Patronizing
Those of you who have dared to peek behind the curtain at our Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic should already be familiar with this strapping half-elf. We introduced Warlock way back in HoEF #4, and he’s been a Patreon exclusive ever since. Happily, our kind-hearted Quest Givers just voted to share the love, marking today as Warlock’s debut on the main site. So welcome to the comic, big guy! May all your blades boom and all your blasts be eldritch.
Any dang way, now that we’ve got the introductions out of the way, why don’t we talk about the choice that confronts all who would wield blade, book, or incorrigible shoulder demon? When you decide to become a warlock, the first order of business is striking a bargain with an otherworldly being. If we’re just talking Core Rulebook, your options include eldritch abomination from beyond time and space, the literal incarnation of evil, and ridiculously hot fey chick. Not much of a choice if you ask me. But then again, I’m exactly the sort of unwitting fool to fall for a pretty face.
If you’ve read your Dresden Files, seen Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, or come anywhere close to a Changeling game, you know how dangerous a Fey Queen can be. The promise of otherworldly delight always comes with strings attached. And in that way, the “good guy” choice of Archfey isn’t so far from the Faustian contract that undergirds the Fiend or the temptation of forbidden knowledge embodied by the Old One. Whichever way you choose, you’re getting more than you bargained for. And for me, that is the central premise of playing a warlock. You wanted something. You bargained for it. Now you’re paying off the interest.
And so, for today’s discussion question, let’s talk about the fine print on the contract. The terrible price of those mythos secrets. The cost of crossing into faerie. When you’ve got a PC in hock to a big bad from the Nevernever, how do you turn the screws? What favors does your boss expect? And just as important, how do you make sure that’s an interesting story hook rather than a “punishment” for daring to play a class with built-in baggage? Tell us your tale of bargains struck and tolls exacted down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I’m usually the one playing the warlock myself – it’s my favourite class, in part for the reasons you describe. I love the endless possibilites of patron/warlock dynamics. I also love that it lends itself towards being an average joe making his own luck, rather than being born to some significant destiny like the sorcerer. Oh, an it helps that it suits me mechanically, too! I much prefer having a few exciting tricks, half of them permanently engaged, rather than a massive armoury of spells and abilities to choose from each action. I’ll happily play under any warlock patron (except the hexblade, which I hate with a passion), and I like to try less standard approaches to them.
But, regarding this comic’s question, as much as I enjoy punishing players for crossing the fey, I’m a light touch when it comes to archfey patron warlocks. I really don’t want to punish the player, as you say! In my current game, there is one such – except she is also the distant descendent of her patron, so there is a remote and cold, but relevant, familial bond. To be sure, she’s had to go through hell to recover powers lost by her patron, and she’s soon to be roped in to settle an old personal grudge for her patron. Oh, and the old fey queen is pretty insistent that she start having children and proliferate the magic bloodline, but the warlock is not exactly reticent on that point – she’s collecting a harem of strapping young elfin men.
Why the hatred for hexblade? Is it overpowered, or is it just less interesting thematically?
Personally, the hexblade lore is simultaneously too vague and too restrictive. You get powers from magical weapons, but also serve a greater power, except you dont because it doesnt contact you directly? And its also the Raven Queen in Forgotten Realms except it might not be, and who even knows outside the Realms.
Its a great boon for an Arthas build from Warcraft though.
I guess it’s a bit odd to think of Elric of Melnibone using Stormbringer as a bridge to some other power rather than treating it as the important eldritch entity in and of itself.
Both, sort of. To be fair, my upset with the hexblade is in large part because it did everything that was sorely needed to make the “pact of the blade” work in a gameplay sense – but only if you chose that one patron that thematically seemed kinda irelevant. You’re right, stories are full of sentient weapons, but it seemed to me more the kind of thing a player could “write in” to the fluff of their blade-pact warlock, if they really wanted to. It is thematically blander than other pateons for sure.
On the whole the meat of the warlock class is not in the benefits it gets from its patron type – these are more thematic things with a lot of flavour and moderate utility. Except for the hexblade, where it really does make the blade pact warlock viable as a warrior. I would rather some essential elements of the hexblade archetype were made available to any blade pact warlock (as invocations, probly) – such as using the casting stat for weapon attacks.
Ulitmately, it is my frustration that wizards saw the flaw in the blade pact and (in my subjective opinion) botched the fix, which gives me an enduring hostility to the offending class option.
I couldn’t really see that happening.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/powerful-ego
<_<
Hm. If I ever GM and someone chooses the Archfiend or something similar, I want to do a plot twist where the supposed evil patron is actually super sweet and generous.
Sure. The kind and caring demon lord is just as interesting as the surprisingly wicked fairy queen. But I do think that an overly-involved, helicopter parent version of Asmodeus presents its own sort of problems.
“Do you have rope in your pack? Everyone always thinks they don’t have to bring rope because everyone else will have. And then no one will have any when you need it. I’m putting rope in your pack. What about your spells? Did you make sure to prepare them? Don’t forget to prepare a healing spell. Yes, I know you have a cleric in your party, but prepare a healing spell anyway.”
(Also, I just commissioned Laurel for one of my characters. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.)
