TOPIC: Party Composition

The last couple years we've ran using all ten of the classes (leaving out one of the fighters and one of the wizards). This year it felt like there was just too many people at the sliding board. So we've been talking about using both wizards next year.

My question for you all is how many groups out there have been running with 2 wizards already? Also, how has that been, any drawbacks? And what does everyone think the most disposable other class is?

We're red level, but we run with two wizards in both of our groups. Eliminating Monk gets two low-hit/damage tokens off the sliding board, so we do that and have the Fighters, Barbarian and Ranger slide first, then have the rogue, pallie and cleric slide cleanup.

If we had anyone who wanted to play Druid, they wouldn't be allowed to slide either.

As someone who plays a cleric 9 times out of 10. I find having a defensive healing build is a great way to go. It eliminates one slider at the board. The only times I slide are when I can bump someone into a better position. In the future I plan on sliding first on the first round off to the side of the board just to gauge the speed of the board for the other sliders.

Anselm of Dundurn wrote: As someone who plays a cleric 9 times out of 10. I find having a defensive healing build is a great way to go. It eliminates one slider at the board. The only times I slide are when I can bump someone into a better position. In the future I plan on sliding first on the first round off to the side of the board just to gauge the speed of the board for the other sliders.

Ditto.

But whom should you leave out? Tough call. If you're worried about too many sliders, I'd say Monk and one of the melee, of course. You need Pally for guard and some extra healing, Ranger for ranged and Barb for Raging at the boss, so that just leaves one of the Fighters. Or, if you already know all the clues you need, you could leave out Rogue - but that 5th level flanking came in very handy against the genie's chains.

But most of the time I play in pickup groups and/or with first-timers, so everyone just plays pretty much whatever they think will be the most fun for them.

Anselm of Dundurn wrote: As someone who plays a cleric 9 times out of 10. I find having a defensive healing build is a great way to go. It eliminates one slider at the board. The only times I slide are when I can bump someone into a better position. In the future I plan on sliding first on the first round off to the side of the board just to gauge the speed of the board for the other sliders.

That's a very healthy attitude. I wish we could keep our clerics from sliding - one of them is REALLY bad at sliding and we usually have a pickup for the other group, which is why we have them do cleanup (bumping other people's pucks into better position).

The guy who's really bad at sliding is hooked on the idea that in D&D clerics are melee combatants, so he thinks he should be good at melee in spite of, you know, not having any bonuses or strength equipment.

Our group runs:
Ranger
Barbarian
Fighter
Mage
Cleric
Bard
Paladin
Other three spots are pugs... our cleric never combats unless we need a bump.

Oh we don't use a mage due to time it takes for the GM to do the test instead of just sliding. Way faster combat.

I run a group of 10, usually 3 events per year (this year we ran 3 dungeons, last year it was 2 dungeons and a grind). My group consists of:

Druid - myself (major damage dealer for big boss)
Rogue - for the rogue box token/clue, backstab and flanking abilities
Both Fighters, and Barbarian - heavy melee damage and not bad ranged
Bard - got to have that inspiration (+2/+4 o everyone is awesome)
Paladin - shield plus not bad damage dealer
Cleric - healing
Both Wizards - +10 initiative each combat very good/wide variety of spells

So that leaves out the monk and ranger. Don't like the monk because my group is token heavy so it is really outclassed by the others. Both the Rsnger and Monk require special sliding skills and my group usually isn't that coordinated. Also I provide a folder of about 100 tokens (average) for each class and adding another folder is just too much weight. Though next year I will create a Barbain/Ranger folder as per one of my players request. I figure I can do it with minimal extra tokens.

I always play wizard, and it seems I have an apprentice maybe 75% of the time. Seems to work out well for the groups I've gone with. Although, I'm pretty quick with the DM's time and I help my fellow wizard to be so as well.

We have mages that do come in the other spots, just that it's 50/50 how fast the DM is. If he lets us slide while doing the checks. Most make the checks take place then we can slide...

JimC wrote: I run a group of 10, usually 3 events per year
Paladin - shield plus not bad damage dealer

Can I ask where this idea that the Paladin is a "decent" damage dealer came from? Is it just a holdover from D&D? Because I'm seeing this pop up on the site and the fact is the Paladin is as good a melee damage dealer as the Cleric, the Bard or the Wizard. They all have 10 Strength, no bonuses to hit and no bonuses to damage. Yes, the Paladin weapon selection is generally better than Wizard, but it's essentially the same as Cleric, Bard or Rogue (slightly better than Rogue, but Rogues get to Sneak Attack).

Adeya, I've seen our wizards "apprenticing" newbies also, which is very useful. I think it's another strength of the Wizard class that it's pretty easy to transfer important knowledge and guidance to newbies whereas you can't exactly instill slider ability or similar for the melee classes.

In my runs lately, it seems the missing classes have usually been monk and one of the fighters. Especially for purped out groups, the amount of damage two wizards can do is pretty awesome. As Adeya said, experienced wizards can do their tests very quickly, while the other players are sliding.

And I agree with Toran that apprentice wizards can get a lot of worthwhile advice and knowledge during a run.