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View Full Version : Single-Class Parties - Ever Tried One?



Runa
2007-10-29, 05:10 PM
This isn't necessarily something my group's ever going to do, but I'm curious how many have tried it, as I know at least one person on here had a party of five bards once.

The idea is a party consisting of people who all are of the same class, or, in a gestalt game, all share one of their classes. Yes, you'd have to brew the adventure yourself because every stock adventure is set up to require a healing person and a rogue and at least one or two people that can bash things in the face. But, it could be interesting if tailored to the party...

For instance:

All Paladins - could be a group on a mission together for their church, or, even more tantalizing, Paladins who all follow different gods who must overcome their potential misunderstandings to come together and face a threat so great that it NEEDS that many available Paladins just to deal with it. The cool thing about a party of Paladins, is they're ALL bash-em-ups with a touch of casting, including a little Lay On Hands - so you could get away with not having to have a Cleric in there too. And in a gestalt game, it'd be even more interesting, with say, a Bardadin and a Barb//Pal and a Monk//Pal and so on - very different types you know - needing to work together.

All Bards - in a Bard-tailored adventure, and with the versatality of the class to begin with, this could be really exciting, with them focusing on different skills and different performance specialities - you could focus one somewhat rogue-like and another more fighter-like if you wanted to have a basically tweaked version of the usual party format, even. And in a gestalt game? Freakin' awesomely weird! Barbarian//Bard working alongside a Bardadin and a Bard//Rogue and any number of other odd combinations. Druid//Bard, even(? Does Druid have an alignment restriction? I forget; I've never played one before)! And the backstory'd be easy - they're obviously a group of traveling performers, right? They could also be a group of spies disguised as such, though. The possibilities are many...

All Rogues - A group of skillmonkeys together? Interesting prospects. And the lack of alignment restrictions for the Rogue means they could be anything from a merry band of CG thieves, to a set of malicious highway bandits, a group of spies or a team of assassins. Or a really sneaky group of treasure-hunters...

All Barbarians - Can you say "brutal invading min-army"? I knew you could! Or, conversely, the tribal natives defending their home - or, a band of its last survivors, now forced to wander, nomads in strange lands.

Any other thoughts? Anybody tried any of these before?

-Runa

StickMan
2007-10-29, 05:24 PM
I've always wanted to do this in a military campaign in which the PC are all soldiers with fighter on one side.

Frosty
2007-10-29, 05:29 PM
You want an army? Go all Druids. Not only do you have 4 animal companions, but you all can summon lots of critters every round!

Krasus
2007-10-29, 05:32 PM
Our group went with all clerics. Enough interesting domain powers gave us some decent fighters type. Lots of heals available since it was a good campaign. I took a lot of focus in conjuration for planar allies. We couldn't mimic a wizard or sorcerer perfectly, but someone was using force domain and whichever domain gives dispel magic.

Rogue 7
2007-10-29, 05:36 PM
I'll be starting an LOTR-based PbP campaign soon (hopefully). We've got 2 Fighters, 2 Barbarians, and a Non-magic Ranger (I think- he may still have the spells). So, although it isn't a single-class, we've got almost no spellcasting.

Runa
2007-10-29, 05:37 PM
You want an army? Go all Druids. Not only do you have 4 animal companions, but you all can summon lots of critters every round!

True - I didn't think of that!

martyboy74
2007-10-29, 05:40 PM
The other nice thing about everyone sharing a class is that you don't really have to make the loot exclusive for one player. All the wizards could share the same spellbook.

As a side note, you couldn't have a Pal//Barb without houserules because of alignment restrictions.

-Cor-
2007-10-29, 05:41 PM
I've done all melee or all caster, but never all one class.

I think you'd have to have a pretty solid group of RPers to keep it from getting boring... even with gestalt.

brian c
2007-10-29, 05:56 PM
You want an army? Go all Druids. Not only do you have 4 animal companions, but you all can summon lots of critters every round!

Party of Dread Necromancers. I think a couple dozen undead each would be a low estimate, plus if everyone takes Tomb-Tainted Soul then negative energy is your best friend. One of the party members can just cast nothing but Inflict spells and be the healer.

Catch
2007-10-29, 06:10 PM
Four Wizards would be pretty wicked. You could spread the paranoia around, at least, everyone trading off casting Foresight and Greater Prying Eyes. Four times the Time Stops, four times the Polymorphs, four times the Gates...

It'd be an industrial cheese factory, for sure.

