D&D General Warlocks' patrons vs. Paladin Oaths and Cleric Deities

[Maxperson]

No, they cannot. A paladin player could choose to become an oathbreaker using the optional subclass changing rules, but there is no way to force them to change.

I don’t think subclass changing is in the 2024 rules though (I could be wrong) so it’s actually impossible for a paladin to become an oathbreaker under the 2024 rules.

I mean, the DM could make the character an NPC oathbreaker if he wants. The player has 3 options if the DM uses the rules to make the PC an oathbreaker. 1) be an oathbreaker. 2) make a new character and the oathbreaker becomes an NPC. 3) leave the game and the oathbreaker becomes an NPC.

I've almost never seen a player screw up a paladin to the point where he'd become an oathbreaker in the first place, but in every one of those very few times, the player went with option 1 or option 2.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure. There are always a few bad actors or just entirely clueless players. One of the benefits of being in my late 40s is that I've had decades to weed those people out.

I'm not even talking about bad actors or entirely clueless players. Sometimes the player doesn't realize the character is disruptive and when you tell him, he's like, "Oh, no problem. I'll make something else."

 

[saviirkad]

I probably should've specified that this whole dilemma only came about because one of my players was quite disappointed with Warlocks' lack of patron interaction during a short campaign we had; so after talking it out with them, I ended up making this thread in an effort to gain insights from the folk here
I've had other warlock players but til now they basically just played them as, and I categorized them in my head as, "different-mechanics sorcerers" (which funny enough is how the 3e class was pitched).. just because I didn't know what to make of them.

I've run two warlocks, three "patrons," of varying interaction with the PC. I'm a firm believer in the warlock class specifically because it's even easier for me to incorporate powerful NPCs, to have more of an excuse than I would for a cleric. A new vehicle to stretch the story in different ways, or a way to introduce further wrinkles and challenges to the otherwise unrelated story.

Warlock 1/Pact A was essentially a "different mechanics sorcerer," in that the patron was not a thinking individual but a battery. Without going into the details of this warlock's introduction after the player's first PC died, the warlock had the souls of many, many murdered individuals bound to them to act as a source of power. This binding was without the warlock's knowledge or consent, and represented power they did not want to keep but you needed someone very, very powerful to unbind these souls.

The roleplay for this "patron" was a tortured warlock seeking true freedom from a cult and what this cult did to them, but also having this source of power that revolted them but the temptation to use it was always too strong. The intent was always to provide a way to deal with that, either by holding onto it but becoming powerful enough to deal with it personally or seeking a new patron to rescue them.

Warlock 1/Pact B was the fae queen of the Court of Winter, one of a few powerful beings that I put around the party to see which the warlock would gravitate towards. I leaned on the book series Dresden Files, the winter queen uses mortals who swear themselves to her to be her knight. That is not the Pact, the warlock is not strong enough for her to care that much about him. But she will do this kindness, release those murdered souls and replace the horrible sigil of the cult bound to his body and soul with the cold sigil of her court. Binding the warlock to the fae court. And I used this relationship to explain why certain things were happening and give relevant quests.

Like, when a teleportation went so badly that the party was sent so, so far off target as to be anywhere in the world, and took so much damage that it was a near TPK, I had them awake on an island, their teleportation helm broken. As they explored this island, it became evident to the party that the winter queen had reached out and made this happen. She forced the spell to go wrong and broke their means of escape. Why, because this island is where her current Knight is located, where he refuses her commands and acts independently of her. She is very angry with this Knight. Find him. Do not kill him. Give him to her alive, so she can show him just how disappointed in him she is. And then the party can leave, conveniently after a level up where the party could leave of their own power.

Later on, when the party needed to upgrade their power to put them on a level playing field with their villainous target, the warlock's path was to compete against others to become the queen's next Knight.

The winter queen was a dire, severe patron, but the warlock was generally on her side. The relationship was not antagonistic, though it could have been.

Warlock 2/Pact C was antagonistic. Different player, different campaign. Shorter campaign, only a couple years I think. Set in Exandria, the patron was that setting's version of Vecna, before the ascension to godhood. The warlock had an extremely innocent outlook, and had a fascination with the undead and desire to become a lich. This was based on the character's own misunderstanding of heroic stories of powerful wizards. This outlook was capitalized on by the manipulative Vecna, whose motive was to prepare this warlock to become a special kind of spirit jar for Vecna. The end goal was the true death of the warlock, "becoming a lich."

