Warlocks: Goodbye Rogues, we hardly knew you

[gyor]

Not 100% to be fair. And they are still striker kings - especially the second rank thug with a whip. But:

The rogue gets to pick locks. The Warlock gets to walk through the wall.

The rogue gets to hide behind the curtain. The Warlock gets to create the curtain then hide behind it. Or just walk through the wall again.

The rogue gets to cause a distraction. The Warlock creates ten pints of oil from thin air, stands well back, and throws a match on it.

The rogue gets a minimum of 10 to bluff. The Warlock either gets advantage or can charm a whole room.

The warlock has to burn favours to walk through walls or make items materialize out of thin air (which by the way is nothing the rogue can buy or steal), which means he can only do it limited number of times a day and it costs them a use of another lesser invocation or Pact Boon to do so. A Rogue can pick locks all day long or use skill mastery in other ways.

A warlock can magically charm a room full of people, but at a price, both mechanically and,roleplay wise. It costs a favour and odds are people are going to figure out he did it and there could be reprecussions to it.

A Rogue on the other hand could basically do the same sort of thing none magically via diplomacy or bluff check and not have the effect were out.

Honestly normally I'd use my favours for a Baleful Utterance, not that other stuff, especially if I have a Rogue in the party.

As for Dragon Sorceror outshining Fighters I can sort of see that, but fighters are still tougher and can focus thier status on strenth/dex and con, while a DS will need high charisma and has a finite supply of willpower. I'd give the fighter an extra die and +2 damage to weapon attacks. That would solve that. Fighter needs that anyway.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I had been worrying about sorcerers outshining wizards, not fighters. Compared to the fighter, the sorcerer gets slightly worse HP/HD, worse attack bonuses, more MAD (he needs Cha), and of course no CS.

He does get spells, of course, and at first glance that would seem really overpowered. 8 Arc Lightnings at level 5! But when you look at damage, a fighter with a longbow is doing 3d8+Dex damage at a longer range by level 5 (avg 13.5+dex, so maybe 16.5) while the Arc Lightning is doing 5d6 (17.5) to the primary target and 2d6 (7) to the secondary. Better damage, sure, but limited times per day.

So offensively, the sorcerer has a narrow edge when he's burning through spell points (and a more significant edge against groups of enemies, thanks to his AOE spells). But that's kind of the point of a limited-resource arcane spellcaster. Defensively, he's a bit worse off than the fighter on every front except AC, where he's even.

Personally, I could see knocking him down to medium armor proficiency (something about a "pure" arcane caster in plate armor rubs me the wrong way) and maybe even getting rid of shield proficiency (since it's goofy to imagine him sheathing a weapon every time he needs a free hand to cast a spell anyway).

As for the warlock vs. rogue conundrum - IMHO, teleports and etherealness aren't really stepping on the rogue's toes, since the rogue can't do those things to begin with. Yeah, the warlock can conjure up a puddle of oil, but so can a wizard, and a rogue can carry one around with him nonmagically just fine. A warlock is better at escaping jail, but a rogue is better at infiltrating an enemy base without instantly having every monster in a mile radius notice him walking through walls into a room full of orcs and then trying to crouch in a broom closet for ten minutes to ask his patron for some more juice. Charming a room full of people is awesome, but even the 2hp goblins get saves. I'd have to playtest to see how they measure up.

 

[Someone]

You don't want to attack in melee with the draconic sorc - you want to go full spellcaster. The melee options, like the Draconic strength are trap choices; it's much better to use a shield and Shocking grasp as your weapon of choice. This allows you to ignore Str as a stat and concentrate on better ones, defensive and skill wise. You miss your +2 damage when you spend 3 Willpower, but that's all.

Then you choose Shield as one of your 1st level spells, and go to town. 3 times per day at level 1 your AC is 2 higher than the sword and board fighter's (reaching 19, meaning even the most accurate monsters in the bestiary need a 15 to hit you) and your damage is on par, assuming he only uses his CS die for damage. On top of that you can choose something for crowd control, like Burning hands or Cause fear. Not much of a choice here, since you'll get all 1st level spell on the list at level 3.

Later the fighter wins just at melee attack with better accuracy and more and better CS dice, but by this point the Sorc can spam Shield, Burning Hands, Ghoul Touch or Melf's. The comparison would be more one sided if the sorc got the really good spells.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Not 100% to be fair. And they are still striker kings - especially the second rank thug with a whip. But:

The rogue gets to pick locks. The Warlock gets to walk through the wall.

The rogue gets to hide behind the curtain. The Warlock gets to create the curtain then hide behind it. Or just walk through the wall again.

