D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)

[Plane Sailing]

I'm certainly curious whether a paladin and a ranger with the heal skill can compensate.

Paladin possibly, with his lay on hands (although the number of times per day depends on Wisdom?)

Ranger with heal skill might be a bit limited in that (IIR) the heal skill can only trigger a second wind, which a needy person might have used already.

In both cases, the other party members are going to have a bunch of healing surges left at the end of every encounter since they can only expend 1 per encounter... fine for getting up to scratch after the encounter is over, but likely to reduce the parties staying power considerably in the middle of a fight.

(in my campaign the paladin died relatively early from the dual problems of spending his healing surges on other people and underestimating the impact of getting surrounded by minions. On other occasions when the party has been without either cleric or warlord for some reason, they've had much less staying power in a fight)

Cheers

 

[Jack99]

I'm certainly curious whether a paladin and a ranger with the heal skill can compensate.

Not unless your players play strategically very very smart.

 

[Sagiro]

I'm certainly curious whether a paladin and a ranger with the heal skill can compensate.

You know, an organization as old and important as the Grey Guard probably has chests full of healing potions in the basement. Those potions would be kept in reserve, for when teams of Guardsmen find themselves without enough innate healing ability.

 

[Sagiro]

Not unless your players play strategically very very smart.

Speaking as one of those players, I have two words for you:

Uh oh.

 

[Simplicity]

I'm certainly curious whether a paladin and a ranger with the heal skill can compensate.

I have a ranger and a paladin in my campaign. Along with the cleric. So, I can answer this for you.

Not even close.

That's not to say that they won't survive. A good DM can always keep his players alive one way or another. And good players can always pull something out of their hats. But especially early on, it'll be a tough fight.

The players need to be MOBILE if they want to live. Two rogues can do that. And the paladin needs to mark smartly. But, if they allow the baddies to focus fire on them (as they should be trying to do), its over. The increased HPs of 4e usually mean that players don't go down in one round anymore at least...

 

[Umbran]

Speaking as one of those players, I have two words for you:

Uh oh.

Yeah, right. You're just trying to get P-cat to underestimate you. He made that mistake once, and he's still trying to pick the feathers out of the veranda...

 

[TerraDave]

For my current campaign I made a new world after....18 years, something like that...you don't realize all the little things you take for granted until they are gone. Loads of fun though.

Re this game, the'll miss the leader. As discussed recently in another thread, 4E is plenty deadly.

 

[blargney the second]

Well, between the paladin and Heal checks you might be able to cover the healing for the first few levels, which is important.

However, leaders have two other important functions: buffs and tactical positioning. They're very important because they're the keystone to the teamwork that 4e play strongly promotes. Once you've missed a few times with important daily abilities or have been unable to get to a position where you can use them effectively, you'll see what I mean...
-blarg

 

[Henry]

You know, an organization as old and important as the Grey Guard probably has chests full of healing potions in the basement. Those potions would be kept in reserve, for when teams of Guardsmen find themselves without enough innate healing ability.

Hopefully, those are some very high level healing potions, or consist of a variant formula that the Grey Guards concocted, because the regular healing potion available to the rank and file recruits are very, very poor quality, and don't heal much at all...

 

[Piratecat]

I'd be interested in other peoples' opinions on this. I don't mind beefing up the healing potions, but I want to hit the right balance without breaking the game.

Huh. I just learned that I might have to be out at Pixar on the day we're going to game next week. Talk about mixed feelings!