Pickles JG
First Post
So how can a team of strikers do against a balanced team in a variety of encounters. I fancy labbing this probably in a couple of wekends time if people are interested in helping me build the parties & the encounters.
I would take 2 different parties of 5 & run them through 4 encounters representing an adventuring day - these encounters would be level +1ish with maybe a boss fight at level +2-3. Ideally the players would not know how many fights there are but that's tricky.
Party 1 would be all strikers
Party 2 would be a balanced party featuring all the roles.
I would do this at level 8 as it's about as high as I am familiar with & it is high enough that the classes are reasonably developed & characterised.
Parties
Strikers
I think there are 2 options here - 5 rangers or "one of each".
Rangers are seen as the strongest strikers a lot of the time & bow rangers have unparallelled ranged damage. I guess 2 or 3 of them should be capable in melee whille the rest shoot only. They should MC into some leader powers - anyone that was planning to play as a striker force would do this though (& my actual ranger did too) only 1 or 2 need do a utility swap any others can get by witha free daily heal.
One of each striker would be Ranger Rogue Barbarian Avenger Sorcerer. Warlocks have the lowest damage so are least able to test the theoryof killing fast. This team plays like a normal party in as much as it has a reasonable front line & good ranged support including the sorcerer AOE & the ranger would be bow or hybrid. Some MC leadership would be needed again.
I would prefer to try this party as it is probably more fun to play than all archers.
Balanced party
There are a lot of options here. My hypothetical best party is something like BRV Fighter, Battle Cleric, Tactical Warlord, Ranger, Sorcerer. This has lots of buffs heals & robustness but no controller.
So I have no idea what an optimised controller featuring party is like & I am open to suggestions.
Left to my own devices I would probably go Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard as it's traditional. I would then add a swordmage (assault) or a Warlord or a Druid. Well really I would add a Ranger but I am trying to increase the differentiation.
Any suggestions for a balanced party & build ideas are welcomed. I am OK with martial builds & other hitty ones, the rest are a bit more varied & I have not played them much to get a feel. I would also like play tips for the controller sorts.
Encounters
These should use a wide variety of monster classes & should be reasonably challenging or it's not really a test so 4 level 10 encounters more or less.
I have the published adventures so would like to use the maps from them which give a good frame of reference. Also Homlet has a nice Keep.
Encounter flavours with possibilties
Pack of Skirmishers, maybe something leader like with them. (eg 6 Phase Spiders. Terrain broken but with good LOS to help the spiders bamf..)
Artillery, Controllers & blockers. Fields of fire with chokepoints for the blockers to block up.
Lots of Minions with a leader or 2 & something robust. (eg Witherlings from MM2 are very nasty plus some gnolls. No idea about terrain)
Solo with support (eg level 7 Adamatine dragon with some Kobbolds from the Draconomicon (a healer/buffer & 3 soldiers). Big space - cavern with a few pillars. Not too much headroom as dragons are too manoevrable.)
I prefer more lower level monsters to fewer high level ones as I find these a bit irritating - but if that is needed as a good test its easy enough to change.
Anyway I will get on with making ups some characters & hope for some support.
Forked from: Holy cow my party has 3 strikers in it
I would take 2 different parties of 5 & run them through 4 encounters representing an adventuring day - these encounters would be level +1ish with maybe a boss fight at level +2-3. Ideally the players would not know how many fights there are but that's tricky.
Party 1 would be all strikers
Party 2 would be a balanced party featuring all the roles.
I would do this at level 8 as it's about as high as I am familiar with & it is high enough that the classes are reasonably developed & characterised.
Parties
Strikers
I think there are 2 options here - 5 rangers or "one of each".
Rangers are seen as the strongest strikers a lot of the time & bow rangers have unparallelled ranged damage. I guess 2 or 3 of them should be capable in melee whille the rest shoot only. They should MC into some leader powers - anyone that was planning to play as a striker force would do this though (& my actual ranger did too) only 1 or 2 need do a utility swap any others can get by witha free daily heal.
One of each striker would be Ranger Rogue Barbarian Avenger Sorcerer. Warlocks have the lowest damage so are least able to test the theoryof killing fast. This team plays like a normal party in as much as it has a reasonable front line & good ranged support including the sorcerer AOE & the ranger would be bow or hybrid. Some MC leadership would be needed again.
I would prefer to try this party as it is probably more fun to play than all archers.
Balanced party
There are a lot of options here. My hypothetical best party is something like BRV Fighter, Battle Cleric, Tactical Warlord, Ranger, Sorcerer. This has lots of buffs heals & robustness but no controller.
So I have no idea what an optimised controller featuring party is like & I am open to suggestions.
Left to my own devices I would probably go Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard as it's traditional. I would then add a swordmage (assault) or a Warlord or a Druid. Well really I would add a Ranger but I am trying to increase the differentiation.
Any suggestions for a balanced party & build ideas are welcomed. I am OK with martial builds & other hitty ones, the rest are a bit more varied & I have not played them much to get a feel. I would also like play tips for the controller sorts.
Encounters
These should use a wide variety of monster classes & should be reasonably challenging or it's not really a test so 4 level 10 encounters more or less.
I have the published adventures so would like to use the maps from them which give a good frame of reference. Also Homlet has a nice Keep.
Encounter flavours with possibilties
Pack of Skirmishers, maybe something leader like with them. (eg 6 Phase Spiders. Terrain broken but with good LOS to help the spiders bamf..)
Artillery, Controllers & blockers. Fields of fire with chokepoints for the blockers to block up.
Lots of Minions with a leader or 2 & something robust. (eg Witherlings from MM2 are very nasty plus some gnolls. No idea about terrain)
Solo with support (eg level 7 Adamatine dragon with some Kobbolds from the Draconomicon (a healer/buffer & 3 soldiers). Big space - cavern with a few pillars. Not too much headroom as dragons are too manoevrable.)
I prefer more lower level monsters to fewer high level ones as I find these a bit irritating - but if that is needed as a good test its easy enough to change.
Anyway I will get on with making ups some characters & hope for some support.
Forked from: Holy cow my party has 3 strikers in it
Herschel said:But as you even said: Focus Fire is bad. The controller and defender can stop this from happening. All strikers can't. A well designed and well played encounter shreds them because of this. If your DM doesn't challenge you, that's fine but you're pointing out an extremely over-simplified (and thereby inaccurate) view of 4E combat in the game at large.
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