the Battle Master Fighter can "Rally" to give his/her party members temporary hit-points. I don't think healing should ever be an issue. Especially with the short rest option and hit-die spending. Warlocks, Wizards and Sorcerers can all grant them selves temporary hit-points as well or even healing as a Necromancer school Wizard. As a DM I like to beat the crap out of party members (at least close to death as possible) but always slide them a potion of healing or three if necessary. Just figured I'd throw those options out to go with your video Nerdarchy crew. Good Stuff as always, and a necessary topic as well!
Three wizards (one generalist, one invoker, and one Spells & Magic build with only Conjuration and Invocation, but allowed to wear armor) and a thief. Still my favorite unusual party composition to this day. :)
In an MMO, party composition and teamwork (and uber gear) are paramount at the upper levels. Same thing for most published adventures. The expectation is that the players will bring a well rounded party, or an appropriately specialized one. If not, the DM should be adjusting encounters to suit or things will probably degenerate into an exercise in frustration. Getting away from published materials and into homemade adventures allows the DM to tailor the action to the backstories and capabilities of the PCs. Also, individual players require different levels of rp, combat, crafting, exploration, etc. Two fighters and a cleric are going to handle encounters very differently than two rogues and a wizard. They might be pitted against identical enemies and obstacles, but will use completely different tactics to succeed. What's a challenge for one group might be a cakewalk for the other. Also consider the level of experience and temperament of the players. Veterans and rookies, introverts and extroverts, thespians and mathematicians are going to approach problems differently. Party composition is important insofar as the DM needs to pay attention to it and tweak challenges as needed to keep the challenges from tipping too far. The composition of the gamers playing the characters is also important and should not be overlooked either.
Well, if there's class overlap, like having two rogues in the party, one way to make them not be in competition, as it were, is to have them use different subclasses, like thief and assassin, and/or different races. Also, I don't know if my DM will sign off on it, but I did just created an NPC party last night - idea being that they happen to be my character's wife's party and thus friends/allies of the player characters, especially since we are in an area, where my guy is from, which is filled with many dangers and no known allies. Here's the rundown - Subclass, Race, Background Artificer - Battle Smith, Minotaur, Soldier Barbarian - Totem Warrior, Loxoden, Guild Merchant Bard - College of Lore, Centaur, Folk Hero Cleric - Life Domain, Lizardfolk, Outlander Druid - Circle of the Moon, Tortle, Sailor Fighter - Cavalier, Human Variant/Hollow One, Entertainer Monk - Way of the Kensei, Hobgoblin, Charlatan Paladin - Oath of Vengeance, Kobold, Urchin Ranger - Beast Master, Goblin, Hermit Rogue - Thief, Mountain Dwarf, Criminal Sorcerer - Draconic Bloodline, Protector Aasimar, Sage Warlock - Celestial, Glasya Tiefling, Acolyte Wizard - Necromancer, Half-Drow, Noble - this one being my character's wife.
Going to comment before I watch. You do not need any specific composition to play. Even a solo character can adventure in the world. It is the DM's job to to tailor the competition in his game to suit the group he has available. It is okay to lose fights sometimes or even often. It is much more rewarding to win with a mish mash team of 3 rogues and a cleric, a group clearly suffering from disadvantages as opposed to a group of cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard. This kind of stuff in my opinion is about taking your group to the next level in terms of role playing.
***** Definitely! I think this kind of thinking leads down a good path. Most people only play very powerful characters, time and time again. I think it can be fun to fix in some very weak characters and see what happens :)
No, the DM doesn't have to model the enemies to fit the party. A set of 5 heavy plate, hack and slash fighters can run into a balanced group of warlock, cleric, ranged weapon fighter and fighter types... And the lack of spellcasters or any ranged attacks in the PC party is going to hurt. I'll have them down 40% hit points before they hit my front line. They chose to take a set of meat shields in without backup knowing that this fantasy adventure game has people who use magic and ranged weapons.
My newest campaign has a Shadow elf warlock, a Dragonborn Temest Cleric, an Inquisitive halfling rouge, and a hobgoblin conjure wizard. SKREW TEAM COMPM The goal is to have fun!
I think Ryan had the best idea of coming with a couple character concepts. That's something you could do with a session 0 is just to ask people to have 2 ideas and fill the roles that way. Having said that, there's a few classes that I just do not enjoy for role playing reasons like clerics, bards, rogues. I wouldn't be happy playing the game if I was forced into one of those classes.
Your conversation about the two sage type characters is probably the main reason my players have wanted to stay running Pathfinder rather than moving to 5e. If you have 17 intelligence and are proficient in history and arcana then you are going to have the same chance in anyone with the same intelligence, proficiencies and level as you. In Pathfinder characters have to put ranks into skills which allows for two knowledge based characters to have more areas of expertise and weakness. Not dissing 5e but that (and the lack of a 3PP license) is what's keeping us playing a stripped down Mathfinder game at the moment.
Like some others have said in the comments, I tend to be the sort who kinda fills the gaps. When I'm playing, I try to make sure I either A. Can effectively fill as many roles as possible, or B. try to make sure that the character I plan to play fills a role that isn't filled, because I don't like stepping on the toes of the other players. An example of A. is from one of my Pathfinder games, where I've made a character with the intention of being able to use the flurry of blows Full-Round action with a Greatsword by level three. The end result was a Brawler(Think Monk minus the mysticism.)/Barbarian/Cleric. He can flurry like nobody's business with his greatsword, so he dishes out decent damage, but he also has really solid AC, and access to healing spells. He can do a LOT of things, and does a decent job of them no less. Example of B. is from the same game, but in a different team of characters. The team I made this character for had its front line pretty much sorted, it had a healer, it had some skill coverage, but what it lacked was someone who could hit the runners/counter snipers. So, I made a character that now can shoot things about a mile away no sweat, filling the role that needed filled. When I'm DM'ing, it's a bit of a different deal, because I don't wanna take away from the Players' enjoyment of the game, but I wanna make sure they're not gunna get stuck because they wanted to play a specific type of character, so what I'll do is I'll basically make a robot, who performs ONLY the function that isn't being performed by the rest of the party. (A Cleric who only does healing, for example.) This character doesn't stick around forever (Unless the party really likes the characterization/doesn't end up adapting to fill the role I'm using a DMPC to fill.) and can be swapped out if another niche needs met.
***** Filling the gap is fine if that is what you enjoy doing and some players are like that. Nothing wrong with it. When I Dm if there is a gap there is a gap and we'll sort it out in game some how. I'm not a big fan of NPC's as part of the party, but that is just me. -Nerdarchist Dave
Knight_Of _Heart we have set up a 3.5 campaign where all the characters were rolled by using the whatareyou quiz on easydamus. Unsurprisingly all bar one's primary class is wizard, the odd one out is a sorcerer. It's certainly shifted the usual adventuring dynamics. How did yours go? Any tips or unexpected pitfalls to be aware of?
I've been really vocal with my group about diversifying skillsets, backgrounds, and classes.. but not to the point of 'forcing' them to play something they don't want to. I've helped all but one player set their characters up and we've all kind of had the shared opinion that we don't want redundancy. For instance, we had a cleric who wanted the sailor background for no reason but an online guide said it was best for his class. I went through all the options and suggested Faction Agent, which still allowed him to get the skill proficiencies he wanted but gave a better background draw as to not take away from our fighter who was already a sailor.
A DM thinking on the fly can help the overlap. If you have 2 rogues, instead of 1 always showing up the other, give them opportunities to collaborate. Easy version: instead of having a high lock-pick check, have 2 medium-high checks on either side of the door that have to be turned simultaneously. Slightly more interesting: one puts on a show with disguise and bluff checks, and the other picks the distracted crowd.
We have two Rogues in our current party, both VERY skilled at their lockpicking and traps etc. They actually take turns doing stuff and we frequently will have moments where one will look at the big, scary door and shoot for it to see whose turn it is to pick the lock or, if one of them just took a bunch of damage, the injured will tell the other one to take the next one.
It may have been my group, but we played 3.5 for years without a healer, one spell caster, and they were fine. I also didn't craft adventures with PC roles in mind. My players were extremely creative when it came to problem solving. They triumphed often, and had fun every time.
I lean towards the side of letting the players pick. I started DM’ng my first game this year, and one of my friends who had never played DnD before said that she wanted to kind of play a battlefield trickster. The usual suspects brushed my mind-trickery cleric, archfey warlock-but me and the other experienced players at the table were a bit worried about her playing a spell caster right out the gate. so after some discussion during session 0, she ended up going with a monk, and was happy to subclass with 4 elements as she was an Avatar TLA fan
My group (I'm the GM) is made up of three rogues, a barbarian and a fighter. The barbarian and fighter tank, the human rogue gets stuck in like a sort of a sneaky Zorro-like character, the elf rogue scouts and uses sneak attacks and the halfling rogue just stands back a supplies support/cover fire with her bow... and they make it work so well.
I have a handful of veteran players with over 10 years of roleplay experience and they always choose to play whatever they feel is necessary to the party. They let the newbies pick what they want and then choose what to be. "oh there's a rogue, a fighter and a druid? Well we'll play a sorcerer and a bard" But 5e alleviates that a bit. I played a finesse variant human fighter with the noble background (8 str 16 dex 14 con 10 wis 12 int 14 chs) With the variant human I picked up proficiency in deception and asked my GM if I could take stealth as one of my 2 fighter skills and all the sudden I was sneaking around and using my silver tongue to get out of sticky situations, I was stealthy, tanky, and the face of the party all at once. My dad played a rogue and picked up the magic initiate and uses guiding bolt as his first level spell
The hard part is giving just the right amount of fudging to keep all players relevant, but not so much that they start thinking you're forcing the events. When two of your three player characters are a warrior who deals massive damage to anything, and an anti-paladin with an array of dark powers who will eventually control demons and undead, keeping a humble bard relevant in battle can be a chore.
+ZorotheGallade Think how people who play monopoly love to pick their favorite token to move around the board. If you have players who are new to D&D you can present them with a dozen premade characters to choose from which work perfectly in your adventure. It gives players choice and gets rid of the problem.
One of my favorite campaigns that i played in, the dm wanted us all to be wizards. I think we used 3.5 and Pathfinder, so there were a ton of options to build our characters very differently from each other. So we had a blaster wizard, a tanky-type, a wand wielder, a 'conjurist', and i rolled an enchanter (who the dm hated) We've talked about doing more campaigns revolving around a single class. An all-Bard campaign, where we would basically be a band on tour getting into trouble. And an all-Rogue game, something like Mission Impossible.
I'm with Dave on this one, good/bad party composition is about character motivation, not classes. If all else fails, they can hire followers or aquire henchmen to fill in the gaps! In my current campaign (AD&D 2ed) this is exactly the case, the PC party consists of a halfling thief, a priest of a travellers/horsemanship deity, an Abjurer, and a Transmuter. None of the players in the campaign currently are really interested in role playing a warrior. They currently have two followers who are nice tanky types, and 'toe the line' when things get tough. So they still have the various roles filled, but aren't necessarily investing energy on characters they aren't interested in.
Hiring NPCs is a fairly elegant answer to the problem but it does increase the workload for the GM. If the players are willing to pitch in and run hirelings in combat that would make things easier. That being said it would still throw game balance out of wack, the GM would have to look at changing encounters to take the extra manpower provided by the hirelings into account. Then we are right back to increasing the GMs workload...
When the group I Game Master for plays we focus more on how our characters back stories will intermingle, if at all, rather than on the classes themselves. Having strong character ideas and synergy is more important to our table than trying to cover traditional class roles. On the other hand, when I play a character I always want to know who is going to play what because I like playing niche characters that others often don't want to play. Cleric? Sure. Bard? Absolutely! Of course sometimes I just want to play a fire-loving Warlock or an honour-bound Paladin, but I like to play to fill a role myself, and sometimes a party just needs a Cleric to round things out.
The way to get around the mandatory cleric issue is to use another domain other than life... like war (for a more warrior-like experience) or trickery (for a more thief-like experience). You still get cleric spells, but also get to do more than sit back and heal everyone else.
Our group at the second League are all "play what you want to play" concept. That's mean one Draconic Sorcerer (me), and four other fighter-types. (one Barbarian, one Ranger, and two Fighters - one ranged and one tank). The DM felt the necessity to add a Cleric. I don't think the Cleric is necessary (Rangers can heal), and the Ranger and the ranged Fighter are both very stealthy types. The composition of the party is less important than the party *chemistry*. I've DM'ed all fighter parties, but they all got along great - and that was fantastic. As far as games like Vampire: The Masquerade - I suggest playing them before talking about "sameness". The Clan determines the set of Vampiric powers, and the background/archetype determines a lot of skills. I assure you a Brujah and a Toreador are NOT the same. A Gangrel and a Ventrue are NOT the same...and so on. I've also LARPed this system (yeah, yeah, I know) and that was probably the most fun I've had in a long time. I made a lot of new friends there, and I'll always value that time. But that too, holds the same rule: Play what you love. If the PLAYERS get along really well, WHAT they play as characters doesn't matter, because the story they create will be fantastic.
