3 players: scale down or double up?

[MortalPlague]

I will be running a campaign with three players soon, so this is something I've thought about a fair bit. Mind you, my players plan to play a warlord, a warlock, and a fighter (perhaps?), so I think my roles are pretty well covered. Your three striker party could lend itself to some very interesting encounters...

As one poster mentioned, it might be a good idea to have particular missions tailored for their style of play. Infiltration, hit and run, guerrilla warfare type missions could work really well with this sort of group. Anything where they don't have to stand up and take the punishment.

Also, I'd like to add a vote for adding NPC allies. I've always done this in my games, and some NPC allies go on to become enduring characters with lasting friendships with the PCs. They die occasionally, or they will give up the life of adventure, or even go off on a quest of their own, but they can provide much needed support for a group who doesn't have all the roles covered. As a bonus, an NPC can be an excellent way to engage the players in character, whether to prod them towards a solution or to comment on their state or just to have a casual conversation.

It's also worthwhile to remember that if you run with just three strikers and one of them dies, that player could roll up a solid fighter or paladin to anchor the group.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Perhaps an NPC ally (or two) but keep them a level below the PC's (at least, once the PC's have gone to second?)?

With their being less of a change between levels, the NPC's should still be very useful but not overshadow the main party.

However, in the case of the OP, it seems that his players might want to play secondary characters, in which case all power to them.

 

[DSRilk]

It depends entirely upon the type of players you have. If they're not real big into the RP stuff, then two characters isn't too bad - it's certainly not like trying to play a 3e cleric and 3e wizard as one player However, if they enjoy the RP aspect of the game to even a moderate extent, it will be ABSOLUTELY worth it to scale down or run one or two NPCs. Running two PCs is a major distraction for most of us when it comes to RP.

 

[Mentat55]

I think a party of 3 strikers should work just fine. As an earlier poster said, play up encounters and situations that accentuate their striker-ness: ambushes, hit-and-run battles, etc. Also, if they are all trained in Stealth, or are at least reasonably stealthy, you can create more adventures that cater to these traits.

At the same time, I would occasionally use encounters that expose their weaknesses (though I might make these average to easy difficulty), just to remind them of what they are lacking, and force them to come up with creative solutions to these challenges.

 

[Khaim]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet: mutliclass!

Either the TWF ranger or the rogue could easily grab the fighter multi- heck, the rogue might have the Charisma to go paladin instead. That gives you a quasi-defender right there. The other can take Warlord; now you have Inpsiring Word. Or the archer can become a cleric or something.

If your players really balk at this, you could give them each a free multiclass feat. That said, multiclassing seems quite powerful, and it doesn't have to invalidate your original character concept. Suggest it and see what they think.

 

[Xorn]

I ran The Second Son with three players, a ranger, rogue, and wizard. As they all had fantastic Stealth, they basically started every fight with a surprise round, and though they needed some outstanding tactics, they went through the entire adventure without taking an extended rest till they got to Rakin and decided to nurse him to a healthier state before moving on.

True, they wiped in the final fight, but that's because they didn't think to have Rakin hang back while they scouted ahead, so I rolled HIS stealth instead of theirs--and a guy with 1 foot hobbling around on an improvised crutch up crumbling stairs just isn't that quiet.

Human berserker + human wizard acting first--yeah it wasn't pretty. But the glass cannon idea is quite apparent.

Hey, if you don't have a leader, the party won't have the advantages associated with that. No defender, the strikers lose some mobility and become the front line. No controller, the larger the fight gets, the more exponentially dangerous it gets.

With three strikers, they'll learn two things quickly--they need to focus fire the most dangerous enemy down before they can act, and the first one of them to die should make a defender or at least a leader.

But I'd let them try it!

My play group (going to do the mini-adventure in the DMG before starting KotS) is made up of a dwarf fighter, tiefling warlord, halfling rogue, elf ranger, and if this new guy joins the game, a human wizard. They are going to melt faces, I think...

 

[invokethehojo]

I think the number of players is less important than how they interact together as far as stragey goes. With three strikers you should be ok. I've made several characters in the last few days (i have the books) and strikers that focus on Ranged or Melee but are still competant in the other are pretty easy to make. None of your powers are keyed off other players or thier posistions (like you don't want a warlord in a party with no melee characters) so this should work.

If you do anything I suggest this (my group is also 3 players and, after DMing a couple sessions this is what I plan to do) give each player a power from another class for free, as long as that power helps to flesh the party's abilities out and fits the character.

Ex: Give a ranger healing (or inspiring) word, that way you won't always have to be giving out healing potions.

 

[tomtill]

Thanks

Thanks to all those who posted their ideas.

I think I will try the 3 striker party long enough to rescue a NPC, ally (cleric or inspiring warlord). We will try this for a while, then move either to multiclassing/house-ruling freebies.

I've moved double characters back to being a last resort.

I agree that RP suffers with double characters, that's why I got rid of them in 3e.

I'm hoping that a NPC ally in 4e, with his limited power list, will help without getting in the way.

 

[brownbat]

That's disappointing

We just started making characters and hit the "everyone wants to play strikers" problem too.

These solutions of running a DM ally, or retooling every encounter, or forcing characters to be remade as other roles, they all seem like sad compromises. I wish the game would let people play what they wanted out of the box.

It's looking more and more like if everyone wants to play strikers, the group would be just as well off playing a different game.

 

[Asmor]

Well, it's not like the game is going to break if they all play strikers. You just have to be more careful.

It's also not a problem unique to 4e. Imagine a group of rogues in 3e. Heck, imagine a group of high-mobility, high-damage, low-defense characters in any point buy system.