Important: I have been harassed on my discussion threads before. I am not claiming to be better than anyone, this is for community input and not to brag about my contributions. I WILL have to report any time someone makes a personal attack on me. You are free to attack my opinions, but don't call me worthless and stupid.
The point of this is to see what the community likes, not to boast that I can come up with ideas. I am also aware that lore and Wizards of the Coast trends make many of these a bad idea. What do you think sounds cool? Any comments to make?
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
Am I wrong in remembering thinking that 'hexblade' is already the Raven Queen as a patron? I don't mind seeing a specific umbral(shadow) patron of some kind, but not necessarily the literal god of the place as why is that person a warlock rather than a cleric?
A Psi patron is a great idea, but again not necessarily one associated with the illithids.
Genie already counts as this, no? Other primordial patrons might do for a different flavor, yes; but then again, your elder dragon one below can also serve as an elemental patron.
Good for an improved talisman version but possibly also redundant with Void affiliated / a bound vestige.
The Void isn't anything, literal nothing between the somethings. It does however contain vestiges, the remnant consciousnesses of dead gods and other similar beings that found nowhere within the planes to be, vestiges can be bound for power, but not really as a single patron, rather more in line with your 'Hive' style patron. Multiple vestiges can be simultaneously bound each providing a small portion of the overall warlock abilities.
This should always have been a Patron all along - on the one hand. On the other, Dragons can imbue essence to potentially make sorcerers rather than warlocks out of a follower and also teach them wizardry or patronize shamans. As above, they also are not necessarily separate from an elementally powered concept.
I'd totally pick Strahad as a Ravenloft warlock patron, no doubt, but it has to be someone big like that. Simple 'vampire' is too small. Afterall Ravenloft was invented because the founder played a game where 'vampire' was a random encounter in a dungeon crawl and felt it was out of place there; nevertheless 'vampire' or at least vampiric template are often still largely just generic monster or even nowadays outright PC applicable. Also, they can fit as below under the already existing undead patron category.
Well, Undead patron is already a thing and possibly includes Orcus, Vecna can be as great a theme for that, but on the other hand, same as the Raven Queen; Vecna is a literal god; so why warlock and not cleric if you pick him as your patron?
Fine for Nordic themed warlocks or perhaps certain Dwarven ones, yes.
Aside from being a vestige binder, what sort power source pools do you have in mind? Swarm of Pixies?; also works with swarm of tiny elementals of some kind for that approach, so not necessarily its own patron, but just variant style for all the above concepts.
Vecna and the Raven Queen do not belong on this list. Wizards does not design Warlock subclasses for specific individuals (like Vecna) - they design subclasses for archetypes and then players and DMs use their own worldbuilding to choose which individual patron or utilize. From a game design stance, this makes sense - if you have a “Vecna Patron Warlock” then that is not going to be very useful for folks playing in a world without Vecna.
Sticking with our Vecna example, that is why they use something like “the Undying” as the title for Warlock subclass - the Undying is a pact made with an extremely powerful entity, and thus is appropriate for a lich god like Vecna.
(As an aside, Shepherd_ Hubbard is correct about Hexblade - Hexblade is one of the few warlock subclasses that specifically mentions a named individual, in this case, the Raven Queen. I suspect that is because, unlike other subclasses, you can’t immediately tell who the patron is by the word “Hexblade,” so they wanted to provide one example. The text, however, remains clear that the Raven Queen is not the only entity who can create Hexblade pacts and that the subclass can be used universally).
If I were to make a homebrew of one of these, what should I make?
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Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
From your list, the biggest gaps currently are Dragon, Giant, and Elemental, though I would argue that Genie covers the latter since genies come from those planes in particular.
The rest are pretty well-linked to existing patrons I would say.
How much would the community want a dragon patron in official D&D? They don't cast spells and thus it wouldn't make sense to me that they'd grant you level 20 warlock magic, but people seem to love the idea.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
The fact that their stat blocks [see Ancient Gold Dragon] don't have any spells and the only potential magic is Change Shape. They are magical, but why grant Eldritch invocations to someone when you don't even cast spells? Just saying. Spellcaster is defined as someone who casts a spell, and they don't cast spells. They're MAGIC, not SPELLCASTERS because of this, at least for normal dragons. There's a huge difference, because the type of magic they use is different than what humans use. Wizards use Draconic, so what, its a magic language. That doesn't mean the Dragons are a warlock Patron, just saying. As for sorcerers, the magic bloodline of dragons is what the sorcerer needs to cast spells, since they need magic in them to innately do so. This does not mean they themselves cast spells. Plus, I never said they can't be a warlock Patron. It's just that this is an entirely different type of magic granting in the fact that they must already have that ability, which they don't.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
The lack of spells in the statblock is some 5e nonsense. Delve deeper into the lore and you'll see, dragons are supposed to have spells and spell like abilities and certainly did in older books etc - even class levels. Dragons literally 'make' magic.