It certainly takes a certain confidence to do so. And for those who lack confidence, I've seen it be the inspiration for better role playing at the table once LARPing has been performed.
Player Composition: Players should play what they want! Experienced players generally understand that all compositions may not be equally useful. It's up to the GM and the players to make the most of the situation. Between potion abundance, feats, more frequent resting, and general class healing abilities there sure are a lot of options. Plus, between Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger there are a TON of ways to give a party some healing while still having a lot of other play styles for the healer to "focus" on. Fighters have: second wind, survivor (if the game goes that far), and rally. Monks have: wholeness of body. Rogues get: use magic device which can be used for healer specific magic items. There are several spells in the Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard spell list that grant temporary hit points. I think the only class that has nothing like healing would be Barbarian. One could argue that the damage reduction performs the same basic goal and technically, yeah, but I think the damage reduction they have is a balance mechanic (along with the higher hit point pool) to compensate for the lower AC.
Jake Williams What about a DEX barbarian? My point above was that there are plenty of ways to get healing. Are you bringing up a DEX barbarian as nothing more than a way to start an argument, or did you miss the point of the original comment? To go completely off topic ... that's rude and lame by the way: A DEX focused barbarian would lose on rage bonus damage with both ranged weapons and with finesse weapons (using DEX instead of STR). Reckless attack doesn't work with ranged weapons or with finesse weapons (using DEX instead of STR). Brutal critical doesn't work with ranged weapons .... and on and on. It's almost like a Barbarian was designed to be low DEX with a lower AC and a higher hit point total to compensate for being hit more often ... and had been designed to work that way for multiple decades of dungeons and dragons editions. I'm sure there's a site somewhere with the highest possible Barbarian AC build for you to mimic, but it still won't be DEX focused.
zero11010 I apologize if I have offended you, I meant none. I was simply point out that there is a possible build of the barbarian that has a very high armor class, which is relevant to your comment. So I haven't gone way off base, I simply pointing out something you may have not considered. Just because a class is designed to be a certain way, that doesn't mean it has to be used like that
Jake Williams I get where you're coming from. You're trying to make a correction or point out an error anywhere in a fairly long comment, regardless of how pertinent to the bulk of that comment the error may be. "Just because a class is designed to be a certain way, that doesn't mean it has to be used like that" It certainly does mean that this is how it's usually played. Did I make a generalization? Yep. Is that generalization wrong? Nope. Is any generalization right 100% of the time? Hell no. You're welcome to be the first low STR and low CON barbarian. Maybe you can be a high elf barbarian and really focus on casting your cantrip in combat. Then, you can tell me all about how awesome it is to play a class in an unexpected way. I don't have all the items in the DMG memorized. I know that there are items for INT, CON, and STR that increase the attribute dramatically to a fixed number. If an item like that existed for DEX it may be feasible to use that for an AC boost at higher level (once the item is procured). But, the build would really still be a Strength based build.
In a game I'm putting together, we are forming a Good to Neutral aligned group that actively fights against devils and evil creatures, sometimes based on profit or mercenary work (basically Devil May Cry). So far I have a Gunslinger, a Swashbuckler, and a Light Cleric. Each with a specific reason for being that class and archetype. I particularly like the Cleric, as we felt a religious slant in the party would be good for roleplay. Also a fourth person may join us who will play a Tiefling, which I think is pretty novel as it opens up a whole slew of possibilities for character development.
Also, something to keep in mind, when trying to balance the party is NPC. If you have 4a party of that don't want to play a cleric, they can run into a friendly heal-bot.
This reminded me of how for some old modules at certain times you needed a certain class with a certain spell to defeat a specific baddie, get out of a trap, or progress with the story. Woe to the DM who did not read the adventure thoroughly beforehand, or for the group that does not think to prepare a specific spell (eg. Shatter, Bless, Dispel, etc). This can b a real party stopper (Dragnglass in Game of Thrones).
My longest played 2nd edition group consisted of a Human Fighter, Human Wizard and a Halfling rogue. My first solo character was a half-elf Ranger/Druid. Our newest group which is running through the Temple of Elemental Evil is ( Human Ranger, Human Cleric of Lathander, High Elf Wizard, High Elf Fighter(Archer), Dwarf Barbarian/Fighter, and a Halfling Rogue.)
I told my table of regulars: Create 3 characters with EPIC background stories as much within the trinity composition. I playfully taunted them: A true DnD player always have atleast 3 characters ready at hand. Trinity-composition being: Tank-healer-damage dealer. It doesn't have to outright be: Sword&board Fighter with all the defensive talents, A rogue/Wizard for damage and the typical Cleric for healing in the name of Pelor. Tank: Could be a Half Orc wildshape druid with a shield, going for Bearforms. Healers: If the party has a Paladin and a Ranger, they both have off-healing capabilities, that party is not in dire need of a cleric healbot. The advantages of this: 1 - The players will invest more time in these character's background development and personality. Flaws, bonds, history, habbits etc. Thus the roleplay becomes more immersive for the players. 2 - They can use these characters at other tables/campaigns. 3 - When sitting down for a new campaign, they as veterans can easily let newcommers pick what they want to play and thus add one of their trinity characters to the party's composition. 4 - I want to give players that Ned Stark moment, making them not feel too safe. And if I kill one of the PC's off. They won't be so heartbroken, because they have 2 other equally awesome characters lying around waiting to be taken on adventure as well.
My two gaming groups have enough experienced players who have already played a variety of character classes so each one will play something totally different from what he or she played in an earlier game. In the end the party still ends up with a randomly mixed group. For example in Campaign1, I had played a male Dragonborn Paladin of the Ancients; in Campaign2 I played a female Half-Elf Bard of Lore; in Campaign3, I'm now a male Moon Elf Rogue Arcane Trickster. The other players played a Human Ranger Colossus Slayer, a Tiefling Warlock/Thief/Sorcerer, and a Half-Orc Barbarian in Campaign1. Then the others switched around and our characters were an Elf Monk, a Half-Orc Ranger, and Human Wizard in Campaign2. The players are now playing an Elf Sorcerer, a Half-Orc Paladin of Vengeance, and a Half-Orc Fighter Champion, along with a newbie playing a Dwarf Cleric in Campaign3. Nobody asked anybody what they wanted to play, except the newby we were introducing to the game. Everybody just played the character type each was most comfortable with, whether it was a bit similar to a previous character or someone totally different or never played before.
Storytime, then assistance required: My first campaign I told everyone to play what would make them happy. I didn't know what I was doing and wanted them to have the most fun possible since I would be bumbling through my home brew setting (customization to any party was possible). Designed for busy people there would be easy plot based reasons for characters to pop in and out based on other commitments, and if they were still having fun at the end and I didn't want to shoot myself, we could continue. Experienced player said that was a terrible idea, no one could possibly have fun when we were going to have so many problems without a well balanced party or, God forbid, double up classes - but he would give it a shot. Made a character he said he had fun playing (oddly to fill in a gap the first group had), but wanted to kill it off and make a cleric based on my first game (which was me panicking because I forgot I get stage fright, a newbie that seems more to enjoy the story and going with the flow, a player that has since learned that being a squishy mage means stand in the back, and a crazy NPC healer/guide). It would be more fun for him, if we had a healer. And the gap (from before) going to be filled by someone who joined later. Fine, but all the healing supplementary items were involved in actual plot, and the room full of healing potions was already there (It was part of the looney tune's backstory - I swear. Not that it mattered because they found but didn't search the room). Started talking about how excited he was to play this cleric...was unable to do the exact build he wanted. Started talking about how excited he was to play this bard...realized he hated how bards ran in this system after he started playing the character, but he found an acceptable way to play it. They breezed through the rest of the dungeon he built this character for much faster than I anticipated. Started mentioning that the bard really had no motivation to stay with the party, it's what his character would do... (Apparently, when the GM says she can cover gaps in the group, she can in fact cover gaps in the group) PS - In case an NPC/villain comes back, I need the basis for a monster/demon/other that focuses on life transference. IE: I give my hit points to my allies and steal my enemy's hit points. I was thinking a devil that got turned into a fey of some sort due to...stuff. Ret-conning might be required at this point, but I would like to keep the essence of the story I was going to write while satisfying the lore that my players love.
This question is easily resolved if you roll up characters with organic stat rolling. Everybody finds out what the party will be like at the same time, nobody is unhappy that they get stuck into a party bot role they don't want to play.
What I do is always have a couple of "back-up" characters I always wanted to try. Ones I always wanted to try. So this way I can always fit what the party needs, I personally am very indecisive so this works perfect for me. I have 3-7 characters in my backup at all times.
I'd say it's up to the players to make their characters different from each other, even if all four get handed the exact same sheet with the same everything. It's up to the DM to make sure that it's possible in his game to survive under such circumstances. I.E. Make sure they have enough healing potions or fight easier monsters that don't require as much healing. Most importantly, if it's a thieves guild campaign, make it more about sneaking and assassinating than fighting dragons and hordes of fighters. Btw, that's a really inspiring idea! "You're a thief. Tell me why. Ok, the guild needs you to steal xyz."
None should force or being forced to play something: if you need cooperation have players speak each other and decide toghether who's gonna do what. As both player and master I always feel the group need to be balanced and fit for every kind of challenge. That does not mean classes, but roles: tankyness, healing abilities, high single-target damage and multiple-enemies damage, and a character can usually do two of them. The thing works even out of combat, so I love having someone who does stealthy things, someone to talk to people, someone who knows things and so on. If the party is (even a little) power-gaming coherently organized I think the fun on the table can rise a lot, for both players and master: as a player you are more likely to achieve small victories and able to make a stand for the big ones, so as a master you can put challenge into campaign and let the players shine.
I think 5e really did a good job on reducing the whole 'you need so and so classes' thing. You don't need to be a Cleric to be good at healing and you don't need to be a Rogue to be good at disarming traps and picking locks. Our party has a Druid/Monk multiclass that fits our trap disarming and lock picking needs. As far as healing goes, Druid/Monk can spend spell slots to heal in Wild Shape and we have a Paladin/Sorcerer (me) with Cure Wounds as well as Lay on Hands, though I prefer to spend my lvl1 spell slots on Shield.
I realize I am commenting on an old video, but TH-cam recommended the video. I always tell players to be what they want but I warn them that being well-rounded as individuals and as a team will be more effective than any min-maxing. I tend to use a variety of challenges to keep things fresh, although I lean towards a particular aspect if the party just so happens to be weighted in that direction. As far as specific roles go: - Tanks are a silly concept any way. Each player needs to consider how their character will defend themselves. I never find I need to compensate for the lack of a heavily armored fighter. - Healers are not needed, although healing is. I don’t like characters springing back into action after being knocked unconscious anyway, so my house rules encourage players to seriously consider not getting downed. Healing out of combat is not an issue of course. - DPS is very non-essential. I tend to employ a lot of minions so most characters can take down most enemies. For champion/boss encounters it is more about strategy than raw damage anyhow. I usually have non-combat skills be fairly effective at avoiding, limiting or ending a fight. For example, a character with high persuasion can attempt to make enemies surrender, and intimidation can make opponents flee. - Rogue is not essential in 5e anyway, since most characters have the potential for sneaking and locks can be opened multiple ways. Note that there are occasionally situations where a group is missing something that makes gameplay inconvenient. For example, perhaps no-one is good at tracking. I get round this with hirelings/npcs, and in the course of play I give out items or even skill boons that enable the party to plug the gap. For example, for aiding the archdruid he gives the party a deer antler hat that grants advantage on survival rolls.
There's a ton of great pop fiction for that. Since the majority of movies don't have D&D magic, anything where the movie's primarily about warriors will work- The Magnificent Seven, The 13th Warrior, & Brave Heart just to name a few. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Before watching: Every party which intends to enter combat should have a healer, a tank, a damage dealer, and CC. Every party should be able to stealth, socialize, kill, and investigate. Every party should be able to get around in atypical environments and secure the means to safely rest while away from home. And here's where I note that just because they *should*, doesn't mean they NEED it. Any more than a Barbarian needs a decent Con score or a Rogue needs a decent Dex. They are likely more effective with it, sure. Yet every single one of those things can be taken care of through non-standard means, and any 'gaps' in party composition or ability can be filled in a variety of ways- items, NPCs being hired to assist with certain spells (such as teleportation magic), creative problem solving, etc. I'll also point out that many of the classes are FAR more flexible than they're given credit for, or for how they once were. A Druid can fill Every Single One of those needs and roles, and can do so in a single character (decent Wis and Cha, rely on beast shapes for physical attributes). Most other characters can triple up on roles, or at least double. As long as you have at least 1 primary spellcaster in the party, you're probably fine, and if you don't, well, you're just going to play a different type of campaign than you otherwise might, it doesn't mean you can't still have fun.
Our party started as a 3 man: wizard (me), Paladin and ranger. Which felt pretty balanced and covered most roles (I have thieves tools prof). Now we have two new guys coming in. One chose to be a divine soul sorc and the other is going monk (drunk Master eventually). We’re not bad off, but I am a little concerned with how squishy the party is.
