D&D Iconic Characters

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would want the iconics to be actual playtest characters, so that they'd have interesting names and more organic designs. My favorite published D&D characters are the designers' PCs in the back of the 1E Rogues Gallery, precisely because they were rough around the edges characters, with wacky concepts, strange magic items and were definitely not min/maxed.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I'd like to see them have official stats for the iconics at every level from 1st on up. They could be standby pre-gens that could be used on the fly for one-shot adventures and it would make things easier for the DM as he'd know the capabilities of the PCs beforehand.

 

[Morrus]

I'll miss the iconics in 4E. A bunch of nameless, everchanging iconics just doesn't do it for me.

What makes you think there's going to be a bunch of nameless, everchanging iconics?

 

[InVinoVeritas]

...I just want to keep Lidda.

 

[The Merciful]

I don't care for "iconics" that merely appear repeatedly in text and illustrations. Ever changing characters would be more entertaining and interesting in that case. However, if they are tied to some sort of narrative similar to old Basic set, that would be cool and have my full aproval. Bring back Bargle!

 

[Clavis]

If Morgan Ironwolf isn't there, I'm not interested!

 

[Li Shenron]

There's a real tension in creating iconics. If you make them too generic, they're boring. If you make them too unique, they're not iconic.

That's a good observation.

Personally I didn't like half of the 3e iconics, so if it was for me I'd either make many more iconics (like 3-4 per class), or not have iconics at all.

But I think 4e will use iconics more or less like 3e did.

 

[Mad Mac]

I look forward to seeing the new iconics. A lot of the old ones were terrible, but that was part of the fun. It'll be interesting to see which of the new iconics will be Lidda (popular to the point of practically having fanboys) or Hennet and Mialee, (walking punchlines) Or just forgotten (Kerwyn who?)

Sadly, the new Iconics probably won't get their own line of super-cheesy childrens novels written by various designers using pseudonames. Hennet showed up suprisingly often as I recall, though I think his final spell tally ended up like:

Hennet casting magic missle, largely ineffectually, 3,524 times.

Hennet casting some other spell, uselessly and then falling back on magic missle and/or crying like a girl. 2.3 times.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

My favourite set of iconics would look like this:

Male human fighter with a longsword/shortsword combo, a longbow, and a tankard on the belt
LN female human sorceress (yeah, lawful sorceress. Nothing says that those guys and girls can't be control freak)
CN female elf rogue with Int as a dump stat (not the sharpest blade in the drawer but with lots of knives to make up for it)
Female sun cleric with a scimitar
Older-looging male human wizard that reminds one of Sean Connery
Male Dwarf Ranger with a crossbow

That would be gr... hey wait a minute