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I'll say 5 warlords: A warlord depends solely on moving his allies around. Every ally would moving each other; it'd be a hectic mess as people shift, pull, and slide around the battlemat like a bizzaro-dance number.
Of course, all they need is one barbarian or melee ranger added to the mix to go from worst party ever to best party ever. :P
(I played one LFR adventure with my barbarian, a cleric, and three warlords of different types. Best adventure ever.)
Hmm, hard to say, since even within a class you can often have many different builds. I'd suspect it would be an all striker or controller party - I've been in such groups in LFR, and it is doable, but very intense. It is easier, in my mind, to build an all-leader party for offense than an all striker party for durability.
All warlock might be the worst - they need to take a feat just to be able to stack curses, don't have stellar defenses, and are not as spike damage as other strikers.
Monk, also, would be in a bad place - also low damage for a striker, they have a lot of awesome mobility and forced movement that works great when you can leave enemies stuck by defenders, but not so much when the enemy can simply chase you down after you run away.
Controllers could be bad, though massed area effects and stacking debuffs could be powerful in the right circumstances. On the other hand, the wrong group that gets cornered could be done for.
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I would be very curious to how 5 wizards would fare.
So would I. I think they would do OK depending on the type of wizards and the powers they pick. If they all took the same powers and build, then it could go very bad.
I think the answer to the question changes depending on whether or not the PCs are all the same build of the class. A party of all shielding clerics would be terrible, but a party with a mix of Str, Laser, and Shielding would be great.
A party of all one type of Warlord would probably not do well, as their init bonus and action point bonuses would not stack, but a party with one of each type would buff each other amazingly and have absurd action points. Also, the Warlord benefits from having other melee fighters, and so having everyone in the party be a melee fighter helps them out, although the lack of ranged attacks will be a problem.
I think an all wizard party could do very well, actually, particularly if they are all Staff (for good defenses) or Orb (as a good Wisdom, Thunderwave, and Cloud of Daggers adds up to a lot of damage as they ping pong enemies through the Cloud(s) over and over again). With good bursts and blasts, they have solid melee and ranged capabilities, and the lower single target damage should be made up for by constantly hitting multiple enemies (if the enemies don't cooperate, then one PC will just have to set them up for the others).
I think the all Warlock party can be great if they have a hexhammer or two and a mix of the other types, but an all Feylock party would be a contender for worst party.
I think an all Bard party would be fine, with plenty of buffs and debuffs, healing, and the ability to grab melee powers. In fact, if you assume that the party all starts out as the same build, they are one of the better options, as they can pick up both melee and ranged attacks regardless of build. They will also totally rock skill challenges.
Even though I love the class a lot - in fact, it's probably my favorite - 5 4e Swordmages in a party would IMO suck.
Marking becomes much less useful when all the targets are basically the same, and there's nobody squishy to protect. Additionally, the swordmages' very low damage output would make for some pretty awful fights.
Five controllers of any stripe. I have no idea how it was decided that controllers should have the least hitpoints AND the least damage of any class. They always seem to be a liability when I'm playing.
In the campaign I'm currently DMing, my wife's character is a high-Con druid with the Toughness feat. They're 4th level and it's become something of a running joke that the druid (still) has the most hit points in the party. The party's defender, a dragonborn paladin, is catching up with each level, but slowly.
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The all leader party might be slow to kill it's enemies but will be nigh-unkillable in return. The all striker party will be a turbo-charged killing machine until they hit a run of bad luck. Then they'll go down like a soufle at a Mega-Deth concert. The all Controller party can clean-up... if they are all tactically minded players who coordinate well. Otherwise it will be like balloon soldiers fighting porcupines. The all defender party will have balanced offense and defense but with no healing, and since they have no one to defend their main reason for being is negated. They'd probably commit seppuku from the ennui of it.
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as already suggested by previous posters (like Nift) if you have 5 PCs of the same class and same build then that is failure because there would be a lot less fun there (way too reptative and boring.. be it the same attack or the same class feature or same 'gimmick')
Same class but different builds could work (but for 5 you'd either still have overlap or need more classes tossed in there).
I think 5 leaders (of any mix) would get boring (not failure, but boring) only because the pool of hp and bonus saves increases dramatically and it just leads to boring fights with little way to challenge the PCs as they can get more hp or more saves as a seemingly-unlimited resource per encounter.
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Last edited by fba827; 7th October 2009 at 10:20 PM..
