Dungeon Fantasy party compositions

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Sutibu

How do you deal with this sort of player?

You kick him out.

You might (should!) do it politely, but if his gaming style is ruining the fun for the rest of the group, then he needs to go. I'm too old to muck with that sort of sophomoric stuff anymore. Damn kids. :-)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You kick him out.

You might (should!) do it politely, but if his gaming style is ruining the fun for the rest of the group, then he needs to go. I'm too old to muck with that sort of sophomoric stuff anymore. Damn kids. :-)

I wouldn't have put up with that when I was a kid. Why play with someone that cannot or will not resist the urge to stomp on everyone's fun?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Our group consists of:

- knight
- dwarf knight
- wizard
- cleric
- two scouts
- barbarian

They usually have an NPC barbarian with them.

In the game I play in, Crakkerjakk is the GM, and Bruno and mlangsdorf also play.

All of us are around 300-315 points now, I think.

We've got:

Staver, Infernal Scout. He's a demon-looking thing who can and does shoot two arrows at once as a standard tactic.

Brother Michel, Half Dwarf Mystic Theurge. Cleric-Mage, with a stellar-high IQ that makes him the go-to for many things, since his defaults are pretty darn good.

Brody, a well-traveled human Thief. Brody had to drop. He was awesome at selling stuff, is my most notable memory.

Thumvar, a gargoyle caravan guard. He can fly, which is awesome. He's a Knight template, and favors shield and axe, both of which he strikes with.

Gareth Oakyard, a lowlife faun barbarian. No longer playing, but eight feet tall, ST 17, two-handed axe/mace and bow.

Brother Cadmus, a Warrior Saint of Pharasma. This one's me. Warrior Saint is like Holy Warrior, but with more Holy due to use of learned prayers and Divine Favor rules. His trick is Righteous Fury, which effectively adds 40-240 points for 3d seconds to his template with a ST, HT, and DX boost.

Elessar Séregon, elven scholar-preist of Calistria. A cleric with Wild Talent, Power Investiture, and Modular Abiliiies (Book Learning). Also IQ 15, and with Modular Abilities he can do anything for which he has a good book and time to prepare.

It's a decent party, though we miss our thief and the ability to form any sort of battle line.

[mlangsdorf]

In addition to Crakkerjack's game above, I've the following party compositions:

Lenia's band:
* Nymph wizard/diplomat with Wealth
* Shadow Elf thief/wizard
* Ogre scout
* Human holy warrior
* Dwarf cleric
* Human swashbuckler
A fairly conventional group, with no real weaknesses. It maybe could have used a single high DR/defense character but what it had was okay.

Mordreona's minions:
* Nymph wizard/diplomat with Wealth
* Human scout/barbarian
* Human thief
* Minotaur barbarian
* Faun druid
* various wacky short lived characters
Lenia's band evolved into this over several months of playtime. It was a little short on healing ability and iffy against incorporeal undead, but could murder anything substantial. Again, no real weaknesses.

The Inhumans
* Pixie wizard
* Gargoyle knight
* Dwarf cleric
* Mountain Elf scout
* Catfolk Swashbuckler
* Minotaur martial artist
This was a reasonably effective party, and probably the most wacky bunch - no humans involved, for instance. They lacked social skills, but were otherwise reasonably competent. It does turn out that while it's impossible to hit Pixie wizards in combat, they aren't good at defending against area attacks and have no HP.

This group evolved over time (I think I killed or retired 3 of Bruno's characters in that game) and at one point had an undead necromancer and a semi-competent human holy warrior, I think. Good times.

My current group is Daughter Joan's Bunch:
* Human saint
* Human swashbuckler-thief
* Wood Elf scout
* Human elementalist
* Half-Ogre knight
They lack social skills, reliable information magic, and a high skill damage dealer (mostly because the swashbuckler has spent points on social skills instead of fighting skills). They kill stuff reasonably well, and Divine Favor and some lucky rolls lets them get away with a lot.

Even beyond party composition, character design can matter a lot. A well-made Half-Elf scout with multiple cornucopia quivers (each of a different arrow type) is a lot more effective than a quickly created Wood Elf scout with only 20 impaling arrows to his name.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Sutibu

Also he doesnt invest time in finding out what his skills and advantages actually do in the game, but rather has an image in his midn what they can do and when this doesnt work he freezes the game by putting his feet in the sand until we give him some sort of compromise.. How do you deal with this sort of player?

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't know for sure, as my players don't act that way, but I think I might call it grounds for termination.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You kick him out.

You might (should!) do it politely, but if his gaming style is ruining the fun for the rest of the group, then he needs to go. I'm too old to muck with that sort of sophomoric stuff anymore. Damn kids. :-)

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

I have a policy for this kind of thing - my DMG rule. I hit players like this on the head with my 1st edition AD&D DMG.

