Thanks, C and K, for bringing some of the fun to the rest of us!

For awhile today, I was envisioning writing up a fantasy story where a truly great and powerful wizard got severely level-drained and reduced to an embryonic state, but I kept getting too distracted while looking at the sonogram picture to write anything of real entertainment value.

Instead, to commemorate the occasion I have done my duty as Dungeon Master and created a character sheet for our progeny.  I hope you all enjoy it, back to the regularly scheduled programming!

Out of the Box Roleplaying – Gencon 2009 (Panel from left to right: Dante, Vanir, Bartoneus, Yax, Dave the Game, e and Chgowiz)

As if Gencon weren’t crazy enough, we’re adding our own special brand of insanity to the mix. Returning for its third year, but with a sparkly new name, we will be showcasing unconventional roleplaying at its finest.

Game ID: SEM1013931

Title: Roleplaying Therapy For The Severely Disturbed with StupidRanger.com

Description: Can the RPG bloggers beat the DM’s dungeon? Will they try and make the DM’s head explode in the process? Will there be EL Fudge? Come find out the answers to these questions and more at this live play session, with plenty of audience participation and prizes awarded.

This year’s panel of guests (TBA later this month) will be entertaining you with their demonstration of a rules-light-roleplay-heavy game where absolutely ANYTHING can happen! That said, please be aware that this is not really a family-friendly event; language and content may not be suitable for all audiences. It will be fun, it will be crazy, and there will be audience prizes!

Last year’s session, recorded by the fine folks at Pulp Gamer, is available for review here.  And if you want to see more pictures, you can view my Gencon 2009 Flickr set here.

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Achieving Balance

I wanted to make sure that my paragon path was balanced, and I considered altering an existing paragon path to ensure I had that balance.  At the same time, I wasn’t satisfied with just taking an ice path and changing the keywords; some elements don’t transfer from ice to fire well.  So I selected two different ice paths (Spellstorm Mage from PHB and Bralani Wintersoul from Dragon 384) and blended elements from each.

Introducing: Flamespark Mage

After cherry-picking and adjusting the elements from the previous two ice-y paragon paths, I developed the Flamespark Mage paragon path.  I reviewed it with Dante prior to calling it complete, and we did make a few minor adjustments.  In the end, I have exactly the paragon path that I want: fiery and balanced, with interesting spells to look forward to learning.

This is a mostly spoiler-free review/recap of our experiences.  If you don’t want to know anything about the third session, don’t click the link below.

Dante & I have been playing the new D&D Encounters season: Fury of the Wastewalker.  Last week, we finished our third session (see photo).  I’m playing Barcan, the sorcerer, while Dante is playing Jarvix, the psion.  Both of us are new to Dark Sun, so this has been a unique experience for us.

Session Recaps — Without Giving Anything Away

Traveling through the wastelands, we find our caravan attacked.  We few adventurers survive and strive to escape to civilization.  It’s not an easy life, traveling the desert, especially with random attacks threatening our lives.  But we have to keep moving, or the victory our enemies fail to achieve will be accomplished by the harsh environment.

My Thoughts So Far

I opted for the sorcerer, Barcan.  I wanted to play a class with which I had some familiarity, but there were still several elements I didn’t know.  It’s tough to walk into a character not knowing anything about them, but I thought my experience with my wizard would be enough to help me figure my way through the unfamiliar powers.

My biggest problem was getting used to the abbreviated character sheet.  I miss having all the details, especially the skills.  With all the miscellaneous skill checks, it would have been nice to have all the skills and modifiers listed, instead of just the trained skills.  The spells are fairly well defined, but I miss little things like the keywords.  For me, it’s more about what I don’t see on my little character card, though the omissions are minor in nature.

Dark Sun is a unique experience for me.  I’m having fun so far, but I’m not sure how much I would enjoy the difficulties of surviving the environment in a long-term campaign.  So I’m reserving judgment until I’ve play a bit more.

For New Players

If you haven’t had much — or any — roleplaying experience, the guide is a great reference for getting your feet wet. There is a lot of great advice on roleplaying topics, from deciding what character to play to getting into character to deciding when to heal. What I like about this from the new player perspective is that things are explained simply, without a lot of the jargon that can be a little intimidating to new players.

For Experienced Players

The guide may feel as if it’s geared toward new players, but there are still valuable tips for experienced players who may be switching to 4E. Because 4E has so many different elements from previous editions, some of the character development techniques can be useful for those who are switching editions. What I really like from the experienced player perspective are the character quizzes. There are quizzes to help you pin-point which class and which race you might like to play. This would have been immensely helpful for our paladin, who switched classes after 10 levels because the warlord just wasn’t suiting her style of play.

Attention: Spoilers included! If you haven’t played your last session of Encounters yet, you may want to come back later!

In-Character Recap

Brief summation for those who haven’t been playing along at home. Our merry band of adventurers were hired by Fein to open the magical entrance recently unearthed in the Underdark; before we were hired, we had to rescue her from thugs. We made our way to the entrance, we disabled the magical protections and escaped down the revealed stairs before the ceiling collapsed on us. We found ourselves trapped in Halaster’s apprentice’s quarters. We fought our way past all kinds of evils before continuing on our way. Eventually, we met up with Fein again, who came through a portal; shortly after her arrival, Xeres, the Big Bad showed up, and the portal was no longer active. Xeres brought some friends to keep us occupied while he kidnapped Fein. He managed to avoid all kinds of obstacles, and we managed to fight our way through to find him.

