Constructing a D&D cartoon.

[Sir Neil]

The hero of the film is the Fighter. And he uses swords and wits from start to finish, never getting a mid-movie magic sword upgrade.

Actually he does. He picks up a sword of sharpness in a deleted scene; you can see the weapon is different when they enter the lich's throne room. That's why he can cut through stone and chop off the manservant's arm.

[souran]

Instead of this cartoon stuff, what D&D needs is a live action series thats a sort of mix between Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel and Stargate. Other recommendations: Get Joss Whedon to write the pilot and the season arcs but let Brad Wright control episode writting-except for a pre-shoot dialog rewrite by wheedon. Also steal Nathan Fillion from Castle as your lead.

[FatR]

Live action series can't have sufficient budget to put on screen stuff that makes DnD regognizable as DnD. I couldn't even watch Buffy because supernatural shit looked cheap and unimpressive.

[Zinegata]

The hero of the film is the Fighter. And he uses swords and wits from start to finish, never getting a mid-movie magic sword upgrade.

Actually he does. He picks up a sword of sharpness in a deleted scene; you can see the weapon is different when they enter the lich's throne room. That's why he can cut through stone and chop off the manservant's arm.

There was a deleted scene?

[Zinegata]

Live action series can't have sufficient budget to put on screen stuff that makes DnD regognizable as DnD. I couldn't even watch Buffy because supernatural shit looked cheap and unimpressive.

Legend of the Seeker, to an extent, disagrees.

[Nicklance]

I still remember the pilot episode of what was supposed to be Vampire the Masquerade, it totally bombed.

Anyway back to dnd.

I was under the impression that the Zena and Hercules series was pretty cool enough to actually be interpreted somehow as a DnD live action series.

[souran]

Live action series can't have sufficient budget to put on screen stuff that makes DnD regognizable as DnD. I couldn't even watch Buffy because supernatural shit looked cheap and unimpressive.

Then you seriously missed out. Buffy/Angel was the best written show on TV at its time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, now what was the power level of Buffy?

As far as I know she and the rest of the cast was at a Wuxia level. I'm willing to be contradicted by that, but I was under the impression that the stunts that the characters did could mostly be done by people in the 'real' world on the cheap.

I mean, really, Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was expensive as fuck to construct and the special effects were still not as impressive as they were on the show. The D&D cartoon should be around this level.

Moreover, if they did foolishly go with the 'live action' version, the violence will have to be toned down. Blowing up CGI/puppet zombies with a fireball will be much more graphic in 'live action' than in a cartoon. That compromise is unacceptable to me.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also, I updated the first post of this thread to add more of my 'insights'. Have fun you guys.

[souran]

Okay, now what was the power level of Buffy?

As far as I know she and the rest of the cast was at a Wuxia level. I'm willing to be contradicted by that, but I was under the impression that the stunts that the characters did could mostly be done by people in the 'real' world on the cheap.

Several things here:

Buffy/Angel were on various power levels by season. Basically as the show went on they kept upping the ante. They go from fighting a vampire overloard (seasons 1-2), to fighting an immortal/ dragon (3), then a god (5), then the very essense of evil itself (7).

The characters similarly also get much toughter. Season one, nobody but buff can take on vampires and demons. Season 5/6/7 even "has no powers" xander can take down vamps on his own. While the "real" characters (Buffy/Willow/Giles) all get supercharged. Willow learns magic and Giles is apperently also dumbledore in his spare time because by season 7 he knows enough about magic to help evil willow get her shit back together. Buffy (or slayers in general) keep aquiring powers using the spider man method of "if it makes the hero cooler they get another power" so prophetic dreams, hidden inner reserves of power, hell even a stupid looking artifcat weapon in season 7. There is always room for another power in the book of slayers are more awesomerer than you.

HOnestly, this combined with the "monster of the week" format of the show really made buffy a lot like "D&D, set in a 90's southern cal high school."

As for production values, the show is produced by fox and had a special effects budget from season 2 onward similar to star trek. Hell a number of the costume people worked for both shows. Now there were some costumes that were never satifactory (even the author's admitted that even after 7 years of buffy and 5 of angel that they never made a good werewolf costume) but the show didn't have a shoestring budget. Now it looks a little dated to the late 90's...which is when it was filmed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

souran, that still doesn't answer my question about special effects.

