One class party, a thought experiment.

lorenlord wrote:

I'd have to throw my lot in with the Oracle party. With Life getting great mystery spells, they can definitely hang with Healing, and wearing Med Armor is a big plus as well. Seems like it owuld be a cool campaign as well. The Divinely Destined.

so... a blind man, a cripple, and a deaf walk into a bar...

:P

would make epic tales for the bard trailing them (and writing jokes about:P)

LOL, don't forget the guy walking around with a ghost throwing his gear everywhere ;p

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Quinggong Monk. Not a caster per se, but you can cast certain spells based on your ki.

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Qinggong Monk of the Four Winds is a decent blaster with a bender feel.

Solonar wrote:

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Qinggong Monk of the Four Winds is a decent blaster with a bender feel.

Is there a optimized build for this anywhere? I'd be curious about playing one.

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Half Elf using Arcane Training for wand use.

Imbicatus wrote:

Solonar wrote:

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Qinggong Monk of the Four Winds is a decent blaster with a bender feel.

Is there a optimized build for this anywhere? I'd be curious about playing one.

I know there is one somewhere on the boards, but I don't have time to look for it now. It was in a thread discussing an airbender monk.

Of course, the true strength of an all bard party is that you get to go around introducing yourself as a band.

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

All Elf Bard Party: Boy Band. Complete with lip synching to ghost sound.

Anyone got any other good speciesist jokes for the bands?

There is the goth dhampir band.

Ranger/Horizon Walkers.

No matter where they go, someone will feel at home.

Imbicatus wrote:

Solonar wrote:

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

Qinggong Monk of the Four Winds is a decent blaster with a bender feel.

Is there a optimized build for this anywhere? I'd be curious about playing one.

Sensei Ki Mystic 4 Winds Qinggong

With Half Elf, you could also do something like Crane Style and choose the 9 Section Whip.

FuelDrop wrote:

Of course, the true strength of an all bard party is that you get to go around introducing yourself as a band.

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

All Elf Bard Party: Boy Band. Complete with lip synching to ghost sound.

Anyone got any other good speciesist jokes for the bands?

There is the goth dhampir band.

A group of Oread dervish dancers could call themselves the Rotating Stones.
In a similar vein a band composed of Vanaras could be The Monkeys.

Or an all hobgoblin band could be Knights In Stanley's Service.

just a comment...

for those who believe that you need arcane spell list for its spells, I point to theologian or ecclisitheurge clerics for their ability to get a good chunk of arcane best list. Plus eldritch heritage (arcane) covers many angles that domain spell lists did not. it is not perfect but a group without divine spell list is going to spending a lot of wealth to cover basic poisons, saves, negative levels, and such. a divine class will look at anything the arcane does and do it in a lesser way with a lesser spell but they still do it. this is the principle reason they will always be if not better; a safer bet for a such a party.

darn I got in rant mode.... ill run down the options of cleric vs everything...

Inquisitors: 4 domains versus 8 in a 4 man party. Inquisitors judgments will not come close to overtaking the clerics demon subdomain boost till the third judgment comes into play and by then the normal cleric has 4 domain powers to use (2 from each). Inquisitors can complete in archery and win in skills but lose horribly in all other areas.

Oracles: Oracles are VERY strong and can fill almost any role. Combined with being charisma based caster and we have a serious contender here. The main difference for me is in the clerics charisma based abilities; evangelist and channeling. Channeling is both massed healing and mob control in one feature (rulership and similar). A life oracle can be a healbot like no other but he in a party of oracles is the only one without spells able to do so.On the other hand a party of clerics could potentially all heal each and never use a single spell. add to it that an evangelist boosts the abilities of the party in arguably the best way in the game (bard style ;) Oracle tries but cleric just has more features attached.

Druid: As I had said in an earlier post a melee druid will practically always beat a battle cleric in tanking and DPS and almost all the druids can enter melee as a fall back option. The list has good healing, summoning, and the second best list for battlefield control. So whats the problem then? A four druid party is very strong but more often than not, its 4 very powerful PCs fighting on the same side. By contrast a group of 4 clerics is going to have multiple layers of them working as one cohesive unit to directly make the others better. For example, 2 clerics have imspire courage and tactics domain between them.. One manages to improve the chances of the team going first and the other makes the whole teams DPR increase (and this is just two features) but where does the druid give such bonuses to the whole team with such quality? To explain that fully would take a long time but that is really the true reason why druids don't run rampant over a cleric, the clerics are a better TEAM.

