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Author Topic: When I hear the word Warlock...  (Read 3354 times)

LiferGamer

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When I hear the word Warlock...
« on: September 15, 2020, 09:51:11 AM »
First thing I think of is a misguided lost soul that's made a bargain with dark powers who will NOT come out of it ahead.

Not Pokemon. 

Baby Bestiary: Caretaker Warlock (5e)

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/251622/Baby-Bestiary-Caretaker-Warlock-5e


Shit like this is why I am so glad to have found you all.



Your Forgotten Realms was my first The Last Jedi.

If the party is gonna die, they want to be riding and blasting/hacking away at a separate one of Tiamat's heads as she plummets towards earth with broken wings while Solars and Planars sing.

hedgehobbit

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2020, 10:06:01 AM »
Whenever I hear the word Warlock the first thing I think of is how the rendered fat of an unbaptized male child is the primary ingredient in a potion of flying.

Simlasa

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2020, 11:58:56 AM »
I think of the male witches on Bewitched.

But I wouldn't mind playing a Pokemon-like yokai wrangler... and that Caretaker Warlock idea doesn't fly up my skirt and steal my nards either, it sounds cute and fun.
Plenty of fantasy stories have characters protecting and bonding with young creatures the grow to be powerful (or dangerous).
« Last Edit: September 15, 2020, 12:06:34 PM by Simlasa »

Pat
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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2020, 12:01:49 PM »
When I hear the word warlock, I think of curling up the edge of the world.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2020, 01:37:35 PM »
I think of the Warlock b-movies.

Outside of D&D's strictly-defined classes, words like druid, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, witch, etc don't have well-defined meanings owing to their fictional nature.

A warlock could be anything from a male witch, an oath-breaker, a conjurer of spirits, or something else.

D&D's warlock isn't even a coherent concept since you can make a pact with the same stuff worshiped by clerics. Why is there a difference between a warlock, a druid, and a cleric who all get their power from a nature deity?

Ghostmaker

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2020, 01:55:21 PM »
I think of the warlock I played in a 3.5e game who would consistently animate dead enemies and unleash them upon party foes. And who wanted to collect enough onyx to reanimate a giant crustacean so they could use it as a mobile fortress.

Mishihari

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2020, 03:00:37 PM »
I think of the WoW class, pretty much demonologists.  They never seem to pay the price for their perfidy, though.  Weaksausce.

Pat
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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #7 on: September 15, 2020, 03:23:58 PM »
D&D's warlock isn't even a coherent concept since you can make a pact with the same stuff worshiped by clerics. Why is there a difference between a warlock, a druid, and a cleric who all get their power from a nature deity?
I've never actually played in a game that used warlocks, but I always thought the core inspiration (which I referenced above) is the warlock from the Lawrence Watt-Evan's Ethshar series, specifically The Unwilling Warlord novel. The idea is that warlocks tapped into some unknown "source", and they could channel that power to fly, perform what amounts to telekinesis, self-heal, and so on. The more they used the power, the more powerful they became, and the easier it became to use the power, even inadvertently.

The downside is the more attuned they became to the source, the more attuned it became to them, and while nobody knew what the source really was, all warlocks knew it wasn't nice. After a certain point, they would all start having nightmares they couldn't describe on waking, which eventually became whispers they couldn't quite make out even when they were awake. Whatever the source was, it was calling them, and the call became stronger as they became more powerful. Eventually all warlocks vanished in the night, presumably flying away to the source, never to return.

From a story standpoint, it provides hubris, temptation, mystery, and eventual doom. The D&D version sounds like they added additional powers, removed most of the limitations, and shifted the source a bit to more traditional pacts of some kind. But otherwise, remarkably similar.

