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ChrisMcDee
2007-07-04, 07:21 AM
I've always liked the idea of parties having a theme. For one campaign your players could be four questing Knights out to find an ancient relic. In the next they're Dwarvern Rangers exploring a forgotten mine or a band of Sorcerers recently thrown out of their community.

Obviously the biggest issue with this sort of party is giving each character their own flavour. This could be achieved though feat selection for fighters or specialisation for wizards but classes like Monk or Ranger might struggle more to stand out from eachother. Obviously balance would need to be adressed by the GM.

However, the benefits are appealing to me. If being an Elf or a Wizard doesn't make a character feel special the player may be more likely to put some effort into developing the actual personality of the character. There's always the old theory that restrictions provoke creativity, and I've found that to be true on many occasions.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone's had any experience with a party of characers of at least a similar class.

Kiero
2007-07-04, 07:25 AM
I think it's pretty neat, has plenty of precedent in fiction. Goes without saying that the GM should be structuring encounters to take the party's makeup into account.

Cue the usual chorus of "that's not D&D"...

KIDS
2007-07-04, 07:30 AM
As long as the DM is mindful of vulnerabilities that this brings about, I admit I am fond of this idea. Not always, but it has great potential for great stories :)

A good rule to institute is: say, all Knights. Your Knight Class level must always be at least equal to or higher than another highest class level, excluding prestige classes made specificall for knights (such as Knight Protector or Justiciar)

B!shop
2007-07-04, 07:33 AM
You can have a party theme without restricting the class choises to players.

Using your examples, you can have:

- Questing knights party formed by fighters, paladins, war-oriented clerics
- Dwarven rangers party with rangers, druids, rogues, barbarians
- Sorcerers band formed up by an alchemist, some sorcerers, a favored soul and maybe some unorthodox wizard.

I've never liked the neat class-are-role idea.
I like to develop my character with options, feat, behaviour and style, and I've played many times the same class but every time he's an entirely different character.

Swooper
2007-07-04, 07:33 AM
The best way to do this IMHO is Gestalt. Make each character be a specific class on one side and whatever they want on the other. That way, the party is themed, likely has all the neccesary party roles and each player gets to have a unique character.

That said, there's no reason a group of, to use one of your examples, dwarf "rangers" shouldn't include a field medic (cleric) and maybe a (gnome even?) wizard, and the actual "rangers" could be either standard rangers or fighters, barbarians, rogues or something similar.

Matthew
2007-07-04, 07:34 AM
My experience of this sort of thing is that it works well for Melee types at low to mid levels (1-10), but I suspect it would become less fun at higher levels, where the challenges assume more magic. Saying that, it might still be possible for four Fighter 20s to take down a Balor.

My experience of this sort of thing is mainly of (A)D&D, where there is a greater frequency of Fighters to other Classes. I don't really see why it wouldn't work with 3.x, though. No matter what the party composition, you have to take it into account when creating an encounter. It might not work so well with pre written published Adventures.

nerulean
2007-07-04, 07:44 AM
I certainly like the idea of narrowing down class selection to meet the story requirements of a specific campaign, but even within single-focus fiction you always get variation within the group: there's one who's quick witted but weaker in combat, there's one who's brave and bold and runs into the fight first, there's one who -- you know, etc.

Obviously all this can come out through roleplay, which as far as I'm concerned is a great thing, but unless the differences are backed up statistically then they might feel a little flimsy. You could solve this in the ways suggested above: it doesn't have to be a single class party, just a narrow selection, and there's always different feat choices to make things interesting, not to mention some of the variant class features that have started showing up in recent books, and even as far back as Unearthed Arcana. A few multiclass levels can make a difference too, and could represent character background before he (say) became a knight.

One thing that a group like this necessitates is communication before the beginning of the game, which is always a good thing. The DM asks the group the sort of theme they'd like to play, possibly with a few selections, and the players respond. The DM then gives them their class choices, and the players come up with stuff. If you're looking at roleplay-encouraging background then using a forum or something to collect hard copies of backstories and ask questions, giving you something solid about personality as well as the character sheet with the stats.

Selv
2007-07-04, 08:20 AM
In spite of all the practical difficultues, I maintain that this is the perfect environment for the Paladin.

Tengu
2007-07-04, 08:25 AM
Cue the usual chorus of "that's not D&D"...

I see you haven't yet stopped that tantrum after people voiced against E6? Chill out.

------

On topic. Two single-class parties that come to mind immediately are:

1. Clerics. All of them follow the same god, and are probably on a holy (though not necessarily on an epic scale) mission to somewhere.
2. Bards - a travelling band!

