Warlocks = evil?

[Counterspin]

If warlock abilities can still be inherited, there's absolutely no need for any sort of alignment restriction on them. If they have to have made the pact themselves, the only thing required to make a good warlock is hubris.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Uh... Isn't that everybody except the monk then? And maybe the psion?

Clerics need gods and a holy symbol. Wizards need magic and implements and maybe a spell book. Even a fighter needs a sword to do well.

No. Tool use is not the same thing as an external source of powers. Wizards learn how to cast spells, fighters develop their fighting skills, psions strengthen their minds as fighters do their bodies. I don't usually treat clerics as being "gifted" their powers by their gods but they are the best example in 3.5 core. (And luckily clerics don't actually need gods, so I can happily play a philosophy cleric.)

An external source of powers is more like a "instrument of the gods" interpretation of the cleric or what we have seen of the warlock. Instead of gaining power from your training and strengthening yourself, you are simply a vessel for someone else's power to flow through. Not my bag.

 

[Stone Dog]

I'm going to go ahead and be a heretic here and say that I dislike the idea of good powered warlocks.

Forget the name for a bit. What we have are characters that have their power because they or an ancestor made a deal for it. I'm not so happy about the idea of bargaining for magics from the Holy. The Holy should reward devotion, virtue and righteousness because the person is already those things.

I'm less edgy about good powered warlocks that have their power bestowed on them because of destiny, but that doesn't fit with the idea of an arcane powered character class. That would be a divine powered character class.

Of course, those are just musings with what little we know so far. It will be interesting seeing the final product and how the infernal, shadow and feral powers make the class distinct.

 

[Zurai]

I'm not so happy about the idea of bargaining for magics from the Holy. The Holy should reward devotion, virtue and righteousness because the person is already those things.

Sure, a Solar wouldn't likely do such a thing. I can see a Leonal or Ghaele Eladrin doing it, though (the eladrin more than the guardinals, really). Basically, it sounds (no offense intended here) that you're trying to pigeonhole all Good, capital G, powers into being paragons of virtue and righteousness, law and order.

In the 3E cosmology, at least, that's only one small facet of Goodness. There's also the paragons of Good, No Matter The Cost. Those Holies would actually be pretty keen to offer pacts to good-leaning mortals, I'd think.

 

[ThirdWizard]

just out of curiosity, is the Fey source confirmed, or is this just a persistent ENW assumption about the described Feral source?

From here.

Warlocks: In 4E, these are arcane Strikers, able to do a great deal of damage to one or two foes at a time. They can align themselves with fey spirits, devils, demons or the “stars and the darkness between them.” Their abilities will include transportation effects, invocations, curses and a powerful melee attack called Soul Ruin. They also have the ability to use Pacts, meaning that it looks like they absorbed the Binder, and each Pact will grant per-encounter curses.

Depending on how much stock you put in the source.

 

[Victim]

Sure, a Solar wouldn't likely do such a thing. I can see a Leonal or Ghaele Eladrin doing it, though (the eladrin more than the guardinals, really). Basically, it sounds (no offense intended here) that you're trying to pigeonhole all Good, capital G, powers into being paragons of virtue and righteousness, law and order.

In the 3E cosmology, at least, that's only one small facet of Goodness. There's also the paragons of Good, No Matter The Cost. Those Holies would actually be pretty keen to offer pacts to good-leaning mortals, I'd think.

Good, No Matter The Cost sounds like an oxymoron. While there are certainly approaches to good that don't emphasize duty, honor, and law, those approaches still have to be good themselves.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Sure, a Solar wouldn't likely do such a thing. I can see a Leonal or Ghaele Eladrin doing it, though (the eladrin more than the guardinals, really). Basically, it sounds (no offense intended here) that you're trying to pigeonhole all Good, capital G, powers into being paragons of virtue and righteousness, law and order.

In the 3E cosmology, at least, that's only one small facet of Goodness. There's also the paragons of Good, No Matter The Cost. Those Holies would actually be pretty keen to offer pacts to good-leaning mortals, I'd think.

Well, think of what's being offered, and the terms of use on the powers.

An infernal warlock gets his powers from an evil being, but the being has limited control over how the warlock uses those powers. He could go out and do nothing but rescue people from fires using his infernal resistance to flame (or whatever). This is not likely to be too troublesome for the evil being, since perhaps the warlock had to trade over his soul or something else in order to get the powers, and evil beings aren't usually ideologically dedicated to an increase in the amount of evil there is. They foster evil because being evil gets them advantages (souls, power, etc.); it's the morality of the extremely selfish. They'll seed the population with kewl powers and either directly reap rewards, or promise even better powers in exchange for loyalty (which they may or may not come through with).

