D&D 5E New class niche?

[Horwath]

While it was buffed, it's really really frustrating that in order to just keep up with melee stuff, you have to use something like half of your 10 total invocations: Pact of the Blade, Thirsting Blade, Lifedrinker, Devouring Blade, Eldritch Smite. Meanwhile, a non-Blade Warlock spends one: Agonizing Blast.

I get that they didn't want things to be overly powerful. I really do. But the sheer investment you need in order to be merely adequate in combat is severe. Doubly so since Blade Warlocks don't get weapon mastery properties--if something like Lifedrinker or Eldritch Smite let you pick one weapon mastery property you could benefit from, it'd be a lot less frustrating to justify so many resources invested.

just take one level of fighter if you miss masteries and armor so much...

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I'd like to give them something like runes that can empower them as a unique class feature, just haven't quite figured out how to do it.

Yeah I've noticed in fiction that runes have been used several times for gish like characters, so it could work in making them more thematically unique.

The catch though, is that in DnD lore, runes are super exclusive to giants thematically, making it very hard to base classes around them. It really sucks, but unless the lore got changed, rune themed classes can't really exist. (I would have no issues with the lore changing here).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

just take one level of fighter if you miss masteries and armor so much...

My point was that this claim of "best melee DPR" seems to be ignoring rather important features (mastery properties, which everyone is raving about, alongside armor and HP). I'm perfectly fine with those being costs I paid in order to have some spellcasting while also having the ability to join melee.

I've been playing a Blade(+Tome) Warlock in Hussar's Phandelver game for a bit over six months now, IIRC. I am nowhere near the best melee attacker. Not even close. I'd need to be at least level 12 to even approach the kinds of damage our Barbarian can do while raging--and by then, they'll have gotten that much better. And they don't have mastery stuff yet, because I'm using the Playtest 7 rules (though Hussar had already effectively set down the change that actually did happen with the 5.5e Extra Attack stuff, where the third attack costs an additional invocation). Now, admittedly, I'm attempting to fill a lot of roles at the same time--I'm the party healer and (limitedly...) sage-ish guy, and the utility caster--but I'm more than a little skeptical about this claim that the published (not playtest) 5.5e Warlock actually is leading by such an extreme degree.

If a character is sinking nearly half their class resources into doing something, I think they should end up pretty good at that thing. Most of what I hear about Warlocks doing crazy damage requires multiple spells, and ignores things like opportunity cost and how fragile the Warlock generally is. Absolute theoretical potential--while ignoring cost-risk-benefit tradeoffs--may not be representative.

But then again, we were explicitly told that the 5.0 Fighter was supposed to be THE strongest physical attacker, which was the excuse for why they didn't get other features. That ended up being an outright lie, so I'm not really sure that your complaint is all that meaningful in the first place. That is, the train already left the station before you even bought a ticket.

 

[mellored]

While it was buffed, it's really really frustrating that in order to just keep up with melee stuff, you have to use something like half of your 10 total invocations: Pact of the Blade, Thirsting Blade, Lifedrinker, Devouring Blade, Eldritch Smite.

You start off ahead with 2d6 instead of 1d10.

Life drinker isn't required, but puts you a little further ahead.
Smite puts you further ahead.
Any of the weapon feats puts you further ahead.
Spirit Shroud puts you ahead of anyone else.
Foresight keeps you as the top damage dealer.

Meanwhile, a non-Blade Warlock spends one: Agonizing Blast.

You mean they can only spend one.

There is no Lifedrinker for EB.

But the sheer investment you need in order to be merely adequate in combat is severe.

Your underestimating how much damage a bladelock can do.

 

[Shardstone]

The idea of class niche does not exist anymore when it comes to mechanics. Instead, you have class fantasy and class theme.

Let's look at the druid.

