D&D 5E Hex Shenanigans

[doctorbadwolf]

Not a lot. Not a lot.

But how many DM enforce the Ethos of a god onto the player playing a cleric or a paladin?
The answer is: "Not a lot". Again...

The warlock is not a very popular class in my games just because of that. I do insist on character creation that the Warlock writes exactly what he wanted from his patron (usually power) and I write the contract, terms, duration and whether or not the contract is renewable and on which conditions (if any). I once had a warlock which had a 10 year terms for his contract and I said: "Ok, 3 years passe between the end of your adventure and the beginning of the next one". The warlock was not happy about it. Then I had a warlock suffer a total loss of power because he hadn't respected his contract, the player complained that her character was not a cleric. I said, worse, you bargained with a power that does not even care one iota about you, your race and your goals. She (the Winter Queen) cares only about herself and her feys. (She had harmed a fey in self defense but it was written in her contract that she would never harm a fey under any conditions. Not even to save her life...).

So yep, not a lot. And if you're the kind of DM that does, the class loses a lot of its appeal.

That reads mostly as adversarial DMing.

 

[Helldritch]

That reads mostly as adversarial DMing.

Far from it. There are consequences to choosing your patron. RP is a big part of our game and backgrounds are played. I like the players to think about the consequences of their actions and their decisions. If they follow an ethos, then the ethos is supposed to be a big thing for the character. A warpriest will not have the same RP as a priest of life. A warlock of the fey will not act in the same way as a warlock of the fiend. It might be obvious when said this way, but at a lot of table it is not. In many tables I have seen, Joe the fighter acts the same way as Joe the paladin or Joe the ranger. This is not my/our kind of game.

I have two groups and if I wanted to, I could have more. But family and work takes a lot of time. I am no longer the young adult that had four or five groups full time. My games are very democratic and every single modification to a rule (of which there are very few) are voted upon by all players (both groups vote). What you see externally as adversarial DMing is in fact a common decision by 13 peoples (groups are 6 players strong) that decided to have a common view of the game. We are very RAW oriented and the modifications to the base games are all from the options in the DMG (save 2 minor modifications).

I have yet to find a ruling to which all my players did not agree in principle (though sometimes, it is agreed upon reluctantly as a child knows he did something wrong but will not admit it). And if I make a mistake (which I do make, that is why I love this forum. It offers a lot of views and clarifications that I really like) I am quick to accept and amend myself.

I am playing/DMing with these principles.
1) Everyone must shine.
2) Background and personal history matter. If not why make them?
3) All rolls are on the open. Mine and the players'.
4) RP is important. Alignment is important. Ethos is important.
5) Everyone must have fun. Bad things can happen. But in the end, we want to have fun. (and not just the girls!)
6) Respect at the table is of utmost importance.
7) The DM can be wrong. So can the players. That is why #6 is there. So let's talk about it instead.
8) No drugs and only a moderate amount of beers will be tolerated. A game is not a place to get high or drunk.
and finally,
9) All modifications to the game must be approved by the majority of all players. Both groups.

 

[Fanaelialae]

To me, that would be you as the DM finding RP loopholes to arbitrarily nix a perfectly reasonable action.

Also, I don’t play warlocks at tables where the DM expects total control over what the patron-warlock relationship is and how the patron acts and all that. I’d be playing a rogue or something at your table, if that sort of thing was within the norm of play for you as the DM. That type of play leads me to play characters with no family, no strings, no debts, little backstory. Can still be fun, but that isn’t what makes TTRPGs awesome, for me.

In what way is that total control over the patron-warlock relationship? I added one small detail to your proposal. A detail which, unless you are primarily concerned with the game benefit it would deny you, shouldn't even be pertinent to the scene as proposed.

It would be like you going to the DM and insisting that your character's mother is the most powerful archmage in all of history. Then when the DM counter proposes that she's a powerful archmage, but not necessarily the most powerful to have ever lived, throwing your arms up and declaring your character won't even have a mother then. Or getting upset when that character goes to ask mommy to solve a problem for them and the DM says that she's gone traveling the planes (or whatever) and that her servants don't know when she will return.

I like character backgrounds. I reward players who write them. That doesn't mean that you can write whatever you want into your backstory and expect to have complete control over it. Those are NPCs, which places them firmly within the DMs authority, irrespective of the fact that you invented them. Your character is the archmage's child, not the archmage herself.

You have complete authority over your own character, but the rest of the world is in the DM's authority. Whether your background references it or not. If that means you don't consider writing a background to be worthwhile, then you may not have appropriate motives for why you are writing a background. The background describes the character and their connection to the world, ideally with a few potential adventure hooks thrown in. It isn't an invitation for you to create an entire stable of characters over which you expect to have complete authorial control.

 

[jasper]

I have to agree with Fanaelialae and Hellritch and against doctorbadwolf. The Warlock pact always struck as an excellence way for a dm and player to stretch their role playing wings. The dms could set conditions and flavor which were different from each patron and the player had to make sure they pay attention to the conditions and look for traps.

