Constructing a D&D cartoon.

[Nicklance]

Someone did a Live Action for Drizzt

Road to Mithril Hall [animated]

[FatR]

The short Drizzt animation is all sorts of awesome. It even tries to do justice to what high-ish level fighters in DnD should be like. Their ideas of how to draw dwarves and particularly halflings are no good, though.

[erik]

Just thought I should throw out there, that I just got a freebie DnD comic preview.

Their iconic party is:

Human fighter(?) leader guy.
Dwarven fighter(?) lancer guy.
Elven ranger snark guy.
Halfling rogue kender gal.
Tiefling warlock dark gal.

I couldn't tell exactly what the human and dwarf were because they just hit stuff with their melee weapons. Might be fighter/paladin/cleric/warlord.

Comic is going for sale as a series starting in November. There's a Dark Sun comic too going on sale same time. They actually looked mildly interesting and well drawn. Tis a shame for 4e that they are coming out during its swansong rather than at its inception.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The short Drizzt animation is all sorts of awesome. It even tries to do justice to what high-ish level fighters in DnD should be like. Their ideas of how to draw dwarves and particularly halflings are no good, though.

The dwarf and halfling look like they came straight out of the 1e Monster Manual.

[Lago PARANOIA]

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.

The first episode of Teen Titans is also known for really sucking. I think the only episode worse than that of the season was the Aqualad/Tempest one. And Season 1 was overall the worst one, too. That just only highlights the pitfalls of trying to do everything at once.

Avatar's first episode is also not a good example. The characters act so differently by season two (especially Sokka and Zuko) that the huge gulf in characterization nullifies any continuity it has to future ones. Yes, viewed as a whole it's a great start to see what the characters will become, but as far as 'watch out of order and it will make sense' it's not a good one. But because the first episode was good in spite of this, I don't even think this is a good goal.

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.

You really don't need to. Curiously enough you only need to explain things for people older in the audience, because younger kids have a higher WSoD than the older audience and ask less questions. But even to the older audience the fact that halflings/elves/dwarves are STILL already universally accessible; if they don't get their introduction to it from their siblings or popcultural osmosis, then they'll certainly get it from the LotR movies their parents put on or the World of Warcraft that everyone plays.

In other words, the people who aren't already familiar with these memes won't even care.

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.

Yeah, if you do it in an infodump way you'll just end up wasting time--though don't underestimate the usefulness of filler. But that's doing things in a stupid way; the smart way to do it is to combine the stories into something interesting. Avatar for example was able to give us some great insight into Zuko's motivations and also Fire Nation culture with a three-minute flashback. There's no reason why you can't do it for the halflings or elves or whoever else. So instead of eating up time explaining elf culture and why Party Member #2 is estranged from it, you can just have your druid shouting at the elders for turning their back on the so-called savage to remain safe in their hidden villages and also become banished for bringing in the orcs who caused a forest fire for medical treatment.



From another standpoint, it's not a good thing to have your characters look like a direct analogue to another set. While the Five Man Band is a very powerful and well-loved storytelling tool, the kiss of death is having people go 'hey, that guy is like so-and-so' more than once or twice. I'm already extremely dubious at your suggestion of including a female halfling monk (I can see the Toph comparisons like right now) for example; but it's more forgivable if you make your Toph expy a lot more 'different' than the inspiration. Mixing and matching the races is a good way to differentiate your characters while not having to abandon popular tropes. Everyone loves martial arts, everyone loves boys in tight pants, everyone loves bad boys, but no-one likes Robin copies. But if said Robin copy was changed to be a dwarf with a goatee, people wouldn't notice so quickly.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Personally, I'm pretty bummed by the fact that A:TLA didn't seem to take ahold of the public consciousness as it deserved to. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that it has the highest density of quality out of any animated feature and that's up against stiff competition like JLU and TTGL.

Why do you think that the cartoon didn't catch on as well as it should have? Did it just not stay on the air long enough? Did the show not do enough merchandise tie-in? Is it a problem of an excellent cartoon competing against a bunch of average-to-great ones? Was it aimed at the wrong kind of audience?

