Avenge Me!
So I played a 2-encounter 1-shot D&D 4E at Rob's tonight:
http://rob-donoghue.livejournal.com/332766.html
Good stuff. I played a 5th Level Deva Avenger, very much oriented on getting up in folks' faces, plenty of mobility-oriented powers. I skipped anything that used an implement, and went after things with my great big Executioner's Axe. Items rounded out the build here: I had a cloak that gave ranged attackers at -5 if they were more than 5 squares away, and my (cloth) armor boosted my AC by +2 once I got bloodied. Deva + items + one of my feats means that when I'm bloodied, getting attacked by a bloodied foe, my AC's at 21. (At level 6, I'd be inclined to go ahead and get the leather proficiency, but for tonight's build it was important to me to experience the Avenger as a "clothie.")
Deva + Avenger is a nice combo, from the stat bonuses right on over to the racial power that lets you tweak a roll that *just* missed into one that *just* hits. During an opening skill challenge, I rolled a 13 against a target of 15. That counts as an encounter right there, so I busted out some ancestral dice-adjustment and brought it up to target. The noncombat potency of that racial ability is nothing to sneeze at -- it adds just the right amount of on-demand reliability when you need it.
That feeling -- of reliability, of consistency -- really turned out to be the theme of the character: Oath of Enmity means you're rolling more times to hit your target, so you hit more reliably; and with a Brutal 2 weapon, damage gets optimized real fast, too.
That's not to say I didn't have whiffs. I did: my first attack of the night involved me rolling a 1 and a 3 on my d20's. (Not much later, I managed a 1 and a 2; it was really epic.)
But even with those events, the Avenger felt really, satisfyingly *consistent*. I didn't even roll a crit tonight (and that would have been a terror, what with my weapon also being High Crit), but when I was attacking and not having one of my rare whiffs, I was either:
a) Destroying the crap out of a minion with one of my at-wills, or
b) Using one of my encounter powers (or in the second fight, daily powers) to deal 22-28 points of damage and bring down the non-minion opponents fast.
Good stuff. This character scratched a lot of itches for me; I'm almost certain to make it a repeater on those rare chances I get to be a player.
http://rob-donoghue.livejournal.com/332766.html
Good stuff. I played a 5th Level Deva Avenger, very much oriented on getting up in folks' faces, plenty of mobility-oriented powers. I skipped anything that used an implement, and went after things with my great big Executioner's Axe. Items rounded out the build here: I had a cloak that gave ranged attackers at -5 if they were more than 5 squares away, and my (cloth) armor boosted my AC by +2 once I got bloodied. Deva + items + one of my feats means that when I'm bloodied, getting attacked by a bloodied foe, my AC's at 21. (At level 6, I'd be inclined to go ahead and get the leather proficiency, but for tonight's build it was important to me to experience the Avenger as a "clothie.")
Deva + Avenger is a nice combo, from the stat bonuses right on over to the racial power that lets you tweak a roll that *just* missed into one that *just* hits. During an opening skill challenge, I rolled a 13 against a target of 15. That counts as an encounter right there, so I busted out some ancestral dice-adjustment and brought it up to target. The noncombat potency of that racial ability is nothing to sneeze at -- it adds just the right amount of on-demand reliability when you need it.
That feeling -- of reliability, of consistency -- really turned out to be the theme of the character: Oath of Enmity means you're rolling more times to hit your target, so you hit more reliably; and with a Brutal 2 weapon, damage gets optimized real fast, too.
That's not to say I didn't have whiffs. I did: my first attack of the night involved me rolling a 1 and a 3 on my d20's. (Not much later, I managed a 1 and a 2; it was really epic.)
But even with those events, the Avenger felt really, satisfyingly *consistent*. I didn't even roll a crit tonight (and that would have been a terror, what with my weapon also being High Crit), but when I was attacking and not having one of my rare whiffs, I was either:
a) Destroying the crap out of a minion with one of my at-wills, or
b) Using one of my encounter powers (or in the second fight, daily powers) to deal 22-28 points of damage and bring down the non-minion opponents fast.
Good stuff. This character scratched a lot of itches for me; I'm almost certain to make it a repeater on those rare chances I get to be a player.