Okay... so I've found myself staring at the computer screen waiting... waiting for something to happen. So to fill up my time with something useful I've decided that I'll throw something out here to the Tavern that may get some response from both 3.x and 4e CoCo members.
Funny thing, I see Quickslip and Eluria post all the time, but we seldom get to interact. I know I've left 3.x in the dust (my last 3.5 game as Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which ended this past Fall), and perhaps they did the same with 4e. So I felt like starting this thread to get some interaction from both sides of the aisle.
So I'm throwing this out there for all the CoCo members...
Who is your iconic D&D character? Tell us about him/her. Does this PC fight in the CoCo?
_________________________________________________ "Jacking up the level rewards has always carried the taint of bribery, in my mind. If people need to be bribed to play D&D, then something's wrong with the game." -Steve Winter (http://www.howlingtower.com/2012/01/illusory-math.html)
Are you meaning the character we think we would be if we lived in D&D-land? Or the character we think of as being "what we play," regardless of all the other stuff we have running around in our heads?
• Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's circumstances, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Abusive (Personal Attack)— Insulting the person, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Tu Quoque— Saying the person's inconsistent, not addressing the argument. • Appeal to Authority/Belief/Common Practice/Consequence of a Belief/Emotion/Fear/Flattery/Novelty/Pity/Popularity/Ridicule/Spite/Tradition— Using emotion instead of Fact. • Bandwagon— Use of peer pressure. • Begging the Question— Assuming premises which haven't necessarily been agreed to. • Biased Sample— Using a sampling which may not properly represent the whole. • Burden of Proof— Shifting it to the wrong side. • Circumstantial Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's interests in supporting their argument. • Composition— Assuming that the whole has the same qualities as individual parts. • Confusing Cause & Effect— Assuming that one thing causes another because they appear in conjunction. • Division— Assuming that the individual parts have the same qualities as the whole. • False Dilemma— Assuming that only two options exist. • Gambler's Fallacy— Assuming the odds have changed because of past occurances • Genetic— Assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim is proof of a defect in the claim. • Guilt by Association— Attacking others who agree with the claim. • Hasty Generalization— Assuming a quality based on too small a sample size. • Ignoring the Common Cause— Assuming there is no outside cause of two connected things. • Middle Ground— Assuming the midpoint of two extremes must be correct. • Misleading Vividness— Assuming a colorful anecdote outweighs statistical evidence. • Poisoning the Well— Using unprovable claims about the person instead of addressing the argument. • Post Hoc— Assuming that something caused something else simply because it happened first. • Questionable Cause— Assuming that one thing causes another. • Red Herring— Using irrelevant evidence to divert a discussion. • Relativist Fallacy— Asserting that a claim may be true for some but not for the speaker. • Slippery Slope— Assuming the inevitability of one event based on another. • Special Pleading— Claiming exemption without justification. • Spotlight— Assuming individuals that get the most attention to be indicative of the whole. • Straw Man— Misrepresenting the opposing argument. • Two Wrongs Make a Right— Justifying something unethical/immoral as response or pre-emption to something else unethical/immoral.
Response to those who like to compare 4e to a Video GameShow
Also, I find that the "D&D 4e is like an MMO" argument is often a sign of someone who is deliberately being obtuse and/or is potentially ignorant of actual MMO play. As someone who only ended a 6-year World of Warcraft addiction a year ago, I can say that most of your bullet points actually don't match up to the truth of it.
In D&D 4e, you can choose a hybrid, you can choose to play one class as though it were another (people played Warlords as Bards frequently, when the edition first came out, and Rangers were refluffed to Monks), you can focus your class on its secondary role (a Warlock who is more controller than striker, for instance), you can multiclass, and you can create a particular concept (a mounted lancer, a charger, etc.) within the mechanics via feats, choice of powers, and choice of skills. You decide which set of stats you use--are you a Chaladin, Straladin, or Baladin?--and you have ultimate influence on how your character turns out in the end. Yes, powers require you to be using a particular weapon within your class's available selection, but the powers are not themselves tied to the gear. Powers tied to weapons or armor are typically powers that belong to the item, not to the character class that's most likely to use it.