[Slade]

But for a D&D cartoon, there's no contest. You should have five people in it. The actual game should be able to be smoothly ran with less people than this, but in the cartoon you don't have to worry about not finding enough people for a game or people not showing up. The success of Five-Person Ensemble casts have been documented extensively; search TVTropes, because I don't provide links to such hugbox tripe. In some ways, Dungeons and Dragons makes constructing your 'core cast' easy--you neatly dodge the biggest problem with most 5PEs have of the members being represented inequally. So as long as you avoid Mary Sues like Raistlin. So here is how I would construct the party:

• You need a leader type of some sort. Someone whom while not being the muscle of the party is still at the vanguard. The easiest way to convince people that someone is a good leader is to emphasize their nurturing/motherly/fatherly qualities. And the easiest way to prove have them protect the others. Unfortunately, this character has a tendency to be rather bland. I'll give my recommendations on how to spice this character up below this. My recommendation: A Paladin.
• You need a spiritual type/second-in-command of some sort. This person should constantly interject the settings' religion into it and be a walking advertisement for the wildlife and landscape without it being too obvious. You do this because you are trying to get people interested in the core game. To make this character more interesting, they should regularly be at odds with the leader type. The character should be constructed in such a way to be in a rivalry with the leader of some sort. If you notice, the most popular 'second-in-command's do this. Everyone remembers and loves Kain and Spock. As K said in another thread, this person should provide the alternative viewpoint. My recommendation: A Druid.
• You need a macho smasher type of some sort. This is stereotypically doesn't need to be a hugely muscled male; as Toph Bei Fong has shown us you can be a small female child and people will take you seriously as long as you have the attitude for it. You want this person to appeal to the 'dwarf' personalities and also because you will need a person who will punch the guard captain in the nads if the plot is going too slowly. This person provides the adrenaline and the boisterous belly laughs if done properly--do NOT make this character the 'strong, silent, stoic' type. They're boring as fuck. Everyone loves Sabin and Barret, nobody loves Kimahri. The macho smasher doesn't necessarily need to resort to physical prowess one-hundred percent but their way of fighting should be up and in your face. My recommendation: A monk.
• You need a smart type of some sort. This is the person who generates the snark and also the clever plans. They are there to stimulate potential players' imaginations and to make them realize that they could be constructing plans this awesome too if they play. If something sneaky or tricksy needs to be done, they are also the go-to guy. My recommendation: A bard (Rogue/Enchanter in 5E). Not the wimpy 3rd/4th Edition bard, but the badass 1st edition bard. Who was a spymaster/assassin/enchanter/illusionist. Biggest rule: NO SINGING. Playing musical instruments in combat is fine, if a bit silly. Singing to hurt enemies or help your friends is not.

Good group, but I disagree with Bard singing = bad. The way they sing that can be bad. Death metal or rock n' roll = badass. Brave Sir Robin = not.

People who are familiar with the Five Man Band should know that I'm about to deviate from the formula. Don't put 'The Heart' onto your team. This role should be combined with the leader or second-in-command. No one likes this character. They tend to be the comic relief or the stupid damsel-in-distress. Starfire was the least interesting person in Teen Titans because of this. Avatar dodged this entirely and we have Katara (who would traditionally get saddled with this role) at the cost of bucking tradition.

Who the heck didn't like Starfire? I'd laugh at them.
Cyborg was actually the least interesting.
He wasn't a freak like beast boy, godblood like Raven, trained by the Batman, or an alien like Starfire. He was a human and good with machines.
She was not the heart of the team: that was Beast boy.
Starfire have the ability to fly, shoot lazer beams, and super strong. But they only worked when she was feeling good for some reason. I loved the alien home world episodes personally.

I didn't like her sister at all.

Sokka was the heart of the team.
So much so they had to give him actual warrior training so he was somewhat competent compared to his co-stars (who had magic powers). They even gave him a Star Sword.


