D&D 5E Warlock as Intelligence caster?

[mellored]

Balance wise, there's not much difference between Int and Cha. So why not?

In my game I've house ruled letting players pick Int, Chr, or Wisdom, as their casting stat no mater what class they've picked. I did not want to have a warlock or sorc being the charisma character of the party unless that's what they wanted. I even have a bard that wanted to be intelligence based so they could master history and arcana rather than performance and diplomacy.

However, Wis is an important saving throw. So a Wis warlock will have about +4 against charm spells. Not game breaking, but slightly unbalanced.

 

[Gadget]

This is news to me, as I never knew that they originally had the Warlock as an Int based caster but they changed it based on (closed, as it was not in the public) play test feed back. It makes sense, I'm sorry they switched it back to Charisma, and I say that as someone who is not usually a fan of symmetry based mechanics.

I have often thought that the High Elf bonus to Int was often misplaced in this fashion as well. In AD&D, Int was the mage/magic user casting stat so it made sense that the naturally using magic elves would get a bonus to the only Arcane caster stat. From 3e on, with the advent of the sorcerer (and now with the bard and the warlock), it makes more sense than ever to have the High Elf stat bonus be Char rather than Int. Though admittedly the PHB Sorcerer sub-classes don't really fit the traditional 'Elf' type role. The problem being that High Elf bonus to Int has become too calcified into the "lore" of D&D to change without risk of backlash.

 

[Mad_Jack]

As mentioned, the main issues with switching up a class's casting stat are their skills and their saving throws. Depending on which save proficiencies they get from their class, they may end up with either one really good save or a fair number of "merely" good ones.
Switching up their main stat may or may not greatly affect their skills (in much the same way as saves) since they may end up being ridiculously good at only one or two skills or have a much wider variety of skills they're pretty good at than a character who was using the original casting stat.
Depending on the individual situation, you might want to tweak which saves the class gets proficiency in or modify their skill list to better interact with their new casting stat.

 

[Xeviat]

I'd support warlock as Intelligence. I like the notion of warlocks uncovering secrets and writing lawyery pacts. Charisma fits them, but it also fits sorcerers and bards.

I like grid filling, though.


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[TheCosmicKid]

Anyway, this was just something that I found interesting, since even I realized fairly quickly that Int needs a boost, seeing as it's so rarely seen/used, and this seems like it would be great. What are your thoughts?

The thing is that this would only give a Int a boost for warlocks, and most characters aren't. You counted the number of casters of the various types, but that doesn't really give a measure of the ability scores' balance at the table, because any given character is most likely only going to use one or two classes no matter how many there are. If you're playing a wizard, it doesn't matter that wizards are the only Int caster: increasing the number of Int caster classes doesn't change the significance of your Int score. And if you're playing a barbarian/bard/cleric/druid/fighter/monk/paladin/ranger/rogue/sorcerer, it doesn't matter that wizards are the only Int caster: increasing the number of Int caster classes still doesn't change the significance of your Int score.

The one potential wrinkle to this principle is multiclassing. Having more Int caster classes might make Int more valuable because it would open up more options in multiclassing down the line. But in practice, you rarely see optimizers advise players rolling a fighter or whatever to put a high score in Charisma on the grounds that they might want to multiclass into bard, paladin, sorcerer, or warlock later. (Note that this is different than having a specific "build" aiming for one of those classes. If you have a build, you evaluate scores based on whatever that build demands, and you're back to the logic of the previous paragraph where you don't care how many classes use a score because you're not taking levels in all those classes.) So I don't think multiclassing flexibility is a significant factor in balancing the ability scores.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

In my game I've house ruled letting players pick Int, Chr, or Wisdom, as their casting stat no mater what class they've picked. I did not want to have a warlock or sorc being the charisma character of the party unless that's what they wanted. I even have a bard that wanted to be inteligence based so they could master history and arcana rather than performance and diplomacy.

I allow this too, for the more loosely defined spellcasting traditions. I don't think it's really that important flavorfully how exactly paladins or warlocks cast their spells -- any score seems justifiable. But wizards are always Int, and sorcerers are always Cha. For them, that's kind of the point.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

So, I found this posted recently in Sage Advise.

Basically, the Warlock flavor seems very intelligence based, but play-testers preferred to keep them as charisma casters, as that was what they were before. Now, I just started about 1.5 years ago with 5e and have no game design, or similar, experience, so I have no background for this, but Int seems like it would have been better if for no other reason than caster stat balance. From the PHB, we have 1^2/3rds Int casters (Wizard, AT, EK), 2^1/2... Wis (Cleric, Druid, Ranger(and Monk...)) and 3^1/2 Cha (Bard, Pal, Sorcerer, Warlock). From this, moving Warlocks to Int would almost perfectly balance out the caster mods.

I've also noticed that a lot of peoples "problem" builds involve a Warlock dip, often due to either Eldritch/Agonizing Blast, short rest recovering spell slots, or both. These almost always seem to be due to smites for the Paladin("general" consensus) or meta magic/more spell known for the Sorcerer(more of a local thing). Don't generally hear complaints about Barlocks. Now, if they were Int based instead, those would be very, or extremely, for a Paladin, harder to pull of. I don't know what kind of shenanigans a Wizlock could pull of, but AT and EK would hardly be affected, I think. Both don't typically need a good Int due to being martial classes and preferring to do damage by attacking, therefore taking utility spells instead of damage/CC effects (shield, haste, blur, find familer, etc, none of which need Int). More specifically, EK get full armor/weapons and AT can't use one of the main Rogue abilities with spells, Sneak Attack, so why invest in a secondary casting stat?

Anyway, this was just something that I found interesting, since even I realized fairly quickly that Int needs a boost, seeing as it's so rarely seen/used, and this seems like it would be great. What are your thoughts?

Well, thematically I really like it. I can buy Charisma as the stat for sorcerers, the "I'm willing you to explode with my sheer force of desire" class, but warlocks never made any sense to me. Intelligence makes perfect sense for someone who is seeking out hidden secrets and lore. I also like how that completely scrambles the metagame: no more paladin/warlocks, bardlocks, sorlocks, etc. (Necrolocks become much better but I think that's okay, and very thematic.)

I don't think the change is necessary, but I sure think it could be an interesting variant to play with, or even just to construct a fictional world with.

 

[Zardnaar]

The charisma based classes are a bit more limited in their versatility vs wizards. If you do this a MC Warlock/Wizard gets most of the versatility of the wizard+ uber damage of the warlock. Its a bad idea IMHO.

 

[Valetudo]

Changing their primary stat to int would not fix the dip problem. It would just just change the classes dipping into warlock.

 

[Zardnaar]

Changing their primary stat to int would not fix the dip problem. It would just just change the classes dipping into warlock.

A class with way more options. A Sorlock for example can't cast forsight.