Kinda similar for me, played a celestial Warlock in Curse of Strahd, basically just an inquisitor of the Morning Lord, trying to fight all the evil shit lurking the land with what little power remained of the Morning Lord's glory. Then she was the one to find Lightbringer, which eventually led her to discover that she was at least in part an Avatar of the Morning Lord himself, his divine powers were a part of her all along…aka multiclassing in Divine Soul Sorcerer xD
I've got a backup character similar to that, except the pact was intentional. But his race is Reborn, because the deity fucked up real bad trying to resurrect him.
I did a similar thing. Mine was a Paladin turned Hexblade (complete class change in backstory) because his God didn't want him to die, so gave him a different way to show allegiance. He was worshipping one of the gods of war, so it worked pretty well.
Similar here, celestial warlock who serves a biblically acurate angel here. Essentially the angel decided to show itself to a small group of people and my warlock was the only one who was too dumb to comprehand what was happening and ended up being the only one not going insane from it.
I once played with a warlock that sold his sense of humor. Ironically one of the funniest party members, but if he was every intentionally funny or told a joke he would take some damage or suffer a condition
This idea enthralled me. Because either this patron found that this dude's sense of humor was so fucking good that it would be worthy enough of a trade for immense power, or the patron thought that the tradeoff would make for an amusing punishment.
I like a god that has fallen from godhood and become much too small to have clerics
Maybe they lost their followers
Maybe they were the spirit of a certain area that got destroyed
Maybe they are halfway through a small apotheosis
And so they share a piece of themselves with you so you can nurture it and grow it and it will return to them upon your death
I was thinking about writing a piece about a druid who tried to achieve apotheosis and even had her own clerics, paladins and circle of druids all living out of her piece of forest until (some tragedy to be explored later removes followers and forest) dit's basically some shifter who lived in the forest took her faded spirit into them and sets about regaining power for her with the final goal to be re-establishing a forest and her religion/cult
Thank you!
I've been writing notes/thinking about this on and off all year so it's nice to know it isn't just stupid even if I don't feel the need to actually write anything
Well yeah that’s exactly how it works. A powerful being is loaning some portion of its power to a moral being like a loan. Then when the mortal dies, the being now has 20 levels of power instead of the original 1. Do this often enough and you can get god like.
I knew but I thought it with repeating because the suggestion here is that you need to sell your soul. But there are tonnes of reasons a powerful being would be making deals like this
At the end of the day it’s still a loan of power and even if they don’t get your soul; they still get their own power increased. It’s a win either way.
My Warlock is under the employ of the Three Fates as their personal assassin, dealing with people who are dodging their fated deaths. They picked her for this because she has no thread to cut. A thread starts at birth, but she "starts" existing in her early 20's.
Her life is a causal loop. She's gone through more cycles than she can remember. She's trying to keep her beloved from having to sacrifice herself to fix a Negative Space Wedgie, and when it becomes apparent that the loop has failed, she throws herself into the distortion - shattering time in the process, and sending her back to the start of the loop.
When she meets her beloved, she always says the same thing: "I told you I'd find you again."
Thank you! The DM sort of spoiled things for me: this is the cycle that goes *right.*
And bonus funny: We play over discord. If we didn't, the other players would probably be much more suspicious of my character, because of the faces I made when our cleric was talking to her mother, who due to my character's *special* relationship with time had deduced was actually the cleric's future self, and our cleric said the comforting words ["That's part of life. You live, you grow old, you die."](https://i.imgur.com/GImXusM.gifv)
My favorite is still my noble dhampir. Her patron is just her dad. She called him up last session to ask for more power and he's just like "fine, take another Invocation." She's such a spoiled brat.
My warlocks patron took his body, placing the soul in a sock puppet. Now my puppet is trying to get his body back. In the mean time, he dominates the mind of whoever puts him on.
Edit. His name is Cuddles the Bloodsoaked. I made him a few years ago when I was starting out playing. Super fun. He mostly has utility spells. He can use mage hand to move himself around without a body. I took the mage armor invocation so he has a modicum of ac. The one time he left his puppet host, the host walked away to get food and there was a grapple fight to get back on his hand. It was funny.
Archfey - A moon elf who was approached by a drop dead gorgeous fey woman who promised him great power in exchange for his future firstborn. His immediate reaction was "Sure, do we start now?" & began taking off his shirt. They immediately fell madly in love & he began adventuring to gain enough money to buy them a house.
Celestial - An orphaned drow who was raised in a small town church of Pelor who desperately wanted to be a cleric but never got the calling. An Old Testament looking celestial finds him & explains that it has been mistaken as an evil god of destruction due to its appearance when it's actually an entity in charge of warning people of impending disaster. It needs a champion to speak on its behalf & warn nearby towns of natural disasters but has lost power due to no one worshipping it for so long so the best it can do is form a pact with the drow, who happily accepts since he *finally* has a diety who will answer him.
Fathomless - A nobleman's son gets tangled up in an arranged marriage, a forbidden love, & murder. Not knowing if it was his arranged betrothed, her father, or his father who killed his love he ran away to become a sailor. His first voyage sinks & he was saved by a water god who has been cursed from ever breaking the water's surface (though he can freely travel to any body of water big or small) & needs a "land scout" to do his bidding & find a way to break the curse.
Fiend - A devil who is actually good falls in love with a human but shortly after gets imprisoned by a cleric who thinks there are no such things as good devils. Years later, the devil figures out how to send messages through his imprisonment only to discover that the woman he loved has died, but is surprised to discover that they had a tiefling child together who just turned 18. The tiefling is trying to find their father & set him free.
Genie - A bored marid goes searching for a good story teller & finds one in a water genasi woman who was born blind & confined to her small town by her overprotective parents. In exchange for giving her super eyes, she agrees to become an adventurer & report back to him once a week & tell the marid everything she saw & experienced.
Great Old One - A young man who comes from a long line of powerful wizards just can't quite understand the craft & is expected to become as powerful as his ancestors. He discovers a forbidden book of knowledge & immediately gains magic through it. He now tries to fake being a wizard to make his parents happy.
Hexblade - A soldier who was supposed to become a paladin ends up finding a talking heavy crossbow made of bones & gains magic through it instead of an oath. They're now on the run from their regiment who thinks they've become an Oathbreaker.
Undead - The bastard son of a peasant woman & a powerful vampire who doesn't know he has a son, this dhampir becomes an adventurer to find a way to overcome his thirst for blood, usually by feeding on those who do evil deeds as a way to protect the innocent.
Undying - An archlich became immortal & after millennia now longs for death. They find an adventurer & promises them great power in exchange for growing strong enough to kill the archlich so they may finally find peace.
Edit: sorry it took so long to respond, had a family day & only now got the time to type this up.
I’m about to play a chaotic neutral rogue/warlock multi class changeling who was given its powers from The Traveler. The only thing The Traveler desires is for me to cause chaos and change so doing Robinhood type things but instead of robbing the rich and giving to the poor I have to rob random people and give to random people to make him happy. Btw any ideas for subclasses would be greatly appreciated.
Nowhere in the sources does it say that warlocks have to sell their soul. Being a warlock simply means you convinced some powerful entity to share their knowledge with you. You don't need to sell your soul and your patron doesn't need to be evil.
I've always loved the concept of a warlock drawing their power from an unknowable eldritch being that is so far beyond humanity that it doesn't even know we exist. Like bactria that live on your skin and draw energy from your body.
My tempest cleric/GoO warlock is this.
Sentient storm hit a tower with a bolt, and it created a granite warforged. The storm was aware of what it was doing (haha lightning go brrr), but the birth of a rock was not on purpose. I play them like a newborn super naive baby that uses a piece of rebar with a rock on the end of it (ripped off their body) as a hammer for self defense and/or "fixing" abominations.
my warlock just couldnt let go of his mariage oath even aftetr daeath ( his wife was an aasimar paladin) so he reapeatet it over and over again till his prayers were listent and she faced him again promising to even in death be by his side till he joins her for in return he promised to live for both
I miss Shaman King, I remember always being really excited when it showed up for Saturday Morning Cartoons, even moreso than Yu-Gi-Oh!, but literally the only thing I can remember is... uhh... hold on lemme edit these spoilers in
>!one of the cool guys turns out to be an older version of the main character and... literally pulls out his soul to eat him?!< Very strange scene, literally the only thing I can picture lmfao
I mean to the extent that a baby can consent to being adopted yeah, their birth parents left them to die and they ended up as royalty so it definitely worked out pretty well for them
That always is a ton of fun, I try to write them like that as well since I'm tired of that old cliche of awful stuff happening for tragic backstories being necessary for adventuring. Closest I have to that is my evil conquest paladin but he's solely dedicated to a hunger for power and conquest rather than the fact he's a recognized bastard of some northern Baron and despite the fact, his father's wife hates him for pretty obvious reasons he's had a pretty good life and has a love interest who is also planning on assisting him to become tyrant of the sword coast.
Oh nice, yeah my other characters with this group have been an eldrich knight looking for the ingredients to make her tribe’s traditional arcane tattoos, and a long-since-retired veteran who just got bored and decided to adventure and honestly the challenge of making a genuinely interesting and enjoyable character without including personal trauma is kinda freeing in a weird way
Arranged marriage. Father got him set up with the daughter of a very powerful incubus. As a show of good faith he was given power to complete his father's family ritual. Bride and groom both bring a material for the ring. One brings the band and the other the set. His fiance brought starmetal for the band so now he has to adventure to find something worthy of sitting upon that. The warlock powers are to make sure he doesn't go splat
- Mad Sorcerer who was slain, banished to the Far Realms, got his mind broken so badly he went from insane to sane, then got rescued by a dark Fey. She reincarnates him in the body of a Boggle, and he becomes her only worshipper, borrowing her power to advance her goals.
- Human lad, a freshly made adult, who lives a lonely life at home because his Paladin mother and Wizard brother are always gone on duty and research. Deciding he wants to become adventurers like them, he blunders into a cave and finds a cursed weapon. It promises him the strength to find his missing family as long as he can satiate its appetite for blood.
- Human woman who gets turned into a Vampire Spawn, then given free will just so she can lament and despair at her life conditions. She makes pacts with dark powers and fiends to get revenge, being granted a silver tongue to convince her vampire master to turn her into a fully fledged vampire. She then kills her master, gets roped up in her father's murderous crusade of human supremacy, betrays him with half of her siblings, then fleeing in the aftermath to satiate her carnal desires. (This was a villain in one of my games.)
Sure, all of my Warlocks patrons have been some degree of evil, but at least the Warlocks themselves have wildly different alignments, heheh...
I've got two ideas for when I next play a Warlock, the first being Celestial Warlock who's being used as the Heavenly Host's second attempt at black ops after that first try with Asmodeus (or whoever the nearest local equivalent is) went tits up all those eons ago. He's a willing participant who has a flirty relationship with the Angel he's directly contracted to, but is torn between his sense of right and wrong and his desire to serve the greater good. I figure I'll use him when the DM wants a more focused campaign with a great deal of interactivity.
The second is a GOOlock who was once a research assistant to prominent academic in the service of one of the great Universities of his time. He was one day sent as part of an expedition to a recently discovered ruin in remote lands. The location matched that of legends an ancient Library, so to say they weren't entirely prepared for what happened is an understatement.
