Here’s another recent mail I got from a reader. I’ve edited some because English isn’t his primary language (email comes from The Netherlands)… come to think of it, it’s not mine either 🙂
Dear DM of Chatyness,
A friend of mine said I should read this blog and now I spend most of my vacation on reading trough it all.
That was a great piece of advice you got there! Also take some time to have a look at the RPG Bloggers’ Network.
We are beginners in the whole DnD and tabletop rpg concept, and we are running into issues with our characters. My friend is Gm-ing this.
All right so what we have here is a group of new players to the game. Everyone in the group seems to have just gotten into RPGs and chose 4e to start with. Since no one has experience with it, expect to keep discovering rules and new ways to play long into your first campaign.
The first thing I should say is to keep things dead simple. The group needs to focus on learning the rules and D&D 4e, while simple in design, can be complicated to master for some.
Focus on Core material for a few session, even if it means switching builds and PCs a few time during the campaing. Try new powers and new feats as you learn how to play better. Once you ‘get it’ the game becomes fairly intuitive and flows much better
(Fights will still take a long tome, but D&D 4e is a RPG built on a combat engine, it’s becoming a standard assumption that those who play it enjoy it for the fights)
Most of our problems come from forgetting we have action point, healing surges and other attacks than magic missile. These we’ll have to sort out by regular playing, and remembering to move and use all our options.
Experience will indeed make this easier but I must say that using Power Cards for your powers and class features is a big help. I took mine from Grandpa’s Power Cards because they also feature all class abilities. It also has things like Second Wind and cards for Items.
Each player prints out the cards for their PCs and keep their powers well in view beside their character sheet. When planning your turn, you can scan your cards and see your options more clearly than checking in the Players Handbook to check what’s the difference between Cleave and Tide of Iron. Whenever you use a daily or encounter power, you just flip the card so you can’t read the text on it anymore.
(As for the cleric’s Healing Word, that can be used twice per encounter, just ‘tap’ the card by turning it sideways when first used and flip it once used the second time).
However there is one bigger issue involved. We are a party of 3 PC + 1 DM and we don’t know how to really be useful to the other party members. That is, other then killing mobs before they kill us.
Could you possibly give us some tips on how our party could function better?
One of the first tactical lessons I learned while watching my friends play the first few sessions was that players must do everything to prevent the DM from separating PCs and taking control of their fight. Once PCs learn to stick together and prevent being separated in subunits, they become much harder to defeat.
(And by sticking together I don’t mean leaving the minis touching each other, it means that all players are aware of what the other players are planning and can react when any plan fails)
With only 3 PCs this is kinda hard. If you GM is fair, he’ll usually give you encounters with 2-4 monsters so you don’t get swamped to easily. Let’s look at your party’s setup:
Our party consist of a Human Fighter (lvl 1), a Dwarven Cleric (lvl 1) and a Eladrin wizard (lvl 1).
The fighter uses a reach weapon (Spiked chain) And has sweeping strike as an encounter power and Villains menace as an Daily. (I’m willing to chance these to be better disposed to help out the party [except for the weapon])
Our Dwarf cleric is the basic PHB devoted cleric. Right down to the feat.
Our wizard has Magic Missiles. He also has Scourging Burst and Chill Strike as encounter powers and Acid Arrow as a daily.
Okay, I see that the Fighter has already dipped in the Martial Powers book, before you guys even tackled the basics of the game. It can work but it makes things a bit more complicated (and you’ll need to create the Power cards yourselves).
The way I see it, your party needs to function as a 3 piece assault team. The Cleric should be a Battle Cleric to help the fighter control the battlefield. With Cleric and Fighter ‘tanking’ the wizard stays behind and can focus on either slowing the opposition or focus its firepower on the same creatures the melee characters are tackling. Concentrating damage on key adversaries will make them fall very fast.
By the way, do realize that the wizard should have another Daily power to choose from… While he can only use one a day, he knows 2 of them.
Also, I’d ask the DM if it would be okay to have a NPC rogue with the party, controlled by the players during combat. Thus, with the cleric and the Fighter, you can create what I call melee Triangles where monsters are caught in a triangle made up of the 3 fighting PCs and suffer major damage.
So if you guys are struggling now its mostly because you are all in the ‘forming’ stage of your gaming group. The rules are unfamiliar, no one thinks about bonuses such as Flanking, and bonuses from Powers and such.
If you discuss between players during combat, asking others what they think of the move you are contemplating or asking them what would be most useful, chances are the group will end up functioning as a team and will see a very noticeable surge in performance.
At least that’s what I’ve seen in my group.
Anyone else has tricks and tips for my Dutch reader? I’m a DM, so player tactics are not necessarily my forte.
One of the simplest things you can do as a team player in 4e is to use what I call the “Over there!” method.
This method means – if you’re crippling an enemy, you’re doing it so another player can get a shot at him. You’re not shooting a searing light willy-nilly at a guy – you’re blinding him so the Fighter can go up to him unopposed and smash him in the face. This is the simplest of team tactics but it really goes a long way. When you attack, tell one of the players “I got him, try to do [X] now!” and when you see a player attack, try to follow it up. I know a lot of players who go around just killing monsters individually within the same general area. That’s different from teamwork. If the rogue is fighting a guy, ignore whatever you’re doing for a moment and try to get him some combat advantage. If a guy moves next to the Wizard, push him away and have the Wizard help you in your new engagement. It may seem really meta, but for developing players, making explicit what you intend to do around the table can help form strategies.
