DnD 4e: Human Warlock Part 1
After Ironclaw, Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition was the second pen&paper game I played. I did hear a little about it from Ban, who had been wanting to get hold of the Core Rules books (which we did few weeks ago - yay!) and disliked the previous edition ("Pathfinder") for having fun-killer game mechanic.
Class
In an astute observation made by Ban very recently, consistent with Ironclaw (and the MMORPG game Everquest which I played and loved years ago), the first character I chose was a warlock and more specifically, the high damage-dealing kind. Ban was very helpful in providing links to two guides on building a warlock character.
From the guide and given that I'm looking to specialise in dealing damage, I chose the Infernal Pact. Not a great Pact Boon - gain temporary hit points ("THP") equal to my characater's level - but good spells.
Abilities priority
As per Ban's advice, I looked at the spells to determine which abilities (Strength "Str", Constitution "Con", Dexterity "Dex", Intelligence "Int", Wisdom "Wis", Charisma "Cha") I should concentrate on. For the Infernal Pact, they are Constitution (primary stat) and Intelligence. Constitution based warlock is nicknamed Con'lock. It turned out that this worked pretty well because Constitution determines total hit points and Fortitutde defense while Intelligence determines Reflex defense bonus. There is no overlapping of defense here, unlike the Cleric Templar and Paladin where their primary and secondary stats are Wisdom and Charisma respectively, both determine Will defense bonus but only the higher value is used (sucks!).
Race
Naturally the races I considered were those from the guides as well as any race that boosts the Constitution and Intelligence stats. At first I chose Half-elf for its racial feature that allows me to choose an At-will power from any other class as an additional encounter power.
However, luckily I read the guide a few more times and caught hold of this recommendation for Human Con'lock to get Eyes of the Vestige as the extra At-will power. Human has this racial feature that allows me to choose an extra At-will warlock power. This spell is great because it helps to spread the Warlock's Curse around (as otherwise the curse can be planted only on the nearest enemy the warlock can see) and the power is vs Will (rather than Reflex which is more common among the Infernal Pact powers).
Besides having a great extra At-will power, Human also has +1 defense bonus to Fortitude, Reflex and Will and get to train in an extra skill. The downside is that unlike other races, it could boost only 1 ability score and I chose Constitution for obvious reasons.
Calibrating ability scores
Ban taught me to first determine the "dump stat" i.e. the ability score that I wanted it to be the lowest. That easily was Wisdom. Charisma is used for some of the warlock's trainable skills. Next was to determine the ability I wanted to be the highest and that was Constitution. Second highest was Intelligence. After fiddling with the scores many times, in the end I chose 10 Str 18 Con 11 Dex 14 Int 8 Wis 10 Cha (an array of, in descending order, 18 14 11 10 8), before adding the chosen racial bonus of +2 to Con. The aim was to have as high Con as possible for me to be able to land a hit on enemies. The score of 11 for dexterity enabled me to choose the feat Dual Implement Spellcaster (able to dual wield implements!) by level 8 if I raised it by 1 at level 4 and at level 8 i.e. to a total of 13. It is a requirement to have at least 13 dex to choose that feat.
I now realised that it may not be a good idea to have odd-numbered score because it's kind of a waste. The ability score determines defense and attack bonus by subtracting 10 from the score , divided by 2 and rounded down to the nearest integer (if the ability score is 10 or less, then that bonus is automatically 0). When I discussed this with Ban recently, he agreed and revealed he usually sticks with the array 16 16 12 12 8.
Class
In an astute observation made by Ban very recently, consistent with Ironclaw (and the MMORPG game Everquest which I played and loved years ago), the first character I chose was a warlock and more specifically, the high damage-dealing kind. Ban was very helpful in providing links to two guides on building a warlock character.
From the guide and given that I'm looking to specialise in dealing damage, I chose the Infernal Pact. Not a great Pact Boon - gain temporary hit points ("THP") equal to my characater's level - but good spells.
Abilities priority
As per Ban's advice, I looked at the spells to determine which abilities (Strength "Str", Constitution "Con", Dexterity "Dex", Intelligence "Int", Wisdom "Wis", Charisma "Cha") I should concentrate on. For the Infernal Pact, they are Constitution (primary stat) and Intelligence. Constitution based warlock is nicknamed Con'lock. It turned out that this worked pretty well because Constitution determines total hit points and Fortitutde defense while Intelligence determines Reflex defense bonus. There is no overlapping of defense here, unlike the Cleric Templar and Paladin where their primary and secondary stats are Wisdom and Charisma respectively, both determine Will defense bonus but only the higher value is used (sucks!).
Race
Naturally the races I considered were those from the guides as well as any race that boosts the Constitution and Intelligence stats. At first I chose Half-elf for its racial feature that allows me to choose an At-will power from any other class as an additional encounter power.
However, luckily I read the guide a few more times and caught hold of this recommendation for Human Con'lock to get Eyes of the Vestige as the extra At-will power. Human has this racial feature that allows me to choose an extra At-will warlock power. This spell is great because it helps to spread the Warlock's Curse around (as otherwise the curse can be planted only on the nearest enemy the warlock can see) and the power is vs Will (rather than Reflex which is more common among the Infernal Pact powers).
Besides having a great extra At-will power, Human also has +1 defense bonus to Fortitude, Reflex and Will and get to train in an extra skill. The downside is that unlike other races, it could boost only 1 ability score and I chose Constitution for obvious reasons.
Calibrating ability scores
Ban taught me to first determine the "dump stat" i.e. the ability score that I wanted it to be the lowest. That easily was Wisdom. Charisma is used for some of the warlock's trainable skills. Next was to determine the ability I wanted to be the highest and that was Constitution. Second highest was Intelligence. After fiddling with the scores many times, in the end I chose 10 Str 18 Con 11 Dex 14 Int 8 Wis 10 Cha (an array of, in descending order, 18 14 11 10 8), before adding the chosen racial bonus of +2 to Con. The aim was to have as high Con as possible for me to be able to land a hit on enemies. The score of 11 for dexterity enabled me to choose the feat Dual Implement Spellcaster (able to dual wield implements!) by level 8 if I raised it by 1 at level 4 and at level 8 i.e. to a total of 13. It is a requirement to have at least 13 dex to choose that feat.
I now realised that it may not be a good idea to have odd-numbered score because it's kind of a waste. The ability score determines defense and attack bonus by subtracting 10 from the score , divided by 2 and rounded down to the nearest integer (if the ability score is 10 or less, then that bonus is automatically 0). When I discussed this with Ban recently, he agreed and revealed he usually sticks with the array 16 16 12 12 8.
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