nope, they all have something to bring to the table. My problem on that note is that most classes fails horribly from level 14+
exemple of that... Rogues seems not to have good stuff after level 11. and thus i usually multi class out of it after level 12 for absi.
the only one class that i think is not worth multi into, is ranger. and even there the archetypes are worth it still. so...
Inquisitive, if you want a full tank then fighter purple dragon is much better choice then warlock. a wizard would also be a great choice, but considering fighter have actual taunts inbedded, its much better to just go barb or fighter if you want dedication to a tank role. aside from that my point was that warlock could also benefit from other classes for tanking, as in your tank can actually also dps while keeping its health up with uncanny dodge and evasion. sneak attack onto a tank is great because it boost his damage and makes him lose nothing in the process of tanking.
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Wow geez, what a mess of grammar and poor understanding going on in here. Anyways, Warlock is a class that's pretty frontloaded. The flavour is that you bargained for power instead of learning it or finding it within yourself, so it makes sense right?
With the frontloading comes a couple of really good reasons to pick up early Warlock levels (I usually go to 4 before I start branching cause I value the ASI) including the early access to EB spam, effectively replacing your need to think too hard about combat and a couple of other decent Invocations. Amongst those as listed already of course, Disguise Self at will, Agonizing and Repelling Blast and a couple others. Hex is also a part of that frontloading and also covers a lot of that thinking in combat.
But that's a really surface level interpretation of Warlock. Hex is an amazing tool with a bunch of tricks, my favourites being making specific important characters weak to grapples, weak at perceiving or figuring out if I'm deceiving. Oh and of course, maintaining it through short rests etc etc. And EB when paired with Repelling Blast becomes a tool apt to save your allies and make using persistent AoEs way more fun. And Disguise Self at will? Forget about it, you already know how amazing that is.
Hexblade silliness aside, I think Warlock provides a lot of customisation too. The being you made your pact with defines your overall mechanics of course and often the kind of character you play, but the 3rd level Pact really changes how you approach everything. Blade pact obviously makes an attack focused character (as an aside, if you think EB spam is boring but give a pass to melee attackers or anything else that does the same thing for consistent damage every round, your argument is garbage) but Chain pact leans you into a support focused character with the ability to hand out advantage on the fly and an extra dimension to character interaction and Tome pact leans into utility with Rituals and a minor support role with all those controls. Contrasting those against the now 6? patrons just makes it so rewarding to delve into it all and see how the parts all go together.
As to the spell slots, frankly, everyone wants to rest. It takes a couple of minutes IRL and let's everyone breathe. In game, yes, in dungeons you can find it hard to rest uninterrupted but it's not impossible with a bit of work (barricading, Tiny But, Catnap) and only the biggest of pricks DM will turn you down consistently when you ask for something built into the game. Personally, I find the tension with what to do with my slots an enjoyable part of playing my character.
As to 15 minute spell rests, this sounds like a pointless mechanic dredged out of the realms of people who lack the ability to think critically. What difference barring encounters, which the DM once again literally controls or the possible ramifications of a time sensitive event, which a good DM should be using, is there between a 15 minute rest or an hour long one? Why bother differentiating the two?
I've played purelocks and I've played multiclass locks and both were great. I can guarantee I'll be playing more locks in the future.
TL;DR locks are flavourful, rewarding to customise and **** 15 minute short rests. Also to answer the original question, no class is the best at everything. Warlocks are best at high level spell casting over a well rested day, worse if your DM is bad.
Drayen, instead of crying about my grammar, you should of read my post more in depth... you'd have understood my point of rest being not always 1 hour long and 8 hour long. in fact rest are a major debate in pretty much every community of gaming in d&d 5e. many thinks its unreal to have full health in 8 hours of sleep. others think its literally not right to have short rest of 1 hour long when you consider what people are doing. sorry but if i want to rest my feets and pray to my god... it doesn't take me an hour. thats gonna take me 15 minutes and i'll be done with it. you know how i know that, because i worked in a real life sanctuary and people never ever took more then 15 minutes to pray to their god. you may say rituals are 1 hour long, you may say they can take more and i totally agree with that... but really why wouldn't you make a difference is the real question ?
imagine your players wanting to catnap their rest... sure catnap takes 10 minutes... but why was that spell even created if there was no problem to begin with ? Even the designers themselves thought that short rest were whack, and decided to give you numerous options in the book themselves.
but why do i even bother try to tell you all this, its your game if you are fine with it, then be my guess and play it that way. but to me, like many others i've seen on the net... Short rest area problem, because its not all the time you need 1 hour. and immersion wise... i think short rest are the bane of our gaming. we're in a coach going toward another city... does that count as a short rest ? that kind of thing is not in the books, as far as i am concerned... what is a short rest is barely explained... they literally only say, 1 hour of non-tedious activity... i'd argue with you, that just walking for an hour is tedious ! heck even just talking for hour can be tedious !
but more so... in our real life, we get 15 minutes breaks and that seems to be just enough for a break to gain back our strength. you could argue a lot about short rest... and thats a whole other debate...
here my point is... imagine that cleric stuck with only channel divinity ! no spell slots... that's warlock's case !