One thing I noticed is that the Wizard took Chill Strike. That is a great decision and a good mind-set for a small group. You don’t want to just deal big damage or area damage. You want to cripple dudes. You especially want to cripple the dudes that are right next to the Fighter, who’s ready to smack them down. 4e is big about stops – if the enemy wastes a turn, you’re doing a good job.
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The main thing players (new and old) forget in D&D is this:
Focus fire.
Pick a bad guy. Drop it, move to the next. Select your threats based on what’s been happening– for instance, I had a battle last weekend where the wizard got an early initiative and he raced out to throw nice AoE that caught 4 undead baddies for some fire damage. The ghouls up front then turned on him and proceeded to whack him until candy came out. The rest of the party scattered, attacking other foes who were knocking people prone, or lobbing ranged damage, or causing ongoing damage. I nearly ate half of the party, because they figured two characters could handle it. If they’d all just decided to beat the hell out of those ghouls, the way they’d been handling every other combat, it would have been a non-issue. As it was, the wizard was killed.
When there’s a single bad guy, this is easy to remember. When there’s a hojillion bad guys, it’s easy because they’re probably mostly minions. The tricky part comes when you’ve got a mixed group with no minions.
Sometimes you can send one guy off to preoccupy a foe, because he’s a striker or a defender, and he’ll either take out the threat or he’ll keep it busy, but in a smaller party? You need to function like a team, focus fire and remember that your enemies are good to the last drop. The heroics come when the situation’s in hand.
-Ben.
Bens last blog post..A good quote for the new year…
Some things have been said before, but I’d like to reiterate: focus your fire. It’s all about dealing damage while preventing the enemy to deal damage to you. An enemy with 10 hp left is just as dangerous as one with 100 hp, meaning that all damage-dealing is effectless until you deal the last damage. Focus your damage where it makes the most effect, usually meaning either take out the vulnerable artillery or controller monsters or, if you can’t get to them, focus on what you can get to, but
One creature at a time. Good luck and happy gaming 🙂
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My best advice for new 4e players is to look at your characters powers in terms of how they can help the rest of the party. A 4e party is the most powerful, when they coordinate their powers so that one player using a power, helps another, or the whole party.
For instance, the Fighter At Will power, Tide of Iron has many uses. The most obvious use is to push a monster into another object (fire pit, cliff, etc), but it has more tactical uses. It can be used to push an enemy away from a fellow player. Or it can be used to push an enemy into position to set up a Flank for a fellow player (works great if you have a Thief).
The Cleric player should be choosing powers that are giving bonuses to his fellow party members. In a 3 player group, I think that the Cleric is not martial enough. I would consider the Warlord over the Cleric, as you get more martial firepower and still get healing.
The Mage should look at powers that have effects on creatures, not just damage. An enemy that becomes dazed or immobilized can be of great use for the party.
As for the Fighter, you have two purposes. Smash things, and keep the Mage from getting stuck in Melee combat. Look at powers that can not only do damage, but provide some protection to your fellow teammates. I mentioned Tide of Iron, also Passing Attack, etc.
When you level up, as a group you should all look at the new powers available to you, and think of what powers will not only be cool to use, but will also be the most beneficial to the group.
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My best advice as far as 4E tactical tips goes : Be selfless.
That is especially true for the fighter, who’s job it is to take the punishement for the rest of the party. The second a monster’s trying to hit one of your party-mates, have the fighter get in the face of said monster, and stick to it like a house on a Katamari.
Also, have the fighter consider getting more multi-targetting attacks, for they’ll allow him to mark more than one opponent per round.
It’s been said before, focus fire. Target the Most Damaging Dude first, and try to ignore the brutes if you can.
Finally, kill the minions. Never ever forget the minions. They seem small and innocent, but they’ll kill you slowly if you don’t do something about it, and given their ridiculous number, they can land quite a few blow. You have a wizard, have him burn through the little guys as fast as he can, they hurt.
Hope these are useful to someone!
Remember that in 4th edition you are not just picking a class, you are filling a role. Much of this goes along with the above advice of being selfless and thinking of yourself with the group in mind.
If you are filling the defender role, defend! Yes, you can dish out damage and are likely good at it. However, you are the only thing that can stop hordes of evily, baddy monsters from devouring your weak, wimpy comrades. Get in the way! Mark wisely! Become a wall.
Strikers have it easiest, I think. People play the game with an intention on killing enemies (not always, but often). Strikers should just run with this.
Well, I am not going to go on and on, but you get it — be like the sweet cream of a Hostess cupcake — fill your roll.
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well seeing how things are playing out with your guys characters I can agree with the others
1. stick together and focus fire or at least set them up power wise to knock them down one by one
2. as for the Mage I’m not sure the damage dealing type that he built if going to work out as well as say something like a control mage with sleep or cloud daggers, as those things can keep swarms much more busy so you can deal with them one at a time
3. the Cleric to Warlord makes alot of sense but you could go Battle Cleric too
4. try to keep the focus on the Fighter but also set it up in the way that its hard to hurt him… buff his AC make the others blind if they get close and keep the cleric in touch distance alot of the time as well as let the fighter keep the mage out of melee fights
but this is just a Tactical Warlord who uses a longspear to use his powers talking…