The best D&D on TV was Freaks and Geeks (end of series I think).

[Lago PARANOIA]

Good group, but I disagree with Bard singing = bad. The way they sing that can be bad. Death metal or rock n' roll = badass. Brave Sir Robin = not.

The fundamental problem with the bard class is that you seriously do not have enough time to sing a decent song within the confines of combat.

Either you sing for the entire duration of combat (which will get VERY distracting) or you only sing when the camera is on you. And at that point it doesn't matter how badass your song or singing is, you'll end up sounding like Brave Sir Robin anyway if you only get 3-15 seconds of song in the action.

It's not a big deal on tabletop since you can handwave it, but it'll be very obvious in a cartoon.

Who the heck didn't like Starfire? I'd laugh at them.

She's not an awful character, she's actually probably the second-funniest one (that would be Cyborg), the problem is that Starfire never really contributes anything to the team dynamic other than love interest for someone who couldn't care less. Not just because of her limited power-set, but because whenever the camera was focused on her the episode either ended up being weird and out-of-place with the rest of the series (Betrothed, Troqq, that stupid episode in the 4th season where they crashlanded) or they were a 'Starfire learns that she's really loved and appreciated after all!' episode.

[tzor]

I am going to have to side with the notion that singing may not be bad. Consider the "Dynamic Duo" of the fantasy world, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The former had a lot of bardic singing talents. I forget if he was still into the instruments after he lost his hand, but he was a married man by that point in time.

Remember, every iconic party has to be able to boast (and raise the story to epic proportions) at the local tavern.

I agree with the notion that you need a paladin as the leader. The whole interplay with planning and murphy's law is a major potential of plot points.

I think you also need a "ranger." Yea, that's right, Mr. Paladin, he's a "ranger."

Then you need a magic user and a cleric. But since you already have a "Mr right" in the paladin, you need more of a rabbinic type cleric "On the one hand ... but on the other hand ... but on the third hand ..."

("Hey wait a minute" the Paladin replies, "can we just have two hands.")

Oh and you need a generic dwarf fighter, because well dungeons are his thing. "Aye, we are going exactly 1.5 degrees downhill, I'm a dwarf, I know these things." ... as they walk up the stairs.

[Username17]

Lago is totally right that singing does not work in a television format. A real song takes like 3 minutes of real time. Basically you'd have to structure the show like Josie and the Pussycats, where every single episode called time for a music video montage. That gets old really fast, and gets even more nonsensical if the group isn't a rock band but seriously just has one guy rocking out on a acoustic guitar for every single action scene.

-Username17

[tzor]

Lago is totally right that singing does not work in a television format. A real song takes like 3 minutes of real time. Basically you'd have to structure the show like Josie and the Pussycats, where every single episode called time for a music video montage. That gets old really fast, and gets even more nonsensical if the group isn't a rock band but seriously just has one guy rocking out on a acoustic guitar for every single action scene.

Ideally you would never see a complete song. The "bard" (wait I thought he was the "ranger" ...) would start the first two lines before the Paladin interrupts him on his accuracy, or before the whole scene flashes back to what actually happened.

[Prak]

Personally, I'm pretty bummed by the fact that A:TLA didn't seem to take ahold of the public consciousness as it deserved to. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that it has the highest density of quality out of any animated feature and that's up against stiff competition like JLU and TTGL.

Why do you think that the cartoon didn't catch on as well as it should have? Did it just not stay on the air long enough? Did the show not do enough merchandise tie-in? Is it a problem of an excellent cartoon competing against a bunch of average-to-great ones? Was it aimed at the wrong kind of audience?

I think it's biggest problem may have been the animation age ghetto syndrome. Even I, who likes cartoons, thought, before actually seeing it, that it was too childish. I think the biggest influence on that was that it was put on a channel with a lot of stuff that *is* excessively immature.