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Reading your posts is a bit trying DnDPalladin. But if you'd read his post you'd see he commented on the grammar and content.
I think this discussion has finished. Nothing new is being added, here's the summary:
Most think Warlock is great for a dip or straight. DnDPaladin thinks all of the classes including Warlock are lacking and should multi-class if you want to maximize your combat power. Also it is apparently important to him that resting be house ruled, but this is not relevant to the OP...
Alright, apparently I have to empirically prove that the arguments presented are worthless so here we go I suppose. What a treat for my eyes.
Anyways, going as I pick them up
"1 hour short rests are unrealistic and the existence of Catnap proves this" Amongst other things, this seems to be the basis of your argument for 15 minute short rests to recover spell slots (and presumably pretty much everything except Hit Dice) this is just flawed for a number of reasons. Your argument assumes that the current short rest length is flawed because "IRL people do not take that long to rest" and that the existence of Catnap shows that "even the developers believe short rests are flawed." On two points this is a bad argument, because we are nowhere near a realistic IRL situation in DnD. No one IRL is asking God for magic, no one is making bargains to regain eldritch power. A rest IRL is mostly just that, a rest. And people IRL rest for different amounts of time, it really does depend on your spoons my man. When you try to argue that a short rest is too long because "the people I know don't need to rest that long" you're using anecdotal evidence. Evidence of your own experience is not universal nor even necessarily a view of the average. Even more so, it's got no bearing for what might be needed in an adventuring situation.
"What constitutes a short rest" is something you're pretty much being willfully ignorant or facetious about here, because you've described it in such a way that makes me think you're trying to find issues. "Talking for an hour can be tedious, walking for an hour can be tedious" and hell, you're not wrong. So if those situations have obviously been tedious for you, why are you trying to even count them as short rests in the first place? For that matter, why are you trying to power game short rests in the first place? Seems pretty obvious to me, seems pretty obvious to even the most new of players I've had to introduce and teach, that a short rest is a short rest when you do something restful. If you're finding it hard, maybe have a look to some other play groups? I've had many many sessions where people have sped through a short rest in maybe half a minute because no one felt the need to get hung up on what constituted as a short rest. I've never had a session where people have tried to argue that spending time doing something that was pretty obviously not intended to be a short rest is restful so yeah, anecdotal evidence cancelling each other out?
Secondly, "Catnap's existence shows the designer's believe that short rests are flawed" is just an illogical and ignorant argument m'dude. Ignoring the fact that Catnap does not actually replace short rests entirely, ignore the fact that errata exists and if they wanted to change short rests because they believed them flawed, they would be well within their capacity to do so, ignore the fact that the time frame of a short rest is functionally arbitrary after a certain point and dependent on the DM to begin with, it still wouldn't make sense for the designers to introduce a spell, something only a half or so of the available classes can actually take to fix a problem they thought the game had.
As to the idea that "everywhere is talking about how short rests are flawed" an idea predicated on your assumption that I don't frequent the same kind or number of forums related to this game, that I am maybe not invested as you believe yourself to be, because fun fact, I'm in a lot of places and I've literally never heard anyone before this point talk about this issue. So I guess in this case, my anecdotal evidence counters yours?
As to "Cleric stuck with only Channel Divinity" Jesus, what a mess. As stated, there's already some tricks to extend your spell slot usage outside of multiclassing, ala Hex concentration overlap, the fact that regardless of short rests being 15 minutes or an hour, they do still give you back your charges which means you're allowed to use any of the spells you have pretty much 4-6 times a day, compared to the limited functionality of Channel Divinity doing 2 things that many times. And that's ignoring Cantrip usage. You're not "stuck" with only 2 options, you're blessed with an array of useful abilities and even more available to you via Invocations.
Now to some older arguments that actually hold some merit. "No one uses the invocations that require a spell slot" This isn't entirely true, because obviously someone uses them, I doubt there's a feature that doesn't go used regardless of how bad you think it is but yeah, they're weaker on par because of their cost. Still, having access to Polymorph once a day instead of on call feels very Warlock of it all. I'm not a Wizard, I traded power for speed, a point I've already made in my previous post. We're not here to have on par abilities with other dedicated casters, we're here to represent the easy path. And with it we get access to some cool other stuff.
