Back at the table - new charcter older player

[Lukeworm]

Long time lurker surfacing again…

Next week we are starting a new campaign, this will be the first time I play a “real” table top game in many years. In fact I haven’t played that much since D&D 3.0 came out, just a few play by post games here on EN.

We are all in our thirties married, or soon to be, and some have children. Most of the players are new to 4E but all have gaming experience. Our DM is more experienced and an active DM. I wanted to share this with ENers as posts here on EN by people of my age hwo are active RP gamers encouraged me to return to the hobby.

On a different note since most of us are not familiar with 4E I want your advice about party composition and my character.

The party includes a human Fighter, a gensai sorcerer, a cleric and my own human rogue. That means we have one defender (hopefully the fighter is not a slayer), a leader and two strikers. A good spread of roles, skills and abilities I believe.

For my character I wanted a not to complicated class, melee oriented and with a lot of skills as the campaign will focus on politics and mysteries. I decided on an essentials thief with 18 dexterity, 14 strength and 14 charisma. Trained in athletics, bluff, diplomacy (class skill from background), perception and streetwise, as well as the mandatory stealth and thievery. I did not chose acrobatics or insight for roleplaying reasons.

I need to pick two feats and two at-will tricks and here I need advice. I prefer one combat feat and one feat to augment skills. There are plenty of combat feats but the more appealing ones are master at arms, combat mobility and quick draw. There are much less skill related feats perhaps only alertness. I may instead choose TWF and TWD.

I’m even less sure about at-wills. Acrobat trick and the one about stealth don’t fit the character concept, any recommendations?

Well this is long enough for one post, any comments would be appreciated.

 

[Saracenus]

With a 4 party group the Defender, Leader, 2 Striker combo is not a bad choice. You will dish out damage faster than a completely balanced group possibly ending encounters quicker, but you have a couple of vulnerabilities:

1) Minions and swarms are a bigger threat you're party.
2) Lack of battlefield control is also an issue for very mobile threats.

If the fighter is indeed the Slayer variety, then it gets better and worse. You will put the smack hard on the bad guys but bad initiative and some unlucky rolls that go against the party can lead to some very scary moments.

As to feats? Depends on what is available. It sounds like its more than Essentials only. Your question would probably be better answered on the Character Optimization Boards at WotC.

As for which tricks? Depends on how the group operates and plays together. If you want to maintain combat advantage almost all the time, then Tactical Trick and Ambush Trick are the best bets.

If you had a Sentinel Druid of Spring with a wolf companion, not so much.

Are you going to get flank all the time? What weapon are you going to use?

I saw an elven thief with a +1 distance dagger tear it up as a ranged striker.

I would talk with the other players and see what synergies your powers and abilities might generate.

My two coppers,

 

[Destil]

Master at Arms is very hard to beat, even with a character as accurate as a thief (who can also take advantage of the quick swap rapier <-> shortbow it provides).

As far as a skill-based feat, picking up a multiclass feat that comes with a skill training may be the way to go. What skills are you looking for? Bardic Dilettante sounds like it may be a good fit (as well as providing your party with an extra healing surge trigger once a day).

 

[tiornys]

From a pure combat optimization standpoint, your best feat as a Thief is Light Blade Expertise (+1 hit and +1 damage in a single feat), followed by Backstabber (+2 average damage).

There aren't a whole lot of interesting feats that boost skills, unfortunately. Multiclassing is a good way to pick up another trained skill alongside a minor benefit. I don't know how many multiclasses appeal to you from a flavor standpoint, but Ranger and Barbarian give solid extras, as does Battlewise (Fighter) if you have Wis 13. Other skill-related feats of note include Disciple of Lore, Wasteland Wanderer, Wilderness Skirmisher, Street Eyes, and maybe Connected.

You might be better off waiting on skill-related stuff until level 2, when you can take Skill Power. I find a lot the skill-based utilities to be interesting and flavorful in ways that most feats aren't.

The TWF/TWD pair you mentioned is a good way to boost both offense and defense. You might also consider Toughness as a good way to give yourself a little more breathing room for the first few levels (plan to retrain it around level 5).

t~

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It really just depends on what you want to do. Non-combat options are such a broad category that it is hard to give specific advice. If you want to pick up a specific skill then an MC feat is the best option, but Skill Training works too. If you want to be really good at X then pick up the Skill Focus for it (though honestly there are other options that don't cost a feat and probably serve as well, the only virtue of Skill Focus being you get the +3 all the time).

