Party Composition - what's your recipe?

[Zaruthustran]

This way they could all defend each other - picture First Knight with the Knights of the Round table in the end battle where they are all helping eachother.

Argh! You evoked the name of that worst of all movies, First Knight! Shame on you! My eyes! They bleed from the memory!

-z

PS: for ideal party composition, I'd go with Paladin, Cleric, Wizard, Ranger1/RogueX. Use summoned creatures for cannon fodder/damage soakers, and the Paladin as your iron man (the guy that has to face the scary/diseased/spell using/tough creatures).

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's more a question of roles than classes. I've been in groups that didn't have a single Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, or Rogue, without a substantial change in power.

You need a healer. It doesn't have to be a Cleric, but under the core rules only a Druid can really substitute. The key is Heal/Mass Heal; as level increases the amount of damage per round increases until it's far beyond what Cure Critical Wounds can handle. A Paladin just isn't going to cut it, and neither is a stack of Cure Light Wounds wands.

Same goes for other needed roles: long-ranged damage, defensive "tanking" (get between bad guys and low-AC/HP types), utility spells, raw melee damage, and detection (Spot/Listen/Search) are the usual gaps to fill. In many cases, there's one class ideally suited to the role.

Frankly, any group that has each of these can do just fine. I was in an 8-man group of casual players; we'd have 5-6 people show up on a given night. It usually wasn't a problem, because of redundancy in key roles. We'd have to adjust our playstyles to match the attendance, of course.
(For the record, we were Wizard, Sorcerer/Rogue, Rogue/Ranger, Ranger/Bard, Fighter/Barbarian, Cleric, Paladin, and Druid... pretty nice distribution, huh?)

The problem, IMHO, is that certain classes can fill too many roles. It's not that Cleric healing is so much better than Druid healing, it's that Clerics can heal without tying up all their spell slots, AND wear armor, AND can use better weapons, AND have plenty of utility spells to choose from.

 

[Celebrim]

I wonder sometimes whether or not a party might not be most capable with a large number of clerics of various flavors: an elven cleric with a bow, a warrior cleric (Templar?), a cleric with the magic domain (and something offensive like the fire domain), and so forth. About the only thing the cleric can't do well is skills, so you'd need at least one rouge (with a level or two of cleric?) to round out the party.

Then again, I've often wondered whether a party would do well to turn everyone into archery specialists...

Sort of the same thinging as behind min/maxing a character, only min/maxing the whole party.

 

[bret]

I wonder sometimes whether or not a party might not be most capable with a large number of clerics of various flavors: an elven cleric with a bow, a warrior cleric (Templar?), a cleric with the magic domain (and something offensive like the fire domain), and so forth.

Depends on how much of the time they spend in religious 'discussions'.



The group could have more problems dealing with each other than any NPCs.

 

[MadScientist]

I wonder sometimes whether or not a party might not be most capable with a large number of clerics of various flavors

Yeah I've often wondered how well a "God Squad" would perform as well. The sad thing is I actually believe that kind of party would be incredibly powerful. I mean with all the healing they would have available they would be able to withstand a lot of punishment. I'm actually having trouble thinking of challenges they would be particularly weak against. Maybe traps?

 

[clark411]

We've gone most of our campaign without a cleric, save a rapidly-falling-behind-the-APL cohort one who was swatted awhile back. We've managed to get to 14 or so level wise... although it's taken about 3 years

 

[Spatzimaus]

So, a Priest, a Rabbi, and a Nun walk into a bar...

Sorry, but that WAS what I thought when I heard that suggestion. The Cleric can substitute for the Wizard, sure, and they do well as archers, but as tanks they only seem to work IF they can get Divine Might and stuff up, because without buffs they're just featless fighters with a bad BAB.

Now, you could do it like this:

Human Paladin (it's nice to have ONE dedicated meleer)
Half-Orc Barbarian 1/Cleric
Elven Cleric (archer/caster)
Halfling Rogue 2/Cleric

That could work...

 

[Berk]

1 cleric, preferably with the strength and destruction domains.

1 sorcerer with greater spell focus evoc and a bunch of other DC raising feats

2 wizards, 1 enchanter, and 1 necromancer, with the appropriate spell focus feats and all that. preferably red wizards if you can use the FRCS, if you can then take out the sor and put in another wizard for a total of 3 and make the 3rd one an evoker red wizard.

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

I've always wanted to DM a stealth campaign. Everyone is trained by a thieves guild or spy guild or ninja order or what have you.

The only sticking point I can see is healing. UMD could work, but it's not cost-effective. If I ran a game like this, I couldn't treat the party as if they were the typical F/M/C/R party, since they couldn't recover well. I'd expect that they'd have to use a lot more ambushes to survive, and I'd have to use undead and constructs sparingly, if at all.
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Other ideas that are neat:

Wilderness campaign (Druids, rangers, barbarians, nature clerics)
God campaign (Clerics of allied gods in a crusade)
Arcane campaign (Wizards and sorcerers from a guild only)
Monk campaign (All monks, all the time)
Minstrel campaign (All the PCs are part of a wandering troupe of musicians/adventurers, must be bards or rogues)
Military campaign (the PCs have been trained in the same squad, and have ranks in an army)
Same Species campaign (All the PCs are humans or dwarves or pixies or ogre magi)

 

[Celebrim]

CB: What there are no gods of thieves in your world? I think a rogue/cleric could be quite powerful if carefully constructed.