I have eight players on my table and not a single healer. The druid is always in bear form and the cleric only takes offensive spells. It gets ugly at times but the group seems resourceful enough that they get to the end of the session with 2-3 HP left each. Though, there is a strong current of anger forming against the cleric but he won't give up secretly worshiping the god of mindflayers. The video is great as always but, without Ted, it feels exactly like adventuring without a healer: something is just missing.
Lol, Ted will be glad to know he's missed. Schedules man schedules. You know what they say once you go secretly worshipping mindflayer gods you don't go back. Besides if those other players wanted a healer so bad maybe they should of thought about that while selecting their own classes. - Nerdarchist Dave
My second campaign ( AD&D, early eighties) we had 6 - level 1 magic users run into a pack of orcs. My spell failed in round one, next struck an orc with my dagger. Then I died. Rolled a human fighter, caught up with the party (drawn in by the screams of the dying) and dispatched the foes. Fun times. Bring a tank, folks!
Human thief with the healer feat is a great way to work without a real healer. Throw in the mobile feat and some potions and you are ready to go. He can run around the battle field and heal someone. If necessary he can use both a healing kit and a potion in one turn on somebody
I play in a smaller party. Often, we have a few fights before we get a rest. Yes, I play the cleric. However, as I knew beforehand what everyone was playing, I noticed a lack of spell casters. I chose a cleric over any of the mage types. As a Knowledge Domain Cleric to a War God, I do my fearsome smiting with a strength of 7. (Yes, it fits my background story and gave me a reason for a 7 stat other than using one of my other abilities as a "dump stat.") I used a Half-Elf for the extra stat boosts and skills. Now, the other players think my character is the mafia because I use my skills to enhance my encounters with the NPCs. Some lucky rolls on some intimidation checks, a bit of thaumaturgy and I seem a lot more awesome. Oh, and I killed a monster capable of killing the entire party - (the DM was setting it up as a future encounter) - I killed it by taking off my shirt and using it as a lure and sent it over a cliff into the arms of a more dangerous group of monsters that we had sneaked past. Clerics are fun. It only means you have to find things about a character to make it fun for you and the other members.
I always say play what's fun, don't worry about it. If my players are playing all melee fighter's I'm not sending nothing but archers against them as it wouldn't be fair/fun. I think it's the DM's job to tailor the game around the party make up.
I'm playing a bard in a party with 2 wizards and a cleric. There was supposed to be a paladin but so far he hasn't made it to the table. It's completely dysfunctional in this combat-heavy campaign. The cleric and I are trading off tank and healing duties as the situation warrants. As a lore bard I don't dish out much damage but the wizards nuke the world around me and I have so many skills that my survival rate is awesome. I find it an enjoyable experience despite the odd party balance.
Or if you don't have a magic healer you can agree to make it so HP represents something completely different than actual damage taken and actually represents defensive stamina and only after your HP hits 0 does your character start taking actual physical damage that must be role-played (making different levels of negative represent different levels of physical damage with different penalties). Then you make it so characters naturally heal HP (the defensive stamina not the actual wounds) at a certain rate through normal rest or even light activity. You'd need to fine tweak the mechanics, but it is a work around alternative from D&D's incredibly slow natural healing that makes having a cleric almost a necessity. The point being you can always find ways to make any party playable as a DM.
compisition is all personal preference and planning. the group I play with has, literally 5 fighters, including a goblin npc named droop who is a level 11 eldrich knight, a wizard and a sorcerer(me), and we actually get by rather well
We have started the hoard of the dragon queen campaign, our party consists of a rock gnome barbarian, a human druid, a halfling monk, a half elf rogue and myself a tiefling warlock. We are having great fun with this bunch of misfits, just shows that you don't always need the classic standard character classes.
I've seen a party containing a ranger a fighter and two rogues survive cause the rogues had use magic device plus they bought lots of potions. They also heavily donated to the temple so much so the temple wanted them alive cause they donated more in a few months than was donated the rest of the year. So any group can work so long as you're willing to work together to figure out how to deal with any short comings of a missing ability.
Unless the campaign is leaning towards a particular theme or set of themes then you want that iconic mix of Fighter, Cleric, Thief, & Wizard. Once that foundation is set, do whatever you want with the remaining three to four slots. A balance of complementary specialists means that the party is best capable of dealing with the challenges they confront. If there are multiple ways to get around challenges, great but for those stubborn, sticky situations, you're prepared. You can't have a soccer team solely made up of strikers. If someone is late to join the party then their preferred role might already be taken. Frankly, I will play the cleric/support/healer character because no one else will and the party will suffer for it. Furthermore, Clerics are pretty badass right now. There's a bunch that will start with the heavy armor proficiency and free chainmail + shield. That's 18 AC right out of the gate. The ones without that proficiency have some pretty interesting spell casting or utility features. I gave a Tempest Cleric a try at a D&D AL game and while I didn't directly slay anything, I prevented a number of party of deaths while dealing some damage and providing bonuses over the three mini adventures we ran.
I'm playing in a 2e game and my now retired Dwarf fighter had a lot of similarities to the Half-Orc Champion, his character was undoubtedly stronger than mine but the relationship wasn't one of competition it was definitely one of mate-ship and mutual respect. Another character being better than you at what you do doesn't matter when you aren't in competition.
We always have at least a rogue and a cleric in our party. It usually ends up with the classic Fighter, Rogue, Wizard/Sorcerer and a Cleric. The healer could have been a Paladin or a Druid, but people seem to prefer the Cleric. I feel it always works better with a healer, since it keeps the party going for longer. I can also throw in tougher encounters without worrying about killing the party. It would be interesting to see the party struggle with poison and disease without having a healer around to remove it though :p Clerics are very versatile though, so I don't feel like it's a problem. This time around we have a war cleric. 5e has a lot of neat class variations that make the classes a lot more interesting in my opinion.
No healer? Have the player progress at Max HP. Or give them a Moon Flask. A Flask that, when struck by Moon Light, turns the water inside it into a healing liquid. And have it usable as bonus action.
+whatever3554 Oooh I like that idea a lot. Forces a 1/day use (or 2/day at lesser potency eg they don't drink the entire contents) and gets around forcing a cleric (or making me play as one while DMing)
@damion Jackson Well start letting them be on the verge of death in a few encounters, so they can in character realise they need a way to heal up in combat, let them search for ways to deal with it like let potions be a more common comodity in your world, maybe they can learn to create them themselves. They wil be more cautious, not running in guns blazing always. It gives the campaign another dimension
I think the points about party chemistry are spot on. I definitely think players should play characters that they enjoy within the framework of what works for the campaign. If you have a party of all fighters or all mages, etc. then hopefully the GM can find a way to smooth over the lack of certain skills or abilities that might be needed. I think it truly comes down to being able to create an interesting character that has plenty of hooks for the GM and other characters to interact with.
I have found that the party compositions matters little. but what is more important is of how the DM will allow certain things to be done. for example, a campaign is set up where the party must attack a fort populated by bandits. if the party is diverse, you can do many ways in doing that single task. but if the party is mostly built up on rogues, they might take a stealthy approach. or even if they are mostly fighters/barbarians, they might go for the more direct route. as long as the DM allows certain actions and approaches to be done, then the compositions shouldnt be the problem.
If something is needed there are all kinds of ways to put one’s own spin on that need. The right feats and focus and a healer could be a combat medic, a herbalist, a witch doctor, or necromancer who uses his knowledge of biology to act as a doctor.
On a side note, work up a half wood elf fire genasi. Give him plus one to S,D, C, and W. No increased movement speed, When the other elves try to show him mask of the wild, have him standing there with his red skin and hair the color of white hot iron with a hit of red blowing in the breeze with his arms across his chest saying, "Really?" Give him bits and pieces of the criminal and urchin background and make him a slave in his youth in the city of brass. You now have a wizard who's really nervous about his fire spells, hates loud noises, and knows the escape route out of every town he is in.
Our group we all work together. If we need to know something about the arcane everyone with knowledge arcana rolls just in case someone rolls low. If we have multiple sneak attackers we coordinate our attacks. Soon there'll be 2 rangers but they're very different because one is a dwarven close up brawler that focuses on crafts and the other is going to be an eladrin archer/ rogue that's going to act as a support character with illusion spells, sleep, and cure wounds/ goodberry type spells.
Whenever I split the party I have another person, that I call "The DM's helper" or "Assisstant DM", take over the new group to prevent the boredom of only one group doing anything. When not managing the second group, I have them handle random loot rolls or special enemies during combat.
I like diversity for a party's composition and I don't mind overlap, but it is very detrimental to not have some form of healing. I played a 1st level Human Warlock who grabbed Healer as his feat. That was our only reliable healing. I kept our party alive in our first encounter, one that we wouldn't have survived otherwise.
In the campaign that we just started a couple of weeks ago, I decided I had to be the cleric because we only had three people and there was already another fighter. My only complaint so far is that there are far too many spells to choose from. The DM was expecting at least five people so it eased up his need to drastically nerf the encounters. Fortunately, I already had a bare bones cleric rolled up. Unfortunately, my rolls all night were terrible, I'm still blaming the table being padded as the reason. Even if you double up on something, like knowledge, doesn't mean that both people are going to roll well enough to use it every time. Redundancy isn't a bad thing, especially if your life or your characters life, is on the line.
I have found over the years that parties tend to work themselves because a truly creative player has more character concepts then time to play them and bad players are given a warning or rejected from a group.
In my main campaign all four of our party members are divine spell casters. Cleric/Ranger/Paladin/Druid, its quite funny to see how many hit points we can tank with four sources of healing.
I usually make an actual character concept before I pick a class, and then I work in the class afterwards, to fit the party. For example I had this character idea of a lizardman or dragonborn who was obsessed with being the best cook in the world and trying every different type of food there was. Now I could make him all sorts of classes, for Pathfinder the funniest one was Alchemist, to make him the worlds first (and probably last) molecular gastronomist. For 5e I could have played him as a bard with cooking as a musical instrument (dm permitting of course). Or he could have been a rogue who was very, very good with knives... or a barbarian with huge eating utensils for weapons (grabbing a bite to eat during combat, perhaps). Anything is possible, and all of those sound kind of fun. A bit gimmicky perhaps, but then you flesh out the rest of the character later on. :P
Dave, I have to say I am one of those guilty people. I have a bad habit of creating tons of characters. Most of the time I end up playing some kind of character with spell like abilities that is also a melee character, or try playing a spell caster as a melee like class. I like the idea of imagining the wizards or spell caster wielding a Longsword and blasting people with magic from his offhand.
Party composition effects how much combat and how quickly and often the party can fight, survive combat, and move on to the next combat. If the players and the GM is fine with PCs taking a while to recover from each fight (like a city/crime game) then no healers is fine (or even preferable for flavour). If the players want to repeatedly get through fights (e.g. a classic dungeon or pre-package adventures) then a tank+healer+DPS mix is almost essential. That doesn't mean a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard necessarily, just that those 3 roles can be covered. A party of 4 hybrids (e.g. Paladins or Bards) could probably do a decent job depending on Archetypes. A College of Valour Bard can easily get AC 18 and literally taunt and attack with Vicious Mockery and Battle Magic...and a party of Bards can Inspire each other to help them do their jobs (e.g. Combat Inspiration on whoever is tanking). I've played a game recently with a multiclass War Cleric/Eldritch Knight with Heavy Armour Mastery as the combo tank/healer and everyone else doing DPS which worked OK.
Discovered this today: We had to split our party in 2 because we had too many players in our group wich resulted in 2 groups of 3 players (3 being a very scary amount when you have an unbalanced party.) The problem we saw we faced: One party was a Paladin Tank (me), a Tempest Cleric and a Corruption Warlock, the other being a Bard, Sorcerer and Ranger. My party had a great time, (being level 2 characters), taking down a Manticore and 2 Anhkegs (altough it was an intense fight), the other party almost got wiped after fighting a group of bandits and resting in their camp, because they then faced a group of enemies slightly above their challenge rating. The lack off either a decent tank to soak up damage, or a decent healer to get everyone up resulted in a death and the other 2 to flee. When these 2 groups are together, we can easily take on most challenges thrown our way, but as soon as you're lacking a key component, you're in for a rough ride. (That's why I almost all the time roll as a Healer or Tank.) That being said, having a group of characters who fit well together in role-playing manner is just as fun. Having a noble Lawful Good Paladin and a Neutral Drow Warlock in the same party can be fun to roleplay. We agree on many things in this campaign, but for very different reasons.
If you have two knowledge wizards you could have them both roll and give one the correct info and the other the wrong info so they have to try and convince the party that what they know is the real thing.
