2 person party Advice

[renau1g]

Ok, so I'm about to start DM'ing for my wife and a good friend of ours. I allowed them to roll stats, which are quite a bit above the 22 PB, but I'm not too concerned as there's only 2 of them. One wants to play a Tactical Warlord, the other is undecided, but I suggested a melee striker to both take advantage of the warlord's bonuses and help out in melee. No defender but if there's only two of them there's less need I thought.

Anyways, a couple comments:

1) Thoughts for the other players class to best work with the small group?

2) Tips for me as DM to not overwhelm them.

Thanks!

 

[DEFCON 1]

For a melee striker, I'd go with either a dual-weapon ranger or barbarian. I'd avoid the rogue just because with only two players, gaining flanking for Sneak Attack will be much more difficult.

Tips for the DM... with only two players, I'd avoid Elites and Solos completely. You probably can create most encounters that are one standard monster of level +1 or +2 and four minions, or two standard monsters of level or level -1. For flavor, you could also do encounters of 8 to 10 minions only (avoiding a standard monster altogether).

If you do decide to run an Elite as a single monster encounter... find or create one that has at-will multi-square shifting abilities. This allows you to keep the monster (probably a skirmisher) moving around the battlefield, thereby avoiding making the encounter boring by keeping the fight static. If the monster only has it's single square shift as part of its Move, then it basically turns into a one-square dance of the pair of PC moves into flank, the monster shifts a square, a PC shifts back into flank etc... sending the three of them around in circles the entire fight.

Allow the monster to shift (and if possible, even go into hiding via stealth), allows you a much more fluid fight with the two PCs running around trying to find and hit the Elite.

 

[Aenghus]

A Taclord generally needs a melee partner, and it helps to have one with a good melee base attack. I would suggest a two handed weapon barbarian, melee ranger or maybe a two handed weapon fighter for the second slot. Avenger is somewhat less attractive with the melee training nerf, rogue has the same problem as well as having issues gaining combat advantage with only one ally.


As for appropriate encounters, I would say majorly limit enemy controlling powers. Conditions are disproportionately effective against a two PC party, especially daze, dominate and stun. A small number of normal monsters, along with regular use of minions sounds right. They probably won't have easy ways of disposing of multiple minions, so a few minions helps flesh out the encounter and make it look scarier.

 

[renau1g]

Yeah they had batted around a dwarf ranger or barbarian also considered avenger.

Minions will likely be a necessity with this group. Thanks so far. I'm wondering if they'll burn through resources (mostly HS's) faster than a normal group as well even with a reduced monster amount.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

When designing encounters, scale the XP budget to the number of players, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that a typical encounter contains standard equal-level monsters. Two standard level-n monsters against two PCs probably has the same potential for grind as two elite level-n monsters against four PCs: it'll take half the combat to kill the first monster. A "typical" encounter should probably be one level-n monster and four level-n minions or three level-(n-2) monsters. Keeping the number of monsters up will also be important for keeping the battle dynamic.

 

[dvvega]

My first gut reaction was to use the Hybrid multi-classing system so that they could at least have "a bit of this a bit of that" in their general builds.

I've done this kind of thing before and it always boiled down to the story.

The encounters you develop should use a lot of minions and only a few hit point creatures/opponents. This way they get a feeling of fighting the underlings and meeting the mid-level bosses as they progress.

The group style skill challenges work well as well since they both have that feeling of helping each other (Batman and Robin), and traps with minions are great while the striker does the killing, the leader is trying to disarm/deactivate the traps while now and then shouting advice.

Of course it depends on the type of campaign you want to run but I find noir/detective stories work much better than save the world stories. They are more personal, don't make changes that affect the world but huge changes for the characters.

The last one I ran for a group was 100% city-based with forays into the wilderness.

Hope that helps,
D

 

[renau1g]

I agree with you the urban setting dvvega, I'm hoping to run something like that. I ran a solo game for the misses back when we were in university (with a DM cleric NPC to heal her) and it was a lot of fun. She was a wizard and we had a lot of fun with the inner workings of her mage academy.

 

[WhatGravitas]

My first gut reaction was to use the Hybrid multi-classing system so that they could at least have "a bit of this a bit of that" in their general builds.

Alternatively, the classes with strong leanings towards a secondary role work pretty well, too. In a two-player campaign, my players played a Warlock and a Paladin. Since Warlocks have a controller-y bent and the Paladin a Leader-ish one, they were able to handle a lot of stuff pretty well.

For monsters, I tended to use monsters with ~level - 2 to fill the XP budget, plus minions, lots of minions to populate the battlefield a bit more. Use more confined terrain like dungeons as well. A party of two is pretty agile and can navigate choke points pretty well (especially those with teleport powers) - open terrain where they get surrounded is a lot more tricky.

Finally, let me suggest: Companions. That's what I'm doing in a three-player campaign now (two veterans, one rookie), the more experienced players play companion characters that are tied into their story pretty well. It's not a lot of extra bookkeeping if you built them with single-shot powers (as opposed to lasting zones/effects/etc.) and encounter utilities.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Tharian]

Don't forget to make use of a companion character or two. When I started running a campaign for one of my best friends and his fiancee, we couldn't find people that were willing to participate on a regular basis. Since she had a leader and he had a striker, I made a defender companion character for them and they've been able to handle a lot more of the encounters along the way. I think the only thing I would look at changing is tweaking the marking ability to be more in line with one of the defender classes than what was outlined in DMG2.

 

[knightofround]

My advice would be to make up some kind of gesalt system. And then just make sure that at least one player has a "leader" and the opposite player has a "defender". The second role that each player picks can be more flexible.

Normally when you hybrid, there's restrictions placed upon what you can cherry-pick from each class. If you've only got a 2-person party, let them hybrid for free without any penalties -- ie, let them get full class' features, proficiencies, skills, hitpoints, surges, and powers, no questions asked. Also hand wave away implement & weapon requirements on powers.

To help with action economy, I'd recommend giving players two initiative counts, thus giving them two turns per round instead of one. If that ends up feeling too superhero-y, alternatively you could make all minor actions free actions, and then give each player an action point per encounter, instead of per milestone. But you'll have to tone down encounters (and xp tables) to compensate...as well as house rule some minor actions.

I think these changes will give your some party enough versatility that they should be able to go up against...I haven't had the chance to try them yet, but I think it would be worth a shot =)