Warlock Willingness

[Amateur Hour]

From the wiki:

Good/accidental/forced Warlock RP is not supported. All Arelith Warlocks have taken their pact voluntarily. The circumstances of this choice remain at the player's discretion.

The question is three parts:

1. Are warlock characters allowed to lie and claim that their pact was forced?

2. In the version of the Forgotten Realms that is Arelith, are voluntary pacts the only pacts that exist, or do both voluntary and involuntary pacts exist in the world (and Arelith PCs are always voluntary)?

3. If all pacts in the Arelith version of the Forgotten Realms are voluntary, is this something a reasonably-educated person would know? Obviously a country bumpkin from nowhere can be completely ignorant of anything and a Loremaster Wizard with 42 INT can know almost anything, but what about the middle space?

At its core:

If someone claims they have a forced or unwilling pact IC, is this something a reasonably well-educated individual would know has to be untrue?

EDIT: Realized there was an important first question.

[The GrumpyCat]

1) Yes, they are allowed to lie
2) Voluntary pacts do exist in the wider FR lore, but not (at least currently) on Arelith, mostly due to the alignment restrictions. My suggestion is to consider that Involuntary/accidental pacts can happen... but they're exceedingly rare for whatever reason, and never heard of on the isle.
3) For a middling knowledgable character, I think it's safe to presume that pacts must be (at least mostly) voluntary and willing. With oddly enough the more 'learned' knowing that very occasionally pacts can be made unwillingly - but it's a very rare thing indeed. Beyond that it really is up to how nieve a character is.

At the Core:
Ok consider this situation as an analogy.
You see a fellow selling Healing Potions for 10 gp in the street. You ask him how he can sell them so cheep. He gives a grin and say 'They fell off that back of a cart, mate.'
Now it is possible, genuinly possible, that the potions did, indeed, fall off the back of a cart. But I think in most circumstances people would consider that... highly susspicious.
I'd consider the Warlock sitaution similar. It's not entirely out of the realms of possiblity the Warlock is telling the truth, sure. But it's really, really, really unlikely and probably something a warlock /would/ lie about too.

[Amateur Hour]

The issue I find my character running into - and running into A LOT, which is why I'm asking the question - is this:

• A character is outed as a warlock.

• Said character claims it was forced.

• There is literally no way to prove them right or wrong or investigate further (unlike with the potion example, where you could go around asking if anyone is missing any potions, look for maker's marks, etc.).

• You have to take them at their word or decide they're lying (and thus earn the wrath of everyone who goes to bat for the person because "innocent until proven guilty" is hammered into every player's heads from infancy).

It feels like there's really no point to the rule saying that all pacts are voluntary if a character can just consistently say it was involuntary without any consequences.

[Biolab00]

I believe that the crux of the question is, whether the relationship between said warlock and you, is intimate enough that you risk (including your own life) to find out. Putting respawn stuff aside, to touch upon the pact of the Warlock is probably going to touch upon the otherworldly beings, that is incredibly dangerous.

While there may not be ways or method to reliably find out accurately, Warlock that claims to be forced can in fact (at least imho) to be considered good aligned monster (with motive). In a nutshell, other PC do not need evidence to shun a Warlock because that's how dangerous they are.

You'll believe a Warlock that claims their pact is forced, as much as you believe that robbers can share gold with his victims.

[The GrumpyCat]

The issue I find my character running into - and running into A LOT, which is why I'm asking the question - is this:

• A character is outed as a warlock.

• Said character claims it was forced.

• There is literally no way to prove them right or wrong or investigate further (unlike with the potion example, where you could go around asking if anyone is missing any potions, look for maker's marks, etc.).

• You have to take them at their word or decide they're lying (and thus earn the wrath of everyone who goes to bat for the person because "innocent until proven guilty" is hammered into every player's heads from infancy).

It feels like there's really no point to the rule saying that all pacts are voluntary if a character can just consistently say it was involuntary without any consequences.

Oh this is an easy one

If said character said it was forced, work with them to try and 'undo' the pact, do some rp to try and break it - could be a fun way of roleplaying with that character!
Try and talk to them - get to know them - ask other people about them. Get a feeling for who they are. This has the benefit of givign you the advantage of lots of people to roleplay with, lots of new relationships to make, lots of juicy rp to get into!
Watch them. Observe them. If they do seem absolutly 100% pure innocent sweet and good - great. Maybe they were telling the truth? (But then, if they really do seem utterly and completely innocent, with absolutly no evil and 100% good and utterly rejecting of their pact, maybe best to contact the Dms?) Or see if they slip up? Maybe the pact was /genuinly/ coerced in some way, and that's an angle you can rp.
Or maybe your pc gets drawn into the web of power! Maybe they are interested by these new angles. Maybe they're corrupted?
Or maybe their attempts to help the warlock draw the Warlock into the path of redemption, making them realize that they really should be someone better.
Or maybe you spot that they are up to something malavolent, at which point you've some proof of guilt and can bring it to the other pcs.
Or heck, maybe you find nothing and get nowhere and they turn out to be a bad'un later and you can go 'HA! I TOLD YOU!'

