D&D 4E Getting Into 4E, Have Some Questions

[Mulsiphix]

My wife and I have been trying to find a fantasy setting that will allow us to play just by ourselves. The area we live in, Albuquerque NM, is pretty devoid of players and even possible avenues to find others (like online player finders/directories and craigslist.com) are either barren or virtually empty or unused by other locals.

She is willing to play multiple PC's herself but I realize this could potentially produce some serious problems with gameplay and it feeling more like work than fun. So D&D 4E is something we are considering strongly, especially since Fantasy is the only genre she is really excited about and D&D is the father and current monolith of gaming fantasy. However, I've heard D&D 4E really needs 4 to 5 PC's to really work as designed. So I have a few questions:

1. Would few than 4 PC's be ridiculously challenging as far as surviving trap and puzzle ridden dungeon crawls are concerned? Are there other aspects of the game that would suffer greatly from a team that wasn't all that well rounded?
2. How difficult would it be for a single person to manage five PC's? This is her first experience with PnP gaming and my first experience as a GM. Even my player years are pretty limited compared to most and while I have seen much D&D gaming in the past I have only participated in an actual game of D&D 3.5 for a few months.
3. Regardless of the amount of PC's involved in the adventure, what kind of limitations might arise from a single person controlling all PC's? Could adventure depth seriously suffer or the individual PC's be extremely difficult to really flesh out and take on real virtual persona's of their own?

Any comments on this situation and D&D4E would be most appreciated

 

[mach1.9pants]

1. less than 4 PCs wouldn't work IF you are not happy to modify the encounters. Modding encounters is really easy, I do it all the time, so not really a problem.
2. If your wife is pretty hardcore (that sounds bad, but I you know what I mean) get her to run 4 PCs and make sure (as DM) you run at least 4 baddies, makes it half and half in tactical combat> But if your wife isn't, ahem. really into DnD and willing to memorise/know a lot (just like every other edition) then it won't work. However IMO 4E is a lot easier for this sort of thing 'cos you can easily get everything you need to know on your char sheet.
3. Is entirely up to how much you guys enjoy role-playing in the purist sense, it is easy if, between you, you can have a good laugh pretending to be various characters throughout (remember she will only ever have 4 characters to worry about, the DM has unlimited!)

EDIT: 4E, in combat, is so much better with 4 or more PCs. The tactical element comes to the fore.

 

[beldar1215]

I would agree with mach1.9pants. Less than 4 PC's would take some work. One person trying to remember all the powers for 4 characters might be a little ruff. If I might, let me suggest looking at Savage Worlds. It is a great system and would probably be easier to run multiple PC's in. It can handle almost any type of game. The is a great fantasy pdf on the downloads page. I think it is called Wizards and Warriors. They also have a fast start rules pdf, so you could try it before you buy. Here is the link to the downloads page:

Pinnacle Entertainment Group Downloads

Beldar

 

[FrozenChrono]

Running fewer than 4-5 PC's is still fun. I've been in a two man party for a few months that's been going pretty well, and I've been running my GF in a 1 person party for a few months as well. There's are a few adjustments you need to make as a DM to pull it off though.

-make sure they have access to healing potions. I can't emphasize this enough. They should always have a few on them, especially if they aren't a leader.

-Action conservation feats and abilities are really good for these characters. Quick-draw gives you access to those potions for one minor action, minor action powers maximize what you're doing each round.

-In the same vein multiple attack abilities are great. The avenger gets two attack rolls, the Ranger has double strike, and the sorcerer, wizard, swordmage, and many others have multiple enemy targeting at-wills. These abilities prevent bad dice rolls from being as much of an issue, and allow the PC to fight multiple opponents.

-Remember when adjusting encounters for a level one character that 1 level one enemy is level appropriate, two level one enemies is an extreame challenge. If you want to add enemies, minions are your friend. Actually minions are fantastic for single PC campeigns.

-Be very aware of your PC's abilities and skills. If you design a challenge that requires theivery or a magic ritual to get through a door and your PC's a Paladin, they aren't going to get through that door.

Hope that helps. If you'd like more specific advice let me know.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

My wife and I have been trying to find a fantasy setting that will allow us to play just by ourselves. The area we live in, Albuquerque NM, is pretty devoid of players and even possible avenues to find others (like online player finders/directories and craigslist.com) are either barren or virtually empty or unused by other locals.

She is willing to play multiple PC's herself but I realize this could potentially produce some serious problems with gameplay and it feeling more like work than fun. So D&D 4E is something we are considering strongly, especially since Fantasy is the only genre she is really excited about and D&D is the father and current monolith of gaming fantasy. However, I've heard D&D 4E really needs 4 to 5 PC's to really work as designed. So I have a few questions:

1. Would few than 4 PC's be ridiculously challenging as far as surviving trap and puzzle ridden dungeon crawls are concerned? Are there other aspects of the game that would suffer greatly from a team that wasn't all that well rounded?
2. How difficult would it be for a single person to manage five PC's? This is her first experience with PnP gaming and my first experience as a GM. Even my player years are pretty limited compared to most and while I have seen much D&D gaming in the past I have only participated in an actual game of D&D 3.5 for a few months.
3. Regardless of the amount of PC's involved in the adventure, what kind of limitations might arise from a single person controlling all PC's? Could adventure depth seriously suffer or the individual PC's be extremely difficult to really flesh out and take on real virtual persona's of their own?

Any comments on this situation and D&D4E would be most appreciated

We regularly have only 4 PCs, and sometimes have to make do with 3 players, so one player gets "double shift".

I think that is definitely manageable. Maybe even more. You will end up with a "laundry list" of powers eventually, but you start small, and it's never as bad as managing 30 spell slots and 300 spells per PC, and 6 different attack bonuses and ACs per PC based on buffing spells.

What I am not certain about is how much fun combat really is if you don't have lots of other players to work together with.

The 4E DMG contains some suggestion on having less than 5 PCs, and how to compose a party. It contains pre-calculated suggested values for XP per encounter based on party size for 3-6 PCs or so, and I think you should be able to extrapolate the rest, and it should work for 2 PCs, too.
Of course, running published adventures with such a setup is harder, since you need to adapt encounters a lot, but it should be possible. If there is a fair amount of monsters, you might just replace some regular monsters with Minions. Solo and Elite monsters might need more tweaking.

 

[Piratecat]

[off topic] For what it's worth, I know that there are several EN Worlders in Albuquerque; BSF is one of them. [/off topic]

 

[On Puget Sound]

Don't make her play all 4. Each of you play 2. Also share making the monsters' decisions. It's more a shared storytelling/ adventure rather than the traditional GM vs Players roles. Pick up the Dungeon Delves book; it has 30 mini-adventures of about 5 encounters each. You'll have to be honest about not reacting to what you (the players) have read until you (the characters) see it, but that shouldn't be hard.

 

[SkidAce]

Wish I had known, just finished a business trip there. And I spent a long time looking around for a gaming store.

Have you tried findng players from the military/Kirtland? There is usually a group around a military base somewhere.

 

[Hereticus]

Have you tried findng players from the military/Kirtland? There is usually a group around a military base somewhere.

When I lived in El Paso, we had alot of military players.

In a more recent game in Vermont, we had two players that were eventually recalled back to Iraq. One guy DMed, and he ran some nasty combat scenarios. I wonder where he got his ideas from...

 

[Kinneus]

Another option worth considering is an online gametable, like Maptools. That's my fallback for when I really want to play, but don't know anybody to play with.