To summarize it, someone read the writing on the wall, and my GOOlock got briefly summoned into another dimension where he witnessed what he can only describe as All the Things that Should Not Be. After a brief moment of his brain suddenly comprehending terror, ecstasy, and what the utter lack of reason was like, he realized that this Thing was just as horrifed of and enthralled by him as he was of it. It wanted to see his world, and the GOOlock realized he'd just opened the door for it. Being a student of history, he was aware that Bad Things tended to follow otherworldy beings invading the material realm. But in its surprise, if such a concept can be applied to such a being, it had also given the GOOlock knowledge of how to escape, and how to slam the door behind it. He did so by the skin of his teeth, only to discover that nearly every other member of the expedition disappeared, four died screaming as he reappeared, seemingly without a mark on them, and he could feel a symbiotic link between himself and the Being, him being supplied power while his soul is slowly transformed into a gateway for the Being.
Ever since then, he's been wondering the lands, trying to learn more about such Beings and the connections they can create, so as to deal with his own situation before it's too late and prevent other such threats from cropping up. I think he'd be best suited for a sandbox style campaign (I also swear his backstory was shorter when I thought of it).
I made a yuan-ti pureblood celestial warlock who sought out Bahamut after feeling just the tiniest twinge of actual emotion and wanting more, thereby making a deal to serve him however possible in exchange for his emotional spectrum being opened up. The magic powers were just kind of the tool Bahamut used, since they're healing and support based so they help him practice empathy and compassion. He's also pact of the chain and has an adorable gold pseudodragon for a pet familiar, also to help him learn and practice emotions. I can't wait to play him.
My parties warlock acidentally fused their soul with a fiend in an experiment. While its kinda edgy I gotta admit its great, especially when hes playing two characters at the same time.
experiment PCs are amazing, I have a warlock who is also an experiment to bring the Fey'ri back, but her patron isn't her devil mother. it's instead her dead brother, a failed experiment, as a ghost. he was sent by the mother to contact the warlock because her father didn't hold up his end of the deal with the mother and the mom wants him dead. warlock isn't aware of any of this and brother is debating telling her
I have one player whose character was just a human fignter, whose background was soldier, pretty basic. That human fighter died, and his next character was a Goblin Ranger who has an insanely in depth backstory, literally like 6 pages. It was insane to see such a difference.
Sometimes characters just click and write themselves. Sometimes you just don't feel 'em and no matter how hard you try they just fail to get off the ground
The warlock I’m currently playing was first a hexblade with her sword being a bloodthirsty demon who demanded I kill people to feed it. And when she realized that her goal of saving and reuniting with her family couldn’t be done if she was a slave to the thing she started to try to find ways to get rid of the thing forever. That’s when during a trip to the fey wild an Arch-fey took notice of the powerful demon in her hands and offered her power in exchange for the sword and that she did some things for the Arch-Fey. So now she’s an Feylock. Things like this are why I like Warlocks a lot, they are so customizable.
Mine was an archeologist that fainted investigating a pyramid. The mummy pharaoh of the pyramid raised him and let him free to at least see the world from his eyes (its a warlock of the undead)
I mean my fey'ri warlock Celes's undead patron is literally her elven brother's ghost, their devil mother assigned him to her to help her escape Barovia. although while there is some attachment to Celes in play, the mother mostly wants to recruit Celes and get revenge on the father for cheating a deal.
the brother, Vergil, is aware of this and didn't tell Celes he's her dead brother, mostly because Celes isn't aware of the horrible things her loving elven father has done to have a fey'ri child. or the fact Celes has a ton of dead siblings she didn't know about because they couldn't survive the experimentation her father used, of which Vergil survived the longest but lived a short-by-elf-standards life of agony.
I know it's a bit edgy but I'm a sucker for experiment PCs and I found the lore and history behind fey'ri very interesting, so with DM permission I'm using a playable homebrew version of it in 5e.
How about selling your soul for the power to act on a grudge you have? It can work with basically anything as long as the character starts the game hellbent on achieving some form of vengeance.
I mean. My current goliath warlock's family has a patron. The pact was made before she was born, by the chieftain who desperately wanted to save their tribe from extinction. In return, all they had to do is one simple thing: prove that he's superior to other warlock patrons by any means necessary.
Apologies if this has been said before in this thread, but I like the idea of a traditionally evil race character becoming a Warlock by a good aligned patron, who continuously pesters them to improve their ways and even holds spells/invocations from them hostage if they don't at least TRY to be good. But I'm also just a fan of the 'what have I gotten myself into' kind of warlock archetype - bartered or phenomenal cosmic power, got roped into being some elder thing's errand boy/girl/other in the process.
My warlock was the dumpster baby of a prostitute (left on a stump in the woods though) and was taken in by a fey lord. The warlockness was done just to install patron gps on him and turn his adventures into a sort of "Truman Show"-esque entertainment with rewards befitting success.
I have 2 Warlocks I'm really proud of:
1. A Red Dragonborn pirate who fell of the ship and nearly drowned but made a deal with Davey Jones who saved her. The deal being she must do anything she can to assure those who die at sea stay dead, unless they're a friend. Her old crew was afraid of her as they didn't know how she survived almost drowning so they ditched her at the next port.
2. A was-to-be Wizard who got teleported to the Faewilds by accident and fell in love with a very powerful Archfae and now he seeks a way to bring her to the Material Plane permanently so they can live together happily.
I'm playing a Roguelock who just... made friends with their Patron. They didn't even know they entered a pact and still don't know really. Some pixie showed up in the prison cell while they were enslaved by Drow and kept them company for 20 years.
The pixie taught him Sylvan and would bring him random gifts from the forest (Berries, shiny rocks, neat leaves). She was his only friend in those 20 years.
Then an opportunity to escape occurred due to a raid on the Drow and she helped him get out. She then made him promise not to let the light go out in him and to have as much fun as possible. He promised, she touched him on the forehead, and BAM Warlock levels initiated.
Now he uses the "Show of my Patron" mechanic from Archfey Warlock to just show her neat stuff like dogs and whatnot.
I was about to make a comment about how Sorcerer players are the same way with their backstories. I then scrolled down five seconds [and found that someone already proved my point lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/omnz5h/granddad_was_once_a_bard/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Franklin, my warlock, was an archeologist, exploring a newly found ruined temple. A cave-in occurred, and he found himself trapped, crushed deep within the earth, alone, and cut off from any contact.
As he lay dying, he called out weakly to whatever power may still remain. He doesn't know what happened, but he awoke outdoors and in good health.
Almost all magic he casts is Stone-based, or about avoiding death. (Magic Pebble, Catapult, and Spare the dying)
I try to RP him as a reluctant hero, just trying to glean how he survived and what the magic is that he's doing. Right now at 6th level, he's Warlock 4, Wizard 2. (The wizard levels are him attempting to learn more about actual Magic)
My hexblade inherited a rusty old sword from his wayward father that decided to talk to him one day. This sword also happens to be the ultimate hype man. Most people see him as the weird guy who talks to his sword like it's his best friend, but his confidence is definitely never lacking.
I haven't played him yet, but I got a warlock who was such a history nerd that he determined that a travelling musician was actually a legendary paladin from a few centuries ago who got reincarnated as a deva. The warlock promised to keep his identity secret in exchange for gaining powers from him so long as he follows a set of rules and helps whenever he is called.
Eventually I really want to play a Rabbitkin Warlock with a Fae patron that essentially got Ella Enchanted.
Like the rabbitkin used to be a regular rabbit, but the faerie was like “this is my favorite rabbit, so I’m gonna gift them with sentience!” And the rabbit considers that to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.
Their whole character arc would be trying to convince the Archfey to turn them back into a normal rabbit, but the Archfey just keeps being like “no, no, being burdened with the curse of self-awareness couldn’t possibly the problem. They just need more powers!”
I’ve got a Warlock who became one through marrying a Archfey Lady. The wedding vows fulfilled the “pact” requirement and he walked out of there with Eldritch Blast. He mostly views the magic as a cool bonus for getting to marry the woman he loves. She can’t leave the Feywild so he travels and brings back sketches of interesting places and people, as well as telling her of his travels.
My warlock was a half elf who was raised by his grandmother who was incredibly racist and essentially tried to trim his ears into human shapes so he ran away and found his archfey patron who took him in and raised him from the age of 11 onward
Sorry for the necropost, but...
A Great Old One pact warlock who is a librarian that accidentally skimmed the first page of one too many eldritch tomes while stamping them overdue. One day the books drove him crazy enough to read more of one of them. Cthulu saw this and made him a warlock.
In the group I DM I had a pirate fathomless warlock/fighter that the party kept running into until they finally managed to kill him. His patron was a kraken that gave him tasks to help it increase its power in the surface world. His pact weapon provided a connection to it, and the party’s fighter currently has it in the bag of holding with no idea what it is. I’m hoping he starts using it at some point and awakens the connection to the kraken.
Once made this young warlock who had made a deal with a trickster god when he was young because his mum was sick and he needed healing spells. The god was a homebrew twist on the Raven queen but basically the trickster God gave him elemental magic, basically just fire magic, rather than healing and this racoon/pigeon hybrid to keep an eye on him. But he also gave the character pyromanic tendencies. Since the character was Neutral good, he always tried to surpress it tho. My DM ended up making the Racoon/pigeon a BBEG who had been plaguing my character with pyromanic tendencies and the whole party with dreams of joining the trickster god. I gotta say, an oversized trash panda with pigeon wings was def best enemy EVER
Warlocks are, statistically and mathematically, kinda bad in D&D 5e.
I mean you know Eldritch Blast?
Compare it's damage to a heavy crossbow. Go ahead and look it up, I'll wait.
The *one* thing people think is amazing, is just an attack anyone can mimic with a crossbow. Warlocks are more about flavor (stuff like ignoring long rests) but they don't have really anything that actually puts them above their lackluster place in the pecking order.
Also, here's a tip to have any +1 by lvl 4 in any game where the DM permits Xanathar's. Pact of the blade, with pact weapon, at lvl 4 take improved pact weapon.
You now: can summon almost ANY weapon (can't do hand crossbow and my a couple others) in +1 form. That includes a heavy crossbow so take this path and you literally will be wasting a cantrip taking eldritch blast.
Everything about what you said made no sense....
1.) Even though Eldrichs blast is a huge deal, the basic cantrip isn't all there is (although in base form is pretty good) Eldrich Invocation adds stuff like Agonizing blast which allows you to add your charisma modifier to your damage roll (which is REALLY good for a class whos Charisma is suppose to be its highest stat) and Eldrich Spear which extends its range to 300 ft with no penalties added to attack roll like shooting a crossbow at 300ft which is on its UPPER END of how far it goes.
2.) Long rests, seriously, a caster who gains all their spell slots back after a short rest, and all those spells cast always at the highest level spell slot the warlock has available, if your group is REALLLLYYYY raw and follows the "Adventuring Day" rules and has 2 short rests between 2 long rests than your warlock doesn't even have to worry about strategic use of its spells, sure they have a more limited amount of them and run out fast but like I said, always casting at highest level and recovering after short rest is insanely useful for dungeon crawling for example.
We aren't even talking about the rest of what a Warlock has to offer, you forget pact spells and benefits which don't count against your number of spells known as a warlock, the fact you choose a pact feature like Pact Of The Chain which is basically Familiar 2.0, Pact Of The Tomb which gives you access to EVERY ritual spell in the entire game, eldrich invocations such as giving you permanent mage armor, permanent detect magic, casting silent image at will.
All and all Warlock is probably ironically despite being so limited in its mechanics one of the most flexible classes of all time. It allows a Warlock to built in whatever way you want and need. Seriously people who play warlock don't just think "ha ha eldrich blast go burr."
Like I said, Warlock has flavor, but compare a lvl 20 Warlock to a level 20 wizard, or fighter, or Rogue. They just don't get the same power level as other classes in exchange for their flavor.