Yes, there are only so many powers available, and these will be what you do in battle; this is all that the designers created. Yes, there is a time-frame in which they can be used; this has always been the case, even in the days of Vancian casting. Yes, there are suggested builds, but you can routinely ignore those if it pleases you; the only parts of a class you have to take are the class features, and even those have options at this point. But the only way that this can be considered at all conflatable with MMO character building/playing is if you are deliberately ignoring all of that.
In WoW, you choose a class and you're done. No multiclassing or hybridization, no way to mimic one class with careful building of a different one. There is a firm dividing line on what is a WoW class. No secondary roles or creative concepts, either; you're going to be what the class sets out to be, and that's it. You'll always have the same stat allocation as another of your class, because you get set numbers as you level up, and you've got at best four options--and that's only the Druid class--to build, and if you plan on running dungeons, particularly heroic level ones, or raiding, you'd better not even think of deviating from the single defined best build on the talent tree for what you want to do. It was only recently, with the complete tear-down and recreation of talent trees for Mists of Pandaria, that there was a concept of there being anything but the one best build that people who calculated such mechanical advantages (the folks on Elitist Jerks, for example), and the people who did things like achieve "World First" at various top-tier raids set precedent for.
Also, no class will ever not have a specific set of powers; all Priests in WoW have the same baseline, with deviation only based upon their talent tree specialization, where a D&D4e player could take whatever power in their class pleases them. Any Retribution Paladin will be the same as any other in terms of powers, because that is what a RetPally is. Any Assassination Rogue will always have the same powers as another, etc. All powers are always on specific cool-downs, but will always be there when they start a battle, where a 4e PC might enter an encounter with only At-Wills, or without their Daily powers due to what plot has done up until that point. Furthermore, no power that is not already specifically tied to an item will ever "require" you have that item, to my recollection. Classes get all their powers based on class; gear only gives bonuses to stats, possibly cuts down cast times for abilities or cooldowns, grants temporary extra bonuses to stats (the latter two most often on the raid tier equipment), and on rare occassions an extra power that may or may not be valuable, as some are only special effects instead of valuable abilities.
Most honest/open response on why DDN needs to be InclusiveShow
I've always felt it is in the best interests of D&D to be as inclusive across the playerbase as they can be and still have a game. I've never felt though that making a game that was inclusive within a group was very useful or even desirable. DM's and players can decide amongst themselves what options or restrictions they want for their games. I tend to lean to the DM to make most of those decisions but again that is a group specific thing.
Having said that. I get the distinct impression that there are a lot of players on these boards who come from groups that generally ruled against their own desires. It's almost like they are an oppressed minority from a gaming perspective. I also get the impression that they tend to advocate against things that if available their fellow group members might like and vote them down on.
Do a lot of you feel this way?
Just for clarification...here are some examples... 1. Alignment restrictions as an option. 2. Alignment Mechanics 3. Martial healing 4. Races being included or not.
I know my perspective is not that I often play at tables where my likes are not represented. Instead, my perspective comes from the many years I spent being a bad DM. I was a bad DM because my guidance came from the books, and the books gave bad advice. The books told me that alignment was a useful approach to roleplaying, so I went with it even though it felt kind of weird to me. Now I know that, at least in my style of running games, alignment destroys rp. I trusted the books to give good advice, and it messed up my game. Now I'm much more mature as a DM, so I know how to take advice with a grain of salt. And I still learn new stuff every session I run.
I don't want future DMs to go through my problems again. There's a big enough DM shortage as it is. DMing well is hard.
The biggest thing I had to unlearn in my process of becoming a good DM was the idea that the game is a simulation of a world. I understand many DMs prefer a more simulationist approach, although I am always skeptical simply because I would have said the same thing until I learned and grew as a DM. This doesn't mean their approach is completely invalid, but it still gives me a personal twinge when I see a regression back to 3e era sim style gaming.
