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

[Neonchameleon]

If you can find a DM who's okay with that then go ahead.

Nobody's stopping you from making houserules.

The thing is "Paladins lose their powers for an evil act" hasn't been part of mainline D&D's rules since 2008 and has never been a part of the most popular version of D&D in history.

You are either not playing 5e or are dumpster diving through previous editions to pull out a bad rule from them and insert it in as a house rule.

You are the one arguing for a specific terrible house rule here. And most DMs do not do this. Most people on ENWorld are DMs - and if you find a random DM they will be a 5e DM unless explicitly saying otherwise and there is a 95%+ chance they will on this matter play RAW rather than use your bad houserule

 

[tetrasodium]

My point is and has always been, as I originally said, that the conclusions folks almost always draw from the experiment, and the claims people make about exactly what happened during the experiment, are almost always overblown and, generally speaking, presented in a way that is outright opposing what actually happened.

I literally have no idea what you're talking about with this "a charismatic player standing up as a self-proclaimed authority of something like fairness or roleplaying". Like I genuinely have no idea how that even remotely relates to this.

In fact, the only thing I can see which would relate to this is that your described situation is the exact antithesis of what the Milgram experiment examined. It would be a rebellious figure standing up against the person several people on this very forum allege to be the "absolute" authority on genuinely everything going on at the table, the person allegedly invested with the ability to break any rule, tell any lie, deceive the players at any time for any reason about anything, etc. It would be someone challenging authority. Which, from the section I referenced, having another person there who challenges the authority causes the number of people to go along with it to drop to nearly zero. As in, having even ONE person present who questions authority completely breaks the whole "powerful authority figures can throw their weight around" thing.

So...no. My point has nothing whatsoever to do with that. My point has to do with exactly what I said originally:

Let me help you on that bold bit milgram was about authority and coercion. None of your quibbles change it's relevance to the point made in 148 where it was not the only thing mentioned. The link was approaching the same "how did people allow that historical event happen" question by looking at it from a different perspective. The single solitary link explains

To a degree yes, but it was more about the impact of putting people into groups and having one group in power with the minimal rules over the other second group carrying a negatively charged term like prisoners. The prisoners who were under power also developed notably in less interesting ways. There are other studies that cover that whole power without rules/responsibility bwith bon group context like the milgram experiment where acting as the will of an authority figure left nearly every participant willing to execute the lone unseen test taker who was begging for their life over a speaker was analyzed & Bonhoeffer's theory of stupidity where the how/why a charismatic leader with an us vrs them agenda unlocks crowds was explained

More importantly wrt Stanford prison experiment and the other two in the context ttrpgs like d&d 5e: the players at the table are part of a group and the gm at the table is there as a group of one. In all three, the group of players have a role and entire forests of text about player agency good railroading bad etc while the gm without a group has a Job rather than role. You could link the erosion of barriers in rest/recovery and removal of magic item churn as a need into a couple in various ways to give a removal of authority for the player group too.

TL;DR: Stanford prison experiment is more about groups set above other groups, players have and benefit from a group in ways that only need a group member to stand up with conviction and authority or charisma while slinging an us vrs that guy cause.

I wasn't the one to bring up milgram originally when I corrected it's relevance to d&d table dynamics between a like GM and group of players . I've attempted in two posts to guide you back at the original post 148 point you ignored.

 

[Remathilis]

If you can find a DM who's okay with that then go ahead.

Nobody's stopping you from making houserules.

Right. Make house rules that allow you strip clerics of their class if they swear on Sunday. The core books don't need such things.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So the claims a lot of people make--how just being in a situation with authority figures telling you what to do suddenly destroys all sense of moral duty or the like in any subordinate person--is completely incorrect. Almost all of the 40 test subjects complained. Almost all of them had to reach at least the third prompt ("It is absolutely essential that you continue"), and most were explicitly and specifically told that the actions they were taking would not cause permanent harm to the "Learner".

And that was true! I think most people who kept pushing the button did so under assumption that it would not be legal to arrange an experiment in which real harm was caused, even if it might appear otherwise. And they were correct!

No why one would bring this experiment up in discussion about table dynamics in an RPG, I do not know. The situations are so far apart that any comparison would be absurd.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I also think that the patron should have a lot of leverage in the narrative. Where we probably disagree is that I don’t think that a GM’s judgment call is necessary to implement that leverage.

In absence of concrete rules, it has to be judgement of a participant, and to Czege Principle* would suggest it should not be the player. So it has to be the GM.

* It isn't fun for a single player to control both a character's adversity and the resolution of that adversity.

Now, for the OP, since it was the player’s specific request to implement such a relationship, of course the GM should implement it.

Right. But the thing I feel a lot of people here who argue against GM authority, it that this is not GM vs. Players issue, it is that a lot of players want the GM to be able to assign such consequences. And I find it a bit weird so many people react to this so negatively. Like I am not saying that in your game you must do this, in my current game where I combined warlock and sorcerer classes the resulting class is not dependent on the patron for their powers. But the the basic idea that such thing could happen is perfectly fine. The GM assigns all sort of consequences for the player actions all the time, and these might even result a character getting killed. The game's core playloop basically is this. So I don't get why this one type of consequence would be beyond the pale.

