OOC: In the Beginning...

There are multiple types of darknesses, including those that aren't as powerful as the Drow cloud of darkness but cover a larger area (usually restricted to shades and the like). Trust me, they're annoying as hell, and normal light doesn't cut it.

Ideally, we'd all have tremorsense or blindvision. But whatever, this is a story for another time. At level 2, regular lights will do just fine against almost everything.

Not to mention, it's awfully hard to assassinate someone when you have to carry around a torch to see where you're going.

DannoE, did you settle on 5 vs. 6 folks? Just curious if we are ready to kick this campaign off soon (although admittedly most of us are still doing last minute tweaks to characters, myself included).

Okay, I just realized something, and it's pretty awesome. With Hellish Rebuke, I can do almost as much damage as if I had used my daily. HR+Curse=2d6+6, then if they hit me before my next turn, they take another 2d6+6, for a total of 4d6+12, for a range of 16-36 damage. My daily, Flames of Phlegethos, does 3d10+6 damage, plus Warlock's Curse makes 3d10+1d6+6, for a range of 10-42 damage, albeit with an additional 5 ongoing damage (save ends). Of course, all of this hinges on if the secondary damage from Hellish Rebuke triggers Warlock's Curse's extra damage. From what I've read, I believe it does, but that's for the DM to decide.

I'm not awfully fan of any plan that requires you to get hit for it to work. The bright side with Hellish Rebuke is that it deals extra damage no matter who dealt the damage to you. However, you're not going to deal much damage after you're down. And spending a round on Second Wind is a round you're not dealing damage.

In my mind, Hellish Rebuke is more of a defensive power. It discourages the enemy from targeting you back.

The daily sounds like it's woking as intended -- a daily deals more damage than an at-will.

As a great man once said: any plan that involves you getting shot is not a good plan.

The guy has several good quotes. Some other good ones:
Finally, a thought to get the game started:

Okay, on the darkvision thing: The Sellswords have fought a handfull of monsters that have Benighted Presence. That's a power that turns normal light into low-light if the source of the light is lower than the monster's level. And yeah, it's been a huge pain for them. They've also fought a shadow-dragon and a few other nasties like that, and there might've even been a bad guy who could just snuff light. But that's a Paragon party with two humans and a shardmind, so taking hard shots at them like that is fair game.

The other thing--and I'll enforce it in this game as well--is that when you are traveling through an open danger area in the Underdark and carrying a light, bottom line, everything in the world will see you and then try to eat you. Because the Underdark is normally DARK, even a candle is visible for miles and miles.

No. I've been absolutely slammed this week. I'm going to go through the apps tomorrow while the Packers dismantle the Lions, and at that time, I'll also set up the forum here in full. So we're probably looking at a start sometime tomorrow afternoon or Friday. Which doesn't mean you can't spend Thanksgiving away from the boards. That's merely the first chance this week I'll get to sit down with this.

I have a 12th-level warlock somewhat focuses on doing fire damage and he does 1d6+2d8+20 for each hellish rebuke damage roll. I usually don't open with that power, but after the enemies realize that he does a fair but of damage (and has horrible defenses), I usually get a creature on me and that secondary damage tends to kick in. With an avg damage over 30, it usually means my warlock gets hit, but that he kills his fellow monster in the process.

Yeah. Tarner's got some pretty high HP (obviously not quite as high as say, Gruunk), so he can afford to take a couple of hits, especially if it helps deal monstrous damage. Plus, as a Hell-lock, he's able to get a ton of Temporary HP's.