GMs & DMs: What do you do with (severely) unbalanced adventuring parties?

[Evenglare]

Who said anything about the GM being treated like crap? The GM runs the show. Everything is under his control with one exception--the player characters (not that he doesn't have veto rights for concepts that just don't work for the campaign, or which he feels are unacceptable for some other reason.) I have no idea how as GM I'm being treated like crap because my philosophy is not to passive aggressively punish my players for wanting to play different characters than I might want them to.

You misinterpret my post. I meant on message boards everyone is basically saying bow down to what the players want. This is -in my opinion- treating the gm crappy, and revoking what HE wants. Everywhere it's "cater to the players" , if this were the one true way of playing then no adventure paths would ever be sold since they don't "cater to the players". There are people out there that like running their own campaign and worlds, and there are players who enjoy playing in those worlds because they trust the GM.

I understand that some GMs enjoy it when their players are happy and basically don't care about what they run, as long as it makes them happy. I am not one of those people. If I have people that make a party full of wizards or rogues or something and I am NOT prepared for it, then I will NOT enjoy running the game, and the whole party will suffer (as in not enjoy playing because I'm not prepared, not suffer as in "rocks fall everyone dies make new characters). I know It's an awful monstrosity for a GM to run something HE wants to , but sadly it's just how I feel, i guess it's that human drawback of mine. If the player doesnt like my world or story or campaign or whatever, they don't have to play, im not forcing anyone . I can find other players who enjoy the style of game I wish to play.

Fortunately for me I have actually never encountered this problem. I pitch my cam[paign and the players converse with each other and make their own characters and have a balanced party where each person excels at a particular situation. I guess they think it would be boring to have 4 rogue who all basically do the same thing. I mean sure you have archetypes and all ,but customize all you want, 2 rogues are goign to be much more similar than a rogue and a wizard (for example).

 

[Ahnehnois]

The same thing I do with any other party: react to what the players do.

 

[Desdichado]

As an aside, here's a storyhour that's basically a retelling of a campaign where the PCs were able to start with one racial choice--human--and one of three class choices--fighter, rogue and expert.

It's one of the best retellings of a D&D campaign I've ever read, and it's a campaign that I really wish I'd had the opportunity to play in.

 

[S'mon]

I'd run an all-Rogue or all-Wizard campaign. If the party is weaker than normal then they have to take on lesser challenges, and they get less XP.

 

[Crothian]

What do we do? We have fun. Some of the best playing we have done has involved people playing characters out of their element. It allows for players to get creative in ways they usually are not and it allows the characters to shine doing things they aren't good out.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

An all-rogue party? No one is willing to be a medic in your modern campaign? The adventuring group is a showcase of poor builds and your players think they are all "very cool"?

Usually the party imbalance is easy to fix by having a discussion with your players but what if that doesn't work? Hypothetical example:
The only melee-character dies and the rest of the party are arcane casters. Bored with supremacy of arcane casters the player wants to create a wizard also. Now you notice that the party is awkwardly unbalanced and the frustrated player politely refuses to make any adjustments to his/her character.

What would you do? Introduce a DMPC or do you have something subtler?

In my group there are occasional issues with imbalance. Usually I see no other solution than an unintended but unavoidable (near)-TPK.

There are a few things to consider here.

If you're home brewing / creating your own adventures? Then you should probably play to the strengths to of that unbalanced party. It's really not that difficult. however if you've told your players that you want to run a game that involves plenty of combat and monster slaying and they come back to you with a party of rogues built around sneaking and intrigue that's them being passive agressive and basically disrespectful of the GM's time.

You want your players to have fun but YOU as a DM want to have fun as well. These things are not mutually exclusive and a DM's job should not be one of complete selflessness. The actual players have a role to play outside of their characters in making sure that EVERYONE including the GM is enjoying themselves. Unfortunately a lot of players only see and care about their own fun.

NOTE: I pretty much run pre-written adventures and AP's exclusively these days so let my players know this right off the bat. They still have the choice to run whatever they want to but I let them know whether or not there might be issues to help guide their choices. If they still want to play something sub-optimal or super specialized then that's on them.

 

[LostSoul]

I'm running two campaigns right now and the approach I take is slightly different.

In the first one I don't care. I make up the world with a variety of challenges and the players make whatever characters they want. The players then select goals for their PCs and attempt to achieve them. Some characters may be better suited to certain goals, but that's not my responsibility, it's up to the players.

Makes it pretty easy to DM.

