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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nerf_ninja" data-source="post: 5994952" data-attributes="member: 29905">Warlock GOODWe 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</blockquote>

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