In last night's session, my party was both clever and lucky - in other words, we hardly took any damage. While this sounds awesome, as the party's healer it made me feel pretty useless. We started with a skill challenge - we had to get past a set of portcullises guarded by two ogres. We were able to bribe one with food and the other with gems, and they toddled off like good little monsters. All that remained was to deal with the drow within the fortress.
YAWN.
There were some opportunities for relatively cool moves - our defender climbed up a battlement, defeated one enemy, then leapt across to another battlement to engage two more. Our controller skulked around the corner and sniped at everyone else. And one of our strikers turned insubstantial, sauntered up to two baddies, and dropped a killer Daily power on the asses.
And then there was me. I charged in and missed, then was bloodied, shifted, and knocked prone by a single attack. I'm a melee combatant, so there wasn't a great way to get back into the fray - I spent the next round healing myself. After that, I was immoblized by an area attack and couldn't do anything to save my comrades from ongoing damage. By the time I was finally free to actually do something, the session was over.
I know I shouldn't complain - the healer (aka leader) is a somewhat reactionary role, and if there's nothing for me to do that means my allies are doing pretty well. However, when I ask the table if anyone needs heals at the end of the session and they all turn me down, it's kind of depressing. My "main" is a leader (a tiefling bard) that I have a lot of fun roleplaying, even when he doesn't do much in a battle. However, Encounters is not the forum for role-playing (sadly).
Coming soon: Exclusive details about my main, Kismet. It will make me feel better.
As a fellow leader/healer, I feel ya. That's why I made my second character a striker. SMASH.
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