Andy Collins said:
Our group in Monte Cook's Ptolus game included a sorcerer, a monk, a rogue, and an archery-based fighter, and the monk player was constantly frustrated that the party needed him to do things (like tank) that he wasn't built for. The rogue ended up being pushed into multiclassing as a fighter, which meant the party was short on rogue talents, so my sorcerer dabbled in rogue and thus didn't have the spell power he really needed in the toughest fights. And our lack of a cleric caused no end of headaches.
Sounds like the RtToEE group I was in. We decided to go with a themed group; specifically, stealth. So, we end up with a halfling rogue (stealth focused), a human rogue (working toward thief-acrobat, so combat focused), a fighter/rogue working toward duelist, a monk, a bard, and a barbarian (with "maxed" stealth). A "sneaky" cleric and the world's unluckiest ranger also passed through.
We were mobile enough to avoid dying too often. That pretty well covers it. My theif-acrobat and my wife's duelist were the two PCs to be reckoned with (we work well together, what can I say). The others were non-entities, for all practical purposes.
The monk and halfling waited for an opening, but rarely got one. When we intentionally switched things up, the halfling always got dropped and the acrobat or duelist replacement always made the monk look bad.
The barbarian was no better at combat than either the acrobat or duelist, switched to the ranger and looked worse, then left the group. Both looked good on paper, but didn't have the mobility to keep up with the others and didn't have better armor or do more damage (sneak attacks were not a problem).
The poor bard had to play both cleric and wizard and spent most of his time with a wand of CLW in hand. After the acrobat took a single level of wizard, he was almost as good of an arcane striker as the bard. Both the duelist and acrobat had roughly equal Diplomacy scores as the bard, too. In his defense, the bard did survive one of the toughest solo scenes.
The cleric was the replacement for the dead halfling. He didn't want to play the healer, so didn't. He pretty much just buffed himself and did his own thing, which usually meant acting like a tank. IIRC, he insisted on wearing his plate armor in a boat on a lake in the Water Temple and didn't survive (go figure), so he left. If he'd been more of a team player, he would have been a great asset in the tougher fights.
So, what started off as a really great, themed group ended up being a bunch of people watching two extremely effective strikers act like all the world was a nail. If a hammer was the right tool, life was great. If it wasn't, it was a painful, frustrating night -- usually several nights.
Woot! :rofl:
