How balanced is this Party?

[Fenris-Wolf]

Hello Everyone,

My group has recently started the Shackled City AP, which many consider a high difficulty campaign running from lvs 1-20. We are currently lv3 having completed are second dungeon and already players are grumbling about some characters feeling useless/redundant.

We are a 6 character group and we have access to Complete Adventurer, Arcane, Divine and Warrior + Core. Assuming everyone lives we will eventually look like this:

Human Fighter 4/Thief 6/dervish 10 (w/able learner); Human Druid 15-16/nature's warrior 4-5 (fleshraker familiar); Human Sorcerer 20; Dwarf Fighter 10/Dwarven Defender 10; Human Cleric 6/Fighter 4/Shinning Blade 10; Half-Elf Ranger 4-9/Wizard 1-6/Arcane Archer 10; solid stats all across the board with these guys.

Concerns: lack of Bard seems obvious, at least one player is concerned that the rogue is multi-classed as a warrior, and 4 out of 6 are melee (5 of 7 with companion) which has led to a lot of crowding issues.

So I am wondering what the veterans here think, will are mesh well together or would we better off if somebody got replaced?

[angry_bear]

Might want to have the player with the dwarf reconsider his choice of prestige class. Dwarven Defender isn't that great... Aside from that the party looks fairly solid. There are more OP choices, but it's alright.

[Faily]

At a quick glance, I'd say that the party looks reasonably balanced for Shackled City. Though I will say that the first dungeons of that campaign are absolute horror to go through (Jzadirune, I hate you!).

Without giving any spoilers, there's going to be a lot of different challenges in this campaign, and IMO everyone had a chance to shine. Our group was a 4-man group, and on that level consisted of myself playing a Halfling Swashbuckler/Rogue, an Elf Cleric/Ranger (aiming for Seeker of the Misty Isle), a Gnome Ranger, and a Gold Dwarf Paladin. The dungeons are real horror unless you got clever players figuring them out, but I wouldn't say that it detracts from the rest of the Adventure.

But yes, I will agree with the above-post and say that the Dwarf should consider something else than Dwarven Defender. Maybe Stonewarden (Races of Stone)?

You might be lacking a bit in arcane power, but that's nothing to worry about, imo. Your cleric can make up for it.

[RustyArmor]

With a druid mixed in with that bunch I can see why the others would feel useless/redundant. Granted at level 3 druids are not to bad ..... yet. But that aside at the low levels most classes are redundant and even most T1s are useless once they cast their 3 spells so just let them hang in there and see how they grow and work out at later levels, if most of them feel that way around the 8-10th levels maybe let them switch out. (For all the martial types BoNS is a nice change of pace since you can do more then "swing my sword at it).

[Grod_The_Giant]

Human Fighter 4/Thief 6/dervish 10 (w/able learner)
Seems decent enough. Solid mid-op, at a guess.


Human Druid 15-16/nature's warrior 4-5 (fleshraker familiar)
The PrC isn't the hottest, but Druid is a strong, strong class, and fleshraker is a borderline-abusive animal companion/wildshape form. I'd be worried-- druid already has a high optimization floor, and the fleshraker thing makes me think that this guy knows how to book-dive.


Human Sorcerer 20
Spell selection will determine the power here.


Dwarf Fighter 10/Dwarven Defender 10; Human Cleric 6/Fighter 4/Shinning Blade 10; Half-Elf Ranger 4-9/Wizard 1-6/Arcane Archer 10; solid stats all across the board with these guys.
All of these are pretty low-op. The PrCs (which look to be the focus of the builds) are absolutely godawful-- I've seen Shining Blade called out as one of the crappiest things WotC ever published, and Half-Elf is about the worst race out there.

Composition-wise, you're probably fine-- you've got full arcane and divine casters, a full prepared caster to deal with the unexpected, two demi-skillmonkies (thief and ranger), two tanks, a skirmisher, a ranged guy... I don't know if the module has horrible trap or social DCs, but you should be able to cover all the bases.

Optimization-wise (and based only on the most rudimentary info here) I'd be nervous about the druid, especially in comparison to a half-elf arcane archer and a Shining Blade.

