Character Rolls



One face to play them all...



Firstly apologies for the lack of posts over the last week. School midterm break knocked me from my usual routine (or as close as I have to one). Talking of sources of discontent is my static painting total. I've been painting a Cryx Reaper and Slayer in tandem (being so similar), and they are bogging me down with fiddly painting and making dispiriting progress. I need to press on and get them done (at least to the pre-rust effect stage) and have a breather with something smaller and quicker. Anyway, enough whinging and onto the proper post.

A couple of weeks ago we finally managed to get the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed ball rolling, after many delays. Well, when I say rolling, perhaps a fairer description would be we mounted the tee, pegged up the ball and addressed it. Yup, that old chestnut, the character creation session was had. And with 2 DnD newbies in the group and only one set of player manuals progress was pretty slow. We all hold DnD as the standard archetypal fantasy roleplaying game so it seems strange that, despite playing several other systems, creating a character is such an unfamiliar and complicated procedure. So many racial, class and sub class options are available that you almost feel that you have to be an experienced player to really create the character you want. Pease note that I said character you want and not the most powerful character possible - that's another well trod topic for "discussion" for another day...

After some debate I've volunteered to play 2 characters to help make up the party numbers. This usually means one main character and one supporting actor. This is a bit more tricky in 4th Ed as the number of skills and feats each character has means that you can't just forget the support troop and bring him in for battle, d20 vs weapon skill a few times then pack him back into the gaming table bag of holding until the next combat encounter. Paying him/her no attention will lead to much "what's this feat do?" delays mid game or missing out on skills that could have been used. Unfortunately this also means that I was faced with the prospect of fumbling through the character creation process twice.

Thankfully I found an old install of the Character Creator from a couple of years ago (the last time we tried to get a game up and running). So a few race, class and autofill button clicks later I have a Lawful Good Cleric Halfling and Paladin Half Orc team ready to face the big world. I know this is cheating a bit, but call me old school but I like to think that as long as I have a character with stats vaguely suited to the their class I can try to roleplay the rest. I find there's nothing like finding interesting ways to work round character limitations to getthe most connection, and ultimimately enjoyment, from an RPG.

Now to find the figure(s) to use on the table,and a couple of character defining quirks to make the DM's life tricky (although we all know that in practice it'll just make my time more tricky).