How would you make Hero from Dragon Quest?

[Trickster]

I'm interested in creating a version of Hero from all the dragon quests, basically collecting all the common traits and turning it into a singular character.

While I'm not familiar with any of the in-game mechanics, I do have a gist of the character:

• Sword & Shield
• Lengthy spell list
• Slime familiar?

I was thinking duskblade but their spell list is ridiculously small, so should I just go with duskblade and enhance the spell list? Or go a different route?

[RSGA]

If you're going for commonality, the spell list would probably be rather small. Even discounting the pure bruiser heroes, the major common elements would be some healing, a few bits of support/utility, and then lightning spells. If you wanted a slightly larger/more modern focus, I think you'd want to do some initiator base into JPM and go heavier on the battle than the spell side.

[Fizban]

The DQ Hero changes significantly as the series changes its mechanics over time. Early on they're the "I get everything you want but not technically everything so the specialists are a little better in their areas." Later games start adding skill paths such that the Hero really doesn't have everything anymore, but then many of those skills are just different flavors of 'hit thing'. Sometimes this can even end up similar to the job-system class-switching char-op madness of some Final Fantasy games. IIRC in DQ9 you don't even get a Hero class, you just make your character with one of the many classes- I picked 'Minstrel' as the closest to classic, and was rather annoyed by the lack of anything interesting (indeed, I should have realized Bard would be Bard).

The 'Hero' generally has:
-Almost any armor, including most of what DnD would call Heavy armor, barring the occasional Warrior exclusive.
-Almost any weapon, including all of what DnD would call Martial weapons, barring the occasional Warrior exclusive and the 'exotic' weapons exclusive to other classes.
--In games where the skill paths exist, the Hero has traditional swords, shields, and greatswords, plus a few others.
-Access to both attack and healing magic, but later than Wizards and Clerics, as well as convenient teleportation magic, sometimes sooner than Wizards. Depending on the game, sometimes spells feel like they deal the same damage no matter who uses them, and sometimes they seem to deal twice as much with a specialist than a generalist (this may be in part due to easy char-op in the older games).
--The Hero gets the Zap spell as their big exclusive, but it's usually very mana inefficient and not worth casting?

Simplest would be Psychic Warrior with a custom spell/power list, relaxing the 3-limit on Martial Study feats for those weapon skills. DnD has far longer spell lists than any video game, and it's quite possible you can fit the entire range of DQ spells into a single character's spells known even without fudging them as a 'fixed list' caster. But you can also do that too.

If you want spells to deal the same damage without augmenting, you could make their stuff scale automatically, but you'd need to compensate by getting rid of the "every spell should deal minimum 1d6 per level no-save even at 1st level" mentality: No damaging spells below 2nd, and those 2nd level spells deal d6/2 levels with a save, sonic and non-elemental spells must be 4th+ level, and probably no no-save spells at all. This would give the Hero massive magical efficiency at high levels. . . but high level foes also ought to have lots of SR and energy resistance which will cut the damage of those lower level spells and require them to use the higher cost effects anyway- just like in the video games, the hit point and defense scaling make the those efficient low level spells useless against high level foes.


Alternatively, make a reduced casting jack-of-all-trades class which can actually do the thing, unlike the Bard. I've got one in my tweaks and brew doc called the "Free Mage" (naming is hard), but technically it can't be a DQ Hero because it very specifically does *not* gain Fireball, because Fireball is a benchmark top-tier attack spell if its level. It's more meant for stuff like the Tales series magic warriors, or Bards that are magical dabblers rather than lol bardic music.


Or finally, Battle Sorc with Fighter (or martial adept) dips, and again either a custom class spell list or some sort bespoke way of getting the non-Sor/Wiz spells. If you can use Arcane Disciple without the massive limitations (Wisdom requirement and 1/day/spell), and fix the Healing domain to have status removal and high level healing instead of just Cures, then that would work.


If you're planning a Dragon Quest or similar video-game inspired sort of campaign, I highly suggest changing the resurrection rules- because while DnD 3.0 wanted to be cool with you dying so you could learn from it (and failed because the level loss was huge), DnD 3.5 would rather you tear up your sheet and make a new character (because now you lose levels *and* huge piles of gold).

• Delay Death and Revenance: removed.
• Vivify: 4th, usable within 1 min/level after death, return at -1hp as raise dead but with no penalties, 500gp. Most things that reference the revivify (SpC) spell instead now use vivify.
• Raise Dead: 5th, as normal (within 1 day/level) but 1,500gp, and instead of losing a level you gain a negative level that sticks until you level up.
• Revive: 6th, as vivify but target returns at 1/2 of their full hit points (still 500gp).
• Resurrection: 7th, as normal but 3,000gp and instead of losing a level you gain a negative level that sticks until you level up.
• True Resurrection: 9th, as normal but 5,000gp.

[Shpadoinkle]

Quick rundown of the heroes (at least of the games I've played, which are DQ 1-8) without getting into the actual mechanics. Spoilered in case you don't really care about the summary of each hero's abilities.

Spoiler

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In DQ1 the hero was kind of a magic knight type. Could use any weapon or armor in the game, but... he was also the ONLY playable character in the game, so that doesn't really have much weight. DQ1 was also pretty much the first JRPG. He was also good with magic, his spell list including healing, direct damage, and status effects (sleep and 'stopspell,' which is basically Silence in D&D terms.)

