The power level of a Patron is a delicate balance. Frankly, wotc should have quantified the entire thing, or at least given some kind of guidelines. Just HOW does a Patron bestow powers? That is something a god can do, but Patrons are not gods...usually, until we get into the Great Old Ones.
Low level entities (as described in previous posts) would never have the ability to bestow any kind of power on any PC. And on the other side of the coin, why on earth would any powerful being (named Fiend, Dragon, demi-god etc) waste time and effort on a 1st level PC?
To paraphrase The Godfather "some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you for a favor. But until then, enjoy this gift of power." The one thing all warlock patrons have in common is immortality, which means that a small investment of power now can pay big dividends only a few short decades later, whether that's from having a powerful spellcaster indebted to the patron and advancing their goals on the mortal realm or via claiming their soul after death.
Plus, there is no way a Patron, unless it is a god, has the bandwidth to make pacts and then follow up occasionally on those pacts with hundreds or thousands of mortals simultaneously. It would pick and choose its moments and "clients", likely based on some trigger of in-game activities by a PC. (found the wrong book/item, slayed the wrong ally/enemy of a potential Patron, messed around with the wrong spell like Plane Shift, Contact Plane)
Where does it say anywhere that the typical warlock patron has "hundreds or thousands" of warlocks simultaneously?
How special of a snowflake do you see the PCs?
Why do you think that there's only one fiend making pacts with mortals?
I don't. But I also don't assume there are a bottomless pile of them to create warlocks. Some will have a few warlock pacts, some will hundreds, some will have thousands. I think the rules are fairly clear that they are not feeding the warlock power directly otherwise they could cut it off at will, they need to be powerful enough to grant the warlock the knowledge and make the pact, so their aren't infinite warlock making fiends out there, but once they are powerful enough to make one, they will make all they can as it benefits them. And while they don't say it directly, by giving many of the patrons specific names its clear intent imo is that the patrons will have many pacts. The PC is not the only warlock in the universe who Titania of the Summer Court made a pact with.
The power level of a Patron is a delicate balance. Frankly, wotc should have quantified the entire thing, or at least given some kind of guidelines. Just HOW does a Patron bestow powers? That is something a god can do, but Patrons are not gods...usually, until we get into the Great Old Ones.
Low level entities (as described in previous posts) would never have the ability to bestow any kind of power on any PC. And on the other side of the coin, why on earth would any powerful being (named Fiend, Dragon, demi-god etc) waste time and effort on a 1st level PC?
To paraphrase The Godfather "some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you for a favor. But until then, enjoy this gift of power." The one thing all warlock patrons have in common is immortality, which means that a small investment of power now can pay big dividends only a few short decades later, whether that's from having a powerful spellcaster indebted to the patron and advancing their goals on the mortal realm or via claiming their soul after death.
Plus, there is no way a Patron, unless it is a god, has the bandwidth to make pacts and then follow up occasionally on those pacts with hundreds or thousands of mortals simultaneously. It would pick and choose its moments and "clients", likely based on some trigger of in-game activities by a PC. (found the wrong book/item, slayed the wrong ally/enemy of a potential Patron, messed around with the wrong spell like Plane Shift, Contact Plane)
Where does it say anywhere that the typical warlock patron has "hundreds or thousands" of warlocks simultaneously?
How special of a snowflake do you see the PCs?
What does that have to do with anything?!? A fiend might have a half a dozen Warlocks, a powerful fiend might have a few dozen warlocks, a particularly powerful fiend might have a few score. Maybe very powerful fiends like Asmodeus have a couple hundred, but how many people do you think are walking around with a fiendish patron? Spellcasters are rare, Warlocks are only a small percentage of all spellcasters, and those that make pacts with fiends are only a fraction of all warlocks. Even if the world has a population as high as 3,500,000,000 (3.5b), if 1% of those people are “adventurers” (PCs & NPCs) then that’s 35,000,000 “adventurers.” If half of them are full spellcasters then that’s only 17,500,000 total. Even if all those full casters are evenly distributed among Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards (which I think is unlikely, but for the sake of argument we’ll presume that many of them actually are Warlocks), then that means 2,916,667 of those casters are Warlocks. There are 9 potential patron options, and if presume that the number of Warlocks is distributed evenly across those options that means only 324,074 total Warlocks have fiend patrons. If we presume that total number of fiendlocks is distributed evenly across the three types of fiends (devils, yugoloths, and demons), that means only 108,025 warlocks for each of the three fiend types total. Even if we only count the types of fiends listed under the fiend patron option as being powerful enough to have warlocks, there are still hundreds, of them for each of those fiend types. That means there ain’t that many warlocks per fiendish patron. It’s just basic arithmetic.
The power level of a Patron is a delicate balance. Frankly, wotc should have quantified the entire thing, or at least given some kind of guidelines. Just HOW does a Patron bestow powers? That is something a god can do, but Patrons are not gods...usually, until we get into the Great Old Ones.