Sure, as power level goes up the SFX tends to go up as well. But not necessarily. It basically costs no money to depict someone on live-action as an 'ultra-tough telepath with a glowy sword'. I'm not impressed by anyone claiming that you can depict that shit on the cheap.

And like you said, the show saved money by having villains that looked like humans with makeup and was set in a modern Californian high school. That's... that's an incredible cost-cutting measure, I'll say that. I'd be offended if a D&D cartoon that happened at mid-level didn't have the heroes regularly fighting golems, gelatinous cubes, dragons, and zombie giants and going to a variety of exotic locales.

[Username17]

This unfortunately means no ugly races. And if they are from an ugly race then they will be made cute. The other flipside to this is that aside from being not-ugly, the character will also have to be shipping bait. I'll discuss more of this later, but the biggest thing is that they need to be about the same size as the average height of the rest of the cast. This means no-one grievously shorter than the rest of the cast.

The first part is right, the second part is wrong. You can get away with a girl halfling as one of the major characters without making the cast less shipworthy. Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts. Also, it is the actual experience of a significant number of young women that they are very short, which makes them feel like halflings (even though in reality they are only like 12 centimeters shorter than the people around them). Believe it or not, "sexy halfling girl" is a popular archetype with women.

But beyond that, what the hell are you thinking? Dwarves? Shifters? Fuck man, furries exist, but there is a reason that Beast Boy's human form is pretty damn human. Actual animal-people are kept to the sidelines - like Wildebeast. And furries can go scour the minor characters for shipping fodder. You make one of the villain leaders a minotaur and maybe you bring in a Shifter ranger as a side character for an episode - if he's popular enough, you bring him back later. Your Druid is going to be turning into animals sometimes, that's plenty furry for the primary cast.

The fundamental fact is that you need each character to be "special" in as few ways as possible. That is, if someone pulls out spells and shit and really pushes things into crazy town - they need to be a human in order to ground the character. Keep them with one trait that is "normal." So your Druid, Wizard, and Paladin? All humans. That gives you two slots for non-humans: the Monk (who is a Halfling), and the Assassin (who is a Drow).

Sorry, but the amount of exposition you can spend on the racial background of the primary cast members is pretty limited, because you have to cram enough of it to get it across into the episode the character is introduced. So your Green Ranger (the Drow Assassin) gets to be non-human because you are introducing her in a later episode. The initial four (Paladin, Wizard, Druid, Monk) only get one non-human between them because the first episode is going to have to call time to answer "What is a..." for each non-human character in the party. You can have her join up in the first episode from a Halfling Village that the characters are saving in order to put as much of that background information as possible into things other than info-dumps. If you had a second or (shudder) a third non-human character in the starting four, you'd be stuck pokedex infodumping for the entire first episode.

So yes, your starting group is:

• Human Male Paladin
  Human Male Druid
  Human Female Wizard
  Halfling Female Monk

In an episode or five you will add:

• Drow Female Assassin.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I hate the argument that everyone needs to be human. They don't. They can be blue cat people and the show still can draw in the biggest return of the year.

-Crissa

[virgil]

Just look at the Thundercats, Fraggles, Smurfs, or even Transformers. However, one thing you'll notice is that there's at least a racial hegemony in the primary cast.

[Username17]

I hate the argument that everyone needs to be human. They don't. They can be blue cat people and the show still can draw in the biggest return of the year.

-Crissa

The limitation is not "everyone has to be humans" it's "you can introduce one alien race per episode, humans are free."

So the first episode could introduce one race to the extent that it could be used for primary cast members. That race could be halflings or elves or orcs or whatever. And then some number between zero and all of the characters in the main group could be that race. The rest have to be humans.

I suggest one halfling girl, because it's a popular, but rather limited schtick. The other possibility is to have her have a brother who is an Illusionist, but tiny young men are just not as popular (with boys or girls) as tiny young women.

Yes, you could do Elf Quest, where all the main cast members are elves, and you introduce trolls and shit in later episodes. But you can't have a panoply of races in the first episode or it will be a confusing mess. Deep Space Nine only worked because it was Season 7 of TNG. The Ferengi, the Cardassians, the Bejorans, and the Trill were already introduced. The only "new" race character was Odo.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

I hate the argument that everyone needs to be human. They don't. They can be blue cat people and the show still can draw in the biggest return of the year.

