The idea was that the thaneborn barb skirts the battleground popping -defenses on critters, and also does target calling. The archer rangers then tee off on the called and -defensed creature. Meanwhile, the fighter is kitted out for multi-target marking (passing attack, sweeping blow, tempest dance, etc.), and also lays a decent amount of wood himself – a bloodclaw greatsword works nicely for that.

One of the beauties of this build was that the archer rangers were tricked out for maximizing twin strike damage, so I could pass them off to our two less experienced players, one of whom had only played one 4e game, the other who didn’t even have a RPGA# at the start of the delve. The highest skill position, arguably, is the thaneborn barbarian, as the thaneborn has a lot of tricks that require good mechanical knowledge to exploit.

Really enjoyed reading your write-up; on the off-chance I make it to GenCon I’ll give the next one a shot.

For the edification of others, back in the olden days (of which I was most certainly involved) tournaments had pre-gens and used one or both of two measuring sticks to determine what individuals/teams advanced: tactical play and/or roleplaying ability. The former is easy enough to measure, but the latter is so subjective as to be near useless in effectively assessing an individual’s or group’s competence. We learned that years ago in the RPGA, when we used to give out prizes for the “best roleplayer” at the table – which was frequently the person that was very outgoing and spoke in the most entertaining manner. I remember very vividly that some of us experienced players would grab the “money character” (there were usually 1 or 2 in a group of pre-gens) as often as possible when playing tourneys – the character that had some great shtick you could hone in on to give an increased chance of winning the table. I don’t think I ever took the “quiet brooder” characters.

We’ve definitely come a long ways, and while nostalgia for the “good old days” runs deep (I even long for it on occasion), most tournament-type experiences are much more quantifiable nowadays. If a group gets TPK’d or doesn’t finish an encounter/adventure in the time allotted and another group does, that seems to be a much clearer indication of who “wins” or “succeeds” in a competitive play environment than any other measurement.

David: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

This post has me endlessly excited to play in the Ultimate Delve at GenCon. Just need to decide what kind of class/role I want to play.

Oh, and the grappling hook was actually bought on my impulse, as I had just watched the movie Fanboys.

Grappling hook!!
Graham´s last blog ..Damn you, Dave! You and your… logic…