Party Optimization Part two: Mechanics

We talked about creating a party that has similar goals and perhaps even an overarching theme such as all arcane characters in part one. Now we’re going to talk about making mechanical choices that will create a synergistic party. Once you have agreed on a party theme, or at least gotten some ideas how the characters could be connected, the next step is actually creating a party. When creating a party you want to look at how all the pieces fit together, instead of simply making individual characters on their own. Remember the goal here is to make a party that runs like a well oiled machine. Occasionally a party will work well together from happenstance. Additionally, if the characters and players all have similar goals a party can run smoothly as well. However, a party built together with a theme, with short term and long term goals, and with an eye towards working as a unit, can run sensationally well.

The first step to making a mechanically optimized party is to pick a theme. Your theme should include some basic story ideas, how the characters will interact and what the party will be good at. No one character can be good at everything and the same is true of adventuring parties. While you can certainly have a party that does a bit of everything, having a more focused party is going to shine brighter. You certainly want to cover your bases in party creation to make sure you don’t have any glaring holes. For example a party that is functionally blind or socially illiterate. The main thing is to come up with some sort of concept for your party such as our party always wants to go first, or our party never wants to miss. Of course you will never be able to fully reach those goals, but if you have them you can make informed choices to come close to reaching them.

There is some inherent synergy in choosing classes that share a power source. For example, arcane characters tend to have some great controller options across the board, divine characters tend to have a touch of leader in them, most martial characters have good basic attacks and warlords can give out basic attacks like candy. This is nice because the game rewards you for making a party with a theme. I’ve never been in a party of all arcane characters, but I imagine it would be fun frustrating all the monsters into oblivion.

Yeah it's kinda like that

Playing a group of characters that share a race has less inherent synergy. Still there are some options that can be synergistic, and even more options that can work well together on a basic level. A team of all Devas could work well, especially for a group of divine characters. The bonuses like up, and Devas make excellent Divine characters thematically. You will get a lot of mileage out of Memory of 1,000 lifetimes and the Deva’s resistances are a nice bonus. Some feats are particularly useful for a group of Devas. These include Radiant Power, Battle Intuition and Auspicious Lineage in the heroic tier. Shared Memories is an excellent feat, but is for Warlords only. One interesting tactic could be an entire party of multiclass Warlords. The multiclass Warlord feats out of Martial Power 2 are all excellent choices for this. The party would get a ton of benefits when anyone used an action point and the party’s memory power would become a poll available for all to use whenever needed.

If you never want to miss a party of all elves could be interesting. Elven bonuses would work well for a primal themed adventuring party if you wanted to go the hippy tree hugger route. There are plenty of good feats for Elven characters, but nothing terribly game changing. One interesting idea is to make a party which includes at least one Elf, at least one Eladrin, and at least one Drow to make use of Caelynnvala'sBoons.

No Beast will escape my tiny pixie wrath

Almost any race could work to build a themed adventuring party around. Some races have more support than others, but as long as the party tries to work together your party of pixie beast slayers should do quite well. The character optimization race guide wiki is an excellent resource if you are looking to make an optimized party of all one race. Another excellent place to look is this post on Dungeon's Master.

Here are some other thoughts you should keep in mind when building an optimized party. Your leader is a resource for more than just healing. Healing is an important aspect of any leader, but there is more to being a good leader than healing. There is an excellent guide to leaders here. The guide lists several aspects of being a good leader, and all of the leader classes excel at some aspects but not others. Keeping the other classes needs in mind while building your leader is a key to successful party optimization. Several classes, most notably the Blackguard, gain bonuses from having temporary hit points. Having a leader that gives out temps is great for those classes. A class like a barbarian that likes wielding big damage, low accuracy weapons would love a leader that helps with accuracy such as a tactical warlord.  On the other side very accurate characters like Avengers and Rangers would love a damage boosting leader like a Panther Shaman. The Panther Shaman works especially well with a Ranger because the damage roll bonus would apply to both Twin Strikes ramping up the damage even more.

