Paizo Iconics - Harsk

Harsk is the final iconic to be pictured on the cover of a Rise of the Runelords book, #5, "The Spires of Xin-Shalast." While he's not actually a pregen for that campaign, he is in the Pathfinder Legends radio play adaptation of it, so I feel that he's one of the more iconic of the iconics, if that makes sense. He is, however, one of the pregens in the second adventure path, along with Seela, Lem and Ezren. He's also in the radio play adaptation of that adventure path, because it uses the same characters as the other ones, of course.

Harsk is meant to be both the iconic ranger and the iconic dwarf. Giant is his favored enemy, which works for a dwarf, and he's got a tragic backstory of his brother being killed by one. Of course, a dwarf as a ranger isn't the most iconic combination, but he otherwise is pretty stereotypical as a dwarf; surly, grumpy and kind of short-tempered. 

Of course they changed his hair color from 1e to 2e, which is weird. I'm also not entirely sure how that big ax is a ranger weapon, but his crossbow at least seems iconic; rangers being stereotypically ranged weapon specialists of sorts. Probably mostly based on the Robin Hood archetype.

As characters go, in the radio play he was mostly kind of interesting. He's the last one of these that I can refer to from those, however. I do find it curious that the Pathfinder Legends crew had no cleric, but rather a fighter, rogue, wizard and... ranger? And he didn't even do any healing at any point that I recall. Makes you really wonder if the iconic class round-up is really as iconic as all that. I tend to think not. Then again, Kyra was a lousy iconic character, so the clerics were poorly served there anyway. Too DEI.

So yeah, Harsk is one of the better iconics. I could actually use him as a pregen and run a campaign or at least a module with him and not be unhappy about it. It doesn't hurt that I love the ranger archetype anyway. 

As a small bit of a joke, although I've never thought of dwarves as being particularly Scottish (Tolkien wrote them as Scandinavian, for instance) that has kind of become a bit of a joke in D&D, probably because of Bob Salvatore and Bruenor. Harsk does not speak with a Scottish accent in the radio plays, but his Wayne Reynolds images do have a bit of a tartan blanket or sash.