Dungeon Fantasy 1-2 -- Ranking of PC Templates Chosen by Your Players

[Mailanka]

I talk about DF far more than I play it (and while I'd like to run or play it, I generally find that I'm busy putting together other campaigns).

Still, we've had:
2 Knights
1.5 Martial Artists
1.5 Wizards
1 Swashbuckler
1 Gadgeteer
1 Cleric
1 Holy Warrior

[RobKamm]

In my game we've had:

Barbarian 1
Wizard/Sage 1
Swashbuckler/Bard 1
Scout/Swashbuckler 1
Cleric 1
Knight/Thief 1
Knight 1

[sir_pudding]

I've run a bit of DF but not really enough for a representative sample.
Scout-2
Swashbuckler-1
Cleric (War)-1
Ninja/Holy Warrior (Night)-1

[Carlos]

I like the Barbarian style. But speaking about combat, the Knight overpower the Barbarian completely. Knights has Combat Reflexes, High Pain Threshold and 60 points to spend, including the possibility of buy Weapon Master. They can also buy 4 extra HP. Barbarians start with 5 extra HP and a higher ST, but on the other hand, they have only 30 points to spend and they don't start with Combat Reflexes (though they can buy it).

Things just get balanced with time, when they can buy Weapon Master from a lens...

[RobKamm]

You can certainly do that -- if you want to convert the Barbarian into a combat character. However, the Barbarian is not the optimized combatant in a DF group. The Barbarian is the strong-guy and backs up the Knight and Scout in their roles.

[Kromm]

Yeah, the poor barbarian is misunderstood. He's often classed as a "warrior" in casual DF writing because it's that or "sage," "sneak," or "spellcaster," and he's none of those. Also, he certainly is combat-oriented, just not combat-exclusive; his primary jobs are twofold:

1. Being muscle for muscle's sake – lifting gratings, bending bars, lugging huge chests of loot, and pulling up four little buddies on a rope – as contrasted with muscle for combat's sake.

2. Being the rough-and-ready outdoorsman – wrestling bears, swimming across ice-cold water, and clearing dire brambles with his bare hands – as contrasted with some sort of snooty druid or sneaky scout.

Being strong and tough also makes him respectable at combat, and gives him a secondary niche as the guy who can, with the right gear and power-ups, deal out the single largest physical attack. However, this isn't a high-skill, low-prep scenario, but a medium-skill set piece.

In modern terms, he's not armor (knight) or commandos (scout), or a specialist anti-something unit (holy warrior) or light infantry (swashbuckler), but more like some sort of combat engineers with armored dozers who can certainly plow stuff into the ground under fire but also drag around heavy loads and do work off the battlefield.

[Highland_Piper]

My DF campaign is a bit different as there is no outdoors in the normal sense. My DF world takes place in a completely underground setting of mega dungeons. There are pocket dimensions (none larger than a few square miles), and fantastic cities (called burrows). But because of this the characters take on a slightly different role.

1. Knight
2. Scout
3. Wizard
4. Martial Artist
5. Bard
6. Thief
7. Holy Warrior
8. Cleric
9. Barbarian
10. Swashbuckler
11. Druid