A New Kind of Pathfinder Party

Way back in my beginning Steemit career I made a post about picking character classes in Pathfinder. I wanted to expand upon these ideas as well as a thought experiment about how to make a super effective group by utilizing some infrequently utilized synergies.

Most roleplayers know about the generic fantasy party that consists of a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric. In Pathfinder with its multitude of character classes, it would be more appropriate to refer to this core four as a stealthy character, a combat specialist, a divine spellcaster/healer and an arcane spellcaster. I mentioned in my previous post about how players want to find niches. Maybe one player wants to be an archer, while another wants to get into the thick of things in melee. Sounds great because then you have an answer for every solution.

Let us use our core four-person party as an example. Say the rogue and the cleric both like to get into melee, while the fighter (who specialized as an archer) and wizard prefer to stand back at range. At first glance this makeup sounds ideal, but then you realize that in any given situation, two of the party will be fighting in a sub-optimal manner. My party effectiveness optimization strategy is instead of spreading out, every member should share a similar focus. To break it down I will provide a list of roles and their primary and secondary roles plus a name for ease of identification.

• Ranged Damage and Stealthy, Evasive Scout - (Scout)
• Ranged Physical Damage and Melee Ability - (Switch Hitter)
• Ranged Damage and Healing - (Healer)
• Ranged Damage and Control Spells - (Controller)

As you can see, the key ability to every character is ranged damage and decent mobility. Heavily armored characters may find they limit the parties' effectiveness. In effect, the teamwork is more akin to a small, highly trained, modern military squad. If the party gets to initiate the battle, they just start at max range and focus fire one enemy down at a time while their controller helps slow the enemies' approach along with dealing damage. Note that Pathfinder is the type of game in most situations an enemy at 1hp is just as dangerous as one at full help, so it doesn't make sense to split the damage rather than completely taking out enemies one at a time. Focused damage is much easier to accomplish at range because positioning is not as important as in melee.

I am sure if you've gotten this far, you've started to think about a potential glaring hole in my logic: Pathfinder isn't just about ranged encounters as quite often adventurers must foray into confined dungeons, caves or various buildings. This is where the scout role becomes essential. Instead of kicking down a door and rushing in one at a time, you send one stealthy member ahead to trigger the enemies. Then the scout pulls back to a kill zone and enemies get focus fired down. Running them into traps is a bonus as well. This will require a highly evasive character, perhaps even buffed by the spellcasters. If control and ranged damage can't keep enemies at bay, then the switch-hitter can come in and supply melee support as needed.

I will be the first to argue that Pathfinder is not just about combat so don't think I'm trying to say that combat efficiency is the most important element of a party and should be the only factor in character creation. Suboptimal parties can be a blast to play. I once played in a team that consisted just a bard and wizard. We almost got TPK by a stray dog at level one, so we had to come at encounters with a good deal of creativity and not just attack everything. However, if you want to make your own special ops squad, try my strategy and let me know how it goes.