D&D this summer, bringin' it to the here and now

So last post I discussed the horrific experience that was my initiation into D&D. I never played again, but always felt that it was worth a second shot with the right group. This time has come. I think we have the right group of people. It will be me; MV (my gf); MV's bro; James, (the DM, we're thinking); and a couple (literally) of friends. These friends are extra cool, newly-wed, and are going to be awesome. At this point we have yet to all sit down together and discuss the game. It looks like James has agreed to DM for us. I think he'll do a good job, as he has a good sense of humor and a strong attention to detail. He's abroad now, so we've not had a chance to hammer down details. As to the other two, we really need to talk about characters. I have no idea what kind of party roles they'd want to fill.

Lessons learned from last post (and from limited raiding exp in WoW):

1. Party must be properly balanced. We must have a dedicated tank and a dedicated healer, neither of which I had in my last exp.
2. People should understand they are choosing their character both to their liking and to fulfill their specific role.
3. Players should all contribute to each other having fun, not just to having fun themselves.

That said, I think this leaves alot of room for just having fun. Unfortunately rule 1 is holding me back from choosing a class definitively. I want to meet with the Colosowins to see what roles they want to fill before choosing my class. I am willing to take on a number of roles based on what they want to do. Leaving aside my willingness o adapt to others' desires, I would have it know that I do have a specific characater I'd like to play.

I want to play an Eladrin Rogue. I've been putting a good deal of thought into this character. This is a DPS char, so, of course I'd be looking to do a good deal of damage. More than that though, I'd like to maximize my skill checks. In particular I'd want a very high Perception score. I've designed the char at lvl 1 and lvl 5, so as to get a feeling for how I'd develop the mechanics of the char. In terms of ability scores, I'd be ranking it Dex, (Cha, Wis), Con, Int, Str. So I'm considering completely ignoring Str to maximize Dex, and then taking Melee Training (Dex). That would mean that I apply my Dex bonus to my attack rolls. Basically + to hit rating. I'd choose skills that look to Cha instead of Str. Meanwhile a highish Wis modifier would allow for fairly good Perception, Dungeoneering, Nature and Heal checks, the former two trained and the latter untrained. My other trained skills would be Acrobatics, Athletics, and Bluff, and the two default Rogue skills, Stealth and Thievery. That would amount to 7 trained skills for an Eladrin Rogue. Taking the Jack of all Trades feat would add a +2 to all untrained skills, giving an extra edge in Heal, Nature, Insight, etc. Every little bit helps I reckon. In order to really maximize perception I'll take either the Skill Focus (Perception) or the Alertness feats. This will put me in a position to be a really good scout with high perception, high stealth, and fairly good modifiers for information checks (e.g. History, Arcana, Nature, etc.). When in party, the higher modifiers can be used to back up others if their checks fail.

Finallyto damage. I should have a fairly high Attack score because of the Meelee training feat, but whe I hit, I'll be hitting with daggers, only a d4. So not much damage from straight melee. My powers will all be augmented by my dex and/or cha modifierrs, so that'll up damage. But the other thing I'm trying to do is maximize the Sneak Attack feature of the Rogue class. Sneak Attack damage can be applied anytime the Rogue has combat advantage and packs a fairly sizable whallop, 2d6. To get the most out of this I'll take the Backstabber skill, which ups the damage to 2d8. That's a really fair bit of damage in addition to any other damage done. But to get this extra damage, you need combat advantage. I am at the stage of mechanics planning where I am trying to figure out the best way given my chosen feats to gain combat advantage as much as possible. I am hoping that I can keep my feat choices as is and look to use actions and allies to gain combat advantage. The more I look, the more possible this seems. It seems that I would do better to choose Alertness than Skill Focus (Perception) though. While SF(P) grants +3 to Perception, Alertness grants +2 and makes it so that you do not grant combat advantage during surprise rounds. I think that that will fit nicely into a character build with high perception, as if even when surprised, he either unconsciously noticed noticed something was wrong or is so agile as to not be left flat footed. In the meantime, though, I am not sure I really know how Stealth is going to work in encounters. It would be nice if I could get into a Bluff, Stealth, Attack + Sneak Attack cycle, but it is unclear to me how exactly this will play out. It may be that I have to be very careful to use the terrain to me advantage. In otherwards, make sure that I am only visible to a maximum of 2 baddies in any encounter, so as to raises my chances for Stealth success. We shall see. More reading for me to understand this.

So far that is my mechanical analysis of my character: maximized sneak attack, high Perception, high level scouting skills, overall high skill modifyers so as to be, as the feat say, a jack of all trades.