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

[overgeeked]

My warlock player -- who remade his wizard into a warlock as far back as 3E -- actually came to me with a bunch of ideas of how I could make him miserable. A celestial warlock where his patron, an Odin analogue, wanted to find someone else to hang off the Tree of Knowledge, thanks, and was basically trying to trick his warlocks to take over for him.

That sounds amazing. Great player.

It was pretty great, although the player ended up having real life responsibilities that eventually took him out of the game.

That’s really too bad.

 

[Reynard]

My feeling is, if you don’t want the possibility of that kind of story (where the fiction of the pact matters) don’t play a warlock. At least, that is what I’d say to anyone wanting to play one in a campaign I was running.

So what other classes do you consider to allow free intrusion for the GM on player agency?

 

[Reynard]

A whole lot of the warlock, cleric, and paladin class fiction is dependent on serving a higher power. It’s weird and “a-fictional” to try to avoid having to deal with that aspect of the class. It’s not about hypothetical gotchas. It’s about undermining the fiction. If you don’t want to have a patron, god, or oath don’t play a class with those fictional aspects.

All characters learned their skills from someone. They all have backstories and ties to setting elements outside themselves. The rogues old guild can come for them, or the wizard's master can summon them for aid. That's part of playing in a fictional world. But the idea that the GM is somehow more allowed or even required to mess with the cleric, paladin or warlock.PC is just the GM flexing.

I think someone upthread nailed it. As almost always, it’s a split between the gamers and role-players. The gamers want the power without even the possibility of a drawback while the role-players are at least open to the possibility provided it’s not abused.

Oh geez. Now we are going tobtalk about who's a real roleplayer?

 

[Scribe]

I think a lot of player concern/pushback comes from online people seemingly licking their chops at playing "gotcha"with the warlock players. As in the patron telling the warlock "burn down that orphan or lose all your powers". Hahaha

Yeah, no. I've never seen this behavior, despite the repeated trauma dumps we see from a few folks online.

 

[Scribe]

Duplicate.

 

[Seramus]

I believe very strongly in reflavoring things. So a player that loves the mechanics of a Warlock should be able to reflavor the whole thing into something else, giving them the mechanics they desire with the fiction they desire. We can sit down and discuss how that would play out in game, because it could be as simple as a Celestial Artifact that doesn't talk back, or something more dramatic like "I'm just an arcane knight trained at an academy" with no actual patron at all.

On the other hand, if you DO sit down and want to play a Warlock with the traditional fiction associated with the class, you better believe I'm going to be including them in the narrative and they might have some thoughts about your behavior.

 

[Reynard]

Here's the thing: it is 2025. We have reached the point where we understand, even when playing a traditional RPG like D&D, that the GM is not the sole author. And more particularly that GMs need permission to mess with PCs because PCs belong to the players.

Now, this can be session zero blanket permissions, or it can be specific kinds of stories permissions that require individual player buy in.

But GMs don't own the campaign anymore. And, importantly, I say this as someone who is primarily a GM, just a thin sliver away from forever GM.

If you want your Warlock PC's patron to be a force in the campaign that manipulates the Warlock, just ask them if that's okay. The vast majority of players will be all in, I guarantee it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I always prefer it when a player goes all-in on their character design, as those are some of the most fertile strands of narrative one can work with their players on. To me it's always more compelling and fun to play to your character's concepts. And the best way to achieve that is to cultivate a table of players who agree with that.

But at the same time I'm not going to whine about it if a player decides they want to play a Warlock but is not interested in developing their backstory. I mean I can't force them to. And if they'd prefer to just move forward with their character and is uninterested in everything that happened prior to the game (including making their pact)... then that's fine. I'll deal. I might not find myself as invested in the character as I would otherwise... but so be it. If the player is happy then I'll go with it.

 

[WanderingMystic]

I feel that most of the disagreement is that it can feel like the player is being penalized for a class choice and not a back story. If you require other people to find people to train them before they can level or bring in the wizards old master who taught them to control their story then it is something that everyon is experiencing. Player and dm talking about what they want from the game and their character easily fixes all of this. As a warlock player of my dm came to me before the game started and said that to move beyond level 5, 10 and 15 in a class players needed to have some type of quest, needed to find a new mentor, had to discover some lost secret them yeah I would be all for my warlock being made to tighten his bond with his patron.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why. Clerics gods don't get directly involved.

One: sometimes they do. Depends on the god. Certainly other members of the faith might take a more active role.

Two: warlocks patrons (mostly) seem to have a more intimate relationship with their warlocks.