Marketing Campaign
Today’s blog takes the form of a needlessly confrontational Socratic dialogue. For the sake of scene setting, let us assume that our drama unfolds in your high school cafeteria. Ahem:
You: “This is bullshit! I shouldn’t have to please my Patron just to earn my warlock powers! Jeremy Crawford said so!”
Me: “Ah, then Jeremy Crawford is your GM?”
You: “No. Obviously not.”
Me: “Perhaps Matt Mercer is your GM? After all, he famously threated to disempower rebellious warlocks.”
You: “Pffft. Hell no. Mercer doesn’t get to decide what goes at my table.”
Me: “Who does get to decide what goes on at your table?”
You: “Me and my GM.”
Me: “We come to the heart of the matter, then! Tell me now: Who is it that decided you would need to please your patron in order to earn your warlock powers?”
You: “My GM. But he’s playing wrong!”
Me: “I thought that your GM got to decide ‘what goes on at your table.'”
You: “He should take my feelings into account! After all, it is my character.”
Me: “Well said. It is a cooperative game, and your feelings ought to matter. Can we then assume you feel that you should get all the benefits of your patron’s blessings without paying any price for them?”
You: “I just want to play my class! Why can’t I enjoy my mechanics without having to jump through a bunch of arbitrary roleplaying hoops?”
Me: “That does sound irritating. But then again, doesn’t a paladin have to ‘jump through arbitrary roleplaying hoops’ to keep their powers?”
You: “Yes, of course. But there are rules for paladin oaths and codes and shit. Warlock doesn’t have to deal with any of that!”
Me: “Indeed not. Unless of course your GM has a role in deciding ‘what goes on at your table’ beyond the written rules.
You: “Then he should have explained that I can lose my powers at character gen!”
Me: “Must your GM warn you of all possible perils up front?”
You: “Well no. But this has a major impact on my character’s lore and backstory.”
Me: “What is your character’s backstory?”
You: “He’s an orphan with memory loss who woke up with mysterious powers one day.”
Me: “I can see you’ve put a great deal of time and effort into your backstory.”
You: “Thank you.”
Me: “But haven’t you’ve ceded some modicum of narrative authority to your GM? You have chosen to include ‘mysterious powers’ in your personal history. Surely the role of mystery solver then falls to your GM?”
You: “I suppose that makes sense.”
Me: “What then is wrong with defining the warlock/patron role as one of power for service?”
You: “I don’t like it!”
Me: “Have you expressed this dislike to your GM?”
You: “Certainly not! I called him a butt and then showed up here to complain.”
Me: “Is it not you who are the butt?”
You: “I am logically compelled to agree.”
And scene. We can assume our drama ends with everybody in the cafeteria slow clapping for me. Meanwhile your pants fall down as you run out of the school in tears. (I did warn you that this would be needlessly confrontational.)
As for today’s discussion, let’s figure out exactly what the limits of power are in a “GM stole my powers” scenario. When is it a cool RP moment to coerce a PC? When is it a blatant abuse of GM power? And how do you tell the difference? Let’s hear all about your own patron/warlock relationships (along with alternatives to the baseline power for service narrative) down in the comments!
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The last time I played in table with warlock we had two of them, the first had acolyte background and was trying to make a religion out of his Fey patron and collected trophies out of defeated foes… and no he didn’t always wait they were dead. The second had bloodline, Thiefling and more or less played it as rich uncle spoiling their niece kinda way. Our GM had no issue with either take and neither tried to cheese it.
The first time I GM’d for a Warlock I just ended up treating it like alternative Cleric. Give praise and service to your lord and it in turns empowers you.
> I just ended up treating it like alternative Cleric. Give praise and service to your lord and it in turns empowers you.
I think this is a common approach. But it also raises the question of what happens when a cleric disparages their own deity or actively works against them.
Personally I’d like to uphold Clerics to similar standard as Paladins, but with Deitys doimain over alingment, like Cleric of God of Knowledge burning library, or God of Laws decides that inciting people to riot/revolt is precicely what the word Lawfull means. Also Druids if they ever are happily playing Lumberjack with out very good explanation.
Yeah I’m not big fan of casters, if it was up to me normal magic would be straight from warhammer and divine ones require almost slavish obidience to doctrine. Maybe better for all that I’m no game designer
There can be Lawful reasons to riot or revolt. Understanding the differences between law-obedience, Lawfulness, and legitimacy are precisely what a Cleric of Law should understand.
