Classes: What they are rather than what they're not

[spinningdice]

I would have put Conan as a scout personally. I'm not all that deeply readly into it, but while he spends a fair amount of time in cities and the like he's in his element out in the wilds.
That said I think Burglar combined with say Strong Barbarian might work in an odd fashion.

[paddyfool]

I confess this thread gives me the urge to dust off an old 3.5 trope:

What Origins/Specialty/Class(es) would you give Batman?

[MilitiaJim]

What Origins/Specialty/Class(es) would you give Batman?

Super Powered I Can Swim, with 17 class levels that he can change once every other scene.

[Desertpuma]

Batman is primarily a nasty combination of Sleuth/Martial Artist possibly with some Stuntman or use the new One Man Army out of the Agent X series. I consider him a Disciplined Playboy (gotta have that PL feat for Alfred after all).

[aegis]

I can't imagine batman without levels of Intruder. 

Concerning Origins, I'd make him an Orphaned Thrill-Seeker (or Playboy indeed).

[Desertpuma]

I would go with Orphaned Playboy (it is actually best description for him there). I not so sure about Intruder but can give him Ninja levels certainly.

[pawsplay]

I don't recall Gandalf using magic though, he uses Turning on the Orcs once or twice, but thats about it.  He's a killer with a sword thou, and encourages his allies to greater feats.  That says to me Seer or Captain, probably the former.

That's because he's sworn to only use his magic to halt the armies of Sauron. He does use Searing Ray on the fell beast, some kind of flash/bang spell on the orcs, and he obviously did something to the Balrog.

[Sletchman]

I don't recall Gandalf using magic though, he uses Turning on the Orcs once or twice, but thats about it.  He's a killer with a sword thou, and encourages his allies to greater feats.  That says to me Seer or Captain, probably the former.

That's because he's sworn to only use his magic to halt the armies of Sauron. He does use Searing Ray on the fell beast, some kind of flash/bang spell on the orcs, and he obviously did something to the Balrog.

"You Shall Not Pass!!" - Totally just flavourtext for his turn attempt.  He obviously has huge resolve.  Add The Gift, for making his staff glow, with Glow I.  It's all smoke and mirrors.

[pawsplay]

I don't recall Gandalf using magic though, he uses Turning on the Orcs once or twice, but thats about it.  He's a killer with a sword thou, and encourages his allies to greater feats.  That says to me Seer or Captain, probably the former.

That's because he's sworn to only use his magic to halt the armies of Sauron. He does use Searing Ray on the fell beast, some kind of flash/bang spell on the orcs, and he obviously did something to the Balrog.

"You Shall Not Pass!!" - Totally just flavourtext for his turn attempt.  He obviously has huge resolve.  Add The Gift, for making his staff glow, with Glow I.  It's all smoke and mirrors.

"You shall not pass," was just a friendly warning.

[Gentry]

"You Shall Not Pass!!" - Totally just flavourtext for his turn attempt.  He obviously has huge resolve.  Add The Gift, for making his staff glow, with Glow I.  It's all smoke and mirrors.

Absolutely. Onscreen, Gandalf invokes little or no magic himself, but uses a pretty sweet-hot magic staff with some regularly.

Now, I admit that's a pretty narrow view, and it's not inline with in-print Gandalf, or all the expanded universe J.R.R. created, and on and on. There's a lot of sacred cow-ing related to Gandalf. The point here, as Turnip illustrates, is that if you stick to just what the character does, rather than what we think he can do or ought to be able to do, you can put mechanics on him fairly easily, and using several different mechanical avenues.

[Krensky]

I love that you watch Legend of the Seeker (and, some would say, are willing to admit it). I can never seem to figure out when it's on, so I've only seen three episodes.  

Netflix has season one and the first six episodes of season two available on streaming. I discovered it over the holiday.

[pawsplay]

"You Shall Not Pass!!" - Totally just flavourtext for his turn attempt.  He obviously has huge resolve.  Add The Gift, for making his staff glow, with Glow I.  It's all smoke and mirrors.

Absolutely. Onscreen, Gandalf invokes little or no magic himself, but uses a pretty sweet-hot magic staff with some regularly.

Now, I admit that's a pretty narrow view, and it's not inline with in-print Gandalf, or all the expanded universe J.R.R. created, and on and on. There's a lot of sacred cow-ing related to Gandalf. The point here, as Turnip illustrates, is that if you stick to just what the character does, rather than what we think he can do or ought to be able to do, you can put mechanics on him fairly easily, and using several different mechanical avenues.