Arcane casters in general: please don't make me laugh. It is a testament to the quality of the spell list that these guys even get a mention. Im sorry but the weak saves, low health, usually bad skills, and more coupled with the fact that clerics steal some of their best spells makes em bad for an all one class party. They are great classes but they are falling behind.

Summoners: ok we got serious. If synthesist and master summoners are allowed at your table this will be interesting to say the least. If you have 20 creatures on the table on your side plus beastly eidilons on top of the best 6th level list in the game its good. Add to it that eidilons can be converted to skill monkey roles easy enough so they have a lot of potential and adaptability when compared to most. But where they fail is that everything they do depends on them going first. If those summoners don't go first its entirely possible for one of them to get KOed very easy, in the absence of any other class to protect em. And if one summoner goes down you also lose all the creatures he could have brought to the fight for at least a short time. Clerics don't have this issue honestly because they have no less than 3 high quality domain or inquisition powers based on wisdom to make sure that the whole party goes first and have heavier armor should that fail.

Paladin: They fall! or the story messes em up. ok seriously, a fine class with lots of healing and martial potential but skills are just a joke. at least cleric have spells to help out or can justify taking INT 13+ for spell spec. Plus we have the same case as druid where they cant boost each other with their class features anywhere in the same league as the cleric can. Many of the archetypes support features will overlap on each other in a four man group.

Bard: I want to support them but the bards overlap too much. They are SOLID but can you honestly say that one bard is so vastly diferrent from the other that you can make a party out of em? I cant. the performances overlap, 6th level casting vs 9th level, limited weapon and armor. sry my diva friends.

Oh, interesting detail for an all summoner party- the first world summoner can become a substitute for a witch.

This is because their replacement for the summon monster SLA adds various fey creatures to their list. On level II, the pugwampis shows up.

There is a more accurate term for pugwampis though- "A 45' circle of no save AoE Misfortune Hex". Yes, pugwampis come with an aura that forces everything within a 20' radius to roll every d20 twice and take the worse result (so that means attacks, saves, and skills more the most part). And avoiding friendly fire from that is as simple as grabbing a luck bonus (so half-orcs, as well as anything that takes advantage of the slotless item: luck stone, for just a couple options that a 1 class party can take advantage of)

And since pugwampis are on such a low summon level, you can easily summon a ton of the buggers and have them spread out to cover the whole battle field. The fact that they have only 6 base hp makes little difference- even if enemies try to kill them, that would be a turn where they are dividing their forces and not paying attention to your party of summoners and eidolons. The pugwampis are not combatants- they are nodes for a widespread debuff spell that just happen to have the ability to flank.

Not entirely sure how well this would work out (I think it might make others' summoning spells a bit messier), but it is an interesting option at least.

I guess if trapfinder trait is allowed, clerics beat oracles. I personally found trapfinder cheesy, a rogues class feature and the measly price of half a feat? Meh

ideal cleric party:
Half orc cleric of Cayden(goes around with a honking battle axe, cos, he's half orc?)
Human theologian of Sarenrae(Mr boomstick)
Human evangelist cleric of erastil (hey, erastil's favored weapon is a longbow!) - Feather domain
Get that half orc to ride your animal companion (axebeak/lion) into battle
Dwarf cleric of Sivhana (knowledge and trickery domains), with trapfinder trait. Put on breadth of experience for knowledge monkey! For more knowledge, take cloistered cleric, in which do not take knowledge domain.

ideal oracle party:
Half orc battle oracle
Half elf life oracle (ancient lorekeeper)
Half elf heavens oracle (blackened curse)
Half orc lore oracle (seeker) -party rogue and knowledge monkey.

more offensive variant:
Half orc battle oracle
Half orc flame oracle (seeker)
Half elf heavens oracle (blackened curse)
Half elf lore oracle (ancient lorekeeper)

Another version, - the skill monkey(oracles have 4 skill pts per lv, how bad can it get)
Half orc battle oracle
Half orc flame oracle
Half elf heavens oracle (blackened curse)
Aasimar life oracle

You can use any class for this, so long as the campaign takes the class into account. No healers? Make healing potions more readily available, or some type of healer NPC if the party can get to civilization. All martials? Go light on swarms or other tactics that make the martial PCs feel useless. All mages? Go light on monsters with high spell resistance.

I've done all cleric parties before, and it worked well.

