Character building

Literally.  Not the "I'm sorry if it hurts now, but it's all character building" sort of character building.  This is gaming character building.  Which, come to think of it, often ends up in the same place when your lovingly crafted elf rogue bites the dust after an ill-advised advance on a giant spider.

Friday sees the long awaited return of our home gaming group.  We've had a longer than intended hiatus as our normal GM was inconsiderate enough to go and have a baby and he and his wife are hors de combat at the moment.  Then it was summer and we (i.e. my family) went away on holiday for a bit.  Then another player went on holiday.  Then another one was ill.  And so and so forth.  

Anyway, we're getting back on the road at last which is all that matters.  The campaign in question is run by my husband and we haven't been there for a while.  Due to the loss of both our healer types due to above-mentioned baby, it has fallen to me to build a new party member to keep the old party members in band-aids.  In 4e terms, that's a Leader and I often play them.  In our home campaigns, my Leaders have had variable fates.

Flora the shifter cleric was overwhelmingly lawful and good and prone to striding into the middle of battle and yelling "Who's hurt?  Tell me now!"  This sort of behaviour meant she had to be raised from the dead once and rendered her unconscious a lot before she finally died at the hands of furniture.  It was a less ignominious ending than it sounds.  Slightly.  The furniture in question belonged to a necromancer and hurt anyone who started their turn next to it.  She was imprudent enough to drop unconscious next to a table and that was that. I decided her day was done and moved on to Karolina.

Karolina is a human bard.  Yes, present tense.  Karolina yet lives, although not in the current campaign.  She has a vampiric background and a heavy Transylvanian accent.  So heavy, in fact that hardly anybody can understand her.  This is a pity as she is also the party ritualist and routinely sends reports of battles and pleas for aid via animal messengers.  Such messages are delivered in the voice of the caster, so Winterhaven is full of people who have received an unintelligible demand for something or other and are deeply confused.  Unlike her predecessor, Karolina's notion of a good fight is one in which she stands at the edge, doesn't get hurt and sings sarcastic songs to her foes to make them fall over or be otherwise distracted.

The current leader is not yet decided.  I have two in mind.  One is another look at an old favourite of mine, a halberd wielding warlord who prefers others to do the dirty work.  The other is based on a recent discovery,  Muktuk the Hard Boiled Shaman.  Muktuk's tribute is called Itigiak and looks promising.  I haven't recreated the warlord yet, but over the course of the day he too will burgeon into life.