D&D 5E Is Warlock broken?

[FormerlyHemlock]

I agree that 5e doesn't enable that experience nearly enough...it just sucks that none of the casters EXCEPT the Warlock has to deal with that kind of limitation. The way I see it, you should go all in with that--don't leave just one class, or even a couple, sitting on one side of the line.

So what's the Sorcerer, chopped liver?

Sorcerer has fewer spells known than the Warlock, and no at-will invocations. If anyone is going to "not have the solution to every problem", it's as likely to be the sorcerer as the Warlock. It's not like the sorcerer can realistically expect to have more 6th-9th level spells available than the warlock has Mystic Arcana: the Warlock at 20th level has 15 spells known plus 4 Mystic Arcana plus 8 invocations, whereas the Sorcerer just has 15 spells, period.

 

[Flamestrike]

How does the DM stop the party taking short rests though when there's spells like rope trick?

1) Reactive monsters (the Orcs from room 2 notice the Orcs from room 1 have been killed. They notify the evil BBEG necromancer and he immediately flees the dungeon, taking the treasure and the macguffin the PCs were sent to retrieve with him). Just because the PCs stop for an hour, doesnt mean the rest of the world does.

2) Timed quests (The party needs to slay the evil BBEG by midnight or he summons a potent demon with the macuggin).

I would find an environment where I frequently had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted to do to be both boring and unrealistic.

I mean think about it. Your PCs are a special forces team who have been hired to do (defeat the BBEG, recover the macguffin, save the princess, or whatever). A SF team cant exactly stop an assault of a compound after clearing a few rooms to rest for an hour and then come back and hit it again without expecting the occupants to have fortified everything, be ready for you, or simply to have moved elsewhere.

As a DM you need to turn your mind to this question when designing your encounters and adventures. That doesnt mean all adventures will feature a time limit or reactive monsters, but most should. It's the DMs job to dictate the broad pacing of the campaign and adventures and to police the 5 minute adventuring day.

 

[Ashrym]

Warlock has a bigger toolbox than sorcerers. Between spells known, arcanum, and invocations they rival bards. The difference is warlocks tend to be heavier damage at will compared to a bard and the spells are paced out by short rests while the bards can splurge or conserve slots. Quite honestly, I could do a lot with silent image, arcane eye, levitate, alter self, and speak with dead (I had fun with that one) at will plus a lot of spells known even with only 3 or 4 slots available between plus cantrips plus rituals. Agonizing blast and book of ancient secrets were important, but once a person has those and two or three more invocations for a couple good at-will SLA's the spell slots from pact magic didn't bother me at all.

I didn't find the tome warlock to struggle at all for options. There's a difference between having limited slots and having limited choices with those slots.

There are quite a few spells that don't scale with higher level slots, such as detect thoughts, misty step, suggestion, hypnotic pattern, Evard's black tentacles, etc. When a warlock has higher level slots and casts these spells, that extra spell power is effectively wasted. It matters if someone tries to counterspell or dispel them, but that's very situational and doesn't come up very often. A wizard or sorcerer can just cast a spell like suggestion using a 2nd level slot - no problem. If a warlock wants to cast it, he can only spend one of his precious couple of slots, and the fact that it's a 5th level slot usually doesn't matter.

If a warlock wants to cast it, it's because it's the right tool for the job at the time and that warlock can cast it. The slots will still renew on a short rest and the warlock still has other options. There's no benefit the warlock would have gained in having cast the spell in a lower level slot so there's no loss. The only difference is the other spell caster can spend more slots because the other spell caster has lower level slots to spend, and that doesn't change regardless of the level of the spell being cast.

That's a bit of a red herring point. The fact some spells don't scale doesn't actually hurt the warlock.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So what's the Sorcerer, chopped liver?

Sorcerer has fewer spells known than the Warlock, and no at-will invocations. If anyone is going to "not have the solution to every problem", it's as likely to be the sorcerer as the Warlock. It's not like the sorcerer can realistically expect to have more 6th-9th level spells available than the warlock has Mystic Arcana: the Warlock at 20th level has 15 spells known plus 4 Mystic Arcana plus 8 invocations, whereas the Sorcerer just has 15 spells, period.