I also have noticed many groups where one or two old-school players run a whole group's playstyle because the newer players aren't even aware there are other ways of doing things. The newer players tell me stories of things they hated in the session, and I end up explaining to them how those things they hate are very fixable, and in fact are fixed in the newer edition of the game their older players have told them is terrible.
In regard to things like martial healing, I don't think it's necessary for it to be in the game for the game to be fun. However, the attitude that says martial healing is terrible and shouldn't exist is an attitude that, to me, reveals a wrongheaded approach to the game. Therefore, my fight for it to be an option is to help legitimize the more narrative approach that I think is what most players want, but many don't know is possible, because they've never been exposed to it.
I meant your "go to" character - the character that seems to follow you around no matter what edition you play, from 1st to 4e, you always had a version of that same character.
_________________________________________________ "Jacking up the level rewards has always carried the taint of bribery, in my mind. If people need to be bribed to play D&D, then something's wrong with the game." -Steve Winter (http://www.howlingtower.com/2012/01/illusory-math.html)
I came back to D&D right as 3e came out. I remember poring through the rulebooks and thinking how cool the rules had gotten since the red box (the last time I had played regularly). The character concept that I liked the most was the Arcane Archer. So the PC I made up was pretty typical: a character with an elven sorcerer mother and a human fighter father. Her name was Atilisa. I found myself making different versions of her - whether it was in later editions of D&D, or in video games. But the funny thing is - I've never even got the chance to play her in any D&D games! I solely game online (until recently) and the mercurial nature of online groups always stalled any character progression before the Arcane Archer prestige class was ever chosen.
When 4e came along, the closest thing I could think of to represent this character was a bard, and that was before any bard powers had ranged weapon attacks. Since the character looked felt completely different that the Arcane Archer, I changed her background and name.
That's about the closest thing I have to an iconic character - one that only seems to follow me around no matter what game format I'm playing in. Since I have never - ever - finished a campaign as a player (nor seen advancement for more than four levels), I didn't have to worry about character retirement or death, so I guess that's why she stuck around so long.
_________________________________________________ "Jacking up the level rewards has always carried the taint of bribery, in my mind. If people need to be bribed to play D&D, then something's wrong with the game." -Steve Winter (http://www.howlingtower.com/2012/01/illusory-math.html)
I've been thinking about it, and it's kinda hard for me to come up with any "iconic" things, because each time I've played, the rules have been so different.
I started back when Elves were a class and not a race, Halflings were Hobbits, and rulebooks weren't bought so much as copies passed around between grade school friends. At some point, when Basic and 1st edition were coexisting I think, I ended up making a party of five - don't remember much about them, except the cleric was somehow a dual-classed thief, and the mage and thief were twin brothers. I solo played Temple of Elemental Evil, whichever one had the dinosaurs, and Ravenloft. I remember Ravenloft was a completely different ruleset, but I pretty much went through it anyway just for the hell of it.
In college, I played a bit more regularly, with other people, and with all sorts of rulesets (was introduced to Gurps at one point, and Elric at another). A lot of one-shots, and so a lot of different characters, but most of the regulars tended to play similar characters, often with the same name. I usually ended up playing clerics, thieves, or cleric/thieves. Half of my friends wanted to be fighters and beat stuff up. The other half wanted to be mages and blow stuff up. (The introduction of Wild Magic and the Chaos Mage will forever be an infamous one with that old group, I suspect; especially once he got his hands on a wand of wonder.) So I was the "support." I had fun with it, and fiddled around when and where I could. I remember doing Castle Amber - the chaos mage nearly TPK'd us one night, including 3 deaths for one character and using up all my resurrection magics.
