Last Friday’s D&D session saw Martin run the best session of the campaign so far… all three sessions of it. The most glorious moment was when my character declared that he was arresting an NPC for war crimes (who we’d been chasing for most of the previous session), and the NPC exclaimed “it’s a fair cop, guv!” and surrendered. Well, perhaps he didn’t use those exact words, but he certainly surrendered.
Of course, that probably means the Eberron version of the Red Cross is more than a little annoyed at us, but it was them who was harbouring a war criminal, not us. We didn’t exactly turn him over to the authorities, though. So, what happens next should be pretty amusing.
All of this allowed us to reach 2nd level. Unfortunately, Psionic Power, like the Dark Sun books, isn’t in Ballarat yet. So, I have to work with the pretty limited selection of powers that I do have. Martin included some magical scalemail in the adventure, revised to chainmail when we worked out no-one could wear it, but my 2nd level feat is looking like Scalemail Proficiency, so I don’t think he’ll mind if I revise it back. (Let me know, Martin!) So, +1 delver’s scalemail, which now will give me an AC of 19.
I realised that my character sheet incorrectly said I was using a Battleaxe rather than a Greataxe! I don’t know how that happened. I do wonder if I should take Light Shield proficiency at some point… if anything, it should see my Reflex go from bad to… well, still bad. At 2nd level, my Reflex defense is 12. Compare to Fort of 14 and Will of 16. It’s very interesting being a player in a 4e game. I must say: I’m enjoying the experience. Mostly.
The bit where I’m not enjoying it came from the first combat of the night. My actions went as follows:
Round one: Move up a bit (slowly). Throw a hand-axe and miss with a 3 on the die.
Round two: Charge into melee, and miss with a 1 on the die.
Round three: Move adjacent to two enemies, and attack with a burst attack. Miss with a 2 and a 4 on the die. Get dropped by the goblins.
Round four: Make a death save and fail with a 5 on the die.
Yes, I really, really want my new dice to arrive soon! 🙂
The second combat was only 2 rounds of combat really – I missed and hit once. So that was better. The second combat was hilarious: we were attacked by personages unknown who wanted to capture Nathaniel’s warforged. They succeeded. Martin *had* wanted to run it last session, to close things, as Nathaniel was going overseas. For this session, Nate wasn’t about so we had him kidnapped “in absentia” or something like that.
I’ll post a fuller session report on RPG Geek sometime soon.
I also had to choose a new utility power for my character. The character builder came up with a few somewhat interesting skill powers I could also choose from, but eventually I decided that Dimension Swap (swap positions with an ally nearby) would be best. Used in combination with Rich’s Avenger, it could be very interesting.
I did manage to take more of a “leading” role in directing the combat, in addition to noting down what was happening. Martin proved as efficient as me at skipping people’s turns. How do we do that? Is it a worldwide phenonema?
Sounds like fun. Planning any changes to how you run based how much much time you’re getting on the other side of the screen? I know I’ve improved from picking up on things I like and don’t as a player.
One trick we use for initiative is we have old-fashioned clothespins (the solid wood, not the ones with springs), one for each character plus A-E (and “!”) for foes. We just put them in order at the beginning of a combat from the DM screen, and when someone goes we move their clothespin to the end. You don’t miss anyone and it’s easy to see who’s on deck. Doesn’t have a handy way to show delays or readies though.