Holy cow my party is all strikers!! Forked Thread: Holy cow my party has 3 strikers

Pickles JG · Jun 4, 2009

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

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.

Blackbrrd · Jun 4, 2009

BRV Fighter, Battle Cleric, Tactical Warlord, Ranger, Sorcerer

I agree about the BRV Fighter and Ranger (bow).

There is a lot of synergy between a Tactical Warlord and the Battle Cleric, but I think I would rather go for a Bard and Invoker.

The Sorcerer could be exchanged with a Barbarian. Barbarians can actually tank pretty well (Half-orc 18str/18dex as starting), since they get quite a lot of temp hp during a fight.

If you don't have a controller I think your party will be swarmed to easily by melee/minions, atleast at low levels.

The Invoker you pick wrath, Astral Terror and all the other encounter/daily powers that only targets enemies.

tiornys · Jun 4, 2009

Let's use WotC's suggestion for the balanced party: 2 Defenders, a Striker, a Leader, and a Controller.

How optimized are we making these characters?

t~

Pickles JG · Jun 4, 2009

Blackbrrd said:
I agree about the BRV Fighter and Ranger (bow).

There is a lot of synergy between a Tactical Warlord and the Battle Cleric, but I think I would rather go for a Bard and Invoker.

The Sorcerer could be exchanged with a Barbarian. Barbarians can actually tank pretty well (Half-orc 18str/18dex as starting), since they get quite a lot of temp hp during a fight.

If you don't have a controller I think your party will be swarmed to easily by melee/minions, atleast at low levels.

The Invoker you pick wrath, Astral Terror and all the other encounter/daily powers that only targets enemies.

My party was not a suggestion as there is no contoller & there needs to be one as they are the opposite end of the spectrum from strikers.

You suggest:- BRV Fighter, Bow Ranger, Invoker, Bard, Barbarian or Sorcerer. What flavour Bard would you want?

I only want one Striker so how about Swordmage in the last slot?

tiornys said:
Let's use WotC's suggestion for the balanced party: 2 Defenders, a Striker, a Leader, and a Controller.

How optimized are we making these characters?
t~

As optimised as possible

Of course you can be optimised for different things. Having had a play there does not seem too much scope for extreme abuse at this level, though I am no expert, willing to be proved wrong. They can be optimised as a team & should not rely soley on dailies for effectiveness. I would miss out bloodclaw & reckless weapons - I am unaware of anything else as OTT (Iron Armbands ?). If this helps either team too much we can add them in but as they are a bit broken it's not a very good test.

I am happy with doubling defenders. I think you probably want one tending to damage & the other to robustness - so Warden/BRV/Paladin (if you must) plus Tempest/Assault Swordmage. I guess Shielding Mages count as robust thoughthey seem to me to be better are preventing damage to allies than taking it themselves making them a separate category.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jun 4, 2009

BRV Fighter stands for Battlerage Vigor Fighter? I wouldn't pick that one. It is often considered "overpowered" and might be used to attack the "credibility" of your little study.

A classic setup might be: Fighter (Sword & Board), Paladin, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard.
For the Striker team: Avenger, Barbarian, Ranger, Sorceror, Warlock.

Pickles JG · Jun 4, 2009

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
BRV Fighter stands for Battlerage Vigor Fighter? I wouldn't pick that one. It is often considered "overpowered" and might be used to attack the "credibility" of your little study.

This is true though since I am cheering striker team I was thinking of it as a handicap. In fact my position is not really that all strikers is better more that all strikers is viable. People round here are reluctant to drop the healing crutch & like a tank. We do not see many controllers.

I could just use my LFR not BRV dwarf fighter, who seems OK.

Garthanos · Jun 4, 2009

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
BRV Fighter stands for Battlerage Vigor Fighter? I wouldn't pick that one. It is often considered "overpowered" and might be used to attack the "credibility" of your little study.

A classic setup might be: Fighter (Sword & Board), Paladin, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard.
For the Striker team: Avenger, Barbarian, Ranger, Sorceror, Warlock.

Good teams... So what are the judging criteria for the results?

by the way...
A BRV fighter optimized for pure survival, seems most often sighted as unkillable ... not necessarily better as a defender...just better at being last man... and less likely to be having his friends with him at the end of the fight ... (In real life ranged weaponry was used extensively with the sling being very cheap and popular, emulate real life better and brv vigor is a whole lot less useful (when optimized that way))

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jun 4, 2009

Criteria in order of "relevance":
1) Number of Encounters completed
2) Number of PC losses (e.g. need a Raise Dead Ritual. Dropped to 0 hp or less doesn't count,that "just" costs healing surges and powers.)
3) Number of Daily Class Powers expended
4) Number of Healing Surges expended
5) Number of Daily Magic Item uses expended
6) Number of Consumnable magic items or ritual components expended (to raise the dead and son on.)

Also, for evaluation data, it should be noted how much each individual encounter costed the party. If you'd actually run the encounters multiple times for each group, it might pay off to change the order of encounters.

Instead of having just one adventuring day, one could allow the party to move at its own pace and see who finishes the encounters first and with how many resources left.

Open to debate might be whether a raise dead ritual is allowed during the encounters.

Blackbrrd · Jun 4, 2009

"I only want one Striker so how about Swordmage in the last slot?"

This is not what you stated in your original post, you only asked for a balanced party, which would include one character of each kind. The fifth character should be a striker. If he can't be a striker, I would make him a tempest fighter with a double sword and the kickas 3rd level fighter power I can't remember the name of.

The bard I have in my party has 20 cha and the feat that gives his healing +5 temp hp. (In other words he heals healing surge+5+5thp.). The ability to overheal a bit without waste is great. You can heal earlier, and on average you heal more than any other healer.

Having the healer as a gnome has the great advantage of him going invisible for a round when he gets too much damage. You don't want your healer to go down.