This past Saturday I was going through old characters in archives and realized that most of the characters that have been updated have been, for the most part exactly the same. I decided to update, reword and customize a couple of the characters that I liked. Let me know what you all think.

Barbarian

STR: 5 Craft: 1 Fate: 1 Life: 4

You need not roll the die in the Crags, Chasm or Forest unless you wish to. If you choose to roll, you must accept the result.

Whenever you are about to engage in battle, you may berserk and add 2 to your attack score. If you berserk, you lose a life, even if you win the battle.

You may not use any armour during battle.

Dragon Knight aka Dragon Rider

STR: 3 Craft: 3 Fate: 3 Life: 4

Whenever you defeat a Dragon in battle you may conquer it and keep it as your Mount. The Dragon adds 3 to your strength in combat and when you roll for movement you may roll two dice and choose which one to use. You may only have one Dragon conquered at a time. While you have a Dragon mount you cannot use the abilities of Riding horse or War horse.

Whenever you land on the Castle you may heal your full amount of life for free.

Ranger

STR: 3 Craft: 3 Fate: 4 Life: 4

You need not roll the die in the Crags, Chasm or Forest unless you wish to. If you choose to roll, you must accept the result.

You may choose to ignore the effects of the Storm and Blizzard

Whenever you land on the Desert you do not lose a life.

Whenever you Battle a Dragon or Animal you may add 1 to your total.

Whenever you roll a 1 for movement, you may re-roll your movement die but you must accept the result.

Scout

STR: 3 Craft: 4 Fate: 2 Life: 4

You need not roll the die in the Crags or Forest unless you wish to. If you choose to roll, you must accept the result.

Whenever you land on a Place, you may cover your tracks. Turn the Place card face down, as long as it is face down only you may visit it. This card still counts towards the card total of a space. You may only have one Place face down at a time.

Woodsman

STR: 4 Craft: 2 Fate: 3 Life: 4

You need not roll the die in the Forest, unless you wish to. If you choose to roll, you must accept the result.

Whenever you land on the Woods, you may draw two Adventure Cards, instead of one, but you must encounter both cards. If there is a card already on the Woods when you land there, you may draw a second card, but you must encounter both cards.

When using an Axe in combat add 2 to your Strength instead of 1.

Whenever you defeat an Animal in combat, you may choose to eat its remains rather than take it as a trophy, if you do so heal 1 life.

Let me know what you all think, I'm also want to work on Saytr, Spy, Soldier, Halfling and Pirate.

These are seem quite reasonable. Off hand I don't remember which ones have been re-released by FFG.

Of them all, the only tweaks I might make would be

• The Barbarian may use a Shield but not other types of armor. He may not use a Shield when going berserk.
• The Ranger cannot cover his tracks in Fields... in otherwords, he can only do so in the wild (other draw spaces). That seems the best way to word what I'm thinking of. I suppose one could say "only in Hills, Plains, and Woods", but there are a lot of other non-Fields draw spaces IN THE WILD. I would also give him the ability to evade animals and dragons rather than a bonus in attacking them; his total points (S/C/F) are already above the other characters here.
• For the Woodsman, I would make him miss a turn to prepare that meal, but it's not that big a deal. Maybe if he can do it any time without missing a turn, he might have a minimum amount of Animal trophies he has to trade in for that Life instead of Strength.
• And I've never cared for the Dragon Rider or other variations, but I'm probably alone in that.

Did you have any notions for illustrating these and turning them into actual characters cards? If they are ones that have been (will be) re-released by FFG, they might not attract those obsessed with commercial material - but someone would probably like playing them.

Thanks for the feedback I appreciate it. For the most part I didn't make too many exceptions, such as only covering tracks on X, to keep the characters simple and not slow down the pace of play. If there are exceptions they're taken from the original cards.

I may have to change the wording for the Barbarian to state that. The only reason I dropped armor completely was so it wouldn't be a better version of the Highlander.
Scout, I think you crunched in with the Ranger. I like your suggestion and it makes logical sense but rather than being a straight nature based Scout I think of him as a military Scout trained in subterfuge so he knows how to hide his tracks on any terrain.
The Ranger I like your suggestion to make it so he can evade rather than getting an attack buff. I just went with the attack bonus because that's what the 2nd edition Ranger had and most fantasy Rangers, such as in D&D have always gotten attack buffs against favored types of monsters. I'll probably be changing that to evade, I like that idea.
The Woodsman I decided to just emulate the Vampiress from highlands and allow him to heal since she can sacrifice followers to heal I figured trophies were just as vital or less as some followers. Originally he could take an animal as a follower, but I found a neat Beast Master card and decided to reserve that that ability specifically for the Beast Master.
Truthfully I've never cared for any character that's interacted with a dragon without slaying them in the end. Dragons are pretty overrated, I just thought the mechanic was kind of cool and wanted to see if I could improve the character.

I have the cards made, I just don't have the pictures put on them yet. As I don't have photoshop installed I can't put the images on the character template backgrounds. I figure after I finish up the other batch, get some feedback, make some changes I would get them all completed as playable cards.

Here is the Swordsman I forgot to post him.

STR: 3 Craft: 3 Fate: 2 Life: 4

You begin the game with a Sword from the Purchase deck.

Whenever you are about to engage in battle with another character, you may attempt to disarm them. Roll one die and add your craft score, if the roll is higher than their craft score they may not use any weapons during the battle.

Whenever you are about to engage in battle, you may choose to fight defensively. If you do, add 2 to your score. If you win the battle it counts as a draw.

The Swordsman/Sword Master I found from an older edition was pretty neat I just felt his Disarm skill was really strong. If I remember you didn't have to make a check and it caused the opponent to any object they had on them and neither you nor the player could pick it up when you left the space. The Parry was changed to Fight Defensively because I found another character card that had an ability called Parry that I felt fit the namesake better.

I follow you on most points, though you know that Ranger will always be interpreted by Talisman players as akin to that from the Lord of the Rings. You'll need a rather special illustration to make them think otherwise. The term ranger in its medieval origins didn't have a connection to the military.

The Swordsman's ability is similar to the old Samurai, of which I did my own rework along with two others. I'm not sure what you intend with it, but disarming and then battling another character would be seen my most players as too much unfair advantage.

Overall on Dragons, Talisman's are wimpish mere beasts at best, or sometimes worse based modern fantasy fiction... and the Catholic church's rewrite of mythologies to assimilate other culture's through their indigenous ideologies. No real dragon would subject itself to being a beast of burden... except to get an easy snack of a stupid human. But enough of that.

Looking forward to seeing your cards. Give a shout if need any assistance graphics wise, but it sounds like you don't.

Samurai: Card, Token
Ronin: Card, Token
Ninja: Card, Token

Hello,

The link is invalid for samurai...

I agree that the Barbarian should be able to use a shield, and I think that, with so many drawbacks, he should start with more fate, around 5 maybe. Or start with more life (justified by a high constitution), so that losing a life every time he uses his one really cool ability isn't such a harsh penalty.

I like the Dragon Rider. I never had that expansion pack, so I don't know how he compares with the original.

What's different about the Ranger? Just the last ability, right? I like it.

If the Scout decides that he wants to flip over a place card, but he already has one place card flipped over on the board, what needs to happen in order for him to un-flip the latter card? Anything special, or is it just automatic?

Swordsman seems neat.

I haven't been back into this topic in a while and just noticed the issue with the Samurai card. The link has been fixed.