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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6544706" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Thanks for the responses.Paladin’s divine favor is useful, but it will only last for a single fight. If a warlock can keep concentration he can keep hex up all day long at higher levels (though he probably will lose concentration at some point). I do consider it a spell resource rather than at-will, but as far as I can tell, hex, hunter’s mark, and ki hold a special place amongst limited use abilities in that they are about as close to at-will as you can get (hence the special category for them). I’d be interested in knowing if there are other similar abilities I may have missed.I’m not committed to a position that Agonizing Blast needs to be nerfed. If I were I wouldn’t be posting about it, since I have no problem house ruling. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Rather, I’m concerned that if it is part of the intended balance then I will weaken the class by nerfing it.Basically, what I’m saying is that I’ve seen arguments on other threads (not necessarily at ENWorld) presented that claim warlocks are underpowered without the high-powered RAW Agonizing Blast—but I’ve always found them to be poor arguments that fail to take into account the design intent of two short rests per day, or fail to account for invocations, or a warlock’s proficiencies, or fail to recognize where a warlock’s relative damage output falls (as I talked about in my first post), or make some other oversight. It’s undestandable—warlock is the most oddball and complicated class in the bunch. Nevertheless, that still doesn’t make them good arguments. What I’m asking for is if anyone can give me a good argument for that position.So, let me analyze how I feel warlock’s features stack up to other full-caster classes. Because I’m comparing them to casters, I’ll use the most castery warlock—Pact of the Tome. Also, because they have d8s for HD, I’ll compare them to the other d8 classes: bard, cleric, and druid.How does a warlock’s spellcasting stack up?*1. Classes are balanced around two short rests in a day. That means you need to multiple a warlock’s spell slots by 3 to see how many they effectively have in a day.2. A warlock’s spell slots are auto-leveled to their maximum level (up to level 5). 3. A warlock who takes Pact of the Tome can cherry pick 3 cantrips from anywhere.4. A Pact of the Tome warlock can take an invocation to get potential access to every ritual in the game, from every class.5. At 20th level, a warlock can spend 1 minute to regain his 5 spell slots of 5th level 1/day.6. Warlock’s have the shortest spell list of the full casters. (Although Otherworldly Patron means their spell list is actually 10 spells more than the warlock list shows.)7. Warlock’s miss out on the one extra 6th and 7th level spell at high levels--but see #5.8. A warlock’s 6-9th level spellcasting is less flexible.*Since encounters are generally only a few short rounds, and you can generally only use 1 spell slot in a round, warlocks are also fine with their 2-4 spell slots if you only have one encounter in the day.A Pact of the Tome warlock’s effective spellcasting feels to me about equivalent to the spellcasting of other full-casters (or at the least, of the weaker full casters).A) While they have less daily spell slots overall (remember to multiple x3), they have better spell slots due to auto-leveling all of them. If you are talking about power, 6 spell slots of 5th level as a 9th or 10th level character doesn't strike me as being all that weaker than 1 or 2 spell slots of 5th level and 13 assorted lower level slots. If you were given the choice between those numbers of daily spell slots (in isolation from the rest of the discussion), which would you choose? I’m guessing that a good number of people are in the same camp as me, and would respond, “I don’t know. It depends on what I want to do with the character.”B) They miss out on flexibility in spell choices and higher-level casting, but access to so many rituals and cantrips helps make up for that lack of flexibility.C) Access to so many rituals also increases their effective spell slots.They definitely are both different and complicated, but if you compare the relevant spellcasting features, I’m not seeing a striking imbalance in spellcasting power.How do a warlock’s other class features stack up?1. A warlock’s Otherworldly Patron features are roughly as good as the subclass features of the other classes (with the possible exception of cleric domains, which seem to take on a greater share of class powers than the other classes’ subclasses do). If we are on the fence, we can pretend warlock’s subclass features are slightly worse, just to play it safe. Otherwise, we no longer have to think about subclasses for comparison purposes.2. A warlock has d8 HD, light armor and simple weapon proficiencies. Bards and druids are negligibly better, while clerics have access to all medium armors, making them clearly superior. Bards also get an extra skill, which is useful. We’ll add this into the comparison below.3. We are assuming the Pact of the Tome and the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation as part of the spellcasting balance, as well as taking account of Eldritch Mastery, so we won’t consider them as part of the other class features.4. That leaves the warlock with his 7 additional Invocations to compare to the remaining class features of those classes. So let’s look at what they each get.Bard: Bardic Inspiration, Jack of All Trades, Song of Rest, Expertise, Font of Inspiration, Countercharm, Magical Secrets, Superior Inspiration, (+extra skill)Cleric: Channel Divinity (Turn Undead), Destroy Undead, Divine Intervention, (+medium armor and shield)(+extra domain oomph)Druid: Wild Shape, Timeless Body, Beast Spells, Archdruid. (+shield)5. Now we need to put together a good list of invocations for a warlock. We will add in Agonizing Blast and treat it as the nerfed version—which raises their At-Will attacks to slightly better than an evoker wizard or draconic sorcerer (force damage plus splittable targetting). Plenty of good choices here.Warlock: Agonizing Blast (+Cha mod to eldritch blast damage 1/turn), Ascendant Step (levitate at-will), Devil’s Sight (see 120’ in normal and magical darkness), Master of Myriad Forms (alter self at-will), Repelling Blast (push creature 10’ with eldritch blast), Vision of Distant Realms (arcane eye at-will), Fiendish Vigor (false life at-will). If you are Fiend Pact, take Witch Sight (see true form of shapechanged or illusioned (including invisible) creatures within 30’) instead of Fiendish Vigor.So, if I am correct in my analysis, I’ve reduced the comparison of the power levels of bard, cleric, druid, and warlock down to a list of specific class features. If the warlock’s suite of features in this list is significantly weaker than those of the other classes (which are supposed to be more or less balanced amongst themselves) then it would seem they should be using Agonizing Blast according to RAW to make up for their weakness. If the warlock's class features on this list are roughly equivalent (or even better) than the other classes’, then it would seem that Agonizing Blast RAW should not reflect (competent) design intent.For easy reference, here is the comparison:[table="width: 500"][tr]    [td]Bard[/td]    [td]Cleric[/td]    [td]Druid[/td]    [td]Warlock[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Bardic Inspiration[/td]    [td]Channel Divinity[/td]    [td]Wild Shape[/td]    [td]Agonizing Blast (nerfed)[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Jack of All Trades[/td]    [td](Turn Undead)[/td]    [td]Timeless Body[/td]    [td]Ascendant Step[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Song of Rest[/td]    [td]Destroy Undead[/td]    [td]Beast Spells[/td]    [td]Devil Sight[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Expertise[/td]    [td]Divine Intervention[/td]    [td]Archdruid[/td]    [td]Master of Myriad Forms[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Font of Inspiration[/td]    [td]+medium armor[/td]    [td]+shields[/td]    [td]Repelling Blast[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Counter Charm[/td]    [td]+shields[/td]    [td][/td]    [td]Vision of Distant Realms[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Magical Secrets[/td]    [td]+extra domain oomph[/td]    [td][/td]    [td]Fiendish Vigor[/td][/tr][tr]    [td]Superior Inspiration[/td]    [td][/td]    [td][/td]    [td][/td][/tr][tr]    [td]+extra skill[/td]    [td][/td]    [td][/td]    [td][/td][/tr][/table]The bard, cleric, and druid lists should all be roughly equal to each other. So the question this time is: Is the warlock’s list significantly weaker than the other lists?</blockquote>

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