In which I make a Ranger who actually ranges (4e D&D: round2)

Again, this post is about a month late from when it's events actually occurred. I'm a little bit behind, but I'm catching up. ;>] Anyway, here it goes...

So my next foray into 4e was a lot more "local"...we're talkin' like 5 miles from my house...cool. Anyway, there is a local gaming store (Blue Dragon Games) that has a few campaigns going with 4e (some still 3.5, and some other games too, but they are doing a lot of 4e there, so that's cool).

Now, I'm having trouble committing to a constant weekly group thing, as I have very little time as of late in RL. Well, they have scheduled some "sanctioned" RPGA events at the shop, including a series called Dungeon Delves (or something). It's basically broken down into sessions that include 2 encounters each, and are supposed to be sorta like 1-shot pickup games on a weekly basis. I think the deal is you can show up for one and miss the next, maybe show up for the 4th one, etc. We'll see. This is the sorta thing I need, since I cannot commit to a weekly thing fully.

So I went to the 1st session, and it turns out I was the only person on the planet that even knew about it, save the store owner and an employee/manager (DMing these). I only knew about it because I was in the store on New Year's Eve day, just out shopping (returning a gift or two from Christmas) and stopped in the store for a little browsing. They have added it to their website, so I hope there are some folks that show up next time.

Anyway, I got to at least make my character that night. The DM told me that everyone who joins in would have to make an 8th level character....whoah! Now that may be old hat to some, but a brand new system, with all new powers, skills, feats, classes, races, etc is kinda tough to jump into 8th level. But man, was it fun!

My 8th level dude, is a Ranger of the Elven variety.

He is actually going to "range" things. The Ranger in my 1st (level 1-2) group was a melee guy. This dude of mine will pop things from afar (whoah!). He has some sweet powers (at-wills, encounters, dailies) and feats, and even a little gear (you get to pick 3 magic items at that level, one at level (8), one below (7), and one above (9), so that helps out a little), mostly all geared to maxing his ranged damage.

He is gonna use a +2 Vicious Greatbow almost exclusively. The vicious is different than what I've seen before (3.5?, D&D Online/DDO). No damage back to the user, but it does nice work on a crit. Now I won't crit a lot, cuz they don't have the true improved crit stuff that I've grown used to (in DDO, especially), but when I do crit it will be massive!


In encounters Rangers get to tag their closest foe as their "quarry" once per round. Anyway, when you do that you get some nice bonus damage on them (1d6). With a feat that I took (Lethal Hunter) this additional 1d6 of quarry damage increases to a 1d8. Oh and as an elf, I can re-roll some misses, Eleven Accuracy or something....so on the big attacks, I can use a power to re-roll some of them...cool! This is gonna be fun!

Man, I just hope I get to actually play this dork, as it took forever to make him. The employee/manager of the store (the future DM of these sessions) was *very* helpful and sat there the whole time with me pouring thru the books and such. Another player who is frequently at the store, playing in several campaigns, was also very helpful with some of the creation process. It was pretty daunting for a 4e newb, especially making this guy 8th level to start.

It was a ton of fun, and I never even rolled a single polyhedron....ha!