If you were playing a T1 with a fighter and a rogue . . .

[Particle_Man]

Let's say you were playing a tier 1 character (let's say either a cleric or a wizard) and find out that the others are playing a rogue and a fighter, respectively, how would you play your character so as not to overshadow the fighter and the rogue? Would you avoid certain spells, feats, magic items? If so, which ones?

This is assuming that you don't convince the others to "tier up" so you decide to "tier down" but maintain your class while doing so.

Could one do it if one played the cleric as a "healbot" (remove X spells that can be dropped for cures, mainly) and the wizard as a "blaster"?

[Seerow]

Yeah, tier1s are actually really easy to play downwards, it just means specifically avoiding optimal abilities. As long as you are actively aware of the power gap and make the effort to downplay it, you should be fine.


Alternatively you can focus on things that won't make the party feel overshadowed, even while being very effective. Buffing spells tend to be the big thing here. The Fighter/Rogue might feel bad if the Wizard finished the encounter before they get to act, but they'll love the Wizard giving them buffs that make them more effective.

[Rakaydos]

Since tiers are about versitility, you simply dont use the options you get.

Memorize the same spells each day. Dont divine the future, summon meatshields, or detect traps. Do things they cant, in ways that help them out, but dont tread on their toes.

[Kennisiou]

Avoid anything that lets you do their job but better. No shapechanging except to change into utility forms that AID the rogue or fighter in doing their job without overshadowing them (eg, a good grapple form without lots of damage for combat or shapechanging into a mouse or cat to help the rogue sneak). Buffs on yourself are okay (with this party you will all probably be frontline) but buffs for the fighter or the whole party are better. Spells that only buff you ever should be avoided almost completely.

For items, get a wand of CLW or Lesser Vigor for out of combat healing. For in-combat healing a wand of close wounds in a weapon's wand-sheath works wonders. Try to get items that make you better at surviving and better at making others better. Avoid items that help turn you into a one-man party. For feat selection avoid DMM: Persist since it often winds up making you better than others. Instead, DMM: Quicken is often a simpler way to power out spells better without the temptation to only do it to spells that affect you. Taking feats that expand on the party rolls you can fill is good and probably necessary with a party this size, but understand you shouldn't be looking to do this to the exclusion of other's ability to contribute. You should be able to be a stealth team with the rogue, a combat team with the fighter, a party face by yourself or with the rogue if that's something they're building to do. You and the fighter should both be capable of being the rogue's flanking buddy. Spells that immobilize foes are going to be great for helping the rogue in combat.

[eggynack]

Blasting seems counterproductive when the god wizard archetype is already all about this. Skip summoning and instead pack spells like haste, web, and grease, dividing up your enemies and empowering your allies such that they get to do their thing. A lot of the wizard's most optimal stuff is reasonably party friendly. Not-wizards are a bit more on the selfish side, as both clerics and druids incentivize doing a lot of the work on your own, but clerics get a range of debuffs, and druids get a range of BFC's, so you can emphasize those to good effect.

[gorfnab]

A wise man once said "A good Wizard is like a good bass player. You don't notice them until they leave."
Basically buff the Rogue and Fighter, use battlefield control to stall the enemies, and generally fill in the gaps that the other two can't fill (transportation, utility, etc).

[Brookshw]

Buffbot, war weavers a great choice, bring the rest up if they're game for it..

[DrDeth]

Right. Buff & battlefield control. Which are some of the best things a spellcaster can do anyway, so you're not nerfing yourself.

[Hurnn]

Play as heals, buffs/debuffs, and control. Cleric and druid can do both quite easily and still be able to go god mode if they have to. Wizard isn't as good at the heals portion, but probably better at buffs and control. As wizard you could also go evocation mainly with a bit of buffing and just hold back an "I Win" spell for emergencies.

[Vanitas]

Just don't be a jerk and everything will work out fine.

[Sith_Happens]

If Wizard, two words: War Weaver.

[RolandDeschain]

War Weaver, as mentioned, is an excellent choice, it's all about buffing your party to let them shine a little brighter.

If I were you, though, I would look for spells that fit into the area of 'battlefield control'. It's fun, and you've got a role in the party that is critical. You break the DMs toys and then watch as the rest of the party kills/destroys them.

As stated avoid spells that allow you to do what your party members do, because even if you're not trying, you'll end up doing it better than they do.

[3WhiteFox3]

Play a Cleric or druid that focuses on party buffs/healing. Things like prayer, bless, vigor and the like make the lower tier characters feel awesome, without sacrificing on power. I'd personally stay away from DMM shenanigans, but persisting support spells is a useful way to stay relevant and make the party better. Things like Protection Devotion, Augment Healing (w/ the vigor line) and other support based feats can also be useful.