VisionStorm

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #8 on: September 15, 2020, 05:08:10 PM »
When I hear the word Warlock I think of a gimmicky made up NuD&D (4e+) class that’s arbitrarily different from other caster classes just for the sake of being different and adds to the endless variant stream of what’s essentially a warrior, caster or specialist; needlessly complicating the game so that I can’t just improvise NPCs/Enemies without stopping the game to look up what endless bloat of tiny class features they get that specific level. I also think of Tumblr and cutesy tiefling bois who are nonbinary.

Once upon a time, many years ago (decades really), the word “Warlock” used to invoke images of badass spell casters hexing their enemies and summoning shadowy creatures from beyond. But now it’s just an edgy, trite and overhyped word used by Tumblrinas to wipe their asses with.

I also have to agree with crayon eater that the word has no clearly defined meaning outside of D&D made up distinctions (which are all bullshit, including the idea of separate arcane/divine magic—which has no bearing with real life mystical traditions, which are ALL magico-spiritual to some degree or another, therefore both “arcane” AND “divine”) and if it where up to me there would be no fifty thousand variations of what’s essentially a mystic. There would just be ONE universal caster class and everything else would be a matter of RP or specific skills, feats or equivalent that the character has to define their specific talents beyond their core caster functions.

jhkim

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #9 on: September 15, 2020, 05:37:11 PM »
I think of the male witches on Bewitched.

But I wouldn't mind playing a Pokemon-like yokai wrangler... and that Caretaker Warlock idea doesn't fly up my skirt and steal my nards either, it sounds cute and fun.
Plenty of fantasy stories have characters protecting and bonding with young creatures the grow to be powerful (or dangerous).
Yeah, there are a lot of different kinds of witches and warlocks in different fantasy novels and films/television. The D&D class has some specifics, but like other 5E classes, having the different paths and options means that it can imitate different sorts of characters - varying from the Julian Sands movies of evil antagonist or anti-hero to more positive witch portrayals like Pratchett's Tiffany Aching.

I played a warlock for a while in D&D5. My character was evil-adjacent, and was more wicca-themed with an imp who usually appeared as a raven and using a lot of deception and spying abilities.

In game terms, I'm not sure how I'd handle it if a player wanted their character to be an anti-hero destined to a bad end because of the deal they made. That seems like more of a story-game-ish fate option than D&D. For the OP, would you want a PC witch to be fated to come to grief as a predestined end? Or would you prefer just to not allow PC warlocks?

Omega

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #10 on: September 15, 2020, 06:30:47 PM »
I think of the male counterpart to a witch.The villain The Warlock from the old superman cartoons.
An old 50s western with Henry Fonda.The character in the 2000AD comics.etc.

But really theres so many approaches and uses that its all good really.
Same with Sorcerer.
Another word for wizard, an evil wizard, a movie from the 70s about people transporting nitroglycerine. etc.

JeffB

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #11 on: September 15, 2020, 06:31:52 PM »
This always pops into my mind


Thornhammer

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #12 on: September 15, 2020, 09:43:02 PM »
Whenever I hear the word Warlock the first thing I think of is how the rendered fat of an unbaptized male child is the primary ingredient in a potion of flying.


Truly, a man of taste.


I remember watching that as a young lad, and wondering what in the hell he was putting in that can and then putting two and two together. 


"Oh.  Oh!  ...oh.  Damn, dude."

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #13 on: September 15, 2020, 11:11:41 PM »
To be fair to the baby bestiary people: Their illustrations & writings about the ways to have baby beasts are immeasurably cute.


But Id say Warlock doesn't fit that aspect still.

LiferGamer

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Re: When I hear the word Warlock...
« Reply #14 on: September 16, 2020, 12:04:30 AM »
To be fair to the baby bestiary people: Their illustrations & writings about the ways to have baby beasts are immeasurably cute.

But Id say Warlock doesn't fit that aspect still.


Agreed; I'm not trying to give them shit - but Warlocks?
Your Forgotten Realms was my first The Last Jedi.

If the party is gonna die, they want to be riding and blasting/hacking away at a separate one of Tiamat's heads as she plummets towards earth with broken wings while Solars and Planars sing.