Player Etiquette: Changing Class

[Henry]

...what I'm finding a little dissapointing about the Warlord so far is that there seem to be few options for me when my turn comes up. Part of this may be the low level of the character so far, so I'm willing to give it a few more sessions to see if my warlord turns out to be more active than simply attacking and casting the Warlord's Inspiration power a couple of times.

My first question is: Do you listen to podcasts? If you have a good bandwidth (DSL or better) a really good thing to check into is one show on Radio Free Hommlet:

http://hommlet.com/podcast-storage/RFH-Adv5.mp3

Their central topic is Warlord building, and tips and tricks the hosts have found for their Warlord play. If you aren't into podcasts much, their three central themes are:

1. Pair up with a flank-buddy. A Warlord and a Rogue make a POWERFUL team.

2. Use a reach weapon. Reach Weapons aren't the "bastard children" of melee weapons any more.

3. The rest of their advice is rather long to post here, but they give advice for what feats and powers to take whether you're an "inspiring" or "tactical" warlord. Their resident Warlord player favors "inspiring" but he got schooled on some of the advantages of "Tact-Lords" during the program.

Very good advice show, if you can take advantage of it.

 

[Vorput]

So don't make it hard for someone to switch characters. Make it easy. Use your imagination. Help them integrate into the party with a minimum of fuss. Unless, of course, you have a good reason for wanting that person to not enjoy the game.

Mallus makes a good point here. This helps preserve continuity to those that it matters to. Some players don't care how a new character joins in, and some do. Doing this, those that do care then have the ability to create a plausible way to keep the story (and not just the game) going. A way they should (theoretically) be happy with, since they help create it.

No, you're mistaken. All I said was that a DM should consider party composition when designing adventures, not that the party should be able to tackle any opponent at any time with a reasonable chance for success. "Don't run the Mega-Crypt of the Undead for a party of 3e rogues".

I think my point is that we should stop thinking in terms of 'ideal' parties. Whatever the players choose to create is 'ideal', with the right adventures.

2 points. What if the all-rogue party wants to go to the mega-crypt? Or if they don't want to go there, what if they need an item found there?

And I agree with you on ideal parties. I think in all my time DMing (9-ish years now) I've had maybe two groups that set out to fulfill all the roles, and created their characters with the roles in mind. Using other systems I was able to compensate for that, but 4e seems to make it very hard to do that- the entire system is created around the idea of these 4 roles... to the point that the classes themselves are now built (exclusively?) with these roles in mind. The set list of powers and what not seems to limit your versatility, and the system expects some of those powers be available in every fight.

This isn't an attack on 4e btw, but a comment that in this system- keeping the roles covered (having the 'ideal party' as it were) seems to be more important than in other systems.