Makin’ PCs

 games  1 Response »
Nov 082012
 

Quick update to the last post.

First: Thanks for all the suggestions!

Second: Not surprisingly, I just couldn’t make up my mind even with all the suggestions. So I decided to let my minis decide.

I have a big container full of minis I haven’t painted yet. When I’m stuck for a character, I like to choose one and build a character around it. This not only lets me try random things, but then, because I’m using the mini, I paint the mini, thus getting one more out of the unpainted bin.

Well, this time I came up with not one, and not two, but SEVEN minis I thought might be fun to play with. After some thinking, I paired it down to three: one Fighter, one Rogue, and one Wizard. And then I set about creating the characters. I wasn’t looking to min-max these; I wanted to create interesting characters that would let me test the flexibility of this system and the mixing/matching of Class, Specialty, and Background. They are:

  • Argyll, “The Blade-biter”, Human Rogue with a Trickster scheme, Ambush specialty, and Thug background. I wanted to do this wiry, creepy guy who’s constantly a little on edge. He’s not a particularly traditional Rogue (no Sneak skill, for instance), but I think he’ll be fun.
  • Denton Le Dale, Human Fighter sports the Duelist scheme, also has Ambush specialty, and has a Bounty Hunter background. I wanted to do a swashbuckler character and play with the idea of a DEX fighter. I ended up thinking about Inigo Montoya as I made him, and so I thought the bounty hunter element would make him a little more like that fabled swordsman (after all, they did kidnap buttercup for a bounty).
  • Norris Barliman, Dwarf Wizard, because, hey, why not? Actually, I just had this Dwarven Brewmaster figure in the case and really wanted to do something with it. Making a dwarf wizard was interesting; I went Battle Mage tradition and gave him Endurance specialty, to make him a little more combat-ready, and of course an Artisan [Brewer] background.

As you can see, there’s a bit of “playing against type” in here. I thought this creation process would help me decide, but now I just want to play all three of them. Well, almost; I don’t know that I particularly like Denton’s swashbuckler build, but that may be me just needing to rethink him a bit. I think Argyll is my favorite overall character, but Norris sounds like a really fun time, too.

Ah, decisions, decisions. I need to choose soon, so I can get the mini painted for Saturday!

Fighter, Rogue, or Wizard?

 games  6 Responses »
Nov 052012
 

IT’S ALIVE!!!!!

Hey folks! Long time, no blog. Sorry. I drifted away from D&D Next for a little while. The D&D Next playtest I ran went for two sessions, but nothing terribly exciting ever came out of it so I didn’t bother blogging about it; and my son has lost interest in D&D and Magic for the time being (he’s given himself wholly over to Minecraft); and life got in the way with all its work hours and kids sick and stuff.

But, with a new playtest packet and a new play opportunity coming up, I hope to be more active blogging again. And speaking of new playtest opportunities, I have a question for y’all …

Fighter, Rogue, or Wizard?

I finally have a chance to play in a D&D Next playtest event AS A PLAYER, instead of my usual role as DM. And I can’t decide which class to play! I don’t want to play a cleric; I know that much. But between the other three, I’m so torn.

  • I am a fan of the Fighter, now that combat dice are coming into their own. I want to get a first-hand feel for it.
  • Ditto the Rogue; and since this packet is a first implementation of the rule for Rogues, I feel I might be able to generate some good feedback by playng it.
  • And then there’s the Wizard, a class that is getting so fragmented right now that I want to play it just to see if it’s really as much of a confusing trainwreck as it seems at first glance.

So, help me out. Which one should I choose, and why? I need to decide before Saturday. Preferably lots before, so I can spend time here on the blog hashing out character choices. Feed my need in the comments below!

The Case of Apple v. Orange [Part Four]

 games, Uncategorized  Comments Off
Aug 172012
 

So, last time I pitted a playtest fighter maximized for damage-dealing against a playtest wizard maximized for damage-dealing, to try and explore whether or not the wizard was over-the-top powerful compared to the fighter (as has been complained about by some people). The result? The wizard dies most of the time, unless he gains the initiative and rolls high on damage.

But I’ll be the first to admit that the fight isn’t fully fair, since the D&D wizard is, by design, not meant to be in close combat. And that was, honestly, one of the points I wanted to make with this whole exercise: comparing wizards and fighters directly is like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges. People making the claim that wizards are too dominating are committing a fundamental flaw: they’re assuming that wizards and fighters are meant to do the same thing. Continue reading »

Wizard vs. Fighter! [Part Three]

 games, Uncategorized  Comments Off
Aug 162012
 

Randolf the Red, Wizard

 vs.

Hellwig, Fighter

 

So, first I maxed out a playtest wizard for combat damage, to see what it looked like. Then I maxed out a playtest fighter for combat damage, to see if I could match the wizard. Today, I pit them against each other in a hypothetical fight to the death! Continue reading »

Wizard It Up! [Part One]

 games  4 Responses »
Aug 152012
 

After playing around with a character concept that I’d love to play, I thought I’d turn my sights to a little powergaming.

Personally, I loathe powergamers, and I find powergamed PCs to be utterly un-fun to play outside of the moment where you roll the d20; but some people keep complaining about overpowered wizards, so I thought I’d give it a go. If I maxed out every option to get a wizard as wizard-y as possible, what would I end up with? Continue reading »

What A Wizard!

 games  2 Responses »
May 152012
 

Much like all of you, I’ve been following the recent Legends and Lore columns with some interest. As Mike Mearls has made his way through the various classes, I’ve been panning for gold in each article. Up until now, I’ve been rather disappointed — basically, they want a fighter to work like a fighter, a cleric to work like a cleric, and so on. Crunchy bits have been few, and it felt like a lot of what we’d already heard previously.

Not so this week’s column on the wizard. Maybe it’s because the playtest is getting so close, but Mearls actually reveals a fair amount of detail concerning the wizard we’re going to see next week. You’ll probably want to read the whole article, but here are my thoughts on the crunchier bits. Continue reading »