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

Scribe · 2026-02-19T05:54:42+0000

Neonchameleon said:
The God isn't forced "to continue to empower". The God has already empowered. It's already done. You give a car to someone and they then sleep with your wife and you can't take the car back because it's now their car.

Man, you can have a preference, but these still are God's right? This analogy is painful to read.

The God/Patron empowers? The God/Patron revokes.

Simple.

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T06:04:33+0000

tetrasodium said:
To a degree yes, but it was more about the impact of putting people into groups and having one group in power with the minimal rules over the other second group carrying a negatively charged term like prisoners. The prisoners who were under power also developed notably in less interesting ways. There are other studies that cover that whole power without rules/responsibility bwith bon group context like the milgram experiment where acting as the will of an authority figure left nearly every participant willing to execute the lone unseen test taker who was begging for their life over a speaker was analyzed & Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity where the how/why a charismatic leader with an us vrs them agenda unlocks crowds was explained

More importantly wrt Stanford prison experiment and the other two in the context ttrpgs like d&d 5e: the players at the table are part of a group and the gm at the table is there as a group of one. In all three, the group of players have a role and entire forests of text about player agency good railroading bad etc while the gm without a group has a Job rather than role. You could link the erosion of barriers in rest/recovery and removal of magic item churn as a need into a couple in various ways to give a removal of authority for the player group too.

TL;DR: Stanford prison experiment is more about groups set above other groups, players have and benefit from a group in ways that only need a group member to stand up with conviction and authority or charisma while slinging an us vrs that guy cause.

As with the Stanford prison experiment, the stuff people say about the Milgram experiment is often HORRIFICALLY mis-quoted, inaccurate, or even straight-up wrong. So, while I don't mean to pick on you personally for this one, I'm gonna have to tear into that quite a lot because this reflects that false/inaccurate presentation.

People were not "willing" collaborators. The vast majority of people complained multiple times along the way and had to be verbally coerced into continuing. Further, unlike what most people say, the experimental subjects were NOT repeatedly told that they could leave at any time. Rather, there was a specific script that every test-giver had to go through, which escalated the responses to higher and higher expectations if a previous prompt stopped working. They were:

Please continue.
The experiment requires you to continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice but to continue.

If--and only if--the experimental subject (the "Teacher") exhausted all four of these instructions, then the experiment would end. And they had to actually exhaust them--a prompt would be repeated if the subject complained again, until that prompt failed to convince the experimental subject to continue. Almost all of the subjects exhibited clear and obvious signs of distress (e.g. nervous laughter, pained expressions, etc.) Furthermore, there were additional prompts specified for the experimentalist in response to certain kinds of subject comments. If the subject expressed concern for the health or wellbeing of the "Learner", the experimentalist was supposed to say, "Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on." If the subject stated that the "Learner" appeared to be in intense distress or wishing to halt the experiment, they were to be told, "Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on."

So the claims a lot of people make--how just being in a situation with authority figures telling you what to do suddenly destroys all sense of moral duty or the like in any subordinate person--is completely incorrect. Almost all of the 40 test subjects complained. Almost all of them had to reach at least the third prompt ("It is absolutely essential that you continue"), and most were explicitly and specifically told that the actions they were taking would not cause permanent harm to the "Learner".

In other words, far from showing that most people meekly submit to authority even when they know that authority is giving morally wrong orders, it shows that most people question authority to at least some degree; that most people, while they do trust authority figures in some contexts, do not blindly follow orders and clearly show great emotional distress in response; and, finally, that to achieve the levels of deference shown in the experiment, the experimentalists had to extensively deceive and manipulate the test subjects.

Yes, it does show that it is possible for a powerful authority to coerce moral people into committing immoral actions against the latter's moral instincts, if said authority operates carefully. But doing so was difficult. Furthermore, the experiment itself was with only a relatively small and not necessarily representative sample, so even the conclusions we can validly draw from it are limited.

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T06:10:33+0000

Paul Farquhar said:
The rules isn’t the world. They are just an abstraction to deal with how the PCs interact with it. It’s nonsense that a fighter with the soldier background is so much weaker than a n NPC with the veteran stat block, so it makes perfect sense that they have never been level 1.

As with most rules structures, it is an abstraction with only an approximate correspondence to the world itself. Sometimes, it is worthwhile going to the effort to tighten that approximation so that the two are nearly (if not actually) identical. Often, however, it is not worth putting in that effort, because doing so causes significant other problems.

