New character for a new player

[Amaroq]

I'd add to the general comments:

I have a new-to-tabletop-gaming player in my campaign. She's playing a human sorcerer. She loves it.

She's a long way away from "optimized" and doesn't tend to focus on the forums, but she picked it up right away and she loves the sorcerer's flexibility, basically being able to scorch anything that comes to close to her (with a lot of close burst and close blast fire powers) or just rain thunder and lightning down on them from range.

So, for cutting through the "overwhelm", that's what I'd recommend.

Besides the great advice to run the Character Builder trial to make your characters 1st, 2nd, and 3rd levels, and plunk down the $ if you're getting value ..

.. I'd say the other piece is "get a more experienced player to sit with you while you do it", they'll be able to explain the costs and benefits of certain powers or choices quite well.

Remember, you aren't locked into any of your choices: each time you level up, you can retrain one thing about your character that you don't like. Took the power "Utterly Useless"? Fine, once you've figured out that its utterly useless, you level up, and you retrain it to "Looks Much Better"!

She's certainly done that with one - she's playing a Chaos Sorcerer (Wild Magic), and hadn't quite figured out how useful the Level 2 Utility power that lets her choose whether her attack die roll was even or odd was. As she saw how many powers relied on that, she decided to retrain to learn that L2 Utility power.

 

[heroclix1021clix1021]

thx for the replys. already downloaded the character builder and paid for a subscription and currectly looking into the pros/cons of warlock/sorceror

 

[Turtlejay]

My two bits:

It is important when you start not to get bogged down with the minute details of character building and optimization.

D&D is relatively easy. Especially 4e. Especially when compared to WoW. The basic concept, roll some dice, add up the numbers, and subtract them from the bad guy, is simple. Start adding in some of this extra charop stuff and you might get overwhelmed.

Sorcerers are easy peasy. No extra damage die, no cursing/marking/shrouding/quarrying mechanic, just plain, vanilla damage in a size and shape you find pleasing.

Yes, 4e powers all have riders, but your DM is there to take those into account. Take a simple class, choose a race that fits it (that you want to *be*), and kill things.

The pretending to be an elf will come soon enough. Eventually, you will be seducing your DM (in character, natch) like a pro. That's what high CHA characters do, after all.

Jay

 

[On Puget Sound]

WoW warlocks are also a "pet class", doing a lot of their damage through their summoned demons. D&D warlocks are not. If you like that particular aspect of warlockery and want to recreate it in D&D, the closest is probably a Wizard focused on Summoning spells for your dailies. Rangers have a pet build too, but the pet is not the main damaging part of the team; it acts more as a distraction, flanker and damage sponge.

If you want to try building a summoning wizard, make INT and CON your highest scores, since your summoned creatures have hit points based on your own.

Now that you have the character builder, just monkey around with it; you'll be amazed at how many ways there are to build a character!

 

[Amaroq]

Good point, On Puget Sound - note also that the Shaman's companion can fill a similar role. In our party, the shaman personally stays in the back line while keeping her companion on the front lines with the fighter and the warden.