Do warlocks fit into the Forgotten Realms?

[NESchampion]

Ronan himself said he wants to remove the outliers of extreme power because they hurt RPing...

No, I want to remove them because they are unbalanced. I really don't think they hurt RPing itself very often, they more cause OOC grief. Balance is important in any campaign, and its much harder in one spanning dozens of DMs. Some people may not care about balance, but most want to be roughly equal in power to other PCs who have been through the same things their PC has, and get rightly pissed when another PC has 5x the wealth of theirs just because his DM decided to give out more loot. Builds are little different from this.

Well, "remove" is a poor word. Unless the concepts are just silly (say, clerics of Tyr with healing/animal domains, or Svirf monks), I'd prefer to just adjust them down. We don't want to lessen the number of character concepts NWN2 supports, after all.

Ah, my apologies for misinterpretting your words.

[Mord]

Let me clarify something I feel need to be clarified.

Just because I more often than not choose builds that may be considered more "rp" than other builds, doesn't mean I am pushing for such to be the norm, far from it. If you want to play a 18 str, 18 con character that's entirely your right in my opinion, as long as you actually roleplay aforementioned stats properly. There is just as much roleplaying potential in 8 cha as in 18 cha and thinking otherwise is pure nonsense. Such characters may have a higher probability of surviving, then again they may not, all depending how you roleplay them. Not many people would be willing to follow that cha 8 half orc to hell and back just because he tried to persuade them to do it. As far as fighters are concerned, if you have a weak build, why not employ your fighter as a ranged combatant, where does it say that fighters HAVE to be meatshields? Work with the game engine and stay alive by playing smart and efficiently.

Just because you have a strong build does not mean you are a powergamer, if you powergame then you are a powergamer.

[Burt]

10 pages and the result is clear. Warlocks stay. You all suck. I win. Lock thread plz.

[Mikayla]

So I finally got around to looking through my Complete Arcane and it answers some of the questions posed about Warlocks.

To begin with, the Warlock class opening “fluff” states the following:
“Born of a supernatural bloodline, a warlock seeks to master the perilous magic that suffuses his soul. ... By harnessing his innate magical gift through fearsome determination and force of will, a warlock can perform feats of supernatural stealth, beguile the weak minded, or scout his foes with blasts of eldritch power.”

The next section of text is where the now-infamous “pacts” are discussed, and that discussion is somewhat at odds with the opening paragraph.

The Background section undercuts suggestions of making Warlock a Prestige Class. It also undercuts any idea that Warlocks must serve a patron, or that a Warlock’s powers might be lost if he or she does not serve that patron. The Background sections states:
“Warlocks are born, not made. Some are the descendants of people who trafficked with demons and devils long ago. Some seek out the dark powers as youths, driven by ambition or the desire for power, but a few blameless individuals are simply marked out by the supernatural forces as conduits and tools. The exact nature of the a warlock’s origin is up to the player to decide; just as a sorcerer is not beholden to the magic-wielding ancestor that bequeathed his bloodline with arcane power, a warlock is not bound to follow the source that gifted him with magic.”

The Background section also notes that many warlocks are not created by evil powers at all, but by wild or fey forces.

So, in sum, my position as PA is that the Warlock class will be allowed, and I do not plan (at this time) to restrict its multi-classing ability. We do not currently keep fighters from taking a level of wizard or sorcerer just so they can use scrolls like Truestrike or See Invis, we do not restrict people from taking a level of Barbarian for the extra movement, we do not restrict people from taking a level or two of Ranger for the dual-wield, etc. If it gets abused, we will deal with it on an individual basis.

Having said that, I am considering the idea that if someone wants to play a Warlock, since Warlocks are born not made, that Warlock has to be their first class. Having now played a Warlock, a Paladin, Fighter and a Sorcerer through the low-levels of NWN2, I found the Warlock the hardest to survive with at those low levels (though the sorcerer was no joy-ride).

Anyway, that is where we stand as of right now. Thanks for the discussion.

EDIT: And as we have reached the 10 page mark, I am locking the thread. Folks are more than welcome to start a new thread if they wish to discuss the issues further. Thanks again.