We're level 3 and nearly had 3 TPKs, so ... yeah. Our party composition kinda sucks, so I'm trying to come up with ways to shore up our weaknesses. Party membership:
Me, Draconic (Arcane) Sorcerer. The usual assortment of blast spells with some setups like Fear and crowd control like Entangling Flora. The only person who uses skill actions. System mastery: Moderate-ish. I read optimization guides for characters before I play them, at least.
Elf Fighter, specced for archery. Point Blank Stance. Uses longbow instead of shortbow. System Mastery: Below average. Just stands and fires unless something gets within melee range, then he runs away. Backup weapon: Rapier.
Centaur Ranger, also specced for archery, Precision style. Uses a comp. longbow. Unlike the previous character, runs away first. Constantly forgets to use Hunted Shot or Hunter's Aim. New to the system. +4 STR, +3 DEX. System Mastery: None. Backup weapon: Scimitar.
Human Bard. Prefers weapons to spells. Thinks the bard is a damage class. Fond of using a battle axe with a +0 STR. Has to be reminded to use Courageous Anthem every single fight. Aside from Force Barrage, Soothe, and TK Projectile, I have no idea what spells she has. System Mastery: Does the scale go negative?
There's a fire-and-wood kineticist who can join us every other game who helps a lot, but we need to plan for his absence.
And yes, none of us really consulted with one another when making characters, except for me coming in and asking what everybody else was playing, if it wasn't obvious.
Our issues, to my analysis, are:
1. A lack of in-combat burst healing. Soothe is *okay*, but the bard tends to go down first (see point 3). Out of combat, we're okay, with two people with Medicine and the DM is liberal with the potions.
2. We don't know anything. We are almost incapable of succeeding at Recall Knowledge checks, leaving us to trial-and-error tactics.
3. We have no 'front line'. While we have two warriors who are perfectly capable in melee combat, they ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO. The Centaur would probably be better in melee than at range. They usually scatter and leave the Sorc and Bard to be the 'front line', and you can guess how well that works. If the Fighter and Ranger were Flanking buddies, they'd wreck house.
The Fighter hid behind the Sorcerer last game ...
4. Resistance to Piercing is a bigger problem than it should be due to over-reliance on bows.
None of us want to retire our current characters and do new ones, so I'm trying to figure out how to compensate for our considerable weaknesses. It's ... daunting, so I'm looking for help from the experts.
Will things improve when we hit higher levels? Or are we just doomed?