Why is Warhammer fantasy the only setting that portray Witch Hunters in a actual good light...

In all fairness, in real life Puritan witch hunters were more or less totally unregulated individuals who were armed and stirred up mobs to burn random people that went through no official courts and no official trials by people with no official sanction.
Later on certain witchfinders got some sort of vague seal of approval largely so that the crown could pretend in front of everyone that they were in control of the Puritan religious nutbars who went around murdering dozens because otherwise it was open admittance that they had completely lost control over large sections of the country.
Eventually England DID crack down on that shit, at which point they gave some ultimatums to stop or be punished for killing randos for religious reasons, since this was when King George was getting sick and tired of that horseshit.
A bunch of them got on boats where they sailed to the New World where they kind of became one of the founding religious groups in the Colonies...so yeah.

>Warhammer Fantasy Witch Hunters
> good light

Stop projecting.

They are powerful.

ez pz

You do know about witch hunters in the real world...right?

Jade Magistrates in Rokugan are definitely witch hunters, and don't really have that stereotype. I mean, maybe it was the fact that I played Phoenix in the CCG, but if anything the issue seemed to be that there was relatively few of them and a whole grip of maho tsukai out there.

Rokugan has actual Witch Hunters. By name even. They're more Hardline and focused than the Jade magistrates.

But the Witch Hunter you posted is going out of his way to give a wizard accused of heresy a fair trial

Well I prefer them fighting demons than committing property fraud

Because those are the only sort of witch hunters who ever actually existed in real life.
Like yeah in a setting with actual real witches it doesn't make much sense, but as far as real world history goes, a word where magic isn't really, every person ever killed by a witch hunter was innocent.

Yeah, during the apocalypse. When pushed against a wall, all scum reveal what desperate creatures they really are.

That's nice. Still doesn't make sense why you can't understand why Witch Hunters have a bad rep.

Sup Fags

Make them driven, charismatic, authoritarian and someone who strongly believes in the righteousness of the not!Malleus Maleficarum. They sincerely believe, and can compellingly argue for why it is better that innocent people suffer than one witch escaping justice.

>Why are people who dragged innocent women in front of a kangaroo court and ordered them hanged always portrayed negatively?

People did investigate witchcraft though, it's just that their standard of evidence and sense of morality was and is incompatible with the modern way of things.
From a christian late medieval/enlightment era perspective it makes total sense to water-test someone to see if they're a witch. Sure, innocent people might die but they get to go to heaven quicker.

Not the only one.
There is a setting-locked system named Witch Hunter: The Invisible World; check it.

What are you talking about, OP?

This game is Witch Hunters: the Game.

He didn’t know the Skaven were there at the time, and even when he found out he had no reason to think it wasn’t just a normal incursion, albeit a large one.
He took Sienna into custody because he didn’t want her to get lynched, and he hired Kruber because he knew he’d just been denied leave to see his family.
Add not removing elf at first opportunity and Saltzpyre is pretty bro by WH standards.

Wait, they have pre-game lore? Where can I find this?

Partially in their bios on the site/lore book in game, and parrially in item descriptions.
IIRC, it went something along the lines of
>Sienna found out about a merchant’s son being a murdering kidnapper
>she flipped her shit and burned him alive, but accidentally set the town on fire in the process
>merchant wanted to hide the evidence and gathered a lynch mob
>Saltzpyre was is the area, found out the truth and took Sienna in for trial over the collateral damage, which she handed herself in for
>she got an official pardon around the time of Karak Azgaraz

>Medival
Look I know a few happened in the medival era but that's like saying the plauge lasted to today because some shit hole in Africa has it.
The vast majority of all witch burnings were done post Reformation by crazy protestants.

Damn, that game is fucking awesome.

Malleus Maleficarum was released in the late medieval period. I'm not talking about the early late medieval period.

Well I mean I guess it's because the people they're based on weren't exactly all smiles and rainbows. If you ever get extremely bored pick up a copy (or pdf) of Kramer and Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum, it really is the bumper book of no fun allowed.

From another perspective I guess it's because witch hunters are generally a case study in what happens when you let vigilantes do law enforcement, doubly so when they're effectively immune from reproach.

Some of that is a bit too ineffective, dude. Something to remember is that in Warhammer, it's a common religious conceit beyond even the cult of Sigmar that the only way to guarantee a creature of Chaos is destroyed is to burn it.