Who the heck didn't like Starfire? I'd laugh at them.
Cyborg was actually the least interesting.
He wasn't a freak like beast boy, godblood like Raven, trained by the Batman, or an alien like Starfire. He was a human and good with machines.
She was not the heart of the team: that was Beast boy.
Starfire have the ability to fly, shoot lazer beams, and super strong. But they only worked when she was feeling good for some reason. I loved the alien home world episodes personally.

I didn't like her sister at all.

I didn't particularly like Starfire. The "I'm an alien, so I'm going to be stupidly ignorant of your culture, to the point of being obnoxious because our cultures are so different" is just bad. They should have stuck with the "Proud Warrior Race" chick from the comic with trouble understanding some of the more perplexing parts of human society. Hell, they could have made her a deliverer of adult bonus content by bringing up some of the stuff that, even lampshaded, would go over kids' heads and adults would get a laugh out of, or a squick. She could have asked why Slade took such a liking to Terra, for example.

Honestly most of the team was obnoxious, I watched it for Raven, Robin's less emo moments, and Beast Boy's less class-clownish moment. Cyborg was ok, and kinda seemed like the team uncle (like a team dad, but cooler), but even he got saddled with a good bit of dumb.

The fundamental problem with the bard class is that you seriously do not have enough time to sing a decent song within the confines of combat.

Either you sing for the entire duration of combat (which will get VERY distracting) or you only sing when the camera is on you. And at that point it doesn't matter how badass your song or singing is, you'll end up sounding like Brave Sir Robin anyway if you only get 3-15 seconds of song in the action.

It's not a big deal on tabletop since you can handwave it, but it'll be very obvious in a cartoon.

Music Meister

[Lago PARANOIA]

Ideally you would never see a complete song. The "bard" (wait I thought he was the "ranger" ...) would start the first two lines before the Paladin interrupts him on his accuracy, or before the whole scene flashes back to what actually happened.

If you do this then you'll quickly end up sounding like Elan or Brave Sir Robin.

Seriously, put on a music video or something. Then every 5-20 seconds cut away to a different song and different scene. Or hell, you don't even have to put on a different song.

Moreover, singing with actual lyrics is actually really inappropriate for most combat scenes. AMVs always and without exception suck shit and it's because even if the video person chose an appropriate song, the singing is really distracting from the action. Occasionally it works, but emphasis on occasion. Seriously, watch a batch of cartoons or live-action adventure/action shows. Notice how incredibly rare it is to get any vocals more complicated than a woman trilling in the background or ominous latin chanting. And even then it only works if you're willing to forgo sound effects and combat chatter for the scene, which is again okay if you do it now and then but as a once-an-episode thing it sucks.

Making this even worse is that the bard will have to play songs that are appropriate to the background theme. Their song can't be the background theme, because they seriously only have one instrument and can't even do the J&TPC thing because they're the only one with an instrument. This is a grievous limitation, because that means that unless you want to play an action scene theme that doesn't match up with the bard's singing/playing (which will sound awful), the music will have to match up with the bard's performance. Except that the bard is stuck using crap appropriate for a heroic fantasy pastiche, meaning that you're either forced to resort to anachronisms like giving the bard a magical saxophone or your selection of tunes will be very limited if the bard participates in them.

It's a really bad idea all around; there's a reason why those kind of characters died a hideous death with the end of the 80's and no one has made any attempt to revive them.

[Prak]

Well, conceivably you could start with a character who wants to be a bard and quickly finds it's not particularly feasible, and branches out into something else.

[tzor]

If you do this then you'll quickly end up sounding like Elan or Brave Sir Robin.

I was worried more along the lines of the prince in MP's Holy Grail "stop the singing!" But if this is an animated catroon (a regular catroon is even worse with an entire song in a single panel with additional panels being adoring fan girl worship ... extra credit if he's an elf and you can get Frank Sinatra jokes into the strip) you have to keep everything not directly related to the plot short and mostly hinted at.

Elan uses bard songs to "improve" skill checks, something which is wrong on so many levels in actual game play. Sir Robin's minstrel's were just plain annoying.

