Tomorrow I’ll be playing a crazy game with some friends. Today, I prepare…

I’ve been playing a campaign with a group for about three years now. They’re a great group and it’s a lot of fun. I play as a chaotic rogue who makes some bad decisions but is loyal to her party. Mostly.

But tomorrow, as a couple of the players can’t make the session, we’re going to play a one-shot instead. I won’t be DMing this game – another one of the party is taking the reins and the game they have planned sounds very interesting.

The premise (so we’re told) is that a powerful wizard is bored and wants entertainment, so his servant imp sets up a competition and this is where we enter the story. We’ll be playing against each other, with some PvP fighting and some other competitive tasks. That’s all I know so far.

In preparation, I’ve been creating a powerful, combat-focussed level 10 character. I’ve opted for a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass high elf. Now I just have to figure out how many levels I want to take in each class.

Initially, I built my character as a level 7 Paladin and level 3 Sorcerer but now I’m having second thoughts. I want to take at least level 5 Paladin, so that I get multiattack. But at level 3 the Sorcerer spells are still a little bit weak.

So I’ve tweaked the character to level 5 in each class and I think it will be a lot more powerful. For a start, I get Fireball and Counterspell, which are great spells and really fun to use. And changing the levels has only made my HP drop from 68 to 64, which is not a huge hit to take considering the benefits those extra levels of Sorcerer have given me.

Designing a character for a specific purpose is not really something I’ve done before. All my previous characters have been based around things I thought would be fun to roleplay (my chaotic, quippy Rogue, and my enthusiastic and flirty Bard are two examples). But this has been a different building process.

Mostly, of course, I’m intrigued to see how tomorrow’s game will play out. One of the things I love about DnD is that it’s a cooperative game, where we work as a team to strategise, solve problems and explore a new world. This seems like it’s going to be the antithesis of that, so surely it won’t work, right? Well, I think it might actually work very well for a one-shot.

Playing this sort of game with friends is going to be key to enjoying it, at least for me. I’m not sure I have the confidence or the killer instinct to let loose and attempt to destroy characters whose players I don’t know but if it’s among friends and we all know there for a good time (not a long time), then I’m ready to fight.