The fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons might get a lot of disdain from the gaming community, but I will freely admit I played the shit out of that game back in the day. And I am saying that as a guy who has played every edition of D&D since the edition I bought with my birthday money back in the early 80’s from Sears.

Fourth edition was definitely influenced by the contemporary popularity of World of Warcraft, a high-fantasy MMORPG that had PC’s displaying flashing, superhuman powers as part of gameplay. It also solidly locked in the essential need for miniatures and battlemaps that third edition had been forcing earlier. But as a guy who loves supers RPGs and a bit of lighthearted fantasy, the fourth edition was fun. It was also the version that I introduced to my two oldest children (along with another RPG, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, which deserves its own article).

In that gaming group was a player who had a minotaur barbarian named Grendel. The player was a classic “I’m here to kill things and have a good time” player who reveled in combat. And Fourth Edition gave him the chance to stack bonus upon bonus upon bonus to the point where we actually made the player a shirt for his birthday that listed all the modifiers to his final attack roll and he loved it. The minotaur’s name was Grendel, and on the odd times I like another player sit behind the screen my own PC would mercilessly mock the hell out of Grendel with every bovine-related pun I could of. (What happened when Grendel’s player rolled a critical hit? Udder destruction.)

We still make references to Grendel, the ultimate combat monster, and when I painted this minotaur from the Reaper Dungeon Dwellers Kickstarter I texted the photo to Grendel’s player (who I know longer live near since moving to my current location) and he loved it. The miniature is a solid, typical minotaur with his giant battle axe and skull accessories. The miniature would make a good BBEG for a low-level adventure or a good bodyguard for a higher level one. Or serve as the PC of a combat-loving player, I suppose…