-Crissa

But then you have to focus on ``the world of blue cat people'' rather than "the world of D&D". I'm not saying that I completely agree with Frank; all of the traditional D&D races can both pass as human and have a strong mythology in popular culture. Your paladin could be a dwarf, your druid could even be an orc (although those tusks are beyond humanity), your wizard could be an elf, and your martial artist* could be a halfling. Clearly you want at least one vanilla human, which should probably be the person with the most outlandish powers (druid, or wizard).

I don't see the difference between "elf" and "human" (or "dwarf") as any greater than the difference between "water tribe" and "air tribe".
If you really wanted to avoid excessive exposition, start with a group of two (say, the paladin and the wizard) who have known each other for a long time and have just had some major life change which has set off the current story. Then in episode two, they meet up with the druid in Mirkwood, have a misunderstanding, conflict, resolution, and then the druid does a heel-face turn and joins the party. Then they make friends with the halfling channeling Disney's Aladdin in the next town, and then later on we use the same heel-face formula to make friends with the drow assassin.

---

*It took me forever to figure out why celibate, cloistered Christians had unarmed combat abilities when I was young. And why female monks weren't called "nuns". For an American kid that doesn't know the history of both the Shao Lin temple and Hong Kong chopsocky flicks, "monk" is a very confusing name for an action hero, even if she does lack epicanthal folds.

[virgil]

There are exceptions, if done right. Babylon 5 and Farscape both introduced a plethora of races in their first episodes, in their main cast no less. Heck, TNG had an android, klingon, and a betazed; and their pilot also introduces Q.

EDIT: Forgot about Futurama.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So the first episode could introduce one race to the extent that it could be used for primary cast members. That race could be halflings or elves or orcs or whatever. And then some number between zero and all of the characters in the main group could be that race. The rest have to be humans.

Frank, who said that you have to introduce all of the characters at once/in the pilot?

I don't agree with that line of thought. Having all of the characters together at once is in my opinion a bad move. It's actually very hard to give sufficient character development and establishing character moments when you have four primary protagonists fighting for space. Teen Titans screwed the pooch on their first episode and the rest of the season was playing catchup.

If I had my druthers, the first episode would open with two characters. The second would introduce the third guy. The third would have the fourth character. You spend the fourth episode getting their dynamics together. Then by the fifth-to-seventh episode you add the fifth character. Then you let things settle for a couple of seasons until you're ready to add another one.

Moreover, these aren't Star Wars or even Star Trek races where you're being confronted with an entirely new biology out of nowhere and need to explain. Everyone knows what a damn elf is. Everyone knows what a dwarf is. Everyone knows what a robot buddy is. Everyone knows what a werewolf is--you just need to say that they shapeshift at will instead of by the full moon. Yeah, if you're doing Earthdawn it's a bad idea to racedump a bunch of stuff at once, but seriously. Lord of the Rings is a bigger thing than Star Wars. I have a low opinion of the intelligence of a television audience, but it's not that low.

The only race you will really have to spend an episode introducing due to pop cultural osmosis failure is your drow character. I mean, really, the idea of an elf and a shifter is too foreign for people to understand really quickly? Are you kidding me?

But beyond that, what the hell are you thinking? Dwarves? Shifters? Fuck man, furries exist, but there is a reason that Beast Boy's human form is pretty damn human. Actual animal-people are kept to the sidelines - like Wildebeast.

This really shows how insular the Internet community is. The idea of furries as unknowable sexual deviants is a meme and an Exalted expansion. And the idea of everything even remotely animal flavored getting retconned into this club is just fucking insulting and played-out.

The trope of 'weird tribe people who shapeshift into critters/a specific one' is much larger. And you can do a lot of things with it. I didn't recommend adding a shifter to appeal to furries, I recommended adding a partial shapeshifter because it's an established trope. Sheesh.

I recommended adding a more 'uncultured' race like a dwarf or a shifter to contrast against the rest of the party who are two elves and a paladin. And also to prevent unfortunate comparisons between Toph and this person. I mean, halfling is okay, it's just too close for my comfort.

Why warforged? It's pretty simple. You get all of the fun of having 'weird emotionless boy/girl' without their race getting too much in the way. If you've noticed, the 'Dark Token Teammate' archetype character has something 'off' about them in some deep, fundamental way without being too alien from the rest of the party. Making them some kinda fantasy robot sets that up but doesn't force you to confront it directly until you have a lull in the story.

The fundamental fact is that you need each character to be "special" in as few ways as possible. That is, if someone pulls out spells and shit and really pushes things into crazy town - they need to be a human in order to ground the character.

