D&D 5E Convince me we're doing the Warlock wrong

[Flamestrike]

Honestly, I've always considered Pathfinder's and 5e's hedging on multiclassing to be a design flaw. If you're going to build in Lego-block style class levels into the system, why the constant urge to punish people for playing with them? I'd much rather see a system where the class level goes to 20 but the class levels only go up to 10. (For one, it wold let people actually try out interesting capstones.)

Not a bad idea, particularly if you have mutually workable classes (Fighter, Cavalier, Barbarian, Swashbucker) or even mandatory prestige classes from 10th level onwards.

Get your class capstone at 10th, then embark upoon the prestige 10 levels of your career to truly define who you are.

 

[Flamestrike]

Nope, it does what it says on the can, and you aren't much better off swapping to another class if you want to hit things and take a pounding. With warlock, you don't get a lot for sticking with it for the long haul. You get your third spell slot at 11th level...

Two spells per short rest (by default every 2.5 encounters). So enough to drop one of your highest level spells nearly every encounter). Give a Wixard the ability to spam their highest level damage spell every encounter and many would take it. Give that Wizard a fantastic damaging cantrip at will, and a suite of other at will abilities and pact features, and the same amount of high level slots per day (6-9) as a full caster (with far less versatility) and increase the HD to d8.

Theyre a good class. They only suck when your DM doesnt understand (or doesnt adequately police) the rest mechanic. Too few and their power drops; too many Short rests and they become powerhouses, particularly a mid levels where they can routinely spam multiple high level spells every single encounter.

If your DM routinely allows 5 minute/ 1 encounter adventuring days, and is loose on long rests, play a full caster or a nova striker like the Paladin. If your DM routinely allows spamming of short rests whenever you want one, but is a stickler for long rests, play a Fighter, Monk or Warlock.

Personal experiences of the Warlock vary by DM policing and understanding of the rest mechanic, its intent and function in the game.

 

[famousringo]

I don't really see how Warlock is more dependant on short rests than, say, the fighter, who everybody seems to think is fine.

Warlock spell slots should be pretty much equivalent to Action Surge: A sudden burst of power that changes the complexion of an encounter. A timely Fireball or a well-executed Suggestion should be just as devastating as doubled attacks for a round. Like Action Surge, they need to be carefully rationed for a time of great need or excellent opportunity.

Like the fighter, when not going nova, the warlock is dishing out steady, solid damage with EB. The tradeoff is that fighters get excellent durability, while warlocks get great utility through cantrips and invocations.

I think the reason some people get confused by warlock is because wizards walk into an encounter deciding how big a spell is warranted by the threat, while the warlock needs to decide if the encounter warrants a spell at all. It's a different rhythm, and wizards have had decades of being a DnD staple to set expectations which the warlock was never designed to meet.

 

[Jaron Mortimer]

Since i'm coming at it from the perspective of the 3.5 warlock, I think it works just fine, if not better than intended. The old version was a somewhat enhanced regular person with a magic laser rifle; this one isn't much different. the fact that it has spell slots AT ALL was a surprise to me, but i still like the way the mechanic works. I've played several of them and I never feel underpowered.

 

[Aldarc]

Honestly, I've always considered Pathfinder's and 5e's hedging on multiclassing to be a design flaw. If you're going to build in Lego-block style class levels into the system, why the constant urge to punish people for playing with them? I'd much rather see a system where the class level goes to 20 but the class levels only go up to 10. (For one, it wold let people actually try out interesting capstones.)

Yes, but that would require for all the class levels to actually be interesting and meaningful! We can't have that!

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

I think the key to making the class work is proper synergy between invocations, spells, feats, and other abilities. For spells, the warlock doesn't want "instantaneous" effects; he wants spells that will last for most of the combat. (Hex is a good place to start.)

When I got Darkness and the Devil's Sight invocation for my Tiefling Blade Pact Warlock, I started using the Blink spell. I cast Darkness on my shield, so when I blink out the darkness field goes with me and doesn't annoy my allies. Then when I blink back in, I get free movement, attack twice with advantage (Thirsting Blade and Devil's Sight invocations) and hopefully, blink back out again. Note that Darkness is big enough (20' radius) to do the same thing with Eldritch Blast if that's your preference.

