D&D (2024) New playtest fighter and warlock

[doctorbadwolf]

I find it funny that you side with the player wanting to go against the very idea of the playtest.

He is going exactly with the very idea of the playtest. Compatibility is a priority of the playtest. The playtest assumes the use of some elements of the 2014 PHB and existing supplements.

We didn’t call him annoying but we sure told him to knock it off.

This was a playtest game and the DM said he wanted to use as much of the playtest as possible. That was the pitch. TBH he asked about fighters and warlocks that is how we ended up with these characters.

Agreeing to a game and then ignoring the pitch for the game is a wholly different beast from “going against the very idea of the playtest.”

I’m not sure if lying is the right word but “putting spin on it” might be. I guess that is a type of lying.

Then I’d rather not continue interacting. I don’t have enough spare time to waste it arguing with folks who can’t even take basic design goals at face value while participating in a playtest.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

So tonight is game 1. We have been told we are going to be at a small town on the boarder of a dessert and a mountain region that has a mixed population that has had trouble with orcs and goblins and not much bigger. We got to pick and we already know each other and have a base team built.
He also warned it will not be goblins per-say but undead his adventure uses and one we don’t often fight.

I look forward to your after action report... I have not yet gotten to even make a character from this packet.

 

[OldSchoolGamerGirl]

his guns to be made of Adamantine BIT also asked to make crossbow expert work on pistols.

I meant to ask before, what benefit is it that his guns are made of that? is there just an rp thing or a houserule?

 

[HammerMan]

I meant to ask before, what benefit is it that his guns are made of that? is there just an rp thing or a houserule?

Just a rule of cool thing. But he did joke about hammering down doors with them

 

[HammerMan]

We hit the ground running when a mummy lord/Necromancer attacked the town. He had mummy and vampire spawn and wights with him and dropped more than half of town guard.

Mid fight a refluffed young white dragon showed up and almost dropped all of us.
We did have NPC priestess and acolytes of the raven queen along with town guard protecting the town.

Having said that I also know at least some of the wights were modified to have swords that dealt d6 damage but had the vex mastery. And that is evil cause if they hit they get advantage on that life drain.

The mummy is also a shader Kai or was in life… and had blessing of the raven queen

We got 3 combat encounters a bit of exploration and 2 rp scenes all in tonight and we are off into the dessert searching for where the mummy lord calls home. (We assume a dungeon)
Take away. The fighter wasn’t much more dynamic. It was a let down even with mastery. The blade lock worked much better than the fighter (especially since he also had mastery).
I will say indomitable may have gotten its best showing ever when the fighter rolled a 2 (so like 7ish) vs HARM and was going to drop… but she used it and rerolled adding 13 to it so she rolled a 6 and made it.
Now that didn’t help when she made her save vs the Dragons Breath-weapon and dropped anyway from half damage but hey it all worked out… sort of.
Also kind of funny we have a fighter with a +12 and a fighter with a +9 but both warlocks hit with +10s so the fighter doesn’t feel that much like a combat focused class .
My wizard warlock acting as healer was okay but I wish I got slots back on the short rests.
We used HD to get back in fighting shape it’s a good thing I took remove curse though since both our blade lock and front line fighter ended the first fight with Mummy Rot. I don’t know WHAT we would have done if I didn’t have it.

I wanted to modify spell to make remove curse a ritual for a day, but we read and only spells that take longer to cast can get rituals tag added.
Also my poison spray is a wasted cantrip but to be fair if I had taken toll the dead it would not have been much better. Chill touch and sacred flame though came in handy.
Also Archery fighting style is still GOAT I feel like it should be changed but fighters should just get a generic +1 to hit with weapon attacks.

Oh and the warlock DOES get some benefit out of the arcane spell list instead of the short warlock one. Both disintegrating and teleporting were used to good effect.
Also my expertise in Arcana was a big deal too while learning about the mummy.
Our gunslinger fighter rouge and me having about 90hp each but the blade lock and fighter in the front line 120 and 150 didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Our melee characters just took too many hits. At 13th level the melee of 19 Ac is not enough.

