I talked the other day about how I see the Rogue as a spoiler as much as a striker. Another D&D 4E class that fits that model in my thinking is the Warlock, whose specialty is supposed to be curses.
In D&D 4E, the Warlock's "curse" is mainly a once-a-turn damage-boosting mechanic of the sort that all the first group of strikers had. There are some slightly interesting mechanics that are triggered when someone under your curse dies/is defeated (by your hand or not), but other than that, it's basically the Warlock's sneak attack. A lot of their attack powers have interesting effects and implications (like an at-will attack called "Eyebite" that does mental damage and makes you briefly invisible to the target), but they aren't strongly tied to the curse mechanic in any way.
So here's my take on the Warlock.
First, the curse works about the same way, in terms of how it's administered, but gone is the requirement that it must be the nearest enemy to you who gains the curse each round. That seems like a meaningless rule designed to force the Warlock to move around in a certain way because strikers are supposed to do that. Somebody who curses should be able to hang back a little.
The Warlock's favored combat power type is the Hex. Like all combat powers, each Hex has an at-will basic use, an encounter-like Silver use, and a daily-like Gold use, and some have Copper utility uses. The vanilla use of each Hex is a debuff that gets applied to anyone the Warlock has cursed. The other uses are debuff/condition-heavy attacks the Warlock can apply to one target under the effects of their curse.
Say you have the Petrification Hex. What does this do for you? Well, first, everyone you have cursed loses some of their movement speed and Reflexes defense. By spending a Copper Token, you interrupt an enemy's move to root them to the spot until their next turn. For a Silver, you can daze and slow them. For Gold, you can paralyze them and subject them to ongoing earth damage (both the equivalent of one "save ends" condition in 4E), and if they "die" in that state, they become a stone statue unless and until someone breaks the curse (which you can do at any time with a touch).
So we start with "everyone I curse becomes a little statue-like" and have progressively more drastic levels of that, culminating in possibly total, permanent (though reversible) petrification. Dramatic death effects is a hallmark of Hexes. Call The Beast's Gold ability does no damage and is activated when something else (anything else) defeats the subject of your curse; it basically turns the defeated foe into a werewolf under your temporary control, and if they survive to the end of the fight, you have the choice of releasing them from the curse, killing them, leaving them as a mindless animal, or having them be a cursed were... though as with petrification, the inflicting Warlock can reverse the latter two fates.
Note that your control lapses at the end of the fight, and if you leave the victim cursed they will simply flee. Their fate as an animal or werecreature is background color and roleplaying/story fodder. But turning your enemies into animals or cursing them as werewolves is the sort of thing you'd expect someone who specializes in curses to do.
(Also note that like 4E's summoning powers, for balance reasons the beast form of the cursed victim's capabilities are set more by the power and the Warlock's abilities than by the victim's original form.)
One of the key things about these abilities--the curses and the Hexes--is that for the most part, they don't involve the Warlock making attack rolls. They tend to be lower damage than most attacks, but once someone is cursed (which itself inflicts no damage), the debuff is in effect and the higher effects don't require any hit roll. You're not "hitting" the target, you're strengthening the curse they're already under.
They're limited, of course. A level 1 character only has 1 Silver Token per encounter and 1 Gold Token per day. But the Warlock doesn't even have to be able to see their target to call the Hex's effects into being, much less aim.
For the rounds when the Warlock isn't using greater hex effects, they do have an ability comparable to Eldritch Blast. There will also be something to be said for taking a Hex as one combat ability (a requirement, since it's their favored type) and using the other one for a Spell or Fighting Technique that benefits from/complements the Hex's debuff.
For people who like the 4E Warlock, one of the available Hexes, Dominance, works a lot like the 4E Warlock mechanic. It gives the Warlock a hit bonus versus their own curse victims and lets them inflict bonus damage, with the Silver and Gold abilities being damage on top of damage. If you take that, plus an attack spell and your "Hex Blast"... yeah, you'll have a character who looks and plays a lot like the source/inspiration.
But if you find the idea of a character who makes a pact with dire powers for magical ability and then slings curses in battle far more interesting than the execution in 4E and you want to be turning your opponents to stone before your very eyes or sending them into an eternal slumber or bewitching their minds... well, that's covered by this concept, too. And rather than being either a "save or die" effect (as in pre-4E D&D) or an unsatisfying one-or-two round effect that's flavorfully described as something more dramatic (as is often the case in 4E), you get a lingering effect that could represent the early onset of something, which you can dramatically ramp up at opportune moments (or to create opportune moments), culminating in the awesome moments when the curse takes full effect.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}