ChrisMcDee
2007-07-04, 08:30 AM
Nice to see I'm not alone here.

I definitely like the idea of saying that players can multiclass so long as their heighest level class is the "party class". I think that would work particularly well with a class made up of the fighter-types and would be nicely suited to a more low-magic, gritty campaign. With no "pure" Wizards, Clerics, Rogues etc. the power loss might not seem so bad either.

Damionte
2007-07-04, 08:35 AM
Although I always thought the idea was neat, I've never felt a GM should really tailor all of the adventures to fit this kind of party all the time. Particularly in those cases where you've agreed to DM and the group springs this type of party on you.

They decided to go with all of one party, or even a party that is missing one of the basic 4 archetypes. I think they should at times feel the weight of what they're missing in the party makeup, and have to think of other ways aroudn certain problems.

nerulean
2007-07-04, 08:40 AM
I think you might be missing the point, Damionte: it's not the players springing this kind of group on the DM, it's the DM telling the players that they're going to be playing this kind of group.

Another thing did occur to me that's worth taking into account. Make sure, however similar the characters are, that everyone does have their own role, since otherwise it can be very easy for one person to feel constantly overshadowed by a better build/luckier stat roll and never have anything to do.

Tengu
2007-07-04, 08:42 AM
I think that it's the DM/GM's job to tailor the campaign for his group. If your party misses a certain role, don't make points in your campaign where the players cannot progress without this role's help. Slight difficulties are fine though.

For example, if there's no rogue or other skillmonkey, don't make a lot of deadly traps - but feel free to put a slightly less deadly one from time to time, so the characters will think "ah, what a pity we don't have anyone who could somehow disarm those!"

Of course, there's always the option of getting NPCs, but I'm completely against NPCs as hired healbots/trapbots/meatshields with no personality - an NPC should have personality and a place in the story.

SilverClawShift
2007-07-04, 08:54 AM
My group actually did a massive campaign where each of us played a bard. The whole "Wandering Performers" thing.

It worked surprisingly well, both flavorwise, and mechanically. We wound up 'cheating' with prestige classes a little bit, but ultimately the all-bard party worked very well.

One of our group wound up being a primary healer, took the Augment Healing feat from complete divine. The rest of us had to back him up obviously, but he made sure we all survived long enough to continue surviving as a group.

One became a Sublime Chord, one became an Evangelist (lead singer), and I became a Dirgesinger. The fifth one stayed a pure bard, and so did the healer. We had a really good range of skills covered, and we were mechanically sound in combat. Good times were had by all.

The campaign started as a murder mystery/phantom of the opera type setting, but it grew into a world shattering plot like they always do. I think a similar makeup would be harder for a lot of other classes, but still not immpossible, especially with a good DM. We've had groups that were all warriors, or all spellcasters before, and as long as the DM pays attention to what the class CAN'T do, it's still a good game.

A party of all factotums would just be ridiculous.

Tormsskull
2007-07-04, 09:05 AM
I ran an all thieves adventure before, it worked out pretty well. I'm not a big fan of gestalt, but allowing them to multi-class with the above mentioned restrictions would be cool. Also, I'd let them make what ever the party class is their favored class as far as mutliclassing exp penalties are concerned.

SolkaTruesilver
2007-07-04, 09:08 AM
I had the idea of either making the whole group 1-race (like the Elven team), or an adventure of all-wizard party.

(the idea of the campaign for the all-wizard party would be them all being male drow wizards, stuck in servitude under the same master at the begginning of the game)

ChrisMcDee
2007-07-04, 09:30 AM
I had the idea of either making the whole group 1-race (like the Elven team).

This is definitely something I'm in favour of, for two main reasons. Flavour-wise it just makes sense to me. I can much more easily imagine a group of adventuring elves travelling together than your usual mish-mash party. I think the feeling of unity within the party would definitely benefit when you're all members of the same race far away from home. Think of the Hobbits travelling through Bree amongst the big scary humans.

Secondly it will hopefully prod players towards the often ignored race-class combos. An all Dwarf party with the classic combo of Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard instantly has a bit of character with the inclusion of the Dwarf Rogue and Wizard. Again I feel this is a case of "restriction promoting creativity", a phrase I'm using more and more each day :smallwink:

SolkaTruesilver
2007-07-04, 02:38 PM
to be honest, the first 1-race party I had in mind was a team of Humanorc (half-orcs), who have to free their brethen from the vile human slavers and the idiot orc butchers.

