D&D General Warlocks' patrons vs. Paladin Oaths and Cleric Deities

[Minigiant]

People are stuck on an idea of "temptation" and "contract" which forces the patron to either be a raging douche, or a functional non-entity.

Change the how and the why, and all these problems go away.

Yeah.
A patrons is just a being strong enough to give arcane power. After that, the physicality and mentality is near limitless.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Personally, I think it's even simpler than that.

People are stuck on an idea of "temptation" and "contract" which forces the patron to either be a raging douche, or a functional non-entity.

Change the how and the why, and all these problems go away. Make patrons far-sighted and patient. Make them manipulative and deceptive. Hell, consider even just the manipulations of Mizora from BG3: she stipulated a contract Wyll thought was perfectly unobjectionable, which included the line that his targets could only include (amongst a handful of similar things) "the heartless"--which makes Karlach technically a valid target, as her heart was forcibly removed and replaced with an infernal device, making her, technically, "heartless" despite being one of the most heart-full people in the whole of Faerun.

I don't even think Mizora is all that good of a patron, and she's still beating the pants off folks hand-wringing over neutered patrons.

We are the dungeon's masters. We have the entire breadth of human creativity at our fingertips. We should be using it!

The thing about BG3 is it has examples of both ways of doing it. If you want the story to involve conflict with a patron you can play as Wyll or include him in your party. If you want a patron who is not involved unless you choose to mention them in dialogue you can play as Warlock Tav.

And yeah, you don't need to play it that way, but that is the inspiration of the class. And if you don't want to do that, and just have the patron as some impersonal or immaterial power source that is no longer actively relevant, then that just makes the warlock a sorcerer.

Value judgements on how people choose to play their character are not acceptable. Do you judge rogue players for choosing not to have their character involved with the criminal underworld?

So if the GM wants of course the gods can take away the cleric's powers and the patrons the warlock's powers.

No, you can’t. 5e tries to reign in the idea that a DM is an all powerful dictator who can add remove or change any rule they like on a whim. The DM’s role is different to other players, but they are equal to them, not more important.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Are DMs really so lazy that they can't just make up their own rule at their own table for forcing Warlock players to play to their pact, and instead demands the book gives them rules for it that they can just use with no effort or thought whatsoever?

I mean I already know the answer to that... but it still surprises me on occasion.

 

[Wolfram stout]

I have always been enamored of the contest, trickery, or favor done method.

Contest: think of the song The devil went down to Georgia. Johnny gets the fiddle which is the conduit for power. The devil can only attack him obliquely as that’s just the cosmic order of things.
Trickery: Using all sorts of Jack Tales where the commoner outwits the patron. Maybe the patron doesn’t even notice…or not for a long time.
Favor Done. The player frees a fox from a silver thorn bush and lets it go free. It was an archery that is dreadfully hurt by silver thorn bushes. He is honor bound to reward the player and gives home a sliver of power.

In each of these the DM can include the patron down the road even in an adversarial or demanding way. But not with the haha do what I say or lose your powers. .

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've had trouble with warlocks all through 5e, and I could use some insights from other folk. Maybe I just need the discussion.

I've been playing and running since AD&D, so I have solid ideas of what the strictures of a cleric and paladin should be, where their powers come from, and the responsibilities of those classes. In some ways, they're still baked into the class, even if 5e has handwaved a lot of it away. But Warlocks, as they are now, are a 5e construct.

A paladin's power is drawn from their oath, their faith (in that oath or deity). I still ask paladins players to pick a deity or something in that vein.
Clerics get their powers from their deity, their faith, etc.
Warlocks, according to their 5e14 class description, get their power in exchange for performing services for their patron.

Here's one hurdle: the warlock actually gets their power by leveling up- whether it's experience points or milestone leveling, the warlock doesn't need to be doing anything for their patron to "gain power." You could say similar things about clerics and paladins, but a paladin just has to keep to their oath- a cleric just needs to adhere to their faith. If they violate those, then there's trouble; class changes, power-stripping, the kind of stuff that doesn't actually happen at most tables but the mechanical suggestion is there, both consequence and requirement.

