On this episode, Benoit and I respond to a listener email from Dave, who is looking for advice on his infernal pact warlock. We give him some advice for maxing out damage using Hellish Rebuke.
Then we talk about a new home game that we’re going to be starting with our local group. We’ll be rotating DM’s and focusing on more “A-Team” style missions. Benoit and I discuss the various characters we might make for this campaign. Benoit also discussed this in a recent blog post.
As always, we want your feedback! Leave a comment below, email us at podcast@rovingbandofmisfits.com, or send a tweet to Benoit or Hamblin.
Roving Band of Misfits 
Yes, about people being passionate for the old Living Greyhawk I am still one of them for I still have all my Records and character sheets from those days. It was a pity that WotC changed everything over to launch 4th and then crapped on the players who were all devoted to LG.
I had more RP fun in LG then I do in LFR for LFR seems more about how much damage can you output in one turn and the skills and alignment for the most part fall by the wayside.
But, hadn’t the majority of LG players run out of steam around the time it was being canceled? I’m not saying there weren’t rabid fans, but many were ready to transition (though perhaps not to what LFR initially delivered). On my end, I was pretty burned our on both LG and 3E by the time the announcement came. I still was surprised to see so few people take part in things like petitions to keep the campaign active.
This is separate from what I like in a living campaign. I do really want high-story and high interactivity. I love the LG model.
I was still happy to play LG and in fact I got to write a few Mini-missions and did a Hool Marsh complete write up for the Keoland triad so it helped my writing ability a bit and got me really excited.
I was much more involved with my LG character with fleshing it out and actual costuming for it.
Reading the LFR campaign is just hit or miss. Alot of the early modules weren’t written very well or tied together. It seems that you didn’t have that interactiveness that you did with LG
I also like your idea for the characters quest cards that is a nice little touch to tie the party together in some way and give the DM story ideas. I ask for the PC’s ,when I ran a game, to give me at least a 2 paragraph background story so I could also weave them into the world.
As for the rotating DMs that can work, but you can’t be to attached to your plot ideas for the next DM takes your plot and sets it aside for he has his own agenda. So it will be awhile before anyone remembers what your plot hooks were or will the party even care by the time it gets around to you again?
Shadowrun and Spycraft (and many espionage/modern/future games) suffer from the issue where the party splits. These games tend to have a face (the person that handles diplomacy while the others hide), the hacker/technologist (does cool techno tricks while others wait, such as opening an encoded door lock), the gear gadgeteer/provider (has contacts to procure or just manufactures gear), etc. This forces downtime but rewards the player for being “on camera”. Spycraft has a really cool system for Dramatic Conflicts where the person picks strategies (and the GM as well) and you play out the resolutions (hacking or a car crash are examples). But, either way there is that issue of keeping the off-camera people entertained.
In Shadowrun 4 they made everything wireless and theoretically on-the-fly, so the whole group can be moving together and exploring while the decker is making checks to open doors, silence alarms, etc. It is a lot better.
Hey guys,
Thanks so much for the feedback on my warlock! Extremely helpful, and I’m honored that you offered your time that way. I really like the concept of infernal pact so I think I’m going to stick with that in Heroic, but I think I can get some good RP hooks out of twofold path at Paragon, with the character digging himself even deeper by “selling his soul” to yet another entity for more power.
So yeah, at 8th drop Sacrifice and Killing Curse, pick up Reckless Curse, Implement Focus, and Primed Curse. I’d also drop the two Rod feats to get hybrid artificer and Staff Expertise, and get a staff of ruin.
At Paragon I’d be looking for that shadowrift blade, twofold pact, and called shot.
I’d better get playing! Thanks again for your help!
One thing that was forgotten: As a human, Dave’s warlock could be sorcerer-king pact and /still/ have Hellish Rebuke as the bonus at-will.
And, an addendum: You guys may have recorded the episode before the revisions to “Tools of Two Trades” went live, but White Lotus Dueling Expertise has been updated to give the now-standard expertise attack bonus to all arcane keyword an/or basic attacks made with a proficient weapon or implement. In addition, you gain proficiency with any one of rods/staves/orbs/wands.
This means that Dave’s warlock could (as a human) go the sorcerer-king pact route, take Hellish Rebuke as its bonus at-will power (for being human), and acquire staff proficiency through WLDE. If he has 13 Wisdom (as a Con’lock, not necessarily out of the question), he could then get dual-implement shenanigans through the Staff Fighting feat, and use the arm-slot wrist razors y’all discussed. I believe that all works, although I’m doing this w/o the compendium or printed materials in front of me.
Incidentally, my thought on Killing Curse was that if I’m almost always targeting a cursed enemy, KC and Implement Focus have the same average impact on damage, but on a crit KC adds two to the damage. This doesn’t work because of hellish rebuke among other reasons. I guess I thought about it just enough to make the wrong decision…..