Making your best group

[detritus]

Just a little bit of discussion for everyone. What do you think the best 5-man and 6-man groups would consist of? You can throw our role or class, and as a side question which class do you prefer for each role? Not necessarily what you are playing, but just what you would throw together if you could hand pick the group.

With an early thank you for all the consideration and answers.

I find a good group consists of defender, leader, striker, controller, striker for a 5-man, and throw on another leader for 6-man.

For each I prefer these.

Defender-spellsword
Striker-avenger 1st and warlock 2nd
controller-invoker
leader-cleric 1st and bard 2nd

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

I like your list quite a bit except for the Spell Sword as a defender. My experience with the Spell Sword is they are too good at maneuver by half to make a really good tank. To many abilities that yank enemies out of the way etc. I've also found their durability to be suspect.

I generally feel the tank should also usually be 'home base'. If your getting beaten on and can't take it you snuggle up to the tank who helps protect you. If the rush at the BBEG has gone bad and the strikers need to retreat they retreat past the tank to regroup and heal etc.

The tank needs to be a high hp high AC wall meant more to take damage then dish it out and not prone to running all over the map. I like it if my party has a Fighter or a Paladin as the Defender and prefer to see both of these classes put at least some of their focus into making their character even more durable defensively then they already are because they could be called on to hold up the entire enemy force for a round while the rest of the party licks its wounds and recovers from a set back.

[detritus]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

I like your list quite a bit except for the Spell Sword as a defender. My experience with the Spell Sword is they are too good at maneuver by half to make a really good tank. To many abilities that yank enemies out of the way etc. I've also found their durability to be suspect.

I can agree with that pretty well. When I played a swordmage in one campaign (first time not be a leader or controller in years :) ), I went the 1h route with con and int as my primary stats. Took the feat to allow my opportunity attacks to be based on int and concentrated on raising my saves/hps/durability through feats. He wasnt too bad, but before he got a little fleshing out he was pretty squishy. Paladin and Warden are tied for my second, for whatever reason I just cannot stand the Fighter. Maybe it because no one in any of my groups have played a 1h/shield fighter.

[Paul Worthen]

We rolled fighter, swordmage, bard, rogue, cleric in a recent campaign. It worked out fairly well - double defenders and double leaders is decent, and we didn't feel the loss of a controller that much.

Our current game is: cleric, invoker, rogue, ranger, with the cleric multiclassed towards a defender. Sometimes the ranger in this group feels like extra baggage. A fighter or paladin would have fit that slot a lot better.

[detritus]

the group I am now the DM for is doing ok, with this set up.

2h paladin, 2h battle cleric (spiked chain), barbarian, archery/twf ranger mix, wizard, bard

it has not been too bad, but the cleric is wishing they were a ranged striker half the time, since the bard and paladin have covered all the healing

[Matthew Koelbl]

I tend to feel that almost any combination can be pretty effective, and the groups I've been in thus far have had a pretty wide variety. But if I had to choose a group to be as powerful as it could be...

Five or Six PCs:

Defender: Shielding Swordmage. Probably the best single-target tank out there, especially as they get into Paragon tier. Top of the line defenses and the ability to shut down an enemy that ignores them.

Secondary Defender: Battlerager Fighter. I would tend to go with a secondary striker over a secondary defender... but a fighter can easily fill that role. While the Swordmage tanks the biggest enemy in each fight, this guy tries to grab as many of the rest as he can, while dishing out some respectable damage.

Leader: Cleric. This is probably the hardest choice, because all the leaders bring a lot to the table. The Cleric really remains the king of healing, though, and can be really designed to keep anyone from ever dropping.

Controller: Invoker or Wizard. Another tough choice - I tend to feel Invokers are stronger earlier on, with the ability to pour out some intense area effect damage while providing some nice buffs to the party... but when the Wizard comes into their own, they are hard to beat. They really end up with enormous area attacks and some brutal status effects. If I'm less concerned about status effects and more about raw damage, I might even consider filling this slot with a Sorcerer...

Striker: Brutal Rogue. When it comes to simply unloading damage into an enemy, they are tough to beat - especially early on, it is hard for any other strikes to compare to their sheer accuracy and dmaage output. Fragile... but in this party, they should be pretty safe.

PC Number Six - Striker: Archer Ranger. Another character excellent at putting out very reliable damage, and adds a bit of ranged power to a heavy melee party.

Pretty much any of these could be swapped out for different classes and builds, but if I was making choices for a group that would be very effective at taking on all comers, this would probably be where I'd start at.

[frozenwastes]

Rogue - halfling is good, must take melee training (dex)
Tactical Warlord - the rogue is going to get his backstab damage every round
Healing (wis based) Cleric - dwarf is good
Warden - Earth based with lots of con. Be it human, goliath, dwarf or something else
Storm Sorcerer - a striker with a good amount of controller as a secondary. The ability to do area damage while exempting the centre square of the burst works particularly well with the warden.

6th member:

Wizard - tiefling fire wizard is good. As is an illusionist

Or

Fighter - Sword and Shield. Dragon born, Longtooth shifter or Human.

The group I DM for contains 1 Leader (Dwarf Cleric) 3 Strikers (Human Barbarian, Human Ranger, Eladrin Rogue) and 2 Defenders (Dragonborn Fighter, Human Warden). It's nasty. The defenders have plenty of powers that let them attack multiple foes. Basically everyone has the ability to function as a controller a tiny bit. So far, they haven't really missed having one.

[Ratchet]

According to various character optimisation boards, the best group layout is supposed to be built in this order

Striker
Leader
Defender
Controller
Striker
Striker
Striker
Striker etc.

personally, I dont agree with it.

My layout would be

BattleRager Fighter
Earth Strength Warden
Battle Cleric
Orb Wizard
Archer Ranger
Dragon Sorceror

[Marec]

I understand the benefit of Sword Mages, Battlerager Fighters, and even Wardens, but do not forget that at lvl 11 Paladins have access to one of the best abilities in the game IMHO -

pg 100phb Certain Justice - as long as the paladin has the target marked if that ability hits, then they are weakened and dazed as long as the mark stays up - not until end of next turn, not save ends, potentially for the rest of the fight - that is very powerful.