A good being could make a pact with a warlock, also giving him powers that the good being has little control over. That warlock could do nothing with those powers but go burn down orphanages with the burning light of goodness (or whatever). The good creature is probably going to feel really crappy about that, and if it has any kind of foresight at all will probably not enter into that sort of pact in the first place. Good beings are ideologically dedicated to preventing evil, and will probably not just seed the mortal population with kewl powers and hope for the best. If something goes wrong, it will be a disaster, because evil will be done by their interference.

Good has more invested in the outcome than evil does. Evil probably gets a charge out of putting the temptation for evil into the hands of those who wouldn't necessarily be able to perpetrate evil without the kewl powers. Evil warlocks are probably those who were wronged and looked for a quick path to power so that they could avenge themselves, but may not have started out evil; putting a metaphysical gun in their hands caused them to turn toward evil. A theoretical good warlock was almost certainly good to begin with. If not, what's to stop him from using his powers for evil. In fact, a previously good person suddenly in possession of kewl powers might be tempted to evil for the same reasons the evil warlock was. When you've got a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail, right? So the best way to keep people from getting nailed is to not hand out hammers. And a good being would probably see that right away.

 

[Zurai]

That's a good reason for Celestial pacts to be significantly rarer than Infernal or Fey pacts, but I don't think it excludes them. For example, a large number of Celestial beings that could conceivably grant such a pact have innate access to divination abilities that could determine at least a general idea of the outcome of such a pact. And a Chaotic Good being such as an Eladrin might even make such a pact to a person who won't do immediate good with it - but whose descendant would save the world from a major catastrophe using his bloodline powers. It would take the immediate short-term loss to enable a larger, longer-term gain.

Now, I'm not saying this is the only way to go about it, and I'm not saying your argument is invalid. Not at all, it's an extremely good argument and one I didn't consider fully before my original response. I just don't think the more Chaotic exemplars would feel quite so restricted.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't think celestial pacts are a good idea for the warlock class.

They're probably a good idea in general, I just don't think they're a good idea for the warlock class. It may be too far apart in theme to easily slot into the basic chassis of the warlock class.

I think of character classes like a vehicle chassis. Feats, skills, choosable abilities, those are the extras. Sometimes its easy to modify a particular class in a particular way. Take Fighters in 3e. If I want to make a fighter who is palpably a good guy, I can do it. If I want to make a fighter who gives people the creeps and is palpably a bad guy, I can do that too.

But sometimes its not that easy. Sometimes the theme of the class goes further than skin deep. Sometimes giving a new set of options with which to customize your chassis doesn't create what you're looking for, because the underlying chassis is too specific to something you don't want.

Consider most Evil Paladin classes that basically just swap the words "good" and "evil" in the core 3e paladin class. Sure, some of them are functional. But a lot of them would be much better if they went ahead and started fresh, and designed a class for Paladins of Evil from the ground up, with their own vision, rather than with blinders from looking at the core Paladin too long.

I think that maybe adding an angelic pact option to warlocks might be that sort of mistake. If the theme to warlocks goes as deep as I think it does, a "pact with angels" choice may be too different from what we've got so far.

I'd be excited for a class that DID make pacts with angels. I've been wanting my Magical Anime Girl class for a long, long time. And a character who gains the ability to fly and shoot light from her hands after being blessed by an angel is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. I just suspect that the class which is constructed in a manner similar to either the 3e Warlock, the 3e Binder, or both, won't accept that customization option well.

I can't know for sure without seeing the class itself. But a new class might be the best choice.

 

[Stone Dog]

Basically, it sounds (no offense intended here) that you're trying to pigeonhole all Good, capital G, powers into being paragons of virtue and righteousness, law and order.

No, I'm not. Just the first two which I feel are independant of law and order.

I'm trying to imagine 4e cosmology here, not the Great Wheel. I'm thinking Angels serve Gods and Celestial power is divine in nature and comes down from clerics. That is the Natural Order that the Gods work with.

Anything else is outside that order and must be bargained with. Devils want to spread powers that tempt and corrupt, demons are happy to taint mortals for a little more destruction in the world, the dead want to live vicariously through the exploits of the ambitious living and the fae... well... who knows what the hell the fae want.

I'm just guessing here, but for 4e I'm pretty sure we are going to have to abandon how we think warlocks will work in past D&D cosmologies and imagine new metaphysics.