Share Your Thoughts On My Warlock Houserules

[abirdcall]

You are grossly overstating the power of a warlock. No matter how many spells they know, they are still severely limited by the number of spell slots. Invocations are great, but the ones worth a damn cost spell slots, and are usually once per day, so its not that absurd.
Patron powers? Everyone has their archtype powers. Same goes for Pact powers.
The fact is, warlocks are far from being in the overpowered tier. They don't even scale well into high level, with Mystic Arcanum being so limited and all. You are over exaggerating.

As written they aren't ovepowered but with your houserule they are.

You are telling me that an average of 9 3rd level spell slots per day at 5th level along with their other powers/abilities is balanced?

It's not even close. Their raw power level is fine. If you want to make the argument that they could have some more spells known or a bigger (but not more powerful) list of invocations to choose from then sure.

But increasing their spell slots by 50%? That's absurd.

 

[Colder]

I don't really like the invocations spells change. They seem pretty weak at first blush, but because they use your warlock slot, they scale up along with them which makes them deceptively powerful.

 

[dco]

Absurdly overpowered, 6 extra abilities and most of them very powerful as extra spell slots, extra spells, changing stats for damage and attacks, 3 possible attacks at level 6...
The only thing that gets limited are the eldritch blasts, one of the most characteristic traits of the build, fight with the sword at close quarters, blast at range.
It also doesn't let the players go with a STR build, it changes it for CHA.
It isn't giving extra choices, they are extras for all warlocks, all get all spells, etc. The only real extra choices are the new invocations and that's the way I would have used to give choices. For example, someone wants heavy armor, create an invocation called heavy shadow armor, AC=7 or 8.
Multiclassing is also overpowered, a Sorcerer with 3 levels of warlock can get now new slots, spells, armor, attacks with CHA, etc.

 

[CapnZapp]

The problem is that your rules don't just change how the Warlock plays. They vastly increase the Warlock's power. If you don't think they are underpowered to begin with, then you must agree that your rules are making them overpowered.

I can't speak for Justin but believe me your concerns are always on my mind.

I suggested the following pared-down selection of the original proposal:

* Longrest Patron spell slot (two at L11)
* Invocation spells doesn't burn slots
* Charisma for blade melee attack and damage
* Extra attack at 6th level (presumably offered as an alternative to your L6 Otherworldly Patron Boon?*)

You should see that they are are all mindful of any possible overpoweredness. Let's spell that out for the audience:

1) long rest spell slots are seldom overpowered, since you by definition only get to use them once per long rest
2) sure this allows you to use your slots on other things than the invocation spells. But since nobody took the original deal, it's not a huge issue that you have made those that did a lot better. This only brings underpowered choices up to speed. Although I do recognize the potential for one or two of the very best invocation spells to actuall increase the overall Warlock chassi just a little bit
3) since bladelocks are far from overpowered, this only helps them to suck a little less. It's not that they can't do without dexterity anyway, and it's not like bladelocks did huge amounts of damage
4) extra attack doesn't really add power as so much as to make a sucky option a little less sucky. Remember eldritch blast effectively gets "extra attack" upgrades automatically and for free.

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All in all you can't just say that just because an option undeniably increases one Warlock feature's power that it actually increase the overall Warlock chassi's power.

You can certainly both think the Warlock isn't underpowered and still want to prop up the parts of it that are.

 

[Christopher Sage]

I DM for a very macro focused group that prefers to move between big set pieces rather than your traditional dungeon crawl. As such, I like many of the changes presented here. In the last 17 six hour game sessions, the group has taken no more than five short rests, since the cinematic nature of the game often lends itself to long rests or none at all.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

The problem with your solution is, warlocks are not the only class that recharges on a short rest. About half of magic classes can feet get something back, and just about all of the non magic classes recharge, so short rests are important. Sure there are some situations where time may not permit more than one or any at all, but like all character classes, that's where resource management comes into play. Warlocks are essentially cantrip casters. Your "catch your breath" system sounds like the warlock level 20 ability, except you're allowing more uses which makes it overpowered, especially if no other class gets it. If every class gets it, then it makes short rests useless. It sounds like you're trying to reinvent the wheel. Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk

Given some of your previous comments, I'm not sure you really either read or understood everything I wrote, for all that you broke my points out by number. Regardless, it's fine not to like something. FWIW: I consider straight Warlock to be problematic, with straight Bladelock being slightly more problematic. I also think that you utterly don't understand the problem of long vs short rests, which applies to all classes, not just Warlocks; my suggestion deliberately affects all classes, and solves the problem neatly, across all kinds of campaign. (It doesn't solve the problem of the 5 minute adventuring day, but is not designed to. That's a different conversation, with a different solution.) Various guides on the optimization forums and elsewhere make it clear that I am far from the only person who considers 2 short rests per long rest to be an expected standard. But again, my suggestions are not authoritative and might not work for your game or playing style. Anyway, Ken

