The Warlock - How has it played?

[devilbat]

World of Warcraft? Something WOTC?

I have several warlocks... just curious which one the discussion is about.

From WOTC Complete Arcane.

A player in my group has been playing one from first level, and currently at fifth. His opinion is that the class is a "one trick pony" and "gets dull quickly".

As far as balanced goes, I would say it's pretty fairly balance. I'll second the suggestion that at early levels the eldritch blast quickly becomes the go to ability for the party.

 

[Len]

The Warlock in my last game was awful. The player in question claimed that the Warlock was balanced because he was only good at combat, and was therefore not a flexible character.

Unfortunately, since the game in question was heavily focused on combad, he quickly dominated.

Was there no fighter in your party? In our group, the warlock doesn't usually outdo the melee guy (he's a multiclass fighter/rogue/etc.) The warlock gets three maximized blasts per day, which are pretty powerful, but the fighter can do more damage in a good round.

 

[Crothian]

THe warlock was actually a bit boring. Powerwise it was fione (only took him to tenth level though) and I had fun with him, but that was because of the extras I'll do to have fun with a character. Mechancically though, it got boring fast.

 

[Ozmar]

The warlock in my game I found to be annoying, but maybe it's just me.

The annoying thing was the constant flying (not so bad) and teleporting (rather annoying). The party would teleport through any barrier b/c he'd hop them through one at a time. Non-stop teleports just bug me. He also could see invisibility and detect magic, but that's pretty much de riguer anyway.

I guess he wasn't unbalanced, though. He died quick drinking from a cursed pool and getting smited by an outsider. *shrug* I banned the class.

Ozmar the Stingy DM

 

[HellHound]

Makes some sense. I've banned teleportation except over very short distances from my games now. Dimension Door is as powerful as teleporting gets.

 

[MerricB]

I agree that the Warlock might become boring as a PC fairly rapidly - although if I ever ran one, I'd maximise out the role-playing skills and become the face of the party; Beguiling Influence is fun.

However, I've been using the Warlock as a villain NPC, and they are great. They can teleport away (Flee the Scene), they can send minions against the PCs and use their bolts to otherwise hassle them.

Very cool class.

Cheers!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I banned the class.

Why? Nothing in your post gave a good clue as to why it would be necessary to do so. That is, you say the teleportation bugged you, but was it bad enough for a banning? Does it throw off something intrinsic to your campaign world? Just curious.

 

[Particle_Man]

My Dm said my Dimension Door (flee the scene) was "self and light enc. only" so be an alternative to outright banning.

 

[Taloras]

Im currently playing a 3rd level warlock. However, our group is using the Midnight settings Heroic Paths(in a FR campaign), which ups the power level of characters. The DM selected the Dragonblooded one for the warlock, saying the extra spells were extra invocations....so I get a few more invocations than I would usually. So far it hasnt made much difference.

However, our swashbuckler/bard wishes he had seen warlock when he was making the character. 2 levels in warlock could get him Leaps and Bounds (+6 to tumble, jump,and climb for 24 hours), and Beguiling Influence(+6 to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate). Since hes a tumbling, feinting type of character, this would work perfect for him, even better than the bard levels. And use the eldritch blast as his ranged attack when needed.

So far, it hasnt gotten out of hand, but I can definitely see how it could do so later. Im about to hit 4th level, and at that point, ill have a +13 to use magic device....we are just waiting for the DM to give us a few wands, or money to get them...give me Double Wand Wielder and i could be really nasty at later levels.

 

[Felon]

Why? Nothing in your post gave a good clue as to why it would be necessary to do so. That is, you say the teleportation bugged you, but was it bad enough for a banning? Does it throw off something intrinsic to your campaign world? Just curious.

He gave a major clue I'd say, and it didn't just have to do with dimension door. D&D is largely a game of resource management. Having a class with infinite resources opens itself to vast realms of exploitation and would quickly grow tedious for many DM's. That doesn't change just by banning Flee the Scene.

Using that small handful of abilities as many times as you can is pretty much the point of the class, right? If the warlock's not 'porting or flying constantly, or not charming every potential enemy he encounters or throwing chilling tentacles all over the place with wild abandon, it's pretty easy to argue that he isn't getting his money's worth.

In his design interview for Complete Arcane, Rich Baker shares his (flawed) logic:

The thinking here is that in most D&D games, your characters are probably going to be in only 15 to 20 rounds of combat between rests and spell recoveries. So after your spellcaster has a total daily spell allocation of 20 spells or more (say, around 5th level), his real limit is the number of actions he gets per day -- the number of specific opportunities he has to cast a spell. So the warlock is still bound to the same ultimate limit that any moderate-level wizard deals with.

Smell the brain fart? If not, look back at Ozmar's post. Rich's little formula falls apart the second you factor in that D&D is not measured entirely in combat rounds. The point of a lot of non-combat obstacles is not to kill the PC's, but rather to force them to expend resources, or to make them do things the hard way for fear of consuming a resource prematurely. The warlock can throw a lot of that out the window.

I think the ideal way to circumvent that issue would be to replace limited uses with a built-in potential for backlash with the more abuse-prone invocations (the sending invocation is a good example). Then it's back to being a matter of tactical resource management, but of a kind all its own.

So, for instance, the warlock can charm all he wants, but any foe that shakes off the effect instantly becomes murderously hostile towards him. Maybe he can see the unseen all day long, but it shifts his focus off of the visible world and makes spot checks a little harder against non-invisible creatures.