Low level entities (as described in previous posts) would never have the ability to bestow any kind of power on any PC. And on the other side of the coin, why on earth would any powerful being (named Fiend, Dragon, demi-god etc) waste time and effort on a 1st level PC?
To paraphrase The Godfather "some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you for a favor. But until then, enjoy this gift of power." The one thing all warlock patrons have in common is immortality, which means that a small investment of power now can pay big dividends only a few short decades later, whether that's from having a powerful spellcaster indebted to the patron and advancing their goals on the mortal realm or via claiming their soul after death.
Plus, there is no way a Patron, unless it is a god, has the bandwidth to make pacts and then follow up occasionally on those pacts with hundreds or thousands of mortals simultaneously. It would pick and choose its moments and "clients", likely based on some trigger of in-game activities by a PC. (found the wrong book/item, slayed the wrong ally/enemy of a potential Patron, messed around with the wrong spell like Plane Shift, Contact Plane)
Where does it say anywhere that the typical warlock patron has "hundreds or thousands" of warlocks simultaneously?
How special of a snowflake do you see the PCs?
Why do you think that there's only one fiend making pacts with mortals?
I don't. But I also don't assume there are a bottomless pile of them to create warlocks. Some will have a few warlock pacts, some will hundreds, some will have thousands. I think the rules are fairly clear that they are not feeding the warlock power directly otherwise they could cut it off at will, they need to be powerful enough to grant the warlock the knowledge and make the pact, so their aren't infinite warlock making fiends out there, but once they are powerful enough to make one, they will make all they can as it benefits them. And while they don't say it directly, by giving many of the patrons specific names its clear intent imo is that the patrons will have many pacts. The PC is not the only warlock in the universe who Titania of the Summer Court made a pact with.
No, but Titania of the Summer Court is not the only Archfey making a pact with mortals. There doesn't need to be a bottomless pile of powerful immortal beings making pacts with warlocks unless you assume that there's a bottomless pile of warlocks.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The power level of a Patron is a delicate balance. Frankly, wotc should have quantified the entire thing, or at least given some kind of guidelines. Just HOW does a Patron bestow powers? That is something a god can do, but Patrons are not gods...usually, until we get into the Great Old Ones.
Low level entities (as described in previous posts) would never have the ability to bestow any kind of power on any PC. And on the other side of the coin, why on earth would any powerful being (named Fiend, Dragon, demi-god etc) waste time and effort on a 1st level PC?
To paraphrase The Godfather "some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you for a favor. But until then, enjoy this gift of power." The one thing all warlock patrons have in common is immortality, which means that a small investment of power now can pay big dividends only a few short decades later, whether that's from having a powerful spellcaster indebted to the patron and advancing their goals on the mortal realm or via claiming their soul after death.
Plus, there is no way a Patron, unless it is a god, has the bandwidth to make pacts and then follow up occasionally on those pacts with hundreds or thousands of mortals simultaneously. It would pick and choose its moments and "clients", likely based on some trigger of in-game activities by a PC. (found the wrong book/item, slayed the wrong ally/enemy of a potential Patron, messed around with the wrong spell like Plane Shift, Contact Plane)
Where does it say anywhere that the typical warlock patron has "hundreds or thousands" of warlocks simultaneously?
How special of a snowflake do you see the PCs?
What does that have to do with anything?!? A fiend might have a half a dozen Warlocks, a powerful fiend might have a few dozen warlocks, a particularly powerful fiend might have a few score. Maybe very powerful fiends like Asmodeus have a couple hundred, but how many people do you think are walking around with a fiendish patron? Spellcasters are rare, Warlocks are only a small percentage of all spellcasters, and those that make pacts with fiends are only a fraction of all warlocks. Even if the world has a population as high as 3,500,000,000 (3.5b), if 1% of those people are “adventurers” (PCs & NPCs) then that’s 35,000,000 “adventurers.” If half of them are full spellcasters then that’s only 17,500,000 total. Even if all those full casters are evenly distributed among Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards (which I think is unlikely, but for the sake of argument we’ll presume that many of them actually are Warlocks), then that means 2,916,667 of those casters are Warlocks. There are 9 potential patron options, and if presume that the number of Warlocks is distributed evenly across those options that means only 324,074 total Warlocks have fiend patrons. If we presume that total number of fiendlocks is distributed evenly across the three types of fiends (devils, yugoloths, and demons), that means only 108,025 warlocks for each of the three fiend types total. Even if we only count the types of fiends listed under the fiend patron option as being powerful enough to have warlocks, there are still hundreds, of them for each of those fiend types. That means there ain’t that many warlocks per fiendish patron. It’s just basic arithmetic.
The power level of a Patron is a delicate balance. Frankly, wotc should have quantified the entire thing, or at least given some kind of guidelines. Just HOW does a Patron bestow powers? That is something a god can do, but Patrons are not gods...usually, until we get into the Great Old Ones.
