A question about Warlocks

[Sajber]

Hey! I don't post here often, except for these sort of questions, but I lurk here all the time. So, I'm running my first campaign, and we're about to start the third sitting. So far everything has gone very good. It's set in the Planescape multiverse, centered (for now) on a post-Lady of Pain-rulership of Sigil, with a lot of twists an turns (the last sitting, the party built their own pub, of all things! Ad libbing can sure be fun ) It's a more or less casual campaign, meaning we don't take to heavily to the exact writing of the rules, and focus more on the players and what they want to do. Of course we fight monsters and such, but not so much as in our last campaign.

One of my players is playing a warlock, a class that I don't have much experience with. We all trust each other, etc, etc, so I don't know all the inn-and-outs of everybody's character, especially this warlock. Nobody tries to brake the game by entering the wish economy, or something similar, and we generally just disregard that the party is running around with a huge weight in coins.

Anyhow, my question... The warlock wants to "bond" (or whatever the word was that he used) a Demon, to give him some special abilities or somesuch. I don't know anything about that, but I'd love to have it in the game, since it fits kinda good with his backstory and it's a fun thing to do. How does this bonding works? Can I find some info on it somewhere, or do one of you guys know anything about it?

Cheers!
Erik

[Koumei]

That's not an ability Warlocks have, though the flavour of the class suggests it's something they would do all the time, just for kicks. So you probably get to make something up.

Possibly something could be cooked up via the Pact Magic rules (each day, you can call up a specific demon, then make a level check against an arbitrary DC. If successful, you gain some benefits all day, and a tell-tale physical sign. If you fail, you still get the abilities and sign, but in certain circumstances it has limited control over you).

Or possibly he might be interested in "The Tainted" Prestige Class. It's nothing special, but does offer full casting progression along with small benefits based on what fiend you choose to bond with/own your soul.

[Username17]

The Warlock is an elaborate hallucination. A sleight of hand trick played on the masses. There really isn't anything there.

Warlocks don't do anything. It's not just that they don't do anything good, they don't do anything at all. They infrequently generate new abilities which can be called upon limitlessly.

You can cheese them out sort of by going Here. But honestly, there's not much that they do.

Having aWarlock bind with a demon and get all demony is definitely in character. But there is no rules-backing for them being able to actually do that.

-Username17

[Koumei]

You know, Tenacious Plague sounds like a really weak and simple "The evil guy is destroying cities" BBEG. Obviously he has a bodyguard to serve as the actual challenge part of it, while he just goes about summoning swarms to destroy cities at will, but it sounds like a really simple way to make that work.

Sure, they get that ability at the level where PCs shouldn't be saving cities but instead playing volleyball with planets, but it's not like his other abilities are so scary that you couldn't use a higher level one as a lower level CR.

[Sajber]

So, basicly, there are no rules for it, and whatever I make up for a pact is good to go? Sounds lovely, exactly how I prefer it! Any ideas?

Thing is, he's not really your avarage "destruction-death-decay"-sort of warlock... He's actually sort of good! Well, chaotic good, to be exact. He comes from a big family of evil, but it just wasn't *him*. He uses evil to do good, basicly.

Haha, it just struck me... He could Pact with Fjhull Fork-tounged! I was already planning on giving him a sort of cameo in the campaign (he's still forced to do good, since Trias is still alive in my campaign). That should be fun!

[JonSetanta]

Try to find the Binder PrC, and maybe you can convert the class abilities into Invocations.
IMO it's possible and balanced, maybe someone 'out there' has tried.