[Sith_Happens]

'battlefield control'

BFC is extremely hit or miss as a "not overshadowing" method. It depends on whether the Fighter and Rogue players are likely to notice or care that everything they attack is already no longer a threat.

[RolandDeschain]

BFC is extremely hit or miss as a "not overshadowing" method. It depends on whether the Fighter and Rogue players are likely to notice or care that everything they attack is already no longer a threat.

absolutely valid point, you need to be fairly careful in you spell selection, slowing down and depriving your opponents of some their attacks would be seen as most helpful, whereas holding or paralyzing them so the fighter and rogue are just going around doing coup-de-graces would certainly be "overshadowing" :smallsmile:

[eggynack]

BFC is extremely hit or miss as a "not overshadowing" method. It depends on whether the Fighter and Rogue players are likely to notice or care that everything they attack is already no longer a threat.
It's a complicated thing, I think, depending not only on the group, as you noted, but also on the specific spell being employed. For example, what if your BFC of choice were a wall of stone, placed right in the middle of the enemy group, thus dividing their forces until the distant enemies break through? That sort of maneuver wouldn't so much make the individual enemies non-threats as it would make the entire encounter somewhat less threatening. It seems like it'd be more subtle than something like a freezing fog placed over an entire encounter. Grease is probably also an acceptable spell, as it specifically makes the rogue's job easier instead of just exploding the encounter in the face. I think there's some room to maneuver with this one.

[JaronK]

I'd just play support and buffing. Grease/Glitterdust lets the Rogue Sneak Attack like crazy. Righteous Wrath of the Faithful heavily boosts both of them. Similar spells do similar things. At the end of the day, they are my tools with which to destroy the enemy.

JaronK

[Yorrin]

Yeah, I'm jumping on the Buff bandwagon and advising against BFC. BFC makes you feel high-op in a low-op game. Using your high level spell spots for buffing the party makes them feel better, and if they're all buffed up your offense consists of magic missile and maybe an occasional scorching ray, or in the case of Cleric use Inflict spells and/or include yourself in your buff routine and then pretend to be a fighter for the rest of the fight.

[Seerow]

Agreeing that BFC can cause issues, depending on the other players.


Personally for a low op group I like to load up on buffs, the occasional debuff for use on monsters that will legitimately kill your allies if they get a few solid hits in (generally using ones that harm the enemy's ability to act without stopping them from acting. Better to use Unluck or Glitterdust than Stinking Cloud or Ghoul Touch/Hold Person), and a single blast spell to power a reserve feat just to have some minor pew pew to throw out when you're not casting anything (and help make the melee guys feel more awesome. Wizard stuck dealing 10ish damage a round while the Rogue is dealing 15 per hit? So great!)

[Fyermind]

Yes! Reserve feats for damage on most rounds is great. Especially with good healing the mundanes should feel like they can go all day and you have to pace yourself all the time.

Prepare higher level buffs and lower power BFC spells. As mentioned previously, grease, web, wall of X to split enemy forces and shrink the battle without rendering foes helpless are all great choices.

I think druids have the hardest time with this. I have yet to find a good way to play a druid alongside a fighter. I'm curious what spells and tactics the playground suggests.

[eggynack]

I think druids have the hardest time with this. I have yet to find a good way to play a druid alongside a fighter. I'm curious what spells and tactics the playground suggests.
It's certainly a challenge, especially with the animal companion acting as a fighter right out of the box. That feature, even more than wild shape, just straight up obsoletes the fighter. At least wild shape can be used for defense/utility, while doing that with an animal companion just feels like a waste. The correct move might just be trading out the animal companion. Two of the best things to trade it for are the first shifter druid substitution level, and urban companion (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a), though the former just pushes you towards invalidating the fighter in summoning shaped ways. Urban companion doesn't really cause fighter based heartache though, so it could work.

After that, I suppose you get to the spell list, though that thing is often brute force based to the extent where it can be even more problematic than the wizard list on occasion. Still, the list has occasionally not troublesome BFC's, like wall of salt (Sand, 127) or sleet storm, a couple of applicable buffs, like instant of power (FoW, 114) and mass snake's swiftness (SpC, 193), and the occasional healing spell, like lesser vigor (SpC, 229), panacea (SpC, 152), and spontaneously summoned unicorns. Those things can pretty neatly avoid the problem of invalidating the fighter, though it's hard to do so completely.

