If you want warlocks to have more spell slots in your game: just toss the whole short rest concept and make them daily spellcasters with standard spell slots.
If you want warlocks to have more spell slots in your game: just toss the whole short rest concept and make them daily spellcasters with standard spell slots.
That would work, but then you may have to limit invocations to balance it out.
If you want warlocks to have more spell slots in your game: just toss the whole short rest concept and make them daily spellcasters with standard spell slots.
That would work, but then you may have to limit invocations to balance it out.
Does their spell list support that? Off the top of my head, a lot of their spells don’t necessarily scale well. Hex and Armor of Agathys scale well for Warlocks due to the pact Magic system…not so much for regular spell casting.
I don’t know, it seems like squeezing a square peg into a round whole. Levels 2-10 is a long stretch without an increase in spell slots. And 6-10 can be brutal, but I think encouraging the Warlock to *ask* the rest of the party for a rest is the simple answer
I'd be supportive of giving a Warlock access to a few Magic Staves or wands. 1d6+4 charges to use on a small set of thematically aligned spells seems like a reasonable compromise. With a few different staves, they would have the option of tailoring their loadout according to the mission, but would need to spend the time to swap them out.
If you wanted to go the homebrew route, then you could add a new class feature to play off of the whole Patron drama. For example,
[Feature: Dangerous Bargain] Petition your patron for extra power in exchange for a piece of your soul.
As an action, regain one Warlock spell slot and reduce your maximum hitpoints by 3 times the level of the spell slot. These lost hitpoints can not be regained by any means, but are returned after completing a long rest. If the character's maximum hitpoints reach zero as a result of this feature, the player may cast a spell as part of this action and then immediately dies and can not be resurrected.
(Optional: Each time this feature is used, the cost increases. x3 --> x4 -->x5) (Alternative: Use Exhaustion Levels instead of Max HP decreases)
At x3, a Warlock under 9th level will die in 3~4 uses, and a 20th level Warlock could survive 8 uses. With the scaling mechanic, it's a bit more extreme.
Straight boosts to a class may cause problems, but the right gamble can make a player feel like they have more freedom without being too exploitable.
At level 5, they would get 3 level 3 spell slots that refresh on short rest. That's three fireballs from your Warlock every single combat, or your warlock not being afraid to be a counterspell bot while still having the most reliable DPR in the game with Eldritch blast. You just posted that you allow your party to dictate short rests and you never interrupt them.
To the earlier points, Warlocks are meant to get a lot of their flavor/meat from their invocations/subclass abilities. If there is one thing a Warlock shouldn't feel, it's hampered unless it's prior to level 3. All classes feel weak prior to 3, but warlocks only getting 2 spell slots until the 11th makes sense when you remember how they work. Warlocks just need to be vocal about their specific needs and remind the party they synergize. Druids get wild shapes back on a short, Fighters get action surge back, Clerics/Paladins get their channel divinities back. Have those classes use those every/every other combat, and then they go hey, let's take a break.
3 third level slots is nothing compared to 4 1st level, 3 2nd level, and 1 3rd level. its maybe better per turn for 3 turns, and even then warlocks 3rd level spells arent very good compared to fireball.
Asside from the fathomless warlock (who gains access to lightning bolt), the most powerful damage dealing spell warlocks get at 3rd level would be hunger of hadar, which only does 2d6 damage per round in a small immovable radius.
warlocks spell list is so restrictive (its by far the smallest list of all the classes asside from ranger) that giving them extra spell slots wont really matter when the best damaging spells 99% of warlocks will have is armor of agathys and eldritch blast/hex combo.
All the extra spell slots would do is give them a small bit of added utility and make them slightly more fun to play since you'll be less reluctant to spend spell slots on any spell that says "instantaneous" on it.
And then on top of that, all the invocations that require the use of spell slots when they shouldnt just kinda makes warlock spell slots a very very thin resource unless youre having a short rest every couple of minutes. its kinda like saying "sorcerers shouldnt get more sorcery points because its overpowered for them to be able to create spell slots of higher levels whenever they want" when theyre already the only class that can cast 3 9th level spells per day.
