Customizing Your Character with the PHB2

I believe that a character truly lives when she has a history.  And there are some options in the new PHB2 that give you some ideas if you're stuck trying to develop your character's backstory.

Background Options

Chapter Three begins with some option to help you develop a background for your character, including associated skills you might want to consider training (pending DM approval, of course).  There are some basic options, including geography and socio-economic status, to get you started and inspire you to something more.

There are also background examples specifically related to your character's race.  Races from the PHB, Forgotten Realms Players Guide and the PHB2 have two or three background scenarios listed.  But these are not just gimme scenarios; they present questions to help you take that scenario and customize it for your character... perfect for getting you started on your backstory.

Variant Ritual Book

This is one of my favorite inspirations.  Not every character who needs a ritual book wants to lug around a "book" for her rituals.  Sometimes, a variation of the "book" is what works best for your character.  There are some ideas listed under the Variant Ritual Book heading, but you can easily apply your own creative twist.  Your cleric might prefer prayer beads.  Your bard might carry a music score book.  Changing the nature of your "book" is a prefect way to make your character a little more unique.

Dante & I will be posting additional PHB2 articles through the release on Tuesday, so check back for more.  Of course, if you missed them, read more from Atomic Array, Game Cryer, Gnome Stew, Critical Hits, Campaign Mastery, Uncle Bear, Critical Ankle Bites, Kobold Quarterly, The Core Mechanic, Flames Rising, Musings of the Chatty DM, or right here with Dante.

The Sorcerer: Destruction Personified

The Stupid Ranger Crew was afforded a rare opportunity to preview the newly released Player's Handbook 2. We were asked to explore everything there is to know about the Sorcerer class, so I did what any good impartial reviewer would do: I rolled up an NPC!

Setting the Stage

One aspect of the Player's Handbook 2 that I enjoy is the very clear, visceral descriptions that the authors provide for each of the different class specializations. The Sorcerer class, as an example, is divided into two main focuses: Dragon magic and Wild magic.

The Dragon path provided a few class powers that provide a bit of extra damage to your arcane spells, some minor protective increases to your armor class, and a small amount of damage resistance to a particular type of damage (I picked fire!) The Wild Magic path provides some chaotic aspects to attacks, critical hits, and a chaotic damage resistance that changes with every extended rest.

Pretty much anything with "Dragon" in the title excites me in strange and uncomfortable ways, so I had to go with Dragon magic, and quickly I realized that the Dragonborn class is a natural fit if I'm going down that path. Don't get me wrong... the lure of being a Wild magic user was very strong but in the end you just simply have to go with the stereotype as far as it will go.

A short hour of exciting dice rolling and character sheet mangling later, I had myself Ash the Dragonborn Sorcerer, ready to whip up on the evils of Shadowfell Keep.

A Fighter in Mage Robes

One very striking feature of the Sorcerer class is that you no longer only have 4 hit points at first level. Thanks to the new 4e rules, my Sorcerer began his life with a stout 26 hit points, which is more than enough to allow him to exercise his sorcerer-ly ways and not worry about getting felled by a wayward crossbow bolt.

As our session progressed, the power of the Dragon path became quite apparent. It seems that many of the At-Will and Encounter abilities plan allowed ol' Ash to do a respectable amount of damage. Many of the abilities I selected for him ended up being Close Blast or Burst, so he was taking on small groups of baddies largely unaided. It's not that the rest of the party wasn't helping, they were just rolling poorly!

A few of the Sorcerer at-will spells could be used as ranged basic attacks, so they offered a good fall back option that still aided the party in a meaningful way. No more lobbing Rays of Frost with next to no damage, folks!

Hooked on a feeling...

Call me a sucker for flavor text if you will, but I really enjoy the structure and aesthetic of the Dragon magic path. There are several spells available along this path that offer breath-like attacks, and, as expected, much of the damage is elemental in nature, so you get a real notion of a barely contained channeling of large amounts of power. The truly great part is the damage allocated to this excellent aesthetic makes sense, and my sorcerer felt like a meaningful member of our group society.

The spells provided by the PHB2 seem to hit hard with the satisfying "FWOOMP!" noise that only massive amounts of elemental damage can achieve. Even the few encounters that we got through during our gaming session were enough to make me realize that the new sorcerer is certainly not yesterday's alabaster-skinned nerd in robes who had to stay so far away from battle as to be rendered forgettable.

In fact, the Fourth Edition Sorcerer is a force to be reckoned with, and in the words of Ash the Sorcerer: "Just make sure you're not in front of me when things get started."

Keep an eye out over the weekend, we're posting more juicy PHB2 details up to the official release on Tuesday! Also, you will be able to find further coverage on this release on the RPGBloggers Network!

Want to learn more about Player's Handbook 2? Read on...

• Atomic Array: Episode 018: Player's Handbook 2
  
• Game Cryer: Player's Handbook 2 Review
  
• Gnome Stew: A Veteran GM's Take on GMing and the PHB2
  
• Critical Hits: The Avenger
  
• Campaign Mastery: The Barbarian
  
• Uncle Bear: The Bard
  
• Critical Ankle Bites: The Druid
  
• Kobold Quarterly: Review: Player's Handbook 2
  
• The Core Mechanic: The Invoker
  
• Flames Rising: The Shaman
  
• Stupid Ranger: The Sorcerer
  
• Musings of the Chatty DM: The Warden

Drop by Wizards of the Coast today!

Open Game Table

I had the honor to be an assistant editor for the Open Game Table Anthology, and I'm very excited to say that the book will be available for sale March 23rd.  Check out more information at The Core Mechanic.

Split Personality: The Early Days

In honor of the newly received preview copy of the PHB2, I could not resist the urge to try out one of the new classes.  No, I'm not pre-emptively reviewing one of the classes; today's tale is one of split personalities.

Two Personalities

Dante allowed any of us in the group to roll up a new PHB2-class character to be introduced into our Keep of the Shadowfell game.  My first character is an Eladrin Wizard; she's been fun so far, but I was really interested in trying out one of the new classes. So Saturday night, I'm sitting at the table with one new character and one old character, trying to divorce myself from Eaerenel, my wizard, so I could enjoy Rynna, my new character.  Then Dante gives us the good news: we can run one or both of the characters.  

One Player

So there I was, with two great characters and permission to enjoy them both.  And that's when things got interesting.  How do you manage two characters engaged in the same battle?

One of the easiest ways to keep my characters separate was something I determined during my second character creation.  My wizard is mostly ranged; Rynna is mostly melee.  This helps keep battle strategies for each character separate.

The second step was to move my wizard personality into the background.  I decided to make Rynna my primary personality, and I made it very clear to the rest of the group that my in-character actions would be from Rynna unless I stated otherwise.  This helped avoid a lot of confusion and didn't leave me trying to maintain two prominent personalities.

The third step, which really helped me maintain what sanity I have, was having notecards prepared with each character's powers with descriptions and bonuses already calculated.  The cards had different colored borders, so they were easy to keep separate.  Overall, these cards really helped me keep each character's abilities separate, and I didn't have to flip between books and pages checking on things.

Sanity Maintained

All in all, my first split-personality session went really well.  I'm looking forward to more adventures with my two characters.  I suspect it will be more difficult as they gain levels and additional powers, but I think these initial steps will help keep things from getting too crazy.