For example (it’s a bit caricatural for the sake of brevity), let’s suppose a usurper to the throne, having heard a prophecy that a group of people that would form in a tavern would depose him and restore the rightful ruler, has decided to outlaw all taverns everywhere. Certainly, not adventuring cleric would ever consider such a law to be in compliance with divine Law. Therefore, law-obedience (lower-case law) is not Lawful (upper-case Law) in this case.
Yeah, I was bit too black and white with the examples, but Law works in case by case basis, but at least in here Finland my point would stand, inciting to riot would have zero justification. In ages past when we didn’t have means to change laws, maybe then. But lets think of revolts few hundred years ago we had “Club rebellion” in which pesantry rose in arms against the then king for being bit oppressive and also there was bit of fighting over who was the rightfull king at the time too, on the other hand we have the civil war from last century and one of it’s names in “Red rebellion” the reds rose in armed rebellion because they didn’t like the direction goverment was taking and would have much rather us to be in union with soviet russia.
Are you suggesting it is God’s will we go down the pub and have a few?
lawful only means you follow a strict code. No one ever said it was the legal code
Man, Paladin must have fallen really low if he’s had to replace his halo with a wooden plank.
At least he seems interested in Warlocks weird sex cul-I mean, his cool archfey club.
When you’re at the bottom of your character arc, you’ll take whatever help is offered.
…
Or nail a board to your head.
You fool(s), you’ve introduced a cool-looking Tiefling. You are now obligated to either bardify them or make them a new PC character.
I am always vaguely creepified by Laurel’s skin-colored horns. It would be REALLY uncomfortable to bump anything. And imagine using those things for a gore attack! it would be like Wolverine’s claw wounds sans healing factor.
I’d assume it’s less of a gore and more of a bludgeon… like a giraffe.
Maybe they’re tremorsense appendages?
Huh. Ossicones. Neat!
I now want to see a long-necked tan and yellow tiefling.
Girrafling?
Any Socratic dialogue that concludes with “Is it not you who are the butt?” is quality philosophy.
I do make sure that my players understand the risks inherent in a class during character generation. Though they generally favor classes with few inherent risks anyway, which is honestly kind of a shame. I mostly run Pathfinder 1E, but I’ve never gotten a chance to have some fun storytelling beats with witch patrons.
I had a horror campaign where the Witch’s patron was the main threat.
Fortunately(?) the patron wasn’t hostile so much as an inherently dangerous alien eldritch being from another dimension, so the PCs didn’t directly fight it, and I’m not sure if it would have understood what was going on enough to strip the Witch’s magic away anyways. It mostly came up in that a lot of the somewhat-intelligent extradimensional creatures that the PCs ran into recognized the patron’s power in the Witch and respected it, which led to the Witch forming a menagerie of weird alien pets rather than just fighting them.
…Also, technically all of the PCs were dream-beings brought into existence by an unintentional use of the patron’s power (long story), so there’s that.
“Empowered by wholly alien entity” makes good sense to me. I quite like the idea that it’s too foreign to have a personal connection with the PC, much less single them out for special treatment. Seems especially appropriate with Mythos themed beasties.
I think my favorite piece of warlock propaganda involves magical girls https://askmerriauthor.tumblr.com/post/180092336328/
Another concept I have on the back burner is a tiefling that’s a child of a mortal and an erinyes. She’s also their fiend patron. “No, mom, I still haven’t found anyone to settle down with. Yes, I know you want grandkids. Look, can I just get my spell slots, please?”
I don’t know how many magical girls are warlocks, but PMMM’s definitely are.
What do those cute little mascots want anyway? What’s their motivation? What fell powers do they serve?
In many series, they’re just cats, with basically the same drives as any cat.
In my book, that makes them even less trustworthy.
If you read the lore-blurbs that everyone but turbo-nerds like me ignore, you’ll see that Warlocks are not in fact “Clerics to middle-management”, nor are they “Artificial/first generation Sorcerers”, but rather they’re “Wizards with a weird teacher”. This is because they were planned to be Int-based but were switched at the last minute in the laziest most search/replace fashion possible. (And they’re easy to switch back, plus switching them back works great when I’ve played with it.) If you piss off your teacher they won’t teach you more (No subsequent levels) but in general they can’t revoke what you know. Also Mercer is a hack, don’t cite him as an example.
