I'm running a game for a group of five friends right now. The game is pretty combat-heavy, which all of us enjoy, and all the PC's are optimized mostly for combat.
The party is level 5 right now and consists of:
A Crossbow Expert/Sharpshooter Fighter
A Polearm Master Paladin
A GWM Totem Barbarian
An Assassin Rogue
A Fireball-spamming Wizard
The issue I'm having right now is that the fighter is stealing most of the spotlight in combat. I realize that they just hit a huge power spike at level 5, but I've been having the party level up pretty slowly so they'll be at level 5 for at least a couple more sessions, and I don't see the power difference narrowing that much in the next couple levels. The paladin and barbarian are usually fine -- they have their moments, and I know what to throw at them to let them feel useful.
It'd be great to brainstorm some ideas for how to get the spotlight especially onto the Rogue and Wizard more often. Ideally this would be in combat, since my group loves combat and isn't as interested in other things, but all ideas are welcome.
If it helps, we'll be starting Tomb of Annihilation in the next session or two as we just finished LMoP.
The Rogue should likely be consuming a disproportionate amount of time out of combat scouting etc. He should already have the spotlight *plenty*. If for whatever reason scouting and setting up ambushes and either negating encounters or starting them half dead due to all his stuff isn't cutting it, just get him some poison, and that will even things Right up. Seriously rogues having too little an amount of the spotlight is unlikely to remain a serious issue for long :-)
The wizard is likely just having issues due to the fireball spamming, that's like the least interesting and effective thing to do most of the time as a Wizard. Still, if that's his bag, throw a few summoners at him or otherwise just a massive horde of squishy things from time to time and let him melt 8-10 miniatures off the board in a single action. If you know he's going to be throwing around fireballs anyway, they should not significantly impact the CR of the encounter but they can make him feel epic during his moments. Then, when he's throwing around cantrips and complaining he has nothing better to do, remind him that he already killed like 20 dudes today, he did his part, and remind him to try to find ways to use cantrips to do things other than just throw out damage. If you encourage creative spell use in cantrips (let some stuff work even if it's questionable), eventually you'll start to see more creativity out of his other spell usage as well, and then you'll see less generic fireball spamming. Lay off on the hordes of creatures at that point so he doesn't feel he HAS to fireball spam, and I have a feeling he'll grow to love Wizard for a lot more than just the damage dice.
Final note: It's fine for some characters to have more or less of the spotlight in combat, generally you want it inversely proportional to the amount of spotlight they have out of combat. So if the Rogue is the face of the party, and also the scout while exploring, and has the majority of the spotlight in 2 of 3 pillars of the game, him doing relatively little in combat is Just Fine. If conversely the Fighter is the face, and the scout, and the combat hero, then yeah it's a problem.
Barbarians and Paladin's get better the higher in level they are. Fighters shine early on in combat. As far as I've seen. Once Barbarians get their brutal critical and more rages it gets to even out. Paladin's especially depending on their subclass can keep up with them. So that might be a case of just getting them a bit higher in level for those two. As for the Rogue? Well, they are prime for singling out creatures and killing them quickly. So perhaps focus on explaining how gruesome the Rogue killed this one guy instead of keeping tallies on the board for how many kills. Also a Rogue is useful for scouting ahead far more quietly, and disarms traps they can see and such. So throw in some traps to make the Rogue also feel more useful is always a good way to give them the spotlight.
As for the Wizard? Well that's a bit of a tougher one because Wizards in themselves are based more on their utility then their need to make things go boom. Unless you specialize in Evocation which I've done in the past. It's fun and you focus on blowing things up with different things. If your player really only wants to focus on the combat oriented part of a Wizard then perhaps that class isn't right for them in my opinion. I would maybe offer up a Sorcerer instead. They have some fun spells and have a lot of overlap with a Wizard as well. The one thing that Sorcerers have that is good for your more combat oriented group are sorcery points. He can use that fireball and some sorcery points to really give it a boost in damage, or twin the spell and hit two spots with it. Quicken it and turn it into a bonus action and depending on your home rules cast two at the same turn. (turns a spell into a bonus action, but the rules say that you can only cast a cantrip as your main action if a spell is a bonus action. Some DM's change that to certain level spells or get rid of that entirely) So my suggestion would be to honestly see if they'd want to switch out their class.
You could always feature them heavily in a part of the story. Maybe a figure from the rogue’s past comes and wants to do one last job. Performing a heist would be more up the rogue’s (or the wizard’s) alley.
Or maybe the wizard’s former master is in danger; being hunted by some dark order, which would call for some heavy magic use/cunning.
Some story-based event to force the spotlight onto them would be how I would do it.
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I'm running a game for a group of five friends right now. The game is pretty combat-heavy, which all of us enjoy, and all the PC's are optimized mostly for combat.
The party is level 5 right now and consists of:
The issue I'm having right now is that the fighter is stealing most of the spotlight in combat. I realize that they just hit a huge power spike at level 5, but I've been having the party level up pretty slowly so they'll be at level 5 for at least a couple more sessions, and I don't see the power difference narrowing that much in the next couple levels. The paladin and barbarian are usually fine -- they have their moments, and I know what to throw at them to let them feel useful.
It'd be great to brainstorm some ideas for how to get the spotlight especially onto the Rogue and Wizard more often. Ideally this would be in combat, since my group loves combat and isn't as interested in other things, but all ideas are welcome.
If it helps, we'll be starting Tomb of Annihilation in the next session or two as we just finished LMoP.
The Rogue should likely be consuming a disproportionate amount of time out of combat scouting etc. He should already have the spotlight *plenty*. If for whatever reason scouting and setting up ambushes and either negating encounters or starting them half dead due to all his stuff isn't cutting it, just get him some poison, and that will even things Right up. Seriously rogues having too little an amount of the spotlight is unlikely to remain a serious issue for long :-)
The wizard is likely just having issues due to the fireball spamming, that's like the least interesting and effective thing to do most of the time as a Wizard. Still, if that's his bag, throw a few summoners at him or otherwise just a massive horde of squishy things from time to time and let him melt 8-10 miniatures off the board in a single action. If you know he's going to be throwing around fireballs anyway, they should not significantly impact the CR of the encounter but they can make him feel epic during his moments. Then, when he's throwing around cantrips and complaining he has nothing better to do, remind him that he already killed like 20 dudes today, he did his part, and remind him to try to find ways to use cantrips to do things other than just throw out damage. If you encourage creative spell use in cantrips (let some stuff work even if it's questionable), eventually you'll start to see more creativity out of his other spell usage as well, and then you'll see less generic fireball spamming. Lay off on the hordes of creatures at that point so he doesn't feel he HAS to fireball spam, and I have a feeling he'll grow to love Wizard for a lot more than just the damage dice.
Final note: It's fine for some characters to have more or less of the spotlight in combat, generally you want it inversely proportional to the amount of spotlight they have out of combat. So if the Rogue is the face of the party, and also the scout while exploring, and has the majority of the spotlight in 2 of 3 pillars of the game, him doing relatively little in combat is Just Fine. If conversely the Fighter is the face, and the scout, and the combat hero, then yeah it's a problem.
Barbarians and Paladin's get better the higher in level they are. Fighters shine early on in combat. As far as I've seen. Once Barbarians get their brutal critical and more rages it gets to even out. Paladin's especially depending on their subclass can keep up with them. So that might be a case of just getting them a bit higher in level for those two. As for the Rogue? Well, they are prime for singling out creatures and killing them quickly. So perhaps focus on explaining how gruesome the Rogue killed this one guy instead of keeping tallies on the board for how many kills. Also a Rogue is useful for scouting ahead far more quietly, and disarms traps they can see and such. So throw in some traps to make the Rogue also feel more useful is always a good way to give them the spotlight.
As for the Wizard? Well that's a bit of a tougher one because Wizards in themselves are based more on their utility then their need to make things go boom. Unless you specialize in Evocation which I've done in the past. It's fun and you focus on blowing things up with different things. If your player really only wants to focus on the combat oriented part of a Wizard then perhaps that class isn't right for them in my opinion. I would maybe offer up a Sorcerer instead. They have some fun spells and have a lot of overlap with a Wizard as well. The one thing that Sorcerers have that is good for your more combat oriented group are sorcery points. He can use that fireball and some sorcery points to really give it a boost in damage, or twin the spell and hit two spots with it. Quicken it and turn it into a bonus action and depending on your home rules cast two at the same turn. (turns a spell into a bonus action, but the rules say that you can only cast a cantrip as your main action if a spell is a bonus action. Some DM's change that to certain level spells or get rid of that entirely) So my suggestion would be to honestly see if they'd want to switch out their class.
You could always feature them heavily in a part of the story. Maybe a figure from the rogue’s past comes and wants to do one last job. Performing a heist would be more up the rogue’s (or the wizard’s) alley.
Or maybe the wizard’s former master is in danger; being hunted by some dark order, which would call for some heavy magic use/cunning.
Some story-based event to force the spotlight onto them would be how I would do it.