D&D General Warlocks
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DrJawaPhD
Hero
Pact of the Fiend is the one with Dark One's Blessing that grants temp HP when you reduce an enemy to 0 HP, and they also get Fireball spell (at character 5th level for spells of 3rd level). Mephistopheles would generally be an appropriate Patron for Pact of the Fiend
This is true for both 2014 or 2024 rules, where Dark One's Blessing is slightly better in 2024 (it also triggers when someone else within 10 feet reduces an enemy to 0 HP)
This is true for both 2014 or 2024 rules, where Dark One's Blessing is slightly better in 2024 (it also triggers when someone else within 10 feet reduces an enemy to 0 HP)
Fireball-ish is not likely on a warlock at that 3rd level. The 3rd level spell fireball is available from the fiend patron as a 5th level warlock.
Arms of Hadar is an AoE centered on warlocks as a 1st level spell that would do 3d6 damage in the AoE as a 3rd level warlock, and fiend also offers burning hands in the spell list available as a 3rd level warlock.
Arms of Hadar is an AoE centered on warlocks as a 1st level spell that would do 3d6 damage in the AoE as a 3rd level warlock, and fiend also offers burning hands in the spell list available as a 3rd level warlock.
Okay, the original seemed broken to me, and it got improved? Tell me why I'm wrong.
As for the other, a friend of mine, a mostly dm, was telling me that the Meph pact gave an ability that was basically fireball with a different name (orb something) as a second level spell. Maybe I heard wrong. I'll ask him next time I see him.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
It's not broken at all (following is all based on 2014 rules). So you get temporary hit points equal to your Warlock level + Charisma whenever you reduce a creature to 0 hit points.
Let's take a look at level 3. We'll assume a Charisma of 16. Your best damaging spell is probably Scorching Ray (granted by Pact of the Fiend), which gives you three attacks for 2d6 fire each. If you have Hex up, you'll get another d6 necrotic on each attack. If you hit with all three attacks, that's 9d6 damage, or 31.5 damage. Pretty sweet. But, let's look at the enemies you might be fighting.
A high difficulty encounter for a level 3 party can be either a CR 3 Ankylosaurus (68 hit points), 2 x Adult Kruthik's (39 hit points each), or 4 x Bugbear (27 hit points each).
Fighting the Bugbears, your Scorching Ray obliterates one of them no problem. You get 6 temporary hit points. Each Bugbear can attack for 11 with their Morningstar, though if they surprised you, you might have already taken 18 from a single Bugbear (ouch!). You have two Pact slots, so it's possible to kill two Bugbears and get 12 temporary hit points from this fight, about enough to ignore a single attack (and hopefully you have a short rest afterwards!).
Fighting the Kruthik's, you need a better than average roll to kill one outright to get your 6 temporary hp. It's not inconceivable that an ally can hit one first to guarantee the kill, but depending on initiative, you might deal most of the damage and someone else steals the kill from you. The fact that you can split up your rays might make it possible to kill two birds in one action, depending on what's going on, but you can only get the 6 temporary hit points once. By contrast, each Kruthik has two attacks that can deal 13 damage, so again, the temps are only equal about one of it's attacks, half the damage it can deal per turn.
Fighting the Ankylosaurus, you're not guaranteed the kill. Two scorching rays alone won't kill it, but most likely your other party members will take it out before you do. It's unlikely you get any temporary hit points. Even if you did, if you were hit by the Ankylosaurus, it deals a whopping 18 damage per hit, so you'd only shave off 1/3 of a hit.
Because of how monster hit points and damage scale, things just get worse from here. Monsters become harder to kill, and deal more damage, and the scaling of your temporary hit points isn't great. The advantage is that you can carry them over into future battles, but it really is a drop in the bucket. One would hope, as a ranged character, you wouldn't be taking that many attacks anyways, which actually devalues the temporary hit points if they're not being used.
As for the 2024 Fiend Pact, you get the temps no matter who kills an enemy, which is good, but it requires you to be within 10 ft. of that enemy, which is way too close for comfort. The scaling is still bad, and even worse, the 2024 guidelines for encounter design will have you facing more or even more dangerous foes. For example, while that 2 x adult kruthik encounter is hard in 2014, in 2024 it becomes merely moderate- you'd have to face 3 adult kruthik's to get a high difficulty encounter!
So while it's a very nice ability, I can assure you, it's really not a huge deal.
Let's take a look at level 3. We'll assume a Charisma of 16. Your best damaging spell is probably Scorching Ray (granted by Pact of the Fiend), which gives you three attacks for 2d6 fire each. If you have Hex up, you'll get another d6 necrotic on each attack. If you hit with all three attacks, that's 9d6 damage, or 31.5 damage. Pretty sweet. But, let's look at the enemies you might be fighting.
