Why are Warlocks evil?

Why are Warlocks evil?

Usually because they're in league with not-Satan, not-Cthulhu, particularly dickish faeries, or something else powerful and spooky.

This, really. Most incarnations of warlocks are individuals who enter into pacts with malevolent or incomprehensible entities in exchange for power.

As above, also in the real world a warlock was basically a man who sold his soul The devil in exchange for being a wizard or some shit.

As compared to the historical witch, a female who sucked The devil's dick for the same.

Because they have "war" in their name. Make love, not war :^D

They aren't. Stop asking questions with a fundamentally incorrect premise, you rancid queef blasted from a dead moose's cunt.

>trade your soul to an elder being/demon/faerie with questionable morals for power
>not evil

Pick one, and only one.

Well, player character warlocks can definitely swing neutral, particularly if they aren't especially loyal to the entity holding their chain.

Coincidence.

My class is Lovelock.

That they might, but the fact still stands, they kowtow with higher entities for power. Most of these entities are kinds of daemons. Even those that aren't such as fairies are still hardly friendly enough to humans.
Fairies of old, where they got inspiration from, could be delighted seeing our suffering.
And lastly, being neutral doesn't mean not being the most dickish of cunts.

While true in a sense, they have also clearly and deliberately caused a soul (hopefully only their own) to suffer eternal damnation/suffering/purgatory by enacting this pact in the first place. I believe that is an evil act no,matter how hard you spin it.

Also, in said pact is usually a clause that states "If you (the warlock) fail to meet my (elder power) expectations or fail to act in accordance with the rules I have set down, I reserve the right to revoke your power."

If you make a deal with a Devil, and you turn around and use that power for good, they will come to claim your soul. So basically, you're evil or dead.

They aren't. Stop sucking cock.

I can't, I enjoy it too much.

Says demon's cocksucker. Gtfo, bitch.

Does that mean that Wizards love The WIZ? Or do they piss everywhere?

I have demonstrated how a Warlock is evil.
I would like you to demonstrate how a Warlock can be good and continue to be a both A) alive and B) a Warlock.

Also I enjoy sucking cocks and will continue to do so.

Warlocks can make a pact with any creature of sufficient power, not just demons or devils. Fuck off.

Make a pact with a non-evil creature. There, done. Get rekt.

How does that make you any less of a cocksucker, cocksucker?
Faires aren't good, so you're gotta be evil, period.

And which creatures would that be?
I have never heard of a Warlock making a pact with an Angel.

This.

>b-b-b-b-b-but muh demon pact

Not inherently evil.

>neutral might as well be evil

Yeah, around here we call that desperate damage control.

>hurting yourself is evil

Nope.

>all Warlocks follow demonic entities

Nope.

Amusingly, under this definition, one might consider Paladins to be Warlocks.

>he's never heard of a Feylock
>hoots of derision intensify

Neutral actions might be evil and the soultaint is a fact, keep on that damage control.

>fey
>creatures who steal children, delight in suffering and are huge cunts.
>not evil.

Nice try. Let's go again.

Because the word warlock literally means oathbreaker/deceiver? I know you want to be special but you have to understand the whole idea of a warlock is evil.

That definition has nothing that makes Paladins and Warlocks the same.

Nothing stops a Warlock from entering a pact with a Celestial, for example. Or Good-aligned Fey. Despite what autists on Veeky Forums think, such things can and in fact to exist in most settings. Or maybe their patron is an elemental lord. Or a Wizard of cosmic and transcendent power who wants a mortal servant while they fuck off in the Astral Plane.

One of the best things in 5th Edition is the Positive Energy Warlock and the Seeker Warlock.

I never saw the point, mechanically, to add warlocks. Wizards do practically everything they do, but better and more reliably. Warlocks need to make bids for power while wizards simply spend time reading to acquire the EXACT same power.

