The party’s ability to deal with traps, to perform reconnaissance, and a host of other social and political options all become severely limited. You don’t always need the rogue’s abilities of stealth and skill, but without them a whole host of tactical options are essentially off the table. The rogue is a bit different from the other three main roles in that it is more situational. Without a dedicated spellcaster, a party lacks powerful area effects and also will not have access to the huge variety of utility spells that are often either required or nearly tactically essential, especially at higher levels. Those two roles are probably the most critical, but both the magic user/spellcaster and the thief/rogue are vital as well. Without a dedicated cleric/healer, survivability drops radically, and the party will have to constantly rest and heal up. Without the fighter/tank, a party is hard pressed to control combat tactically, creating choke points or protecting more vulnerable party members. To clarify this point, I’ll go through each of the original classes and give them a more universal designation. Whether you like the four archetypes or not, it is hard to construct an effective party without having at least one character dedicated to each of the main roles. In so doing, whether by brilliant design or by fortuitous accident, D&D hit on four tactical roles that are so intuitive and basic they have almost become fundamental to game design across a broad range of genres and formats. The first supplement, Greyhawk (1975), brought in the thief, completing the set. To be completely accurate, the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set (1974) only had three classes, the cleric, fighting man, and magic user. Often referred to as the four “tactical roles,” these archetypal character types are fundamental to the game’s design. The core feature of D&D game design that most distinctly affects optimum party size is the classic four-role structure that has been a part of the game’s design since D&D’s earliest incarnations. I’ve concluded that the perfect party size is five PCs. It’s not just the math that makes this so it’s the basic design of the class system that makes party size such a critical consideration. It’s a useful note, but really avoids dealing with the fact that the whole game is going to be radically different if you have a party of three as opposed to a party of six. Silhouettes courtesy of Telecanter’s Receding Rules. Art is in the public domain. On page 83 there is the telling note that parties smaller than four and larger than five need to increase or decrease encounter multipliers for the number of monsters, but that’s about it. About the only concrete note on party size appears in the section on encounter design in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Still, I think it’s worth considering what the optimal number of players is and what might be done to alleviate situations that arise from having too few or too many at the table. Particularly compared to earlier editions, the 5th edition books have surprisingly little to say about party size and composition. There’s not a lot I can or am willing to do to change either of those situations, so both games are likely to continue on with a few attendant difficulties. The one I play in may have too few players, while the that one I run sometimes has too many. I’ve encountered both sides of the problem in the two games in which I am currently involved. Few of us would be willing to tell a friend who wants to join the fun that our game is full, and we’ve probably had a game or two never get off the ground because there weren’t enough players. I’ve been ruminating recently on an issue I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about: How many players are too few or too many?įor most groups, this issue is more a matter of chance and social dynamics than it is about game play. Angry GM’s 5 Rules for Dating My Teen-Aged Skill System.Angry GM’s 3 Shocking Things You Won’t Believe about Combat.Angry GM’s 4 Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck.Angry GM’s 11 Ways to Make Inspiration Not Suck.Justin Alexander’s Railroading Manifesto.Justin Alexander’s Node-Based Scenario Design.D&D 5E Tools by Leugren: Encounter Difficulty Calculator.Ash Law’s Trajectory of Fear (excellent advice for horrific scenarios).Jason Tondro on How Tolkien’s Dwarves Are Nothing Like They’ve Been Depicted.
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