I didn't play D&D again for a while. Fell in with Marvel and Shadowrun and World of Darkness and Pendragon. Marvel, we actually never did any adventures; we would give ourselves 30 minutes to create characters, or if we didn't have time use ones from past get-togethers, and then play a battle royale in a "danger room" thing. Last one standing got the most xp, and so on (sound like anything we do?). Shadowrun, I stuck to the cat burglar motife; WoD, I usually ran; and Pendragon, amid a group of exclusively pagan players, I was usually the only one willing to play a Christian Knight because, to me, that's what knights were. Then a girl I dated, her father started running a 2nd edition campaign. I came in as a gnome bard - they already had a cleric and a thief set-up, so I went for the cross-trained support character, able to do a little bit of everything in support roles. That was 15 years ago.
Last year, I talked my wife into letting me get some of the 4e stuff. I've never owned any of the 3e, much less looked at it, so I don't know squat about it. Once I did a quick readthrough of 4e, I was able to convince some friends to come over for a campaign about once a month (published books, starting with Shadowfell). Half the group (my wife included) had never played; the other half hadn't done anything tabletop since 2nd. So it's been an experience. In fact, most of the group got me to start running a second campaign (I went with Scales of War) so that they could play more often.
So if I have anything "iconic," it's probably the cleric/thief - always female; I played male clerics and male thieves, but every cleric/thief was female - though when I think of characters I've played, the gnome bard is up there as well. I haven't taken the time to create a hybrid cleric/thief yet, but probably will this summer. I've been playing around with a gnome bard as well, but don't like the feel of it yet (oh, how I wish we could use Arcane Power....). Actually, with 4th edition, Avengers and Seekers and Battleminds have been catching my attention the most. We shall see....
• Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's circumstances, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Abusive (Personal Attack)— Insulting the person, not addressing the argument. • Ad Hominem Tu Quoque— Saying the person's inconsistent, not addressing the argument. • Appeal to Authority/Belief/Common Practice/Consequence of a Belief/Emotion/Fear/Flattery/Novelty/Pity/Popularity/Ridicule/Spite/Tradition— Using emotion instead of Fact. • Bandwagon— Use of peer pressure. • Begging the Question— Assuming premises which haven't necessarily been agreed to. • Biased Sample— Using a sampling which may not properly represent the whole. • Burden of Proof— Shifting it to the wrong side. • Circumstantial Ad Hominem— Attacking the person's interests in supporting their argument. • Composition— Assuming that the whole has the same qualities as individual parts. • Confusing Cause & Effect— Assuming that one thing causes another because they appear in conjunction. • Division— Assuming that the individual parts have the same qualities as the whole. • False Dilemma— Assuming that only two options exist. • Gambler's Fallacy— Assuming the odds have changed because of past occurances • Genetic— Assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim is proof of a defect in the claim. • Guilt by Association— Attacking others who agree with the claim. • Hasty Generalization— Assuming a quality based on too small a sample size. • Ignoring the Common Cause— Assuming there is no outside cause of two connected things. • Middle Ground— Assuming the midpoint of two extremes must be correct. • Misleading Vividness— Assuming a colorful anecdote outweighs statistical evidence. • Poisoning the Well— Using unprovable claims about the person instead of addressing the argument. • Post Hoc— Assuming that something caused something else simply because it happened first. • Questionable Cause— Assuming that one thing causes another. • Red Herring— Using irrelevant evidence to divert a discussion. • Relativist Fallacy— Asserting that a claim may be true for some but not for the speaker. • Slippery Slope— Assuming the inevitability of one event based on another. • Special Pleading— Claiming exemption without justification. • Spotlight— Assuming individuals that get the most attention to be indicative of the whole. • Straw Man— Misrepresenting the opposing argument. • Two Wrongs Make a Right— Justifying something unethical/immoral as response or pre-emption to something else unethical/immoral.
Response to those who like to compare 4e to a Video GameShow
Also, I find that the "D&D 4e is like an MMO" argument is often a sign of someone who is deliberately being obtuse and/or is potentially ignorant of actual MMO play. As someone who only ended a 6-year World of Warcraft addiction a year ago, I can say that most of your bullet points actually don't match up to the truth of it.