Good timing! Inktober just ended, and I think she’s looking forward to getting back to commission work. 🙂
Been toying around with the idea of playing a warlock with Patron referred to as The Old Man (Undying?) That spends all his time looking through my eyes and giving “suggestions” aka sitting in his lazyboy and yelling at the tv
Monday-morning quarterback patron gives you advantage on rolls you have already made.
Except I can hear him in my head. Some of what he says could b like theumataurge mixing up edition rules
It’s all about the wording, and the percieved intent, of the contract. I once had an NPC knight bargain with the faeries for healty sons, so he got five strapping, strong lads. However, it turned out, as the PC’s found out during a sidequest in their main adventure, that all of them were sterile\infertile. See, he only asked for sons, not for more, so he got what he asked for…
Usually faery in Arthurian myth is known to be a realm that you should be weary in anyway. But quite a few people still want to make, and sometimes do make, deals. The ones for personal gain ussualy end bad, but the ones in which communities leave stuff for blessings on village and fields tend to hold for quite a while, as the faeries are tied to the land. Unless the new, firebrand, village piest bans all that stuff, with sometimes terrible consequences for the village.
Nice that Pendragon’s multi-generational nature makes these relationships a long term hook rather than a sudden betrayal. A young knight dealing with a priest who is set to undo his grandfather’s careful bargain is a great story.
what a dick move, I‘d argue that „beeing sterile“ = „not healthy“
having healthy sons, just not genetically his,
and/or genetically his sons distributed amongst affairs in the population,
is entirely within the premise, and leaves more room for role play/plot hook.
Ok. This might be a “lost in translation” thing. As English is not my first language, I wrote healthy, although it might have been better translated with strong. So within the wording of the contract, he got what he asked, but not what he wanted, namely, indeed, healthy offspring, to continue the family.
Generally for warlocks, I leave it up to the players how much of a role their patrons play. If they want to be a reluctant servant bound by the whims of the entity they’ve chosen (after all, pathos can be great fun), then I’ll play up the patron’s manipulation and cruelty. If they’d like a more supportive patron, I’ll gladly make it more of a friendly business partner, mentor or parental figure. If they don’t want the extra baggage, I can make that work – maybe it was a one-time price they’ve already paid, maybe their powers are stolen or otherwise unwittingly granted, or maybe they went the Liliana Vess route and killed their patron to get out of the contract. It’s their character, and they’re free to interpret their class as they wish.
This point can’t be overstated. When you’ve got a major backstory element like the Patron at stake, you don’t want to make a unilateral decision about the nature of that relationship.
That said, there is a sticking point for some GMs:
When you take a dip in Warlock for purely mechanical reasons, it can feel strange to glom onto the powers without playing with the backstory elements. Do you ever feel like players who “don’t want the extra baggage” are leaving story elements on the table?
Not really. Sure, they miss out on the potential those elements give, but the reasons for not having a patron can be as interesting as any patron would be. It’s only a problem if they don’t care enough to give a reason, and if they’re that uninterested in their own characters, you’ve likely got bigger concerns than just class flavour.
I feel that if a person switches class out of being a warlock, there’s a chance their patron will send someone up to have a “chat” with them… Either in a “why did you leave? Was it me? I can try harder”, or a “we don’t think the contract has run its course. We’ve invested a lot in you and we want our pound of flesh – figuratively speaking. Some time you will get a message asking you to perform some simple task for us. Until then, here’s an imp who will appear every morning to remind you. Sometimes he sings.”
Me and my group are cureently playing pathfinder 2e with the edgewatch module, and one of thr other players is playing a witch who was tricked into having his name stolen by a fey, and now has to do various tasks for it to get it back. We’ve just started so besides being forced to join the guard, a couple of minor tasks such as buying a specific book from a smuggler, and a couple of ones known only to him and the dm, there hasn’t been much with it yet besides the ever present and ever demanding crow familiar, but i can’t wait to see what more comes of it.
How is Edgewatch? I’m a big fan of Terry Pratchett, so this one definitely caught my eye.
Fun backstory with the stolen name. I’m doing something similar with an upcoming mesmerist. Dude has a backstory fey who stole his capacity for emotion. The game doesn’t start until the new year, but I’m looking forward to doing the creepy flat-affect PC.
I’ve been really liking it. Lots of godd social opprotunities, while also having a reasonable amount of combat, very flavorful setting and interesting missions so far. Besides being cops in a major fantasy city though i wouldnt say its that close to the night watch series admittedly, and some of the social stuff may have been from our dm since he likes to add that in. Also speaking of planning characters out well ahead of time, i’ve been planning out my current character concept, a adopted farmer cleric grandpa elf, who turns to adventure to help cope with having watched all his close family die of old age, them being humans, for over a year now, and I’m so happy to finally play it. Luckily its been going amazingly so far, which has been helped by the fact that this is the most social party I’ve ever played in, with even our normal murderhobo player being a character that, while more focused on combat then anyone else, is actually decent socially and is a legitametly good person with no real murderhoboey traits.
Refreshing to have non-murderhobo parties every once in a while. You’d think that would be a little more common.
One of my current characters is a hexblade warlock, where the relationship with a patron is less emphasized… but given that my character is part shadar-kai and the hexblade ‘patronage’ is associated with the Shadowfell, it’s maybe not too hard to figure out who he’s working for.
Does the sentient sword act like an NPC in your game, or is it mostly just treated like a magic weapon in your group?
So far, the conjured pact weapon is just that… a weapon representing the pact, something comparable to a holy symbol.
