A Leaderless Party: What Can I As The DM Do To Make It Work?

[DragonBaneDM]

Hey again guys!

So I just got a whole new group of roommates, and we're all pumped to live together next year, and I figured I would introduce them to 4e! Note, only one of them has played before, but the others have proven themselves able to pick up games like Magic quickly, so I think they'll be able to learn just fine.

Here's the party as it stands right now:
Genasi Shaper Psion
Dragonborn Chaladin
Drow Archer Ranger
Genasi Shielding Swordmage
Revenant Artful Dodger Rogue

So they've all picked somewhat resilient class combinations, which makes me think this can work! I've encouraged each of them to multiclass Leader, and I've got all summer before we get started.

How should I change my normal style (the Monster Manual 3 style monsters) to accommodate? I've never ran a Leaderless campaign before, and I want to make this fun for these guys. I'm sure it can be done!

So, how can I make this work for these fellas?

[Reluctance]

What stands out to me immediately is that two defenders seems suboptimal. Locking down the biggest threat is important. You then either have someone trying to tie down lesser threats, or having characters mark-steal. Communicating that might get someone to change their option.

The biggest thing is to throw in a bit of extra treasure in the form of healing potions. Healing up between fights will be suboptimal, but negligibly so. (Leader boosts to their *word powers help save surges, but the party can get by without 100% efficiency.) All you need is the occasional item or someone willing to take a power against the event of someone going down. A paladin and one other character with a leader MC feat should serve as all the "Oh ****!" insurance you need.

(You might want to lay off boss fights above +1 or maybe +2 levels, since force multipliers help a lot. Since the team is going to be newbies without optimization or tactical skills, that's good advice regardless.)

[DragonBaneDM]

What stands out to me immediately is that two defenders seems suboptimal.

Hm... Why you say dis?

Everything else super solid advice. Just this is the only thing that stands out as being something I didn't totally comprehend.

[Reluctance]

Defenders give enemies an uncomfortable choice. Attack them, with their usually better AC and ability to sponge damage, or attack someone else and eat the penalty for violating the mark. The obvious choice if you're the party's sole defender is to run up to the biggest, baddest threat and lock it down.

If you're the party's second defender, what do you do? Locking down the second meanest enemy isn't necessarily as useful, since the best outcome you could hope for is you and him duking it out while the rest of the party focuses on the primary threat. Focusing on the primary threat means one of you will be ignoring the essential point of your role. Playing up your secondary role raises the question of why you didn't just pick a class with that role as the primary in the first case.

[tcrudisi]

Two defenders can make an excellent team. In fact, I've always wanted to try out the "all-defender" team. The easiest example of this is the Battlemind. The second defender marks the target, the target attacks that defender, the Battlemind uses Lightning Rush to both turn himself into a striker and let the second defender punish the target for daring to target someone else. That's a pretty darn good use of defender mechanics to turn both defenders into strikers.

So, it can work. The Paladin will want ranged attacks so he can keep his mark up while the poor enemy is forced to attack the Swordmage. Likewise, the Swordmage's mark target will be screwed and doing practically no damage.

Of course, the monsters can choose to ignore the marks and go to the defender that marked them -- at the expense of a couple of opportunity attacks. The party will have to be very good at positioning themselves, but it can be done with relative ease. So the monster has an option: take a bunch of damage and target the defender that marked him, or take a penalty to the attack and either do no damage or take a bunch of damage and target the guy next to him. That's lose/lose. Excellent control (with a controller already in the party!), excellent damage. The only thing missing? Healing. The Paladin can make up for this somewhat, of course, but not enough to really be safe.

As for what you can do as a DM? I'm not sure. Their inexperience means they will suffer tactically and when it comes to their character builds.

You could give them a 6th character, a random leader that the entire party controls. But that's not a good idea with such new players. You could control the character yourself, but I loathe the DM PC. You could encorage them to each take a leader multiclass, but man oh man, even when I'm given expertise and improved defenses for free, I still find myself without enough feats. You could point out how important it is for new players to have a leader, but then someone is playing something they don't want to play.

I can't see any good solutions to this problem.

[Reluctance]

There's a difference between what a skilled party can pull off, and what a newbie can. Still, it's not gamebustingly bad. Just stands out as suboptimal.

If you're looking for simple handwavium, DMG 2 mentions grandmaster training/divine boons/etc. as ways to give "items" that are the result of something other than a thing you can hold in your hand. Have one of their early quests be beneficial to a god with some affinity for healing. Pelor is the most obvious, but even The Raven Queen can do in a pinch. As part of their reward, a divine boon settles on them. Once per day, they can let someone spend a surge. (I want to say touch range and goes off as a minor, but I'm pulling things out of my rear here.) An ability like that kinda sorta fits into the preexisting item mechanics, allows emergency heals as needed, but doesn't actually stand in for all the things a leader can do.

Or you could just give everybody a free leader multiclass feat, but tying it to the existing multiclass rules seems like it would open the door to clunkiness. You're either locking them out of multiclass options they may want, or opening the door to multi-multiclass shenanigans.

[DragonBaneDM]

There's a difference between what a skilled party can pull off, and what a newbie can. Still, it's not gamebustingly bad. Just stands out as suboptimal.

If you're looking for simple handwavium, DMG 2 mentions grandmaster training/divine boons/etc. as ways to give "items" that are the result of something other than a thing you can hold in your hand. Have one of their early quests be beneficial to a god with some affinity for healing. Pelor is the most obvious, but even The Raven Queen can do in a pinch. As part of their reward, a divine boon settles on them. Once per day, they can let someone spend a surge. (I want to say touch range and goes off as a minor, but I'm pulling things out of my rear here.) An ability like that kinda sorta fits into the preexisting item mechanics, allows emergency heals as needed, but doesn't actually stand in for all the things a leader can do.
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Okay, I like this! I like this a lot. I'll probably end up defining it as Grandmaster Training over Divine Boons, unless the character's religious!