Scaling to small party size

[Xanaqui]

In your case, it might just be suboptimal class choice that was hurting your two PC party. Wizards are at their most effective when there are lots of enemies to blast (i.e. in larger parties). I imagine that a two PC party of a Paladin and a Rogue (or Ranger, or Warlock) would do considerably better.

Good points. Concentrating more on minions (at least at low levels) or larger groups of lower level creatures (above low levels) may help.

Two person party doesn't work well with the system. When one of them goes down, you've lost 50% of your resources, which pretty much means the other person is about to go down as well. For a party of 4, one member down only means 25% loss, and the rest can still put up a good fight.

I think ideally, you don't want to play with less than 4, or more than 6 characters. It's possible, and there is advice in the DMG for it, but you pretty much have to change some of your design process for the encounters.

True, but this is true in every edition of D&D I've played. I didn't find the DMG advice to be very helpful.

The ability to heal as a minor action on a per encounter basis - ie, the leader class - is a huge deal.

...For a small group, I'd start with melee leader with armor or shield feats for tanking and healing power, and then add characters from there.

...
Also, having fewer characters is going be especially problematic at low levels. At higher levels, you can make encounters with several lower enemies instead a few equal level guys. At level one or two, you're already pretty much at the floor. Similarly, at very high levels, there will also be trouble because of the proportion of elites and solos.

Good points.

For a 2 Player group, 2 characters each is going to be needed, maybe some hirelings too.

That's why we moved to 3 PCs - one player is playing 2 PCs.

For 2 players group you have to create the encounter carefully. For a wizard and a paladin, use manly minions and one guy of the right level. Other option is give -8 hp to each monster to compensate the absence of a striker and help things out. And without leaders, the ever needed healing potions are a must. Try to alocate at least 1 per encounter for your players. Like if you want then fighting against 5 encounters that day, put up 5 potions.

But the monster weakening is a good way to balance things. Less hp so the wizard can take many with 2 AoE spells, and the paladin can make kick work with melee attacks.

Very good ideas. Thank you.

Because of the expected balance between the 4 roles (and a party of 5), when you get down below 4 characters there are gaps in the party ability. Be a little more liberal (and encouraging) with potions of healing (when missing a leader), give more terrain advantages (when missing a defender), do not swarm the party (when missing a controller), and try to use less high hit point monsters (when missing a striker).

Good points.

Rather than 2 characters each, one might try the "gestalt" approach — each player has one character, but that character has two classes, getting the powers and features of each, but only one character's worth of actions per turn.

Interesting idea, but it's not what I'm looking for at the moment. A good chunk of the purpose of this particular game is to teach us the details of 4E.

 

[silentounce]

This came up in another thread and I like the idea of having each PC in a two player party use the rules for adding a class template in the DMG, effectively making them "elite" characters. Don't forget to increase the HP as well and do everything else that you would for an elite. This is similar to the gestalt idea above but it is actually using rules built into the system so should cause less problems. It also won't be as overwhelming to the players as having two times everything as was suggested above. Remember though, that they are effectively two characters, so either require twice the amount of XP to level, or halve all XP rewards they receive. It may be a little more complex when they gain levels, but if you only have two players you probably have the time to deal with that as well.

 

[fissionessence]

Well, just to throw my experiences in the mix:

The group I DM has 3 PCs and we tried 4E for the first time last night, running through Kobold Hall. One of the players didn't show up, so I played his character.

For the first room, I dropped the number of kobolds from five to three to represent the smaller party size. However, after just two rounds I realized that three kobolds just wasn't enough of a challenge, so I had the remaining two jump out from the hidden room.

In the next room, I didn't even bother lowering the encounter difficulty, and the PCs had no real problems. The room after that the PCs survived just fine as well, although the rogue used all the rest of his healing surges to get back up to full for the next encounter.