1 Fighter, 1 Ranger, 1 Cleric and 1 Rogue. A good, strong party. No Arcane Spellcasters, because I like it when magic is evil.

After all, if the only arcane spellcaster you meet are opponent, it kinda justifies burning them on sight :smallamused:

Anxe
2007-07-04, 02:43 PM
My players tried a party of all halflings once. They died horrible horrible deaths. Right now they're doing all humans and that's working pretty well.
Another time half the party was paladins and the other half evil wizards and rogues. That didn't work so well.
Never had a party where they were all the same class though.

mikeejimbo
2007-07-04, 02:47 PM
2. Bards - a travelling band!

Hahah, I think I heard about an idea similar to this somewhere, where the whole party was a group of Elven Bards who were in a Boy Band.

asqwasqw
2007-07-04, 03:21 PM
I have an all human druids campaign (the world is nothing but human druids), but I haven't started it yet. Homebrew is good for these types of campaigns.

Capt'n Ironbrow
2007-07-04, 03:25 PM
:smallsmile: In warhammer roleplay 1st ed. there are just 4 classes (fighter, Ranger, Rogue and Academic), the rest is all careers (your job and it's posibilities if you're a bit ambitious). This system provides great basis for backstories and themed party adventures, as each class is taylored to a certain role. we leads me to suggest the idea of giving each of the players in the themed party a backstory of what their motivations where for joining this party...

actually alignment can do that to. the lawfull good player in an all-fighter party like a military unit (bootcamp: 1st level in fighter) joined the army to uphold the law and the honour of his kingdom and race and stuff like that. The Evil player might join that same army because it gives him the chance to murder and/or opress, the neutral player could be searching an aquaintance of his who also joined up, or trying forget being dumped by his girlfriend or because of the stories about the payment and food the drafting officer told etc. Alignments might also lead them to certain roles, a good aligned character might for example, even as trained fighter not be willing to kill any sentient being and tries to progress to healer and moralebooster, while the Lawfull Evil player might try to rise up in the army's hierarchy just to become his subordinates' worst nightmare as sadistical officer.

Take any book/movie about a "single class" :smallwink: group and you'll get plenty of idea's (Band of Brothers, Sharpe Series, Hornblower, Robin Hood) how to stimulate players to avoid all following the same game mechanism of improvement.

SolkaTruesilver
2007-07-04, 03:29 PM
Take a Fighter, a Rogue, a Ranger, (maybe pally). Put them in uniform, you got yourself a nice military outfit.

You can also try to FORBID a class (as i've done to Arcane Spellcasters in the half-orc campaign). which will also influence the campaign. What is the only clerics are clerics of the god of evils, and the lone surviving Good God only has paladin as servant (he accepts no clerics)?

Orzel
2007-07-04, 04:16 PM
One of my favorite campaign parties was an all Bard one. I played the bassist (normal bard) and was the party scout. The vocalist (savage bard) played smasher, the drummer (CN divine bard) went healer, and lute guy (normal bard) played batman.

Longest trip to the Battle of the Bands ever.

SoulCatcher78
2007-07-04, 04:18 PM
Lots of great ideas already put out there but the one that I agree with the most is that everyone have the same base class and it always has to be at a higher level than any multiclas options.

I am currently planning a Thieves World type of game with these guidelines so it's good to see that I am not alone for this method.

Nero24200
2007-07-04, 04:19 PM
I'd be in favour of this idea, though I don't think multiple classes would be the way to go.

The point of feats and spell selections is to add a unique flavour to your character, if you always pick the same feats when playing a certain class, it's not very creative and you're bound to have plenty of characters the same.

13th Warrior - I would put just about all the main characters as barberians (though maybe one or two as ranger)

Samurai 7 - All samurai

Robin Hood - A group of Rangers or Ranger/rogues

I'd also like this idea applying to race as well, I beleive in one splat-book theres an example given of 4 dwarves who search to avenge the death of their clan.

horseboy
2007-07-04, 05:03 PM
I think that it's the DM/GM's job to tailor the campaign for his group. If your party misses a certain role, don't make points in your campaign where the players cannot progress without this role's help. Slight difficulties are fine though.

For example, if there's no rogue or other skillmonkey, don't make a lot of deadly traps - but feel free to put a slightly less deadly one from time to time, so the characters will think "ah, what a pity we don't have anyone who could somehow disarm those!"

Of course, there's always the option of getting NPCs, but I'm completely against NPCs as hired healbots/trapbots/meatshields with no personality - an NPC should have personality and a place in the story.

If you've got Summon monster III, you've got a trap detector. Just shout: "Oh no holy buffalo" and smack it on the rump.

