How would your write the characters from Archer: Fugitive from the Empire in your favorite edition (Youtube link provided)

[Garthanos]

Edit: And, according to people that played in Gygax's table, he never expected PCs to get to levels where they could cast 7th-9th level spells. Those spell levels were included for NPCs

He commented that he expected those who stuck with the game to gravitate towards wizards since that was where the power and interesting decisions were....

Many game designers fail to account for how people use their games though same happened in Magic the gathering when they saw the one and 2 turn kill decks sweeping tournaments ... they changed the rules.

 

[Greg K]

Looking at themes there are a number of encounter powers with bursty effects and some powers that trigger multi-hit from a when you hit a single target ... but most are looking to be melee... close blast 3 for instance.

I was kind of hoping to pull a re-flavor on it but a custom theme could get good stuff anyway.

I am not to familiar with themes. I only own PHB2 and Martial Power at the moment.

 

[Greg K]

The Ladyhawke Characters worked surprisingly well.. and werent exactly high magic themselves..

Looks like my reply didn't go through last night. I was pretty impressed at how easy that you made it look, but I had the feeling that PHB1 could do many lower magic characters from fiction pretty well.

 

[Garthanos]

I am not to familiar with themes. I only own PHB2 and Martial Power at the moment.

They were introduced in Darksun and somewhat similar to a heroic level analog to Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies... One of the elements I like a lot is they provide powers you can swap out for your class powers generally written up so as to be based on whatever your highest stat is and can enable concepts that might otherwise harder to reach.

In the category of character concept enablement I also recommend PHB3 for the Hybrids very potent but requires a little user finesse at times.

 

[Garthanos]

Here is an example of a fun Theme

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Someone posted Archer: Fugitive From the Empire on Youtube. The movie is a failed TV pilot from the early 80's and released as the movie "Archer and the Sorceress" in Europe. The DVD has only been released in PAL format which is used outside of the US.

I was wondering if anyone more knowledgeable than I would to write up the characters main characters: Toran, Estra, and Slant for various editions including Toran's Bow and Estra's necklace. If necessary, feel free to suggest/use classes (or for 4e powers) from Dragon Magazine or OSR products. For 4e, I am figuring the Ranger would work really well for Toran.

You can (and probably should) skip over the first 7 to 8 minutes and skip to where Toran first encounters Estra in the tomb of her mother (unless you want the background and to see the initial appearance of the snakemen). Then, again, you might want to skip 18:42 to 27:00 (the meeting of the barbarian clans and where Toran is framed for his father's murder) to avoid really bad overacting.

Warning: The video quality and sound are poor. Also, the aspect ratio is off (or the person did a poor matte job and cut off the edges).

I loved the movie. I saw it when it was first on TV, then searched for it for years. Yes it's bad, but bad in that way that so many '70s and '80s fantasy was (Like Sword and the Sorcerer). Have it on VHS and a digital copy. Slant is still one of my favorite rogues ever.

It has been a while since I watched it though. Toran seems like a fairly average fighter type with no other real abilities, and the Heartbow is pretty much all of what he's got. I never really saw the bow as much more than an over-the-top depiction of a +X bow, in AD&D days, probably +3 to +5. He readily kills the snake people with it, but not Gar. He does use force magic from it to push the barge from shore. So there's that.

It's been so long that I don't really recall Estra doing all that much magic. Shapechange if I recall, perhaps more druid than wizard? But I think she used a necklace to do it, so more like a magic item. Or did she just turn the necklace into a serpent. I'll have to find the time to watch it...

Slant was just a rogue. I wouldn't call him a thief, like I don't think he has much in the way of traditional thieving skills. Just a con-artist basically.

I think the video and sound were done that way on purpose - so the Youtube automatic copyright detection stuff doesn't recognize it.