In the second campaign I'm running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I told the players that having a Cleric is probably necessary - or at least a guy who can cast Death Ward. I then explained the nature of the campaign in general - bad guys trying to do something bad, you only have so much time to stop them. Then I let them make up whatever they wanted. So "fair warning" I guess.

 

[S'mon]

I take pretty much the opposite approach to the advice you've gotten so far. To me, one of the prime responsibilities of the GM (which is frequently me) is to allow players to play the characters that they want to play, and offer them a game that works for the characters you get, not for some hypothical "balanced party" ideal.

Normally I'm happy to GM for whatever PCs I get, I've never found much need for a balance of classes. I remember at one point my first 3e campaign had turned into all-Wizard (around 17th level) - that seemed to work much better than when the group had had a mix of classes!

Exception would be if I say "all Martial PCs" or "no PHB 3" - in that case the players need to stick to the restrictions I set for that campaign, or they can find another GM.

But I've never said "You're late - you're playing the Cleric". It did happen to me in the Pathfinder campaign I'm playing in - I was the 6th player, so I was told Cleric-only. I was a bit unsure, I prefer playing Fighter types, and I don't like overshadowing other players, especially newbies, who comprise most of this group. So I made my Cleric a Viking, and as Fighter-ish as possible without compromising his ability to do his job (STR 14 DEX 14 CON 13 INT 10 WIS 16 CHA 12) - Raknar Olafson likes charging into melee at the front of the group, mace swinging.

 

[jasper]

I create a NPC Medic (or whatever) and hand it to group. Some one in the group chooses the actions of NPC with me having power to over rule the action. Aka: No! Hobo the npc medic is not going to give the party his magic and strip nekkid and moon the king.
I will adjust the magic given out and some of the module if I running a module.
What I did have happen is on Friday the group is balanced, and on Saturday only the thieves and fighters show up. in most cases I changed the upcoming encounter.

 

[Celebrim]

Please excuse me but I must say that I'm baffled that people are satisfied with unbalanced groups.

Ok. Generally if lots of people agree on some point, and it baffles you its because the people are coming at the problem from a completely different direction.

With an all-rogue party you basically lose quarter of the monsters in Monster Manual.

No, the monsters are still there. And, you can still use them. However, the effective CR of about a quarter of the monsters in the monster manual changes fairly drastically. You can't be quite as lazy with encounter design and rewards if the party is specialized as you can when its a more typical presumed generalist party. That being said, the CR/EL system is grossly and wildly inaccurate on many levels, so if you aren't applying your own judgment to it already you probably should be. So, to a certain extent I concede that you make the XP system more difficult, but if you've ever tried to do anything original in encounter design you've probably ran up hard against the problems in the CR/EL/XP system already. It basically sucks as anything but rough guidelines.

With an all-rogue party you lack many creative approaches to many situations which a balanced group might have.

What do you mean by 'creative'? You seem to be using it in a sense that is almost the opposite of my understanding about what 'creative' means. For a balanced, generalist party, with all of the expected tools, most problems encountered will be addressed or at least addressable in the normal, expected, presumed manner. You even address this yourself in your other points when you say things like "dealing large masses of opponents is difficult without a mid-level wizard". Most of your complaints about a unbalanced party seem to be, "Well, the party won't be able to use the typical uncreative solution to problems. What then?" The answer is, if they find themselves facing those problems, they better be creative.

Also one of the rogues might be outshone by the others, thus being useless.

But this can happen in any party. In fact, its funny that you mention rogues as being outshone, because generally speaking being outshown by others is the expected life of a rogue. You start out being fairly useful, but by 5th level or so it's really easy to be outshown - especially in 1st or 2nd edition D&D. First, you increasingly aren't as capable as a fighter over time, and second your utility skills are generally unreliable and greatly outclassed by easily accessible and more reliable spells like Mage Hand, Unseen Servant, Silence, Invisibility, Jump, Levitate, Fly, Knock, Find Traps, Detect Magic, Clairaudience/Clairvoyance, Augury, Arcane Eye, etc. It takes work to not get outshown as a thief or rogue, and so competing only against other rogues is perhaps preferable.

I think there is a deeper issue underlying your complaint, and that is the issue of how you as a DM must change the way you prepare based on choices that your party has made. I think the fundamental problem is that you are assuming that the social contract at the table is, "The DM presents the players with challenges of his own devising. The players try to overcome those challenges as best as they are able." By creating less than optimized characters or a less than optimized party, you are claiming that they are violating the implied social contract to overcome your challenges "as best as they are able", and you are asking for validation from the boards that you can now discipline your players for this gross violation of proper player conduct.

Since you aren't recieving the validation you expected, you are baffled.