How about "Witch" instead of "Warlock"?

[Felon]

And the women in the wizarding world are called...

Harriet?

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Witch doesn't seem to fit the nature of the class; warlock does... or better yet sorcerer.

I agree that warlord kinda sucks as a class name. I would prefer something like armsman, commander, marshal, or overseer. Though I also wouldn't mind officer, lordling, leader, or even kibitzer ( ).

 

[Nifft]

Yeah, if we can only keep one "Warlo-", let it not be Warlord.

Hell, just call the class Roy.

Cheers, -- N

 

[WayneLigon]

When you hear "warlord", you think of a guy who doesn't know better than to hold a sword edge against his spinal column?

He's just that good.

 

[lukelightning]

9 times out of 10 you'll get a green warty lady with a broomstick.

Every time Borbag Zugrush, female half-orc, cleans her porch, someone accuses her of being a witch.

 

[Cadfan]

I'm not worried about the hunched over warty green lady with a pointy black hat thing. That can be fixed easily in the minds of D&D players. Sure, the general public may think warty green lady, but the D&D public is going to have no trouble accepting a young, pretty witch, or a middle aged male witch.

My problem is that, archetypically, witches curse people. They don't shoot highly customizable bolts, sheets, and zig-zags of magical fire, ice and acid.

If I'm playing a warlock, I'm ok with him hurling bolts of power like a sith lord crossed with the Energizer Bunny. If I'm playing a witch, I want to steal the strength from an enemy warrior's limbs, leaving him unable to lift his sword. I want to commune with spirits for information. I want low level enemies to flee at the sight of the evil eye.

Its a different archetype to me, and I don't want to use up the name "Witch" on the Warlock when it could (imo should) be its own class.

 

[Felon]

My problem is that, archetypically, witches curse people. They don't shoot highly customizable bolts, sheets, and zig-zags of magical fire, ice and acid.

If I'm playing a warlock, I'm ok with him hurling bolts of power like a sith lord crossed with the Energizer Bunny. If I'm playing a witch, I want to steal the strength from an enemy warrior's limbs, leaving him unable to lift his sword. I want to commune with spirits for information. I want low level enemies to flee at the sight of the evil eye.

Its a different archetype to me, and I don't want to use up the name "Witch" on the Warlock when it could (imo should) be its own class.

Note that your "problem" seems to be that a witch ought to have certain powers that the warlock doesn't offer. In fact, it does. Warlocks can curse and weaken foes and do all sorts of witchy things. Guess you (and others) are too fixated on the eldritch blast, as if it were all there was to a warlock.

And that's to be expected. When a player character sees an orc guarding a pie, they're probably not just going to afflict it with some quality-of-life-diminishing curse. The player's going to kill it. That's why casters get bolts of power and other zaps. A little bit of tailoring and it fits--in this case, call it something like "witchfire".

 

[Felon]

Just to drive my point home a bit more...

I did similar work on the warlock powers over the last couple of days. It was actually a little tough with the warlock powers, because the warlock's got many more powers than he had before, and we don't want all of them to just drip with evil. Making sure that several different varieties of warlock flavor were scattered through the powers was important to me. Fortunately a good number of cleric powers are "classics" that have been around for a long time, so a little bit o' polish and they're good for another edition.

So, we apparently won't have a class that's singularly malevolent. This syncs up with the arguements for using "witch" that I offered in my OP.