My whole idea is the iconic "you meet at a bar." Only it starts out after the fact and the adventure is protrayed as a flashback. The dwarf is drinking, the friar (cleric) is eating, the ranger (who is really a thief ...) is singing, and the Paladin is trynig to have a political conversation with the barkeep on some high moral argument which the barkeep doesn't really care about.

[FatR]

Personally, I'm pretty bummed by the fact that A:TLA didn't seem to take ahold of the public consciousness as it deserved to. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that it has the highest density of quality out of any animated feature and that's up against stiff competition like JLU and TTGL.

Why do you think that the cartoon didn't catch on as well as it should have? Did it just not stay on the air long enough? Did the show not do enough merchandise tie-in? Is it a problem of an excellent cartoon competing against a bunch of average-to-great ones? Was it aimed at the wrong kind of audience?

I can only offer my personal experience. The weak beginning. My initial reaction on the first episode was "some kiddie stuff with slapstick humor, cartoonish (in a bad way) approach to violence, and semi-shitty animation" and only years after that I realised that A:TLA is really avesome, once the story and the characters mature a bit. Accidentally, my initial reaction to TTGL was pretty similar, and I didn't dropped it only because of being pointed to it by a really positive review from a source I trusted.

And of course, it didn't have power of an existing franchise to back it up. In fact, I think it also was a bit too short to really establish itself from zero.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's almost certainly intentional, FatR. I'm sure you could write an essay on how tween-aimed action-adventure fiction starts out light-hearted with plenty of jokes and kidding around and villains that aren't ultra-scary but then as the show matures and gets more serious the comedy moments become increasingly out-of-place.

It's very easy to go from silly to serious, the reverse is not easy. Unless you're planning on having a mostly episodic show like Teen Titans where arcs and episodes are mostly self-contained and characters don't grow all that much, you actually need to start out at a fairly light-hearted place to have some room to work with. If it starts out too mature and serious it might alienate the younger audience before it has room to grow on then.

[Midnight_v]

This might be an unpopular opinion. . .
...but I think the Main Guy in the band shuold be... a Warblade.

Now before you groan, hear me out on this. One of the things is by doing this you get to roll a few meme's in with the guy(more on that in a sec) and you can miss the "Fighter's can't do shit" idea pretty much completely. Lastly, assuming this is a kids show, it gives something for the kids to yell out when they're playing. I use "RUBY NIGHTMARE BLADE!" on you! Or whatever. This has a lot of resonance with kid mentality.
Meme's or arctypes or whatever you want to call it. You get to play the main as:

Strider Hiyru: Mostly for clothing appearance because the main needs a scarf though it'll be him wearing light armor/medium but having something blowing behind him is key and if it isn't hair it lets someone else have that.
Roy from: Oots: Reached out to by an old mentor from beyond perhaps the monostary has been betrayed or some such. Same as strider.
Kain from "kung~fu": Flashbacks, when trying to dredge up martial power to split bolders or whatever.
Drizzt: Two weapon dancing is a popular style, short sword size kukri's exist Irl but are ceremonial, not so in D&D. . . ftw.
(It also allows for occasional descriptions of how badass he is when he well this):
Lancer: "What is he doing? It looks like he's not touching that golem at all"
Mr. Know it all: He isn't, he's losing himself in his combat rhythm! Oh my, he's been trained as a stromguard warrior!" I thought that technique was forbidden!
Lifted from wolverine "Oh noez! Logans going into a berserker rage!"

HOWEVER, the cool thing about this is that while those kukri's are his favorite weapons. Will be to defy the Artifact weapon thing entirely, let the Main use varying weapons at various times for various effects. You can even let him lose his kurkris for a time and make him a Great Hammer guy, warblades do that... weapon swap or whatever.
Charles atlas superpower to Ki powers to being able to teleport, and stop time and or/planeshift whatever. If it gets that far you're imporvising anyway but .... checked... yeah there is a "Time Stands Still" manuever.
Further, if he's a refugee from the temple that has been corrupted somehow, occasionally ninja's/assassins will show up to kill him for escaping with the secrets. Which isn't a big deal at all.

