What happens when/if a warlock breaks the pact with their patron? I'm looking for RAW, RAI, and any other knowledge, thoughts, or opinions. Do they loose all the warlock levels? Nothing happens? My "feeling" is that something bad should happen, and my gut response is they loose their warlock levels, or at least warlock powers, either forever or until they make amends with their patron or a different patron.
The way i set my warlock up, (and this is the way i chose to play him, not necessarily RAW or RAI) if he were to find a way to break his pact he would loose everything and be cast into a lower region of hell for a long time. The way his contract is written, (signed and witnessed by a demon, renewed on a monthly basis by the painful removal of strips of his shadow) all his abilities are supplied by, and controlled by his patron right down to the selection of spells and invocations. He has no say in what abilities he has. Break any of the written (or unwritten) rules in the contract? Loose abilities. Keep the Crimson King happy? Be rewarded with new skills and abilities (level up). For him, breaking the pact would have huge ramifications. As a player, i let my DM decide the level of “punishment”. I also try really, really hard to not break any of that crazy buggers rules. The Crimson King’s, not my DM’s.....
As sfPanzer says, there is no rule about stripping a character of his class levels/abilities. I've heard WotC staff say that "once a pact is made and powers given, they are given and a patron can't take them back." This is not to day a patron can't seek revenge, etc.
I always loathed rules that would ruin your character... "hi player, I decided that the gods were angry with how you handled those goblin prisoners so you can no longer cast spells"
Patrons can't just shut off/take back a warlock's powers whenever they feel like it. Thats why pacts are so risky for them and why they are so picky on making them and with the wording of the contract.
Story wise, Breaking your Pact usually comes with a consequence stipulated in the original contract. It could be the loss of access to powers, if that is what you agreed on. Most pacts have far steeper consequences though:
For infernal pacts it is usually the immediate forfeit of your soul/life to the fiend. Lots of devils make pacts with humanoids hoping they will break them so the fiend can have their soul all the faster. Why would they bother shutting off your powers when they could just take your life, your soul and everything you have ever valued instead?
For an Archfey the consequence could be removing an eyeball, or indentured servitude for a period of time, or the warlock's first born child, or aging the warlock as the Parton takes twenty years of the warlocks life.
A Great Old One could impose some form of Indefinite Madness on the warlock. Or they cold consume the Warlocks Mind and Soul or turn them into a Sorrowsworn. Or they could infect the warlock with a space parasite that causes 3 permanent levels of exhaustion and you can see it moving around under their skin.
Patrons aren't dumb and they usually have a lot of experience making pacts that people wont want to break. There is always a way around this, but most patrons are good at what they do.
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
This might not be a very popular opinion on warlock pacts but this is how i view them.....
They are much like a contract of employment you have when you go to work for a company. You go through an interview process and if successful are offered a contract. If you accept it you are expected to act in a certain way, perform certain duties, achieve certain targets and act in a way that is beneficial for your employer. If you fail to do so then your employer will initially have a word with you about bucking your ideas up and make sure you are aware of what is expected of you, you may lose certain benefits such as monetary bonuses and if you keep failing to do what you have been employed to do you will be fired.
So thinking of the warlock pact in those terms your patron would be fully within their rights to revoke or restrict the power they have given to you if you routinely break the pact you agreed to. They may send one of their other warlocks to you with a view of giving you a stern talking to and remind you of your role and duties or anything else they deem apropriate.
If you have a PLayer of a Warlock who uses the "my patron is not aware of me/my pact" route then they need to be able to justify this in some way. The reason I would say this is the definition of Pact is "an agreement between one or more parties" so if you are not aware of the other party in the pact you cannot agree to it. Players who adopt this route need to be aware that just because the patron is not aware of them does not mean they cannot become aware of them. To use another work contract analogy....
