Fix the party

[McDaygo]

So my game started as a group of 6 but due to out of game reasons lost 3 players. We don’t want to start the game over but this left serious holes in the party.

Right now the party is two fighters one speced for Tanking/high AC,one a gloomblade speccing for critical hits and a social built oracle. They lost thier skill monkey (rogue) and two arcane casters (support witch and arcainist dps)

I’m considering letting the players Gesault to fix roles but is there other ways outside of adding players or new characters to fix the current party?

[Lady Asharah]

So technically a question. What is there to fix?
As a DM you can design challenges that will fit the party.

As a DM you can design challenges that the party can't solve *and* force them to think outside the box (is there a thieves guild in the city we just left that would have a locksmith for hire to open this ancient dungeon door?)

Parties that are "missing" certain roles can be as much if not more fun to play than your standard tank/healer/dps setup

You already have two fighters, one to take hits and one to dish them out, and a face for the party.

Alternatively Leadership feat can often fix holes like this.

[Melkiador]

It does sound like a workable party, even for most APs. You may just need to throw a few more wands their way and they should be fine.

Gestalt feels like overkill, but if you really want to add something, consider giving free variant multiclassing, where they don’t lose feats for the class abilities gained.

[Derklord]

General things: Pathfinder is geared towards hybrids and generally flexible or versatile characters, and the "traditional party roles" are/should be split among multiple characters. You don't have a character with one role, but a character with multiple jobs, none of which have to be exclusive in a party.

What you want is answers to various kinds of challenges. I don't know what sort of campaign you're playing, but such challenges are usually: Tough individual enemies, groups of enemies, swarms, flying/unreachable enemies, and invisible enemies; perception checks, various knowledge checks, and social interactions; hp damage and conditions; environmental obstacles and travel.

Whether you need to do something depends a lot on how the characters are build. Fighter is possible the class where what they can do depends most on the actual build (thanks to Advanced Weapon Training). How many jobs the Oracle can fulfill depends on the build, too. Does the Oracle (or one of the Fighters) have UMD? That helps a lot. There are some ways to add versatility to an Oracle, e.g. Paragon Surge or Mnemonic Vestment, which obviously help overcoming challenges.
Of course, if they Fighters are badly build (not able to overcome even the in-combat challenges listed above), it might be expedient to work on their builds a bit.

[McDaygo]

The only areas the fighters are weak in combat wise is aoe attacks for swarms. Otherwise unless they roll bad for specific saves (ie against special attacks like gaze) they can hold thier own. The oracle spells were not picked for combat but due to losing all other casters Ivam going to give them a free retraining if they want a new list.

I really like the free VMC idea as it makes a character more unique but not drastically overpowerful.

Gesault sounds fun too and I can only imagine certain combinations breaking a game (which I wouldn’t allow), however it balances out via action economy, and not being able to be in two spots at once.

Game wise this is a custom Drow house. They were once great but fell from grace and are fighting to regain station. In the progress they have set up a trade center deep in the dark lands/underdark which I plan to develop into a full city. Other goals the party needs to do is regain the physical house from a rival house, pay off debt of protection from patron house and reassemble the missing family members that abandoned when house fell (only males
Departed, each male reunited brings a new resource the party can use for main goal). This is on top of any mini quest I gave an individual player as trials of lolth.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Note: That's "gestalt', not 'gesault'.

I have to agree with Asharah: this doesn't seem to be a problem to me. STill, if it is, you have a few options that are far less invasive and bothersome than retraining, adding subsystems, etc.:

1. Let the players work around issues with a suboptimal group. This can be fun.
2. Write adventure that play to the party's strengths. It seems you are running a a homebrew game so this should be easy.
3. Allow hirelings, henchment, followers, etc.
4. DMPC the needed roles (from experience this can work well. just make sure to make the DMPCs interesting and not overshadow the PCs)

[PFRPGrognard]

Sounds like they just need an NPC healer. Case closed. You can add an NPC to the group at two levels below the party level for a full party. If the party is less than four, then just run the NPC at the same level and it will not affect your overall Average Party Level.

[Philippe Lam]

GM shouldn't always have to compensate for party shortcomings. It's on the players to figure it out too. Players want to play what they prefer most, but there's also about what the party needs.

[Derklord]

PFRPGrognard wrote:

Sounds like they just need an NPC healer.

Hell no. They have an Oracle, a wand and a few scrolls can do the job perfectly fine. No need to butcher the campaign by adding some GMPC!

McDaygo wrote:

The only areas the fighters are weak in combat wise is aoe attacks for swarms.

So they do have means against unreachable and invisible enemies? Great, in that case, you shouldn't have too many problems.

Sure, the game's style will shift a bit, with the party struggeling with challenges they previously overcame with ease, but that's fine, and no need for you to drastically change things. Players needing to come up with creative solutions instead of being able to rely on the arcane casters is actually an upside.

Gestalt completely changes the characters, I definitely wouldn't go that far unless the players themselves voice discomfort with continuing the campaign as-is. I'm not sure if VMC really helps here, as most of the stuff is in-combat, and that's not where the (small) problems lie.

What you might want to think about doing is grant some extra skill ranks, possibly accompanied by free skill unlocks.

[Melkiador]

If you're worried about skills, you might let everyone have background skills

http://legacy.aonprd.com/unchained/skillsAndOptions/backgroundSkills.html

If you're worried about being strong enough in combat, you could consider handing out 1 mythic rank, but even 1 mythic rank can be a pretty big jump in power.

[Foeclan]

If they're high enough level, getting a cohort with the Leadership feat can help. We did that to work around losing our main healer in my group. Between the cohort and a cure wand we're doing pretty well.

Something like low-tier Mythic can give them a bit more oomph without breaking things, if that fits the flavor of your campaign.

[Derklord]

PFRPGrognard wrote:

If you're going to respond to me like that, my reply is that you probably suck as a GM and don't know how to help balance your party. Anything else I can help you with?

On the contrary, I'm a good enough GM that I don't need to "help balance [my] party". I can build a campaign so that the lack of e.g. a dedicated healer is no problem.

And since it's not that difficult (I'm sure you can learn it too, in time!), I stand by my statement that the OP's party does not "need an NPC healer".

[Philippe Lam]

PFRPGrognard wrote:

If you're going to respond to me like that, my reply is that you probably suck as a GM and don't know how to help balance your party. Anything else I can help you with?

Even the fact of being offensive in response to what is an otherwise reasonable response shows where's the wrong. Since when it's a contest off who's right or wrong ?

[McDaygo]

They are fine healing wise. Until the oracle takes Vile Leadership (evil game) I’m probably going to let them hire a mercenary (insert clasd) that they want to bring.