So I've been playing 5e a whiiiile now and have seen plenty about the infamous coffeelock (and the various arguments of its RAW legality). But I'm not looking for that right now! I wanna know if anyone's actually used it/had a player who used it.
I've only ever heard of it from peoples theoretical builds of what you COULD do, but I've never actually heard of people playing it for a full campaign. I've always reflexively banned it because it sounds cheesy and exploity (like a speedrun build from a videogame) and usually the only reason it gets brought up is because someone wants to be like "Look at this cheesy build i made"
But now... I've got to thinking. Is it really that bad? Since I've never actually seen it in practice, nor read about it I'm unsure. So If you've actually seen it played before (extensively) lemme know how it is! Not just from a DM standpoint, but from the other players standpoint to! Did it make the other casters in the party like "whats the point, johnny sorlock over there can infinitely cast" or was it more like "cool! the party is better cause of johnny sorlock!"
Doesn't matter! I don't have one in particular. I'm just looking for someone who has used the concept in their campaign (either a player whos played one, a party member of one, or a DM whos had one in their party) because I want to know if its really as bad as I've been thinking it sounds.
What I'm defining as a "coffeelock" is any sorc/lock multiclass with the intent of avoiding longrests and banking spellslots.
Firstly you have to survive to 4th level before you can use it; and that is to only regain 2 spell slots. The party will get annoyed with having to stop an hour regularly just so that you can cast a single 2nd level spell.
This is exactly what I was thinking! I'm mainly a DM and I have a party member who every new campaign suggests coffeelock for his character (he's mainly joking but i feel like if i said OK he'd take it up in a heartbeat lol) and until now I've always banned it 'cause it felt broken and cheesy. But i got to thinking that it prolly wouldn't be that bad because it relies on SIGNIFICANT downtime to bank all those spell slots and that's not something a party would allow for I imagine.
I still might say "no" to the concept, but not because of brokenness but rather how cumbersome and impractical it is to the rest of the party
Coffeelock is a mid to late-game build, not an early-game one A 2/2 Sorlock can only regain one first-level spell slot per short rest and only gets one or two short rests per day - no big deal.
A 7/5 Sorlock can create one third-level, two second-level, or three first-level spell slots per short rest and can turn one long rest into eight short rests, if they don't need to recover HP. A Sorlock loaded up with eight additional Fireballs, sixteen additional Scorching Rays, or twenty-four additional Magic Missiles might do things to your combat calculations.
Now, in practice the Sorlock can only do this when conditions are right. They can theoretically generate an arbitrarily high number of spell slots they want while not adventuring, but their sorcerer spell slots, their HP, and their hit dice only recover when they actually take a long rest, at which point all their janky freemium coffee-fueled spell slots fall off. The Coffeelock is eventually going to want those resources back, and that means taking the long rest whether they want to or not. It's also actually an open question as to whether a Coffeelock can skip their Long Rest - there's a valid argument to be had that completing eight short rests in a row fulfills the requirement for taking a long rest as well and thus the long rest just happens. The coffeelock can sacrifice one of their short rests and do quiet calisthenics at the edge of camp, perhaps, but even then.
Coffeelocking is generally only something that happens prior to the start of a dangerous delve, as during and after said delve the Coffeelock is going to want that long rest just as badly as the rest of the party. The DM is also perfectly within their rights to impose limits on how many spell slots the Coffeelock can carry - manufacturing significantly more arcane power than your body/spirit is meant to hold comes with risks, after all. A houserule I've seen proposed is that a Coffeelock that casts a spell while carrying spell slots over their maximum automatically induces a Wild Magic Surge, as the overcharge is much more difficult to control. Alternately, they might start losing Hit Die and then actual HP as the magical overcharge slowly burns them up.
If your player is interested enough in the concept to fish for it with repeated jokes? Let him have it. Yeah, Coffeelocking that goes completely unaddressed can get out of hand, but there's plenty of ways for the DM to get a handle on Coffeelocking. The other thing to remember is that as powerful as a full magazine of Fireballs is, by the time the Coffeelock starts really coming into its own, other spellcasters are into six and seventh-level spells, getting Greater Arcana and starting to unlock the Cool Shit that's in their class's tier 3 abilities. The Coffeelock is still stuck at fourth or maybe fifth-level magic and tier 2 midgame stuff.
