Huh? So we're just ignoring the tempter narrative conceit, the corrupter narrative conceit as well as those folk heroes who actually outsmarted or bested an entity and was able to garner a small part of its power in return...
I just feel like you have a much narrower concept for the Warlock archetype than I'd agree with.
Eh.
You can always do that option with the O5e or A5e Warlock because while the structure gives you the power it's up to you and your DM to decide who that power comes from and how it all works out. It's a thing people do, sometimes, with mysterious figure NPC Patrons and honestly go for it, it works.
It's the D&D 2024 Warlock that says "This is the ONLY WAY IT WORKS".
Now instead of it being an option, it's the default for everyone, no exceptions. And not only is it the default, the class is structured so that doing it the other way can really mess things up at 3rd level. It also makes all Warlocks below level 3 mechanically identical with no flavor based on the kind of magic they have. No longer do you start out with any kind of difference between an Old One or a Fiend in what they do. You don't even get your themed spell list 'til 3 so you're LITERALLY the same mechanical structure as any other Warlock regardless of who, or how, they made their pact.
Which kinda sucks.
Also there's the whole Cross-Class archetypes issue which will result in people only ever having "Mysterious Voice" patron and then they're off to Wizard School to be really bad Wizards. And, conversely, Wizards getting Pacts with Devils, Celestials, Fey, Genies, and Old Gods as a distinct possibility.
The latter of which takes the entire narrative conceit of Warlocks and just gives it away.
Yes you foolishly called on/bargained with/summoned something beyond your understanding...
You may eventually discern what it is or maybe you never do... what I do find hard to believe is that beings this powerful would necessarily be so straightforward & obvious that their summoning rituals Are all direct calling cards.
Which is fine as an OPTION. But not as the default. At least not to me.
Wyll didn't sell his soul to some "Mysterious Entity" to save Baldur's Gate. He sold it to a Devil in exchange for Warlock Powers knowing exactly what the cost was. And the weight and drama of that decision is what drives a lot of his characterization and character interactions. The same sort of themes carry through in the vast majority of media and historical literature.
There are -some- stories where people are making a deal and don't know who it's with... But the vast majority of stories involving a pact with a devil make the people involved really, incredibly, blatantly obvious because it's a morality tale.
Stingy Jack didn't make a deal with a "Mysterious Entity" to turn itself into a coin then stuff the mysterious entity into his pocket next to a silver cross to keep him there for a year and a day. And when he died it wasn't a mysterious entity that threw a single coal from hell's fires to him to light his way in the dark as he wandered the Earth forever after.
How does it strip away identity... by allowing theDM or PC the freedom to define the type of being you make a pact with... seems to me this would accommodate many more identities using the Warlock class/archetype.
You ALWAYS have the choice of defining the type of being you make the pact with in O5e and A5e. That isn't something D&D24 has somehow "Gained".
is this a general D&D thing or something from a specific D&D setting?
Mages of Strixhaven is a specific setting based off a Magic: the Gathering property. But the thrust of the argument isn't "Mages of Strixhaven is now the default setting!" it's that Mages of Strixhaven was a test case for community engagement for cross-class archetyping that was received positively enough that they're almost certainly going to make it a "Thing" going forward.
And based on what came out of Strixhaven it's clear they're utterly uninterested in giving a 2/2 flying frog fart about the Warlock's theme or narrative in their actions.
By making all the classes share the same levels for their archetypes they're trying to set things up to stretch out their writing by instead of making a Warlock Patron and a Wizard School and a Sorcerer Bloodline a single "Generic Magic Thing" that all three are going to be able to take part in.
There is still a point... 3rd level... where you know who and what your patron is. It's not limiting because the archetype of both one who was tempted/corrupted but did not fully sucumb or understand the being they were dealing with (1st or 2nd lvl then multiclass)...as well as the Warlock who comes to know who and what he's made a deal with (3rd lvl or higher) are possible.
The fully knowledgeable of his patron and fully aware and accepting of a deal Warlock is not the only valid portrayal of the archetype.
"You get to learn at third level!" is not a great argument when the problem raised is that it's being obfuscated for the first two levels which strips out the class's narrative elements to shuffle them around in favor of a homogenization of power across classes across D&D24.
No one is saying it's the "Only Valid" way. But it is an IMPORTANT way. And should probably be the default way because of the structure of the stories that it is calling upon being structured that way.
Trying to shoehorn the 3rd level mechanical mandate into the class takes away an important narrative element at 1st level and applies a "One Size Fits All" mysterious figure.
Honestly, if they wanted to do that they should've taken away Patrons as Archetype choices and instead made Pact Boons into Archetypes and Patrons into 1st level functions.
Instead of an Invocation at level 1 you pick your patron to gain a minor ability and an increased Spell List. THEN you'd get Invocations at level 2. THEN you'd get an Archetype at level 3 which is a Pact Boon like Pact of the Blade or Pact of the Tome or whatever.
That would've made VASTLY more narrative sense to try and keep the Warlock in the wheelhouse of your Fausts and Johnnys.
But they decided to take the Pact Boons and make them Invocations for some unfathomable reason and give Warlocks a "Once per long rest you can get spells back with 1 minute instead of 1 hour!" mechanic that I despise. If the party's going to hang out for any length of time from 1 minute to 10 minutes to 1 hour then it's probably not super important that it only be 1 minute instead of 1 hour so why not just take the short rest?
Anyway. Yeah. They really messed up Warlocks is what I'm saying. They took away the flavor of them in favor of bland mechanics and they're working to make it so you can have a level 20 Warlock who doesn't -actually- have a Patron of any narrative weight, or a level 20 Wizard who has a Warlock Patron.