Game design is always a balance between so many different things. Play-experience requirements. Simplicity requirements. Depth requirements. Immersion/groundedness requirements. Balance. Theme. Etc. You are always making compromises as a designer. It's perfectly fine to, for example, say that all else being equal, small sacrifices in play-experience quality or simplicity can be worth it if they reap significant gains in, say, depth or immersion or thematics or whatever. But I see quite a lot of folks plonking down the expectation that absolutely everything can and should be sacrificed for any gain in immersion/groundedness, no matter how small--that immersion/groundedness/etc. is the only thing rules should concern themselves about and all other things are mere niceties that can and should be dispensed with if they ever cause even the slightest impingement upon groundedness.

From my phrasing, folks can probably figure out how I feel about that particular attitude.

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T06:29:56+0000

Neonchameleon said:
I'm curious who says that worldbuilding belongs exclusively to the players? Because I have literally never seen anyone say that the GM is not allowed to worldbuild or introduce NPCs with backgrounds they have created.

I'd therefore be very curious to read any of these threads you cite. I can think of plenty of people, myself included, who say that worldbuilding is better when shared but that is nowhere near as extreme as what you claim one side says.

Completely agreed. Who is saying this? I might've missed it on later pages (there's like 120 posts I haven't read yet...) but nobody on this forum advocates such a position as far as I can tell. I sure as hell wouldn't.

tetrasodium · 2026-02-19T07:12:44+0000

EzekielRaiden said:
As with the Stanford prison experiment, the stuff people say about the Milgram experiment is often HORRIFICALLY mis-quoted, inaccurate, or even straight-up wrong. So, while I don't mean to pick on you personally for this one, I'm gonna have to tear into that quite a lot because this reflects that false/inaccurate presentation.

People were not "willing" collaborators. The vast majority of people complained multiple times along the way and had to be verbally coerced into continuing. Further, unlike what most people say, the experimental subjects were NOT repeatedly told that they could leave at any time. Rather, there was a specific script that every test-giver had to go through, which escalated the responses to higher and higher expectations if a previous prompt stopped working. They were:

Please continue.

The experiment requires you to continue.

It is absolutely essential that you continue.

You have no other choice but to continue.

If--and only if--the experimental subject (the "Teacher") exhausted all four of these instructions, then the experiment would end. And they had to actually exhaust them--a prompt would be repeated if the subject complained again, until that prompt failed to convince the experimental subject to continue. Almost all of the subjects exhibited clear and obvious signs of distress (e.g. nervous laughter, pained expressions, etc.) Furthermore, there were additional prompts specified for the experimentalist in response to certain kinds of subject comments. If the subject expressed concern for the health or wellbeing of the "Learner", the experimentalist was supposed to say, "Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on." If the subject stated that the "Learner" appeared to be in intense distress or wishing to halt the experiment, they were to be told, "Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on."

So the claims a lot of people make--how just being in a situation with authority figures telling you what to do suddenly destroys all sense of moral duty or the like in any subordinate person--is completely incorrect. Almost all of the 40 test subjects complained. Almost all of them had to reach at least the third prompt ("It is absolutely essential that you continue"), and most were explicitly and specifically told that the actions they were taking would not cause permanent harm to the "Learner".

In other words, far from showing that most people meekly submit to authority even when they know that authority is giving morally wrong orders, it shows that most people question authority to at least some degree; that most people, while they do trust authority figures in some contexts, do not blindly follow orders and clearly show great emotional distress in response; and, finally, that to achieve the levels of deference shown in the experiment, the experimentalists had to extensively deceive and manipulate the test subjects.

Yes, it does show that it is possible for a powerful authority to coerce moral people into committing immoral actions against the latter's moral instincts, if said authority operates carefully. But doing so was difficult. Furthermore, the experiment itself was with only a relatively small and not necessarily representative sample, so even the conclusions we can validly draw from it are limited.

Uhh... Read my post more carefully?... You know, given how

"Milgram's results showed that 65% of the participants in the study delivered the maximum shocks.4 Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks, while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels."

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T07:14:45+0000

Maxperson said:
I'm of the opinion that what's good for the goose, is good for the gander. If NPCs can do it, PCs should be able to do it as well. If PCs can do it, NPCs should be able to do it as well.

To really engage with what you are describing, you'd need a classless system, and D&D isn't that kind of system.

To really engage with what you are describing, you'd need a classless system--so that everyone could in fact use the same rules.

