Yes, I do smell the air, thank you.  It’s not refreshing.  It smells like the refuse of homeland ground between a fomorian’s teeth and spit out.

Fine.  I’ll go.  But I assure you I will not enjoy it.

Sick of surly dwarves with a heart of gold and steadfast loyalty to their friends? Make acquaintance with the surly eladrin.  Short on words, high on attitude, the surly eladrin is here to remind you that yes,his people are simply better. At everything. Why is he here then?  This question drives the character and answering it makes him more than a twist on an old schtick.  The surly dwarf engages on his hero’s journey often because of an oath, a debt, or a bond of friendship.  The surly eladrin is an exile, forced from a mystical paradise for just or unjust reasons. His motivation is to return home as soon as he can. His adventures with the party towards are an extension of that aim.  If he can gain some treasure along the way, that would be fine to, but –you guessed it! — the treasure back home is much better.

Why play a Surly eladrin?

Well, let’s face it.  It’s fun to be a little rude, isn’t it?  The surly eladrin is a fun contradiction of sorts -erudite yet gruff.  While the surly dwarf is a foul-mouthed, earthy, pragmatic character, the surly eladrin teeters on the edge of politeness and sophistication, using his wit as a quick stabbing blade when he deigns to speak at all.

His stabbing wit is his shell against the deep pain he feels at being isolated from his home and being a stranger in a strange land. Remembrances of home bring out his true, sensitive personality for brief moments in time, but don’t get too comfortable — the second he realizes his defenses are down, the curt comments return with even greater force and frequency.

Opportunities For Growth.

It’s Not How I Remembered –The conditions of the eladrin’s exile are lifted.  You are free to return home!  The memories that comforted you in the  barbarous realms of men are clouded by the realities of what you now witness.  The question to answer:  have you changed, or has home?

One of Them – You meet someone from your homeland.  You are on the edge of her cutting wit and insults.  You think that you’ve stumbled across a fellow countryman, but in her eyes you’re “one of them” now.  How have you changed in this new land without even realizing it?

Suggested classes & Sample Backgrounds

Eladrin Warlock (Star Pact) — You worship distant alien stars in pursuit of the Far Realm and have become anathema to your people.   You may want to return home to exact revenge, or you may seek to gain understanding and acceptance despite your strange otherworldly pursuits.  Either way, you are out of joint, perpendicular to multiple realms and worlds all at once.

Eladrin Tempest Fighter — You slew your greatest rival in a duel and found yourself exiled though your reasons were just. Disillusioned and weary of “justice”, you are now an exiled mercenary who dreams one day of absolution.

Eladrin Druid — so in tune were you with the boundless treasures of the Feywild that one day you merged with it. You became one with every blade of grass, every spider, every ancient oak…then you fell through, into the mortal realm.  Now you seek some way back into the endless forests of the Feywild, while protecting what nature you find in your new “home”.

"L", A Player of Games

Hmm. He did just as I expected, manuevering himself right into our trap. Zarri, that ring I gave you? I’m going to need that back right now…I know it was a gift, Zarri, but it also contains the enchantment we’re going to need to catch this felon. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t risk it being found on me if we were caught, and I couldn’t tell you because someone might have read it on your face. I’m sorry Zarri, but you’re a horrible liar.

Thotham, if this is going to work, you need to let our assassin spot you. It could….hurt. But it’s the only way. But we have Andira around to heal you if things turn too ugly.

You’re asking my part in this? It’s simple — I’m going to be the assassin’s next target.

OK, I’ve got the rest of the plan set up. No, there’s no time to explain it all –I’ve already spent too much time talking as is. Everyone knows their relevant roles. Let’s move.

Races

• Human
• Hal-elf
• Deva

Classes

• Wizard
• Warlord (Bravura or Tactical)
• Invoker

In Combat: Nothing is as important to you as winning. You’ve found the secret formula to winning way more than you’ll ever lose: Attack the enemy at it’s strongest point first. Lesser strategists flee from their foe’s strong point. Great strategists dismantle an opponent where he is powerful. Destroy the enemy at its core and there is nothing to fall back on. Moral disintegrates and your manuever himself right into your strengths. Destroy a foe’s strength and you destroy his heart.