In D&D 4e, you can choose a hybrid, you can choose to play one class as though it were another (people played Warlords as Bards frequently, when the edition first came out, and Rangers were refluffed to Monks), you can focus your class on its secondary role (a Warlock who is more controller than striker, for instance), you can multiclass, and you can create a particular concept (a mounted lancer, a charger, etc.) within the mechanics via feats, choice of powers, and choice of skills. You decide which set of stats you use--are you a Chaladin, Straladin, or Baladin?--and you have ultimate influence on how your character turns out in the end. Yes, powers require you to be using a particular weapon within your class's available selection, but the powers are not themselves tied to the gear. Powers tied to weapons or armor are typically powers that belong to the item, not to the character class that's most likely to use it.
Yes, there are only so many powers available, and these will be what you do in battle; this is all that the designers created. Yes, there is a time-frame in which they can be used; this has always been the case, even in the days of Vancian casting. Yes, there are suggested builds, but you can routinely ignore those if it pleases you; the only parts of a class you have to take are the class features, and even those have options at this point. But the only way that this can be considered at all conflatable with MMO character building/playing is if you are deliberately ignoring all of that.
In WoW, you choose a class and you're done. No multiclassing or hybridization, no way to mimic one class with careful building of a different one. There is a firm dividing line on what is a WoW class. No secondary roles or creative concepts, either; you're going to be what the class sets out to be, and that's it. You'll always have the same stat allocation as another of your class, because you get set numbers as you level up, and you've got at best four options--and that's only the Druid class--to build, and if you plan on running dungeons, particularly heroic level ones, or raiding, you'd better not even think of deviating from the single defined best build on the talent tree for what you want to do. It was only recently, with the complete tear-down and recreation of talent trees for Mists of Pandaria, that there was a concept of there being anything but the one best build that people who calculated such mechanical advantages (the folks on Elitist Jerks, for example), and the people who did things like achieve "World First" at various top-tier raids set precedent for.
Also, no class will ever not have a specific set of powers; all Priests in WoW have the same baseline, with deviation only based upon their talent tree specialization, where a D&D4e player could take whatever power in their class pleases them. Any Retribution Paladin will be the same as any other in terms of powers, because that is what a RetPally is. Any Assassination Rogue will always have the same powers as another, etc. All powers are always on specific cool-downs, but will always be there when they start a battle, where a 4e PC might enter an encounter with only At-Wills, or without their Daily powers due to what plot has done up until that point. Furthermore, no power that is not already specifically tied to an item will ever "require" you have that item, to my recollection. Classes get all their powers based on class; gear only gives bonuses to stats, possibly cuts down cast times for abilities or cooldowns, grants temporary extra bonuses to stats (the latter two most often on the raid tier equipment), and on rare occassions an extra power that may or may not be valuable, as some are only special effects instead of valuable abilities.
Most honest/open response on why DDN needs to be InclusiveShow
I've always felt it is in the best interests of D&D to be as inclusive across the playerbase as they can be and still have a game. I've never felt though that making a game that was inclusive within a group was very useful or even desirable. DM's and players can decide amongst themselves what options or restrictions they want for their games. I tend to lean to the DM to make most of those decisions but again that is a group specific thing.
Having said that. I get the distinct impression that there are a lot of players on these boards who come from groups that generally ruled against their own desires. It's almost like they are an oppressed minority from a gaming perspective. I also get the impression that they tend to advocate against things that if available their fellow group members might like and vote them down on.
Do a lot of you feel this way?
Just for clarification...here are some examples... 1. Alignment restrictions as an option. 2. Alignment Mechanics 3. Martial healing 4. Races being included or not.