It seems to me that warlocks were added solely to have an edgy angle on playing a wizard. Thematically they have so little different from them than wizards, except for maybe the lack of independence, that I think the only reason they were added is to homebrew more specific societal things to interact with players.

I still don't see why anyone would play a warlock instead of a wizard, core rulebook

Flavor, basically.

Wizards in most fantasy games including D&D are basically STEM major power fantasies. Not everyone enjoys magic articulated as "if we integrate the ley line equations with the proper quadratic alignment of neo-icieum we can create a blizzard!". Playing a nerd with a book is one way to play a magic wielder but it gets tiring when that's the only way.

Warlock offers a more occult angle. Less magic algebra and more spookiness.

Necessity
> "OH GODS EVERYONE I KNOW AND LOVE IS GONNA DIE IF I DONT DO SOMETHING. Hey evil being, I know you're evil, but gimme dat power, I need it to protect people and I don't have time for a training montage."

Forced Upon
> "Your soul has been sold to me by your father, you will do my bidding. Here, have a fraction of my power, you wouldnt be able to do anything otherwise."

Entity doesnt know someone is using its power
> "So, I maaay have figured out how to channel the power of Vldarshgn the Sleeping Leviathan. Next step, using it for the betterment of everyone!"

Entity isnt necessarily evil
> "Alright boy, I'll lend you some power, but you'll be my pawn in the mortal realm. No I don't plan on bringing destruction to your land, I honestly just want to dick over Blorgash the Pestilent since he destroyed a circle of druids that worshipped me."

That's four situations, do you want me to carry on?

I want to put the fear of [Entity name] on Blorgash

While those situations are nice and all, they only deal with acquiring Warlock power, but fail to remember that the kind of entities that make these pacts force Warlock to carry out their bidding. Especially your first two examples, if the Warlock goes against the wishes of the entity, that entity then claims the Warlock's soul.

>I need to protect people
You are didn't read the terms and conditions, your soul is mine

>daddy had issues
not my problem, two free souls

>sleeping elder power
Then wakes up because someone is stealing power. Time for devastation

>non- evil entity
Doesn't make warlock pacts in the first place. What you get is a sorcerer/paladin/cleric/druid etc.

Please continue, these are amusing at the very least.

>non- evil entity
>Doesn't make warlock pacts in the first place


This is a really important distinction. Pelor doesn't visit mortals in their dreams or at a crossroads to tell them unlimited power can be theirs if they pledge their souls for them. His power is there for anyone with the strength and moral foundation to wield it and he only takes it from people who abuse it. There's no dotted lines.

Good entities don't need to finagle or coerce or make deals to get mortal followers. A Good hero will do their work regardless of their help and one who has to be convinced isn't really worth their time.

Warcraft warlocks are not inherently evil, but a necessary use of dark magic. what I never understood about warcraft was that they persecute demon hunters for doing what they did, but let warlocks and blood elves run around freely despite them being tainted with fel magic. thats something thats always really bugged me.

Because good warlocks are called druids or clerics.

#NotAllWarlocks

Some eldritch abomination, it's not evil because it's morality is completely alien

They aren't, only some are. The evil warlocks are the narrow mainstream conception of them as Satan worshipping magic dudes gifted with power in exchange for their souls.

In many RPGs, warlocks (and witches) occupy a much larger concept of a non divine entity gifting power in exchange for service. From powerful angels and other celestial beings, to infernal lords and princes, to the inscrutable Fey, to elementals lords and kings, to things from between the stars. All of these grant a smidgen of their power in exchange for spreading their influence, whether that is simply chaos, founding cults, or for more precise missions. It has even been said that there are warlocks and witches who get their power from minor gods.

