Casters Suck? Please explain.

[Incenjucar]

Happy to help. Good gaming.

 

[S'mon]

As said upthread, your party would be much stronger as leader-defender-striker, rather than leader-striker-striker. Defender-striker-striker may not help much. I ran some fun online 4e games for a 2 PC defender-striker party, but I was mostly using 1st-3rd level monsters vs 5th level PCs!

 

[MrMyth]

We can't flank, however. Any feat I could take to give me CA when my team flanks is bunk. Two ranged characters and one melee character.

The answer is that our party just won't work, I guess. I think that is sad.

I don't think that is necessarily true. But... it is true that the DM should probably be adjusting for having a smaller party than normal. This should consist, in theory, of using fewer monsters or lower level monsters. It might be that he isn't doing so - maybe because he thinks the PCs are so effective they need more of 'a challenge'.

For example, you mention being completely surrounded. But with 3 PCs, a reasonable encounter would consist of 3 enemies. If you are regularly fighting more than that, without a defender, your DM is somewhat stacking the deck against you.

Or if he is using lots of monsters, they should probably be low level and easier to hit - which doesn't sound like it is the case.

So, again, I think the problem may come to the DM's encounter design, and possibly because he makes encounters more challenging due to the other PCs having accidently given themselves higher-than-appropriate attack bonuses. I'd recommend addressing that before worrying about whether the group is broken as a whole.

 

[The Human Target]

Then we can all miss horribly together? We are a party of 3 implement users. No one targets AC. That should be balanced according to most of the posts in this thread, but I can't help but feel we are just going to be epic fail unless we power game the crap out of our characters and go strictly for attack bonuses.

I feel defeated. I will play 2 more games as my cleric, and then I am going to reroll as a Paladin.

A big part of your problem is that you are a party of 2 strikers and one ranged leader. Without a defender or more than one melee character you guys are gonna get hammered on. Thats just how the game works (and really always has.)

And yeah, its something to talk to your DM about. Not every party is equal, and your three man crew is for sure not optimized. So your DM is either gonna grind you down into quitting or getting TPKed, or needs to make some adjustments to his encounter design. Or have you guys switch characters.

When my group started playing 4E we had 3 strikers, a leader, and a controller. We got hammered on game after game. Then one player switched from leader to defender sub leader and while the lack of healing and buffs still hurt our overall survivability skyrocketed.

Don't despair!

 

[TwoSix]

I've observed that hybriding also works well in parties of <4. Dwarf fighter/cleric or warden/cleric could work well.

 

[Herschel]

First of all, we lack a defender and a controller in our group. I am a cleric, therefore I am a Leader. No one is sucking at their intended role.

Wait, 3 implement users and no defender? And none a controller?

There's your biggest problem. Your party is made of squish. Sorcerer, Monk and caster Cleric? Yuck.

The good news is at least someone will be re-rolling their character soon because the life expectancy of that group is nil. Fudging their attack bonuses only goes so far. Get the Monk to play a defender, the sorcerer to switch to a Warlock (which has a decent amount of control powers) and you'll be in business. (or something similar)

 

[mneme]

Ok, I think there are a few things here:

First, yeah, I think we've adressed the question of whether it's "I'm playing a caster" that's the problem; it isn't, but the makeup of the group (somewhat coupled with how your GM is designing/picking encounters; clearly you're not abusing your spousal privledges enough! has some issues.

Now, to the issues:

1. Yeah, your GM could make things easier on you. And, in fact, by offering to let you run a second character, he's making things a -lot- easier for you, as he doesn't need to adjust things nearly so much for a 4 person group.

2. Pacifist healer is, yes, going to deeply suffer in a 3 person party. First, you built all ranged, but with 3 party members (and only one of those melee), there's not a lot of ways to keep the bad guys off your back. Second, your key attack power, Astral Seal, gets weaker with fewer allies; fewer allies means fewer people to give a +2 to hit to when your Seal hits. Third, your Divinity power -also- gets weaker with fewer allies, as there's a huge difference between getting 2-3 allies in a burst with 4-5 allies and doing so with 2-3 allies. Fourth, the difference of having one party member who isn't mostly doing direct damage is much, much larger with a small party (where your party loses 1/3 of their damage due to your using Astral Seal or missing) than a larger one.

So yeah; I do think your setup doesn't quite work; you've got a leader who excels in large parties trying to explore a dungeon with two off-strikers who are better at clearing a room of weak enemies than they are at taking out single targets (or hits).

Ways I could see taking it:

1. Go trad. A pacifist cleric still isn't ideal in a 4 person group, but it's more workable, particularly with a defender who can hit hard (probably a fighter). Sorcerer and monk cover the controller role pretty well, so just adding a fighter would probably help a lot.

or

2. Go Stealth. so you've got a ranged striker, a striker who can cover ranged play reasonably well, and you. One way to handle this is to play a leader who's good as stealth (an eagle shaman with an appropriate background comes to mind), and refocus as a ranged party. Instead of trying to go toe to toe with the monsters, the approach here is to leave them wondering where the attacks are coming from, while the party blasts them from hiding, then the sorcerer and monk emerge to finish up the remains.

 

[mudlock]

I still wanna know how his sorcerer friend is getting a +10 to hit...

Also, I'm curious if your DM is running a printed module, without editing it. Those assume a 5-man party, and so the average encounter for 2nd level has about 625xp (125xp * 5) worth of monsters, while for a 3-man, 2nd-level party the budget should be about 375xp (125xp * 3). 625xp would be more than a level+3 (2nd+3=5th; 5th=200xp; 200xp * 3 = 600) encounter, which would you should expect to be hard; really hard (even if your sorcerer friend is accidentally cheating).

I've run with leader-plus-n-strikers parties, and they can be quite effective, so I don't think that's what the problem is (the game is more forgiving with respect to roles than I think most people are claiming, *especially* at low level.) But if it's an inexperience DM, I could absolutely believe he's running an out-of-the-box module, and not adjusting the encounter difficulty based on having an uncommonly-small number of players.

 

[mudlock]

...by which I mean to say: if you like your pacifist cleric, you should be able to keep playing him, especially if changing to a different character won't fix the situation (which would be the case if the DM is constantly running you at level+3 encounters.)

 

[Incenjucar]

I still wanna know how his sorcerer friend is getting a +10 to hit...

Well, a tiefling using all the accuracy-boosting feats, a +1 implement, and fire spells could do it...