I promised my PCs surprises, and last Friday they got one.
About a year and half ago, real-time, the Age of Worms featured different characters, 3 out of 4 of them were evil. One of the members quit the team and walked off into the sunset before the team was TPKd by Pitchblade in the Champion Games. This member, Stout Irongate, had found a calling by Hextor (TFeO) when he claimed the magic plate off of Theldrick’s dead body.
Stout had since joined a cleric of Hextor and rode through a portal to the heeding of their “new master”.
Enter new Good aligned heroes destined to bring an end to the Age of Worms. They are Level 20th, all extremely powerful, and restocking in Greyhawk for the last time before meeting Dragotha. I set the scene:
On a cramped dusty bazaar road in Grayhawk’s mercantile district, the crowd stumbles apart like a chasm as 6 ominous individuals walk abreast, making room for these dangerous looking individuals. The PCs, assembled in a semicircle and oblivious to the danger to come, are busy dividing up their hard earned loot when they find themselves the only ones in the middle of the street save the virtual police lineup of villains only a few arms length away.
Helmed Dark One: “So this is the Great Worm Trigger in your visions Van, Der Meer?”
Reginald VanDerMeer (looks a lot like football player Jim Brown): “Yes M’Lord.”
Stout (cracking his knuckles): “These guys don’t look so tough. This shouldn’t take long.”
Helmed Dark One stups up and I show the players the front of the Dungeon Magazine that has a picture of War Duke on it.
DM: “You see him.”
War Duke: “Who dies by my blade first?”
And that’s where we wrapped it up for the night – a hell of a cliff hanger. I actually alluded to War Duke long ago in our campaign. This should be fun.
Note that War Duke and his Hextor friends believe THEY are the heroes. They believe that the PCs are ushering in the Age of Worms (working for Lashonna, its not that far of a stretch) and that by simply killing the PCs could prevent the catastrophe – this furthers my sub-plot of good vs. evil isn’t necessarily black and white idea.
I promised my PCs surprises, and last Friday they got one.
About a year and half ago, real-time, the Age of Worms featured different characters, 3 out of 4 of them were evil. One of the members quit the team and walked off into the sunset before the team was TPKd by Pitchblade in the Champion Games. This member, Stout Irongate, had found a calling by Hextor (TFeO) when he claimed the magic plate off of Theldrick’s dead body.
Stout had since joined a cleric of Hextor and rode through a portal to the heeding of their “new master”.
Enter new Good aligned heroes destined to bring an end to the Age of Worms. They are Level 20th, all extremely powerful, and restocking in Greyhawk for the last time before meeting Dragotha. I set the scene:
On a cramped dusty bazaar road in Grayhawk’s mercantile district, the crowd stumbles apart like a chasm as 6 ominous individuals walk abreast, making room for these dangerous looking individuals. The PCs, assembled in a semicircle and oblivious to the danger to come, are busy dividing up their hard earned loot when they find themselves the only ones in the middle of the street save the virtual police lineup of villains only a few arms length away.Helmed Dark One: “So this is the Great Worm Trigger in your visions Van, Der Meer?”
Reginald VanDerMeer (looks a lot like football player Jim Brown): “Yes M’Lord.”
Stout (cracking his knuckles): “These guys don’t look so tough. This shouldn’t take long.”Helmed Dark One stups up and I show the players the front of the Dungeon Magazine that has a picture of War Duke on it.
DM: “You see him.”
War Duke: “Who dies by my blade first?”And that’s where we wrapped it up for the night – a hell of a cliff hanger. I actually alluded to War Duke long ago in our campaign. This should be fun.
Note that War Duke and his Hextor friends believe THEY are the heroes. They believe that the PCs are ushering in the Age of Worms (working for Lashonna, its not that far of a stretch) and that by simply killing the PCs could...
Utter coolness! Wish I had the Warduke's stats (don't have the dungeon), as one of my PC's is wearing the Hand of Vecna, and I'd love to throw something more legendary at them than the archmage/lich from I've been using. Interesting twist on the good/evil concept. Let me know how it turns out!
Anything involving the Duke is a good thing. As it should be, player blood must be spilled by his blade.
Excellent use of Warduke.
Give us the skinny on the post-fight report when the smoke clears.
Nice job with tying Warduke into the campaign. You've inspired me to do the same, although my players are a long way off fighting him (we're still in the Whispering Cairn). Still, gives me plenty of time for some foreshadowing...
