Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5370584" data-attributes="member: 58197">Warlocks explicitly gain their power through bargains with spirits or other forces, and 3E and 4E have both identified them as arcane casters.Gods and angels provide divine magic. Spirits of nature provide primal magic. D&amp;D has never been very consistent on what kind of magic demons, devils, elementals, and other such beings provide. In 4E, for instance, Asmodeus is a deity with paladins and clerics; yet there are also warlocks who receive their power from the Nine Hells.Well, there's the rub--are the effects reproducible? If, for instance, we're going with &quot;warlock magic&quot; (where magic comes from arcane spirits in one form or another), the effect depends on the intervention of a sentient being with its own free agency. You can offer the spirit things that it likes, and it will probably respond favorably, but there's no guarantee--it might be in a bad mood that day, or dislike you personally, or have prior obligations, or any of a dozen other things which might or might not be enough to make it reject the offer.Is that reproducible?(In D&amp;D, all this tends to be handwaved, mostly because it's a pain in the neck to create RPG rules for magic where the effects are not reproducible. Even divine magic, which certainly comes from the intervention of sentient beings, tends to gloss over the question of the god's willingness to intervene.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5370584, member: 58197"] Warlocks explicitly gain their power through bargains with spirits or other forces, and 3E and 4E have both identified them as arcane casters. Gods and angels provide divine magic. Spirits of nature provide primal magic. D&D has never been very consistent on what kind of magic demons, devils, elementals, and other such beings provide. In 4E, for instance, Asmodeus is a deity with paladins and clerics; yet there are also warlocks who receive their power from the Nine Hells. Well, there's the rub--are the effects reproducible? If, for instance, we're going with "warlock magic" (where magic comes from arcane spirits in one form or another), the effect depends on the intervention of a sentient being with its own free agency. You can offer the spirit things that it likes, and it will [i]probably[/i] respond favorably, but there's no guarantee--it might be in a bad mood that day, or dislike you personally, or have prior obligations, or any of a dozen other things which might or might not be enough to make it reject the offer. Is that reproducible? (In D&D, all this tends to be handwaved, mostly because it's a pain in the neck to create RPG rules for magic where the effects are not reproducible. Even divine magic, which certainly comes from the intervention of sentient beings, tends to gloss over the question of the god's willingness to intervene.) [/QUOTE]

Verification