The Basics

Each Hybrid listing gives you half of what you need.  You pick the two halves you want, then combine the stats for each half.  At first level, you gain one At-Will power from each class, one Encounter & one Daily power from either class.  Then, as you gain levels, you can select powers from either class as long as you build each half equally.

The Combinations

Now, as you can imagine, not every combinations is going to work perfectly.  Can you picture a wizard/barbarian?  Not the most auspicious combination.  Not to worry, with each hybrid listing, you’ll find recommendations on which other hybrids will make a good match.

I have to say, I can never really decide what class I want to play.  Even now, preparing for D&D Encounters this week, I can’t decide.  Hybrids may just be one of the best options for me.  Now, I just have to narrow it down to two classes…

How It Works

Skill Powers can be taken whenever you reach a level that would normally grant a utility power from your class.  Instead, you gain a utility power based on your trained skills.  You can also use the retraining rules presented in the PHB to swap out class skills you already have for new skill powers.  You can’t do this swap for a utility power from a paragon path or an epic destiny, but that’s not too much of a hindrance.

Like all other abilities, each of these Skill Powers are tiered in their abilities and benefits.  Some of them are fairly laughable, for example there is an Acrobatics skill power called Agile Recovery that allows you to stand up as a minor action, at will.  The Acrobatics skills, for example, quickly go to places you would expect… the Drop and Roll level 10 ability allows you to shift three squares after a fall where you would take no damage.  At the highest levels, your tumbling and dodging ability allows you to shift by half your movement speed and reduce an attack’s damage by half.

That’s pretty cool no matter how you shake it!

Appreciable gains for focusing on a skill

My favorite thing about this mechanic is that I’ve used it in my campaigns all the time.  Invariably, my players would ask “I have a lot of <insert skill here>, would that help me in this situation?” and now there are concrete rules for how your knowledge will aid you.  The mappings make sense: book learnin’ skills such as History and Arcana earn you battle tactics that aid your initiative, AC, or provide other tactical advantages.  More brawny skills such as Athletics grant you appropriately brawny skill powers for use in combat.

You can add a lot of flavor for your character by adding in some skill powers.  As I was reading through the Nature skill powers, it dawned on me that a lot of these skills are tailor-made for a ranger or druid and seemed to align with the normal skill training that is done for those classes.  That allows for added variety within standard classes and gets even further away from the “cookie cutter character” worry.

Choosing is Hard

The more I got into the Skill Powers section, the more trouble I had determining which I would choose for my characters.  There are so many interesting options it’s hard to choose only a few to add some zest to my character.  If you’ve got any questions, be sure to post them up in the thread and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Finally, the Monk Returns

The Monk returns as a Striker with a Psionic keyword.  Monks spend years training and studying, and they have learned how to use their psionic powers and their fists to defeat their foes.  As you mind expect, many of their powers have monk-like names, such as Whirling Mantis Step and Fist of Indomitable Iron.

I have to say, at first glance, my favorite aspect of the monk is the Initiate of the Dragon Paragon path.  Here, you’ve learned the ancient skills that were once taught by dragons to particularly gifted humans and have pass through the ages.  Once you’ve mastered this Paragon Path at 20th level, you have fully developed the ability to polymorph into a dragon.

What About the Rest?

Each of the other psionic classes has its interesting features, as well as the more mundane powers related to keeping oneself alive.  But here’s what I thought was neat about the Ardent, Battlemind & Psion.

They don’t have Encounter powers.  Instead, they gain At-Will powers when everyone else gets Encounter Powers.  These At-Will Powers are fairly useful in their own right, but there’s an extra little kick to make them truly unique for the psionics.

These three classes gain Power Points at Encounter-Power Levels.  Power Points can be used with “Augmentable” At-Will Psion powers.  Based on the number of Power Points expended to augment a power, the At-Will gains extra strength.  It’s an interesting concept of psionics’ control over their mental abilities; by training and focusing their mental powers, they can alter their attacks as needed.  Power Points reset after a short or extended rest, giving them the same basic utility as Encounter powers.

