[4e] six-person party

[QueenCaryatid]

What do people think is the best makeup for a six-person party in terms of leaders, defenders, strikers, and controllers, i.e. which roles are best doubled up? I know it can depend a lot on everyone's secondary features. At the moment, we seem to have a leader and a controller who are both leaning a little strikey, but none of that is yet set in stone. So what do you all think? My first instinct is to double up on controller and defender.

[Sipex]

Honestly, a 4e party can consist of anything you want, it's easier to have one of each role but having all (say controllers) would work well enough too.

If you want to contribute something new to the party then give us a list of what the other members chose (and possibly builds as well).

[Loren]

I played in a party with doubled defenders and doubled leaders and it worked well. I think the warlord really started to shine when he had lots of peices to work with (Fighter, move over there and flank with the rogue! Rogue attack!)

[valadil]

I vote for extra strikers and leaders.

Redundant controllers and defenders don't add much to the party. There's only so many conditions you can throw at an enemy until it's up but useless. But there's always room for more damage. Leaders just make everything run more smoothly and it's nice to have a backup in case the first goes down.

[Optimystik]

You can't go wrong stacking DPS. I agree, more strikers.

NUEK EVEYRTHIGN

[Sir Homeslice]

One Leader
One Defender
One Controller
Three Strikers

Or: Six Dragonborn Bravura Warlords. There are no turns, just more attacks.

[RebelRogue]

As several have noted, it's not really crucial to have "one of each role" in a 4e party, although I think a group without a Leader will generally have a harder time. It is important that the characters understand teamwork, including choosing powers/builds that complement each other.

[BlckDv]

In general, as long as you have at least one leader, anything can go. For a well-oiled machine that knows how to work as a team, even the leader is optional.

I DM a six player game (JUST about to go paragon, 56 XP shy) with:

2 Defenders:
Shielding Swordmage, Hammer/Shield Fighter
2 Leaders:
Cleric (swapped Turn Undead for Heal) M/C Bard, Prescient Bard M/C Cleric
1 Striker:
Crossbow Brutal Scoundrel Rogue
1 Controller:
Orb Wizard

I call it team turtle. The wizard locks down the "riffraff", defenders pin the main threat(s), and leaders keep everyone up while the rogue works down the list from highest to lowest priority kills. Battles usually last about five rounds, and spend an average of two Surges per PC per fight (including post fight heals). Fights against mobs with high resistance or immunity to favorite damage times are greatly feared, as outside of the rogue the PCs have little ability to "spike" damage to overcome resistance. The team is very cautious and worried about any lethal hits, heals are given out quickly and a PC getting knocked out results in lots of OOC worry at the table.

I play in a six man team (level 6) with:

1 Defender:
Heavily Race speced Dragonborn Melee Paladin
1 Leader:
Virtue Bard
3 Strikers:
1 Crossbow Brutal Scoundrel Rogue, 1 Bleak Disciple Assassin, 1 Pursuit Avenger
1 Controller:
Bloodbond Seeker (me- a crazy melee Greatbow build)

I call it team glass cannon. I usually open the fight with a defense de-buff on the main threat, who is then barraged by the party en mass. The Dragonborn uses his breath to soften up the "crowd" and marks whoever looks likely to hit the hardest, the strikers then try to maneuver targets into bursts for me to hit as the Bard bitterly curses the damage we take. Battles last about three rounds, at least one striker goes unconscious (the Avenger most often) about half the time, and we burn an average of two surges per PC per fight (including after combat healing).. but usually it is concentrated on just one or two PCs heal per fight. We really like the "pass healing surges" ritual. The few times we cannot drop the biggest threat in a non solo fight by the end of round two things get really nail biting, and we expect two or more PCs to be knocked out at the fights end. We all play with a pretty loose attitude that death may get us from any bad luck. (we're a Raven Queen worshiper group IC, and casual OOC.)

From levels 4-6, we had 4 Strikers and no Controller, my Assassin retired so that another player could try out the class.

And those are just what I see right now, I've seen everything from 5 Striker 1 leader, to 5 leaders and nothing else played in a way that the party had fun every game.

