So before you start accusing other people of having poor relationships with their DMs maybe look into your relationship with your players because this seems a biiiit unhealthy.
Have you considered perhaps telling your players you’d like them to try playing heroes instead of psycho killers?
We're playing a pirate game, the characters do not play morally clean types and setting itself, Mystara, leans more towards moral ambiguity and gray morality where no side is truly good and heroes and villains often depend on one's perspective. It would be hypocritical of me to demand players act like morally clean-cut, clean-shaven goody two-shoes.
And mechanically the game does reward just focusing fire and killing enemeis as fast as possible and it is very hard to add external factors and obiectives that do force players in combat to do something else. Why should I punish my players or call them out on behavior that system was designed to reward?
Also, as a player myself I have gotten tremendous pushback whenever I even bring an idea of playing a D&D character who doesn't kill. Not a pacifist, not someone who doesn't fight, just a character who is willing to beat up or even maim enemies, but doesn't kill people. Is okay with killing animals or monsters lacking sentience, but doesn't kill anyone who could be considered a person. The amount of vitroil I've got for bringing this idea to different people online multiple times while looking for group or asking communities about such concept, kinda makes me wonder if this game wasn't made TO play psycho killers.
Maybe the worst one is that he claims that warlocks dont get high level spells.
I started rewatching the video and as I suspected, you picked this out of context. Pointy Hat very clearly says it is a benefit that helps Warlock being multiclass friendly because their spellcasting works differently from everything else and you do not have an actual table showing you you just gave up 9th level spell slot by taking levels in a different class the way full casters do.
Also funny thing that I'm 6 minutes in the video and he already
multiple times acknowledged people who do not play Warlocks the way he is describing, sometimes humorously too. Yet you acussed him of telling people who play it different they're playing the game wrong, despite him going out of his way to not alienate them.
Have...actually seen this video? Because I am starting to have a suspiction you are going off on what someone else told you is in the video. It gives me the same vibe as when RWBY fans were mad at Hbomberguy's video about the show, saying he complaints about issues from early seasons that later seasons fixed, while ignoring that twice in the video he makes a point he sticks to early seasons only because while he also doesn't likes post-Monty seasons, they have completely different share of issues that would need a separate video to criticise.
If you don't have an actual counterpoint, you can just not reply to that part of the post, saying "nuh-huh" makes it hard to take your position seriously. Especially if you do it so many times in a single post.
Not at all. This is objectively not the case. The patron showing up and bugging their warlock as they make camp in the 2nd session of the campaign, at level 2, is completely allowed within the rules, and does not have any effect on the fact that at level 10 the Warlock gains the new ability to call upon their Patron with a known and reliable method that is in their hands.
Except it goes against what RAW says of how patron is supposed to contact the Warlock before level 10, through agents and messengers, who by virtue of being middle men are inherently easy to ignore. Also, patron showing up before level 3 when the subclass is selected imposes on player agency to be able to choose what their patron is at level 3.
Nonsense. If you didn't have a conversation with the player about their patron, then don't bring them in until the patron has been decided upon, sure, but it's general best practice to have that discussion before session 1 anyway.
So if player says "I don't know, I will pick up later" or multiclasses from different class into Warlock, I'm just unable to bring them anything to roleplay. A player who picked up Warlock 2 for a subclass and does not want to say what patron they want effectively never gets to interact with one and just reduces the class to "big number goes up".
Cut the patronizing bull. It has nothing to do with bad experiences. It's a preference, and a perfectly valid one.
I'm trying to be compassionate to people who come to the game with assumption the DM is out to screw them over by assuming this comes from bad past experience that resulted in lack of trust. Would you rather I just treat people with this attitude as selfish and entitled?
No, they aren't. They could be, if the player and DM agree to run them that way, but they weren't in any of the actual games they are pulled from.
Your table experiences are so specific you could have literally 100% exact same thing you played through fine happen at antoher table and be seen as DM trying to mess with player agency.
Nope. Your misguided sense of superiority over people who don't play like you seems to be coloring your perspective here.
I'm just saying that by the way game defines things, you would be a Sorcerer and you just reskinned Warlock for mechanics.
Other PCs affect player agency. The King affects player agency. The only way to have pure player agency is to play solo. What is being discussed is whether or not the warlock class requires a toxic relationship between the PC and the Patron.
And quite lot entitled players are mad when NPCs want things from them or react accordingly to PC's actions and even mad when they're not allowed to ruin other players' time, seeing both as imposing on their agency. You yourself define patron being an actual npc and not just empty, meaningless set of mechanical bonuses, as toxic.
I better tell my wife that her Paladin can't roleplay anymore, I guess. or not, because this is nonsense.
You can always roleplay, but things that were once built into the class to facilitate roleplay have been removed now for sake of "big number goes up".
That sounds ridiculous. Like some hairbrained scheme of a DM that doesn't know how to encourage roleplay without using a hammer.
Who now has, as you can see yourself saying in a different quoteblock in this post, a "misguided sense of superiority over people who don't play like you"
isn't even relevant to this discussion
You treat the idea of patron not being rendered meaningless as DM tryign to get you, so I say it is relevant.
Except that you are inventing things for me to have said, because I have never said anything remotely like that.
You mean the "trying to screw them over with no way to stop them" regarding the patron part? That part?
I have lovely DMs. And I have players who don't enjoy having a patron that is trying to screw them over with no way to stop them, because they aren't reading a book, they're playing a character.
That part?
Well you wanted to show how Celestial Patron does not need to be a god and both options you chose were directly tied to a god, so...
A wild exaggeration, at best. Some people express distaste for a given mindset. That isn't a declaration of war or a cry for emergency aide. It's a preference. It's a strong opinion. It is, at most, complaining about their DM being a jerk about their preference taking precedence over that of the player of the character involved.
And yet you are furious that someone on the internet made a video not catering to your preferences, one I am starting to think you didn't even watch. Also, this is a very entitled mindset, you see DM as your slave who has to bend the whole world to your idea instead of working together . Like, if I'm running a game in Mystara, where no fiends or celestials are allowed, I have right to say you cannot pick up Fiend or Celestial patron. I personally would let you have one of Immortals as your patron for Celestial or Enthropic Immortals for Fiend but that's it. You are treating the game as something you come to and are served by the DM and not a collaborative thing where anything that is not your way means DM is a jerk.
Ah, yes, my tiefling warlock, who was raised in a cultish family of fiendish "witches," and had an imp familiar, had no idea that the family patron was her great-great-grandmother from Hell that her family elders routinely converse with.
You know, when people say that "flavor is free" this is the kind of thing they're talking about. I can flavor a level 1 warlock as anything I want. I can make my background whatever I want. No DM is going to go, "no, you can't know who your patron is!"
The DM fixing the bad design on their table does not make the bad design disappear. RAW this means your character is level 3 and not suitable for level 1 game due to clearly having what devs deemed a part of level 3 subclass benefit.
Thats not a constraint.
Absolutely nothing stops my background from being "my patreon is my succubus great-great-grandmother. Warlockhood is passed from mom to daughter in my family."
You can CHOOSE to have it a mystery. Nothing forces it to be a mystery.
Except of course that player's handbook says you do not know your patron before level 3 and letting you know them earlier is a DM's chocie that may be seen as unfair by any other player using Warlock at the table.
