Party make up for rotating GM duties

[jvold]

My family of four is very new to roleplaying games and are almost to Thistletop in RotRL with me as the GM. I recently found Jacob's Tower and think it's a good way to introduce different aspects of the game and by switching GM duty we think that it would help us learn more by having to read about how different parts of the game work from the GM perspective. Of course this could all be a bad idea. Anyway what do you think would be a good party make up considering each session a different character would be sitting out as they take over GMing?

[Eltacolibre]

How many people are rotating? All four?

[jvold]

Yes, all four of us would be rotating through.

[jvold]

Currently in RotRL we have a Melee focused Druid, swith-hitter Ranger, and a Sylvan sorcerer. The thought was to do new characters with different classes.

[Eltacolibre]

Assuming you are going to be doing some dungeon crawls:

/ to express the people who would rotate

-Front-Line: Paladin/Invulnerable rager (Barbarian)
-Skillmonkey: Archeologist Bard/Investigator/Slayer/Crypt Breaker Alchemist
-Arcane: Sorcerer(Arcane is best but well usually pick what is most fun for you)/Wizard (foresight)/Arcanist/ Summoner
-Divine: Evangelist cleric/Oracle of Heavens/Shaman of Life

[jvold]

I think you may have misunderstood my intent. We would have four PCs but each session one would sit out to take over the GM duties. So I need to figure out ways to keep all our bases covered. For instance when it's the Barbarian's turn to GM someone would need to fill in on the front-line.

[Broken Zenith]

I would suggest something like:

Druid, melee would be good, but if you don't want to play that again, summoner or cavalier might work
Cleric or Paladin
Wizard or Sorcerer
Inquisitor, switch hitter or ranged

Across any group of three, you should have melee, ranged, magic, healing, curing, utility, etc... The only problem may be if your inquisitor goes, you'll lose a big chunk of skills - don't skimp on Intelligence for any of your characters and double down on disable device and other crucial skills.

Don't forget a few wands of cure light wounds!

I would love to hear how this goes (given that I wrote Jacob's Tower). Feel free to PM me or comment on the blog as you progress.

[jvold]

I like the idea of a summoner, arcane magic and summoned melee. Magus crossed my mind for the same reason although the summoner has charisma as a main stat that I'm sure will help out.

Wizard is more appealing for this as we've got a sorcerer in our other game. With intelligence as a main stat I think they'd end up with a decent amount of skill points.

Inquisitor as a switch hitter would be good I think.

Summoner covers arcane and melee
Wizard for arcane and skills
Inquisitor for melee/ranged and skills

That leaves the Cleric or Paladin, I'm not sure which would be a better match. Maybe a two-handed Paladin?

[jvold]

Well we ended up with
Shiradaz and Undine Summoner
Jada the Oread Inquisitor
Nava a Sylph Wizard and
Zetaya an Ifrit Paladin

My son thought that the Oread sounded cool and we all went with the elemental thing. Makes for a good story as to why we were chosen by Jacob as we had never met before.

We played through level one with my daughter (the paladin) gming for the first time. Things got a little hairy at times especially against Posy. I tend to use Combat Manager to run our games and she looked up a Cult Leader without realizing the difference between what Posy was supposed to be and what we were now facing (human cleric 10/Rogue 2 CR 11). She mentioned that Posy had a will save of 13 which made me realize that something wasn't right and got her steered in the right direction. Overall we had a good time and are looking forward to level two. My son the Inquisitor will be taking his turn as gm.

[Broken Zenith]

Wow! I'm surprised that CR 11 enemy didn't just immediately trounce you! A single channel negative energy would have taken down even the toughest barbarian, along with everybody else. Sounds like you had a good time though. Have fun with level 2!