In D&D, I think he works better as a Cleric/Loremaster with the Good and Sun Domains, but in FC, I think Wizard Mage actually works pretty well. Assuming he survives long enough, Angelic Heritage, Angelic Legacy, and Guts could reflect the revelation that he is Maiar.

[Gentry]

Richard Cypher (Legend of the Seeker)
Kaylan - confessor - Legend of the Seeker

Ok, Azgulor, I'm necromacizing this topic just for you, as I'm one ep away from finishing LotS season 1 (yay netflix!), and I finally feel like I can take a stab at putting classes on these people (Morganti and Aegis took a whack at it, but I'm going to expand on it).

First, the easy stuff. The Confessors and the Mord Sith are both Priest class offshoots, with the power of confession and agiel-wielding being part of their respective specialized paths. Kahlan's actually working two paths at once, I'd say: one that grants her confession ability (which she's got maxed out), and another that gives her the "kill every motherfucker in the room" red-eye power (the name of which eludes me), which she's only got the first step on. The Mord Sith path abilities, just to spitball, focus on ignoring and then channeling pain (perhaps converting subdual damage directly into personal healing), as well as hurting or killing people with the agiel (which is a ritual weapon if ever there was one). The MS Breath of Life power probably exists on its own path, with successive steps allowing you to revive someone after progressively longer and longer periods of death.

A talent like Crusading or Single-Minded fits Kahlan nicely, and while it's tempting to give her the Cleric specialty I'm loathe to do so, largely because we never see her turn anything, and she doesn't appear to have any particular bent toward medicine. I'd learn toward a specialty like Guardian or Vanguard, myself. Those fit her fighting spirit.

As an aside, you don't ask about Zed, but for my money he's actually an NPC. He's a superhero of exposition and a massive deus ex machina in a lot of the episodes. The way NPC spellcasting works, the GM can tailor Zed's spell list to the adventure at hand, making sure he's got some kind of spell that'll come in handy. So there's that.

Richard's the biggie. Because he's THE HERO, he's a swiss army knife of abilities, so he needs to be boiled down to some kind of basic attribute list before we can apply any kind of mechanics to him. Here's my list:

-He's ripped, with a six pack on top of his six pack. It's like an 18 pack. It's scary, but even as a straight guy I think Richard's pretty hot.
-He's got an earnest charm that swings people his way.
-He's an extremely talented fighter, capable of mowing down a dozen men in slo-mo with or without a weapon.
-He can track down a single seed pod in a forest while moving at full speed.
-He can read any language thanks to his seeker-dom.

And that seems to be about the size of it.

Given that, I'm going to call Richard a Svelte Warden, which gives him his overall physical hawtness as well as a background in the woods (and his Pathfinder Basics feat is absolutely Forest/Jungle). After that, classes give us some options.

It's easiest to call him a Soldier. He's got a boatload of feats: the Sword chain (and maybe the Polearm chain and Spear chain, which he uses while wielding a sword), the Armor chain (he's awfully tough to actually hurt, even in nothing more than his leather vest), Contempt (man, can he rip through a mob of standard goons), Personal Lieutenant (Zed), Martial Arts (he's an asskicker even half-naked), the Ambush chain (he's jumping out of bushes and kacking people all the time), Favored/Signature/Trademark Gear (the sword of truth), and Blessed (THE SEEKER), and that's just off the top of my head. If he wants all that, he pretty much needs to be a Soldier so that he gets as many whuppin' feats as he can.

However, he could probably also be built with Assassin (he's not half bad at disguising himself as a D'haran--just be sure to give him Contempt for the mooks), Captain (he's a natural leader, after all), Explorer (he can find stuff pretty well, and Explorer gets a mess of bonus feats, too), or Priest (folding a lot of those feats into a "Seeker" path and a "Sword of Truth Wielder" path).

Either way, I'd give him his first level in Scout, as that Trailblazer ability is totally Richard's schtick played over and over (find people quickly and then ambush them).

How does that grab you, Azgulor?

[Azgulor]

That's..... all shades of awesome!

Between the original post and now, I've had time to absorb more of the FC goodness and I'm continually impressed by the system's flexibility.

And (like with Spycraft), every time I think I have a handle on what it can or can't do, someone like yourself posts something that shows the can't column is actually very sparse if not altogether empty!

Thank you very much for the post!

[Gentry]

You are quite welcome. I'm glad to have helped.