Current group makeup and potential problems

[TheNivMizzet]

I recently joined a friends Pathfinder group at level 4, I'm the party cleric multiclassing into Wizard to take Mythic Theurge and run double duty as both healer and control. The reason I'm having doubts or worries is because looking at the tier system I'm the only character running a tier 1 class, or two of them. The current party composition is a:
Fighter 4
Fighter 4 (Gargoyle and I'm convincing to take levels in barbarian)
Cavalier 4
Bard 4
Bard 4
Rogue 4 (Going for the Assassin prestige class)
Cleric 3/Wizard 1 (Me)
The GM has set us up as a group and we're currently questing, introducing all the new party members. The bards do very little spellcasting, but I figure they will come into their own once they get their characters down and I explain that they're taking CLW at the next level. The party recently faced a severely weakened dracolich which had just "awakened" (Not in the druid sense) and was apparently meant to be ran away from but, due to its lack of non-basic attacks, we dug in our heels and I cast Protection from Evil, Communal, and slaughtered it. I guess my worry is that with me in the party the GM will have to throw harder encounters at us to make up my healing and protection buffs, making it harder for the lower tier characters to feel they can affect the situation. Is this a valid concern or should I wait to see what happens, I wasn't the final hit on it, and the only effect my communal protection had was halting its initial charge against me and one of the bards like a brick wall.

[avr]

As a mystic theurge without early entry tricks you won't outshine the others, if that's your concern. You'll be getting 3rd level spells at 8th level; the bards will get theirs at 7th.

If you're more concerned about the party being able to handle the adventure talk to the GM.

BTW unless the dracolich was summoned or conjured it should have slaughtered you. Just being evil means that you'd have a +2 AC & +2 on saves against it, which while nice wouldn't change the situation drastically.

[TheNivMizzet]

BTW unless the dracolich was summoned or conjured it should have slaughtered you. Just being evil means that you'd have a +2 AC & +2 on saves against it, which while nice wouldn't change the situation drastically.

The creature would have counted a summoned creature, but this is more of a homebrew thing. I didn't think of it at the time, but it was fine post-event any way, but thank you for pointing it out, I'm not used to protection spells.

[Edmure Wytehall]

I recently joined a friends Pathfinder group at level 4, I'm the party cleric multiclassing into Wizard to take Mythic Theurge and run double duty as both healer and control. The reason I'm having doubts or worries is because looking at the tier system I'm the only character running a tier 1 class, or two of them. The current party composition is a:
Fighter/Ranger (3) [if I recall rightly] 4
Fighter 4 (Gargoyle and I'm convincing to take levels in barbarian)
Cavalier 4
Bard 4
Bard 4
Rogue 4 (Going for the Assassin prestige class)
Cleric 3/Wizard 1 (Me)
The GM has set us up as a group and we're currently questing, introducing all the new party members. The bards do very little spellcasting, but I figure they will come into their own once they get their characters down and I explain that they're taking CLW at the next level. Please do so, they have never really had to play magical bards before.
The party recently faced a severely weakened dracolich which had just "awakened" (Not in the druid sense) and was apparently meant to be ran away from but, due to its lack of non-basic attacks, we dug in our heels and I cast Protection from Evil, Communal, and slaughtered it. We HAVE since deduced you STILL should have run away because the things you did (Protection from Evil and Crit Killing it were impossible), but that's my fault, and anyway, it was too funny/awesome for me to care, and you all had fun. It won't be happening again, though...
I guess my worry is that with me in the party the GM will have to throw harder encounters at us to make up my healing and protection buffs, making it harder for the lower tier characters to feel they can affect the situation. Is this a valid concern or should I wait to see what happens, I wasn't the final hit on it, and the only effect my communal protection had was halting its initial charge against me and one of the bards like a brick wall.
Tbf, as I see it, I'm just going to have to occasionally force the game to pause to clarify a rule check from now on, because some of the things you do are so outrageous that I just roll with it, because I am overly generous to my players.
Also, if I think you are going to do something that will mess up an encounter and make the game too easy, expect there to be an encounter that is immune to certain things, has spell-resistance, or just simply isn't affected by your domain/source.

But I stand by my own rule of course: "If it's cool: do it". :smallsmile:
I'm far more concerned in making the party have fun with my game than necessarily playing exactly by the book.
Though you won't be finding a dracolich so easy from here on out. :smalltongue:

Also, if anyone reading this has ideas as to how to make the players have more threat, or just general ideas and advice, please do let me know. I'm not a highly competent GM, as evidence has been supplied from the OP.