Healing surges are a party resource. You are only as resilient as your weakest link. If you want to keep going after others have fallen you should start to think of healing surges as a party resource. There are a couple of really good ways to extend the party’s day by passing around surges. The Paladin can give out some healing by using Lay on Hands. Clerics, Shamans and Artificers have some good options for surgeless healing. Artificers in particular are good at this because their encounter heals can be replenished by any party member’s surges. If none of those options work well in your group you should make sure that someone has access to the Comrade’s Succor Ritual. It is a first level ritual and well worth the price.

Then the Jaguar ate his face! True story. 

Guild and Tribal feats are your friend. If you can get the whole party on board the guild and tribal feats are well worth the investment. The feats all give a solid benefit for taking them, and the benefits are improved for each other party member that takes them. If you have a good theme in mind the feats can help solidify it.

I hope you find some of these ideas helpful when you are building your next party. Even if you don’t want to make a totally optimized party, thinking about a theme for your party and making some choices together can lead to a richer gaming experience. In the future I would like to post a complete party that uses these ideas including some basic backgrounds and connections between the characters. If you have made a party cooperatively or just have some ideas for how it might work, please leave a comment below. Until next time remember don’t let your DM tell you no. It’s always, “Yes, and…?”

Party Optimization Part One of Two: Theme and Story

Much has been written on the subject character optimization. I know Charop is a touchy subject, with bad feelings on both sides of the issue. For every person who simply wants to play a fun and effective character there is a pun pun waiting in the wings, and for every person who simply wants to play a concept and doesn’t really care much about the mechanics there is a person who plays a character who is CN and has a 3 cha just to be a douche. Sadly many times people in the opposing camps can’t see there is a middle ground. It is perfectly ok to want a character that is confident and effective in combat and out of it. It is also perfectly fine to play a character that has a personality and a backstory and doesn’t care what magic item or feat they are picking up next. I have done both, sometimes even on the same character.

Much can be accomplished by working together

I’ve actually gone pretty far afield here. I was saying that a lot has been written about optimizing an individual character. However, D and D is a social game, a cooperative game. You would think that some thought would be given to creating a whole party that works well together. Instead almost all of what you see is geared towards making a single character do well completely apart from any of the rest of the party. I have found this to be true in most of the research I have done, as well as at most of my game sessions. I have seen a very few synergestic parties, such as the radiant mafia, but they are rare. In addition most of the times I have tried to get my fellow players interested in even bare bones party creation I have been met with apathy if not outright derision. While 4e has done much to make party synergy possible, it has also done much to make it unnecessary.

With the self healing available to all characters and the general heartiness of most 4e characters, a case can be made that no attempts need to be made to organize your party, let alone optimize it. It is certainly possible to play 4e and be successful with a thrown together party of all rogues. However, just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or would even work well. I can’t tell you how tired I am of hearing, “You don’t need to have a leader in 4e” whenever I ask my friends to sit and make a party with me. I tend to be more focused on the mechanics and I will address the mechanics in part two. For now it is just as important to have a party that will work together for story purposes.

The Thief is behind me isn't he?

If you have played D and D for any amount of time you have seen an example of a party that does not work well together. The most egregious examples can be attributed to individual characters. Some of these include the thief who insists on stealing from the party, the cleric who refuses to heal the necromancer, (A cleric who refuses to heal anyone is the subject of another post), or the Paladin who has to be sent for a sandwich anytime the party needs to actually do something. While some of this is just general douchery, much of it could have been avoided by simply discussing a party concept before the game started.

Even if you haven’t played with an asshat paladin or a steal everything that isn’t nailed down thief you have probably experienced a party that didn’t gel together for whatever reason. Having a party concept or theme would be most useful in story driven or roleplay heavy games because part of what moves the game forward is interactions between the players. Some of my favorite moments as a DM have been listening to the players talk to each other in character. It’s great because it gives me a chance to sit back and just enjoy the game for a while instead of constantly working to keep the game going. However, even in dungeon of the week style games having at least a little idea of how the party will work together can be very enriching. I have a couple of suggestions for building a party that has a theme, or at least some connections, which I think will greatly aid your games. You may still run into an asshat Paladin on occasion, but at least you will know about it before hand. Heck maybe you could make a whole party of them.