 

[neogod22]

Hi, Given some of your previous comments, I'm not sure you really either read or understood everything I wrote, for all that you broke my points out by number. Regardless, it's fine not to like something. FWIW: I consider straight Warlock to be problematic, with straight Bladelock being slightly more problematic. I also think that you utterly don't understand the problem of long vs short rests, which applies to all classes, not just Warlocks; my suggestion deliberately affects all classes, and solves the problem neatly, across all kinds of campaign. (It doesn't solve the problem of the 5 minute adventuring day, but is not designed to. That's a different conversation, with a different solution.) Various guides on the optimization forums and elsewhere make it clear that I am far from the only person who considers 2 short rests per long rest to be an expected standard. But again, my suggestions are not authoritative and might not work for your game or playing style. Anyway, Ken

You're right, I don't understand your problem because I don't read the Internet to figure out how to play the game. Where are you getting this 2 short rests per long rest from, because it's not in the book. I play in Adventures League and in a playtest group, and we always take short rests when we need to. There may be situations that may not allow for long rests, but there are very few situations do not allow for any rest at all. There is technicality no limit to the number of short rests per day you can take, but in reality, since it does take an hour, you probably can take 4-6. You shouldn't need thst many, unless your DM is sadistic.

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[Gadget]

Overall I like what most of these house rules are designed to do. I especially like make the 1/day invocations not use a spell slot. It has been suggested before quite a bit, it is neat and only a small boost in power. To those who think it is to much of a 'something for nothing', I would like to point out you are paying for the ability with an invocation and the opportunity cost of other invocations you could have chosen. In the core game, these invocations are painfully under powered compared to others, this just makes them competitive.

I also heartily approve of adding Patron specific spells to spells known. A nice touch.

Where I'm unsure is giving the Warlock a special "patron" spell slot for use once a day. I understand that these spells are more flavorful and usually less in power, so it may be difficult for these spells to find use in actual play compared to the 'stand-by' spells a warlock uses; yet I feel there would still be instances when these spell would see use, in the right situation. Plus I'm not fond of the additional book keeping the additional slot entails.

As for the bladelock stuff, I very much agree that the bladelock needs additional help, but I'm not sure this is the way to go about it. The problem is that the Warlock class is designed around using the very good Eldritch Blast cantrip and its attendant Invocations, while the blade lock feels left out in the cold by using melee, despite Thirsting Blade and the like. Perhaps there needs to be a Bladelock cantrip equivalent to Eldritch Blast designed along the lines of Green Flame Blade and the like, with attendant Invocations. Perhaps a slight boost too, or more, defensive Invocations? I'm not sure.

 

[neogod22]

The problem is with the players not the class. You guys don't understand what a warlock is. The warlock is designed to be a spell caster that never runs out of spells. The limited spell slots per fight and the long rest high magic spells are in place for balance reasons. The spells are supposed to be for big hitters, not so you can enter every encounter and just spam lvl 5 fireballs indefinitely. No spell caster can recover spells level 6 or higher. If you really have a problem managing your resources, then play a sorcerer.

You complain about lack of spell slots, what I have a problem with, is finding fights worth me using spell slots. The same is true with my wizard. The enemies don't live long enough to get full use of most spells. The other thing is, as you're leveling up, you should be finding staves and wands. The abilities on these items more than make up the problem of lack of spell slots, because they are essentially free spells. My new warlock thst I'm playing is more of a controller role than a damage dealer one, it gives me a new dimension of fun.

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[discosoc]

Out of curiosity, what problems do Warlocks normally have? I had someone play one and he was incredibly effective (he was a bladelock, no multiclassing) and reliable for both damage and tanking. The player is hardly a min/maxer as well, so I don't think he broke any rules. He did eventually stop playing him because "the character is kind of one-dimensional," but he's stopped playing a lot of characters for that same reason (fighters, rogues, barbs).

Sometimes I really feel like the internet just amplifies opinions to the point where people don't even know why they have them anymore. This is especially true in regards to concepts like class balance. I've seen people argue about how Dual Wielding is useless compared to GWF, and you look into their math a bit and find out the "difference" is pretty damn minor until the last few levels -- and even then it's assuming fights happen in a vacuum. Some other player see that kind of popular opinion and very well might not give TWF a try because they just assume it's horrible.

Warlocks feel like they have the same problem. I didn't play 4e, so maybe it's an issue with the class just being different than before. Or maybe they feel like it's supposed to be a high utility class with tons of combat options simply because it's kind of a caster class. I honestly don't know, but it seem to run just fine when I see it played.