[Hzurr]

I've been DMing a group with 6 PCs (occationally 7) for the last year and a half or so; and since several of my Players suffer from Character ADD, I've seen a lot of variations.

- if you get more than 1 controller, things get really complicated. After a while, all the zones and walls and debuffs get ridiculous, and more annoying than anything else (especially for the DM)

- Having 2 defenders isn't a bad idea, especially if the backline consists of the more...squishy leaders and controllers (or ranged strikers). For a while, we had a fighter and a paladin and they dominated. It was pretty ridiculous. If you only have 1 defender, you want to make sure that your strikers or leaders can survive on the front lines (so having a Warlord or Barbarian is preferable to a Bard or Warlock if you only have the 1 defender)

- Having 2 leaders is nice, because it allows them to focus on some of the neat non-healing things that Leaders can do. If you only have one leader; he/she needs to focus almost exclusively on healing, because the healing has to be spread out a lot more. You either need an uber-cleric, or barring that to have a couple other PCs who have multi-classed into a leader roll, or have some other healing ability (like a paladin)

- Having 2 strikers is very nice, but it again depends on what the rest of the party is. If you're a charge-n-go Barbarian, make sure you have a leader who can keep you running, (since the encounters are tougher, running forward and being the first target can be significantly deadly. For a while, in my game, we had a competition between the Barbarian and the Cleric to see if the Barbarian could take more damage than the cleric could heal. Fortunately, the Cleric won). If you have a strong front line (say 2 defenders, or a defender and a str-cleric or warlord), than I recommend having one melee striker, and one ranged striker.

Here would be my ideal 6-man party

- Wizard
- Fighter
- Archery Ranger
- Paladin
- Lazor Cleric
- Rogue or Barbarian

(note that a lot of these rolls can be tweaked with. I mean, if you have a Warden instead of a fighter, or an invoker instead of a wizard; it's not really a big deal)

[Ozreth]

As long as the DM caters his encounters to what youve got in your party to balance it out, anything should be ok.

[Skrizzy]

Strikers and different controllers are the best after 1 of each.

[Artanis]

Well, first of all, it really depends on the party. For instance, if you have four ranged squishies and one Defender, making the sixth character another Defender would be a good idea.


In general (i.e. not knowing the party makeup), I would double up on Strikers and Leaders. Why those two?

For Strikers, the "default" five-PC party already doubles up on Strikers, and I see no reason to remove one when going up to six, while tripling up would be, if you'll forgive the pun, overkill.

As for Leaders, there's almost zero secondary Leaders, so there's almost nothing to help the first Leader pick up the extra workload. You don't need another Controller because there's so many secondary Controllers (and those that aren't usually have at least some sort of Controller-y elements anyways), and with six PCs, you probably have enough melee characters to clog up the front lines, mitigating the need for a second Defender. So out of the four roles, the Leader is the one that's most likely to have things get harder by having another PC in the party.

[QueenCaryatid]

Wow, thanks guys! That helps a lot.

Just a few notes on our game:
-- We have long adhered to the philosophy of "whoever shows up to defeat the horrible X, that's who's gonna have to defeat the horrible X, because the X is horrible and is not going to wait to destroy the Y and kill the Z until you find more appropriate heroes, so if none of you has will saves, you'd better use all that gold you just looted to splurge on some awesome circlets." The only thing that keeps us from showing up with a party of four wizards and no armor is that we pick separate roles ahead of time. Other than that, we don't pick individual powers or features to complement each other. It can be a lot of fun, especially in the first fights, to discover each other's powers. "Hey, Leader, if you can slide that dude over to me, I can pluck out his eyeballs as a basic melee attack!" "Well, Striker, I can do better than that; I'll slide him over to you and give you four temporary hit points if you successfully pluck his eyes out!" "No way." "Way." It can also be frustrating, as in the aforementioned "no one has a decent will save so at this point we should probably run away" scenario that we had to live (and occassionally, die) through.
-- Our DM's campaign-planning style mimics the above philosophy. He's less a benevolent shepherd of our adventures and personal growth and more a malevolent trickster god who enjoys our distress and keeps us alive solely for his own amusement. On the bright side, it makes face-stabbing his teleporting ogres immensely satisfying.