I've been toying with my next Earthdawn campaign being a crystal raider campaign. Everybody being shipmates from the same trollmoot, mainly being sky raiders, with an elementalist learning to operate a ship before he starts making them.

ChrisMcDee
2007-07-04, 05:30 PM
Take any book/movie about a "single class" :smallwink: group and you'll get plenty of idea's (Band of Brothers, Sharpe Series, Hornblower, Robin Hood) how to stimulate players to avoid all following the same game mechanism of improvement.
Exactly. A character should be definited by his personality and the events that happen to him, not his base attack bonus and class abilities.

Of course in an ideal world there'd be perfect balance between the two.

Selv
2007-07-04, 06:43 PM
I've always loved Monks, and a game like this might defuse their single biggest weakness: that there's nothing much they can do that someone else can't do better.


One of my favorite campaign parties was an all Bard one. I played the bassist (normal bard) and was the party scout. The vocalist (savage bard) played smasher, the drummer (CN divine bard) went healer, and lute guy (normal bard) played batman.

Longest trip to the Battle of the Bands ever.

This is awesome, but I can't escape the image of you all driving around in the Mystery Machine, pulling rubber masks off of drow.

ChrisMcDee
2007-07-04, 07:59 PM
I've always loved Monks, and a game like this might defuse their single biggest weakness: that there's nothing much they can do that someone else can't do better.

Exactly! The four surviving monks from a destroyed monastary go out seeking revenge on the evil behind the attack? Sneaky Monk (Monk/Rogue), Angry Monk (Monk/Barbarian), Super-Spiritual Monk (Monk/Cleric) and Slow-Minded Grunt Monk (Half-Orc Monk) getting up to all sorts of adventure on the way? Yes please!

So many plot hooks, so few players around my town :smallannoyed:

Selv
2007-07-04, 08:07 PM
Exactly! The four surviving monks from a destroyed monastary go out seeking revenge on the evil behind the attack? Sneaky Monk (Monk/Rogue), Angry Monk (Monk/Barbarian), Super-Spiritual Monk (Monk/Cleric) and Slow-Minded Grunt Monk (Half-Orc Monk) getting up to all sorts of adventure on the way? Yes please!

Dang, I may have to set that up one day.

Brother_Franklin
2007-07-05, 01:58 AM
It might be fun to have them play all one class. But make it clear that hirelings are available, and maybe even give the leadership feat for free.

For a beggining group you'd want to control the NPCs giving them access to class skills without having to know deeply class rules. For an advanced group running two charaters of different levels might be a fun challange.

The RP hooks are also endliss. You can have a charater death without the instant let's go rez.

Catharsis
2007-07-05, 06:40 AM
That sounds like fun! I particularly like the idea of a crusade-type group (pallies, clerics, fighters), nature-oriented group (rangers, scouts, rogues, a druid) and sneaky group (rogues, scouts, swashbucklers, a beguiler, maybe a bard... imagine not having Clunky McTrashcan with you on that infiltration mission!).

If I'm ever to DM (and I might have to when our current campaign ends), I might go for something like this to keep it simpler and more flavorful. On the other hand, it might be difficult to find campaign material for such special parties.

Draz74
2007-07-05, 01:43 PM
Let's see ... with no multiclassing, how can we do?

All-bards can work, and be very thematic. Though it's hard to make a decent Bard tank.

All-factotums or binders can work in a similar way, but probably a little bit better. Even if you don't allow other PrC's, you should allow Chameleon in an all-Factotum party. :smallwink:

All-rogue can be made to work, especially with liberal use of UMD skill. Rogues are just so customizable, and they appreciate not having anyone in the party who isn't skilled like them.

All-cleric is actually surprisingly doable. Extremely so, if the Cloistered Cleric is allowed. With different domain choices for each cleric, and liberal use of a couple spells like Find Traps, these clerics may make other clerics wonder why they bother traveling with anyone but clerics. (Until the religious debates get started. Whew! Suddenly the clerics want to go out and find three agnostic Rogues to travel with. This is kind of the opposite of the Bards' situation, where being together makes more-than-perfect sense.)

All-artificer would be ridiculous. Hilarious, but cheezy beyond compare. Especially if most of the party are Warforged.

All-crusader would probably be very effective in combat, but boring. Crusaders don't have much variety. Also, out-of-combat skills would be harshly scarce.