Though I could see a hunter nailing scripture to...say, a Verenean who was unlucky enough to be in a hunter's sights without his cult's protection. Followed by burning.

Otherwise I agree. Your model should be Colonel Hans Landa, not Judge Jean-Claude Frollo, if you want to throw your players off. You may even want to make him an occasional loathsome ally.

It's actually strongly implied that Saltzpyre arriving in time for the invasion with a sergeant and battle wizard in tow was no accident and the whole trial rigormarole was cover. He certainly doesn't seem to consider Sienna guilty at any point (not of anything worth outright killing her over), but he uses the threat of trial (he thinks) to control her. Sienna, for her part, values her innocence too much to simply kill Saltzpyre or flee.

>Anytime some other setting mentions witch hunters they make them out as these incredibly bigoted insane stupid individuals who dont actually investigate into an accusations and send them directly to the pyre.
Because most witchhunters are based on the irrational fanatics like Matthew Hopkins, the Salem judges, or the Inquisition's torturers

The reality they were based off of were usually self appointed vigilante religious fanatics trying to coerce confession over either minor doctrinal differences or based on superstitious nonsense.

But if you wanted to go a more good light to your campaigns, the official inquisition was made up of professions who went out of their way to try and make sure people didnt get burned (so long as you confessed). They also typically didnt believe the local peasants about stupid nonsense like magic and fairies. They preferred to use logic and debate to prove the accused wrong but show the forgiving nature of their side by giving them an out.

The protestant inspired witch hunters were just plain insane and unreasonable.

Call them Agents or Vampire Hunters, rather than titles of real-world negative connotations

Because nowadays it's cool to shit on religion and pseudo-christianity

Witch Hunters in WHFB are very justified with all the truly evil shit that happens in the Empire's woods

>Because nowadays it's cool to shit on religion and pseudo-christianity

Witches aren't and have never been real, you daft cunt.

Make them appear frail, skinny, smiling and harmless. Dressed in elegant cloth

Someone with inquisitive eyes but warm expression and soft voice, always asking questions.

He could be your old uncle or a merchant, or maybe eve a mystic or a wizard?

But raise suspicion and face your PURGE

Make them human. A person who is self aware enough the realize that they have become a monster in order to fight monsters, yet believes enough in their faith and their righteousness to justify their actions. The players will have a harder time fighting a villain they can empathize with.

They're all a pastiche of the Witch Finder General film, even the Fantasy ones.

But user, no one will let them in.

>Anytime some other setting mentions witch hunters they make them out as these incredibly bigoted insane stupid individuals who dont actually investigate into an accusations and send them directly to the pyre.
That is what most witch hunters do in Warhammer Fantasy too

Okay so like 2 based Witch Hunters out of like what hundreds of insane murderers?

t.Wiccan

kek

Hmmm.

I actually liked it more when it was a 3:10 to Yuma situation.

She's his prisoner and he's planning on purging her but the immediate threat is too great to both of them so they have to work together.

Very hard to prove a negative.

You'd have to be mentally ill to think literal magic is real.

You do understand that "witch hunt" had negative linguistic connotations for a reason right

So hold on, where do the Dwarf and Elf fit in?

Dwarf and elf were just in the wrong bar at the right time when the apocalypse started

Probably because in most settings, the witch hunters are usually after the party.

While we're on the topic, here's a tangentially related gripe:

I have absolutely no problem with fantasy worlds having oppressed underclasses, and I take no issue with fantasy stories trying to discuss oppression as a thematic point, but mages, witches, and magic users in general are one of the worst stand-ins for unfairly oppressed groups that you could possibly use.

Its one thing to have a fantasy race treated unfairly and to frame it as an injustice, but people with magic are actually, legitimately a public threat worthy of being worried about. You can't have your setting go on about how it's unfair that society sticks all the mages in a big tower or something when the setting proves time and time again that mages are an active risk at being channels for demons manifesting of people exploding at pretty much all times.

The Issue there is if a Sigmarite Witch hunter DID do that he'd be pissing off the other orders of the Empire, who ALSO have Witch Hunters.

Nah, Saltzpyre IS a pretty bro witchhunter. If he was one of the unflinching douchbags he'd have more Issue with Kruber worshipping Taal.

My witch hunters specifically hunt Warlocks and Witches because they make deals with entities from the Outside, and regardless of the actual nature of these patrons the truth is that the fact that they start breaking in attracted by prospective followers or straight up by people who try to summon them they open the gates for bad shit to happen while making the world's defenses worse over time.

