Thaumatic Themes: Ragwheeler

In truth, I thought about transferring "Tabletop" over to 4th Edition back when it first came out. I spent a few weeks in autumn 2009 working up my own classes, but then things picked up in our main campaign, and I realised people weren't going to want to switch. I'm glad now we didn't - the last three years have given me a much clearer understanding of the system, and I'm in a better position now to start a homebrew campaign. But those early class ideas became the basis of the themes I'm looking at today. Or, at least, they did until Sandy and Mike got involved. Damn them.

The problem with game designers is they always want to design their own stuff. Stacey loved the "Bombardier", but when I presented Sandy with the "Deathcrook" - another of my old classes I'd boiled down into a theme - he wasn't quite so sold. Personally, I couldn't understand why not: a class that could steal the souls of those it killed, and use them as fuel for necrotic attacks - even summon them as minions? What's not to like?

However, when Sandy mailed me through a near-complete theme of his own devising, I had to swallow my pride. Because his creation - which we named the "Ragwheeler" - was something special: a slave bound to its masters through a deadly shackle. Powers aside, what I loved about this was the flavour. Reading his description of the work-slum, I really got an image of what these poor blighters had to live through - and that's exactly what a theme should do.

But don't just take my word for it: take a look for yourselves. I'm really looking forward to seeing this in action!

If you like it, or have any suggestions, please drop me a comment. This time, I promise I won't delete them! (I'm still getting used to Blogger, as on Friday I accidentally deleted all of the previous comments whilst playing around with the dashboard. Doh.)