Why?

Sure, if you're doing one movie that's a great idea, but if you're doing a series of stories that's not a hot idea. Any plot hook you give a character has a shelf life to it. And as Starfire showed us if you rely on it too much it makes the character really lame and boring.

I recommend giving people as much conflict and specialness as possible without derailing the main plot or stepping on others' screentime. Otherwise you're forced to resort to crap episodes like 'Zuko and his buddies are at the beach' or 'The Teen Titans are goofing off on some alien planet while Starfire sorts out her feelings' because you have no more ideas what to do with your characters. Or you have to add plot hooks to someone in the middle of the story, which is much harder to do.

Just changing someone's race from a 'human' to an 'elf' gives writers a lot of possible plot hooks to run through without making the character stale.

[Mask_De_H]

What do you have against filler Lago? Those episodes work as downtime moments where you can work on character interplay and even do an infodump or two.

I also disagree with Frank's "mainly humans, Final Destination" method: having a racially diverse cast is not a hard thing to do. It allows for more distinction between characters in look and in plot hooks, especially if we're working with the Fantasy Kitchen Sink method of each race basically being humans with rubber foreheads. I mean seriously, how hard is it to just have:

Male Human Paladin - Straight Man and leader. Face
Male Hobgoblin Druid - Serious Lancer type. The Unfunny and possible dig at badass protagonists. Recon
Female Elven Wizard - Insufferable nerd/snark flinger. Any female Scooby mixed with Sokka. Hacker
Female Halfling Monk - Token Badass Loli. Can go either the way of Toph or Hit-girl or May from Guilty Gear. Muscle.

So you've got a straight human, a muscular, Fist of the North Star looking human thing, a willowy brown human thing with pointy ears, and a little girl. That's about as much of a stretch as a normal human, a half-demon, an orange human with glowy eyes, a green human with pointy ears and fangs, and a half-man/half robot.



On conflict: having too many threads makes the whole thing a jumble; not everyone can be the super speshul snowflake all the time. This is what helped Heroes turn to shit. Start simple, one paragraph. As the show goes on, you can use your filler episodes or bring in plot points to add depth that provides impetus to the story when you can't think of shit else to do.

On the emotionless character: I'd go Tiefling. I mean, you want them to be ZOMG dark, and what's darker than hellspawn? Your biggest influences are gonna end up being Raven (by your own admission) and Rei Ayanami (due to general nerd connection) anyway. Both of 'em are half big-bad-soulfucker, so make yours half big-bad-soulfucker. And fuck Warforged.

Also:
>insular internet community
>implying your reasoning isn't colored by said insular internet community

implying implications.

A quick question though, before I shove my foot in my mouth even further: are we working off of 3.5/4e, or are we talking about the 5th edition ideas we've been kicking around? Because if it's the latter, the reasoning against having a "Fighter" character was systematically rendered moot during the design process for our fighter analogue. Ditto our rogue analogue. If we're working off of the editions that actually exist, I'll get off of it.

[Username17]

Frank, who said that you have to introduce all of the characters at once/in the pilot?

Yes, if you're going to go the Sailor Moon route, you can introduce characters one at a time. And then you can introduce their backstories - including the backstories of their species, on at a time. I disapprove of doing things this way, because it means that you're going to be be spending a good a long time fucking around before you get to the "real" story - and anyone coming in the middle will have to watch 2 hours of television to catch up and find out what the fucking hell is going on. Teen Titans is much better than Avatar or Sailor Moon as a show to watch in random order, because the first episode jumps you in an introduces all the major characters.

But even look at Avatar for a moment. Who do they introduce in episode one?

• Sokka
  Katara
  Aang
  Zuko
  Iroh
  ~Appa

That's what? Five major characters and a named animal companion. My suggestion is to instead introduce:

• Paladin
  Druid
  Wizard
  Monk
  Villain #1

Then in the next episode you introduce Green Ranger Drow Assassin and Villain #1's boss.

Lord of the Rings is a bigger thing than Star Wars. I have a low opinion of the intelligence of a television audience, but it's not that low.

Your audience is 8. The chances of them being familiar with LotR is like 50/50. You have to play to the lowest common denominator, and that means people who need Halflings, Dwarfs, and Elves explained. You probably don't need to explain Robots, but you'd have to explain why there were robots but not cars, and then you're in info-dump territory again. If you had a tech setting, robot humans would need no explanation at all (they come free along with humans and ghosts), but in a setting where the paladin is fighting with a warhammer, then you need to exposition that shit.

