Is a Warlock always the sucker in the contractual arrangement with his patron or can he legitimately trick a demon if he's sleazy enough?
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D&D pill me
Is a Warlock always the sucker in the contractual arrangement with his patron or can he legitimately trick a demon if he's sleazy enough?
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Potentially both.
The nature of a Warlock's pact is very flexible. It can go anywhere from a cynical faustian bargain to a bond between lovers. Whether the Warlock is playing his patron, his patron is playing him, they're playing each other, or it's just an honest to god good faith deal is up to you and your DM.
I don't get it. Why would an 8th level magic-user be any more or less of a sucker than any other level of magic-user?
Because its thematic and fits the special snowflake that is the warlock class fantasy
Warlock is a stupid class. "Powers deriving from otherworldly sources at a terrible cost" should be the default for any 'arcane' casters, and also there's no need for four separate arcane full-caster class, especially when two of them are just 'Wizard but not a nerd' and the third is 'an entire Rogue, but also it fricks and is a full caster'. Sorcerers, Warlocks and WIzards should be at most subclasses of the same class, and Bards should be social-focused skillmonkeys with good combat but low HP and music/inspiration as a special feature and no magic (Rangers and Rogues should be just the same, except with focus on different skills - with obviously some overlap - and special features focused on sneak attacks and evasion for the rogue, animal companions and wilderness fighting for the ranger. Possibly they should also all be subclasses of the same class).
Sounds like you'd enjoy Barbarians of Lemuria.
I prefer str/con/cha bards myself.
That is the most moronic level advancement chart I think I've ever seen. How the frick does a swashbuckler, who is associated with light armor and a rapier, evolve into a myrmidon, a heavy armor user known for using spears and shields?
Whoever designed that is a fricking top-tier moron.
Myrmidons are highly skilled swordmasters famed to be so agile and dextrous in combat that they frequently eschew the use of metal armor entirely.
Thr secret sre of not knowing what a myrmidon is. Is this based on a Japanese video game? For some reason they seen to think they're swashbuckling saber fencers instead of Greek hoplites
Myrmidon is a Fire Emblem class based around crit fishing. They're glass nukes if levels favor them correctly. A myrmidon in FE traditionally promotes to a sword master, which is the same but more.
>The fancy homosexual title of Swashbuckler is higher than Warrior & Hero
Dumb as hell
truly spoken like a naive child idiot who never got his buckle swashed
Back in my day, fellas kept who was swashin who's buckle between themselves and we were all alot happier for it.
Narratively to me, it'd be much more interesting to play a character that got suckered into a deal than one who suckered the patron. I want to be the guy who outsmarts the devil during play to escape my contract, not the guy who outsmarted the devil in his backstory.
I would allow one of the following options:
>The warlock is bound to their patron as normal, but has a plan to trick the demon. This will have however to take place in-game as a personal quest.
or
>The warlock has already tricked their patron in their background so they're no longer bound to their end of the bargain while still getting the patron's power. The patron is not happy about it and while it can't deny the warlock their power or kill them, it is cashing in favours with other demons to send misfortune and/or monsters after the warlock. It is going to be feasible for the warlock to put an end to this somehow - as in, keep cashing in on the patron's powers without having a debt and without other demons persecute them - but this will have to be accomplished in-game as a personal quest.
I will not allow:
>The warlock has already tricked their patron in their background, and got away scot-free, and will never have to hold up their end of the deal nor face any repercussion
The PHB is deliberately vague about it. There is no definitive right way to flavor the warlock–patron dynamic. It can be a relationship between master and servant, it can be a thief and his mark, it can be a transaction between equal partners, etc. There's all the freedom in the world to play around with this.
> There is no definitive right way to flavor the warlock–patron dynamic.
I once had a character concept for an infernal pact warlock where, due to backstory shenanigans, the fiend in question “owes the PC a favor” something both parties resent and the warlock patronage is only until the debt is repaid to both individuals’s satisfaction.
It basically never comes up unless the player is trying to weasel special favors out of the DM or the DM is trying to compel the player to do something he doesn't want to do.
I wish Warlocks didn't suck compared to Sorcerers, or Dog forbid - W*zards.
Regaining spell slots on a short rest is pretty OP to begin with but when you then carefully combine it with Sorcerer levels and abuse the synthesis of Pact Magic + Metamagic you get probably the most broken 5e character build. They really should have made the primary stat for Warlocks, like, Strength or something.
As a start perhaps they should give the class fricking anything to do beyond casting eldritch blast.
Look man
Your soul isn't worth that much
You want variety, go to Wizard college and get a fricking degree
At the very least, even at level 1 he should also be casting Hex
As per the 5e fluff, the relationship between patron and warlock can be anything. You might not even be the one that made the pact, or at least one of the parties involved could be unaware of it.
They could at least draw from 3.5 warlock with multiple ways to blast, or its pathfinder knockoff in the kineticist.
I feel the Warlock should basically be like sorcerers in The Second Apocalypse. Yeah, you're hellbound, but you've got powers. Sure, they're not the BEST powers, but it sure beats a life of farming fricking dirt.
Better work on being immortal, or you're going to be sodomized by demons forever in Hell.
Praise the Inverse Fire! Praise the Goad! The world must be shut!
The Shortest Path!
Dunno about D&D, but the Occultist from DD is literally conceived around the idea of using a dark god's powers in hopes of besting that dark god.
