D&D Legendlore: Warduke | D&D 5E Character Breakdown
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- Опубліковано 21 лют 2021
- Hello and welcome friends to Legendlore, where I draw pictures of gods, monsters, and characters from D&D while giving a small but dense history about them! Today we'll be covering one of the toy-line borne characters of the game's older days: Warduke
Warduke's Armaments: www.worldanvil.com/w/aldris-i...
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This is the dude that shows up to throw hands whenever someone calls Fighters "basic". Absolutely S U P E R B.
I was always fascinated by this character because of the 80s toy line. Glad to see the old duke has plenty of fans. Great art work!
I introduced Warduke in the first session of my current campaign where he beat up the party for using magic to remove his helmet. I run him kind of like Nosferatu Zodd from Berserk where he is an agent of evil but doesn’t really care about their goals, all he cares about is finding powerful opponents to fight and because he has existed in legends for far longer than a normal human could he is kind of a legendary figure for mercenaries and warrior types who revere and fear encountering him as an enemy.
This is so cool I love this!
Holy crap, I'm actually doing the exact same thing with my new campaign. Lol. I love that his design just naturally gives off that "don't fuck with me" vibe.
Having grown up with this figure being my favorite in the LJN line in the 80’s, I now find myself running him as a PC in my current D&D game. Warduke is badass!
That he is xP and that’s awesome it’s rare to get to play actual characters as PCs
My barbarian who was beyond rediculous. Pretty much kharne the betrayer but wasnt good or evil just wanted the best champions skulls dipped in gold for his personal trophys. Had the helm of seven deaths, turasq hide armor, a ring of regen, a vorpal executioner axe (I rolled 3 god rolls in a row and the dm said make a wish) and an anq of invuln. Needless to say my guy was shot from a ballista in the astra sea, but my party rolled a one and I entered orbit of a nearby planet. Holding my action with the anq of invuln it hit the planet like a meteor, a nearby tribe was preying for someone to save them and my character showed up, enraged and bloodied but still alive. Needless to say I was looking for the war duke and it would have been a hell of a fight. Sadly my guy acended to demigod in our previous campaign while everyone else pretty much died out for some reason. My guy was nuts beyond compare and the dm needed to retire him so now hes a deity option in our campaigns...
Warduke, the duke of war, like his name suggests, he is the one and only.
I saved this to a playlist of favorite videos specifically because this art was so good. Excellent job!
Thank you so much! :)
Warduke is my go to bad, but not super bad enforcer.
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He has likable traits, such as his overwhelming strength and mastery of the battlefield. He works with the League of Malevolence on retainer, and while he's cruel he won't do more than his job requires unless provoked. It's detailed in the module he mostly lost his sense of honor and personal responsibility for his actions. He has many admirable traits with his stoicism and Battle IQ, but with literally no sense of shame he now does anything to win.
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In my games he's not beyond a "kind" of redemption, but he truly doesn't have empathy for his enemies. His only personal convictions being essentially hating Strongheart. As Strongheart was unaffected by the Heartstone, I think Warduke recognizes he may have a flaw in his character, but no longer has the power to reflect on it.
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Usually I have him betray Kelek in some extravagant way, but he usually proves to be some untouchable monster. One time he suffered a fireball to the face that he tanked with his shield, only to then leap across the battlefield and down three of my players in one turn. Letting them live because, "you tablescraps should be enough to keep the rats busy." As he sealed a room shut as zombies flooded in.
An interesting thing about Warduke is his sword... Looking him up, it will be a flaming burst sword. However, when he was introduced in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon in the 80s, his sword had ice powers, which I believe had the burst ability, as he was able to freeze the Dungeon Master who was on a limb of a tree by plunging his sword into the tree and sending the ice up along the tree to encase him.
I think he'd probably be a battle master
5e Warduke (seen in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight) is surprisingly weak, with strange stats for a supposed-Fighter. He's got 12 HD but only d8s; his Proficiency is +3 which means he's actually only between levels 5 and 8 (probably the latter, that's what he was in 1e), and his statline is exactly the same as 1e (though the numbers mean different things). His magic items are even worse than they were in 1e (his sword used to be a +1 flametongue, now it just does extra fire damage with no bonuses to attack rolls; his helmet used to give him the equivalent of darkvision, now it just makes his eyes glow with no other mechanical effect). He's now also explicitly Kelek's lackey and content to be so, with no grand designs of his own (and Kelek is only level 7, just as he originally was) rather than one of the Big Bads of the setting.
(That said, *everyone's* HD in that module seem to be d8s, regardless of class, and Ringlerun, explicitly a Wizard, also has 12 HD but Proficiency +3)
His 3e version (Dungeon Magazine, Issue 105) was a powerhouse, though - level 18 and armed to the teeth with magic items (+3 human-bane flaming burst sword, and that's just for starters) and his helmet was an actual major artifact granted to him by an evil god. (While most of the LJN D&D figures were converted to 5e, Warduke is the only one converted to 3e)
Very cool illustration!!
Me and some friends decided to play a one shot instead of a usual campaign so as a joke I’m playing warduke mostly because he’s my favorite character from that classic ljn toy line, and this video is a big help for fleshing out stats and lore
Can confirm that Kelek and Warduke are both in a recent 5e book, won't spoil where they pop up though.
Same, which is really weird considering it’s a Feywild book :-/
@@itslegendlore gotta get them out there somehow, not like they could just make a greyhawk campaign setting book or something.
@@sharkwolfdarkwolf2625 see I would love
A Grey hawk book, like we need more
Campaign settings plz
@@itslegendlore it's not actually weird though since it's FEYwild
This character appears in his 80s cartoon form on the Magic the Gathering card Primal Vigor, available only in the Secret Lair series summer of 2021. That's what brought me here, looking for more info on this weirdly helmed figure.
Sherwood Dungeon dark knight lol
I not only have his figure but also Grimsword's too from the LJN figs for 15 bucks together.
I would like to know in more detail about who WARDUKE was originally and what exactly happened to turn him evil.
Allegedly he always had a dark heart compared to his friend Strongheart, and encountering an item known as the Heartstone caused their personalities to become further extreme, turning Warduke to villainy
Hi, great video and drawing. What do you use to draw this? Is this a digital art pad? Im interested in maybe getting one.
Thanks! I use an iPad Pro and the program I use is clip studio :)
Anyone know the music name?
I want to make a character like warduke for my universe. Got any advice on How i van make them a little more original?
Warduke is basically a martial fighter bad guy, think Shredder from TMNT more than Bebop or Rocksteady. He is sheer strength and malevolence and so long as you follow that line of development any combo can work very well. I personally would recommend use of races such as Goliaths or Bugbears and then go Fighter or Paladin with some strong mythical magic items and gear to back him up
Ain't the dude left handed?
I'm not that familiar with D&D but is that sword of his based on/inspired by The Atlantean Sword from the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film?
I'm personally not sure but I wouldnt be surprised :)
Warduke's first appearance seems to have been in 1983, so it just might be. (Wouldn't be surprised if there was some Star Wars and/or Thundarr the Barbarian influence in there, too)
I’m a bit war duke mad at the mo
Why what happened?
@@itslegendlore The Wild Beyond the Witchlight happened.
Cringe looking shield and music . The drawing was alright but coloration was sub standard .
Yeah this is a super old video xD i've definitely improved since then