Your Group is Missing a Role

[Pickles JG]

Being able to do damage is not everything though. If you have a tac warlord like I have seen run, it works wonders when you hand out MBAs to a high-powered striker who you are flanking with.

Handing out the best MBAs in the game is still just doing damage only someone else rolls the dice.

 

[MrMyth]

Gotta say, I would not alter my adventure/encounter design in the slightest to cope with party design, most specifically "ill-composed parties". To me, being able to cope with and adapt to situations is part of the game. If the party has left a hole in their composition, and they hit an encounter that is difficult as a result, well, let it be difficult.

Let the party understand that the absence of a certain role needs to be accounted for. Feat picks, gear, whatever. The absence of a controller means get some AOE capability, the absence of a leader means get some healing, the absence of a striker means up your damage e.t.c. e.t.c.

A the end of the day, they party made a decision to omit the role. It was their decision, and (to a degree) they must wear the consequences of that decision. We are their DM's, not their nannies.

Hmm. Yes... and no. I tend to assume most parties can adapt - I even recall running through an LFR brutal dungeon crawl with 5 strikers and a bard (and the bard left halfway through) - and still coming out alive. It can be fun to try and figure out how to make strange combination parties work.

But I do support adjusting things when people are missing roles due to having less players. If you've got a 2 or 3 person party, I think it perfectly reasonable to try to adjust encounter designed based on that. That doesn't mean you need to tailor every encounter to be easily defeated by them, and I don't think anyone is suggesting that such is the case.

 

[Sunseeker]

Personally I think the only two necessary roles needed are Defender and Healer. However, you can very easily do a defender-healer hybrid, defender-striker hybrid, healer-striker hybrids with little trouble. And I'm not even referring to actual hybrid builds, as most of these classes have at least a few of their non-role powers to use.

Personally, I think people take "roles" far too strictly, a lot of strikers can overcome the lack of a defender or healer because they can kill mobs faster. A lot of defenders can overcome a lack of healers or strikers because they can survive easier. Healers, while squishier, can easily pick up a few striker and defender powers to basically "heal through" the damage.

The main reason I think this way is that there are 4 main roles, but the average party has 5 people. You're overlaying a pentagon upon a diamond. The lines simply don't line up(save one of them), and as such, you should always encourage party versatility over strict "roles".

Because especially at higher levels, it gets really blurry as to what roles each character really fills. Especially if they start picking powers based on what they feel the party or their character is unable to do, rather than what their "role" suggests they do more of.

Also, as mentioned early on, controllers are often an accessory. After the initial wave of minions, their variety of AOE powers become more dangerous to the party than the enemies. And more often than not, they're overshadowed by ranged strikers, whose attack effects do a good deal of controlling on their own.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Personally, I think people take "roles" far too strictly, a lot of strikers can overcome the lack of a defender or healer because they can kill mobs faster.

This is correct, but the lack of defender or leader makes the encounter swingier.

Now, the term "swingier" gets thrown around a lot, but to me the critical feature of a swingy combat is that at the end of it you may say "Well, that wasn't too bad" and then realize that one of your group's PCs was killed. A couple of badly timed crits to a PC who has already soaked up a bit of damage and wham, negative bloodied without a chance to intervene. It's true that this can happen in any case, but it's more likely to happen when no one has an immediate action power available to rush in and save the day.

 

[Sunseeker]

This is correct, but the lack of defender or leader makes the encounter swingier.

Now, the term "swingier" gets thrown around a lot, but to me the critical feature of a swingy combat is that at the end of it you may say "Well, that wasn't too bad" and then realize that one of your group's PCs was killed. A couple of badly timed crits to a PC who has already soaked up a bit of damage and wham, negative bloodied without a chance to intervene. It's true that this can happen in any case, but it's more likely to happen when no one has an immediate action power available to rush in and save the day.

True, though in many cases I've found that players enjoy less predictable combat over the more standard dungeon-boss run of tank aggros and turns, DPS stands behind while everyone stays out of fire.

That and I really enjoy players making characters that favor personal concepts over specific builds.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

Also, as mentioned early on, controllers are often an accessory. After the initial wave of minions, their variety of AOE powers become more dangerous to the party than the enemies. And more often than not, they're overshadowed by ranged strikers, whose attack effects do a good deal of controlling on their own.

As long as a controller just targets people who can or don't mind "taking" damage, then it's not too bad. One of the wizards amongmy players asks the party, "I'm going to do x, is anyone NOT okay with that?" And they usually are, accepting that the damage that he does is for the sake of hurting the enemies.
And they all know that the first thing he usually does it put up a fire wall.

 

[drothgery]

As long as a controller just targets people who can or don't mind "taking" damage, then it's not too bad. One of the wizards amongmy players asks the party, "I'm going to do x, is anyone NOT okay with that?" And they usually are, accepting that the damage that he does is for the sake of hurting the enemies.
And they all know that the first thing he usually does it put up a fire wall.

And at least some controllers (especially invokers) are pretty good about targeting only enemies.

 

[Nifft]

This is correct, but the lack of defender or leader makes the encounter swingier.

Is "swingy" the opposite of "grindy"?

If so, let there be swing!

Cheers, -- N

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Is "swingy" the opposite of "grindy"?

If so, let there be swing!

Cheers, -- N

I don't know, but it rhymes with dingy. Or maybe dinghy.

 

[erleni]

From the experience I had with our group I guess you can do well even if a full-fledged leader is missing as long as you build the party in a proper way. We played with paladin, fighter, wizard and archer ranger. The fighter multiclassed into cleric for some more healing and we didn't experience any serious issue.

In another case we played an extreme party with only 3 PGs: assassin, barbarian and hybrid druid/shaman, so no defender. Combining damage reduction, temporary HP generation and, at least in assassin case, the revenant race, we have been able to make up for the missing features.

I guess that every role can be covered with the existing flexibility given by multiclassing, feats, paragon paths and epic destinies.