Is Coffeelocking awkward rules cheese that makes many DMs sigh into their soup? Absolutely it is. But if the player really wants to try it out and can work with the DM to create a story around this character who's learned how to cheat the system and force power out of the Weave that they were never meant to have...well. Maybe there's a plotline worth pursuing in that.
Sure thing. Full disclaimer: I've never actually played a Coffeelock. But I do game with a group that likes to pursue and discuss rules cheese, and our considered opinion is that Coffeelock, generally, has a worse reputation than it merits.
The concept is hard-limited by its sorcerer levels - a Coffeelock can never possess more sorcery points than it has sorcerer levels, which puts a hard upper limit on how many spell slots they can create per rest. That means they're going to be a sorcerer first no matter that warlock is generally a better class, and sorcerers don't benefit from short rests at all. In a sense, Coffeelocking is a patch fix for that which allows the sorcerer to benefit from short rests, so hey - a plus!
Because Coffeelocks are required to be primarily sorcerers, their access to Invocations is also quite limited, and one of those invocations is required to be Aspect of the Moon in order for the 'Coffee' part of Coffeelock to work. Most Coffeelocks don't go beyond fifth-level Warlock, if they even bother with that, which means they have either two or three Invocations to play with. One is guaranteed to be Agonizing Blast, another is required to be Aspect of the Moon. That minimizes the amount of nonsense they can get up to with Invocations.
They're also required to be Pact of the Tome, which in turn prevents Chain familiar cheese - and I have played a Chainlock with heavy emphasis on the (flying, invisible, highly intelligent, possessed-of-opposable-thumbs) familiar. That is potentially worse than the Coffeelock
Now, a Coffeelock can become annoying quickly if your campaign trends towards spellcasting enemies, because one of the best uses of the Coffeelock's illicit spell slots is as plentiful fuel for Counterspell. The aforementioned Sorlock 7/5 can have eight additional Counterspells ready to go, which will become infuriating in short order if you're using magical enemies. But the whole interaction is fuzzy and abstract enough that there's tons of room for the DM to inject a little dose of reality into a Coffeelock's brain. It's not like the Polearm Master + Sentinel combo, where each part of the combination is simple, clear, and not really open to any creative DM interpretation. SentiPAMs can't be reasoned with, appeased, or worked around - they will do their thing without regard for your desire to offer interesting tactical challenges and fluid combat to the party.
Coffeelocks? Coffeelocks are only a problem if the DM buys into their supposed invincibility. You're the DM, not the Coffeelock player - he has to negotiate with you for his shinies, not the other way around.
A 7/5 Sorlock can create one third-level, two second-level, or three first-level spell slots per short rest and can turn one long rest into eight short rests, if they don't need to recover HP. A Sorlock loaded up with eight additional Fireballs, sixteen additional Scorching Rays, or twenty-four additional Magic Missiles might do things to your combat calculations.
And that also comes back to the DM's interpretation and allowance on taking short rests. A short rest is defined as a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long. So, does the DM allow the example sorlock to have eight short rests during that 8 hour period? Or does the DM say that it was one extended short rest? Or is there some sort of compromise between these two concepts?
No right or wrong answer per se, but I'd say that this is another example of where the DM retains control of how much they let the sorlock/coffeelock use their short rests and sorcery points to pump up their "daily" spell slots. DM just needs to be upfront with their player(s), so nobody is crying foul later on because you suddenly implement a change after they've taken the levels and abilities to build such a character.
Dealing with a sorlock in one of my current campaigns that I DM, and it hasn't really been an issue for the group. However, I was upfront at the start that my expectations were that they couldn't automatically declare a 2+ hour break equated to multiple short rests. Our house rule is that you need to be able to separate the breaks with enough "non-rest" activity to warrant them being separate short rests versus one extended short rest. Character is still averaging 3-4 short rests between long rests, so they're happy to have the extra points/slots without it becoming a ridiculously high number of extra spell slots.
Our house rule is that you need to be able to separate the breaks with enough "non-rest" activity to warrant them being separate short rests versus one extended short rest.
Yes, I would absolutely rule that... Sorlock or no Sorlock.
