Warlocks dabble in the occult or seek forbidden lore and incantations and can gain their spellcasting and invocations that way. Maybe an entity is guiding their way, but I don’t think they have to at this point, like while searching an old library for this lore a book “just so happens” to fall off a shelf and lands open to a certain page. Or they accidentally or through a trinket tap into an entity’s power and once they gain a certain level of power a pact with that entity is formed.
I mean, whatever works for a specific player and a specific table. But this kind of reinforces the idea of "no subclass means no patron". What if you multiclass and only take 2 levels of warlock? Are you forever a warlock without a patron? Again, that's perfectly fine, the patron is pretty much just flavor, anyway. But it doesn't help this mass hysteria caused by all classes getting their subclass at level 3.
That’s why I added the part about an entity guiding your way. It could be a patron that is providing power yet not a formal pact as you haven’t proven yourself yet. And look at GOO subclass. That patron may not even know of your existence or care so would it even matter if you got it at level one or three?
Like I said, flavor is free, and playing a warlock without a pact is perfectly fine. But for people trying to make sense out of what's written in the PHB (which is the point of this thread), it's counterproductive to play a warlock without a pact. That's what defines the flavor of the class. You don't even get the Spellcasting class feature, you get Pact Magic. What pact?
This is one way to do it, for sure, but if someone is trying to make sense out of it, postponing the actual pact to level 3 will make the narrative make even less sense.
I feel like people are overthinking things when it comes to the narrative weirdness of having a subclass at level 3. For instance, warlocks have a patron starting level 1, its just that the player may or may not know who that patron is, depending on how they want to play it. This isn't much different from say, a player deciding who their character's parents are in the middle of a campaign, and you can certainly make a similar argument there. "What, so you can choose who your parents are after you already exist?" What people need to keep in mind is that the player making a choice isn't necessarily the same thing as their character making a choice.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Like I said, flavor is free, and playing a warlock without a pact is perfectly fine. But for people trying to make sense out of what's written in the PHB (which is the point of this thread), it's counterproductive to play a warlock without a pact. That's what defines the flavor of the class. You don't even get the Spellcasting class feature, you get Pact Magic. What pact?
This is one way to do it, for sure, but if someone is trying to make sense out of it, postponing the actual pact to level 3 will make the narrative make even less sense.
I feel like people are overthinking things when it comes to the narrative weirdness of having a subclass at level 3. For instance, warlocks have a patron starting level 1, its just that the player may or may not know who that patron is, depending on how they want to play it. This isn't much different from say, a player deciding who their character's parents are in the middle of a campaign, and you can certainly make a similar argument there. "What, so you can choose who your parents are after you already exist?" What people need to keep in mind is that the player making a choice isn't necessarily the same thing as their character making a choice.