Party of Almost Purely Tanks

[Nyaricus]

*sigh* I need to find a more diverse group.

Come to Winnipeg! Dammit man!!

My Forgotten Realms group I am DMing (all level 3 pure classes):

• Chondathan Wild Elven Shapeshift Druid of [can't remember]
• Sembian Lightfoot Halfling Beguiler
• Chessantan Earth Genasi Pugilist (Dr. Awkwards Brawler class)
• Chessantan Air Genasi Ranger
• Dragon Coast Human Favoured Soul of Kelemvor
• Smoking Mountains Gold Dwarf Knight

My Dark*Sun Group I am playing in (level 4 ECL):

• Human Bard 1/Telepath 3 (that's me!!) Going for Thrallherd
• Pterran Water Cleric 4
• Thri-Kreen Scout or Ranger 1
• Human Gladiator 4
• Half-Giant Barbarian 1

So, like I say, come to Winnipeg!!

P.S. Sorry for (likely) making you jealous - but good luck! My suggestion? Go with something incrediably optimized when compared to your niche group, like some of my suggestions for a good solo build found here.

cheers,
--N

 

[MonkeyDragon]

I think your druid will find himself in the roll of healer sooner or later, whether he wants to be or not. At the very least, though, pool as much of the party resources as you can spare for healing wands. The druid can use them without giving up any spell slots, and hopefully someone else will be able to put enough ranks into UMD to use them as well.

 

[Dog Moon]

P.S. Sorry for (likely) making you jealous - but good luck! My suggestion? Go with something incrediably optimized when compared to your niche group, like some of my suggestions for a good solo build found here.

cheers,
--N

None of those suggestions include an optimized swordsage though...

Sounds like you have a couple of good groups there. I DO feel a little jealous, but my group consists solely of good friends, so I can't feel THAT jealous.

 

[Sunderstone]

I DO feel a little jealous, but my group consists solely of good friends, so I can't feel THAT jealous.

Thats the bottom line. As long as you all have fun, thats the main thing. Have you talked with them about having a more balanced party?

My suggestion is that you abandon something as long-term as the AoW type stuff in favor of smaller self-contained adventures. This way you sort of "field-test" the party composition without ruining a larger, more epic campaign with many new "revolving-door" characters coming in.

 

[brehobit]

Healing:
The druid can have a wand of CLW. Get one ASAP. I don't know what an archer is, but if taking one level of ranger works for him, that gives another CLW wand-user.

Rogue:
The swordsage has a lot of skill points and can, in part, cover for the rogue. The warblade also (assuming a reasonable INT) will also have a lot of skills. Not great coverage, but it should help.

Wizard:
A swordsage can manage a number of area-attack options and I think the warblade has a few such options. The blaster part of the wizard won't be missed too much. Buffing is different and will be greatly missed, though the swordsage can do a little bit of it.

Utility magic:
The duskblade has the basic read magic and detect magic stuff. Missing identify and similar spells will suck.

I agree with everyone else. The party will do quite well until it doesn't. Then it dies. Long fights will kill this party (swordsage hates them, no healing kills you). But it will be fun.

FYI: changing the warblade into a crusader would help a lot... (some buff, some healing).

Mark

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

You could ask the DM if he'd consider using alternative HP rules, perhaps like those found in Unearthed Arcana. Otherwise, unless you have access to a lot of wands of curing, you could be in for a rough ride.

 

[smootrk]

I don't expect that you will have to worry about diversity for very long. Likely after a few deaths and a couple of new character roll-ups the level of diversity will be quite different, as the players try different things (different classes). Pity that they can't see this coming beforehand.... sucks to die.

 

[Emirikol]

>We're going to play the Age of Worms AP. How well do you think we'll do without any
>arcane, roguish [for traps, searching, etc or bluff, diplomacy, etc], and a healer?

BTW, no suprises here, but Age of Worms is very traditional, RRxing, dungeon-crawly. You'll want tanks so that YOU can spend your time playing something fun (i.e. anything but a tank). All characters can have fun, but plan for the dungeon. I'm DMing it right now and it's been lots of fun (granted it's modified to fit in CONAN's world.. ....but, the players quickly realized they needed more firepower and smarter rogues (you need both without spellcasters..but with spellcasters..players can be..uhm..less-cautious-I-believe-is-the-euphamism..yea).

We don't have spellcasters in our campaign (just lots of healing potions to suck up player gold, heh, heh, heh) and it still works just great becasue the players are forced to actually think for once.

I would tailor your druid to underground survival...



jh
JUST FOR FUN: Sounds like the DM needs some armor-piercing, RPGs.....is there such an equivalent in D&D?

 

[Brother MacLaren]

At level 7, the druid will have access to the Unicorn Healing Brigades; a Summon Nature's Ally IV gets you 5d8+20 of healing (3 CLW at 1d8+5, 1 CMW at 2d8+5).

Not that useful for mid-combat healing, but good between fights.

 

[Someone]

Get wands of Lesser Vigor: that should be enough for the off-combat healing, and use one or two of your high level slots for emergency in combat cures. Scouting isn't so vital (and frequently causes more problems than it solves), and you can deal with traps in other ways than disarming them. I don't see the problem with your group, except the lack of wizard utility spells (rope trick, teleport...)