Not much going on this week other than working like crazy on the maps for adventure H2, so… this week I think I’ll tell you about my character!
I’ve been playing in Dave Noonan’s Thursday night Eberron game for a couple of years now. Back in May we switched the game to 4th Edition, so this is one of the longest-running 4e playtests around. Many rules have changed many times in the last few months, so I’ve reinvented my character at least three or four times over. I learn something new each time (and I think I’m getting faster at it!) Karhun began in the 3rd Edition era of Dave’s game as an illumian warblade/warmage. These days, he’s a 10th-level human warlord.
Race is pretty simple: We don’t have illumians developed for 4e yet, and they’re pretty low priority. Illumians are pretty close to human anyway, so Karhun became a human (although I considered half-elf just because they multiclass well).
I thought about converting Karhun to a fighter instead of a warlord. After all, warblades would be in the defender role, just like fighters are. However, my desire to keep in touch with some arcane spellcasting meant that Karhun would need to multiclass into wizard (no warmage yet either), and thus could really use a good Intelligence score. Fighters have no real use for a high Intelligence, but warlords certainly do, and warlord abilities are often reminiscent of the White Raven maneuvers from Tome of Battle—Karhun had a couple of those maneuvers in his 3e incarnation. So it wasn’t entirely crazy to change up roles, and make Karhun into a warlord.
(At this point I’d tell you exactly what we’re up to with multiclassing so that I could explain Karhun’s wizardliness, but I’m afraid I can’t quite yet. Suffice it to say that multiclassing isn’t like it was in 3e. That’s as much as I can say right now.)
Karhun’s ability scores are: Str 20, Con 14, Dex 8, Int 17, Wis 10, Cha 14. I set my Strength high because most warlord powers rely on melee attacks, and it’s useful just for dishing out some extra melee damage anyway. Warlords also have class features and powers that make use of Intelligence and Charisma, so those are good choices for my next-best stats (and of course a good Int helps out with being a part-time wizard, as you might expect). I can “hide” Karhun’s poor Dexterity score by choosing heavy armor for him, so my Armor Class is passable. And Karhun’s got the Toughness feat (much better than the 3e version) and a decent Con, so his hit points are pretty good too.
Overall, Karhun is a pretty good “second tank” in the party. He’s a competent healer, like any leader, but I’ve chosen mostly offensive powers because our group happens to have a healing-freak cleric in it (the player actually prefers to spend his action on a heal than swing at a bad guy). I use Karhun’s wizard powers for dealing with foes at range and nifty utility effects, but most of my character emphasis is on warlord. My warlord powers help to increase the party’s damage output, and get Karhun right in the thick of the melee. For example, one of my favorite warlord powers is Hammer and Anvil. The warlord takes a swing at a bad guy, and he picks an ally who threatens that same target and grants that ally an immediate attack against the bad guy. Lots of fun!
Anyway, that seems like plenty for now… and I’ll spare you the description of my second-guessing about whether I should have gone wizard first and then multiclassed into warlord instead of the other way around.