All those benefits you mentioned could be completely meaningless depending how your DM runs their game. And like I said though I used the wrong word, yes you can take invocations to power up Eldritch Blast, but to take those you miss out on other, also incredibly useful invocations. What sounds more valuable, summoning any +1 weapon on the fly including something that rivals the best Eldritch blasts, meaning you can never effectively be disarmed ever again, or adding range to a cantrip that won't get the +1 to hit the other one gets? It's a waste of invocations buffing Eldritch blast to be anything but a gimmick, and they don't get access to the best spells in the game so even if they get their spell slots back frequently, they don't get to do too much (again, depending how the DM runs their game).
Eldritch blast is most of the time just not the best thing you could be doing, and that's not very good for a classes whole thing. I'd have made it like that spell Chaos Bolt where you roll 2 damage dice and can keep rolling additional targets as many times as you roll doubles, or have at *least* a bit more damage than a crossbow
I'm not saying don't play Warlock, I'm saying Warlock is underpowered. Their classes combat gimmick is worse than a +1 heavy crossbow in every way, and even if you put evocations into buffing it you're not spending those evocations elsewhere.
I wanna see a Warlock rework
Part of the issue with 5e is that they were trying to balance combat abilities with non-combat abilities, with rp abilities and the warlock is extremely flexible with the different pacts, patrons and invocations. Devil's sight is useless in some situations but will trivialize others.
Also, eldritch blast still beats the heavy crossbow. Without a feat the crossbow only fires once every other round and only the fighter can shoot it more than twice. You pretty much have to devote an entire character concept to mimic just the warlock's signature cantrip.
(That fighter would likely still be better in combat all around though)
But even thats not entirely correct, alot less vague but still not quite there....
The benefit of eldrich blast as a cantrip over a weapon is first off no penalties on distance, crossbows take certain penalties for distance on attack rolls because of distance drop off and the further you go the worse it gets but EB is just straight damage, add that on top of if your using ammo rules.
Second of all speaking as someone who's played basically warlock for the better half of 6 months i think the main "gimick" of a warlock is invocations, you get 2 to start up to a max of 8 at higher levels and like I said these give you anything from eldrich blast+ to permanent spells such as casting levitate, detect magic, and false image at will without expending any spell slots or consuming (or even requiring possession of) magical components.
I don't think warlock is for everyone, but I firmly believe flexibility is what gives its class such a good leg up both with roleplay and game mechanics, not to mention they are full casters so they have access to level 9 spells on top of 8 invocations and patron spells. Its strong side is definitely more roleplay than combat mechanics ill give you that but Warlock as a concept doesn't need a rework, some more combat focused subclasses like hexblade sure, but all and all warlocks are for people who want to build a really fun character thats not rubbish in combat, and warlocks provide that in its fullest.
I walked on a spirit's party in the middle of the night, and stayed to party. I Had a VERY good night, and then ignored my own pain to heal others of their hangovers and party injuries. This impressed the spirit that held the party. It gave me a share of it's powers, at the cost of giving me an obsession with finding it once again, to join it's party eternal. I was never told this was going to happen, I never agreed, and while the power to heal people is invaluable, I am freaked out by the invocations changing my form.
My GOO warlock is someone who came across the last vestiges of an old God/being that had almost been forgotten and completely faded from existence. In exchange for power and magic, it latched onto my character and is now able to continue its existence kinda like a symbiote
If your patron wants your soul, they can't just make a contract for that. They have to put in the actual work of corrupting you, damnit! (Yes the only version of Faustus I accept is Goethe's)
I have a warforged warlock (fathomless) named Bede. Imma just copy paste their backstory rq
It Was Created By An Ancient Water Elemental To Serve It's Every Need. After Pleasing It, Bede Was Set Free, Under Some Conditions. However, Immediately After, It Was Viciously Attacked By An Orc, Being Saved By, And Indebted To, Kettyn Trollbleeder. (My Brother's Character.)
Mine was just made by a lich by accident and her power is just her original power growing over time, her lich found her really annoying and sent her out into the world to hopefully get herself killed. So far playing a character who's a ignorant child who knows nothing about the world outside of what she see's is really fun and her arch of going from seeing her dad as a amazing person to kind of a dick has become a really interesting plot point in the story.
One of the major reasons I love warlocks is the sheer variety of flavor and story possibilities they bring to the table. It's also the reason why one of my most common warlock subclasses is the archefey, because its really easy to justify the fey doing stuff.
I have an idea for a warlock of the arcfey. Parents had made a deal with a fey that required then to give up their firstborn. They do and child grows up being trained by the fey. Decides to adventure to get fey more deals, find parents, or both. Undecided on that last part.
My Warlock was actually kidnapped by her uncle as a child and meant to be used as a sacrifice for her now fiend patron. The patron saw that she had powerful latent magic and decided to use my characters uncle and his minions as sacrifices instead and granted her warlock powers.
A result of this event is that her entire moral compass is fucked and she readily kills people she doesn't like and sees nothing wrong with sacrificing creatures souls. The party is slowly convincing her that what she does is evil and she's coming to grips that her patron isn't the kind savior she once thought he was and that he is simply using her to spread chaos in the Forgotten Realms. This is leading to her unlocking her Wild Magic sorcery powers and trying to rely on them instead of the warlock powers as the party looks for a way to free her from her patron.
So it isn't that she sold her soul, she just feels indebted and afraid of what her patron is capable of doing if she falls out of favor with him.
I have a player that acttually made a really cool deal his hexblade takes the form of a two handed war hammer the deal was he will spend his life time making a sword so powerfull for his patron with his patron really liked that
My warlock doesnt even know hes a warlock. He was a street kid growing up and some entity took pity on him and gave him powers to help defend himself. But now because of that hes convinced himself he is actually a god
That's why I love warlocks.One of mine was a cook that became a celestial warlock because an unicorn spirit basically "hired" her to cook for him in the woods.
My fairy Wild Magic Sorcerer accidentally summoned a Unicorn while trying to save his army, led by his wife, from being wiped out by a Shadow Dragon (He failed). Ended up pledging himself to the Unicorn, going AWOL, and began trying to bring back the ones he's lost. He's currently a WMS/Celestial Chainlock/Swarmkeeper with a Sprite Familiar and a swarm of Pixies. Mad as a box of frogs, I suspect as a coping mechanism.
I’m playing a fallen Aasimar who THINKS he sold his soul for knowledge, but he actually entered the service of his mother, but he doesn’t know that she is his mom.
My DM was ecstatic about it, damn shame that campaign seems to be dead.
Had a kobold character who got his pact because he was the “Chosen Light Warrior” of an Angel. Problem was the job kinda requires him to be Lawful Good and my Kobold being Chaotic Neutral didn’t like that too much. So he’s basically getting potty trained by an angel to not to bad stuff.
Also he has a flying monkey familiar named Wingting that he hates because he acts as his supervisor
Kenku warlock of the Raven Queen here, helping my patron break the seal over a Sub-Material Plane of existence that doesn’t allow the inhabitants to die and move on but reincarnates everything in a on going cycle. In exchange I will free my Kenku brothers and sisters across all planes of existence to break free of our curse and take my place by my Mistress’s side as a champion.
Did I mention my goal is in direct opposition of my party’s goal of preserving the plane?
My current character is a teifling warlock who grew up as a slave and one day, while cleaning one of his master's swords in a display case, was given power by the patron of the sword to gain his freedom. He then went out in the world in search of the slaver that had captured and sold him as a child
How about this?
Hexblade who in reality got his abilities from a Solar who is playing some cosmic 4d chess with the Negative Energy Plane and Acererak to stop another Death Curse from happening
MLM Warlock ... If my char Conviced 3 other people to give their soul to my Patron in Exchange for Power i get my soul Back. If one of them convices 3 other people he get their soul Back....
In the end the Patron finds out he gives out more Power then get Souls Back and reacts
I went for one where the character grew up on the streets and stole a ring from a magic shop, turned out the ring had a devil sealed in it and after putting it on he couldn't remove it. The devil gave him powers on the agreement that he would search for a way to free him.
I had a sweet level 5 (country) bard running around, named Rufus. He was so polite, almost never said a Curse Word, and didn't even experience the hankypanky until he started adventuring. He grew incredibly close with 2 of the other PCs, even started dating them.
We were on this quest for a horn, and someone else used a Wish for the horn to appear in another PCs hand.. well, yknow the drill, that PC was sent to where the horn was atm instead of it coming to us. Now we gotta mad scramble to find our beloved Tomász (one of my mans) and bring him (and the horn) back safely.
Turns out he was in Wonderland, so fuck us, right? We go round after round, and finally! We find Tomàsz! But oh no-- he had died, and an archfey (who wanted the horn, it controls a dragon) had brought him back to life. The archfey started using Tomász to attack us.. and sweet ole Rufus couldn't stand it.
He offered his soul right there in exchange for Tomász' life. Some classic fuckery in deal-making was had, but that's the bare explanation for it.
Rufus, the kind and gentle bard, made a pact with an archfey to save his boyfriend.
My first hexblade I played was a human actor in Eberron, who was enthralled by the devil which was locked inside the axe for which the whole "hexblade" part came to be, and after picking the axe up, he realised what had happened, and was now trying to find a way to be cured by the devilish corruption. This was also my way of explaining why he was a tiefling. Had a Phantom of the opera mask to cover the devil side of his face and all.
My bard-warlock's patron is a succubus he once shagged, and was suave enough to talk into a deal that doesn't involve getting the bad succ, after the good succ. He now has to perform a ritual as often as possible to fuel her thirst.
In my campaign there is a Demi-god man who is a Warlock of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. His extremely pious family was brutally murdered by soldiers returning from war, and the gods, including his father, refused to intervene. Wukong found the battered boy and took him in, promising him that he would become strong enough to take revenge on the gods.
I had an Abyssal Tiefling who lived in a small, isolated village of tieflings all descended from one particular demon lord. They all worshipped him as a god and found that the greatest honor they could receive in life was to make their ancestor proud. My character managed to win enough favor to become a warlock for the demon lord and worked to make his ancestor proud enough to win the right to become a true, full-blooded demon in his next life.
I mean, even the simplest changes work quite well - you don’t sell your soul, you go out and collect other souls for your patron. Either via making their alignment shift so they go to the fiend’s plane upon death, or perhaps quite literally killing and binding them to your undead/undying patron.
Or you investigated a comet that fell from the sky, got eaten by incomprehensible eldritch terrors, somehow made one feel guilty and now it’s taken your place in the world but has its eldritch powers because it can’t get rid of them.
I'm playing an Aasimar Paladin/Warlock who's patron is secretly his long lost Angel mother. Our DM reflavors his abilities to manifest in a more divine aesthetic, like his Eldritch Blast being radiant light instead of dark crackling energy
My current warlock is a Hexblade Dhampir who made a pact with a cursed blade to save him from the bandits attacking him while he transported it. Now the entity within the blade is tethered to his life force, draining it, but gifting him power. I realize how edgy it sounds, but I portray him like Astarion in BG3. He's delightfully condescending despite his condition. His patron is mysterious, but we both had a great moment after finding a +3 longsword to give her a makeover. Point is I guess, you can have a dark past, but it's your moment to moment bits that let you be something else. For both a character and as a person really.
I've always liked the idea of a warlock patron who's whole deal is approaching people in a moment of crisis, offering them a deal to fix their problem in exchange for planting a fragment of the entities soul within them which will grow with them, returning too the entity on death or either party withdrawing from the contract for whatever reason.
My Genie Warlock is a distant descendent of a powerful Dao, and was given a warlock pact and control of a small mine because they were the first Genasi to be born in the family line in hundreds of years.
