A while back I made a post in which I reexamined my view on Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and promised to make updates on the game I would take part in. After three sessions, we finally have a stable group of players and I feel confident I can now tell you about our first level experience. I'll start by introducing the player characters and work my way into what actually happened.

I'll start off with my character briefly. In the previous write up, I went through the character creation process when making my half-elf cleric, but I thought I would use this space to describe how the game mechanics worked out. At first, I attempted to use my melee powers to confront enemies. The powers themselves are not too shabby, however since I did not place strength highly on my ability score priorities, I would miss more often than not and soak up a considerable amount of damage. That is when I switched up my tactics a bit. I decided to rely on my ranged attack power that has a secondary effect of allowing my allies to hit my target better, and battle flowed more smoothly after that. Also, since I am the main source of HP recovery, I am more often than not burning through my healing powers in order to keep my group up. The down side to this is my "best" healing power requires me to hit a target with a melee attack, so I often leave that as a last resort. Over all though, it is pretty fun playing a cleric and directing the targeting of enemies by granting other characters bonuses.



Next I will move on to our half-elf ranger. The player is completely new to D&D, so often we have to remind her of the mechanics of the game. Its no real big deal, but we had to help her figure out how to use her powers. She's a "twin-blade" ranger, since she specialized in the use of two melee weapons rather than the more traditional bow ranger. She can be pretty effective when she is not missing, but her low AC often leads to me having to heal her. Though her powers seem to have rather limited use other than allowing her to make two attacks in one round. Also, her hunter's quarry ability is really nice for the extra damage.

Now on to the tiefling fighter. She's got some experience, but often forgets to utilize her class abilities to the fullest. I am often whispering over the table for her to mark (a condition that grants a penalty to the marked creature when it tries to attack someone other than her) her targets. She also often forgets her role of defender and sits back going through crossbow bolts like its fashionable. When she is in melee combat, however, she has a number of powers that prove useful, such as a strike that deals one damage even if it misses.

On to our dragonborn paladin. He is by far the most useful member of our little party. He has a multitude of abilities that help keep targets on him, including his Divine Challenge power, that marks a target and causes it to take damage should it attack anyone other than him. He is limited to melee combat, but that is typically not a problem. He works well with my powers that grant attack bonuses, and between the two of use, we usually take down the toughest of our opponents while the others keep things off of our backs. His powers also focus more on inflicting penalties to his opponent so they have a harder time succeeding on attacks, which has saved our party a number of times. Also, with the most HP, he benefits the most from my healing abilities since he is often taking the bulk of the damage.



Now that I have finished describing the original members of the party, I will briefly describe how combat works. Much like 3rd edition, the encounters start with everyone rolling initiative. On tied rolls, the character with the highest initiative modifier acts first. Each character gets three actions in a round: move, standard, and minor. A standard action can be swapped for a move or minor, and a move action can be swapped for a minor action. Movement is now handled by squares rather than by feet. A major change from 3rd edition rules is that a diagonal movement is always one square in size, so characters are now more mobile than before. This leads to some interesting mechanics since blasts and bursts now act the same way (any area effect is now square, in other words). Character powers all have their action type labeled in its description, so you can know exactly what you can do in one round. There is now only one saving throw, so if you get hit by something that a save ends, you simply have to roll a 10 or higher to end it at the end of your turn. Powers can target one of four defenses: AC, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will. AC tends to the the higher value for most creatures, so having a balanced selection of attacks is highly recommended. Rolls to hit are still done with a d20, so there is no change there. Overall, battle flows a lot faster than in 3rd edition.

Our party was plagued by bad roll and almost died on several occasions, often saved by a luck critical hit or a max roll on my healing skills. Criticals, it should be noted, are handled differently. Unless there is a critical modifier, the attack simply does the maximum damage it can if you roll a 20 and if the resulting total (20 + attack mods) would over come the targets defense. If the roll can't over come the defense, the attack still hits, but does normal damage. It should be noted that we have yet to fight a creature that we did not crit with a roll of a 20. If there are critical modifiers, you would add the rolls for them to the maximum damage the attack normally does.

We have reached level 2 with our character now and are in the process of leveling up. This was accomplished after fighting many a best that seemed almost too difficult to over come. In my next update on Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, I plan on discussing how monsters have changed and how it makes combat all the more brutal.

Also, I need to find better images to break up text.