I'd suggest giving the last few guys some suggestions on how to better fill their character concepts-- the Shining Blade might drop a few of those fighter levels and switch to a fluff-swapped Stormlord, for example. The Dwarven Defender might take some Crusader (if allowed). The Arcane Archer... well, maybe you can offer him the Pathfinder version of the class.

[Fenris-Wolf]

Seems decent enough. Solid mid-op, at a guess.


The PrC isn't the hottest, but Druid is a strong, strong class, and fleshraker is a borderline-abusive animal companion/wildshape form. I'd be worried-- druid already has a high optimization floor, and the fleshraker thing makes me think that this guy knows how to book-dive.


Spell selection will determine the power here.


All of these are pretty low-op. The PrCs (which look to be the focus of the builds) are absolutely godawful-- I've seen Shining Blade called out as one of the crappiest things WotC ever published, and Half-Elf is about the worst race out there.

Composition-wise, you're probably fine-- you've got full arcane and divine casters, a full prepared caster to deal with the unexpected, two demi-skillmonkies (thief and ranger), two tanks, a skirmisher, a ranged guy... I don't know if the module has horrible trap or social DCs, but you should be able to cover all the bases.

Optimization-wise (and based only on the most rudimentary info here) I'd be nervous about the druid, especially in comparison to a half-elf arcane archer and a Shining Blade.

I'd suggest giving the last few guys some suggestions on how to better fill their character concepts-- the Shining Blade might drop a few of those fighter levels and switch to a fluff-swapped Stormlord, for example. The Dwarven Defender might take some Crusader (if allowed). The Arcane Archer... well, maybe you can offer him the Pathfinder version of the class.
Thanks for that great post,

Just so it's clear I'm a player not a Dm.
Personally, I was most worried about the strength of the Dwarf, Archer and Shining Blade at higher lvs; the last 2 are both NPCs so there is no changing them, the Dwarf is a maybe on that prestige class depending on whether he listens to me over the Dm. The Druid and Dervish are both my characters, and I am the biggest optimizer in the group, partly bc I have the most experience with 3.5 (we mostly played 2E years before) and partly bc I try to munchkin my characters to balance for my crappy luck with dice :smalltongue:

However book-diving shouldn't be an issue since we do not have a lot of books to pull from and Tome of Battle is definitely not happening; our DM has disallowed the PHB II with the argument that "if it's better than core, why would anyone want to take core feats/abilities etc."

The only thing that are party seems to be lacking 'role' wise is a party face.

P.S. Can anyone recommend a good caster focused prestige class for the Druid since wildshape may not be the best fit in this melee heavy party?

[eggynack]

P.S. Can anyone recommend a good caster focused prestige class for the Druid since wildshape may not be the best fit in this melee heavy party?
The three druid prestige class options that are anything like worthwhile are planar shepherd (FoE, 105), lion of talisid (BoED, 65), and moonspeaker (RoE, 143). Out of those, moonspeaker is probably the most casting focused route, though it would necessitate changing your race to shifter (RoE, 25). Planar shepherd is powerful enough that I would avoid bringing it into most games, especially a game with dwarven defenders and arcane archers, and lion of talisid is basically just a slightly altered druid, so that probably gets you into moonspeaker. You could also just be a druid, because one of the best prestige classes for a druid is more druid.

Alternatively, there're other less traditional options that I've recently been exploring as well, mostly in the form of one level dips. Those include contemplative (CD, 30), holt warden (CC, 84), seeker of the misty isle (CD, 61), and sacred exorcist (CD, 56). Contemplative and seeker of the misty isle add reasonable spells to your list, holt warden grants an extra spell/day at each spell level, drawn from the plant domain, and sacred exorcist grants turn undead, which can power DMM along with some other stuff, and all of those things.

Another longer duration class to consider is hathran (PGtF, 59), though I wouldn't use that one. It's a class that is mostly made up of cheese, with little for those seeking not-cheese. Good break points are level one, where you can use rashemi spirit magic combined with an acorn of far travel (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040710a) to cast from the entire druid list spontaneously, or level five, where you gain the utterly ridiculous ability to act as a circle leader. No good can come of it, I think. There're some other reasonable options hanging out in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16680649), though the stuff I mentioned is probably the most worthwhile.