Their line of thought is "if Outsiders have no reason to get into the world, they won't".

Outsiders aren't the only ones that breach the only line of defense either, but also a bunch of monsters that fuck everything up in their path. The more warlocks and witches there are, the wider these gaps get, and the harder it is for the barrier to heal.

People in this world might think 'but warlocks and their patrons aren't always bad, why stop them from doing what they do? Why stop Outsiders from coming in if they're sometimes good? but don't think about the implications of letting them in in the first place.

Witch hunters are the good guys. They don't try to kill warlocks, they just tell them to stop that shit and do what they must to prevent them from giving their patrons more and more power. Sometimes the warlocks refuse and get killed. More often than not, they don't.

Because in WHF there's mf witches, user.

Kerrilian's implied to have forseen the End Times in her dreams, and either left Athel Loren or been exiled as a result.
Bardin was there to meet somebody who could point him towards the lost hold he was seeking.

Both met up near Stromdorf and were about to kill each other before the Skaven showed up, and later met up with Saltspyre's party.

Witch Hunters in Elder Scrolls were a base class.

“Witchhunters are dedicated to rooting out and destroying the practices of dark cults and profane sorcery. They train for martial and magical war against vampires, cultists, necromancers and their summoned creatures.”

Why cant we just call them "Hunters" why do we have to put an emphasis on witch?

Because they hunt witches.

and obtain bitches

HEYO

>Why is Warhammer fantasy the only setting that portray Witch Hunters in a actual good light
Are we just not counting vin Diesel's homebrew or what?

>vin Diesel's homebrew
Elaborate.

My brother of African descent, glad to see someone at least posting the best possible version of a witch hunter

I have good news, there is a sequel coming out they are adding in Chaos and subclasses. For example Bardin can become a slayer, Saltspyre can become a warrior priest of Sigmar, and it seems Karellian can become a Khainite assassin and use dark elf stuff.

It's entirely terminological. Individuals and organizations termed as "witch hunters" draw from the connotations of the English phrase "witch-hunt." However, a number of settings have positively-portrayed individuals and organizations that police magic users or devil-summoners--they just aren't referred to as "witch hunters."

Wow its like this entire paragraph is screaming Dragon Age at me. I suppose it is often done because it is easy to relate to witch burnings in real life.

Not the same user, but there is a movie

youtube.com/watch?v=xsuG2JUgs_8

haven't seen it so couldn't comment on it.

...

I've seen it. He's more of a witch cop than a witch hunter. Generally a pretty tolerant fellow for an immortal viking with a tortured soul because witches killed his family or whatever.

It's such a dumb film that I have to recommend it.

It's a question of individual versus trend. Crime statistics "prove time and time again" that certain demographics are more violent or prone to criminal behavior, but there are a lot of factors that go into that. So, too, is it possible that there are a lot of factors that go into mages being dangerous. After all, the black lawyer with a Harvard degree who enjoys Wagnerian opera isn't secretly itching to shoot people on the street and loot shops.

Of course, I fully admit that most of the settings that you're describing don't actually engage with the issue at any real depth. It's just portrayed as bad because reasons. Still, I think it's worth recognizing that it COULD be done interestingly.

As soon as I found out Vin Diesel was a immortal catholic viking witch cop sponsored by the Vatican I was sold.

If you read the Malleus Malificarum, the catholic handbook to witch hunting, you learn that a lot of the qualifying criteria for "Witchcraft" mostly boiled down to "Women who know how to do things."
Midwifery? Witchcraft, because the pain of childbirth is Eve's punishment.
Willow bark tea? (Early aspirine) Witchcraft, no faithful child of god need worry about the flu. And even if they die, they're probably in heaven so it's okay.

Brewing beer? Witchcraft because beer = drunkeness and thereby evil.

Basically, if a woman had any agency or knowledge, she was considered a witch because god wants them to keep the house and pop out babies.
The word "Witch" derives from the old word meaning "To know" or "to be clever."

So fiction portrays them as psychopathic, short-sighted and biased assholes because, well, they kind of were.

Witch hunters portrayed as being GOOD AND RIGHT and all that, to me, seems kind of like if someone made a movie about a "Heroic" SS officer hunting down jews, and the jews transform into flesh-eating lizardmen or something.