This is why I prefer pathfinder just for the spell Infernal Healing. It's a very cheap wizard spell to heal up a party in between combat. You don't need a cleric. My priority, as you get more party members what's "optimal" next class: 1st player = Fighter (preferably reach focused fighter) 2nd player = Wizard (for buffing the Fighter + zoning) 3rd player = Rogue (mainly for working back field) 4th player = second fighter (could be another melee focus like Barbarian) 5th player = Archer (ranged damage focuses) Despite the potential of the Wizard to bend reality, Fighter is still the core of combat. She is a massive roadblock, everyone must deal with them constantly. Wizard only comes second to help the fighter, to buff the fighter, to set up traps for her like enemies slipping on grease. Rogue comes to work with the back field behind the front line when there if a Fighter to even MAKE a front line, that little scamp can work the back-field and screw up the obvious counters to fighter such as ranged attackers and enemy casters. An you also can't have a rogue first as who will you flank with? You get the stock damage dealer first and then specialist damage dealer comes next. A second fighter because as things get tougher you need the benefit of rolling cover. Fighter's work disproportionately well in pairs, they stop themselves being surrounded by instead surround and pressure the enemy. You don't need another Rogue, one is enough, two is just multiple chances to tip them off. You don't need another wizard, if you need more spells out utilise potions, wondrous items and spell storing weapons. Low LOW down on the list is an archer, but still they are great. These are the raw damage dealers, while fighters hold the enemy, the archer can just rain a constant stream of damage, the archer can be quite boring but they depend so much on having fighters on the front line. Using the archer's range just see them as able to damage anywhere and everywhere, they should take rapid shot as soon as possible sit back and get twanging. Going archer before you have a really solid front line is asking for trouble. Too much stuff will get past and it is way WAY too easy to move right in and perform a combat maneuver on them which totally impedes their ability to use their ranged weapon and with a ranged weapon they can't use provoke to impede a CM. And if an archer is Flanked then they are so deeply screwed unless they quickly switch to some back-up melee weapon, it's hard to be a switch hitter Archer.
When I have played or been DM I don't think we have had to worry about party compisition. People want to do something different all the time, but we have never had to say no you can't be this or that. I feel like people should play what they are in the mood for. People can always change later, by making a new character or even branching out into multiclassing. You never know, people can surprise you and throw a curveball doing something you never expected. When I played D&D I've been everything from a Wizard, Paladin, Ranger, Fighter, and Barbarian. I don't think I have ever played a Cleric expect for in computer games.
As far as I'm concerned, party composition is a fluid concept, especially considering how many different classes fit different roles. Just because you need a striker-type doesn't mean it /has/ to be a fighter. My 4e group has for their two strikers a Ranger and my character, a Warlock. But if you want to survive, someone's gotta know healing. Because you just never know. Be it paladin, cleric, bard, or someone who has multi-classed, someone's gotta be able to dole out the heals when the chips are down. Maybe you can't always actively prevent death, but you can delay it for a while. And sometimes, that'll be enough. As for out of battle, having a good spread of skills is a definite plus. Otherwise, you come across that awkward moment where the primary skills for a skill challenge are something no one is trained in, and the DM has to scramble to re-shuffle the skills around. (Besides, you need /someone/ to be the "face" of the party when dealing with nobility, right?)
You can be a face without skills. I'd allow player to just rp it. In 5e everything is just an ability check. If you have a skill you are just better at it. The idea of telling players to play something because we need healing or a skill set has always rubbed me the wrong way. Especially if someone picks what they want but wants to tell someone else play something maybe they aren't interested in playing. For me it always comes back to play what you want. - Nerdarchist Dave
I don't see choosing character class as a polar choice between "play whatever you want" vs "you must play this class because the party needs one". In my experience, players differ in what they want from their characters. Some have a particular class (or even a fully formed character) in mind while others have several preferences from which they're willing to choose and others are even more flexible, with no particular preference. Consequently, it isn't difficult to find classes for everyone which also result in a reasonably balanced party composition. I find that Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Bard serves as a useful guideline to influence choices without forcing players into a particular class.
I'm in a game right now of a bunch of new players doing the 5e starter adventure and I started off playing a Warlock (because I always go with the Barbarian type character in any game and i wanted to mix it up) but this other guy also wanted to be a Warlock but he also wanted to be unique (which gets pretty ironic later on) so he decided to be a Rogue. He ended up switching a couple times to see what he really like and settled on an Elf Great Weapon Fighter and at Level 3, he went Eldritch Knight. Just like the other two Fighters. I ended up feeling obligated to play a Cleric but I never used him because at the last minute I decided I would rather have fun than make sure the party is balanced and I talked to the DM and we settled on Matt Mercer's Gunslinger Archetype for the Fighter and I kinda hope the other guy gets to make the Warlock he wanted to make at first because i feel guilty about sort of taking that away from him.
I used to ask my players to try and get the basic roles filled, but I've stopped. They can all attend to that themselves, or not. As a player, I try to fill an empty party roll if I see one. Pathfinder's been good to me for both of these, and I can see where 5e has some flexibility as well. Of course, sometimes it's the oddball party that get's the best stories. Like a group I was DM for who decided that they didn't need any magic, arcane or divine, as we started up Jade Regent. There were a few regrets, but some really fun stories to go with it.
I play a CN Tempest Cleric Copper-Dragonborn whom had been a sailor, his ship was raided and the defenders were all slain, as he lay dying he beseeched any greater power to avenge he and his crew, seeing no response he screamed out that he would give anything, do anything. This got a response from the Dark God Talos, CE, who made him his Cleric, blew apart the ships and set him on a Dark Path as his Champion. Balasar is the Champion of a dark and Evil god, and is CN, but uses his powers to destroy and save. He refuses to murder innocents, but will burn villages to appease Talos. He is a contradiction.
Good comments throughout, and interesting video. But if you don't have at least one character that can take some damage and another that can deal it out, if you have a campaign that has any degree of combat, the players will have to be either very smart or very lucky at low levels to survive.
I just started in a game last night, and I was told I was not allowed to know about anyone elses characters. I was supposed to pick whatever I wanted without knowing anything about party comp. It was awesome but also an odd decision, as I didnt have to worry about filling a role, I only had to worry about what sounded fun. I spent a week looking into classes, and with it being a Pathfinder game, that was a lot of options.
Nerdarchy I went with a 2 weapon fighting Fighter, my other game I am playing a goblin alchemist, so I thought it would be nice to be less squishy and to be right in the thick of things.
I always try to get the players to make their characters before they talk to eachother. I dont want ''proper balance'' to factor into a players choice of character. I just set up the frame their character has to fit into sort of like: s/he must be of a race/class that fits this local area and be in good standing with X organisation. That makes the group coherent enough for me to work with.
Original party comp of my current DnD group: Fighter/archer, wild fire sorceror, cleric, paladin, rogue, and dragon ancestry sorceror. then people died, like alot (actually we found 2 decks of many things... 1 person got erased, 2 others got their soul sucked out of them, one of our other players sold his soul to a devil and was later killed in a boss fight (the devil claimed the soul so we could not rez him) So now our current party is: fighter/archer, monk, paladin (different paladin) a fighter (tank) and 2 bards... i'm all for people playing what they want to play, but i fear our current composition could go horrible wrong and end up in a TPK...
I like having all of my players make their characters apart from one another so they can play what they want without worrying who is playing what. At the same time if they want to talk things over and decide the take certain roles that's on them I won't say no.
I've been in a game as a barbarian with another barbarian, same primal path, same background, worked out just fine cause everyone else were spell casters and the like
I generally let the groups set up their characters as they see fit and if this doesn't include anyone with healing capabilities or trapfinding it just serves as an example to why such classes help balance adventuring parties
In 5e it doesn't matter as much what classes players choose. Most new players try to make a character that can do a lot of roles and unless you all create characters together there is no synergy anywhere. I find it difficult to understand why a Hobgoblin and a Lizardfolk want to adventure with the human and the Aasimar, but players pick race and class based on what they think is cool. Older editions relied more on party cohesion. You needed a tank for combat, a healer was a must, probably a Cleric because turning undead was important. You needed a stealthy character for scouting or to disable traps. Your Magic-User was a glass cannon but without magic you were in trouble so the Fighter needed to keep the arcane caster alive. In 5e I take a level as Fighter then switch to Warlock, buy some healing kits, increase Dexterity and I can do everything. It's a little less fun than the classic Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief adventuring party. But these days everyone's own backstory seems more important then working as a team. As a DM I would create encounters as normal and if the party dies or gets trapped because they don't have someone that can do one of the classic roles then so be it. You want a party of Wizards and Bards, fine but don't complain when a simple locked door or turnable undead keep you from your goal!
I tend to let my players play what they want and if there is obvious lacking like no fighter or no Trip Finder or no healer I will incorporate NPC mercenaries which will take from the loop in order to fill that party void or make healing potions more accessible in the event that some players don't like the NPCs crutch
Usually run with a party of 3 where the two players with the least experience build what they want and the player with the most experience builds his to cover whatever gaps he feels need plugging.
That’s a really cool idea!
I played in an all fighter campaign (5e, 5 players). It was glorious. We all used different weapons, all decided on different feats, we all played a different way and our character's personalities were VASTLY different. It didn't feel like we were stepping on each others toes at all.
Fighters are one of the most versatile classes and there are even several "fighter" classes (in addition to the base Fighter class): Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger and Monk, each with their own archetypes.
However, 5 druids, 5 bards or 5 even Paladins wouldn't play as well because more specialised classes benefit from a more diverse party.
Well, when I'm a player, I usually end up being a cleric because I actually enjoy being a cleric.
Hey, hands-down, the rogue's my favorite class... I've probably played them darn near 50% of the time in my gaming career. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Hey, hands-down, the rogue's my favorite class... I've probably played them darn near 50% of the time in my gaming career. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Nick Faga sorry for resurrecting the comment, but that's what us clerics do ;) I frequently play a cleric because I like the way they typically have the best "I do not lose" buttons rather than "I win" or "I stole yours" ones.
My favorite is paladin or druid serving as a damage sponge because no one protects the healer. Its not that I hate healing its that shooting the medic happens a lot.
I'm the same, I love the healer types whether it be in tabletop or PC RPGs. I've even played healers in games that killed the healer role...just make sure you can protect yourself as well as everyone else, and hope your allies appreciate the value and squishyness of your character.
I hate having to shoehorn players into specific roles, but I had this situation come up in my current game. We had someone who wanted to play a fighter, but just ghosted on us before the first session ever happened. Thankfully, another player had a friend who was willing to jump in at the last minute. When I talked to him about what character he should bring to the game, I didn't tell him "Play a fighter." I told him "We have a healer, we have spellcasters, we have someone who can handle traps and locks. We need someone who can deal damage and take hits." That gave him the freedom to make whatever he wanted with the knowledge of what was already in the party (fighter, barbarian, tank druid/ranger as examples). I hate the "we need to have a cleric, a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard" party system. As long as the archetypes are there, the classes don't matter. Someone needs to be able to heal damage, someone needs to be able to deal damage (preferably one each of physical and magical), someone needs to be able to take hits, and someone needs to be able to deal with dungeon hazards. 5e especially is awesome for this way of thinking by adding the backgrounds. Slap the criminal or urchin background on anyone with a decent Dex score and they can open locks (our party has two lock pickers, but only one rogue). Slap the hermit background on a character and they can keep you from dying. It's not about the class, it's about the role that you fill in the party.
With NPCs, Hirlings, and henchmen options, why would a party "need" anything? Finding a meatshield is the easiest NPC to find, INT and Wisdom not required.
D4bbl3zGaming - I like that you didn't force him to play a fighter but I even disagree with the whole "we need X"
The most creative tactics come from players who need to approach encounters from a different angle. I had a party of all front line low Dex types and a party of all ranged classes with mediocre AC. Their formations, their information gathering, their encounter initiation all changed to make up for their weaknesses.
Not every time obviously but when you don't have a caster with dispel or see invisibility you don't laugh at the rogue who pulls out a bag of flour.
You could always find a cleric at Traveler’s Inn willing to go into the Caves of Chaos with you. He even has a couple of flunkies to act as meat shields, fantastic!
It sure was nice in 4th edition where the cleric could play as a melee class or a ranged DPS caster (laser cleric) and take a turn to perform an attack or whatever else, then use a minor action to do the healing instead of having to devote the whole turn to just healing.
5th edition includes a handful of weak healing abilities that can be used as bonus actions, but nothing with the punch of either the 4E healing ability or the combination of healing players while also performing another task (like attack spells that also healed the party as a part of the magic of the spell).
DON'T YOU KNOW, YOU NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY!
CLERICS IN THE BACK, KEEP THOSE FIGHTERS HALE AND HEARTY
THE WIZARD IN THE MIDDLE SO HE CAN SHED SOME LIGHT
AND NEVER LET THAT DAMN THEIF OUT OF SIIIIIIIGHT!!~~~
Hogtie the Thief. Keep them tied up and drag them along. Like Gollum was kept by Frodo and Sam.
Aaaaaannnd my coin pouch is gone again...
always split up the party
that's when half the fun happens (random encounters)
Every video I watch on this channel is preceded by a razor commercial. In a channel where everybody has beards, with an audience that's likely often-bearded. Good job, TH-cam
JJNess YT seems to be ruled by shaved dwarfs!
Back in 4E, my favorite 4 person party was:
Damager Paladin (With Mordenkrad, Fullblade, or Execution Axe)
Healing Paladin (Longsword, Spear, or Mace & Shield)
Controlling Paladin (Holy Symbol & Polearm weapon)
Tanking Paladin (Flail, Battleaxe, Warhammer, or Broadsword & Shield)
A variety of weapons, races, feats and magic items made this not only viable, but fun.