[Qwertystop]

One other notable question: Are they aware of what a Wizard can do compared to what they can do? Depending on the players, they might be more annoyed that you're intentionally doing less than you could than that you're overshadowing them, if they expected the overshadowing or if there's a fight that's really hard because you're holding back.

If possible, keep a good amount of emergency stuff prepared, but make it defensive to avoid making the rest of the party worthless.

[Yogibear41]

Start at level 1 :smallsmile: your life is now in their hands.

[3WhiteFox3]

Start at level 1 :smallsmile: your life is now in their hands.

That's not really true, despite being intuitive. It's true that the caster classes are less Godlike at first level; however, even if we agree that casters are absolutely weak without the other party members there remain two problems.

1. Color Spray, Sleep, Grease, Command, Entangle and Charm Person are all spells that can overshadow any low-tier character. They are first level and any full caster will get anywhere from 2 to 4 of those a day. First level casters aren't so much glass cannons so much as they are bombers. Yes, they need an escort, but the entire purpose of the escort is to protect the caster.

2. You don't stay at first level, as D&D is a system based on level advancement. And the point where casters start to really dominate is not that far into the game. Sure if every single game you play is low-level, but that's only a small fraction of the level ranges available to you. By the time you reach about 5th level, most mundanes begin to be overshadowed by the casters.

[Yogibear41]

Agreed, but one bad initiative and that cr 1/3 skeleton whacks your 6 hit points away with 1 swing of his club :smallsmile: not to mention hes immune to your silly color sprays and your dagger is useless muahahha! oh look he has 2 friends with him! They flank you! muahahhaha!


All in all I think people worry to much, just play the game as long as everyone is having fun who cares what tier you are and what tier he is. I'd be willing to bet that a good number of people who are worried about "out-playing" the lower tier characters aren't as good at playing the god-wizard as they think they are anyway, (that is not a reference to the OP) just an observation I have seen.

New a guy once level 7 or 8 gnome wizard, specialized divination banned necro, had chosen of mystra template, spontaneously cast his spells, could make spellcraft checks to learn new spells on the spot. Thought Phantasmal Killer was an awesome spell.(till he tried to use it HAHHAHA) Had supposedly been playing since before 2nd edition.

Was almost completely useless, said he was glad that the other caster in the group could do something because he just ran out of spells to easy, (I was like a level 5-6 warlock all I did was shoot things lol)

[Hurnn]

Yes! Reserve feats for damage on most rounds is great. Especially with good healing the mundanes should feel like they can go all day and you have to pace yourself all the time.

Prepare higher level buffs and lower power BFC spells. As mentioned previously, grease, web, wall of X to split enemy forces and shrink the battle without rendering foes helpless are all great choices.

I think druids have the hardest time with this. I have yet to find a good way to play a druid alongside a fighter. I'm curious what spells and tactics the playground suggests.

You are not required to take the most optimal animal companion at every level, don't take the ridding dog, take the dire rat or the owl or the hawk, play buff bot for the fighter hey have cats grace or bull strength or bears endurance, or you know play as a healer.

[Bullet06320]

I built my character, they built thiers
I would play mine as I intended to
and in one similar case, I killed everything before the children could get hurt, the RP was hilarious, everyone still had the fun, the ranger kept trying to kill the undead I summoned to kill the monsters we faced(favored enemy undead) LOL

[Drachasor]

I wouldn't forget Enlarge Person on the Fighter. Reduce Person can be handy for a Rogue too -- later Greater Invisibility is pretty awesome (Mindblank much later makes it still awesome).

Heck, Spiderclimb on them + Web can be very good, but you need to know when it can be prepped. Or if they have slippers of Spiderclimbing or the like, then just Web. Of course, Web alone is quite good to divide enemy forces.

There's a lot you can do just to make everyone else look good. Another way to think of it is that you are doing most of the work and letting them mop up the bits that remain -- but it won't feel that way to them.

It's good to have single-target buffs or debuffs too. You'll have encounters where area effect spells just don't work.

[3WhiteFox3]

Yes! Reserve feats for damage on most rounds is great. Especially with good healing the mundanes should feel like they can go all day and you have to pace yourself all the time.

Prepare higher level buffs and lower power BFC spells. As mentioned previously, grease, web, wall of X to split enemy forces and shrink the battle without rendering foes helpless are all great choices.

I think druids have the hardest time with this. I have yet to find a good way to play a druid alongside a fighter. I'm curious what spells and tactics the playground suggests.

Don't take Natural Spell. I know that this is extremely counter to any advice that you'd normally get for optimization, but without it Wildshape becomes a powerful, but situational ability instead of a no-brainer.

