Designing for Parties Missing a Role (3rd Edition)

I’ve talked a few times about designing sessions for balanced parties and how hard it is. But some parties don’t have the luxury of being balanced. Sometimes, nobody wants to fill a certain role, or there just aren’t enough people to hit every base. Even missing a regular player for a session or two changes the dynamic of play. How do you build a session, adventure, or campaign when you’re missing something the game expects?

Here’s a link to part 1 of this article, about 4th Edition. 3rd Edition has more roles (also, I made them up), so they’re harder to cover. However, they’re not as explicit in the rules, and traditionally they’re less necessary than in 4th. Each party member is expected to have more than one role, and most classes can fulfill most roles. Still, if something is missing despite all that, there’s something you can do.

When I’m missing a role in 3rd Edition, sometimes I ignore it. After all, it’s not as though all combats are designed for a balanced party, and it’s more realistic that sometimes a party with no diplomat will still have to talk to somebody. But when I do make changes, here’s how I tend to design:

• Control

  Controllers mess with the battlefield by keeping monsters separated, limiting their effectiveness, or protecting allies. A party without a controller will get in over their head, often before they realize it, so try to be open about giving them opportunities to back away and try to get a more advantageous situation. Keep away from tons of low-level monsters that somebody with area effects could normally disable or impede, because the party may not be able to do that any more. Try planning encounters in waves; fighting fifteen orcs is far more daunting than fighting three sets of five orcs each that appear every few rounds.

• Damage

  Designing for a party without a damage role isn’t that difficult because you’ve probably already done it. If a party’s primary source of damage is a rogue, then a fight against undead means that the party doesn’t have a damage-dealer. The same goes for a party with a sorcerer fighting a high-level outsider with Spell Resistance, a two-sword ranger fighting a monster with DR against slashing or any of the above fighting a golem. One option is to plan on other sources of damage, like unusual terrain (not much can survive a lava pit), traps the party can co-opt, or limited-use magic items. Another is to accept that damage will be low and give monsters low health to compensate, perhaps increasing their Dexterity or Strength as much as you decrease their Constitution, or decreasing monster damage so neither side is outpacing the other.

• Defense

  The defender role isn’t as hard and fast as it is in 4th Edition; rather than a mark, a defender in 3rd Edition just soaks attacks that could otherwise have gone toward squishier characters. A party without defense is rare because somebody usually likes having high AC, but that party would obviously take more hits in a given fight. Be wary of monsters with Power Attack or similar features, because while a -5 penalty to attack for +10 damage is incredibly meaningful when they hit on a 15 or higher, it’s not that much of a problem when they hit on an 8. Expect players to use smarter tactics, like cover and choke points, to limit the amount of damage they take, and plan on shorter days because the party healer is likely to be much busier.

• Diplomacy

  A party without diplomacy will do a lot of punching and not a lot of talking, and when they do talk they’ll probably be bad at it. The key is to not make the party feel put upon for missing this role. That is, if the party is bad at high negotiations and political intrigue, don’t give them a series of adventures based around it. Having the occasional haggling or bartering session is fine, but remember that the players designed a less-talking-more-hitting team because that’s the sort of kick-in-the-door game they want to play. Unless they really want to feel evil, avoid monsters that like fleeing or surrendering, and lean toward monsters rather than NPCs with class levels.

• Healing

  In general, without a healer you can also expect a lower amount of party satisfaction. When a player goes down, they usually stay down, and that player gets to sit back and watch while other players fight and complain about how hard combats are. They also get to do less in a day and rarely enter fights at full strength, so the dissatisfaction builds and builds. I suggest you really encourage players to reconsider a party without a healer, because it’s generally less fun for everybody involved. If this is impossible, a lot of the notes from the last post apply here: lean toward low-damage monsters, allow strategic (between fights) healing to make up for the lack of tactical (during fights) healing, and expect fewer fights per day. One difference is that having many, lower-level creatures here is a good idea, because damage and attack bonus scale more quickly in 3rd than in 4th.

• Nature

  Obviously, parties without a nature role will be bad in the wilderness, so count on them to try to find ways around it (teleporting, taking a vehicle, hiring a guide, or simply avoiding quests outside civilized areas). You can also expect them to have trouble with monster knowledge, since Knowledge (nature) covers six creature types. Nature characters also tend to be mobile, whether it’s because of lots of skills like the ranger, great ability scores like the barbarian, or outright flying like the druid. Parties without mobility make have to approach obstacles in more blunt ways like punching through them, and even a simple castle wall can be a significant challenge, so keep that in mind when designing non-combat challenges.

• Stealth

  Stealth is kind of a mixed bag. Parties without stealth tend to deal with problem head-on because they don’t have a second option, but they also tend to stick together because they have less opportunity to split up. Generally, remember that the party will be together most of the time and likes it that way, so don’t expect them to leave each other. Stealthy characters without spellcasting also tend to thrive on focused fire, so keep in mind that a party without stealth is more likely to split their damage (intentionally or otherwise). The same notes on mobility apply here as they do with nature, above.

Pathfinder basically has the same roles at 3rd Edition. There is one other thing I want to address in a future post, which is how to deal with a temporary change in a party rather than a general session design strategy.