D&D 5E Hex Shenanigans

[Arial Black]

Bang. Private takes out the mag and loads one bullet into his thirty round mag.
DRILL DGT, "PVT PYLE! What are you doing?"
Pvt Pyle, "Just preshooting my rifle, SGT!"

Pulls back and releases slide, loading a bullet from the magazine to the firing chamber. Removes magazine. Loads another bullet. Re-inserts magazine
DRILL SGT: Private! Why are you gaming the system?

 

[Arial Black]

I now know why you don't want the warlock to interact with their patrons at all.

My patrons interact in rational ways according to their own personalities. I've yet to have one who micromanaged my breakfast, or who forbade me from making rational decisions to use my abilities and the laws of the universe to my own advantage.

 

[Fenris-77]

My patrons interact in rational ways according to their own personalities. I've yet to have one who micromanaged my breakfast, or who forbade me from making rational decisions to use my abilities and the laws of the universe to my own advantage.

To bring this full circle, is hexing a chicken chosen at random from a bag of chickens a rational decision or not? Moreover, is carrying a bag a chickens in the first place just silly, or a pithy existential argument about the fundamental absurdity of the universe? Asking for a friend.

The micromanagement of breakfast is, btw, something reserved for the lowest planes of hell.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Pulls back and releases slide, loading a bullet from the magazine to the firing chamber. Removes magazine. Loads another bullet. Re-inserts magazine
DRILL SGT: Private! Why are you gaming the system?

Drill SGT: Now you listen to me, Private Pyle. And you listen good. I want that weapon. And I want it now. You will place that rifle on the deck at your feet... and step back away from it.

...this doesn't end well.

I am sure there's a moral here.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, you are being a horrible DM, because you are assuming base motives for players and that horrible assumption is based merely on their choice of class.

TLDR: "merely choosing to play a warlock demonstrates that the player is dishonest". That assumption is truly horrible.

As far as I can tell from your list above most of your PCs are exactly the kind of thing I get tired of. Couple levels of warlock to get a power boost and then on to their "real" class.

Different people play for different reasons. I want more immersion and logic to my world than a video game. If I ever had a player who wanted to do a couple levels of warlock for reasons other than meta-game power up I'll dance a jig. Well, maybe not a jig but take it into consideration and make an exception to my house rule that does not exist yet that I'm only considering.

I'm not particularly fond of the warlock class for campaign reasons in the first place, the fact that it's only been done in games I've personally played as an exploit/gaming the system just makes it worse.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If you have spells which last 8 or 24 hours or such like, and you regain slots on a short rest, it is entirely rational to cast them and then rest to regain your slots when you know you are going adventuring!

It's as sensible as a soldier pre-loading their magazines with bullets instead of waiting for the bullets to start flying before loading their bullets into their magazines one at a time.

It makes sense to pre cast mage armor. You don't want to waste an action on the first round of combat casting it. It's clearly meant to be a pre buff.

Hex on the other hand requires concentration and only takes a bonus action to cast. IOW, there's a decent chance you gain very little for pre casting it. If you get hit and lose concentration, you've literally gained nothing. If you decide to cast a different concentration spell before you've used hex, again, no benefit. You're bending over backwards every day to gain a marginal benefit. Easy for the player. I'm unconvinced the character would appreciate the routine nearly as much.

Not to mention that the original trick involves hauling a chicken coop with you on your adventures! Not sure if you've been around chickens, but I had a friend whose mom raised them, and they are both smelly and noisy. Not really an ideal pet or food source when adventuring.

It's exactly the sort of thing one might try to exploit a poorly designed system in a computer game, but shouldn't happen with a thinking DM at the table.

 

[Arial Black]

Do you also make your wizards idiots? Do you make your druids ruthless industrialists? Have you made an anti-theistic cleric?

Because, to me, those are basically the same thing as making a warlock where you actively ignore your patron. Hopefully you'll forgive me for thinking that, because you don't involve your patron in your warlock, that means that you think you shouldn't have any consequences for murdering a NPC in broad daylight in the middle of the street.

If that is the case, just go play an Elder Scrolls game or something, then you won't have any DM trying to ruin your fun.

If you think that playing a rational warlock is the equivalent of playing an idiot wizard then we fundamentally disagree about warlocks!

Who says I ignore my patron? What happens is that my patron has more important things on its plate than micromanaging my breakfast, and they actively applaud behaviour that makes me a more efficient caster!

And I generally play good aligned PCs, who don't randomly murder innocents. If I did, then I would expect people who knew about it to react rationally according to their own views.

There is no moral component to hexing your soon-to-be breakfast. It's just as dead either way, and its Str checks had disadvantage for less than 6 seconds before it died.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

My patrons interact in rational ways according to their own personalities. I've yet to have one who micromanaged my breakfast, or who forbade me from making rational decisions to use my abilities and the laws of the universe to my own advantage.

Rational for them in the world they are in, or rational for you as a player of the game?

Besides, rational people are boring. Imagine how boring a lot of stories would be if everyone was rational.

 

[Oofta]

What's the 'unexpected bill' for being a fighter?

Again with the strawman. There's no unexpected bill for any class. I do take into consideration deities, backgrounds and so on. People know all about this from session 0.

 

[Fenris-77]

Again with the strawman. There's no unexpected bill for any class. I do take into consideration deities, backgrounds and so on. People know all about this from session 0.

Yup, even the Warlock isn't designed with an unexpected bill, that's all on specific DMs. There's room for plot hooks there, but WotC pretty carefully avoided baking any negative consequences into the class.