The solution would be to give Warlocks one more slot of let´s say two less level. So starting at lvl 5th, they would have 2 lvl 3 and 1 lvl 1 slots. At lvl 7 two 4th-level slots and one 2nd-level slot, and so on... I feel that the Warlock is subpar with wizards but who is not? Wizards also recover spell slots on short rests thanks to Arcane Recovery Plus the rests system depends alot on the type of game you play. On my games usually only have one encounter per day (we play less dungeon crawling and more campaign RPG oriented) so warlocks are clearly in disadvantage there. I gave my warlock player that feat and it improved a bit it´s performance. Futhermore, it didnt affect to players wanting a warlock levels dip and it doesnt kick until the warlock is level 5.
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If you want warlocks to have more spell slots in your game: just toss the whole short rest concept and make them daily spellcasters with standard spell slots.
That would work, but then you may have to limit invocations to balance it out.
Does their spell list support that? Off the top of my head, a lot of their spells don’t necessarily scale well. Hex and Armor of Agathys scale well for Warlocks due to the pact Magic system…not so much for regular spell casting.
I don’t know, it seems like squeezing a square peg into a round whole. Levels 2-10 is a long stretch without an increase in spell slots. And 6-10 can be brutal, but I think encouraging the Warlock to *ask* the rest of the party for a rest is the simple answer
I'd be supportive of giving a Warlock access to a few Magic Staves or wands. 1d6+4 charges to use on a small set of thematically aligned spells seems like a reasonable compromise. With a few different staves, they would have the option of tailoring their loadout according to the mission, but would need to spend the time to swap them out.
If you wanted to go the homebrew route, then you could add a new class feature to play off of the whole Patron drama. For example,
[Feature: Dangerous Bargain] Petition your patron for extra power in exchange for a piece of your soul.
As an action, regain one Warlock spell slot and reduce your maximum hitpoints by 3 times the level of the spell slot. These lost hitpoints can not be regained by any means, but are returned after completing a long rest. If the character's maximum hitpoints reach zero as a result of this feature, the player may cast a spell as part of this action and then immediately dies and can not be resurrected.
(Optional: Each time this feature is used, the cost increases. x3 --> x4 -->x5)
(Alternative: Use Exhaustion Levels instead of Max HP decreases)
At x3, a Warlock under 9th level will die in 3~4 uses, and a 20th level Warlock could survive 8 uses. With the scaling mechanic, it's a bit more extreme.
Straight boosts to a class may cause problems, but the right gamble can make a player feel like they have more freedom without being too exploitable.
3 third level slots is nothing compared to 4 1st level, 3 2nd level, and 1 3rd level. its maybe better per turn for 3 turns, and even then warlocks 3rd level spells arent very good compared to fireball.
Asside from the fathomless warlock (who gains access to lightning bolt), the most powerful damage dealing spell warlocks get at 3rd level would be hunger of hadar, which only does 2d6 damage per round in a small immovable radius.
warlocks spell list is so restrictive (its by far the smallest list of all the classes asside from ranger) that giving them extra spell slots wont really matter when the best damaging spells 99% of warlocks will have is armor of agathys and eldritch blast/hex combo.
All the extra spell slots would do is give them a small bit of added utility and make them slightly more fun to play since you'll be less reluctant to spend spell slots on any spell that says "instantaneous" on it.
And then on top of that, all the invocations that require the use of spell slots when they shouldnt just kinda makes warlock spell slots a very very thin resource unless youre having a short rest every couple of minutes. its kinda like saying "sorcerers shouldnt get more sorcery points because its overpowered for them to be able to create spell slots of higher levels whenever they want" when theyre already the only class that can cast 3 9th level spells per day.
The solution would be to give Warlocks one more slot of let´s say two less level. So starting at lvl 5th, they would have 2 lvl 3 and 1 lvl 1 slots. At lvl 7 two 4th-level slots and one 2nd-level slot, and so on... I feel that the Warlock is subpar with wizards but who is not? Wizards also recover spell slots on short rests thanks to Arcane Recovery Plus the rests system depends alot on the type of game you play. On my games usually only have one encounter per day (we play less dungeon crawling and more campaign RPG oriented) so warlocks are clearly in disadvantage there. I gave my warlock player that feat and it improved a bit it´s performance. Futhermore, it didnt affect to players wanting a warlock levels dip and it doesnt kick until the warlock is level 5.