::A Geek in Korea::

Our D&D group got to meet after a month of off time for holidays and different scheduling conflicts. This was our “reboot” mission, where we were admitting we couldn’t break the system with our party and needed to step back, address all the roles of the party and make sure we knew what we were doing. While my Genasi Warlord survived the last battle, I voluntarily made a Halfling Rogue to play as the “striker” in our party.

The role of a rogue striker is to do massive damage to one target, primarily by the means of getting combat advantage over an enemy and then using a class feature called sneak attack for lots of extra damage. Combat Advantage can be achieved in a number of different ways, such as through stealth, feints, or flanking. I tried to use all my tricks to take out foes.

All of this was taking place in the same town as our last party. The surviving members of the last group were still walking around,  but we just added new characters to the mix. It’s a “living world” style campaign, so when we turn up in town the stuff we did impacts what the other characters think of us.

We started the adventure with a skill/combat challenge.  There was another rogue in town operating as a carnie that had set up a game of chance. My character, Noz, the World’s Tallest Halfling, was best with a sling, and had to hit bottles off a set of targets. The first to knock off the most bottles wins, or something. The rogue cheated, so our party lost some gold. We upped the stakes a little with some negotiation, then rigged the game in our favor. We also cheated and won some of that money back. All’s fair when the party’s gold was on the line. I swore revenge on the carnie rogue for taking some of our gold. We will return to win back our money later. If it was our evil campaign, I would have just stabbed him. Oh how the times change.

Our first combat encounter as a party was a mission we took to test out our battle synergy. We had to protect a flock of sheep from some guard drakes. These were bipedal lizards, resembling the procompsognathus in Jurassic Park that killed Dennis Nedry (Newman).  One even spat acid on the face of our Wizard! We were fighting in a field full of sheep, but once our Dwarven fighter got up close and personal (and also surrounded and nearly eaten) by the drakes I got to use my sneak attack to deliver some serious damage. It was very satisfying to roll all those extra dice and start putting lizards down left and right.

The first encounter went swimmingly. We took down the drakes and collected an heirloom from the indebted farmer. I ended up getting a +1 magic dagger to stab people with more proficiently. YES! Magical daggers return to the thrower’s hand after each attack, so I didn’t have to worry about missing and being unarmed between each round. It also boosted my to hit chance to +10 per attack, which is great, and increased my already stellar damage ratios. I was delivering the pain in a big way, and was able to hit nearly everything thrown at us with a decent roll! When our cleric buffed the party, it got even easier to hit. There were times when all I had to do was not roll a “1″ on a twenty sided die to hit. That’s what you want to see in a striker who needs to take people out fast. I also won every throw for initiative, which is critical for more chances at sneak attack damage.

Our DM also let us level up mercifully, as we had been playing level 1 characters for the past few sessions and that can get to be a drag for people that wanted new powers to try out.  I got some advice about my build from other guys in the party to see what they thought I should take. I decided to up the size of the dice I roll when I backstab people. This is seriously the best part of the rogue class.

The next fight was a retread of the last encounter we had to run from. Same setup, with a hive kruthik waiting to try to take us down. We knew the tactics and also knew not to get caught in the breath weapon by surprise. We handled the battle well. I got dropped to -2 HP on the final round of combat because of some ongoing acid eating through my armor, but there was cleric waiting to heal me right away. No danger, but it’ll teach me to waste my Halfling “Reroll” ability on an attack from a minion, even if they do critical hit damage. The party was not supported by any other goblins this time around, we just went in with our crew and wanted to mop up all the experience we could.

Mission accomplished. Finally. As a reward, I got a new weapon that works as a dagger made from a skull. It has a special bonus to hit creatures larger than it’s wielder. Since I am a Halfling, nearly everything in the entire game qualifies for this bonus.  Nice! This was written into the adventure even before I was playing a small sized character, so it didn’t seem like a favor when I got my hands on it either. I would hate to feel like it was written in only for me. I’ve got two sweet daggers already and can spend my dough on some other magical item to make my guy an even more bad ass striker. The lack of low light vision might need to be fixed if I want to continue to function as our lookout.

This game after the long break and the defeat last time has really reinvigorated me. I was worried that a rogue would seem shallow after the helpful Warlord I had built, but it was a lot of fun. My character needs to be fleshed out. What I said at the table when introducing him was that he was the  “The World’s Tallest Halfling”, which is kind of a joke, but I might run with it. Lamest Circus Sideshow freak ever? That might work as a humorous background.

It was probably our best 4th Edition game so far, and I can’t wait to play again in 2009.