Making a Balanced Dungeon Fantasy Party Without Templates

One nice thing about mandatory templates is that they make it easy to (partly) describe your character in one word.  And then the GM can say "bring a Wizard, a Cleric, a Thief or Scout, and a Knight or Swashbuckler or Barbarian, and you should be fine."  Of course all Wizards are not the same, as their spell selection varies widely.  And not all Clerics take Turning.  And a Berserk Barbarian in heavy armor plays completely differently than a sane Barbarian in light armor.  But it gives you a starting point.

Without templates, we have to fall back to talking about collections of advantages and skills, which is harder.  But let's give it a try.

Here are some things that I think every member of a Dungeon Fantasy party should have:

- Luck.  Luck is the only thing that will save you from a monster that does huge damage rolling a critical hit.  If you're not a super-experienced GURPS player, just spend 15 points for Luck on every character you make, and tell all the other players you have it, so they know to remind you to use it when a horrible die roll happens to you.  (If you are a super-experienced GURPS player, you can break this rule, but I will still laugh at you when it gets your PC killed.)

- Stealth.  There are 3 kinds of characters: super-stealthy PCs, mildly stealthy PCs, and loud PCs who summon all the wandering monsters and get the whole party killed.  Not everyone can be super-stealthy (unless you want to make the all-Thief game), but everyone can put a few points in Stealth to make an honest attempt to not give the party away.  Also, Incompetence: Stealth is the worst quirk ever, and I'd like to apologize for taking it once.

- Hiking.  Everybody walks sometimes, and if you can't keep up, you slow everyone down.

- Climbing, because everyone needs to be able to make the easy climbs.  (The good climber or flier can set ropes to help the bad climbers, but they need to be able to climb a little.)

- Move 4 or better.  Again, the party moves at the speed of its slowest member.  Also, if you're encumbered down to Move 3, you can't outrun anything faster than green slime, and if the party needs to run away, they either need to stay behind with you and die with you, or leave you as Monster Chow and feel bad.  Even 4 is kind of marginal; having the slowest member at Move 5 is better.  Note: if you're Move 3 but can quickly get to Move 4 by dropping something that you're willing to drop, that's not so horrible.  Extra encumbrance from a quick-release backpack or buckler is better than extra encumbrance from armor.

- Riding.  This is a bit situational because you can't always afford horses, and you don't always have a safe place to keep horses, and you're not always going far enough to want horses.  But if you can and you do and you are, then everyone wants Riding.  (Pro-tip: if your IQ is much better than your DX, you might want to take Animal Handling instead and default Riding from it.)

- A shared spoken and written language, so you can talk to each other and write notes to each other.  (You usually get this for free so it's not a big deal.  But think twice before making an illiterate or mute character.)  Bonus points if everyone shares a language that's not Common, so you can talk without as many enemies understanding you.

- Gesture, so you can sign at each other.  One point is a lot better than default.  Not every party does gestures for silent tactical communication, but they should.

- Swimming, because otherwise you will drown when you fall into water.  (You might still drown with Swimming, but a point goes a long way.)

- Some kind of active defense roll over 10, for a fighting chance when things attack you.  It's best if Parry isn't your only decent defense, since missile weapons exist.

- At least DR 2 over most of the body, for basic survival when your active defenses fail.

- HT of 11 or better, so you have a decent chance of staying up if you get poisoned or take a Major Wound.  11 isn't great, but at least you'll make it over half the time, if there's no penalty.

- HP or 11 or better, so you can take a hit without it being a Major Wound, a bigger hit without it being a consciousness check, a really big hit without it being a death check, etc.  11 is pretty marginal but it's better than 10.  I want to say 13 but I know there are Wizards out there who would be offended.

- Will of 11 of better, so you have a decent chance of resisting mind control spells and Fright Checks.

- DX of 11 or better, so you have a decent chance of resisting certain traps, making it across hazardous terrain, etc.

- Some defense for Close Combat, either unarmed skills or weapons with range C or Blink to get you out of there.  Some attacks that work in Close Combat would be nice too.

- Something useful to do in combat when your own attacks don't work, because you're out of FP or the monster has lots of DR and no eyes, or something.  Tactics skill to boost your ally's attack rolls is a nice one.