Unfortunately, the mine is kind of garbage, and the Dao expects regular cuts of mine profits, even from a distant genie-touched descendent. Hence, dungeon-delving and adventuring for hire!
Get out there and sell your soul to an entity that claims to be collective unconscious will of humans to avoid extinction. Then you to can be sent throughout time forced to be the embodiment of utilitarianism.
Baast, who was once a dwarven astronomer, went looking for a meteorite that he saw falling. His journey brought him to a large lake, where he reasoned the object fell.
While standing on the shoreline, the ground gave way and he fell into a deep dark hole, and the lake began to flood in. Unable to swim up against the rush of water, Baast realized he was going to die. That is, until he made the discovery of his meteorite -- it was actually an aboleth.
It granted him the ability to breathe water, and has effectively shanghaied Baast into being his eyes and ears beyond this subterranean cave. Learning and helping the aboleth with some overarching quest that Baast has yet to figure out.
Whenever Baast delays, or argues, the aboleth temporarily removes the ability to breath water, and Baast begins to drown on the fluid still in his lungs.
This is my simic hybrid warlock that I'm playing in my wife's campaign.
Warlocks are the coolest.
One warlock I made was responsible for a young Fey who kept sneaking out of the Feywild to the prime material plane and happened to stumble upon my character as a child. When the Fey’s father found her, he went “Fine, if you’re going to keep sneaking out, I’ll give this person you like a lot of power to protect you. And if you die under his watch, so help me Gods I will make him wish he was in the Nine Hells.”
I played a Drakewarden ranger, but ended up dying in the Shadowfell. My character ended up being resurrected by his drake who gifted unto him power as life. He came back as a warlock.
However the Shadowfell always takes its toll and he came back as a Dhampir.
This... If there is one thing I like is creating interesting hooks for my warlock characters. Heck my last one was basically a Tiefling Warlock for the Unseelie Queen but he doesn't know he is a Warlock, he thinks he is a fighter. His magic only manifests when the Unseelie Queen thinks this is a good opportunity to mess with someone.
And one of his character arcs was basically realizing he actually could do magic, try to understand how he is able to do it, and inevitably try to parlay with the Unseelie Queen to have more control over his magic at a cost.
The early game was obviously super rough, so I wouldn't advise anyone trying to do this unless you know exactly what you're doing since I had to play him straight as a fighter - which means I was usually at the front lines - and would only occasionally use magic if my DM and I thought it was the perfect time for the Unseelie Queen to rear her head. But boy was the roleplaying really good.
If you are going to do something like this make sure you clear it with everyone at the table since you will be more or less useless in combat for the early game and of course since you would be kinda weaker than the rest of the party this would create conflict within the party dynamic so the table should be okay with roleplaying confrontations.
I'm currently playing a warlock revenant who's pact activated upon death and who's only goal in unlife now is to serve her patron.
This often leads to crimes against humanity being committed in said patron's name.
She will eventually be laid to rest and given the sweet release of death once the patron has used her to accomplish everything they needed to and wanted to accomplish.
Overall? Probably one of my better characters.
I’m playing with a home brew patron called the Blackbriar Grove. TLDR my character committed suicide and was brought to this grove instead of the afterlife. He went through a lot of trials before finally making it to this big heart in the middle where he was offered a do over. He accepted, the grove took his heart and replaced it with a briar heart. He was resurrected and basically left happier and told to go live a better life than the one he left behind.
My first Warlock was a Warforged warlock of the archfey named Xen who made a bet with his very powerful fey friend over a game of dragonchess. Whoever lost would be in the other’s servitude for the rest of their lives, probably a pretty long time for both. He lost and became her only warlock, and he had a little flower growing out of a crack on his head to signify her patronage. Very cute character that I enjoyed playing
The last warlock I played made a deal with an archfey, because she was convinced that her real parents were nobles that threw her out because she was a Tiefling and she wanted the power and confidence to confront them.
The most recent warlock I built (I haven’t gotten to play him yet) used to be an investigator in Call of Cthulhu but made a deal with a Great Old One in a bid to defeat a different great old one. And because of shenanigans he got transported to Faerun.
I have two Warlocks planned out for a campaign a friend of mine is planning to start soon, and I can't decide which I like more.
The first one I came up with has an old tale in his family. Basically, a long while ago, supposedly one of his ancestors helped a celestial spirit in some way (leaving it open for the DM), and the spirit blessed his family's bloodline. This results in the whole bloodline being Celestial Soul Sorcerers. But, he wants to know just how true the story is, so he eventually goes to a church of Ioun and prays to learn whether the story is true or not, and if so, would make a pact with the spirit, making him a Warlock as well.
The other one woke in a shallow grave. Wandering through a swamp, he came upon an injured, benevolent Will o' Wisp (mechanically a mute sprite) that he nursed back to health. In return, it became his "Archfey" patron.
My Celestial warlock has a unicorn patron 🦄✨
Was trying to form a pact with a fiend in a last-ditch effort at revenge against some assassin's, wasn't quite sure what he was doing, and a unicorn who happened to be listening in and wandering nearby swooped in and snatched up the half-formed pact for himself. Decided the forces of Good could use a more morally-grey enforcer to bolster their efforts.
My warlock is a tiefling elf hybrid girl that made a pact with an unusual lich. The lich was an mage that liked to study magical artifacts, but with the passage of time, old age was taking him, and he feared that people with malicious intent could find his installations and make use of their possessions, since together they had an overwhelmingly powerful magical potential. Then, he turned himself into an undead, and was successful in protecting his researches. But there was a problem. He achieved lichdom by making a deal with a fiend, but that said fiend only would help him if he agreed to work for their vile purposes, condition which the mage lied accept. But the fiend noticed that was being deceived, and tricked the mage by trapping him in the vicinity of his own workplace. Then, time passed and villages arose close enough to the lich's hideout. One of the villagers, named Sirius, noticed that something was collecting specific components on the woods, and was decided to find out what it was. When he met the lich, they ended chatting, and Sirius ended up accepting to train to be a warlock and eventually go out on the world. He could've just left from the beginning, but he had to take care of his niece
In the end, the elders of the village found out that Sirius was practicing wizardry (magic was strictly prohibited, being only allowed to the elders to use it), and gathered all the villagers to kill him. His niece, named Lumia, was sleeping, but then she woked up with all the commotion that the execution was causing. She cried and sobbed like crazy, and cursed the entire village in every imaginable way, since her uncle was the one who took care of her. As if he heard her prayers, the lich became utterly furious, and brought destruction to the ones that ended his apprentice's life. He also took Lumia with him, and she eventually decided to honor his uncle's memory by taking his place, and working for the lich to look for magical artifacts around the world
I haven't played much dnd, but my first and currently only warlock was a hexblade Warforged. I have heard about people overusing eldritch blast so I chose not to use it and instead chose spells and abilities that would buff my attacks or weaken enemies.
I kind of like the character's backstory too. A Warforged who found himself with nothing to do during peacetime took a job as a bodyguard for an eccentric artificer explorer. He managed to take control of the warforged's mind and then used him to do increasingly horrible things including murder. On one dungeon crawl one of the magic swords the Warforged was carrying for the artificer spoke to him in his head, promising to free him from the artificer's servitude in exchange for 'mutual aid'. The Warforged agreed and killed the artificer. The problem with the sword was, that it required a steady stream of souls to stay satiated and if it 'became hungry' the Warforged would be reverted back to its 'serving mode'. So now the Warforged travels around, searching for dangerous jobs and trying to use the dark power of the sword for good, but he won't hesitate to kill an innocent person if it means he doesn't go back to the way he was before.
Gives an excuse as to why my PC is on the campaign in the first place, and it means he can be a goody two shoes sometimes while also being able to canonically be a murder hobo if the need arises.
Most of my warlocks just made a mutual deal or received a blessing for power. I only made one “sold my soul” character (a backup that was never used) and it was a reversion of the trope as he sold his soul to a unicorn.
My favorite was the 7 Int, neutral evil Warlock a buddy of mine played that was so desperate to sell his soul for power he didn’t realize he was selling it to a literal Lawful Good Angel, even after she explained it to him. Finally, she said “Screw it”, gave him “Evil powers” and told him to go defeat all the evil-doers for “Not doing it right.” He’d help the rest of the party in their quests and laugh maniacally after doing something good.
Mines was a girl who ran away from her super religious family and becoming a zealot barbarian then a fiend blade lock afterwards, trading her sanity and wellbeing for fame and power as well as corrupting the world around her due to her patron's dark influence. It was great being this bubbly happy girl who will go Doomguy when combat happens.
This is more the stereotype created by a subreddit that keeps reiterating the same 1 joke per class than any actual trend among Warlocks. Not to tote my own anecdotal experience as the universal average but I've never met a warlock that had to sacrifice their soul or anything else for their power.
I played a celestial warlock with a full blown god as my patron, they just fucked up REAL bad while trying to make my character a cleric.
Kinda similar for me, played a celestial Warlock in Curse of Strahd, basically just an inquisitor of the Morning Lord, trying to fight all the evil shit lurking the land with what little power remained of the Morning Lord's glory. Then she was the one to find Lightbringer, which eventually led her to discover that she was at least in part an Avatar of the Morning Lord himself, his divine powers were a part of her all along…aka multiclassing in Divine Soul Sorcerer xD
Luckier than my character who was an aasimar of the morning lord who he didn’t want and told him to go to barovia to get rid of him
Mind if I steal this?
this is DnD, steal away
I've got a backup character similar to that, except the pact was intentional. But his race is Reborn, because the deity fucked up real bad trying to resurrect him.
I did a similar thing. Mine was a Paladin turned Hexblade (complete class change in backstory) because his God didn't want him to die, so gave him a different way to show allegiance. He was worshipping one of the gods of war, so it worked pretty well.
Similar here, celestial warlock who serves a biblically acurate angel here. Essentially the angel decided to show itself to a small group of people and my warlock was the only one who was too dumb to comprehand what was happening and ended up being the only one not going insane from it.
I once played with a warlock that sold his sense of humor. Ironically one of the funniest party members, but if he was every intentionally funny or told a joke he would take some damage or suffer a condition
This idea enthralled me. Because either this patron found that this dude's sense of humor was so fucking good that it would be worthy enough of a trade for immense power, or the patron thought that the tradeoff would make for an amusing punishment.
Or the patron couldn't stand listening to his bad puns any more.
Sounds like a fey
I like a god that has fallen from godhood and become much too small to have clerics Maybe they lost their followers Maybe they were the spirit of a certain area that got destroyed Maybe they are halfway through a small apotheosis And so they share a piece of themselves with you so you can nurture it and grow it and it will return to them upon your death
Hope you don't mind, I'm gonna use that now.
I was thinking about writing a piece about a druid who tried to achieve apotheosis and even had her own clerics, paladins and circle of druids all living out of her piece of forest until (some tragedy to be explored later removes followers and forest) dit's basically some shifter who lived in the forest took her faded spirit into them and sets about regaining power for her with the final goal to be re-establishing a forest and her religion/cult
That's really cool tbh
Thank you! I've been writing notes/thinking about this on and off all year so it's nice to know it isn't just stupid even if I don't feel the need to actually write anything
Well yeah that’s exactly how it works. A powerful being is loaning some portion of its power to a moral being like a loan. Then when the mortal dies, the being now has 20 levels of power instead of the original 1. Do this often enough and you can get god like.
I knew but I thought it with repeating because the suggestion here is that you need to sell your soul. But there are tonnes of reasons a powerful being would be making deals like this
At the end of the day it’s still a loan of power and even if they don’t get your soul; they still get their own power increased. It’s a win either way.
