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Stormageddon
2010-03-07, 04:33 PM
So my DM is thinking about switching things up for the next adventure by converting to 4.0. We have a small group of two players + the DM. Is 4.0 good for small groups? What classes do people recommend?

Mordokai
2010-03-07, 04:38 PM
Personally, I'd say that 4E lends itself poorly to such small group.

However, I haven't tried hybrids yet. Maybe it could work with a well balanced leader/defender and striker/controller... or somesuch combination.

But no, I'd say that two people are just too small of a group for a good and satisfying 4E experience. Maybe if the DM gives you a few NPC characters, but that's not really the same.

Mando Knight
2010-03-07, 04:41 PM
4e works fine for small groups, provided you've got a DM who balances encounters for such.

The best two roles for a small group would be a Striker and a melee Leader, or a Striker who can stay out of the way and a self-healing Defender (that is, a Paladin or Battlerager Fighter). Tactical Warlord and Two-Weapon Ranger is one of the strongest combinations.

Almost any Cleric build will also work fantastically.

Swordgleam
2010-03-07, 04:44 PM
Assuming your DM scales encounters appropriately, should be fine. I second the recommendation of a striker - 4e monsters have lots of HP - and a leader - healing is important. Plus, lots of strikers and leaders are skillmonkies (whereas defenders, not so much) so you should be covered on that front.

Vitruviansquid
2010-03-07, 04:45 PM
I don't see it being a good idea unless your DM really knows what he's doing.

This is because the game assumes a party of 4-6 people and so has 4 group roles that different people are expected to perform. (These roles being Striker, Defender, Leader, and Controller)

While it is true that most, if not all classes can function as combinations of two roles, in that a Great Weapon fighter is a lot like a Defender/Striker or a lot of warlocks are more like Striker/Controllers, your group is going to feel a lot more... flat without dedicated members for all four roles.

That said, I don't see why you guys couldn't just have each person play two different characters and have a viable 4-man team. If your DM's the type, he could even throw in a DMPC and thus have a full 5-man party.

Zaq
2010-03-07, 04:47 PM
It's relatively easy to make "autopilot" builds in 4e, that have a well-defined role and don't need any real thought to play compared to more nuanced and interesting characters. This means that it's easy to make tag-along NPCs to flesh out what the party is missing. They can be played by the GM, whoever's farthest away in initiative, or anyone, really, since they're so simple and require very little effort. Need a leader? Just have a relatively unoptimized Cleric stand in the back and use healing powers. Need a striker? Generic Ranger McNPC just fires his bow over and over and racks up damage without any difficulty. They don't have to be played especially smart, as long as they cover the rudimentary features of their role.

4e does assume that you have a relatively balanced party with the Big Four roles, but you can get by without them. However, I would recommend that, if you're the GM, you tweak the rules a little bit to make the loss of whichever role less painful (for example, without a leader, let people use Second Wind more than 1/encounter, or as a minor instead of a standard). You will have to throw the PCs some bones in terms of field advantage (a normal and balanced party should be able to storm a moderately fortified goblin encampment, for example, but a party of two might need to have a little favorable terrain of their own) or tone down encounters, but it can be done.

Yakk
2010-03-07, 04:50 PM
Naw, don't make PC built NPCs. Just build a companion character to fill in a missing role for the party -- or skip it.

A problem with small parties is that it is hard to have a 'reasonably large' encounter at level 1 that isn't full of minions, or ridiculously hard.

Guy
2010-03-07, 05:01 PM
Naw, don't make PC built NPCs. Just build a companion character to fill in a missing role for the party -- or skip it.

A problem with small parties is that it is hard to have a 'reasonably large' encounter at level 1 that isn't full of minions, or ridiculously hard.

Really no problem with it being 'full of minions', though - that's one of their main uses, letting low level or small parties be able to fight "lots of enemies"

Yakk
2010-03-07, 05:04 PM
*nod*, but it could get tiresome. :)

It will get better by around level 4 or 5.

By level 5, you can throw 5+ normal monsters at the party, and it can be a pretty fun fight (two level 6 PCs have the same XP budget as 5 level 1 PCs).

Fallbot
2010-03-07, 05:15 PM
We've played 4E with both normal 6 man parties and a smaller one made up of 3 players, and we've found that it is much harder to make appropriate encounters for a small party. Admittedly the smaller party was very unoptimized with no striker (and a wizard convinced he's a tank, though here is not the place to complain about that), but we still found it very hard to get the difficulty level right. It's definitely doable, but the system is strongly geared towards a larger group.

Swordgleam
2010-03-07, 05:16 PM
This is because the game assumes a party of 4-6 people and so has 4 group roles that different people are expected to perform.