>non- evil entity
>Doesn't make warlock pacts in the first place. What you get is a sorcerer/paladin/cleric/druid etc.
A sorcerer is someone with magical lineage, a Cleric is gifted with power by a god through faithful devotion, a druid is gifted with power by powerful nature spirits or nature gods by faithful devotion, a paladin is a warrior of a god gifted with power by faithful devotion. There are plenty of good entities that aren't gods which need mortals to carry out their affairs. Making a pact isn't some soul selling business, but entering into a business arrangement for power at the cost of service. Even gods would do this with certain people who aren't exactly faithful but would serve as an excellent means towards a certain goal.

Maahes the Guardian Beast, a powerful angel, needs tasks carried out by some mortals, so he invests some of the minor divine power he has to them, making them a warlock (or witch in PF). Maahes doesn't have the power of a full god and thus is unable to grant cleric powers, but he has enough to fuel a few people to serve him and grant knowledge of certain magical abilities.

> Terms and Conditions
So suddenly a selfless sacrifice is an evil act? To sacrifice your own soul in order to preserve the lifes of others is evil?

> Inherited Pact
Still doesn't make the Warlock evil, in fact, the warlock wasn't even the one who made the pact. The entity might be evil sure, but the warlock didn't exactly have the choice in this scenario, and as far as I understand it, we are discussing the morality of the warlock first, and that of the entity only as a consequence.

> Leviathan wakes up
That still doesn't make the character evil. Stupid perhaps, arrogant almost definitely, but not necessarily evil depending how he uses the power. He might have doomed the world, and even might be remembered in history as an evil person, but the person itself may not be evil, especially if their aims was to improve the world, rather than destroy it

> Not a dick entity
Why wouldn't it though? I mean, DnD 5e has things like the Undying One and Fey. And before you link me back to remember I'm talking DnD 5e here, which by default has several fey that aren't evil (complete dicks maybe, but the chaotic neutral type)

As for new scenarios

Demon-Enhanced Demon Hunter
> Turns out that in this scenario's universe, the best way to kill a demon is with another demon's power, hence the secretive Order of Hunters performs contracts with demons, damming themselves, but protecting so many others.

Entity falls outside our spectrum of morality
> Valriagth the Eternal is a completely alien being and for reasons inscrutable to mere mortals, gives power to the warlock. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth yeah? Especially if the horse could crush you with less than a though.

In the original flavor text for WoW warlocks, it describes them as almost universally possessing capricious and cruel personalities.

If you read into the lore a little, you find in almost all societies warlocks are frowned upon and disliked for consorting with dark powers. But they're more or less tolerated because the original point was every faction in the game is on the ropes, and warlocks are diverting those powers towards those factions' enemies (for now). The Forsake are the only race where warlocks were ever allowed to roam freely.

However, for gameplay purposes they couldn't make a class which was actually kill on sight for most NPCs.

By this point though I feel Blizz more or less forgot about all of this.

Can a warlock that is sufficiently powerful create a new warlock by forming a pact with another person? Would that practically, though maybe not formally, make the second warlock a subcontractor of the first warlock's pact? And continuing down that line of thought, could the second warlock then create a third warlock by acting as the patron in a new pact? If this chain could then be extended, or if several of these signatories could each be contracted with one warlock, then in theory you could organize organizations or even entire societies where everyone is a warlock and the position in the chain of subcontractors correlates with one's standing within the hierarchy of the collective.

once death knights showed up im sure warlocks became a non issue. and as it is currently vs the burning legion, pretty much anything goes to avoid being annihilated.

Granting warlock pacts requires you to be greater than HD 20. So we are talking such entities as Demon lords, named unique angels, Fey lords, and such. Basically, only epic warlocks would be able to do such a thing, and even then only for a very limited number of people.

It is their magical realm, after all

>Warlock pyramid schemes
I am so using this

At first I was got an idea about contractual crusades between warlocks of different pacts, but then it struck me that the patrons would be irreplaceable in a much more considerable way than any military general from actual history, and that makes me think that assassination and precision killing might be a more likely doctrine to be adapted, supposing that the legwork subcontractors could have the means of killing a patron that might be higher up than themselves in their respective pact "pyramids."