SilverClawShift
2007-10-29, 06:12 PM
We've done a few thematic games at our table. Usually we just pick a concept to go with, and try to adhere to it. We have had a few single-class campaigns though.

We did a campaign where no one was allowed to have more than a 1/2 BAB at any given time. That one was pretty fun.

We did a campaign that was all bards. Even the bad guys were all bards. Our DM just stared at us for a minute we said "We're all going to be bards". Then he said "Allright, let's do it".
It was actually a great campaign. It started as a low-level Phantom of the Opera/Scooby Doo/Murder Mystery type story and rolled out from there. Eventually we wound up going against a bard-lich who was like something out of Thriller. Corpses dancing around her while she sang and laughed.

Good times.

Kurald Galain
2007-10-29, 06:48 PM
I fail to see why one would want to restrict all characters to a certain game-technical concept.

Sure, an "army" campaign where everybody needs a role that fits in the army, I can see that. Or a "gnome" campaign, where everybody is a gnome or something like that. But requiring everybody to use the same mechanics... why???

Little_Rudo
2007-10-29, 06:56 PM
I don't think I could stand all one class... I'm a big fan of niche-filling, and although some classes offer enough variability (rogue, druid, cleric, etc.), it seems like a big bunch of redundancy. I would like theme games, though! A campaign where all the characters are sent on a mission for a church, and consist of divine-oriented classes, like paladin, cleric (normal and cloistered), divine bard, maybe druid if the god permits... a wilderness game with druid, ranger, wilderness rogue or barbarian... yeah, I could dig a thematically-themed game.

Hzurr
2007-10-29, 07:04 PM
I've done all rogue.

We had one "Face" rogue, who focused on charisma and interaction based skills; a "sneaky" rogue, who focused on trapfinding and hide/move silently; and a "strong" rogue, who focused on damage output.

It worked really well.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-10-29, 07:35 PM
I guess I'm the only one who would do something Athurian with a group of all paladins.

*sniffle*

Temp
2007-10-29, 07:39 PM
In one of my groups, nearly everybody is always primarily Rogue. If somebody isn't, you could pretty safely bet that they'll still take a level at some point in their careers.

Why do we do that? I don't know, it usually just works out that way: If I want to play a Ranger I'll probably dip one level of the actual class and take the rest as a Rogue. If I want to play a Wizard I usually make a single-level Rogue/Spellthief dip at some point just to get skills onto my class list (which leads me to mention tht every character I've made since the option became available has had the Able Learner feat).

skywalker
2007-10-29, 07:41 PM
I fail to see why one would want to restrict all characters to a certain game-technical concept.

Sure, an "army" campaign where everybody needs a role that fits in the army, I can see that. Or a "gnome" campaign, where everybody is a gnome or something like that. But requiring everybody to use the same mechanics... why???

Always wanted to do an all-elf campaign. Always had that one friend who would only play dwarves, though(and it changed. It wasn't the same guy everytime!)


I guess I'm the only one who would do something Athurian with a group of all paladins.

*sniffle*

No, I'm totally with you. (But there's always those 6 other guys, who only play chaotic neutral...*rambles*)

Azerian Kelimon
2007-10-29, 07:44 PM
ALL FACTOTUMS! UWEHEHEHE! Everyone shall just fall 'n die. Seriously, you can do just about everything, and with the possibility of branching out, you'll pwnzorzize everything. But that's too cheesy, like taking four swordsages or wizards.

On the other end, and this one's for masochists, a full samurai party. Incapable of beating a housecat at level 20, anyone?

Irreverent Fool
2007-10-29, 07:46 PM
The other nice thing about everyone sharing a class is that you don't really have to make the loot exclusive for one player. All the wizards could share the same spellbook.

As a side note, you couldn't have a Pal//Barb without houserules because of alignment restrictions.

Yes you can, there'd just be an alignment change in there somewhere. Of course, he'd want to have started out as a barbarian and would lose his rage ability as a result of becoming lawful. (Starting as a paladin and going barbarian would be cool too fluff-wise, but eww for power-loss.)

Of course, since gestalt was mentioned, I assume there wouldn't be any problem using a paladin of freedom which are restricted to Chaotic Good and have only a slightly different spell list.

A current favorite NPC was a half-orc barbarian who had heard the call of a god and sought out civilization and eventually became a paladin. He'd even taken the pounce alternate class feature in exchange for fast movement so there was really no downside to wearing heavy armor (aside from the usual).

Edit: All commoners!