An quick example Fey patron states you must eat what is set before you and don’t consume blue food. Then Captain Kirk is set down to a blue spaghetti dinner, with blue Gatorade and blueberry pie. As long the dm did this once no problem and the pc has to think fast. More than once then the DM is being a pill.

Now as AL DM, I can’t do this but I have found ways to show a patron’s displeasure.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The warlock is not a very popular class in my games just because of that.

This comes across weird, although maybe I'm just not reading you right - if your goal with these rules is to make warlocks more fun to play, but the result is no one wants to play a warlock anymore - I'd say you did not achieve that goal.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I have to agree with Fanaelialae and Hellritch and against doctorbadwolf. The Warlock pact always struck as an excellence way for a dm and player to stretch their role playing wings. The dms could set conditions and flavor which were different from each patron and the player had to make sure they pay attention to the conditions and look for traps.

An quick example Fey patron states you must eat what is set before you and don’t consume blue food. Then Captain Kirk is set down to a blue spaghetti dinner, with blue Gatorade and blueberry pie. As long the dm did this once no problem and the pc has to think fast. More than once then the DM is being a pill.

Now as AL DM, I can’t do this but I have found ways to show a patron’s displeasure.

This only works if it's a mutually agreed upon change/restriction/whatever. A lot of dm's will unilaterally impose oddball restrictions on warlock players and then be surprised when the players aren't totally onboard with arbitrary restrictions that only they (none of the other players) have to deal with.

 

[billd91]

I have to agree with Fanaelialae and Hellritch and against doctorbadwolf. The Warlock pact always struck as an excellence way for a dm and player to stretch their role playing wings. The dms could set conditions and flavor which were different from each patron and the player had to make sure they pay attention to the conditions and look for traps.

An quick example Fey patron states you must eat what is set before you and don’t consume blue food. Then Captain Kirk is set down to a blue spaghetti dinner, with blue Gatorade and blueberry pie. As long the dm did this once no problem and the pc has to think fast. More than once then the DM is being a pill.

Now as AL DM, I can’t do this but I have found ways to show a patron’s displeasure.

Expressing displeasure may be one thing, but handing down restrictions the player has no control over other than to play a different character strikes me as potentially problematic. It's bad enough that plenty of games over the years have paladin issues, let's add the warlock on the pile.

I can definitely see doctorbadwolf's point about adversarial DMing, particularly with Hellritch's example of the player laying out a 10 year contract, so he advanced the timeline 3 years between adventures. That's pretty adversarial. It's like something from John Wick's essay on how to GM Champions like a complete naughty word (though maybe on the shallow end of that essay's list of crimes against players).

 

[Fenris-77]

Far from it. There are consequences to choosing your patron. RP is a big part of our game and backgrounds are played. I like the players to think about the consequences of their actions and their decisions.

Sorry, I don't agree. Not unless you've gone into all the classes and done something similarly unsavory. Consequnces in roleplaying are fine, but adding a consequence to choosing one particular class is not the same thing. Great, you think it's a better story, but really all you're doing is screwing over players who want to play a Warlock. You can do what you like with your own game, but at least be honest about what you're doing.

There are lots of ways to bring the Patron into play that aren't this restrictive and arbitrary, and it is a super cool RP handle. Complete loss of powers though? Arbitrary passing of huge stretches of time? Yikes. Are you taking away all the Ranger's powers or all the Wizard's powers in the same way? Can the Monk lose his Ki? Can the Barbarian lose his rage? If you were being even handed about it that would be different, but you don't appear to be.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In what way is that total control over the patron-warlock relationship? I added one small detail to your proposal. A detail which, unless you are primarily concerned with the game benefit it would deny you, shouldn't even be pertinent to the scene as proposed.

It would be like you going to the DM and insisting that your character's mother is the most powerful archmage in all of history. Then when the DM counter proposes that she's a powerful archmage, but not necessarily the most powerful to have ever lived, throwing your arms up and declaring your character won't even have a mother then. Or getting upset when that character goes to ask mommy to solve a problem for them and the DM says that she's gone traveling the planes (or whatever) and that her servants don't know when she will return.

I like character backgrounds. I reward players who write them. That doesn't mean that you can write whatever you want into your backstory and expect to have complete control over it. Those are NPCs, which places them firmly within the DMs authority, irrespective of the fact that you invented them. Your character is the archmage's child, not the archmage herself.

You have complete authority over your own character, but the rest of the world is in the DM's authority. Whether your background references it or not. If that means you don't consider writing a background to be worthwhile, then you may not have appropriate motives for why you are writing a background. The background describes the character and their connection to the world, ideally with a few potential adventure hooks thrown in. It isn't an invitation for you to create an entire stable of characters over which you expect to have complete authorial control.

You know it’s not binary, right?

 

[jgsugden]

How many D&D campaigns feature a strong relationship between Warlock and patron? Because thus far I haven't witnessed such a thing myself.

Every single one I have witnessed in 5E, which has been about a dozen. The Patron or a representative of the Patron plays an active role in the storyline. Even when a stock module was used, the DM worked the Patron into the story.