"Resting every encounter if they're easy feels bad" then frankly dude, you're in the market for the wrong class. Once again, not everyone is good at everything and warlocks do plenty outside of combat. Being Cha based obviously helps, access to good RP cantrips and invocations, all of it can lean you towards the exploration and social pillars. I've seen your predilection towards multiclassing and as a power gamer myself, I get it. The possibilities are high and it feels good to wring out the best you can from the system but it's nowhere near as necessary as you say. Maybe if you have a bad DM, sure, no balance in fights makes it hard to survive when you're "underpowered" but I've played a wide, wide range of Locks at this point, multiclassed and otherwise and I've never felt that way. More anecdotal evidence we must be so fond of it by now.
Anyways, I hope that was plenty of stuff to keep you occupied my dude, there's more than a few reasons why your thinking is flawed in there.
On the issue with the once-a-day Invocations with spell slot -
That actually was complained about quite a bit when the game first came out. The game designers thought the class would be "too powerful" if allowed as a regular spell being spammed constantly. Lots of people openly disagreed. The developers basically said, "Huh. Noted." And everyone moved on; some left as is, some house ruled, etc.
There's a lot of minor issues with the warlock, but that doesn't mean its unplayable or bad. It just means you have to be a little more careful when picking what options you want.
I'm playing a warlock right now and the once-a-day invocations with a spell slot aren't any different from wizards getting one spell slot of their highest level and only being able to cast one of their highest level spells a day. They're very balanced.
At 5th level, a wizard get's two 3rd level spell slots and a warlock get's two 3rd level spell slots. A wizard can learn slow and cast it twice a day while a warlock can pick an eldritch invocation that let's him cast slow once a day. The warlock has an advantage because the warlock can cast two other 3rd level spells per short rest, while the wizard had an advantage because the wizard can cast four 1st level spells, three 2nd level spells, and two 3rd level spells in a single encounter. I think that the warlock is very well balanced compared to a wizard and vice versa.
The way i see it, some of you missunderstand certain invocations...
heres a reading of the invocations in question...
"You can cast compulsion once using a warlock spell slot. You can’t do so again until you finish a long rest."
let's break this down for you guys and compare it to say a wizard casting the same spell... 1) you can only cast it once per long rest, even if you have more then 1 spell slot for it. something the wizard can cast numerous times as long as he has the spell slots.
2) it absolutely need a warlock spell slots, something the wizard or other casters don't. meaning even if you have other spell slots you cannot cast this spell. while a wizard multiclassed can because it doesn't matter which spell slot was used to cast the spell.
3) you still need a spell slot to cast it, thus in the end its the equivalent of just adding a spell to your list of known spell... so basically you lost an invocation to just add a spell known to your list. something you can't even abuse because of the other restrictions there is.
all of these 3, makes the invocations much weaker then say any other spell casters just adding this to their list. the only advantage this has compared to the others, is that it can be casted at higher levels. oh wait, it doesn't go beyond 5th level which is the maximum level of the spell slots the warlock can get. after that he doesn't get any higher.
these are why nobody or next to nobody... like literally millions of players do not use those invocations. look at everything they requires to work, and compare them to any other invocations that are passives like Levitates, Mage Armor heck even Improved pact weapon has tons more milleage then these invocations.
With all that said, i feel like you guys only read what you want to read from my posts... I never said the warlock was weak, i never said he was bad. i only ever said i never played a warlock to 20. i always left the last 6 levels, out. thats all i ever said ! 14 levels of a class is much better then one might think !
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I believe most of us do, in fact, understand how the invocations works. While I agree they are poor choices compared to others, this does not illustrate anything regarding the class's potential. I'd never take True Strike as a cantrip on a Wizard. This does not illustrate a flaw in the Wizard class. There are simply better options available.
Wow... you don't know one language yet it doesn't illustrate a flaw in your person... thats the problem, because it does illustrate a flaw. something that is not worth taking is a flaw. otherwise why wouldn't you take it ? if it wasn't a flaw then people would take it. having better options then that one illustrate the flaw in that invocations. otherwise you'd take it because it would be good. if its not then it is a flaw. the same way in your real life day job, you do things because they are good ways to do it. you wouldn't start badly doing your job just because you can. unless you truly wanna be a jerk about it.
while your true strike argument isn't a flaw of the wizard itself, it is still a flaw in the spell itself. but the problem with your argument is that an invocation is a warlock thing to begin with. while true strike isn't just a spell for wizards. the thing is, while does invocations aren't stellar, in fact they are much weaker then the other invocations. the reality is, those invocations aren't options anymore because they are weak and thus unattractive.
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Alright, apparently I have to empirically prove that the arguments presented are worthless ...
You don't have to do anything.
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It's ridiculous to try and say "All spells should be able to be picked by all classes all the time" And point to that statement not being true as a flaw.
my beef with warlock goes as follow... need more defense if he is a blade pact melee warlock.
Blur is the hexblade answer to defense. It is the only melee oriented gish class that has access to it! With Medium Armor and Shield, you won't get hit very often at all.
