New DM - Party Balance Concerns

[NecessaryWeevil]

Hi gang,

I'm about to run The Sunless Citadel. I will have a five-person group which is one more than the assumed four-person party, but I think I have a general idea how to handle that. My bigger concern is that one to three of them are likely to build pretty powerful characters. One is simply playing a cleric, which should hold its own. The last is playing...a monk.

I worry about him being overshadowed, but I also don't want to tell him that the class he wants to play sucks. He's seen the power of a swordsage so I'm wondering about recommending that, but he chose monk, not swordsage. What might you do in such a situation?

[(Un)Inspired]

Do you know why he wants to play a monk? I can't think of any flavorful or mechanical reasons to choose monk over swordsage.

[NecessaryWeevil]

"I haven't played a monk in a while."

[fishyfishyfishy]

What I would do in this situation depends on the level of skill of the player in question. The playground had proven that a well optimized monk build in the hands of a skilled player can easily defeat all the elder evils on their own. If the player is not very skilled and creates a character that has no hope of performing well I would try several things. You and other players can coach them on how to use superior tactics and make more powerful choices during character creation and level up. You can give them some fancy magic gear to make up for some of the disparity. You can ask the more skilled players to tone things down a bit while working with this one on stepping it up a little and hopefully things will even out.

[Vhaidara]

If he wants to play a monk, let him play a monk. Talk to the other players, and give him a better point buy. If he whines about being useless, let him switch to being a swordsage on the spot.

Basically, he's forgotten how bad it is to be a monk. Let him experience it again, and remember how bad it is. Then let him come back into the light of well designed classes.

EDIT: As far as the Monk vs Elder Evils thing, that was an incredibly cheesed monk. I'm sure Rubik will provide a link to the build, since it was his.

[Magesmiley]

What are the other players playing? There are several different niches that a monk can fill, depending on the rest of the party.

[JackQ]

What are the other players playing? There are several different niches that a monk can fill, depending on the rest of the party.

He can always fill the comedy side-kick role.

[ddude987]

If he wants to play a monk, let him play a monk. Talk to the other players, and give him a better point buy. If he whines about being useless, let him switch to being a swordsage on the spot.

Basically, he's forgotten how bad it is to be a monk. Let him experience it again, and remember how bad it is. Then let him come back into the light of well designed classes.

EDIT: As far as the Monk vs Elder Evils thing, that was an incredibly cheesed monk. I'm sure Rubik will provide a link to the build, since it was his.

I thought Xervous was the one who defeated the challenge first? At least, he made it seem that way when we were discussing it (and this discussion was had way to many times).

As to the playing a monk, how are the players of the party in terms of knowing "tiers" "optomizing" et cetra? If its low op or there is no concept of tiers and whatnot, Monk will probably not be so bad. Its all relative. I say let him play, if it turns out bad, let him switch.

[Vhaidara]

I thought Xervous was the one who defeated the challenge first? At least, he made it seem that way when we were discussing it (and this discussion was had way to many times).

Not sure who else cleared it, Rubik tends to post his in threads like this, so I've seen it. It involved using the fact that a Monk's entire body can be used as an unarmed strike, and the monks unarmed strike is both a natural and a manufactured weapon, allowing a Monk to acquire a Hardness score of around 150, which took that much off of all damage dealt to him.

[rexx1888]

wait... someone used RAW to give a monk Hardness O.o i wanna see that

[Vhaidara]

Well, I was gonna let Rubik post it, but here it is

I forgot the other part of the trick was that it had to be a warforged monk.

[Faily]

Having played through Sunless Citadel some time ago, iirc it's a low-level adventure (level 1 or 2?) to start with and have some slightly physical challenges (pits, a cliff with no ladder to climb down, etc) that should be decent for a Monk to handle. From my run through it, the adventure isn't particularly difficult and is low-level enough that the casters aren't overshadowing the low-tier classes quite so much. In our play, I played a Druid, the rest of the party was a Warmage, a Scout and a Warlock. Apart from the Animal Companion acting as Party-Tank most of the time, it went fine.

If the guy hasn't played Monk in a while, it almost sounds like he knows what he's getting into. Maybe he doesn't care about the power-level much either, or he just doesn't like the Swordsage? Just assume the player knows what he's doing?

[NecessaryWeevil]

We've got a cleric, a warblade, a homebrew cross between a Scout and an Archivist, and a Knight. So I guess it could be worse, now that I know what everyone is playing. The warblade's and the knight's players were the ones I was most worried about in terms of breaking the game wide open but, yeah. A warblade and a Knight don't scare me too much. I probably will just let the chips fall where they may for the first session and monitor whether he seems to be having fun.

Thanks!