Welcome to a new series on my (usually defunct) blog. This series will talk about running a game, and running a great game that everyone loves. The first topic on this will be actually creating a party.
Party Composition
The first thing a lot of people worry about in the party is “balance.” Do we have enough front-line fighters? Do we have a rogue? How about a cleric? Can we track, and who’s going to talk to people? Unfortunately this often leaves people playing characters that they just don’t want to be playing. I hate, for example, playing rogues. I find rogues exceedingly boring, since all I have to do is hurtle several d6s in combat. But what happens if the rest of my part wants to play clerics and wizards? Do we just play without a rogue?
It’s really the duty of the GM to say, “Yes. Yes you can play without a rogue.” See, a rogue is only necessary if there are doors that *need* to be picked. So if there is no rogue in your party, you can just not put loot in locked chests, and not require people to go through locked doors that they can’t simply bash down. ”No inescapable pit traps” isn’t exactly a conflicted design space. Or what if no one takes track?
I had an adventure that centered around tracking someone down. The party managed to do it without the “track” feat because I was able to knock the DC down far enough. If they hadn’t done that, eventually by asking around town they could have found out there was a local wizard’s tower that they would probably want to investigate. If they hadn’t done that(you know, pass a DC 15 gather info check after trying a couple of days) the wizard would basically have sent someone to “deal” with them… who could have been questioned to figure out where the wizard was. All of this is done while staying well within the rules.
In fact it’s generally useful to have two or three backup methods for getting your PCs to where they need to go. This isn’t “leading them by the nose,” but rather just developing an adventure with the understanding that sometimes your party rolls 1s instead of 10s. It also lets your party develop itself according to how it feels the characters need to develop rather than worrying about “party needs.” Hell, worst case scenario you can always make a tracker available.
Really the only party roles that need filling that can’t be solved by handing out magic items are these: damage dealer. Someone somewhere on the team has to be able to deal damage at some point. It doesn’t need to be the same person, but if your entire party wants to play “guy with sword and shield” then I highly recommend NOT sending them up against a bunch of baddies with DR10/bludgeoning. I’ll discuss that more in the future under “designing encounters,” but as a general rule of thumb the onus is on you, the Game Master, to design encounters that fit the party rather than on the players to design characters that fit the encounters.
Stat Generation
To buy or not to buy, that is the age-old question of seasoned GMs. There are many methods of stat generation that can be used for characters, and there are advantages or disadvantages or both to all of them. This is all based on my experience of playing with various people, but I’ll at least touch on all of them.
Standard- The standard generation system is “4d6b3″ or roll 4d6 and keep the highest 3. Variants include “5d6b3″ and allowing the users to roll several sets of this and keep the one they prefer. Personally this is my favorite, and usually I like to give players between 3-6 sets to chose from or go with the 5d6b3 set. It’s important to allow generous re-rolls on this, and not from what the DMG or PHB says are “appropriate” for re-rolls. Generally speaking let your players re-roll anything without at least 2 stats that are larger than 14s, and always let them re-roll anything that has a total net bonus (add all the bonuses together) of +1 or less. It’s not that these stats are necessarily unplayable, but they do tend to be unfun for players. Another good rule of thumb is “if the elite array looks better, reroll.” PCs are supposed to be above the elite array. Granted, there are some times when a character will want to keep a seemingly sub-optimal stat generation (18 14 12 6 6 8 might be more desirable than 14, 14, 12, 11, 10, 10, 10 for example) so let the players pick whatever stats they want. Just remember to offer the rerolls for bad or unplayable stats, because above all you want your players to have fun.
Point Buy- Point buy generated stats are generated by starting with 8s, and then “buying” your stats up using points. Higher stats cost more points, so buying from 8 to a 10 costs 2 points while buying from a 16 to an 18 costs 6 points. This is the golden standard for “testing” builds. When you’re trying to see what’s optimal or what’s not, or what’s powerful or what’s not, or really trying to keep every party member on the exact same plane in terms of starting out without any randomization to it, use the point buy. Point buy is nice to add as an option in online games where people don’t want to use dice rollers to determine their stats. Generally speaking the stats from a point buy will be lower than rolling if you allow re-rolls, but the characters will be more powerful. The most common point buys are 28 or 35, with any number really being possible. I recommend 35 for non-magic users, and 28 for magic users. One major advantage to point buy is that it helps you balance games for lower to mid levels. Letting a fighter start with a 35 point buy is a huge advantage over the wizard starting at a 20 point buy… though obviously 20 points is really low. Expect character’s stats with a 28 point buy to look like (18, 14, 14, 8, 8, 8).
Elite Array- Your stats are 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Go. I <expletive deleted> hate the Elite Array and feel like it’s the worst possible stat generation method. It’s used exclusively for NPCs and specifically designed for NPCs with PC classes… who are, by definition, supposed to be less inherently awesome than PC classes. This is also known as the “25 point buy” (and not even the most optimized one at that) and generates characters that are largely frustrating to play… especially at lower levels. If you’re planning on starting a campaign at levels 1-3 and you force your players to use the Shit Array, expect them to die, and die often because they simply do not have the power level to deal with at-CR encounters. A “variant” of this is the Standard Array, which is designed for NPCs with NPC classes (you know, the tavern wench, etc.) and should never be used for PCs. Ever. I *will* find you and I *will* hurt you.