Cognitively, I know the Sorcerer is there, but somehow I always forget about it. Not entirely sure why--perhaps the lingering effect of forcing myself to forget about the incredibly flavorful playtest Sorcerer.

 

[CapnZapp]

They aren't spell slots. Each Mystic Arcanum is a single casting of a specific spell, once per day, that doesn't use a spell slot.

You can't cast it using a higher level slot because it doesn't use a slot (and the 3 spell slots you do have are all 5th level), and you can't replace it with a lower level spell to get the benefits of using a higher level spell slot because (once again) the mystic arcanum doesn't use a spell slot.

Think of them like 1/day spell-like ability (to borrow from 3rd edition terminology). As for why, my guess is an attempt to balance them against the full casters who only get 1 or 2 slots (at most) for spell levels 6-9, while keeping with the theme of them being even more restricted than sorcerers for available spells.

Yeah but WHY?

(You're not answering his question)

 

[Flamestrike]

The high level spells (mystic arcanum), I perfectly understand why those slots are once a day, not once per short rest. The balance reason is obvious.

What I don't understand is why these slots are restricted to a single spell! As noted above, this is quite restrictive and I don't understand why.

I houserule Warlocks can use those arcanum slots to upcast lower level pact magic slots in addition to casting the arcanum spell.

Beats me why this isnt the rule anyways.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The high level spells (mystic arcanum), I perfectly understand why those slots are once a day, not once per short rest. The balance reason is obvious.

What I don't understand is why these slots are restricted to a single spell! As noted above, this is quite restrictive and I don't understand why.

I'm pretty sure the answer is that the class was designed late into the production process, and they had to try and fit different ideas into the mechanical language which had evolved to accommodate the core classes. They were able to make the basic pact spell slots fit into the short rest mechanic by severely limiting spell access and only giving out 2-3 spell slots at a time, but that didn't translate well for the higher-level spells that were already limited to one slot per day.

As awkward as it is to know only one level 6 spell, the alternative would be more awkward. Where a Sorcerer can know a couple of level 6 spells, they can at least (theoretically) cast those in higher level slots, so they might actually end up casting two or three different level 6 spells in the same day; and that warrants knowing at least two or three level 6 spells.

Contrast with the Warlock, where the unifying theme of all their different spell mechanics is that you never have to decide which spell slot to cast a spell from - rituals are cast at their minimum level, cantrips scale automatically, a low-level spell is always cast at the level of your pact slots, and a high-level spell is cast at exactly the level of its Mystic Arcanum. If you think about Warlock as being the "simple" spellcaster, which was one of the original design goals, then it's actually pretty noob-friendly to not have to make that decision with every spell you cast.

But the point where I was going with all that is that it would be kind of awkward if they let you know three different level 6 spells, and then gave you exactly one spell slot to split between them, and no way to ever cast more than one of those per day. It's a resource-management puzzle beyond the scope of what any other class has to deal with, so it's not something they wanted for their "simple" spellcaster. (And if they allowed upranking of a level 6 spell into your level 8 slot, or whatever, then it would raise the complexity of the class as a whole.)

 

[CapnZapp]

Thank you for your reasoned reply, S.

 

[Ancalagon]

Interesting [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] .... can anyone who was part of the playtest comment?

 

[Ancalagon]

So what's the Sorcerer, chopped liver?

Sorcerer has fewer spells known than the Warlock, and no at-will invocations. If anyone is going to "not have the solution to every problem", it's as likely to be the sorcerer as the Warlock. It's not like the sorcerer can realistically expect to have more 6th-9th level spells available than the warlock has Mystic Arcana: the Warlock at 20th level has 15 spells known plus 4 Mystic Arcana plus 8 invocations, whereas the Sorcerer just has 15 spells, period.

I see more the Sorcerer as a sort of tartare....

Seriously thought, that is a good point, *but* for two facts. First, that high level slot, the sorcerer has far more flexibility on how he uses it. He may know a few high level spells. He can use it to cast a super powerful fireball etc etc. Furthermore, his potential list of choice (in the spell list) is somewhat longer (although not as big as I thought). Lastly, every time he goes up a level he can adjust his list of spell known. The warlock? Not for the Arcanums! If she took plane shift because she thought it would be important, and well it's only one adventure they did planar travel and it never came up again well... she has planeshift, forever. She can't change it to something else.