Help! My party has no healer!

[Celyn]

There's also the more prosaic Durable and Toughness feats.

Don't you guys just slaughter things like lightning? Are you focusing fire enough?

PS

Things do go down pretty fast, but like Gort said, if something has a way of getting around my marks and going for say, Addie the assassin, she gets walloped pretty quickly. She doesn't have Toughness. Yes, we've told her to get it!

Honestly, I think we could go another session or so as we are and see how things go, since it won't be every week that things can be running past me without causing opportunity attacks.

But as a proper fighter I do like to believe that we can fight the entire world without many problems, so my opinion isn't necessarily the most stable

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Why go look for complex solutions?

If things are out of balance, just re-balance.

If encounters suddenly are too easy for your party, what would you do? That's right, you would increase encounter difficulty.

So, if things change so that they suddenly are too hard, you just do the opposite; you lower encounter difficulty.

It does not matter if its because you lose or gain party members, lose or gain magic items, or the party's tactical acumen suddenly changes; when you, the DM, sit down and put the encounters on paper, you have the power to change each encounter in any way you like to make them fit your current party - you don't have to change the party. No need to cut off the toes to fit the shoe - just select another shoe.

Excellent post; OP, listen to this guy. No need to start passing out healing gear to a bunch of strikers, or having everyone blow feats on multiclassing. I mean if that's what everyone wants to do, then by all means; but it is hardly necessary.

I'll also add that classes in 4e are a self-fulfilling prophecy. You need the classes that you have. If you have a leader, you need his healing and buffing because he isn't a striker putting out 100 damage per round. If you have 3 strikers, you need all 3 of them because one of them isn't a controller that's busy making half the enemy party objectively useless.

Oh...and any assassin that gets caught in a focus fire needs a good

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Honestly, I think we could go another session or so as we are and see how things go, since it won't be every week that things can be running past me without causing opportunity attacks.

You have to adjust tactics for different situations. If creatures can ignore opportunity attacks, then the people you need to protect should be adjacent to you. In many cases, that means them coming to you. Hiding in a bush 15 squares from the action is only a good idea if the enemy can't reach you.

 

[Gort]

There's also the more prosaic Durable and Toughness feats.

Don't you guys just slaughter things like lightning? Are you focusing fire enough?

PS

Well, the players are pretty new to the game (check out the Marauder ranger, oh god) and they're mostly melee-based, so focus fire is tough to do.

 

[tyrlaan]

As many have stated, you need to rebalance the encounters for 4 characters.

You could also use the bard as a Companion character instead. This will keep the healer around as if he never left.

The other option (which a lot of people scoff at) are the healing potions. The let you spend surges to heal. They are only good for the low surge value characters but are still useful.

D

This, this, and this! I could provide advice, but my post would clearly have been redundant

 

[tyrlaan]

I'll also add that classes in 4e are a self-fulfilling prophecy. You need the classes that you have. If you have a leader, you need his healing and buffing because he isn't a striker putting out 100 damage per round. If you have 3 strikers, you need all 3 of them because one of them isn't a controller that's busy making half the enemy party objectively useless.

You know, this is such a good point that upon reading it struck me as "wow, that's so completely true! How have I not realized this before?"

 

[Bagpuss]

Oh, Maya actually has this - I probably should've mentioned it

Maya's player seems to have the right idea. A party can get by without a healer but you need to pick powers and get items that let you spend healing surges or temporary hit points. The fact the other keep falling over is there own fault, they need to spend money/slots on healing items, and retrain their powers to ones that allow for temporary hit points or spending healing surges, nearly every class has them in some form or another.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Assassins have great damage mitigating powers/feats.

@Gort: just removing one monster won´t do the trick. If you lose out the healer, maybe you also need to use monsters 1 level lower, because on average the lesser chance to hit and slightly lower damage will make up for the lost healing power, the reduced AC and HP will make up for missing attack and damage bonuses.

Also taking feats and powers or multiclassing should help. There also may be the option to multiclass and take a paragon path with healing and other leader powers built in. (Supposing, you´d allow retraining the paragon path)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Gort, if you are the DM... then you get to control what happens with the monsters. Just because they can get past the fighter's mark doesn't mean they have to. And just because they can focus fire and take out one of the strikers fairly quickly doesn't mean they have to. You can have them do whatever you want to create maximum enjoyment for your players and the game. And without a leader, having the monster's tactics change to account for that is good DMing.

Now I know several other DMs might say "I refuse to have my monsters act illogically!" and thus try and make us believe that they have no choice but to cream their PCs... but that's a bunch of baloney and we all know it. If this is the attitude a DM has... then they have to reap what they sow. Go ahead and focus fire kill off a PC at a time, but don't then come complaining here that your player's characters aren't able to survive.

I don't know if this is the kind of attitude you have when playing your monsters, but I would hope not. You control what they do to make the best game you can... you aren't beholden to any sort of stupid versimilitude as if your game was being watched by Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and have to make sure all the enemies act as realistic as possible lest someone jump out from behind the curtains shouting "Why are those four bugbears each going one-on-one with those PCs?!?".

 

[CAFRedblade]

Perhaps a DM Companion Leader class character, with a few players multi-classing, or some extra healing effect magic items. With the companion character you could give him/her/it to a responsible PC to watch over and direct in combat. It wouldn't replace a full PC healer, but the basic 2 per encounter healing word type effects would provide needed benefit alongside other options.

Perhaps he/she is a simple hireling, or is a distant family member, second cousin, twice removed or some such.