Unbalanced Groups... reports please...

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Rashak Mani

First Post

• May 1, 2002

• #11

Roland I am looking forward to hearing about your all Psion groups adventure... the name of the Group should be interesting too... all those wierd psionic people !

Does seem many all fighter type groups do work as combat only... but give them a half decent spellcaster to face and they fall like flies !

I used to colorspray my own evil group when they got too disordely to stop them from fighting among themselves. Barbarians never have good will saves... comic... but the Cleric tended to fail his Will more than the Fighters !!!

Any MAGE HEAVY group stories ? Would be interesting... multiple fireballs on the first round... magic missile galore...

 

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Psion

Adventurer

• May 1, 2002

• #12

I have a fairly well rounded group with a single glaring exception: no divine spellcaster (other than a paladin).

The players proceeded on the assumption that the paladin's admitedly impressive ability to cure HP damage would get the job done. That worked fine for a while, but now that they are high level, they are finding poison and other ability damage a real pain in the arse. The party rogue spent half of last adventure in a stupor due to a maddening (i.e., wis-damage causing) gas.

That said, I could see single classed parties... but I would certainly run such a game very different.

 

der_kluge

Adventurer

• May 1, 2002

• #13

We just started a new group, but the previous group was fighter heavy. And yes, they kicked butt.

Fighter, Paladin, Monk, Ranger (none of them multi-classed), and then a Clr/Illusionist, Rog/Sor, and Rog/Wiz. My wife played the rog/wiz and she got up to level 7 wizard, so we had haste and a couple of other spells by the time we finished. My illusionist level was only 3rd, and the sorcerer had 4th level spells, too. But, it was a large party, and we had the bases covered. We probably could have benefited from a straight wizard, though.

Our current party is pretty balanced, too.
Fighter, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and then I had to go and screw it up. I should have made a wizard, but I made a Bard instead. I can see that we're going to suffer by not having things like 'identify'. I'll be damned if I'm gonna spend precious Bard spell slots on things like identify, and dispel magic. So, I think we'll probably suffer as a result. The Bard is decent, but certainly not a powerful class in combat.

 

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Tortoise

First Post

• May 1, 2002

• #14

At one point in my recently ended campaign, the 7 character party consisted of:

3 wizards (none specialized)

1 fighter/wizard

1 druid

1 fighter

1 fighter/rogue

What they lacked in healing they often made up for with creative spell use.

Two of the wizards saved the fighter/wizard by lowering a rope off the bridge he had fallen from (he found it and tugged on it), casting light down in the general direction the rope was hanging into the fog shrouded chasm allowing him to see the silhouette of his attacker, and when he shouted up that he was under attack, casting sleep targeting along the rope as well. They knocked out both the F/W and his attacker (a carrion crawler).

A similar trick worked for them when the F/R was washed away into a tunnel by a rapid underground stream. They cast light on the end of the rope and fed over 200' of it into the flowing water. He had luckily grabbed onto a rock and when he saw the glowing rope, at first he prayed it wasn't a monster, then he realized it was his salvation. Again this was the wizards putting their heads together for a quick solution.

Oddly balanced groups aren't necessarily handicapped. This one surprised me a number of times.

Of course the limited availability of healing did slow them down from time to time.

 

Torx

First Post

• May 1, 2002

• #15

The game I'm currently running a game w/ a paladin, cleric, cleric/sorcerer, cleric, and rogue. They stay alive a long time with their multitude of healing.

It's worked well with essentially four religious-types in the game. The cleric class allows a lot of leeway, depending on the powers worshipped. The paladin and a the two clerics worship more combat-oriented gods (tho still three different ones) and the cleric/sorcerer takes a more spell-casting angle.

Plus, it provides lots of role-playing opportunities since they each represent 4 different divine view-points. Some of the internal fighting has been more intense than the monsters and villains have provided. They're good enough to not let it get out of hand though. But for an unbalanced party, this party's fairly balanced.

 

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Setanta

First Post

• May 1, 2002

• #16

My group consists of 2 rogues, 2 rangers, a paladin, two fighters, and a fighter/sorceror. They're currently 8-9 level, so there's a total of four real spellcaster levels among them (the ftr/sor). It's been interesting.

They pretty much crush encounters that are many wimpier creatures, even if the EL comes out to be 5-6 higher than the party level (even taking into account that there's double the recommended number of players). However, they often struggle against a smaller number of big bruisers, like giants, because they have no recourse but to stand with the thing and slug it out. They also can't take advantage of its weaknesses like a low willpower save.

They also fare pretty well against demons and devils, because those creatures tend to have a lot of elemental resistance and SR built into their CR's, both of which are irrelevant to this group. NPC spellcasters can be a big problem, depending on spell choice and prepartation.

 

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Ramien Meltides

First Post

• May 1, 2002

• #17

Our campaign currently has a very ecletic mix of characters and types:

We have:
1) an Aasimar Sorcerer6/Elemental Savant 6
2) a human Paladin 5/Knight of the Great Kingdom 2/Shining Blade of Heironeous 6
3) a human Cleric 5/Sacred Exorcist 6/Contemplative 2
4) a gnome Cleric 6/Divine Disciple 6/Contemplative 1
5) a human Rogue 3/Ranger 1/Barbarian 1/Taker 8 (That's me!)
6) a genasi Barbarian 4/Psychic Warrior 4/Cypher 4

Make what you will of that!

 

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ConcreteBuddha

First Post

• May 2, 2002

• #18

Druid 4 (9 Str)
Rogue 3 / Fighter 1 (10 Con, 18 HP, the sorc has more HP!)
Sorcerer 3 (Comprehend Languages)


No tank! DMing this one is funny. I sneeze and the party drops. The druid's wolves are the only effective party members. I'm predicting a TPW...

 

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Rashak Mani

First Post

• May 2, 2002

• #19

Yep concretebudha... your group is bound for a total wipe out...

 

Alaxk Knight of Galt

First Post

• May 2, 2002

• #20

I'm playing in a RttToEE, our party consist of

Fighter/Wizard (me)
Ranger/Barbarian (Lizard Man)
Fighter/Greater Samuria
Rogue
Fighter (Gnoll)
Paladin/Cleric/Sor/Dragon Disciple
Fighter (Mounted)
Ranger

Large group, but only two spell casters in the group. The party tends to kick a__ when together. My character typically stands in the middle of the action, firing spells, fighting when a character goes down. The problem is we tend to get over-confident. We got ambushed by a Grey Render and 1/2 the party went down. I must say that playing in an all fighter group has been a lot of fun. I really wish I could get into the all psionic game, that sounds cool.