I like to cover the basics every time I've been involved in a TPK we were lacking a crucial party element. Last time it was not having a tank.
Class can mean little based on a good player. I DMd a campaign, everyone wanted to be fighters, so they made a backstory of a merc unit. One was a swordsmaster, one an archer, a martial artist, a troubleshooter (jack of all trades, master of none), and a tank. Worked out. I have seen a Cleric who was more like a Paladin, Wizard who played like a Ranger, a Rogue who was the best warrior I have seen. Most interesting was the Barbarian, who was more of a thief than the Rogue...lol. Good times.
The thing about 5th edition is there is SO much healing/temporary hit-point gaining. Even the Battle Master Fighter can "Rally" to give his/her party members temporary hit-points. I don't think healing should ever be an issue. Especially with the short rest option and hit-die spending. Warlocks, Wizards and Sorcerers can all grant them selves temporary hit-points as well or even healing as a Necromancer school Wizard. As a DM I like to beat the crap out of party members (at least close to death as possible) but always slide them a potion of healing or three if necessary. Just figured I'd throw those options out to go with your video Nerdarchy crew. Good Stuff as always, and a necessary topic as well!
All good points. Criminal background turns anyone into a mini rogue as well.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Yep that's what I did as an Urchin also for my Fighter Rogue that dual wields Whips ;)
Three wizards (one generalist, one invoker, and one Spells & Magic build with only Conjuration and Invocation, but allowed to wear armor) and a thief.
Still my favorite unusual party composition to this day. :)
LordSephleon for me we have a cleric, a Geomancer and a few general sorcerers.
Heals is important in combat heavy campaigns.
Lol just one thief?.....that must've been amazing
I just started a 2 wiz 1 sorc and 1 rogue going to be interesting
In an MMO, party composition and teamwork (and uber gear) are paramount at the upper levels. Same thing for most published adventures. The expectation is that the players will bring a well rounded party, or an appropriately specialized one. If not, the DM should be adjusting encounters to suit or things will probably degenerate into an exercise in frustration.
Getting away from published materials and into homemade adventures allows the DM to tailor the action to the backstories and capabilities of the PCs. Also, individual players require different levels of rp, combat, crafting, exploration, etc.
Two fighters and a cleric are going to handle encounters very differently than two rogues and a wizard. They might be pitted against identical enemies and obstacles, but will use completely different tactics to succeed. What's a challenge for one group might be a cakewalk for the other.
Also consider the level of experience and temperament of the players. Veterans and rookies, introverts and extroverts, thespians and mathematicians are going to approach problems differently.
Party composition is important insofar as the DM needs to pay attention to it and tweak challenges as needed to keep the challenges from tipping too far. The composition of the gamers playing the characters is also important and should not be overlooked either.
Well said. DM needs to pay attention is a great take away.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Well, if there's class overlap, like having two rogues in the party, one way to make them not be in competition, as it were, is to have them use different subclasses, like thief and assassin, and/or different races.
Also, I don't know if my DM will sign off on it, but I did just created an NPC party last night - idea being that they happen to be my character's wife's party and thus friends/allies of the player characters, especially since we are in an area, where my guy is from, which is filled with many dangers and no known allies.
Here's the rundown - Subclass, Race, Background
Artificer - Battle Smith, Minotaur, Soldier
Barbarian - Totem Warrior, Loxoden, Guild Merchant
Bard - College of Lore, Centaur, Folk Hero
Cleric - Life Domain, Lizardfolk, Outlander
Druid - Circle of the Moon, Tortle, Sailor
Fighter - Cavalier, Human Variant/Hollow One, Entertainer
Monk - Way of the Kensei, Hobgoblin, Charlatan
Paladin - Oath of Vengeance, Kobold, Urchin
Ranger - Beast Master, Goblin, Hermit
Rogue - Thief, Mountain Dwarf, Criminal
Sorcerer - Draconic Bloodline, Protector Aasimar, Sage
Warlock - Celestial, Glasya Tiefling, Acolyte
Wizard - Necromancer, Half-Drow, Noble - this one being my character's wife.
Am I the only person who pictured "Meteor Man" and the two guys doing Runway Model combat when Ryan was talking about Knowledge Wars?
Going to comment before I watch. You do not need any specific composition to play. Even a solo character can adventure in the world. It is the DM's job to to tailor the competition in his game to suit the group he has available. It is okay to lose fights sometimes or even often. It is much more rewarding to win with a mish mash team of 3 rogues and a cleric, a group clearly suffering from disadvantages as opposed to a group of cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard.
This kind of stuff in my opinion is about taking your group to the next level in terms of role playing.
p0ck3tp3ar PREACH!!!!!
***** Definitely! I think this kind of thinking leads down a good path. Most people only play very powerful characters, time and time again. I think it can be fun to fix in some very weak characters and see what happens :)
Pretty much you echoed the sentiment of our vid.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Nerdarchy Haha. Good to hear that. I figured that's the way you guys would handle things :)
No, the DM doesn't have to model the enemies to fit the party.
A set of 5 heavy plate, hack and slash fighters can run into a balanced group of warlock, cleric, ranged weapon fighter and fighter types...
And the lack of spellcasters or any ranged attacks in the PC party is going to hurt. I'll have them down 40% hit points before they hit my front line.
They chose to take a set of meat shields in without backup knowing that this fantasy adventure game has people who use magic and ranged weapons.
My newest campaign has a Shadow elf warlock, a Dragonborn Temest Cleric, an Inquisitive halfling rouge, and a hobgoblin conjure wizard.
SKREW TEAM COMPM
The goal is to have fun!
What reason would an Elf, a Dragonborn, a Halfling and a Hobgoblin have to adventure together?
@@johnharrison2086 They were given an offer that none of them could refuse - Money!
Well, that or someone wanted all of them dead.
I think Ryan had the best idea of coming with a couple character concepts. That's something you could do with a session 0 is just to ask people to have 2 ideas and fill the roles that way. Having said that, there's a few classes that I just do not enjoy for role playing reasons like clerics, bards, rogues. I wouldn't be happy playing the game if I was forced into one of those classes.
Nor should you or anyone else ever be forced to play something you don't want to just to fill a role.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Your conversation about the two sage type characters is probably the main reason my players have wanted to stay running Pathfinder rather than moving to 5e. If you have 17 intelligence and are proficient in history and arcana then you are going to have the same chance in anyone with the same intelligence, proficiencies and level as you. In Pathfinder characters have to put ranks into skills which allows for two knowledge based characters to have more areas of expertise and weakness.
Not dissing 5e but that (and the lack of a 3PP license) is what's keeping us playing a stripped down Mathfinder game at the moment.
Like some others have said in the comments, I tend to be the sort who kinda fills the gaps. When I'm playing, I try to make sure I either A. Can effectively fill as many roles as possible, or B. try to make sure that the character I plan to play fills a role that isn't filled, because I don't like stepping on the toes of the other players.
An example of A. is from one of my Pathfinder games, where I've made a character with the intention of being able to use the flurry of blows Full-Round action with a Greatsword by level three. The end result was a Brawler(Think Monk minus the mysticism.)/Barbarian/Cleric. He can flurry like nobody's business with his greatsword, so he dishes out decent damage, but he also has really solid AC, and access to healing spells. He can do a LOT of things, and does a decent job of them no less.
Example of B. is from the same game, but in a different team of characters. The team I made this character for had its front line pretty much sorted, it had a healer, it had some skill coverage, but what it lacked was someone who could hit the runners/counter snipers. So, I made a character that now can shoot things about a mile away no sweat, filling the role that needed filled.
When I'm DM'ing, it's a bit of a different deal, because I don't wanna take away from the Players' enjoyment of the game, but I wanna make sure they're not gunna get stuck because they wanted to play a specific type of character, so what I'll do is I'll basically make a robot, who performs ONLY the function that isn't being performed by the rest of the party. (A Cleric who only does healing, for example.) This character doesn't stick around forever (Unless the party really likes the characterization/doesn't end up adapting to fill the role I'm using a DMPC to fill.) and can be swapped out if another niche needs met.
***** Filling the gap is fine if that is what you enjoy doing and some players are like that. Nothing wrong with it. When I Dm if there is a gap there is a gap and we'll sort it out in game some how. I'm not a big fan of NPC's as part of the party, but that is just me.
-Nerdarchist Dave
For an upcoming game I've got all wizards, a homebrew Mage class, and a Fighter. One of the Wizards is also a Monk
Knight_Of _Heart we have set up a 3.5 campaign where all the characters were rolled by using the whatareyou quiz on easydamus. Unsurprisingly all bar one's primary class is wizard, the odd one out is a sorcerer. It's certainly shifted the usual adventuring dynamics.
How did yours go? Any tips or unexpected pitfalls to be aware of?
I've been really vocal with my group about diversifying skillsets, backgrounds, and classes.. but not to the point of 'forcing' them to play something they don't want to. I've helped all but one player set their characters up and we've all kind of had the shared opinion that we don't want redundancy.
For instance, we had a cleric who wanted the sailor background for no reason but an online guide said it was best for his class. I went through all the options and suggested Faction Agent, which still allowed him to get the skill proficiencies he wanted but gave a better background draw as to not take away from our fighter who was already a sailor.
A DM thinking on the fly can help the overlap.
If you have 2 rogues, instead of 1 always showing up the other, give them opportunities to collaborate. Easy version: instead of having a high lock-pick check, have 2 medium-high checks on either side of the door that have to be turned simultaneously. Slightly more interesting: one puts on a show with disguise and bluff checks, and the other picks the distracted crowd.
We have two Rogues in our current party, both VERY skilled at their lockpicking and traps etc. They actually take turns doing stuff and we frequently will have moments where one will look at the big, scary door and shoot for it to see whose turn it is to pick the lock or, if one of them just took a bunch of damage, the injured will tell the other one to take the next one.
It may have been my group, but we played 3.5 for years without a healer, one spell caster, and they were fine. I also didn't craft adventures with PC roles in mind. My players were extremely creative when it came to problem solving. They triumphed often, and had fun every time.
thegrimjester With the right mindset and players, you are bound to have fun. Party composition then becomes a non issue
I lean towards the side of letting the players pick. I started DM’ng my first game this year, and one of my friends who had never played DnD before said that she wanted to kind of play a battlefield trickster. The usual suspects brushed my mind-trickery cleric, archfey warlock-but me and the other experienced players at the table were a bit worried about her playing a spell caster right out the gate. so after some discussion during session 0, she ended up going with a monk, and was happy to subclass with 4 elements as she was an Avatar TLA fan
My group (I'm the GM) is made up of three rogues, a barbarian and a fighter. The barbarian and fighter tank, the human rogue gets stuck in like a sort of a sneaky Zorro-like character, the elf rogue scouts and uses sneak attacks and the halfling rogue just stands back a supplies support/cover fire with her bow... and they make it work so well.
I have a handful of veteran players with over 10 years of roleplay experience and they always choose to play whatever they feel is necessary to the party. They let the newbies pick what they want and then choose what to be. "oh there's a rogue, a fighter and a druid? Well we'll play a sorcerer and a bard"
But 5e alleviates that a bit. I played a finesse variant human fighter with the noble background (8 str 16 dex 14 con 10 wis 12 int 14 chs) With the variant human I picked up proficiency in deception and asked my GM if I could take stealth as one of my 2 fighter skills and all the sudden I was sneaking around and using my silver tongue to get out of sticky situations, I was stealthy, tanky, and the face of the party all at once. My dad played a rogue and picked up the magic initiate and uses guiding bolt as his first level spell
I really despise the what do we need approach. 5e does make it less of an issue which is great.
- Nerdarchist Dave
The hard part is giving just the right amount of fudging to keep all players relevant, but not so much that they start thinking you're forcing the events. When two of your three player characters are a warrior who deals massive damage to anything, and an anti-paladin with an array of dark powers who will eventually control demons and undead, keeping a humble bard relevant in battle can be a chore.
+ZorotheGallade Think how people who play monopoly love to pick their favorite token to move around the board. If you have players who are new to D&D you can present them with a dozen premade characters to choose from which work perfectly in your adventure. It gives players choice and gets rid of the problem.
One of my favorite campaigns that i played in, the dm wanted us all to be wizards. I think we used 3.5 and Pathfinder, so there were a ton of options to build our characters very differently from each other. So we had a blaster wizard, a tanky-type, a wand wielder, a 'conjurist', and i rolled an enchanter (who the dm hated)
We've talked about doing more campaigns revolving around a single class. An all-Bard campaign, where we would basically be a band on tour getting into trouble. And an all-Rogue game, something like Mission Impossible.
I'm with Dave on this one, good/bad party composition is about character motivation, not classes. If all else fails, they can hire followers or aquire henchmen to fill in the gaps! In my current campaign (AD&D 2ed) this is exactly the case, the PC party consists of a halfling thief, a priest of a travellers/horsemanship deity, an Abjurer, and a Transmuter. None of the players in the campaign currently are really interested in role playing a warrior. They currently have two followers who are nice tanky types, and 'toe the line' when things get tough. So they still have the various roles filled, but aren't necessarily investing energy on characters they aren't interested in.