A high difficulty encounter for a level 3 party can be either a CR 3 Ankylosaurus (68 hit points), 2 x Adult Kruthik's (39 hit points each), or 4 x Bugbear (27 hit points each).
Fighting the Bugbears, your Scorching Ray obliterates one of them no problem. You get 6 temporary hit points. Each Bugbear can attack for 11 with their Morningstar, though if they surprised you, you might have already taken 18 from a single Bugbear (ouch!). You have two Pact slots, so it's possible to kill two Bugbears and get 12 temporary hit points from this fight, about enough to ignore a single attack (and hopefully you have a short rest afterwards!).
Fighting the Kruthik's, you need a better than average roll to kill one outright to get your 6 temporary hp. It's not inconceivable that an ally can hit one first to guarantee the kill, but depending on initiative, you might deal most of the damage and someone else steals the kill from you. The fact that you can split up your rays might make it possible to kill two birds in one action, depending on what's going on, but you can only get the 6 temporary hit points once. By contrast, each Kruthik has two attacks that can deal 13 damage, so again, the temps are only equal about one of it's attacks, half the damage it can deal per turn.
Fighting the Ankylosaurus, you're not guaranteed the kill. Two scorching rays alone won't kill it, but most likely your other party members will take it out before you do. It's unlikely you get any temporary hit points. Even if you did, if you were hit by the Ankylosaurus, it deals a whopping 18 damage per hit, so you'd only shave off 1/3 of a hit.
Because of how monster hit points and damage scale, things just get worse from here. Monsters become harder to kill, and deal more damage, and the scaling of your temporary hit points isn't great. The advantage is that you can carry them over into future battles, but it really is a drop in the bucket. One would hope, as a ranged character, you wouldn't be taking that many attacks anyways, which actually devalues the temporary hit points if they're not being used.
As for the 2024 Fiend Pact, you get the temps no matter who kills an enemy, which is good, but it requires you to be within 10 ft. of that enemy, which is way too close for comfort. The scaling is still bad, and even worse, the 2024 guidelines for encounter design will have you facing more or even more dangerous foes. For example, while that 2 x adult kruthik encounter is hard in 2014, in 2024 it becomes merely moderate- you'd have to face 3 adult kruthik's to get a high difficulty encounter!
So while it's a very nice ability, I can assure you, it's really not a huge deal.
DrJawaPhD
Hero
Temp HP each time you kill an enemy isn't very strong at all. Many fights are just one tough creature, or even if you're fighting multiple enemies you don't necessarily get the killing blow, and by the time enemies are dying you might already have the fight well in hand. Also it's not that many Temp HP. It's not a garbage ability but definitely not overpowered
For the 2nd level spell, maybe Scorching Ray? You get to shoot a bunch of mini-fireballs, either all at one target or you can spread it around (it's more like Magic Missile than Fireball, but you could think of it like a burst of fireballs)
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Whatever happened to Melf's Minute Meteors?
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
It's also 3rd level (so, no more nor less accessible than fireball), and isn't a Warlock spell, nor accessible through any official Warlock patrons.
It is hard to respond to a generic "well it was broken before, so how is it not broken now?" question. I would need to know what part(s) of it you thought were broken. Are you referring to the Fiend pact THP? Given THP don't stack and the Warlock only gets them if she actually lands the killing blow, it's really not that much of an impact. Particularly because (from experience!) Warlocks are pretty squishy.
Most of the improvements to the 5.5e Warlock were to correct balance issues (e.g., groups do not take enough short rests per long rest, which shafts most Warlocks), to make pacts easier to access and non-exclusive, and to make growth via Invocations smoother and not tied narrowly to one single patron (e.g., deleting Hexblade and folding its effects into Pact of the Blade and other Invocations). AFAIK, non-Hexblade subclasses were mostly kept almost exactly the same, and the baseline chassis of the class is only changed in the sense that Pacts are now a type of Invocation (so you can have a Warlock with no pact at all, or with all the pacts, or anywhere in-between.) Ultimately this really doesn't change much because the really powerful things require consistent Invocation investment, and thus become exclusive to one another.
There is no specific "Mephistopheles" patron, so perhaps your friend was speaking of homebrew or 3PP?
The only spell I can think of that matches that description is chromatic orb, but that's a first-level spell and has been part of 5e from the beginning. There's also flaming sphere, but that creates an entity that sits on the field and does stuff. (I got quite a bit of use out of flaming sphere in LMoP/P&B.)
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Paul Farquhar
Legend
As you suggest, possibly a 3PP patron? Flaming Sphere is also 2nd level, and could be mistaken for fireball if you only read the name - and not available through official warlock channels.
Chaltab
Legend
Looked through my collection and the only non-official patron I found with Flaming Sphere at 3rd level was the Red Dragon patron from The Elements and Beyond.
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