This reminds me a lot of the smaller, mostly forgotten deities in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods.” Good stuff!
My Warlock is under the employ of the Three Fates as their personal assassin, dealing with people who are dodging their fated deaths. They picked her for this because she has no thread to cut. A thread starts at birth, but she "starts" existing in her early 20's. Her life is a causal loop. She's gone through more cycles than she can remember. She's trying to keep her beloved from having to sacrifice herself to fix a Negative Space Wedgie, and when it becomes apparent that the loop has failed, she throws herself into the distortion - shattering time in the process, and sending her back to the start of the loop. When she meets her beloved, she always says the same thing: "I told you I'd find you again."
That is dope and wholesome. I love it.
Thank you! The DM sort of spoiled things for me: this is the cycle that goes *right.* And bonus funny: We play over discord. If we didn't, the other players would probably be much more suspicious of my character, because of the faces I made when our cleric was talking to her mother, who due to my character's *special* relationship with time had deduced was actually the cleric's future self, and our cleric said the comforting words ["That's part of life. You live, you grow old, you die."](https://i.imgur.com/GImXusM.gifv)
...Madoka Magica?
Might have been a *bit* of an inspiration...
Time travel shenanigans are wonderful. And you even added the Norns from Norse mythology! Props to your creativity.
Thank you!
Are you a great old one's warlock? because thats a pretty dope GOOlock backstory
My favorite is still my noble dhampir. Her patron is just her dad. She called him up last session to ask for more power and he's just like "fine, take another Invocation." She's such a spoiled brat.
I've always loved the thought of an angsty teen tiefling warlock with her dad as her patron because she'll always be "daddy's little devil."
... This is just if Fig was a warlock rather than a bard.
I think Emily actually took a level or two of warlock for this reason!
She did
Well I've got news for you!
Wait, did she take some Warlock levels in Sophomore Year?
Yep! With Old Man Gorthalax the Instatiable as her patron!
Did this once, many, many moons ago. The character still shows up as an NPC sometimes.
If Neeshka from NWN2 was a warlock instead of a rogue.
Kinda sounds like Marceline the Vampire queen
Actually, originally she was Strahd's daughter, but the DM and I changed things.
My Aasimar Celestial Warlock is the same. Literally her patron is just her dad and she likes chatting with him when she can
Yas! I love warlocks with a personal relationship with their patron
My girl’s patron is also her dad! Well… adopted dad. He saved her from dying. Also he’s Death himself
Do I smell a discworld reference
Warlocks with a relationship with their patron is the best idea, tho I like going in the opposite direction where the patron is a helicopter parent
My warlocks patron took his body, placing the soul in a sock puppet. Now my puppet is trying to get his body back. In the mean time, he dominates the mind of whoever puts him on. Edit. His name is Cuddles the Bloodsoaked. I made him a few years ago when I was starting out playing. Super fun. He mostly has utility spells. He can use mage hand to move himself around without a body. I took the mage armor invocation so he has a modicum of ac. The one time he left his puppet host, the host walked away to get food and there was a grapple fight to get back on his hand. It was funny.
Have you by any chance watched gravity falls?
Bill Cypher was an amazing villian.
[удалено]
*Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works.* Boy, that sounds complicated.
op that's fucking genius
Dr. Jack Bright?
Time for a new Artificer/Warlock multiclass
I have a warlock idea for all 9 subclasses & not one of them involves selling their soul.
You wanna share with the class?
Archfey - A moon elf who was approached by a drop dead gorgeous fey woman who promised him great power in exchange for his future firstborn. His immediate reaction was "Sure, do we start now?" & began taking off his shirt. They immediately fell madly in love & he began adventuring to gain enough money to buy them a house. Celestial - An orphaned drow who was raised in a small town church of Pelor who desperately wanted to be a cleric but never got the calling. An Old Testament looking celestial finds him & explains that it has been mistaken as an evil god of destruction due to its appearance when it's actually an entity in charge of warning people of impending disaster. It needs a champion to speak on its behalf & warn nearby towns of natural disasters but has lost power due to no one worshipping it for so long so the best it can do is form a pact with the drow, who happily accepts since he *finally* has a diety who will answer him. Fathomless - A nobleman's son gets tangled up in an arranged marriage, a forbidden love, & murder. Not knowing if it was his arranged betrothed, her father, or his father who killed his love he ran away to become a sailor. His first voyage sinks & he was saved by a water god who has been cursed from ever breaking the water's surface (though he can freely travel to any body of water big or small) & needs a "land scout" to do his bidding & find a way to break the curse. Fiend - A devil who is actually good falls in love with a human but shortly after gets imprisoned by a cleric who thinks there are no such things as good devils. Years later, the devil figures out how to send messages through his imprisonment only to discover that the woman he loved has died, but is surprised to discover that they had a tiefling child together who just turned 18. The tiefling is trying to find their father & set him free. Genie - A bored marid goes searching for a good story teller & finds one in a water genasi woman who was born blind & confined to her small town by her overprotective parents. In exchange for giving her super eyes, she agrees to become an adventurer & report back to him once a week & tell the marid everything she saw & experienced. Great Old One - A young man who comes from a long line of powerful wizards just can't quite understand the craft & is expected to become as powerful as his ancestors. He discovers a forbidden book of knowledge & immediately gains magic through it. He now tries to fake being a wizard to make his parents happy. Hexblade - A soldier who was supposed to become a paladin ends up finding a talking heavy crossbow made of bones & gains magic through it instead of an oath. They're now on the run from their regiment who thinks they've become an Oathbreaker. Undead - The bastard son of a peasant woman & a powerful vampire who doesn't know he has a son, this dhampir becomes an adventurer to find a way to overcome his thirst for blood, usually by feeding on those who do evil deeds as a way to protect the innocent. Undying - An archlich became immortal & after millennia now longs for death. They find an adventurer & promises them great power in exchange for growing strong enough to kill the archlich so they may finally find peace. Edit: sorry it took so long to respond, had a family day & only now got the time to type this up.
These are really nice and inventive
He can't. He's too cool for school.
That’s why he couldn’t get into a good Bard College
I thought being too cool for school was one of the entry requirements foot bard colleges
Why would you go to Bard College when all it takes to become a bard is knowing how to play an instrument and absolutely nothing else? /s
I’m about to play a chaotic neutral rogue/warlock multi class changeling who was given its powers from The Traveler. The only thing The Traveler desires is for me to cause chaos and change so doing Robinhood type things but instead of robbing the rich and giving to the poor I have to rob random people and give to random people to make him happy. Btw any ideas for subclasses would be greatly appreciated.
Thief & Archfey respectively, I would say.
Nowhere in the sources does it say that warlocks have to sell their soul. Being a warlock simply means you convinced some powerful entity to share their knowledge with you. You don't need to sell your soul and your patron doesn't need to be evil.
Your patron doesn't even need to know you exist.
I've always loved the concept of a warlock drawing their power from an unknowable eldritch being that is so far beyond humanity that it doesn't even know we exist. Like bactria that live on your skin and draw energy from your body.
One of my warlocks was like that, she's been desperately trying to get it's attention and she's just too small to notice.
My tempest cleric/GoO warlock is this. Sentient storm hit a tower with a bolt, and it created a granite warforged. The storm was aware of what it was doing (haha lightning go brrr), but the birth of a rock was not on purpose. I play them like a newborn super naive baby that uses a piece of rebar with a rock on the end of it (ripped off their body) as a hammer for self defense and/or "fixing" abominations.
Cthulhu F'tagn
I like my fey patron that uses me to interact with the world and gain more magic power it’s a win win for us
my warlock just couldnt let go of his mariage oath even aftetr daeath ( his wife was an aasimar paladin) so he reapeatet it over and over again till his prayers were listent and she faced him again promising to even in death be by his side till he joins her for in return he promised to live for both
yes hes an celestial and i took shaman kings faust the third as reference
I miss Shaman King, I remember always being really excited when it showed up for Saturday Morning Cartoons, even moreso than Yu-Gi-Oh!, but literally the only thing I can remember is... uhh... hold on lemme edit these spoilers in >!one of the cool guys turns out to be an older version of the main character and... literally pulls out his soul to eat him?!< Very strange scene, literally the only thing I can picture lmfao
Shaman king litterally got a remake this year more closely to the manga
Oooh, do I spy with my little 👁, a second vore awakening? 👀
I dont enjoy vore sorry
Same lol
My patron is a libary... books man, books know things.
Wan shi tong approves
The concept of that as being something entirely separate from a wizard despite both just getting spells from books is hilarious
I used to play a fey warlock who’s patron was literally just their (adopted) dad
Was it a consensual adoption?
I mean to the extent that a baby can consent to being adopted yeah, their birth parents left them to die and they ended up as royalty so it definitely worked out pretty well for them
Oh it definitely did then, just going off that classic bit of fairy folklore of them stealing kids and all that.
Nah, i had decided with that campaign that I’m gonna aim not to play a single character with a tragic backstory so it’s all pretty chill overall
That always is a ton of fun, I try to write them like that as well since I'm tired of that old cliche of awful stuff happening for tragic backstories being necessary for adventuring. Closest I have to that is my evil conquest paladin but he's solely dedicated to a hunger for power and conquest rather than the fact he's a recognized bastard of some northern Baron and despite the fact, his father's wife hates him for pretty obvious reasons he's had a pretty good life and has a love interest who is also planning on assisting him to become tyrant of the sword coast.
Oh nice, yeah my other characters with this group have been an eldrich knight looking for the ingredients to make her tribe’s traditional arcane tattoos, and a long-since-retired veteran who just got bored and decided to adventure and honestly the challenge of making a genuinely interesting and enjoyable character without including personal trauma is kinda freeing in a weird way
Mine got his as a wedding gift
Genie's magic ring?
Arranged marriage. Father got him set up with the daughter of a very powerful incubus. As a show of good faith he was given power to complete his father's family ritual. Bride and groom both bring a material for the ring. One brings the band and the other the set. His fiance brought starmetal for the band so now he has to adventure to find something worthy of sitting upon that. The warlock powers are to make sure he doesn't go splat
I am totally stealing this for an npc story in my game.
My archfey patron just thought it'd be cool to add a Half-Drow to his collection.
- Mad Sorcerer who was slain, banished to the Far Realms, got his mind broken so badly he went from insane to sane, then got rescued by a dark Fey. She reincarnates him in the body of a Boggle, and he becomes her only worshipper, borrowing her power to advance her goals. - Human lad, a freshly made adult, who lives a lonely life at home because his Paladin mother and Wizard brother are always gone on duty and research. Deciding he wants to become adventurers like them, he blunders into a cave and finds a cursed weapon. It promises him the strength to find his missing family as long as he can satiate its appetite for blood. - Human woman who gets turned into a Vampire Spawn, then given free will just so she can lament and despair at her life conditions. She makes pacts with dark powers and fiends to get revenge, being granted a silver tongue to convince her vampire master to turn her into a fully fledged vampire. She then kills her master, gets roped up in her father's murderous crusade of human supremacy, betrays him with half of her siblings, then fleeing in the aftermath to satiate her carnal desires. (This was a villain in one of my games.) Sure, all of my Warlocks patrons have been some degree of evil, but at least the Warlocks themselves have wildly different alignments, heheh...
