D&D (2024) I like the new Warlock

[Aldarc]

IMHO, warlock is a perfect candidate for a 2/3rd caster.

7 levels of spells, gained at class levels: 1,4,7,10,13,16,19.

also, bard could be also knocked down to 2/3rd caster.

Going from a full caster progression to a 2/3rd caster progression is still a nerf.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have some fond memories of 4e, but it's gone. Encounter powers are not coming back. They didn't make sense and were an artificial game balance rule. The character doesn't know what an encounter is, only the player and DM knows. Everything in life including you reading this message is an "encounter" and it just doesn't make sense, even in a fantasy world, for quantity of powers to be based on encounters.

Now if you want to say a spell slot recharges every minute, or after you spend a minute doing nothing, that we could work with.

Except that encounter abilities are literally abilities that recover on a five minute rest (which is how a short rest was defined in 4e). This is explicit in the rules and nowhere did it say that they recharged at the start of the encounter however they were named.

A 4e character might not know what "an encounter" is - but they do know what a five minute break to catch their breath and possibly any of clean their weapons bandage their wounds, loot the bodies, and grab a quick bite and drink of water. And that was the explicit recharge mechanic for encounter powers. The idea that encounter powers recharge because an encounter starts is something by people not reading the 4e rules and by poor presentation of the 4e rules.

Now can we please take this piece of nonsense about 4e and bury it under a crossroads with a stake through its heart? It's been almost fifteen years since 4e launched.

 

[Horwath]

Going from a full caster progression to a 2/3rd caster progression is still a nerf.

Agree on that.

I would like to see that half casters get spell levels at the same rate as full casters but with fewer spell slots.

I.E. half caster would get one 5th level spell slot at 9th level, but 2nd spell slot would be at 19th level as normal.

 

[Hatmatter]

I don't really like this argument. A lot of people like the warlock but don't like the 2014 pact magic. (me, I'm a lot of people)

Hear, hear!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Anytime you say "You're not a fan of x if you disagree with me", then you're gatekeeping.

I don't understand why people think the Vanican casting is boring but pact magic isn't.

Because Pact Magic doesn't have anything like the book keeping involved. If I'm playing a warlock I know six spells at level five, all of which can be cast at third level and therefore are all influential. If I'm playing a sorcerer I either know seven split across three levels, leaving me feeling very cramped or I know thirteen if I'm an Aberrant Mind or Clockwork Soul. I'm also tracking three separate pools of magic. I therefore get roughly three quarters of the highlights of the sorcerer for less than half the effort.

Sure it's structured differently, but it's just a means of being able to determine how many spells you can cast. That's it. There's nothing inherently boring or interesting about it. Oh, it's different from everyone else! Yay! It still sucks. Having two spell slots sucks. Having almost no spell selection sucks. The Spells became this side thing that you had really only for utility and one big boom spell for a grenade, and then this class that has so much room for flexibility and awesomeness becomes...a sniper.

Sure ... if you ignore invocations. Meanwhile the Warlock should be either getting shenanigans or awesomeness from e.g. being able to change their appearance every round if they choose to. Invocations can be very fun.

I know how the Warlock was SUPPOSED to work, because it is given abilities that suggest certain builds. Like a melee focused Warlock. The Pact of the Blade is RIGHT THERE, and is given all these Invocations to make it work...but it never does.

I don't think there is a single person who disagrees. Hexblade was added to make the pact of the blade playable - and doing that rather than actually fixing the pact boon has lead to a lot of the multiclassing issues. No one thinks that the 2014 Pact Blade is good - and everyone was expecting that WotC would finally fix the thing in 2022 when they should have done it in about 2015. This isn't however bad fundamental design but bad execution. There's nothing wrong with the idea of a pact blade - but it should use your casting stat and shouldn't be very thirsty for invocations. Two things that have been fixed in the OneD&D version (although it's still sitting there begging for a paladin or even melee cleric to take a one level dip).

Eldritch Blast with Two Invocations is better at every level.

What do you need the second invocation for? Like I say Invocations are the source of the warlock's non high level spell shenanigans. Agonizing Blast is basically a tax. And invocations are really valuable.

But that's all Invocations. I basically ignored his spells. I just used the spells as a back up utility or a grenade. My Fire Genasi Fiend Warlock was basically Ghost Rider, with an infernal revolver (Eldritch Blast) that would transform into a grenade launcher when he cast Wall of Fire or Fireball.

