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Paragon Badger
2008-06-22, 11:08 PM
Since the PHB has helped illuminate this matter in no way...

From making pacts, do warlocks gain the knowledge to wield the universe's awesome might?

Or do warlocks become a conduit for their patrons to wield the universe' awesome might?

I'm not particularly interested in opinions (:smallwink:) so I'm really only looking for an official word from WOTC on the matter.

Isomenes
2008-06-22, 11:23 PM
Because clearly what's written in the official rulebook is the only way to handle it. Nobody could ever have reason to deviate from the rulebook.

:tongue:

Why not choose which is best for you and then write your fluff based on that?

Paragon Badger
2008-06-22, 11:32 PM
Because clearly what's written in the official rulebook is the only way to handle it. Nobody could ever have reason to deviate from the rulebook.

:tongue:

Why not choose which is best for you and then write your fluff based on that?

I normally would. In fact, I was planning on home-brewing a Celestial pact.

However, if I got the fluff wrong, people would go;

"MORBOL SAYS WARLOCK PACTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!"

(Then again, there is nothing saying I can't have a divine warlock.....)

Orzel
2008-06-22, 11:37 PM
I thinks it's a little bit of both. I believe they gain the knowledge to create pacts that allow them to channel arcane powers from powerful beings and their creations. The infernal pact suggest that the warlock researches some info about some ancient rituals created by some dead/imprisoned devils.

Kinda like
Warlock calls or reads books of fey/devil/madness
Powerful being says "This is how you shoot laserz"
Warlock shoots laserz
Powerful being grins

Opposed to:
Wizard read book of laserz
Wizard does math
Wizard shoots laserz

TheOOB
2008-06-22, 11:47 PM
Warlocks don't act as a conduit for dark powers, they make a pact with a being who gives them powers. After that the powers are the warlocks own.

Nermy
2008-06-22, 11:50 PM
RAW:

Power Source: Arcane. You gain your magical power
from a pact you forge with a powerful, supernatural
force or an unnamed entity.

Also, looking back on 3,5 fluff, sorcerers didn't really gain knowledge so much as shoot stuff from their heritages, and Archivists learned divine magic through study, so either magic type can go either way.

That being said, house rule in a change in power source to divine and you're good to go.

The Necroswanso
2008-06-22, 11:52 PM
Well, let's take it to it's bare bones. In 3.5, they were arcane. In this system, there is nothing wrong with assuming they are arcane.
However, they gain the knowledge skills for both religeon and arcane. So there's nothing wrong with assuming you choose how they work. My DM said they were arcane as the image for it looks like either some horrible devil, or something a wizard could do.

Arrrg! I be ninja'd

TheOOB
2008-06-22, 11:52 PM
Arcane and divine isn't so much about how you got the magic, but how the magic works. Being someone who lives in a world without magic, I can't tell you the exact differences, but they are there.

That said, changing the warlock to divine wouldn't really change anything now that there isn't armor based rules baggage for arcane magic.

Daracaex
2008-06-23, 02:13 AM
(Then again, there is nothing saying I can't have a divine warlock.....)

*coughFavoredSoulcough*:smallbiggrin:

Actually, making an alternate divine pact for a warlock might be a good baseline for bringing the Favored Soul into 4E.

Scintillatus
2008-06-23, 06:26 AM
AFAIK, Semi-Divine Warlocks are in the works; they're sort of like Binders, I think. Instead of learning the ancient paths to power from the Primal Fey, or Demons, or The Stars, they talk to nearly-dead Gods floating in the Astral Sea.

Which is pretty neat.

I think you could probably re-fluff any one of the Pacts to be a Favoured Soul, really; just change the damage types to Radiant and describe your powers differently.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-23, 07:39 AM
To be honest, I'm not massively certain whether it matters. The whole "power sources" thing in 3.X seems to be kind of meaningless, I haven't seen anything in my reading of the rulebooks which actually differentiates between them.

Kurald Galain
2008-06-23, 07:40 AM
"MORBOL SAYS WARLOCK PACTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!"

Morbo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_alien_characters_from_Futurama#M orbo)'s name isn't spelled that way!!!