But the character is pretty low level so far, so it may be interesting to see how things evolve… I can see the sword serving as a link for communicating with his shadowy patron.
“Sentient” is an interesting idea too. The One Ring was sentient, but it’s not exactly a character.
I know I’m a pest, but if it’s thou and thy soul, it should also be thy patron, not your patron.
Buyer, not patron, sorry. 🙂 No edit button that I can see.
Sadly, there isn’t an easy edit button on the comic either. :/
This happened before i joined this particular group, but the at-the-time party warlock of Orcus got killed and resurrected. The DM rolled on a Bad Stuff table to see what, if anything, went wrong (because resurrection in that world was not consistent or reliable due to Plot) and he got the 00 0 result: Your soul is replaced by another entity. So the warlock’s soul was displaced by Orcus, who replaced him for a half dozen sessions before the other PCs picked up on it and beat him to death again to get the right soul back. At that point, the warlock (who’s soul was being tortured in the abyss while this was going on) dropped Orcus as a patron. He wasnt terrible happy with that, and cut to several months of real time later, and were storming Orcus’ palace and kill the git in literally half a round (paladins nova like nobody’s business.)
Pretty epic.
Was there a lot of secret note-passing between the GM and “Orcus?” How did you handle the PVP aspect?
I dont actually know. Like i said, this was before i joined the group. I think there was much note passing, and then when the jig was up the DM just assumed control.
Honestly, the other two are just better. The fiend can honor a deal and the great old one will probably just forget about you.
In terms of retirement plans…
Fiend: Hell/Abyss/Other lower plane.
Archfey: Enjoy your eternity as a servant to the most obnoxious rich people in the multiverse. For this decade you’ll be serving as a table.
Great Old One: You’ll be too insane for it to matter.
Hexblade: Too non-descript for a good answer.
Celestial: A nice stay in Mt. Celestia.
Maybe you get to hold the pitchfork?
At least you’ll get polymorphed into the highest quality mahogany treant.
LiKe a fThAghN CoME tRuE.
Same as regular afterlife, but with more magical swords… so automatically better.
I don’t know. Sounds boring… jk, you get to fight monsters in a sentai squad of archons.
Never trust Demogorgon.
If there’s one thing I know about Cthulhu, it’s that there are no long-term negative consequences for interacting with him.
If you can’t remember what sanity was like, there is no downside.
Ironic that the Warlock is no longer Patron-exclusive. (Although we still had the Fiend Warlock)
The Great Old One pact is usually the one with the least strings attached. The one I played in a one-shot, and the one I was in a party with had the same backstory: They looked at the wrong painting/read the wrong book/solved the wrong puzzle and got some C’thul’hu in their brain. Mine gained phenomenal eldritch power at great physical cost. (Really bad stat rolls. 5 strength, middling dex/con.) His was slowly losing his mind.
The GOOlock I DM’d carried an object containing a tiny fragment of Augh’paws’trugh’fie the unpronounceable’s mind. It occasionally devoured staffs/wands/etc and gave them new powers.
A Hexblade I played in an evil one-shot was “The lord of edges”. Tiefling, Noble, Hexblade. Standard-issue dead parents? He killed them on his sword’s orders. He wasted most of his spell-slots teleporting behind people. It was nothing personal, kid. He is my only 5E character death: The one-shot was over, and I was down with two-failed death-saves. My character and the Rogue were at each other’s throats the entire time, so I suggested he kill me before I get back up. He obliged.
One of my “If I ever get a chance to play this” characters is a Fiend Warlock who is basically stuck in a multi-level-marketing scam for the “Crawling-city consultation corporation” a group of Daemons (Yugoloths if you’re the type of person who calls Devils “Baatezu”. Basically incarnations of selfishness) who give you warlock powers, but in exchange you have to keep making money for them/recruit more people, or forfeit your soul. The goal was to make a Fiend Warlock who wasn’t very evil, and was kind of pathetic.
Aside: I usually call devils devils (unless I feel the need to distinguish between baatezu and either of the species of devils that aren’t baatezu), but I never call yugoloths daemons. Once it was because it sounds too much like “demon,” now it’s more because the only connection between fiends and the original Greek daemons is that “daemon” was corrupted to the modern concept of “demon” due to the Christian god being a jealous bitch. (Which, aside from mythological pedantry, means that demons and fiend-daemons are the same thing.)
“Demon”: Pronounced “Dee-mun”. Chaotic Evil incarnations of savagery/destruction/madness.
“Daemon”: Pronounced “Day-mun”. Neutral Evil incarnations of selfishness.
“Devil”: Lawful Evil incarnations of tyranny/corruption. (The political variety)
The distinction is pretty clear to me. If you can distinguish between Demons and Devils, (My table can’t. We’re playing Descent into Avernus now, and every time my table mixes the two up I twitch a little, and re-explain it.) then you can distinguish between Demons and Daemons.
My problem is that “Yugoloth” sounds like a shitty soviet car.
What are the other species? It’s very hard to find info. I believe Baatezu are specifically Devils made from the souls of mortals who went to hell, and the other kind are fallen angels who became devils? What are those called?
Off the top of my head, in 3.5 kytons and hellcats weren’t proper Baatezu. There’s probably more in obscure Forgotten Realms books, and 2e Planescape books probably have something weird to say.
