Café de Nuit

So okay, last night I opened up a D&D Miniatures booster box from the Unhallowed expansion (expecting Strahd to pop out), lo and behold I get a handaxe-wielding Van Richten complete with EPIC stats (for D&D Miniatures)! Woohoo!

In the Unhallowed version, he's a Cleric 11/Sacred Purifier 3 (PrC from Libris Mortis), which I guess isn't all that bad considering everything.

Now as you all know I'm not a Ravenloft fundamentalist; as much as possible, I want to connect the Ravenloft we know to what D&D is today. Van Richten being a Sacred Purifier is alright, but can his cleric-ness (domains Healing and Sun) be justified? For me I guess yeah.

Dion of the Fraternity wrote:So okay, last night I opened up a D&D Miniatures booster box from the Unhallowed expansion (expecting Strahd to pop out), lo and behold I get a handaxe-wielding Van Richten complete with EPIC stats (for D&D Miniatures)! Woohoo!

Let me know what you think of Strahd when you do get him. I was not impressed with his mini at all. I buy them for the 3.5 D&D games I play for our battles(Also lots of them look really cool) I am now on my 5th set and the last one was not very good IMO. The Werewolf Lord & the Ogre Executioner are really good looking though. Hopefully they will do better with the next one.

He's not a rogue anymore? (Or if not, a fighter?)

It's just an odd choice of class, since none of the texts written so far about him mention divine powers...

But we have to put this in the same file as EtCR and the elf pirate Strahd: as something else not related at all to the RL setting.

Joël

All the source books place Van Richten as being a rogue with no magical abilities and he was highly distrustful of magic as a side effect of his 'work'.

Dion of the Fraternity wrote:So okay, last night I opened up a D&D Miniatures booster box from the Unhallowed expansion (expecting Strahd to pop out), lo and behold I get a handaxe-wielding Van Richten complete with EPIC stats (for D&D Miniatures)! Woohoo!

In the Unhallowed version, he's a Cleric 11/Sacred Purifier 3 (PrC from Libris Mortis), which I guess isn't all that bad considering everything.

Now as you all know I'm not a Ravenloft fundamentalist; as much as possible, I want to connect the Ravenloft we know to what D&D is today. Van Richten being a Sacred Purifier is alright, but can his cleric-ness (domains Healing and Sun) be justified? For me I guess yeah.

Now, they never said this was Rudolph van Richten, right? ;D

IIRC, the old sage mentions in one of his VRGs that if his life had followed a different path, he might have heeded the calling to become a cleric.

EtCR is a rehash of I6, which is set in 528 BC, right? Maybe the cleric-VR lived back then, and the herbalist-cum-monster-hunter we know and love is his reincarnation. Just a thought.

Van Richten training himself as a theif was a dream.

Strahd dressing in black and not looking like the Dread Elf-Pirate of Lake Baratok was a dream.

Ravenloft not being filled with domains from Eborron (how do you spell that any way?) was a dream too.

And when WOTC does d20 Mutant Ninja Turtles, Azalin being an undead human tyrant rather than being a misunderstood and oversized undead shell of his former self will be every bit as much a dream.

The nightmare has just begun . . .

cure wrote:Van Richten training himself as a theif was a dream.

Strahd dressing in black and not looking like the Dread Elf-Pirate of Lake Baratok was a dream.

Ravenloft not being filled with domains from Eborron (how do you spell that any way?) was a dream too.

And when WOTC does d20 Mutant Ninja Turtles, Azalin being a human tyrant rather than being a misunderstood and oversized undead turtle will be every bit as much a dream.

The nightmare has hardly begun . . .

LOL... funny, yet I can imagine it happening, spooky...

Nathan of the FoS wrote:Now, they never said this was Rudolph van Richten, right?

Sad to say, but they did call him "Rudolph" in the online Preview article

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20061221a

Correction to the original post: Van Richten is a cleric 11/sacred purifier 5.

In truth, I find this a little depressing. Did anyone actually bother to read who Van Richten actually was?

Then again, it's still better then the Elf-Strahd and Hag-Eva.

To me, this kind of shows that someone with only a very cursory knowledge of Ravenloft made the mini. "This Van Richten dude, he's what, a vampire hunter, yeah? Must be a sun cleric."

Ignore me, I get gloomy....

I dunno. I think WotC doesn't take steps this drastic in overhauling a campaign setting without some careful research. They are after all a commercial corporate entity, and some people on these boards think that excuses all sorts of odd behavior on their part.

That having been said, I still think this direction they're taking the campaign setting in is DAMN WRONG.

Personally, I was outraged at the notion of Van Richten as some badass "undead slayer".. I have a beloved REALMS character, a Kelemvorite Paladin/Cleric/SacredPurifier.... a Realms character. Making Rudolph a cleric shows an utter disrespect for Ravenloft canon -- though from what I've got to see of EtCR, WotC has already proven how little they care about the setting...

To be fair, Van Richten would make a terrible addition to the mini game if he kept his old stats.

On the other hand, it doesn't look much like him, does it? I think maybe it's because he's blond now.... I'd be more tempted to use the High Inquisitor mini for him appearance-wise.

Isabella wrote:To be fair, Van Richten would make a terrible addition to the mini game if he kept his old stats.

VR's usual MO wouldn't really fit the minis game, no.