Warcraft movie: Gul'Dan build

[Xar Zarath]

Well, what is says on the tin...what would be the best build to recreate Gul'Dan from the Warcraft movie into 3.5e DND?

The most I am looking forward to is what spell would be the equivalent of life drain that Gul'Dan uses so liberally in the entire movie?

[Sun Elemental]

First, I haven't seen the movie. I have played WoW and Hearthstone, and I'm familiar with Warcraft lore.
Also, a PC Gul'dan wouldn't be as impressive as the movie one, because a PC can't really be a raid boss/literally the first warlock ever. It'd be a cool NPC thought.

Gul'dan, and warlocks in general, have demonic summons and DoTs (delayed damage) that are sometimes also HoTs (delayed healing).

The demons are easy, any Wizard/Sorc/Cleric/FavSoul can whip out a Summon Monster. If you care about abusing the system then Clerics have more options, Malconvokers are good, playing PF for Summoners is great, but those are optional.

Actual damage/heal spells that take time are very rare in D&D, and kinda bad because they're designed to only have good numbers if you can afford to keep the spell up for its full duration.

Drain Life is pretty close to the lvl3 spell Vampiric Touch, which does d6/2 lvls in both damage and self-healing, capped at 5d6. However: (1) It's melee only, so it'd have to be metamagic'ed to be ranged. (2) It's Wiz/Sorc only, unless you find a way to add it to a divine spell list. There may be more obscure hurt/heal spells, but WotC usually makes them bad because they're basically 2 actions in 1.

The ACTUAL Warlock class from Complete Arcane is pure blasting, no heals, barely any summons, so they kinda suck. If anything, they could be re-skinned to be a WoW-style Hunter, stand and shoot.

Oddly, in warcraft lore about half of warlocks are implied to be fallen shamans, the other being mages. Considering orcs have shamans, Gul'dan is a fallen shaman, so an evil Cleric/FavSoul would be best for thematics. But no Vamp Touch :(

[Manyasone]

I believe you'd have more chances in recreating Gul'Dan using Spheres of Power, mate... Maybe a soul weaver as class. Triple goddess archetype

[Name1]

Planar Touchstone (Catalogues of Enlightenment) might let you choose the Envy domain, which offers Vampiric Touch as a 3rd level spell IIRC.

[khadgar567]

Not a warcraft player but agreed with spheres of power its much easyer to pull something similar to guldan for supposed summons conjuration sphere helps and tradition can be used to mimic enviromental drain effects of fell magic

[TheSethGrey]

You know there was a bunch of Warcraft 3.5 books, there's a Warlock class in the core book.

[Kaje]

I wonder if Spheres of Power fans have any idea just how unhelpful they're being in all these type of threads.

[khadgar567]

I wonder if Spheres of Power fans have any idea just how unhelpful they're being in all these type of threads.
do you wanna explain how we are not trying to create another wizard clone with different name sherlock?

[Kaje]

Don't know what that meant.

[Name1]

Don't know what that meant.

He's basically saying "what's the big difference between your 3.5 build and our Paths of Power build?", at least that's what I understood from it.

[khadgar567]

He's basically saying "what's the big difference between your 3.5 build and our Paths of Power build?", at least that's what I understood from it.
yes that's what I ment while using snark speak skill

[Manyasone]

We merely offer a suggestion of expanding the books you use. Some people don't know because of... well... reasons, I guess. Some personal input is required. After all, isn't that what this forum is al about...as I suggested, soul weaver with triple goddess gives you full caster on Life, Death and Fate. Solid blocks for Gul'Dan.

[Nousos]

In the terms of movie Gul'dan, the simple life draining effects wouldn't work, because he used souls to power his magic. The effects of his magic can all be accomplished with existing spells, but to show this effect use the sacrifice rules. Haven't read them myself, but seeing them in the board, they can be used to get high level spells without slots. I'm sure there must be a way to use sacrifices to fuel metamagic.

[Name1]

He powers it off of souls? So, does he cast using Str and uses an item of consumptive field to boost it up or what are we talking about here ?-?

[khadgar567]

He powers it off of souls? So, does he cast using Str and uses an item of consumptive field to boost it up or what are we talking about here ?-?
don't want to anger someone but if we use spheres of power we can use custom tradition like this(modified blood magic tradition)
fell magic tradition
One of the most dangerous forms of magic, fell magic, promises great power to its practitioners, but with a price. Fell magic is difficult, lengthy, complicated, and draining, but for its practitioners the promise of insurmountable power is worth the mere price of their life force. Blood mages are constantly performing a dangerous dance, for the closer they are to death’s door, the greater their power.
Drawbacks: Draining Casting, Verbal Casting, Somatic Casting (2), Extended Casting
Boons: Deathful Magic, Overcharge, Fortified Magic
now what we have is his main tradition only remaining thing is choose him a class or w homebrew one to finish build
as from previous posts warlocks in warcraft constantly have one demon with them and often use crowd control spells to keep themselves safe( as far as bargain with demon goes) so he is probably charisma casting due his leader status in horde if you ask me he is maybe incanter with charisma as casting stat( you can use wisdom if you want) for spheres he definitely has conjuration due warlocks summons my other choices for spheres probably destruction for raw damage and and some other sphere to debuffing

