D&D General The Player's Quantum Ogre: Warlock Pacts

[Necropolitan]

All that aside, if some of us are a bit paranoid of DMs using the pact due to setting logic, can you provide an example of what you would do as a DM of a warlock player? If you have and I missed it I apologize.

If you feel like the DM is abusing or will abuse your Warlock's Pact then you shouldn't be playing with them.

The solution is to encourage good DMing, not take away the DM's powers.

It doesn't matter what the rules say, bad DMs will find a way to be bad DMs. Should the Dungeon Master's Guide say cave-ins, landslides, and meteors don't happen because a DM might do "Rocks fall, everyone dies?"

 

[Micah Sweet]

So I don't disagree with using setting logic/versimilitiude at all. But the player should have the main hand in their character backstory.

See my warlock is not making an opened pack such as give me power and I will obey you. It's I beat a devil in a fiddle contest and won a thread of its power. He can't take it back or kill me directly. Now if the DM wants this devil to occasionally send it's minions after me. Cool I just hope he spotlights the other PCs

My fae warlock got his power by freeing a fae lord in animal form from a silverthorn bush. If the DM wants to make it that his enemies (who may have trapped him) are now unhappy with me, cool.

And the Daggerheart method works for me as well. In fact I really like the twist and turns you can do with fear.


All that aside, if some of us are a bit paranoid of DMs using the pact due to setting logic, can you provide an example of what you would do as a DM of a warlock player? If you have and I missed it I apologize.

What I would do under what circumstance? Did you have a scenario in mind? In general I would have fairly regular communication, in one way or another, between the PC and the patron (or perhaps their agent). During these times the patron would push their agenda, suggesting or maybe even ordering courses of action, depending on their nature. They might meet other creatures with a relationship with their patron, or see the effects of their influence. At some point they may even be summoned into their presence. If conflict between the two erupts, I would likely play it by ear. Penalties for non-compliance would vary greatly, but they would never begin with the kind of gleeful cut-off of abilities @EzekielRaiden and @Remathilis seem so afraid of, and if it does end up there at some point, it will make sense in the setting and emergent narrative, and some kind of replacement will be potentially available.

As a side note, I see the appeal of the Daggerheart method, but it requires a degree of metacurrency manipulation with which I am personally uncomfortable in a traditional RPG.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

The horrifying reality is that people keep talking about all the things that get done that will hurt the players. We've had all of ONE person in this thread talking about carrots. Everyone else is talking sticks.

How am I supposed to have an upbeat attitude about things when time after time after time after time it's "okay, now here's how you'll get specially screwed over if you play X class instead of anything else".

Maybe if folks spent a quarter of the time they spent talking about the bad, instead choosing to talk about what good things they do with these "story hooks", it would be easier to buy that this isn't just special extra punishment heaped on players who dared to choose a class they thought sounded fun?

Those of us who have positive experiences with DMs, with warlock patrons, with that story telling interplay that's at the core of the system, we don't feel a need to explain it. It's self-evident and the norm to us. Just like people on these boards poo-pooing DM behavior, it's par for the course. It's just the norm. It's has been for as long as I've been here.

I could come on here and talk about the positives. Why my players love playing warlocks. Why they love how I treat cleric deities in a similar way. I can give story after story about why these are some of the best parts of 5e. I can talk about character growth and story progression, about fulfilling narratives and provoking emotion. But what purpose would that all serve? Outside of offering to run games to demonstrate a point, I won't convince anyone. People will just march to the beat of the "system bad" drum as they do.

It's not the culture to parade around speaking one's own praise. To brag about how good one's own experience is. No, the culture is to vent. And some of us push back when we see absurdity, but stop short of saying "well I'm doing it better" or "my DM handles it better."

We stop short because, at least to me, doing more without offering solutions would be rude. And I have no better solutions then what I've already said. Its a social problem, with social solutions. And sometimes the only solution is a new DM.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I feel that there is a tad too much polarisation in the state of the discussion currently. I know that is is a time-honoured tradition in internet discourse to set up a quintain at the far end of the arena for you to tilt at, by trying to depict your opponent as occupying an extreme viewpoint.
However, the vast majority (and likely the entirety of the reasonable) demographic are somewhere much more around the middle, where DMs and players agree how much spotlight the warlock's patron gets, whether that is "Player asks the DM to incorporate the patron", through "DM uses the patron as an NPC or plot device to move things along" to "Patron does not get involved or mentioned".

These days, a DM using class mechanics just as a stick to beat the player with is just as rare as players who insist that any interference with their characters by NPCs is unacceptable - and thankfully and rightfully so. But neither of these situations is an issue with the class or game mechanics, rather a problem with the personality of the individual. As such it is a social issue requiring discussion within what is hopefully a group of friends, and said individual would hopefully adjust their attitude when they find out how much of a jerk they are being.

