Spell combos and teamwork tactics

[FoxWander]

Looking for ideas and tips that synergize an adventuring groups abilities. We're playing in a high-level game where we should have all the options in the world. I know there a tricks and things we can pull off by combining our abilities but in action we act more like a bunch of high-level individuals with a common goal rather than a well-meshed group.

One problem is most of the group has never played at this level, currently 15th but there's a little gestalt that amps the power level up- I'll explain more in a bit. Also,this is the first 3.5 d20 game for several of them as well. On top of that we don't have much time to get together outside of game time so most of them would rather play than discuss tactics during game time. At least not to come up with stuff on our own from scratch- but if I can come to the table with a few ideas from the ENWorld collective maybe I can spark their interest.

The party make-up is a bit hard to describe (that gestalt bit I mentioned), long story short, we had two well-balanced groups (role wise) that got fused together. Now each member has the full abilities of one character and a gestalt, at half level, of another character's abilities. As a result our party roles got a bit mixed up. Currently we have 2 gishes who are full arcane casters, a paladin who's half duskblade, a Tome-of-battle fighter who's half rogue/psion, a full rogue/half cleric summoner and a ranger/half druid. So basically a boatload of mixed abilities. Which is another problem with getting the group to work together- some of the individual characters are having a hard time working together!

Anyway, here are a couple of tricks along the lines of what I'm thinking...

"Isn't that special!"
The name for this comes from another party. That group realized that each of us could cast one part of the dimensional lock/cloudkill/forcecage combo (usually pulled by a single caster of much higher level via timestop- and generally a waste of resources for such a caster) we just needed to time our actions with a trigger. We had encountered another group in the underdark and planned to try and handle it diplomatically but, if things went south, we wanted a way to signal each other to attack. We also figured the above combo would be an excellent way to take out their leader and I came up with that I would say "Isn't that special." in the conversation to signal that talking was over. The fun thing was that our group figured this out without the DM around so he was totally surprised (as he was planning to jump us mid-conversation in a round or two) when I casually, and totally appropriately for the conversation, said the trigger phrase, the others jumped in with their part and the combo went off spectacularly well! Now granted, that particular combo has limited applications, but at least it's something we can hold in reserve if needed.

Will it blend?
This is one we actually just came up with to turn one of our gishes into a combat monster- kinda literally. By combining wraithstrike with bite of the werebear, girallon's blessing from the cleric, haste from my character and lion's charge from the druid you basically get a tasmanian devil whirlwind kind of effect and some hideous damage. It just so happens we had watched a few 'Will it blend?' videos just before the game so that name was hilariously perfect.


Anyone else have some good tricks and tactics we can use?

 

[freebiewitz]

Ahh spell comboes, the thing you have to remeber is that you don't have to be scared of using level 0 spells.

For example by that level your druid should be able to create a TONNE of water. Not litterelly but alot. Use that in conjunction with any thunder/lightning attack and you have an instant aoe. (If the thunder/lightning attack only attacks one person)

Use fire with it and you have a steamy smog (Not as useful since druid has spells that produce pretty much the same results.)

Obscuring mist with fairie fire, you can see the enemy but they can't see you. (Great for bbeg's) Followed by magic missle.

Entangling roots with touch flame make a good small substitute fireball. (Though I still prefer fireballs.)
Depending how your DM rolls you can also set grease ( the spell) on fire giving you a cheap fire wall.

Uhh letme see what else...... Oh right, more create water with that ray of frost.

In terms of spell versitility Druid would win why?
He can sponteaneously casts summon natures ally.
Some of these allies can use spells. If he summons the right creatures he can have something that can teleport, heal or just buff and AOE.

Me and my group are low level but we always use spell combonations all the time. Its helped by the fact that all the spell casters in the party have quickened magic :3 Hope this helps.

 

[FoxWander]

Thanks- a couple of good ideas in there. Mainly that I need to look into the druid spell list some more. I don't play druids very often (and neither has anyone else in the group) so a little spell research there should pay off. I don't recognize a couple of the spells you mentioned though. Entangling roots? Touch Flame? Did you mean Entangle and Produce Flame? Those might be good if we run into some generic thugs and mooks but most of what we're facing is too high a level for that. (For instance- we faced a Nightcrawler and then a Nightwalker in quick succession last time due to a quick jaunt thru the plane of Shadow. Almost lost some folks when they're undead hordes showed up.)

As for versatility, druids are pretty good but ours is only half level right now (7th) so he doesn't hold a candle to the two 15th level arcane casters! But still- we're leaving the dungeon for the underdark now (a natural environment) so the druid may shine yet. That entangle will effectively shut down a tunnel in a cave system. A little acid fog on top of it will be icing on the cake. Not to mention how useful faerie fire will be against all the concealed foes will likely face.

 

[freebiewitz]

Sorry about that, Its been awhile since Ive played druid (My fave class).
The best way to figure out spell combos is to figure out what they all have in common.

Spells based on vision such as fairie fire, obscuring mist, fog etc.
Spells that react with fire such as gaseous form, entangle etc.

Just try and classify each spell, an easy way is to check the already classified ones such as evocation, necromacy, illusion and so forth, who knows you may find a game breaking ability yet.