The Warlock - How has it played?

[William Ronald]

It does seem to me that almost every DM upset with the Warlock class , is cheesed off due to a what seems in the DM's mind an undue use of power to bypass some beloved obstacle.

I understand what Felon is saying, but think that even given "non combat" obstacles something of what Baker is saying is somewhat valid. In any given game session there are limited number of situations to use any given power.

An equivalent level sorcerer with Ddoor could likely duplicate a Warlock with Flee the Scene.

The fun part about DMing for a warlock is you can come up with some crazy scenarios, like a huge cavern of stone columns rising out of an inky black nothingness, with swirling winds that make flying dangerous, and force the parties Warlock to act as a Nightcrawler delivery service, and ferry the party to different stone columns. Take advantage of the Warlocks unlimited use.

Plus, there are ways to foil teleportation. I remember that in the 1st edition book, Manual of the Planes, there was a potion that could be added to the material used for a new building that would prevent planar travel or teleportation. Also, it is important to note that a character should have some idea where he or she is teleporting. (A few good illusions might hide a few problems in what seems like a safe location.)

 

[Sigdel]

I have been playing a Warlock for two sessions now and, so far, I like it. Already i used an invocation in a creative way. We were being attacked by som messed up animals and our parties fighter took a withdrawl due to the beating he was taking in the front line. Knowing he could not take much more, i used earthen grasp to stand in the way of him and the animals. It allowed him to get some healing on while keeping the animals busy with a new foe. I saved his candy hide.

 

[FireLance]

It does seem to me that almost every DM upset with the Warlock class, is cheesed off due to a what seems in the DM's mind an undue use of power to bypass some beloved obstacle.

Agreed, and it's not just the warlock class. Any feat, spell, class ability, magic item, etc (I will use the generic term "game element" henceforth). that allows a PC to easily bypass an obstacle that the DM intended to be challenging ususally gets labelled "broken" by the indignant DM in question.

I don't believe that many game elements are truly broken. However, I do believe that there may be game elements that do not fit well with the type of games that a particular DM wants to run. And I do believe that it is the responsibility of a DM to be aware of the potential repercussions of any game element before he allows it into his game, or to change the nature of the challenges in the game to take into account the presence of the game element. In particular, a DM can set up situations where a particular game element is crucial, and other situations where it is irrelevant. Preferably both during the same game, so that the PC gets a chance to shine without overshadowing the rest of the party.

 

[Berandor]

Well, being aware of the way I run my campaigns, and not being a rookie DM, I banned the Warlock

When I look at how the wizard in our group hesitates before spending one of his offensive spells, and how he often spends several rounds shooting his crossbow, I don't want someone who pulls a damaging touch attack out of his pants every round. And I don't want to have to concentrate on attacking that character to offset his offensive prowess.

I don't care if it's balanced, I just don't want it. It's the same with the Mystic Theurge and all its followers.

That doesn't mean I won't use a warlock NPC, though

 

[Sammael]

I played a warlock (very briefly) and I don't recall outshining the rest of the party. I did have fell flight, which caused my DM some concern. But, in the end, a lone flying warlock is a very tempting target...

Warlocks make GREAT NPCs. They are much quicker to build than sorcerers or wizards, and fit the BBEG (or BBEG's lieutenant) stereotype quite nicely.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I might use the class for my own evil-guy ends, but I doubt I would leave it open to players.

It might be balanced, I might be a bad GM, but like a few GMs, I guess, there are alot of spell-like abilities I wouldn't want used at-will every day. Would intrude too much on how I tend to craft things. Like Artificer, it's probably balanced in its own right, but there's too much to do to unbalance it for me to worry with it.

--fje

 

[VirgilCaine]

Well, being aware of the way I run my campaigns, and not being a rookie DM, I banned the Warlock

When I look at how the wizard in our group hesitates before spending one of his offensive spells, and how he often spends several rounds shooting his crossbow, I don't want someone who pulls a damaging touch attack out of his pants every round. And I don't want to have to concentrate on attacking that character to offset his offensive prowess.

What level is this Wizard? He does use Scribe Scroll during downtime, right?

The fun part about DMing for a warlock is you can come up with some crazy scenarios, like a huge cavern of stone columns rising out of an inky black nothingness, with swirling winds that make flying dangerous, and force the parties Warlock to act as a Nightcrawler delivery service, and ferry the party to different stone columns. Take advantage of the Warlocks unlimited use.

This is good dungeon design. Force the players to use their abilities, don't negate them.
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I agree about the non-combat invocations, though. A few non-combat invocations changes the mix--Warlock's Call and Beguiling Whatever don't fit at all with the rest of the list, so they'd be out, IMO.

 

[Ashanderai]

I played a warlock in a brief mini-campaign. He didn't outshine anyone and we had a ranger specialized in archery with us as well as a Dragon-article, modified Paladin (NG), his dwarven cleric cohort, a barbarian, and an NPC wizard.

The ranger was better at long distance sniping and the warlock was better at being the close-range support guy with just a couple of other tricks, like detect magic. The ranger was very interesting; he had some trick arrows that were pretty cool - one type of which were arrows of healing (they could do max damage and due to the healing enchantment on them would heal anyone struck by them minus the damage, which would at worst cancel the new damage from the arrow). The arrows were a great way to heal someone when no one in the party could get near someone about to go down (or that had just gone down).

The warlock was cool because of what he could do with his eldritch blast. He had the ability to arc his blast to hit a second target near the first that came in extremely useful. Once we were getting pounded by some undead that were backing us into an undesirable corridor by coming at us with a tower shield that filled the corridor and that our strong guys and the ranger could do nothing about (the wizard was not with us yet). The warlock attacked the shield and arced the blast to hit the undead holding it a few times, which got them to change tactics to something our front line guys could deal with. The warlock was never able to do anything the DM could not cope with though. In fact, the warlock was the first to fall in the party and was eventually turned into an evil outsider that the NG Paladin had to banish.

 

[Felon]

It does seem to me that almost every DM upset with the Warlock class , is cheesed off due to a what seems in the DM's mind an undue use of power to bypass some beloved obstacle.

Not quite. The obstacle isn't there to bring the adventure to a screeching halt. It's more or less meant to be bypassed by players that expend a certain amount of effort. The issue with the warlock is that nothing's expended.

An equivalent level sorcerer with Ddoor could likely duplicate a Warlock with Flee the Scene..

Sure he could--but would he? Each 4th-level spell he casts is one he won't cast later. That resource has to be managed.

 

[kanithardm]

Given that any victim of such spamming can do damage to the warlock spammer, I think that would be a sub-optimal choice.

If only all spam worked that way.....