It’s not easy, but what’s easy or not is less important than winning. You’ll lose an arm or even your own life for critical moments. Victories rarely come without sacrifice, and no one will sacrifice more than you.

You are a daring strategist, leading from the front with plans that entail great risk while offering great rewards. You’ll take the brunt of the risks yourself, but you expect your companions to sacrifice as well. They will, because your plans are so insane that they always work, but they’ll be complaining the whole way through.

Let them. More important matters concern you –like victory.

In Play: Conflicts to you are games. This does not mean they are trivial. Indeed, the games you play are always in service to some higher concept or power. You might seek to uphold the forces of law, or to attain perfection in battle. The concept or power you serve provides you with the motivation to risk everything and anything for it. Even your friends. You’ll ask them to risk less than you risk, but since you’ll risk your life…

You are a noble person. Your friends admire your generous spirit and ability to plot moves ten steps ahead of your enemies. The only complaint? They’d really like you to keep them up to date with your plans. While you will always be up front regarding anything that puts your companions in danger, you often gloss over small details or step in the plan that, while it won’t necessarily kill someone, would be nice to know ahead of time. But you don’t have time for those small details! You’re a tactical visionary and if you wasted your time talking over your plans with everyone, they’d not only not get it, but they might object to the path you’ve set…the path to victory. Each victory propels you forward further towards your goals. You refuse to lose sight of this.

Your friends sometimes feel like pawns in the game you play. Of course this isn’t true –if they were unworthy of friendship or trust, you wouldn’t ask anything of them. You don’t mean to manipulate your allies, but when you move so far ahead of the game and don’t keep people informed, that’s how they’re going to feel at the end of the day. It’s regrettable they fail to understand. It’s just another sacrifice you make in the name of victory and your higher cause.

Opportunities for Growth

• Normally you strategies are without peer. But you, like everyone else, have a fatal flaw. The concept or power you serve gives you strength, but it’s also the weak point of your game. You do your best to obscure this fact, but it remains true that you will sacrifice everything needed but the power you serve. Any enemy who realize your true goals can exploit this.If you serve the forces of Law, for example, you’ll do everything and anything up to and excluding, actually breaking the Law. Law is sacred to you. Your nemesis, however has no problems with violating the law at all, and can put you at severe disadvantages by going the places you can’t.How does your character adapt to this? The only ways around this strategy are to either violate your own principles or elevate and move to an even higher principle, leaving you above your previous limitations. Which path do you choose?
• You’re not often wrong, but when you are, it’s a disaster. You devise a plan from erroneous information or fail to account for all an opponent’s options…and innocents die. This is a blow to your confidence. How do you conquer this crisis of faith in yourself? How do you atone for your error?

Those men over there with the tattoos are really nice! They gave me this…thing –What is this? Some sort of wierd looking sword. It’s huge! I’ve never seen a black one before. It’s kind of creepy, but they said it would bring me good luck! Luck is now on our side! And at a bargain price!

Does it have a name? Why would you name a sword? Errr, I think that I might remember them calling it a storm-something…Storm-Hanger? Noooo…Storm-Chimney…that’s not it. Storm Bringer, the sword is Stormbringer!

Why are you guys backing away? Why is this blade glowing? Why do I have this insatiable desire to feed this with the blood and souls of my enemies?

Did I err?

Races

• Human
• Half-Orc
• Halfling

Classes

• Paladin
• Barbarian
• Ranger

In Combat: You are no tactician. No, you are the blunt instrument of Fate, crashing blindly into your enemies. You tend to pick one combatant qua victim to focus on and beat him until he falls. And then you beat on him a little more. The only thing that can stop you is if one of your friends is in trouble. You’ll tear through an army without hesitation to save a failling comrade. In part this because you are a bit dull, and don’t stop to think that it’s an army, but mostly it’s your fierce loyalty to your friends that snaps you out of your focused, simplistic battleplans.

