Time to start your next campaign? Don’t spend hours agonizing over the perfect D&D party. Use these tricks instead!
One of the most arduous processes in D&D is picking out your party composition. How many healers are too many? And just who is going to deal all that damage? We can’t all play a Wizard, can we? Wait, but what if we can?
And so the discussion goes, often through a whole session. But that needn’t be your fate, friends. There are plenty of ways to build a party, and it needn’t take all your time. Sometimes you can find a theme. Other times, you just all have one thing in common. There are a variety of methods, but when you need to build a party in a hurry, try one of these tactics!
The Classic
For this method, you’ll want to fill out the standard fantasy archetypes. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that every “adventuring party” would consist of a Fighter, a Magic-User, a Cleric, and a Thief. That someone was D&D, though, admittedly it took several iterations to get there, because when D&D started there were Fighting Men, Clerics, and Magic-Users. And that was it.
Extrapolate this out from the specific terminology and you get some clearly defined roles: someone who hits and can take a hit, someone who casts spells, someone who casts spells (that maybe occasionally heal), and someone who gets the party in trouble. Usually by making skill checks. If you can’t decide what to do, try and fill in these party roles and go from there.
Everyone Is A Wizard
They’re called Wizards of the Coast for a reason. And in this edition of D&D, Wizards are among the most popular classes. They also have the widest range of possibilities. A Wizard can do everything from fight in melee (thanks to Bladesinger) to excelling at skills and even healing if you take the right feats. So lean in to the name and have everyone pick a different sort of Wizard; just maybe get ready to take a lot of naps.
Matching Powers
Okay, not everyone wants to play a Wizard. That’s fine. But you can find a surprising number of similarities across classes. And not just in the “every class has some sort of magic-using option” kind of way. You could easily find a common mechanical element to base a party around: everyone in this party uses fire. Everyone in this party has psionic powers of some kind. And the list goes on.
Order Of The _____
Got a random assortment of classes and no idea how to connect everyone? Forget about party roles or party themes. Instead give everyone a connected story. Pick an animal or cool plant, combine with an adjective and you’ve got the makings of a company of heroes. The Order of the Scarlet Phoenix, for instance, suggests some ideals you could easily espouse. Once you do, you’ve got your connections built in.
Found/Chosen Family
When all else fails, just remember, like Dom says, Family is Everything. So decide you’re a family, then figure out who’s the Mommy and who’s the Daddy. Once you have those two roles filled, you can fill in the rest with things like “that one cousin who always seems to want to start a dirt clod fight” or “annoying little sibling” and you’ll have a party with built in dynamics ready to go!
How do you build your party?
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