Or if none of this appeals - just shrug and move onto something else, as following it up doesn't really seem much fun for anyone?

People tend to think as conflict in binary terms. Either 100% loved and trusted or 'KILL ON SIGHT!' - in truth I don't think the team want either.
We would like to see Warlocks distrusted, feared, and disliked. In the same way I think we'd like to see say, surfacers in the underdark treated like that too - But that doesn't mean we need to see them absolutly eradicated.

You have to take them at their word or decide they're lying (and thus earn the wrath of everyone who goes to bat for the person because "innocent until proven guilty" is hammered into every player's heads from infancy).

So work to prove them guilty. Or make it clear that 'Look, I'm ok not to kill him, but I don't trust him and we need to watch him.' And honestly that's enough.

With a lot of this sort of rp (monsterious races in settlments being the exception) I don't think the team are saying that such classes should be killed on sight. Just that perhaps you shouldn't be asking them to babysit your kids.

[Rei_Jin]

I'll be honest and say that as someone playing an evil character that is a monster, my character still pauses when it comes to warlocks, and is a bit reticent.

Demons, devils, sure, you know they want to corrupt those around them, cause chaos, etc.

Patrons for a warlock go a level beyond that, and they are truly worrying things.

If you, as a player playing a warlock, don't have that in your mind and as something that impacts your roleplay, and if you, as a player interacting with a warlock, don't have that in your mind as you work out how you'll engage with them, then perhaps the lore hasn't hit you hard enough.

Warlocks are bad news, and should be taken seriously by everyone.

[Amateur Hour]

If you, as a player playing a warlock, don't have that in your mind and as something that impacts your roleplay, and if you, as a player interacting with a warlock, don't have that in your mind as you work out how you'll engage with them, then perhaps the lore hasn't hit you hard enough.

Warlocks are bad news, and should be taken seriously by everyone.

Might be a good project for the writing team, then, to put together some roleplay tips in the Warlock wiki page, because I feel like most players think of warlocks as being little different from non-good sorcerers because MECHANICALLY warlocks are little different from sorcerers and just happen to be locked out of Good alignments.

[Kuma]

Might be a good project for the writing team, then, to put together some roleplay tips in the Warlock wiki page, because I feel like most players think of warlocks as being little different from non-good sorcerers because MECHANICALLY warlocks are little different from sorcerers and just happen to be locked out of Good alignments.

That's basically canon, is the fun thing!

By the books, Warlocks aren't really any more "bad news" than an irresponsible Sorcerer. They're a pretty basic character class that can have any number of motivations and power sources, and half of them are indeed "my grandpa was a weirdo" or "i woke up like this". But we've homebrewed ourselves into a corner with how we've considered and implemented Warlocks on Arelith for years now. Patrons work better in P&P (like divine classes and their gods) but we kinda have to gloss over a lot of it.

Writing this would be an admission that Arelith Warlocks are not canon Warlocks and I'm not there yet.

[Scurvy Cur]

I think a lot of the reason that Arelith doesn't hold too close to warlock lore, by the book, is that our initial release of warlock wasn't too close to warlock by the book either.

It's worth bearing in mind that, when the class was launched, you got two flavors of warlock:

1) Fey, which almost nobody played because it was one of the worst levelling experiences Arelith has ever had on offer, and initially got shut down by the then-cooldownless clarity potion.

2) Fiend, which summoned balor lords or pit fiend generals.

And some of the initial "I'm a good guy, but a distant ancestor saddled me with periodic balors" RP was genuinely awful. So, as tends to happen when the playerbase at large proves itself incapable of handling nuance well, some boundaries were put on how warlock should happen.

Writing this would be an admission that Arelith Warlocks are not canon Warlocks and I'm not there yet.

Show me where the summoning buttons come from:
https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/ba ... rlock.html
https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/magic/invo ... tions.html

(outside of using imbue item, which allows the warlock to prepare magic items without knowing the spell, to make scrolls of summoning spells, they don't conjure things)

Therefore, Arelith warlocks are not canon warlocks (though Blastlock is closer than any previous variant has been).

[DM Monkey]

Probably better to start thinking that the way classes are mechanically implemented on Arelith don’t actually represent their 3.5 rules edition counterpart in all cases.