Making him the "Last Sword Prince of the Fallen White Raven temple " lends to being a team player, and explains in some ways why he's cross trained with enough to know crusader stance for healing his friends during combat.

Note: He'll secretly know something from the shadow hand school, teleports most likely, but doesn't want to use it because he was tortured as a youth, to gain access to the "evil schools" powers. Course he'll use it at some point and feel bad about it but whatever. It also opens the door for a nemesis using "Five-death, creeping enervation strike" etc.
but most of all it makes for an interesting story and allows a lot of growth. Really, that shit just writes itself.
Obviating "My god powers me!" devotion to a diety ever, pally wouldn't do that discussion ever, and lets the main be a badass but use non leathal tecniques...

but that leads me to a question. What age range are you shooting for.

One more thing... earlier lago says "I hate raistlin" I'm kinda of a mind to think that its a bad rubric to go off.
You could verywell take a pastiche of the most popular D&D charaters and put them on a team together, and that might totally work. Ymmv.
Also... something strikes me as odd about the 3 girls 2 elf males idea. Can't put my finger on what though.
So far I'd give it:
Human Warblade (Male) (leader) *fills all the roles you could possibly want in that spot. Train hard eat your veggies + angst.
Druid (Male) (lancer): I really want to make the Druid the lancer going off on "We have to do this or consider Nature" and almost coming to blows with the Warblade and/or others to be a really good foil. Plus it brings the animal companion to the table. Which can recieve it's own characterization and you can even use it to occasionally slip "Heart" on to the team, depending on what it is. "What are you looking at you stupid, cat?" (cat proceeds to guilt them to monologue)
Rogue (Changeling) (Sex TBD): This is a diversion and I'm not trying to play ramna 1/2 or some nonsense just that this seems to be a good comprimise, much like Morph from the old X-men cartoon, of course the changeling will be the Snarky, sarcasitc one.
Dark Magic girl: Drow wizard well it fits as a drow really well, almost too well.
Magic girl/Princess: is there ANY way to make this a half-orc? It'd be nice to see a beutiful half-orc girl on the team. You know what. If someone can make a half-orc beutiful girl, and keep them slim and feminie, then yeah there you have an undead hating cleric... or, a "Favored Soul", much better in some ways.

Though, I gotta say, Lago's point has some merit, you could play that whole Half-sister thing with a human being both the parent of the dark magic girl and the Princess magic girl.
Though honestly that'd work with a beutiful half orc with a half elf sister elven just as much as a drow. So lets just go with the elves cause you're right people do love drow, and green skinned girls are popular in star trek more than anywhere else.
That way you can pull a Betty and Veronica, which is a lot more understandable to the yonger crowd.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Not to be too pedantic about a very minor point, but kukris are soooo not ceremonial. They are for cutting branches and chopping heads. My 1920s vintage kukri is all business. In fact the guy who runs the karate school down the street from my old house even built a two-kukri fighting style.

Though come to think of it, you might have been thinking about the 6-foot ceremonial ox-beheading kukri.

[Midnight_v]

Not to be too pedantic about a very minor point, but kukris are soooo not ceremonial. They are for cutting branches and chopping heads. My 1920s vintage kukri is all business. In fact the guy who runs the karate school down the street from my old house even built a two-kukri fighting style.

Though come to think of it, you might have been thinking about the 6-foot ceremonial ox-beheading kukri.

