What is a good warlock backstory for a half elf? First time Dnd

You've been imprisoned for performing dark arts made illegal by your local Lord, while languishing in prison a demon came to you in your dreams and promised it would lend you it's power to escape for an unspecified favor in the future. You are now bound to this demon as it's the source of your newfound power, and the time to escape this dungeon grows near...

Alignment NE btw

Haha! I thought of this but would be too cliche perhaps.
My idea is
>Lived in village, small human/elf community
>Human fanatics attack, pillage the women and rape the houses
>Hear a strange calling from the village well, drag myself toward it
>slaughter the fanatics?

Thoughts?

You're not forced to be anything. How your character treats other people is entirely up to you. Chaotic neutral tends to be generally pleasant towards other people, as long as nothing is demanded of them.

Your patron doesn't HAVE to mean the apocalypse. Some may simply want knowledge, or worship, or even just the amusement of seeing what a human does with their power. You could even play up some of them as GOOD, like an Archefey that fancies itself a granter of wishes like a fairytale character.

Furthermore, how you're "forced" to act depends entirely on the terms of your "contract" with a patron. As long as you're keeping up your end of the bargain, whatever that may be, you have free reign to do whatever in your free time.

Never ever create a character with the "I'm a sole survivor who slaughtered everyone" trope. It tells us nothing about your character except that had A ZOMG ANIME RAGE! moment. In fact, it's often better character development if a character CAN'T respond to bad events right away. Powerlessness can be a great motivator to go adventuring.

I second this! Your character should have ties to the world beyond revenge.

See, this is beautiful. Without being a novel, the pic-related tells us about the character's childhood and culture, skills they had (NOT RELATED TO COMBAT/CLASS), how they eventually ended up getting their class skills, who important people in their life are, what their life was like before the adventure, and what happened and WHY they're adventuring now.

This is a 9/10 backstory, only thing keeping it from being 10/10 is that the culture-building might be a little excessive for some games/settings.

Wow, great advice. I'll look into it!

How about this
>Lived in village, small human community that borders on elf territory
>Exploring forest as a child and find itinerant pixie.
>Me and Pixie get up to hijinks and become close friends
>Eventually strike out to explore and adventure with pixie friend

Fey/Chain pact with the Pixie/Familiar thematically having all the magic and you acting as her guardian. When casting spells you fetch components from pouch for mad fae dakka.

If you want more ideas for your character’s backstory then you should check out the expanded background options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

If you do check it out, then post the results. I would be curious to see what you got

And then at the end of the campaign comes the big plot twist that the pixie was just grooming the character to be a vessel for it's lord/lady's rebirth. Just making him/her strong enough to be a suitable body for it's master to inhabit.

I had a DM pull this on me once. It was pretty edgy, but it was also kinda cool. All that levelling and such just to have to cut the tie to my patron at the end of it and lose all that power.

Started a new campaign a few months later as the same character, trying to learn magic legit as a wizard this time instead of taking the easy way as a warlock (and starting over at level 1).

I hadn't thought about it going that way but it definitely sounds like fun.
imho I wouldn't have let the DM do that because I enjoy simple character concepts.

whothefuckismydndcharacter.com/

> conscientious Half-orc Warlock from the sealed city who just wants their money back

There are two ways to approach Warlock patrons, and which one happens will depend on your DM alot of the time.

>Way 1: You, as a player, essentially make two characters, your warlock, and their patron. You as a player decides what the Patron wants and what they're asking of your player character. The downsides of this are it potentially allows players to be bestest friends with super powerful entities capable of granting magic powers on a whim and can very easily be power-gamed or turned into a Mary Sue situation. However it can also allow for the player to create a fun and interesting NPC in your world if they do it responsibly.

>Way 2: You, as a player, only make your warlock. Your warlock's patron is completely under the control of the DM, including their ultimate end goals and sometimes even including the terms of the contract your warlock agreed to for power. The downside of this is that it allows a DM to completely fuck over your character if they don't have a clear idea what you want out of the story (or just feel like being an asshole). However this can also make for a tense and surprising story if the DM does it well.

I second the charts from Xanathar's guide. They're a great resource for setting up character backgrounds

me
me

Oh I'm happy with my DM controlling my patron but I just wouldn't want them to fuck up a good thing.

For what it's worth, that's part of the risk you take when you're so desperate for power that you sign a contract with an extra-dimensional alien entity for power.

The easiest option is usually 'Someone very powerful took something from you. In a moment of anger, you swore you'd give *anything* for the power to make them pay. Something was listening."

For a half-elf, I'd go with either
>Powerful orc warlord ransacks countryside, killed character's elven parent. Half elf swears vengeance. Fae noble (King Oberron, Titannia, Mab, Jareth) approves and 'knights' him by making him a warlock and commanding him to slaughter orcs.

or

>Powerful Elven Archmage is enraged that his daughter is married to a human and refuses to abandon her husband and child to 'come home', so he kills her husband and kidnaps her. Their child (your character) swears a bloody oath to make him pay, and rescue their mother. A Demon or Great Old One the arch-mage has annoyed in the past offers your character the power, or the potential power, to do exactly that.

Not all Great Old Ones are harbingers of apocalypses. Ithaqua just wants to eat people. Shub-Niggrauth (arguably one of the most benevolent of the GOOs) is more concerned with spawning more monstrous progeny and smacking around other GOOs and Outer Gods that want to kill her spawn. A lot of them don't even have 'agendas' that normal humans can recognize and barely recognize humans as being separate entities. Maybe one of them confused your character for one of its worshippers begging for power just because you had similar auras and were reasonably close to the same ley line (naturally occurring concentration of magic), so you got the powers it was aiming at someone else (played a warlock once who got their powers because the Great Old One didn't understand that I was the sacrifice and the cult was the power-hungry worshippers, got confused, ate them, granted me power, didn't really care).

Some cat thing showed up and asked you if you wanted to sign a contract. It was a calculated risk, but boy were you bad at math.

Persuit the power of the darck arcane ways of magic to stop beiag a half elf

The eldritch mysteries of not being an elf at all

>warlocks are just magical girls

I can't believe I didn't see this until now.

My half-elf's back story was she had dubious consensual sex with her partner, who was force-fed a potion so that he would fuck her, and he was fully aware of it but he can't stop himself.

The next day my half-elf woke up with the cell they were in unlocked and her partner in a catatonic state. Despite doing everything she knew she couldn't snap him out of it, and she had to leave her behind.

My half-elf was a female rogue but I think you can tweak it for a warlock male.