Hiring NPCs is a fairly elegant answer to the problem but it does increase the workload for the GM. If the players are willing to pitch in and run hirelings in combat that would make things easier.
That being said it would still throw game balance out of wack, the GM would have to look at changing encounters to take the extra manpower provided by the hirelings into account.
Then we are right back to increasing the GMs workload...
When the group I Game Master for plays we focus more on how our characters back stories will intermingle, if at all, rather than on the classes themselves. Having strong character ideas and synergy is more important to our table than trying to cover traditional class roles.
On the other hand, when I play a character I always want to know who is going to play what because I like playing niche characters that others often don't want to play. Cleric? Sure. Bard? Absolutely! Of course sometimes I just want to play a fire-loving Warlock or an honour-bound Paladin, but I like to play to fill a role myself, and sometimes a party just needs a Cleric to round things out.
I like the way you guys do things. Also sounds like you and Ted are very similar.
- Nerdarchist Dave
The way to get around the mandatory cleric issue is to use another domain other than life... like war (for a more warrior-like experience) or trickery (for a more thief-like experience). You still get cleric spells, but also get to do more than sit back and heal everyone else.
Our group at the second League are all "play what you want to play" concept. That's mean one Draconic Sorcerer (me), and four other fighter-types. (one Barbarian, one Ranger, and two Fighters - one ranged and one tank). The DM felt the necessity to add a Cleric. I don't think the Cleric is necessary (Rangers can heal), and the Ranger and the ranged Fighter are both very stealthy types.
The composition of the party is less important than the party *chemistry*. I've DM'ed all fighter parties, but they all got along great - and that was fantastic.
As far as games like Vampire: The Masquerade - I suggest playing them before talking about "sameness". The Clan determines the set of Vampiric powers, and the background/archetype determines a lot of skills. I assure you a Brujah and a Toreador are NOT the same. A Gangrel and a Ventrue are NOT the same...and so on. I've also LARPed this system (yeah, yeah, I know) and that was probably the most fun I've had in a long time. I made a lot of new friends there, and I'll always value that time.
But that too, holds the same rule: Play what you love. If the PLAYERS get along really well, WHAT they play as characters doesn't matter, because the story they create will be fantastic.
Well said sir. Both Ted and Nate were LARPers. Nerdarchy has even considered running a larp of our own.
- Nerdarchist Dave
It certainly takes a certain confidence to do so. And for those who lack confidence, I've seen it be the inspiration for better role playing at the table once LARPing has been performed.
+Mike Gould Only 1 thing to say to that.
Malkavian for life :D
Newbish Dm Born Brujah. Die Brujah. Get some today! :)
Player Composition: Players should play what they want! Experienced players generally understand that all compositions may not be equally useful. It's up to the GM and the players to make the most of the situation. Between potion abundance, feats, more frequent resting, and general class healing abilities there sure are a lot of options. Plus, between Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger there are a TON of ways to give a party some healing while still having a lot of other play styles for the healer to "focus" on.
Fighters have: second wind, survivor (if the game goes that far), and rally.
Monks have: wholeness of body.
Rogues get: use magic device which can be used for healer specific magic items.
There are several spells in the Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard spell list that grant temporary hit points.
I think the only class that has nothing like healing would be Barbarian. One could argue that the damage reduction performs the same basic goal and technically, yeah, but I think the damage reduction they have is a balance mechanic (along with the higher hit point pool) to compensate for the lower AC.
What if there a dex barbarian (for some strange reason?). Then they have a high AC
Jake Williams What about a DEX barbarian? My point above was that there are plenty of ways to get healing. Are you bringing up a DEX barbarian as nothing more than a way to start an argument, or did you miss the point of the original comment?
To go completely off topic ... that's rude and lame by the way:
A DEX focused barbarian would lose on rage bonus damage with both ranged weapons and with finesse weapons (using DEX instead of STR). Reckless attack doesn't work with ranged weapons or with finesse weapons (using DEX instead of STR). Brutal critical doesn't work with ranged weapons .... and on and on.
It's almost like a Barbarian was designed to be low DEX with a lower AC and a higher hit point total to compensate for being hit more often ... and had been designed to work that way for multiple decades of dungeons and dragons editions.
I'm sure there's a site somewhere with the highest possible Barbarian AC build for you to mimic, but it still won't be DEX focused.
zero11010 I apologize if I have offended you, I meant none.
I was simply point out that there is a possible build of the barbarian that has a very high armor class, which is relevant to your comment. So I haven't gone way off base, I simply pointing out something you may have not considered. Just because a class is designed to be a certain way, that doesn't mean it has to be used like that
Jake Williams I get where you're coming from.
You're trying to make a correction or point out an error anywhere in a fairly long comment, regardless of how pertinent to the bulk of that comment the error may be.
"Just because a class is designed to be a certain way, that doesn't mean it has to be used like that" It certainly does mean that this is how it's usually played. Did I make a generalization? Yep. Is that generalization wrong? Nope. Is any generalization right 100% of the time? Hell no.
You're welcome to be the first low STR and low CON barbarian. Maybe you can be a high elf barbarian and really focus on casting your cantrip in combat. Then, you can tell me all about how awesome it is to play a class in an unexpected way.
I don't have all the items in the DMG memorized. I know that there are items for INT, CON, and STR that increase the attribute dramatically to a fixed number. If an item like that existed for DEX it may be feasible to use that for an AC boost at higher level (once the item is procured). But, the build would really still be a Strength based build.
In a game I'm putting together, we are forming a Good to Neutral aligned group that actively fights against devils and evil creatures, sometimes based on profit or mercenary work (basically Devil May Cry). So far I have a Gunslinger, a Swashbuckler, and a Light Cleric. Each with a specific reason for being that class and archetype. I particularly like the Cleric, as we felt a religious slant in the party would be good for roleplay. Also a fourth person may join us who will play a Tiefling, which I think is pretty novel as it opens up a whole slew of possibilities for character development.
Also, something to keep in mind, when trying to balance the party is NPC. If you have 4a party of that don't want to play a cleric, they can run into a friendly heal-bot.
This reminded me of how for some old modules at certain times you needed a certain class with a certain spell to defeat a specific baddie, get out of a trap, or progress with the story. Woe to the DM who did not read the adventure thoroughly beforehand, or for the group that does not think to prepare a specific spell (eg. Shatter, Bless, Dispel, etc). This can b a real party stopper (Dragnglass in Game of Thrones).
Well we've got a saying where I'm from- "Work it out"
:-)
- Nerdarchist Dave
My longest played 2nd edition group consisted of a Human Fighter, Human Wizard and a Halfling rogue. My first solo character was a half-elf Ranger/Druid.
Our newest group which is running through the Temple of Elemental Evil is ( Human Ranger, Human Cleric of Lathander, High Elf Wizard, High Elf Fighter(Archer), Dwarf Barbarian/Fighter, and a Halfling Rogue.)
I'd love to play in the all dwarf game. Having alot of the same thing can create it's interesting points in the game.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I told my table of regulars: Create 3 characters with EPIC background stories as much within the trinity composition.
I playfully taunted them: A true DnD player always have atleast 3 characters ready at hand.
Trinity-composition being: Tank-healer-damage dealer.
It doesn't have to outright be: Sword&board Fighter with all the defensive talents, A rogue/Wizard for damage and the typical Cleric for healing in the name of Pelor.
Tank: Could be a Half Orc wildshape druid with a shield, going for Bearforms.
Healers: If the party has a Paladin and a Ranger, they both have off-healing capabilities, that party is not in dire need of a cleric healbot.
The advantages of this:
1 - The players will invest more time in these character's background development and personality. Flaws, bonds, history, habbits etc. Thus the roleplay becomes more immersive for the players.
2 - They can use these characters at other tables/campaigns.
3 - When sitting down for a new campaign, they as veterans can easily let newcommers pick what they want to play and thus add one of their trinity characters to the party's composition.
4 - I want to give players that Ned Stark moment, making them not feel too safe. And if I kill one of the PC's off. They won't be so heartbroken, because they have 2 other equally awesome characters lying around waiting to be taken on adventure as well.
My two gaming groups have enough experienced players who have already played a variety of character classes so each one will play something totally different from what he or she played in an earlier game. In the end the party still ends up with a randomly mixed group.
For example in Campaign1, I had played a male Dragonborn Paladin of the Ancients; in Campaign2 I played a female Half-Elf Bard of Lore; in Campaign3, I'm now a male Moon Elf Rogue Arcane Trickster.
The other players played a Human Ranger Colossus Slayer, a Tiefling Warlock/Thief/Sorcerer, and a Half-Orc Barbarian in Campaign1. Then the others switched around and our characters were an Elf Monk, a Half-Orc Ranger, and Human Wizard in Campaign2. The players are now playing an Elf Sorcerer, a Half-Orc Paladin of Vengeance, and a Half-Orc Fighter Champion, along with a newbie playing a Dwarf Cleric in Campaign3.
Nobody asked anybody what they wanted to play, except the newby we were introducing to the game. Everybody just played the character type each was most comfortable with, whether it was a bit similar to a previous character or someone totally different or never played before.
Storytime, then assistance required:
My first campaign I told everyone to play what would make them happy. I didn't know what I was doing and wanted them to have the most fun possible since I would be bumbling through my home brew setting (customization to any party was possible). Designed for busy people there would be easy plot based reasons for characters to pop in and out based on other commitments, and if they were still having fun at the end and I didn't want to shoot myself, we could continue. Experienced player said that was a terrible idea, no one could possibly have fun when we were going to have so many problems without a well balanced party or, God forbid, double up classes - but he would give it a shot. Made a character he said he had fun playing (oddly to fill in a gap the first group had), but wanted to kill it off and make a cleric based on my first game (which was me panicking because I forgot I get stage fright, a newbie that seems more to enjoy the story and going with the flow, a player that has since learned that being a squishy mage means stand in the back, and a crazy NPC healer/guide). It would be more fun for him, if we had a healer. And the gap (from before) going to be filled by someone who joined later.
Fine, but all the healing supplementary items were involved in actual plot, and the room full of healing potions was already there (It was part of the looney tune's backstory - I swear. Not that it mattered because they found but didn't search the room).
Started talking about how excited he was to play this cleric...was unable to do the exact build he wanted. Started talking about how excited he was to play this bard...realized he hated how bards ran in this system after he started playing the character, but he found an acceptable way to play it. They breezed through the rest of the dungeon he built this character for much faster than I anticipated.
Started mentioning that the bard really had no motivation to stay with the party, it's what his character would do... (Apparently, when the GM says she can cover gaps in the group, she can in fact cover gaps in the group)
PS - In case an NPC/villain comes back, I need the basis for a monster/demon/other that focuses on life transference. IE: I give my hit points to my allies and steal my enemy's hit points. I was thinking a devil that got turned into a fey of some sort due to...stuff. Ret-conning might be required at this point, but I would like to keep the essence of the story I was going to write while satisfying the lore that my players love.
This question is easily resolved if you roll up characters with organic stat rolling. Everybody finds out what the party will be like at the same time, nobody is unhappy that they get stuck into a party bot role they don't want to play.
I gradually got one of my old groups used to the idea of just melee and ranged with roles based on where their utilities were at.
What I do is always have a couple of "back-up" characters I always wanted to try. Ones I always wanted to try. So this way I can always fit what the party needs,
I personally am very indecisive so this works perfect for me. I have 3-7 characters in my backup at all times.
I'd say it's up to the players to make their characters different from each other, even if all four get handed the exact same sheet with the same everything. It's up to the DM to make sure that it's possible in his game to survive under such circumstances. I.E. Make sure they have enough healing potions or fight easier monsters that don't require as much healing. Most importantly, if it's a thieves guild campaign, make it more about sneaking and assassinating than fighting dragons and hordes of fighters. Btw, that's a really inspiring idea! "You're a thief. Tell me why. Ok, the guild needs you to steal xyz."
None should force or being forced to play something: if you need cooperation have players speak each other and decide toghether who's gonna do what.
As both player and master I always feel the group need to be balanced and fit for every kind of challenge. That does not mean classes, but roles: tankyness, healing abilities, high single-target damage and multiple-enemies damage, and a character can usually do two of them. The thing works even out of combat, so I love having someone who does stealthy things, someone to talk to people, someone who knows things and so on.
If the party is (even a little) power-gaming coherently organized I think the fun on the table can rise a lot, for both players and master: as a player you are more likely to achieve small victories and able to make a stand for the big ones, so as a master you can put challenge into campaign and let the players shine.
You make several good points and I couldn't agree more.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I think 5e really did a good job on reducing the whole 'you need so and so classes' thing. You don't need to be a Cleric to be good at healing and you don't need to be a Rogue to be good at disarming traps and picking locks. Our party has a Druid/Monk multiclass that fits our trap disarming and lock picking needs. As far as healing goes, Druid/Monk can spend spell slots to heal in Wild Shape and we have a Paladin/Sorcerer (me) with Cure Wounds as well as Lay on Hands, though I prefer to spend my lvl1 spell slots on Shield.