Now I totally get that a character getting permanently depowered in long campaign probably is not ideal, but I don't think people are envisioning that. For example Paladin that switches to Oathbreaker is not actually depowered, just changed. And warlock I could envision working so that the acquired powers are kept, but new warlock levels require the patron to keep granting new powers so that they could use this as a leverage, but if the character did not wish to obey the patron they could find a new patron or multiclass into another class. A cleric who forsook their god could find another that better suits their values etc. This is not about the GM punishing the player, this is about interesting consequences altering the trajectory of the character growth.

 

[TwoSix]

Now I totally get that a character getting permanently depowered in long campaign probably is not ideal, but I don't think people are envisioning that. For example Paladin that switches to Oathbreaker is not actually depowered, just changed. And warlock I could envision working so that the acquired powers are kept, but new warlock levels require the patron to keep granting new powers so that they could use this as a leverage, but if the character did not wish to obey the patron they could find a new patron or multiclass into another class. A cleric who forsook their god could find another that better suits their values etc. This is not about the GM punishing the player, this is about interesting consequences altering the trajectory of the character growth.

It's not really the transformation that's problematic. It isn't even really about invoking a consequence. It's more about the idea that the GM is evaluating your play, finding it lacking, and then administering punishment.

It's deep in the DNA of the game, with paladins getting forced back into fighter, or behaviors being judged for alignment change that then gives an XP penalty, or even not awarding XP to a dual-class character who uses abilities from their starting class. That framework of judgment is still common in the mindsets of players of the earlier generations (myself included), and is where the primary pushback comes from.

A secondary concern is that for games in a neotrad framework, like 5e is typically played, character concept and visualization is a primary play goal. Having that visualization disrupted by an undesired consequence (like a conversion to Oathbreaker) can violate those play goals. Personally, I like leaving my characters open to change through play, even drastic transformations (that's one of the parts of OSR play I enjoy), but there's a large swathe of players, the ones who drop $50 on a HeroForge mini or work on detailed backstories, who absolutely do not want something that grossly interrupts their character's assumed arc.

(Yes, the obvious rejoinder is that players shouldn't assume their characters will progress as they hope, but if we can have plenty of groups who run adventure paths from start to finish, we can have players that assume their characters will get to experience that entire adventure arc.)

 

[Bae'zel]

I'm curious who says that worldbuilding belongs exclusively to the players? Because I have literally never seen anyone say that the GM is not allowed to worldbuild or introduce NPCs with backgrounds they have created.

I'd therefore be very curious to read any of these threads you cite. I can think of plenty of people, myself included, who say that worldbuilding is better when shared but that is nowhere near as extreme as what you claim one side says.

This thread has LOTS. D&D General - The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

This too: D&D General - Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

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

A few particular posters were vehemently on the side of "the GM shouldn't limit player choice on character concept and/or should not be restrictive in their world building" with some nice doses of negative insinuations about them being control freaks or even worse. I was there.

 

[TwoSix]

This thread has LOTS. D&D General - The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

This too: D&D General - Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

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

A few particular posters were vehemently on the side of "the GM shouldn't limit player choice on character concept and/or should not be restrictive in their world building" with some nice doses of negative insinuations about them being control freaks or even worse. I was there.

As one of the vehement posters, I would point out that "GM shouldn't limit player choice" and "worldbuilding belongs exclusively to the players" has a large, large amount of space between those two positions.

Racial and class choices are a very small part of worldbuilding.

 

[Scribe]

But ... you do realise that in a polytheistic theology god's aren't omnipotent? And that what you are asking for doesn't happen with a real world monotheistic god?

Holy christ dude.

God's in D&D? Real.
God's in D&D? Cosmic, Plane shaping, power.

God's in reality? Maybe not real.
God's in reality? Maybe no power.

I have no clue why you keep trying to appeal to the real world here, it's nonsensical.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This thread has LOTS. D&D General - The Monsters Know What They're Doing ... Are Unsure on 5e24

This too: D&D General - Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

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

A few particular posters were vehemently on the side of "the GM shouldn't limit player choice on character concept and/or should not be restrictive in their world building" with some nice doses of negative insinuations about them being control freaks or even worse. I was there.

And I was there too. Literally no one was saying that the GM can do no worldbuilding and that the worldbuilding belongs exclusively to the players - in order to do that the GM would have to run every single NPC past all the players for approval before introducing them into the session the way many GMs vet the player characters. That would be absurd and not one single person was arguing for that.

The two camps are that worldbuilding is exclusively the province of the GM and that worldbuilding is a shared creative activity for the shared creative game that everyone is a part of. And that the players should be encouraged to have a say in the setup because the GM will inherently always have the greatest share.

Presenting these camps as mirrors of each other is an extreme misrepresentation and only underscores just how you fail to understand the other side.