Point 1: Do you have a source for that?
Point 2: What do ability scores have to do with flavor?
i can see it now:
in the great beyond..Paladin’s former patron & Warlock’s Patron meet up at the doss of the former Patron of AP to share with each other how disappointed they are in their minions…of course the current resident of said Patron’s Body will have to talk her way out of getting found out…
and should she roll a critical the whole balance of heaven and hell will tumble right down to the ‘slow mice and cream realm’…
fade out
fade in
-the realm of slow mice-
*Archfey while holding a mice in each hand*:
“so..why are we doing this again?…i know it has something with showing our minions how it’s done ..but..”
I mean… What? Pffft. Naw dawg. I’m certainly not setting up anything like this as a plot point.
>_>
I was just thinking that if she has the gall to pull one Deity level being by the hair, two more won’t be much different…
Hoo boy, that is ehm.
That would be too much for me, both as a player and a DM.
I understand that it’s some sort of collective impromptu theatre play we’re conducting here, but were I to pull something like this, I’d sincerely doubt that I’d ever get to see a player choose to run a warlock at my table again.
Something like “I’m throwing a low-magic, humans-only campaign” sounds acceptable. Something in the vein of “Ah cool, you made your warlock character, I’ve decided that you need to have this NPC shackled to you” does not.
I think the delineation is pretty clear in this specific example of yours. “Y” wanted to play a warlock without being compelled to add unwanted NPCs to their backstory, and honestly that’s a refreshing breath of air. I never saw someone deciding to play a patronless warlock and there are tons of narrative possibilities to inject here (warlock powers due to: “unholy experimental psychic surgery by mind flayers”; “possession by living spells from the Mournland”; “dynastic curse upon all descendants of a traitorous archmage”)
I agree that a patronless warlock can work. So can a godless cleric. At that point, it’s down to the player to work with a GM to develop this new flavor of PC. That is why if, “Y wanted to play a warlock without being compelled to add unwanted NPCs to their backstory,” they should have said so up front. Note that they ‘work up with mysterious powers,’ in this example. That’s a plot hook for a GM to develop a Patron they see fit.
If the player in the OP were at my table, I’d work with them to craft a unique power source for their warlock. However, I’d be annoyed that they felt compelled to seek counsel from Socrates before talking to me.
When it comes to reducing or removing powers, I tend to look at the RP or the story. That being said, I’ve seen relatively few “religious” characters at my table that didn’t go hard into the RP. The one Warlock I had multi-classed into it and had a dream of the Great Old One. They had no clue why the Old One was teaching them and were frankly terrified but it gave no instructions on how to serve it.
I remember one story I read years ago… lets see if I can find it… oh here it is – https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tolerance
In that scenario, I would have probably taken away the paladin’s powers as soon as they killed the first of the phase spiders, if only for a day. And I would not have seen it as an abuse of my power. Perhaps I would have been wrong, but I would have seen it as a chance to save the other spider, a wake up call. Their RP took them to that place and the story would be enhanced by it.
So with that said, I think the cut off is… well, player action. Take away a caster’s magic and they need to have something else to do and that can hurt if they don’t know it’s coming. Give warnings, make it clear what the patron/teacher wants, get them worried about it, highlight some danger, outright remove it if they keep going and weave story into why.
The psychology of these moments is strange. Some players tend to look at this sort of moment as “punishing” a player rather than offering an RP opportunity. Some GMs get annoyed with players for “playing wrong” and seek to shut ’em down. Neither one is great. But I’d hope to cultivate an atmosphere at the table where everyone assumes the other fellow is acting in good faith.
How did you illustrate my warlock character so accurately, chick tracts and everything!?
You haven’t made you check to notice the scrying sensor yet.
This is a flawed argument from the basis of the premise:
The point of the paladin Oaths is that there is a specific key to the power involved in the oaths. The rules state that not following the oaths results in those powers being lost. Losing Paladin Powers is a built in MECHANIC.
