D&D 5E (2024) Implied Improvement: Eldritch Blast

[Tales and Chronicles]

I'd be fine just porting the 3.5 class in.

IIRC the first playtest version of the warlock did not have spells, only invocations and their EB, much like the 3.5 one.

It was one of my favorite class, being the edgelord that I am. Adding the subclasses of 5e to its chassis would be awesome.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My next bet is one smite per round, on your turn using attack action.

Maybe limited to Proficiency Bonus times per long rest, too.

 

[Haplo781]

My next bet is one smite per round, on your turn using attack action.

It so weird that these changes all affect martials

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It so weird that these changes all affect martials

Eh, Spellcasters have gotten some nerfs that we've seen. You can only ever prepare a single 9th level spell slot, so you choose one and never get another unless you change it during a long rest. That means that you can't choose in a battle to cast Meteor Swarm or Wish, you have to pick one and stick with it for the day (Bards might get around this with Magical Secrets). That's a pretty big nerf. They also removed quite a few really good spells from the Bard list.

Overall, there are both buffs and nerfs for both the Spellcasting and Martial characters. We'll have to wait until we get the rest of the Class UAs in order to have a definitive answer to the question: "are martials being nerfed more than spellcasters?"

 

[Benjamin Olson]

All I see is it not being included on any of the three general lists, which could simply mean that it is given to Warlocks separate of the Arcane list, but still a spell. And if there's one thing we should never doubt WotC's capacity for, it is unnecessarily making every class feature that can be reduced to a form of spellcasting into spellcasting.

I've certainly heard the arguments for why Eldritch Blast would work better as a class feature, I agree with many of them. But stepping back and looking at the whole game a bit more abstractly, it would be very strange indeed if the same people who still feel that Hunter's Mark has to be handled as a spell were to decide to make the explicitly magic blasts of a warlock not a spell.

My guess is it will be a spell. Whether they'll change the spell to be more dependent on Warlock levels (say, make multiple blasts a level 5 invocation rather than just part of the cantrip) I have no idea. I'm going to guess that they will make it an automatic pick for Warlocks, because not letting people mess up their characters by missing something obvious to everyone in the know seems to be the current vibe.

 

[Krachek]

Eh, Spellcasters have gotten some nerfs that we've seen. You can only ever prepare a single 9th level spell slot, so you choose one and never get another unless you change it during a long rest. That means that you can't choose in a battle to cast Meteor Swarm or Wish, you have to pick one and stick with it for the day (Bards might get around this with Magical Secrets). That's a pretty big nerf. They also removed quite a few really good spells from the Bard list.

Overall, there are both buffs and nerfs for both the Spellcasting and Martial characters. We'll have to wait until we get the rest of the Class UAs in order to have a definitive answer to the question: "are martials being nerfed more than spellcasters?"

I don’t think magical secret bypass the spell slot requirement. It allow only to choose other spell list without school restriction.

« Whenever you prepare your Bard Spells, two of the Spells you prepare can be from the chosen list and from any School of Magic. The prepared Spells otherwise follow the rules of your Bard Spellcasting feature. »

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don’t think magical secret bypass the spell slot requirement. It allow only to choose other spell list without school restriction.

« Whenever you prepare your Bard Spells, two of the Spells you prepare can be from the chosen list and from any School of Magic. The prepared Spells otherwise follow the rules of your Bard Spellcasting feature. »

Looks like you're right. The Bard gets to choose basically any 9th-level spell they want in the game, but they only get to prepare 1 of them every day. They don't get multiple options. That's a pretty big nerf if it's also true for other fullcasters.

 

[Charlaquin]

IIRC the first playtest version of the warlock did not have spells, only invocations and their EB, much like the 3.5 one.

It was one of my favorite class, being the edgelord that I am. Adding the subclasses of 5e to its chassis would be awesome.

They did have spells, but they didn’t have spell slots. They could only cast spells as rituals by default, and they could gain “lesser invocations” that would allow them to spend their “Patron’s Favors” to cast spells. Which functionally was a lot less different from the PHB version than it sounds. Warlock spell slots are just Patron’s Favors by another name, and PHB warlocks learn new spells at the same rate playtest warlocks learned lesser invocations. Minor invocations were functionally what the PHB warlock just calls invocations. And we never got to see greater invocations in the playtest, but I’d put money down that they would functionally have been what the PHB warlock calls Mystic Arcana.

 

[James Gasik]

But as a class feature it won’t combo with quicken spell….

Don't worry, there'll be a Feat for that!

Or maybe a Hex, but if we're going back to 3.5, there'll be Feats for everything.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Or maybe they will just get rid of it completely.

It has never made any sense to me why a god cannot grant the best cantrip to followers, but any junior varsity fiend or fey can.