You walk into an office block, you talk you way passed security and onto the office floor for a company. You even manage to introduce yourself to the HR department and talk them into adding you onto the payroll and talking one of the line managers into believing you have just been hired. You get a monthly wage, you get a raft of extra's such as monetary bonus, stock options, private healthcare, gym memberships etc. Some time passes and you get asked into a meeting where the managers tell you they have found out you never had an interview, were never offered a job and have commited fraud by acting in the way you did. Now there is a very small chance they may reward your inititiative and let you continue to work for them but it is much more likely they will call the police and have your arressted and punished in some way. It is largely a case of when, not if, they find out what you have done.
In this way it is certainly withn the patrons ability to remove or revoke the power the warlock has "stolen" or otherwise punish the warlock by simply saying "Kudos for getting away with it for as long as you did but I never agreed to anything so I'll take back that power",
Using the above it would also be possible for patrons to trade warlocks with other patrons, maybe Asmodeus (a fiend patron) a makes a deal with the Queen of Air and Darkness (a fey parton) and throws one of their warlocks in to sweeten the deal so the Warlock wakes up one day and suddenly finds their powers have changed. This could be a interesting jumping off point for a new story arch as the warlock investigates whats happened.
in a similar way if he Warlock can prove their patron has failed ot live up to their side of the pact they could potentially break off the pact with no consequences, think of it as talking your company to court for some infraction.
Since it's not really taboo to change your class/subclass in a campaign without multiclassing, nothing really happens. But when my players fail to uphold a bargain or attitude with a higher power (ie. a cleric breaks the morals of their diety or a druid damages the natural order of things) then their main powers leave them and they must atone. The warlock in this case would lose the pact magic feature and the pact boon and it's other abilities. Because of this, it is also allowed for them to change their subclass for me. If their character, let's say a warlock of the fiend, makes a pact with the celestial, I would rule it that the fiendish magic leaves them and eventually the divine power would enter them. When I find it right, I grant them class abilities up to the level they are. This is easy to do with magic users, which is why only those who rely on others for magic (ie. paladins, clerics, druids, warlocks, etc) can do this type of thing. But characters who have the inborn magic or just CANT reverse what's been chosen and done (ie. sorcerers, bards, wizards, fighters, etc) they must keep their subclass. This is much like the oath breaker paladin the the DMG
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I love roleplaying, message me so we can set something up.
I talk everything D&D, message me for questions, chat, arguements, or roleplay!
It's not RAW, but I stop letting them gain warlock levels. It's no fun at all to get nerfed back to level 1, but getting stuck at your level is something you can live with for a few sessions, while you try to figure out a solution. Start multiclassing? Find a new patron? Somehow repent and convert to a cleric at the same level as you were a warlock?
Really, it's going to be determined by the nature of the deal. It could be that you negotiated a contract of employment, and if you want to keep getting paid, you keep doing what you're told. It could be that you negotiated a deal to do something, and in return you get warlock powers. It could be that you make a deal to do something for a level of warlock powers. When you level up, you have to make a deal and do something else to get your next level of warlock powers. There's no limitation on what your contract could be.
As long as you didn't negotiate a contract that makes you a permanent employee of said patron, there's no RP reason to /lose/ any power that you have. It could be that the patron offered you a deal because you could do something that they needed and were unable to do for <reason>. Some patrons might offer a deal because it annoys someone else, or because it amuses them. The nature of the deal is the key though. You don't HAVE to have a standard employee contract.
In fact, none of my warlocks do. My class choice does not allow the DM to make me a slave to his whims unless I am 100% on board with it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
As everyone else is saying, it depends on the deal. But at my table, I would rule it like this: You retain all of your levels, you don't lose anything. Your patron has been giving you eldritch knowledge, but you are not a conduit of their power like the relationship between a god and cleric. However, you would not be able to gain more levels in the warlock class, because your patron is no longer teaching you. You would have to continue with another class, or perhaps do a quest for your patron to make amends and convince them to tutor you again.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Halt your wagging and wag your halters, for I am mastercryomancer!"