Thank you for reading all of that, I thought it'd be met with jeers.
I wasn't being clear. I"m well aware that kurkri's are SERIOUS weapons, visually however i would want them represented to be closer to short sword size; in D&D they come off as "keen daggers" were gonna run em as short sword size so it's CLEAR what the guy is using something special. Simple visualization thats all.
Also about that 6 foot bull killer, someone can totally use one but ultimatley: This would be the "bastard sword kukri" design
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WdvfQFg ... re=related
Edit: minus the part at the end where he's killed by artifact ascendance.
It starts at 2:40 BBEG Makes a blade thats the blade the "leader guy" uses 2 of those, and but the whole video is a good example of how the fight rubric works for the Main guy, if you imagine you get one character that uses all the good fighting styles presented there. Ideally speaking though we have a 2wpn sword style but the swords are essntially kurkis. Exaggerated exaggerated in size to achieve visualy effect.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I actually kind of liked your blathering. Namechecking Strider Hiryu goes a long way in my book. And I suppose I'm just a kukri enthusiast. I remember sitting in the theater watching LotR and actually saying out loud: "Nice kukri, Viggo!" But your suggestions do have a good flavor, ultimately... in the context of a kids' cartoon, the iconics do need to have a certain flair.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now before you groan, hear me out on this. One of the things is by doing this you get to roll a few meme's in with the guy(more on that in a sec) and you can miss the "Fighter's can't do shit" idea pretty much completely. Lastly, assuming this is a kids show, it gives something for the kids to yell out when they're playing. I use "RUBY NIGHTMARE BLADE!" on you! Or whatever. This has a lot of resonance with kid mentality.

No. Warblades suck for the same reason that fighters and Starfire suck; they provide nothing unique to the table except for combat ability.

If the hero was a Spellblade or a Paladin then it'd be fine, because those characters could do things besides fight. Unless you want to make the Warblade a Chuck Norris joke such as cleaving dimensional portals from thin air or swinging his sword like a helicopter blade to fly, the character is no good.

You people need to get it through your thick heads that Martial characters suck and only grognards and people with no imagination want to see them on screen. Every time A:TLA decided it was time for Sokka to contribute something he ended up killing the tension, because the opportunity for him to take down Library Owl or Combustion Man reeks of plot convenience.

[Midnight_v]

I actually kind of liked your blathering. Namechecking Strider Hiryu goes a long way in my book. And I suppose I'm just a kukri enthusiast.

Thanks! Strider having that scaf wave worked really well, visually. Capes and hoods seem to be overdone somehow.
The kukri... man so under represented, for such an awesome real life tool. Did you like the video I linked? I mean gving him a rant about how his blades were "passed down" but also allowing for him to improvise any weapon and be just as badass is so fitting.

Ultimately... in the context of a kids' cartoon, the iconics do need to have a certain flair.

Gotcha, then it still works and moreso, basically, you've established the "Running Joke" on the main. Call him
Lancer: "Hey there fighter!"
Leader: "Me? I'm a Warblade!"
Lancer: "Look you're a fighter, you fight things. The rest of thats just flair."
Leader: "You realize I can teleport... and fly breifly using some of my manuevers?"
Lancer: "Fiiiiigter...." (the lancer yell this out from the other side of the battlefield whenever Leader guy does a "non-flashy" move.
That way you get that constant reference to the Iconic, and Since honestly the warblade is nothing more than a replacement fighter anyway... it's a good intro and a call out to what was done with the D&D franchise anyway.

No. Warblades suck for the same reason that fighters and Starfire suck; they provide nothing unique to the table except for combat ability.

I personally would not make our 'angsty not really evil but DARKNYSS' brooder type male only because I fucking hate Raistlin.

Lago... you have a lot of bias there, and amidst your good ideas there is a sharp bent of "Lago doesnt' like it, so NO!" thats not a good determinate for whats best.
I'm pretty sure for a kids show the Wuxia Tob guys are whats up. There are so many shows that establish, "Training to the highest we can reach", "Studying constantly to improve myself"; along with Teamwork for the win White Raven is good enough that it really works in that context.

