Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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CME is Conjure Minor Elementals.
And by 12th you've got most of the invocations you're ever going to get (8 of 10), almost all the real class features you're ever going to get. (Mystic Arcana is kind of a joke). You've got 3 of 4 spell slots (and it'll be another 5 levels before you get the 4th one), and they capped at level 5 already. Multiclassing for actual class features makes a ton of sense. There's typically nothing worth sticking around for. (A couple of the subclasses might make 14 worthwhile, but not all of them).
Not to be effective. But EB is just kind of boring without it.
EB is not why people play warlock. EB is what non-melee warlocks do when they don't have something better to do, or as an accessory to their other spells. It's boring like fighters taking the attack action is boring.
CME should not exist as a spell it is game breakingly good. And I'll somewhat agree on the invocations side, you should continue to get one every other level once it slows down at 5 and they should have more high level invocations.
But the mystic arcanum are solid high level spells once a day which is how most full casters work. Now warlocks have a terrible spell list including the mystic arcanum but their 9th level options are solid. Now I think WOTC should errata in a few more like bestow curse, steel wind strike, fabricate, reverse gravity, mass suggestion maybe wish as I think reality altering powers makes more sense when its backed by a powerful entity or bring back the clerics miracle version and give them that etc. They along with sorcerers, bards etc should get a unique spell every spell level that they don't hand out like candy to subclasses and feats. Some of their unique spells need some love hunger of hadar is just bad despite being really cool.
So while I think warlocks need some love instead of being ignored after a sort of half ass treatment in the PH. They are still a fun class to play throughout all their levels.
The Mystic Arcanum list is really limited. More importantly, you don't actually get level 6+ slots, so you can't up-cast into them, and you can't prepare more than one per spell level to have options (and that short list is full of situational things like Demiplane, Glibness, or Planeshift, or that really want to be up-cast like Etherealness); warlock higher level casting is no more than half as valuable as regular spellcasting at higher levels. Picking up metamagic, for example, is almost certainly stronger than a couple high level spells. And the biggest upside of Mystic Arcanum - that they are cast without a spell slot - is hard to make the best use of without metamagic. (And one 9th level spell in 5 levels is not a great value proposition if that's the only real reason to stick around).
I will agree that it is a major flavor fail that Bestow Curse isn't a Warlock spell, but that wouldn't keep me in Warlock longer.
The 8th level options are a huge wiff in the mystic arcanum, the 6th and 7th could be better but are not terrible, the 9th level options are good. It does look like in the arcana unleashed book warlocks are getting a lot of spell options. including a couple good 8th level arcanum. And sure 18-20 are kind of pointless for a warlock, 1 invocation and the 2nd half of your 2nd level recovery. So a 3 level dip at least would be more valuable. The lack of the ability to upcast arcanum is a limitation but very few spells are worth upcasting. There are a couple really good options that they lose out on though. But I would not say its worth giving up 7th-9th level arcana options for metamagic.
There aren't many 6+ spells worth upcasting (although Etherealness is far more useful when you can bring your party with you, and Create Undead is basically useless without upcasting - scratch that, Create Undead is useless at any spell slot level).
But there are definitely lower level spells worth upcasting into high spell slots, starting with Planar Binding and (if using backwards compatibility) Infernal Calling, especially in combination with each other. Indeed, Planar Binding is almost useless in a 5th level slot. It's only when you can start upcasting it that it has real value. (And those are hardly the only ones).
And it's not just metamagic. You get a bunch of spell slots that you can use for your spells which you don't care if they're up-cast.
They could have added 1 or 2 invocations that work with Subclasses features/theme.
Just allowing more Origin Feats is not a solution.