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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9751397" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Then everyone should have built-in obligations, because these classes do not get anything anyone else doesn't.It's flatly unfair punishment for them otherwise.....then what is the problem here??? You literally just responded to my suggestion of NOT singling the Warlock out by telling me I should get used to Warlocks (etc.) getting singled out!Er...other than the whole "evil being getting one over on a mortal" thing that nearly all of them have. The Great Old One intentionally forcing you to become more and more like itself. The Devil, frankly doing the same thing but in a personality kind of way rather than a "literally making your brain tentacular" or whatever. The Fey, I mean have you read any stories where the fey are involved? It's literally their jam to do things like screwing people over because they broke rules they didn't know existed.So...yeah I feel pretty comfortable saying that in D&D fiction specifically, patrons are frequently characterized as actively malicious and trying to harm the people they pact with, but the fiction in the rulebooks says absolutely none of that. Hence the problem. Making the patron "matter" very, very, very frequently means....bringing in all of those thematic things, things used by the fiction of D&D itself, that are actively malicious and punitive.Again, I want to stress how significant a difference it is to be told what [USER=6747251]@Micah Sweet[/USER] said upthread. No instant-character-imploding. Primarily means communication. Probably will include requests now and then--likely, ones designed to be achievable and not obviously horrendous, but which still make me uncomfortable. If a true pact-negation event occurred, and it may or may not ever do so, it would not be a sudden or surprising turn of events, and any such loss would either be temporary (with the pact restored, or a new patron stepping in to take the old one's place), or permanent but with some alternative pathway opening in its place.That's all I need to know to be comfortable moving forward. I don't need to know the frequency of the requests (we can talk about it if it's excessive). I don't need to know the content. I don't need to know everything about the patron--mysteries can be fun, even in your cosmic "employer". With the above, I feel quite confident that the situation will be one of developing intrigue and interest. I understand where Micah is coming from, and can work within those parameters, while trusting that he will also work within those parameters.It always, always comes down to not knowing the parameters I'm operating within. Leaving things up to the unspoken, mercurial "social contract", where I cannot ever know what the rules or limits are until after it is (far) too late to do anything, where the presumption of common agreement far too easily traps me into "well I didn't actually agree to that" "then why did you START" type stuff. It doesn't take much--I mean it was literally like a one-paragraph, off-the-cuff thing from Micah!--to break free of that situation. But constantly saying "the social contract" as though it were magic words that eliminated all concerns or issues ain't it.I personally would only ever choose Celestial (in part because I like healing, in part because I like the flavor) or maybe some kind of genie or draconic pact, if such a thing existed. (Believe it or not, a draconic pact doesn't actually interest me that much--a rare case where being dragon-y doesn't do anything special for me.) There's a very, very limited context in which I might choose GOO (namely, paranormal investigator kind of character).</blockquote>

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