Kinda reminds me of the Genocide Men from Requiem Chevalier Vampire. People who are basically WMDs because when they die they wipe out such a countless number of enemies.

Oryx pls

Your GM might allow something like that if you ask them. Like, say you play a warlock who's made a pact with a fey. You negotiate something with the fey, maybe pay some price or accept some new terms or conditions, and in exchange you get to make a contract with some other character under certain terms (some fine print can be fun in these situations). Then let's say that your subcontractor gets the ability to cast some nerfed cantrip or has some sort of linked form between you. I think it can be a decent plot hook. I'd probably treat it more as a subplot, though.

Damn user, that's an awfully large amount of salt for the conversation.

Good and evil are just words, and why bother with those when you can have POWER?

>Good and evil are just words
Detect Evil isn't just about flipping through a dictionary or a dissertation on dualist morality.

Because the translation of warlock isn't "male witch" warlock translates into "oath breaker".

Technically anyone who has ever broken an honor bound promise or committed a vile evil act of betrayal to someone who they were loyal to is a warlock, male or female, with magical abilities or without.

Pic related you fucking tards.

>warlock pyramid scheme
That can't be good.

I could see it

I'm not understanding why Lorkhan is relevant, but I've always love his expression.

If any Patron would appreciate a good hustle like the warlock pyramid scheme, it'd be Lorkhan.

And Wizard means sage or wiseman, but this is about fantasy you autismal pedant.

What the literal translation of the word is does not encompass it's actual meaning you fucking sperg. Wendigo means Hungry Winter but that doesn't mean the legends are about snow that needs a cheeseburger.

Because they only dress in black, red, and purple.

Wizards are chill fuckers who are all about balance of the natural order and shit, they use magic wisely and in adequate portions.

Warlocks are stupid, arrogant, ignorant or crazy sorcerers who see themselves above the restrictions more relaxed wizards place on their activities, outside the limitations of sanity, tradition or convention.

They're not evil as much as they are greedy dicks gripped with hybris, but in the end they usually pay dearly for messing with fire so to speak anyway.

They're......not?
They usually can be anything they want.
Their patron however.....well that's a different story.

they break oaths dude, they're fucking assholes.

They are, ultimately, granting a suspicious or downright malicious otherworldly being influence over their home dimension in exchange for magical power.

But I suppose it's perfectly possible to play a neutral or good warlock, if their motivations are good, regardless of their patron.

Good posts.

What does Necromancer literally translate to, user?

What do Necromancers actually do?

>people ITT implying that pacts with not-technically-evil beings like Elder Gods and Fey are not a fucking 90 degree slippery slope

>implying accepting their alien morality system doesn't allow you to transcend good and evil

In the case if the Fey pact, nearly all examples given in 5e aren't evil or totally duplicitous. I think the only ones are ancient hags.

I was wrong. There is also the Prince of Frost and the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Do you ever wonder if those spells were designed by thinking beings (wizards or gods) and if so how much work it took these beings to decide whether, say, littering made someone evil?

they are only as evil as you want them to be

What the word actually means doesn't fucking matter. It's context. It depends on the setting, you twat.

>the lorkhan the malicious trickster meme
I want elves to leave.

>Implying you can't do both at the same time.

laughing_morrighan_and_ishtar.scroll

Person who reads the future using death.
They actually talk to the dead (in spirit form) in hopes of finding out things about the future.

I would love to see more settings that actually have people like this, classical mythology magicians, who are mostly diviners.

Maybe but there is no reasons why you couldn't have a setting where people can make this kind of pacts with angels or other good/neutral entities.

the Wardstone Chronicles has a necromancer as the villain of one book who's like that, he uses his ability to talk to the dead to gain leverage on people to manipulate them.

you might as well replace
>fey
with
>humans/elves/dwarves/orcs/anyone ever
because there's going to be some sick fuckos who like being huge cunts and fucking up other people. By your logic, warlocks are evil because some sentient being was a huge cunt to someone else so therefore all sentient beings are evil.