Raza
2007-07-05, 02:23 PM
Themed parties are always cool. Thight class restrictions, not so much though. They can really sabotage a build's effectiveness even as they work out perfectly managable for the guy filling the other role next to you, which creates random inequality and annoyance. If it's a theme issue, then it should be enforced through theme rules. Disallowing crusaders and knights in a paladin thing, for example, or even demanding that they're less than half of all levels is pretty 'meh'.

'Sides, very few well designed chracters stick with their main class for long anyway, especially core base classes. A party of bards wont really reach the point of excelling in their internal specialisations until the point where the caster goes Sublime Chord, the bard/barbarian semi-tank goes into War Chanter and more of such. And excelling at what you do is one of the main ways the game becomes enjoyable.

valadil
2007-07-05, 02:42 PM
I recently ran a thieves guild game. Everyone had to be at least one half rogue.

There were a couple problems:

Only one of them had UMD. This made in combat healing a royal pain.
All but one of them relied on sneak attack for damage. They found fortification and displacement to be too frustrating and unfun, which made it very difficult to write encounters they didn't cut through. The BBEG worked nicely though - he was an abjurer champion with excessive crowd control. Didn't matter if they got sneak attack if they didn't full attack.

Rogues seemed like an interesting game because I'd always disliked how the rogue tries to go looting, and either doesn't get to because the party will be bored, or gets to and gets a little extra loot while the party sits there bored. Putting the focus on stealing let the thieves of the group live out their occupation.

I was also tempted to do an all wizard game. A wizard academy could be fun, so long is it didn't turn into Harry Potter. What I'd really like to do in a game like this is limit magic by way of material components. Make some things hard to get. Make others downright illegal. Who would let you bring bat guano into the city if everyone knows its used in casting fireballs? I think this would be an interesting way to limit casters to effectively get a low magic game without having to adjust mechanics very much.

TheLogman
2007-07-05, 03:54 PM
I suppose a team of 4 Rouges would be pretty good, you make one your melee type, sneak attacking, make one the trap finder, make one they UMD, and then get another that either does diplomacy, or a second UMD.

Trauco
2007-07-05, 04:51 PM
Who would let you bring bat guano into the city if everyone knows its used in casting fireballs?

This could be used as a plot hook for several underground adventures. Bat caves would become strategic military locations. (and on that setting bat caves are like diamond mines)

Sornjss Lichdom
2007-07-05, 05:07 PM
4-Rangers is surpisingly versatile. hav two take two-handed, two take bow, then hav some do urban ranger (becomes a sort of rogue) hav some drop the spell list for varients (c complete war) there u go, take alot of healing potions.

4-wiz/sor first and formost hav everybody in the group take tomb-tainted as a skill feat, no whining or u dont get healed.

another surprisinly easy one, hav a guy crank up str (only bested by Int) then do acouple enlarge person, Feat:improved grapple, another couple of buff spells and some acid sheath, tentecales for grappling, then grillion blessing.

get the good old evoker
get a necromancer that puts out alot of negative vibes for healing
and the batman in the backround, throwing some negetive points around and some battlefield control its all urs.
HAVE A BALL

TheWarBlade
2007-07-06, 12:14 PM
All arcane spellcaster party

World: Arcane magic is evil, burning of hertics and similar treats hang over the PCs heads

One Evoker: "He tears reality apart!"

One Necromancer: "He defiles the dead!"

One Conjurer: "Demon summoner!"

One Illusionist: "Trickster!"

A possible rule could be that all arcane magic comes from the negative planes while divine magic comes from the positive planes.

Galathir
2007-07-06, 12:55 PM
I really like this idea. I am planning a campaign for next semester and I was thinking of putting in some restrictions to keep the party a little more balanced. I was originally considering: Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Hexblade, Monk, Ninja, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Scout, Shadowdancer, Sorcerer, Warlock as allowed classes, but I think a melee themed party of just Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ninja, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, and Scout would be lots of fun. Maybe I would let in Bard for the fun of it. The main problem would be convincing the players to go along with it. I know that I like to come up with unusual classes and races to play and going Human Scout might take a little getting used to. I'll think about it but I really like the idea. At the very least it should bring out a little more role-play.

Roderick_BR
2007-07-06, 12:59 PM
Back in 2nd edition, I played a group of elf wizard/something. Was interesting. I was a wizard/fighter, and my two friends were a wizard/cleric and a wizard/rogue.
We played a lot in the typical roles. The arcane magic was more like to aid each character on his own ways.
I combined boosting magics with my sword fighting abilities
The cleric was a "magic" cannon wielding both arcane and divine powers.
And the rogue, like me, used his magic to enhance his skills.
All in all, it was a cool game.

That could be a cool theme for a gestalt game. All elves, making sorcerers/any other class.