D&D 5E New Warlock Pacts: What are your concepts?

[tuxgeo]

A "pact" in the sense that I think was meant by the original poster of this thread was the "pact boon" given to a warlock at the third warlock level. The original pact boons in the PHB were "pact of the chain," "pact of the blade," and "pact of the tome." In each case, the warlock's patron bestows upon the warlock some kind of gift as a reward for faithful service: either an improved form of the find familiar spell (castable as a ritual), or a pact weapon that you can summon to your hand, or a Book of Shadows which initially contains three freely-chosen cantrips from any class, and which book can be further improved with Invocations.

In order to come up with good new "pacts," it might be useful to ask oneself, "What might a warlock's patron give to a faithful warlock* in order to enhance that warlock's ability to serve the patron?"
* of course, 'faithful warlock' is a bit of a contradiction in terms, in the sense that one etymology of the word "warlock" is "oath-breaker," from 'vaer' meaning 'truth' and 'loegen' meaning 'lie.'

 

[fuindordm]

The patrons are the subclasses, and grant several abilities as well as an expanded spell list. They are responsible for most of the flavor of your warlock.

The three pacts are designed to let the player skew their flavor toward specific play style, by granting a minor ability initially and opening up invocations for high-quality spells/powers not on the basic warlock list.

Pact of the Tome = I want to be a more wizard-like warlock
Pact of the Blade = I want to be a gishy warlock
Pact of the Chain = I want to be spirit-binder / summoner

Viewed through this lens, I think these already suggested pacts fall into the same design philosophy:

Pact of the Shroud (cool name BTW!) = I want to be a rogulike infiltrator
Pact of the Flesh = I want to be a shapechanger ... lots of possible abilities in here, maybe the player could select from a short menu (skin = AC, tongue = 10' reach attack, blood = adv. on death saves...)

And so far, no one has suggested a pact for the warlock of a "good" power who wants to skew towards leader/healer. However, I like the flavor in this previously suggested name:

Pact of the Lantern = I want to be a healer/leader

The nice thing about a lantern is that it is a natural symbol for aura effects. At 3rd level it could just give a minor defensive bonus to allies within 15', such as +1AC or a few temp HP. It could also unlock invocations that upgrade the radius and effect of the aura, or even grant a cure spell with the usual condition for high-quality spells (uses a spell slot, once per long rest).

Cheers,
Ben

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Izek Strazni in CoS that had a barbed devil's arm that replaced his own. That seems like a good precedent for a pact type to me.

A pact boon that requires you to cut off your arm! Very atmospheric!

Doing this with a fey warlock patron might mean swapping arms with a tree, like the Kuakgan in Elizabeth Moon's fiction.