Skill Powers really are a very good option. They can give the flavor of being excellent at something specific, etc.

You might also look at some kind of item, though the better ones don't really kick in till level 5 and you kind of have to count on the DM to help you out there.

Other niche options also exist, like martial practices, which are good but not worth the feat to just pick up one or two.

 

[WalterKovacs]

With a 4 party group the Defender, Leader, 2 Striker combo is not a bad choice. You will dish out damage faster than a completely balanced group possibly ending encounters quicker, but you have a couple of vulnerabilities:

1) Minions and swarms are a bigger threat you're party.

They do have a sorceror though, so he should be able to deal with minions pretty easily.

2) Lack of battlefield control is also an issue for very mobile threats.

This is more of an issue ... if it's a weaponmaster fighter, he'll have stickiness on his side, but other than that, it may be hard to get monsters where you want them.

Depending on the cleric, you may have only the fighter to flank with, which would mean that looking for other ways to get combat advantage.

For combat stuff, you may want to pick up a a rapier at some point (otherwise you are mostly looking at short sword, dagger or short bow, depending on what kind of melee/ranged mix you want. You can also go with two-fisted shooter to take a hand crossbow in one hand and a short sword or rapier in the other). There is also multiclassing into use of a spiked chain, it's a nice +3 to hit 2d4 reaching light blade. Not sure if it fits your theme at all, but it's an option.

Assuming you have access to more than just the books (at the very least, with a genasi sorceror at the table, you have access to quite a bit of stuff), there are some different options for skill feats:

Building Comraderie: It let's you make your diplomacy check get better and better each time you succeed. [I.e. +1 cumulative each time you succeed for the rest of the encounter, but you lose it all and can't get it anymore when you fail]. Could be helpful for the political stuff.

Furtive Signals: If you can convince another player to also take this (probably the Sorceror), it would let you make bluff checks to communicate with each other silently, and also to make a bluff to give each other combat advantage or chances to hide. It also gives a little boost to bluff, but does require an ally taking it as well to make it useful.

Street Eyes: Like the previous, needs someone else to grab it. Two people with this feat working together can either do a streetwise (gather info) check in half the time, or with a boost to the check.

Connected: You roll twice on any streetwise check [Can be helpful later on, since at level 2 you can get the skill power that let's you use streetwise checks in place of other knowledge skills when in a place you've already succeeded on a streetwise check]

As far as your at-will tricks:

Leaving out the two you put, and considering you are lacking allies, I'd probably cut out Tactical Trick as well.

Ambush trick may be useful. With a smaller party, you should be against fewer enemies, so it's easier for one of them to be alone. Unbalancing or Tumbling Trick are both nice for giving you good shifts (which can get you away from an enemy without provoking O/As, and even getting yourself far enough to be able to charge someone if you can't get where you want with the shift). Tumbling Trick gives you some minion clearing power (in case the fighter doesn't have cleave and the sorceror doesn't have an at-will burst attack), while Unbalancing Trick is a bit more useful if the cleric is melee (ranged people like the sorceror don't like prone opponent's much). Thug's Trick can be interesting if you intend to flank with the fighter (And the cleric) quite a bit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm an experienced gamer (34 yrs in the hobby) who plays with experienced gamers (none less than 14 yrs). Seriously, details aside, you may want to do party composition a little differently for 4Ed. I'm not talking about class or race selection, but feat & power selection.

Because of the way 4Ed is designed to support a team effort concept, with status effects constantly changing, some players find it frustrating if their PC concept/design doesn't mesh all that well with other PCs. In 4Ed, its just slightly harder to be the oddball...just enough moreso that, for some, it can radically affect their enjoyment.

For example, my dwarven Starpact Warlock has a few powers that both target AND reduce foes' Will. This is good synergy within the PC because if I can get a good hit with such a power early on, it means I'm more likely to hit that target later in the combat.

What we only recently discovered, though, was that another PC in the party had some melee attacks that targeted Will. Had we known this a while ago, my PC would have been softening up HIS targets instead of those of the other melee combatants...most of whose powers target AC or Reflex.

So sitting down with each other and finding infra-party synergies may make getting into 4Ed a bit easier for you.