The point here is that everything works together: Cantrip (Eldritch Blast), racial power (Darkness), spell (Blink), invocations (Devil's Sight/Thirsting Blade) and feat (Medium Armor or Warcaster).

The Warlock class has tons of moving parts; the trick is getting them to work in concert instead of grinding against each other. I just got the Hunger of Hadar spell; my next invocation will be Repelling Blast so I can push my victims back into the darkness when they escape from it. And I've still got Devil's Sight so I can Blast anyone inside the spell's area of effect with advantage... twice. Bwahahaha!!!!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I feel like I'm the only person who plays warlock because they ooze flavour... or maybe I'm one of the few who doesn't try to min/max for highest possible dee-pee-ess.

*slow clap* Well done. You managed to combine the "it's a tabletop, not an MMO!" snobbery with "roleplaying, not rollplaying!" snobbery. Impressive work. </sarcasm>

More seriously, is it really necessary to cast such aspersions? There's a vast excluded middle between "I ONLY PLAY MATHEMATICALLY PERFECT CHARACTERS" and "What's an 'attack bonus'? Dammit, I'm a roleplayer, not a GAMER!" Maybe people want...I dunno...both things?

A warlock isn't a primary caster. A pre-Pact warlock is a bag o'tricks (not unlike the sorcerer) who is able to pick Invocations and cantrips to best mould his persona (he IS Charisma-based). A feylock hexblade should play and feel a LOT different than a Old One warlock with the Chain Pact (the one with the familiar).

Is a warlock's casting dependent on short rests? Sure. Does a warlock need to cast said spells every combat? Probably not. Does a ranged Warlock spam Eldritch Blast? He sure does!

Other than the first sentence, none of the first paragraph appears to have any bearing on the actual question asked by the OP. And the last two bits (questions and answers, not sure if those count as separate sentences) blithely dismiss that issue. You seem to be thinking that its not-a-primary-caster status is a minor bump on the road to getting to the cool stuff. The way the OP speaks, its non-primary status is the problem. The player wants to be slinging SPELL spells in combat, and that isn't happening.

See, I wouldn't even consider that a "design failure". I personally see no reason why getting to level 20 in a particular class is the "best" or "rightest" way to play a character.

I...don't think that's actually what was being said, there. I think what was being said was, "The Warlock provides nothing that cannot be done more effectively, more simply, or more flexibly by a different casting class...once you have all the flavorful stuff." It's not that you SHOULD *always* make Warlocks go to 20 levels of the class, it's that there's little to nothing worth taking from it at those high levels.

It's incredibly frustrating to have these kinds of conversations almost guaranteed to be sidetracked by "jeez guys, ever heard of choosing flavor???" comments. Choosing flavor is what we WANT. We just don't want flavor to be a sacrifice for no good reason, since there are plenty of character concepts that never have to sacrifice one bit of power for their flavor. It's the unfairness of that--that some character concepts are just straight-up shortchanged compared to others--that drives us mad.

It's the same way someone might feel their "ultimate ranger" would be 20 levels of Champion fighter with the Outlander background. Is that bad design? Not from where I'm sitting. I've also tried making the case all the time that if the Battle Master fighter's specific maneuvers to choose from doesn't produce a "warlord" type of character you're looking for... take the War Cleric mechanics and wipe all the "divine" and "magic" fluff off of it and make your "warlord" that way.

And for those who think there should be meaningful mechanical differences between magical effects and non-magical effects, even though the overall quantities of power, utility, and flavor are/should be more-or-less equivalent between the two?

The game mechanics are just rules and numbers. There's no story that can't be wiped off of them. So once you figure out what your character's story is... take whatever mechanics you want as you go along that best exemplifies it. And never think you or the designers are "doing it wrong" by making that choice.

Funny, the whole playtest seemed to say that this is not the case; that the nature of the mechanics has a distinct impact on the feel and flavor of the game. If it's all pure numbers which can be described any way you want, why did the designers have to re-build the Fighter four or five times before they "got it right"?

So the barbarian is a design failure because he's only hitting things all the time?