The druid has a spell list of AoE effects (ranger, cleric, wizard), divine magic (cleric, paladin), primal magic (ranger). Most of its features come from its spells, of which there are many. It's core feature, Wild Shape, allows you to become an animal. Not so much a battle beast unless you go moon druid, but a fun little animal that can sneak or swim or w/e. Or you can summon an animal. Either way, animals are involved with the fantasy of the class, but its actual niche mechanically isn't clear. Is it a sneak? A blaster? AoE focused? Tank? Secondline defense? Support?

These things don't matter anymore. All that matters is that you create an interesting fantasy for the class itself, and make a FUN mechanic that captures that fantasy. Viewed through this lens, making new classes is easy. After all, outside of D&D fantasy, many D&D tropes aren't that common anymore, and many very common tropes aren't seen in D&D. So, it merely becomes a matter of seeing something in Fantasy you think is cool -- or having your own ideas -- and then building it out and giving it a FUN mechanic.

You could easily make a full "Shifter" class even though the Druid exists and put it in vanilla D&D without any loss. That's because a full Shifter class would have a lot of non-spell features to modify its "Beast Shift" or whatever, creating a different experience. It doesn't take away from the Druid, who is the wild of the party, and instead lets you either remix that fantasy or pursue a different one (wild barbarian, werebeast, awakened thing, evolution powers, mutant, etc).

So if we look at the Arcane-Gish, we can see literally hundreds, if not thousands of magic-using warriors in Fantasy. Many of these we can group up based on any amount of valid-but-concocted parameters to create a class and subclass suite for.

Reach in Shounen Anime to grab Naruto, Bleach, Hunter X Hunter, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Yu Yu Hakusho and you can create a cool combat-Exorcist that weaves in spells between their attacks. Reach into Western comics for X-Men, literally just the X-Men, and create a hyper-customizable Mutant class whose limited spells also amp their mutations in different ways. Reach into Star Wars and take a variety of sith and jedi and other force powers to create a reinvented Mystic that is actually using a few arcane spells and that has a lot of features about discipline, calmness, and inspiring others. Reach into the Witcher and take each of the Witcher schools to make a Slayer gish class that has different spell schools for each Slayer subclass. Do what I did and draw from Fate/Stay and Arthurian tales to create a Pendragon whose mythical weapon allows them to also cast spells.

Just right there, in a few minutes, I created 5 different valid Arcane Gish classes, showing the flexibility of the archetype AND drawing on popular media, thus demonstrating plausible popularity for these concepts. I didn't even touch Sanderson, Avatar, One Piece, Dragonball, or many real-world myths such as those seen in Indian and norse epics.

The only thing holding us back from getting new and interesting classes that expand D&D and allow us to fill class fantasies like "arcane gish" is the conversative nature of both the designers and the fanbase. It truly is a match made in heaven. Most of you cannot stomach the idea of new official classes because you have 30+ years of lore backing your individual schemas. Additionally, people are so afraid of "bloat" that somehow the new gen of RPers is terrified of it despite not growing up with 3E, as if a DM was never allowed to just pick and choose what content to use in their game.

Alas, third party and homebrew are where the real heart of D&D is IMO, creating new classes, mechanics, and procedures to evolve the game instead of just insisting we all accept the 12 core classes and never dare ask for more.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

While it was buffed, it's really really frustrating that in order to just keep up with melee stuff, you have to use something like half of your 10 total invocations: Pact of the Blade, Thirsting Blade, Lifedrinker, Devouring Blade, Eldritch Smite. Meanwhile, a non-Blade Warlock spends one: Agonizing Blast.

I get that they didn't want things to be overly powerful. I really do. But the sheer investment you need in order to be merely adequate in combat is severe. Doubly so since Blade Warlocks don't get weapon mastery properties--if something like Lifedrinker or Eldritch Smite let you pick one weapon mastery property you could benefit from, it'd be a lot less frustrating to justify so many resources invested.

A D&D 2024 warlock with those invocations and a build/spells to match is considerably better than "merely adequate" in melee.

If a character is sinking nearly half their class resources into doing something, I think they should end up pretty good at that thing. Most of what I hear about Warlocks doing crazy damage requires multiple spells, and ignores things like opportunity cost and how fragile the Warlock generally is. Absolute theoretical potential--while ignoring cost-risk-benefit tradeoffs--may not be representative.

