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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 5686688" data-attributes="member: 54846">That's not the end of the world. There are ways to deal with this as a DM.You have two characters who are ranged (wizard, ranger), one who's likely melee (the rogue) and one who could be ranged or melee (the cleric; the warlord, if you go with it, is melee).All characters do not have lots of hit points. What this means is that you have two characters who can put out a lot of damage, one guy who can heal damage and make everyone fight better, and one guy who can effect a group of people. What are you lacking?Someone who can stop enemies from moving around, and who can take a lot of hits. Therefore choose your monsters more carefully: use enemies that don't do buckets of damage with their attacks, enemies who have ranged attacks but are weak in melee, minions*, etc. Use Soldiers** and Controllers more often. They have various effects but won't kill your PCs outright. Use Artillery as real threats - enemies at range that need to be taken out or killed soon, because while weak, they can put the hurt (thus you end up with situations where PCs might want to take cover, and it becomes a shootout). Use Skirmishers and Brutes sparingly. They can potentially do a lot of damage, and often these are the guys Defenders pin down (to stop Skirmishers from moving/surrounding softer targets, and to keep Brutes from pounding the hell out of everyone else). Lurkers are a mixed bag - they are about doing a lot of damage once or twice in a fight, but are weak. So they are big threats once, and thus provide a good scare to change a battle. Most lurkers can remain hidden, so have them waiting to pounce on the second or third round.Occasionally, break these molds. Run an encounter as normal. Otherwise it will look formulaic. If you do not want to deal with changing monster encounters like this, or if you're still nervous, what you could do is create a Companion Character defender. This has the same relative power as a PC, but has fewer options. Let one of the players basically dictate this character's actions in combat. *Do not use too many minions at one time. Your strikers will get very irritated because their focus is doing lots of damage, and it doesn't matter how much damage they do to a minion. Minions are the wizard's pinata. For other characters, their intention is to be speedbumps, getting in the way of attacking the higher powered stuff.**Do not use too many soldiers at once - their high defenses and low damage can make them a grindy pain. One or two to tie up the melee guys/keep them off a controller or artillery is good.</blockquote>

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