The roleplay was Vecna taking opportunities to whisper deceptions and gaslight the warlock to keep her going under his influence. At a crucial point, when the warlock reaffirmed her loyalty and desire to help this voice, Vecna took her heart and discarded it, replacing it with one of his own. The warlock was tasked with taking this heart to the powerful, but tortured remnant of a champion of several gods, and making him into a vessel for this heart. If she failed, she would remain the vessel herself. I had the voice of one god occasionally try to break through to her, because the warlock was a linchpin in Vecna's plans to ascend to godhood but not be bound by the divine gate inherent to this setting.

Eventually the warlock was able to convey what was happening in the right way to finally trigger the party's interest and concern, and that led to the conclusion of this quest. Powerful arcanists, including a former cultist of Vecna, gathered to sever the connection this warlock had to Vecna. This was ultimately successful, but it left behind one of Vecna's hearts that was within the warlock. I used this to explain that at the end of the day, the power was always the warlock's. The patron had been gaslighting her into thinking he was the source of her power. With Vecna's direct link removed, the heart belonged now to the warlock.

This was a Call of the Netherdeep campaign, that I eventually will use the Vecna campaign as a sequel, with strong TVA vibes as the multi-dimensional connective tissue.

 

[Remathilis]

Are DMs really so lazy that they can't just make up their own rule at their own table for forcing Warlock players to play to their pact, and instead demands the book gives them rules for it that they can just use with no effort or thought whatsoever?

I mean I already know the answer to that... but it still surprises me on occasion.

In my experience, DMs like to hide behind passive aggressive rules like losing your abilities if you roleplay wrong so they can shift the blame from "you're not playing the way I think you should be playing" to "You're not roleplaying the way the rulebook thinks you should be playing."

You can thank AD&D and the fact that between alignment restrictions, codes of conduct and gear dependency, the only class the DM cannot intentionally cripple your character with is fighter.* Every other class had some way of either stripping you of your powers or stopping your advancement. Couple that with the "genre enforcement" rules in settings like Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Ravenloft, and you had the first 20 years of the game be designed around "DM may I?" As the default method of playing your character.


* Capture a LE thief, a paladin, a ranger and a druid and force each of them to wear a helm of opposite alignment. You will have two fighters with bad XP charts, a thief who cannot gain levels anymore, and an ex-druid who lost his magic because he wore a metal helmet.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've almost never seen a player screw up a paladin to the point where he'd become an oathbreaker in the first place

A player might choose to roleplay a paladin who falls (at least under 2014 rules). The DM shouldn't be screwing with them at all.

If you look at the paladin tenets in the 2024 rules, they have been made so broad that it is almost impossible to break them, unless the player says their character believes they have broken them.

 

[TwoSix]

I've almost never seen a player screw up a paladin to the point where he'd become an oathbreaker in the first place, but in every one of those very few times, the player went with option 1 or option 2.

I'd argue that if the paladin character doesn't get near oathbreaker status at a few points, why did they bother playing a paladin in the first place?

Oathbreaker isn't a status condition indicating bad play, it should indicate that you played your character to the hilt and paid the price.

Remember, the point of play is not to play the concept you came up with at the start of the game and just keep it the same the whole game. Characters should want to grow and change, often in ways you (as a player) may not have anticipated when the game started.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Before I tell you how I do it, I'm going to tell you why.

I hate imbalance between character options. Some characters having role-playing restrictions when others have none because of a completely equal mechanical choice (like class) is really, really annoying to me. That said, I also am not a fan of clerics and paladins having no consequences for violating their in-setting requirements.

Here's what I do. Acquiring a class can potentially happen in multiple different ways. Some examples were give in this postof warlocks who learned their powers from study, or make pacts with or steal power from multiple beings rather than having a specific patron for example. I typically say that the divine power clerics wield isn't proximately granted by their deity, but is something that comes from their deity that was granted to mortals a long time ago and can be passed down from mortals to mortals, typically through their religious heirarchy. Individual clerics become clerics through some sort of ritual investiture. I haven't defined it for paladins yet, though I do attach each subclass to a specific divine order and have never been entirely happy with the 5e idea of just swearing an oath.