I realize I am commenting on an old video, but TH-cam recommended the video. I always tell players to be what they want but I warn them that being well-rounded as individuals and as a team will be more effective than any min-maxing. I tend to use a variety of challenges to keep things fresh, although I lean towards a particular aspect if the party just so happens to be weighted in that direction. As far as specific roles go:
- Tanks are a silly concept any way. Each player needs to consider how their character will defend themselves. I never find I need to compensate for the lack of a heavily armored fighter.
- Healers are not needed, although healing is. I don’t like characters springing back into action after being knocked unconscious anyway, so my house rules encourage players to seriously consider not getting downed. Healing out of combat is not an issue of course.
- DPS is very non-essential. I tend to employ a lot of minions so most characters can take down most enemies. For champion/boss encounters it is more about strategy than raw damage anyhow. I usually have non-combat skills be fairly effective at avoiding, limiting or ending a fight. For example, a character with high persuasion can attempt to make enemies surrender, and intimidation can make opponents flee.
- Rogue is not essential in 5e anyway, since most characters have the potential for sneaking and locks can be opened multiple ways.
Note that there are occasionally situations where a group is missing something that makes gameplay inconvenient. For example, perhaps no-one is good at tracking. I get round this with hirelings/npcs, and in the course of play I give out items or even skill boons that enable the party to plug the gap. For example, for aiding the archdruid he gives the party a deer antler hat that grants advantage on survival rolls.
If you want to know how to run an adventure for a party of fighters, watch the original Conan the Barbarian
There's a ton of great pop fiction for that. Since the majority of movies don't have D&D magic, anything where the movie's primarily about warriors will work- The Magnificent Seven, The 13th Warrior, & Brave Heart just to name a few. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Those are great movies/suggestions!
In the books Conan was a thief when he was young.
I played a campaign where we didnt have a healer but we all had some sort of self healing, it got close at times but it went pretty well
Before watching: Every party which intends to enter combat should have a healer, a tank, a damage dealer, and CC. Every party should be able to stealth, socialize, kill, and investigate. Every party should be able to get around in atypical environments and secure the means to safely rest while away from home.
And here's where I note that just because they *should*, doesn't mean they NEED it. Any more than a Barbarian needs a decent Con score or a Rogue needs a decent Dex. They are likely more effective with it, sure. Yet every single one of those things can be taken care of through non-standard means, and any 'gaps' in party composition or ability can be filled in a variety of ways- items, NPCs being hired to assist with certain spells (such as teleportation magic), creative problem solving, etc.
I'll also point out that many of the classes are FAR more flexible than they're given credit for, or for how they once were. A Druid can fill Every Single One of those needs and roles, and can do so in a single character (decent Wis and Cha, rely on beast shapes for physical attributes). Most other characters can triple up on roles, or at least double. As long as you have at least 1 primary spellcaster in the party, you're probably fine, and if you don't, well, you're just going to play a different type of campaign than you otherwise might, it doesn't mean you can't still have fun.
Our party started as a 3 man: wizard (me), Paladin and ranger. Which felt pretty balanced and covered most roles (I have thieves tools prof).
Now we have two new guys coming in. One chose to be a divine soul sorc and the other is going monk (drunk Master eventually).
We’re not bad off, but I am a little concerned with how squishy the party is.
I have eight players on my table and not a single healer. The druid is always in bear form and the cleric only takes offensive spells. It gets ugly at times but the group seems resourceful enough that they get to the end of the session with 2-3 HP left each. Though, there is a strong current of anger forming against the cleric but he won't give up secretly worshiping the god of mindflayers.
The video is great as always but, without Ted, it feels exactly like adventuring without a healer: something is just missing.
Lol, Ted will be glad to know he's missed. Schedules man schedules.
You know what they say once you go secretly worshipping mindflayer gods you don't go back. Besides if those other players wanted a healer so bad maybe they should of thought about that while selecting their own classes.
- Nerdarchist Dave
My second campaign ( AD&D, early eighties) we had 6 - level 1 magic users run into a pack of orcs. My spell failed in round one, next struck an orc with my dagger. Then I died. Rolled a human fighter, caught up with the party (drawn in by the screams of the dying) and dispatched the foes. Fun times. Bring a tank, folks!
Human thief with the healer feat is a great way to work without a real healer. Throw in the mobile feat and some potions and you are ready to go.
He can run around the battle field and heal someone. If necessary he can use both a healing kit and a potion in one turn on somebody
I play in a smaller party. Often, we have a few fights before we get a rest. Yes, I play the cleric. However, as I knew beforehand what everyone was playing, I noticed a lack of spell casters. I chose a cleric over any of the mage types.
As a Knowledge Domain Cleric to a War God, I do my fearsome smiting with a strength of 7. (Yes, it fits my background story and gave me a reason for a 7 stat other than using one of my other abilities as a "dump stat.") I used a Half-Elf for the extra stat boosts and skills. Now, the other players think my character is the mafia because I use my skills to enhance my encounters with the NPCs. Some lucky rolls on some intimidation checks, a bit of thaumaturgy and I seem a lot more awesome.
Oh, and I killed a monster capable of killing the entire party - (the DM was setting it up as a future encounter) - I killed it by taking off my shirt and using it as a lure and sent it over a cliff into the arms of a more dangerous group of monsters that we had sneaked past.
Clerics are fun. It only means you have to find things about a character to make it fun for you and the other members.
I always say play what's fun, don't worry about it. If my players are playing all melee fighter's I'm not sending nothing but archers against them as it wouldn't be fair/fun. I think it's the DM's job to tailor the game around the party make up.
I'm playing a bard in a party with 2 wizards and a cleric. There was supposed to be a paladin but so far he hasn't made it to the table. It's completely dysfunctional in this combat-heavy campaign. The cleric and I are trading off tank and healing duties as the situation warrants. As a lore bard I don't dish out much damage but the wizards nuke the world around me and I have so many skills that my survival rate is awesome. I find it an enjoyable experience despite the odd party balance.
Or if you don't have a magic healer you can agree to make it so HP represents something completely different than actual damage taken and actually represents defensive stamina and only after your HP hits 0 does your character start taking actual physical damage that must be role-played (making different levels of negative represent different levels of physical damage with different penalties). Then you make it so characters naturally heal HP (the defensive stamina not the actual wounds) at a certain rate through normal rest or even light activity. You'd need to fine tweak the mechanics, but it is a work around alternative from D&D's incredibly slow natural healing that makes having a cleric almost a necessity.
The point being you can always find ways to make any party playable as a DM.
compisition is all personal preference and planning. the group I play with has, literally 5 fighters, including a goblin npc named droop who is a level 11 eldrich knight, a wizard and a sorcerer(me), and we actually get by rather well
We have started the hoard of the dragon queen campaign, our party consists of a rock gnome barbarian, a human druid, a halfling monk, a half elf rogue and myself a tiefling warlock. We are having great fun with this bunch of misfits, just shows that you don't always need the classic standard character classes.
I've seen a party containing a ranger a fighter and two rogues survive cause the rogues had use magic device plus they bought lots of potions. They also heavily donated to the temple so much so the temple wanted them alive cause they donated more in a few months than was donated the rest of the year. So any group can work so long as you're willing to work together to figure out how to deal with any short comings of a missing ability.
Very true. Just forces everyone to be a little more creative.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Unless the campaign is leaning towards a particular theme or set of themes then you want that iconic mix of Fighter, Cleric, Thief, & Wizard. Once that foundation is set, do whatever you want with the remaining three to four slots. A balance of complementary specialists means that the party is best capable of dealing with the challenges they confront. If there are multiple ways to get around challenges, great but for those stubborn, sticky situations, you're prepared. You can't have a soccer team solely made up of strikers. If someone is late to join the party then their preferred role might already be taken.
Frankly, I will play the cleric/support/healer character because no one else will and the party will suffer for it. Furthermore, Clerics are pretty badass right now. There's a bunch that will start with the heavy armor proficiency and free chainmail + shield. That's 18 AC right out of the gate. The ones without that proficiency have some pretty interesting spell casting or utility features. I gave a Tempest Cleric a try at a D&D AL game and while I didn't directly slay anything, I prevented a number of party of deaths while dealing some damage and providing bonuses over the three mini adventures we ran.
I'm playing in a 2e game and my now retired Dwarf fighter had a lot of similarities to the Half-Orc Champion, his character was undoubtedly stronger than mine but the relationship wasn't one of competition it was definitely one of mate-ship and mutual respect. Another character being better than you at what you do doesn't matter when you aren't in competition.
Agreed.
- Nerdarchist Dave
We always have at least a rogue and a cleric in our party. It usually ends up with the classic Fighter, Rogue, Wizard/Sorcerer and a Cleric. The healer could have been a Paladin or a Druid, but people seem to prefer the Cleric.
I feel it always works better with a healer, since it keeps the party going for longer. I can also throw in tougher encounters without worrying about killing the party. It would be interesting to see the party struggle with poison and disease without having a healer around to remove it though :p
Clerics are very versatile though, so I don't feel like it's a problem. This time around we have a war cleric. 5e has a lot of neat class variations that make the classes a lot more interesting in my opinion.
No healer?
Have the player progress at Max HP.
Or give them a Moon Flask. A Flask that, when struck by Moon Light, turns the water inside it into a healing liquid. And have it usable as bonus action.
+whatever3554 Oooh I like that idea a lot. Forces a 1/day use (or 2/day at lesser potency eg they don't drink the entire contents) and gets around forcing a cleric (or making me play as one while DMing)
Or just let them live with the consequences of their choices. No Healer? Cool. Hope you guys arent attached to your characters...
Or you could have one of them specialize in potion making... :D
Its that what they want... XD
@damion Jackson Well start letting them be on the verge of death in a few encounters, so they can in character realise they need a way to heal up in combat, let them search for ways to deal with it like let potions be a more common comodity in your world, maybe they can learn to create them themselves. They wil be more cautious, not running in guns blazing always. It gives the campaign another dimension
I think the points about party chemistry are spot on. I definitely think players should play characters that they enjoy within the framework of what works for the campaign. If you have a party of all fighters or all mages, etc. then hopefully the GM can find a way to smooth over the lack of certain skills or abilities that might be needed. I think it truly comes down to being able to create an interesting character that has plenty of hooks for the GM and other characters to interact with.
I have found that the party compositions matters little. but what is more important is of how the DM will allow certain things to be done. for example, a campaign is set up where the party must attack a fort populated by bandits. if the party is diverse, you can do many ways in doing that single task. but if the party is mostly built up on rogues, they might take a stealthy approach. or even if they are mostly fighters/barbarians, they might go for the more direct route. as long as the DM allows certain actions and approaches to be done, then the compositions shouldnt be the problem.
Just send in an entire party of clerics.
If something is needed there are all kinds of ways to put one’s own spin on that need. The right feats and focus and a healer could be a combat medic, a herbalist, a witch doctor, or necromancer who uses his knowledge of biology to act as a doctor.
On a side note, work up a half wood elf fire genasi. Give him plus one to S,D, C, and W. No increased movement speed, When the other elves try to show him mask of the wild, have him standing there with his red skin and hair the color of white hot iron with a hit of red blowing in the breeze with his arms across his chest saying, "Really?" Give him bits and pieces of the criminal and urchin background and make him a slave in his youth in the city of brass. You now have a wizard who's really nervous about his fire spells, hates loud noises, and knows the escape route out of every town he is in.
Our group we all work together. If we need to know something about the arcane everyone with knowledge arcana rolls just in case someone rolls low. If we have multiple sneak attackers we coordinate our attacks. Soon there'll be 2 rangers but they're very different because one is a dwarven close up brawler that focuses on crafts and the other is going to be an eladrin archer/ rogue that's going to act as a support character with illusion spells, sleep, and cure wounds/ goodberry type spells.
Whenever I split the party I have another person, that I call "The DM's helper" or "Assisstant DM", take over the new group to prevent the boredom of only one group doing anything. When not managing the second group, I have them handle random loot rolls or special enemies during combat.
I like diversity for a party's composition and I don't mind overlap, but it is very detrimental to not have some form of healing. I played a 1st level Human Warlock who grabbed Healer as his feat. That was our only reliable healing. I kept our party alive in our first encounter, one that we wouldn't have survived otherwise.
In the campaign that we just started a couple of weeks ago, I decided I had to be the cleric because we only had three people and there was already another fighter. My only complaint so far is that there are far too many spells to choose from. The DM was expecting at least five people so it eased up his need to drastically nerf the encounters. Fortunately, I already had a bare bones cleric rolled up. Unfortunately, my rolls all night were terrible, I'm still blaming the table being padded as the reason.
Even if you double up on something, like knowledge, doesn't mean that both people are going to roll well enough to use it every time. Redundancy isn't a bad thing, especially if your life or your characters life, is on the line.
True about the redundancy. Sorry you felt you had to play the cleric opposed to wanting to play one.
- Nerdarchist Dave
It's all good, I just didn't have him all completely fleshed out. I'm not unhappy with playing the cleric, it just wasn't planned.
I have found over the years that parties tend to work themselves because a truly creative player has more character concepts then time to play them and bad players are given a warning or rejected from a group.