Pact magic is a one way transaction. Their could be role playing aspects added to it where by defaulting on the contract, the fiend lays claim on your soul. But barring this being the case there are no immediate consequences to breaking your pact
With that being said, if I’m a DM role playing as a fiend patron, I’m sending agents your way until I kill you or you offer me some collateral
I think the idea is you paid a upfront cost so there is no deal to break. You can't unpay the cost outside of time travel or something. With fiend maybe you already gave your soul, old ones maybe you performed a ritual and opened a conduit to the far planes for just a moment, but enough for the old one to move closer into this world, genie maybe a wish or you performed some boon for a elemental prince in your past like you saved their child while they were visiting the prime material plane, or you gave them 10 slaves. The cost has already been paid, they granted you power its up to you how you grow it from there.
Travis Willingham plays a Warlock/Paladin in campaign 2 of Critical Role. He essentially broke his pact with his patron and lost all of his powers. The Grave Cleric in their party serves the Wildmother and Travis' character asked the Wildmother to help him find his way again. His character agreed to serve the Wildmother at which point his character got his Warlock powers back but also multiclassed to Paladin.
What happens when/if a warlock breaks the pact with their patron? I'm looking for RAW, RAI, and any other knowledge, thoughts, or opinions. Do they loose all the warlock levels? Nothing happens? My "feeling" is that something bad should happen, and my gut response is they loose their warlock levels, or at least warlock powers, either forever or until they make amends with their patron or a different patron.
Thanks!
Way to assume your Pact is breakable. If you sold your soul, your soul is sold. Ain't no getting it back, son. If you're playing a game with breakable Pacts, I'd work it like a Paladin breaking their Oath (see TCOE for guidance) - you'd need to find a replacement Pact in a big hurry or lose all class abilities. But if I were your GM, your Pact would be harder to break than an adamantine golem's heart. Shit's permanent.
Correct, whatever you bargained, you bargained regardless. However, not every bargain is for the cost of a soul. A fiend gains just as much if they corrupt you to the point that you go to the nine hells and can more often than not still claim your soul.
So why ask for a soul when most people who aren't extremely desperate would decline? Maybe the fiend just asks you kill the person who also wronged you? Maybe you don't realize that this person had a pact or some other dealings with the fiend and has broken their pact and is *attempting* to redeem themselves. Maybe they also influence enough events that in order to kill this person, you have to shed innocent blood on the way. What if afterwards you're hunted by bounty hunters and the fiend returns and offers more power and only requires you to kill the men who hunt you?
Maybe the language in the deal is worded as such that if you don't fulfill your end and kill the people who hunted you, your soul is surrendered as the collateral, but you'll kill them or die trying because they are going to kill you. Now, maybe after getting your revenge you walk away from the fiend. You'll still retain your abilities and *potentially* can still learn new ones. Maybe at some point the fiend returns and offers even greater powers (mystic arcanums). Maybe if after given access to the initial Warlock abilities you are able to learn the upper limits of their power without your patron so maybe they offer something else of great value.
If you continue to ignore their advances, maybe they watch you from afar. If you're alignment is still evil, they are likely to leave you be, but if you attempt to redeem yourself, they send someone who you previously wronged after you...
Yeah but again, lets say the deal was to kill the person who wronged you. Until you've accomplished that, you haven't completed your pact so neither would they complete theirs. Once you kill the person who wronged you, that is when you'd become a warlock. Don't get me wrong it could be some mafia thing, I'm going to give you this power see, and I don't want nothing form you in return now. But sometime in the future I will come to you in my hour of need, and then you will have to do what I ask. I guess that is theoretically possible, but seems like a bad deal on the side of the devil, old one, fey etc as you might tell them to piss off later. So they gave up power for nothing, being able to get revenge on you isn't really helping them out. It works for the mafia in these stories as they are dealing with normal people with families and lives, not some crazy ass adventurer.
My impression is you formed the pact, the pact part is already done. You can't break it, they can't break it, its done. They may come and ask things of you later, but that is outside of the pact.
If I were the GM, I would 100% allow you to Pact away your free will, which would let your Patron make new demands of you in the future with no possibility of the Pact being broken (the Pact was giving your free will away, not future obedience, so even if you're physically prevented from obeying an order, the Pact would remain unbroken). I'm not opposed to the idea of a Patron making future demands of you. I am opposed to the idea of a mere mortal being capable of breaking a Pact.
