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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6134347" data-attributes="member: 82106">DDI is great! <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/database.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/database.aspx</a> is the online Compendium (it will let you search without a DDI account, but it won't let you view the details of an entry, even so you can see what book to look stuff up in). I think the Compendium alone is by far the most useful part of DDI, and worth the cost. I can look up any monster and its simple to just past stat blocks to a file (I just screen cap them and slap them into a page using GIMP) print it out, and you have all you need without page flipping. More recently I just bring an iPad to the game and put each one on a tab in the browser. The Character Builder is highly useful too, though I have to say the online CB can be a pain to use (it gets slow and crashes sometimes). Dragon and Dungeon are pretty nice and there are a vast number of cool articles and etc you can download from the last 5 years. You can get a 1 month sub for $10 and check it out, low risk and even if you stop using it you can keep all the PDFs you will ever need. As others have said, the idealized party is 5 chars, 2 strikers, 1 defender, 1 leader, and 1 controller. Controllers are somewhat less often used than the others, so you often see 3 strikers, a defender, and a leader, or 2 strikers and 2 defenders. Fighters are your common defender and they do basically low striker level damage, so striker/defender can be fairly interchangeable. Going without ANY defenders can be tricky, but a tough barbarian, monk, or beast master ranger can do the job of pinning things down. You can likewise live without a leader. The idea there being the extra striker just kills stuff faster and less healing is needed. I have a party with 5 strikers right now, and it works pretty well (they do love healing potions though, lol). You COULD always reduce the encounters by one monster if you have 4 players. Chances are players that focus fire and play tactics will do fine, but that might not describe your players! You can always replace a regular monster with a minion too, minions are fun.</blockquote>

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