3-man Party without a Defender

[Riposte]

The party I plan on running a game for has no defender. The party is made up of a Striker(Ranger), Controller(Wizard), and Leader(Cleric).

Defenders seem to be the very important in keeping PCs alive, more so than a Leader or anyone else. I'm also a little worried this will be even worse with only 3 members.

Advice?

 

[Rashak Mani]

Good Luck

 

[Nifft]

Just make sure nobody is squishy. For the Wizard, this means Staff, and have a Str & Con of at least 13 each, so you can get into Hide armor fast. He must take Thunderwave, and he should consider Illusory Ambush (from Dragon 364) as it takes the place of a Mark in terms of reducing a melee monster's expected damage.

If the Ranger and Cleric are both Strength-based melee dudes, there should be no big problems. If they're both ranged attackers (Dex and Wisdom based, respectively), the party is pretty much screwed.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I think the melee vs ranged division is more important than defender vs other roles. The move+charge combo makes monsters (and PCs) much more mobile than in 3rd ed: a party has to have at least one character ready to fight HTH. If the party is composed of a Str Cleric, a two-weapon Ranger and a Wizard with Thunderwave you'll have a quite different experience from a laser Cleric, bow Ranger and purely ranged Wizard.

A Str+Wis Cleric and Str+Dex TWF Ranger can combo good ranged and melee abilities. As long as the Cleric and Wizard remember to take Toughness I think they'd be a fine party.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

I'm GMing a (solo) game where the main PC has two followers... and they have the same exact party configuration as that. Over 5 or so combats so far, I think every one has had at least one PC below 0 HP. One combat was a TPK, but that was against needlefang drakes, who are unbalanced for their level anyway.

Basically, the players will need to consider their tactics more carefully, and will need to adjust their builds to compensate for the lack of a defender. AC and HP boosting items and feats will be important, as will having some actual melee ability themselves. (After a few combats, the ranger switched from ranged to melee, which helped a little.)

 

[bganon]

I think you might actually be better off with the cleric than, say, a fighter anyway. I'm running a three-char party with a fighter, ranger (mostly bow), and starlock. And no matter how hard the fighter tries, after two or three encounters at least one of the strikers will have taken some lucky shots from skirmishers/artillery and have to burn through half their healing surges, while most monsters can hardly touch the fighter (who has 12 surges anyway).

The fighter's multiclassing into warlord to ameliorate some of this, but the party's still only level 3. Often I think the party could use in-combat healing a lot more than the tanking the fighter provides, but this could be a "grass is greener" situation.

I think you should be OK, just make sure they have plenty of heals ready for the Wizard (healing potions are fantastic), and advise them to take out the artillery first. And perhaps be sparing with brutes. The other thing to watch out for is keeping an encounter's xp budget reasonable; with only three characters it's easy to accidentally add a monster/trap and wind up with a much harder encounter than intended.

But in the end, I've found the three-char party works surprisingly well. Good luck!

 

[fba827]

Their tactics will have to rely on mobility, immobilizing enemies, doing as much damage from range as possible, and using terrain to their advantage (for cover behind things, keeping a pit or something between them and enemies, etc).

It's those direct, open field, melee fights that are going to be murder.

 

[blargney the second]

They're toast. The party is inevitably going to take damage, and that big bucket of hit points and healing surges is essential to survive.
-blarg

 

[DEFCON 1]

Or you can just avoid creating encounters that have soliders, brutes, elites, or solos. Those are the monster roles where you are better off having a defender there to mark them and keep them occupied.

With a controller and no defender... using minions much more often than soliders/brutes/elites/solos will be more effective in playing to the party's strengths. The wizard will have a better chance at taking out numerous enemies with single AoE spells, and if he is forced to go into HtH, the lower ACs of skirmishers, controllers and artillery mean that he has a better chance of knocking those minions out with the one hit.

 

[jimtillman]

The party I plan on running a game for has no defender. The party is made up of a Striker(Ranger), Controller(Wizard), and Leader(Cleric).

Defenders seem to be the very important in keeping PCs alive, more so than a Leader or anyone else. I'm also a little worried this will be even worse with only 3 members.

Advice?

should be fine, paticulary if the ranger is 2 weapon primarily
you will need to tailor the fight to the party a little more carefully but you should be fine