[Afgncaap5]

I've been looking at Magic of Incarnum to see if there's anything that can represent soul use, but I'm not finding much in Incarnum that does direct blasting style damage apart from acidic spittle and a few other scattered things. Still... I feel like Incarnum might be a good way to go with some fluff rewiring.



as from previous posts warlocks in warcraft constantly have one demon with them and often use crowd control spells to keep themselves safe( as far as bargain with demon goes) so he is probably charisma casting due his leader status in horde if you ask me he is maybe incanter with charisma as casting stat( you can use wisdom if you want) for spheres he definitely has conjuration due warlocks summons my other choices for spheres probably destruction for raw damage and and some other sphere to debuffing

Going along on this note, my Warcraft knowledge is super limited to four months of the game played five years ago and to all the crazy amounts of Hearthstone I've been playing now. In Hearthstone I know he can get loads of demons and other minions (or at least up to seven) at a time; is it ever possible in WoW or the movie or the original Warcraft games for a Warlock to have more than one demon follower, or is it a thing where they have to choose which demon to have?

Because I was considering what Hearthstone-style mass summoning would look like with Spheres. It occurs to me that most of Gul'Dan's minions come with some personal drawback to him there, which is represented well with Deathful Casting, Draining Casting, and the like, but does a casting tradition in spheres apply to the Spellcraft side of SoP? As in... let's say Gul'Dan has a little spellbook of Spheres Of Power-style spells, and each spell lets him summon a demon (an imp, a succubus, a hellhound, etc.); do the spells also incur the casting drawbacks of his sphere effects? If so, this sounds like a way to go.

[khadgar567]

Going along on this note, my Warcraft knowledge is super limited to four months of the game played five years ago and to all the crazy amounts of Hearthstone I've been playing now. In Hearthstone I know he can get loads of demons and other minions (or at least up to seven) at a time; is it ever possible in WoW or the movie or the original Warcraft games for a Warlock to have more than one demon follower, or is it a thing where they have to choose which demon to have?

Because I was considering what Hearthstone-style mass summoning would look like with Spheres. It occurs to me that most of Gul'Dan's minions come with some personal drawback to him there, which is represented well with Deathful Casting, Draining Casting, and the like, but does a casting tradition in spheres apply to the Spellcraft side of SoP? As in... let's say Gul'Dan has a little spellbook of Spheres Of Power-style spells, and each spell lets him summon a demon (an imp, a succubus, a hellhound, etc.); do the spells also incur the casting drawbacks of his sphere effects? If so, this sounds like a way to go.
they are more like I need more talents than 30 given if you get 5 drawbacks you get double the talents 60 talents total besides gained from casting modifier so they kinda affect your casting on flavor point

[ShurikVch]

In Warcraft the RPG, Gul'Dan was described in Shadow and Light book
He's Sorcerer 15/Fighter 4/Healer* 1/Warlock* 10/Shaman* 4

*In Warcraft the RPG, Healer is something like "generic divine spellcaster" (but very close to "standard" Cleric), Warlock is arcane PrC for evil summoners (with Rebuke Outsider at capstone), and Shaman is divine PrC which looks a bit like Shugenja

And yes, Gul'Dan have Epic Spellcasting

[khadgar567]

In Warcraft the RPG, Gul'Dan was described in Shadow and Light book
He's Sorcerer 15/Fighter 4/Healer* 1/Warlock* 10/Shaman* 4

*In Warcraft the RPG, Healer is something like "generic divine spellcaster" (but very close to "standard" Cleric), Warlock is arcane PrC for evil summoners (with Rebuke Outsider at capstone), and Shaman is divine PrC which looks a bit like Shugenja

And yes, Gul'Dan have Epic Spellcasting
I think we don't need that much convoluted build for old fart like guldan

[paperarmor]

With most knowledge of the character from this thread and hearthstone. How about wizard 7 nar demonbinder 6 ur priest 8 you won't get ninths but it should get you the feel of a wow warlock.

[Name1]

IIRC, there are only two things WoW Warlocks can do which are useful AND can't go really really wrong: Soul-Stones and Heal-Stones.
Should we just cover that via magic items?

[Goodkill]

you might as well be open to homebrewing if you're going to allow all these crazy splat books. i know people enjoy the challenge of following the rules while trying to make builds but homebrewing can be fun too.

i don't know enough about warcraft to make any specific suggestions though. in a neverwinter nights 2 expansion there was a soul-eating mechanic that gave you power by eating souls, so that might be a start as to how to implement soul-powered abilities in D&D 3.5.