While that is true, I've yet to play in (or run) a 4e game that actually has the four basic food groups, and none of us have had any problems.

The four roles as shorthand for a balanced party is really more of a suggestion. People seem to take it as gospel, and I don't know why. I've seen all-striker parties, leader-less parties, defender-less parties, no problem.

Fallbot
2010-03-07, 05:30 PM
We compared two different parties (for science!), one composed of two strikers, two defenders a leader and a controller (pretty nicely balanced overall), and another, through a communication fail, comprising four strikers, a defender and a controller. Guess who kicked ass and who narrowly avoided getting TPKed in their second session.

So yeah, once you have a large enough party I don't think being perfectly balanced is a huge deal, but with only two players it could be a problem, and I think having a healbot NPC or whatever along for the ride would be a very good idea.

Vitruviansquid
2010-03-07, 05:30 PM
The issue isn't really with difficulty so much as... how fun it is. I'm sure a group with four rangers can function just as well as a group with a bard, warden, rogue, and invoker. It's just that the latter group is going to be doing exciting things like figuring out how to get the rogue into flanking position or how to protect the invoker who looks like he'll be splattered next turn while the former group is going to be doing Twin Strikes all day long.

Swordgleam
2010-03-07, 06:10 PM
For me, it's more fun to run my character and just have the party be PCs. I'd rather have that than a couple NPCs or be running two PCs, just so there's more options available in combat. So I suppose it all comes down to which is more fun for you.

Yakk
2010-03-07, 06:15 PM
The DMG2 has rules for "companion characters", which are basically guildlines for turning an appropriate NPC into a pseudo-PC that works better with the PC resource rules, and is easier to run.

Basically, you strip out recharge powers (making them encounter), remove certain other categories of power, and sometimes add in role-specific abilities that let them do their job. You change their HP and grant them more healing surges, for a better PC-esque pacing model.

Then you hand them to the PCs to run in combat.

Thajocoth
2010-03-07, 09:59 PM
There are several options here.

Option 1 is to simply play normal characters. There are rules for adjusting encounters and loot based on party size. The standard numbers are for parties of 5, and the DMG says how to fix it for 1-8 people. You'll be fine and should be able to have fun as long as the DM knows this.

I was in a game with two others for a while, and we were defeating things well over what a full party our level could handle. He threw a solo of our level at us to show us what an encounter of our level feels like, and we, in the water, kept the hydra prone the entire encounter (which was, maybe 4 rounds...) This was a paragon tier group that had chosen very optimal choices. So option 2 is to play optimized paragon tier characters.

Option 3 is to each play 2 characters. Some may feel that this cuts into their roleplay though...

Option 4 is for the DM to add a DMPC. I can give you stats for a perfect DMPC healer. What makes it perfect as a DMPC is that it's great for healing, but attacking foes causes it to hurt itself half the time. If the party can keep enemies away from him though, he should be able to keep them alive in most situations. (Basically, you pick a Wis/Cha race, get 20 Wis, then max Cha... Ignore all Str spells... And at first level take this feat called "Pacifist Healer". Adds to their healing ability, but stuns them if they attack a bloodied foe. Then take any spell that's left that hurts the caster to help the party... Like this one that deals ongoing 5 damage to themselves to heal party members 15 points per round... Stuff like that. Turns them into an item, really.) Or the DM could play a regular DMPC... On par with your characters...

Option 5 is that you play Hybrids. Hybrids are weaker, but covering more roles may be useful. Who knows? I haven't seen the PHB3 Hybrid stuff, so I don't know if they fixed all the problems with it.

Option 6 is for the DM to give you "monster" type characters in your party.

Option 7 is for you to do something not covered by the other options (and there are plenty of things you can do here.)

AtopTheMountain
2010-03-07, 10:06 PM
I once played several weeks of 4E with only 2 players when people just didn't show up, and what we did was have each person play 2 characters, and it worked out fine.

Thajocoth
2010-03-07, 10:12 PM
You asked for class recommendations... You could try to supplement your lack of people with a Summoner Wizard. You could do a pairing that works well together, like Artful Dodger Rogue + Fighter, or Charging Barbarian + Any Defender. Or you could have one character play a melee Leader character, while the other plays a melee defender. Warlord + Fighter makes a good combo here. The Warlord could flank enemies with the Fighter, and give bonuses to the Fighter for flanking with him, and you can easily build a Fighter that deals very large amounts of damage and can take a lot of punishment.

You could also just have 2 Fighters. Take the powers that let you spend healing surges. There are a few... You should be able to take a lot of punishment if you take Battlerager Vigor.