The spells are to be deployed when they are gamechangers. I see no problem with that when the utility abilities are covered by invocations.

I want to see how the Warlock plays as a Half Caster. Half Casters don't rely on spells. They rely on their other abilities, but they have spells as back ups, like the Warlock does.

Not true in the Paladin's case. The paladin works and gets their big booms because they can simultaneously add their spell to their melee by smiting. Half casters use their spells for utility, while the warlock uses invocations for utility.

Paladin pretty much save them for Smites, Rangers oft forget they have them.

Yours may. Mine all use their spells for utility. Especially Goodberry and Pass Without Trace. (Oh, and Hunter's Mark)

Plus, it makes Shield a viable warlock spell. That's a good thing!

No it isn't! Shield is boring and frustrating! It no-sells! Not forcing the Warlock into being yet another shield spammer is a good thing!

What the warlock should be able to use for resilience is either False Life or Mage Armour as invocations. Unfortunately casting Mage Armour is a waste of a slot, never mind an invocation, for someone in light armour and as for the False Life invocation it doesn't scale. 5hp is great at level 1 but very weak at level 10.

Let's playtest these new ones before we just decide "Oh, it's not different anymore, my life is over! How will I ever go on if the character I play functions like the other player's characters!"

I have literally been praising the warlock for years for not messing around with low level spell slots. Meanwhile the new warlock is forced to have the very thing I praised it for not having.

"I'll have the chicken salad"
"Here's the kilo of barbqueue wings"
"I don't want this. It's pure fatty meat with fat and I ordered the light salad with chicken breast"
"You can't know you don't like it if you haven't tried it! And see! It contains chicken!"

 

[Neonchameleon]

My biggest complaint (besides how badly it doesn't work with multi-classing) is that it is wildly ineffective to cast anything but your best spell.

OK. Non-hypothetical example. I'm playing a fifth level infernal warlock. I have Fly, Fireball, Invisibility (2 target), Blindness/deafness (2 target), Suggestion, and Hex (8 hour) as my spells known because I've been swapping out my spells when I levelled up. What is my "best spell" from that list? It depends entirely on the situation because none of those spells do even close to the same thing as each other. And yes I'll grant it's wildly ineffective to cast fireball in the middle of a crowded ballroom or suggestion in combat.

I mean sure, if I've got both Hunger of Hadar and Fireball I'm going to be casting one rather than the other 90% of the time. Or even if I've got Arms of Hadar and Hunger of Hadar. But the lesson here is that when you only have a tiny spell list it's wildly ineffective to choose spells that are in direct competition with each other. This is a core problem with the 2014 (and 3.x) Sorcerer, of course, because they only know about as many spells as the warlock but need to spread them across multiple levels.

Casting anything that doesn't scale or scale poorly is a waste.

Not swapping out anything that doesn't scale or scales poorly when you level up is a waste. There's no good reason for a warlock to know both fireball and burning hands. You only have a very limited number of spells known. Meanwhile with only slightly more spells known there is a good reason for the sorcerer to know both - and that's that they can't cast fireball in the same slot as burning hands so they need to effectively double up on overlapping spells in a way that the warlock doesn't.

Even paladins and rangers get more mileage out of their spell casting for everything but the boom.

Even paladins and rangers get more mileage out of their spell casting than a badly played warlock. (And one of the strengths of the paladin is that they can ignore their casting entirely and dump all their magic through Smite).

I dunno. Maybe if there was a full progression spooky mage that could emulate witches, arcanists and cultists using full spellcasting, I would be happy. But we have the warlock and he does not work for anything but a sniper with occasional grenades.

The warlock doesn't work for anything but a sniper with occasional grenades if you try to pretend that it's an orthodox caster and don't play to the strengths of the class. The wizard doesn't do very well if you try to play them like a paladin either. I mean they both have spells, right?

Meanwhile if you approach a warlock as a warlock they are a strong but slightly squishy (because the defensive invocations just don't work properly) jack of all trades but master of none.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Patron's Spell: You may cast a total of spell levels worth of spells equal to your proficiency bonus per day from your patrons spell list without using a spell slot, even spells of a level higher than you can usual cast.

Something like this would fix my issues with the current ua warlock

I think this feature would be even better on the old short rest warlock (taken from the Tasha's Ranger) :

''You learn additional spells when you reach certain levels in this class if you don't already know them, as shown in the Patron Gift Spells table. These spells don't count against the number of warlock spells you know.