In the fourth room, the ranger took two consecutive hits that put him unconscious, then the rogue took the brunt of the assault for a round (there were like 6 monsters in that room!), and he didn't have his second wind as an option, so he went down, and the fighter the round after that . . . then the boulder crushed all three of them to death as it circled around the room.

Anyway, it was just a test session so no big deal on dying, and I think we got a good feel for it, but those first three rooms really just seemed like a good challenge. If I had actually scaled down the encounters I think they would have gotten through just fine.

To recap, the party consisted of a defender and two strikers (fighter, rogue, ranger).

~

 

[nittanytbone]

I ran a full set of encounters from level 1 to 2 with a Paladin PC and a rogue NPC (built with the NPC rules - one at will, encounter, and daily). I found that encounters with 200 XP were challenging but reasonable. Those with 150 XP were pretty easy. Those with 300 or 400 XP were extremely difficult and "on the knife's edge." The toughest I threw was a Wererat, 4 decrepit skeleton minions, and the level two spear trap. The easiest was two giant rat minions and a stirge.

I was very pleased with how the system scaled. The treasure amounts per the DMG were right, the encounter difficulty was right, it all worked.

 

[Subedei]

My suggestion for 2-3 person parties is pretty simple:

Treat them as a party of twice their size minus one. When encounters come up, have them roll initiative twice, and add them to the initiative roster for both results. This is distinct from simply doubling their actions as it doesn't feel like you are doubling their actions.

Then, give them 1 more encounter, daily, and utility powers per tier, and increase their HP by 1 per level.

The difference should not be terribly noticeable, yet make a large difference in normalizing gameplay. I haven't had a chance to playtest this yet, but I believe it should allow them to function as a relatively normal party.

 

[MeMeMeMe]

My suggestion for 2-3 person parties is pretty simple:

Treat them as a party of twice their size minus one. When encounters come up, have them roll initiative twice, and add them to the initiative roster for both results. This is distinct from simply doubling their actions as it doesn't feel like you are doubling their actions.

This is ingenious.

 

[Eyada]

My group only has 2 characters (with an occasional 3rd player), and I've found that the system scales quite well. I've yet to use a Solo monster against them, due to the fact that in order for such an encounter to be balanced the Solo monster would need to be 3-5 levels lower than the characters; however, Elites +2-3 levels higher than the characters serve the exact same purpose, and do so quite well.

Initially, I wasn't doing the scaling correctly which resulted in nearly every battle being extremely tough, as the OP described. Once I realized my mistake, things started flowing much more smoothly. The only time since then that the players have had a harder time in a fight than I felt they should have was when the completely-melee oriented party (Fighter and a Ranger) were attacked by rat Swarms while treading water.

Otherwise, my group has been quite pleased by the system. We're still going to test out Gestalt variants (probably by applying Elite Templates as described earlier in this thread), if only to facilitate even larger battles and to add more diversity to the class system.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I play a campaign with just 2 players; a cleric and a ranger. As DM I play a DBorn Pal (with a INT 5 so no useful ideas from me!) and it works fine. Having the little extra healing from the Pal means that the party manages to do OK against a 4 PC challenge (400XP, we have only just started and are all level 1).

So I would recommend having a DM run (stupid as a post) PC with a 2 player group

 

[erik_the_guy]

From what I have seen of two PC encounters, they are tricky. You definitely have to avoid even one player going down. It is extremely important to have a healer. If they don't I would give them an NPC. The other thing I suggest is a tweak in encounter size. This will differ from group to group, but I find that for a small party use several smaller than required encounters. The players will still accomplish a lot during their day as long as they don't have to waste all their resources on a single combat.

 

[Constance Clochard]

I, too, have played campaigns with 2 player characters - the solution was a DM run character. Our "DM Sponsered" character charged occassionally as we moved through various plots/places. Sometimes our Sponsered PC was nothing more than a McGuffin that provided something we needed (healing, tracking, whatever) and would lend a helping hand.
Our DM sponsered character(s) came in handy when we had "guests" who wanted to play too.

Them was good times...