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Message: <blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 7027744" data-attributes="member: 6855057">So, over in the thread dedicated to the Warlocks & Wizards UA we had this month, there was a user or two complaining that WoTC focused on making new Patrons (entities to forge contracts with, what 4e called "Pacts") and not new Pacts (manifestations of the contract between Patron and Warlock). Now, at the time, I found this complaint kind of unfounded; with the existing Pacts of Blade (a magical weapon), Chain (a familiar) and Tome (a book of eldritch lore), what's honestly left for Warlocks to possible get as a symbol of their Pact? These fit pretty solid hits in terms of both thematic and mechanical value.But then, I stopped and thought about that from a different angle: what is left? What other possible gifts could a Patron give to their Warlock that would actually have mechanical impact without, essentially, stepping on the toes of the three that came before?So, I thought I'd start this topic and see if anyone else has interesting ideas for workable Pacts. Keep in mind, anyone can just spout a random "cool sounding" title. If you want to be taken seriously, you got to come up with an idea on how the Pact would actually function, crunch-wise. Furthermore, a Pact only gives a single, one-level, mechanical benefit, which in all honesty is probably why Patrons are more the subclass than Pacts are.Personally, there's only one Pact idea that I have, and that is the Pact of the Steed. This Pact, admittedly somewhat close to the Pact of the Chain, would give the Warlock a mystical beast companion in the form of a magical steed that they can use to carry them into battle or through the wilderness. There's some interesting potential here, I think, but there's also a lot of problems. The first major issue is mechanically balancing it; as cool as the image of a warlock riding to battle atop a faerie elk or a unicorn or a nightmare or a shantak is, the steed couldn't be made too beefy, and that leads to complaints that their awesome looking steed is ultimately little tougher than the standard riding horse. The second major issue is that... well, there's a reason the Cavalier has traditionally sucked, and that nobody paid any real attention to the "Divine Steed" class feature for Paladins back in 3e, and that's the fact that a mount is only situationally useful. In, say, the traditional dungeon crawl, there's no room to use the thing, and it ends up as a waste of a feature. At least familiars are small and readily deployed for stealth purposes.</blockquote>

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