If I were the GM, I would 100% allow you to Pact away your free will, which would let your Patron make new demands of you in the future with no possibility of the Pact being broken (the Pact was giving your free will away, not future obedience, so even if you're physically prevented from obeying an order, the Pact would remain unbroken). I'm not opposed to the idea of a Patron making future demands of you. I am opposed to the idea of a mere mortal being capable of breaking a Pact.
But that's the thing, we're all saying there is no breaking the pact. A deal was reached, and payment was made and there is no going back.
What we're saying is that deal doesn't have to be your soul or even your free will moving forward. Those would be extreme cases were someone has little leverage to bargain with.
Imagine a second born prince wants to be king and he makes a pact with a fiend. I give you the power, you kill your father and brother. *Boom* you are a Warlock. Now you could walk away, but given your ambition, why would you. You only have a taste of power, so you fulfil but of course there was one witness who saw everything. You can either kill this innocent person or give up everything and go on the run.
If I'm the fiend I use either situation to my advantage. You kill the innocent person and you are well on your way to being completely corrupted. I occasionally orchestrate events that lead to uprisings and of course you resort to brutally putting them down. This leads to the kingdom/region being corrupted and gives me more opportunities to claim souls. Eventually once my goals are reached, maybe I offer several adventurers Eldritch abilities in exchange for killing you which would probably lead to more corruption. Even *if* you found out, it probably leads to you becoming even more aggressive as King towards the region.
But let's say you go on the run instead, and you're hunted relentlessly for regicide. Now if you die, I likely claim at least your soul for just killing your father and brother, so I can sit back and play the long game. I probably tempt you with more power, enough to kill the men who hunt you, so maybe you accept. However, they keep coming non-stop, so this time I make my first demand and tell you send a clear message and attack a nearby village in a show of force. Prior to this, I just gave you powers to do what you wanted because our goals aligned, but since you have resisted the more evil acts, I up the stakes. If you decline, I ensure you are overwhelmed and killed but maybe you're more desperate now than you were before and agree to this deal.
I can then pick a few survivors and offer them great power and an opportunity for revenge, thus the cycle continues. Still, I demand nothing, because our goals are aligned. I give them a taste of power and dangle more behind additional favors. Kill this enemy for me and I'll teach you this. Kill this person for me and I'll teach you that. Steal this artifact for me and I'll offer you this. By the time they gain enough power to actually challenge you, they have committed so many evil acts that I win regardless.
Long story short...you get more bees with honey as opposed to vinegar
What happens when/if a warlock breaks the pact with their patron? I'm looking for RAW, RAI, and any other knowledge, thoughts, or opinions. Do they loose all the warlock levels? Nothing happens? My "feeling" is that something bad should happen, and my gut response is they loose their warlock levels, or at least warlock powers, either forever or until they make amends with their patron or a different patron.
Thanks!
The way i set my warlock up, (and this is the way i chose to play him, not necessarily RAW or RAI) if he were to find a way to break his pact he would loose everything and be cast into a lower region of hell for a long time. The way his contract is written, (signed and witnessed by a demon, renewed on a monthly basis by the painful removal of strips of his shadow) all his abilities are supplied by, and controlled by his patron right down to the selection of spells and invocations. He has no say in what abilities he has. Break any of the written (or unwritten) rules in the contract? Loose abilities. Keep the Crimson King happy? Be rewarded with new skills and abilities (level up). For him, breaking the pact would have huge ramifications. As a player, i let my DM decide the level of “punishment”. I also try really, really hard to not break any of that crazy buggers rules. The Crimson King’s, not my DM’s.....
As sfPanzer says, there is no rule about stripping a character of his class levels/abilities. I've heard WotC staff say that "once a pact is made and powers given, they are given and a patron can't take them back." This is not to day a patron can't seek revenge, etc.
I always loathed rules that would ruin your character... "hi player, I decided that the gods were angry with how you handled those goblin prisoners so you can no longer cast spells"
Patrons can't just shut off/take back a warlock's powers whenever they feel like it. Thats why pacts are so risky for them and why they are so picky on making them and with the wording of the contract.