Blur is good, for sure, though I sometimes prefer Armor of Agythis, and if we roll stats (and I roll well) or if I optimize my race choice for Cha/Dex, I find that my AC is really good with Armor of Shadows. Mirror Image is a great choice if you don't want to spend Concentration on defense, but the class doesn't need Hex to be effective, so there's nothing wrong with using other concentration spells.
Although, the 8-24 hour eventual duration on Hex makes it harder to turn down as you level up, since you can keep concentration through short rests, and RAW through long rests (i've heard that some uptight DMs rule that sleep breaks concentration, but most I've met don't nerf it).
Regardless, Warlocks have plenty of choices for defense. I just wish that Fiendish Vigor let the spell scale with your warlock level, and it would be great if Pact of The Blade gave a Fighting Style choice, since as it is it gives you practically nothing of value before taking invocations. Seriously, without Invocations, PoTB is weaker than using Tome to get Shillelagh and picking up a stick.
If the invocations that gave you a spell once a day that uses up a spell slot were the only ones available, then I would tangentially agree with you. However, There are 39 other invocations that work differently. You can easily build several different warlocks that never take even one of those invocations. Also, outside of AL, I have seen GM's house-rule that they do not use up a slot so the problem is far from insurmountable or constitute class nerfing.
Seriously. Most invocations that give access to spells aren't the one's he is complaining about, and spell-granting invocations are only part of the list of invocations. I do think that they should either just add the spell to your list as a normal spell, or not use a slot, but I have made characters for whom one of those Invocations made the most sense as one of their invocations. It was more worthwhile a cost than multiclassing to get the spell.
Never said it wasnt insurmountable... Only said there was things that should be houseruled. You talk about those spells but again, number wise, nobody uses them. Passives on warlocks are that strong.
When it comes to spells its always the same... Blur is concentration and thus clashes with hex. Mirror image and shield are much better options because they do not clash with anything. Concentration spells have alway been troublesome even though necessary.
You guys strickly dodges the problems of the warlock by saying there are options... The problem is those options are often not good and from a min maxers stand point... There is only a few things worth considering. Thats why people always ask for more and why people wanted homebrew so badly.
Again... Does the warlock be a bad class... Not at all... I actually multiclass a lot into it. But fact is... I can never really seem to need more then 6 levels of it.
A) The min-maxer's perspective is utterly irrelevant to game design. Always, without exception. No game should ever be designed with min-maxers in mind, to literally any degree. I love CharOp theory crafting, but it exists outside the scope of normal play, and is thus irrelevant.
2) Do you have any actual source on how often a given Invocation is used? I've never seen numbers on that from DDB or wotc.
On the issue with the once-a-day Invocations with spell slot -
That actually was complained about quite a bit when the game first came out. The game designers thought the class would be "too powerful" if allowed as a regular spell being spammed constantly. Lots of people openly disagreed. The developers basically said, "Huh. Noted." And everyone moved on; some left as is, some house ruled, etc.
There's a lot of minor issues with the warlock, but that doesn't mean its unplayable or bad. It just means you have to be a little more careful when picking what options you want.
And they are spells that probably just wouldn't be on the Warlock list at all if not for those invocations. You'd be stuck multiclassing if you want your warlock to be able to use Polymorph. Instead, you can use an Invocation to get access to a spell that otherwise isn't available to warlocks. So...roughly on par with the subclasses that add spells to their spell list.
Your suggestion that the min-maxers point of view should never and indeed is not ever taken into account is a bit irreverent of like, actual game design theory you realise right? Min-maxers serve their purpose the same as anyone else in the great big process that encompasses iterative and incremental design.
That's not why his argument is lacking, seems silly to point it out.
Wow... you don't know one language yet it doesn't illustrate a flaw in your person...
It doesn't seem that my grasp of language is actually in question here...
To the point you are trying to make. Having access to sub-optimal choices is not a flaw. Like you said, I can choose to work (or write) poorly. Having that option is not a flaw...
Your suggestion that the min-maxers point of view should never and indeed is not ever taken into account is a bit irreverent of like, actual game design theory you realise right? Min-maxers serve their purpose the same as anyone else in the great big process that encompasses iterative and incremental design.
That's not why his argument is lacking, seems silly to point it out.
Having optimisers in the playtest for a game is useful. The game should never be built for them. 5e is, rightly, built around an assumed group of non-optimising players.
I myself am an optimiser, but my optimising knowledge of the system is only useful in the sense of game design in the specific context of finding bugs. The game should never change because people who are more into optimization than I would never touch a 4 elements monk. The 4 elements monk is unbalanced without the perspective of the min-maxer, and thus could reasonably be considered a problem. The gameplay of the subclass suffers, even in a non optimised group,because of the way it was designed. The "sub-par" invocations do not cause the gameplay to suffer in a non optimised group, and are thus fine as is. IE, the POV of the min maxer is irrelevant to determining if those game elements are working.