I also do not like daemon or yugoloth. For PF I’m a fan of “Harbinger” as a more generic but still menacing name. “Deacon” sounds nice, but is an actual term in daemon culture. “Horseman” might work because they do technically work for the 4 Horsemen.
Heyo! He gots jokes.
I’m just starting a game where my character is a warlock with a celestial patron. The DM ran a ‘funnel’ for character creation. I misunderstood the rules to set up the stat blocks for my peasants so they were all under powered. My surviving one was an orphan that was incredibly weak, so the DM gave me X stat points to distribute how I wanted so it would be on par with the other players.
I decided to make the back story that this orphan was a neglected half-orc, malnourished and sickly. After the funnel, a planetar of Torm took notice of his bravery to defend the village that showed him no love even though he was weak. He blessed him, which explains how he suddenly got swol, to be his avatar of courage and justice.
I’m really looking forward to see what my DM wants to do with that.
Half-orc Captain America? I dig it!
I’m probably going to play him really sub optimally. I’m going to be playing him more as a martial character than a spell caster. I think first chance I get I’m taking a feat to take better armor.
Blade pact is a thing! Ain’t nothing wrong with a little fish action!
Running a pact of the archfey warlock now, where the character is a cat who wanted to be turned into a person. The price to be paid is a lifetime of collecting books for the queen’s otherworldly library. My character can’t read.
I gather you aren’t a tome-lock.
Back a bit, I mentioned my Eliciter. Reason he, and the rest of our party is relevant is, we just started into Mythic Spheres of Power. We had to take a patron as our source and we could get crazy with it to tie it to our characters.
I couldn’t figure out what would be thematic or a good RP hook. All I knew was I wanted a power boost to my character that was similar to another temporary boom I had gained, so I went all in. Our DM offered to help come up with something that ties into the story and Reid back to that temp boost.
Now I have a good direction for where I want to go, and I can’t wait to see if my character can keep his corruption at bay. All he knows is mirrors bad, blood good, and don’t try to drink from the eldritch or chaos magic- tainted party members…
I really hope I can pull this off, because the Mind Sphere has a LOT of built in depth to it, since you are a “good guy” who can utterly rob someone of their freedom.
I liked this dude from My Hero as an example of a good guy mind controller:
https://bokunoheroacademia.fandom.com/wiki/Hitoshi_Shinso
It was part of his character arc to be heroic despite his “villain power.”
Yeah I like him too.
He’s a good example of staying true to ones self despite what others think of you.
I think the biggest draw for me is will he stay a “good guy”? (read as not a monster)… will he want to? Or will he find that the easiest way to win is simply to not play by their rules?…
I am leaning a bit towards the “nice guy, pushed too far” side of things though.
Now I read that again, I should clarify that I mean my character!
😛
I only ever ran one game of DnD 5e and the last level one PC took was in Warlock for the Great Old One. I didn’t have much time to do much, since they elected to not continue when the semester ended, but I played up nightmares mostly. I would write a quick nightmare thing before game and hand it to the player when they slept and then let them go to town with RP. Nothing particularly prophetic or crazy stuff like that, since I focused more on history stuff from the world. Lost knowledge type deal which sounds good until you realize learning why two people fighting in the forest (leading to both of their deaths) has no useful application 1000 years later when the nation they were in has been conquered 6 times and the village destroyed.
Beyond that, Changeling the Lost is my jam. I once ran a LARP for it and had a blast with “be careful what you wish for” plots.
I think nightmares are an ideal way to keep the flavor without warping the game around the Patron relationship. You can hand out prophetic warnings, mislead the party, or simply toss ’em out occasionally as a bit of added flavor.
Reading through this discussion gave me an idea for a plot hook:
A warlocks otherworldly patron is imprisoned by another entity coveting its power and the warlock must free them, potentially slaying their patron out of necessity or wiping their life-debt clean. Other warlocks seeking the same may stand as allies or enemies.
Just an idea.
I’d play that.
“Heya, Squiddly Diddly. How’s that cage treating you? Lookit this key I got here. What say we renegotiate our contract a bit, Hoss? Gladly, you say? See, I told the party Paladin you were a reasonable eldritch abomination.”
I’m pretty sure the “key” to R’lyeh is an alarm clock.
Yeah, but if Squiddly was imprisoned by another abomination, who knows where it was locked up?
Another classic key to the Squiddly Diddly would be the diddly themselves, after all Lovecraft did refer to the mytos as yog sothothery, and good ol Yoggie boy is famously both the gate and the key.
Now look here, which one of us is writing Handbook of Erotic Fantasy?
*takes notes furiously*
In my only (short) 5e campaign, I was a Paladin/Warlock with the fiend patron. (For simplicity’s sake, the DM rolled the sources of both classes’ power into one entity.) The PC had been part of a destroyed caravan chased by orcs, and his desperate prayers for help fell on… something. I don’t really know that much more (since the campaign ended), though it seemed like the DM was leaning in the “vindictive fire deity” direction.
One of my eternal backup characters was a Dark Tapestry Oracle who had used her innate connection to dark forces to battle the darkness of the Arctic winter wastes for centuries until one of these entities got the better of her and burned her nearly to ashes with cursed fire. She reconstituted herself through sheer will, but the process left her frail, scarred with heavy burns and with massive holes in her mind and body alike as she desperately tries to keep in the fight until she loses control and disentigrates for the final time.