Story wise, Breaking your Pact usually comes with a consequence stipulated in the original contract. It could be the loss of access to powers, if that is what you agreed on. Most pacts have far steeper consequences though:
Patrons aren't dumb and they usually have a lot of experience making pacts that people wont want to break. There is always a way around this, but most patrons are good at what they do.
Check out my Disabled & Dragons Youtube Channel for 5e Monster and Player Tactics. Helping the Disabled Community and Players and DM’s (both new and experienced) get into D&D. Plus there is a talking Dragon named Quill.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPmyTI0tZ6nM-bzY0IG3ww
This might not be a very popular opinion on warlock pacts but this is how i view them.....
They are much like a contract of employment you have when you go to work for a company. You go through an interview process and if successful are offered a contract. If you accept it you are expected to act in a certain way, perform certain duties, achieve certain targets and act in a way that is beneficial for your employer. If you fail to do so then your employer will initially have a word with you about bucking your ideas up and make sure you are aware of what is expected of you, you may lose certain benefits such as monetary bonuses and if you keep failing to do what you have been employed to do you will be fired.
So thinking of the warlock pact in those terms your patron would be fully within their rights to revoke or restrict the power they have given to you if you routinely break the pact you agreed to. They may send one of their other warlocks to you with a view of giving you a stern talking to and remind you of your role and duties or anything else they deem apropriate.
If you have a PLayer of a Warlock who uses the "my patron is not aware of me/my pact" route then they need to be able to justify this in some way. The reason I would say this is the definition of Pact is "an agreement between one or more parties" so if you are not aware of the other party in the pact you cannot agree to it. Players who adopt this route need to be aware that just because the patron is not aware of them does not mean they cannot become aware of them. To use another work contract analogy....
You walk into an office block, you talk you way passed security and onto the office floor for a company. You even manage to introduce yourself to the HR department and talk them into adding you onto the payroll and talking one of the line managers into believing you have just been hired. You get a monthly wage, you get a raft of extra's such as monetary bonus, stock options, private healthcare, gym memberships etc. Some time passes and you get asked into a meeting where the managers tell you they have found out you never had an interview, were never offered a job and have commited fraud by acting in the way you did. Now there is a very small chance they may reward your inititiative and let you continue to work for them but it is much more likely they will call the police and have your arressted and punished in some way. It is largely a case of when, not if, they find out what you have done.
In this way it is certainly withn the patrons ability to remove or revoke the power the warlock has "stolen" or otherwise punish the warlock by simply saying "Kudos for getting away with it for as long as you did but I never agreed to anything so I'll take back that power",
Using the above it would also be possible for patrons to trade warlocks with other patrons, maybe Asmodeus (a fiend patron) a makes a deal with the Queen of Air and Darkness (a fey parton) and throws one of their warlocks in to sweeten the deal so the Warlock wakes up one day and suddenly finds their powers have changed. This could be a interesting jumping off point for a new story arch as the warlock investigates whats happened.
in a similar way if he Warlock can prove their patron has failed ot live up to their side of the pact they could potentially break off the pact with no consequences, think of it as talking your company to court for some infraction.
Since it's not really taboo to change your class/subclass in a campaign without multiclassing, nothing really happens. But when my players fail to uphold a bargain or attitude with a higher power (ie. a cleric breaks the morals of their diety or a druid damages the natural order of things) then their main powers leave them and they must atone. The warlock in this case would lose the pact magic feature and the pact boon and it's other abilities. Because of this, it is also allowed for them to change their subclass for me. If their character, let's say a warlock of the fiend, makes a pact with the celestial, I would rule it that the fiendish magic leaves them and eventually the divine power would enter them. When I find it right, I grant them class abilities up to the level they are. This is easy to do with magic users, which is why only those who rely on others for magic (ie. paladins, clerics, druids, warlocks, etc) can do this type of thing. But characters who have the inborn magic or just CANT reverse what's been chosen and done (ie. sorcerers, bards, wizards, fighters, etc) they must keep their subclass. This is much like the oath breaker paladin the the DMG
I love roleplaying, message me so we can set something up.