A party of 5 Bards would suck if identical in all aspects, since you can't stack the same bardic musics, and many of the buff spells they get also are morale. However, if allowed to go into different prestige classes, you coul have something like: a Bard/Crusader/Warchanter with Song of the White Raven as party Fighter; Bard/Sublime Chord for arcanist; Bard/Druid/Rogue/Fochlurian Lyricist for divine magic; Bard/Seeker of the Song or Bard/Virtuoso for the "pure" Bard; etc...
A party like that would be awesome.
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Originally Posted by SSquirrel
Worst group is 4 black robes. Oh wait, that's FF I.
Funny thing is, my friend ran a FF 1 style game out of D&D 3E, with the classes hmodified to be al spontaneous casting and generally mesh with the game's classes. Race was also restricted to like...3 choices. I and one other played a Black Mage and a third person made a Red Mage with a heavy offensive basis (though he had access to White Magic). Rounding out our Warriors of Light was a Fighter...
Despite our lopsided focus, we actually rocked quite hard. Eventualy the DM let in a 5th person to play White Mage for healing, ut in retrospect, we could have probably gotten by on wands. The trick was our focuses were somewhat different and worked together. My BM focused on transmutations and battlefield control, often leaving enemies stuck nigh imobile ot be utterly devastated by our party's sickening ranged damage potential, like shooting fish in a barrel. We even learned the teamwork benefit to add to save DCs of area spells if allies cast them already in the past round, and because all the mages got improved familars of some sort (mine was actually an animal companion Moogle; using UA variant) that could use magic devices, there were points of heavy bombardment where we were adding +8 to each others' save DCs! And the uh...Fighter learned to use a bow well...
Spoiler:
In fact, the same DM recently started a new campaign using the same material for a new group. Despite having more PCs than us initially and actually being a well balanced party, they actually got TPK'd the first session. To be fair, you start at level 1, and it is quite brutal. We ran away often from fights. But still, we handily beat that first major fight, 30+ goblins coming at us from a bridge. Mainly because I had taken Precocious Apprentice to learn Web. Which the more blasty BM then set on fire...
Samurai from CW: A party of them stands out the worst solely because they're the worst PC class in the entire edition... An expert could make a better PC, and in turn, a party of 5 experts would also make a better party.
My nomination for worst smae-class party: All Marshals!
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My nomination for worst smae-class party: All Marshals!
Actually, I think that would work pretty well. If they all used different auras, the overall bonuses would push their multiple mediocrities into multiple strengths. The party could go from smasha-melee to deadly archery in a single round. If everyone took Quick Draw, they would be like Voltron. You would never have to worry about failing a Will save again. By granting each other move actions, they could regulaly close with bad guys and unleash full attacks. A smattering of cross class skills and use of Skill Focus and they could cover most of the basics. By using aid another, their main Diplomacy guy could probably finesse many situations that would stop a normal party in its tracks. The main weakness would be a lack of healing.
In the campaign I'm currently DMing, my wife's character is a high-Con druid with the Toughness feat. They're 4th level and it's become something of a running joke that the druid (still) has the most hit points in the party. The party's defender, a dragonborn paladin, is catching up with each level, but slowly.
Well, that's great and all, but all that really says to me is that the party defender and other melee characters are probably catching all the flak for the druid - which is exactly what their job is. If it was just five druids, they'd have to take the flak themselves, and not having much damage to kill enemies or many hitpoints to defend themselves, I could see it turning into a bloodbath pretty quickly.
When you're making a party, the first considerations are (in my experience, anyway) who's going to be the defender, who's going to be the leader, then who's going to do the damage. The nebulous niche of "controller" seems to be a very distant concern compared to those.
Playing all Warlocks would suck, if their Curses were mutually exclusive.
IMHO all Defenders could suck, but I guess they could take turns being "it", and thereby help spread the damage around.
Cheers, -- N
With Twofold Curse the warlock team could be fairly good.
A party of all fighters is going to be crazy if you get a good spread of builds. Swordmages with good builds can do the AoE thing. Paladins may even have a chance with some of the options in divine power.
Really, it seems like winning this is finding classes that can excel in their secondary roles, and doing so...
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I agree that an all Warlock class would probably be one of the worst. They are kind of the lowest powered class as is, having to waste a feat each just to curse is kind of crappy.
On a related note, we think a party of all Bards would be awesome. Each multiclassing into a different class in order to make up everything we need. We are already considering doing this on purpose.
Likewise, although they might not be the best party in the world, I keep wanting to make a party of all Rangers and instead of picking names just choose colors. Then we can call ourselves the Power Rangers. Or all multiclass into Barbarian, Druid, or Shaman and call ourselves the Primal Power Rangers.
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I and one other played a Black Mage and a third person made a Red Mage with a heavy offensive basis (though he had access to White Magic). Rounding out our Warriors of Light was a Fighter...
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