Death Teams?

[Ghast_Eyeson]

I've noticed in a number of games that "teams within teams" tend to form. Sometimes these teams just so happen to work together really well. My favorite example of this was during an "evil" campaign I played a while ago. I was playing a Drow explosives expert (Rogue if memory serves). The rest of the party was formed of a Vampire, a Half-Ogre with orc cohort, and a psion. The vampire and my drow quickly found several great tactics in and out of combat. In a dungeon infested with Chain-Devils, he would use the Goad feat to attract the attention of the Devils, who would then attack him with their chain attacks. He would quickly proceed to grab the chains, pulling them taught. I would then use balance to hop onto the chain, run down it, and fill the Devil's face with blades.

My point is, has anybody else noticed this occurrence? If so, what are some of your favorite team-ups?

[Jack_of_Spades]

How did that chain walking thing work? It seems to me that any sane DM wouldn't allow it.


Right now my LG Knight is working really well witht he CN Drow fighter. We keep five feet between us and advance toward the enemy. When we reach him we both double move to flank and beat the hell out of him. Or keep ten or so feet between us and try to funnel enemies between us so they can't escape.

[OOTS_Rules.]

Knights don't get flanking bonuses. It is against the knight's code.

[Raistlin1040]

My wizard works well with our party rogue. The rogue runs into the fray, blindly attacking any monsters. The fighter assists. The monsters gravitate toward those two. Then, maximized fireball! The rogue has evasion and the fighter's got a lot of HP. But the enemies...well they meet a more BBQ-like end.

[Rama_Lei]

Knights don't get flanking bonuses. It is against the knight's code.

Well the knight still offers a flanking bonus to allies.

[Mewtarthio]

Knights don't get flanking bonuses. It is against the knight's code.

Now that never made any sense to me. You get the flanking bonus because your opponent is distracted, right? How do the knights not take advantage of a distracted opponent? No matter what the knight does, the guy will still have his attention split between the knight and the fighter. Does the knight intentionally swing poorly at a -2 penalty to counter the flanking bonus?

[Ghast_Eyeson]

My wizard works well with our party rogue. The rogue runs into the fray, blindly attacking any monsters. The fighter assists. The monsters gravitate toward those two. Then, maximized fireball! The rogue has evasion and the fighter's got a lot of HP. But the enemies...well they meet a more BBQ-like end.

Sweet lord! You fire on your own party?! Thats brilliant!

[Talyn]

We had a warmage who consistently did that - sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident.

He ended up dead with the party rogue's knife in his throat. Some people aren't too pleased when their "ally" fireballs them.

[Ravyn]

My personal favorite involved a homebrew PrC--one of my friends had created the "Dragon Knight" for a new character I was adding to the group, but I didn't get access to a dragon just yet. We compensated for this by making some mount-dependent features have alternates for on foot (which led to a lot of jumping charges)--and then, during the first session, the druid wildshaped into a rhino.

It was synergy at first sight.

I haven't gotten to play that for a while, but when those two worked together, it was devastating.

In other systems, my friends and I live almost entirely by the dual-tech--at least dual, anyway. I've seen some wildly effective triples, and once a quintuple. There was even one game in which two of us planned a pair of characters to synergize and spent an entire battle coming up with new and inventive ways to double-attack our opponent.

[Quietus]

In the campaign in which I'm playing a blind monk, I expect that he'll be doing a lot of helping for the ranger that he's with - it's much easier to use the Aid Other option than it is to strike something, and between providing flanking and only having to hit a 10 AC, I'm sure that the +4 chance-to-hit she'll get will be much appreciated. Against smaller groups, I'll grapple a spellcaster if I can (with a +14 listen at level 1, I'll hear the somatic components), while she worries about other issues. Maybe not the perfect synergy, but it's the best way for my monk to be useful.

[iceman]

My story is similar to raistlin's except I was wearing a scarab of protection (protects against magical death effects and the like, as the spell death ward) and my wizard friend was casting Wail of the Banshee. We were in the shadow plane fighting a Great Wyrm Shadow Dragon. The incredibly short lived fight went something like this, (miraculously I won initiative) I charge toward the area I last heard the dragon speak from ... and miss horribly. Next the dragon does a full round attack on me, at which point I yell, out of character, "Marco!". The wizard/fatespinner (3.0 version) goes next, closes in and drops the spell with a fort save of 50+. As the dragon falls, my friend calmly says "polo".

Worked on a group of Balor's as well.

[Raistlin1040]

Sweet lord! You fire on your own party?! Thats brilliant!

Isn't it thought? Good thing they wern't too angry about it and it became our main strategy. Although my DM seriously considered changing my alignment from LN to TN or even CN.

[The_Ferg]

Right now, I'm in a campaign where the basic goal of character creation was to nerf ourselves but still be generally awesome, so we all took on a characteristic that limited us in some manner and then went with it to become awesome.

Anyways, my character is a dual shield wielding fighter (DM ruled that the shield bonuses stacked), which pumps my AC, but I'm only doing d4 damage with the two light shields. But my friendly barbarian (a gnome, of all things) has a really, REALLY low AC, especially when he rages (I think it goes down to a 13 or something like that. This is so far a pretty low-level campaign). So, I run in straight through a line of enemies and all around them, taking all the attacks of opportunity (which they have to roll really well to hit, with Mobility and all) and flanking them. The gnome, if he beats my initiative, delays until after I go, then rages and charges, gaining a +4 against the flanked opponent (charge + flank). And then we just clean up.

I usually describe it that I'm his blocker and he's the running back. That seems to work devastatingly well for a low-level (3rd) party. We usually clean up within a few rounds against CRs way higher than we are.