“Natural” stats- This is even worse than the Elite Array. Basically you roll 3d6 in order, and those are your stats. If the Elite Array makes frustrating characters, the “natural” stats are a way to make hoards of characters that are simply unplayable. The average character rolled from this will be 10, 11, 10, 11, 10, 11. There are variants like doing 4d6b3 in order or the ability to switch any two stats, but I feel like all of these just force people to play certain characters. You might find someone who enjoys doing that, but surprise! You could just offer them to roll 4d6b3 and they can make the choice to roll 3d6 and put them naturally. So players who want to do this can do this without you making everyone use this evil, vile, and despicable method of determining stats.
Dice pool- This is actually a pretty sweet method of arranging stats. Essentially you get a “dice pool” of about 4-6 dice. Then you determine your stats by rolling 3d6. You can subtract a die out of your pool to re-roll, so let’s say you roll 3d6 and you get 1, 6, 6. You can re-roll that 1 by subtracting from your dice pool… or if you roll 1, 1, 6 you can subtract 2 from your dice pool to re-roll both 1s. It’s kind of a complicated method but it really does give you a bit more flexibility than the traditional 4d6b3.
Personally, I recommend the “standard” method, only branching out if you have an experienced group. Even then I like to spice it up by allowing re-rolls generously and asking for multiple sets of stats so the players can choose their preference. This gives everyone the fun of rolling dice and the “lol” moment of “man this set has three 6s in it!” without forcing anyone to play a character that’s 18, 14, 17, 3, 3, 6.
Class Selection
Now this might seem like it’s related to balance, but there’s more going to it than that. What classes are you going to allow? What classes are you going to disallow? Most importantly, why? Personally I allow generally all the base classes and all the prestige classes excluding a few. For example, Incantatrix is generally not allowed at my tables simply because I don’t want to deal with that power level. Even cross-setting prestige classes or base classes are added, though with a little manipulation of flavor. Obviously in a “psionics = no” setting psionicists are out, but it’s not too difficult to fit “radiant servant of Pelor” into a setting without the god Pelor… just change it to a different god.
Several prestige classes are also going to need subtle redesigning in many campaigns to suit the need you have for them. I usually take away the “must be evil” requirement for Assassin, for example, because I feel like it’s possible to have neutral, or even “good,” assassins. After all, if a Paladin’s job is to smite evil (which generally kills the evil thing) then what’s the difference between a Paladin and an assassin? (Hint: Paladins aren’t effective at killing things)
Even determining the social repercussions of playing a certain class is often important. For example, in Thay, sorcerers are looked down upon and jailed, enslaved, or even executed. If I were to do a campaign in Thay then, I would inform anyone looking to play a Sorcerer that they’ll have to “hide” their craft and nature or pursue significant persecution. For some people this is fun: they like the idea of having to hide or dodge the law. Some rare few will choose to play an obnoxious sorcerer who flaunts his powers… and to these players you can, if you have fully explained what the consequences of this sort of action is before the player does it, hunt down with extreme prejudice.
I feel like it’s important to allow players to play what they want to play, but sometimes you might feel like a class is “broken.” The most common examples of this are the Tome of Battle (ToB) classes, which many people complain are overpowered, especially compared to the traditional “fighter, monk, barbarian.” The answer is an obvious “duh,” but that’s because fighter, monk, and barbarian are extremely under-powered classes to begin with, or as the traditional joke goes: “The best way to play a Monk is to cross-class UMD, buy wands and scrolls, and pretend you’re a wizard.” (No joke, a prominent member of Giant in the Playground actually suggested this as an example of how Monks were balanced.) As a GM you do have a say in what is or isn’t played at your table, but be prepared to have an open mind about it. Even if, in your experience, a certain class or character was overpowered understand that you might have misunderstood the rules. A lot of people think that psionicists, for example, can augment their powers as much as they want… so they see psionicists as overpowered since they can expend all of their power points on a single ability. These people have actually misread the rules. It’s almost always worthwhile to talk to the player about why they want to play a certain class and voice your concerns over it. You may have overlooked a drawback to the class or may just not have understood it properly… and above all, don’t ever compare a class to fighters or monks and call them op because they’re “better” than two of the worst classes in the game. D&D is not particularly well-balanced game so complaining about balance while allowing clerics, wizards, and druids is just silly.
Feat selection should go about the same as Class Selection: if you have a very good reason not to allow something, give it. Also try to give good advice if you have some new players: i.e. that Dodge is actually really bad, that Combat Casting is a trap, etc. etc. New players will be frustrated by these sort of tricks, and the same will generally happen if they pick bad spells for Sorcerer.
Equipment
In Dungeons and Dragons equipment comes in various forms. Some of it is basic stuff, some of it is magically op bullshit, and some of it is “really, really expensive paperweight.” I recommend letting characters have WBL, and to follow the guide in the PHB for how much starting gold people get. I recommend offering them average if it suggests rolling, but encourage rolling. Generally speaking, while the game is not inherently balanced, it is ostensibly balanced to WBL. That is to say that a level 2 adventurer is expected to have about a thousand gold of gear, some of which is earmarked for “consumables.” Roughly by level 3 you expect everyone to have a +1 weapon (or equivalent) as well as +1 armor (or equivalent)… which is reflected in the fact that CR 3 characters have slightly more hitpoints armor, and attack than an ECL 3 character.
So barring extraneous circumstances, I highly recommend giving the party WBL. If you don’t give the party WBL, at least give the majority of the loot to the mundane classes (mundane = not magical). They’re going to need the help keeping up, and even then won’t be able to keep up at all with the monsters you through at them. What’s a fighter gonna do against a Beholder? Dragon-strafing will kill anyone without access to flying. Obviously this sort of thing will come up again when I talk about designing encounters, but it’s something to bring up here. Give the characters WBL when they start, it may seem like they’re getting a ton of magic items for free (which they sort of are), but they need those magic items to remain relevant.
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