Also Hexer giving advantage on con saves to hold spells was less useful than I expected. Life drinker though adding damage and a healing component mixed with the temps every time someone on melee dropped meant the blade lock with 40-50 less hp ended up tanking a bit like the straight fighter. (But he too got knocked down)

 

[Neonchameleon]

We got 3 combat encounters a bit of exploration and 2 rp scenes all in tonight and we are off into the dessert searching for where the mummy lord calls home. (We assume a dungeon)
Take away. The fighter wasn’t much more dynamic. It was a let down even with mastery. The blade lock worked much better than the fighter (especially since he also had mastery).

Interesting, thank you. So while the fighter is almost strictly better than the classic fighter (with a significant damage buff especially by level 8) it does nothing to solve the core problems of the fighter of being little more than a commoner out of combat, not scaling past level 11 in terms of what they do, and not having significant options. This is what I thought but it's nice to have confirmation.

My wizard warlock acting as healer was okay but I wish I got slots back on the short rests.
We used HD to get back in fighting shape it’s a good thing I took remove curse though since both our blade lock and front line fighter ended the first fight with Mummy Rot. I don’t know WHAT we would have done if I didn’t have it.

I wanted to modify spell to make remove curse a ritual for a day, but we read and only spells that take longer to cast can get rituals tag added.
Also my poison spray is a wasted cantrip but to be fair if I had taken toll the dead it would not have been much better. Chill touch and sacred flame though came in handy.
Also Archery fighting style is still GOAT I feel like it should be changed but fighters should just get a generic +1 to hit with weapon attacks.

I'm in favour of dropping fighting styles entirely for masteries. And then dropping all the fighter's mastery abilities down to level 1.

Oh and the warlock DOES get some benefit out of the arcane spell list instead of the short warlock one. Both disintegrating and teleporting were used to good effect.
Also my expertise in Arcana was a big deal too while learning about the mummy.
Our gunslinger fighter rouge and me having about 90hp each but the blade lock and fighter in the front line 120 and 150 didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Our melee characters just took too many hits. At 13th level the melee of 19 Ac is not enough.

Core 5e problem. AC does not scale but attack bonus does. And secondary problem, partially mitigated - a lack of functional defensive invocations for the warlock (Mage Armour is a waste of an invocation if you can already wear light armour, and False Life At Will doesn't scale). I'm glad to see that Life Drinker does at least some of the extra work that a melee warlock needs, and that the Infernal first ability now does the job of making it survivable.

With respect to survivability can I ask if you were making use of the Shield spell and other low level defensive spells? It's not having the low level slots that made the non-working defensive invocations into such a problem for the warlock and made them in practice probably the squishiest class in the game.

 

[HammerMan]

Interesting, thank you. So while the fighter is almost strictly better than the classic fighter (with a significant damage buff especially by level 8) it does nothing to solve the core problems of the fighter of being little more than a commoner out of combat, not scaling past level 11 in terms of what they do, and not having significant options. This is what I thought but it's nice to have confirmation.

For this attempt yes that is about right.

With respect to survivability can I ask if you were making use of the Shield spell and other low level defensive spells? It's not having the low level slots that made the non-working defensive invocations into such a problem for the warlock and made them in practice probably the squishiest class in the game.

Neither of us took Sheild. The blade lock kicked himself for that. Several times it would have saved him.

 

[HammerMan]

I thought I posted game 2 (mostly us lost in a dessert) but I will come back to this tomorrow. We are on game 4 or 5 and over all the game is going well

 

[Pauln6]

Yeah as cool as the new gaze is I can't see it making it to print. Literally the warlock could sit back in a lawn chair, be completely safe, yet provide its full suite of offense in a fight, by having spells come out of one of the other characters. That's just really crazy good.

Could it be fixed if you have to make a concentration check when your proxy takes damage?

 

[HammerMan]

Could it be fixed if you have to make a concentration check when your proxy takes damage?

Someone said to me the other day “if I wasn’t to stay back safe and shoot through their eyes what does it hurt” and I didn’t have a good answer. It just takes death off the table for the character not failure.