Warlocks do not have these mechanical rules. More importantly, the stories from which the class tropes are drawn from often involve deals with otherworldly entities with dark intentions, in which frequently the warlock in question uses the powers they’ve gained in order to not only disobey, but foil the very patron they gained their powers from. To not allow room for these routes is to ignore the very platform from which these elements are drawn from. It would be just as bad as allowing a paladin to break their oaths and have no consequences.
So it’s perfectly fine to say that there are CONSEQUENCES when a warlock disobeys their patron, but RAI (and RAW) those should NOT be MECHANICAL, they should be ROLEPLAY consequences.
A patron can be upset with their warlock, but that should not simply flick a switch that disables access to class features that are built into their character. The consequences need to show up as either story or flavor elements alone.
Warlock doesn’t follow through on a devil’s deal? That devil still needs to come collect, which makes room for the player to kill or attempt to trap and re-negotiate the contract.
Piss off your sugardaddy arch-fey? They’ll lead extra enemies your way and play pranks to keep things “entertaining.”
Going against the interests of your Great Old One? Your nightmares are plagued by monsters that you have to fight alone or you take exhaustion after your long rest. Ideally there are still perks or winning too, such as those dream battles acting as a training arena for upcoming boss encounters.
The point of DMing is to tell a cool story. If you’re just punishing a player by taking away their ability to play, because they didn’t meet your demands, (which often involves overriding their ability to play their character the way THEY want) then that’s not fun or cool for anyone.
So the “logical argument” collapses; the DM in question IS being a butt.
I find myself largely in agreement.
I think there’s room for a discussion for it if your GM wants to propose the idea of a relationship of a kind where the Patron *can* take away/limit some powers, but that absolutely should be a discussion and they’re certainly still being a butt if you say no. And honestly I can’t see a reason to say yes when there’s so many more interesting/less game breaking/more fun “no” alternatives.
Also this is just kind of punishing you for not choosing a class the GM doesn’t feel the “need” to mess with like this. (Imagine if a GM tried to apply this behavior to every class/archetype/prestige class/whatever they possibly could and imagine how aggravated everyone at the table, especially when they compare their situation to the classes the GM can’t come up with an excuse to do so for. In my case I don’t have to imagine this at all, I’ve seen GMs try this and nobody had a good time and the games fell apart very quickly.)
Why is “you have nightmares that cause exhaustion” more acceptable than “you lose access to your powers?” They both read as mechanical and roleplay opportunities to me.
…is the Paladin going to swear the Oath of the Ancients? We have a yuan-ti rebel who is a Paladin following that Oath and it’s pretty darn good.
What’s the big mechanical power-up for your yuan-ti pally?
I think that the thing here is prior communication – what does ‘warlock’ mean in this setting? For that matter, what does ‘cleric’ mean? What are they beholden to and what is expected? These should be hashed out before you play, so the player and the GM are both on the same page. If I’ve agreed with my GM that my powers are reliant on my patron’s continued goodwill, then I can’t be surprised if I work against my patron and lose them. On the other hand, the GM has a responsibility to flag that I might be pissing the patron off. It’s also the GMs responsibility to leverage that relationship in a way that doesn’t clash with the rest of the campaign.
If you suddenly declare halfway through the campaign that a character class works a certain way that isn’t explicitly set out either in the rulebook or your house rules, you run the serious risk of making a character not only unplayable but nonsensical. I played a Pathfinder Summoner who was basically a diablerist – she summoned and dealt exclusively with Devils. It was an evil campaign and she fit right in. The GM and I decided the basics of a contract between her and her eidolon-devil, with the understand of neither of us taking the piss OC. Halfway through the game, GM decides it’ll be cool if the contract meant the devil got possession of the summoner’s soul. Which was something that certainly hadn’t been discussed, and if it was true, was something my character should certainly have known. We had a bit of a debate about it, and they eventually agreed they couldn’t just add shit in like that without asking me, but it did kinda derail the conversation, as what the summoner was and wasn’t willing to agree to had been relatively well established at that point, and giving up her soul would have been very out of character.
> What are they beholden to and what is expected? These should be hashed out before you play, so the player and the GM are both on the same page.
It’s easy to say “this should have been discussed in session zero.” In practice, however, I find that these relationships emerge through play. We’re talking signs and portents. Visionary dreams. A momentary loss of powers in one encounter after going against the wishes of your eldritch overlord. That likely happens over the course of several sessions, and should include between-games discussions between player and GM.