Did he? Occultist doesn't even know it's this entity we're fight is what gives him powers and he seems to be legitimately worshipping it, touching altars and other people's funny parts.
He's one of the 'brave' heroes in the final encounter and calls it his tormentor, which implies he's been actively and knowingly opposing it since the game start at least. But he DID make a pact for knowledge in seeming earnest before that.
Notably, even while rebelling, his god occasionally forcibly talks through him.
> Is a Warlock always the sucker in the contractual arrangement with his patron
If this is an infernal pact, then yes, yes he is. What everyone always forgets is that as a demon/devil they’ve been doing this for centuries before and have both pulled all manner of contractual shenanigans and have seen all manner of chicanery to get out of an infernal contract long before ever meeting your character. Not to mention that in life, this fiend was probably pulling all these manipulative schemes himself.
What I’m saying is that in an infernal pact, you are going to get screwed over because you are not as clever as you think you are.
if you want your fiend to be especially condescending, have it so that not only is the warlock’s scene to weasel out of the pact thwarted, but the fiend showers the warlock In confetti, congratulating him on being the 100th person to try that particular little scheme
Dunno, infernal pacts as easy as shit to break by summoning that devil and murderfricking him with highlevel party. Problem solved.
I'll have you know I spent a decade studying demonic law in Dis and got my doctorate specifically in contractual loopholes.
Don't frick with me devil.
Should've studied something useful like, I dunno, magic instead.
Devils make Infernal contracts. Demonic law is "Do what I say before I kill you (or worse)"
A contract by definition is bipartisan.
A contract can say whatever you want it to say. It doesn't matter when you're dealing with Demons who are all Chaotic Evil by definition.
> I'll have you know I spent a decade studying demonic law in Dis and got my doctorate specifically in contractual loopholes.
And the demon has been both studying and practicing for nearly a millennium.
Again, you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.
What people often don't understand, right, is that a lot of the time if you can offer a dude a deal, you're getting it basically for fricking free as the big boss.
No, seriously. This costs you basically fricking nothing. This power you gave em, they know it. This isn't some fricking bullshit like the cleric, you gave someone the knowledge of eldritch blast and shit, incantations and more, but this is lore, knowledge, power, but it ain't leeching off your ass, its shit a warlock knows. A warlock is aware, he can't learn like a wizard, he can't pray like a cleric, but he actually does know his spells and can write spell scrolls and do rituals and shit. You're trading knowledge, which is power, but you're not giving or leasing away your power.
And the thing about devils and aboleths and so on is that they can very well make fair deals. The frick do they give a shit about screwing your soul over for fun, they already get an agent for basically free on the surface to do tasks, solve problems or even better, get new converts. Devils aren't all gigantic buttholes and making it so every single devil deal fricking sucks makes people not take them. An aboleth is playing the fricking gigantic long game con, he probably doesn't give much of a shit about you specifically unless you're like really important on a time crucial skill or task. A Lich is so powerful he might legitimately do it for a sick sense of fun alongside an Angel, only he is trying to make this heavy will imposer into a tool for good while he's in the material plane. Same for shit like GOOs, they don't often care at all, and most other patrons, well, they often don't have a huge reason to frick with you.
Fae aside, most don't just toy with mortals, don't have 10k years of lawyer school unless its a lawyer archdevil. Often, you're just a spark of potential, a useful tool, a neat little champion on the material plane or a pawn in a long game of chess. Needless antagonism is needless.
5E will tell you that it doesn't matter.
Warlocks don't need to heed their patron, Clerics have no reason to bear tribute or reverence to their god. It's just a pile of options and spells.
5E players I mean.
Yeah a lot of players are very averse to the actual roleplay stuff connected to the classes.
It's too bad in the case of the warlocks. There are great opportunities for it baked into the premise of the class.
Not him but often people just get shafted for trying to even remotely engage in that stuff, kinda like trying to write a happy family backstory. The GM almost always without a single second of hesitation ruins that, and the warlock players often get fricking shafted if the GM suddenly decides that no, your contract was not friendly or in good will and you will never make a good impression with your patron and they'll abuse you every second day because they are just *that* bored and no, you aren't smart enough to find a loophole in any way shape form aspiration or even aesthetic.
It gets very dull to be the only one in the game that gets personally fricked for picking the arguably second worst class since monk.
I had a whole thing planned for my favorite current player's ridiculous Barbarian/Warlock that I allowed to come back from the dead once other characters passed my new character level-penalty guideline under the condition that he change patrons to the Undead one - and his patron was secretly Vecna (pre-return). After consistently refusing to follow his instructions correctly, I planted a secret circumstance on him. One hinging on his proven sword-collecting and stubborn-raging qualities. All he had to do was stand mano-e-mano with Zuggtmoy long enough to get one crit on her but he was less than initially aggressive enough and/or wasn't lucky enough in the four shots he did manage to take.
So the moral of the story is that Patron RP is shit because players can't be predicted, maybe especially so for the type of players who want to play Warlocks in the first place.
A warlock's power is not part of an ongoing arrangement, but payment for services rendered. It's possible that the services desired were rendered by a parent or ancestor, or even unstated that they were unstated and the warlock's power was given with no formal contract as an apparent gift. However, nowhere in Complete Arcane is the warlock stipulated with rules for falling from grace as a paladin, or enforced servitude as a mounteback, so it's very clear that warlock's power cannot be taken back by a creature dissatisfied with the choices the warlock makes.
Warlocks can make pacts with Angels though.