Welcome to Gaia! ::

*perceived. I like to use words that don't exist, and I was amused at the thought of blending that with a Transformers pun.

As covered in a PM with Flames, I'm waiting for Dwalin to begin his dagger story before I post.

to know about giant centipede monsters, i roll for nature, right?

you are going to make me cry!

I *THink* it's OK to burn dailies against this one, so when it gets to my turn in the initiative count, I'm gonna burn Lead the Attack. If I hit with it, we'll all have a +4 to hit until the end of the encounter. If I miss, only +1. Let's hope I don't miss. ><

@ New players:

What Plainsfox is talking about, is that he thinks it'll be safe to use your daily powers in this encounter. Or at least, HIS daily power.

The three types of powers you can attack with are...

• At-Will - If you use an at-will power, it doesn't go away; you can use an At-Will power every round until the cows come home.
  
• Encounter - Encounter powers can be used once an encounter. You use it, and it's gone until you have at least 5 minutes of rest (a "short rest"). When you do, ALL used encounter powers come back (you'd eventually work your way up to 4 max).
  
• Daily - Daily powers can be used once per day. They stay gone until you've had a long time to recover yourselves; an "extended rest". Typically, this is done via sleeping. An extended rest eats up either 6 or 8 hours, I'm going to say 8 at the moment. When you finish your rest, you get back ALL used daily powers (and encounter powers).

What Plainsfox is banking on, is that either this will be the ONLY encounter before you slumber, or it will be the TOUGHEST encounter before you slumber. Whether or not you agree with him is up to you. If you don't use your daily powers before you sleep, you don't get rewarded. It's a gamble to use it - defeat something tough now, or save it for something possibly tougher later?

Typically though, it's okay to burn through your encounter powers in every encounter, UNLESS you know it's going to be some sort of running battle thing where you won't have time to rest.

Also, something to discuss is Action Points. Normally, when your turn comes up in initiative order, you get three actions: A Standard Action, a Move Action, and a Minor Action. You can convert down (Standard > Move > Minor), but never up. So you can take 2 moves and 1 minor, for instance. Attacking will ALWAYS be a Standard Action though!

What an Action Point does for you is during your turn, if you spend one (free action), you get an additional action of any type. Typically, it's spent for a second Standard Action (but can be Move or Minor as needed, as well). You "reset" back to 1 action point after an extended rest, no matter how many you had or didn't have before you rested. You also get one after every 'Milestone' (basically, after every other encounter in a day since you last slept). Milestones are also used for certain magic item properties, but we don't need to worry about that yet!

In NORMAL 4th edition D&D rules, you can only spend 1 Action Point in an encounter. I houserule it where you can only spend 1 Action Point in a turn instead. It's less punishing towards players who hoard their action points (like me!) in case it gets tougher, then find out your dungeon crawl ended 3 or 4 encounters sooner than you expected.

Also, for Play By Post games, I encourage people to post in combat at their earliest opportunity, unless they're waiting to see what someone else's action is before they take their own.

For instance, if Ambra was going to blast those baby centipedes with some fire and she was confident that anyone before her would not affect her doing so, she's free to do just that. I resolve posts in initiative order; I don't necessarily expect them to be posted as such.

On the off chance that what something someone else does affects you after all (you were going to shoot a monster, and someone bull-rushed it out of line of sight!), you are free to alter your actions to reflect a new target, or something new altogether. My one restriction is, you must keep any dice rolled already, even you change what those dice are for (different power, an attack roll turned into a skill check, etc).

For the new players: Speaking is a free action, and can be done on anyone's turn.

A 'round' of combat is approximately 6 seconds though, so no extended dialogues. If you do, I may have monsters throw things at you as attacks of opportunities to get you to focus. I don't care if they have no arms and there's nothing to throw, you're getting things thrown at you.

However, I wholeheartedly support witty dialogue, catchphrases, and other forms of snappy repartee.