I know my perspective is not that I often play at tables where my likes are not represented. Instead, my perspective comes from the many years I spent being a bad DM. I was a bad DM because my guidance came from the books, and the books gave bad advice. The books told me that alignment was a useful approach to roleplaying, so I went with it even though it felt kind of weird to me. Now I know that, at least in my style of running games, alignment destroys rp. I trusted the books to give good advice, and it messed up my game. Now I'm much more mature as a DM, so I know how to take advice with a grain of salt. And I still learn new stuff every session I run.
I don't want future DMs to go through my problems again. There's a big enough DM shortage as it is. DMing well is hard.
The biggest thing I had to unlearn in my process of becoming a good DM was the idea that the game is a simulation of a world. I understand many DMs prefer a more simulationist approach, although I am always skeptical simply because I would have said the same thing until I learned and grew as a DM. This doesn't mean their approach is completely invalid, but it still gives me a personal twinge when I see a regression back to 3e era sim style gaming.
I also have noticed many groups where one or two old-school players run a whole group's playstyle because the newer players aren't even aware there are other ways of doing things. The newer players tell me stories of things they hated in the session, and I end up explaining to them how those things they hate are very fixable, and in fact are fixed in the newer edition of the game their older players have told them is terrible.
In regard to things like martial healing, I don't think it's necessary for it to be in the game for the game to be fun. However, the attitude that says martial healing is terrible and shouldn't exist is an attitude that, to me, reveals a wrongheaded approach to the game. Therefore, my fight for it to be an option is to help legitimize the more narrative approach that I think is what most players want, but many don't know is possible, because they've never been exposed to it.
This is a nice idea for "intergroup relations," between 3.5 and 4 here in CoCo. I like how the iconic character question ends up getting answered with a background of people's DnD history, so I'll start with that.
I started playing in 3rd grade, with red/blue box sets, and then at some point we back-tracked and tried out regular dungeons and dragons (elves/dwarves/halflings as races, etc), but mostly played AD&D 2nd Ed. We had a lot of houserules and were very flexible, since we were a regular group of tight friends. Our most memorable campaigns were set in the Dark Sun campaign setting. We never played many pre-packaged published adventures. Due to college, etc, there was a lot less playing time available (with this group), so I ended up taking a hiatus after briefly trying out a few other groups.
When 3rd ed came out, we read the books, loved it, and restarted playing. Played a ton of 3rd ed, and 3.5. Almost entirely in homebrew campaign settings, and almost entirely with me as DM (thus my difficulty with iconic character question). As my friends and I have gotten older, busier, jobs, families, moved, etc, we've occasionally played online together PbP or even via skype and other web-cam tools.
Currently, RL D&D is hard to come by; PbP is a way to fill that void, but I prefer the faster pace and face-to-face comraderie, jokes, etc, that come with playing in person.
Re: iconic character question, I'll go back to D&D 2nd Ed, and Dark Sun - they had sorceror kings, which, in retrospect, are sort of the first/forerunner of prestige classes in a way - you had to get to psion 20/wizard 20 then could advance through 10 levels of dragon or avangion... I had an avangion. But that was sick advanced and a long, long time ago.
Psionics are my favorite system, and many of my more enjoyed characters incorporate psionics, but as a function of DMing most of the time, it's been a long, long, long time since I've had a character. My friends would say "dwarf fighter," since I have had many memorable and successful characters that were dwarf fighters. They're just fun, and easy to roleplay, and we had some memorable campaigns back in the day
Re: 4th ed, I am mostly turned off by the lack of versatility in solving out of combat encounters; the characters feel like they're basically stat-cards, and not characters, and ... I don't know, part of the fun for me/our group is being creative with skills/spells/abilities/items out of combat to solve challenges, pull off heroic actions, etc... and 4th ed just seems like a homogenized combat system to me. (Note: I absolutely don't intend/want to start a flame war - I played some 4th ed, and certainly haven't given it a huge chance, but I am just sharing my personal views and why I am not that into it).