Low level entities (as described in previous posts) would never have the ability to bestow any kind of power on any PC. And on the other side of the coin, why on earth would any powerful being (named Fiend, Dragon, demi-god etc) waste time and effort on a 1st level PC?
To paraphrase The Godfather "some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you for a favor. But until then, enjoy this gift of power." The one thing all warlock patrons have in common is immortality, which means that a small investment of power now can pay big dividends only a few short decades later, whether that's from having a powerful spellcaster indebted to the patron and advancing their goals on the mortal realm or via claiming their soul after death.
Plus, there is no way a Patron, unless it is a god, has the bandwidth to make pacts and then follow up occasionally on those pacts with hundreds or thousands of mortals simultaneously. It would pick and choose its moments and "clients", likely based on some trigger of in-game activities by a PC. (found the wrong book/item, slayed the wrong ally/enemy of a potential Patron, messed around with the wrong spell like Plane Shift, Contact Plane)
Where does it say anywhere that the typical warlock patron has "hundreds or thousands" of warlocks simultaneously?
Actually, your analogy of using the Godfather is incorrectly applied.
Bonasera was already known to the Corleone family, and to the Godfather (the Patron in your analogy). Don Corleone's wife was godmother to Bonasera's only child, and Bonasera had been invited to the wedding. If we follow that analogy, Bonasera is not some 1st level PC that the Don does not even know of, knocking on the door of the compound on the day Connie Corleone's wedding. Bonasera is a higher level PC.
Assuming there are millions of people in whatever world the DM creates, even billions, there is no way any Patron has his eye on some PC with 0 XP. There way too many other potential tools to be used before a 1st level PC would be considered. The Warlock class is poorly designed as it is, and making Pacts with Patrons should only be available to higher level PC's.
Oh, and that scene is the finest opening scene in the history of film-making.
Actually, your analogy of using the Godfather is incorrectly applied.
Bonasera was already known to the Corleone family, and to the Godfather (the Patron in your analogy). Don Corleone's wife was godmother to Bonasera's only child, and Bonasera had been invited to the wedding. If we follow that analogy, Bonasera is not some 1st level PC that the Don does not even know of, knocking on the door of the compound on the day Connie Corleone's wedding. Bonasera is a higher level PC.
Assuming there are millions of people in whatever world the DM creates, even billions, there is no way any Patron has his eye on some PC with 0 XP. There way too many other potential tools to be used before a 1st level PC would be considered. The Warlock class is poorly designed as it is, and making Pacts with Patrons should only be available to higher level PC's.
Oh, and that scene is the finest opening scene in the history of film-making.
I was using it for illustrative purposes, that's why I said I was paraphrasing the quote. And it has long been established canon that fiends don't just try to temp powerful mortals, they also try to corrupt people who are weak but have the potential to become great. As I said before, all warlock patrons are immortal, something that pays off in a decade or two is still close enough to immediate from there perspective.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
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I don't. But I also don't assume there are a bottomless pile of them to create warlocks. Some will have a few warlock pacts, some will hundreds, some will have thousands. I think the rules are fairly clear that they are not feeding the warlock power directly otherwise they could cut it off at will, they need to be powerful enough to grant the warlock the knowledge and make the pact, so their aren't infinite warlock making fiends out there, but once they are powerful enough to make one, they will make all they can as it benefits them. And while they don't say it directly, by giving many of the patrons specific names its clear intent imo is that the patrons will have many pacts. The PC is not the only warlock in the universe who Titania of the Summer Court made a pact with.
Bad math, but math I guess.
No, but Titania of the Summer Court is not the only Archfey making a pact with mortals. There doesn't need to be a bottomless pile of powerful immortal beings making pacts with warlocks unless you assume that there's a bottomless pile of warlocks.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
What’s wrong with my math? You got better?
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Actually, your analogy of using the Godfather is incorrectly applied.
Bonasera was already known to the Corleone family, and to the Godfather (the Patron in your analogy). Don Corleone's wife was godmother to Bonasera's only child, and Bonasera had been invited to the wedding. If we follow that analogy, Bonasera is not some 1st level PC that the Don does not even know of, knocking on the door of the compound on the day Connie Corleone's wedding. Bonasera is a higher level PC.
Assuming there are millions of people in whatever world the DM creates, even billions, there is no way any Patron has his eye on some PC with 0 XP. There way too many other potential tools to be used before a 1st level PC would be considered. The Warlock class is poorly designed as it is, and making Pacts with Patrons should only be available to higher level PC's.
Oh, and that scene is the finest opening scene in the history of film-making.
I was using it for illustrative purposes, that's why I said I was paraphrasing the quote. And it has long been established canon that fiends don't just try to temp powerful mortals, they also try to corrupt people who are weak but have the potential to become great. As I said before, all warlock patrons are immortal, something that pays off in a decade or two is still close enough to immediate from there perspective.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.