Oh for fucks sake. Now I want there to be a setting like that. Where any sufficiently godly entity can make a pact with a mortal.

>Kevin the "mage" makes a deal with Grothnabog the Unpossible because he can't actually do magic for shit.
>First has to track down Grothnabog
>The trick is to find the prime number avoiding pattern in pub closing times
>Grothnabog has a thing about prime numbers
>Migrates between pubs of the most ancient still inhabited city so as to avoid them
>Kevin eventually tracks Grothnabog down
>Performs the ritual of buying Grothnabog a pint made up of shots from the top shelf
>The two get drunk together
>Both pass out
>Kevin wakes up with basic Jedi abilities
>Performs many deed, makes name for himself and his patron
>Returns to patron because "can you give me the ability to shoot lightning from my hands? Shit would be so wizard!"
>"Ok, just hold still I'm drunk and I need to concentrate"
>Grabs Kevin's head and starts muttering in impossible non-words that makes the lights dim, eldritch screaming comes from the wall, the ceiling is impossibly high, the walls fade away and all about there is the wasteland beyond reality and the Things that dwell there watching. Always watching.
>Barman throws mug at Grothnabog's head and tells him to cut that shit out
>"Sorry bro, lost concentration because SOME SHITSTAIN bopped me one on the noggin. Good news, you got baddass lightning, but you also got eyeballs that look like you borrowed them from an octopus".
>"So whats the bad news?"
>"The eyeballs?"
>"Bitch if I knew badass wizard eyes were an option I would have fucking paid for it in gold!"
>Fucking humans, man. I swear they weren't this weird back in the Neolithic era.

>Wizards
>Using magic wisely.

I provide you, exhibit A.

The true answer is pop culture, as always, because sometimes the sorcerer is not edgelord enough. That's why they are described like that in the rulebooks, so the target audience can be baited into purchasing the product.

The practical answer is that it depends on the setting. It is entirely possible to create a world where everyone is a sorcerer mechanically but they are called priests because that is their function in society (and their job description), for example.

The smartass answer is that strictly speaking, warlocks are clerics but without having to adhere to anyone's teachings, only the job matters. In short, warlocks are skipping out on customer service, having to sell their religion, and angry calls from middle management for the smallest mistakes. As long as their boss' demands are met they can do whatever the fuck they want. Of course the clerics will be assmad and shittalk them to oblivion.

They tend to turn into Magi

Because they're so obsessively power-hungry and reckless that they make shitty deals with dangerous and mostly evil beings to borrow their power.

If a warlock on a higher tier dies, would every warlock under his lineage lose their abilities? If somehow the super powerful chief warlock were to be killed, would all the rest become mundane? I've never thought of playing a game where the patron's death was a possibility.

I suppose that depends on the time print of the pact. If a warlock with subcontractors die, then the contract would either be voided and moot, or it woupd be inherited by a subcontractor as per some sort of order of succession.

Both have some pretty intriguing ideas. You either give the lower warlocks a vested interest in protecting their superiors from harm, or the temptation to conspire together against the more powerful heads.

Isn't that every fairytale where someone in a compact with the Devil routinely kills an apprentice to buy themselves more time?
Because there's *a lot* of fairytales to that pattern.

Circumstance of poverty and opportunity curtailed by monarchs, oppressive churches and myopic scholars has forced them to reach out to abyssal forces in their pursuit of ambition and happiness.

Noone understands them. Noone cares.

