Say hello to Corrin Lyvan! Finally picked up my model from my friend’s, and I love the paint job that my DM did. You can’t see it in that picture but I have blue arrow tattoos like in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I asked to have the wave coloured differently to represent the four elements.
I was excited to start level 3 as it’s the point where you get to choose a path that opens up different abilities for the rest of the game. I chose the way of the four elements for my monk as it offers the most variety and gives me a chance to play like Avatar. We had a full complement of players this session, and after a late start we managed to get straight into it as we’d all prepared our level 3 stuff beforehand. I had a few new abilities, one of which is Deflect Missiles. This allows me to reduce the damage of ranged attacks and gives me a chance of catching the missile and hurling it back for an attack. I also gained Elemental Attunement, which allows me to affect the elements in small ways, and I’m looking forward to finding imaginative ways to implement that. I also have Fangs of the Fire Snake, which is such a cool name. Tendrils of flame emerge from my hands and feet, increasing my range on my unarmed strikes and also dealing fire damage.
Most of us started off as spectators as one of the characters had to meet his patron and get a pact weapon from him, which had a strong Highlander vibe. Soon enough we were on our way and back on the main quest, which I’m glad to see we completed without much fuss, and I was actually able to contribute in combat this time! I was also able to use my new abilities. When searching for secret doors, I placed my hand against stone to see if I could sense anything. The player’s handbook is a little vague about the limitations on my elemental powers so I’m not doing anything too drastic, and I’ll see what the DM lets me get away with.
I also lit torches to try and surprise a guard so that he would fall into a pit. It didn’t quite work, but it was still fun, and something a bit different. I wasn’t able to pull off Fangs of the Fire Snake, unfortunately, which was disappointing. As for Deflect Missiles, well, I only used it when someone threw a rotten tomato at us as they thought we were bad guys, which isn’t how I thought I’d use it but I was happy enough.
Overall the session was fun but I’ll need a bit more time to fully utilize my new abilities. As I suspected I blew through my Ki rather quickly, so I still might see if my DM will tweak that slightly, but I guess it’s good to encourage thinking strategically. In fact, that’s something we tried to do much more this time around. We realized that there’s a lot more we can do in combat other than just attack, so we tried to use the other actions available to us. It wasn’t wholly successful, and Attack still seems to be the best option, but I’m sure we’ll get better at that as we go through more combats. We only had a couple yesterday and they were both in close quarters so we were quite limited with regards to movement.
As for the storyline, we’re starting to get a bit of a reputation for torturing to get information. It fits our group though, as the highest morality anyone has is Neutral. I’m Chaotic Neutral myself, and the way I play my character is that I don’t have any sympathy for bullies. So at some point if I think my colleagues are torturing someone who I think doesn’t deserve it I will speak up, but otherwise I’m not going to step in. I’m a Half-Elf as well, and it’s part of their nature to be unpredictable so I’m trying to weave that into my character as well.
I found the most boring part of the session was dividing and selling the loot. As my character was a Hermit and seeking an enlightenment that is higher than mere material gain I’m not actually looking to acquire much wealth, so all I need is enough to live on.
I’m still having fun as a Monk and I’m looking forward to using my elemental abilities more. I think the next quest we’re going to is going to be combat-heavy so it should give me a lot of opportunities to test them. It’ll also give me a chance to see how well my Ki holds up, and how often we’re going to be resting. I’m just worried that once I use my Ki all I’ll be doing is my attack and then a bonus unarmed strike, which is fun but it’ll just get repetitive after a while.
