Design & Development: The Warlock

[Lonely Tylenol]

You're right. Since I had been following the news about 4e and did not make the decision until this thread, then I obviously had no right to be paying attention to this forum. I forgot it was only for fanboys who consider 4e the second coming.

I will now remove myself from here and please feel free to come to Circvs Maximvs sometime where I can be quite candid when speaking to you.

Yeah, I'm sure everyone's going to be lining up to be insulted. lol internet.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Straitjacketing a class into one alignment doesn't jibe with their stated design goal.

Well, the 4e design team then wouldn't be the first group of fallible humans to have conflicting goals. Maybe there's no "Alignment: Any Evil" written on the class requirements, but any class whose powers depend on killing someone and giving their soul over to your infernal master is, ipso facto, populated entirely by evil individuals.

Now, we don't know for sure at this time that Boone of Souls is used by the Shadowy or Feral Warlocks, but if it is, then yeah, every Warlock is evil. You just can't go around selling people's souls to the devil and (factually) be good or neutral. That's just not how it works. To say otherwise is to distort the alignment description to Newspeak.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Just because it has been done, doesn't mean it should. Core classes should be general classes in my mind, fit to fill a large range of campaign settings.

This was always the problem with the paladin, its hard to put a paladin and an evil guy in the same party. Yes people have done it, but you have to work to make it work. That's probably why there are now different kinds of paladin's in 4e.

The same should be true for the warlock. Yes, perhaps I want to play the anti-hero I have bad powers but use them for good. Or maybe I just want to have a pact with a good creature and can my powers that way. Why does the warlock need to have a dark taint innately?

Other than that though, I am very excited about the new warlock, it does seem pretty cool.

Only they're warlocking the paladin, not paladinning the warlock. The paladin's alignment restrictions have been lifted, allowing him to be something other than LG. The warlock was never restricted to CE. He could be good or evil, lawful or chaotic, just not every combination of the two.

 

[Plane Sailing]

but any class whose powers depend on killing someone and giving their soul over to your infernal master

Where exactly do you get this idea from?

The actual article says

the pacts provide direct benefits when you send an enemy you've marked to their afterlife reward

Now to me this says quite clearly that the good guys go to their good afterlife reward, the evil guys go to their evil afterlife reward.

Sending an enemy to their afterlife reward.

Nothing about turning souls over to your own master, whatever that might be.

I'm guessing that someone made an assumption earlier in the thread and it has been passed on through the thread without going back to the source document again

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

"Your opinion doesn't count!"



No worse than your speculation that Warlocks aren't an evil-aligned class. Judging by the article, they are evil all the way with a captial "E". They mentioned feral and shadow in passing and suddenly, with no evidence whatsoever, that makes them non-evil? Now who's reading into the article more than is actually there? By what is currently in the article, they are geared toward being evil. Handwaving semantics and arguing over the traditional meaning of "feral" notwithstanding.

It's a less reasonable assumption that warlocks are going to be an "all villain, all the time" class than it is that they will be able to be either heroes or villains. It would waste a ton of space in the Classes section if the warlock could only be used as an evil character, and would be a bad idea for the designers to set it up this way, and we all implicitly understand this. Therefore, the claims that the warlock can only be evil need to be justified. The default assumption is that you will be able to make a wide variety of characters with any given class.

He didn't specifically call anyone a "name". He said this forum was full of fanboys (which isn't exactly a dirty word, nor untrue).

It's insulting, which is contrary to the board rules.

Then a few posts later, someone suggested he was foolish for posting in a forum dedicated to 4th ed and expecting NOT to find it overrun with 4th ed "fanboys". Which is it? Is this forum for new edition cheerleaders only, or can someone disagree and not get derided, insulted, or dare I say it, "pounced" upon?

He was being obviously ironic when he used the word "fanboys."

 

[SteveC]

I think that a little of the point is being missed. You can have good characters that have dark backgrounds, and the Warlock is invoking images of Spawn and Ghost Rider to that end, I would suppose.

My point is: are these kinds of characters really so iconic that we want one them to be one of the first eight character classes that are presented to us? Aren't there some kinds of characters that might be more iconic and more timely (I mean, come on, do they even publish Spawn any more?)

My suggestion is to yoink the Warlock, and put the Mageblade character back in (assuming that class is still out of the book...)

I think you'd get a lot better response from that class than the Warlock. Warlocks are fine, just give 'em to me in a splat book.

--Steve

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

For you. I don't want to do it. I don't want to have to spend the time converting a class to be more flexible. That's time I could be using to do any number of other more creatively fulfilling things.

If you find that fun, great. But I don't. I'd rather be presented with a flexible class and spend the time detailing the cool flavor I want instead of having to pry unwanted flavor out of all the mechanics to get it looking like something I want. That's just my preference.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pry."

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there was no flavour at all associated with the warlock. None. Just a bunch of mechanics. You add your own flavour. You suggest that you'll enjoy "detailing the cool flavor." You just fill in the appropriate names, effects, etc.

Now, what exactly would change if the warlock came fully loaded with flavour? You'd still detail the cool flavour, fill in the appropriate names, effects, etc. The only difference is that you'd be overwriting what's there instead of filling in blanks. But overwriting existing flavour is exactly as easy as filling in blanks. It's not like the existing flavour is going to fight with you. You just tap the "insert" key, write "celestial" over top of "infernal", and it's done. Cross out "sends him to hell" and write in "sends him to heaven". Since you're going to be doing all this detailing of cool flavour anyway, I don't see where you get the idea that there's going to be a bunch of extra work.

 

[Remathilis]

I dunno, this thread is pretty evil. Side effect of the warlocks infernal masters?

(Thinks the 3.X paladin threads will be bouts using the Marquess of Queensberry rules compared to warlock threads...)

 

[Wormwood]

I dunno, this thread is pretty evil. Side effect of the warlocks infernal masters?

(Thinks the 3.X paladin threads will be bouts using the Marquess of Queensberry rules compared to warlock threads...)

I believe the anger about the Warlock is inversely proportionate to the actual information we have on the class.

Geeks abhor a vacuum.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

And yes, there is a real difference between good and evil, both in the real world and in D&D.

Where did this come from?