I would probably rule something like, "A rest of duration at least 1 hour but less than 8 hours is a single short rest, no matter how many hours it is (1, 2, 3, 5, etc.). A rest of 8 or more hours is a long rest, no matter what you are trying to call it to game the system."
But in general I take a very dim view of people trying to 'game' the system... and I don't really love short rests to begin with. So someone going "I'm gonna take 8 straight short rests because that's better for me than one long rest" is liable to have me ban short rests entirely or move to the "grim" system suggested in DMG rather than accept that they took 8 short rests.
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Why does a coffeelock need aspect of the moon? The rules for 'going without sleep' don't actually give penalties for going without sleep. They give penalties for not taking a long rest, and aspect of the moon has no effect on those penalties.
Assuming the 'light activity' given for Aspect of the Moon is the same as the 'light activity' given for normal resting, you can't even use those eight hours to take eight short rests, because if we assume it's the same as the two hours of light activity in a normal long rest, spellcasting 'or similar adventuring activity' interrupts it.
Better to just play an elf; you really do get an extra four hours that way.
I would posit that a DM who's going to restrict or eliminate short rests should probably make allowances for classes designed to function on short rests. Fighters, monks, and warlocks all key primarily off short rests, and both druids and clerics regain key class feature usage on short rest as well. Wanting to eliminate short rests is all well and good, but at that point the DM probably owes those classes some extra benefits to account for the fact that they're no longer regaining resources during the day that they were built to use-and-regain, rather than use-and-forget. Nipping the worst Coffeelock excesses in the bud is one thing, but denying short rests entirely comes with its own issues.
The intended game play (which rarely happens) appears to be that the DM should spend about 1/3 of the daily xp budget between short rests, and thus a day consists of one long rest and two short rests. As such, it shouldn't be a balance problem to limit short rests per long rest to something like three or four, or require an hour between short rests, it's just forcing game play to be closer to original intent.
I would posit that a DM who's going to restrict or eliminate short rests should probably make allowances for classes designed to function on short rests. Fighters, monks, and warlocks all key primarily off short rests, and both druids and clerics regain key class feature usage on short rest as well.
My comment about eliminating short rests was in relation to the abuse of them (i.e., "I'm going to take a long rest but pretend it's 8 short rests because I want to game the system"). My general response as a DM is, if the players are going to abuse something, then I will take it away entirely.
I recognize that D&D is balanced very carefully around both short and long rests and that, realistically, you can't (without heavy modding) just take them out of the game.
Another thing I might do, if it's paired class combos that are the problem, is just say we are not using the multiclass rule option. Or if someone is abusing feats in some way, I would say "in this campaign we aren't doing feats."
My knee-jerk is to leave things wide open for players, but then if I start to see abuse, I lock it down... Usually, I try gentle reasoning first, but if the player demonstrates an adamantine desire to abuse the rules, then I come down like a ton of bricks. Anyone who has played with me as a GM will probably tell you, by the time I lower the boom, it's more than well deserved.
Fortunately my current players are not like this so it has not been an issue for many years.
I think my inclination would be to rule that a PC can't have more spell slots than what they would normally have for their level. I consider myself a pretty lenient DM overall, but I'm not *that* lenient...
Mind you, I could see myself allowing it for a quick run that isn't meant to be serious, but I think I'd want to run my one-shot where everyone plays a Murderhobo first...
EDIT: Although, in fairness, I could see myself allowing it in a game where everyone's 20th level and supposed to be god-tier anyway, so *shrug*.
The key to coffeelock is that they substitute a long rest with 8 short rests and never long rest allowing them to build up an infinite number of spell slots over subsequent days of rest.
A short rest is an hour. A long rest 8 hours. A DM is free to rule rests in whatever fashion they like but the rules don't explicitly state that a character can't take consecutive short rests.
Usually, the exhaustion penalty that comes from not taking a long rest is considered to be associated with sleeping or the elf trance state. Warlocks have an invocation that permits them to never sleep. If they don't sleep, how can they get exhausted if they don't take a long rest? (DM call on this one too).Thus the reasoning is that a warlock with the Aspect of the Moon invocation prevents the warlock from getting exhausted from missing long rests indefinitely.
Usually, this build involves Divine Soul sorcerer so that they can heal their own hit points using their vast number of spell slots - which takes away one of the other main reasons for taking a long rest. In addition, if the DM wants to get irritating about exhaustion and long rests then the level 9 divine soul sorcerer just takes Greater Restoration and casts it at the start of every day to get rid of any exhaustion they might accrue.