The trope of 'weird tribe people who shapeshift into critters/a specific one' is much larger. And you can do a lot of things with it. I didn't recommend adding a shifter to appeal to furries, I recommended adding a partial shapeshifter because it's an established trope. Sheesh.

Shifters are a bad use of conceptual space when one of your characters is a Druid and changes into a bear. Sorcerer Hunters was cool, Teen Titans was cool, but trying to put Carrot Glace and Beast Boy on the same team is pointless. It would be like putting Superman and Captain Marvel on the same five man team.

I recommend giving people as much conflict and specialness as possible without derailing the main plot or stepping on others' screentime. Otherwise you're forced to resort to crap episodes like 'Zuko and his buddies are at the beach' or 'The Teen Titans are goofing off on some alien planet while Starfire sorts out her feelings' because you have no more ideas what to do with your characters. Or you have to add plot hooks to someone in the middle of the story, which is much harder to do.

Just changing someone's race from a 'human' to an 'elf' gives writers a lot of possible plot hooks to run through without making the character stale.

First of all: The Beach is like the best half hour of TV ever made. So don't dis it. Secondly, having pointy ears doesn't make you interesting or have backstory. Having pointy ears reduces your backstory.

You are going to spend a certain number of actual minutes of actual screen time talking about each character. Every minute you have to spend explaining what elves are in general is a minute that you didn't spend on explaining how that character's first love joined up with the Zhentarim for a paycheck and the next time she saw him he didn't recognize her; or that you didn't spend explaining how the first time the character tried to do good, she ended up getting mauled by an owlbear and the person she was trying to save died anyway. Every establishing shot or sentence you spend on explaining that "Elves live in Tree Cities" is one you didn't spend on something of more direct impact to a character's background.

Worf has a more interesting story than Giordi because he has more episodes dedicated to him than LaForge does. Not because there is anything inherently character advancing about not being a human. Neelix's backstory is stupid and I don't care about it.

Think about superheroes for a moment. Characters who have powers that are easy to explain work better in a team than characters whose powers are hard to explain. People like Wolverine and Cyclops because their powers are easy to explain and easy to convey. People tend to like Phoenix less, because her powers are incoherent. People like the White Queen less when she picked up diamond form, because it made her less coherent. You wouldn't make a Wizard a Gnome for a cartoon. Because there's Gnome Magic and Wizard Magic, and it's annoying to try to figure out whether he is doing something because he is a Wizard or because he is a Gnome. What you want from each character is for them to fill out the chart:

Character	Asks Questions About...	Exposits About...	Is Special Because...	Quests Because...	Fights With...	Solves Other Problems With...
Human Paladin	Monsters Magic	Religions Spirits	Can Heal People Can Glow	Has Evil Brother Dedicated to Light	Warhammer Glowing Pulses of Light	Friendship Speeches Enchantment Smashing
Human Druid	Cities	Monsters Wilderness Areas	Turns into Bear Talks to Badgers	Tribe was killed by villain Future Cataclysm threatens Balance	Growing Plants Bear Form	Nature Craft Talking to Animals
Human Wizard	Romance Underdark	Ancient History Magic	Creates Illusions Conjures Stuff	First Love turned evil Dangerous Signs and Portents	Fire Illusions	Arbitrary Divination Magical Trickery
Halfling Monk	Big People	Crime Ancient Wisdom	Has Glowing Ki Strikes Is very Small	Bad guys attacked village in first ep Likes other characters	Ninja Moves Glowing Ki Strikes	Acrobatics, Smallness Common Sense Advice
Drow Assassin	Surface World	Villains Underdark	Is Drow Has Poisons	Secretly not that Evil Personal Gain	Sneak Attacks Poison	Shadow Magic Treachery

[Psychic Robot]

Legend of the Seeker is about as good a D&D show as there ever will be. And that's based on Terry Goodkind's work which Objectivist masturbatory fantasies and truly epic proportions of rape.

And Slayers is terrible. The entire show is poorly-drawn crap that has the epic-level wizard destroying everything in sight with her massive spells while leaving the fighter a sidekick despite him possessing a magical sword of awesomeness.

[Zinegata]

I think I'm just gonna have to watch the HBO Song of Fire & Ice instead of hoping for a decent D&D show.

Good Gods people. This is a cartoon. Why are you people planning around what god-awful fanfic shippers can do with the characters!

