Advice needed: Life without a striker - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Advice needed: Life without a striker

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
smokeroom
Jul 01, 2008 22:29:47 So, we're currently running KotS with four players. We're playing the Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, and Wizard. We just cleared out the Kobold lair at the last session and I was amazed at how pathetic my healing was. At first, I was completely baffled. How was I supposed to keep everyone up with only a few healing options? We only survived because the paladin mis-read his character sheet and thought he had several uses of LOH. Even then, it was a very close call and really we were only one or two rolls away from a TPK.

After further consideration, I believe that a main part of our trouble with this fight was 1) we only had four characters and 2) we had no striker. These two conditions mean that chewing through all the monster HPs takes much, much longer and thus, the party sustains more damage and requires more healing.

We're all very new to 4e and people are still getting the hang of their various roles...

... What tactics and strategies should a group with two defenders, one controller, and one leader pursue? What will be our greatest weaknesses? What strengths do we need to play to? What can we do to make sure that the party doesn't run out of healing before the fight is over?
#2
Novacat
Jul 02, 2008 1:20:02 First, let me address your concerns about limited healing. In 3E, a 1st level cleric could heal maybe 2-3 times a day, for 1d8+1 each. In 4E, a cleric automatically can heal twice per encounter (or more if he chooses the right powers), and for 1d6+WIS + the target's healing surge value (typically 7-10). In this way, you can see that the 4E cleric has much more healing potential than his 3E counterpart.

Secondly, you are a highly defensive group. You need to take advantage of terrain and environment if you hope to survive. Bottleneck enemies whenever possible, as you want to take on as few monsters at a time as possible. DO NOT let enemies surround you, and DO NOT separate from each other. Your lack of single-target damaging ability is going to make it hard to take on elites or solos (although I'm not familiar with KotSF, so I don't know if there even are any in it).

Remind everyone to use Second Wind if needed. The wizard needs to focus on crowd-control and keeping the heat off the melee monkeys. The fighter and the paladin should be able to augment each other pretty well, and ideally they should be able to keep enemies away from the cleric and wizard.
#3
kouk
Jul 02, 2008 1:46:58 First of all: do not underestimate any of your adversaries. Everything in that adventure (everything) is a pretty tough fight. You see a Kobold? Treat him like a dang Ogre. This is not the same as 3rd edition, these guys can all fight.
Even if you were doing it with all 5 players, the adventure's encounters seem to be usually higher level than your characters.

Make sure the DM is reducing encounters a bit. If he has the DMG then he can follow the guidelines there.

Once you start leveling up it gets easier, but that may just be because the challenges are more ... obvious in certain respects. Even a group of master players with maximally optimized characters who know what is coming could have trouble with that module with a little bit of bad luck.

Anyway, my main point was: don't be disheartened by seeming to suck at the game. The game is stacked against you in that mod; you are almost always on the defensive. What's more, you aren't all used to how your powers work and how to manage them. And you're short a PC (which may or may not have been accounted for, but you are missing that role all the same).
#4
Neutronium_Dragon
Jul 02, 2008 7:07:23 Also, is your DM reducing the encounter strength to account for there being only four characters?

The encounters are scaled to a five character party. If there are only four of you then he needs to shave 20% off of the XP total of the encounter in order to keep it appropriate to your smaller group by removing creatures to reduce the total XP value.
#5
eldritch_lord
Jul 02, 2008 7:49:01 1) Yeah, the 4 PCs in the party thing is an issue. As Neutronium_Dragon said, it's balanced for 5 people, so if your DM isn't reducing the numbers that's a problem.

2) You don't need a striker except for elites and solos; I've run a few sessions and found that defenders and leaders can take on standards just fine, and controllers (well, Wizards at least) are great against minions. You're going to want to stay close together and use the wizard's and cleric's powers to separate the enemies so the defenders can protect against only a few at a time, instead of all of them at once.

3) I haven't run KotS myself, but I recall hearing that the cleric wasn't well-specced for healing and that the wizard didn't have good monster-separating abilities (e.g., thunderwave). That might be your healing and controlling issue right there; I'm guessing that if you built your own characters instead of using the pre-built ones you'd do a bit better.

4) Yeah, the encounters are something like party level + 3, difficulty-wise. It seems that all of the modules are using PL+2 to PL+4 encounters to make them all exciting and life-or-death...which sucks, because then they give you bad pre-builts and don't tell the DM to adjust them or anything. You'll just have to play that much better.
#6
drmorganes
Jul 02, 2008 7:51:01 It bears noting that in 4E, a DM builds encounters using what amounts to a point buy system. The amount of XP in the encounter provides the number of points available. By shaving 20% off the encounter, the encounter automatically scales downward for 4 PCs. Each PC would receive the same XP award.

Example:

If an encounter is set for 500XP for a party of 5 PCs, each PC gets a 20% cut, or 100XP.

Scaling down for 4 PCs, encounter XP drops 20% to 400XP. Each PC gets a 25% cut, or 100XP.
#7
smokeroom
Jul 02, 2008 9:25:54 Thanks for the advice everyone.

Re: Healing - good points, 4e clerics DO get more healing than 3.x clerics. It still wasn't enough to keep everyone up, though!

The tactics advice is very helpful - I think we got a bit too spread out in the Kobold's lair. The defenders did a pretty good job gathering up the enemies, but instead of bottle-necking them, we let ourselves get a little surrounded and we were taking attacks from three sides. I'll definitely mention to the defenders that they shouldn't get _too_ far ahead of each other or the rest of the group. Another problem was that the wyrmpriest was playing hard to get and we just didn't have the spare firepower to hunt him down early in the fight - a rogue/ranger/warlock would have shut him down nicely, I think.

