So another confession time. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, but I’ve never created a character for it. Back when the 4th edition of the rules had just come out, my wife and I went to a local gaming store and joined the official gaming league and participated in a demo of the game. The characters were pre-made on these half-page sized cards. Even though we bought the Player’s Handbook, we never went back to continue in the game. We just were not impressed with the rules that gave it an “MMORPG” feel. So when the Character Creation Challenge came about, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to create a character using the Rules-As-Written.
I haven’t created a ranger yet and I haven’t created a Dragonborn character. So today’s entry will be for Kriv the dual-wielding ranger. There are three methods of generating ability scores. I selected method 2, customizing scores. The six scores start with one at 8 and the remaining at 10. Then you have 22 points to spend (consulting a chart) for the attributes you want. By the time I added my racial modifiers and spent my points Kriv had the following attributes. STR: 16, CON: 13, DEX: 15, INT: 10, WIS: 15, CHA: 10.
While I was writing down my class abilities, they had things called Class Features, Powers and Exploits. If I read the rules correctly, you get all of them for your level. It is something I haven’t seen in any of the other D&D editions and I think this gave it that MMORPG feel. I’m really glad they didn’t continue this part of the game into the 5th edition.
Wait, if I want low-light vision I have to take it as a special feat? The race doesn’t have it automatically? As I read through the feats it sounded like there were some that should have been automatic for the races. But when I went back and checked the racial descriptions, they were not listed. While I was still jumping from section to section in the book (and using a lot of bookmarks) they a least had a section showing the character sheet with information on where to find the information to fill in for each section.
Equipment was pretty quick an easy. Not a lot on equipment but a lot of information on magical items that you could obtain. Very strange. Here is the character sheet after filling in everything that I could find.
Afterthoughts:
While I was going through the book I found the original character card stuck between the pages of the book for Alvenor the Paladin. Apparently it had remained there since that first game. There was also a second paper showing the Undermountain Play Tracker. I head earned 100 XP, three more Renown Points and 13 GP. The DM’s name was Matt.
While I was creating this character, I talked it over with my wife and got her thoughts. She also didn’t like how this edition was set up. She also used the term, “It was too much like the online games”. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one that recalls this. I don’t see myself playing or homebrewing for this edition. But I do wonder if the other books smoothed out or aggravate the rough edges found in the players handbook.
I will say I did like how the character sheet had guidelines for some sections. It did help.
Additional Notes:
I was able to locate another blog with someone who is participating in the Character Creation Challenge. Chimerical Realm has been added to the list of links. I’m not certain how I missed this one before. It looks like this person has been participating for the entire month. If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know via email Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.
Oh and for those of you who asked, we were able to get a permanent fix to our furnace issue. Luckily it was an inexpensive sensor that needed to be replaced. Thanks for asking.
Coming Up Next:
Star Trek Roleplaying Game by Decipher