Ehren already covered this, but it bears repeating: No, it's not, because that's explicitly what the Barbarian does, and the Barbarian's features clearly and explicitly support such activity. I still think that it's a painfully bland class (the Totem Barb has inklings of a much more interesting class, but it's all nascent and underdeveloped). By comparison, the Warlock is billed as being on the same playing field as Sorcerers and Wizards, but straight-up isn't. The only direct equivalent I can think of for this would be if the 4e Slayer were billed as a Defender like all other types of Fighter, despite being built to be a Striker. Of course, in 4e, it would be trivial to prove such statements false (Slayers don't have marking mechanics nor mark punishment, but do have a very clear Striker class feature in Power Attack), so it's not perfectly analogous, but it would be close.

Not a bad idea, particularly if you have mutually workable classes (Fighter, Cavalier, Barbarian, Swashbucker) or even mandatory prestige classes from 10th level onwards.

Get your class capstone at 10th, then embark upoon the prestige 10 levels of your career to truly define who you are.

Yeah...it's not like any version of D&D has ever had 10-level breakpoints where you select new options...*cough*

Such a concept of..."echelons" of power, where you pick up..."elite advancements" and, I dunno, "legendary fates" would be super cool. It's too bad D&D has never embraced this kind of thing....

I don't really see how Warlock is more dependant on short rests than, say, the fighter, who everybody seems to think is fine.

We must frequent vastly different sections of the internet. The dependency of the Fighter (*especially* the Battlemaster) on short rests is definitely a bone of contention for some people. "Everybody" does not think it's fine. Some do. Some vehemently do not.

Warlock spell slots should be pretty much equivalent to Action Surge: A sudden burst of power that changes the complexion of an encounter. A timely Fireball or a well-executed Suggestion should be just as devastating as doubled attacks for a round. Like Action Surge, they need to be carefully rationed for a time of great need or excellent opportunity.

How well does the description of the class communicate that you shouldn't be casting spells most of the time? Does it say or imply that Warlocks should be using magic in the same way Wizards and Sorcerers do? Because if it doesn't communicate that Warlock spells are extremely precious and only appropriate for special circumstances, then the writeup is to blame.

I think the reason some people get confused by warlock is because wizards walk into an encounter deciding how big a spell is warranted by the threat, while the warlock needs to decide if the encounter warrants a spell at all. It's a different rhythm, and wizards have had decades of being a DnD staple to set expectations which the warlock was never designed to meet.

I agree. I think it is a serious failure on the part of the authors to create a class, that diverges heavily from the way others of its kind work, and do diddly-squat to communicate the change in expectations. I hated this BS obscurantism in 3e, and I still hate it now.

 

[Herobizkit]

*slow clap* Well done. You managed to combine the "it's a tabletop, not an MMO!" snobbery with "roleplaying, not rollplaying!" snobbery. Impressive work. </sarcasm>

More seriously, is it really necessary to cast such aspersions? There's a vast excluded middle between "I ONLY PLAY MATHEMATICALLY PERFECT CHARACTERS" and "What's an 'attack bonus'? Dammit, I'm a roleplayer, not a GAMER!" Maybe people want...I dunno...both things?

If people HAD both things, there wouldn't be posts like this one.

You seem to be thinking that its not-a-primary-caster status is a minor bump on the road to getting to the cool stuff. The way the OP speaks, its non-primary status is the problem. The player wants to be slinging SPELL spells in combat, and that isn't happening.

That's true. Perhaps the OP chose the class expecting to be a spell-slinger and was disappointed in what he got. Thing is, every pre-spec caster has at least one ranged attack Cantrip; where other casters advance to more powerful spells, the Warlock stays low-key in his magical ability in exchange for some permanent/always-on abilities (some of which are _also_ spells).

I compare this argument to what I've experienced with pre-4e Bards. People who used to roll Bards and say "their spells/melee are far below that of other classes" and I'd say "Well, yeah, they're not specialists." Full casters ARE specialists, in that magic is their main jam. Warlocks just... aren't. But they offer other abilities in lieu of a full spell progression and offer a degree of customization that is greater than "just spells/attack power".

It's incredibly frustrating to have these kinds of conversations almost guaranteed to be sidetracked by "jeez guys, ever heard of choosing flavor???" comments. Choosing flavor is what we WANT. We just don't want flavor to be a sacrifice for no good reason, since there are plenty of character concepts that never have to sacrifice one bit of power for their flavor. It's the unfairness of that--that some character concepts are just straight-up shortchanged compared to others--that drives us mad.