Speaking of cosmic patronage, in an upcoming campaign I’m running (based upon the famous AP book “Rasputin Must Die!” with the rest of the AP cut out), we’ve ended up with a Paladin of Communism PC, which forced me to write up a surprisingly workable Code of Conduct out of Karl Marx quotes. As a part of this Earth setting, one of the players and I also set domains for the Christian Holy Trinity and several aspects of the devil, though the party’s Catholic Inquisitor is going with an Inquisition rather than a Domain, so that work was almost wasted. A lot is now riding on which of the many obscure gods the Sorcerer/Cleric Mystic Theurge is going to pick, which ranges on a scale from Empyreal Lord to Kyton.
Well damn. That’s pretty cool.
Are you familiar with Marit Lage from MtG?
https://64.media.tumblr.com/15d8f041fb2c96357d74fff260069e76/tumblr_inline_pjljragtuB1rqrjnu_1280.png
Currently playing a Kraken Warlock (UA has cool stuff).
My perspective… I signed up to be horsed around a bit by my patron. But… in this case, I don’t think my current GM understands the tone super well and is not invoking those sorts of arrangements.
He’s treating his game like WoW a bit… We have a quest hub, and he’s making quests that are relevant to each character. I don’t think this is bad, so I’m rolling with it, and it works because I decided my warlock, water genasi from the deep that she is, is a cloud cuckoolander that’s surveying the surface world for her great tentacly patron of the depths… affectionately known as ‘daddy’ to her and ‘squid daddy’ to everyone OOC.
You remember when I signed up for the “standard-issue persecution backstory” as a half-elf?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unequal-treatment
I know that feel, bro.
All I can say is to approach your GM and ask for that stuff if you want to see it actually present in the campaign. It’s not the kind of thing a PC can really bring up on their own, so you have to enlist the guy behind the screen.
Well. My last few characters have gone pretty hard at the table, and I feel like my fellow players would like their shot in the spotlight. So for now, I want to wait and see a bit before I really tug on that thread.
I want my friends which I game with to have their starring roles too, and I worry that players like you and I sometimes run the risk of stealing the whole show.
Any thoughts on that? That can be a complex topic. Future Handbook maybe.
Naw. Past Handbook: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/diva
🙂
One of the finest games I ever had the privilege of playing in was a Ravenloft game. My character was a Caliban Wizard who got tangled up with a lord of the Shadow Fey.
I’m not sure whether my nitpicking over terms and clarity was more annoying to the Thorn-Lord or the DM, but I was not about to give the ******* an inch more leeway than I had to.
And no matter what he would have liked, he was NOT my boss!
Given Warlock’s choices, I’d still go with fey. Yes, they’re nasty and treacherous, and I’ve never played a Warlock or a Cleric in order to avoid ‘being beholden / on the take’, but it seems to me the fey is nasty but can be dealt with so long as you know the rules. She’s not there to eat the world and my sanity, she doesn’t want to bind my soul in eternal suffering (unless it’d be funny). She’s primal and wants stuff on her terms. But at least there are ways to deal. Oblivion and damnation are not the absolute end-goal.
That conflation between NPC and DM points back to my note about ‘story-hook vs. punishment’ issue I mentioned in today’s blog. In my mind, the antagonistic relationship between Harry Dresden and his godmother should be a fun story dynamic rather than a contest between player and GM.
Do you feel like the adversarial relationship between characters spilled over into an adversarial relationship with your GM?
Nah. I like him fine, he just needed to hint a couple of times that I was going a bit too far. ^_^
Honestly a good part of it is in how much you can convince them to not fuck you over during the contract writing, and how much you can make them feel some endearment towards you.
A patron who legitimately likes you personally can have a contract that varies from “You’ll chill in my realm and work what is effectively a retirement job in my council” to “You will never leave my bedroom” depending on that charisma score.
Meanwhile, a patron who legitimately dislikes you or you have done your best to personally anger or wiggle out of the deal can get very. VERY, creative in how to deal with those slights.
I see that you have peeked behind the curtain at our Handbook of Erotic Fantasy stuff. 😛
So is this Warlock from 3,5e, 4e, 5e, or 3rd party pathfinder?
Presumably 5e, as 3.5 didn’t really deal with this
Yes.
More serious answer: The Handbook is nondenominational, but the author’s main familiarity with the class comes from 5e.
Why, do you have interesting notes about the other editions’ take on the warlock?
Plot twist, you don’t make your patron will. Instead your patron sends you to make another guys will. You bargained, so did him, the price for you to pay is to help him with his requests. Even more, what if the party works for someone and that guy make a bargain to get help to stop the BBEG and what it got is the party’s warlock? 😀
In the Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone, Geralt makes, not on purpose, a deal with Gaunter O’Dimm, so pay it up he is send then to run three errands for Olgierd von Everec, a guy that make a pact and now is in debt with Gaunter. That for Gaunter to finish his pact with Geralt and get Olgierd soul once and for all 😀
That a warlock got a pact with a given being doesn’t mean their patron will be micromanaging his investment 🙂
Also good to know Laurel is your patron on the Archfey pact. The Handbook acts like your book of shadows? 😛
I am contractually obligated to respond with, “No comment.”