I've done an all monk party for a Shaw Brothers kung-fu movie-like campaign, and it worked very well.

Pugwampis are good in theory, in practice it bogs down the fight until it's like playing a game where your frame-rate has dropped through the floor.

The main thing that comes to mind about a monoclass party is the campaign. There is no class that is better than a mix, so you're sacrificing utility or power in exchange for a theme. This is not a bad thing in anyway, it just raises the questions, "what is the theme?" and "Is it worth it?"

The monoclass wizard game I played was specifically a band of academy apprentices being sent on a sort of academic contest, and that was all it was until HYDRA attacked the SHIELD Academy and we had to go rogueplot developments forced us to change our priorities from just winning the contest to more important things.

I don't remember all the details, it was a long time ago, I believe I actually had a level of cleric just so I could grab some healing. This was 3.5 so we didn't have Samsarans or Witches.

It may also have been bard.

Pugwampis are good in theory, in practice it bogs down the fight until it's like playing a game where your frame-rate has dropped through the floor.

...remember, in this context, we are discussing an all summoner party here. The frame rate here is 'carved into granite as we go along' anyway.

Heck, since the only general directive you give the pugwampis is to cover the battlefield and run away from beasties, they are usually easier to use than a lot of summons, I would imagine.

Not to say that a first worlder game is particularly fun. It is the kind of odd break that results in the GM constantly throwing out more dice and failing everything he tries....or he gives luckstones out like candy to monsters as if they were freakin' trick or treating. It can be strong, but in such a conditional way that it makes the game extremely weird, either you only fight crippled monsters, or they are metagamed to hell. Overall, first worlder is better as a boss that the players HATE and meticulously design plans to kill.

One battle where they get their rears kicked by fairies until some druid comes in with a horde of summoned monsters to save them, and then another battle after they had done the appropriate knowledge checks and kept the right spells clogging up their slots for weeks just so they would be ready. Done well, you can put the kind of fear into them usually associated with Tucker and his scaly friends.

Surprised all-Witch only got a couple of mentions. With all their Hexes, including beneficial ones (including Healing) that they can use on each other, the more the merrier. With respect to the Hexes they use directly against enemies, these can be selected to rapidly wreck the great majority of enemies (to make this even more effective, have some of them be Halflings concentrating on Jinxing). If a couple of the witches that are not Halflings are Scarred Witch Doctors (Orc or Half-Orc), they can even be decent at melee at low levels when they haven't gotten all their Hexes together yet; for later levels when their BAB gets too far behind for this, Summon Monster is on their spell list if they need melee. If at least one of them has the Life Patron (and is preferably a Hedge Witch, although this isn't strictly necessary), they can be reasonably covered for repairing ability damage/drain as if they had a Cleric (except that this Witch is squishier if not also a Scarred Witch Doctor). A Hex Channeler Archetype is even available from the ACG if you want to poach Channeling, although I wouldn't recommend it unless the party is really big, because every +1d6 of Channeling replaces a Hex, and you won't have enough Character Feats to get all the Hexes you want with Extra Hex unless you have a big enough party to get the required duplication while being able to afford one member not participating fully; for an Evil party/coven, having the Hex Channeler also be a Gravewalker (Necromancer Witch) would be highly thematic, although not optimal (Gravewalker replaces 3 Hexes, which are thus unavailable for replacement by +1d6 Channeling). Anti-Magic Field (which, by the way, is overpowered) would be their big weakness (although if you let some of them take levels in the Prestige Class Blackfire Adept/Darkfire Adept, they even have a pretty good chance to get through that).

* * * * * * * *

With respect to an all-Bard party, I was wondering if this might actually be able to work in Council of Thieves. Main problems I can see are:

1. They are going to have to blow a TON of cash on anti-Undead magical equipment and consumables to fight large numbers of incorporeal Undead (particularly Shadows and their relatives) that show up at certain points (I think this starts in earnest in Chapter 3 -- not 100% sure because the Council of Thieves PbP I have been following creatively rearranged some things, which is really cool in the way it was done, but does make it harder to figure out what would be more commonly encountered).

2. They are going to have a Hell of a time with the last part of the AP (again not 100% sure of what goes where because the above-linked PbP creatively rearranged things).

Bard: I want to support them but the bards overlap too much. They are SOLID but can you honestly say that one bard is so vastly diferrent from the other that you can make a party out of em? I cant. the performances overlap, 6th level casting vs 9th level, limited weapon and armor. sry my diva friends.