In my main campaign all four of our party members are divine spell casters. Cleric/Ranger/Paladin/Druid, its quite funny to see how many hit points we can tank with four sources of healing.
Yea that is a lot of divine might to bring to bear.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I usually make an actual character concept before I pick a class, and then I work in the class afterwards, to fit the party.
For example I had this character idea of a lizardman or dragonborn who was obsessed with being the best cook in the world and trying every different type of food there was. Now I could make him all sorts of classes, for Pathfinder the funniest one was Alchemist, to make him the worlds first (and probably last) molecular gastronomist.
For 5e I could have played him as a bard with cooking as a musical instrument (dm permitting of course). Or he could have been a rogue who was very, very good with knives... or a barbarian with huge eating utensils for weapons (grabbing a bite to eat during combat, perhaps).
Anything is possible, and all of those sound kind of fun. A bit gimmicky perhaps, but then you flesh out the rest of the character later on. :P
Dave, I have to say I am one of those guilty people. I have a bad habit of creating tons of characters. Most of the time I end up playing some kind of character with spell like abilities that is also a melee character, or try playing a spell caster as a melee like class. I like the idea of imagining the wizards or spell caster wielding a Longsword and blasting people with magic from his offhand.
Nothing wrong with that. Not what you are guilty of though. We shoot a lot of vids so I'm no longer sure what I said.
- Nerdarchist Dave
Party composition effects how much combat and how quickly and often the party can fight, survive combat, and move on to the next combat. If the players and the GM is fine with PCs taking a while to recover from each fight (like a city/crime game) then no healers is fine (or even preferable for flavour). If the players want to repeatedly get through fights (e.g. a classic dungeon or pre-package adventures) then a tank+healer+DPS mix is almost essential. That doesn't mean a Fighter, Cleric and Wizard necessarily, just that those 3 roles can be covered. A party of 4 hybrids (e.g. Paladins or Bards) could probably do a decent job depending on Archetypes. A College of Valour Bard can easily get AC 18 and literally taunt and attack with Vicious Mockery and Battle Magic...and a party of Bards can Inspire each other to help them do their jobs (e.g. Combat Inspiration on whoever is tanking). I've played a game recently with a multiclass War Cleric/Eldritch Knight with Heavy Armour Mastery as the combo tank/healer and everyone else doing DPS which worked OK.
Discovered this today: We had to split our party in 2 because we had too many players in our group wich resulted in 2 groups of 3 players (3 being a very scary amount when you have an unbalanced party.) The problem we saw we faced: One party was a Paladin Tank (me), a Tempest Cleric and a Corruption Warlock, the other being a Bard, Sorcerer and Ranger.
My party had a great time, (being level 2 characters), taking down a Manticore and 2 Anhkegs (altough it was an intense fight), the other party almost got wiped after fighting a group of bandits and resting in their camp, because they then faced a group of enemies slightly above their challenge rating. The lack off either a decent tank to soak up damage, or a decent healer to get everyone up resulted in a death and the other 2 to flee.
When these 2 groups are together, we can easily take on most challenges thrown our way, but as soon as you're lacking a key component, you're in for a rough ride. (That's why I almost all the time roll as a Healer or Tank.)
That being said, having a group of characters who fit well together in role-playing manner is just as fun. Having a noble Lawful Good Paladin and a Neutral Drow Warlock in the same party can be fun to roleplay. We agree on many things in this campaign, but for very different reasons.
Sometimes you just have to evaluate what you have and play accordingly.
- Nerdarchist Dave
If you have two knowledge wizards you could have them both roll and give one the correct info and the other the wrong info so they have to try and convince the party that what they know is the real thing.
This is why I prefer pathfinder just for the spell Infernal Healing. It's a very cheap wizard spell to heal up a party in between combat. You don't need a cleric.
My priority, as you get more party members what's "optimal" next class:
1st player = Fighter (preferably reach focused fighter)
2nd player = Wizard (for buffing the Fighter + zoning)
3rd player = Rogue (mainly for working back field)
4th player = second fighter (could be another melee focus like Barbarian)
5th player = Archer (ranged damage focuses)
Despite the potential of the Wizard to bend reality, Fighter is still the core of combat. She is a massive roadblock, everyone must deal with them constantly. Wizard only comes second to help the fighter, to buff the fighter, to set up traps for her like enemies slipping on grease.
Rogue comes to work with the back field behind the front line when there if a Fighter to even MAKE a front line, that little scamp can work the back-field and screw up the obvious counters to fighter such as ranged attackers and enemy casters. An you also can't have a rogue first as who will you flank with? You get the stock damage dealer first and then specialist damage dealer comes next.
A second fighter because as things get tougher you need the benefit of rolling cover. Fighter's work disproportionately well in pairs, they stop themselves being surrounded by instead surround and pressure the enemy. You don't need another Rogue, one is enough, two is just multiple chances to tip them off. You don't need another wizard, if you need more spells out utilise potions, wondrous items and spell storing weapons.
Low LOW down on the list is an archer, but still they are great. These are the raw damage dealers, while fighters hold the enemy, the archer can just rain a constant stream of damage, the archer can be quite boring but they depend so much on having fighters on the front line. Using the archer's range just see them as able to damage anywhere and everywhere, they should take rapid shot as soon as possible sit back and get twanging.
Going archer before you have a really solid front line is asking for trouble. Too much stuff will get past and it is way WAY too easy to move right in and perform a combat maneuver on them which totally impedes their ability to use their ranged weapon and with a ranged weapon they can't use provoke to impede a CM. And if an archer is Flanked then they are so deeply screwed unless they quickly switch to some back-up melee weapon, it's hard to be a switch hitter Archer.
One of the best campainges (shadowrun, not D&d) I ever played in had a party of two mages and a ki-Adept. Our GM called us the "Two and a half mages"
When I have played or been DM I don't think we have had to worry about party compisition. People want to do something different all the time, but we have never had to say no you can't be this or that. I feel like people should play what they are in the mood for. People can always change later, by making a new character or even branching out into multiclassing. You never know, people can surprise you and throw a curveball doing something you never expected. When I played D&D I've been everything from a Wizard, Paladin, Ranger, Fighter, and Barbarian. I don't think I have ever played a Cleric expect for in computer games.
We have similar philosophies for gaming it sounds like.
- Nerdarchist Dave
As far as I'm concerned, party composition is a fluid concept, especially considering how many different classes fit different roles. Just because you need a striker-type doesn't mean it /has/ to be a fighter. My 4e group has for their two strikers a Ranger and my character, a Warlock.
But if you want to survive, someone's gotta know healing. Because you just never know. Be it paladin, cleric, bard, or someone who has multi-classed, someone's gotta be able to dole out the heals when the chips are down. Maybe you can't always actively prevent death, but you can delay it for a while. And sometimes, that'll be enough.
As for out of battle, having a good spread of skills is a definite plus. Otherwise, you come across that awkward moment where the primary skills for a skill challenge are something no one is trained in, and the DM has to scramble to re-shuffle the skills around. (Besides, you need /someone/ to be the "face" of the party when dealing with nobility, right?)
You can be a face without skills. I'd allow player to just rp it. In 5e everything is just an ability check. If you have a skill you are just better at it. The idea of telling players to play something because we need healing or a skill set has always rubbed me the wrong way. Especially if someone picks what they want but wants to tell someone else play something maybe they aren't interested in playing. For me it always comes back to play what you want.
- Nerdarchist Dave
I don't see choosing character class as a polar choice between "play whatever you want" vs "you must play this class because the party needs one".
In my experience, players differ in what they want from their characters. Some have a particular class (or even a fully formed character) in mind while others have several preferences from which they're willing to choose and others are even more flexible, with no particular preference.
Consequently, it isn't difficult to find classes for everyone which also result in a reasonably balanced party composition. I find that Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, Bard serves as a useful guideline to influence choices without forcing players into a particular class.
I'm in a game right now of a bunch of new players doing the 5e starter adventure and I started off playing a Warlock (because I always go with the Barbarian type character in any game and i wanted to mix it up) but this other guy also wanted to be a Warlock but he also wanted to be unique (which gets pretty ironic later on) so he decided to be a Rogue. He ended up switching a couple times to see what he really like and settled on an Elf Great Weapon Fighter and at Level 3, he went Eldritch Knight. Just like the other two Fighters. I ended up feeling obligated to play a Cleric but I never used him because at the last minute I decided I would rather have fun than make sure the party is balanced and I talked to the DM and we settled on Matt Mercer's Gunslinger Archetype for the Fighter and I kinda hope the other guy gets to make the Warlock he wanted to make at first because i feel guilty about sort of taking that away from him.
I used to ask my players to try and get the basic roles filled, but I've stopped. They can all attend to that themselves, or not. As a player, I try to fill an empty party roll if I see one. Pathfinder's been good to me for both of these, and I can see where 5e has some flexibility as well.
Of course, sometimes it's the oddball party that get's the best stories. Like a group I was DM for who decided that they didn't need any magic, arcane or divine, as we started up Jade Regent. There were a few regrets, but some really fun stories to go with it.
I play a CN Tempest Cleric Copper-Dragonborn whom had been a sailor, his ship was raided and the defenders were all slain, as he lay dying he beseeched any greater power to avenge he and his crew, seeing no response he screamed out that he would give anything, do anything. This got a response from the Dark God Talos, CE, who made him his Cleric, blew apart the ships and set him on a Dark Path as his Champion. Balasar is the Champion of a dark and Evil god, and is CN, but uses his powers to destroy and save. He refuses to murder innocents, but will burn villages to appease Talos. He is a contradiction.
Good comments throughout, and interesting video. But if you don't have at least one character that can take some damage and another that can deal it out, if you have a campaign that has any degree of combat, the players will have to be either very smart or very lucky at low levels to survive.
I just started in a game last night, and I was told I was not allowed to know about anyone elses characters. I was supposed to pick whatever I wanted without knowing anything about party comp. It was awesome but also an odd decision, as I didnt have to worry about filling a role, I only had to worry about what sounded fun. I spent a week looking into classes, and with it being a Pathfinder game, that was a lot of options.
I think that is a great way to go into a game.
Nerdarchist Dave
What did you decide on?
Nerdarchist Dave
Nerdarchy
I went with a 2 weapon fighting Fighter, my other game I am playing a goblin alchemist, so I thought it would be nice to be less squishy and to be right in the thick of things.
I always try to get the players to make their characters before they talk to eachother. I dont want ''proper balance'' to factor into a players choice of character.
I just set up the frame their character has to fit into sort of like: s/he must be of a race/class that fits this local area and be in good standing with X organisation. That makes the group coherent enough for me to work with.
I like the way you think. I agree whole heartily let'em play what they want.
- Nerdarchist Dave
*Skwisgaar Skwigelf* and *Toki Wartooth*
a GREAT example of having two characters with the same role.
Original party comp of my current DnD group: Fighter/archer, wild fire sorceror, cleric, paladin, rogue, and dragon ancestry sorceror.
then people died, like alot (actually we found 2 decks of many things... 1 person got erased, 2 others got their soul sucked out of them, one of our other players sold his soul to a devil and was later killed in a boss fight (the devil claimed the soul so we could not rez him)
So now our current party is: fighter/archer, monk, paladin (different paladin) a fighter (tank) and 2 bards...
i'm all for people playing what they want to play, but i fear our current composition could go horrible wrong and end up in a TPK...
I like having all of my players make their characters apart from one another so they can play what they want without worrying who is playing what. At the same time if they want to talk things over and decide the take certain roles that's on them I won't say no.
I've been in a game as a barbarian with another barbarian, same primal path, same background, worked out just fine cause everyone else were spell casters and the like
I generally let the groups set up their characters as they see fit and if this doesn't include anyone with healing capabilities or trapfinding it just serves as an example to why such classes help balance adventuring parties
But even better is when those classes and/or skill sets are missing, but the players find creative solutions anyway.
- Nerdarchist Dave
That a true I had a ranger who found traps by tossing undead he slayed down hallways
In 5e it doesn't matter as much what classes players choose. Most new players try to make a character that can do a lot of roles and unless you all create characters together there is no synergy anywhere.
I find it difficult to understand why a Hobgoblin and a Lizardfolk want to adventure with the human and the Aasimar, but players pick race and class based on what they think is cool.
Older editions relied more on party cohesion. You needed a tank for combat, a healer was a must, probably a Cleric because turning undead was important. You needed a stealthy character for scouting or to disable traps. Your Magic-User was a glass cannon but without magic you were in trouble so the Fighter needed to keep the arcane caster alive.
In 5e I take a level as Fighter then switch to Warlock, buy some healing kits, increase Dexterity and I can do everything. It's a little less fun than the classic Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief adventuring party. But these days everyone's own backstory seems more important then working as a team.
As a DM I would create encounters as normal and if the party dies or gets trapped because they don't have someone that can do one of the classic roles then so be it. You want a party of Wizards and Bards, fine but don't complain when a simple locked door or turnable undead keep you from your goal!
I tend to let my players play what they want and if there is obvious lacking like no fighter or no Trip Finder or no healer I will incorporate NPC mercenaries which will take from the loop in order to fill that party void or make healing potions more accessible in the event that some players don't like the NPCs crutch