I do not feel that depicting DMs as power-tripping egomaniacs, or current players as over-entitled brats, is discussion in good faith. We know that the occasional exceptions exist, to give rise to horror stories. To declare that a significant portion of the demographic is like that however, just weakens your position because we know that argument is false, and it makes us wonder what else you are disingenuous about.

So can we chill a bit, and engage a bit more with the actual arguments being made please? I think that we can all agree that all DMs have the technical capability to persecute the PCs, whether through class narrative or not, but that any DM that does so unreasonably (whether through the medium of warlock patrons, or a myriad of other ways) needs to be taken aside and given some life advice.
If you can't assume a working social contract, you can't play D&D. So could we please not only start arguing in good faith, but also assume that everyone else in the thread is also doing so as well please?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The pacts and the invocations, many of which are associated with them. Would you just rename them so you can keep the mechanics the same? I don't think that would work for me. I said similar mechanics to the warlock, not identical.

If a Celestial warlock uses the Tomb of Levistus invocation, would they actually be calling on Levistus?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Either side can go as far as they want, subject to the social contract for their group, and any campaign parameters established in session 0.

Okay, but this is precisely the problem. You've opened with "go as far as they want" on both sides.

So why can't I go so far as, "I don't accept this, this is not actually fun or engaging, I don't want to do that"?

Why is that an automatic guaranteed violation of the social contract, but the GM doesn't have any limits we can predict in advance?

As far as CR is concerned, very roughly, there were two warlock PCs. Both communicated with their patrons (and they with them) regularly throughout the campaign, checking in and/or making requests of each other. At least one PC ultimately broke with their patron and eventually acquired a new one, with their powers changing as a result.

Cool. That sounds like it could be fun.

Do you think that the player went into it writing a blank check for the GM, on the unstated hope that the stuff that would happen wouldn't be suddenly really upsetting with zero possibility to alter course or do something different?

I mean ... it's pretty trivial to find lots of examples, in holy books in use today, as well as those of religions no longer practiced, where the central divine figure does terrible, terrible things to his worshipers when they cross a line, sometimes without realizing it. And they still do have worshipers.

(Trying to avoid real world specificities here, obviously.)

To the worshippers. As in, any random person, or a random person who did something the deity specifically doesn't like.

Not to their dedicated clergy actively trying to do said deity's will in the world.

Biiiiiiig difference.

 

[Necropolitan]

Why is that an automatic guaranteed violation of the social contract, but the GM doesn't have any limits we can predict in advance?

Because the GM is the one running the campaign.

If you don't like how the GM handles Warlocks find a different GM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What I would do under what circumstance? Did you have a scenario in mind? In general I would have fairly regular communication, in one way or another, between the PC and the patron (or perhaps their agent). During these times the patron would push their agenda, suggesting or maybe even ordering courses of action, depending on their nature. They might meet other creatures with a relationship with their patron, or see the effects of their influence. At some point they may even be summoned into their presence. If conflict between the two erupts, I would likely play it by ear. Penalties for non-compliance would vary greatly, but they would never begin with the kind of gleeful cut-off of abilities @EzekielRaiden and @Remathilis seem so afraid of, and if it does end up there at some point, it will make sense in the setting and emergent narrative, and some kind of replacement will be potentially available.

As a side note, I see the appeal of the Daggerheart method, but it requires a degree of metacurrency manipulation with which I am personally uncomfortable in a traditional RPG.

Okay! This is great!

You are actually setting limitations here. You would not ever begin with getting cut off. You would have regular communication--not just in-character, but OOC as well. If a hard cutting-off were to occur, the player can and should expect alternative pathways to present themselves.

That, that right there, is all I wanted out of this. I just wanted some limits, some idea of where things start and how they could potentially proceed. It doesn't need to be hyperspecific. It doesn't need to be detailed and extensive. I just need to know where I stand. Writing that off with "Anything goes....within the social contract" is actively unhelpful. It comes across to me as actively avoiding setting any boundaries whatsoever--and that active avoidance is what communicates "something is fishy here" to me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because the GM is the one running the campaign.

If you don't like how the GM handles Warlocks find a different GM.

I don't accept this double standard.

If players are subject to guaranteed automatic limitations, so should GMs be.

Nobody gets a free pass. Either I have limits and so do you, or you don't and neither do I. Anything else is "I get power and you get nothing."

 

[Necropolitan]

I don't accept this double standard.

If players are subject to guaranteed automatic limitations, so should GMs be.

Nobody gets a free pass. Either I have limits and so do you, or you don't and neither do I. Anything else is "I get power and you get nothing."

It's not a double standard, it's how the game is played. The GM runs things so they get to decide how things go.

If you don't like how the GM does things then find a different GM.

Nobody is forcing you to play with GMs if you don't like how they do things and you're not allowed to force the GM to do anything they don't want to do.

GMs aren't obligated to put up with players who refuse to abide by their rules.