The bards don't have to overlap each other if you make the right team.

+1 to attack and damage from Inspire Courage (vanilla bard or Arcane Duelist or whatever else you like)
-1 to enemy attack and damage and saves vs fear (Court Bard)
+1 to AC and attack rolls (Archivist)
+1 on CL checks, concentration checks, and attack rolls with spells (Magician)

And of course all those things scale like Inspire Courage at higher levels.

And then Archaeologist is a good one that doesn't get bardic performance at all.

I'm going to go off the board and say an all-Sorcerer party.

Healing? In a room full of CHA-casters, somebody's going to have a decent UMD score. And if not, Infernal Healing will be okay until somebody learns to summon something that can heal.

Meanwhile, you've got a pretty decent variety of potential builds. One guy can fill the boards with summons, one can load up on transmutation and touch spells and try to go melee, a debuffer Necromancer, an Illusionist or Enchanter to be the "face", and of course an Evoker for when you just need stuff dead.

The only trouble is when you need some niche utility spell that nobody wanted to spend a spell known on. But honestly, most sorcerers are versatile enough that this can be worked around.

4 man rogue party. 3 with two weapon fighting, two weapon feint, feint partner, improved feint partner, combat reflexes, coordinated charge, paired opportunist, improved feint, greater feint, and scout archetype. 1 with bandit archetype, moonlight stalker feint, improved feint, greater feint, paired opportunist, feint partner, improved feint partner.

Rogues win initiative or ambush enemies. 3 people coordinated charge an enemy as a standard action in the surprise round dealing 3 sneak attacks. 4th member feints as a swift, move, standard action providing 3 AoOs to each of the 3 members for 9 more attacks at the highest Attack bonus. 12 attacks in a single surprise round all with sneak attack.

If it's still not dead the three begin full attacking with two weapon feint and providing 2 AoOs each with the lone guy doing three feints per round. Three full attacks using two weapon feint are 3-18 attacks with 6 AoOs from that and then 9 more AoOs from the other feints. Totaling 15 AoOs and 3-18 more regular attacks. 33 attacks from 3 people per round is pretty scary. More so when every attack deals sneak attack and a little more than half are at the highest attack bonuses come with a +4 bonus from paired opportunist. Could easily be 21 attacks that only miss on a 1.

Replace rogue with ninja to even greater effect.

All rogue sounds like a challenge. The right campaign could work wonderfully for it.

...but oh... I WANT to play an all barbarian campaign. SMASH RULES!

Alchynor investigator.
If real magic is needed arcanist or hunter. Tons of different

My favorite will always be Bard.

Rock band party ftw.

EDIT: Have to admit all Skald party is an awesome alternative too.

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

I don't have any ideas, but I was thinking about something similar myself after playing the old Bioware game Jade Empire. I think it would be kind of interesting (if players are cooperative) to GM a campaign where players are limited to magic classes and unarmed-combat classes and archetypes. There'd be plenty of enemies with swords, but they would all be warriors between levels 1 and 3.

How many people are old enough to remember when the rules forbade more than 3 Rangers traveling together?

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

This! :-)

We had a similar thought at my table this weekend. An idea of an all monk party for Jade Regent. One of us wanted to play a Zen Archer and I saw that the best way for a healer or divine is to play a Sacred Fist Warpriest. What I have not found is a way to due an 'Arcane Monk' within pathfinder, without multi-classing.

Any ideas?

How about Eldritch Scrapper?

These are a little dated with old Pathfinder Society factions, but I think they’d be fun to play:

Korsairs of Kortos

I made these during the playtest so there aren’t any archetypes. I think swashbucklers would be great to play as a campaign; lots of fast paced play and crazy antics.

Eyes of Lamashtu

I actually made sure everyone had different roles in this party. Of course this came before the Hunter class to steal my ‘teamwork feat thunder’.

Thundersmoke

I just like these guys. Like the barbarian party everyone keeps mentioning, these guys would blow through enemies faster than they could be hurt. As they level they could go into prestige classes to take care of some of the deficiencies in the gunslinger class…

I have played in an all bard party before and it worked really well. Bards are a great class for this because of their vriety of abilities, they can melee, they can heal, they can face, they can buff, they can sneak,they can be skill monkeys, they can do anything really.