One thing this thread points out is how popular the Warlock class is, or at least how strongly people feel about it. :)
The greatest thing about the Warlock class is its flexibility. You can be pretty good at melee and/or range damage, you can choose to have amazing utility outside of combat with pact of the Tome or an enhanced familiar that makes an excellent scout and can aid players to give them advantage in battle. You get a bunch of mini feats, some better than others. A Warlock isn't going to be as good as someone with a class focused on a particular skill, they can't cast as good as a Wizard/Sorcerer, they can't melee as good as a fighter, and they aren't as good of a rogue as a rogue, but they can be pretty good at these things.
A lot of multi-class Warlock because taking 3 levels of Warlock can provide a lot of value to many classes. That doesn't say that Warlock is bad, you don't have to multi-class and you can play pure Warlock quite effectively.
The class does have some problems, but most classes have some problems.
One thing this thread points out is how popular the Warlock class is, or at least how strongly people feel about it. :)
The greatest thing about the Warlock class is its flexibility. You can be pretty good at melee and/or range damage, you can choose to have amazing utility outside of combat with pact of the Tome or an enhanced familiar that makes an excellent scout and can aid players to give them advantage in battle. You get a bunch of mini feats, some better than others. A Warlock isn't going to be as good as someone with a class focused on a particular skill, they can't cast as good as a Wizard/Sorcerer, they can't melee as good as a fighter, and they aren't as good of a rogue as a rogue, but they can be pretty good at these things.
A lot of multi-class Warlock because taking 3 levels of Warlock can provide a lot of value to many classes. That doesn't say that Warlock is bad, you don't have to multi-class and you can play pure Warlock quite effectively.
The class does have some problems, but most classes have some problems.
Exactly right, and what the warlock is very, very good at, if you focus on it, is at-will ranged damage output.
As for MC stuff, I agree that MC Warlock brings a ton of value to other classes. A Rogue/Warlock can do truly insane things with deception. A Bard/Warlock can be one of the game's best magical swashbucklers. Warlock adds immense power to the Paladin. Especially a Hexblade MC.
Having optimisers in the playtest for a game is useful. The game should never be built for them. 5e is, rightly, built around an assumed group of non-optimising players.
I myself am an optimiser, but my optimising knowledge of the system is only useful in the sense of game design in the specific context of finding bugs. The game should never change because people who are more into optimization than I would never touch a 4 elements monk. The 4 elements monk is unbalanced without the perspective of the min-maxer, and thus could reasonably be considered a problem. The gameplay of the subclass suffers, even in a non optimised group,because of the way it was designed. The "sub-par" invocations do not cause the gameplay to suffer in a non optimised group, and are thus fine as is. IE, the POV of the min maxer is irrelevant to determining if those game elements are working.
Is it so hard for you to believe that you can do both of these things? That mechanics can exist inside the game for min-maxing players to work out and use as well as other things? Frankly, I find your overall dismissal that "no min-maxer would ever touch a Four Elements Monk" or that 'Sub-par invocations do not cause gameplay to suffer in non-optimized groups" because both of these statements are ignorant of reality. Some min-maxers will play a Four Elements Monk to find out how to get the best out of it and sub-par, nay, TRAP invocations can exist. In the same way that the Beast Master Ranger has options that are just straight up worse for it's companion that lead to it's overall power level feeling poor, bad invocations can cause a player's perception of Warlock to be twisted.
Min-maxing has it's place, a good game has something in it that appeals to those people and it's in there ON PURPOSE and straight up bad options for customization can cause issues even with players who are not expecting to get the most out of their characters.
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nope, they all have something to bring to the table. My problem on that note is that most classes fails horribly from level 14+
exemple of that... Rogues seems not to have good stuff after level 11. and thus i usually multi class out of it after level 12 for absi.
the only one class that i think is not worth multi into, is ranger. and even there the archetypes are worth it still. so...
Inquisitive, if you want a full tank then fighter purple dragon is much better choice then warlock. a wizard would also be a great choice, but considering fighter have actual taunts inbedded, its much better to just go barb or fighter if you want dedication to a tank role. aside from that my point was that warlock could also benefit from other classes for tanking, as in your tank can actually also dps while keeping its health up with uncanny dodge and evasion. sneak attack onto a tank is great because it boost his damage and makes him lose nothing in the process of tanking.
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Wow geez, what a mess of grammar and poor understanding going on in here. Anyways, Warlock is a class that's pretty frontloaded. The flavour is that you bargained for power instead of learning it or finding it within yourself, so it makes sense right?
With the frontloading comes a couple of really good reasons to pick up early Warlock levels (I usually go to 4 before I start branching cause I value the ASI) including the early access to EB spam, effectively replacing your need to think too hard about combat and a couple of other decent Invocations. Amongst those as listed already of course, Disguise Self at will, Agonizing and Repelling Blast and a couple others. Hex is also a part of that frontloading and also covers a lot of that thinking in combat.