After a character gets a class, they have it. The class, and any of its features cannot be taken away from them. The cleric has received their investiture, the warlock has completed the pact, the wizard has figured out spell books, the barbarian has learned how to rage, and the fighter has got good at fighting. They in no way need the continued support of whatever teachers or entities allowed them to gain that power in order to keep gaining levels. If your deity or patron dies, you can still advance to level 20. (I say that deities actually wield the same power as clerics just in a more powerful way, so when they granted their followers this power it wasn't a direct connection to the gods, it was literally the power the gods themselves use.) Your class features are equally secure regardless of your class choice.

So what happens if you violate the obligations or expectations that your class came with? It depends on the specifics, but the principle is that your character doesn't exist in a vacuum. Other people, organizations, gods, and supernatural beings exist that likely care about how you represent them.

I'm okay with a switch to a mechanically equal option, and sometimes a switch of subclasses can result from betraying your obligations. The Oathbreaker subclass for the paladin is a baked in example. For clerics it's a little trickier, but I like to say that if you become completely out of harmony with your domain it might shift on you, so you go from Life Domain to Death or such. In this case it isn't the deity doing it directly--its the natural metaphysical consequences of your actions.

While a deity or warlock patron can't just deny your spells or class features, they very much can directly or indirectly intervene in your life. They can communicate with you in dreams, visions, and omens. They can exercise power over their portfolio (a displeased god of weather might make sure the weather around you is always against you). They can send other servants--whether that be other clerics or warlocks, or angels, fiends, or other supernatural agents. Any of these servants may attempt to persuade you, or they may attempt to kill you depending on the circumstances and their orders. In the case of many clerics who belong to a clerical order, the order itself will police its members without explicit divine direction needed. And in the final extreme, the entity could directly manifest its power to whatever extent the rules on mythic beings allow it to in a setting. The iconic thunderbolt out of the sky to deal a massive amount of damage. The earth opening to swallow you up. The entity themselves (or their avatar) appearing before you to duke it out. These beings have power, and the potential consequences of defying them are commensurate with that power, just like with any other NPC in the world. (A fighter or monk poorly representing the ideals of the esteemed school they trained at might have to deal with some very unhappy high ranked members of that school!)

But you do get to use all your class features while you're fighting for your life/soul against that patron you ticked off.

 

[ECMO3]

I don't tie players to the thematic constructs of their classes.

Clerics: While Clerics do typically choose deities, I have had a Cleric who didn't. He didn't really define where his powers came from, the player wanted it to be a mystery to the other PCs and maybe it was even a mystery to the player himself. D&D fiction is full of Clerics who do not worship their deities. The Drizzt books have numerous clerics that gain spells from Lolth but do not worship her. Likewise in the Fallbacks series the main cleric does not worship a Deity, but rather makes deals with all of them one at a time. So I let the player drive the fiction in this respect.

Paladins: Paladins have oaths after 3rd level but the player decides what that means. A player that takes an oath to stand up for the downtrodden might define that oath as slaughtering all the peasants so the insects and animals in the fields can live in peace not bothered by peasants trying to farm (never had this just as an example how preposterous it can be).

Warlocks: They get their power from a divine being but it is up to them to decide how that works. It could be a "pact" with the being, it could be they are stealing it through a ritual or something they were born with.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd argue that if the paladin character doesn't get near oathbreaker status at a few points, why did they bother playing a paladin in the first place?

Oathbreaker isn't a status condition indicating bad play, it should indicate that you played your character to the hilt and paid the price.

Remember, the point of play is not to play the concept you came up with at the start of the game and just keep it the same the whole game. Characters should want to grow and change, often in ways you (as a player) may not have anticipated when the game started.

Right! A lot of people here seem to think this is about the jerk DM punishing a bad player or something like that. It is nothing like that, or at least shouldn't be. It is about interesting roleplay, with real mechanical stakes.

And people who think this could not involve some sort of (likely temporary) power limitation or evolution of the character concept do not seem to realise that the players constantly risk such things. In every challenging combat the PC could die, which would limit the characters power rather significantly, and it might result the player needing to make a fully new character which certainly changes the concept they started with!

And whilst in theory a GM could have a Tarrasque attack the fist level PCs and kill them, they could similarly arbitrarily take away the PCs powers. But in good faith play this of course does not happen, and when such stakes are introduces they will make sense in the fiction and allow the players to make interesting decisions about how to proceed.