Really, you need to say something like, "Look dude, stop being a bad player. Either learn the rules and quit whining, or just quit whining." Really, it's just bad manners, bad playing, and bad sportsmanship. You need to make it clear that given the choice between play a fun game, or play a less fun game with a whiny, complaining player, you're going to choose to play without him.

If this is a player who "should know better", this would be my general approach. They'd get a conversation about why this behavior sucks, and put on probation. If they violate probation by continuing to suck, they get kicked out.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Or, if you really want him in a future campaign, you might require him to set aside 10 or 20 character points to be used in buying skills that his character ought to have but that he didn't think of buying.

This is, however, very good for people who might be quite new, or perhaps part of the probation - "unassign" a few traits or attribute levels to get back the freed points (or assign an extra disad if he hasn't hit the limit) and get him to pick up some on the fly for the next bit while he figures out what he really needed.



I actually have a standing policy that new characters (of experienced players or new ones) can be "tweaked" for the first two or three sessions of play, and that anyone can leave some CP and money unallocated at character generation for these "I forgot!" or "I didn't know it worked like that!" moments. With a party full of raw newbies, I'd have them start somewhat low on points and then give them a big reward after three or four sessions, and a lot of latitude on how to spend it.

That will give them the chance to make major additions ("oops, I really want High Pain Threshold I guess") now that they've settled into the system some more.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Staver, Infernal Scout. He's a demon-looking thing who can and does shoot two arrows at once as a standard tactic.

He also has a magical hawk familiar, and his fighting style is a combination of "fill it full of arrows" and "run away screaming".
He has an ongoing semi-hostile relationship with the three holy characters. Brother Michael keeps making nasty comments about his heritage, Staver's convinced Brother Cadmus is going to explode him with holy fire "by accident" one day no matter how friendly he is, and he's recently decided Elessar is out to doom us all.

It's important to have interesting intra-party dynamics :)

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

It's a decent party, though we miss our thief and the ability to form any sort of battle line.

We've got a certain lack of social skills. I'm pretty sure the Gargoyle and Infernal are a bit of a dead-weight for the rest of you guys, and I don't know if anyone's actually spent even a point on Diplomacy yet.

The total failure to form battle lines is more a player problem than a PC-build problem. We're playing after work or very early in the morning, and I suspect some of us are drinking while playing, so concentration and focus are a little penalized :)

[Bruno]

Incidentally, in my experience if you allow players options other than "Human, elf, dwarf, halfling" and "Fighter, wizard, thief, cleric" (expressed however is appropriate for your game system) you WILL end up with gnome barbarians wielding garottes, half-celestial assasins, and minotaur sorcerers. The "freak show" aspect seems to be a major attraction for my group. They like doing something unusual for the entertainment value.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Incidentally, in my experience if you allow players options other than "Human, elf, dwarf, halfling" and "Fighter, wizard, thief, cleric" (expressed however is appropriate for your game system) you WILL end up with gnome barbarians wielding garottes, half-celestial assasins, and minotaur sorcerers.

Yeah. So if you don't want it, don't offer it. This is why my templates list was shorter than the full list, and only a few races were on the table. I limited the players to what I, as the GM, was willing to deal with.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Incidentally, in my experience if you allow players options other than "Human, elf, dwarf, halfling" and "Fighter, wizard, thief, cleric" (expressed however is appropriate for your game system) you WILL end up with gnome barbarians wielding garottes, half-celestial assasins, and minotaur sorcerers. The "freak show" aspect seems to be a major attraction for my group. They like doing something unusual for the entertainment value.

Looking at discussions on different forums, it seems to me that freak show effect is fair common among players. Perhaps it is today most common style of fantasy roleplaying.

I'm running from some years a fantasy campaign. There are several sentient races: human, hillfolks (a sort of primitive halflings), minotaurs, giants, beastmen, cronipoigs (similar to non-militarized dwarfs), faeries (an etherogeneous group of creatures and chimaeras). In this setting there's no melting pot at all; civilized world is inhabited only by humans, there is little or no contact with different races. moreover, it's a low magic setting. From the beginning I told to my players that the only playable race is humans, and that magic user are very rare.
During this campaign, they have played the following characters:
- a mage
- a magic user priest
- a hillfolk shaman
- an enchanter
- another mage
- a necromancer
- a sort of vampire
It really seems that contemporary players are ineluctabily attracted by the most special kind of creature they can play.

[alduc]

Our first group consisted of:

- Barbarian
- Cleric
- Thief
- Wizard

All were humans. With four players, I thought this was the composition that really covered all the basics. With a knight instead of a barbarian, the party can have difficulties in the wilderness.

We recently started a new DF campaign and this time around the party consists of:

- Elf Swashbuckler,
- Pixie Wizard
- Thief
- Cleric

I allowed the pixie wizard because the player (a former GURPS FAQ maintainer) knows the system very well. I'm not certain anyone could make the concept playable.

This new party lacks a bit of combat strength. They'll need to power-up to be more effective against high-DR opponents in the short term.