XD
Good luck in any case 🙂
Archfey fall anywhere between being ‘immature pranksters that just fuck around with everything, especially you’, to ‘casually cause genocide because someone cut down a random tree in the forest’. They’re like Beerus from DBZ, ridiculously powerful and very mood-swingy, and with often wholly alien motivations.
For Warlocks desiring power, a fiend will at least stick to bargains and making you better at what you do if you commit yourself to evil, and a Great Old One can easily offer you vast knowledge… If your brain doesn’t implode from it. But an Archfey might decide you need to babysit a random rock one day and order you to steal a baby the next, with varying degree of commitment or care for you.
Now I kind of want Beerus for my patron.
Our current pathfinder party narrowly avoided a faustian deal in the form of a corrupted wish from a Glabrezu who was in disguise as a wish-granting-capable Janni. Our questioning and a clever use of Truecolor Dye fooled it into revealing it was evil, however. If we took its wish (which would probably be to rez our Oracle who got hit by a instakill from a Destruction spell), we’d have a very nasty battle ahead of us with a hostile PC joining a high-CR demon.
Friggin’ Glabrezu man… Can’t ever trust those guys: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-wish-for-a-dragon
Return of the Runelords has quite a few questionable alliances or deals you make in the process of the AP, whether by people with really bad rep or being flat out villains and bad guys of other Adventure Paths!
Almost all of them are spoiler heavy, so won’t be mentioned, but the most notable of them is effectively an archfey-peesonality individual with the reputation/backstory of a incorrigible tyrant, who is also unparalleled in the art of enchantment magic and sporting 36+ Charisma.
Needless to say, we spent near every interaction with them pressing X to Doubt.
“Hello.”
“SENSE MOTIVE!”
“My name is–”
“SENSE MOTIVE!”
“Honestly now. I only want to–”
“SENSE MOTIVE!”
Now we’re just missing the Ninja (right?). Warlock has yet to get his own cast page entry though.
Hmm, does the Patreon edition handbook have its own cast page/cast list?
It took us over a year to update our cast page the first time. I aim to improve on that track record by at least a month.
Honestly, as a player (and a GM), I avoid the fey as much as possible. Why? Because their mindset is so alien and unpredictable, that i would rather deal with an unknowable entity from beyond time and space who I can expect to not expect anything, or a devil who will adhere to the deal to the letter than to deal with the whims of a fey.
Side note: I feel this lineup of patrons is unfair to some of the patrons… there can totally be sexy fiends (see succubi/incubi)
Totally. :/
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zuggtmoy
She’s a fun gal.
Many have noted that magical girls are basically warlocks. Most of them wield an alien power granted to them by an outside source, and are forced – by their morality more than by obligations to the force, but this may be part of why they were picked – to battle the outside source’s enemies (who the recipient battles willingly anyway, but again see: selection of candidate). They tend to wind up changed, as people, if they survive their war.
And that’s just the lighter magical girl shows, not even getting into the darker ones such as PPMM.
So the real equivalent of warlock on the Pathfinder side is vigilante? There is the cabalist archetype I guess….
Our Big Bad is a king who ended up with one of the darkest possible versions of filling your end of the pact. He has to deliberately destroy his nation and help in the genocide of his own people. Any and all Bond villain stupidity is actually him trying to fail without throwing the fight outright.
He’s got a backup plan in that his “reward” for succeeding would be becoming a devil himself, which would effectively wipe his memory of it all.
I’m guessing there’s some plot maguffin to prevent his suicide?
Clause in the pact that prevents it, yeah. He didn’t think much of it before he realized just how steep the debt was going to be.
I’ve told stories before of my entrepreneurial little ratfolk trader, Churrik. Later in that campaign, the ratfolks’ underground home of Queenswarren was one of the final holdouts against reptilian invaders from another continent, who had rediscovered pre-apocalyptic magitech (and specifically, the elves’ old world-spanning network of portals) more rapidly than our homeland had. Churrik was desperate for any way to save his home, so he agreed to pledge his service to a Winter Fey enchantress with whom we’d had several prior encounters, and who we didn’t trust a damned bit.
Churrik had once bonded with Queenswarren’s young monarch over their shared love of silly escapist literature, which her advisors did their best to confiscare, to keep the Queen’s mind on matters of state. (“Should I smuggle her the latest volume of A Song of Mice and Fire? But everyrat who I like in that story keeps dying!”)
Since that aspect of his character was already established, I figured it was fair to imagine he’d read the ratfolk equivalent of the Wheel of Time books (“Time’s Wheel of Cheddar”?) So he took inspiration from Book 12, and swore to serve his new fey patron “until the hour of my death”. And at the first opportunity, commissioned an alchemist to brew him a dose of poison that would kill a ratfolk in precisely one hour, which thereafter he always made sure to carry.
Churrik wasn’t afraid to lose his soul to the Winter Court — he had only a vague idea of what a soul is even for, and it certainly didn’t appear on any of his balance ledgers — but he abhorred the thought of being forced to betray his friends or his warren. So he figured that if worst came to worst, he could drink the poison, then have one final hour of complete freedom from his oath to sabotage any nefarious plans his patron had. I mean, it had worked for [redacted to avoid Wheel of Time spoilers].
(Sadly, the campaign folded before we ever learned the enchantress’s true intentions, though the unseasonal blizzard she sent in exchange for Churrik’s pledge of service did help turn the tide against the cold-blooded invaders, and break the seige of Queenswarren.)
