LotFP Class: Warlock

People act as though making deals with devils is so damned dangerous. Devils are an embodiment of cosmic law. They’re constitutionally incapable of breaking their word. So long as you don’t agree to something stupid, you’re fine. Making deals with demons is a whole other thing. It takes a particularly self destructive kind of crazy to become a warlock.

Warlocks use the same experience track as the elf, with the saves and hit dice of a magic user.

Becoming a warlock requires the ritual breaking of a sacred oath: the dissolution of a marriage, stealing from one’s host, etcetera. Once this ritual is complete the supplicant may never again bind themselves by their word. If a warlock keeps an oath against their best interests they will not only lose their powers, but must make a saving throw or die. This does not mean a warlock can never make or keep agreements, merely that they can never consider those agreements binding. If a farmer offers 10 coins to rescue their child, the Warlock may do so. However, if the ogre makes a counter offer of 15 coins to let them eat the child in peace, the Warlock should take that deal.

In exchange for making themselves  an embodiment of treachery warlocks receive three demonic boons: the Baleful Whisper the service of a Warlockin, and the ability to bestow Breefs & Feckets.

By giving voice to their many hatreds, warlocks can create a breeze of cursed air called a Baleful Whisper. This functions like a ranged attack with increments of 20’/50’/80′. Only unsuspecting targets, those which could be sneak attacked, are vulnerable. On a successful hit the target takes 1d6 damage. This increases to 2d6 at level 3, with an additional d6 on every third level thereafter.

Warlockin are minor demons that take the form of ugly, 18-inch tall humans. Against their will they are bound to obey the warlock in all things. They are hostile creatures who will attempt to subvert their master’s will whenever possible. Instructions must be phrased clearly, and even then the creature is liable to “forget” certain aspects of their orders if left unsupervised.

Warlockin share their master’s saving throws, and have 1 hit point for each level of the warlock they serve. Due to their size and agility their armor rating is equivalent to plate and shield. In most respects a warlockin has all the abilities and limitations you would imagine an 18 inch person would have, with a single exception the player rolls during character creation:

1. Wings, and the ability to fly with them.
2. At will, their touch can set fire to anything flammable.
3. Able to impersonate any voice they hear with perfect accuracy.
4. Can turn invisible at will.
5. Able to communicate telepathically, though they cannot pull any information from a person’s mind that is not intentionally directed towards them.
6. They have perfect dark vision.
7. Can create illusions at will. Images only, no sound or touch, and covering no more than a 10 foot square area. The illusion must be actively maintained and controlled while it exists.
8. Despite their diminutive size, they have the strength of an average adult human. Their size relative to the world should still be taken into account.
9. Able to poison any food by licking it.
10. Whenever their master wills it, the warlockin’s vitality can be sapped away. Hit points extracted from the warlockin may be used to heal the warlock themselves, or anyone they are touching when they use this power.
11. By burrowing into the body of an animal, the warlockin is able to control it. This only works on creatures large enough for the warlockin to fit inside of.
12. By blowing a kiss, the warlockin can inflict a sour disposition on a person, putting them in a foul mood for a few hours. A saving throw versus magic resists.

Warlockin cannot die. If they are reduced to 0 hit points, their body is completely destroyed in some suitably dramatic fashion. Perhaps they disintegrate and blow away in the wind, or burst into flames, or collapse into a puddle of slime. Whatever feels right to the referee in the moment. D6 hours after they are destroyed, the warlockin will emerge, fully restored, from their master’s body. The means by which they emerge is entirely up to the warlockin, and is often used as a means of getting back at their master for allowing them to die. They may emerge through vomit, painful excretions, or even by bursting through the skin in a bloody gory mess. The process requires 10 minutes, and cannot be delayed by the warlock. When it happens, it happens. Fortunately, any damage suffered during the warlockin’s rebirth will quickly heal itself within that same time.

Warlocks do not cast spells. Instead they bestow Feckets on themselves, and Breefs on their foes. Unlike spells these magics may be employed both stealthily and instantaneously. They require no preparation, no spoken words, and only the most subtle gestures. In combat using them is a free action, though only a single attempt may be made each round. The downside is that only one fecket or breef may be active at a time. Bestowing a new one causes any previously bestowed magic to unravel.

At character creation the player chooses whether to start off knowing a fecket or a breef, then rolls on the appropriate table. Each time they gain a level they learn a new magic by rolling on alternating tables. So: if the player opts to roll a breef at first level, they will roll a fecket at second level, and all even-numbered levels thereafter, while breefs will be learned at odd-numbered levels.

Breefs
Bestowed upon foes to weaken and befuddle them. The warlock may target a number of foes equal to their level, so long as all their targets are within their field of view simultaneously. A successful saving throw versus Magic resists the effect.

