@waxeagle howdy

@GPierce g'morning

@waxeagle how was your game? dm/player?

@GPierce player last night. It was all right, one of our players was missing because his sister in law was having a baby...

took us a fairly long time to do some basic social stuff and get through one encounter..

@waxeagle eh, sometimes that happs

@waxeagle baby? terrible excuse! dnd>babies! :P

@GPierce yeah...the encounter name last night was "Snakes, why did it have to be snakes"

@waxeagle named encounter? very nice

lots of yuan-ti?

@GPierce yeah, our current campaign is centered around a group of Yuan-ti that have taken up residence in Fall Crest. We are charged by the town and the thieves guild to get rid of them. We found out last week from a L34 Red dragon that the yuan-ti have kidnapped a Green Dragon and are using it to poison the water supply of Fall Crest

Last night our party and an emissary from the dragon (a L13 dragonborn skirmisher) entered the yuan-ti's lair. We got through the first chamber which was filled with snakes

That's cool about the Green Dragon

custom plot?

@GPierce yup

It will be interesting to see how we do. Its been a bit since our last extended and we are a bit more depleted than we are used to being for an encounter series like this. Hopefully we don't feel the effects of that too badly...

@waxeagle interesting. i like the extended-deprival method

so, next week one of my newbs is gong to be out of town, so the other two have requested another one-shot, specifically in the people of the land vs the sea thing i made on a whim earlier this week. they apparently loved the setting and the gladitorial combat

@GPierce yeah...we probably could have taken an extended...but our dragonborn friend was pretty restless just going through town for a few minutes....

@GPierce nice

@waxeagle so now i have no idea what to do plot-wise. i kind of left it open (they got rescued from fish-man jail, foudn out their capital has been sacked and the terrans are mobilizing against said threat)

@GPierce gurilla warfare to try and weaken the forces of the fishmen?

lead an insurrection in the capital?

what classes are their PCs?

@waxeagle eladrin wizzy, changeling ranged rogue

@GPierce icky

and the third (who missed the last one shot, which is why we did the one shot) is wanting to build a pally

@GPierce hmmm pally would be a huge boon to this party...

how reliably can the ranged rogue generate CA on his own?

@waxeagle If the one-shot was any indication: Never.

He's a "special" player in that simple things confuse him... like LoS

@GPierce thats not good. Rogues without CA just aren't useful...their weapons aren't big enough to deal damage...

Do you provide him with enough places where he can move from cover to cover and snipe?

This is also the player that plays a Defender normally, who, when surrounded by enemies and allies alike, tries to use Cloud of Darkness every encounter, not realizing he would be hurting his allies in the process. Not with direct damage of course... but...

@waxeagle Had no idea he was playing a rogue when i made the plot/maps/encounters. So, he had virtually none. His power selection is also questionable... He didn't choose many mobile powers

@GPierce I am severely racist towards Drow...especially ones that use CoD...especially ones who can't figure out how to use CoD as an effective tactical tool instead of a effing block for the party...

@waxeagle exactly.... i think it's an awesome tool for a defender or a striker... in the right situations

we've came up with our own in-game racial slur for drows, actually.

Striker surrounded by baddies. CoD. Defender surrounded by baddies, party is on the ropes, need to buy a round for healing or something: CoD.

@GPierce yes, actually a ranged striker drow would make awesome use of it. Because you start away from your companions, cast your cloud, move, hide, fire. next turn move, hide, fire. Cloud ends...two turns of CA

@waxeagle Exactly. Though I thinking a Drow Rogue could make better and more frequent use of Darkfire for CA granting

and with powers that let you move before or after the power its even better because you can hide more often...

@GPierce probably.

@waxeagle EXACTLY! Changeling Ranged Rogue? None of those powers... And I know they exist at level 2...

@GPierce yes, but not many of them are range friendly, those powers tend to be melee...

Though, to be fair, he asked if he could tweak it a little and i told him to have at it. He's changing his stats (invested WAY too heavily into Cha) and some power choices, which was wise on his part

this is one of the things about rogues, while they can be built ranged, a melee only or a hybrid melee/ranged is much more effective

@GPierce yes. I'm all for getting a session or two into a game and making some tweaks...

specially for new or relatively new players

@waxeagle I like how a lot of powers are melee OR ranged. It makes for a very versatile Rogue. Especially if you have a magic dagger that can easily be ranged or melee on a whim

@GPierce yes. Dagger rogues are a bit ridiculous...

I love them for that

My wife's rogue with an 18 in Dex at L9 has a +15 to hit with her magic dagger...+17 with CA...