But that's a really surface level interpretation of Warlock. Hex is an amazing tool with a bunch of tricks, my favourites being making specific important characters weak to grapples, weak at perceiving or figuring out if I'm deceiving. Oh and of course, maintaining it through short rests etc etc. And EB when paired with Repelling Blast becomes a tool apt to save your allies and make using persistent AoEs way more fun. And Disguise Self at will? Forget about it, you already know how amazing that is.
Hexblade silliness aside, I think Warlock provides a lot of customisation too. The being you made your pact with defines your overall mechanics of course and often the kind of character you play, but the 3rd level Pact really changes how you approach everything. Blade pact obviously makes an attack focused character (as an aside, if you think EB spam is boring but give a pass to melee attackers or anything else that does the same thing for consistent damage every round, your argument is garbage) but Chain pact leans you into a support focused character with the ability to hand out advantage on the fly and an extra dimension to character interaction and Tome pact leans into utility with Rituals and a minor support role with all those controls. Contrasting those against the now 6? patrons just makes it so rewarding to delve into it all and see how the parts all go together.
As to the spell slots, frankly, everyone wants to rest. It takes a couple of minutes IRL and let's everyone breathe. In game, yes, in dungeons you can find it hard to rest uninterrupted but it's not impossible with a bit of work (barricading, Tiny But, Catnap) and only the biggest of pricks DM will turn you down consistently when you ask for something built into the game. Personally, I find the tension with what to do with my slots an enjoyable part of playing my character.
As to 15 minute spell rests, this sounds like a pointless mechanic dredged out of the realms of people who lack the ability to think critically. What difference barring encounters, which the DM once again literally controls or the possible ramifications of a time sensitive event, which a good DM should be using, is there between a 15 minute rest or an hour long one? Why bother differentiating the two?
I've played purelocks and I've played multiclass locks and both were great. I can guarantee I'll be playing more locks in the future.
TL;DR locks are flavourful, rewarding to customise and **** 15 minute short rests. Also to answer the original question, no class is the best at everything. Warlocks are best at high level spell casting over a well rested day, worse if your DM is bad.
Drayen, instead of crying about my grammar, you should of read my post more in depth... you'd have understood my point of rest being not always 1 hour long and 8 hour long. in fact rest are a major debate in pretty much every community of gaming in d&d 5e. many thinks its unreal to have full health in 8 hours of sleep. others think its literally not right to have short rest of 1 hour long when you consider what people are doing. sorry but if i want to rest my feets and pray to my god... it doesn't take me an hour. thats gonna take me 15 minutes and i'll be done with it. you know how i know that, because i worked in a real life sanctuary and people never ever took more then 15 minutes to pray to their god. you may say rituals are 1 hour long, you may say they can take more and i totally agree with that... but really why wouldn't you make a difference is the real question ?
imagine your players wanting to catnap their rest... sure catnap takes 10 minutes... but why was that spell even created if there was no problem to begin with ?
Even the designers themselves thought that short rest were whack, and decided to give you numerous options in the book themselves.
but why do i even bother try to tell you all this, its your game if you are fine with it, then be my guess and play it that way. but to me, like many others i've seen on the net... Short rest area problem, because its not all the time you need 1 hour. and immersion wise... i think short rest are the bane of our gaming. we're in a coach going toward another city... does that count as a short rest ? that kind of thing is not in the books, as far as i am concerned... what is a short rest is barely explained... they literally only say, 1 hour of non-tedious activity... i'd argue with you, that just walking for an hour is tedious ! heck even just talking for hour can be tedious !
but more so... in our real life, we get 15 minutes breaks and that seems to be just enough for a break to gain back our strength.
you could argue a lot about short rest... and thats a whole other debate...
here my point is... imagine that cleric stuck with only channel divinity ! no spell slots...
that's warlock's case !
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Reading your posts is a bit trying DnDPalladin. But if you'd read his post you'd see he commented on the grammar and content.
I think this discussion has finished. Nothing new is being added, here's the summary:
Most think Warlock is great for a dip or straight. DnDPaladin thinks all of the classes including Warlock are lacking and should multi-class if you want to maximize your combat power. Also it is apparently important to him that resting be house ruled, but this is not relevant to the OP...
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Alright, apparently I have to empirically prove that the arguments presented are worthless so here we go I suppose. What a treat for my eyes.
