Advice for DM'ing 3-PC party w/o leader?

[Mengu]

What about giving everyone an extra 2 healing surges per day, and making second wind a minor action?

Would that be overcompensating, or still not enough?

That's certainly one viable solution. Two things though.

1. If anyone plays a dwarf they shouldn't feel one of their racial abilities is now worthless, so perhaps give dwarves an ability that lets them use second wind twice per encounter.

2. If one of the PC's dies and decides to come back as a leader, or a 4th player joins the group, the modifications should be removed.

However I was thinking more in the lines of compansating via adjusting the adventures and encounters to suit the party, rather than adjusting the game mehanics (see advice on DMG page 10 and page 31).

 

[MrMyth]

This is not entirely true. A cleric adds additional d6's to surges and his healer's lore bonus which is +4'ish, and has powers to add temporary hitpoints during an encounter, and a few utility powers that don't require expending healing surges, not to mention daily powers (via class abilities or magic items) which do some outright healing or even enhance the cleric's other healing powers. These add up to a significant amount of healing available per day.

A party without a leader, will run out of healing surges more quickly than a party with, so a DM should compensate for this.

A leader definitely can add a decent amount of healing per day, especially a cleric, but I think the core boost they give is in the amount of in-combat healing. A party with a warlord, for example, might get no extra daily healing other than the d6s from Inspiring Word, but I don't think anyone would consider that party to be lacking healing.

This isn't to say one shouldn't expect the party to tap out slightly sooner - but I think the bigger concern will be running out of healing in combat.

 

[bganon]

I've been playing with a 3-PC party: Fighter, Ranger, Warlock. The fighter is multiclassed into Warlord and is really the only source of healing outside potions. They're up to level 4 now, and it hasn't been -too- bad, but here's some notes:

Be fairly generous with healing potions in treasure, such that they have a few to toss around the party at any given time. At low levels, the potions are really quite good and can easily make up for the lack of a true leader class.

Be a little careful about encounter design. Don't go way over the xp limit. Brutes can actually be OK since their attack bonus isn't usually too good, but beware of anything that deals ongoing or automatic damage. Some of the low-level swarms are actually quite nasty, a few bad rolls with those can quickly turn things ugly. Using multiple soldiers against the party will probably lead to boring grindfests; use a soldier monster to protect a soft squishy monster instead. Minions are very fun against small parties!

My guess is your Ranger will tend to run out of healing surges way before the two defenders, although Lay on Hands may mitigate this. You might advise the Ranger's player to invest in the Durable feat. Keep in mind that they may not be able to handle more than 4 encounters per day, and that if things go poorly the Ranger might well be out of surges after only two tough fights, so it might be good to break a dungeon into chunks where they can rest in between.

But overall, the game scales pretty well down to 3 players. The hardest part for me was finding enough suitable low-level opponents to keep things interesting, but you can always scale down higher-level monsters a few levels using the rules in the DMG.

The only special thing I've given the players was to bump any still-empty slots up to +1 weapons/armor/neck item at level 3 more or less automatically (I have an in-game explanation for this).

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

Depending on how your group feels about healing and simulationism, you may want to consider what I call 'environmental healing' or morale boosts. Now that a warlord can 'heal' you with a hearty slap on the back and a cliched line, it opens up a whole world of other things that might 'heal' you.

1) Consider a fight in a town; a PC takes cover behind a house to avoid combat temporarily. A young non-jailbait age woman comes out of the house, makes quick with the gauze and offers her thanks for his heroics with a quick peck on the cheek. Bam. 'Inspiring Word.' The PC, emboldened to impress the coquette picks up a healing surge and charges back into the fray.

2) Also consider the situation of a PC felling the major foe in combat. Sure there are a half-dozen minions and a couple non-minions to mop up, but the tide has clearly shifted; the foes begin to visibly panic. The PC who dropped the BBEG gets a healing surge as he can see the end of the combat is near.

Two such things per combat that fit in with the fluff of the fight and you've got a leader. YMMV.