War Duke was a victim of our massive damage house rule - very anti-climactic. One 50 pt.+ eldritch blast from our resident Warlock forced War Duke to make a Fost Save DC 15, and guess who showed uo? Uno! With his allys still in the fight, it was still a good battle.
That's a pretty cool idea. I always love those great team fights, like in the X-Men comics and things. AOW has a great one in Library of Last Resort, but this one sounds like a ton of fun as well, especially since you used a former PC. If I ever re run the campaign (not out of the question), I may swipe this idea.
Thanks James,
It was the former PC that proved to be the toughest cookie to crack. Now, I did bend some of the rules to make his original concept work (a grappler), but it was well worth it.
Stout was built with a level of Barbarian, 5 levels of Reaping Mauler (this class sucks, by the way), and the rest Fighter (Specializing in wrestling).
Changes included:
Reaping Mauler limitations and requirements are absurd. In Stouts case, he need not have escapre artist or tumble, and his abilities (as lame as they are) were not limited to the wearing of light armor. He dipped into this class because of the character concept and the +2 to wrestle checks (adept wrestling).
A divinely granted +15 to all grapple checks. This was WAY too much, but talk about PC panic! In retrospect a +5 may have been enough.
A feat I created called One-Man Dog-Pile: this essentially allows Stout to threaten areas around him even while grappling. Additionaly, he may make a touch attack on the AoO in an attempt to begin grapples with these enemies adjacent to him.
War Duke never really got off, and I'm sad to say that as much as I like him, he is pretty weak by todays standards. Had Dungeon wrote him up today, hed be a totally diffenent character (what with all the expansion books available).
I think War Duke is pretty well designed, but I wouldn't put him at CR 20 and I wouldn't put him up against a 20th level party unless he had a few more allies who were at least as tough as he is.
Thanks James,
It was the former PC that proved to be the toughest cookie to crack. Now, I did bend some of the rules to make his original concept work (a grappler), but it was well worth it.
Stout was built with a level of Barbarian, 5 levels of Reaping Mauler (this class sucks, by the way), and the rest Fighter (Specializing in wrestling).
Changes included:
Reaping Mauler limitations and requirements are absurd. In Stouts case, he need not have escapre artist or tumble, and his abilities (as lame as they are) were not limited to the wearing of light armor. He dipped into this class because of the character concept and the +2 to wrestle checks (adept wrestling).
A divinely granted +15 to all grapple checks. This was WAY too much, but talk about PC panic! In retrospect a +5 may have been enough.
A feat I created called One-Man Dog-Pile: this essentially allows Stout to threaten areas around him even while grappling. Additionaly, he may make a touch attack on the AoO in an attempt to begin grapples with these enemies adjacent to him.War Duke never really got off, and I'm sad to say that as much as I like him, he is pretty weak by todays standards. Had Dungeon wrote him up today, hed be a totally diffenent character (what with all the expansion books available).
Warduke as he was created in Dungeon was more of an homage to the original printing, not really up to standards for 3.5, especially with the amount of magic and power that PCs have. To make him truly a threat, you would have to go over his stats and equipment and deck him out as a PC; equipment, rolled stats, supplement rules and all. Warduke should never get punk'd, he should be the one punking. If a fight with the Dukester ends with no less than 1-2 PC kills, then something is wrong. The man makes his living killing adventuring parties for goodness sake! Not even the dice should come in the way. Warduke is an event, not a random encounter to be pwned.
And even if he gets killed, I'm positive his friends in the Horned Society would be ready to Resurrect him immediately.
As it is, Warduke has claimed three PCs in my campaign from previous games in the same campaign world and I am positive that when he shows up in Aow, the same results will be repeated. He is truly a feared force in the world and his threat sends shivers up the rubbery spines of my players.
As you can tell, I am a fan of the Warduke.
Where would one find some fluff on Warduke? I'm very interested in using him, would just like to know a bit more, and see what all I'd need to rearange for my campaign.
To be fair, Warduke wasn't neutralized because he was comparitively weak; rather, Warduke fell to house-rules (massive damage). He was still feelin good before he had to make a nearly automatic Fort Save. "1" - Oooops!!!!
Oh well. His Helm teleported him instantaneously so that he could be revived and begin plotting revenge. But thats another story for another day.
Here's an article on Warduke. Combined with what was given to us in Dungeon #105, this should be everything there is about him. Not much is known about the man in the helm, so anything that is known should be documented here.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/alumni/20060414a&pf=true
And the Wikipedia article;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warduke