D&D 5E Warlock Higher Level Spellcasting: Too easy to counter/dispel or effective?

[mellored]

The CR 12 Archmage has 20 slots. The CR 6 mage has 14 slots. They appear to be designed just like PC casters as far as slots go. A glabrezu can dispel magic at will. I design NPC casters and creatures using a similar limitations.

If the PC's are fighting a lot of casters with lots of counter spells, then your going to burn though any caster's slots, warlock included.

But still, they will do better then wizards who don't have a strong cantrip to fall back on.

 

[Horwath]

As long as NPC mage is dispelling and counterspelling he ain't fireballing and shielding.

so your 1 of 4/5 party members probably canceled biggest threat on the field for a round or two. I call that a bargain.

 

[rollingForInit]

If this thing happens once in a while, there's no issue. Getting shut down every now and then isn't an issue, it just means you gotta be able to adapt to different situations, use different tactics, and so on.

If this happens virtually every fight, you don't have a Warlock issue, you have a DM issue. Any DM can shut down any class if they want to, in every fight. That's bad DM'ing. Shut down the Wizard by giving all monsters limited magic immunity, or even just magic resistance. Shut down the melee Barbarian by having only ranged enemies a 100 feet away, and have all fights be over before he can participate. Corner the rogue every single combat so it can't get sneak attack.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

I'd just like to add to the chorus, that 'being reduced' to Eldritch Blast is hardly a problem.

A Warlock with a fully armed and operational EB is a force to be reckoned with, achieving at-will damage every bit as good as all but the most optimized pure-martial characters. Plus a 10 foot push per blast.

I agree that their spellcasting mechanic is inferior to that of other full-casters. I don't believe that their mechanic is "separate but equal," not by a long shot. Why should it be?

Warlock starts with a great EB and goes up from there.

Still not my favorite class. I'd like a few tweaks. But warlocks are decent or better in so many ways, it is hard to shut down all their options.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[Jessica]

It means that spellcaster is using their reaction not to cast Shield. It's a trade off. Does the Warlock have ranged party members who can bait out the Shield spell so the caster can't Counterspell? Or does the Warlock have ranged party members who can go ham on the spellcaster after they use their reaction to Counterspell the Warlock?

 

[Celtavian]

Quite honestly, it's always been the main shtick of the warlock to be an at-will blaster, with a minor bit of utility added in. They're not really "spellcasters" per se.
In 3.5, Eldritch Blast was a class feature, and their main one - most of their invocations involved tricking it out to do various things.
In 4E it was an at-will power somewhat poachable by other classes, but warlocks didn't have a choice in taking it - they received EB just by being a warlock and then their Pact dictated their other at-will power. A warlock could adjust their secondary specialty by deciding which pact to take (and actually do passably well at "faking" a different role), but they were still primarily single-target ranged strikers/blasters. It wasn't until later in 4E that the Eldritch Strike at-will was released and you got the option to build a "bladelock" through choosing either EB or ES. Most of their encounter and daily powers from the various Pacts were pretty blast-y as well and continued to reinforce the striker role.

I'm still not convinced that Eldritch Blast shouldn't have just become a class feature again in 5th Edition, rather than a cantrip... (It would solve most of the issues with it.)

In any event, although you can certainly build a warlock to do a lot of different things, I firmly believe that the main combat tactic of the warlock is meant to be to use their limited spell slots as a facilitator (through defense, deception and debuffing) to enable them to get their at-will damage on.

Making Eldritch Blast would have solved a lot of problems like creatures immune to certain spells or lower not being immune to it. It's too bad they didn't make it a class feature.

 

[Mephista]

Making it a class feature would have also allowed the blade'lock a bit more flexibility in design, I think. One of my favorite things about the hexblade 4e class and the eldrtich glaive in 3e was how you could customize the weapon "type" by adding on powers to it, not just using another magic weapon. Turning the Eldritch Blast into an Eldritch Blade would have been a bit more cool and evocative, I think. You could customize it with patron-specific Invocations or not, but the heart of the attack would remain.

I feel the need to point out that Eldritch Blast is technically optional in this game. You can choose to have a warlock that doesn't focus on using it, as we've seen hinted with the new celestial patron in a recent UA article. Undying light, I think it was (I'm sticking with celestial)? Anyways, I get the feeling that path was meant to use the Radiant damage cantrip as its main source of damage instead of Eld. Blast. Without better scaling, it won't make the cut, but its there. Its kind of par for the course, really. Eldrtich blast as set the standard for the class, and almost every other option comes up short. Its a bit saddening, especially when I get the feeling that Chain is supposed to be able to attack with their familiar, but it does such terrible damage, its not worth using. And we've all heard of blade'lock issues.

 

[Ovarwa]

So, I think the Bladelock would have fared better with a dedicated invocation along the lines of: When you are wielding your Pact Weapon, you can cast Eldritch Blast as a melee rather than a ranged attack; any feats, combat styles or other abilities that would apply to using the weapon for melee attacks also apply to the EB, as do magic properties of the weapon. A subsequent invocation could allow you to use the pact weapon as a focus, with the +N of a magic weapon applying to both to-hit rolls and saving throws for warlock spells. This instead of current invocations extra attack and cha to damage. (EB already has an invocation for that!) Any Warlock variant that offers something "way too powerful" at the expense of EB ain't all that. Anyway, Ken

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Warlocks cast their spells at their highest available level. So a Warlock with 4th level spell slots would cast Darkness as a 4th level spell, which would not be auto-dispelled by Counterspell or Dispell Magic.

 

[EvanNave55]

Warlock WITHOUT Eldritch Blast

I feel the need to point out that Eldritch Blast is technically optional in this game. You can choose to have a warlock that doesn't focus on using it, as we've seen hinted with the new celestial patron in a recent UA article. Undying light, I think it was (I'm sticking with celestial)? Anyways, I get the feeling that path was meant to use the Radiant damage cantrip as its main source of damage instead of Eld. Blast. Without better scaling, it won't make the cut, but its there. Its kind of par for the course, really. Eldrtich blast as set the standard for the class, and almost every other option comes up short. Its a bit saddening, especially when I get the feeling that Chain is supposed to be able to attack with their familiar, but it does such terrible damage, its not worth using. And we've all heard of blade'lock issues.

In the campaign I recently started I am playing the undying light warlock (blade) and actually didn't take Eldritch Blast instead using sacred flame as my at-will ranged cantrip and Green Flame Blade as my normal melee attack since I automatically can add CHA to my damage and it will free up a bunch of my invocations for other things because I don't have to boost EB.