These rules were removed from paladins for a very good reason. Those being that they actively encouraged bad DMing and negative play experiences for the players. And the cleric and paladin actually get their power by levelling up. Warlocks are no different here.

Indeed stripping powers the way you indicate is bad storytelling and blocks off plots. For example you actually can't really have a corrupt paladin.

"Sir, we have reason to believe that one of the paladins is ... a traitor."​

"You know the drill. Get everyone down to the courtyard and we'll see who can no longer lay on hands"​

And the old school Paladin codes of conduct in addition to that were mostly used as "gotchas" by bad DMs (something that was particularly bad in the 2e era when paladins would lose their powers if mind controlled into committing evil acts thus making this smart in character villain play to break paladins). What the old style rules meant is that a corruption arc became impossible because it was "bam! you've fallen" so Paladins basically needed to behave like jerks with iron rods up their backside lest they do one single thing the DM considered an evil act (and I know that Gygax and I have very different opinions on what is considered evil). So the Paladin falling mechanics were toxic to roleplaying complex characters.

It's also worth mentioning as an aside that at least under Catholicism once someone has been ordained a priest the change is permanent; they are always a priest; not stripping precedent has serious precedent in the real world. Instead the controls are through dreams and through consequences via the other members of their organisation (or other organisations).

Power stripping and DM fiat class changes aren't mechanically there even as mechanical suggestions in 5e and consigning those suggestions to the dustbin of history has been a significant improvement to the divine classes in 5e over classic D&D.

Yet I write all that and 5e has the best potential paladin falling mechanics of any version of D&D and it's not even close. This is because you don't take away the powers and leave them as crippled or utterly change them. Instead you change the subclass. Switching from Oath of Devotion to Oath of Vengeance is a much more nuanced change than Paladin to Blackguard while changing less but in the right places. (And a big part of it being the best is it's not an actual punishment for the player and is something the player can accept).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A Cleric or Paladin also gets their power from leveling up. In that regard, Clerics, Paladins and Warlocks are really the same.

The fluff might suggest they get their power from other sources, but deities, churches or patrons alike do not just hand you the power of a Level 20 Cleric ,Paladin or Warlock, regardless how well you follow their tenets or orders!

Balance-wise, these classes are not extra-powerful that they need to be reigned in with some roleplaying "your patron/god disapproves and takes your powers" (and that would be a bad idea, because it can be abused in either direction - the GM doesn't care and the player has an overpowered character that steals the spotlight from the rest, or the GM is punishing every slight transgression and the player should have played a Wizard, Barbarian or Rogue who would have no no such "powers granted by higher beings" narratives.)

One thing to consider is: The Warlock could have already done everything their patron wanted of them before play even begins. If you're the kind of DM that likes to take away player character powers, that's what my character's back story would be! Maybe I sold my soul (or that of my firstborn?), sold someone out, or knocked over a goat during the new moon, or freed a fairy from a tar pit. The character might be wondering what it was good for, or did something regretful, but the obligations for the pact itself are met.

If you want the Warlock's Patron to matter, integrate them in your story. Though make sure before that this is something the players or the party is even interested in.
Do not look at the player's character sheet or class description and think about what stuff you could take away. Instead, look at things that you could add. For example, tempt the player with in-game stuff to do the patron's bidding!

The Patron (possibly through intermediaries) might have the information they need, a magical item that woud benefit the player, their party or allies, lend help during an important fight or debate.
But the Patron need something in exchange. Say, when you defeat that Goblin trible that's bothering the village, knock the shaman or leader out or let them go, apply some arcane mark or perform a ritual with/on them. Make a report of what transpired in your talks with the duke to someone. Or maybe tell a lie to the duke, present false or misleading evidence.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have always been enamored of the contest, trickery, or favor done method.