If a character sinking only half of their resources into doing something makes them almost as good as the class dedicated to that thing, there is a problem.
If you want your warlock to perform as well in melee as the class that does little else, you should be prepared to have to dedicate so many of your class abilities to it that you can do as little else. That includes using your spells to keep up.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You start off ahead with 2d6 instead of 1d10.

Life drinker isn't required, but puts you a little further ahead.
Smite puts you further ahead.
Any of the weapon feats puts you further ahead.
Spirit Shroud puts you ahead of anyone else.
Foresight keeps you as the top damage dealer.

...a ninth-level spell? Are you serious right now?

You mean they can only spend one.

There is no Lifedrinker for EB.

But that one invocation gives them essentially all of the beneficial effects that they'd get from dropping three (Pact, Thirsting, whatever the third one is that gives the 3rd attack) and more, because you get four attacks from EB automatically.

I want you to imagine a world where eldritch blast doesn't automatically get four attacks. Where you have to spend an invocation each time you want to gain an additional hit--in addition to the one spent just to get +Cha to damage. That's where bladelock is. I'm not saying it can't do damage. I'm saying it's annoying that there are a bazillion really cool and very niche invocations that you can't take because just keeping up with the joneses costs a bare minimum of three invocations, whereas the EB spammer gets by with literally exactly one. They don't need more than one; that one is more than enough by itself.

 

[Scribe]

I want you to imagine a world where eldritch blast doesn't automatically get four attacks. Where you have to spend an invocation each time you want to gain an additional hit--in addition to the one spent just to get +Cha to damage. That's where bladelock is. I'm not saying it can't do damage. I'm saying it's annoying that there are a bazillion really cool and very niche invocations that you can't take because just keeping up with the joneses costs a bare minimum of three invocations, whereas the EB spammer gets by with literally exactly one. They don't need more than one; that one is more than enough by itself.

Which is fine, because being a Cantrip spamming Blaster is the Warlock core identity.

Being the top end of melee performance, is not.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A D&D 2024 warlock with those invocations and a build/spells to match is considerably better than "merely adequate" in melee.

Then show me the numbers. I can't see what the new foresight does, for example--and I think it's hilariously ridiculous to be comparing the damage output predicated on a ninth-level spell.

If a character sinking only half of their resources into doing something makes them almost as good as the class dedicated to that thing, there is a problem.

And that's my point--I don't think it does. Mastery properties weren't available to us until very late in the playtest, and only true martial characters get access AFAIK. Certainly Warlocks don't. E.g. Graze is damage on a miss, which is never a bad thing.

If you want your warlock to perform as well in melee as the class that does little else, you should be prepared to have to dedicate so many of your class abilities to it that you can do as little else. That includes using your spells to keep up.

I don't want to perform that well though. I just want to be reasonably decent. I think any class "that does little else" is incredibly stupid, bad design that should never have existed in the first place, because it contradicts the open, explicit designer intent of having "pillars" of play.

And that's part of why I included that last line. Fighters, the class we were explicitly told wasn't getting other features because they'd be the absolute kings of combat, are not and never were the kings of combat. So if the claim is "it's BS that something that can cast spells is the best at fighting in melee," you should have condemned 5.0 from the start. The ship has sailed. Unless and until they actually do design a game where Fighters are so much better at combat that it justifies them being stunted weaklings in every other aspect of gameplay, I don't take this argument even remotely seriously.

Which is fine, because being a Cantrip spamming Blaster is the Warlock core identity.

Being the top end of melee performance, is not.

Then show me the numbers. Prove that its, in fact, the best or nearly-best meleer. Preferably without having to depend on a friggin' 9th level spell.

 

[Scribe]

Then show me the numbers. Prove that its, in fact, the best or nearly-best meleer. Preferably without having to depend on a friggin' 9th level spell.

The UA one? I can look later, the actual 5.5 one, I dont know if someone has done the math.