One thing I like about an all-druid party is that I feel druids are typically super-challenging to RP in an adventuring party. They don't fit right, their goals don't align, and they tend to fall into "tag-along" mode without much character development. Just my personal experience.

An all-druid party though would be a great opportunity to 1) explore the diversity of the class and 2) allow the druids to do quests they really care about instead of "let's go kill another evil thing!"

Plus, wouldn't it just be awesome if the whole party could easily morph into birds, or octopi, or moles, or fire elementals, and explore environments that no other party would even be able to enter?

That sounds awesome, really want to try that now

I have played in an all bard party before and it worked really well. Bards are a great class for this because of their vriety of abilities, they can melee, they can heal, they can face, they can buff, they can sneak,they can be skill monkeys, they can do anything really.

RumpinRufus wrote:

One thing I like about an all-druid party is that I feel druids are typically super-challenging to RP in an adventuring party. They don't fit right, their goals don't align, and they tend to fall into "tag-along" mode without much character development. Just my personal experience.

An all-druid party though would be a great opportunity to 1) explore the diversity of the class and 2) allow the druids to do quests they really care about instead of "let's go kill another evil thing!"

Plus, wouldn't it just be awesome if the whole party could easily morph into birds, or octopi, or moles, or fire elementals, and explore environments that no other party would even be able to enter?

That sounds awesome, really want to try that now

And they can be more ninja than the ninja class. At least for the weirder 'enemy of the week' kind of ninjas.

Who expects a bird to fly into your castle and grow a super beef arm to stab you in your sleep?

How do you deal with a group of earth elemental assassins that hide under the ground and strike unseen?

(I know there are ways to deal with all this- still, it is a set of unexpected options that you might not be prepared for, Mr. Wizard)

Maybe not the best, but still an incredible study in Aid Another synergy:

All halfling honor guard cavaliers of the dragon order with the Helpful trait (+4 to aid another) riding cheetahs. Get bodyguard feat for free (AA as a AoO), then get combat reflexes (level 1), gang up (level 3), outflank (level 5) and reach weapons with the menacing enchantment.

Each would be able to aid another as an AoO to give an untyped +4 to hit and/or to +8 AC to their adjacent ally at 1st level, including their mount. In a formation, this would be coming from two sides, so double that. They'd have a constant +4 to +6 hit when flanking from flanking bonus zones created by their menacing weapons.

By 3rd level they would be flanking almost all the time (via gang up) and at 5th would get another +4 to hit due to outflank for a total of +8 to +10 on flank attacks, which stacks with the untyped Aid Another bonuses.

Consider the stacking from this diagram where halfling 1 thru 4 surround T (for target).

...H1
H2 t H3
...H4

They and their mounts would get a +6 to hit for flanking and a choice of +8 addl to hit or +12 to AC from aid another synergy bonuses anytime T gets the bright idea to attack.

Doom, doom, doomy, doom, doom, doom.

Whelp I don't remember writing that so I was tired i guess haha

Alchemist*

Also some of the occult adventure stuff look like it co uld have some really amusing mono class adventures.

Clerics can easily make their way through a campaign, slightly different builds to fill each role and use of detect traps gets them past a few things (or just plain summoning meat to set them off).
The biggest thing is undead armies (that are normally dangerous) stand no chance vs that many channels.

Inquisitors I can definitely see making their way through a campaign, while they have less spells than clerics they have a tank load of martial might and lots of skills for more rp based campaigns. A few scrolls is more than enough for those situations where a little flex is needed.

I would like to see something like an all ranger/rogue/wizard party personally

4 knifemaster rogues ratfolk with swarming racial trait and river rat background trait.
A.K.A. the Lawn-mowers.

i think a Warpriest party would be pretty good for this. More so if one of them is a divine Commander and shares teamwork feats to the others.

Bard: I want to support them but the bards overlap too much. They are SOLID but can you honestly say that one bard is so vastly diferrent from the other that you can make a party out of em? I cant. the performances overlap, 6th level casting vs 9th level, limited weapon and armor. sry my diva friends.

Bard - covers buffing the party and support roles

May not have access to some of those scarier 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells, but when you can add a few of the big boom spells from 3rd through 6th to your list you're pretty well able to cope.

I'm currently in an All Paladin party running through Wrath of the Righteous. We just hit 11th level/4th teir.

It's a lot of fun. It definitely changes the dynamics of the game, but not to the point where fights feel super easy or insurmountable.

Another vote for the bard party! While the standard inspire courages wouldn't stack - there's enough buff/debuff variety in the archtypes to have them stack through the roof.

