New Party

[IcarusWulfe]

Hello Playground and thank you for your time. I am currently GMing a game and was looking for some advice. My party recently suffered from a (mostly self inflicted) TPK and the replacement party is taking shape. I was just wondering if I could get some feedback on what challenges I might throw up against this party to keep things interesting, but fair. Few of the people in my group are optimizers and a one is relatively new to D&D. The party is Level 4

The new party members consist of the following.

1. Human Paladin, perusing THF, very much an RPer, acting as the primary tank
2. Synad Factotum, generally ok at everything, but slightly focused on melee, acting as primary skillmonkey and Knowlede guy
3. High Elf Scout, archer going for Manyshot, sole remaining member of the original party (He intelligently ran away when things turned sour)
4. New player, wants to play a Soulknife focusing on THF, I said he could use the Pathfinder version.
5.Not sure, but the player tends to like to roll a lot of dice and nuke stuff

Any comments on party balance, or ideas for challenges and encounters are appreciated.

Thank You, Icarus Wulfe

[nedz]

Looks like you have a T3-T4 party which should be fun; though they are lacking in casters.

Just be wary of throwing full casters at them, though at level 4 this should be fine.

[Geddy2112]

In addition to not throwing full casters at them, make sure every challenge has a non magical solution. At higher levels, a lot of enemies and challenges assume the party has a certain amount of magic available.

[FocusWolf413]

They're probably going to needto rely on items for healing. That pally can only offer so much. Make sure they have healing belts and wands of clw.

[BowStreetRunner]

It is always helpful when establishing the dynamics of a new party to create some early opportunities for each PC to take center stage during an encounter. No one wants to be the one character who seems useless in every encounter.

For instance, by 4th level a paladin will have an Aura of Courage. So an encounter with something that uses fear effects would give the paladin the opportunity to use this ability to the party's advantage.

The Factotum and the Scout will both have Trapfinding, so it will be important to pay attention to how each is played to create situations where one won't simply be an irrelevant addition - in this case since the Factotum does melee you might run a battle in which low-level undead are used to draw the melee types into an area filled with traps. Once the party has dispatched the undead they will need to get the melee types back out of the 'minefield' without setting off any more traps.

This sort of planning can help make each player feel their character is appreciated by the rest of the party for the contributions they are making. When a character naturally seems to be contributing to every encounter, this becomes less important. You really need to watch for the characters who seem to be adding very little to most of your encounters however - for instance a Charisma based rogue who is making little difference in combat encounters will need some social encounters to feel useful.

[IcarusWulfe]

Thank You everyone for your advice and feedback, I will be sure to use it to keep my game fun for my players:smallsmile:

[BioCharge]

If I may input, since you allowed the Soulknife to use the PF version, I'd argue to allow the Paladin to as well. In my experience, they can pack a decent amount of healing with the PF version of Lay on Hands.

[IcarusWulfe]

If I may input, since you allowed the Soulknife to use the PF version, I'd argue to allow the Paladin to as well. In my experience, they can pack a decent amount of healing with the PF version of Lay on Hands.

I will be sure to keep that in mind, thanks.