A Grandslam Party

[Ser Loras]

This thread will be out of date as soon as Xanathar's Guide makes its way into our eager little paws but, I thought I'd see what people thought about this anyway.

Has anyone ever played with a full party - i.e., every single class represented in the group?

What was it like? And, I guess it pays to ask, is it too big a team to be functional?

Since I'm playing once a week in a place in the city right now, I'm thinking I might try set up a Roll20 based on this idea...and wanted to hear people's thoughts, for good or for ill! :D

[gloryblaze]

I've got a pretty huge group - right now it's pretty manageable (1 sorcadin, 1 champion/barbarian, 1 warlock, 1 paladin/druid, 2 bards, 1 beast master ranger, 1 assassin/battlemaster/hunter), but before uni started up I think I had 10 or 11 players coming to every session. Early on we were pretty close to the "grand slam" (ignore the silliness of the names, and the blatant plagiarism from sources such as Blizzard. I had some very new, and very silly, players for this campaign):

Henry Fordring (Human Paladin of the Crown)
Shia LaBeouf (Human Enchanter Wizard)
Luna Frejola (Drow War Cleric)
Gadgen (Human Purple Dragon Knight Fighter)
Medivh Gul'dan (Human Assassin Rogue)
Hammerwing Korrin (Dragonborn Valor Bard)
Blacksol (Human Wild Magic Sorcerer)
Alfred Baldwin (Human Fiend Patron Warlock)
Adrian Monk (Human Open Hand Monk)
George the Ranger (Human Hunter Ranger)
Jenny McQueen (Human Totem Barbarian)

The main problems I had was balancing out action economy in combat. I had to either give enemies number nearly equal to the party (which drags out combat a LOT) or else use traits like Reactive or Legendary Actions to give enemies out-of-turn actions. I also ended up using blatantly over-CRd creatures. I think I had them fight a marilith (with a couple quasits, too) when the highest leveled member was Level 4, and they utterly destroyed her. They also chewed through a boss fight that was an ancient red dragon and an ancient blue dragon (working together) at around level 12, if I remember right. Although in that fight they got several crits, no nat 1s, and neither breath weapon recharged more than once I think. Also there were a lot of terrain features to abuse and limit the dragons' mobility (it was an indoor fight)

[KorvinStarmast]

Has anyone ever played with a full party - i.e., every single class represented in the group? Yes. We played an OD&D game with three fighters, 1 magic user, 1 cleric, 1 thief. (The DM didn't care for assassins and monks).
A year later, we added a druid. (Eldritch wizardry had come out)
Good times.

[JellyPooga]

Hmm...interesting. I think it might also be fun to A) theorycraft and B) play a party with as few characters as possible, but all the Classes. For example;

The Warrior: Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue [Str/Dex]
The Guide: Ranger/Druid/Monk [Dex/Wis]
The Priest: Cleric/Paladin/Warlock [Wis/Cha]
The Arcanist: Bard/Sorcerer/Wizard [Cha/Int]

I can see all these MC builds working in one way or another (though I think The Arcanist suffers most with lack of spell level progression). If anyone has suggestions on alternative combos and/or level breaks for these MC builds, I'd like to hear them.