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?
This could be a stupidly long article, so I want to split it into two. First, I want to talk about 4th Edition. It has fewer roles and they’re all derived almost entirely from classes, so it’s easier to hit them, and I really only have to address battle ability. However, there’s an explicit assumption that none of them are missing for even one battle, let alone a campaign.
There are plenty of ways to approach this, but when I’m missing a role, here’s how I tend to design:
- Controller – without this role, the party is less able to redirect and hold back enemies
- Hold back on elites and be sparse with solos. It’s upsetting to get a key monster stun-locked (or daze-locked or even weaken-locked) for a fight, but some of the balance in a solo is that they won’t be able to run roughshod over the party every turn. Players can feel overwhelmed if there’s no way to keep monsters away or make them easier.
- Be aware of what skills are missing. Controllers are almost universally Int- and Wis-based and tend to have more knowledge skills than other roles. It’s easy to forget that the party’s most-used skills (well, beside Athletics) are all on one person, and even easier to design an adventure that relies on a skill the party’s never had.
- Defender – without this role, the party is more likely to take damage and less able to keep enemies away from vulnerable allies
- Keep away from skirmishers. One of a defender’s key features is limiting the movement of enemies, either because the punish movement directly or they inflict a penalty on attacks against distant allies. A controller can hold them back some, but it’s safer to just avoid monsters that can run circles around the party.
- Use lower-level monsters. Yes, they’ll be hit more often and have slightly fewer hit points. But more importantly, they’ll have lower attack bonuses. At-level monsters are designed to mostly fight defenders, and other roles usually have lower defenses, so lower-level enemies give them a better chance to survive the fight and the day.
- Encourage minor character changes, like feats, that increase defenses and survivability. Players should expect that they’ll end up being targeted more often than in a normal party, and ranged characters especially should be somewhat comfortable in melee.
- Leader – without this role, the party is less able to regain hit points in battle and gains fewer buffs
- First, you have to reconcile with the idea that fights are completely different without a healer, and parties often act accordingly (after a few rounds or fights of making bad decisions). The most important resources in D&D are actions and hit points, in that order, and leaders are the masters of both. Losing a leader isn’t just a small adjustment, it’s a major change that needs to be addressed on both sides.
- Consider monsters from earlier books, such as the Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2, Open Grave, and Draconomicon. Somewhere along the line, at least by the middle of 2010, Wizards released new, higher damage numbers for monsters, and later books use the new values. Older books have monsters with the same debilitating effects, similar attack bonuses and defenses, and sometimes more hit points, but do significantly less damage.
- Give players more bonuses to healing between fights. For example, the consumable item herbal poultice from the Adventurer’s Vault lets a character regain additional hit points when spending healing surges after a short rest. Alternatively, plan on fewer fights per day. The ideas is that players get less healing in battle, so give them a way to get to full after being knocked to nothing in every fight.
- Don’t rely solely on more, lower-level monsters. The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 suggests this for smaller parties and it usually works, but monsters only lose a point of damage or two per level. The slight damage drop isn’t worth the large drop in defenses and attack bonus that monsters suffer. The players will survive, but mostly because their enemies are completely impotent, and impotent enemies are boring. This may just be my preferences talking, so feel free to try it, but keep an eye on the mood at the table to see if players are engaging or just assuming success.
- Striker – without this role, the party is less able to bring down enemies quickly, which lets them attack the party longer
- Know what damage your characters can deal and let them leverage it. A regular character can become a pseudo-striker on a monster with a vulnerability, and a controller with bursts and blasts is perfect for fighting swarms.
- Encourage clever, powerful ideas like pushing monsters off cliffs, leading monsters into damaging terrain, or intimidating bloodied enemies into surrendering. Usually, I’m against things that can kill a monster in one hit, but it’s fine if it happens to one one monster in a busy fight or, as with intimidation, it’s only possible on bloodied enemies.
- Don’t rely on solos or elite brutes for difficulty. Strikers are good at killing big monsters, and it’s easy to throw something dangerous or complicated at the party knowing it will last. But without a striker, the scariest monsters stick around much longer and end up much more dangerous than normal.
In all cases, a DM should design with the party in mind. Incomplete parties just have an extra step or two involved to make sure that fights remain fun and challenging.