All melee group, help requested

[MrWesson22]

So, last campaign, I was the second player to make my character. The first made a drunken master monk adapted from 3.5. I made a longbow UA ranger. The other players made a dual wielding UA ranger, a paladin, and a barbarian. At level 3, I had my DM kill off my ranger, and I made a life cleric 1/abjuration wizard x. It played out pretty well, and we took the campaign from 1 to 20.

Now we are starting a new campaign. I made my character first. He's again ranged dps, but will this time eventually be battlemaster fighter 12, assassin rogue 7, ua ranger 1. In come the other players with all martial melee characters except one playing a hexblade (so again melee). I discussed switching to a bard or druid to provide some support with the other players, but they all said to play my fighter since I did that same basic thing last campaign for the good of the party.

I love the group of guys I play with. We have a lot of fun. But they all make martial characters, they all take stat bonuses and almost never feats, and they don't multiclass at all. Obviously, a party and all characters don't need to be optimized to work, but I would hope for some synergy. In this current party, only the ranger and warlock will even have spell slots. There is another rogue who is going thief, and the other fighter is going champion. What would y'all do? Try to talk the warlock into taking inspiring leader? Try to talk the fighter or rogue into taking a couple cleric or bard levels? Or just let everyone do their thing and rely on tons of healing potions for out of combat healing and killing things very quickly?

[Sir cryosin]

What's the problem play what ever you want to play if the party is all melee so what have fun with it.

[MrWesson22]

Our last campaign was very combat heavy. With all dps characters, you either end the fight in the first or second round (making it seem like it was too easy), or you die through attrition. It is too easy to shut down a group like that. AOE damage, crowd control, etc with no way to mitigate it happening.

[Seekergeek]

Only if your DM is playing against you rather than with you. If your DM isn't taking party composition in to account in trying to make the encounters, you know, fun the yeah...that could be a problem. I once played a fighter with inspiring leader, rally, healer and the gourmand feat. He was a solid healer and felt fun and dynamic. There's also the healing tonic spell now (or whatever that's called - I'm on me phone) from the starter spells UA that the warlock could take.

[Sir cryosin]

Our last campaign was very combat heavy. With all dps characters, you either end the fight in the first or second round (making it seem like it was too easy), or you die through attrition. It is too easy to shut down a group like that. AOE damage, crowd control, etc with no way to mitigate it happening.

If you want to change your class then change it. The rest of your party are playing what they want. They are having fun don't be a buzz kill by trying to get them to pick different classes. In are last campaign we had me a druid, gunsmith Artificer, bow rogue assassin, wizard, and a bard. And we went through the hole storm kings thunder book. We played smart and stayed out of melee ingageing from a distance. There were a couple of time were we was fighting in a small space but we made do with what we had.

[MrWesson22]

So we basically cant fight anything with flight, terrain that makes melee characters useless, or decent AOE, and we will be fine. That last campaign was my first in 5e. I guess I am just thinking too much into it from my 20 years of play in older versions where some semblance of party balance was necessary.

[MrStabby]

You can cover a lot as a fighter as long as you can take feats. Ritual caster will get you a long way here.

A couple of levels of dips will further open up possibilities without weakening your character. There are plenty of great low level control spells that will last you up to mid/high levels - web for example.

All in all have fun and play what you want. However, treat this as an opportunity - a dip for access to other abilities will no longer be outclassed by people who have gone deeper into that class.

[suplee215]

Depends on how much your DM wants to kill you or just wants to make you heroes. If people do die then perhaps they will begin to shift their strategy to me closer to what you desire.

[Corran]

I think I get you, op. Here is how I handle it. I think of it as doing my best with what I m given. For example, I consider the choices of the other players to be locked, and then I lock some of my choices that make sense to me (like class, race, skills, etc), to the degree that pleases me. Then I look at what the group looks like, and I try to make the best of it with everything that I have not predetermined for my character.

That's just my own silly trick for thinking I've done the best I could. I treat a base as a given, a fixed thing, and I try to build on top of it the in best way I can.

[MrWesson22]

Yeah, that makes sense. I had a two character concept I tried to get one of them to play with me, but nobody was interested. It was a sorcadin with mounted combatant riding a moon druid. I would have been happy playing either character.

[Contrast]

So we basically cant fight anything with flight, terrain that makes melee characters useless, or decent AOE, and we will be fine.

Hexblades should really still pick up eldritch blast and all physical combatants should carry a ranged weapon regardless (you said you were going as a ranged combatant yourself anyway).

Your AOE defence if that hopefully you'll all have more hitpoints and will be sensible enough for the people with range to target spellcasters and the melee people try not to bunch up.

If the rogue is going thief maybe suggest the healer feat to help get people back on their feet in combat but other than that I wouldn't worry. At the end of the day if it really becomes a problem, someone will die and they can decide if they want to plug the hole at that point :smalltongue:

[Decstarr]

I'm really having trouble understanding what you want from us here :-) The way I see it, here's the situation:

A) You play the character concept you'd like to play
or
B) You adjust and play the most useful class for the group (aka a Wizard in this scenario I'd say).

If A, there's again several options:

A1) Your DM is actually one of the good ones and will adjust the encounters so your group has a chance to actually survive, everyone will have fun in this one, though you might not be fighting too many really mobile beasts like big dragons e.g.
A2) Your DM is either bad or wants to run a pre-made module and is sticking strictly to his script. In this scenario, your lack of range/versatility might eventually kill some of you or even the whole group. While a few PCs dying isn't the worst thing, the way you described your fellow players makes me assume that they'd just go with another martial PC yet again. So you'd be in some type of vicious cycle here.