Builds are typically suggested to be 17 sorc/3 warlock so that they get back 4 sorc points/short rest. This would be 32 points for an 8 hour period where the other characters are long resting.
In a week this is 224 sorcery points that gets cycled into spell slots not including whatever they do with short rests granted during an adventuring day. This is 32 5th level spell slots which can be swapped back to sorcery points for metamagic or to cast as many 5th level spells as the character likes every combat. In addition, they get to restore another 32 points of spell slots for every evening.
This requires a DM to rule favorably on substituting short rests for a long rest (which is not expressly forbidden in the rules and tacitly allowed since the rules just indicate how long each type of rest period is - why can't a character say "I am taking a short rest", "I am taking another short rest" - the rules do not define any time required between short rests - only long rests). It also requires the DM to decide whether missing a long rest causes exhaustion even if the character has no need for sleep (why would a character get exhausted if they don't need to sleep and can keep doing stuff when everyone else sleeps?) OR a level 9 divine soul sorcerer that can cure the exhaustion that might accrue every day.
I've never seen one played since honestly it would not be fair to the other players at the table to allow it. Unlimited spell slots and unlimited sorcery points means that the sorcerer can cast max level spells with metamagic every combat round.
Also, it comes online at level 4 since the sorcerer will get 16 sorcery points every long rest - however, they will only be able to purchase 1st level spell slots since they only have room for two points in their sorcery pool. 3 sorc/2 warlock can purchase 2nd level spell slots. They end up with effectively unlimited 1st level slots at 4th level.
If you take away the ability to substitute long rests with short rests as a source of sorcery points and still require the character to take long rests then the character is no longer a coffeelock - they are just a sorlock doing exactly what the multiclass is intended to be able to do - cycle spell slots into sorcery points and possibly back into spell slots.
I think my inclination would be to rule that a PC can't have more spell slots than what they would normally have for their level. I consider myself a pretty lenient DM overall, but I'm not *that* lenient...
Mind you, I could see myself allowing it for a quick run that isn't meant to be serious, but I think I'd want to run my one-shot where everyone plays a Murderhobo first...
EDIT: Although, in fairness, I could see myself allowing it in a game where everyone's 20th level and supposed to be god-tier anyway, so *shrug*.
Except that one of the features of the sorcerer is that they can purchase spells slots for which they don't have slots if they want to. A 7th level sorcerer has 7 sorcery points which will allow them to purchase a 5th level spell slot if they want to - this is intentional and by design.
This ability is limited by the statement "Any spell slot you create with this feature vanishes when you finish a long rest." Having more spell slots of specific levels than is listed is one of the explicit features of the sorcerer. If they want to spend 2 sorcery points to have 5 first level spell slots then that is the intended ability for the sorcerer. The issue is that these extra spell slots only go away on a long rest and if a sorcerer can avoid taking a long rest they never lose the extra spell slots. (This is the key justification for the coffeelock).
Coffeelocks just combine avoiding long rests with substituting long rests with 8 short rests and the warlock short rest spell slots to generate an unlimited number of spell slots (if the DM allows it - which most don't). Just combining sorcerer and warlock and converting short rest spell slots is a character working as intended - coffeelock specifically depends on avoiding long rests so they don't lose the slots AND substituting long rests with short ones to generate large numbers of sorcery points over time.
Keep in mind that the character only loses these spell slots on a long rest - so RAW, incapacitated, unconscious or even dead might not lose these extra spell slots (though this is entirely up to the DM - but a DM that would allow it in the first place would probably go along).
@David 42: I'm aware. I just think in this scenario it's overly cheesy and would probably rule that it could only be done to replenish spent spell slots, which functionally isn't much different from how it works normally. That and I would *not* let the whole "I had 8 short rests" argument fly...
Except that one of the features of the sorcerer is that they can purchase spells slots for which they don't have slots if they want to.
While true, it is only a very minor nerf to sorcerers to restrict them to recovering slots (it has a slight effect on action economy because creating spell slots costs a bonus action) and you can remove it totally by eliminating the bonus action requirement (you also want to cap sorcery points).
