Otherworldly Patron is the warlock subclass.
Pact Boon is a general warlock feature analogous to Fighting Style from fighter and fighter-adjacent classes.
*deep breath*
Okay. Better now. Carry on. That’s a good way to frame why pact boon is kind of goofy. It doesn’t speak to what the warlock is already doing! Fighting styles work because they augment stuff fighter-types like doing or being.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) December 27, 2018
Yeah, it’s like a pseudo-subclass!
Here: Pick your flavor! Weapon fighter, ritual caster, or caster with a weird buddy? (Still not really a “pet” class) Although I will say I want to play a Chain ‘lock where the imp (or whatever) is the PC, and the warlock is some hapless rube the patron has to use to tether their really agent to the material plane.
“Don’t y’all to the help, he doesn’t know crap! Talk to me!”
— Dan Dillon (@Dan_Dillon_1) December 27, 2018
You know, I’ve often wondered what the warlock class might like like if the two were reversed – your pact boon was your subclass, with the patron being the smaller “extra” for flavor. The boon does seem to lend itself better to being the focus of what your character actually *does*, as opposed to the figure that grants the ability to do it…
— GeorgeSutherlandHoward (@Acr0ssTh3P0nd) December 27, 2018
Yeah, it’s interesting to consider remodeling invocations to mesh better with them – lore/pet/weapon trees – and making those divides clearer. It’s harder to implement, because for fighter types armor/bow/sword/etc is something new players get automatically.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) December 27, 2018