It is precisely the fact that D&D wants a class-based system and wants NPCs who only appear once and wants everyone to work by precisely the same rules 100% of the time, that causes this issue.

If you relax any of those three requirements, the problem is averted. Not class-based? Awesome, every enemy can be bespoke designed to fit the needs it's supposed to fit, you just avoid the types of resources that would cause issues when building things--and players can likewise adjust themselves to suit. Enemy NPCs actually have rules for expressing how much they've been active in the world? Awesome, no problem, enemies with a whole day's worth of spells will only be a problem if players stupidly go after them shortly after they've rested--at which point it's the players' problem, not a problem with the rules. And, of course, not expecting all entities to work by only and precisely 100% identical mechanics? Awesome, the problem is nipped in the bud because you just design your monsters to work correctly in the function they're supposed to serve (being a one-and-done challenge to face, whether or not they reappear on some other day).

But when you try to enforce all three things: class-based, single-use NPCs, AND perfect rules uniformity? Yeah, you're going to have issues, because the system's design is including a set of assumptions which are collectively contradictory.

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T07:19:56+0000

tetrasodium said:
Uhh... Read my post more carefully?... You know, given how

"Milgram's results showed that 65% of the participants in the study delivered the maximum shocks.4 Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks, while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels."

Certainly, y'know, given how

"A review of Milgram's research materials suggests that the experiments exerted more pressure to obey than the original results suggested. Other variations of the experiment revealed much lower rates of obedience, and many of the participants actually altered their behavior when they guessed the true nature of the experiment."

Taken from the exact same article.

tetrasodium · 2026-02-19T09:28:08+0000

EzekielRaiden said:
Certainly, y'know, given how

"A review of Milgram's research materials suggests that the experiments exerted more pressure to obey than the original results suggested. Other variations of the experiment revealed much lower rates of obedience, and many of the participants actually altered their behavior when they guessed the true nature of the experiment."

Taken from the exact same article.

Relevance to what I wrote? Are you attempting to claim that a charismatic player standing up as a self proclaimed authority of something like fairness roleplaying or whatever while part of the same friend and party group as their fellow players is incapable of exerting pressure?

Neonchameleon · 2026-02-19T09:44:52+0000

Scribe said:
Man, you can have a preference, but these still are God's right? This analogy is painful to read.

The God/Patron empowers? The God/Patron revokes.

Simple.

Yes you can justify anything if you say "it's magic" or "they are a God". Very good.

But ... you do realise that in a polytheistic theology god's aren't omnipotent? And that what you are asking for doesn't happen with a real world monotheistic god?

EzekielRaiden · 2026-02-19T09:47:51+0000

tetrasodium said:
Relevance to what I wrote? Are you attempting to claim that a charismatic player standing up as a self proclaimed authority of something like fairness roleplaying or whatever while part of the same friend and party group as their fellow players is incapable of exerting pressure?

My point is and has always been, as I originally said, that the conclusions folks almost always draw from the experiment, and the claims people make about exactly what happened during the experiment, are almost always overblown and, generally speaking, presented in a way that is outright opposing what actually happened.

I literally have no idea what you're talking about with this "a charismatic player standing up as a self-proclaimed authority of something like fairness or roleplaying". Like I genuinely have no idea how that even remotely relates to this.

In fact, the only thing I can see which would relate to this is that your described situation is the exact antithesis of what the Milgram experiment examined. It would be a rebellious figure standing up against the person several people on this very forum allege to be the "absolute" authority on genuinely everything going on at the table, the person allegedly invested with the ability to break any rule, tell any lie, deceive the players at any time for any reason about anything, etc. It would be someone challenging authority. Which, from the section I referenced, having another person there who challenges the authority causes the number of people to go along with it to drop to nearly zero. As in, having even ONE person present who questions authority completely breaks the whole "powerful authority figures can throw their weight around" thing.

So...no. My point has nothing whatsoever to do with that. My point has to do with exactly what I said originally:

EzekielRaiden said:
As with the Stanford prison experiment, the stuff people say about the Milgram experiment is often HORRIFICALLY mis-quoted, inaccurate, or even straight-up wrong. So, while I don't mean to pick on you personally for this one, I'm gonna have to tear into that quite a lot because this reflects that false/inaccurate presentation.

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

Scribe

Legend

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

tetrasodium

Legend

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

tetrasodium

Legend

Neonchameleon

Legend

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way

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