You people need to get it through your thick heads that Martial characters suck and only grognards and people with no imagination want to see them on screen

Wow... yeah thats just really untrue but moreso needless hyperbole Lago. We can't do focus group testing but most of what you say is just more "LAGO hate fighter!, No one like fighters." which is really bad.
Ki powers or Secret technique fighting has a lot of resonance. and that argument about imagination is just... just out there, bro.
Also, basically he's multiclased, learned some stuff from Crusader schoo So they can heall, and some stuff from Swordsages: who subsequently were corrpted and used the shadow powers to take over the temple or whatever which lets him teleport. . . Well not multiclass perse more like martial study... it doesn't need to be an exact translation. It works the character has flair and there will NEVER be paladin or alignent based arguments brought up.
However, moreso, and this is important... he's the leader guy so some of his powers will be in things like "Diplomacy" which comes with the posistion, advocating "fighting without fighting" etc will be his roll too.
Its not a real game its a cartoon... so there's a certain amount of that campiness that becomes really relavant.
@lago
Tl;DR: Don't let your bias decide for you about these things, and you really let it cloud your options.

[JigokuBosatsu]

@Midnite- haven't watched it yet, hard to watch videos at work. Your 'party teasing the fighter' bit made me think about something, which is...

@Lago- Well, fighters suck gamewise, but are prevalent in fiction. If we're trying to hew strongly towards D&D tropes, why not have a couple of the party members be grognards and give the fighter shit about being useless? Could be a bottomless well of comedy/dramatic conflict.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Long story short, characters like Tordek and Batman and Captain America are retarded to have in an ensemble cast where you don't want blatant ensemble divisions for a variety of reasons. Here are two of them but I can come up with more.

1) You have to role protect mundane shit. It always happens in stories where you have a VAH alongside people with genuine superpowers. Zuko has to stop swordfighting despite being established as really good at it because it makes Sokka feel small in the pants that he's competing for screentime against someone who swordfights slightly worse than him AND has fire powers. Tony Stark can no longer be the idea or gadgeteer guy because it makes Batman feel small in the pants. If the power division is big enough then you have to shove more and more stuff onto them.

2.) It encourages people to have stupid anticlimaxes that totally kill the threat level of a villain. Sokka wrecked two fights because he was contractually obligated a useful move. Batman regularly and accidentally neuters villains he fights in the Justice League just by not being turned into goo when someone chokeslams him. Usopp fought a guy with super strength and was able to spit water hard enough to level a forest and WIN--which wasn't a moment of awesomeness for Usopp, it just made his foe the lamest Fishman character to get a name and a fight.

Lago... you have a lot of bias there, and amidst your good ideas there is a sharp bent of "Lago doesnt' like it, so NO!" thats not a good determinate for whats best.

I told you several times why the idea sucks. If all you want to hear is 'lol no' that's your problem.

There are so many shows that establish, "Training to the highest we can reach", "Studying constantly to improve myself"; along with Teamwork for the win White Raven is good enough that it really works in that context.

... which they can do as a paladin or a spellblade. Not only that, but it also avoids the hypocrisy of showing someone training really hard and being inferior to characters who have The Gift.

Also, basically he's multiclased, learned some stuff from Crusader schoo So they can heall, and some stuff from Swordsages: who subsequently were corrpted and used the shadow powers to take over the temple or whatever which lets him teleport. . . Well not multiclass perse more like martial study... it doesn't need to be an exact translation. It works the character has flair and there will NEVER be paladin or alignent based arguments brought up.

Okay, but then the character stops being a Vanilla Action Hero once he does that shit. And unless you're willing to put them through an 'underpowered' period (see below for the perils of this) then it's just an overcomplicated waste of time.

Could be a bottomless well of comedy/dramatic conflict.

The whole 'I feel useless!' issue is not a good thing to build a character around if you want them to be likable. It made Sakura and Usopp the least popular characters out of the entire ensemble while it went on despite the fact that their inferiority complexes were justified and they were otherwise likable characters. You either have to resolve it and quickly before the fanbase hardens to the character or just accept that they'll consistently rank at the bottom of the popularity polls no matter what you do.

There's a reason why Sokka only angsts about his non-bending abilities like a couple of times in the series and even got a 'Dare To Be Badass' episode to himself.