Most underpowered party

[Destil]

I believe a good DM can design encounters which will be entertaining and challenging for any group, however underpowered they may be on paper. Having said that, I would find a group like the following, somewhat challenged.

Gnome Life Warden (sword and shield)
Dragonborn World Speaker Shaman
Eladrin Shielding Cleric (Pacifist)
Half-orc Preserving Invoker
Elf Fey Warlock

I've got one of these in a game I'm playing in, the cleric. Never terribly effective, though huge healing words make it hard to actually suck.

 

[Turtlejay]

That Dwarven Cha Paladin actually looks pretty sweet. I'd play it. Any takers on the rest of that garbage?

Jay

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think these are really just examples of "a pile of badly designed characters" and not really a bad party. A bad party would have to exemplify no power synergy and might also exhibit feat choices which provide advantages which are largely negated by the build of the rest of the party, etc. The Distant Advantage thing being a good example. Obviously a party with bad synergy AND lousy characters will be double bad. I think though that a lot of what makes a party good or bad is how its played.

I'd suggest things like wizards chock full of area burst spells combined with nothing but melee types. A bunch of melee types with no good ranged attack capability beyond 5-10 squares. Leaders focused on nothing but healing combined with relatively low accuracy fighters/strikers that depend heavily on a few big bang attacks and with no way to buff themselves.

Badly allocated secondary roles wouldn't hurt either. The party could have a super efficient healing cleric and several other PCs that double as leaders and also heal. A whole party of characters that heavily emphasize control at the expense of damage output, etc.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

That Dwarven Cha Paladin actually looks pretty sweet. I'd play it. Any takers on the rest of that garbage?

Jay

I'd play the Halfling archer, he sounds like an interesting character, although I would ask the DM if I could reskin the bow to make it a sling

 

[UngeheuerLich]

just use a sling?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Badly allocated secondary roles wouldn't hurt either. The party could have a super efficient healing cleric and several other PCs that double as leaders and also heal. A whole party of characters that heavily emphasize control at the expense of damage output, etc.

I like your other ideas, but ultimately - does "more" healing really hurt. Sure, it is boring to slug it out endlessly and have everyone yoyo from 0 to bloodied to full hit points, but is the party underpowered?

To "defend" my build - I agree the specifc characters are pretty much just selected for being underpowered themselves. Otherwise, I was focusing a little too much on what the Leader contributed - tactical warlords "perks" is generally seen as handing out basic (often melee) attacks, and this party would not get much from it. But there is probably more to consider. Distant Advantage might be suboptimal, too. The trick might be giving the Paladin one of those Paladin Paragon Pathes that grant adjacent allies defensive benefits. I think the Justicar is a good example. No real incentive to flank enemies, it's best to stay adjacent to your allies instead. But then - both Warlord and Paladin are good at melee combat, and a Warlord does work well as a secondary defender - so even without combat advantage, the "Artillery" strikers and the Wizard would be well protected... (and a Staff Wizard might also risk wading into melee due to the Staffs defensive benefits.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suggested excessive healing because it is a classic suboptimal trap for a party. There's only so much healing that will ACTUALLY be useful in a given encounter. Once you pass that point, more is pointless and just means you've given up better options to get useless healing. The party may never fear a member going down, but they'll also get the tar knocked out of them every combat as they try to slog through with few options to deal damage. What you find is that these sorts of parties don't last long. After 3 encounters the defender and strikers are down to 1 surge and things don't go well from there. More healing =/= better.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I suggested excessive healing because it is a classic suboptimal trap for a party. There's only so much healing that will ACTUALLY be useful in a given encounter. Once you pass that point, more is pointless and just means you've given up better options to get useless healing. The party may never fear a member going down, but they'll also get the tar knocked out of them every combat as they try to slog through with few options to deal damage. What you find is that these sorts of parties don't last long. After 3 encounters the defender and strikers are down to 1 surge and things don't go well from there. More healing =/= better.

But is that underpowered? If they still beat encounters of their level+5, I do not think so. It might still suck, but min-maxing, powergaming and whatever do not necessarily imply "maximum fun to play". The 3E MinMax bogeyman Pun-Pun is probably not really that great as a character for roleplaying purposes or even facing interesting challenges.
And any optimize will probably scoff of picking multiple skill training feats, but that might be exactly what makes a character interesting to play for a player.

No, I think "power" of a character is measured in his ability to beat challenges facing him - and typically in the context of D&D that means combat challenges.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But is that underpowered? If they still beat encounters of their level+5, I do not think so. It might still suck, but min-maxing, powergaming and whatever do not necessarily imply "maximum fun to play". The 3E MinMax bogeyman Pun-Pun is probably not really that great as a character for roleplaying purposes or even facing interesting challenges.
And any optimize will probably scoff of picking multiple skill training feats, but that might be exactly what makes a character interesting to play for a player.

No, I think "power" of a character is measured in his ability to beat challenges facing him - and typically in the context of D&D that means combat challenges.

You can only compare power levels between different parties, there is no "absolute" power level. All I'm saying is if it takes N healing powers to get through a given encounter then having N+M healing powers available is M more than you need and the party would be better off with those resources dedicated to something else, like attack powers. The healing heavy party will most likely make it through all the encounters, they'll just have less HS left than the more balanced party.

This brings us to the next important point, which is that you can't really limit your discussion of party power level to a single encounter. The game envisages a party taking on a series of challenges during an adventuring day an needing to overcome each one. This involves not only defeating the individual challenges, but also managing resources effectively so that succeeding challenges can be overcome. The heal heavy party will be suboptimal in this regard. Truthfully a party would need to be very suboptimal before it was unable to take on the majority of single encounters.

Anyway, the whole excess healing thing is just one possible suggestion. I'd imagine a party with NO healing is in even worse shape, but given how easy it is to get basic healing stuff its hard to actually make that happen.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A party with too much healing might want to invest into Durability and Toughness to have more to heal. But in the end - if you have some powers over at the end of the combat, the fight just wasn't tough "enough". Healing Surgers are daily resouces, and many parties. Encounter powers that require healing surges are in a way "daily/encounter" hybrids. Eeven damage-optimzied parties will have daily powers or even encounter powers they don't need to win in a fight.