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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 9014332" data-attributes="member: 87792">Everyone has an opinion and everyone has experience, and everyone can assert whatever they like including about both.No. It outright says you are making an apples to oranges comparison when you bring up the bard because guess what? You are bringing up an apples to oranges comparison. A key difference between the bard threads and this is that this contains specific proposals and they are both bad and half-assed. And they are very clearly half-assed or this playtest packet would not come with the changes to Hex that only make sense under the pact magic paradigm but constitute a significant and pointless nerf under the new one. And when something put up for playtesting doesn't work because of another change put up for playtesting it's clear that whoever made those changes either wasn't communicating or didn't think things through.It is also an apples to oranges comparison because if the bard were to change there would still be two other arcane and two other non-arcane full casters in the game. Changes to the bard are about changing one class to better reflect the archetype. Meanwhile ripping Pact Magic out of the game tears out an entire approach to magic, and forces all casters to approach magic with the book keeping of low level spells and a dozen or more spell slots. It meaningfully makes the game smaller and more homogenous in ways changing the bard while keeping the mechanics on other classes would not.It did however break the synergies within the class. It also broke the balancing of the class. The current class has the level of balancing done for the Artificer, in which the class is made up of a set of cool abilities which add up to ... a pile of cool abilities. The whole is no more than the sum of the parts.But the damage literally isn't there unless you take some hyper-specific options.Eldritch Blast only looks good in terms of damage (before level 17) because people compare it to cantrips. When compared to baseline weapon attacks it comes out looking not so hot; the Ranger gets an accuracy buff and things like Sharpshooter (and Hunter's Mark is IME far more usable than Hex both pre and post changes) and magic weapons are easier to get than Pact Rods, plus there's no Pact Rod equivalent to the Bracers of Archery while a standard +X bow doesn't require attunement. Eldritch Blast does sub-ranger damage and is better compared to a bow wielding Artificer - except that they get to make their own magic items.In addition to this the Ranger actually has magic that stacks damage with archery in the form of "smite spells" such as Ensnaring Smite and Hail of Thorns that lets you go above the effects of simple arrows plus Hunter's Mark. (Of course most of these don't actually work that well in the 2014 rules thanks to Concentration and Hunter's Mark just being better; one of the things that is a genuine improvement in the One D&D rules). And rangers get damage buffs from their subclasses. And more.And the damage from baseline casting isn't there either. A single beam Eldritch Blast plus Hex does d10 + Stat Modifier + d6 damage - which is an approximate match for most PHB first level single target spells on the Arcane list like Chromatic Orb (Dissonant Whispers and Guiding Bolt oddly enough lead the pack). With the exception of Hellish Rebuke (and you're incredibly squishy - and False Life doesn't scale) the only times you might want to cast first level damage spells are if you get a good AoE for Arms of Hadar/Burning Hands/Thunderwave. At fifth level you get second level spells, the damage benchmark for which is Scorching Ray. And this is barely worth casting against a baseline two beam Eldritch Blast; 6d6 fire is technically higher than 2d10 + 2*stat (when your stat probably went to 18 at level 4) force - 21 vs 19 damage. But it sure isn't worth a second level spell slot.In the classic Warlock it didn't matter your baseline damage lagged below the Ranger. Twice per short rest you got to throw a bigger spell than you could with Eldritch Blast thanks to Pact Magic. Your damage baseline was decent and then spiked higher other than at level 2. Meanwhile this version of the warlock needs to give up entire class features to take hyper-specific options (a once per day slot that can only be used for fireball for example) to be able to do better than Eldritch Blast before level 9. And if you need to take a hyper-specific action to make something work then it's bad design.So no they don't have the damage. Eldritch Blast gives you a lower damage version of the archery ranger rather than a low damage with more spike damage rival. And they now don't have higher level slots unless they burn their invocations. And this is another problem - half-caster with ranged attacks and extra class based utility brings the warlock very close to being an arcane mirror of a ranger. If that's what you want just reskin. The warlock used to be its own thing, not a knock-off of an existing class.</blockquote>

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