Warlord Roleplay Advice?

[Faye Grimm]

So I've got a half-elf warlord that is basically the co-leader of the party(the other one being the deva wizard for knowledge based parts of the story). My problem is that I have a hard time sometimes(especially in combat) having him really give off that warlordy feel.

I'm curious if anyone has any tips or tricks for ways to flavor my bolstering abilities or attack granting abilities so that I don't always have to come up with some new witty phrase for inspiring word and so that it doesn't become old after the 3rd time doing basically the same thing. Ways to make him seem more of a warlord outside of battle will be appreciated too, right now he just seems like a fairly cocky and jovial speaker rather than the actual battle ready leader I feel at times he should be. I like the cocky part of his personality, but sometimes I feel there should be something else too, but I don't want to force it.

A little background: He's from a tribe of wood-elves(kinda the elven savages of this campaign) and he is the child of the tribe leader and his human trophy wife(taken from one of their raids). He was raised as a commander for the war parties, but went into a rage and killed his father after seeing his father "be a jerk" to his mother. After that he fled the tribe and used his experience to live as a mercenary freelancer until the campaign started.

Thanks in advance!

[incubus5075]

When i think warlord i always think about the movie 300 or Gladiator. Watch those, i'm sure you will see some ideas

[Emongnome777]

I hear your pain. It's easy to fall into cliches when "inspiring" your allies. I assume your build is Charisma-based as a secondary stat. If you want to be cocky, you can play it up as demanding and belittling to a degree. If you hit with an attack and grant a bonus to hit / damage to an ally on that enemy, maybe have him arrogantly point out some weakness in the enemy's defenses. Something that sounds obvious and arrogant may work for your character, "don't aim for the plate armor; aim for the gaps!". He's young and brash, so giving out orders as if your allies are 5 years old may work.

NOTE: I'm not one to advocate in-party conflict, so don't go over-board with treating the others poorly.

[INDYSTAR188]

I think that while you are playing the game w/your PC you could help direct the fight for your allies. By which I mean you could assume the role as the party's tactician not just 'in character' but also while playing. For example you could take it upon yourself to point out that there is a cauldron of boiling oil on the second floor if we could somehow knock it over we might be able to buy ourselves a little space. Basically what I'm trying to say is that you can be the guy who not only helps your allies directly in a fight but you could be the guy who see's the terrain and figures out how best to exploit it for everyone's benefit.

In this way your fellow PC's will see you not only as their default 'leader' role but as someone who can be counted on to lead you all to victory!

[Tengu_temp]

Watch some Team Fortress 2 videos on youtube. Steal lines from the Soldier.

[Faye Grimm]

When i think warlord i always think about the movie 300 or Gladiator.

Heheh, I do enjoy those. I can probably use some of that material, but since he's not the type to always be the veteran bad#$@ I'll have to be sparing. Last campaign he did rally a village with a "For our freedom!!" speech though, which turned out pretty well!

If you want to be cocky, you can play it up as demanding and belittling to a degree. If you hit with an attack and grant a bonus to hit / damage to an ally on that enemy, maybe have him arrogantly point out some weakness in the enemy's defenses.

This will probably work well, especially for when he's working with the party's barbarian, who he has a light hearted rivalry with. I'm planning on having a fairly charge oriented build for most of paragon tier at least, so he can probably use the fact that he "has to lead by example for her to get it right" in there. Thank you!

I think that while you are playing the game w/your PC you could help direct the fight for your allies.

Typically I love doing this, but unfortunately I have a few problems with this particular campaign. It's a campaign with siblings and a few friends, and unfortunately now I'm no longer living in the same city. We're using MSN with a webcam and mic to play right now, but that means I have a very limited view of the map, and end up having to rely on one of my brothers(the other main tactician in our party) to do most of the precise movements for my character as well as the rest of the party. I'm working on convincing them to use something like maptool to make that a lot easier on me, in which case I'd definitely take a larger role in being the leader both in flavor and gameplay.

Watch some Team Fortress 2 videos on youtube. Steal lines from the Soldier.

XD Never thought of that, since it's a fairly serious campaign overall. In all reality though, we're always busting jokes around, so this will probably actually work quite well!

[Mando Knight]

Watch some Team Fortress 2 videos on youtube. Steal lines from the Soldier.

This point is mine! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?

[Hidden Sanity]

Maptool or gametable(Or even google docs) would be a huge plus for that campaign, yeah.

[Faye Grimm]

Maptool or gametable(Or even google docs) would be a huge plus for that campaign, yeah.

Yeah, my main problem with Maptool was that it was a little too complicated for what we wanted. I really liked the simplicity of one that I tried(Ditzie I think?), but I couldn't find how to use it through a server to allow multiple people to alter it. I'll look into the other two though and see if one of those would be easier to convince my DM to use. I know part of the battle is overcoming the fact that the DM has a lot of random miniatures from various games that he loves using for the campaign.

EDIT: Do you have a link to the Gametable you're talking about? I'm not familiar with it and my google search is giving me several things that you may or may not mean. Thank you!

EDIT2: Also, if I'm simply overlooking ways to simplify creating basic undetailed maps in Maptool, especially on the fly, please let me know. I love the idea of Maptool, but I think my DM would want the ability to be able to either put together the encounter during the session as he does with his map pieces as well as having the option to create them in advance.

Third and hopefully final EDIT: I've messed around a bit with Google Docs and from what I can tell this is as close to what we're looking for as we're gonna get. Thank you very much for the reference, now I just needa convince the DM to buy into it(though thankfully the word buy doesn't actually have to do with money, or I'd be doomed).

[Hidden Sanity]

Gametable is simplier than maptools... in both of them to make maps on the go you either use the raw-tools, or you use pre-imported images to make lines and the like...

[Faye Grimm]

Gametable is simplier than maptools... in both of them to make maps on the go you either use the raw-tools, or you use pre-imported images to make lines and the like...

Ah, alright, thanks again. I've convinced the DM to for sure use one of these, so now it's a matter of which one he'll pick. He's leaning towards Maptools because of the aesthetic qualities, and he's got a friend that will give him a crash course in it. As long as it works I'm happy. When trying to learn the basics of it I had a rather difficult time, but I also hadn't tried using any plugins. I'll definitely look into Gametable now though, in case he'd have an easier time using that one and still getting the effect that he wants. Definitely don't wanna overwork the DM though. XP

[Hidden Sanity]

I prefer maptools, personally(More options, better look), but it does have a learning curve to it; where if you can't figure out gametable then I'm supprised you figured out how to play DnD.

[Faye Grimm]

Didn't quite phrase the last sentence right. >.< Didn't mean overwork him in the sense that he couldn't figure out the program, but rather overwork him in having to work a lot harder at making the maps than he is now, which is why I was leaning towards Google Docs since I just pulled together the basic map for our last boss fight in about 3 minutes, not counting the time to create the character icons.

[Yourshallowpal]

Here's a list of phrases that may come in handy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlock...ve_Mercenaries

A lot of these are "space-pirate" themed, could be easily altered for high fantasy.

Ex: For #8, replace "air lock" with plank, for #4 replace "air support" with "close burst" or "mounted cavalry," etc.

And, of course, there's always the Courage Wolf.

http://www.quickmeme.com/Courage-Wolf/

[Faye Grimm]

And, of course, there's always the Courage Wolf.

You sir... just made my day. I'd forgotten all about courage wolf! Definitely including that(and of course I'll take a look at the other link too). Thank you!!