In Play: You are goofy, lovable, kind and loyal to a fault. No seriously. To a FAULT. Beyond common sense, beyond all reason, you are a friendlyperson. Your simple mind and generous heart make it hard for you not to trust, well, anyone. Your friends are also loyal to you, though they are constantly pulling you away from discomforting and dangerous situations that your gullibility puts you in. Not everyone is trustworthy. When are you going to learn that? And…put that down please.

Opportunities for Growth

• You trust someone unworthy of trust. This is your modus operandi, but one time it doesn’t just hurt you. It hurts someone that’s been with you for a long time. You take the price of trust on your own head with a smile, but what do you do when someone else suffers for your choice?
• Betrayal. Someone you trust deeply betrays your trust. What are you going to do about it? Do you seek revenge? Do you forgive?

Ok, so I couldn’t help it. Here he is, Groo the Wanderer, 4e style:

It just so happens to be that luck is one of my skills! C’mon old man, stop making marks in the dirt and let’s go. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Races

• Elf
• Eladrin
• Shadar-Kai

Classes

• Ranger
• Barbarian
• Fighter (battlerager)

In Combat: The stunt rules in the DMG guide were made for you. They were probably made about you. In a fight you are the avatar of recklessness. You’ll go into a handstand and wield your sword with your feet if the mood strikes you. It’s a bit hard to describe how you fight because the only constant is your wildness. Your skill level is so high though, that somehow you get away with the sloppy and dangerous stunts you pull. Part of it is the fact that your enemies can’t predict or properly react to what you’re going to do. If someone figures out what you’re doing, maybe they could do the favor of telling you, since you’re not sure of what’s going on yourself.

In Play: Do you have to sit here and listen to me prattle on all day? It’s bo-ring. This is your view on anything that doesn’t involve adrenaline. There’s a good chance you’re illiterate (or barely literate). The Undisciplined Badass doesn’t study, doesn’t contemplate. He does. He is. She seems like a cocky bastard (and there is a bit of truth there), but what you see about her is that she is a being existing almost perfectfully in the present moment. No was, no will be, just is. You are the moment, the now, that we currently inhabit.

You probably have a photographic reflexes, which allows you to learn all of your physical skills you need without all that yawn-worthy practice. Everyone around you does all this practicing and they’re not even as good as you, so what good did practice do them? This frustrates and amazes everyone you know. Sometimes you notice that, but usually you just don’t have time to think about it –you’re already in search of your next adrenaline fix.

Opportunities for Growth

• At some point you’re going to be mad with desire on something, and your talent isn’t going to be enough to acquire it for you.  You’re going to have to show discipline and study or practice for once in your life.  I won’t lie to you –it’s going to be very difficult.  You’ll need to conquer yourself first before you can even attempt to learn what you need.
• There’s always someone better.  You’ve stormed through thousands of lesser foes, and then you meet her –someone more badass than you.  She demolishes you in seconds, treats you like how you treat your opponents typically.  How do you come back from that?  Does it drive you to plan, to train, in order to win?  Do you just refocus on you own wildness and become even more savage?

What’s that? Ready to sell?  Already?  Sure you don’t want to think that –well then, I see that you’re truly ready to move ahead.  You made a good move there. Oh, and if I were you I’d run…those black-robes were pretty hot on our heels and I don’t know if they’d appreciate what you did for us too much, do you? <snort>

Races:

• Goblin
• Tiefling
• Dwarf

Classes:

• Rogue
• Warlock
• Warlord

In Combat: You are a pragmatist with a bit of a wild streak.  You are looking to disable your foes in the most direct, brutal fashion possible.  But sometimes that takes a little set-up.  So you’ll insult and cajole to lead an enemy into your trap then close the jaws.  Ultimately though, fair fights are for suckers. Your buddy with the big arms can do all that boring toe-to-toe fighting he likes to do, while you get the job done.

In play: How to say this?  You are not…conventionally attractive.  You are not glib or honeyed of tongue.  You are not a “charmer”.  But you get your way more times than not.  You are the “face” for your party, and even though it’s not an attractive face, it’s effective all the same.  Your ability to sway others comes from your ability to bluff, lie, and cajole aggressively and without shame.  You don’t talk pretty but break situations down in ways that put people in difficult spots.  The Ugly Face has no fear of the consequences of his actions when engaging others socially.  This is a powerful weapon for the party to have on its side, but sometimes the rest of the group needs to “sheathe” the blade of your tongue when the situation calls for true smooth-tongued diplomacy.

