No cleric and no fighter (do my players have a chance?)

[The Antra]

I need some help from the people who ran the Freeort Trilogy. I came up with a party and talk to my players about it. They loved the idea, but I am afraid they're gonna die pretty quickly. The party would be:

Captain Morgan "One-eye" Drake (Fighter1, Bard1)

Samantha "Sam" Fennel (Rogue1)

"Rufio, the elf" - actually Rafaeolius Elessarius, and actually a half-elf (Ranger1)

Mustafah Al-Rashid (Sorcerer1)

Wang Cheng - (Monk1)

That's right. No cleric (that way they will be more dependent on the cleric of the God of Knowledge) and no fighter (Captain Morgan wil develop his Bardic side).

Will they die too quickly? Or at all?

I see everyone who played it had a cleric among the PCs, I'd wonder if it would be playable without one.

Best,
Marcio

[gubaru]

If you send Egil along with them, they should be OK. He'll probabaly be quite useful once Madness rolls around and they're in the sunken temple. Even without him, they might be OK since the bard will have access to some healing spells. It might get pretty tight, though.

FWIW, my party went all of Death and good bit of Terror before adding a new player with a fighter. The party make up was pretty similar to what yours will be if Egil tags along:

Human ranger
Human monk
Human wizard
Halfling rogue
Dwarf cleric

[anoxos]

I think your group will do fine with just Egil as an NPC cleric.

My party had a cleric, but the player running said cleric only managed to show up about half the time. They had to make due with only 1/2 of a cleric. They did alright.

[Nikchick]

My group was without a cleric or a rogue for a whole campaign. With access to a paladin and a few wands/scrolls of cure light and we made it pretty far. Tackling undead was a little trickier, though.

Nicole

[drnuncheon]

My PCs - there are only two of them - had no cleric. They drank more healing potions than they did ale.

They started as Ftr1/Rog2 and Ftr1/Wiz2 in Death in Freeport, and have survived (by the skins of their teeth) until now (halfway through the sunken temple in Madness).

I'm a bit concerned because of all of the undead...they seem to be doing OK for now. The only person who has had huge problems is the NPC who lost 5 strength points. They have been going through charges on their healing wand (the NPC is a ranger) like nobody's business, though.

J

[timemrick]

The main problem with no fighter is that your party doesn't seem to have anyone optimized for front-rank fighting (deal high damage, soak up hits, protect the casters, etc.) except maybe the ranger and monk, who will be more effective if they can stay mobile. My own group had this problem for their first couple adventures; they had to make do with a ranger and bard until the bard's player started over with a fighter. (A tank-style cleric could help here, too; ours was a low-Str, no-armor, wizard wannabe, so had to stay out of melee.)

The main advantage of a cleric in DiF & TiF is the healing ability. If the GM allows enough magic items, or if the bard gets CLW soon enough, you can work around that. However, the sunken temple in MiF is nasty even with a cleric (ability damage, turn resistance, etc.), and could be "quick, brutal, and short" without one.

Tim

_________________
Tim Emrick, time@sluggy.net
Tim's Green Ronin Errata & Notes:
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"Every hour wounds. The last one kills."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: timemrick on 2002-04-29 09:12 ]</font>

[Kalendraf]

The group I DM for started with a cleric, but that player dropped out. Later, another player joined, and decided to run a Druid. The group started out with 1st level characters: Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Barbarian and the Cleric. After finishing the last adventure, they now have a lot of multiclassing going on: Fighter3/Wizard3, Ranger6, Rogue4/Sorcerer2, Barbarian2/Rogue2/Ranger2, Druid6


From a play standpoint, I would say that the 1st two adventures (Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport) can easily be handled without a cleric in the group. Most of the combat situations in those aren't that difficult, and since they are in town, it's pretty easy to have them run back to one of the temples for a quick heal from Brother Egil or another patron clergy if necessary.

However, Madness in Freeport is a totally different scenario. The numerous undead in the temple are very difficult to handle, and the final assault on the lighthouse is likely to require some major healing ability as well. Having some decent fighting types will be important as well.

A few of these problems can be offset by magic to some degree. If you handout some additional healing potions or items that provide healing that can help enormously. And to help against the undead in combat, I'd recommend a ghost touch weapon or two.

I'm wondering why so many groups have trouble finding a cleric to adventure with. Is it still that bad of a class? I've played one 3e cleric so far, and found it quite fun to play. In fact, I haven't found a class that isn't fun to play in 3e.

[timemrick]

I'm wondering why so many groups have trouble finding a cleric to adventure with. Is it still that bad of a class? I've played one 3e cleric so far, and found it quite fun to play. In fact, I haven't found a class that isn't fun to play in 3e.

If your group's anything like the ones I've played with recently, that shortage isn't due to any fault in the class itself. How fun clerics are to play depends heavily on the context of the setting and its religion(s)--even more so than for paladins or druids, one could argue. If you're going to play a cleric seriously, he needs to be more than a wizard with a holy symbol and bandages. And you can only get that extra dimension through how the cleric fits into the world--how he feels about the gods, how he feels about his fellow mortals, what made him become a cleric, what role and duties that status gives him in society, etc. Members of other classes can be just as spiritual and devout, but the cleric is *defined* by that link.

Some players aren't able or willing to take on that role-playing burden. Some need a cool GM or set of gods to play off of in order to enjoy the priestly path (or just prefer it, as I do). A rare few can throw themselves into the role with no problem whatsoever--even if the GM is only so-so and the available religions are pretty lame.

A friend of mine is about to start a new D&D campaign, and was briefly worried that he wouldn't have any divine spellcaster PCs. 3 of the 4 of us were currently playing clerics or druids in other games, so wanted to play something else (even the one player who *always* seems to play clerics or druids wanted a change). But the DM has since recruited a 5th player, who is perfectly happy to play a cleric; it just took him a while to choose from the DM's very eclectic list of gods (and he chose Mystra, so will be multiclassing to wizard ASAP).

Tim Emrick

[The Antra]

In my case, it's not a matter of a bad class. I talked to the players and told them I was going to assign them the characters (it's a tradition of ours to have these role-playing challenges) and they couldn't change a bit of their initial sheets (later they can do whatever they want - multiclassing and all - as long as they come up with a reasonable explanation).

In the specific case of the Freeport trilogy, I WANTED them to be without a cleric and a fighter, so they would be facing a different challenge from my other game of D&D (where everything is pretty much standard D&D - a St. Cuthbert cleric, a paladin, a dwarven fighter, an elven fighter, an elven ranger, a halfling thief, a wizard and a monk). I wanted them to react differently, run when it's overwhelming and plan their strategies. In my other game, the characters have achieved 10th level and ae pretty much killing machines. They interact very well and it's very difficuly to put a challenge they can't handle...

Since I was going to place them in an entirely different setting, I wanted to make sure they would not be depending on the same resources...

Best,
Marcio

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Antra on 2002-04-29 16:05 ]</font>