In DQ2 there were three heroes, who were the direct descendants of the hero from DQ1. The 'main' hero, the prince of Midenhall (Lorasia in the GBC port/remake, though only that version - later ones returned to using the name Midenhall) was the one you played first and the one you named. He was good with weapons and armor and had REALLY good physical stats, but he couldn't use magic at all.
- The second hero in DQ2, the prince of Cannock, was a hybrid character, like the hero from the first game. He could use some weapons and armor and could use some magic, but he wasn't really very good at either of them (at least in the original version, remakes would expand his equipment options quite a bit and make his magic significantly stronger.)
- The third hero in DQ2 was the Princess of Moonbrooke, who was pretty much your typical mage. Poor equipment options, but she could use some very powerful magic.

DQ3 and 4 went back to the hero being a hybrid character (though leaning towards the more physical side, able to use almost all weapons and armor,) and generally the best character in the game. The heroes from these games are very similar, having access to powerful healing spells (DQ4 introduced the HealUsAll spell, which restores the entire party to maximum HP, though it's very costly,) as well as introducing what would become a signature of the 'hero' class: lightning spells. From here forward, lightning-type damage is generally considered holy and/or something only able to be wielded by The Legendary Hero in the series.

DQ5's main character is in fact NOT The Legendary Hero, but rather a cleric-type character with access to healing and wind-elemental spells (which are a mainstay of the cleric or priest-type classes in the series.) The Legendary Hero is playable later in the game, and in most respects is basically the same as the DQ3 and 4 incarnations.

DQ6 and 7 take a major detour from the 'class' based advancement that previous entries had, and now have 'jobs' for characters instead, which are kind of like a template applied to a character's base stats. Any character can take up any job (any job they qualify for, at least - there are some advanced and hybrid jobs that require mastering 'base' jobs first. Like, the Sage job requires mastering Mage and Priest first, etc.) With enough grinding ANY character can take up the 'Hero' job, which grants access to a lot of the same abilities the Legendary Heroes from 3-5 had, but the main characters of these games have the special quality of being allowed to access it with only 1/4 the normal requirements met.

DQ8 takes another detour from BOTH the advancement systems of the previous games and instead has you allocate skill points upon gaining a level, in one of five skill categories, with each character having their own set of skills (mostly - the hero and Angelo, the priest-type companion, both have access to the 'swords' skill tree. While their Sword skills are not identical, they ARE very similar, with both characters gaining access to most of the same skills if you choose to invest your skill points in swords for both of them.) In addition, you gain abilities and spells as you level up that aren't affected by where you allocate your skill points. The hero's 'level' skills are largely the same abilities the heroes from 3-5 had, and that the 'hero' job in 6 and 7 granted. Healing, protection, support, etc.

So a summary of the signature 'hero' abilities are:
- Good with weapons and armor, able to use most if not all of the ones available in the game, often including a unique set of weapons that only The Legendary Hero can use.
- Healing and/or protective spells, which the hero tends to be VERY good with.
- Lightning elemental direct damage spells, with lightning damage generally being considered 'holy' in the series.

Conclusion: Paladin fits almost perfectly, both mechanically and thematically. The hero is usually 'The Chosen One' or has some divine lineage. Maybe swap out the paladin's mount with the ability to make smites at range or against multiple enemies in a single round.

[Prime32]

I'm interested in creating a version of Hero from all the dragon quests, basically collecting all the common traits and turning it into a singular character.

While I'm not familiar with any of the in-game mechanics, I do have a gist of the character:

• Sword & Shield
• Lengthy spell list
• Slime familiar?

I was thinking duskblade but their spell list is ridiculously small, so should I just go with duskblade and enhance the spell list? Or go a different route?

Dragon Quest's Hero was inspired by the original D&D ranger class - a warrior who dabbles in both arcane and divine magic, gains bonuses when fighting larger enemies, and shares the fighter's leadership abilities but angled less towards armies of humans and more towards a small number of elite or monstrous allies. To approximate that in 3.5e... maybe a Factotum, or a Mystic Ranger with the Sword of the Arcane Order feat.

The idea of channelling spells through a sword was invented by the manga The Adventure of Dai (released after Dragon Quest III and ran alongside IV-VI), which was enormously popular/influential and had most of its ideas ported eventually back into the games (including the sword skills mentioned above).
"Hero" as a class does seem to exist in AoD - it's addressed that Dai has potential to learn lightning-element spells which his Mage ally can't, another Hero serves as a mentor to the group, a third Hero failed to live up to his potential and lives as a conman, and a fourth is champion of another region of the world. However, most characters in the story have abilities beyond their class, and in Dai's case he has a special role in the world beyond it, being a unique human/dragon/demon hybrid called the Dragon Knight (if you're familiar with Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Avatar is basically the Dragon Knight concept transposed to an Eastern setting and works nigh-identically). His spellblade technique is specifically a Dragon Knight thing which can't be learned through training alone.

[OracleofWuffing]

My experience with the series ends after 4- and not that video game spells ever line up 1:1 with tabletop spells- but I recall replenishing spells was even rougher in the Dragon Quest games. You might find an item or two that recovered a small amount of MP, a random amount of times, but outside of that, you had to go to a town to rest. You didn't get tents, and even if you did, your carrying capacity was even more precious than what 3.5 models out of the box. I have no idea how you'd model that in-game... Or even if you wanted to.