As said by the above post, take sub-optional animal companions. But further than that, I'm not sure how much you can do sadly; at least, not without intentionally crippling yourself. Even if you prepared nothing but crap, you can still turn those into mini-beat sticks with spontaneous SNA. The druid is hard to optimize poorly, unlike the wizard where poorly optimizing can completely hose you, the druid is still a solid tier 3/4 class even ignoring large swathes of the class' powers.

What I'd try to do is choose spells that aren't completely awful, but are primarily focused on either making the fighter's job easier and don't solve encounter's in one blow.

Choose either Cure spells or the Vigor line for healing.

1: Obscuring Mist, Goodberry, Produce Flame, Longstrider, Vigor
2: [+4 to attribute spells], Flaming Sphere, Resist Energy, Lesser Restoration
3: (This is a hard level, most of your spells are either awful or absolutely awesome; just SNA III makes preparing non-awesome spells pretty much pointless.) Spike Growth, Call Lightning, Stone Shape, Wind Wall
4: Ice Storm, Spike Stones, Air Walk, Dispel Magic
5: Call Lightning Storm, Transmute Rock to Mud, Wall of Thorns, Wall of Fire

Honestly, past level 9 I just don't see the Druid and the fighter really being able to operate well together, at that point the Druid needs his spells just to overcome the things that CR appropriate monsters are going to be throwing around. (That and it's late, so I'll just leave the spell list only going up to level 5 spells.)

[Krazzman]

@Druid:
Play a Stormlord.
Seriously we had the fun of playing with one. Animal Companion Eagle that she didn't let do anything except grabbing the macguffin. Blasting with bolts of lightning and basically being a rather nice follower of Talos.

Else buffing really helps. As a Cleric I would search a way to get haste (either Warpriest or some Domain) and basically be a buffbot melee flanking buddy.

Summon Monster CAN be a help for them. As Meatshield/flanking buddy for the rogue etc. But just don't get too heavy monsters summoned and don't focus on it.

WIth a Wizard... probably I would just use sorcerer try to get into a blasty archetype and pick up good buffspells (as my Sage Sorcerer did. Signature Spell is a level 2 Spell that is basically a Snowball but first action is always Haste.)

greater Invis and Silence on the Rogue will be awesome. Coupled with a Raven Familiar that moves behind the target then Benign Transposition Rogue and Raven and thus the rogue can get to hard to reach places with nasty archery and they can't even see him.

[Vogonjeltz]

That's not really true, despite being intuitive. It's true that the caster classes are less Godlike at first level; however, even if we agree that casters are absolutely weak without the other party members there remain two problems.

1. Color Spray, Sleep, Grease, Command, Entangle and Charm Person are all spells that can overshadow any low-tier character. They are first level and any full caster will get anywhere from 2 to 4 of those a day. First level casters aren't so much glass cannons so much as they are bombers. Yes, they need an escort, but the entire purpose of the escort is to protect the caster.

2. You don't stay at first level, as D&D is a system based on level advancement. And the point where casters start to really dominate is not that far into the game. Sure if every single game you play is low-level, but that's only a small fraction of the level ranges available to you. By the time you reach about 5th level, most mundanes begin to be overshadowed by the casters.

Point 1 doesn't do anything but express a wizards offensive capability. They remain dreadfully frail, most threats can kill them outright for several levels.

Point 2 doesn't have anything to do with the question of weakness at first level.

[ericgrau]

Just don't use any cheese and the game tends to work out fine without even trying.

The best options without cheese tend to be an over-glorified support role anyway: battlefield control and mass/status-effect buffs.


BFC is extremely hit or miss as a "not overshadowing" method. It depends on whether the Fighter and Rogue players are likely to notice or care that everything they attack is already no longer a threat.
A blinded hobo swinging randomly at the air can still beat up a wizard with a crossbow. A lot of it depends on how much you brag about it. When I don't say anything as a caster I tend to be called "support".

I do find that out of offensive options monster delay effects tend to be looked on the softest though, even better than debuffs. Web, sleet storm, solid fog, walls, etc. And status effect buffs like haste and greater invisibility get a strong "sweet, thanks" of course.

[Grayson01]

absolutely valid point, you need to be fairly careful in you spell selection, slowing down and depriving your opponents of some their attacks would be seen as most helpful, whereas holding or paralyzing them so the fighter and rogue are just going around doing coup-de-graces would certainly be "overshadowing" :smallsmile:

As a player who loves playing the rouge assassin I am completely okay with this "team startagy" lol