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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tobiasosir" data-source="post: 5392668" data-attributes="member: 98357">Hello1Please bear with me, as I'm completely new to D&D (a total of 3 sessions under my belt, plus lots of reading), so I may be missing something simple here.My character is a first level fighter who uses a longspear. Her background: she was once part of a group of vampire slayers, and very good at it--but on her latest encounter, she was bitten just as she killed the vampire. She hasn't turned, but was left with a strong aversion to sunlight. Her boss also fired her, thinking she was now a liability. This was a background created by the DM (who built our characters, but is allowing us to change things if we want).I've built up the back story a bit more and have grown to really like the character. She's started to get a bit creepy, running around in a heavy cloak whenever it's day, sulking sharpening her spear, generally refusing to talk about her past, desperate to save others from evil, etc. Now I want to take it further.  We're going to be getting to level two soon, so I'm trying to plan ahead as to what feat I'll be taking, and there's one that particularly appeals to me for flavor reasons: vampiric heritage. It fits perfectly with the back story--she is more 'tainted' than she thought, and is slowly gaining more vampiric traits, but struggles against them. Anyway, this is all well and good, and it gives me a cool--and very creepy--power to use, Blood Drain. The power says that you can inflict damage on a grabbed target, then spend a healing surge on a hit. But here's the thing: you must have a target grabbed. As I understand it, grab is a standard action, as is this power. So, am I right in thinking that I need to forgo an attack one round, grab a target, then wait until my next turn (during which the target might escape) to use the power? Two turns to use one healing surge seems a bit clunky to me.Of course, i could grab, use an action point, then use Blood Drain--but then I'm always using an action point to use Blood Drain, and I don't think I'd end up using it very often (in which case I may just want a different feat).There's also a brawling fighter first level power that grabs, but requires a free hand. Since the longspear is a two handed weapon, this doesn't apply...or can I say I've just let go with one hand (I'm guessing that's a minor), then use the power? Is there a power or an other way I can grab using a minor action, to perform both in the same turn? One thing I found while searching is the 'grasping weapon' magic item, though having my DM grant me that just for flavor reasons seems unfair to me--nobody else has magic weapons yet, and I don't think it's fair for me to dictate which ones go out when we do get them. What do you think? Is there a way to make this work without ending up spending action points and non-attack standard actions all over the place just to satisfy a cool background story?T</blockquote>

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