Could we please have a non evil/ammoral pact for Warlocks? :)

[GreatLemur]

I think his point was that if you make good Warlocks possible, the classic Warlock archetype of "I sold my soul to an evil demon, to gain power to do good" becomes null and void. After all, he could just have made a Good pact and gained his powers that way.

I'm not sure that's a reasonable assumption. Sure, the player could have created a Warlock who made a pact with a good-aligned patron, but that doesn't mean that the character ever had such a chance. I don't picture D&D cities as having a bunch of clearly-marked training halls for Fighters, Rogues, Clerics of Thor, Clerics of Vecna, feral Warlocks, infernal Warlocks, and so on. I kinda suspect that becoming a Warlock of any variety might be an opportunity that only a few people are ever offered.

The bigger question in my mind would be what would separate "celestial" Warlocks from Clerics of good-aligned deities. But I could definitely buy the idea of gods (including the likes of Asmodeus) empowering Clerics while lesser beings such as angels (and, conversely, devils) empower Warlocks.

At any rate, I'm entirely certain we'll see more flavors of Warlock in the future, so this whole issue doesn't seem worth getting upset about.

 

[Walking Dad]

Walking Dad,
I like playing D&D as heroic fantasy, good guys, even if they are often cranky, violent, boozing, frequenters of cathouses
(Being Scots, I tend to have an empathy for grumpy dwarves and wizards, lol!)

Evil is just not cool, seen enough of it in RL to sicken me for several life times :/
I play D&D to get away from RL's ickiness.

I said marketing guys, not me.

Honeslty, how often do you get a player who can run an evil character, and NOT have it ruin play, hm? yes, the do exist, but they ain't common, IMHO.

Last time... in my D&D group. One NE wizard who has a Hitlist of our characters (to many points and he will kill you). The other is a Loviatar priest, who punches everyone, before he heals them.

Warlocks as agents of the fey, elemental, wild powers is great....or characters cursed to have peculiar, deadly abilities that set them apart from the norm, that even they or anyone else may never understand....or to have their fates inexorably bound with some dangerous, destructive entity, beneficial, malign or uncaring, because of some ancient law, cosmic accident or other unexpected fate...those are cool.

I hope this options are included!!!!

 

[kennew142]

Too many folk want warlocks so they can be "the creepy bad guy!", sorry but that doesn't float in my games. Way I see it is, you mess with the powers of Evil, they will 99.9% of the time own your silly ass Also, Evil is *NOT* "cool".

Most folks I know want to be able to build warlock characters like Constantine, Spawn and Ghost Rider - not so they play evil.

Many cultures/myths have "good" deities/powers who are dangerous and down right nasty to their enemies: Soddom and Gomorrah is the most well known such in the Christian world

Any power that perormed such a deed does not meet the D&D definition of good, whatever folks in the real world think.

Having warlocks as basically evil characters is going to have a lot of DMs not want them, period. Having them as dangerous, mysterious, haunted, wrestling with their pwoers/fate/benefactor etc, is fine.

otherwise I KNOW munchkin twerps are gonna want to play the "sexy angst ridden evil warlock" in my and other folks' games, and cause trouble, so I'm going to have to tell them to get stuffed

There is nothing in the rules that makes warlocks evil characters. Who says they're evil? As far as I can tell, it is only some posters in these forums who would like a straw man they can beat up on.

I am in favor of opening up the mechanic to other types of pacts (including angels, couatls, etc...), but most of the posts I've seen advocating it have been nothing more than blind assertions that the current class can only be evil. Oftimes, these same posters (in a moment of true irony) then come up with examples of warlock pacts with good beings that meet no sane definition of good.

If you have a problem with folks (I prefer to avoid derogatory terms such as munchin' twerps) wanting to play evil warlocks in your game, you can always tell them no. I do.

If you have a problem with folks wanting to play evil warlocks in other people's games, that's none of your business. Folks can play D&D however they want.

If you have a problem with folks playing a neutral warlock in your game who uses his class and/or pact as an excuse to play an evil character, you can always pull them aside and say, "Your character isn't really working for me or for this campaign." I've had to do that many times over the last 29 years myself.

I don't even use alignment in my homebrew campaigns, and I've been able to handle the occasional player with the evil character. It seems to me that this is an issue that each GM and each gaming group must deal with themselves. It is none of our concern how other folks play the game.

 

[Rel]

Let's knock off the references to real world religions please.

