Party surviving without an arcane caster?

[Bibliophile]

I'm starting up a monstrous campaign next week, and, surprisingly enough, there isn't a single arcane caster in the entire party. How do you think this will affect the game and/or the difficulty levels of things I throw at them? What else should I take into consideration when preparing adventures?

The party:
lvl 6 Ranger, Natural Lycanthrope (wolf)
lvl 6 Cleric, Custom Celestial (basically regeneration 3 [affected by cold and electricity], and a few other minor things)
lvl 7 Rogue, Drow
lvl 2 Fighter, Yak-Folk

 

[Wycen]

They have a cleric, so they should be fine. If you want to be mean, and possibly suggest an arcane caster could be useful, give them lots of treasure that can only be used by wizards or sorcerers.

 

[arwink]

They can survive without it, although some things that groups come to take as standard (wiping out hordes of low level opponents in one round, a lot of divination and idenfitication spells primarily) will likely be absence.

But I've seen parties survive without all of the primary roles at different points. Usually the first couple of games are awkward, but then people learn how to play to their strengths and cover their weeknesses.

 

[Zappo]

This isn't too surprising; with the high ECLs involved in monstrous campaigns, spellcasters take a hit, and wizards/sorcerers take the biggest hit of all.

Hmm... I was wondering... what about creatures that "cast spells as a Xth level sorcerer"... what if they take levels in sorcerer, would you combine the caster levels for purposes of number of spells known, number of spells per day, and spell power?

 

[Buttercup]

You just have to be careful what you throw at them. A high level Evoker, for example, could wipe them out while buffing his nails.

 

[Bob5th]

As a group we've ran a few sessions without a arcane caster and while we missed the spellpower it was survivable. Now no cleric or druid makes for cautious adventures.

 

[Dinkeldog]

The rogue should probably max out use magic device so that they can make use of spell-completion items, but I'd think they'd be fine.

 

[Schmoe]

The group in the campaign I DM has a similar problem. While they have an arcane caster, he is a multi-classed sorcerer, and his sorcerer levels have always been about 1/2 of the average party level. Currently, the party has an average level of roughly 12, and he has 7 sorcerer levels. That means that, while one could expect the arcane caster to be slinging around Disintegrates and Acid Fogs, he is instead still slinging low-powered Fireballs and Magic Missiles.

That being said, I really don't feel that the party misses a strong arcane caster much. They have a lot of muscle-power, and they can collectively take a beating and dish one out. They have redundancy in divine magic (high-level druid, high-level cleric, paladin, multi-class cleric), which allows them to continue pressing on where others might have to retreat to heal, and it also grants a surprising amount of offensive firepower. When you have two party members casting Flamestrikes, you don't really miss Chain Lightning.

I think the makeup of your party is going to be a significant factor as to whether or not you will miss arcane magic. Noting that your party only has one primary caster, period, I think that the group will find certain classes of challenges difficult, especially those involving non-standard movement (underwater, flight, through a wall, etc), and those involving large numbers of enemies.

Looking at your party, I would make the following suggestions. First, make sure that the cleric always has a Dispel Magic handy. Second, make sure that the ranger has Entangle memorized, have the Drow use his Darkness ability liberally, and have the cleric prepare spells that divide or neutralize areas of the battlefield. By doing so, they can help even the playing field when they are badly outnumbered.

For mobility, buy some potions of flight and waterbreathing, and hope you don't run into too many encounters where that is an issue.

 

[DMScott]

No arcane caster is rough from about 5th to 11th level. Below 5th a wide range of weird party compositions can work just fine, above 11th a cleric can handle a lot of the arcane caster duties (though ideally you want two clerics in the group in that case). 5th to 11th is when the arcane caster really shines for both damage and utility.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I'm running a game where the party has no Arcane caster...the group is:

Half-Elf Samurai
Half-Elf Monk
Elf Ranger
Halfling Cleric
Elf Pyschic Warrior

They do just fine, though you definatly do have to be careful what you throw against them. I've mostly used Clerics and Fighters as enemies for them, though they're coming up to a fight with a Wizard...it definatly takes more care in watching what kind of enemies you use, but its actually fun to watch the group come up with really interesting solutions to things.