Opportunities For Growth

• The king will appreciate your forthrightness…for a time.  Speaking from the gut gives you a lot of power, but it will sometimes can give a double helping of grief.  Learning when these times are and changing your mode of discourse is one of the main challenges of the Ugly Face.  Sometimes, repulsive to you though it is, discretion is the proper course of action.
• You run roughshod over the feelings of other people almost every time you open your mouth.  To you that’s the cost of business, but what if that person you hurt is someone you actually cared about?  Do you continually bruise the ego of someone you care for without concern or do you learn a gentler way?

Races

• Dragonborn
• Tiefling
• Dwarf

Classes

• Wizard
• Cleric
• Warlock
• Sorceror
• Druid

In Combat: You favor complex set-ups that really display your command of the power you can wield. Rarely ever do you simply “blast” something –that’s for simpletons! If it takes a few turns to deliver a truly explosive and final turn, you’ll do that. You make sure to stay as far in the back as you can, as well. Physical combat is for people who exercise the wrong muscles.

In Play: If you don’t do it, it’s probably not worth doing. You are connected to important forces of arcane and/or divine nature. Most of your companions are simple-minded folk. They mean well, but they just won’t be able to do much with the tools they have. Your allies consider you something of a grump, a killljoy, but what they don’t see are…well, the things you see quite clear at every moment. It’s not your fault if you get upset, or frustrated, or impatient, or gods forbid a trifle miffed at having to explain the conjuction of the Six Spheres yet again to someone who has purposefully cut themselves off from greater realities of…well, you can be a bit difficult to be around.

But you have a place in your party anyway. You don’t pretend to know more than you know. You’re a mystic, not a liar. When the party was stuck in that magical trap, it was your knowledge that saved their lives. You aren’t going to win personality contests but you know your stuff. And you know when people are watching. You spend most of your time avoiding matters that aren’t your specialty, but when your expertise does come into play (and in a world where magic is very real, it will) you ham it up, and make a big show. And then you retreat, making as big a show at how essentially pointless whatever else it is that’s being done next is.

Opportunities for Growth

• Those times where your mystic abilities truly fail you, or work less than you had hoped. It is often at these times where you will have to cede that someone else’s skills and talents have value.
• When you try something outside your specialty and find that you actually like it. Almost always for the mystic this will come after succeeding unexpectedly at a skill. You tend to avoid things that you don’t think you can succeed at, but if you find yourself in that situation, you might really get into it and give it more respect.

At the risk of exalting new cliches, let me present a few new archetypes for you.  These archetypes represent characters that represent fresh looks at the the types of characters you can play in 4th edition.

First up is the Little Big Man.

Little Big Man

Short of stature but big on heart, this member of a diminutive race is never afraid to confront large challenges. Though his frame is small, his mind and heart are expansive. He never wastes time on little thoughts or minor setbacks. He thinks and acts always on a large scale. This gets him into his fair share of trouble, but he always finds his way out. He is a confusion to all those who would underestimate him due to size and an inspiration to his allies.

Races

• Halfling
• Kobold
• Goblin

Classes

• Tempest Fighter
• Paladin
• Warlord

In Combat: The Little Big Man is a frontline combatant, using his small size and agility to make opponents miss and punish them for even bothering to try to hit you. Strength is most likely not one of your strengths, but your AC can be extremely high due to size bonuses, racial abilities, and dexterity.  Crush you flat-footed foes with mobility, and don’t fear opportunity attacks.

In Play: You are no meek hobbit.  You take front stage whenever possible with big words and big deeds.  People will mock you, but that’s ok.  Soon they will respect you.  Your enemies will fear you. Over the course of the campaign, the world will know your deeds.  No matter the cost, you never back down.  You are not the most powerful, or most talented.  You are the most determined, and this draws everyone who spends time with you closer to you.

Best represented by:

Naruto (“Believe it!”)