Here are some things that I think multiple members of every Dungeon Fantasy party should have:

- Healing.  If you only have one Cleric and she gets hurt, who heals the healer?  At least a couple of people should have First Aid or healing potions.

- Decent Per-based Traps, for finding traps (and it also works on secret doors, though so do Vision and Observation).  If only one person has it, even at a high level, they'll miss the roll once in a while, and some traps are lethal.  Having two PCs covering each other means you need two missed rolls at the same time.

- Decent Search, for the same reason.  You do not want to miss the small piece of great treasure because the GM rolled a 17 on a hidden roll.  If you always have two people roll Search and you're both decent at it, that will probably never happen.

- Decent ranged attacks.  If you only have one Scout and you get attacked by flying monsters with ranged attacks, and they take down the Scout, you're probably dead.

- The ability to penetrate big DR.  If you're fighting a monster with DR 12 and only one PC can ever penetrate DR 12 (without a miracle like a critical hit that does triple damage or bypasses all armor), it's going to be a long day.  There's more than one way to penetrate big DR: big damage from big ST and big weapons, weapons with armor divisors, spells that ignore DR.

- Rumor-finding.  If the GM has hints for you, you need to be able to dig them up.  And different skills based on different attributes (Carousing, Research, etc.) are useful here, so it's common to split this up.

- Knot-Tying.  PCs are always trying to use rope for something.  If you're the best climber or the flier, you definitely need this; the person who's not at the top of the cliff can't tie the knot for you.


And here are some things that I think at least one member of every Dungeon Fantasy party needs:

- Wizard spells, lots of them, at a good level.

- Cleric spells, lots of them, at a good level.

- Really good ranged damage.  Enemies that have vulnerable eyes and vitals should not be allowed to live long enough for the rest of the party to get a turn.

- Really good melee damage.  At least 3d, preferably more.  Low damage with lots of skill and Extra Attack sounds good, until you fight something with big DR and all 3 of your well-aimed blows bounce off it.

- A reaction bonus.  Sometimes you need to make NPCs like you, so you can't all be ugly and mean.

- The ability to appraise each kind of common item.  Merchant, Connoisseur (art), Analyze Magic, etc.  Otherwise you're trusting the person you want to sell stuff to to tell you what it's worth.

- The ability to deal with swarms effectively.  (1-2 HP per turn is not very effective.)

- The ability to deal with diffuse monsters effectively.  (1-2 HP per turn is not very effective.)

- The ability to deal with spirits effectively.

- The ability to deal with nasty undead effectively, which probably means Turning.

- Good Lockpicking.  (Lockmaster spell also works, but Meteoric locks exist.)

- Forced Entry, for when Lockpicking fails.  (Bonus points if you have a Silence spell so you can bash things without bringing all the orcs to the yard.)

- Good DX-based Traps.  Finding traps is more important, but sometimes you need to disarm them, not just avoid them.

- A way to scout ahead really effectively.  Really good Stealth, or Invisibility, or Wizard Eye.

- Continual Light.

- Some torches and flint and steel, for when you hit a No Mana Zone.

- Dispel Magic.

- Levitation.  Sometimes Climbing just isn't enough.

- Really high Per to avoid surprise.

- Really high ST to move that giant obstacle out of the way, or get that heavy treasure home.


And, finally, here are some skills that not every Dungeon Fantasy game needs, but I recommend for Whiterock in particular:

- Tracking.

- Area Knowledge.  (This isn't in DFRPG, but I'm house ruling it in from GURPS.  It's IQ-E, and I'm making it for the local area by default, no specialization.)

- History.  (This isn't in DFRPG, but I'm house ruling it in from GURPS.  It's IQ-H and I'm making it for the local area by default, no specialization.)

- Languages, both spoken and written.  Maybe even Gift of Letters / Gift of Tongues, in case you really need one you haven't learned.  (We're using the D&D 3.5 languages, and the full GURPS language rules are house ruled in, so you can take languages at Broken, Accented, or Native.)

- Physiology (various).

- Hidden Lore (various).

- The ability to get information from prisoners.  Interrogation, Intimidation, Detect Lies, etc.

- Being Small (SM-1 or better yet SM-2) in case there are any tiny little passages that need exploring.


That's a really long list, and I'm sure I missed a few.  And it's hard to afford everything on a limited point budget.  But I hope this uncovered something that someone forgot about.