Anyway, good thoughts here so far! I think we'll also have to make sure to conserve as many abilities as possible for elites.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 smokeroom Jul 01, 2008 22:29:47	So, we're currently running KotS with four players. We're playing the Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, and Wizard. We just cleared out the Kobold lair at the last session and I was amazed at how pathetic my healing was. At first, I was completely baffled. How was I supposed to keep everyone up with only a few healing options? We only survived because the paladin mis-read his character sheet and thought he had several uses of LOH. Even then, it was a very close call and really we were only one or two rolls away from a TPK. After further consideration, I believe that a main part of our trouble with this fight was 1) we only had four characters and 2) we had no striker. These two conditions mean that chewing through all the monster HPs takes much, much longer and thus, the party sustains more damage and requires more healing. We're all very new to 4e and people are still getting the hang of their various roles... ... What tactics and strategies should a group with two defenders, one controller, and one leader pursue? What will be our greatest weaknesses? What strengths do we need to play to? What can we do to make sure that the party doesn't run out of healing before the fight is over?
#2 Novacat Jul 02, 2008 1:20:02	First, let me address your concerns about limited healing. In 3E, a 1st level cleric could heal maybe 2-3 times a day, for 1d8+1 each. In 4E, a cleric automatically can heal twice per encounter (or more if he chooses the right powers), and for 1d6+WIS + the target's healing surge value (typically 7-10). In this way, you can see that the 4E cleric has much more healing potential than his 3E counterpart. Secondly, you are a highly defensive group. You need to take advantage of terrain and environment if you hope to survive. Bottleneck enemies whenever possible, as you want to take on as few monsters at a time as possible. DO NOT let enemies surround you, and DO NOT separate from each other. Your lack of single-target damaging ability is going to make it hard to take on elites or solos (although I'm not familiar with KotSF, so I don't know if there even are any in it). Remind everyone to use Second Wind if needed. The wizard needs to focus on crowd-control and keeping the heat off the melee monkeys. The fighter and the paladin should be able to augment each other pretty well, and ideally they should be able to keep enemies away from the cleric and wizard.
#3 kouk Jul 02, 2008 1:46:58	First of all: do not underestimate any of your adversaries. Everything in that adventure (everything) is a pretty tough fight. You see a Kobold? Treat him like a dang Ogre. This is not the same as 3rd edition, these guys can all fight. Even if you were doing it with all 5 players, the adventure's encounters seem to be usually higher level than your characters. Make sure the DM is reducing encounters a bit. If he has the DMG then he can follow the guidelines there. Once you start leveling up it gets easier, but that may just be because the challenges are more ... obvious in certain respects. Even a group of master players with maximally optimized characters who know what is coming could have trouble with that module with a little bit of bad luck. Anyway, my main point was: don't be disheartened by seeming to suck at the game. The game is stacked against you in that mod; you are almost always on the defensive. What's more, you aren't all used to how your powers work and how to manage them. And you're short a PC (which may or may not have been accounted for, but you are missing that role all the same).
#4 Neutronium_Dragon Jul 02, 2008 7:07:23	Also, is your DM reducing the encounter strength to account for there being only four characters? The encounters are scaled to a five character party. If there are only four of you then he needs to shave 20% off of the XP total of the encounter in order to keep it appropriate to your smaller group by removing creatures to reduce the total XP value.
#5 eldritch_lord Jul 02, 2008 7:49:01	1) Yeah, the 4 PCs in the party thing is an issue. As Neutronium_Dragon said, it's balanced for 5 people, so if your DM isn't reducing the numbers that's a problem. 2) You don't need a striker except for elites and solos; I've run a few sessions and found that defenders and leaders can take on standards just fine, and controllers (well, Wizards at least) are great against minions. You're going to want to stay close together and use the wizard's and cleric's powers to separate the enemies so the defenders can protect against only a few at a time, instead of all of them at once. 3) I haven't run KotS myself, but I recall hearing that the cleric wasn't well-specced for healing and that the wizard didn't have good monster-separating abilities (e.g., thunderwave). That might be your healing and controlling issue right there; I'm guessing that if you built your own characters instead of using the pre-built ones you'd do a bit better. 4) Yeah, the encounters are something like party level + 3, difficulty-wise. It seems that all of the modules are using PL+2 to PL+4 encounters to make them all exciting and life-or-death...which sucks, because then they give you bad pre-builts and don't tell the DM to adjust them or anything. You'll just have to play that much better.
#6 drmorganes Jul 02, 2008 7:51:01	It bears noting that in 4E, a DM builds encounters using what amounts to a point buy system. The amount of XP in the encounter provides the number of points available. By shaving 20% off the encounter, the encounter automatically scales downward for 4 PCs. Each PC would receive the same XP award. Example: If an encounter is set for 500XP for a party of 5 PCs, each PC gets a 20% cut, or 100XP. Scaling down for 4 PCs, encounter XP drops 20% to 400XP. Each PC gets a 25% cut, or 100XP.
#7 smokeroom Jul 02, 2008 9:25:54	Thanks for the advice everyone. Re: Healing - good points, 4e clerics DO get more healing than 3.x clerics. It still wasn't enough to keep everyone up, though! The tactics advice is very helpful - I think we got a bit too spread out in the Kobold's lair. The defenders did a pretty good job gathering up the enemies, but instead of bottle-necking them, we let ourselves get a little surrounded and we were taking attacks from three sides. I'll definitely mention to the defenders that they shouldn't get _too_ far ahead of each other or the rest of the group. Another problem was that the wyrmpriest was playing hard to get and we just didn't have the spare firepower to hunt him down early in the fight - a rogue/ranger/warlock would have shut him down nicely, I think. Anyway, good thoughts here so far! I think we'll also have to make sure to conserve as many abilities as possible for elites.