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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 4455147" data-attributes="member: 60965">So, our group's warlock player just noticed an interesting rod synergy as we were shopping for magic items after tonight's game. Forgive me if someone has already found this out; my forum-reading-fu isn't what it could be. Anyway, here's the scenario: A warlock, let's call him Tu Wrod is facing some number of minions in a decently confined area(IE, most of the minions are within 5 squares of another minion - true in almost every fight I've seen since burst 5 is a huge 11x11 area). Tu Wrod is prepared for this many-minioned eventuality and whips his rods out of his rod-holsters. Exhibit A: Rod of Corruption +1 - Property: sack pact boon, instead do AoE Curse to all targets in Burst 5 from target that dies. Exhibit B: Rod of Reaving +1 - Property: when Cursed, target takes 1 damage. Step 1: Tu Wrod moves to the nearest minion and Curses him.Step 2: The minion takes 1 point of damage due to Rod of Reaving's Property.Step 3: Minion dies, granting Tu Wrod his pact boon.Step 4: Tu Wrod uses the Rod of Corruption's Property to turn the boon into an AoE curse, cursing all targets(most importantly - all minions) in 5 squares from the original target.Step 5: Due to the Property of the Rod of Reaving, all these targets take 1 damage.Step 6: If they are non-minion, it ends there. If any number of them are minions, they immediately die from the 1 point of damage.Repeat from step 3 until no more minions in range(likely no more minions period). In most of the cases where minions have been used in our game (played from level 1 to level 6), one application of this at the start of the fight would have wiped out 99% of the minions in each fight while cursing 90% of the non-minions in any fight that contained minions - and all with a minor action. The bad thing about this is it pretty much removes all incentive for a DM to use minions in any group with a warlock, since all Tu Wrod need to do is be close enough to use his curse and all minions turn into Curse-spreading, anti-minion bombs. It doesn't even matter what level the minions and/or the rods are. +1 Rods work just as well as +6 rods and on level 1 minions just as well as level 30 minions(though level 30 minions are probably going to be spread out a bit more than level 1 due to their increased mobility and range). Is there something we missed when looking at this, or is this one of the simplest, easiest anti-minion tactics out there? This all is based on the following assumptions: 1) Items with a Property field function every time their criteria are met, as long as they are equipped(IE, in their appropriate slot). Seems pretty obvious. As long as armor is in the armor slot and a weapon is in a weapon slot, any appropriate Properties are functional. 2) Items with a Property field do not require you to "channel" the related action through the Property. IE, you don't need to do anything special with the items to gain their Property, just have them equipped appropriately as above. 3) Warlock gets his pact boon every time an enemy dies, granting the boon for each enemy that dies while cursed, regardless of circumstances in which the enemy died. This is pretty implicit I think. There may be other implicit assumptions that I'm overlooking. I'm sure you all will find them if there are any.</blockquote>

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