Bards can get a masterpiece (essentially a spell or power you cast with your perform rounds) that lets you cast a limited wish or wish-like effect. Neat, right?
Except, said wish is granted/interpreted by an unknown being from the Dark Tapestry, AKA a Cthulhu Mythos eldritch horror. And you take some non-insignificant hits to your CON/WIS in the process.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/bardic-masterpieces/masterpieces/music-beyond-the-spheres-dance-sing-string/
Our party bard used it once to teleport the party, with luckily no effects other than coughing up blood afterwards. We refused further offers to have her cast it again once we learned (IC and OOC) how it works. She retired before she had more options to try use it, though.
We just killed our dark tapestry oracle. He’d turned into a kraken lich. Still sad though.
What’s the story behind their tragic demise?
The Dark Tapestry Oracle was my character, he had been slowly going mad over the course of the campaign through his connection to the Planes, unwittingly going out at night and committing unspeakable acts that he would forget when he woke in the morning. He ran the local museum, and had been secretly building a basement of horrors, complete with brainwashed Cthulhu cultist museum staff and a sacrificial alter, and had been Dominating (and ultimately killed) a local councilman who had threatened to take away his funding. Eventually the party found out, and it was revealed that my Oracle’s pet rabbit was possessed by the spirits of the Great Old Ones and had been poisoning his mind. The Oracle went mad, attacked the party, and then was teleported out (at this point, he stopped being my character and became an antagonist NPC and I rolled up my Frat Bro Paladin). When we tracked him down again, he’d been completely transformed into said Kraken Lich. My paladin got the killing blow! Fun times.
Did you build the character with a plan to have them suffer this fate, or was that just bad luck, poor choices and/or evil DMing taking its natural course?
It was kind of planned? I didn’t have the specifics, but I had always anticipated him getting corrupted during the course of the campaign.
One idea I considered for a warlock backstory was as follows: So my PC was the girl who had been taken by the Stereotypical Mythos Cult to be the sacrifice to their eldritch god, but halfway through the ritual the Big Damn Heroes show up and wreck everything. Problem is, they didn’t arrive quite soon enough to stop the summoning, so now my character’s got a fragment of some primordial horror in her head with no idea how to get it out. She doesn’t want to reveal what’s happened because she’s afraid she’ll get killed or locked up. The horrorshard, meanwhile, can’t remember anything and is just along for the ride. Sadly, the campaign never got off the ground so I never got to see how it would have played out.
Neat! And as an added bonus, you get a cool visual for your eldritch blast:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y3p9MMlTGsA/maxresdefault.jpg
My Summer Eladrin Vengeance Paladin / Archfey Warlock has a well known relationship with “My Lady of Summer”. (I was going to call it a good relationship – but it isn’t that)
He talks about her a lot – to him it’s the most normal thing in the world to be in Her service; however a few times he’s had to warn others from asking too many details about her:
“You wouldn’t want Her to notice you. Saying Her name would be like a mosquito buzzing in her ear; She would end you or own you without even thinking about it”
My DM is leaning into this pretty hard. A lot of the paladin features have a real fey flavour, and there have been some really cool dream sequences with Her on level ups.
I decided on oath of vengeance not oath of the ancients for RP reasons, in my backstory I first attracted her attention after dealing with some merchant types who were spoiling a sacred glade.
Well, the fey aren’t exactly known to be the forgiving type. Fair ball says I!
This does seem like a no-brainer to me. It never is, though. That’s why I don’t like to mess with higher powers.
Eldritch knight instead?
I’m still learning about the game, but that sounds more like my style.
EK was my first 5e character. I wanted to learn about the magic system and the combat system, so it scratched that itch nicely.
Solid plan. I was thinking of starting with a Fighter and seeing how things play out from there, but I might try something else first to get my bearings.
Always been a fan of the Great Old One patron. The mysterious nature of a creature who’s plans are so alien that a mortal mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend them can lead to some… interesting interactions between patron and warlock.
Why did my patron ask me to make sure this tiny hamlet survived a bandit raid? Who knows what the survival of these peasants could mean in a decade… a century… a millenia? the timeline of the old ones is a scale beyond even the gods and that means that even the most benign act is likely part of their grand plans.
Yeah, but I can never remember how to spell “quillploth.” That’s kind of a deal-breaker for me. 😛
Just went to look at the Warlock patron choices to refresh myself on their various benefits and holy crap they’ve expanded them quite a bit (almost all of the newer ones are still in UA form only though). Of the Archfey, Fiend, Great Old One, I’d probably go with Fiend, but the flavor for all three are fantastic. Hexblade is still probably my favorite (it’s just SO good), Celestial is excellent, and the Undying is pretty weak, though thematically cool. The Genie options are spectacular IMO and the flavor is really cool. While I like the flavor of the Raven Queen, the abilities seem really weak IMO. Definitely could use some buffs. The Lurker looks pretty awesome (who doesn’t want what is pretty much a free Spiritual Weapon up to five times a day?), but there definitely needs to be some tweaks. The Seeker is… alright? Flavor-wise, it’s neat, but in terms of abilities it definitely could use some buffs. The Undead feels a lot more like what the Undying should have been and has some truly great abilities.
I wish more 5e classes had the customization options that the Warlock has. The only one that comes even close AFAIK is the Totem Warrior Barbarian.
