new campaign new problems

My group put our old game on hold (at 18th level - been playing regularly from a week before launch) as two players left the country.

The old group was a strange party mix... ALL strikers, one controller.

So... now we got a new group with a few new players too.

Bard, deva - total space case player, absolutely no optimization... just kind of wanders around the battlefield... seems to be working for him though. (new to 4e)

Shaman, halfling - not optimized but competent, solid grasp on role, but tactics are absent, perhaps to develop. (new to 4e)

Warlord, minotaur - somewhat optimized, confused as to role, tactics limited to charge or follow the dwarfs lead. (new to 4e)

Fighter, dwarf - optimized up the wazoo, but RP's that the shaman is his "boss", so tactics and role are mitigated slightly as he usually looks to her lead, which in turn means that the minotaur is often tagging along whatever she calls for him to do. (experienced at 4e)

Assassin, warforged - claims to be optimized up the wazoo, but the dm has serious doubts; RP's a disdain for "fleshies" that affects his choices in combat pretty obviously. (experienced at 4e)


Don't get me wrong; the group and the characters are great. They all RP heavily, they're totally stoked on the campaign and we all had a lot of fun the first session.

Outside of battle the situation is a natural 20.

My only concern is where exactly the needle on the "speedometer" of the groups combat abilities will fall; and what pitfalls there could be.

For instance, I observed that the warlord would pretty much be a total suck-master if there wasn't at least one other front line warrior.

And that the bard mitigates the players "disastrous" play style of randomly wandering in and out of melee/range - to some degree anyway. He seems to like to stay within five squares of his allies so that's all that counts I suppose.

Any warnings or advice? Their abilities and style is a world away from the striker brigade...

just for kicks; the handouts I gave out... the group started in a cave overlooking a bit of the fey wild.

I think it will take a couple sessions for them to grow in to it. How often do you play? If weekly then it will happen somewhat quickly. If longer than that, frankly, every session will be like starting from scratch as they try to get used to it again.

An observation -- by virtue of having 3 leader classes (bard, shaman, warlord) you have 6 potential minor action heals per -encounter- (not even even counting encounter and daily and utility powers that those PCs might take, or the self healing any other class can do) possibly more if anyone multiclassed. As such, you'll have trouble making the PCs scared to die from hit point loss (unless you throw very high level monsters at them, but then they'll have trouble hitting the monsters, so it turns into a boring slaughter), so once in a while, rather than worrying about "heavy hitting" monsters, look to monsters that cause conditions or encounter setupts that would separate/isolate PCs. Of course, don't do this all the time (or even often) but just once in a while when they're getting bored from just wiping the floor without a scratch on them.

Doesn't sound like a problem to me.

Sounds like you have a large group of newbies, so it will be light on the munchkin power-gaming, and heavy on the Role-Playing. I see that as a good thing. My current group is the opposite. I'm more of a storyteller DM while my players like to argue rules, but only to their advantage.

I'd keep the combat on the easy side for them, and add more traps and puzzles.

ranged attacks?
not up to speed on assasin, but a leader as the groups only artillery, may have problems with the double line. Especially if they have terrain advantages.

Second the comment that with 3 leaders, the groups healing will be huge, more than I have ever experianced. The day will prolly end each time the assasin runs out of healing surges.

I have heard shamans take a tactical player to make the most of them, so you will just have to see.

sounds like a fun group to RP with.

unan oranis said:

Assassin, warforged - claims to be optimized up the wazoo, but the dm has serious doubts; RP's a disdain for "fleshies" that affects his choices in combat pretty obviously. (experienced at 4e)

Click to expand...

At some point, he'll need a chest compartment and vast quantities of alcohol, especially if he likes to say "Destroy all humans!"

Brad

If you're worried about combat speed, I would avoid creatures that heal or regenerate as much as possible. (Or, if you have them, put them in encounters with few other monsters.) Since your group will have a significantly lower damage output than you are used to, you don't want to exacerbate that problem with super-longevity type creatures.

On the other hand, your party should be able to handle high damage/low hp monsters a lot better with so much healing to go around.

If your experience is that combat drags on no matter what you do within the rules, you may consider house-ruling to reduce creature HP and increase creature damage by a certain percentage across the board. I would give it a few levels though to see if it is really necessary.

The other thing is, you can address some of the issues (suboptimal builds, suboptimal tactics) simply by playing monsters suboptimally. For example, the orcish berserker runs past some of the melee frontliners, conceding OA's, to hit at the scary shaman .. (who then orders the frontline to "protect her") ...

I'm sure if you do that well enough, you can just about teach them decent tactics through example and experience.

They also just may not know. The party I'm playing with now has 3 completely new players whose experience with DnD is basically computer RPGs, 1 complete noob who doesn't play RPGs at all (playing because her husband is)

and then 3 players who have experience with DnD in the past but not 4e

I've been doing a lot of "consulting" on their chars as I read this stuff a lot more then they do, We are still in the "tweaking" phase with "you should do this to address your issues from last session" kind of stuff

right now they are really getting powerful, 2 of the players who have played before are really into it and researching on their own, none of the new players are really doing anything other then a quick read and "this looks good" everyone else is a bit of a mix.