Now, I am personally more of a “give me a sword or a fireball, I want to see the damage I’m about to inflict” class preference.  But after reviewing these new psionic classes, I’m impressed with the width and breadth of their abilities.  I think they would be fun to play!

What’s On the Table

Since our dice haven’t been clattering on the table, what’s going on here?  At SR-West, Dante & I have been throwing back and forth ideas on possibilities to play with a smaller group.  And I’ve been continuing my game play in Dragon Age: Origins after surviving the two weeks of no X-Box while it was out for repairs.

We’ve also gathered a small stack of books for evaluation.  Without active gaming, it’s been harder to really review some of these, but we’re looking forward to preliminary reviews as we work through our scheduling difficulties.  I’m really looking forward to the DA rpg, which I have acquired but haven’t finished reading.  And Dante, of course, is looking forward to throwing evils at us from the Underdark.

So stay tuned, and we promise we’ll have something more to share with you soon!

Tasty, tasty inspiration

As if someone was monitoring my blog watching for me to desperately cry out, we got a review copy of both Martial Power 2 and the Underdark supplement.  Without even a breath, Stupid Ranger ripped right in to the Martial Power 2 book looking for new goodies for our Warlord and Ranger to use.  I was on my way out to karate practice at the time, but I did grab the Underdark book and look inside quickly.  A scan of the Table of Contents provided the required keywords I was looking for “Denizens of…” and “New Monsters”.

And that’s only the start.  Since my campaign has just entered the Underdark, this book was tailormade for me to drop all sorts of terrible stuff on my players the next time we get together.  I started reading the “Geography of the Underdark” section to decide how much retrofitting I would need to do to make this campaign guide sing in my current game (not much, hooray!) and I was happy to see that there are several new Terrain Features, including a section on the emotional effects of adventuring in the Underdark.

I am excited about this book.  Expect to see much more from this supplement as I unleash it upon my unwitting players.  Mwhahaha!

First, Stupid Ranger’s been bothering me to play a Swordmage.  Our D&D discussions lately consist of the following: “Let me play a Swordmage.  Can I play a Swordmage now?  Can I repurpose Character X to a Swordmage in our campaign?  PLEASE?” So I’m thinking about getting together a side campaign to make this happen.  In addition, thanks to some kind people at Wizards of the Coast we’ve gotten a few review copies that I’ve not made it to yet and I think having a sandbox will help me in doing a proper review of these books.

A few questions, if I may…

How many of you regularly play pick-up games?  Do you go for quick-gen characters?  A shifting campaign setting to encompass a bunch of different ideas?  Dovetailing these campaigns into your main storyline?  I’m interested in hearing how to overcome some of the logistics of having a secondary gaming group and how to make the campaign stay coherent with an irregular schedule.  Help a Dante out!  If you give me a good enough idea, I’m sure I’ll write an article about it so now’s your chance for minor Internet Fame!

Perception or Reality?

Does this actually happen?  Yes.  Does it happen in my campaigns?  Not on purpose.

I usually structure any significant damage dealing encounter in a fashion where player actions will determine who gets the brunt of the badness, but in the case of a battle with ignorant opponents I tend to let proximity to the bad guys or randomization (i.e. a die roll) to determine who gets hurt.

That is fair, isn’t it?

Only if you’re making it obvious to your players that you’re using a die roll to determine who gets the reaction.  The trouble with this mechanic is that patterns emerge, especially in small groups like most D&D adventuring parties.  This may be perceived by your players as favoritism or picking on a player, depending on if the die roll is awarding good fortune or bad.

One way that I cope with this problem is to use a cheat sheet to keep track of who the dice have chosen for good or bad results.  This way I can selectively skip someone if they’ve been randomly selected too many times.  Does this eliminate the value of using dice in the first place?  Some people may say yes, but I’d rather use a mostly fair 90% random, 10% fudged process than have a discussion why the same person got attacked 4 out of the 5 last rounds by the bad guys until they were a bloody pulp.  When real life feelings get hurt, then you’ll wish you had fudged something, I promise!

