Do reserve feats make the Warlock redundant?

Do reserve feats, essentially, make the Warlock redundant? The reserve feats allow wizards to perfectly mimic the Warlock if they so choose. +1d6/2 levels blast ability? Check. At-will utility spells? Check. Granted, there aren't any nearly enough reserve feats to write out all the warlock invocations, but that's really just a failing of the selection and would easily be remedied by a book of feats.

Plus, having the ability to give up your at-will abilities, or at least diminish them, to make a much more massive effect when neccessary makes the regular spellcaster much more versatile.

Really, the only reason I see the Warlock excelling is that it gets all this stuff without having to give up feats... but I think you could easily make a new caster class with warlock features and a bunch of bonus reserve feats. Done. Give it a wide selection of spells but few spells per day.

Redundant? No. It does, however, push the Warlock further into its niche.

The biggest reason it doesn't make the Warlock redundant is that they're both optional rules in non-Core books. Neither one is likely to be in too many games, but the Warlock seems to have enough buzz to be showing up. The new reserve feats don't have quite the glitz, and likely won't see as much game time.

Secondly, the Warlock is built to be entirely "fire and forget." There's no Vancian spells here, just unique effects they can keep tossing off all the time. The Wizard can now emulate that, but it's not nearly as powerful and costs them one (or more) of their feats and spell slots. That means an increasing penalty for being able to do what the Warlock does, unless you just want a one-off special ability.

Now, if 4e comes out with reserve feats in the Core rules then, yeah, the Warlock is going to be hurting. Unless the Warlock is also core...

Also, one of the advantages of the Warlock is its simplicity in play (which of course some see as a disadvantage as they get bored). But it is nice to have a no-paperwork magic user.

That said, I haven't got the Complete Mage yet. I suppose if one used as many feat slots as possible for reserve feats, you could have quite the Warlocky Wizard. I wonder if they can be taken as Wizard Bonus feats?

They can indeed be taken as wizard bonus feats.

I agree that the Warlock's biggest advantages are its simplicity and how much it gains. Right now I'm working on a level 17 wizard for an upcoming game (got Complete Mage just for that purpose), and I have no less than 5 books that I'm going to be sitting down to use to try and make the character... PHB, Spell Compendium, PHB 2, Complete Arcane and Complete Mage. I intend to be taking reasonably significant chunks from each of the books, too. Although I might be able to get away without using Complete Arcane much if at all, since all of its spells are in the Spell Compendium. It does have some nice feats, but it's looking like between reserve and item creation feats I won't have much left.

Could someone summarize the reserve feats plz? My FLGS hasn't gotten complete mage in stock yet.

Basically, Reserve feats require prepping one of a given set of spells or saving a spell slot and not using it, in order to gain some cool abilities, like a su ability to throw up to 9d6 lightning damage at an opponent every round. Once you don't have any spell slots 'held', you lose the benefit of the feat. Essentially, for a small feat cost, you can act in ways similar to a warlock, but in a more limited fashion.

Asmor said:

Do reserve feats, essentially, make the Warlock redundant? The reserve feats allow wizards to perfectly mimic the Warlock if they so choose. +1d6/2 levels blast ability?

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The warlock's eldritch blast is vastly superior to the reserve feats.

It has untyped damage, and you can modify it in various ways to make it more effective.

Reserve feats only give you a very basic version of that ability, that is even weaker than the unmodified eldritch blast.

I don't think they rival the warlock's abilities... besides, warlocks gain quite a few other things over the levels, not just invocations.

Bye
Thanee

They make the warlock weaker than before, but not necessarily obsolete. He needs a boost, namely more invocations known.

Sammael said:

They make the warlock weaker than before, but not necessarily obsolete. He needs a boost, namely more invocations known.

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Not just more invocations known, but more invocations to choose from. Even after Dragon Magic and Complete Mage, there still isn't enough variety in the invocations. Too much focus on improving/altering the eldritch blast.

I always thought the flavor of warlock was a bit redundant anyway (filling the same flavor niche as the sorcerer), let alone nonsential (I get my abilities from fey and fiends, even though there are no fey and fiends with my abilities).

Do reserve feats make them obsolute? No.

But they make them unneccesary for those that want to play arcanists with staying power, which is a good thing for all of us who prefer to not play with all the new baseclasses.