Doresain
2007-10-29, 07:55 PM
ive been in an nearly all-artificer game...4 artificers, a fighter and a rogue...

there was lots of blast rods that game o_O

Person_Man
2007-10-29, 10:05 PM
We've done an "all stealth" campaign. Everyone agreed to have respectable Hide/Move Silently, and work as a commando team. It was really fun. But I've never seen an "all Whatever" party before. It might work with a small group, or a one shot campaign. Otherwise, it'd just get boring, unless you're all full casters.

Ditto
2007-10-29, 10:37 PM
I did all commoners once... we had one of every (core) race, starting with 20 gold. It was a hoot! I wish he wouldn't've disappeared on us...

wadledo
2007-10-29, 10:41 PM
All scout game would be hil-freakin-larios.
Imagine, if you would:
DM: You see a group of orcs on that hill.
P1: lets run in circles around them until they get confused, then hit them with our xd6 damage.
other players: yes, lets do that.

MCerberus
2007-10-29, 10:57 PM
Or if you're masochistic an all monk party.

Guy_Whozevl
2007-10-30, 12:04 AM
All Aristocrat might work from a roleplaying standpoint: the rich nobles decide to go on a romp through the dungeon for fun and games, not truely realizing that every monster can't be bought off with gp.
An all Expert party would work as well, with each individual a specialist in something. If the campaign took place on a ship, it would be that much better (one siege engineer, one helmsman, one navigator, etc.)

Ninja Chocobo
2007-10-30, 12:05 AM
...
...
...
All Frenzied Berserkers.

Danin
2007-10-30, 12:17 AM
I did have the idea of an all Rogue party where you are given incresingly difficult places to break into until you become legendary in your city. It starts with places like inns and merchent houses and eventually into banks and noble estates. Finally, the arcane wisard's guild hall and the castle treasury would be interesting enough. Everyone would start as a rogue but since prestigue classes are allowed you might have a thief accrobat who fills the sneaky, agile part, someone who is more of a thug and beats the information out of people, a party face and a stealthy asassin type person. Everyone has their own unique roll but at the core is the same class.

Further more, it would require a lot more planning on the part of the DM and the players as you get to come up with wholy ellaborate scenarios. There is also the ever present risk of being raided by the city guard. From there it could be taken anywhere. Can you say inter-plannar theft?

(Too lazy to fix spelling)

triforcel
2007-10-30, 12:22 AM
You want an army? Go all Druids. Not only do you have 4 animal companions, but you all can summon lots of critters every round!

I can see it now.

Druid 4 in Round 3: Now I summon a Dire Tiger
DM: You can't.
D4: Why not?
DM: There's no more room!

Seriously though a single class campaign could be fun with the right players. The closest I've played was a gestalt campaign where everyone was full Warlock and then had their other class. The second closest was a campaign where everyone in the party had a few levels of rogue, and that one wasn't even planned.

The VP
2007-10-30, 12:49 AM
I played in a Pulp game where everyone was a rogue with a different specialty. I think we ended up with a 'face', a back-stab rogue, a sneaky trap-finding rogue, a TWF-duelist type (my character, who also happened to be French), and a fifth rogue who primarily focused on not being hit at all. It ended up working for the particular game, as it involved a lot of traps and thinking puzzles and, eventually, lots of Nazi killing.

Fishy
2007-10-30, 04:37 AM
Someone on these very boards put together an all Monk game, and someone else was trying to start one with all characters at least half Rogue.

Why? Because restrictions breed creativity!

Roderick_BR
2007-10-30, 04:59 AM
My group has done it some times.
Back in AD&D, everyone was elf wizard/something. I was a wizard/fighter, the others were a wizard/rogue, and a wizard/cleric.
Then when we got the complete fighter's handbook, we tried an all-fighter group, specialized in several styles.
In 3.x, we did an all-rogue team, each specialized in an area. We were planning into going into prestige classes later. I was going to be an assassin, and one of my friends would get some wizard levels and go arcane trickster.
I think that the rogues team had a better chance of being more varied in 3.x

sun_tzu
2007-10-30, 06:27 AM
Paladin party. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15655)

valadil
2007-10-30, 09:53 AM
I ran an all rogue game set in a thieves guild. I chose rogue because it always bothered me how the rogue wanted to sneak out and go looting but would either get ignored or would get alone time and the party got bored. The campaign was meant to be entirely those rogue shenanigans. I also thought of doing a wizard school (perhaps with each player as a different specialist wizard) but didn't want to deal with allusions to Harry Potter.

