D&D General What Happens if a Cleric/Warlock/etc PC Gravely Offends Their Supernatural Patron?

[Li Shenron]

This is a somewhat biased poll, because it includes only negative consequences.

By default, nothing happens.

As per the PHB, the details of a warlock-patron relationship needs to be worked out case by case and are entirely up to the players and their DM. "Work with your DM" and not "work against your DM" and neither "work against your player". I would follow the rule of cool, bring up some negative consequences if we all agree they will be fun, and otherwise not if we all agree it would be better.

 

[CleverNickName]

One of my biggest pet peeves about D&D (not just 5E) is how generic everything is. If the game doesn't make the gods or patrons matter then why will players care about them? Why even put them in the game?

I think I prefer that, because then it's up to the players and the DM to decide how much the gods and patrons matter. Some players really eat this stuff up, using their characters' faith and devotion to flesh out their backstory, filter their actions...it's a lens through which they see and interpret the game world.

And some players just want to handwave all that stuff and get to the Kewl Toyz for their characters.

The only time I've seen problems arise is when one person wants something that someone else at the table doesn't. DMs are the worst here, because they have the ability to force the issue with rules and game mechanics.

 

[Jer]

One of my biggest pet peeves about D&D (not just 5E) is how generic everything is. If the game doesn't make the gods or patrons matter then why will players care about them? Why even put them in the game?

It's up to players and DMs to make them matter. Ultimately they're roleplaying and story elements, not mechanical ones.

There's nothing about clerics and warlocks having patrons that is unbalanced mechanically if they ignore their patrons, it's all pure story and roleplay. Just like if you have a fighter whose background is that he's on official assignment for the King there's nothing unbalanced mechanically if he ignores that assignment and goes off dungeoncrawling - it's a story element not a mechanical one.

 

[Greg K]

I would not allow Fiendish Patrons for PCs, because I run the deals for Warlocks as seen in 70s occult films, Kolchak the Night Stalker, and specific episodes of Supernatural where the patron outright kill the offender or irrevocabily turn them into an animal with animal sentience and no memory of their human life
If I allowed Celestial patrons, it could vary depending on the patron from "trickster' angel Michael try to get the Winchesters in Supernatural to play their roles or the patron resorting to sadism, sending leser celestial to hunt the offender, or the patron committing murder (angels being d**** as in Supernatural or Gabriel in The Prophecy movie series).

 

[Scribe]

This is a somewhat biased poll, because it includes only negative consequences.

By default, nothing happens.

I assumed this was understood as an underlying assumption.

So the question is what we feel should happen.

If there is no meaningful consequence for this, then the lore, flavour, and mechanism are out of sync.

There are few greater sins, to me.

 

[Umbran]

I'd take this on a case-by-case basis, and don't have a specific approach that covers all, or even most, cases.

However, I note that Geas is a thing....

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I added that option to the results if anyone cares to change their vote.

What if we want to change other people's votes to the correct answer?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So, this, I feel is very setting dependent thing. In my current setting the metaphysics of warlocks is that they're permanently altered and imbued with power. So that cannot really be taken away. Divine casters however explicitly are intermediaries, they channel the power of gods and spirits, and theoretically the source can shut down this this power at any moment if they so choose. However, this is not some old school gotcha game, these divinities are nebulous and distant and unlikely to actually do this. The player chooses at the character creation what sort of priest they want to play, and as long as they roughly stick to that in good faith, their powers will work just fine. And were they somehow significantly straying, the god would probably first send them visions/omens etc. In practice I can really imagine an actual power shut down coming up only in a player initiated storyline for justifying changing the character's patron deity.

 

[delericho]

IMC:

The gods in my setting are unknowable - indeed, it's not absolutely certain that they even exist (except that only those specific gods grant spells, so...). The consequence of this is that Clerics suffer no direct effect on their powers. They are, however, likely to be considered heretics by the church authorities. But then, most PC Clerics have a good chance of falling into that bracket anyway.

Warlocks may have a pact in place, but they don't have that sort of a direct relationship with their Patron. So, again, there are no direct effects. The Patron is very likely to send other agents to exact an appropriate revenge, of course... and failing that, they will extract their price after death.

Paladin oaths are slightly different - I ask Paladin players to come up with five specific points that make up the oath (I'll never touch blood; I'll never cut my hair; I'll never drink alcohol...). Breaking individual parts of this doesn't have any effect unless and until the Paladin breaks the fifth, at which point they either lose their powers temporarily until they atone, or they switch to being an Oathbreaker Paladin - either is fine. (Paladin's aren't allowed to atone for individual infractions until they've gone through the full cycle.)

 

[Amrûnril]

For me, the default answer is that nothing happens, though I'd be happy to explore any of the other possibilities, depending on out of game conversations and on what fits with the relationships established in character's backgrounds (and that applies to any class, not just Clerics, Warlocks and Paladins).

Partly, this is a matter of player agency. The player of a religious character probably understands that character's relationship with the divine better than I do, and that's something I should respect as DM. More broadly, I don't like the idea that any specific class needs to have a specific type of backstory or be roleplayed in a particular way. The class flavor descriptions in the PHB are great suggestions, but to me they're only suggestions, and trying to make them more than that does more to homogenize characters within classes than to differentiate them between classes.