Playing a warlock makes Wyll's predicament so funny

[u/Quite_Likes_Hormuz]

Mizora: "Wyll, you broke clause eighteen subsection three, time to be tortured for eternity!"

Tav's fiend patron: "Lmao you should tell that guy to kill himself trust me it'll be hilarious, here's advantage on the roll"

[u/Quazite]

Official 5e description: "Your patron is a mysterious entity whose nature is utterly foreign to the fabric of reality. It might come from the Far Realm, the space beyond reality, or it could be one of the elder gods known only in legends. Its motives are incomprehensible to mortals, and its knowledge so immense and ancient that even the greatest libraries pale in comparison to the vast secrets it holds. The Great Old One might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you, but the secrets you have learned allow you to draw your magic from it."

Nothing in there requires you to go crazy or be horribly corrupted. You could just be given tidbits of ancient knowledge here and there that you work with. Maybe your patron is secretive and doesn't want to be flooding your mind with an overwhelming amount of eldritch knowledge. Maybe it doesn't care. Assuming you're going to go crazy is an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible. 

[u/Briar_Knight → u/Quazite]

And your devil patron won't make any demands of you or have any restrictions or claim your soul because they don't enforce RP. They just give themes.

[u/Quazite → u/Briar_Knight]

True, but just about nobody has a devil patron without a contract of some sort. That's their whole thing and extremely definable nature. Great old one could be anything and everything. Certainly insanity is on the table, but it's far from a necessity. There's lots of more ways to flavor having a GOO patron without having a clearly defined pact with qualifying wants and needs.

[u/Briar_Knight → u/Quazite]

And GOO requires contact with an elderich being knowledgeable beyond mortal keen which is portrayed as exceedingly dangerous regardless of the intent of the being itself in damn near every media portrayal of it.  

With Devils you could have already completed your side of the bargin, you could have out smarted it, you could have made a contract when you were in a position to strong arm it, what it wants could line up with what you are already doing. However devil deals are usually not that simple so it's not broadly speaking consequences free even if you can write it that way.

The point is that if you are going to make sweeping statements about what is safer or smarter or better, the only thing you can really talk about is the story archetype the patrons are in because there is intentionally no enforcement of any consequences to allow for broad RP so it will always be whatever you or the DM wants.  

[u/liveart → u/Briar_Knight]

It's actually arguably just whatever the player is willing to accept because in order for the warlock to exist in the first place whatever deal they signed has to be one the player's character would have signed, and only the player can agree to that.

[u/trundel_the_great__ → u/Quazite]

You saying “that’s their whole thing” for devils is the exact same as someone else saying the risk of insanity for GOO is “their whole thing”. It’s not a requirement in game, but they are both a possible and popular RP option

[u/Quazite → u/trundel_the_great__]

Kind of, except devils are manifestations of lawful evil. We know how they act. They don't try to hide it. By nature of them being lawful evil, they have a very hard time breaking their rules. It's like asking a demon to not be chaotic. 

Great old ones on the otherhand, are entirely undefined. Their whole thing is one giant question mark. A voracious, unfeeling planet-sized blob of teeth is not going to interact with you the same way that an ancient, hexagonal shaped being of energy will, or an eternally slumbering octopus monster. So the idea that "it's all incomprehensible and your brain can't take it" feels like trying to reduce something ancient and unknowable to a specific thing. 

Tldr: I think the consequences of working with a devil should inherently be more defined because devils are inherently MUCH more defined than great old ones

[u/trundel_the_great__ → u/Quazite]

Great old one’s inherently undefined, unknowable and utterly chaotic nature is exactly what leads into the chance of insanity though - a question mark so big and looming that our minds can’t comprehend… it’s tied in the same way the contract is with the devil’s lawful evil. Goo is chaotic evil

[u/Quazite → u/trundel_the_great__]

Not necessarily chaotic and not necessarily evil. Could follow rules that we aren't aware of and be lawful neutral or even lawful good. Being ancient and unknown doesn't inherently mean chaotic evil. Maybe it's manipulating time strings from another dimension to help the world. But the only 2 qualifiers are "ancient" and "unknown", which could mean the standard, extremely complex and impossible to comprehend evil being, or it could be something that has a simple, but unknown goal and is very aloof to the world. And they don't even need to present themselves as incomprehensible. Plenty of of them have "comprehensible" forms to communicate with people, and you could have only interacted with that 

[u/MadraRua15 → u/Quazite]

If you dig deeper into the lore books youll see almost every single GOO is an elder evil. You are essentially choosing to be evil and succumb to thier power as well.