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Hi, folks –
Last time I told you I’d say more about my epic-level warlock in Dave Noonan’s game. You might recall that Ulwhe was formerly a character in James Wyatt’s City of the Spider Queen game. Ulwhe reached 18th level as a sorcerer/elemental savant. In fact, Ulwhe hit level 10 in elemental savant, so my character was essentially an air elemental with nigh-unlimited lightning bolts.
I’d started to build the 4th Edition Ulwhe as a human warlock, but I had a stroke of good luck early this week—the upcoming rules for the genasi character race wrapped up development. It was a much better fit for my concept of Ulwhe. Even though the genasi ability adjustments don’t really support warlock all that well, I decided to tough it out and accept a key warlock stat 2 points lower than I would have had if I’d really been min-maxing. Besides, the elemental manifestations for the genasi race are really righteous racial abilities. I chose Firesoul and Stormsoul for Ulwhe. The storm trait fits Ulwhe because that’s what he did before, and the fire trait just thematically fits in with a strong subset of warlock powers (a lot of the infernal ones are fire attacks, as you might guess). I also found a genasi-specific paragon path that suited Ulwhe—the wildfire genasi. It offered a couple more good fire attacks.
Because Ulwhe isn’t using Dexterity or Intelligence very much, I decided to invest a couple of feats in armor training, so my 21st-level warlock is running around in +5 scale armor. I also spent a feat to get training in the Stealth skill, because one of the warlock’s special tricks is the ability to gain concealment by moving 3 squares or more. With the Stealth skill, Ulwhe hides pretty effectively after his attacks. Of course, Ulwhe is a megalomaniac, so he doesn’t “hide” from his foes – they’re just not worthy of beholding his glory. I like to think that he vanishes into a broiling, lightning-shot thundercloud as he uses his shadow stride. Same mechanics as the RAW, but just a different “visual effect” I like to imagine for the character.
In our first contact with Dave’s demon-ruined Eberron, we ran into a rakshasa, a pair of hezrous, and an efreet. Our party included two wizards, Ulwhe, and a paladin, so we were really heavy on control ability. Most of the bad guys didn’t move during the fight. Ulwhe hung back from the immobilized bad guys and blasted them with many eldritch blasts. On one round I used a warlock encounter power called harrowstorm to dish out some thunder damage to the rakshasa, and carry him off screaming into the middle of a pool of acid that was still in the immobilized area. He didn’t last long after that. Overall, Ulwhe dished out a lot of damage—but warlocks are strikers, and you’d expect that. I had a couple of good close-range area-effect attacks I didn’t get to because I didn’t want to get into the middle of the same spell effect that was pinning down the bad guys, but staying at long range and blasting seemed to work just fine.
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