A short rest is an hour. A long rest 8 hours. A DM is free to rule rests in whatever fashion they like but the rules don't explicitly state that a character can't take consecutive short rests.
A short rest is at least an hour. I would take thast two mean that 2 hours of downtime is a single short rest not 1. While the rules don't explicity stare you can not take consecutive short rests they do say that short rests can be longer than an hour which I believe implies it.
I would also ruile that if they fulfill the conditions of a long rest they have one. For an Warlock with Aspect of the moon that means 8 hours of downtime. For characters that require sleep and don't get it I would be looking at exhaustion.
I've played sor-lock a bunch of times and I have to say that in practice the build runs into problems that people don't take into account when saying the are over powered on paper. I didn't find it at all overpowered for a few reasons:
-You miss out on high level spells. While other casters in your party are throwing fireballs, your extra first level spell slots aren't that impressive. You are always going to be giving up access to the most powerful spells for more weaker spells.
-Spell slot action economy Even if you have more spell slots, they are at a lower level than if you didn't multiclass. You can still only spend 1 spell slot per turn so your damage output isn't going to be anything crazy. The exception to this are reactions, and having a bunch of slots to cast shield and hellish is very nice, and is where the build shines. What ends up happening is that fights end way before all those saved up slots become useful, and you realize that having high level spells and slots has a huge advantage over lots of lower slots. This is especially true when you consider that tactically the best thing to do in combat is to focus fire one enemy doing as much damage as fast as possible to kill it and get an advantage in action economy.
-Eldritch blast. Because of the spell slot situation, Eldritch blast + hex is going to be the best damage option almost all the time (other than aoes). This makes all those spell slots you stack up pretty useless. The only thing that really lets you use your spell slots on as a bonus action is 1 concentration spell, like hex, and if your a divine soul, spiritual weapon, and healing word. If you really were power gaming, you wouldn't be doing any of those, you would, hex, hbc, quicken, double eldritch blast, and then bonus action convert slots to points when you were out of sorc points. Because the quicken+EB is your highest damage output, you are going to want to refill your sorc points with your short rests. To do this you either need to use up most of your coffee lock earned slots, or you'd need to have a pretty high level warlock slot. And if you have higher level warlock slots, that means you don't have high level sorc spells/slots and have fewer sorc points to use before you need to start wasting bonus actions converting slots to keep on using quicken.
That being said, if you just allow a sor-lock rest at any down time/travel, it can be excessive. Especially if they are divine soul and this allows them to just heal everyone up to full after every combat. This includes if you are using exhaustion checks because a sor-lock can have con save proficiency, +2d4 (favored by the gods), and maybe resistance for anther 1d4.
What suck about the bad rep of sorlocks is that this multiclass is a great way of working around having only 1-3 slots as a warlock and pretty much needing at least 1 of them to be used on hex. It's not just a cheesy power-game multiclass, it's also a good way to have a warlock feel like a spell caster instead of a narcoleptic that needs to nap after everything they do in order to not be handicapped.
So I've been playing 5e a whiiiile now and have seen plenty about the infamous coffeelock (and the various arguments of its RAW legality). But I'm not looking for that right now! I wanna know if anyone's actually used it/had a player who used it.
I've only ever heard of it from peoples theoretical builds of what you COULD do, but I've never actually heard of people playing it for a full campaign. I've always reflexively banned it because it sounds cheesy and exploity (like a speedrun build from a videogame) and usually the only reason it gets brought up is because someone wants to be like "Look at this cheesy build i made"
But now... I've got to thinking. Is it really that bad? Since I've never actually seen it in practice, nor read about it I'm unsure. So If you've actually seen it played before (extensively) lemme know how it is! Not just from a DM standpoint, but from the other players standpoint to! Did it make the other casters in the party like "whats the point, johnny sorlock over there can infinitely cast" or was it more like "cool! the party is better cause of johnny sorlock!"
Doesn't matter! I don't have one in particular. I'm just looking for someone who has used the concept in their campaign (either a player whos played one, a party member of one, or a DM whos had one in their party) because I want to know if its really as bad as I've been thinking it sounds.
What I'm defining as a "coffeelock" is any sorc/lock multiclass with the intent of avoiding longrests and banking spellslots.