If B, no problem whatsoever.

My suggestion if you have any doubt: Talk to your DM and ask how the DM sees the situation with an all out martial group. If he's understanding and/or capable enough, it shouldn't be a problem to generate encounters that are challenging but manageable for any type of group.

[Squiddish]

Okay, general strategy:

Give the smallest character a potent weapon, or spiked armor or somesuch.
Make sure they have a free hand for grappling
Have them ready an attack
Have the strongest character stow their weapon
Have the strongest character throw the smallest character at the enemy.

[Citan]

So, last campaign, I was the second player to make my character. The first made a drunken master monk adapted from 3.5. I made a longbow UA ranger. The other players made a dual wielding UA ranger, a paladin, and a barbarian. At level 3, I had my DM kill off my ranger, and I made a life cleric 1/abjuration wizard x. It played out pretty well, and we took the campaign from 1 to 20.

Now we are starting a new campaign. I made my character first. He's again ranged dps, but will this time eventually be battlemaster fighter 12, assassin rogue 7, ua ranger 1. In come the other players with all martial melee characters except one playing a hexblade (so again melee). I discussed switching to a bard or druid to provide some support with the other players, but they all said to play my fighter since I did that same basic thing last campaign for the good of the party.

I love the group of guys I play with. We have a lot of fun. But they all make martial characters, they all take stat bonuses and almost never feats, and they don't multiclass at all. Obviously, a party and all characters don't need to be optimized to work, but I would hope for some synergy. In this current party, only the ranger and warlock will even have spell slots. There is another rogue who is going thief, and the other fighter is going champion. What would y'all do? Try to talk the warlock into taking inspiring leader? Try to talk the fighter or rogue into taking a couple cleric or bard levels? Or just let everyone do their thing and rely on tons of healing potions for out of combat healing and killing things very quickly?
Well, it will be challenging for sure but it will also certainly create interesting challenges and epic stories. ;)

Since you seem to be the only one ready to take feats, I'd say it's a good thing you went DEX based Fighter. ;)

1) Take only Sharpshooter. You will rarely need to be in melee, and too many other things to do with bonus action to bother with Crossbow Expert (+ party deals ample damage already and you lose much range).
2) Obviously max DEX.
You still have 3 feats to play with.
- Ritual Caster Wizard: unless obviously Warlock takes the similar (better) Invocation. Seems not much at first, but just having ways to avoid surprise (Alarm), sustain the party in exploration and traveling (LTH, Detect spells, etc) will help immensely. And you will unlock Phantom Steed as well, many uses for it whoever mounts it.
- Mage Slayer: seeing as how nearly nobody has any casting (so no Counterspell a fortiori), casters will be your big nemesis: being able to break them ASAP should be your priority: have it as early as possible, like 2nd feat, 3rd at most).

You could also adapt your classes.
- Swap Assassin archetype for Thief (use objects) or Mastermind (Help as bonus action) archetype. Thief especially if your DM allows potions of healing as "objects" (normally they are magical objects so fall aside of what Thief can do as bonus action).
- Drop Rogue levels to 3 only, so you can get some levels in Cleric, Druid, or both (Life Cleric 1 / Arctic -Hold Person- or Desert -Silence- or Swamp -Darkness- or Underdark -Web- Druid 3 recommended): you can usually Bless the ones the most threatened, you can help sustain the party with (Life) Goodberries or Healing Words, you help everybody sneak with Pass Without Trace

What I'd suggest: Wood Elf with 16 DEX, 16 CON and 14 WIS OR Variant Human with Sharpshooter feat (don't use the +10 damage immediately though) and 16 DEX, 14 CON and 14 WIS. I'd recommend Variant Human for once because you won't need CON that much early but it frees one more feat for Ritual Caster so you can cover utility. ;)
Start Fighter up to 6, maybe grabbing a level of Life Cleric just before/after if you feel your party has difficulties with saves. Bump DEX and grab Ritual Caster. Then take Ranger 1, then Fighter 8 (Mage Slayer is largely due by now in most campaigns). Then whatever you want for the rest.

[jaappleton]

Go totally and completely against the grain here, and have as much fun as you can.

Great Old One Warlock

Everyone is focusing on bashing skulls, but you INVADE them!

[Sariel Vailo]

Fighter purple dragon knight inspiring leader with martial manuevers ala feat agin to give the extra players more hits move them give advantage etc or grab healer as your feat

[Potato_Priest]

As others have said, the DM should be able to adapt.

The most fun campaign I ever DMed for was composed entirely of martial characters, only 1 of them ranged. I could actually set up encounters and scenarios for the players to handle without a magic user glancing at his spellsheet and solving the entire thing with one action.

Balancing encounters for a martial/melee party is much, much easier than balancing them for a bunch of casters, because caster combat/problem solving is super swingy. You guys are going to have a blast.

[MasterMercury]

Okay, general strategy:

Give the smallest character a potent weapon, or spiked armor or somesuch.
Make sure they have a free hand for grappling
Have them ready an attack
Have the strongest character stow their weapon
Have the strongest character throw the smallest character at the enemy.



This. So much this.

[Osrogue]

Eh, if the party is all melee, there are a few things you can do.

Pick up a few javelins, for starters, and pass them around to the melee characters.
You can play a ranged character, or someone with a decent ranged attack.
Let things fall as they may. If you're concerned, let them know it's in their best interest to have some ranged option just in case they encounter something that won't enter face-stabbing range. If you've done that, let it go.

It's not the most prudent thing to ignore ranged combat altogether, but players should have as much freedom to make poor tactical choices as they do to make optimal tactical choices.