Besides, if you don't like the idea of Dragon patrons, why did you include it in your list of options?
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Dragon patron is probably the subclass I'd love to see the most, of all potential subclass ideas over all classes.
I'd kind of want it to lean into the 'become the dragon' niche, now that draconic sorcerer has ended up as a dragon summoner archetype (and stolen drakenwarden's lunch money in the process).
This is meant for homebrew and to see what the community likes, so I wasn't fulling focusing on the deep lore. I put Dragon as an option to see if people like it.
Full Explanation below:
I literally just asked what they like most about it. I also said that there's nothing wrong with dragon patrons, I'm just wondering why a dragon is everyone's first choice. And not from lack of understanding, but to see the community's view. And logically, your most recent question about why I'd include it if I don't like it is the real nonsense here, since I know the community loves the idea and this is to "see what the community likes". Also, there are reasons the Dragon Patron isn't a thing in D&D 5e, we don't need much focus on dragons. It was called D&D way back when the game was bad enough to call their classes "Fighting Man" and "Magic User", and Dragon's are cool, but they can't be the keystone of everything.
But perhaps you're the one who knows everything about D&D lore. Here's the real question; You should know that most of these probably won't make it to D&D. Maybe 1 of them gets lucky, although even the best homebrew doesn't make it in as an actual subclass (very few exceptions out of the thousands upon thousands of homebrew subclasses.) So this is a question of what homebrew looks cool. Why? Look at the post below:
If I were to make a homebrew of one of these, what should I make?
I simply ask what people like as a homebrew idea. I don't necessarily need to brain rot over D&D lore rather than accomplishing something with my life, I've won too many awards in to many things to spend my time figuring out every bit of it rather than adding something real to the world. But luckily, I don't need to actually know all the official lore to create UNOFFICIAL D&D content. I am here to determine what to homebrew next by asking what about the subclass people like. I don't do this to go deep into lore, but to make a homebrew that someone wants to play. I don't need to own Wizards of the Coast to do so. One life skill is to be able to identify mild creative curiosity from deep professional critique. Actually, It's not even a life skill so much as a basic skill.
The whole point of this carefully structured post is to teach you that I am not here to make official content that Wizard of the Coast doesn't care about adding. I simply was asking what about dragons as a warlock Patron is interesting beyond just the overused concept of dragon power being beloved amongst this fantasizing community. We don't need to bring up all the facts when the fact are made up by gaming fanatics.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
Anyway, I like the Hive Mind the best. It's never been done before (as far as I know) and seems fun to make.
[I'm not the one trying to argue, I'm just the one putting my opinion into the world.]
Yeah, the hive mind is quite different in the fact that there is no patron. My idea is that a bunch of warlocks put all their magic into a theoretical pull that they can draw from when needed.
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Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
I'm just going to burn any conversation about the Dragon Patron to ashes right now, since no one really understands my point, as much as that depresses me. I'm going to refrain from sharing any opinion so I don't get accused of not knowing the 'obvious lore', I know enough lore but don't want to be targeted again by someone calling my explanation nonsense.
My simple explanation is that I'm not being rude, I'm just a passionate speaker and I put effort into putting my unoffensive point across.
Good point about the Raven Queen. Again, I don't spend all my time on D&D lore, so I wasn't instantly aware of the whole point with the hexblade. Good call. I do feel like the whole shadowfell shouldn't be entirely represented by blades, but maybe I'm blind to some blade-related lore about the shadow fell.
I see the elemental is popular. I think this is a great idea. Of course, the genie's are elemental, but the whole focus of the subclass is on the genie aspect rather than the elemental one. I could be wrong.
Let me address the point on Vecna though. It's one guy, so that's bad for official subclasses. But for homebrew, since you make up or choose whatever specific patron you have (Like a fiend warlock would say "My patron is the Demogorgon" or "My patron is [insert made up fiend]") maybe a player might want it to be customized to Vecna in particular. He feels to me like more of a warlock than a cleric type of guy. I could be wrong though, don't use phrases like "Where did you get the idea..." again.
Any comments? Comments that don't make me elaborate on my profile name? (hint: Orcs are viewed as ugly and less than human outside of D&D, and I'm certainly being insulted in posts that have luckily been deleted. By the way, I wasn't the one who reported them.)