Firstly you have to survive to 4th level before you can use it; and that is to only regain 2 spell slots. The party will get annoyed with having to stop an hour regularly just so that you can cast a single 2nd level spell.
This is exactly what I was thinking! I'm mainly a DM and I have a party member who every new campaign suggests coffeelock for his character (he's mainly joking but i feel like if i said OK he'd take it up in a heartbeat lol) and until now I've always banned it 'cause it felt broken and cheesy. But i got to thinking that it prolly wouldn't be that bad because it relies on SIGNIFICANT downtime to bank all those spell slots and that's not something a party would allow for I imagine.
I still might say "no" to the concept, but not because of brokenness but rather how cumbersome and impractical it is to the rest of the party
Coffeelock is a mid to late-game build, not an early-game one A 2/2 Sorlock can only regain one first-level spell slot per short rest and only gets one or two short rests per day - no big deal.
A 7/5 Sorlock can create one third-level, two second-level, or three first-level spell slots per short rest and can turn one long rest into eight short rests, if they don't need to recover HP. A Sorlock loaded up with eight additional Fireballs, sixteen additional Scorching Rays, or twenty-four additional Magic Missiles might do things to your combat calculations.
Now, in practice the Sorlock can only do this when conditions are right. They can theoretically generate an arbitrarily high number of spell slots they want while not adventuring, but their sorcerer spell slots, their HP, and their hit dice only recover when they actually take a long rest, at which point all their janky freemium coffee-fueled spell slots fall off. The Coffeelock is eventually going to want those resources back, and that means taking the long rest whether they want to or not. It's also actually an open question as to whether a Coffeelock can skip their Long Rest - there's a valid argument to be had that completing eight short rests in a row fulfills the requirement for taking a long rest as well and thus the long rest just happens. The coffeelock can sacrifice one of their short rests and do quiet calisthenics at the edge of camp, perhaps, but even then.
Coffeelocking is generally only something that happens prior to the start of a dangerous delve, as during and after said delve the Coffeelock is going to want that long rest just as badly as the rest of the party. The DM is also perfectly within their rights to impose limits on how many spell slots the Coffeelock can carry - manufacturing significantly more arcane power than your body/spirit is meant to hold comes with risks, after all. A houserule I've seen proposed is that a Coffeelock that casts a spell while carrying spell slots over their maximum automatically induces a Wild Magic Surge, as the overcharge is much more difficult to control. Alternately, they might start losing Hit Die and then actual HP as the magical overcharge slowly burns them up.
If your player is interested enough in the concept to fish for it with repeated jokes? Let him have it. Yeah, Coffeelocking that goes completely unaddressed can get out of hand, but there's plenty of ways for the DM to get a handle on Coffeelocking. The other thing to remember is that as powerful as a full magazine of Fireballs is, by the time the Coffeelock starts really coming into its own, other spellcasters are into six and seventh-level spells, getting Greater Arcana and starting to unlock the Cool Shit that's in their class's tier 3 abilities. The Coffeelock is still stuck at fourth or maybe fifth-level magic and tier 2 midgame stuff.
Is Coffeelocking awkward rules cheese that makes many DMs sigh into their soup? Absolutely it is. But if the player really wants to try it out and can work with the DM to create a story around this character who's learned how to cheat the system and force power out of the Weave that they were never meant to have...well. Maybe there's a plotline worth pursuing in that.
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Thank you! So what I've learned:
1. coffeelock only gets iffy around tier 3
2. They only get iffy if they're given the opportunity to
3. with a bit of cooperation, some interesting mechanics/story can make it fun
Thanks!
Sure thing. Full disclaimer: I've never actually played a Coffeelock. But I do game with a group that likes to pursue and discuss rules cheese, and our considered opinion is that Coffeelock, generally, has a worse reputation than it merits.
The concept is hard-limited by its sorcerer levels - a Coffeelock can never possess more sorcery points than it has sorcerer levels, which puts a hard upper limit on how many spell slots they can create per rest. That means they're going to be a sorcerer first no matter that warlock is generally a better class, and sorcerers don't benefit from short rests at all. In a sense, Coffeelocking is a patch fix for that which allows the sorcerer to benefit from short rests, so hey - a plus!
