Balancing Starlock AC

[Samurai]

My whole position on Starlock is that I think they made a bad design decision of making a class feature they thought might be too good conditionally (Fate of the Void) and so they forced a straight Starlock build to split their point buy between two primary attack / damage stats as a balancing measure. True, there's nothing stopping one from taking powers from another pact, but it stands to reason that some people pick Starlock because - shock of shocks - they want the Starlock powers. If the ability's too good, don't nerf the class, just make that one ability less good. And never - NEVER - impose a restriction on a build option that affects the character all the time to balance an ability that is only too good conditionally. That's just silly.

They should have simply imposed a limitation on FotV and made Starlocks a single primary attack / damage stat path like Hell-locks and Feylocks. Why force someone to do contortions to meet a build concept because you feel one feature could be too good in certain circumstances, when you can simply make that one thing more limited? For instance, limit how the bonus stacks per tier (+1 per die roll per tier, or +2 per die roll per tier with Improved FotV, forcing the player to split up any bonuses between multiple rolls if more than one cursed foe is dropped in heroic, or two in paragon, or three in epic) instead of leaving it so you can apply the bonus for however many cursed foes you can drop in a round to a single die roll, and make Starlocks single stat warlocks like the others. Seems simple to me.

That said, something like your feat would be helpful. But then the warlock is burning a feat to help address what I see as a design flaw, when they've already had to split their point buy up between two primary stats, throwing good after bad. I like creating Starlock characters because of the concept... it was one of the big things I wanted to do first when I got 4e. But when I compare them to other builds I wouldn't want to actually play one. And if I build a starlock and take fey or hell powers to work around it, I feel I might as well just play a fey or hell warlock.

I'd honestly prefer some sort of revision or customization option in the Arcane Power book to the Star Pact as a whole over forcing a character to burn a feat to "fix" their AC, when that pure Star Pact character is already weakened by focusing on two prime stats when the other pacts only need one.

Why didn't they make them a single-stat path? Because Warlocks can take powers from all paths, and they wanted to keep the choice between Cha and Con even. If they made Star either all Cha or all Con, there would be twice as many powers of that stat, making it a no-brainer for Warlocks to focus on that stat over the other.

Alternately, they could have chosen a 3rd stat, such as Int, to be the base of all their powers. That would have made crossing over and gaining other powers even tougher for warlocks though, as they'd now have to boost 3 stats instead of 2 to have access to the full range of powers. And in the future, when creating new paths, wouldn't each of them need a new stat to keep things balanced? But there are only 6 stats...

I think it works out fine as it is, overall. There are benefits and drawbacks to choosing Int or Cha/Con.

 

[Cadfan]

Star 'locks have a fantastic pact boon, the best pact boon booster feat, and some of the best pact augmentations in their class.

Going strictly Cha or Con is 100% viable, and I don't see any need to reward people for gimping themselves by trying to power-game and get both.

Cheers, -- N

I agree wth the first sentence.

About the viability of going strictly Cha or Con, and the power gameyness of going for both? There are three issues.

1. The star pact at will uses Con, and not Cha. This dissuades you from using Cha as your primary attack score. It doesn't stop you, but it does kind of suck for you if you try it.

2. Limited paragon paths. If you do go Con, what paragon path are you going to use?

3. You can't use your pact for all of your powers. This isn't necessarily a negative, but other pacts don't have this problem. The only way to use your pact for all of your powers is to go Con/Cha, but if you do, you'll run into AC problems, and your powers that receives bonuses from your Int won't receive very big bonuses because you'll be too busy pumping your dual attack stats.

I would kind of like to see these fixed in some way.

 

[Cryptos]

Why didn't they make them a single-stat path? Because Warlocks can take powers from all paths, and they wanted to keep the choice between Cha and Con even. If they made Star either all Cha or all Con, there would be twice as many powers of that stat, making it a no-brainer for Warlocks to focus on that stat over the other.

Alternately, they could have chosen a 3rd stat, such as Int, to be the base of all their powers. That would have made crossing over and gaining other powers even tougher for warlocks though, as they'd now have to boost 3 stats instead of 2 to have access to the full range of powers. And in the future, when creating new paths, wouldn't each of them need a new stat to keep things balanced? But there are only 6 stats...

