Spade was my chance, in the middle of this new 4E world, to revel in some old-fashioned feel-good mechanics while I had the chance, so I loaded up on fighter/rogue multiclassing and got ready to power attack sneak attack with a glaive. I gave him a basic character hook, didn't worry about his personality starting out, and sat back to see where it went.
Cornelius Spade, Jr. (just Spade to anyone who knows him), is pretty much the bastard son of some unknown mage. Without any father figure he was kind of a problem child and evnetually decided to leave home to be a mercenary adventurer type and search for the father he never knew. So far he hasn't met anyone who's heard of Cornelius Spade, the world-renowned might wizard (according to his mom) but it hasn't stopped him from asking everyone he meets.
I guess I was in kind of a goofy mood from listening to the Penmy Arcade D&D podcasts so sometimes he gets pretty silly/sarcastic with the NPCs. Since we were kind of out on the frontier I made him kind of a big city know-it-all, so I would just make up completely wrong/fake things he considered to be fact, reasoning that he learned such things in the city. The dry leading on (borderline lying), erroneous knowledge, and search for his father eventually caused this dude to cast a geas on him to always tell the truth; we didn't get the chance to roleplay that much but I thought it was awesome.
Dates played: summer/fall 2009
Class levels: fighter 2/rogue 2
Sweet traits: power attack sneak attacking with a glaive! It never gets old for me, though it didn't work out as well as I planned since he ended up being the main tank in a small party instead of one of a few tanks in a large party - it's just hard to use a reach weapon when you're the main focus in melee. He was much more fighter than rogue flavorwise, so I learned a little Thievery for practicality (though he wasn't a thief) but didn't bother with your stereotypical Acrobatics and Stealth.
Sweet gear: he got a +1 greataxe since the DM thought reach weapons were stupid... He also got a +1 glaive eventually, but by then it was clear he was the only tank and reach weapons weren't gonna work, plus he never got a replacement spiked gauntlet for the one he lost, and without that little keystone doing reach just wasn't a good choice. Other than that he had your basic fighter/rogue light armor, nothing too special since we were low level the whole time.