Anyways, going as I pick them up
"1 hour short rests are unrealistic and the existence of Catnap proves this"
Amongst other things, this seems to be the basis of your argument for 15 minute short rests to recover spell slots (and presumably pretty much everything except Hit Dice) this is just flawed for a number of reasons. Your argument assumes that the current short rest length is flawed because "IRL people do not take that long to rest" and that the existence of Catnap shows that "even the developers believe short rests are flawed." On two points this is a bad argument, because we are nowhere near a realistic IRL situation in DnD. No one IRL is asking God for magic, no one is making bargains to regain eldritch power. A rest IRL is mostly just that, a rest. And people IRL rest for different amounts of time, it really does depend on your spoons my man. When you try to argue that a short rest is too long because "the people I know don't need to rest that long" you're using anecdotal evidence. Evidence of your own experience is not universal nor even necessarily a view of the average. Even more so, it's got no bearing for what might be needed in an adventuring situation.
"What constitutes a short rest" is something you're pretty much being willfully ignorant or facetious about here, because you've described it in such a way that makes me think you're trying to find issues. "Talking for an hour can be tedious, walking for an hour can be tedious" and hell, you're not wrong. So if those situations have obviously been tedious for you, why are you trying to even count them as short rests in the first place? For that matter, why are you trying to power game short rests in the first place? Seems pretty obvious to me, seems pretty obvious to even the most new of players I've had to introduce and teach, that a short rest is a short rest when you do something restful. If you're finding it hard, maybe have a look to some other play groups? I've had many many sessions where people have sped through a short rest in maybe half a minute because no one felt the need to get hung up on what constituted as a short rest. I've never had a session where people have tried to argue that spending time doing something that was pretty obviously not intended to be a short rest is restful so yeah, anecdotal evidence cancelling each other out?
Secondly, "Catnap's existence shows the designer's believe that short rests are flawed" is just an illogical and ignorant argument m'dude. Ignoring the fact that Catnap does not actually replace short rests entirely, ignore the fact that errata exists and if they wanted to change short rests because they believed them flawed, they would be well within their capacity to do so, ignore the fact that the time frame of a short rest is functionally arbitrary after a certain point and dependent on the DM to begin with, it still wouldn't make sense for the designers to introduce a spell, something only a half or so of the available classes can actually take to fix a problem they thought the game had.
As to the idea that "everywhere is talking about how short rests are flawed" an idea predicated on your assumption that I don't frequent the same kind or number of forums related to this game, that I am maybe not invested as you believe yourself to be, because fun fact, I'm in a lot of places and I've literally never heard anyone before this point talk about this issue. So I guess in this case, my anecdotal evidence counters yours?
As to "Cleric stuck with only Channel Divinity" Jesus, what a mess. As stated, there's already some tricks to extend your spell slot usage outside of multiclassing, ala Hex concentration overlap, the fact that regardless of short rests being 15 minutes or an hour, they do still give you back your charges which means you're allowed to use any of the spells you have pretty much 4-6 times a day, compared to the limited functionality of Channel Divinity doing 2 things that many times. And that's ignoring Cantrip usage. You're not "stuck" with only 2 options, you're blessed with an array of useful abilities and even more available to you via Invocations.
Now to some older arguments that actually hold some merit. "No one uses the invocations that require a spell slot" This isn't entirely true, because obviously someone uses them, I doubt there's a feature that doesn't go used regardless of how bad you think it is but yeah, they're weaker on par because of their cost. Still, having access to Polymorph once a day instead of on call feels very Warlock of it all. I'm not a Wizard, I traded power for speed, a point I've already made in my previous post. We're not here to have on par abilities with other dedicated casters, we're here to represent the easy path. And with it we get access to some cool other stuff.
"Resting every encounter if they're easy feels bad" then frankly dude, you're in the market for the wrong class. Once again, not everyone is good at everything and warlocks do plenty outside of combat. Being Cha based obviously helps, access to good RP cantrips and invocations, all of it can lean you towards the exploration and social pillars. I've seen your predilection towards multiclassing and as a power gamer myself, I get it. The possibilities are high and it feels good to wring out the best you can from the system but it's nowhere near as necessary as you say. Maybe if you have a bad DM, sure, no balance in fights makes it hard to survive when you're "underpowered" but I've played a wide, wide range of Locks at this point, multiclassed and otherwise and I've never felt that way. More anecdotal evidence we must be so fond of it by now.
Anyways, I hope that was plenty of stuff to keep you occupied my dude, there's more than a few reasons why your thinking is flawed in there.
On the issue with the once-a-day Invocations with spell slot -
That actually was complained about quite a bit when the game first came out. The game designers thought the class would be "too powerful" if allowed as a regular spell being spammed constantly. Lots of people openly disagreed. The developers basically said, "Huh. Noted." And everyone moved on; some left as is, some house ruled, etc.
There's a lot of minor issues with the warlock, but that doesn't mean its unplayable or bad. It just means you have to be a little more careful when picking what options you want.
I'm playing a warlock right now and the once-a-day invocations with a spell slot aren't any different from wizards getting one spell slot of their highest level and only being able to cast one of their highest level spells a day. They're very balanced.