I think it works out fine as it is, overall. There are benefits and drawbacks to choosing Int or Cha/Con.

It's not like they didn't know Dark Pact was coming. It must have at least been in the planning stages to some degree prior to the PHBI coming out. That makes four pacts, two for CHA and two for CON.

It's also not like there aren't already classes with an uneven number of powers per stat (although admittedly not 2:1) in the PHBI, and it's always been a given that more powers would be offered in the power source books and other sources.

The split can't be simply a desire to keep available warlock powers at a 50/50 split, anyway... if that were the design goal, why not make all pacts 50% Con and 50% Cha instead of singling out one pact? If that were the case, they also would have offered a choice for the new star pact powers presented in Dragon to keep it 50/50 instead of keeping the primary stat for each power at each level roughly the same as the powers in the PHBI. If that were the case, Dark Pact would be similarly split, they'd have a CHA at-will and CON encounter powers, but just looking at the excerpt online it's not that way.

It was a balancing decision that has the net effect of limiting one pact, and the default style of building Star Pact Warlocks (pure Starlock) all the time for a benefit that is only conditional (Fate of the Void.) That's a bad design philosophy in my opinion. You simply don't limit a class all the time because a conditional ability is too good... if balance is your goal, change that one ability so it isn't quite so good.

And no one has suggested making third, fourth, fifth, and sixth primary stats for Warlocks (at least until you did.)

The benefits and drawbacks for choosing attributes are much, much clearer for the other pacts (they don't have to sacrifice effectiveness with any of their own pact's powers by chosing one stat), and those benefits and drawbacks in the RAW are not evenly applied for each pact.

It's okay to say that they made a mistake, and it isn't necessary to defend every decision they made in order to defend this edition. Out of 100s of rules and mechanics presented in the PHB, it's bound to happen. It's not like we're saying 4e is a bad product overall. As 4e design flaws go, though, I would say this is one of the bigger ones.

 

[yesnomu]

I agree wth the first sentence.

About the viability of going strictly Cha or Con, and the power gameyness of going for both? There are three issues.

1. The star pact at will uses Con, and not Cha. This dissuades you from using Cha as your primary attack score. It doesn't stop you, but it does kind of suck for you if you try it.

2. Limited paragon paths. If you do go Con, what paragon path are you going to use?

3. You can't use your pact for all of your powers. This isn't necessarily a negative, but other pacts don't have this problem. The only way to use your pact for all of your powers is to go Con/Cha, but if you do, you'll run into AC problems, and your powers that receives bonuses from your Int won't receive very big bonuses because you'll be too busy pumping your dual attack stats.

I would kind of like to see these fixed in some way.

1. Retraining is the best option here. Take Eyebite or Spiteful Glamour instead.

2. Second Pact to Infernal and use that, I suppose. Alternatively, check with your DM about making one of the pacts use Con. It is annoying that both are Cha-only, I agree.

3. True, but whatcha going to do? The Star Pact is cool enough that you don't need pact bonuses all the time.

With a bit of DM co-operation, Star pact'ers ought to easily be able to use either stat.

 

[Nifft]

1. The star pact at will uses Con, and not Cha. This dissuades you from using Cha as your primary attack score. It doesn't stop you, but it does kind of suck for you if you try it.

Yeah. That is kinda lame for non-Humans. Human Starlocks, however, get Eyebite, arguably the best Warlock at-will.

2. Limited paragon paths. If you do go Con, what paragon path are you going to use?

I expect Dragon to compensate for this.

3. You can't use your pact for all of your powers. This isn't necessarily a negative, but other pacts don't have this problem.

This is compensated by having some of the best pact augmentations. In other words, you get fewer, but better, and IMHO that balances reasonably well. Jugement call here, so we can disagree without acrimony.

Cheers, -- N

 

[DracoSuave]

Also Starlocks have -autohit- powers within their perview as well.

They made three pacts for two builds. In their mind, scourging is the damager, deceptive is the one with tricks. To exemplar scourging they made Infernal, to exemplar deceptive they made Fey and for those who like the middle ground they made Star.

Star is similiar to the Staff of Defense, it's good for either kind of warlock and you have to pick and choose accordingly. You'll end up likely borrowing from other pacts, and that's inherent of the design of the warlock class itself. You can have bampowersmack, tricks, or defenses. Pick two.