~ The GM

[avr]

Threat isn't exactly the problem. You have 3 frontliners, a couple of bards who can buff and who might be able to do damage, a rogue who can probably do damage (these 3 probably can't stay in the fight for long, especially the rogue), and one guy who has buffs and who might be able to do battlefield control later on. That's lots of damage, pretty poor at defence and battlefield control.

If the bards get a wand of cure light wounds each (750 gp per) they won't need CLW as a spell. It may be more worth their getting Saving Finale (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/saving-finale) in order to aid the parties' defence vs. effects which require saves. Potions or scrolls of Delay Poison all round, but especially on those with poor fort saves, are a good investment. Some scrolls of communal resist energy, death ward and/or restoration may be useful, use them wisely.

For the battlefield control I don't have good answers. If anyone's good at a combat maneuver focusing on that may help; Improved Overrun is only a feat away for someone with Power Attack. If scouting can let you literally prepare the battlefield with caltrops that may help too. If someone who isn't NivMizzet is good at Use Magic Device then some scrolls of things like Obscuring Mist or Create Pit may be good.

[GilesTheCleric]

The tier system evaluates classes and builds, not play. Just because you are playing a tier one class doesn't mean it has to play as t1.

Really, you have a few great options, both for the group and the gm. From the gm's perspective, this group is probably the ideal. Everyone's damage output and contribution to scenarios is pretty well-bounded, which makes planning much easier. From the player's perspective, things can be very balanced as well. As long as each person in the group has a mostly-unique character identity and perhaps mechanical focus, everyone can contribute nearly equally, which means nobody is overshadowed or left out.

So, GM options:
GM: let the party continue to hit things with their swords, heal in combat, and follow the rule of cool. Do this by sending mostly non-casting foes at them, with a few low-powered casters for a challenge. There should be creature options for this approach all the way to twenty. Don't forget to include skill, roleplay, and environmental challenges and this can be a great game, just like it sounds like it is. This is a very manageable option.

GM 2: give the casters some pointers on more efficient spells, and help the mundanes move toward more efficient damage dealing (power attack, tripping, rapid shot, lots of precision dice with twf). This will increase the power level of the group, which means they'll be able to take on higher-than-cr challenges more often, and have better chances against casting foes. As the levels increase, the bards and cleric will start to noticeably outshine the mundanes (probably starting at about level 7 or 9), then if the game continues, the cleric will become the strongest character (level 11+). There's nothing wrong with this, but it means you'll have to design encounters to challenge the casters and mundanes separately, and be a bit more careful. This is still reasonable, and is likely to happen regardless if the caster PCs attempt to pick the best spells.

GM 3: change some or many encounters from the traditional creature-with-stats approach, and instead make them puzzles such as by giving creatures only very specific weaknesses, by throwing superlatives such as hundreds of foes or foes with infinite stats in one or two areas, the like. This changes the game to a more puzzle based approach, and likely isn't what the player's expected. It can handle t1s, though. Be sure to include lots of non-combat. I don't really recommend this.

GM 4: a mix of 1 and 2. Let the players and yourself grow in system mastery, experience, and power gradually. Save for a few "learning experiences" (power spikes and new method of playing), this should be a reasonable method, too, and might end up happening anyway.

Player options:
Cleric: focus on in-combat healing, some utility spells, and maybe a few blasting spells. This is the lowest-power option, and should keep the game pretty well balanced, and make life the easiest for your GM.

Cleric 2: focus on buffs for others, BFCs (battle field control), and debuffs (dispel magic, dimensional anchor, bestow curse, etc), and out-of-combat healing. This is the third most powerful option, and should keep everyone still mostly equal while increasing the power level of the group as a whole. It will make some challenges much easier than expected; if done well (not too difficult), nobody will notice that you are the one making everything better.

Cleric 3: use the patented gilesthecleric method. Buff yourself to the high heavens, then buff everyone else with most of your remaining spell slots. Save enough slots so that you can cast a few choice spells several times a day (my picks are dimensional anchor and 3.5's constricting chains), plus a few high-level slots for emergencies. Spend your first few rounds casting those few "harmless" spells, then go to engage the toughest foe mano-a-mano, or if an ally is in trouble, smack your face against that foe. With your buffs, you'll be immune to everything the foes can do, so spend the rest of the fight hitting things with your mace for 1d8 damage (it doesn't matter how much damage you actually do with your buffs, just deal a reasonable low amount). If a fight ever gets to the point where you fear a teamwipe, spend a round praying to your god for assistance, and let the GM pass you a note with the go-ahead to go ham. The following rounds, actually use the buffed numbers on your sheet and destroy everything. Use some high-level spells if there's really trouble. Don't do this more than once every few months, though. Second most powerful option.