At 5th level, a wizard get's two 3rd level spell slots and a warlock get's two 3rd level spell slots. A wizard can learn slow and cast it twice a day while a warlock can pick an eldritch invocation that let's him cast slow once a day. The warlock has an advantage because the warlock can cast two other 3rd level spells per short rest, while the wizard had an advantage because the wizard can cast four 1st level spells, three 2nd level spells, and two 3rd level spells in a single encounter. I think that the warlock is very well balanced compared to a wizard and vice versa.
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The way i see it, some of you missunderstand certain invocations...
heres a reading of the invocations in question...
"You can cast compulsion once using a warlock spell slot. You can’t do so again until you finish a long rest."
let's break this down for you guys and compare it to say a wizard casting the same spell...
1) you can only cast it once per long rest, even if you have more then 1 spell slot for it. something the wizard can cast numerous times as long as he has the spell slots.
2) it absolutely need a warlock spell slots, something the wizard or other casters don't. meaning even if you have other spell slots you cannot cast this spell. while a wizard multiclassed can because it doesn't matter which spell slot was used to cast the spell.
3) you still need a spell slot to cast it, thus in the end its the equivalent of just adding a spell to your list of known spell... so basically you lost an invocation to just add a spell known to your list. something you can't even abuse because of the other restrictions there is.
all of these 3, makes the invocations much weaker then say any other spell casters just adding this to their list.
the only advantage this has compared to the others, is that it can be casted at higher levels. oh wait, it doesn't go beyond 5th level which is the maximum level of the spell slots the warlock can get. after that he doesn't get any higher.
these are why nobody or next to nobody... like literally millions of players do not use those invocations. look at everything they requires to work, and compare them to any other invocations that are passives like Levitates, Mage Armor heck even Improved pact weapon has tons more milleage then these invocations.
With all that said, i feel like you guys only read what you want to read from my posts...
I never said the warlock was weak, i never said he was bad. i only ever said i never played a warlock to 20. i always left the last 6 levels, out. thats all i ever said ! 14 levels of a class is much better then one might think !
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I believe most of us do, in fact, understand how the invocations works. While I agree they are poor choices compared to others, this does not illustrate anything regarding the class's potential. I'd never take True Strike as a cantrip on a Wizard. This does not illustrate a flaw in the Wizard class. There are simply better options available.
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Wow... you don't know one language yet it doesn't illustrate a flaw in your person...
thats the problem, because it does illustrate a flaw. something that is not worth taking is a flaw.
otherwise why wouldn't you take it ? if it wasn't a flaw then people would take it. having better options then that one illustrate the flaw in that invocations. otherwise you'd take it because it would be good. if its not then it is a flaw. the same way in your real life day job, you do things because they are good ways to do it. you wouldn't start badly doing your job just because you can. unless you truly wanna be a jerk about it.
while your true strike argument isn't a flaw of the wizard itself, it is still a flaw in the spell itself. but the problem with your argument is that an invocation is a warlock thing to begin with. while true strike isn't just a spell for wizards. the thing is, while does invocations aren't stellar, in fact they are much weaker then the other invocations. the reality is, those invocations aren't options anymore because they are weak and thus unattractive.
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It's ridiculous to try and say "All spells should be able to be picked by all classes all the time" And point to that statement not being true as a flaw.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Your suggestion that the min-maxers point of view should never and indeed is not ever taken into account is a bit irreverent of like, actual game design theory you realise right? Min-maxers serve their purpose the same as anyone else in the great big process that encompasses iterative and incremental design.
That's not why his argument is lacking, seems silly to point it out.
It doesn't seem that my grasp of language is actually in question here...
To the point you are trying to make. Having access to sub-optimal choices is not a flaw. Like you said, I can choose to work (or write) poorly. Having that option is not a flaw...
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We do bones, motherf***ker!
One thing this thread points out is how popular the Warlock class is, or at least how strongly people feel about it. :)
The greatest thing about the Warlock class is its flexibility. You can be pretty good at melee and/or range damage, you can choose to have amazing utility outside of combat with pact of the Tome or an enhanced familiar that makes an excellent scout and can aid players to give them advantage in battle. You get a bunch of mini feats, some better than others. A Warlock isn't going to be as good as someone with a class focused on a particular skill, they can't cast as good as a Wizard/Sorcerer, they can't melee as good as a fighter, and they aren't as good of a rogue as a rogue, but they can be pretty good at these things.
A lot of multi-class Warlock because taking 3 levels of Warlock can provide a lot of value to many classes. That doesn't say that Warlock is bad, you don't have to multi-class and you can play pure Warlock quite effectively.
The class does have some problems, but most classes have some problems.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Min-maxing has it's place, a good game has something in it that appeals to those people and it's in there ON PURPOSE and straight up bad options for customization can cause issues even with players who are not expecting to get the most out of their characters.