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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6600213" data-attributes="member: 6790260">If we always restrict our consideration to character personality and story, you're absolutely right. It is strictly impossible to value one path over another, because every story is "unique" (for a given definition of "unique" that can handle the stories having very similar natures, of course). But there are metrics on which one build path is better than another. E.g. "Does this build achieve what I want it to achieve?" Of course, "what I want it to do" is subjective, but whether it meets that goal can be objectively determined. It's like saying, "any one diet isn't better or 'more right' than another," when in truth there ARE diets that are better or more right, just "better" is context-dependent. E.g. an objectively superior diet for a person with celiac disease is one that excludes gluten; an objectively superior diet for a person with diabetes carefully controls blood sugar levels. There may be other such contexts, those are just the only two I know off the top of my head (and doing any kind of google search for "diets" is a non-starter, sadly).And D&D comes with a super useful common context! Fights. The game *expects* you to fight. It's got too many resources sunk into the fighty options, and too many classes who do nothing but fighting (e.g. Fighter, Barbarian, debatably Paladin, certain builds of Rogue and Warlock...) to expect otherwise. Is the game all about fighting? Heck no. But that is a common context for characters. Another common context is using skills (regardless of the specific nature, though "social" and "environmental" are two useful, broad categories within "using skills"). Thus we have, inherently, two fundamental and empirical metrics for analyzing a character: how well do they perform their chosen behaviors in combat, and how well do they succeed at their chosen skills? It would certainly seem--I have not done the testing, and don't really feel like doing so, so I cannot speak with 100% certainty--that both of these metrics suggest that, after a certain point (no later than Warlock 11, probably not earlier than level 5 or 6), a Warlock character *strictly* gains on both metrics by acquiring levels in a different casting class, presumably Sorcerer to make the ability mods line up (but Wizard could work as well). Furthermore, given that both are casting classes, no (or very little) refluffing is required. The Chaos Sorcerer works relatively well as a Fey thing (capricious!), and Dragon could work as an Infernal thing. GOO is harder but I sincerely doubt that an agreement couldn't be reached between DM and player, especially in light of the Favored Soul. And Wizards are the ultimate generalists, able to focus on any kind of magic they want.So you have said, but the ability to test success in combat and in skills says otherwise. Unless, again, you turn a totally blind eye to effectiveness and only consider story, in which case (to continue my diet analogy above), there's no "better" or "worse" foods to eat. There's just food you like and food you don't. But if you want to eat healthy, whatever that means for your particular context, then there absolutely is a "right" way to eat. That it is contextual does not make it "neither better nor worse" than other ways.</blockquote>

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