D&D (2024) Dear Team WotC: Better Pact Magic Fixes

[mellored]

Ah! Okay I figured it out. You view the spell slot as a significant mechanic.

I view casting 3rd level spells as a significant mechanic more so than how they cast it.

A bard, wizard, sorcerer, and warlock walks into a goblin cave..
one casts hypnotic pattern
one casts fly
One casts major image
One casts slow

And you can't tell who did what, because they all cast the same spells.

Divine spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Nature spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Arcane spells have 4.5 classes that can cast them.
Multi-attack has 5 classes that have (while I'm counting).

I would rather warlocks be their own thing than just another arcane caster variant.

A lot of this had to do with classes losing their unique spell lists.

 

[Charlaquin]

How about this idea: Keep Pact Magic the same, but remove recharge on Short Rest, and add:

Pact Meditation: A warlock can spend one minute meditating to refocus their internal energies. After doing so, they regain one Pact Magic spell slot. This can be done an number of times equal to the Proficiency Bonus of the Warlock. All uses of Pact Meditation are regained after a Long Rest.

It wouldn't be the first time they've used Prof Bonus instead of Short Rest abilities. This provides a more reliable recharge. It ends up being slightly less spells if a warlock routinely takes 2 short rests, but not needing a full hour might balance that.

As you say, that’s fewer spells per day than if you regularly get 2 short tests per day. But change it to letting you recover all of your Pact Magic spell slots instead of just one and I’d be ok with it. Not my ideal solution, but one I could live with.

 

[Charlaquin]

A slight tangent, but now that you've mentioned it, I don't recall seeing many "Proficiency Bonus" dependent abilities in this packet (or any of the OneD&D packets thusfar). That seemed to be all the rage back in the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything days, to the point where everybody was making fun of it. But it looks like WotC is steering away from that now.

The species with inherent spellcasting all use the “prof times per long rest” model, and the Cleric had it for Channel Divinity, but in the Druid and Paladin packet they said it would be changed to the same model as Channel Nature, because tying a class resource to prof bonus was determined to be too exploitable when multiclassing. So I expect moving forward we’ll see prof bonus uses become the standard for species features, but disappear from class features.

 

[Reef]

As you say, that’s fewer spells per day than if you regularly get 2 short tests per day. But change it to letting you recover all of your Pact Magic spell slots instead of just one and I’d be ok with it. Not my ideal solution, but one I could live with.

That would definitely be an increase in power, though, wouldn’t it? Since Prof Bonus goes all the way to six. I don’t think there’s anyone taking 5 or 6 short rests between Long, although I could be wrong!

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I view casting 3rd level spells as a significant mechanic more so than how they cast it.

A bard, wizard, sorcerer, and warlock walks into a goblin cave..
one casts hypnotic pattern
one casts fly
One casts major image
One casts slow

And you can't tell who did what, because they all cast the same spells.

Divine spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Nature spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Arcane spells have 4.5 classes that can cast them.
Multi-attack has 5 classes that have (while I'm counting).

I would rather warlocks be their own thing than just another arcane caster variant.

A lot of this had to do with classes losing their unique spell lists.

I am not against all of the warlock changes but the game in general could really benefit from more specialized spells to differ I ate classes.

 

[Charlaquin]

That would definitely be an increase in power, though, wouldn’t it? Since Prof Bonus goes all the way to six. I don’t think there’s anyone taking 5 or 6 short rests between Long, although I could be wrong!

True, and they are moving away from tying class abilities to prof bonus due to multiclassing. But, why not just make it usable twice per day?

 

[Reef]

True, and they are moving away from tying class abilities to prof bonus due to multiclassing. But, why not just make it usable twice per day?

Yeah, you're pretty much correct on that. I was just trying to piggy-back on existing mechanics, but as you say, they've been moving away from that.

Twice a day, with regaining all slots works for me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I view casting 3rd level spells as a significant mechanic more so than how they cast it.

A bard, wizard, sorcerer, and warlock walks into a goblin cave..
one casts hypnotic pattern
one casts fly
One casts major image
One casts slow

And you can't tell who did what, because they all cast the same spells.

Divine spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Nature spells have 1.5 classes that can cast them
Arcane spells have 4.5 classes that can cast them.
Multi-attack has 5 classes that have (while I'm counting).

I would rather warlocks be their own thing than just another arcane caster variant.

A lot of this had to do with classes losing their unique spell lists.

Yeah ya lost me again. The game could be all arcane spellcasters and that still wouldn’t be an argument with any power to move the slightest little bit.

The species with inherent spellcasting all use the “prof times per long rest” model, and the Cleric had it for Channel Divinity, but in the Druid and Paladin packet they said it would be changed to the same model as Channel Nature, because tying a class resource to prof bonus was determined to be too exploitable when multiclassing. So I expect moving forward we’ll see prof bonus uses become the standard for species features, but disappear from class features.

I think we may still see it in higher level features, by which I mean as low as level 6, because that just isn’t really an exploit at that point, but otherwise yeah.

 

[mellored]

Yeah ya lost me again. The game could be all arcane spellcasters and that still wouldn’t be an argument with any power to move the slightest little bit.

So you would be fine if the cleric became an arcane caster? As long as they kept high level spells?

Anyways. I still think we have enough arcane casters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A lot of this had to do with classes losing their unique spell lists.

To be fair, this latest packet they’ve showed a little bit of class exclusive spells.

We’ll see what happens after they get feedback on that.