5e lore here. Warlocks are dudes that make a pact with a being for magical knowledge.
This is the easy street to power; when the kid is failing the wizard's college and his silver tongue is no longer enough to keep up a facade, a voice from the corner offers him an out for a favor down the line...
These pacts are not always over souls. Fiends can get a warlock's soul just by giving them power/motivation to do evil things, which is often easy, because they get to cherrypick who of those willing to make dark pacts for power is corruptable. Fey may or may not give a shit about that, and likely require other favors or mortal influence or just a good show. Old ones are downright inscrutable, and may not even know that their power is being tapped- less of a pact than the warlock stumbling across how to draw upon something much bigger and maddening than they.
So it's real easy for them to fall to evil; the temptations of power can do that. Fiends want them to be corrupted and spread evil, some fey are indifferent while others are glad for the show and the evil ones are happy to cause suffering, and the influence of the olds ones can cause madness and temptation to do downright nasty things with those mind-affecting powers. Not all warlocks are evil, though.
Oh, and their teacher can't rescind their powers. It isn't like a cleric or paladin where they tap into a god's power supply, they get taught their tricks. Even if they draw upon their master's power, it's because the master taught them how to do that such as a fiend sharing a bit of their true name to spice up their spell incantations, or cracking into a good vein of old one...stuff.

Depends on the pact they made.

Yeah, selling your soul to Demons or Devils is a pretty fuckibg stupid thing to do in a universe where afterlifes of infinite happiness and love exist, but that's just one flavor. Even then, some causes may compel a person to damn themselves for millenia for their only chance to right a major wrong.

If you're a level 1 commoner and a local warlord strolls through your town, burns everything to the ground and murders everyone you've ever known or loved, you don't have many options. If you're not lucky enough to be born with innate sorcery, you were never particularly great with weapons (especially to the near supernatural degree fighters, warblades, etc. are) and you aren't a genius Wizard with 20 native int, you don't have many routes to power that don't involve sacrifice.

Selling your soul for the chance to be as powerful as those mythical adventurers you've always hears about, who throw around as much money as a small kingdom on pure whim, who arm wrestle dragons for fun when they're drunk, well it may end up being worth it.

Not to mention the wide variety of ways one can completely cheat both death and the afterlife entirely. The prime material place is a cozy place, people have been figuring out ways to overstay their welcome for a long time.

Star pact and fey-pact warlocks are even less inherently evil . Sure, owing a few thousand years of service to a fickle fey court isn't exactly glamorous, but to their timescale that's barely a summer internship. Pledging allegiance to the dnd equivalent of Cthulhu or the Ogdru Jahad is a little less defensible, but if their arrival won't happen for the next ten billion years anyways does it really matter if you aid a cosmic devourer gain a foothold on the Prime?

Unlike players, the characters themselves don't get to pick what they're born as.

That second option is just the Sith.

>Choose Fey Pact
>Your Patron's a member of the UnSeele Court
>DM makes mystery rolls regarding you when you're around nature
>DM seems to make doubled mystery rolls regarding you around industry
>DM glances at you, mutters "I'm sorry" and takes you character sheet
>Character disappears from the party for the rest of the session
>Next session, you're back and there's a lot of dead lumberjacks and a noble and his family have been turned into dogwood trees
>DM says you should have known enough Fey when you signed that contract

Technically, they aren't evil, but Fey don't fuck around. Incidentally, I've gotten my party into some real fucking trouble lately.

"Hungry Winter"
Winter = White

So wendigos are just amerifats then

>unreasonable monsters that kill anything foreign
Sounds about right.

Your query is based on the presupposition that evil is not an observable and measurable quality. Evil is more like radioactivity in DnD than a moral concept and Detect Evil is pretty much just like flipping on a Geiger counter. Asking who decided what is evil in DnD is like asking who decided what registers on a Geiger counter.

A Sith apprentice kills his master after surpassing him. I think the warlock scenario is more like diablerie in VtM, where the act itself is the power source.

...

Reminder that they just wanted to help their country.

>Nothing stops a Warlock from entering a pact with a Celestial, for example.
Semantics. We call those Clerics.

I'm pretty sure you can be a cleric without being a warlock.