Arcane Duelist: There are enough bards that one losing bardic knowledge doesn't matter. He can fight better & cover inspire courage.

Archivist: They buff with Naturalist - the insight bonus stacks entirely with inspire courage's competance bonus.

Court Bard: Satire = De-buffs the enemy.

Street Performer: Disappearing Act = Spread around the invis! (Of note - since the ability makes all foes "treat one creature chosen by the bard as if it were invisible" even true seeing doesn't help against it, as they're not actually invisible anyway.)

Inspire courage & Naturalist more than make up for the mid BAB. (not to mention 1 being invis each round at low levels - more as the campaign goes on) While Satire makes up for the d8 HD & light armor.

As to the theme - I vote for a boy band. The idea of it simply amuses me to no end. In addition, it makes sense that everyone is a bit different. (They need to appeal to all of the ladies' tastes.) Plus, that way they don't need to use instruments.

Worst idea for an all barbarian party:
Make them all half-orc Mounted Furies with Boon Companion and Beast Rider for some cool rhinoceros companions. Then give them (barbarians and rhinoceroses) Rhino Charge and some nice teamwork feats (Pack Rager archetype would help, but costs rage powers). If you get the beast totem powers, than once you get to 11th level and pick up Coordinated Charge, you'll be performing multiple full attacks in a round.

If combat maneuvers are your thing, Awesome Charge, Minotaur Charge, and Impaling Charge could be viable options for the rhinoceroses.

Not very effective in most situations, but I just can't get the image of a horde of charging half-orcs riding rhinoceroses out of my head.

I'd have to throw my lot in with the Oracle party. With Life getting great mystery spells, they can definitely hang with Healing, and wearing Med Armor is a big plus as well. Seems like it owuld be a cool campaign as well. The Divinely Destined.

Metal mystery can have some very nice bonuses for a melee fighter.

I'm really liking the idea of a Druid party. A LOT of wildshape options aren't useful because only one party member can do them, but if EVERYONE can turn into a sparrow or a crocodile a lot of tricks become viable. Less, "okay, I wildshape into an ape, because that's the only thing this class ability is good for." Maybe everybody transforms into giant geckos and runs up a wall that would take a levitate spell and 150 feet of rope for a "normal" party.

Not to mention there is a lot of plot potential for an all-druid gang. Sure the class is typecast as irrational and contradictory hippies that should probably spend all of their time obsessively defending their sacred grove and ignoring outside threats until the apocalypse has already started, but it isn't THAT hard to play them different. The Druids of Shannara come to mind as an archetype that would go out into the world and get involved in stuff.

An all elf bard party.

An all elf bard party.

I can totally see that being a boy band.

All i have too say is all rogue and stealth synergy, and watch your gm implode.

FuelDrop wrote:

All Dwarf Bard Party: Rock/Metal band. 'Cause all Dwarfs care about is Rock, Metal, and Axes.

This! :-)

Yeah verily this, however...

Four coordinated Sorcerer's CAN do EVERYTHING if they choose to. Discuss.

A 4 Psion Party: A Transmogrofist(sp) for smashing, another Egoist for healing (Empathic Transfer), a Shaper for "summoning", and a Kiteticist for nuking. (You can dual-discipline to cover more ground)

I second cleric as the strongest, followed by druid. All bard sounds like it would be amazing. All paladin would be solid too.

Not many people have said all ranger. They get healing and I'd think between them, rangers could each pick a favored enemy and terrains which are either all the same and completely decimate the area. Or, they pick all different ones to cover. So that ranger 1 covers undead, 2 is dragons, 3 is evil outsiders, and 4 is I don't know, magical beasts or something?

I can see a dragon age style dwarf ranger party into the underdark being super fun to play.

What about taking the concept further and having an all-hybrid Dual Talent Battle/Casting "Martial Artist 1/Ecclisitheurge of Sarenrae" party, with social inquisitions thrown in?

The Sword-Brothers of the Solar Temple.
"Temple-Sword-Power-Attack-Flurrying, High-Wisdom-Cleric-Casting, Fireball-Throwing, Aura-Debuffing, Social-Situation-Dominating. We do that. All of it. All of us."

All wizard parties have a pretty good reason to focus on fireballs and the like. Sure, it's not the most effective form of attack one on one, but four fireballs on round 1? Scary.

All commoners, now there is a challenge for you.