Here we are once again at the end of the show and I’ve got some weird and wacky mechanic for you to try in your game. The idea this week isn’t so much something I have done as it is something I want to do; wish fulfillment. You see, I get bored of my 4th edition characters very quickly – far more than any other game I’ve ever played. I think this is because WotC dishes out so many shiny new toys on a weekly basis that I get distracted. Fears, powers, builds – I want to try them all. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think that 4E has abandoned or isn’t conducive to immersive roleplaying. I love immersive roleplaying and I love 4E. With the game mechanics so intricate and yet transparent, I can’t ever seem to get into character nowadays because I’m thinking of all the little things I want to explore and fiddle with mechanically. This, by the way, is the reason I can never play Magic: The Gathering. I’d have to have all the cards – ALL of them from the very beginning over a decade ago up through today or I’d never feel like I could play completely the game fully. My own little personal brand of OCD, I guess.

So here’s what I’d like to do sometime. I want to be the entire party for a change. Yes, I know this is supposed to be a cooperative multiplayer game, but darn it I have this whole stable of crazy characters who don’t really quite work right until paragon tier, and I don’t want to have to trudge through 10 levels of LFR just to get there. I’ve got this John Woo-style dual hand crossbow ‘gun-fu’ ranger, another ranger multiclassed to druid with a beast companion and a homebrew feat that lets him be his own wolfpack, a polearm fighter who augments his fighting with Quick Draw and Alchemical Opportunist, a possessed Barbarian/Warlock Hybrid and who knows whatever else – I’d have to go look through my hard drive to find them all. You know what, I.. I just don’t want to have to work my way through all these levels!! I just want to throw them down on the table as is and go nuts!

So why wait – why not start at level 1 and hack my way through all the levels like I’m supposed to? Because when PHB3 comes out, I’m going to have another half-dozen or so builds that I know I’m going to want to play. Seekers, Psions, Ardents… I can’t even remember right now all that’s in PHB 3, it’s sort of eluded me. And it’s not like you could even do this efficiently in 3.x Edition because making a character above 1st level took so long, doling out skill points and picking out spells and everything else. Making one character was hard and tedious enough, let alone four or five. And 1st and 2nd editions, while also having fairly simple character design, just doesn’t have the breadth and flexibility of options that 4th Edition does. To me, the game is just sitting here begging me to make a whole squad of my own guys and run them. I imagine that wouldn’t make any sort of a decent campaign, but as a one-off, a one-shot? Eh, maybe. The next time your regular game group comes up a couple players short, let whoever’s there bring out two or three character of suitable level, bust out a prebuilt dungeon from the WotC site and have yourself a good old-fashioned story-light beatdown. Then let me know how it goes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get some pizza rolls and a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics and see if I can’t scratch this itch myself.