[Afgncaap5]

A couple of other options just occurred to me. If we focus on Vampiric Touch as the primary means of replicating Life Drain, then the 2nd level Spectral Hand spell allows a caster to use Vampiric Touch at a range. Spectral Hand also has the wonderfully warlock-y stipulation that you lose 1d4 hit points while the hand is active and don't get them back until the hand is gone (and that it becomes just regular damage if the spectral hand itself is destroyed.) Visually having the ghost of a hand appear to reach out and touch someone isn't really what it looks like when Gul'Dan uses his abilities, I think, but it's not a bad low-level way to simulate that kind of thing.

On the higher level side of things, the Archmage class has the Arcane Reach ability (for which you permanently lose a 7th level spell slot), and it also has a Spell-Like Ability ability which lets you permanently memorize a spell in a slot to cast it twice per day (or more than that if you prepare it in a higher spot. This ability also costs a 7th level spell, *and*you lose/commit whatever level spell slot you want to prepare the spell in.) Personally, I wouldn't go this way... but visually an archmage doing this would, appearance-wise, be just right.

Apart from things like that... yeah, I'd wanna homebrew something. Probably make a warlock class alternate invocation. Something like "Eldritch Drain: when using your Eldritch Blast ability, you may choose to reduce the die size by one step and, upon dealing damage, recover health equal to the amount of damage dealt." I'd then probably have a higher-level ability that lets it be temporary hit points instead of healing so that you can overheal yourself while also not reducing the size of the die. An ability like that would let you have the ability from level 1, see it get better over time, and also be a reasonable themed alteration of eldritch blast invocations.

[Thurbane]

I wonder if Spheres of Power fans have any idea just how unhelpful they're being in all these type of threads.


He's basically saying "what's the big difference between your 3.5 build and our Paths of Power build?", at least that's what I understood from it.

...while I might have phrased my reply a little more politely, Kaje raises a point.

If someone specifically asks for a 3.5 D&D build, it's probably because his group doesn't use Pathfinder.

It's fine to suggest "if you can use Pathfinder material, X might be useful". When multiple suggest the same thing, I dunno, kind of just suggests to me maybe they didn't read the OP.

Not saying anyone in this thread did anything wrong, but in the forums as whole, this seems to happen a lot.

Some of us just plain flat-out don't use PF.

[Afgncaap5]

...while I might have phrased my reply a little more politely, Kaje raises a point.

If someone specifically asks for a 3.5 D&D build, it's probably because his group doesn't use Pathfinder.

It's fine to suggest "if you can use Pathfinder material, X might be useful". When multiple suggest the same thing, I dunno, kind of just suggests to me maybe they didn't read the OP.

Not saying anyone in this thread did anything wrong, but in the forums as whole, this seems to happen a lot.

Some of us just plain flat-out don't use PF.

Indeed. I think it's related to why I've seen so many threads with an OP that contains phrases like "And please, don't just tell me to use Factotum." A lot of us have ideas that we see as awesome and obviously great, and really, really want to wave that answer's flag at any opportunity. While it's true that there are 3.5 games that incorporate Spheres of Power (even while not using anything else from Pathfinder) it can distract from the original discussion if it's brought up as more than a possible alternative.

[ben-zayb]

Gotta second/third the point about suggesting PF material in a specifically identified 3.5e game (not PF, not 3.P). Personally, I find WoW Warlocks' life drain mechanics hard to map out in 3.5 aside from Vampiric Touch, but surprisingly, the noncaster Soul Eater PrC comes to mind.

Now this next part is crazy, but maybe a Truenamer can emulate it close enough via Words of Nurturing (and reverse), and IIRC Jormengand even managed to abuse skill-based combat to even summon demons in one of the Villain Competition. Might want to PM J for detail, as I can't remember half the tricks used.

As also someone mentioned, if we are opening the suggestions floodgate of non-1st party material like the crappy Warcraft D&D and PF, might as well suggest the great breadth of options available from homebrew. Of course, doing so might end up being less productive if the OP won't be allowed those anyway.

EDIT: you know what? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced Truenamer is appropriate for Gul'dan specifically. Remember how much he was treated in the Harbinger short due to being so freaking useless in the beginning?! And even elemental powers reject him! It's only the otherworldly whispers that gave him the power. And, yes, he totally unnamed everyine from his clan, such that no one, even the most learned mage, knew a sliver of detail about them. Oh, and he totally turned the elder orc's staff into a custom +True speak item

[Name1]

...while I might have phrased my reply a little more politely, Kaje raises a point.

If someone specifically asks for a 3.5 D&D build, it's probably because his group doesn't use Pathfinder.

It's fine to suggest "if you can use Pathfinder material, X might be useful". When multiple suggest the same thing, I dunno, kind of just suggests to me maybe they didn't read the OP.

Not saying anyone in this thread did anything wrong, but in the forums as whole, this seems to happen a lot.

Some of us just plain flat-out don't use PF.

I just told him what khadgar meant, not whether or not I approve of it.
...Though if we are talking 3rd party... Give me 20 Minutes and I have an Eclipse build ready for you ;P