I'd watch it

Well, the problem is that we have the situation where a lot of settings openly include spellcasters who receive their magic from contracts with devils...and still portray witch hunters as insane psychopaths. Which, in your metaphor, is like having flesh-eating lizardmen among the Jews, but getting incredibly defensive whenever someone says anything about the flesh-eating lizardmen, even if that person is fine with the other Jews.

The Malleus Malificarum was not a "Catholic Handbook". It was used by Catholics and Protestants in large number, but the church has some isolation against it.

Heinrich Kramer wrote it while he was expelled from his diocese and duties as a priest for 'inappropriate behavior', and he was so obsessed with an accused witch's sexual habits that the case had to be dropped. The book itself never had support from any higher church authorities who even criticized it for it's statements on gender, inhumane punishments, and erroneous takes on church teachings. It only sold so well to German Catholics because it contained the text of a papal bull, which gave the book certain implied authority it never had.

Like the spanish inquisition, they have a quota to fill and their job is one of finding suspects.

A mix between dangerous paranoia, god given rights and powers and business is a dangerous mix.

Why would witch hunter want to burn an elf? I get that Dorfs and humans are biggest bros, but why would humans dislike elves?

>witches weren't real
OR, or they were real, and they saved us by burning them all. Didn't think of that did ya.

The problem with this is that these settings also portray said magic users as powerful and in general not so reliant on keeping in secret.
When you have a word that has magic but the whole magic using community has an Illuminati thing going for them and does their best to remain hidden, it makes actual sense to have some witch-hunting elements.

These guys, however, are still going apeshit on people who are definitely in the clear. Even a simple thing like a mana drain spell would easily separate those who can cast anything and those who do not.

Wood elves are infamous for being colossal, capricious cunts to pretty much everyone.
The average peasant wouldn’t know that, but a witch hunter would.

didn't stop people using it to justify burning women who they didn't like in the name of god.

This isn't 40k, he wouldn't try to do anything to the elf unless provoked, he would just constantly scoff at her, which he does

Most Witches burnt were also guilty of other crimes, usually theft or unethical business practices, why do you think so many tailors and the wives of mayors were burnt among herbalists?

Also the inquisition was one of the first tribunals to exercise the "innocent until proven guilty" thing. Although being innocent didn't mean they were gonna be nice with you.

It's almost as if real life discrimination happened for actual reasons and not because racists are inherently evil.

>In all fairness, in real life Puritan witch hunters were more or less totally unregulated individuals who were armed and stirred up mobs to burn random people that went through no official courts and no official trials by people with no official sanction.

Do you actually believe this or are you just meming?

What meme?

>Witches aren't and have never been real, you daft cunt.
Just because magic isn't real doesn't mean that people didn't unsuccessfully attempt to engage in witchcraft.

I don't know where everyone is getting the idea that everyone was 100% innocent. Yeah, you may not have actually brewed a potion or placed a curse on your neighbor, but your attempt at doing so is still witchcraft and you're guilty as sin.

>arhammer fantasy the only setting that portray Witch Hunters in a actual good light
>bigoted insane stupid individuals who dont actually investigate into an accusations and send them directly to the pyre.
I mean this is how they're portrayed in Warhammer Fantasy too, you just don't have the self awareness to see it.

They just happen to be right twice a day.

Because warhammer is the setting were the good guys are cunts and the bad guys crazy psychos. True even in fantasy, if less than in 40k.

It's more like gun control advocates overreacting to mass shootings. Mages are powerful individuals so a few large and dangerous events will be cited as a reason to stop that kind of power entirely. No amount of good mages helping will avail them and they frame their point of view as common sense to shut down the complicated issue. That said, it's never framed as a complicated issue and there's never any real dialogue. I'm pro-mage even if I'm a rogue for the record.

>Just because magic isn't real doesn't mean that people didn't unsuccessfully attempt to engage in witchcraft.
Man, so I guess they desereved to die for just boiling some wierd herbs and sayin some gibberish.

I guess it's okay for folks in Africa to rape virgins to cure aids, kill albinos to ward off bad spirits, and also stone/burn witches too.
Muh witchunters didnu nuffin.
Source on most wiches.

And you act like BURNING SOMEONE ALIVE for theft or "unethical business" is still not fucking savage.

The BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time did an episode on witchcraft:
bbc.co.uk/
programmes/p004y2b0

Lots of game-relatable shows in their archive.