Encounter Advice for Lopsided Party

[Ketjak]

Be careful using swarms - they will tear apart a party lacking area attacks. Makes a fun threat from both sides of the table, too.

Minions are fun, but FFS don't identify them as minions, ever. Let the players figure that out after hitting them. Minions will force them to adapt as well, which makes for a fun-if-harrowing experience for a group like thus the first time they're tactically split... And the second... Third...

The more mobile your monsters, the better this will be since the players are also playing very mobile characters. The battlefield will mix quite a bit and will sharpen their responses to threats.

Big solos will get boring fast. You'll see the same actions over and over and will teach the players how to fan out and stand more or less in place (the warlock will pace) and deliver the same attacks. That TW ranger and the avenger are going to get bruised more in a solo fight.

 

[Patlin]

In my experience with 4e so far, it handles non-optimal parties well and without need for adjustment in encounter composition. Four strikers, a leader, and no defender should work fine. This is in significant contrast to other games, such as WOW, where the composition would be suicidal.

I suggest giving the group a try without adjusting the encounters, and see how they do.

 

[Amaroq]

Yeah - remember, if they discover that they need a tank, they can always tank up. Our TW fighter, for example, has spent two feats upgrading his armor, and plans his next feat to multiclass fighter .. he's going to be a damn scary tank when he's 6th level!

From a "making fights last" perspective, I'd suggest:

A soldier will definitely challenge this party, but should also be unable to deal out enough damage to kill 'em.

Brutes, definitely.

Artillery and Controllers, behind a layer of melee defense of course.

You can also add creatures during the course of a fight. I really like to design encounters with, for example, a script like "Round 2: roll initiative and stealth for the .. (new addition) .. On its initiative in Round 2, the (new addition) reaches the edge of the map. It is placed on the map on the initiative of the first character whose Passive Perception (or Active if called for) beats the stealth roll, or on its initiative in Round 3 when it gets a full suite of actions."

This is very useful for bringing things in around behind the party - your melee types are usually all up front at the things that they could see in Round 1, and the new addition(s) can threaten the back line (lurker, skirmisher), hit the front line from a different angle (soldier, brute), or pop up making best use of defensive terrain, obstacles, etc (artillery, controller).

If you feel a DM should never "throw" an encounter, you can prep entirely, and stand by your decision; if you're willing to "throw" encounters, you can script for, say, 1 to 3 creatures arriving, depending on how well the party has handled the first two rounds.

Regarding artillery, one of our DM's loves to throw minion-artillery at us: these typically do "real artillery" damage, but fall on one hit. They're utterly vicious.

I'd probably also recommend a fair number of Elite Brutes for this party composition: plenty of HP to absorb the striker-quality attacks, low defenses so striker-quality attacks hit .. they ought to be able to put up a decent challenge.

 

[Lackofname]

Be careful using swarms - they will tear apart a party lacking area attacks. Makes a fun threat from both sides of the table, too.

Fun, or frustrating as hell?

It would certainly slow down the massive damage the party might be putting out. But it would also put them up against a wall.

I'm wary about minions, as 3/5ths of the party has extra damage dice, it suddenly takes away those damage capabilities. It would, if nothing else, be frustrating at a time.

As for "Let'm die and figure it out", I don't like that attitude. All the players are new to 4e, and are the "I am attached to my character" types. So I'd rather not Punish them for not conforming. This is a game, not school.

 

[Herschel]

It is a game, and part of the game is cooperation. Sometimes learning to cooperate means learning the hard way what works for everyone. The great thing about 4E is that you can take a character concept and build it in to multiple roles while maintaining the flavor of the character. By running a few "test encounters/adventures" past them they may find things they want to change about their characters to work better with the group.

IE: If Finegan the Ranger becomes Finegan the Tempest Fighter the flavor doesn't need to change, just some of the mechanics. Character death doesn't have to be permanent in the test encounters, or even penalized, but it can give them a chance to tweak their characters in a way that makes them happy and allows you more flexibility in creating fun encounters.

After all, if they're new to 4E, they might decide/realize their initial thoughts don't quite work how they thought they would.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Fun, or frustrating as hell?

It would certainly slow down the massive damage the party might be putting out. But it would also put them up against a wall.

I'm wary about minions, as 3/5ths of the party has extra damage dice, it suddenly takes away those damage capabilities. It would, if nothing else, be frustrating at a time.

As for "Let'm die and figure it out", I don't like that attitude. All the players are new to 4e, and are the "I am attached to my character" types. So I'd rather not Punish them for not conforming. This is a game, not school.

I think your party can do well if they just play to their strengths. As mentioned, the Avenger can tank a little (high AC), the Warlock can tank a little (temp hp generation), while both the Cleric and Warlock has some controller-like powers.

If you want to help your players, hint a bit about how important focus firing is. In other words - the ranged guys target the same target as the melee guys. Or, if you are using soldiers - let the non-ac attackers take care of him.

 

[fba827]

i don't think it 'won't work' so you don't need to sweat about the party getting hammered anymore than any other party of similar size and level. having said that, i'd put some extra focus in to terrain features (i.e. ledges, pits, traps, wierd magical zones, etc). can't kill the enemies as quickly if they can't reach them right away. same is true if the enemies have some controllers to slow/immobilze them or toss around zones.