Anyway, players could multiclass but had to be rogue types. I think we even had a straight ninja that was close enough.

The game worked pretty well, but I would have liked to see some more variety from my players. I think we had three who went for two weapon fighting to get extra sneak attacks. Nobody took my advice to have ways to damage undead, and nobody maxed out UMD. It was a fun little campaign though. There was a ton of sneak attack damage once they realized how nasty grease was and I had to double the HP of most MM monsters just to make the fights last a couple rounds.

Indon
2007-10-30, 10:39 AM
Or if you're masochistic an all monk party.

Masochistic? By RAW, they'd be epic within a week!

DM: "All right, you have entered the lair of the Dragon.
Players: "We anger the dragon and run away, laughing!"
DM: "Grumble. Take your encounter XP..."

They'd be the most powerful Lawful Evil hooligans ever.

Curmudgeon
2007-10-30, 10:50 AM
Our group went with all clerics. ... We couldn't mimic a wizard or sorcerer perfectly, but someone was using force domain and whichever domain gives dispel magic.
Dispel Magic

Abjuration
Level: Brd 3, Clr 3, Drd 4, Magic 3, Pal 3, Sor/Wiz 3 All Clerics have Dispel Magic. Or did you perhaps mean the Inquisition domain, which grants a +4 bonus on dispel checks?

On the original topic, I've done this with Rogues with great success. A couple of them had max Use Magic Device ranks and used lots of wands. We got all our buffing and healing that way. These two would then fight defensively and flank. The other two of us were the combat specialists: lots of sneak attack boosts like Telling Blow and Craven. If we found something that was immune to sneak attack we'd all keep our distance and just use missile weapons.

Indon
2007-10-30, 11:00 AM
All Clerics have Dispel Magic. Or did you perhaps mean the Inquisition domain, which grants a +4 bonus on dispel checks?

On the original topic, I've done this with Rogues with great success. A couple of them had max Use Magic Device ranks and used lots of wands. We got all our buffing and healing that way. These two would then fight defensively and flank. The other two of us were the combat specialists: lots of sneak attack boosts like Telling Blow and Craven. If we found something that was immune to sneak attack we'd all keep our distance and just use missile weapons.

He probably meant the Magic domain; it provides Dispel Magic, as well as a number of other Wiz/Sor spells.

Darkxarth
2007-10-30, 11:17 AM
I have two quotes on the subject of an all-Rogue party...


Oh ho! You are astounded by my quick roguish wit, are you not?
Although......if you were to make...oh, for the opposite effect,
AN ENTIRE ROGUE PARTY! .....-drools at the thought-
The Human Rogue "Face"- Master of Charisma
The Halfling Rogue "Silent"- The Small Silence
The Dwarven Rogue "Smush"- Frontline
The Gnomish Rogue "Trick"- Intel
The Elven Rogue "Point"- Dex Bow-nus
The Half-Orc Rogue "Huh?"- The Bait.


And this one


4 Rogues.

Rogue 1: "Rogue 2, You disarm the trap and I'll..."
Rogue 2: "Hey, I disarmed the trap LAST time!"
Rogue 1: "Yeah, and you're pretty good at it, so..."
Rogue 2: "You know something about this trap, don't you? It's going to disintegrate me or something..."
Rogue 1: "No, I just..."
Rogue 3: "I pickpocket Rogue 1 while he's distracted."
Rogue 4: "Traitor! I sneak attack Rogue 3!"
Rogue 1: "Look, now if you just disarm..."
Rogue 2: "Rogue 4, stop attacking Rogue 3!"
Rogue 4: "But he..."
Rogue 2: "I feint and sneak attack Rogue 4!"
Rogue 3: (Fails stabilize check) "Urgle."
Rogue 4: "That's it, Rogue 2!" (UMD scroll of fireball)
DM: "You're in the blast.."
Rogue 4: "I don't care!"
Rogues 2, 3, 4: "Urgle..."
Rogue 1: "Why do I bother?"

Yvanehtnioj
2007-10-30, 10:37 PM
I have had the pleasure of playing in an all wizard (mage specialists) party. We were at a magic school in Karameikos. (This was way before Harry Potter was in existence.) It was a lot of fun. We spent our first few minutes sharing spells with one another.

Kaelik
2007-10-30, 11:39 PM
I always wanted to do an all Warlock party, but have one person go into each of the PrCs in complete Mage and at least one stay straight Warlock. You could have a Glaive Lock and the Eldritch Disciple take care of Melee and everyone else could blast to their hearts content.