Cleric 4: play it like a t1 class. Trivialize fights in the first round with BFCs, SoLs, and SoDs. Keep you and your allies constantly buffed to the point of invincibility. This method is the most powerful, and unless you're playing an rp-focused game, makes the game pretty boring. Even then, a t1 class can still trivialize rp and skill challenges.

My apologies if there's typos; posting from mobile.

Edit, on powerful spells:
To clarify what I mean by BFCs: spells like obscuring mist, grease, wall of x, wind wall, etc can either trivialize or make encounters much easier. To see why they're more optimal than healing or blasting, consider it this way: each round, each foe is going to deal damage, your allies are going to deal damage, and you might deal negative damage (healing). If we say that everyone's damage is equal, then one character's healing constitutes about 1/4 of the incoming damage each round, meaning that from round one, the healing isn't going to keep up with the incoming damage. Now, suppose instead of healing, you cast obscuring mist and hit 2/4 foes. For that round, they can't find your allies and their damage drops to zero. With obscuring mist, you've just effectively healed your party for 2/4 instead of 1/4 (not to mention that your party is now able to direct all of their attacks to half as many targets, making the battle shorter and also reducing the total number of spells/healing you cast that encounter). That single spell might even be able to affect foes for more than one round, meaning that your effective healing continues to increase. With something even more potent than obscuring mist, such as grease, you can very reliably remove one or more foes from the fight for the entirety of the flight, since almost no creatures have ranks in balance. Your rangers can kill the foes with impunity, completely trivializing the fight.

In this way, BFCs can be "t1" spells. However, it's easy to reduce their impact on the fight by hitting less optimal areas, or using less powerful spells, like wall of x or obscuring mist instead of grease. Further, most BFCs don't allow saves, which is another thing that greatly increases their power. If you cast a wall spell directly on a foe, they then get a save, which is probably worse than forcing them to move around or through it themselves, so there's ways to make these spells less potent.

Other types of "t1" spells are divinations and immunities. Things like protection from arrows can negate an entire encounter, and divinations are even more powerful, since you can have precisely the right buffs up ahead of time, or can entirely avoid deadly situations. Again, with judicious use, these can be less powerful.

See the link on my sig about spells that are pretty good. It's 3.5, but it includes info on why those spells are good, and many of the spells are available in pf as well, so it should still be so good learning tool.

Edit 2, on healing: In terms of healing from the GM's perspective. Assume that each healer can heal about 1/8 of a character's hp per round; this means that healing isn't going to appreciably extend the duration of fights unless they last more than 10 rounds (unlikely in my experience, but this varies of course). What it does mean is that the characters have a high resiliency to being killed -- it's likely that if anyone is dropped, they will be quickly stabilized or even brought back into the fight. This won't change until the players have access to the Heal spell, at which point you can start accounting for players having additional full life bars.

From the player's perspective: heals do very little in combat. See the Wands of Lesser Vigour link in my sig, which itself is a good analysis of out-of-combat healing. But, there's also a link in the first or second paragraph which directs to a post with a graph of cure x vs hp vs power attack damage which should give a good idea of how powerful healing is at each level.

Edit 3, on my experience:
My last long-term game (two years, levels 1-18) was much like what you've described; for the first year and a half, I was the only t1/optimized character. At low levels, the power+versatility difference between the tiers is less pronounced, and following my gilesthecleric method at higher levels allowed to things to stay balanced (I only pulled stops against a pit fiend+hundreds of simulacrums [we were level 14 or so?], a hellfire dragon+terrasque [CR 26+20 at level ~16], an optimized t1 wizard, and The Leviathan [elder evil]). The game was fun throughout, with everyone having a chance to shine and contribute.

Our GM ran a fair number of published 3.5 adventures from MMs, HoH, and other sources. We also used the Taint rules from HoH, but that was more of an RP-type thing. Even just following the modules as-published, everything worked out fine, so take heart that you as GM can definitely have a fun, balanced game, and take heart as a player that imbalancing a game doesn't have to happen.