Hello, DnD Player Community!
I'm currently playing in a group with almost all of us being first timers, including our DM. I'm currently playing a range ranger, and this past encounter we did we got our behinds handed to us despite being over-leveled. (As an aside we tend to meta-game a bit, so its more than that we are just sloppy.)
I feel part of this is that our group composition is 1) too vs. AC focused, and 2) is lacking a certain role.
Our group composition is currently this:
- Deva Wizard (currently dead since we... killed him. The guy playing him is off on a business trip for about a month, so it works out. He will be coming back to play with us though.)- More striker than controller
- Dragonborn Fighter - more striker than tank (but she does tank for us, and has been fairly good thus far. But she doesn't want to expand into additional armor, and uses a 2-hander)
- Dwarven Cleric -healer/buffer
- Elvish Monk - don't really know Monks that well...
- Eladrin Rogue- striker (duh :P)
- Elvish Ranger- Striker (Me)
As you can see we are heavy on the strikers... I was thinking of becoming a warlord...
Any thoughts/suggestions would be great. Thank you.
How/why did you get your butts handed to you? Not being able to hit? Not being able to shake off conditions on you? Bad die rolls? Too many enemies? No terrain to use/hide behind? There's a wide variety of reasons things could go pear shaped.
I don't really see any significant problem with your group composition, a striker-heavy group has advantages in that it is able to kill the enemies before they take too much damage. And you already have a leader, how about going controller or defender instead since the wizard is dead and the fighter is more focused on dealing damage.
How/why did you get your butts handed to you? Not being able to hit? Not being able to shake off conditions on you? Bad die rolls? Too many enemies? No terrain to use/hide behind? There's a wide variety of reasons things could go pear shaped.
It was bad die rolls (statistically, I can't believe we rolled that bad), but the other problem was we weren't able to hit. The monster had really high AC.. The problem is, almost all of our abilities hit vs. AC. I felt that it wasn't really wasn't the fact that we are striker heavy, but more that we are vs. AC heavy. So we come across someone who is basically immune to us.
I see a couple of the same problems my group started out with; here's how we dealt with them.
1) "Everyone wants to be a striker." If your wizard doesn't do any controlling, who will? Likewise if your fighter isn't interested in defending. Our group of seven had two controllers starting out, and they both wanted to be strikers, to the point that neither of them bothered taking a single area spell. (other than at-wills, which they had trouble using) Some of the other characters had similar issues.
One of them (the druid) left; the wizard re-tooled his powers so he's now an awesome controller, and everyone else took some lessons from the school of hard knocks. Basically they learned that using their class abilities as intended (focusing on their designated role, in other words) enabled them to kick some serious butt.
They're still slightly jealous of the ranger and rogue's (and sometimes the warlock's) damage rolls. But our strikers rely on them to get those hits; it's a team effort. Prior to our learning good teamwork, getting the hits was a problem, for everyone.
Some people will say the game shouldn't force them to play their character a certain way. I agree. If your wizard really wants an arcane striker, maybe sorcerer would be better. And if the fighter prefers striking to defending, barbarian would be worth a look. OTOH, it's a good idea to have every role covered, and played smartly, because it's no fun when everyone's getting their butts kicked.
2) "We can't hit." Our group had the same problem, and although improving our teamwork helped, (flanking, etc.) we still needed a boost. Enter the tac-lord! We added a new PC, and he's a tac-lord optimized for attack bonuses. He hands them out like candy, and we eat 'em up! Combine that with a cleric built to de-buff your enemies' defenses, and your striker-heavy party becomes an unstoppable meat-grinder. We've had fights in which our cleric and warlord (plus our other bonuses) drove our target numbers so low we hit our foes rolling 3's. (The rogue's 3 hit, mine didn't: I needed a 4. Wah!!!)
Switching your character to a warlord wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Go with a tac-lord, and concentrate on attack bonuses!
Good luck.
PtM
Thanks for the thoughts, Pundrake. I think you pretty much summed up our problems with some good solutions!
I am going to have to look into a tactic-lord. I'm not very familiar with him as some of the more iconic classes.
CharOp, to the rescue! I only quickly glanced at the forum, but I think these two might be helpful for a TacLord.
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758...
Thanks for the thoughts, Pundrake. I think you pretty much summed up our problems with some good solutions!
I am going to have to look into a tactic-lord. I'm not very familiar with him as some of the more iconic classes.
This makes me happy. So glad I could help. 
PtM
Those links are awesome! Thanks, I_Roll_Ones!
My group has a general rule of "play what you want". We have seven players in the group, so we usually get every area covered.
If the DM was using a solo, elite, or a soldier-role creature and it was higher level than each of your characters then that would be a more likely explanation. The encounter budget shouldn't be taken to mean that you can stick two 250-XP level 6 creatures up against a five-person 1st level party (XP budget 500), or various other combinations thereof, because the creatures' attacks and defenses will be scaled too high to make a good challenge for the party.
While you can get away with (say) four 125-XP 2nd level creatures for that group, individual creatures shouldn't really over-level the characters by more than 1 - and shouldn't be higher level than the characters in the case of the aforementioned solo, elite, or soldier-role creatures.
A few levels over generally doesn't hurt, but you should indeed know where the max is. Last session we had some great fun with a 5th level brute (Bugbear) and some goblins vs a 2nd level group, but the Hexer (lvl 3) and the Underboss (Elite lvl 4) combined almost got a bit too much... although that was also a lot of fun, since they had to think and maneauver to take the Hexer down so they had a shot at the underboss.
But then our previous DM put our 2nd level group against an 8th level Zombie Hulk, and that was no fun; nigh impossible to hit, and it pounded us into the dust with ease. Specially since we were very poor on items (even regular ones, since they were all stolen before) and we had no defender (yay, my AC 15 Cleric as frontline against that guy)
Another thing that might be fun to do is doing a plot hook that would allow your elf to reroll as a Druid. Predator Druids can play quite strikerishly, but, instead of damage, they hand out slows, slides and combat advantage like candy. At the reroll point you can also reoptimize the character so that it will hit. If the DM corrects any bad encounter design, the combat advantage should allow people to hit more.
The taclord is still probably the better option, but the Druid option could work, as well.