The Departed

It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that our trusty tank... um, Paladin, Victor (née Mike) will not be joining your future endeavours.  Because of a scheduling conflict with work (IRL), our trusty Paladin will be returning to Neverwinter to help with the recovery efforts there. If you know anyone who would be interested in playing, please let me know.  Otherwise I'll open a 'looking for players' to find another tank - unless you guys would like another caster ;)  I did DM a troupe of bards once, but that's a tale for another day...

We could try running as is would probably streamline combat a bit with one less PC. Would also help with the problem we ran into with the xp being divided by so many. But in game for whatever.

If our lack of tank hinders us too much, I could bite the bullet and roll a tank character up.

We could run as is and see how things go.

Yeah, not sure why that thought never occurred to me!  I'm finishing up Salvatore's Neverwinter Saga, and, not to add any spoilers, this coincides nicely with a group of mercenaries in the book discussing how if one or two of them got killed it just means more share of the spoils for others... Haha, so I guess that works.  Five should be more than enough.  You've got the cleric tank, a fighter who isn't yet a bladelock, and a rogue to do sneak attack, so that should be a good 'front line'.  Either that'll be good and we move forward from there, or one or more of you will get squished and have to reroll anyway ;) I consider this starter set adventure to be the 'testing ground' anyway, nothing really fun happens, character-wise, until about 3rd level. So if you decide between about here and 4th level (or at any time, really, if you're sick of the character you created) I think it's fair game to change up characters, especially before we start any time of real 'campaign' as then you'll hopefully be in it for the longer haul with that character... until TPK anyway :P

I'm rapidly becoming attached to Atimus of clan Bouldershoulder.

Actually a quick question on that. Would Matt Mercer's blood hunter class be available for this game?

I haven't seen the latest updates for the Blood Hunter class, just the free 1.3 version. &nbsp; I was actually going to post something about this, somewhere, regarding other sources... We're not playing Adventurer's League games here so we can be more flexible in what's allowed, but I don't want to go _too_ crazy with homebrew classes and the like - but, I don't have any problem with using anything from the published books and am open to Unearthed Arcana classes and option, for sure. &nbsp; Blood Hunter is neither of those, but with Matt Mercer behind it and enough of a community review, I think it's an exception. &nbsp;My only fear is letting in crazy stuff that unbalances the game and makes it no fun for someone who's playing a stock character type, but I think there's been enough eyes on this one that I'd allow it. &nbsp;The only caveat I'm seeing for it in looking around is that it might get weird trying to multiclass it. - This article has a good summary of _all_ of the differences between 5e and previous editions, including all the races/classes, but it's a bit long winded just to get that info out of it:&nbsp; <a href="https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_" rel="nofollow">https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_5th_</a>... - This thread is a year old, so may be missing some stuff, but has a nice summary: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/39agrz/list_" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/39agrz/list_</a>... - Also in that thread are links to these two docs, which seem comprehensive: - Races:&nbsp; <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzptumctKD_HUmJ3N" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzptumctKD_HUmJ3N</a>... - Classes:&nbsp; <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f6PpimA62G" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f6PpimA62G</a>... Although the classes one has a bunch of stuff from 'outside sources'.... I'm sure I could be convinced to let you make a 'Kitten Patron' Warlock, though...&nbsp; <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/3apwcy/5" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/3apwcy/5</a>...

It's all good if it's not allowed! Lol also on the kitten patron note, I have always wanted to do a Bee patron, and all the spells would be bee themed

No, that one I think is cool, just because it's had enough play testing and refining. &nbsp;Anything that's 'canonical' I'd be good with, and would give most of the UA stuff a go - although it's not always balanced or well tested, for sure. &nbsp;I'd just be more hesitant with some homebrew class from Reddit or something :) &nbsp;Not that there aren't good ones! &nbsp;Just again, balance and fairness and all that.

Well, not having a "tank" doesn't make things impossible for us, it just requires more thought and communication on us as party members. I am sad to hear about our Paladin having scheduling conflicts, maybe in a future campaign he can rejoin us time permitting?

Since we have one less in the party now that means we get bumped up to lvl 2 before this session now right.......right.....? Probably not but it was worth a shot :p

Haha, well... I had &nbsp;considered it, but what's done is done! &nbsp;Given that you're 83 points away from leveling up, though, you'll probably level up after the first encounter, so I'm going to let you guys level during the next session. &nbsp;The big change comes at level 3, hopefully after this session (I'll have to math it out). &nbsp;So I'd plan for level 2, but we'll hold off on entering the data until after the first encounter - let me know if you need any help with that or have any questions.