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
I chose the dragon patron because it seems to me alot of the other options can be replicated via flavor by other subclasses.
Good point. We've got lots of love for the dragon subclass.
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Check out Monach of the Realms forum game!As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
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Important: I have been harassed on my discussion threads before. I am not claiming to be better than anyone, this is for community input and not to brag about my contributions. I WILL have to report any time someone makes a personal attack on me. You are free to attack my opinions, but don't call me worthless and stupid.
The point of this is to see what the community likes, not to boast that I can come up with ideas. I am also aware that lore and Wizards of the Coast trends make many of these a bad idea. What do you think sounds cool? Any comments to make?
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
Am I wrong in remembering thinking that 'hexblade' is already the Raven Queen as a patron? I don't mind seeing a specific umbral(shadow) patron of some kind, but not necessarily the literal god of the place as why is that person a warlock rather than a cleric?
A Psi patron is a great idea, but again not necessarily one associated with the illithids.
Genie already counts as this, no? Other primordial patrons might do for a different flavor, yes; but then again, your elder dragon one below can also serve as an elemental patron.
Good for an improved talisman version but possibly also redundant with Void affiliated / a bound vestige.
The Void isn't anything, literal nothing between the somethings. It does however contain vestiges, the remnant consciousnesses of dead gods and other similar beings that found nowhere within the planes to be, vestiges can be bound for power, but not really as a single patron, rather more in line with your 'Hive' style patron. Multiple vestiges can be simultaneously bound each providing a small portion of the overall warlock abilities.
This should always have been a Patron all along - on the one hand. On the other, Dragons can imbue essence to potentially make sorcerers rather than warlocks out of a follower and also teach them wizardry or patronize shamans. As above, they also are not necessarily separate from an elementally powered concept.
I'd totally pick Strahad as a Ravenloft warlock patron, no doubt, but it has to be someone big like that. Simple 'vampire' is too small. Afterall Ravenloft was invented because the founder played a game where 'vampire' was a random encounter in a dungeon crawl and felt it was out of place there; nevertheless 'vampire' or at least vampiric template are often still largely just generic monster or even nowadays outright PC applicable. Also, they can fit as below under the already existing undead patron category.
Well, Undead patron is already a thing and possibly includes Orcus, Vecna can be as great a theme for that, but on the other hand, same as the Raven Queen; Vecna is a literal god; so why warlock and not cleric if you pick him as your patron?
Fine for Nordic themed warlocks or perhaps certain Dwarven ones, yes.
Aside from being a vestige binder, what sort power source pools do you have in mind? Swarm of Pixies?; also works with swarm of tiny elementals of some kind for that approach, so not necessarily its own patron, but just variant style for all the above concepts.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Vecna and the Raven Queen do not belong on this list. Wizards does not design Warlock subclasses for specific individuals (like Vecna) - they design subclasses for archetypes and then players and DMs use their own worldbuilding to choose which individual patron or utilize. From a game design stance, this makes sense - if you have a “Vecna Patron Warlock” then that is not going to be very useful for folks playing in a world without Vecna.
Sticking with our Vecna example, that is why they use something like “the Undying” as the title for Warlock subclass - the Undying is a pact made with an extremely powerful entity, and thus is appropriate for a lich god like Vecna.
(As an aside, Shepherd_ Hubbard is correct about Hexblade - Hexblade is one of the few warlock subclasses that specifically mentions a named individual, in this case, the Raven Queen. I suspect that is because, unlike other subclasses, you can’t immediately tell who the patron is by the word “Hexblade,” so they wanted to provide one example. The text, however, remains clear that the Raven Queen is not the only entity who can create Hexblade pacts and that the subclass can be used universally).
If I were to make a homebrew of one of these, what should I make?
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
From your list, the biggest gaps currently are Dragon, Giant, and Elemental, though I would argue that Genie covers the latter since genies come from those planes in particular.
The rest are pretty well-linked to existing patrons I would say.
How much would the community want a dragon patron in official D&D? They don't cast spells and thus it wouldn't make sense to me that they'd grant you level 20 warlock magic, but people seem to love the idea.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
Of course dragons are spellcasters. Where did you get the idea Dragons weren't spellcasters?
