It’s crucial to thoughtfully compose your adventuring party. By doing so, you ensure that your group can handle the challenges typically encountered in the game. Even if each character is individually optimized, the party may struggle if its composition doesn’t meet the needs of the adventure.
Ensuring each member finds value and purpose in every session begins with agreeing on their primary class and role within the party. Party composition hinges on achieving balance. In earlier editions of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game, classes were categorized into specific roles: Controller, Defender, Leader, or Striker. These roles fostered well-rounded parties, adept at handling combat challenges. While later editions moved away from these explicit roles, they still offer a valuable framework for party construction.
Soulforge Adventures expands upon this concept with a more extensive list of roles, allowing parties to approach strategies with greater specificity. Furthermore, a class can often fulfill multiple roles, contributing to the formation of a complete and versatile party.
Blaster
The Blaster specializes in AoE damage, using spells like Fireball to hit multiple targets at once. Their expertise lies in creating chaos on the battlefield, weakening enemy ranks, and providing openings for allies to exploit. With devastating magic, they excel at dealing widespread destruction in combat.
Controller
The Controller manipulates battlefield dynamics, utilizing spells like Wall of Fire to hinder enemy movement or force them into disadvantageous positions. They excel at crowd control, employing status effects and hindrances to disrupt enemy formations, creating opportunities for allies to gain the upper hand in combat.
Defender
The Defender stands as a bulwark, shielding allies from harm by intercepting foes and controlling the battlefield. Through area control tactics, they deter enemies from advancing past them, while taunt or threat abilities compel adversaries to focus their attacks on the defender, protecting their more vulnerable comrades.
Face
The Face embodies charisma and social finesse, adept in persuasion, deception, and intimidation. They navigate conversations with finesse, persuading or deceiving others to achieve their goals. Their keen insight allows them to discern truths amidst falsehoods, making them invaluable negotiators and diplomats in any situation.
Healer
Healers specialize in restorative magic, mending wounds and revitalizing their allies in the heat of battle or during periods of rest. Their spells and abilities provide essential support, ensuring the party remains healthy and resilient throughout their adventures.
Scholar
Scholars excel in the realms of knowledge, mastering skills such as Arcana, Nature, and Religion. Their expertise unveils secrets of the arcane, the natural world, and divine mysteries, providing valuable insights and guidance to the party in their quests and endeavors.
Scout
Scouts possess stealth and trap-finding skills, excelling in reconnaissance and infiltration. Infiltrators sneak into enemy territory to gather intel or retrieve items, while trapfinders specialize in detecting and disarming traps, ensuring the party’s safety during exploration and encounters.
Striker
Strikers focus on dealing significant damage to single targets or disabling foes. Damage strikers unleash powerful attacks to overwhelm enemies, while disable strikers employ spells or abilities that debilitate opponents, reducing their effectiveness in combat.
Support
Support characters enhance allies with buffs like increased speed or improved accuracy, while also weakening foes through debuffs such as reduced accuracy or movement hindrances. Buffs provide beneficial effects, while debuffs impose penalties on enemies, aiding the party in combat encounters.
Utility Caster
Utility casters specialize in non-combat solutions through spells like Divination and Teleportation. They excel at problem-solving outside of battle, employing magical abilities to overcome obstacles and navigate challenges.
Classes and Roles
These roles signify the primary strengths of each class, highlighting their inherent abilities to influence the battlefield. While certain subclasses or character builds can modify these roles, the core essence remains intact.
Character Lottery
In the event that more characters sign up for an adventure than there are slots for, the GMs will use the lottery system to help them select the most appropriate party. Characters with the lowest lottery number will be considered first prior to those with higher lottery numbers. GMs always have the opportunity to select key characters that are needed for plot reasons, and what not, but otherwise should adhere to the lottery system to ensure fair play across the player base.
Group Composition
For each adventure, the maximum party size is 4 player characters (PCs). However, if a PC has a companion—defined as an entity they control with its own actions or abilities—that isn’t granted by their class, this companion is included in the total group count. The combined number of PCs and companions should not exceed 5.
If the group composition exceeds 5 due to companions, one or more companions will “fade” into the background during combat, unable to act or provide mechanical benefits. It’s up to the party to discuss which companions will participate actively and which will remain in the background to ensure smooth gameplay.
Exceptions to this rule include entities that have no actions or abilities, such as pets or similar companions that serve no mechanical purpose. Mounts are also excluded from the count, unless the companion itself can be mounted, in which case it does count.
This system is designed to maintain a balanced and enjoyable experience for all players, ensuring that combat and roleplay flow smoothly without overshadowing any individual character.