Sean
Reynolds, Designer:
The new D&D
allows us to give the characters abilities that they showed in
novels, without breaking the rules to do so. A spellcaster that
always has the right spell at the right time is probably a sorcerer,
not a wizard. A person with some small natural talent at magic
is also probably a multiclassed sorcerer. A barbarian from the
icy tundra is probably a barbarian, not a fighter. A cleric of
a warrior deity is probably a cleric/fighter.
Jim
Butler, Brand Manager:
Most definitely.
As we’ve gone through and looked at all of the heroes and
villains of the Realms, it’s become obvious that some characters
were better suited as barbarians or sorcerers rather than fighters
or wizards.
Rich
Baker, Creative Director:
We looked
at all of the significant characters and asked ourselves, "Should
this guy be what we said he was in 2nd Edition?" The new
multiclassing rules make it really easy to describe a character
with a little bit of training in one field and a great deal of
expertise in another -- something that 2nd edition generally didn’t
do well.
Jim:
In the same light, the new rules have also allowed us to better
articulate the game rules behind some of the most popular Realms
personages. I view the D&D game rules as the lens through
which we view the Forgotten Realms. As that lens has became more
accurate, we’ve got a clearer picture of who various people
are and what they’re truly capable of.
Rich:
No character’s 2nd edition class and level made it to our
"sacred cows" list, although we didn’t want to
completely reverse a character just for the sake of change. Elminster
is still a very high-level wizard, for instance, even though we
might have described him as a fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard/loremaster/archmage,
because that’s what some of his backstory might suggest.
What
other updates to popular existing Realms characters can we expect
to see?
Jim:
We’re doing more than just a straight conversion this time
around, making slight corrections where appropriate to bring the
characters in line with their popular vision. That doesn’t
mean we’re making changes without careful thought, but it
does mean that we don’t necessarily feel bound to make sure
that Elminster has a 19 Intelligence or Drizzt has a 16 Strength
Sean:
Because the new rules support multiclassing so well, you’ll
see that our popular characters often have a few levels in a secondary
class to explain their abilities that don’t quite jibe with
their primary class. For example, Drizzt is always described as
a ranger in 2nd edition, but anyone who has read the novels knows
that he started as a fighter and is described as an amazing combatant.
So in this book, Drizzt has fighter levels as well as ranger levels
-- to reflect his skills. At the same time, we never see him casting
ranger spells (he can’t be a very high-level ranger) so he
has just enough levels in ranger to reach the lowest-level ranger
spells.
Rich:
Another big change is the "look" of these characters.
We had Todd
Lockwood and Sam
Wood re-concept almost twenty of Faerun’s most important
characters, and the sketches are just tremendous. You won’t
believe how cool these characters look now.