Remember that time I asked Laurel to draw the full party?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-full-party
I’m not sure our professional relationship would survive “draw literally all the patrons.”
I should point out that Fiend can include Inc/Succubi, and that Archfey can include Hags, so in terms of “What’s the sexy option” it’s actually a tossup.
Is it intentional that Archfey Warlock looks like a much hotter version of Wild Magic Sorcerer?
One of the things that bugs me about 5e Warlocks is that DMs almost invariably have ONE TYPE of warlock in mind, and regardless of the subclass the player picks for their warlock they still use their own interpretation. This results in lovecraftian entities writing out a terms of services agreement, or that lovely archfey opening up your universal perception so that your brain warps and drives you towards insanity. In this same vein, a lot of DMs will immediately hear “Great Old One” and think “Cthulhu” even though in 5e you have to go digging deep to even find FR’s knockoff version. Dendar the Night Serpent is my personal top pick for the Goolocks, as she is an eater of dreams, and should she stop doing that, the world would theoretically be unable to ever forget their worst nightmares upon waking, the ones that are even worse than what you CAN remember.
Another thing they are frequently guilty of is thinking that you HAVE to do what they want in order to keep your powers and/or grow those powers, as if your patron has a little on/off switch attached to your class. As an avid fan of the dresden files, I can say with certainty that is the WORST possible method of “enacting a patron’s will” imaginable. Each patron has its own inspirations and style attached to it.
Arch Fey may have granted the power purely because they found you entertaining and want to see what type of trouble gets attracted to you once you taste of power, like you’re a contestant wearing a bacon suit in one of those Japanese Prank shows. It’s difficult to even know what their wishes ARE, (they’re fey, they may not even know what a direct approach is) so it’s a complete crapshoot as to whether you’re EVER really working against them or not.
A Great Old One may have been touched purely by accident, and you tapped into its power without its knowledge, or for that matter, without even your own knowledge. Because of this unintentional nature, it may practically be a given that you are trying to turn the powers you have gained access to against them. Or maybe you’re a nutter who has decided to worship, but that’s a personal choice, not something that is inherent to the class.
A Celestial may be acting on the behest of a God and may have decided that you’d make a good candidate for the cause, but you’re only a subcontractor of a subcontractor at that point and if you decide to bounce well “hey that’s between you and your God, Mr. Celestial, but I’m out!”
The Hexblades are a bit unusual, as while it is known that the power extends from the Shadowfell, it’s not really clear WHAT that entity is. What IS known is that it is the same type of power that seems to be channeled through sentient weapons, possibly with the Raven Queen as the Ultimate source, but who knows? At that point, who’s to say what the patron even wants? If it’s the same power Sentient weapons draw on, then what demands would they make of a sword?
RavenQ: “Yo, I want you to discover the lost treasure of Neverwinter.” Blackrazor: “Sure I’mma get right on that… once I grow some goddamn LEGS!”
The Fiends are the most likely to have an actual contract, but typically are going to either demand payment up front and have it done and over with before the story even start, or be running the long gambit, which may not have the collect until after the PC dies. Ideally, the Warlock may be aiming to get power that will allow him/her to exploit a loophole in order to get out of the contract, or perhaps nullify it entirely, possibly by beating down the very same fiend that unlocked his powers in the first place.
The Undying are the most likely to have their OWN specific goal in mind when they unlock a Warlock’s powers, but this can range all over the place. Ideally whatever it is they want will be achieved naturally by the Warlock even being alive at all. Perhaps every time they use their powers, they are “cheating” death and disrupting the natural cycle of fate a bit more. The thing about ex-mortals is that they can recognize the very mortal tendency to reject an order, ignore a request, and run from fate, so instead they simply pick a person who is already going to do something they want and keep him alive. It’s an investment, and maybe it wont pan out, but they have time… isn’t that the whole point?
And any of these examples can still have a “secondary mediator” storyline attached, where someone ELSE, maybe a family member of the Warlock, or a rival, or some guardian, was the person who made the initial deal with whatever entity the pact is being made with, and made the Warlock became a beneficiary by request, inheritance, or proxy.
Ultimately it doesn’t even matter if you do get rid of the pact, because they don’t actively grant you your powers anyway, they only unlock your access to figuring it out. Even if you completely reject your patron, not only can’t they take back the power, they can’t even cut you off from continuing to gain further power along that path.
But they can get angry.
Personally, it really bugs me when people make the fey always sadistic bastards ala Changeling The Lost, just because it seems like such a waste of storytelling potential. I mean, we already have two entire species of sadistic bastards (demons and devils). I much prefer the fey as something closer to an embodiment of nature, sometimes wonderous, sometimes terrifying, and always unpredictable. I love the idea of the fae trading in abstracts, buying courage or selling laughter, occasionally gifting great rewards for what seem to us simple tasks or gifts, occasionally demanding what seem to us horrific prices for trivial offences or debts. I love the idea that if you approach a great lady of the fae hungry and in need, she might conjure a feast for you and heal your wounds, or she might take you back to her castle of crystal and keep you as a pampered pet until you escape, or she might decide to put you out of your misery and strike you dead on the spot, all based on whims you cannot understand. And I love the idea of the fae granting boons that bring chaos and devastation, not out of malice but simply because they granted the boon on a whim and didn’t bother to consider the implications.