[Mask_De_H]

I think I'm just gonna have to watch the HBO Song of Fire & Ice instead of hoping for a decent D&D show.

Good Gods people. This is a cartoon. Why are you people planning around what god-awful fanfic shippers can do with the characters!

I guess it's an "if you can't beat them, give them material and laugh at their creepy surrogate relationships."

Slayers is a terrible show

You shut your whore mouth.

[HalcyonUmbra]

Are we talking about a show that just runs alongside D&D as its own thing, or a game that is actively marketing D&D to a new audience? Because if it's the latter case, there are some points that I don't think would work to well, as well as some points that need to be addressed. Off the top of my head, the main cast needs to be relatable to your audience, or, in this case, your customer base.

[Shazbot79]

My idea for the regular cast of a D&D cartoon, which greatly diverges a bit from Lago's model:


Paladin (Human Female): "The Hero/Natural Leader". smalltown girl plucked from her quiet life by the hand of fate. Courageous, caring, strong-willed, paragon of virtue, yadayadayada.

Possible character arc: Due to a necessary moral compromise, loses her divine powers and her confidence. When she finally wins them back she returns a stronger person and better leader.


Rogue (Half-Elf Male): "The Lancer/Butt Monkey". Childhood friend of the Paladin. Dreams of a life of adventure. I'm thinking of someone who tries to be Errol Flynn but comes off more like Xander from Buffy. There for pathos and comedic relief.

Possible character arc: Has to step up to take the Paladin's place as leader when she is undergoing her identity crisis. Takes a few levels in badass along the way.


Wizard (Drow Female): "The Anti-hero". At first I was thinking Tiefling for the sake of flavor...but then I remembered that there was some sort of hubbub about D&D and devils a ways back. Besides...Drow have more fans. Cold, Calculating, Ruthless...but somehow not abjectly, irredeemably evil. I'm thinking Faith from Buffy.

Possible character arc: The party finds themselves lost in the underdark and has to rely on Drow-chick to guide them to safety, despite not trusting her one bit. After the ordeal, the group grudgingly accepts her as an ally.

At some point, the Drow is accused of some grave misdeed by prejudiced townfolk and is sentenced to be burned at the stake. After seeing the lengths to which her friends go to prove her innocence, she begins to trust them.


Monk (Halfling Female): "The Brute". I'm thinking Gully from Battle Chasers, as in a three foot tall girl who leaps 50ft. into the air and elbow drops a dragon, with a healthy does of rockstar thrown in. Mercurial, Impulsive, Fun (battle)-loving Daredevil. Does it all for the lulz. Perhaps she uses anachronistic slang terms.

Possible character arc: During a journey of introspection we find that the Monk doesn't have a character arc. She's pretty much a couple of fists with some incidental organs attached. That's all there is. I'm thinking of the 1st issue of Astonishing X-Men where the team is fighting a monster and every member has their internal monologue running...when we get to Wolvie, his simply reads "I really like beer".

Fighter (Half-Orc Male): "The Gandalf/Batman". Okay, so I'm tired of the mentor characters always being sagely wizard-types. I'm also tired of the Ronin fighters...guys wandering the land with nothing but cloak, armor and big honking sword. Instead, I want this character to exhibit the Fighter class' mastery of ALL weapons, from swords, spears and clubs, to crossbows, bolas, hatchets and shields. A weapon and tactic for any situation. Stoic, grizzled, enigmatic...but a capable mentor and protector.

Possible character arc: Early in their adventures, the Fighter's mercenary past catches up to him and he is captured by dangerous badguys. The party, still a bunch of bumbling novices, has to band together and rescue him, which in turn allows him to let go and trust in their abilities.

At the end of season 1, when the party has their confrontation against the Big Bad...the Fighter stands against a horde of demons, undead, owlbears, whatever...thereby allowing the young'ns to escape from the toppling evil fortress and presumably dying, but leaving them to fend for themselves.


Druid (Half-Giant Male): "The Gentle Giant/Zen Guy" a direct contrast to the brash nature of the Halfling Monk. Replaces the Fighter after season 1. Quiet, contemplative, naive to the ways of the world outside of his mountain grove.

Possible character arc: After some environmental disaster is caused by reckless and greedy city folk, we see just how terrible the Druids wrath can be....and why he fights so hard to keep his anger in check. Goes on a rampage, causing a lot of property damage...will have ramifications that crop up over the course of a season.