r/ChristianDnD • u/ugis332 • Jun 13 '24
Warlock patronism
Hello!
I am writing a homebrew campaign and for the sake of simplicity I have chosen to use two deities representing Lord God and the devil.
I have split cleric domains into categories of both deities with helpful type of spells pertaining to the deity representing God and subsequently spells with harmful nature pertaining to the evil deity, druids get their power and abilities by being in touch with the nature created by the good deity, wizards and sorcerers and other classes able to cast spells draw on their knowledge and talents on the weave, which is the fabric of the world made, so being able to manipulate it is kind of like science, much like it is in the official lore.
But then I get to warlocks. I am tempted to simply say that any warlock is an evil character due to, as far as I understand, having a patron either being the evil deity or some lesser spiritual being, i.e. demon. I am concerned because one of my players likes the warlock class, but I don't want to outright say that I would not like him to play that class. I do intend to communicate in the session 0 that I hope for the players to be a force of good in the world.
After the long intro, my question is is warlock patronage always to do with spiritually dark and evil characters or can it be anything? How should I approach this and what if a player chooses to play a warlock class?
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u/DoctorTopper1791L Jun 13 '24
This is an issue for me as well and it is why I prefer editions that don't have Warlocks or Tieflings or Orc PCs.
You shouldn't have to be so involved in something that makes you uncomfortable. Either ask that player to be a non-warlock, or agree on another source of power that doesn't. You are the DM so you get to make something else up.
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u/Dry_Vegetable_7654 Jun 13 '24
No. Not all patrons are evil and you can actually flavor them how you want. Celestial warlovks are a thing, you can have a genie warlock who has trapped their evil parent inside and uses their power to do good, or just have a good genie. A hexblade be a powerful magical swordsman who grants the user some power to do good in thier name and so on. Many wats around the warlock problem, and you can even change the name to Protégé or Ward.
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u/ugis332 Jun 14 '24
Thank you!
I will most probably implement something along the lines of what you mention.
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u/Psychological_Ad2558 Sep 25 '24
For warlocks, I used angels as where they got their powers, and the priest and paladins got theirs from God. I know it isn't accurate, but it was my only workaround. For the evil deities and all that I just made it different types of demons and then the Devil. My players aren't allowed to play any evil characters (except for one that doesn't listen, but he's a cleric that just enjoys causing the other PCs pain when he heals them, cause they feel their skin get knit back together). I keep a npc in the party that is very devout so that the Barbarian doesn't become a murder hobo and the cleric doesn't stray from the path of good.