If you're concerned with being short-changed in abilities, flavour really isn't what you're building for. Seems only we role-players "get" that. You can build a character for both flavour and abilities, but one is going to take precedent... or you're playing a Bard.

Funny, the whole playtest seemed to say that this is not the case; that the nature of the mechanics has a distinct impact on the feel and flavor of the game. If it's all pure numbers which can be described any way you want, why did the designers have to re-build the Fighter four or five times before they "got it right"?

If I had to guess, probably because casters were still overpowering fighter abilities (Remember CoD from 3e?).

By comparison, the Warlock is billed as being on the same playing field as Sorcerers and Wizards, but straight-up isn't. The only direct equivalent I can think of for this would be if the 4e Slayer were billed as a Defender like all other types of Fighter, despite being built to be a Striker. Of course, in 4e, it would be trivial to prove such statements false (Slayers don't have marking mechanics nor mark punishment, but do have a very clear Striker class feature in Power Attack), so it's not perfectly analogous, but it would be close.

And of course, the Warlock and Sorcerer are both Strikers in 4e, but the Sorcerer was just plain more damaging than the vanilla Warlock. But then they gave Warlock the Hexblade with and a slew of different flavours. Sorcerers just... shoot blasty spells.

Except now, Sorcerers can mould what few spells they can cast via spell points and Warlocks... well... they're still nifty. But people who say that Hexblades aren't as good as Fighters and that Tome magic Warlocks aren't as good as Wizards... perhaps those players should be playing Fighters and Wizards and leave Warlocks alone.

 

[Flamestrike]

Yeah...it's not like any version of D&D has ever had 10-level breakpoints where you select new options...*cough*

Such a concept of..."echelons" of power, where you pick up..."elite advancements" and, I dunno, "legendary fates" would be super cool. It's too bad D&D has never embraced this kind of thing....

Except you now dont have to wait till 10th level for a break point to select new options and define your character. In 5th it happens from 1st to 3rd level. There is a big difference between a EK, a BM or a Champion, just like there is a massive difference in the playstyles of a Bladelock v Blastlock v Chainlock and between the different pacts.

Sadly the last particular edition was never embraced by DnD fandom as its precursor seems to be, and its predecessor was. Not to say people didnt like it; although certainly personally I and the many groups I played with and gamers I spoke too didn't like it that much. I come from a BECMI and ADandD background and havent liked a version as much as I like the current one.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Except you now dont have to wait till 10th level for a break point to select new options and define your character. In 5th it happens from 1st to 3rd level. There is a big difference between a EK, a BM or a Champion, just like there is a massive difference in the playstyles of a Bladelock v Blastlock v Chainlock and between the different pacts.

Sadly the last particular edition was never embraced by DnD fandom as its precursor seems to be, and its predecessor was. Not to say people didnt like it; although certainly personally I and the many groups I played with and gamers I spoke too didn't like it that much. I come from a BECMI and ADandD background and havent liked a version as much as I like the current one.

My point was, you describe these things as though they were entirely foreign and alien to D&D, when they are part and parcel of something you apparently hated. It just feels like Monte Cook's "what I like to call passive perception" all over again. You didn't like 4e, and I have neither right nor reason to tell you otherwise. But if you're going to describe something *exactly like* something in 4e, why reinvent the wheel? "Maybe we should bring back the idea of Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies, but make them more like individual classes or combinations of classes. Something in between those and 3e's Prestige Classes." That would have been both supremely respectful AND highlighting something you apparently like, even when it comes from something you don't.

Edit:
As for the "breakpoint to define your character," it's funny that you mention that, since WotC specifically tells us that experienced players will most likely want to skip those levels. I still wish they would have made the "training wheels" levels ACTUALLY optional, e.g. something that can be added for those who want it, rather than hardwired into the basal math of the game. What you consider a fun opportunity to differentiate your characters, I see as the game finally STARTING rather than languishing in "here's a character...that can't do crap!" (Yes, I know this is hyperbolic, but it's how I feel--unless you play a caster, of course, in which case you make your important decisions immediately!)