We survived the skeletons intent on killing us. Knowing Xeres was just a little further ahead, we gathered our courage and our remaining resolve, and we chased the wicked Xeres until he turned to challenge us. We needed to defeat him to retrieve the key to open the portal and escape from the Underdark.

Xeres stood, cooly posed on the bridge, standing over Fein’s apparently unconscious body. Our fighter-y types advanced to engage him, I started peppering him with radiant damage, and our gnome psion inadvertently found some other enemies hanging out, waiting to be invited to the party. It wasn’t easy, but early into battle, things seemed to be going pretty well for us (see picture). Xeres took a lot of focused fire for while (see picture).

But as we all know, battle can turn very quickly. Xeres teleported away to a less-threatened vantage, forcing the fighters to chase him (see picture). Our resources were running out, our resolve was close to failing, but we managed to pull ourselves together, and in the end, we won, though not without a few surprises.

Out-of-Character Thoughts

I had a great time with Encounters! It was a challenge, that first night, to walk into a room full of complete strangers, but I’m glad I did. I made new friends, and I’m looking forward to exploring Dark Sun, not with strangers but with friends.

The concept of one battle per session worked really well. We walked in every week knowing what was expected of us; there were enough surprises that we never knew exactly what to expect, but we knew there would be combat. There was never a moment of indecision because we knew where to go next.

One of biggest problems was with difficult gamer personalities. We had two teenagers that played most every session, and they talked more often than they planned. Combat moved slowly with them, and it was very frustrating for the rest of us. We also had a super-gamer who showed up for a couple of sessions. He wanted to role-play his way through the encounters, which didn’t work well for the group as a whole as he a) took a lot of time every round talking through options he wanted to try, and b) he wasn’t fighting effectively.

My second issue was the slow pace at which we gained experience. As I mentioned before, I understand that short encounters mean less experience, but after eight weeks at level one, I was thrilled to be level two for the last couple of sessions.

Overall, the positive experiences definitely out-weighed the minor issues. I will be starting the Dark Sun season next week, and I hope to have more good experiences in this new set of Encounters!

I was privileged to be an editor for last year’s anthology, and Dante and I are thrilled to have articles included in this year’s edition. Please consider sponsoring this year’s publication, and pass this along to anyone who might also be interested.

This is a mostly spoiler-free recap of last week’s D&D Encounters session.

On the eve of my next Encounters session, I realized that I neglected to share my experiences from last week! So while it’s a little late, here’s how it went.

Last week was my first week playing my Hybrid as a level 2 character. After rolling up and swapping out a feat, I felt much more productive as a party member. Granted, I’m not doing crazy-lots of damage, but I’m hitting more frequently and for more damage.

We had a pretty good session over all. One new-to-4E player joined us and played the paladin pre-gen. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t survive the session, but he is planning to come back this week with a new character.  [Picture here.]

This last session brings us into the final chapter of the season, and I really enjoyed the set-up and tension-building last week. It really felt like we were working up to something big, but that something is still lurking in the shadows, so there is still some mystery to our adventure. I’m definitely looking forward to this week’s session!

Creating my Avengevoker

I did a little bit of research on the Hybrid class before I made a decision on what to play.  I opted for an Avenger/Invoker Hybrid; the divine nature of the two halves and the similar stat-requirements seemed like a good start.  I also wanted to combine the controller and striker roles; I like my Wizard controller, but I wanted a striker option too.  The pieces all fell into place.

In addition to selecting a PHB3 class for the renown points, I also opted to use Character Builder & a PHB3 feat.  I don’t usually use Character Builder; I roll up characters with pencil & paper.  But hey, for renown points, I’d give it a go, and I’m very glad I did.  I found the rules and options for rolling up a hybrid a bit complicated, mostly when sorting out which, and how many, options were available.

For my feat, I opted for Battle Caster Defense (PHB3, p.177) to give me a bonus to defense against attacks of opportunity; with the spell-casting Invoker features and melée Avenger attacks, the possibility of provoking opportunity attacks seemed pretty high and a little extra protection seemed like a good idea.

In keeping with the nature of the Hybrid, I selected a mix of Avenger & Invoker powers.  One each of At-Will powers: a melée power for the Avenger part of me, a ranged power for the Invoker part.  Then I selected a melée Avenger power for my Encounter power and a ranged Invoker power for my Daily.

If I Had It to Do Again…

There are a few things I would have done differently.  Having selected my Encounter power as a melée power, I would have selected a different feat; I would have selected the Hybrid Talent Feat to take the Avenger’s Armor of Faith feature for the bonus to my AC.  As it is, I’m a little too squishy to really use my Encounter power without tempting death.

So why would I make these changes?  In the D&D Encounters environment, where there is little chance for an extended rest, the Encounter power becomes very, very important.  Being too squishy to stay in melée combat, I either need to have a better AC or stay out of combat.

Final Thoughts on the Hybrid

I really like the idea of combining two different classes.  The min-max-er in me sees the fun in trying out new combinations.  But I truly feel as if the Hybrid is a class that really needs to be a few levels older before it becomes effective.  From the vantage point of Level 1, my Hybrid is pretty ineffective, but I know she’s got great potential for the future!