An Unexpectedly Martial Party

[Palanan]

My campaign has taken a while to get underway, and I've lost two players from my original cast of four. One of them can't make it owing to scheduling conflicts, and the other just...went dark.

This leaves me with only two active players, running the following characters:

wild elf martial rogue 4, devoted to archery; and
halfling rogue 1/swashbuckler 3, swordsman and dashing rake.

The other two players would have run a cleric and a druid, respectively. This means, among other things, that the party is magically nekkid. (No, not like that.)

For backup I have two NPCs who will be close allies: a rogue/warblade for martial support and a druid/cleric designed as a healbot. (As characters, they're also important to the overall storyline.)

Given this, if I bring in another player, is there any particular role or class I should suggest? The halfling swordsman is run by an experienced gamer, and his excellent roleplaying is covering the social bases to perfection. But soon enough the PCs will be getting into situations where talking won't help, and I'd like to nudge a new player towards something with spellcasting talent.

So, given the party's composition, what would be a good class to suggest?

[Eldariel]

My campaign has taken a while to get underway, and I've lost two players from my original cast of four. One of them can't make it owing to scheduling conflicts, and the other just...went dark.

This leaves me with only two active players, running the following characters:

wild elf martial rogue 4, devoted to archery; and
halfling rogue 1/swashbuckler 3, swordsman and dashing rake.

The other two players would have run a cleric and a druid, respectively. This means, among other things, that the party is magically nekkid. (No, not like that.)

For backup I have two NPCs who will be close allies: a rogue/warblade for martial support and a druid/cleric designed as a healbot. (As characters, they're also important to the overall storyline.)

Given this, if I bring in another player, is there any particular role or class I should suggest? The halfling swordsman is run by an experienced gamer, and his excellent roleplaying is covering the social bases to perfection. But soon enough the PCs will be getting into situations where talking won't help, and I'd like to nudge a new player towards something with spellcasting talent.

So, given the party's composition, what would be a good class to suggest?

Wizard, Archivist [Heroes of Horror], Cleric with domains to gain access to Wizard-spells (Spell-domain from Spell Compendium in particular would be very helpful) or Druid (their spell list is actually a decent mix of arcane-style and divine-style spells) would be a good way to go. Just a straight caster covering as much of the magical repertoire the game has.

Psion and Ardent would also be sorta passable but their limited Powers Known would probably be a problem since it's a lot of ground for one character to cover; Psychic Reformation would help of course but it gets expensive over time.


Overall though, it seems they could really use a straight full caster especially in a couple of levels when magic gains access to stuff like flying, teleporting and planar travel.

Most of their healing needs they can already handle through Use Magic Device on Wands of Lesser Vigor and Lesser Restoration (and eventually Wand of Restoration) + Healing Belts [Magic Item Compendium] (750gp, one for each and they'll have the emergency healing they might need available at least once per day) even without the healbot NPC. But some Save-or-Xs, buffs and utility (Divinations & Travel Spells in particular) would be very welcome.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks for the suggestions. I'm partial to druids, and the campaign is heavy on wilderness exploration, so that would certainly work.

One concern, though, would be about the difference in power between The Druid and The Other Guys. That was a worry of mine with the original cleric and druid, and I'd been wondering if something like a duskblade or a beguiler would fit better tier-wise.

But, full casting would really be useful here. Does the need for that outweigh any concerns about tier disparities?

[Eldariel]

Okay, thanks for the suggestions. I'm partial to druids, and the campaign is heavy on wilderness exploration, so that would certainly work.

One concern, though, would be about the difference in power between The Druid and The Other Guys. That was a worry of mine with the original cleric and druid, and I'd been wondering if something like a duskblade or a beguiler would fit better tier-wise.

But, full casting would really be useful here. Does the need for that outweigh any concerns about tier disparities?

Depends on how much of their potential is used. Ultimately, access to the buffs would increase the power level of the whole party and we're still on low enough levels where it won't turn into a one-man show and the caster player would probably either lack the competence to truly do everything alone or have the decency to not do so (the latter generally comes with the competence).

Duskblade is definitely out; they gain some minor, very combat-oriented magicks. It'd be more of the same. Beguiler could work to a degree but skills are already very much so covered and their spell list is limited.

If there was another caster, it'd be easier to cover all the bases with Beguiler and something else but with only one caster, I'd steer clear from anything with a limited list or spontaneous casting in order to make sure the party can cover all its bases without excessive work.

[Palanan]

Okay, thanks, and very much appreciated. You've convinced me to spring for a druid.

:smalltongue:

[I, Dashing Cube]

I dont know about the optimization skills of your players, but if they aren't quite experienced in making powerfull caracters, adding in a druid, one of the strongest classes in core and the one that requires the least amount of optimization to play well, might very well make the other feel useless. Have you considered other classes, like binder or factotum ? Considering your present party composition, Beguiler does seem to fit, but it is limited, as was previously said. Finally, are your players adept at using UMD ? Not that it could replace a full caster, but it could give them that extra edge when they really need it without skewing the balance and giving you a mesure of control on what items they get.

[bigstipidfighte]

A straight cleric is probably your best bet. As Dashing Cube mentioned, Druid, unlike most full casters, doesn't need optimization to outshine the rest. Wizard, while theoretically as or more versatile, needs to go out of his way to learn every spell, while cleric can get anything on at most 24hrs notice, making him versatile enough to serve as the party's only full caster. His main weakness is blasting, but with 3 martial characters around that shouldn't be a problem.

Side note: I once ran a game with no casting PCs, and a problem that came up was that there was very little need for rest. Natural healing is super slow, so wands of CLW were used instead. With no "per day" abilities to be used up and plenty of out-of-combat healing, the PCs could handle an arbitrarily high number of encounters per day unless a nasty long-lasting status effect came into play.

[Palanan]

I appreciate the additional comments, and either druid or cleric will probably be the final choice. I'm still partial to the druid, though, and it'll fit much better with the theme of the campaign.

[LadyLexi]

If you want a healing NPC who won't outshine the players, how about Healer from Miniatures? It seems the right level of power to offer backup without outdoing the players.

[Palanan]

Well, I have a druid/cleric NPC who's part of the storyline, and she's designed to be a background healer and occasional utility caster. This is partly because the ship needed a healer, and partly to free up a potential PC cleric to do something other than healing.

At least, that's the theory. We shall see.

[Honest Tiefling]

Doesn't the healer get a unicorn companion? If so, consider that but refluff to er...Something that won't fall off a boat and feels druid-y. Maybe add some druid spells onto the healer list to get the feel of a druid without the actual druid.

EDIT: Can unicorns swim?

[TuggyNE]

EDIT: Can unicorns swim?

They don't have a Swim speed, or any ranks in the Swim skill, but given that they're a lot like horses there's no particular difficulty in principle, and their +5 Str makes things smoother.