D&D (2024) Alternate GOO Warlock Patron Ideas

[Minigiant]

Maybe GOO-gle?

The cult serves a collective intelligent archive that they beam info into the minds of cultists to act as sages.

Imagine warlocks whose pact tomes have a search engine on the first page.
These GOOlocks go out to steal books to add to the archive.

 

[MGibster]

I do think a patron should be something that would give the warlock their power in exchange for something. It's a pact after all, right?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do think a patron should be something that would give the warlock their power in exchange for something. It's a pact after all, right?

Yeah, but 'exchange' is a rather broad concept.

It can be as simple as service, or as weird as 'your humanity' or for the hivemind 'contributing processing power'.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We had a thread on this before. I believe I suggested a miconid colony.

 

[Thommy H-H]

A generative AI program that has consumed a parallel universe and is encroaching on this one. Instead of mutations it's extra fingers and lifeless, uncanny valley faces with an unwholesome sheen. Instead of slime and tentacles it's endless hallucinatory slop that blindly apes but doesn't quite convincingly replicate reality. Psychic damage would certainly be appropriate as everyone around you begins to doubt the evidence of their eyes...

 

[Wolfram stout]

Whenever I see “GOO” my first thought is “Grand Ole Opry”. Perhaps the patron could be a lineup of the spirits of dead country & western superstars.

The Highwayman: An entity that choses a champion each generation to push the boundries of exploration (in whatever way that means to you). The warlock powers come from the combined powers from the prior generations of warlocks.

Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
I'll be back again and again and again and again and again and again

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Highwayman: An entity that choses a champion each generation to push the boundries of exploration (in whatever way that means to you). The warlock powers come from the combined powers from the prior generations of warlocks.

Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
I'll be back again and again and again and again and again and again

I think that would be a better fit for hexblade.

 

[NaturalZero]

Hivemind is something I've thought about. A player in a game I'm running now was reflavoring GOO as an A.I. pact but we ended up just making an A.I. pact that can summon an "altar" that is a terminal with buffs/debuffs. I've also had a postapocalyptic game where the remnant civilization was run by powerful merchantile conglomerates and there was going to be a Corporation pact for those magically contracted with the oligarchy.

People have mentioned it before, but the way psionics was described in 4e, it developed as the universe's antibiotic reaction to Far Realm incursion. Any anti-Far Realm organization, being, or concept works a patron in a way that kinda already fits vanilla DnD.

 

[radiothief]

in my setting i have mindflayer tadpoles that have been modified through magic that act as a simbiotic thing rather than invasive, so once it burrows into your brain, it gifts you psionic properties without transforming you.