I talk everything D&D, message me for questions, chat, arguements, or roleplay!
It's not RAW, but I stop letting them gain warlock levels. It's no fun at all to get nerfed back to level 1, but getting stuck at your level is something you can live with for a few sessions, while you try to figure out a solution. Start multiclassing? Find a new patron? Somehow repent and convert to a cleric at the same level as you were a warlock?
Really, it's going to be determined by the nature of the deal. It could be that you negotiated a contract of employment, and if you want to keep getting paid, you keep doing what you're told. It could be that you negotiated a deal to do something, and in return you get warlock powers. It could be that you make a deal to do something for a level of warlock powers. When you level up, you have to make a deal and do something else to get your next level of warlock powers. There's no limitation on what your contract could be.
As long as you didn't negotiate a contract that makes you a permanent employee of said patron, there's no RP reason to /lose/ any power that you have. It could be that the patron offered you a deal because you could do something that they needed and were unable to do for <reason>. Some patrons might offer a deal because it annoys someone else, or because it amuses them. The nature of the deal is the key though. You don't HAVE to have a standard employee contract.
In fact, none of my warlocks do. My class choice does not allow the DM to make me a slave to his whims unless I am 100% on board with it.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
As everyone else is saying, it depends on the deal. But at my table, I would rule it like this: You retain all of your levels, you don't lose anything. Your patron has been giving you eldritch knowledge, but you are not a conduit of their power like the relationship between a god and cleric. However, you would not be able to gain more levels in the warlock class, because your patron is no longer teaching you. You would have to continue with another class, or perhaps do a quest for your patron to make amends and convince them to tutor you again.
"Halt your wagging and wag your halters, for I am mastercryomancer!"
Check out my Expanded Signature
Pact magic is a one way transaction. Their could be role playing aspects added to it where by defaulting on the contract, the fiend lays claim on your soul. But barring this being the case there are no immediate consequences to breaking your pact
With that being said, if I’m a DM role playing as a fiend patron, I’m sending agents your way until I kill you or you offer me some collateral
“Pact magic is a one way transaction.”
Where is this stated in the game?
Asking for a fiend. I mean friend. Asking for a friend.
https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1221978854119460866?s=21
If you look at the question and then the answer, it's not exactly something that can be taken.
I think the idea is you paid a upfront cost so there is no deal to break. You can't unpay the cost outside of time travel or something. With fiend maybe you already gave your soul, old ones maybe you performed a ritual and opened a conduit to the far planes for just a moment, but enough for the old one to move closer into this world, genie maybe a wish or you performed some boon for a elemental prince in your past like you saved their child while they were visiting the prime material plane, or you gave them 10 slaves. The cost has already been paid, they granted you power its up to you how you grow it from there.
***Critical Role Spoiler***
Travis Willingham plays a Warlock/Paladin in campaign 2 of Critical Role. He essentially broke his pact with his patron and lost all of his powers. The Grave Cleric in their party serves the Wildmother and Travis' character asked the Wildmother to help him find his way again. His character agreed to serve the Wildmother at which point his character got his Warlock powers back but also multiclassed to Paladin.
Way to assume your Pact is breakable. If you sold your soul, your soul is sold. Ain't no getting it back, son. If you're playing a game with breakable Pacts, I'd work it like a Paladin breaking their Oath (see TCOE for guidance) - you'd need to find a replacement Pact in a big hurry or lose all class abilities. But if I were your GM, your Pact would be harder to break than an adamantine golem's heart. Shit's permanent.
Correct, whatever you bargained, you bargained regardless. However, not every bargain is for the cost of a soul. A fiend gains just as much if they corrupt you to the point that you go to the nine hells and can more often than not still claim your soul.
So why ask for a soul when most people who aren't extremely desperate would decline? Maybe the fiend just asks you kill the person who also wronged you? Maybe you don't realize that this person had a pact or some other dealings with the fiend and has broken their pact and is *attempting* to redeem themselves. Maybe they also influence enough events that in order to kill this person, you have to shed innocent blood on the way. What if afterwards you're hunted by bounty hunters and the fiend returns and offers more power and only requires you to kill the men who hunt you?