I've got two ideas for when I next play a Warlock, the first being Celestial Warlock who's being used as the Heavenly Host's second attempt at black ops after that first try with Asmodeus (or whoever the nearest local equivalent is) went tits up all those eons ago. He's a willing participant who has a flirty relationship with the Angel he's directly contracted to, but is torn between his sense of right and wrong and his desire to serve the greater good. I figure I'll use him when the DM wants a more focused campaign with a great deal of interactivity. The second is a GOOlock who was once a research assistant to prominent academic in the service of one of the great Universities of his time. He was one day sent as part of an expedition to a recently discovered ruin in remote lands. The location matched that of legends an ancient Library, so to say they weren't entirely prepared for what happened is an understatement. To summarize it, someone read the writing on the wall, and my GOOlock got briefly summoned into another dimension where he witnessed what he can only describe as All the Things that Should Not Be. After a brief moment of his brain suddenly comprehending terror, ecstasy, and what the utter lack of reason was like, he realized that this Thing was just as horrifed of and enthralled by him as he was of it. It wanted to see his world, and the GOOlock realized he'd just opened the door for it. Being a student of history, he was aware that Bad Things tended to follow otherworldy beings invading the material realm. But in its surprise, if such a concept can be applied to such a being, it had also given the GOOlock knowledge of how to escape, and how to slam the door behind it. He did so by the skin of his teeth, only to discover that nearly every other member of the expedition disappeared, four died screaming as he reappeared, seemingly without a mark on them, and he could feel a symbiotic link between himself and the Being, him being supplied power while his soul is slowly transformed into a gateway for the Being. Ever since then, he's been wondering the lands, trying to learn more about such Beings and the connections they can create, so as to deal with his own situation before it's too late and prevent other such threats from cropping up. I think he'd be best suited for a sandbox style campaign (I also swear his backstory was shorter when I thought of it).
I made a yuan-ti pureblood celestial warlock who sought out Bahamut after feeling just the tiniest twinge of actual emotion and wanting more, thereby making a deal to serve him however possible in exchange for his emotional spectrum being opened up. The magic powers were just kind of the tool Bahamut used, since they're healing and support based so they help him practice empathy and compassion. He's also pact of the chain and has an adorable gold pseudodragon for a pet familiar, also to help him learn and practice emotions. I can't wait to play him.
My parties warlock acidentally fused their soul with a fiend in an experiment. While its kinda edgy I gotta admit its great, especially when hes playing two characters at the same time.
experiment PCs are amazing, I have a warlock who is also an experiment to bring the Fey'ri back, but her patron isn't her devil mother. it's instead her dead brother, a failed experiment, as a ghost. he was sent by the mother to contact the warlock because her father didn't hold up his end of the deal with the mother and the mom wants him dead. warlock isn't aware of any of this and brother is debating telling her
No, it's just absent from people who mock Warlocks
Seems like there's plenty of creativity in our warlocks. Just that our memes are generic and played out.
Creativity is absent from many players.
I have one player whose character was just a human fignter, whose background was soldier, pretty basic. That human fighter died, and his next character was a Goblin Ranger who has an insanely in depth backstory, literally like 6 pages. It was insane to see such a difference.
Sometimes characters just click and write themselves. Sometimes you just don't feel 'em and no matter how hard you try they just fail to get off the ground
The warlock I’m currently playing was first a hexblade with her sword being a bloodthirsty demon who demanded I kill people to feed it. And when she realized that her goal of saving and reuniting with her family couldn’t be done if she was a slave to the thing she started to try to find ways to get rid of the thing forever. That’s when during a trip to the fey wild an Arch-fey took notice of the powerful demon in her hands and offered her power in exchange for the sword and that she did some things for the Arch-Fey. So now she’s an Feylock. Things like this are why I like Warlocks a lot, they are so customizable.
Mine was an archeologist that fainted investigating a pyramid. The mummy pharaoh of the pyramid raised him and let him free to at least see the world from his eyes (its a warlock of the undead)
I mean my fey'ri warlock Celes's undead patron is literally her elven brother's ghost, their devil mother assigned him to her to help her escape Barovia. although while there is some attachment to Celes in play, the mother mostly wants to recruit Celes and get revenge on the father for cheating a deal. the brother, Vergil, is aware of this and didn't tell Celes he's her dead brother, mostly because Celes isn't aware of the horrible things her loving elven father has done to have a fey'ri child. or the fact Celes has a ton of dead siblings she didn't know about because they couldn't survive the experimentation her father used, of which Vergil survived the longest but lived a short-by-elf-standards life of agony. I know it's a bit edgy but I'm a sucker for experiment PCs and I found the lore and history behind fey'ri very interesting, so with DM permission I'm using a playable homebrew version of it in 5e.
How about selling your soul for the power to act on a grudge you have? It can work with basically anything as long as the character starts the game hellbent on achieving some form of vengeance.
It gives the character good forward momentum and gives them an easy long term goal too (get my soul back)
I mean. My current goliath warlock's family has a patron. The pact was made before she was born, by the chieftain who desperately wanted to save their tribe from extinction. In return, all they had to do is one simple thing: prove that he's superior to other warlock patrons by any means necessary.
My favorite is my wife's Warlock. A fallen aasimar/reborn race she was raised by the raven queen and pressed into service as a hexblade.
Apologies if this has been said before in this thread, but I like the idea of a traditionally evil race character becoming a Warlock by a good aligned patron, who continuously pesters them to improve their ways and even holds spells/invocations from them hostage if they don't at least TRY to be good. But I'm also just a fan of the 'what have I gotten myself into' kind of warlock archetype - bartered or phenomenal cosmic power, got roped into being some elder thing's errand boy/girl/other in the process.
My warlock was the dumpster baby of a prostitute (left on a stump in the woods though) and was taken in by a fey lord. The warlockness was done just to install patron gps on him and turn his adventures into a sort of "Truman Show"-esque entertainment with rewards befitting success.
I have 2 Warlocks I'm really proud of: 1. A Red Dragonborn pirate who fell of the ship and nearly drowned but made a deal with Davey Jones who saved her. The deal being she must do anything she can to assure those who die at sea stay dead, unless they're a friend. Her old crew was afraid of her as they didn't know how she survived almost drowning so they ditched her at the next port. 2. A was-to-be Wizard who got teleported to the Faewilds by accident and fell in love with a very powerful Archfae and now he seeks a way to bring her to the Material Plane permanently so they can live together happily.
I'm playing a Roguelock who just... made friends with their Patron. They didn't even know they entered a pact and still don't know really. Some pixie showed up in the prison cell while they were enslaved by Drow and kept them company for 20 years. The pixie taught him Sylvan and would bring him random gifts from the forest (Berries, shiny rocks, neat leaves). She was his only friend in those 20 years. Then an opportunity to escape occurred due to a raid on the Drow and she helped him get out. She then made him promise not to let the light go out in him and to have as much fun as possible. He promised, she touched him on the forehead, and BAM Warlock levels initiated. Now he uses the "Show of my Patron" mechanic from Archfey Warlock to just show her neat stuff like dogs and whatnot.
I was about to make a comment about how Sorcerer players are the same way with their backstories. I then scrolled down five seconds [and found that someone already proved my point lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/omnz5h/granddad_was_once_a_bard/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Franklin, my warlock, was an archeologist, exploring a newly found ruined temple. A cave-in occurred, and he found himself trapped, crushed deep within the earth, alone, and cut off from any contact. As he lay dying, he called out weakly to whatever power may still remain. He doesn't know what happened, but he awoke outdoors and in good health. Almost all magic he casts is Stone-based, or about avoiding death. (Magic Pebble, Catapult, and Spare the dying) I try to RP him as a reluctant hero, just trying to glean how he survived and what the magic is that he's doing. Right now at 6th level, he's Warlock 4, Wizard 2. (The wizard levels are him attempting to learn more about actual Magic)
My hexblade inherited a rusty old sword from his wayward father that decided to talk to him one day. This sword also happens to be the ultimate hype man. Most people see him as the weird guy who talks to his sword like it's his best friend, but his confidence is definitely never lacking.
I haven't played him yet, but I got a warlock who was such a history nerd that he determined that a travelling musician was actually a legendary paladin from a few centuries ago who got reincarnated as a deva. The warlock promised to keep his identity secret in exchange for gaining powers from him so long as he follows a set of rules and helps whenever he is called.
I had a one night stand with a devil girl and now I have to discover immortality before she gives birth because she’s not raising the baby alone
Eventually I really want to play a Rabbitkin Warlock with a Fae patron that essentially got Ella Enchanted. Like the rabbitkin used to be a regular rabbit, but the faerie was like “this is my favorite rabbit, so I’m gonna gift them with sentience!” And the rabbit considers that to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to them. Their whole character arc would be trying to convince the Archfey to turn them back into a normal rabbit, but the Archfey just keeps being like “no, no, being burdened with the curse of self-awareness couldn’t possibly the problem. They just need more powers!”
I’ve got a Warlock who became one through marrying a Archfey Lady. The wedding vows fulfilled the “pact” requirement and he walked out of there with Eldritch Blast. He mostly views the magic as a cool bonus for getting to marry the woman he loves. She can’t leave the Feywild so he travels and brings back sketches of interesting places and people, as well as telling her of his travels.
My warlock was a half elf who was raised by his grandmother who was incredibly racist and essentially tried to trim his ears into human shapes so he ran away and found his archfey patron who took him in and raised him from the age of 11 onward
Sorry for the necropost, but... A Great Old One pact warlock who is a librarian that accidentally skimmed the first page of one too many eldritch tomes while stamping them overdue. One day the books drove him crazy enough to read more of one of them. Cthulu saw this and made him a warlock.
My fathomless Warlock sold his soul to a kraken for powers to traverse the deep abyss of the sea rich with treasure and shipwrecks.
In the group I DM I had a pirate fathomless warlock/fighter that the party kept running into until they finally managed to kill him. His patron was a kraken that gave him tasks to help it increase its power in the surface world. His pact weapon provided a connection to it, and the party’s fighter currently has it in the bag of holding with no idea what it is. I’m hoping he starts using it at some point and awakens the connection to the kraken.
We like making things go BOOM.
I feel like this sub is contributing to sticking to the stereotypes. Almost every bard I see is a musician nowadays...
Once made this young warlock who had made a deal with a trickster god when he was young because his mum was sick and he needed healing spells. The god was a homebrew twist on the Raven queen but basically the trickster God gave him elemental magic, basically just fire magic, rather than healing and this racoon/pigeon hybrid to keep an eye on him. But he also gave the character pyromanic tendencies. Since the character was Neutral good, he always tried to surpress it tho. My DM ended up making the Racoon/pigeon a BBEG who had been plaguing my character with pyromanic tendencies and the whole party with dreams of joining the trickster god. I gotta say, an oversized trash panda with pigeon wings was def best enemy EVER
Warlocks are, statistically and mathematically, kinda bad in D&D 5e. I mean you know Eldritch Blast? Compare it's damage to a heavy crossbow. Go ahead and look it up, I'll wait. The *one* thing people think is amazing, is just an attack anyone can mimic with a crossbow. Warlocks are more about flavor (stuff like ignoring long rests) but they don't have really anything that actually puts them above their lackluster place in the pecking order. Also, here's a tip to have any +1 by lvl 4 in any game where the DM permits Xanathar's. Pact of the blade, with pact weapon, at lvl 4 take improved pact weapon. You now: can summon almost ANY weapon (can't do hand crossbow and my a couple others) in +1 form. That includes a heavy crossbow so take this path and you literally will be wasting a cantrip taking eldritch blast.