1. Tanglefoot Targets become prone to tripping. Any time they move more than 5′ in a round, there is a 4-in-6 chance they fall prone. If they move more than half their movement speed, the chance is 5-in-6.
2. Noodlelimbs Targets’ strength is reduced to the equivalent of a 7 year old child. Anything which would be difficult to push or lift or carry becomes completely impossible for them. They also suffer a -3 on melee attacks.
3. Sloppymouth Causes words to be flubbed to the point of incomprehensibility. Makes spellcasting very difficult.
4. DitzyWitzy Targets forget their motivation for whatever their current goal is. If they are searching, they will forget what they’re looking for. If they’re attacking, they’ll forget what brought them to that point. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll stop, though.
5. Passionbound Emotions become difficult or impossible to suppress. If the target is angry, they will become violent; if they are frightened they will flee; if they are sad they will weep, and so forth.
6. Fumblehands There is a 1-in-6 chance that the target will drop anything they’re carrying each increment of the current timescale. (In combat, rounds; in exploration, turns; etc). This chance is modified up for any activity the target undertakes which is not standing still and focusing on holding the item. Walking with it shifts the chance up to 2-in-6, running to 3-in-6, climbing or acting to 4-in-6, etc.
7. Cowardheart The target becomes easily intimidated by anything that seems threatening. They may flee, or cower, or bargain, according to their disposition.
8. Blindwander The victim loses any sense of direction. If they walk into a dungeon room that only has a single other door, unless the doors look dramatically different, they will not be able to tell which of the two they came in through.
9. Recallnot Victims will not remember anything that happens while under this effect. They retain their ability to think and act normally, but later they’ll discover a gap in their recollections.
10. Obeisance It will seem impossible to disobey any authority which appears legitimate to the victim. If there is a sign which reads “keep off the grass,” then the grass cannot be walked on. A police badge doesn’t become a magic talisman that allows them to be mind controlled, however. They must really believe the person with the badge is an officer, and that the officer is acting within their legal authority.
11. Thundersubtle The affected thump around wherever they walk, muttering out loud about whatever is going through their mind. They’re bad at lying, sneaking, or generally doing anything without telegraphing it to everyone around them.
12. Friendfaced The victim is predisposed to like the warlock. They’ll generally interpret the warlock’s behavior positively, though only within reason. Treat it like running into a guy wearing a T-shirt of your favorite obscure band that nobody else likes.

Feckets

1. Farstride Each step the warlock takes covers a vast swath of ground. It takes about 10 minutes to walk 6 miles, which can be fairly disorienting. You never quite stop where you want to. Roll 1d6 – 1 to determine how many miles from your desired stopping point your are. Dangerous to attempt indoors.
2. Greatmight The warlock gains incredible physical strength, enabling them to lift castle gates or toss their foes about like fukkin’ Conan. For melee combat purposes, treat as max strength.
3. Airstroke Enables the warlock to swim through the air as though it were water. It is not a particularly fast process, but does allow the warlock to position themselves wherever they like in vertical space.
4. Blankspace The warlock becomes a magical void. Spells cannot affect them, and any magic items they touch cannot be activated.
5. Noticemenot The warlock becomes more difficult to notice. In addition to being simply better at stealth and sleight of hand checks (bonus of 3, up to max skill), people will just find their attention drifting away from the warlock. Other things will just seem more important.
6. Feelingfine While active the warlock will not get any hungrier, thirstier, or sleepier than they already are. Furthermore, they do not need to breathe, and will feel comfortable in both extreme heat and extreme cold, so long as the temperatures are within a range that some natural animal could live in. Tardigrades don’t count.
7. Falseface The warlock is able to modify their appearance however they like, so long as they still appear to be a human of roughly the same size.
8. Venomteeth The warlock gains a poisonous bite, causing sleep or death as they prefer. Note that biting people is generally not an easy thing to do.
9. Luckyloo While active, the warlock gains a +3 to all of their saving throws.
10. Locoscient While active, the warlock’s senses are heightened. Their mind is able to process visual information more rapidly, such that if they were looking for a particular person in a crowd, a single glance would be sufficient to pick them out. They can smell and hear with the acuity of a dog, detect vibrations like a blind guy in a bad kung fu movie, and taste the way wine snobs pretend to.
11. Bething The warlock merges with any inanimate object large enough to contain them (even if they would not typically fit into its shape). Stuff like trees, walls, statues, etc. While merged, they retain access to their senses.
12. Unphysicality The warlock becomes incorporeal. Their appearance does not change (they do not become transluscent), but they cannot interact with the physical world. Whenever an object passes through them, or they pass through an object, it makes a loud “b’zorp” sound.

This is a photograph of my old whiteboards. I’d guess it was taken between October 24th and October 26th of 2011. If you look at the to-do list on the upper board, one line reads: “Warlock upgrade for Pathfinder + WoW ‘Lock. They can be the same project.” So, in October of 2011 I’d already been thinking about writing a Warlock class long enough to decide I wanted to merge it with another project.

You may be thinking the class described above doesn’t justify 7 years of buildup. Which…yeah, duh. When you leave something on the back burner for too long, it burns. The right time to do this was in 2011, but sometimes projects fall the wayside. Unlike most of the stuff I never got around to in 2011, however, the desire to make a warlock class has stuck with me.

I was 17 in 2004 when WotC published “Complete Arcane.” Amidst all the typical splatbook junk was a new class that appealed to me: the Warlock. I named mine Zalekios, and he would eventually become my longest running D&D character. A record which stands to this day. The Zalekios campaign inspired many of my early D&D tinkerings.

In 2007 my friends tricked me into playing World of Warcraft. I rolled a human warlock named Sentaigresk. Playing this character would lead to me doing the first serious writing of my life, which in turn got me my first paid writing gig. It’s also while playing Sentai that I met the lady I’m getting married to later this year.

The choices were made trivially at the time: just a D&D character, just a video game class. Now I’m 30 and a ton of my personal history is tied up with warlocks of one flavor or another. In 2011 all I wanted was to update the 3.5 class so I could convince Zalekios’ referee to switch to Pathfinder. I did all sorts of research into folklore, which is where terms like “breef,” “fecket,” and “warlockin” come from.

Unfortunately, in 2011 I was writing 5 blog posts a week, and I was rushing to put them together in the hours between work and sleep. There wasn’t room for a project as large as creating a Pathfinder class. By the time I could handle that sort of project, the Zalekios campaign was long dead.

I recently set myself the task of clearing out some of the older stuff in my drafts folder, and the oldest post by far was this one. Almost nothing of my original work remains, but I’m glad to finally get my version of the Warlock out there. Or at least, some version of my version.

Blogging is fun.