D&D Encounters (Session 5)

Last night I played in session 5 of D&D Encounters. It is my third game, and we play at Eudemonia. I had meant to actually blog about each session, but I am lazy about such things.

Anyhow, I have been having a blast with my half-elf ardent, Byron Aweheart. With a 20 Charisma and 8 Intelligence, he is the Ken of the party, more concerned about how he looks swinging his greatsword around than, well, whatever it was he came down here to do (I know, but he may not). I feel playing a character who is so over the top has helped me adjust to playing with strangers. Being a leader both in role and in character, being able to shrug off the important clues out of disinterest, and then focusing on interacting with the other characters has been a boon in just being able to talk to other people. Sometimes D&D 4th feels too much like a strategy game, and not enough like a social game, so this character helped get around that.

However, despite really being into this character, I am going to switch it up for next game. At the beginning of our game last night I noticed that we had three leaders, one defender and one striker, and mentioned that we could use a controller. Wouldn’t you know it, we fought swarms of rats in the next encounter. Additionally, only one character is trained in arcana, and they tend to pop up in the middle of combat, after we have stumbled around some magical contraption to no avail.

With those considerations, I am planning on playing a human wizard. Scorching burst and a whole lot of arcana (and other skills) will go a long way in this format, and will make our party rounded out. I have a character already rolled up, partially based on fanart I got from Fanime years ago. I have to admit, I love playing wizards. I normally know a substantial amount of the rules, so it is easy to be the geeky guy, almost meta-gaming my way through monsters and whatever the DM throws at us. I look forward to seeing what kind of information I can get from monster knowledge skill checks, and passing it along my party.

Also, thanks to Absalom, Ariella, Christina, Gautham, Jeremy, Jon, Judy, and Tim! We have a lot of people in this game, and everyone is a lot of fun to play with. I feel Tim and I lucked out, since the other Encounters game that is running there seems less fun when we see them. D&D, not a serious game. :slight_smile: