Complete Arcane base classes

[satori01]

Surprisingly enough the greatest brake on a Warlocks use of Chiling Tentacles is his party mates. The Warlock in my campaign has used the Invocation I think less than 1/2 a dozen times, certainly that is all I remember.... Like Evard's Black Tentacles, use of the spell basically precludes the party from melee, and the cold damage from Chilling Tentacles makes that even more so.

The Warlock in my group has complained many a times that something is in his way to cast that spell. Now a group that focused as their main tactic that spell and Ranged Attacks, could be a terror for some time. I personally think the problem is self correcting, Chilling Tentacles ad nauseum + Ranged attacks would get extremely tedious if used every encounter, and I cant see any group of people wanting to have fun, sticking with it for ever. Again in a Dungeon with small rooms this is not a viable tactic because of the fixed radius of the Invocation.

A Warlock on a Huge Battlefield with this Invocation can be quite adept at terrain control. Still Probably not as good as a Druid, but not bad at all.

As for a Warlock in a scenario where effective marshalling of a parties limited resources, a Warlock character is very much like a Rogue. The prime limitation on a Rogue is their Hit Points and their companions.

 

[Shellman]

Warlock's and Warmages's are both pretty cool.

The one thing I would advise any DM or player, is do not count on them to be your primary spell caster, due to there lack of utility type spells. This can easily be remedied by having a cleric (recommended) or a favored soul.

I would advise not to muti-class either class.

IMO, these would be great classes for a new player to use if they haven't played an arcane spelcaster before. They get lots of spells and can blow all kinds of stuff up!

I played a Warmage and he fit the party role of being the primary artillery piece pretty well. Now since PHB II has come out, you can select the alternate class feature of Eclectic Learning which allows a warmage to pick up a limited number of utility spells. This is a great option to the Advanced Learning class feature which only adds evocation spells to the Warmage's already heavy blow-up things spell list.

I have seen a warlock played very well. They seem a tad bit overpowered to me with the Eldritch Blast being cast at will and it is a ranged touch attack. Some of the invocations are really cool but I question the duration on some of them. If the Warlock can use the invocations at will, then why do so many of the invocations last 24 hrs? The one thing that helps balance the Warlock, is the fact that the Warlock's Eldritch Blast and invocations are the only thing the class really has, but in my opinion thats more than enough fire power.