What happens if there really is favoritism going on?

Well, its hard for me to answer this question.  I’ve had the good fortune of not experiencing this problem personally, although I did participate in a few campaigns where certain characters were made much more significant in the plotline than others, which tends to erode party dynamics in a very “un-fun” way.  When this occurs, you can either choose to talk about it to the DM or just go with it if it doesn’t bother you that much.  I tended for the latter approach and it turned out to be a very fun game to participate in despite the extra-special treatment for certain characters.

Has this happened to you?  Have you been a pet player or been in a campaign with one?  What was it like, and how did it resolve?  Inquiring minds want to know!

The Story

Previously in our adventure, we encountered John, who has been working for the Drow because they took his wife hostage.  We entered a deal with John that we would rescue his wife from the Underdark if he told the drow that he had a way to infiltrate the restricted section of the library (we needed more info about the Drow and their plans for items from the library).  So after much wandering around in dark tunnels, taking those roads less traveled to avoid wandering parties of Drow, we found ourselves at a dead end: two Drow guarding the wife, Silvia.

For those of you who haven’t been following along, I’m currently playing Eaerenel, an Eladrin Wizard who specializes in fire spells.  And if you’re not familiar with the fire spells, they usually affect everyone in the area of effect, not just the bad guys.  So if Eaerenel cast a fire spell to affect the guards, she was going to be making life a little extra toasty for poor Silvia.  To make matters more urgent, the Drow decided to kill her instead of letting us try to rescue her and had cast a spell that enveloped her in web of spiders.

Things were looking desperate, and this is where I got creative.  With the DM’s permission, I invoked my ability to Twist the Arcane Fabric to move Silvia to safety before casting one of my fiery spells.  Twist the Arcane Fabric is a feat from Arcane Power (p 130), that allows an Eladrin to use her fey step ability to move an ally out of the way before casting an area or close arcane power.  Dante allowed that since “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Silvia could be counted as an ally.  It was a spectacular moment that made my whole night; I got to save the day!

Be Creative!

Creativity during game play is one of the cornerstones of roleplaying.  Without a touch of creativity, the game becomes mechanical.  To keep that spark of creativity burning,  you have to know your character’s capabilities; how can you plan an awesome course of action if you don’t know what you can do?

Also, Genghiscon is coming February 11-14.  Check out the Denver Gamers Association website for more details!

Today I admit an uncomfortable truth: I have never read any of the Drizzt novels or pretty much any other Forgotten Realms related novelizations.

Before I hear the “door slamming”  sound of the rest of my readership leaving the premises, allow me to explain:

I have spent most of my D&D career learning at the feet of masters.  My original DM, Chuck, was exceedingly well versed in Salvatore-lore and all other manner of Forgotten Realms storylines.  He painted so many vivid and disturbing examples of Drow culture that it held me over for quite some time, and since my first real campaign was a continuation of his storyline I didn’t have to know much more than I already did.  My other campaigns have predominately revolved around non-Forgotten Realms themes and topics I haven’t had to revisit the setting, so my interest wasn’t focused there.

And now I’m screwed.

Well, maybe not screwed… but I do have a situation.  I have worked up a plot that involves the dark elves, and strategically timed it such that I had all holiday break to do some reading to prepare me to subject my characters to a proper representation of Drow society.  The trouble is that I didn’t do my homework and now I need some crib notes for how to whip up a Drow society and make it believable.  I’m going to crack open my 4e Forgotten Realms campaign guide and see what I can glean in a few sessions prior to this weekend, but I’m open to any suggestions on how to bone up fast.

Also, I would like to extend my apologies to everyone who has written in the Forgotten Realms universe.  I consider this one of the most grievous gaps in my D&D education, one that I fully intend to rectify.  Just not this week!  I fully expect to suffer the barbs of my fellow roleplaying bloggers on this one, so the comment thread should be fun!