We come now to what is, at least conceptually, my favorite D&D class. More than any other class in D&D, the subclass you choose for your Warlock has profound lore implications. While the morality and overall outlook of the character varies from Warlock to Warlock, your otherworldly patron is going to mean a very different tone. Pacts struck with Celestials, and some Archfeys, Genies, and even Fathomless might be fairly simple and uncomplicated affairs. But a pact with a Fiend? The Undead? A Great Old One? Hoo boy.
The 2024 PHB brought the Celestial in as its fourth subclass, along with revisions to the 2014 PHB's Archfey, Fiend, and Great Old One.
As I've noted, I have a bit of a bias toward "spooky" or "dark" subclass options, which you might have disagreed with in this series of posts. The thing is, more than any other class, Warlocks lean in to spookiness. I actually think the spook subclasses might very well outnumber the non-spooky ones. (Even some like the Archfey, which could be played as whimsical and light in tone, could also represent a coven of hags or other scary fey being).
Once again, all of these could get a minor mechanical update by turning the "Expanded Spell List" into Patron Spells, but we're going to be a little more discerning here.
Here, we'll talk about the Undying, Hexblade, Genie, Fathomless, and Undead patrons.
Undying: No
There's zero reason for us to revisit this subclass, as we've already essentially got the updated, revised version of it in the Undead patron, which is not only conceptually clearer, but also mechanically superior. I never understood why they hedged so much in SCAG when creating this patron, when it was clearly meant to be an undead patron, but also included any being that had magically extended its life in other ways. Let's sweep this one into the dustbin of history, which we've already more or less done.
Hexblade: No
This has been an incredibly popular subclass, but I believe it's been popular almost entirely because of its mechanics. Many Hexblades (including prominent ones in actual play shows like Dimension 20's Unsleeping City and Critical Role's Campaign Two) have more or less just ignored the actual concept of this - having a sentient weapon as your patron - in favor of using the mechanics to represent something that would be better represented with another patron (I think the Grand Gata in Unsleeping City should be an Archfey, and Uko'toa is an absolute textbook Fathomless, though since that didn't exist at the time, it is also a perfectly appropriate Great Old One). Any future printing of the Hexblade would probably need to nerf it - while the functionality of the Hex Weapon has been folded into the Pact of the Blade, the added training in medium armor and shields makes it too powerful an option (especially for Bladelocks). I'd honestly like to see an Invocation that could grant the armor training, likely requiring Pact of the Blade as a prerequisite. Once that was there, though, we could just move on from the Hexblade. The only reason to reprint this would be to nerf it, and I don't think that's really going to get anyone excited about it.
Genie: Yes
I'd initially said no here purely because I think the subclass already works all right as it is. But I think that at the very least updating the Expanded Spell List to instead be Patron Spells would be a welcome tweak/update, and I think Genies make perfect sense as a patron, given that they're among the most powerful figures in the Elemental Planes, and also the most humanoid-like, who would be eager to work with mortals.
Fathomless: No
I don't think this one's turning heads as much as some of the previous ones, and it's also probably not as powerful as the other ones (though it's pretty killer in a campaign with a lot of underwater combat). But I think the concept, while solid, is also niche enough that I don't think we need a new version of it.
Undead: Yes
I think this should have been in the PHB instead of the Celestial. To me, the Undead patron is one of the no-brainer Warlock patron concepts. Like the Genie, I'd initially had this as a no (which would have meant all nos for the existing subclasses) because this subclass is already pretty good as it stands. But both because of the Expanded Spells/Patron Spells update that all of these should theoretically get, as well as the fact that this was only ever published in a campaign setting book (a very appropriate setting, mind you) when it should be one of the core, default options for a Warlock subclass, means I'd be happy to see it reprinted and updated.
So there we go. Again, I'd initially started writing a whole thing about how I wasn't recommending any of these, but I changed my tune with the two subclasses whose concepts and also mechanics I like best. But I think there's tons of design space here - you could imagine a patron of nearly every creature type (we still don't have a dragon, construct, humanoid, beast, plant, or ooze one. Monstrosity is debatable if you could Fathomless as being specifically a Kraken). It's actually a little unfortunate that the Fathomless has been somewhat overlooked, because it's a subclass that doesn't really match a particular creature type. I could imagine a subclass that gains powers from an ancient sage's mind preserved in some artifact, not quite undead (honestly closer to Hexblade, but with a less explicitly weapon-focused idea) or even some outlandish ideas like a sapient plague or even a future/alternate universe version of the Warlock.
We're in the home stretch now! Only the Wizard left to go.
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