Warlock as Full Caster

I love the Warlock. But the 2 Spells per Short Rest for the most of his Career is frustrating, especially if you have a Campaign where Short Rests are not much more common than long Rest (Overland Travel).

Then it just hit me .. why not swap out the Short Rest Slots to the typical Caster-Spellsslots. So for Example at 5th Level he would have 3 first Level, 3 2nd Level and 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a long rest .. instead of 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a short Rest.

Cantrips and Spells Known would not be affected.

Is that reasonable or are there Problems with that?

It's an intriguing proposal, but then there may be a balance issue. The warlock has a very potent cantrip and invocations... if she also has "full" spellcasting slots...

Well, what you propose is a massive bump in spell power. It also makes the warlock.less distinctive from other casters, and might use hiccups since, unlike other casters, warlocks get permanent and free-use spells through invocations. So I'm not sure your proposal is necessarily the best idea.

But try it. See what you (and your DM, if applicable) think of it. Let us know.

Instead of messing with the number of spell slots I have just made a Rod of the Pact Keeper available fairly early on. It gives the warlock an extra spell slot/long rest and a bonus to Spell Attack and Spell DC.

I've also played with house ruling that warlocks get Blood Magic (at 5th level I think) where they can spend Hit Dice to regain expended spell slots. The warlock must expend a number of HD equal to their Slot Level. Doing so more than once per long rest results in a level of exhaustion. So more spells, but at a cost.

akr71 said:

Instead of messing with the number of spell slots I have just made a Rod of the Pact Keeper available fairly early on. It gives the warlock an extra spell slot/long rest and a bonus to Spell Attack and Spell DC.

I've also played with house ruling that warlocks get Blood Magic (at 5th level I think) where they can spend Hit Dice to regain expended spell slots. The warlock must expend a number of HD equal to their Slot Level. Doing so more than once per long rest results in a level of exhaustion. So more spells, but at a cost.

Click to expand...

That is a very neat idea!

Does it take an action or can you do it and cast in the same rou nd?

Baumi said:

I love the Warlock. But the 2 Spells per Short Rest for the most of his Career is frustrating, especially if you have a Campaign where Short Rests are not much more common than long Rest (Overland Travel).

Then it just hit me .. why not swap out the Short Rest Slots to the typical Caster-Spellsslots. So for Example at 5th Level he would have 3 first Level, 3 2nd Level and 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a long rest .. instead of 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a short Rest.

Cantrips and Spells Known would not be affected.

Is that reasonable or are there Problems with that?

Click to expand...

The idea is interesting, certainly doable, with some additional adjustments.

IIRC, the Warlock gets almost the same (with slight delay) the same amount of spells known as the Sorcerer. The Wizard gets more than double that amount, plus the ability to buy more in exchange for gold. In terms of cantrip known, the Sorcerer knows one more than the Wizard who knows one more than the Warlock.

However, when you look at the special abilities (let's consider capstone abilities a bit separately since they are seldom reached):

- Wizard gets Arcane Recovery (more spell slots), and rituals (equivalent to even more spell slots); two huge capstone abilities that equate to... wait for it... even more spell slots! (and yet some people still think that the Sorcerer casts more spells/day than a Wizard as in 3e)

- Sorcerer gets sorcery points (about as valuable as the Wizard's Arcane Recovery in terms of more slots, but faster to use), 4 metamagic (unfortunately competing for the same sorcery points), and a mediocre 20% sorcery points refresh per short rest as capstone ability

- Warlock gets the pact boon, 8 invocations, and a mediocre slots refresh almost-free per day ("almost" because it still takes 1 minute, making it useless in combat)

I think some of the invocations are pretty powerful, so perhaps all you need is decrease the number of invocations gained to e.g. 5-6.

You also need to update the "Eldritch Master" capstone ability because obviously you shouldn't allow it to regain ALL the spell slots after you've changed them to daily! Notice that the original "Eldritch Master" feature applies to the regular 4 slots that the Warlock regains with a short rest but not to the uses of Mystic Arcanum, so it's basically a refresh of only lower-level spells. You might want to take that into account when adapting "Eldritch Master" to the new Warlock.

I see here the reason to create a union with all short rest base classes.
These classes have the right to have at least two shorts rests a day. Bare minimum.
Short rest classes of the world united.

Baumi said:

Then it just hit me .. why not swap out the Short Rest Slots to the typical Caster-Spellsslots. So for Example at 5th Level he would have 3 first Level, 3 2nd Level and 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a long rest .. instead of 2 3rd Level Slots which resets with a short Rest.

Click to expand...

I suspect this would make the warlock noticeably stronger than other casters, but it is hard to be sure. There are quite a few powerful invocations, you might end up wanting to limit those or tone them down.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. Warlock Slots are really strange to quantify since they are also always on max Level.

In my example, a 5th Level Caster only has 2 3rd Level Slots, while a Warlock with 2 Short Rests get 6! But the normal Caster has 9 Spell Slots in Total, where the lower ones can still be very useful. But the biggest one is that the normal Caster can go full Nova and cast all 9 Spells in One Fight, where the Warlock simply has a maximum of 2.

I would have preferred that the Warlock just gets an additional Slot at level 5 (so he has a bit of spare for utility spells), but that would certainly be a power up and I would love to have him at the same power level.

If you aren't going to use the mechanics of the Warlock class... then the actual meat of the class is entirely fluff and story. If that's the case, it's easier to just run with the sorcerer chassis and maybe replace the sorcerer subclasses with the warlock subclasses and you use the warlock's spell list... and all of the bits of "making a pact with an extradimensional being for power" just become your PC's background and character history and story.

So what you end up with is full spellcasting, and instead of invocations you have metamagic (which if necessary, you refluff as "invocations" that allow you to mess with your spells.) And you're done.