D&D 5E (2014) Why play a pact blade warlock?

[doctorhook]

[edit: taking down the snark level and getting the hell out of this thread. My apologies.]

Jumping ship, eh? But you're supposed to be all about bitterness and grief, Wormwood!

 

[TwoSix]

To answer the OP: at level 5 you can get an invocation that gives you Extra Attack, and at level 12 or so yo get another invocation that lets you add charisma to damage.

Here's a simple damage breakdown at level 15, assuming +4 str and +4 Cha:

Greatsword blade lock: (2d6+8)x2=30 average damage on a hit, not counting crits.
Eldritch Blast (with agonizing invocation): 3d10+4=20.5 average damage on a hit
(28.5 if you add charisma three times, which seems unlikely.)

So the blade lock does more damage on a hit. The blaster can get invocations to do half damage on a miss, which raises his DPR probably ahead of the blade lock, but then the blade lock can take great weapon master to knock it out of the park. Plus, as others have said, you get disadvantage casting ranged spells into melee.

Thanks. I feel a lot better about playing a bladelock now. I have to admit, I'm impressed with how well Wizards has done with a more holistic approach to balance issues.

 

[TwoSix]

The worry I have there is that warlocks have light amor proficiency only. So if you pump up your strength and charisma like that, you'll have no dexterity and will be very easy to hit in melee. You can hellp this slightly with the mage armor invocation but even there you'll want to have a reasonable dexterity score. So think this sort of build would be tough to balance (dead warlock produce no DPR).

I don't think it's particularly tough to balance. It's just called a glass cannon. If you want to have a lot of offense, you have a greater chance of ending up dead. If you want to be more defensive, there are plenty of options you can use. Fighter or Paladin multiclass dip, Medium Armor feat, Mage Armor, Shield, or a Dex/Cha build instead of a Str/Cha build. You can also use your spell slots to Misty Step out of the way. Sure, you sacrifice some offense, but last time I checked, making tradeoffs was the point of having options in the first place!

Even in 4e, strikers weren't competitive with defenders for AC value, outside of a few isolated build cases.

 

[pemerton]

I'm impressed with how well Wizards has done with a more holistic approach to balance issues.

I haven't looked over many of the classes as a whole; but I have compared some spell damage output at various levels, with scaling etc, and on my (admittedly small) random sample it seems pretty coherent.

My main concern, if I were running 5e, would be managing the assymetric resource aspects of caster dailies vs martial at-wills. I also don't find the 1 hour short rest very appealing: it's virtually jumping up-and-down saying "GM, use me to solve your assymetric balance issues by interrupting or not interrupting me as the need arises!", but that's precisely the sort of management of intra-party balance that I'm not sure I want to be responsible for.

But they do seem to have paid attention to the maths. (Except for saving throws? The whole thing of weak saving throws, and the resulting vulnerability of high-level fighters to hold and dominate in conjunctin with the nerfing of indomitable, is something I haven't really made sense of yet, and nor have I seen an analysis that explains it to me.)

 

[TwoSix]

My main concern, if I were running 5e, would be managing the assymetric resource aspects of caster dailies vs martial at-wills. I also don't find the 1 hour short rest very appealing: it's virtually jumping up-and-down saying "GM, use me to solve your assymetric balance issues by interrupting or not interrupting me as the need arises!", but that's precisely the sort of management of intra-party balance that I'm not sure I want to be responsible for.

I do have some concerns there as well. My gut feeling for now is to restrict short rests to 2 per long rest. Further downtime simply provides no benefit. 2 short rests, to my mind, seems to fit in well with the expected frequency of short rest power use. (I'm freely admitting this is primarily a visceral reaction based on the potency of those powers). It also corresponds nicely to our everyday life patterns. Stop for lunch (short rest), stop for dinner (short rest), stop to sleep (long rest).

That being said, I do think the relative paucity of high level slots puts a restraint on some of the bigger issues with caster dailies, such as "going nova", and concentration handles some of the others, such as layering of pre-combat buffs.

But they do seem to have paid attention to the maths. (Except for saving throws? The whole thing of weak saving throws, and the resulting vulnerability of high-level fighters to hold and dominate in conjunctin with the nerfing of indomitable, is something I haven't really made sense of yet, and nor have I seen an analysis that explains it to me.)

I'm a little concerned, but I'd like to see the full PHB before deciding. I would have expected save proficiences to be something gained more frequently during leveling. What I expected to see was high level adventurers be proficient in at least 4 saves, purely from single-class level profession. But, again, the relative paucity of "fire-and-forget" disabling spells is an encouraging sign.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The worry I have there is that warlocks have light amor proficiency only. So if you pump up your strength and charisma like that, you'll have no dexterity and will be very easy to hit in melee. You can hellp this slightly with the mage armor invocation but even there you'll want to have a reasonable dexterity score. So think this sort of build would be tough to balance (dead warlock produce no DPR).

That's a valid concern. One solution is to use a dex weapon instead, like a rapier, but of course that reduces your damage output without the right feat support. My preferred solution is to start with a level of fighter, which gives you more starting hp, con save proficiency, a fighting style, and heavy armor, along with second wind, which won't scale but might still save your bacon. If you want to stay single-class, mountain dwarf is a very appealing option, maybe with heavy armor proficiency as a feat at some point if you feel you need it; human variant starting with the medium armor feat works well too.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Also, spells like armor of Agathys will help your survivability quite a bit.
(From the Finally thread, it grants you temp hp and deals cold damage to anyone who hits you before the temp up wears out; importantly, it scales with spell level.) Plus the incantation that lets you cast false life at will...

 

[Mirtek]

That's a valid concern. One solution is to use a dex weapon instead, like a rapier, but of course that reduces your damage output without the right feat support.

Not by enough to not be competitive with a blaster warlock:

Pact Blade Rapier with 18 Dex/Cha: 1d8+8 = 12.5 damage per hit = 25 damage in 2 hits
Eldritch Blast 4 blasts version with 18 Cha = 4 * 5.5 + 1x4 = 26 damage in 4 hits

Now the blade warlock needs to hit only twice to do his max damage while the blaster warlock is more likely to hit at least once.

However if the invocation that makes Eldritch Blast deal half damage on a miss is still in, then the blaster is once again far ahead

With a 65% hit chance it should look like 16.7 damage for the blade warlock and 20.8 damage for the blast warlock. So roughly 24% more damage for the blaster (if spells can not crit)

 

[Mouseferatu]

However if the invocation that makes Eldritch Blast deal half damage on a miss is still in, then the blaster is once again far ahead

It's not.

 

[Mirtek]

It's not.

In that case the blasterlock should not be able to outpace the bladelock. Also corrected a misstake in my formulas above, but since the DOAM is out even for eldritch blast it doesn't matter anyway.

In that case the blade warlock wins as soon as he get's a magic pact blade and/or raises Dex&Cha to 20