One-Class Parties

[ChrisMcDee]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

In spite of all the practical difficultues, I maintain that this is the perfect environment for the Paladin.

[Tengu]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[SolkaTruesilver]

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

[Anxe]

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]

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]

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]

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" 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Take any book/movie about a "single class" 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]

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]

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