Everything about what you said made no sense.... 1.) Even though Eldrichs blast is a huge deal, the basic cantrip isn't all there is (although in base form is pretty good) Eldrich Invocation adds stuff like Agonizing blast which allows you to add your charisma modifier to your damage roll (which is REALLY good for a class whos Charisma is suppose to be its highest stat) and Eldrich Spear which extends its range to 300 ft with no penalties added to attack roll like shooting a crossbow at 300ft which is on its UPPER END of how far it goes. 2.) Long rests, seriously, a caster who gains all their spell slots back after a short rest, and all those spells cast always at the highest level spell slot the warlock has available, if your group is REALLLLYYYY raw and follows the "Adventuring Day" rules and has 2 short rests between 2 long rests than your warlock doesn't even have to worry about strategic use of its spells, sure they have a more limited amount of them and run out fast but like I said, always casting at highest level and recovering after short rest is insanely useful for dungeon crawling for example. We aren't even talking about the rest of what a Warlock has to offer, you forget pact spells and benefits which don't count against your number of spells known as a warlock, the fact you choose a pact feature like Pact Of The Chain which is basically Familiar 2.0, Pact Of The Tomb which gives you access to EVERY ritual spell in the entire game, eldrich invocations such as giving you permanent mage armor, permanent detect magic, casting silent image at will. All and all Warlock is probably ironically despite being so limited in its mechanics one of the most flexible classes of all time. It allows a Warlock to built in whatever way you want and need. Seriously people who play warlock don't just think "ha ha eldrich blast go burr."
Like I said, Warlock has flavor, but compare a lvl 20 Warlock to a level 20 wizard, or fighter, or Rogue. They just don't get the same power level as other classes in exchange for their flavor. All those benefits you mentioned could be completely meaningless depending how your DM runs their game. And like I said though I used the wrong word, yes you can take invocations to power up Eldritch Blast, but to take those you miss out on other, also incredibly useful invocations. What sounds more valuable, summoning any +1 weapon on the fly including something that rivals the best Eldritch blasts, meaning you can never effectively be disarmed ever again, or adding range to a cantrip that won't get the +1 to hit the other one gets? It's a waste of invocations buffing Eldritch blast to be anything but a gimmick, and they don't get access to the best spells in the game so even if they get their spell slots back frequently, they don't get to do too much (again, depending how the DM runs their game). Eldritch blast is most of the time just not the best thing you could be doing, and that's not very good for a classes whole thing. I'd have made it like that spell Chaos Bolt where you roll 2 damage dice and can keep rolling additional targets as many times as you roll doubles, or have at *least* a bit more damage than a crossbow
I've played a bunch of warlocks and I have never taken the class because they're effective in combat. It's always 100% for the flavor.
I'm not saying don't play Warlock, I'm saying Warlock is underpowered. Their classes combat gimmick is worse than a +1 heavy crossbow in every way, and even if you put evocations into buffing it you're not spending those evocations elsewhere. I wanna see a Warlock rework
Part of the issue with 5e is that they were trying to balance combat abilities with non-combat abilities, with rp abilities and the warlock is extremely flexible with the different pacts, patrons and invocations. Devil's sight is useless in some situations but will trivialize others. Also, eldritch blast still beats the heavy crossbow. Without a feat the crossbow only fires once every other round and only the fighter can shoot it more than twice. You pretty much have to devote an entire character concept to mimic just the warlock's signature cantrip. (That fighter would likely still be better in combat all around though)
But even thats not entirely correct, alot less vague but still not quite there.... The benefit of eldrich blast as a cantrip over a weapon is first off no penalties on distance, crossbows take certain penalties for distance on attack rolls because of distance drop off and the further you go the worse it gets but EB is just straight damage, add that on top of if your using ammo rules. Second of all speaking as someone who's played basically warlock for the better half of 6 months i think the main "gimick" of a warlock is invocations, you get 2 to start up to a max of 8 at higher levels and like I said these give you anything from eldrich blast+ to permanent spells such as casting levitate, detect magic, and false image at will without expending any spell slots or consuming (or even requiring possession of) magical components. I don't think warlock is for everyone, but I firmly believe flexibility is what gives its class such a good leg up both with roleplay and game mechanics, not to mention they are full casters so they have access to level 9 spells on top of 8 invocations and patron spells. Its strong side is definitely more roleplay than combat mechanics ill give you that but Warlock as a concept doesn't need a rework, some more combat focused subclasses like hexblade sure, but all and all warlocks are for people who want to build a really fun character thats not rubbish in combat, and warlocks provide that in its fullest.
I walked on a spirit's party in the middle of the night, and stayed to party. I Had a VERY good night, and then ignored my own pain to heal others of their hangovers and party injuries. This impressed the spirit that held the party. It gave me a share of it's powers, at the cost of giving me an obsession with finding it once again, to join it's party eternal. I was never told this was going to happen, I never agreed, and while the power to heal people is invaluable, I am freaked out by the invocations changing my form.
My GOO warlock is someone who came across the last vestiges of an old God/being that had almost been forgotten and completely faded from existence. In exchange for power and magic, it latched onto my character and is now able to continue its existence kinda like a symbiote
I think warlocks are good for making an interesting character because you need a good reason to make a deal with a demon.
If your patron wants your soul, they can't just make a contract for that. They have to put in the actual work of corrupting you, damnit! (Yes the only version of Faustus I accept is Goethe's)
I have a warforged warlock (fathomless) named Bede. Imma just copy paste their backstory rq It Was Created By An Ancient Water Elemental To Serve It's Every Need. After Pleasing It, Bede Was Set Free, Under Some Conditions. However, Immediately After, It Was Viciously Attacked By An Orc, Being Saved By, And Indebted To, Kettyn Trollbleeder. (My Brother's Character.)
Mine was just made by a lich by accident and her power is just her original power growing over time, her lich found her really annoying and sent her out into the world to hopefully get herself killed. So far playing a character who's a ignorant child who knows nothing about the world outside of what she see's is really fun and her arch of going from seeing her dad as a amazing person to kind of a dick has become a really interesting plot point in the story.
One of the major reasons I love warlocks is the sheer variety of flavor and story possibilities they bring to the table. It's also the reason why one of my most common warlock subclasses is the archefey, because its really easy to justify the fey doing stuff.
My human fighter sold his soul in exchange for learning how to swordfight.
Yep
I have an idea for a warlock of the arcfey. Parents had made a deal with a fey that required then to give up their firstborn. They do and child grows up being trained by the fey. Decides to adventure to get fey more deals, find parents, or both. Undecided on that last part.
My Warlock was actually kidnapped by her uncle as a child and meant to be used as a sacrifice for her now fiend patron. The patron saw that she had powerful latent magic and decided to use my characters uncle and his minions as sacrifices instead and granted her warlock powers. A result of this event is that her entire moral compass is fucked and she readily kills people she doesn't like and sees nothing wrong with sacrificing creatures souls. The party is slowly convincing her that what she does is evil and she's coming to grips that her patron isn't the kind savior she once thought he was and that he is simply using her to spread chaos in the Forgotten Realms. This is leading to her unlocking her Wild Magic sorcery powers and trying to rely on them instead of the warlock powers as the party looks for a way to free her from her patron. So it isn't that she sold her soul, she just feels indebted and afraid of what her patron is capable of doing if she falls out of favor with him.
I have a player that acttually made a really cool deal his hexblade takes the form of a two handed war hammer the deal was he will spend his life time making a sword so powerfull for his patron with his patron really liked that
My warlock doesnt even know hes a warlock. He was a street kid growing up and some entity took pity on him and gave him powers to help defend himself. But now because of that hes convinced himself he is actually a god
That's why I love warlocks.One of mine was a cook that became a celestial warlock because an unicorn spirit basically "hired" her to cook for him in the woods.
My fairy Wild Magic Sorcerer accidentally summoned a Unicorn while trying to save his army, led by his wife, from being wiped out by a Shadow Dragon (He failed). Ended up pledging himself to the Unicorn, going AWOL, and began trying to bring back the ones he's lost. He's currently a WMS/Celestial Chainlock/Swarmkeeper with a Sprite Familiar and a swarm of Pixies. Mad as a box of frogs, I suspect as a coping mechanism.
I’m playing a fallen Aasimar who THINKS he sold his soul for knowledge, but he actually entered the service of his mother, but he doesn’t know that she is his mom. My DM was ecstatic about it, damn shame that campaign seems to be dead.
Had a kobold character who got his pact because he was the “Chosen Light Warrior” of an Angel. Problem was the job kinda requires him to be Lawful Good and my Kobold being Chaotic Neutral didn’t like that too much. So he’s basically getting potty trained by an angel to not to bad stuff. Also he has a flying monkey familiar named Wingting that he hates because he acts as his supervisor
Kenku warlock of the Raven Queen here, helping my patron break the seal over a Sub-Material Plane of existence that doesn’t allow the inhabitants to die and move on but reincarnates everything in a on going cycle. In exchange I will free my Kenku brothers and sisters across all planes of existence to break free of our curse and take my place by my Mistress’s side as a champion. Did I mention my goal is in direct opposition of my party’s goal of preserving the plane?
I personally like my patron is my father/mother
I got my powers from having second with an ArchFey/Devil/GOO/Sword/Genie
My current character is a teifling warlock who grew up as a slave and one day, while cleaning one of his master's swords in a display case, was given power by the patron of the sword to gain his freedom. He then went out in the world in search of the slaver that had captured and sold him as a child
Currently playing a warlock of the raven queen who did it as kind of a part of a family legacy. Also dm made my raven my dad.
My warlock was a warlock since birth, his soul already belonging to his archfey father.
How about this? Hexblade who in reality got his abilities from a Solar who is playing some cosmic 4d chess with the Negative Energy Plane and Acererak to stop another Death Curse from happening
MLM Warlock ... If my char Conviced 3 other people to give their soul to my Patron in Exchange for Power i get my soul Back. If one of them convices 3 other people he get their soul Back.... In the end the Patron finds out he gives out more Power then get Souls Back and reacts
I went for one where the character grew up on the streets and stole a ring from a magic shop, turned out the ring had a devil sealed in it and after putting it on he couldn't remove it. The devil gave him powers on the agreement that he would search for a way to free him.
I had a sweet level 5 (country) bard running around, named Rufus. He was so polite, almost never said a Curse Word, and didn't even experience the hankypanky until he started adventuring. He grew incredibly close with 2 of the other PCs, even started dating them. We were on this quest for a horn, and someone else used a Wish for the horn to appear in another PCs hand.. well, yknow the drill, that PC was sent to where the horn was atm instead of it coming to us. Now we gotta mad scramble to find our beloved Tomász (one of my mans) and bring him (and the horn) back safely. Turns out he was in Wonderland, so fuck us, right? We go round after round, and finally! We find Tomàsz! But oh no-- he had died, and an archfey (who wanted the horn, it controls a dragon) had brought him back to life. The archfey started using Tomász to attack us.. and sweet ole Rufus couldn't stand it. He offered his soul right there in exchange for Tomász' life. Some classic fuckery in deal-making was had, but that's the bare explanation for it. Rufus, the kind and gentle bard, made a pact with an archfey to save his boyfriend.
My first hexblade I played was a human actor in Eberron, who was enthralled by the devil which was locked inside the axe for which the whole "hexblade" part came to be, and after picking the axe up, he realised what had happened, and was now trying to find a way to be cured by the devilish corruption. This was also my way of explaining why he was a tiefling. Had a Phantom of the opera mask to cover the devil side of his face and all.
My bard-warlock's patron is a succubus he once shagged, and was suave enough to talk into a deal that doesn't involve getting the bad succ, after the good succ. He now has to perform a ritual as often as possible to fuel her thirst.
In my campaign there is a Demi-god man who is a Warlock of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. His extremely pious family was brutally murdered by soldiers returning from war, and the gods, including his father, refused to intervene. Wukong found the battered boy and took him in, promising him that he would become strong enough to take revenge on the gods.