Contest: think of the song The devil went down to Georgia. Johnny gets the fiddle which is the conduit for power. The devil can only attack him obliquely as that’s just the cosmic order of things.
Trickery: Using all sorts of Jack Tales where the commoner outwits the patron. Maybe the patron doesn’t even notice…or not for a long time.
Favor Done. The player frees a fox from a silver thorn bush and lets it go free. It was an archery that is dreadfully hurt by silver thorn bushes. He is honor bound to reward the player and gives home a sliver of power.

In each of these the DM can include the patron down the road even in an adversarial or demanding way. But not with the haha do what I say or lose your powers. .

You've gravely misunderstood what The Archfey are. That fix you describe is likely a minor fey at best because The Archfey are entities like Lord/Emperor Oberon, Queen Mab, & Queen Titania. To put it into scale, one of those links goes to the fr wiki and another of them is a real world individual of the wild hunt myth who started out as Odin.

The Devil came up to Boston with Sully is a better analog to the behavior of player controlled PCs in d&d than down to Georgia, but it is an absolutely horrific example story to base anything in d&d on because single player d&d is rarely the norm and the gm needs to remain fair to all of their players while also credibility playing extremely supernaturally skilled beings who need to convincingly exist within the world as more than the punchline for Bob's latest warlock self insert slashfic where devil went down to/came up to level dopes are reasonable NPCs for Bob's Main Character.


Carrying a link to entities like The Archfey might be a total non-issue in a railroad chain of modules/hardcover adventure where PCs are pretty much welded to the module boundaries. That quickly starts to change & "well if you're the type of gm who.." is no longer applicable as things move more towards sandbox play though. That shift occurs because the nature of a sandbox means that the PC is carrying that link and can make use of it in ways that are simply not possible while chained to a series of potentially connected modules

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You've gravely misunderstood what The Archfey are.

Whist the subclass name is archfey, the text presents a wider range of ideas. After naming a few archfey is goes on to say this:

or an ancient hag. Or you might call on a spectrum of Fey, weaving a web of favors and debts. Whoever they are, your patron is often inscrutable and whimsical.

 

[Maxperson]

If you think that, you haven't understood Cthulhu. Cthulhu is beyond noticing their human followers. Cthulhu doesn't care about ending the world. If that happens, it's just treading on an ant when their followers poke them awake.

And this is the thing. No matter how legalistically you interpret class fluff, these things are clear:

The player chooses their patron, from within a very board range of parameters.

The player decides the nature and terms of the pact.

I quoted where that's not true. Both player and DM work together to figure out how present the patron is in the campaign.

"Work with your DM to determine how big a part your pact will play in your character's adventuring career."

And if the DM uses Xanathar's, it's entirely up to the DM...

"A pact can range from a loose agreement to a formal contract with lengthy, detailed clauses and lists of requirements. The terms of a pact-what a warlock must do to receive a patron's favor-are always dictated by the patron. On occasion, those terms include a special proviso that might seem odd or whimsical, but warlocks take these dictates as seriously as they do the other requirements of their pacts."

Thus, it is very easy for the player to choose a pact that will be supportive, indifferent or powerless to interfere with how they play their character.

No. Because the DM has a say, and can in fact completely dictate it via the PHB rules, the player can't cheese the game like that unless the DM okays it.

Page 6 of the 5e PHB...

"Your DM might set the campaign on one of these worlds or on one that he or she created. Because there is so much diversity among the worlds of D&D, you should check with your DM about any house rules that will affect your play of the game. Because there is so much diversity among the worlds of D&D, you should check with your DM about any house rules that will affect your play of the game."

 

[TwoSix]

No. Because the DM has a say, and can in fact completely dictate it via the PHB rules, the player can't cheese the game like that unless the DM okays it.

The GM could put up a fight about it, but a good 5e GM is going to prioritize player desires over (entirely fungible) setting logic.

If the player wants the thespianism of doing patron-warlock roleplay, great! If the player wants to be a warlock because casting spells and using a hexblade seems super cool, and wants their patron to be a ham sandwich, also great!