@waxeagle I think this depends. I think asking for it after the first session, seeing a few combats is acceptable. Anything after that i have issue with, because then it feels less like "oh, i thought this power was cooler/more effective than it was, let me swap it" and more like "i'm rebuilding this character specifically for this campaign"

Ranged Changer Rogue invedsted in STR as a stat..... :p

@GPierce Agreed on this. Our first play through we decided that at L3 we would take the opportunity to tweak characters after playing with them and seeing how they worked for a while. getting a feel for mechs and stuff. It made sense since we were all new to 4e...In my campaign some folks asked to do some power swapping after the first session and I said yes, but do it now and there won't be an opportunity to do it again.

@GPierce yikes. What class featured did he take?

@waxeagle I honestly don't recall. But it wasn't brutal rogue...

@GPierce then no reason to even think about that...honestly light blade rogue makes the most sense to me. Light Blade expertise just meshes so nicely...oh look a +1 to damage when I have CA...

His Dex/Cha were both at 18. So probably one of the cha-heavy builds. I suggested that he shoot for an 18 dex (with a +2 racial from drow -> 20 dex at l2 not shabby)

i told him that while cha, depending on his build might be important, it's not that important to warrant that much expenditure and that if wanted his MBA to be more powerful, to take the melee training feat in dex

@GPierce yeah 20 dex for a rogue is ideal with the rest in CHA. your AC will thank you

@GPierce exactly

@waxeagle exactly. i told him to put points into con over str any day, so that way he has more hp and a better fort

Now, for all the dogging on this guy, he's come a long way. He's pretty creative in what he wants to do in game and he's finally getting the mechanics down (Despite having played for like 2 months now)

@GPierce yeah

Though, he still thinks he can move and shift.... He saw a Kobold do it and at least 1/session I have to remind him he can't do that unless he plays a Kobold

@GPierce thats good. 4e mechanics are fairly easy to get. remembering rules is not...

@GPierce lol have you explained to him that its a racial power for teh kobold?

and that its a minor action?

@waxeagle Every time...

Last night he asked if he could trade his minor for a move.... Everyone just looked at him (other newbs included) and just shook their heads. I explained that would be like if you tried to trade a dime for a dollar... it's just not happening.

@GPierce sigh

@GPierce lol. It helped our newbs to write out the action sequence Standard -> Move -> Minor...but this guy sounds a bit dense...

So he's mechanically dense, but he's a good friend, and as I've said, come up with some of the most creative solutions in the game. He actually is way more into the roleplaying aspect than the other two. That said, his mechanical non-sense is annoying but forgetable in light of everything else

@waxeagle Lol, yeah that'd be helpful for him

@GPierce thats good though. You need both types of players although one type will frustrate the other. Have you though about throwing him a bone and playing a narrative game?

Also looks like I might have solved the "I'm the only DM" issue (wanted to say problem, but it's totally not a problem as I love DMin') for when I will be blind due to eye lasers. The one person I kind of expected to be excited about doing a multi-session one-shot when I'm blind/recovering volunteered almost immeadiately. He apparently had been tossing around ideas before I ever mentioned anything

I offered to help him build it and co-DM and help him with rules/rulings when he does DM for us

@waxeagle Maybe some day once he masters one ruleset. I have played up the NPCs a lot and their interactions for his (and the rest of the groups') benefit and that's helped a lot.

Winterhaven has a fairly distinct personality due to this, which has, at least from my perspective, helped with the immersion

The old farmer Elian? I've basically made him Deckard Cain from the Diablo series and he is a major NPC in the game; moreso, funny enough, than Lord Paidrig. Valthrun, the Eladrin Wizard guy, is a total douche (he is Eladrin, though...) but helpful to the party (though he doesn't care for the dark elf or the half elf and will only really converse with the Tiefling)

@GPierce thats good. I'm just thinking something incredibly rules light (Dread!) just to give them exposure to the other side of the RPG spectrum

@GPierce nice...Eladrin should be sorta dochey

as should wizards...so yeah

@waxeagle Exactly why I found it fitting. I also just imagine Eladrin looking down on Elves and Elf-derivatives

@GPierce absolutely...I mean we both heard wheaton play an Eladrin exactly as it should be played...pretentious prick...

@waxeagle Exactly, Elves are, after all, "the hill-billy cousins" of Eladrin

And Half-Elves... don't even get him started

@GPierce exactly

@waxeagle I also think maybe a little bit of Wheaton was present for the Eladrin.... aka the pretentious prick part, so it was fitting! I've seen him in TV shows and the like, he plays that role too well

@GPierce he really does...Big Bang Theory...although actually his latest episode was cool...he actually made up with Sheldon...