And I will execute great vengeance upon them
with furious rebukes; and they shall know
 that I am the LORD, when
I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

I have two suggestions that really are most important. I cannot stress how much each of them is the most important thing you need to do when making a party. In fact I am struggling to decide which is more important, because they are both that important. First, talk to your DM. It is very likely that your DM has some ideas about the campaign theme, and what types of characters will be appropriate. Additionally half of DMing is hooking characters and if you give the DM hooks that will not only work for your character, but for the entire party he will thank you.

Second, talk to the other players. Really all of my tips and suggestions boil down to having some effective communication before the game starts. If you are the type of player who likes to create a character and go and forget about the rest of the party, be open to some communication about the party. On the other hand if you are the kind of player who enjoys planning out party concepts, be sure you are willing to listen to what the other players want to play. If your concept of a party doesn’t include arcane magic and one of the other players always plays a wizard, at least be open to changing the concept. If you are the DM encourage your players to talk about a concept, or give them some options for a concept. Maybe you could even have a session dedicated to party creation. The rest of the ideas require having a discussion about what the party is going to be, and how to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Party of Wizards for the win

One way to tie the group together is by playing characters that all use the same power source. One of the greatest advances 4e made was making it possible to have a balanced party based around a single power source. Before 4e you had few options for healing that did not include the cleric, and if you wanted big flashy spells you picked the wizard. 3e had a few options, such as the bard, but the bard excelled at being the fifth man, and was a lot less good at being whatever fourth man he was trying to be. If you wanted to play a party full of mages, which is an interesting idea, you had to hope your DM crafted adventures just for you or you had to be very careful while playing until you were high enough level to break the game with your spells. Even then you still had no really good way to heal. Now in 4e it is possible to play a group of people from a single church or mage school or tribe without straining credulity.

Another idea is to have the characters all be the same race. One of the best campaigns I have played in used the Revenant race to keep us all tied together thematically while also giving us a great deal of freedom to be individuals. The story was that thousands of years ago we had each been great hero’s who were returning to save the world from some great danger. Unfortunately, the gods of evil tainted our return, bringing us back as undead and with only a fraction of our former power. Other races would work as well for creating a themed party, but I really like Revenants for versatility.

Another great idea for a themed party is to have all of the characters work for the same organization. If most of the players share a power source or a race, but a few want to branch out into something else, this would actually be the best option. It is easy to imagine a single human working for the Elven army. Of course some outliers wouldn’t make as much sense. Again doing some of the legwork in creating the game should make your DM happy, but always double check to make sure there isn’t a specific organization the DM would think especially appropriate.

It is entirely possible that you won’t be able to come up with theme or concept that works for all the players. There are even times when it isn’t appropriate to have a party theme. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when creating characters for a party that doesn’t have a theme. I contend that even if you don’t want to have a theme you do need to have some connections between the party members. I suggest that you form a connection of some kind with two other party members when making your backgrounds. If all the players do this it will create a web of connections which will make it easier to motivate the party as a whole, and will also give the party a reason to overcome the petty squabbles that often come with the adventuring life.

Just as bad as the
Asshat Paladin
Only smellier

Additionally when you are making a character you should find out what the other player’s dealbreakers are. I know of several people who hate undead and will not play with them under any circumstances. If that is the case you probably already have enough asshats at the table, don’t play an asshat Necromancer. If you have any dealbreakers you should also let the other players know.

Hopefully you can get the players at your table interested in having a pregame conversation about party theme and interconnections. I urge you to give it a try at your games and see if it doesn’t improve the relationships, not only between the characters but between the players as well. I will delve deeper into the mechanics of an optimized party sometime next week. Until next time remember, don’t let your DM tell you no. It’s always, “Yes, and…?”