Afterall, the official language of wizardry is Draconic and a dragon bloodline makes Sorcerers.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
The fact that their stat blocks [see Ancient Gold Dragon] don't have any spells and the only potential magic is Change Shape. They are magical, but why grant Eldritch invocations to someone when you don't even cast spells? Just saying. Spellcaster is defined as someone who casts a spell, and they don't cast spells. They're MAGIC, not SPELLCASTERS because of this, at least for normal dragons. There's a huge difference, because the type of magic they use is different than what humans use. Wizards use Draconic, so what, its a magic language. That doesn't mean the Dragons are a warlock Patron, just saying. As for sorcerers, the magic bloodline of dragons is what the sorcerer needs to cast spells, since they need magic in them to innately do so. This does not mean they themselves cast spells. Plus, I never said they can't be a warlock Patron. It's just that this is an entirely different type of magic granting in the fact that they must already have that ability, which they don't.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
The lack of spells in the statblock is some 5e nonsense. Delve deeper into the lore and you'll see, dragons are supposed to have spells and spell like abilities and certainly did in older books etc - even class levels. Dragons literally 'make' magic.
Besides, if you don't like the idea of Dragon patrons, why did you include it in your list of options?
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Dragon patron is probably the subclass I'd love to see the most, of all potential subclass ideas over all classes.
I'd kind of want it to lean into the 'become the dragon' niche, now that draconic sorcerer has ended up as a dragon summoner archetype (and stolen drakenwarden's lunch money in the process).
This is meant for homebrew and to see what the community likes, so I wasn't fulling focusing on the deep lore. I put Dragon as an option to see if people like it.
Full Explanation below:
I literally just asked what they like most about it. I also said that there's nothing wrong with dragon patrons, I'm just wondering why a dragon is everyone's first choice. And not from lack of understanding, but to see the community's view. And logically, your most recent question about why I'd include it if I don't like it is the real nonsense here, since I know the community loves the idea and this is to "see what the community likes". Also, there are reasons the Dragon Patron isn't a thing in D&D 5e, we don't need much focus on dragons. It was called D&D way back when the game was bad enough to call their classes "Fighting Man" and "Magic User", and Dragon's are cool, but they can't be the keystone of everything.
But perhaps you're the one who knows everything about D&D lore. Here's the real question; You should know that most of these probably won't make it to D&D. Maybe 1 of them gets lucky, although even the best homebrew doesn't make it in as an actual subclass (very few exceptions out of the thousands upon thousands of homebrew subclasses.) So this is a question of what homebrew looks cool. Why? Look at the post below:
I simply ask what people like as a homebrew idea. I don't necessarily need to brain rot over D&D lore rather than accomplishing something with my life, I've won too many awards in to many things to spend my time figuring out every bit of it rather than adding something real to the world. But luckily, I don't need to actually know all the official lore to create UNOFFICIAL D&D content. I am here to determine what to homebrew next by asking what about the subclass people like. I don't do this to go deep into lore, but to make a homebrew that someone wants to play. I don't need to own Wizards of the Coast to do so. One life skill is to be able to identify mild creative curiosity from deep professional critique. Actually, It's not even a life skill so much as a basic skill.
The whole point of this carefully structured post is to teach you that I am not here to make official content that Wizard of the Coast doesn't care about adding. I simply was asking what about dragons as a warlock Patron is interesting beyond just the overused concept of dragon power being beloved amongst this fantasizing community. We don't need to bring up all the facts when the fact are made up by gaming fanatics.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
This thread turned dark/argumentative quick...
Anyway, I like the Hive Mind the best. It's never been done before (as far as I know) and seems fun to make.
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[I'm not the one trying to argue, I'm just the one putting my opinion into the world.]
Yeah, the hive mind is quite different in the fact that there is no patron. My idea is that a bunch of warlocks put all their magic into a theoretical pull that they can draw from when needed.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
I'm just going to burn any conversation about the Dragon Patron to ashes right now, since no one really understands my point, as much as that depresses me. I'm going to refrain from sharing any opinion so I don't get accused of not knowing the 'obvious lore', I know enough lore but don't want to be targeted again by someone calling my explanation nonsense.
My simple explanation is that I'm not being rude, I'm just a passionate speaker and I put effort into putting my unoffensive point across.
Any comments? Comments that don't make me elaborate on my profile name? (hint: Orcs are viewed as ugly and less than human outside of D&D, and I'm certainly being insulted in posts that have luckily been deleted. By the way, I wasn't the one who reported them.)
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.
I chose the dragon patron because it seems to me alot of the other options can be replicated via flavor by other subclasses.
Good point. We've got lots of love for the dragon subclass.
Check out Monach of the Realms forum game! As Djinni you'll know me, for I am your king. From void I have shaped thee, I've shaped everything. But please do not kneel, just look and behold, I rule you to heal and share stories untold. The mask that I wear is a crude one of glass, so your soul will repair if you glance at me fast. You'll pray that you know me, and I'll let your heart ring. I'm as strong as the world tree and I'll make your heart sing.