Thursday, December 29, 2011

Update: Race/Class Build List

I've finally updated my Race/Class Build List to include races/builds from Heroes of the Feywild.  It's basically a list of all the races and class builds in D&D 4e, and which race/build combinations have the best stat synergy.  Wow, 4e has 26 classes now, and 115 builds for those classes.  It also has 32 PC races, plus 11 monster races, making 43 playable races.

Please let me know if you see any mistakes on the list.




Saturday, December 24, 2011

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas... now roll initiative.

Seasons greetings to my gaming group, my gamer friends, my blog readers, and anyone else who happens to stumble across this page.  Have a wonderful holiday!



Sunday, December 11, 2011

Unlikely Heroes: Game, Interrupted

Game Date: 12/10/2011
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Dalia (Matt): Human Ardent
Durp the Oblivious (Cliff): Half-Elf Bard
Keyanna (Chere): Half-Elf Sorcerer
Marrick (Greg): Dwarf Knight
Teddi (Ted):  Dwarf Warlock

Last Session:
I missed the 12/3/2011 session, and had to have the other players fill me in.  Here is a quick recap of what I missed, courtesy of the other players:

We left town to search for some Druids to cure Jevra.  On our way through the woods, we saw a pack of wolves feeding on a corpse.  We chose not to fight them, and just skirted their way around the pack.   Derp found a magic dagger.  The party then came across another town, and went to the inn.  While there, a ranger accosted Derp, claiming that the dagger belonged to him.  This resulted in a bar fight with the ranger's party.  The brawl went on for a while until the sheriff arrived and broke it up.

During the fight, a valuable shroud was burned.  The shroud belonged to a professor, and the sheriff held both parties responsible.  Also, during the night, the dagger was stolen from the sheriff and our party was not allowed to leave town until we found it.  We eventually found it in a stable, having been stolen by a gnome's familiar.

Since the shroud was priceless, the professor came up with a task for us instead of paying for it.  He wants our party to find some druids and ask them a favor.  He wants to borrow some artifacts from them for scientific purposes.  Since we were looking for druids anyway, it seemed like a fair punishment.  Plus we now have a map, so we're not wandering around the forest aimlessly. Our party also hopes to track down the ranger's party and get a little payback.  Gee, I hope these woods are safe...



Today's Session:
As we were getting to leave the inn, we discovered that we couldn't find Glynnyn.  She appeared to have left town, and we wondered if she left with the ranger's party.  We entered the woods and began tracking the other party's footprints.  After a bit of hiking, we triggered a trap.  Merrick and Keyanna quickly found themselves hanging upside down from a rope.  We then heard some rustling in the woods, and were attacked by a werewolf and four wolves.

The wolves were easy enough, but the werewolf meant business.  It had a nasty burst attack that hurt us a lot.  It took Keyanna a few rounds to get herself free of the trap, and Marrick spent even longer as a Dwarf piƱata. Eventually the werewolf tried to flee, but we managed to overtake it and finish it off.  Teddi was bitten during the fight, and has contracted Moon Frenzy.

After the battle, Teddi found a scroll of "Speak with Dead".  We continued to follow our map until we reached a clearing.  We saw a circle of stones, with a mass of moving vines in the middle.  A wolf was being engulfed by the writhing vines.  We considered trying to help the wolf, but having already been attacked by wolves today, we just watched it for a while.  Finally Teddi ran up to help it, got grabbed by the vines, and teleported back to freedom.

There was Elvish writing carved in the stones.  Keyanna translated one passage as:  "Two miles towards the Sun's first fire, the Earth's embrace will steal its ire."  She wanted to read the other side of the stones, but couldn't see enough from her position.  So she climbed a nearby tree and tried to climb out over the stone circle on one of the branches.  It didn't work out like she'd hoped.  On top of one of the monoliths was a suit of plate armor and a panther.  And it turned out the tree was full of stirges.

We were attacked by one large stirge, four stirge suckerlings, the panther, and of course the vines.  Early in the battle, Merrick climbed up onto the monolith to fight the panther.  The vines kept grabbing him and trying to pull him off, but being a dwarf he was able to resist their pulling.  While he faced the panther, the rest of us picked off the suckerling minions.  The big stirge attached itself to Teddi, and he'd already used up his one teleport power.  Jevra ran off and hid between some trees, but then transformed into a werewolf herself.  She came back out and attacked the party in her wolfy form.  Merrick finally killed the panther, but was unable to rejoin the party because the vines still held him in place.

We had to end our session early due to some real-life concerns.

Reminders:
Due to the holiday season, we might not play again for a few weeks, so we'll want to keep a good record of where we left off.

We're still in battle, and the battle isn't going very well.  We've used up a lot of our Encounter powers and Dailies, and most of us are low on hit points.  There are three enemies left: the vines, the large stirge, and Jevra.  None of them are bloodied yet.  The vines aren't much a problem, if Merrick can just get away from them.  The stirge is still stuck to Teddi's face, and is hard to hit because it gets an AC bonus when grabbing something.  Jevra might be our biggest concern.  She hits hard - she hit Dalia twice in one round, taking two-thirds of Dalia's hit points.  Since we've used up most of our healing options, we can't afford to take many more hits from her.  Also, Dalia may have contracted Moon Frenzy.

Initiative Order (As best we remember it):
Marrick
Stirge
Teddi
Vines
Dalia
Jevra
Durp
Keyanna