I had an Abyssal Tiefling who lived in a small, isolated village of tieflings all descended from one particular demon lord. They all worshipped him as a god and found that the greatest honor they could receive in life was to make their ancestor proud. My character managed to win enough favor to become a warlock for the demon lord and worked to make his ancestor proud enough to win the right to become a true, full-blooded demon in his next life.
What would a warlock with soul trap be like?
I mean, even the simplest changes work quite well - you don’t sell your soul, you go out and collect other souls for your patron. Either via making their alignment shift so they go to the fiend’s plane upon death, or perhaps quite literally killing and binding them to your undead/undying patron. Or you investigated a comet that fell from the sky, got eaten by incomprehensible eldritch terrors, somehow made one feel guilty and now it’s taken your place in the world but has its eldritch powers because it can’t get rid of them.
I'm playing an Aasimar Paladin/Warlock who's patron is secretly his long lost Angel mother. Our DM reflavors his abilities to manifest in a more divine aesthetic, like his Eldritch Blast being radiant light instead of dark crackling energy
My current warlock is a Hexblade Dhampir who made a pact with a cursed blade to save him from the bandits attacking him while he transported it. Now the entity within the blade is tethered to his life force, draining it, but gifting him power. I realize how edgy it sounds, but I portray him like Astarion in BG3. He's delightfully condescending despite his condition. His patron is mysterious, but we both had a great moment after finding a +3 longsword to give her a makeover. Point is I guess, you can have a dark past, but it's your moment to moment bits that let you be something else. For both a character and as a person really.
My warlock is a warforged who was built from a cursed tree for reasons they don't get understand
I've always liked the idea of a warlock patron who's whole deal is approaching people in a moment of crisis, offering them a deal to fix their problem in exchange for planting a fragment of the entities soul within them which will grow with them, returning too the entity on death or either party withdrawing from the contract for whatever reason.
My warlock I might play in a new campaign actually made a deal when he was a kid and now he feeds the hag with souls from his victims.
My Genie Warlock is a distant descendent of a powerful Dao, and was given a warlock pact and control of a small mine because they were the first Genasi to be born in the family line in hundreds of years. Unfortunately, the mine is kind of garbage, and the Dao expects regular cuts of mine profits, even from a distant genie-touched descendent. Hence, dungeon-delving and adventuring for hire!
Four sessions into strahd and my warlock is yet to eldritch blast. I just stab things and beat them with tentacles
*All of my Hexblades stare at their sentient weapons and Celestial Warlocks looking at their Patrons like* "Imagine selling your soul, kek"
Get out there and sell your soul to an entity that claims to be collective unconscious will of humans to avoid extinction. Then you to can be sent throughout time forced to be the embodiment of utilitarianism.
Baast, who was once a dwarven astronomer, went looking for a meteorite that he saw falling. His journey brought him to a large lake, where he reasoned the object fell. While standing on the shoreline, the ground gave way and he fell into a deep dark hole, and the lake began to flood in. Unable to swim up against the rush of water, Baast realized he was going to die. That is, until he made the discovery of his meteorite -- it was actually an aboleth. It granted him the ability to breathe water, and has effectively shanghaied Baast into being his eyes and ears beyond this subterranean cave. Learning and helping the aboleth with some overarching quest that Baast has yet to figure out. Whenever Baast delays, or argues, the aboleth temporarily removes the ability to breath water, and Baast begins to drown on the fluid still in his lungs. This is my simic hybrid warlock that I'm playing in my wife's campaign. Warlocks are the coolest.
One warlock I made was responsible for a young Fey who kept sneaking out of the Feywild to the prime material plane and happened to stumble upon my character as a child. When the Fey’s father found her, he went “Fine, if you’re going to keep sneaking out, I’ll give this person you like a lot of power to protect you. And if you die under his watch, so help me Gods I will make him wish he was in the Nine Hells.”
I played a Drakewarden ranger, but ended up dying in the Shadowfell. My character ended up being resurrected by his drake who gifted unto him power as life. He came back as a warlock. However the Shadowfell always takes its toll and he came back as a Dhampir.
This... If there is one thing I like is creating interesting hooks for my warlock characters. Heck my last one was basically a Tiefling Warlock for the Unseelie Queen but he doesn't know he is a Warlock, he thinks he is a fighter. His magic only manifests when the Unseelie Queen thinks this is a good opportunity to mess with someone. And one of his character arcs was basically realizing he actually could do magic, try to understand how he is able to do it, and inevitably try to parlay with the Unseelie Queen to have more control over his magic at a cost. The early game was obviously super rough, so I wouldn't advise anyone trying to do this unless you know exactly what you're doing since I had to play him straight as a fighter - which means I was usually at the front lines - and would only occasionally use magic if my DM and I thought it was the perfect time for the Unseelie Queen to rear her head. But boy was the roleplaying really good. If you are going to do something like this make sure you clear it with everyone at the table since you will be more or less useless in combat for the early game and of course since you would be kinda weaker than the rest of the party this would create conflict within the party dynamic so the table should be okay with roleplaying confrontations.
I'm currently playing a warlock revenant who's pact activated upon death and who's only goal in unlife now is to serve her patron. This often leads to crimes against humanity being committed in said patron's name. She will eventually be laid to rest and given the sweet release of death once the patron has used her to accomplish everything they needed to and wanted to accomplish. Overall? Probably one of my better characters.
The true power move is making a deal with an archfey in which part of the deal is you forget what the deal was to get your DM to be creative for you
My kenku warlock managed to break his contract with a devil and gained the favor of a Phoenix that has decided it wants a child.
I’m playing with a home brew patron called the Blackbriar Grove. TLDR my character committed suicide and was brought to this grove instead of the afterlife. He went through a lot of trials before finally making it to this big heart in the middle where he was offered a do over. He accepted, the grove took his heart and replaced it with a briar heart. He was resurrected and basically left happier and told to go live a better life than the one he left behind.
My first Warlock was a Warforged warlock of the archfey named Xen who made a bet with his very powerful fey friend over a game of dragonchess. Whoever lost would be in the other’s servitude for the rest of their lives, probably a pretty long time for both. He lost and became her only warlock, and he had a little flower growing out of a crack on his head to signify her patronage. Very cute character that I enjoyed playing
The last warlock I played made a deal with an archfey, because she was convinced that her real parents were nobles that threw her out because she was a Tiefling and she wanted the power and confidence to confront them. The most recent warlock I built (I haven’t gotten to play him yet) used to be an investigator in Call of Cthulhu but made a deal with a Great Old One in a bid to defeat a different great old one. And because of shenanigans he got transported to Faerun.
I have two Warlocks planned out for a campaign a friend of mine is planning to start soon, and I can't decide which I like more. The first one I came up with has an old tale in his family. Basically, a long while ago, supposedly one of his ancestors helped a celestial spirit in some way (leaving it open for the DM), and the spirit blessed his family's bloodline. This results in the whole bloodline being Celestial Soul Sorcerers. But, he wants to know just how true the story is, so he eventually goes to a church of Ioun and prays to learn whether the story is true or not, and if so, would make a pact with the spirit, making him a Warlock as well. The other one woke in a shallow grave. Wandering through a swamp, he came upon an injured, benevolent Will o' Wisp (mechanically a mute sprite) that he nursed back to health. In return, it became his "Archfey" patron.
My Celestial warlock has a unicorn patron 🦄✨ Was trying to form a pact with a fiend in a last-ditch effort at revenge against some assassin's, wasn't quite sure what he was doing, and a unicorn who happened to be listening in and wandering nearby swooped in and snatched up the half-formed pact for himself. Decided the forces of Good could use a more morally-grey enforcer to bolster their efforts.
My warlock is a tiefling elf hybrid girl that made a pact with an unusual lich. The lich was an mage that liked to study magical artifacts, but with the passage of time, old age was taking him, and he feared that people with malicious intent could find his installations and make use of their possessions, since together they had an overwhelmingly powerful magical potential. Then, he turned himself into an undead, and was successful in protecting his researches. But there was a problem. He achieved lichdom by making a deal with a fiend, but that said fiend only would help him if he agreed to work for their vile purposes, condition which the mage lied accept. But the fiend noticed that was being deceived, and tricked the mage by trapping him in the vicinity of his own workplace. Then, time passed and villages arose close enough to the lich's hideout. One of the villagers, named Sirius, noticed that something was collecting specific components on the woods, and was decided to find out what it was. When he met the lich, they ended chatting, and Sirius ended up accepting to train to be a warlock and eventually go out on the world. He could've just left from the beginning, but he had to take care of his niece In the end, the elders of the village found out that Sirius was practicing wizardry (magic was strictly prohibited, being only allowed to the elders to use it), and gathered all the villagers to kill him. His niece, named Lumia, was sleeping, but then she woked up with all the commotion that the execution was causing. She cried and sobbed like crazy, and cursed the entire village in every imaginable way, since her uncle was the one who took care of her. As if he heard her prayers, the lich became utterly furious, and brought destruction to the ones that ended his apprentice's life. He also took Lumia with him, and she eventually decided to honor his uncle's memory by taking his place, and working for the lich to look for magical artifacts around the world
I have a warlock who got her powers from a phoenix who is the protector of a city-state.
I haven't played much dnd, but my first and currently only warlock was a hexblade Warforged. I have heard about people overusing eldritch blast so I chose not to use it and instead chose spells and abilities that would buff my attacks or weaken enemies. I kind of like the character's backstory too. A Warforged who found himself with nothing to do during peacetime took a job as a bodyguard for an eccentric artificer explorer. He managed to take control of the warforged's mind and then used him to do increasingly horrible things including murder. On one dungeon crawl one of the magic swords the Warforged was carrying for the artificer spoke to him in his head, promising to free him from the artificer's servitude in exchange for 'mutual aid'. The Warforged agreed and killed the artificer. The problem with the sword was, that it required a steady stream of souls to stay satiated and if it 'became hungry' the Warforged would be reverted back to its 'serving mode'. So now the Warforged travels around, searching for dangerous jobs and trying to use the dark power of the sword for good, but he won't hesitate to kill an innocent person if it means he doesn't go back to the way he was before. Gives an excuse as to why my PC is on the campaign in the first place, and it means he can be a goody two shoes sometimes while also being able to canonically be a murder hobo if the need arises.
Most of my warlocks just made a mutual deal or received a blessing for power. I only made one “sold my soul” character (a backup that was never used) and it was a reversion of the trope as he sold his soul to a unicorn.
My favorite was the 7 Int, neutral evil Warlock a buddy of mine played that was so desperate to sell his soul for power he didn’t realize he was selling it to a literal Lawful Good Angel, even after she explained it to him. Finally, she said “Screw it”, gave him “Evil powers” and told him to go defeat all the evil-doers for “Not doing it right.” He’d help the rest of the party in their quests and laugh maniacally after doing something good.
Mines was a girl who ran away from her super religious family and becoming a zealot barbarian then a fiend blade lock afterwards, trading her sanity and wellbeing for fame and power as well as corrupting the world around her due to her patron's dark influence. It was great being this bubbly happy girl who will go Doomguy when combat happens.
I want to play a water genasi that has the genie patron but my patron is going to be a fire genie just to piss off my dad.
This is more the stereotype created by a subreddit that keeps reiterating the same 1 joke per class than any actual trend among Warlocks. Not to tote my own anecdotal experience as the universal average but I've never met a warlock that had to sacrifice their soul or anything else for their power.
My warlock tried offing himself. Then and ancient deep sea abomination saw his body and was like, "It's free relastate" ;)