I don't know that I really have an iconic character. Before my time at the CoCo, I played a lot of finesse-style fighters (back in 1st and 2nd edition) and I have my "first" character - Brando Starstealer (Kender Handler from 1st edition). I still use the character name on occasion but I wouldn't really call him iconic since he's never made it past 2nd level and only had stats made for him in 2nd edition (never played him in that edition).
Here, I use a lot of clerics and Kraegin is kind of the iconic character for that - but is he more of an iconic character for me than say Sir Valkin? I would have a hard time saying yes...
I'll have to give this more thought. I have a pretty wide range for characters - I'm not sure that I have a single character that really has stuck with me for a while...
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I'm almost certain that I don't have an iconic character. I like characters that use bows, characters that move alot, and characters with tons of skill points though. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I started playing D&D with 3.5, but eh.
It doesn't help that I can get bored of characters really quickly. I think my first character was actually a Wilder who used offensive prescience/precognition to rapid shot/telekinetic thrust arrows at things. That got boring after a while, so when he died, I made a wizard/rogue/arcane trickster thing...which lasted all of two sessions before he died and I made some lycanthrope monk build I completely forget at this point, but ended up finishing the campaign.
Looking at my characters here, I still can't see much of a common strain, since they run the gambit from full melee monk to full rogue to full caster, and everything in between(except for a rogue/caster, and even that's in the works).
But as for 4e, I just don't like to think of it. It's an ok system, but no one around here who's willing to DM a game can run it well. It's all monochrome, non-terrain battles and house-ruled skill systems and such...not all that entertaining. Playing it here would mean that I would almost certainly end up DMing a game, and that I simply don't have the time for...but I'd do it anyway. Not a risk I'm willing to take while in college.
But yeah, no real iconic character.
Nothing is ever only one person's fault. TemplateShow
For simplicity's sake:
Card Name [mc][/mc] Card Type - Subtype Text Flavor
I think my Iconic character is always in the 'support the party' department, which normally means caster. After that ... it is always a matter of how much melee is involved.
Historically:
Erithmu is a 3.5 arcane gish (Rng2/Sorc 6/Defender of the Yuirwood 10/Incantatrix4 before the campaign ended, yes ... epic) I normally go to him in games because he just has this feel of every now and again I (as a player) decide that my PC is going to rock a couple rounds of combat and turn the tide, and most of the time dice back me up. I'm sure I have his character sheet somewhere, but I used lots of arcane striking and polymorphing (with some nerfing). Erithmu actually was a character that I developed on a MUD (you know ... Text based MMO's) and was a Mage/Ranger. This is abnormal cause in the CoCo he is a cleric
My other go to would be Loddick, who has taken on a variety of incarnations but always ends up with a nature based core and some level of fighting. In the CoCo he was a Rng1/Psion 6/Slayer 4 (spec'd for archery) before I retired him due to some poor planning. I still have plans to bring him back at some point. In a TT game with MWB and Hirmajoe (yes we all lived within 40 min of one another for about 9 months) Loddick was a Spirit Shaman 8 /Seeker of the Misty Isle 6/Contemplative 6 (or some variation there of) ... This really threw MWB off cause he was so used to Loddick being an archer. Incidently this was an Eberron Campaign and we all got to meet Vol.
My iconic character isn't really a specific character, its more a specific character type. I really like playing in-your-face melee characters; barbarians, fighters, paladins (to some extent, see MrB's campaign he's running over on the Real Adventures boards ), etc. I still like mixing things up with casters or ranged classes, but I find more enjoyment from playing the crass orc fighter or contemplative minotaur barbarian than a scholarly elf wizard or cunning drow ranger.
I started playing during 3.5e, and I loved it. I hought it could be a bit 2-dimensional at times, but it was always a well done system in my opinion. With 4e, I think it is a more balanced system, but with more potential to become unbalanced, especially with the volume of content they're putting out.
), etc. I still like mixing things up with casters or ranged classes, but I find more enjoyment from playing the crass orc fighter or contemplative minotaur barbarian than a scholarly elf wizard or cunning drow ranger.