Holy cow my party has 3 strikers in it

[Tetravys]

hi everybody,

It's coming up on a year since we started playing 4e, and I've been leading four intrepid adventurers through the chaos that is Thunderspire Labyrinth (which, if you've played it, contains far more labyrinths than it does thunder or spires). While there have been a lot of great improvements to the game in 4e, there have been some drawbacks as well. For us in particular, we've got two major hurdles we're trying to overcome.

Firstly, as you already know, three out of the four PCs are strikers. The rundown is ranger, ranger, rogue, fighter. And as you might imagine, their per-round damage output is nothing short of phenomenal. Essentially the fighter ties up the big monsters with marks, and the strikers take care of the rest. Things regain a semblance of balance when the encounter includes monsters that aren't easily moved or monsters with heavy-hitting ranged attacks, but about 75% of the encounters so far in Thunderspire have been bloodlettings.

Over the last few sessions, I've tried some tricks to bring things back into line. I've begun using Stealth checks more frequently (which a surprising number of monsters in Thunderspire are trained in) to regain some maneuverability, and in some cases I've completely ignored the fighter to go after the softer targets.

The other difficulty is that each combat takes about an hour. Having consulted with other groups, it seems that's how 4e is designed. For our party, however, we're trying to get it down to about 30 minutes per combat.

One house rule I've tried is halving the monsters' hit points and doubling their damage. It works well for the most part, as most of the supporting monsters end up being more useful, and the stronger ones can actually begin to force healing surges and daily powers from the PCs. It's not perfect - sometimes it's difficult to determine whether it would unbalance a given encounter. On a few occassions I've had to nix it, for example if it would reduce an important NPC enemy to 40 hp or somesuch.

And that's about it...I'm hoping someone out there might be able to shed some light on this. At the very least, we're coming to the close of Thunderspire soon. I've suggested to my players that it might be a good time to think about new characters, hopefully with new classes. Thanks in advance for everyone's advice, at this point I'm willing to give anything a shot!

 

[On Puget Sound]

To challenge this group, I recommend Minions. Hordes of minions. Drop 30 figures on the board. On round 2, have one of them bolt out the door hollering for reinforcements, and on round 5 bring in 2 elite artillery with minions in front of them.

 

[Iron Sky]

Until right before Paragon, our party was 3 strikers + leader (ranger, rogue, warlock, cleric). The only time we were usually really challenged was when we "aggro'd" too much stuff at once. We each got a few minion-clearing powers(cleric dragonbreath + their encounter blast 3, rogue daily blind blast 3, ranger twin-strike, warlock hunger of hadar daily 3x3 sustain) so minions didn't trouble us much either.

With that group, sounds like they're mostly melee, so the fairly standard 2-3 soldiers/brutes in melee with 2-3 artillery/controllers in front seems like it'd do the trick, especially if the ranged enemies have obstacles in the way (higher up, difficult terrain, traps, etc) to make it a gamble to try to get them first.

 

[Baumi]

Just a small (deadly) tip ... send them swarms! Two should be more then enough to get them into big troubles, without a controller they are damn hard to kill and attack everyone around them for free .. also the fighter cannot stop them from moving around.

 

[Mentat55]

For making combat go faster on my PBP games, I've gone with 75% hit points/133% damage, and have been very pleased with the results. That 133% damage is on top of tweaking monster damage to better match the guidelines in the DMG.

30 minute combats might be hard to achieve on a consistent basis, though. Assuming a 6 round battle, that is 5 minutes per round...1 minute per PC and 1 minute for the DM. The PCs might be able to take their actions in a minute, probably less, but the DM is often going to take much longer. Consider, on your end, how you can streamline the actions of the monsters, as you will often be running as many or more creatures than the PCs.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

What kinds of monsters are you running up against? 3 Strikers are going to be able to burn through any encounter that is primarily made up of Soldier and Brute type monsters. The game I am playing in had several strikers as well a 5 player group with a Rogue, Warlock, Ranger, Warlord, and a Paladin. Granted, it was rare for all players to show up, but the strikers were able to burn through some fairly heavy opponents, particularly encounters built around Solo's and Elites.

However, we could still run into problems when we faced down properly used artillery controllers, and depending on how they were used, Skirmishers. Rather then screwing around with the HP and damage output, have you tried building encounters around anything other than toe to toe? Going after the squishy targets is good, but to make it work you want to use Artillery (ie, ranged attacks), or Skirmishers (better mobility due to shifting actions). Also instead of trying to challenge through using monsters at a higher XP value, you may as well modify them downward in level to build up the numbers while keeping roughly the same XP value for the encounter. This does get you some of the value for lowering the HP, and you should be able to make up for the weaker attack value through bulk.

In addition, Minions are one of the best ways to deal with overwhelming damage. A Ranger using Twin Strike will still speed things along though, especially if it is built around archery rather than melee. If you can put minions between your Artillery / controller and your melee strikers, while having some skirmisher types go around, you may do better then you expect. If you have Artillery and a means of inflicting the Slowed condition, you can probably make things very dangerous for your players.

Of course all that assumes that you were using Brute / Soldier type monsters to try to go after the squishy targets.

I also strongly suggest that as the DM, you do what you can to take the long view for the encounters, and plan on making things difficult over a series of encounters rather than a single encounters. Your group is on paper at least a glass cannon; All output with not much ability to stand up if you start landing enough solid hits. Who cares if they can race through the first 4 encounters if the 5th one leaves them short of healing surges? Start finding a way to force just one more encounter (even if it is an easy one) before letting them take a full rest.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Piratecat]

My group has three strikers, too. It's great. Not a hint of combat grind, even on solo monsters.

 

[Truename]

My group has three strikers, two leaders, and a defender. They tear through just about everything.

To keep things interesting, I have intelligent monsters avoid the fighter as much as possible, and focus fire on one of the "squishies." They know the fighter will lock them down, so they avoid it. In the last adventuring day, this tactic ended up with the ranger and the rogue both having zero healing surges by the time they got to the climactic encounter, which upped the tension nicely.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I've got Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Bard, Wizard in my current group, now that the Warlord has left. They're an awesome group to watch in action, given that nearly all of them have striker-esque powers (the Fighter is two-handed, the Paladin is an Eladrin, etc).

My solution is not to worry about it, and to sometimes use reinforcements. They're just about to enter the Horned Hold in Thunderspire, so with some judicious use of reinforcements I think I can suprise them a bit.

 

[Warbringer]

My group has three strikers, too. It's great. Not a hint of combat grind, even on solo monsters.

always with the silver lining

and ditto...

the only hiccup they had was when I unleashed a necro combo on them ... controllers, artillery, mininons... and you know what, they ran away...