In the case of your diabolist, a “The Santa Clause” style fine-print clause in the contract could (in theory) be an interesting plot point. I don’t know how explicit the contracts you guys worked out could be. But in a perfect world, you trust your GM to make an interesting RP hook that isn’t designed to ruin your fun. By the same token, if this central relationship is something that *has* been well-established, floating the new twist to the player beforehand may be good policy.
It sounds to me like this got sprung on you in-game, your “nuh-uh” reflexes were activated, and misaligned expectations derailed the session.
I feel that this is a hard topic to broach, since by default someone had to cross a line, whether it be player or DM. Either the former’s action would logically result in the patron shunning the character, in which case the player is at fault, or the action was not enough, in which case the DM overreached. Not helping is that the penalty is incredibly steep- the player character is mechanically non-functional now, with either a Paladin being rendered a Fighter without bonus feats or class features, or the Warlock just a commoner with fancier gear.
It also does not help that this is VERY table-variant. Some DMs won’t touch on the patron or their origin. Some DMs love that lore and work to include it in order to both breathe more life to the setting and tie the player and their actions into it further. Paladins at least have a strict definition for their dos and don’ts, but warlock patrons tend to be cagey in their machinations and motives, so what might seem encouraged to some will be blatantly against their modus operandi to others.
I do feel that this is the point DMs should invoke the dreaded “Are you *sure*?” before dropping a hammer. The game is somewhat at fault for making it so binary in its existing examples of mechanical implementation- there’s no middle step between “you’re a Paladin” and “you’re an npc”. Doing something questionable should have consequences, but not to the point a player will be twiddling their thumbs for a few sessions until they are back in good graces or better off jumping on their sword and rolling up a new character.
Obviously this excludes extreme cases. Guy wants to play a Paladin and immediately robs the party with intent to gear up for the mass orphanage burning? He can kiss those class levels goodbye. Warlock with an infernal patron failing to flip off an orphan as they pass on the street is not so much justification. If it’s a pattern of behavior, warn them that they can feel their connection waning/their patron’s displeasure. If it’s a sudden 180 turn in alignment, that’s the point they can deal with consequences they brought on themselves.
> The game is somewhat at fault for making it so binary in its existing examples of mechanical implementation- there’s no middle step between “you’re a Paladin” and “you’re an npc”
See my experiences with this issue back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tolerance
I did try to add a “you lose only some of your powers temporarily” middle ground. But the real issue is that players may feel like “I did nothing wrong and now you’re punishing me.” When in my GM-head I’m thinking, “This should be an interesting bit of RP to work through.”
I do think that the ideal is a “slow burn” with an established pattern of behavior. The much harder case is when a clearly-questionable act comes up out of the blue. At that point a sort of “this was my first offense!” reaction comes up, and players feel blindsided.
You: “Then he should have explained that I can lose my powers at character gen!”
Me: “Must your GM warn you of all possible perils up front?”
All perils? No, but all perils that should be a part of “Sign On The Dotted Line”? Yes. The GM should have warned the Player of that clause.
But other than this quibble, yeah, the Player is one of “Those Guys”, but man, did you pile up the straw to set this argument up… or was this a “drawn straight from the campaign of” thinly disguised story? (I mean, I can imagine the Player, but not them ever agreeing that they were indeed the butt.)
> All perils? No, but all perils that should be a part of “Sign On The Dotted Line”? Yes. The GM should have warned the Player of that clause.
That’s the issue. The (purely hypothetical) player didn’t have a dotted line. They “woke up with mysterious powers,” and there was no convenient contract to fall back on. The player had effectively given the GM a blank narrative check.
Yes, that’s how Socratic dialogues tend to work. They frequently frame themselves as a fair and even exchange of ideas, but everyone writing one has a side they think is more right, which they generally want other people to also think is right.
Colin does make this more explicit than most authors of Socratic dialogues, though.
I’ma quote myself. Mostly on account of my enormous ego.
“I did warn you that this would be needlessly confrontational.”
😛
Me: But if i can offer a counter-argument: Bees.
You: Bees?
Me: Yeah, bees.
You: How is that a counter-argument to what i said?