Maybe the language in the deal is worded as such that if you don't fulfill your end and kill the people who hunted you, your soul is surrendered as the collateral, but you'll kill them or die trying because they are going to kill you. Now, maybe after getting your revenge you walk away from the fiend. You'll still retain your abilities and *potentially* can still learn new ones. Maybe at some point the fiend returns and offers even greater powers (mystic arcanums). Maybe if after given access to the initial Warlock abilities you are able to learn the upper limits of their power without your patron so maybe they offer something else of great value.
If you continue to ignore their advances, maybe they watch you from afar. If you're alignment is still evil, they are likely to leave you be, but if you attempt to redeem yourself, they send someone who you previously wronged after you...
Yeah but again, lets say the deal was to kill the person who wronged you. Until you've accomplished that, you haven't completed your pact so neither would they complete theirs. Once you kill the person who wronged you, that is when you'd become a warlock. Don't get me wrong it could be some mafia thing, I'm going to give you this power see, and I don't want nothing form you in return now. But sometime in the future I will come to you in my hour of need, and then you will have to do what I ask. I guess that is theoretically possible, but seems like a bad deal on the side of the devil, old one, fey etc as you might tell them to piss off later. So they gave up power for nothing, being able to get revenge on you isn't really helping them out. It works for the mafia in these stories as they are dealing with normal people with families and lives, not some crazy ass adventurer.
My impression is you formed the pact, the pact part is already done. You can't break it, they can't break it, its done. They may come and ask things of you later, but that is outside of the pact.
If I were the GM, I would 100% allow you to Pact away your free will, which would let your Patron make new demands of you in the future with no possibility of the Pact being broken (the Pact was giving your free will away, not future obedience, so even if you're physically prevented from obeying an order, the Pact would remain unbroken). I'm not opposed to the idea of a Patron making future demands of you. I am opposed to the idea of a mere mortal being capable of breaking a Pact.
But that's the thing, we're all saying there is no breaking the pact. A deal was reached, and payment was made and there is no going back.
What we're saying is that deal doesn't have to be your soul or even your free will moving forward. Those would be extreme cases were someone has little leverage to bargain with.
Imagine a second born prince wants to be king and he makes a pact with a fiend. I give you the power, you kill your father and brother. *Boom* you are a Warlock. Now you could walk away, but given your ambition, why would you. You only have a taste of power, so you fulfil but of course there was one witness who saw everything. You can either kill this innocent person or give up everything and go on the run.
If I'm the fiend I use either situation to my advantage. You kill the innocent person and you are well on your way to being completely corrupted. I occasionally orchestrate events that lead to uprisings and of course you resort to brutally putting them down. This leads to the kingdom/region being corrupted and gives me more opportunities to claim souls. Eventually once my goals are reached, maybe I offer several adventurers Eldritch abilities in exchange for killing you which would probably lead to more corruption. Even *if* you found out, it probably leads to you becoming even more aggressive as King towards the region.
But let's say you go on the run instead, and you're hunted relentlessly for regicide. Now if you die, I likely claim at least your soul for just killing your father and brother, so I can sit back and play the long game. I probably tempt you with more power, enough to kill the men who hunt you, so maybe you accept. However, they keep coming non-stop, so this time I make my first demand and tell you send a clear message and attack a nearby village in a show of force. Prior to this, I just gave you powers to do what you wanted because our goals aligned, but since you have resisted the more evil acts, I up the stakes. If you decline, I ensure you are overwhelmed and killed but maybe you're more desperate now than you were before and agree to this deal.
I can then pick a few survivors and offer them great power and an opportunity for revenge, thus the cycle continues. Still, I demand nothing, because our goals are aligned. I give them a taste of power and dangle more behind additional favors. Kill this enemy for me and I'll teach you this. Kill this person for me and I'll teach you that. Steal this artifact for me and I'll offer you this. By the time they gain enough power to actually challenge you, they have committed so many evil acts that I win regardless.
Long story short...you get more bees with honey as opposed to vinegar