Purposely NOT filling the four roles

[Ferrum]

The current campaign I'm in has a monk/rogue, a druid and I play a barb/fighter. Tanking is no prob for me, I've been very lucky on my hp rolls these last 14 levels. I've also had little trouble dealing massive amounts of damage.

The monk does very well at manuevering the battlefield and either being very distracting or aggravating to the opposition. He's very sneaky, agile, and resilient.

The druid tends to take on a more versatility/blaster roll, and at times I feel we're a little short-handed in healing. He does well with battlefield control and slowing down the enemy though.

I've noticed a severe lack in arcane support. The stuff the Barb/Fighter could do better with just an Enlarge and Fly... We're also hurting in the diplomacy department. The barb/fighter has the best charisma mod at +0. Add to that the fact that we're fugitives from the law and have little option to magically disguise ourselves, and getting things like heal potions and simple magic items becomes a real pain.

 

[Aeric]

Rogue is the most common of the four that is missing from my games. Second most absent of the "big four" is the wizard, followed closely by the tank (usually in this case there are several second-line combatants [rangers, rogues] to take its place). Someone almost always manages to play a cleric, though, a fact which belies its unpopularity. On those rare occassions where a healer isn't in the party, a lot of money is spent on Cure potions.

When there is no rogue, we run into surprisingly less locked doors and other situations only a rogue's skillset could surpass. In all the other situations, the game pretty much remains the same; there may not be a lot of mass combat if there's no wizard to drop nukes, but other than that, no real difference.

 

[Abe.ebA]

I've seen relatively few parties with the big four covered precisely. Usually it's the healer that's missing and we muddle through with NPC hirelings, potions, and items. My current game has far too much skill-monkey and far too little tank. There's me (Rog3/Ftr3/Brb1 with high stats of 16Str, 16Int) as the 'tank', a Ranger/Rogue, a straight Rogue, a Bard, a Wizard (I think, could be Sorc), a Cleric/Rogue, and I think a Fighter/Rogue. We generally manage an attendence of 4-5 per session and have a vast wealth of skills at our disposal but little else. We realized one session that only two of us Don't have ranks in Decipher Script and that despite having at least a dozen languages known and the entire party knowing Draconic, nobody knew Goblin or Giant. When being secretive we all just speak Draconic to one another.

According to the DM our toughest encounters (read: the ones where everyone wound up unconscious at least once) were an even CR with our party level. The Bard is still carrying a non-magical bronze machete from the jungle island where we started at level 3 as his primary weapon (and not because we're in a low magic campaign... he just can't fight).

 

[Ion]

My group right now is a Bard, a Wizard, a Ranger, a Druid, and a Monk. We do ok, healing is handled with a wand weilded by the druid, and traps are just stumbled into.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Our Birthright group has three regular players and one half-time player, and it's, well, rather amusing:

A goliath barbarian/fighter/cleric/warpriest

A dwarf fighter/cleric/battlesmith/Hammer of Moradin

A dwarf ranger/wizard/runecaster/something else

The half-time player has a whisper gnome rogue/warlock/arcane trickster

So, we have a great deal of melee combat going, decent arcane and skills, and...crap healing; we're about 11th-12th level, and there are a total of 8 cleric levels in the party split between my goliath and the dwarf HoM. I'm strongly tempted to take Leadership and get a Healer as my cohort.

Brad

 

[VirgilCaine]

So, we have a great deal of melee combat going, decent arcane and skills, and...crap healing; we're about 11th-12th level, and there are a total of 8 cleric levels in the party split between my goliath and the dwarf HoM. I'm strongly tempted to take Leadership and get a Healer as my cohort.

Brad

Is your DM just mean or can you not afford a Wand of Cure Critical Wounds on your combined demesne earnings?

 

[drothgery]

Is your DM just mean or can you not afford a Wand of Cure Critical Wounds on your combined demesne earnings?

Even at 12th level, 21,000 GP is a lot of money to spend on a charged item; it's a little less than 1/4th of the by-the-book wealth of a 12th-level PC. You could almost certainly hire a tagalong level 5+ cleric or healer for less.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Even at 12th level, 21,000 GP is a lot of money to spend on a charged item; it's a little less than 1/4th of the by-the-book wealth of a 12th-level PC. You could almost certainly hire a tagalong level 5+ cleric or healer for less.

Okay, fair enough, then why haven't you hired a 5th level cleric?

 

[Azalnubizar]

interesting, since I just got a new group started...

...since we are lacking 2 players ATM (one is on vacation and be back next session, the other one might show up again and might not) I gave them an extra level to start in Hord of the Red Hand.

they decided on:
Rogue / Fighter (heading for Temple Raider)
Rogue / Barbarian (heading for Holy Liberator)
Bard ( heading for Heartwarder )

they do cover a bit of most classes (Rog/Ftr and Rog/Bar as tanks, ATM Bard as healer, Bard as Arcane caster and both rogues as rogues) but not 100%. This might become interesting in the long run... both tanks will have limited access to divine healing magic and the bard allready has a bit arcane healing magic. They have divided up the Rogue skills - the Barabian becoming the more stalk/hide intensive, while the Rogue/Fighter has concentrated more on the open-lock/Disable trap - stuff...

My experience is, that it can be very much fun and very interesting playing a group not filling every role, but it can also lead to TPKs and very deadly situations...

I recently had a group that lacked (through sudden death of their cleric) any healing power and did because of an unreasonable deadly poison...

...if you write your adventures yourself it might make things much easier... if you have to scale your adventure... well...

... let's take aboves group... the rogue-skills will probably not maxed out as they could be by a pure rogue. Therefore they will have trouble disabling traps. So how do you scale it? Do you still leave traps with DCs that the rogue still can't beat or do you scale them in a way that the rogue can beat it... in the first case - why scale them at all then? In the second case - well, how should you scale them... so the rogue beats it with a 10? 15? 20?...

I don't think that premade adventures should be scaled that much... I would prefer the group to handle the missing stuff themselves... or hire someone (which my group never does, because they hate playing NPCs)j

 

[Voadam]

The group in my Wildwood game has:

A ranger
A barbarian/lizardfolk
A sorcerer
A hexblade/soulknife

So no healer and the ranger has the most skillpoints. The barbarian is thinking of druid next level though for healing.

They do fine, lots of offense and cure light wounds from potion and NPC so far.