Meet the Warlock
The Warlock arrives in The Prophecy of Telor, a thirteen-quest Avalon Hill pack that began as a stretch goal for the "Mythic" tier of the 2020 HasLab crowdfunding campaign and reached shops in 2023–24. One product listing describes the Warlock as a halfling.
The pack is named for Telor, the wizard who travelled with Rogar the barbarian in Mentor's story at the start of the core Quest Book. Telor is a person, not a place.
The Warlock's headline power is Demonform. In Demonform the Warlock rolls an extra attack die and ignores traps. How the Warlock takes Demonform, how long it lasts and what else it changes are on the hero card and the pack's cards, along with the Warlock's Attack, Defend, Body and Mind values; this page doesn't reproduce them. What it does give you is the exact value of those two effects, so you can decide when Demonform is worth it.
Reading the Warlock's Hero Card
- Attack is how many combat dice you roll when you attack. Every skull is a hit.
- Defend is how many combat dice you roll when something attacks you. As a hero you block one hit for every white shield, and two of the six faces are white shields, so each die blocks a third of the time.
- Body Points are your health. Every unblocked hit costs one, and at zero you die unless you drink a healing potion or cast a healing spell on the spot.
- Mind Points stand for wisdom, intelligence and resistance to magic. They matter when one of Zargon's Dread spells tries to put you to sleep, frighten you or take control of you; the spell card says how you resist.
Set the Warlock's card beside the four core heroes:
| Hero | Attack | Defend | Body | Mind | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbarian | 3 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 2 red dice |
| Dwarf | 2 | 2 | 7 | 3 | 2 red dice |
| Elf | 2 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 2 red dice |
| Wizard | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 2 red dice |
| Warlock | see the Warlock's hero card | 2 red dice | |||
What One Extra Attack Die Is Worth
Each attack die is a skull half the time, and a monster blocks only on the black shield, one face in six. So an extra die adds up to half a Body Point of damage to every attack. The chart shows the average damage of one attack against an Orc (2 defend dice) and a Dread Warrior (4 defend dice).
Average Body Points Taken by One Attack
Every step up adds between a third and a half of a Body Point to each attack. That matters most against monsters with several Body Points, where the question isn't "will I hit?" but "how many attacks will this take?"
Chance to Kill Within Two Attacks
Read across a row and each step to the right is one extra die. Against a Dread Warrior, going from 3 to 4 dice raises the chance of finishing it in two attacks from 32.5% to 56.8%. Against an Orc the same die only lifts 93.8% to 97.8%. Demonform pays off against big monsters, not small ones. Monster numbers are the 1990 North American chart, which fan sources say the Avalon Hill game follows; check your monster cards.
What Ignoring Traps Is Worth
The core trap rules decide how much Demonform saves you:
- Pit trap: 1 Body Point, and you fight with one fewer die while you're in the pit.
- Spear trap: one combat die; a skull costs 1 Body Point.
- Falling block: three combat dice, 1 Body Point per skull with no defense, and the square is blocked for good.
Average Cost of Springing a Trap
A hidden trap is a tax on whoever walks in first. If the Warlock is in Demonform, it can go first into an unsearched corridor and save the party a search action, or cross a known trap without spending 2 squares to jump it. Read the card to see exactly how the pack words "ignore", for example whether a falling block still seals the square behind you.
The Warlock's Turn
- On your turn you move, then act, or act, then move. You can't move part of the way, act, and then finish moving.
- Heroes roll two red dice for movement and may move up to the total (an average of 7 squares). There are no diagonal moves, and you can't move through monsters or walls, but you may pass over other heroes.
- Your action is one of six: Attack, Cast a spell, Search for treasure, Search for secret doors, Search for traps or Disarm a trap. Opening doors, drinking potions and picking things up don't use your action.
Whether you can choose the moment depends on how Demonform works on the card. If you can, the chart above is the argument for saving it.
The Warlock in the Party
- With the Dwarf: both deal with traps, in different ways. The Dwarf disarms without a tool kit and fails only on a black shield; the Warlock in Demonform simply ignores them. Between them, nobody else need spring one.
- With a front-liner (Barbarian or Knight): let them hold the doorway while the Warlock saves its big turn for the monster that matters.
- With the Wizard and the Elf: they hold the party's hero spells (nine for the Wizard, three for the Elf, each cast once per quest). Agree who handles which threat so spells and Demonform aren't spent on the same Orc.
Try It at the Table
- Before your first quest with the Warlock, read the Demonform card and write down three things: how it starts, how long it lasts, and anything it costs.
- Pick the toughest monster in the quest you're about to play and look it up on the kill chart above, with and without the extra die.
- Use the Dice Roller to compare your normal attack with your Demonform attack against that monster.
Where Next
- The Prophecy of Telor for the quest pack itself, and its lore page.
- Magic & Spells for how hero and Dread spells work.
- The Bard, the next hero in this guide.