"Worst" non-core party?

[werk]

And would suprise you with its success.

You are correct, I would be genuinely surprised.

 

[Shazman]

I would have to go with swasbuckler for fighting, spellthief for skillmonkey, warlock for blasting, and spirit shaman for healing.

 

[Paradigm]

You are correct, I would be genuinely surprised.

Something about everyone being able to a little of everything seems to work. You should see 6 bard cooperate on bardic knowledge!

I've seen this party in an RPGA campaign, and it was tremendously effective. The spells didn't overlap except in heals, and the variation in PClasses made it powerful.

 

[Nadaka]

BAB +2 (+1 commoner, +1 warrior) -20% expert, -20 aristocrat, -20 warrior, -20 sorcerer =-80% exp

wizard is favored class, and commoner is your base class neither restrict xp.
now add levels of Psion and wilder .....

Ah, I completely misunderstood.
Or you could change the race to halfling, gnome or dwarf to get 100% xp penalty.
Or you could swap wizard for bard.
Or your could swap warrior for bard and chnge race to halfling or dwarf, that way you get only the 1 BAB.
Its been a while since I did this and I did indeed mess it up.

 

[javcs]

Four Ninjas.

Four Spellthiefs.

 

[Particle_Man]

easy.

4 commoners.

Commoners are core.

 

[pawsplay]

Ok, here is my crappy gang of four:

Hexblade (armor sucks, no bonus feats, hex never works, spells suck)
Healer (I can heal, that is all)
Warlock (I am fine when there is a real mage, but guess what? There isn't one in this party)
Ninja (sudden strike!)

How is that crappy? The hexblade is unusual but very solid, the Healer need only heal to be basically effective and does have other useful traits, the warlock is problematic in the arcane role but does excel in certain ways, and with ninjas' ability to turn invisible, sudden strike is actually pretty nice.

However, the category of "worst party scout" is not highly contested... spellthieves have a number of weaknesses but are decent, and have their own schtick; ninjas are weak in a straight up fight but can turn invisible and can do that whole "I have Dex and Wis to AC and I wear bracers of armor" thing; scouts are different from but very equivalent to rogues; bards have no trapfinding but can typically detect magic.

The worst:

Samurai - like a fighter, but with no choices and no feats
Shugenja - the divine class with the worst spell knowledge in the game, they know as few spells as sorcerers and have to pick "order" and "Favored element" spells for most of their spells, poor BAB, light armor, d6s, no turn or chastise ability, one good save.
Ninja - Fairly solid in its own right, but not as skilled as the rogue, and we don't want a spellthief playing back up to our beguiler
Beguiler - Hi! I'm like a sorcerer who chose his spells... unwisely. Don't get me wrong, beguilders are nice, but against undead or constructs, you're going to have problems. And the lack of buffs really hurts, too.

Mind you, this party is likely to whoop up on groups of humanoids, but in terms of meeting an untimely death, this party is hard to beat. It's vulnerable to undead, constructs, groups of melee combatants, anything with SR, and anything that hits hard. Just covering basic cure, restore, and raise spells will use up most of the shugenja's spell allotments, which means little in the way of buffs.

This party has no one proficient with a shield; no optimal two handed weapon wielder, and no one with both heavy armor proficiency and shield proficiency, either; little ability to hit incorporeal opponents; no favorable choices for reach weapons; only one character with two good saves. The shugenja will be hard pressed to cover utility areas such as energy resistance and so forth that the beguiler can't help much with.

 

[Moonstone Spider]

To really screw up your chances of survival you need to play monsters.

For a level 20 Party:

Meat-Shield: A Vampire Satyr with a level of Soulknife (Hi Mr. BBEG! Can you invite me into the dungeon so I can stay with the rest of the party?)

Caster: Umral Medusa, and a level of Warlock. (I have one invocation but I can use it all day!)

Skills User: Fiendish Winged Criosphinx with a level of Ninja. (I can't add anything to this one).

Healer: Succubus with the Half Dragon and Half Celestial templates and two levels of Healer. (Does anything need to be added?)

 

[Nyaricus]

Some nice points. However, guys and gals - commoners, medusas, bards et al are all core. And I was asking for non-core - so keep it up with that part of it!

cheers,
--N

 

[Sejs]

Healer: Succubus with the Half Dragon and Half Celestial templates and two levels of Healer. (Does anything need to be added?)

Nah, Half-Celestial Gelatinous Cube with Cleric levels all the way.

"I'll cast Cure Serious Wounds on Bill.

*roll*

*roll*

Okay, Bill you get 24 hit points back from my spell, take 3 points of damage from my acid and I'm gonna need you to make a fort save or be paralyzed for the next *roll* 11 rounds."