The Dungeons and the Dragons!

So, a few months back I heard about the new Dungeons and Dragons. Needless to say I went out and bought the PHB (Players Handbook if you don't speak nerd) and my friends and I poured over the new rules with shared excitement and anticipation for new epic adventures. Shortly after I contacted one of the best DM's I know just when he happened to be hunting for players. A few days later we were all sitting around hashing out characters and rolling stats. It was after we'd set everything up though that we learned Wizards of the Coast decided to push back the release date for the books. Undaunted we decided to just focus on world building and fleshing out back stories until then. After a very long wait, Sunday, December eight, the gang got together to start a new adventure together just like old times and I thought I'd share some highlights and a few thoughts with anyone willing to read my ramblings.

Firstly, I freaking love that a LOT of the feats that you used to have to spend a life time's worth of levels to collect are now just part of your class. Dual Wielding is not possible without playing a Ranger, anyone at any time can do it, you just lose your bonuses to damage with the offhand weapon. Metamagic feats are also just worked right into the way magic works and it makes sense in the long run. For example, if you want to cast a more powerful version of Fireball, you burn a spell slot at the level you want it cast and the damage scales accordingly.

I ended up playing a bow rogue and was pretty much our only backliner. Luckily though, this was actually really easy to pull off. See, as long one of my allies is in melee range, I get to roll my sneak attack dice with my damage. So in the first combat of the day, I mowed down all of the mooks while everyone else dealt with the boss. It was pretty awesome getting to roll up to 21 damage with every shot.

It really helps that the group I played with is very heavy on story and role play, so it wasn't just rolling the dice and going through the motions. In a low magic world we watched our Druid turn into a bear in the middle of a fight. We then spent a portion of our night talking about whether or not he might be a threat or if he might up and turn on us or maul a kid. It was so much fun just sitting there talking from the prespective of our characters you know.

We started at noon and played until eight, all in all I'd say it was a great day and I'm really looking forward to the next game.