Based on the above advice, I think I'll recommend that we go with a second leader and a second striker (the exact opposite of my first instinct :-P). I forgot that our leader will be taxed with more healing responsibilities with two more people in the party. And, as pointed out, more damage is always good. My worry was that our DM really likes backing up his big baddies with legions upon legions of nasty minions, and I didn't want our poor defender out there by himself absorbing all the aggro. But with two leaders directing the fight and healing, I think he should be okay.

Thanks again, everyone!

[Mando Knight]

Well, first of all, it really depends on the party. For instance, if you have four ranged squishies and one Defender, making the sixth character another Defender would be a good idea.

And if you're full-up on melee types with good basic attacks (either through good Strength or Melee Training), a TacLord and a ranged guy are going to work synergistic wonders: the ranged guy will pick off things that the others can't hit, and the TacLord can make his allies deal massive damage. Everywhere.

[BobTheDog]

As people said before, it really depends on the specific classes. I'm DMing for a group of 7 players (down to 6 now that the Avenger moved away), and the party consisted of:

2 Defenders: Paladin and Swordmage. Neither of them is very good on the "keep off my friends" bit, and tend to be more worried about trying to be strikers, but they do the job of one defender nicely.

1 Leader: Inspiring warlord with a focus on healing (+Cha to healing feat), but tends to get out of healing sometimes. Also loves to use commander's strike since there are...

3 Strikers: Avenger, Barbarian and Sorcerer. Whenever these guys get less than a dozen enemies to fight, critters die rather quickly.

1 Controller: Wizard. Not very good at his job (read "taking out minions and debuffing others"). But is smart and manages to avoid getting hit too much because of the extensive meatshieldness of the group.

Even with the visible lack of healing, they have found a way to work very well, and I don't specifically try to tailor encounters to the group. I love to surprise them, so there's been everything from bunches of elites, to hordes of lower level/minion critters to "elusive boss + traps" to etc. etc. etc. After the players starting picking up on teamwork and 4e tactics/strategy, I've started making encounters harder/trickier and still, worst case scenarios were 2 or 3 unconscious-but-stable PCs at the end.

With a lack of leaders, the trick is waiting until someone is down to turn on the healing. And remembering to use second wind if you have the chance.

[rayne_dragon]

Currently our party consists of: a defender (paladin), a striker (avenger), a leader (cleric) and three controllers (an invoker and two wizards). Oddly enough it works out fairly well, the control aspect makes sure the battle gets fought on our terms and since the DM likes large encounters area of effects do huge amounts of damage while our striker can isolate and take out priory targets.

I think a party with some optimizing of AC could consist 2 strikers, 2 leaders, and 2 controllers could excel in adventuring.

[Colmarr]

Dragon 373 had a good article on party building (it's IMO one of the better articles ever in Dragon).

One thing that I found really rang true is their categorising of a 2-leader party as a "Living Fortress". With two leaders and a tough (plate + shield) defender, a party can take an enormous amount of licking and keep on ticking.

I'd hate to be a DM that had to make it through 2 leaders and 2 defenders.

[DabblerWizard]

Here's what I'd guess off the top of my head.

Assuming at least one of each roll: 1 defender, 1 striker, 1 controller, 1 leader.

2 extra strikers would lead to faster take downs of encounters with fewer, stronger baddies.

2 extra leaders would bring buffing and healing to an extreme to the point where players are just swimming in stat boosts.

2 extra defenders would make the controller feel extra safe, and would make an intentional TPK take longer (if a DM were as unwise as to want this scenario).

2 extra controllers would be cool just because controllers are flashy, but otherwise probably not very helpful, combat wise, since their damage output is only average at best.

[Dimers]

"Hey, Leader, if you can slide that dude over to me, I can pluck out his eyeballs as a basic melee attack!" "Well, Striker, I can do better than that; I'll slide him over to you and give you four temporary hit points if you successfully pluck his eyes out!" "No way." "Way."

Bwahahaahaaaa ... :smallbiggrin:


it makes face-stabbing his teleporting ogres immensely satisfying.

You is a funny lady. :smallsmile:


My worry was that our DM really likes backing up his big baddies with legions upon legions of nasty minions ...

Make that striker an area striker. Sorcerer should do nicely.