 

[Guacamole]

Rule 1.b.22.vix --Grand Ecumenical Dogma and Pamphlet of the Role-Player's Thrice Joyous Covenant

"If you don't like the fluff, rewrite the fluff." Good pacts would be fine as long as the rules aren't changed.

-------------------------------------------------------------

As far as I can tell, having good warlocks wouldn't threaten the existence of evil pact granting beings. Good powers would grant people power to do good things. Evil powers would grant people power to do evil things. Bahamut will not be your patron in warlockery if you want to poke baby good dragons in the eye. Neither will Tiamat if you want to undermine her plan to make everyone watch her show, buy her magazine, and log into her website. If you violate the terms of your contract by lying or whatnot, you'd better find a way out before character death/level 30 else you'd seem to be in for an eternity of hurt for breaking the contract.

I like Samson as an example of a guy IRW religion/literature who had a pact with a good power (Nazirite Vow) that granted him specific powers (not a sorcerous blast, but super-duper strength -- and, if you don't know the story, don't bother calling him a paladin!). Some research on the Nazirite vow might help a body come up with a group of warlocks who even opperate within the orthodox hierarchy of a religion -- check it out, it's even got blood sacrifice!:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazirite

cheers,
guaca.

 

[Mallus]

Honeslty, how often do you get a player who can run an evil character, and NOT have it ruin play, hm?

For me the answer is "frequently, no, make that always". The entire group I've DM'ed for the past 3.5 years, with the exception of a single character, is evil using any definition of the word I can think of. Been going swimmingly so far.

Disruptive players wreck games. It has nothing to do with their character's alignment.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I took a look at the Warlock section of Races and Classes the other day, and what they said about Star pacts made me wonder if we were all barking up the wrong tree about 'em. From what the essay said, it sounded more like a Star pact was a deal with the powers of Fate, rather than the Far Realm.

That makes a lot more sense to me. The whole "star pact = far realms" thing seemed like an odd logical leap to me, and was originally made by people who had not yet even read the book. Even the idea of a Far Realms pact doesn't really make much sense to me, really...

A pact with the powers of fate that are ruled by the motions of the stars, though, is something that sounds much more interesting.

 

[Ahglock]

I'm a bit on the fence.

I imagine my campaign world's moral argument as this: those who seek raw power for its own sake are seldom worthy to have it. Good empowers those who serve: clerics are servants of a specific deity, and paladins are those who serve the greater good. Anyone who bargains for power is motivated as much by pride as a desire to do good.



The only problem is one of imagination: thinking of a Good power source that doesn't care greatly about its warlock's actions--if they did care, why would they enter such a pact? (Answer: they wouldn't--they would reserve the right to revoke the warlock's power, i.e.,
make them a cleric.)

Who says a good warlock is entering the pact because they seek raw power. Maybe evil came a knockin and they have to make a pact in order to fight the evil. They didn't want ti because the pact comes with obligations that they had no desire to enter into. The classic reluctant hero. And sometimes they might be forced by situations to make that pact with an evil being since they were the only ones around at the time to make a pact with. Its not like in any of the "classic" good guy who makes a pact with evil to fight evil stories the "hero" had time to research his options on the internet.

And as for the good power source not caring, well there is a pact that limits them a bit, with obligations to live up to, and they wont get more power(level up in the lock class) unless they fullfill those "good" obligations.

 

[Wormwood]

Disruptive players wreck games. It has nothing to do with their character's alignment.

QFT.

 

[Kaisoku]

Who says it has to be a Good or Evil Warlock?

I just like the idea of a person who steals or makes pacts to get his powers rather than trains, or prays for them.

For example... I've had the idea of a campaign setting here the spellcasters gained their magic through pacts with Elementals from the four elemental forces (fire, water, earth, and air). From the sounds of it, Warlocks were to be the perfect example of this and I was looking forward to it.

Now elementals aren't on the latest list of Warlock pact makers. So it'll have to be something I write up myself I guess, no biggie.


I can see a Warlock gaining powers from a Good source in the same way. It's just another source, and doesn't necessarily have to be about being Good or Evil aligned. If anything, the Warlock sounds like the most unaligned, being that they specifically wouldn't be praying or using their powers for the god explicitly.

Also, there's apparently room for outsiders that aren't specifically aligned to Good or Evil, so maybe there's an Angel or Demon that's willing to do something "outside the rules".

Thinking of examples such as in the movie Constantine, or the concept and story behind the game Painkiller, etc. People using powers and rituals that are from a Good or Evil source, without being good or evil themselves...