You can cast each of these spells once without expending a spell slot. Once you cast a spell in this way, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest.''

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Sorry if this is getting off-topic, it’s just always frustrating to see 5e praised for doing the exact things that the edition was created as a means of “correcting” when 4e did them.

This is, because 5e 2014 overcorrected a bit. Time to have a second look at good 4e mechanics and structures and make 5e even better.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Agree on that.

I would like to see that half casters get spell levels at the same rate as full casters but with fewer spell slots.

I.E. half caster would get one 5th level spell slot at 9th level, but 2nd spell slot would be at 19th level as normal.

I just don't know how you mix those casters then when multiclassing...

 

[Remathilis]

OK. Non-hypothetical example. I'm playing a fifth level infernal warlock. I have Fly, Fireball, Invisibility (2 target), Blindness/deafness (2 target), Suggestion, and Hex (8 hour) as my spells known because I've been swapping out my spells when I levelled up. What is my "best spell" from that list? It depends entirely on the situation because none of those spells do even close to the same thing as each other. And yes I'll grant it's wildly ineffective to cast fireball in the middle of a crowded ballroom or suggestion in combat.

I mean sure, if I've got both Hunger of Hadar and Fireball I'm going to be casting one rather than the other 90% of the time. Or even if I've got Arms of Hadar and Hunger of Hadar. But the lesson here is that when you only have a tiny spell list it's wildly ineffective to choose spells that are in direct competition with each other. This is a core problem with the 2014 (and 3.x) Sorcerer, of course, because they only know about as many spells as the warlock but need to spread them across multiple levels.

Not swapping out anything that doesn't scale or scales poorly when you level up is a waste. There's no good reason for a warlock to know both fireball and burning hands. You only have a very limited number of spells known. Meanwhile with only slightly more spells known there is a good reason for the sorcerer to know both - and that's that they can't cast fireball in the same slot as burning hands so they need to effectively double up on overlapping spells in a way that the warlock doesn't.

Even paladins and rangers get more mileage out of their spell casting than a badly played warlock. (And one of the strengths of the paladin is that they can ignore their casting entirely and dump all their magic through Smite).

The warlock doesn't work for anything but a sniper with occasional grenades if you try to pretend that it's an orthodox caster and don't play to the strengths of the class. The wizard doesn't do very well if you try to play them like a paladin either. I mean they both have spells, right?

Meanwhile if you approach a warlock as a warlock they are a strong but slightly squishy (because the defensive invocations just don't work properly) jack of all trades but master of none.

So Fly is a waste unless you aren't using Hex. If you spend spell slot one to cast Hex, and then come to a large chasm, casting fly costs you both spell slots due to concentration. On a normal caster, that cost is smaller since you have first level slots to recast hex with. But if you precast hex and in the second room in the dungeon you need to fly, you're asking for a short rest one room into the dungeon.

Second, upcasting blindness is a waste if there is only one target. Ditto with Invisibility. A regular caster can control the number of targets and only expend a slot needed, therefore not upcasting for no benefit.

Third, your spell choice is requires constant retraining. While spell swapping is a part of all spells known classes, most players use it to correct bad choices. It takes a far more advanced player who is adept at comparing spell output and average damage (especially upscaled average vs spell of appropriate level average) to constantly retrain every level to keep a bunch of high level choices. Not every player is going to crunch numbers or hang out on charops boards to determine you should switch arms of hardar for fireball. That is a skill that new or casual players don't have, and warlock is constantly referred to as a "beginner" or "easy" spellcaster. Easy to learn, hard to master apparently.

Fourth, when you only have two spells slots that you can count on, the penalty for a successful save is higher. Blindness/Deafness is all or nothing. If a sorcerer casts it and the target makes its save, she has more tries at it. A warlock has used 50% of his arsenal to do nothing. Save or suck is a far riskier bet than it is for a normal caster, and that's far from a safe bet.

Finally, if the warlock isn't an Orthodox caster, maybe it shouldn't be billed like one. People tell me they are akin to a regular spellcasting class due to how fast they acquire spell levels, but they shouldn't be played like one. That's a huge disconnect. And if I, a veteran player of D&D for decades and 5e since it's start has been "playing it wrong", what hope does a new player really have? At least the half-caster progression is an obvious telegram that you're dealing with a class different than a full caster rather than "you get 9 levels of spells, but it's not where you thinnnnk it is..."

Should have made them full casters and been done with it.