Me *releases bees on the school cafeteria scaring and hurting everyone*
Me: BEES!!!! 😛
Based on a true story, probably, my lawyers won’t like to me admitting anything that may be used up in court 😀
DOCTOR BEES would approve this tactic
Oprah Winfrey too 😛
But not Nicholas Cage.
His opinion isn’t relevant once once he is offered as sacrifice 😀
The same issue seems relevant for clerics and paladins too, but it does seem more likely with warlocks since clerics and paladins can generally seek out a deity or oath that they can happily serve without feeling constrained. A character who makes a warlock’s pact is almost certainly accepting power from a source that has goals they do not share. It’s the supernatural equivalent of asking the Mob to do you a big favor.
If it’s expected to play any major role in the campaign the GM/DM should let the players know there’s a risk going in. Pathfinder 2nd Ed has the “Anathema” mechanic which is a great one to adopt into your house rules if you want to lay out clear rules.
One way to make sure it’s clear that it’s the patron NPC, and not the GM/DM, that’s being heavy-handed would be for another entity to reach out to the player offering to become their patron instead (complications, but fun complications, are very likely to ensue).
> complications, but fun complications
I think that’s the real problem. How does a GM go about establishing a “fun complications” mindset rather than a “you’re punishing my character” mindset? As you suggest, presenting it as a choice seems like a solid first step to player buy-in.
I feel that the DM should have a degree of control over such things: after all, the DM is playing the rest of the world, so the actions of gods and fiends are the DM’s remit. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me that one could make a Faustian pact and then have any kind of control over how that works. Sir Terry said it best: if there is power in demonology, it lies with the demons.
On the other hand, I also think it falls on the DM to use that power responsibly, by which I mean in the aid of fun for the group. If the warlock’s patron is going to get demanding, the players should be able to leverage that into quests, adventure, and ultimately XP and rewards.
As for taking powers away if the character misbehaves: yes. Some classes have that as a feature, typically in exchange for power they would not otherwise have. Again: a Faustian bargain is not free, just like a Paladin’s oath. If warlocks want free power, they should have been a different class. But I do think it’s a good idea to discuss ideas along these lines with the player, just as with a Paladin’s fall. Working with them to iron out how things could work out means you get a player on board and a player who is already looking for the quest hooks, thinking about how to turn a setback into drama, and so on.
None of that should mean the warlock cannot subvert instructions or intent. Harry Dresden is a great example of how the warlock can rebel, especially as the example includes the rebellion, the Fun plot that ensues, and costs of doing so.
> Again: a Faustian bargain is not free, just like a Paladin’s oath.
The problem is that the terms of the bargain are not spelled out. And if the player assumes “this isn’t going to be an issue” while the GM assumes “this will be a major story hook,” misaligned expectations and hurt feelings may result. As in so many scenarios with this hobby, communication is key.
Still, I think it pays to point out this particular interaction as a case where friction can come up. While I like the open-ended plot hooks in the concept of a patron, that mess does have a very real downside.
the warlock pact can be a variable story element simply because it is just that, a pact, its rules will very from contract to contract, some warlocks may be simply gifted power that they can cultivate threw training and can not be taken away(which seems to be the default assumption for warlocks) but obviously if its in the contract that the patron can stop your progress or take the power back they can
> if its in the contract that the patron can stop your progress or take the power back they can
Sure. But the issue comes in when the “contract” is a theoretical fiction rather than a written document. If a GM tries to post-hoc the terms, the player may get huffy. And while I think it’s unreasonable to expect the terms of the contract to be spelled out before the campaign even starts, I do think that running your thought process by a player as it comes up is good policy.
“Hey, we’re coming up on your story arc lately. I was thinking about introducing you patron. They may try to strong-arm you into doing a few quests. What do you imagine that relationship looking like?”
After all, this is an NPC that can define a character. Getting a bit of buy-in seems important.
This seems relevant:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndmemes/comments/i6xojz/insert_joke_about_warlocks/
My take is that being in disfavor with your deity as a Cleric vs. being in disfavor with your patron as a Warlock is the difference between debt to the bank and debt to the mafia. In the former case, your money access can be taken away until you can set up a plan by which you can repay your debts. In the latter, there’s no legal threat of your bank account being frozen – but the enforcers can and will break your legs for not being able to pay.
I strongly disagree with the notion to treat a Warlock pact as just a slightly recolored version of a Cleric’s piety.