The rogue gets to cause a distraction. The Warlock creates ten pints of oil from thin air, stands well back, and throws a match on it.

The rogue gets a minimum of 10 to bluff. The Warlock either gets advantage or can charm a whole room.

Okay so how does the rest of the party get to follow the Warlock?

I really get tired of comments like the above when all factors aren't taken into consideration.

The lock still needs to be picked so the rest of the party can follow. I say this is a great ability that would allow the Warlock to see things on the other side of a door before the rest of the party advances.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

So what's the problem with having a Sorcerer and a Fighter fighting side by side?

 

[TrippyHippy]

"Striker roles" are a 4E-ism. I prefer playing a Rogue to a Warlock in D&DNext because you get to play an Everyman hero with lots of skills. The striker role is irrelevant to me.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Of course not. There is, however, something wrong with letting the warlock be a better thief than the thief.

They're not.

Sure, a warlock might be able to bypass a locked door with an invocation. Big deal. He can only do so a limited number of times and can only take himself. Rogues can do it all day long and can bring along the entire party. And it's not like picking locks is the only thing rogues are good for!

Sure, a warlock can charm people. I wasn't aware that only rogues were allowed to be good in the social pillar.

Sure, a warlock can conjure oil and use it as a distraction. But what's preventing the rogue from just carrying around pints of oil with him?

 

[Sonny]

Well they have 2 years to balance and get it right. So far both seem a bit strong, but I think it's better to show off a new design that needs to be toned down, rather then one that's under-powered and instantly dismissed by people as useless or boring.

 

[Vikingkingq]

On the other hand, Fae Pact Warlock is looking like a pretty good (if not the best possible) Rogue multi-class. Combine Eldritch Blast with Sneak Attack for 5d6 at level 1, Ethereal Stride, Shadow Veil, and the level 5 Fae Pact Boon to improve movement, Breath of Night to boost Stealth (especially with the Thief Scheme), Fabrication of the Weave and Visage of the Summer Court and the Level 1 Fey Pact Boon for running scams? Crazyness.

 

[nerf_ninja]

Warlock GOOD

We just played a game with a fighter (hill dwarf survivor), cleric (human healer) and warlock (human charlatan). We thought the module would be like caves of chaos, so we started at 3rd level. (And, it wasn't. It would have been easy for 1st level characters.)

First of all -- skills only come from backgrounds, and a couple class features? What? Rogue only gets his background skills? Seriously?

The Cleric kind of got the short end of the stick. 1d8+4 at-will and a few (very few) spell slots. Poorest attack bonuses. Great sun domain benefits (resistance fire!). None of the spells were awesome though, like the 1st round of the playtest.

The fighter rolled 56 HP at lvl 3. Survivor plus hill dwarf FTW? But his weapon damage was only 2d6+STR. He had six of the combat options, but each of them used up his one expertise die. That stank. Cleave if and only if you didn't parry or protect or glance or deadly-ish strike, etc.

So these classes -- which had appeared in the first round -- were kind of gimpy, it felt. They had been dialed back a lot.

Now, the warlock. Remember how they were published separate from the 2nd round materials in a separate article? This is important I think.

His pact boon was the fey pact. The charm never came up b/c we went adventuring into the House Center. It's not that great anyway, since a) the charmed doesn't change his opinions of warlock's party mates, and b) the charmed doesn't change his opinion of his allies. SO there's no combat use, just an RP one.

Now the invocations.... He gets three to choose at 3rd, plus the obligatory eldritch strike. He gets the best magic attack bonus. Because of the favors, you can only use two lesser invokes per encounter -- but they recharge after any rest. The item one is utility for sure. There is Baleful Utterance, which is okay, but a tiny AoE cone. Oh and it alerts the entire dungeon to your presence, no exceptions. So that one's a trap. The other ones that do damage are pretty swell compared to that. Ethereal stride is as awesome as it sounds. But the frosting on the cake has got to be eldritch blast. At 3rd level, at-will since it's a minor invoke, 4d6 damage. With a 50 ft range. No AoO or disadvantage for blasting the guy who's in your face either. And he gets rituals (choice of only 2 spells, but still - free magic). So, he wins. By a long shot.

My opinion is that all the base classes got nerfed hard in the capability department. More so than simply "reducing damage and HP overall," which was one of the major changes for this 2nd round. But the new classes (warlock and sorc) must have been under development in a separate train. The WotC design-by-committee nonsense resulted in a very weak core class selection. The other parallel development continued unabated by all appearances. Why release a couple classes which are basically incompatible with the rest of the system?

-NN