Design & Development: The Warlock

[Wormwood]

So, if I am insulted by someone calling me a "Scruffy Nerfherder", even if I am, it's against board rules? Can I say "4th ed Cheerleader"? Or is "Cheerleader" a Newspeak insult too? Maybe the easily insulted can cobble together some kind of Thoughtcrime Insult List and post it somewhere so I know how not to offend those going out of their way to find offense.

Such a list is unnecessary where common courtesy is in use.

 

[Bishmon]

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.

You misunderstood. I don't want to spend my time adding (or subtracting and then adding) flavor to the mechanics. I want to spend my time adding flavor to the character.

I want the warlock to be like the wizard, sorcerer, or cleric. I want to imagine a character, pick the spells/powers that fit my idea for that character, and then build a story on that. I don't want to imagine a character and then have to completely change the class by either renaming, reworking, or outright getting rid of some of its abilities.

All that matters to me is the 3E warlock was one of the least fun classes for me to create a character in because of its inherent lack of flexibility. Granted, as has been pointed out repeatedly, I was certainly capable of overcoming that lack of flexibility, but that sure didn't do anything to make creating a warlock any more fun for me. I'd just like to see a more flexible approach to the 4E warlock.

 

[Badkarmaboy]

Where was it stated there was no druid in the PHB?

Did I miss something big?

 

[BadMojo]

The part I'm surprised that I've seen few comment on in this thread is how CLOSELY this resembles the World of Warcraft Warlock -- down to "marking a soul", to the summoning of mouths to bite enemies, etc. Hopefully, Blizzard won't sue. (edited because I missed the middle of Praxis' post.)

I didn't even know WoW had warlocks. I'm just glad the D&D warlock seems like he ate the lame Hexblade, spat out the bad parts and is much more interesting than the current "I use my eldritch blast...again" warlock of 3.5 Ed.

 

[Paraxis]

A fighter gets levels from killing people.

A fighter gets levels from playing the game like any other class.
He does not have a class ablility based on getting a bonus from killing people.

The facts are they could have either A) put this version of the Warlock in another book, or B) make the Warlock more flexible and use alot less Infernal/Evil/Demonic themes with it.

Personaly I think a Favored Soul/Warlock combo like thing would have been the way to best way to work it. And I know I can strip all the fluff and rewrite the effects and tweak the warlock to be such, but my point is I should not have to.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

So, if I am insulted by someone calling me a "Scruffy Nerfherder", even if I am, it's against board rules? Can I say "4th ed Cheerleader"? Or is "Cheerleader" a Newspeak insult too? Maybe the easily insulted can cobble together some kind of Thoughtcrime Insult List and post it somewhere so I know how not to offend those going out of their way to find offense.

Maybe you could just not call people names.

 

[TheSeer]

After taking a look at this, I'm going to seriously suggest that WotC take a look at the Warlock and tone down some of these abilities and take a look at the flavor behind it.

Is it because I'm scared of "dark" things? Not in the least. The reason for it is because we're only going to have a relatively small number of classes available in the core, and presumably in the SRD, and a class like this is simply not going to be as useful for games as some of the others that are getting moved to supplements.

Like it or not, the majority of D&D campaigns are heroic in nature, and the warlocks flavor (and some of the crunch) clashes with that. If you take a look at Organized Play in the RPGA (arguably one of the largest groups of gamers around) evil characters are banned, and evil actions are a quick ticket to having your character turned into an NPC.

I don't think it would be very hard to adjust the flavor of the class that much.

Now I'm not trying to say that any particular kind of campaign is bad, or that playing a warlock isn't a good thing, only that we have such a small number of "core at launch" classes, that do we really want to include one that is of questionable utility for many groups?

--Steve

Can you quote exactly where your statistics come from. Because if you look at the posts on this board, the sides are pretty much even as far as who likes the allegedly (i use allegedly because we don't have hard facts, more just inference as far as the class being restricted to being evil - again, if you can quote/link to an exact place where it definitively states them as being so, I'd love to see it) dark tone as those who dislike it.

I am a member of the RPGA and to tell you the truth, the one thing I dislike about it is someone who is not at *MY* table has decided that the game is about heroics, therefore my wanting to play someone with more shades of grey/dark isn't a viable choice. That decision should be made between players and DM. Which, is pretty much what WOTC is doing, giving you the choice. If your DM doesn't want to have that in their campaign, then don't have it. It would be no more difficult than it was for my 1E DM to ban Assassins, or from my 2E DM banning Psionics, or my 3E DM banning the entire Book of Exalted Deeds (or Exalted Cheese as he called it.)

Why is it better to take away choices than keep em in and have it be decided between the people concerned?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I wasn't aware that it was a requirement for a cleric of Heironeous to kill people in order to regain spells or that killing evil people gave a cleric of Heironeous special abilities.

Killing people is precisely what gives them special abilities. Why does the cleric get 2nd level spells? He killed enough goblins.

 

[Zaruthustran]

The facts are they could have either A) put this version of the Warlock in another book, or B) make the Warlock more flexible and use alot less Infernal/Evil/Demonic themes with it.

Personaly I think a Favored Soul/Warlock combo like thing would have been the way to best way to work it. And I know I can strip all the fluff and rewrite the effects and tweak the warlock to be such, but my point is I should not have to.

I guess I don't see why the dark themes are a big deal. It's dramatic and interesting, and certainly many D&D adventures have featured diabolical meddling as a major plot point. Many villains wreak havoc at the behest of infernal masters, so it just makes sense for there to be a class that shows why a person would appease those masters: power.

I mean, making the Warlock a PHB class is the most blunt way to say "one of the major themes of this game is that infernal powers meddle in the affairs of men".

Fact is, demons and devils are *the* villains of choice for high level adventurers. There's just not much out there that can go toe to toe with 30th level characters. So by making the warlock a base class, the game introduces these villains as early as possible: during character creation.

Elegant, really.

-z

PS, from your sig: "The game master has full discretionary power over the game." If you don't like the warlock fluff, just change it.

 

[Irda Ranger]

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

No, no. Not at all. My opinion was informed by a mis-reading of the source document itself. (Note to others: based on my mis-read, it was a restatement of the facts, but not an embellishment of them).

It still feels evil to me though. Heck, making deals with the devil is inherantly dicey. It rarely goes well.

I reserve judgement, particularly with respect to the Shadowy and Feral Warlocks. It would have been nice though if there were explicitly 'celestial' and 'elemental' warlocks, to round out the class.