Thursday, February 18, 2010

[DND] Character Concept - Solomon Kane

Honestly, I didn't know anything about Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane until last summer at San Diego Comic-Con. I happened to catch the tail end of the Solomon Kane movie preview panel because I wanted to see some other programming happening later on in the same room. When they played the trailer for the film (which apparently never got a distributor for a U.S. release), it enthralled me instantly.

You see, back then, I played more than my fair share of Warhammer Online. The imagery of Solomon Kane in the movie reminded me very much of the Witch Hunters in that world, which I also found fascinating.  Naturally, I immediately want to put such imagery into game terms, so I decided to translate this idea into a D&D character.

To start off, I wanted to identify a few core themes and characteristics that I deemed most vital to the character:
  • devout piety
  • singular focus on seeking out and punishing evil
  • expert swordsmanship
  • flintlock pistols
  • pimp hats
In D&D4e terms, the religious aspect of the character led me to the Divine power source, while the swordsmanship and pistol aspects sounded more like a Martial discipline. To get as close to the source character as possible, I decided I would have to build the concept character as either a Multiclass or a Hybrid. I built one of each, and I go into excruciating detail about them below. So let's get down to it.