Game in one hour - will this 3-PC party be OK?

Wik's coming over to DM my first real game of 4e. *happy dance* There are three 1st level PCs in the party, and I'd like to hear your opinions on the likelihood of survival for our party.

Eladrin Tactical Warlord
Str 16, Con 12, Dex 14, Int 18, Wis 8, Cha 10
Feat: Arcane Initiate (Scorching Burst)
Skills: Arcana, Athletics, Endurance, History, Diplomacy
At-Will: Commander's Strike, Wolf Pack Tactics
Encounter: Warlord's Favor
Daily: Lead the Attack
Equipment: longsword, light shield, hide armor

Minotaur Maul Fighter
Str 18, Con 18, Dex 12, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 10
Feat: Armor Proficiency (Plate)
Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Heal
At Will: Cleave, Reaping Strike
Encounter: Steel Serpent Strike
Daily: Comeback Strike
Equipment: large maul, large javelin, plate

Drow Artful Dodger Rogue
Str 14, Con 12, Dex 18, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 16
Feat: Backstabber
Skills: Stealth, Thievery, Acrobatics, Perception, Athletics, Intimidate
At-Will: Piercing Strike, Sly Flourish
Encounter: Positioning Strike
Daily: Blinding Barrage
Equipment: dagger, shuriken, leather armor


Do you have any recommendations or helpful tips for 4e newbies? Tweaks to the PCs? Any party tactics we should try to use?

I look forward to hearing your input!
-blarg

Interesting group.

Well, let's see. Leader, Defender, Striker.

They might have some trouble with large groups of monsters. Also, for the most part, they lack ranged attack options. Which means they have to mix it up in melee more.

Given that your group is kinda small (and therefore prone to more damage), I might suggest that the warlord take inspiring presense for the boosts it provides to his allies.

However, the Eladrin can drop a scorching burst, and he should be able to hold up okay enough in melee to last.

Your defender's a bit vulnerable to attacks against his reflex and will defenses, which could prove problematic.

Overall, not a bad 3-man team.

Let us know how the adventure goes.

Move and you'll live. Stand still and you'll die. I almost wiped a three man party (Cleric, Fighter, Wizard) using an appropriate level 2 encounter because the fools didn't move well. So be careful.

Hmm, you'll want to use mosters of lower levels as a default. The party should be encoraged to look into mounts and NPC allies since the party is missing 40% of the HP and actions they are expected to have.

Mr. 2d8+4 maul should at least make enemies drop kinda quick.

The Warlord would be even more effective in a larger party, but the team looks viable. I'm realy not sure about 4e small parties. If you don't have a vulnerable controller to protect, for intance, the defender is less critical. If you only have two companions to keep alive, the leader role is a bit easier. Many leader powers, though, work on all your allies - and if that's only two people, those powers lose some effectiveness in theory.

It will work if they play smart and you scale down your baseline XP pool for level-appropriate encounters from 500xp to 300xp.

- Marty Lund

Defender, Striker, and Leader -- IMHO they'll be fine.

Cheers, -- N

Cool, thanks for the advice guys! I think I may have been a little unclear in my first post - I'm a player in that group, and Wik is the DM. We'll try to make sure we don't get pinned down (good advice, regardless of group size methinks!). Good to know that y'all think we'll be OK.

blargney the second said:

I think I may have been a little unclear in my first post - I'm a player in that group, and Wik is the DM.

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You were clear but not all of us read it correctly the first time (I didn't).

blargney the second said:

We'll try to make sure we don't get pinned down (good advice, regardless of group size methinks!). Good to know that y'all think we'll be OK.

Click to expand...

It is good advice for any group but bad movement is more survivable when you have more players (and characters) that can make up for mistakes.
And use that cover! Even if you can only get cover, go for it. Superior cover is a lot better but nothing beats the immunity of Total cover.

Good Luck!

I've been doing simulations with characters I've pregenerated in anticipation of a possible game with some completely novice players. There are three of them, and I've been trying out fights with three PCs against various encounters. Mostly to get the encounter balance right. The one thing that I can't simulate, though, is lack of knowledge of the game and RPGs in general. So I have to assume they'll do a lot worse than my simulations, at least for a while.

I agree with the "encourage them to move or they're dead" sentiment above.

I've got about three PC choices for each player, based on what I know about them and the sorts of characters they like from fiction and so forth. But I can't be entirely sure which of my pregens each of them will pick, even though I have a very good idea. So I roll a d6, pick one of the three from each set, and construct test parties from that against my encounters.

Things I've noticed, some of which may help you, some may not:

They seem to do roughly 50% better with an optimized defender that actually gets to defend (that means marking, wading into melee, and making sure they are positioned well for opportunity attacks, making the most out of each turn to do so.) That is, they'll end the fight with about 50% more expendable resources left (healing surges, daily powers, hit points, etc.)

Multiclassing is almost always a good choice. Be careful with skill challenges with a smaller party that there aren't a lot of missing skills. Your Warlord has arcana, so it looks like they've already considered this. Social encounters would look to be your party's weakness.

To finish fights quickly with this party, your rogue's goal is to try to keep getting combat advantage. Your warlord and fighter should have the secondary goal of helping the rogue get combat advantage. Your warlord should only ignore this goal when he needs to heal, if healing would interfere with helping the rogue gain CA.

This doesn't really apply to you, but you can have a viable striker - striker - controller team (just about any combination with the right tactics, really, if the DM designs for the party rather than generic encounter design, but for this role combo specifically: ) without toning down encounters overmuch, but the controller has to be using pushes, slows and terrain effects, and everyone has to keep moving. A damage-oriented controller does not help unless I front load an encounter with minions for a significant portion of the XP. However, if one of those strikers is a warlock, survivability can down for this particular three man team if the warlock can't stick to one attack bonus ability. Three fights with a warlock that tried to keep both CON and CHA equal vs. three fights with a warlock that had one of the two high and used that for all their attack powers: the fights finish noticeably faster (and thus survivability goes up) with the single ability warlock. Shadow Step is an immense help, a warlock shouldn't discount it and should always be looking to exploit it, as with a rogue and CA.

But as I've been considering running a three PC game for several weeks now, I think you'll do fine.