Because Coffeelocks are required to be primarily sorcerers, their access to Invocations is also quite limited, and one of those invocations is required to be Aspect of the Moon in order for the 'Coffee' part of Coffeelock to work. Most Coffeelocks don't go beyond fifth-level Warlock, if they even bother with that, which means they have either two or three Invocations to play with. One is guaranteed to be Agonizing Blast, another is required to be Aspect of the Moon. That minimizes the amount of nonsense they can get up to with Invocations.
They're also required to be Pact of the Tome, which in turn prevents Chain familiar cheese - and I have played a Chainlock with heavy emphasis on the (flying, invisible, highly intelligent, possessed-of-opposable-thumbs) familiar. That is potentially worse than the Coffeelock
Now, a Coffeelock can become annoying quickly if your campaign trends towards spellcasting enemies, because one of the best uses of the Coffeelock's illicit spell slots is as plentiful fuel for Counterspell. The aforementioned Sorlock 7/5 can have eight additional Counterspells ready to go, which will become infuriating in short order if you're using magical enemies. But the whole interaction is fuzzy and abstract enough that there's tons of room for the DM to inject a little dose of reality into a Coffeelock's brain. It's not like the Polearm Master + Sentinel combo, where each part of the combination is simple, clear, and not really open to any creative DM interpretation. SentiPAMs can't be reasoned with, appeased, or worked around - they will do their thing without regard for your desire to offer interesting tactical challenges and fluid combat to the party.
Coffeelocks? Coffeelocks are only a problem if the DM buys into their supposed invincibility. You're the DM, not the Coffeelock player - he has to negotiate with you for his shinies, not the other way around.
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And that also comes back to the DM's interpretation and allowance on taking short rests. A short rest is defined as a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long. So, does the DM allow the example sorlock to have eight short rests during that 8 hour period? Or does the DM say that it was one extended short rest? Or is there some sort of compromise between these two concepts?
No right or wrong answer per se, but I'd say that this is another example of where the DM retains control of how much they let the sorlock/coffeelock use their short rests and sorcery points to pump up their "daily" spell slots. DM just needs to be upfront with their player(s), so nobody is crying foul later on because you suddenly implement a change after they've taken the levels and abilities to build such a character.
Dealing with a sorlock in one of my current campaigns that I DM, and it hasn't really been an issue for the group. However, I was upfront at the start that my expectations were that they couldn't automatically declare a 2+ hour break equated to multiple short rests. Our house rule is that you need to be able to separate the breaks with enough "non-rest" activity to warrant them being separate short rests versus one extended short rest. Character is still averaging 3-4 short rests between long rests, so they're happy to have the extra points/slots without it becoming a ridiculously high number of extra spell slots.
Yes, I would absolutely rule that... Sorlock or no Sorlock.
I would probably rule something like, "A rest of duration at least 1 hour but less than 8 hours is a single short rest, no matter how many hours it is (1, 2, 3, 5, etc.). A rest of 8 or more hours is a long rest, no matter what you are trying to call it to game the system."
But in general I take a very dim view of people trying to 'game' the system... and I don't really love short rests to begin with. So someone going "I'm gonna take 8 straight short rests because that's better for me than one long rest" is liable to have me ban short rests entirely or move to the "grim" system suggested in DMG rather than accept that they took 8 short rests.
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Why does a coffeelock need aspect of the moon? The rules for 'going without sleep' don't actually give penalties for going without sleep. They give penalties for not taking a long rest, and aspect of the moon has no effect on those penalties.
Assuming the 'light activity' given for Aspect of the Moon is the same as the 'light activity' given for normal resting, you can't even use those eight hours to take eight short rests, because if we assume it's the same as the two hours of light activity in a normal long rest, spellcasting 'or similar adventuring activity' interrupts it.
Better to just play an elf; you really do get an extra four hours that way.
I would posit that a DM who's going to restrict or eliminate short rests should probably make allowances for classes designed to function on short rests. Fighters, monks, and warlocks all key primarily off short rests, and both druids and clerics regain key class feature usage on short rest as well. Wanting to eliminate short rests is all well and good, but at that point the DM probably owes those classes some extra benefits to account for the fact that they're no longer regaining resources during the day that they were built to use-and-regain, rather than use-and-forget. Nipping the worst Coffeelock excesses in the bud is one thing, but denying short rests entirely comes with its own issues.
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The intended game play (which rarely happens) appears to be that the DM should spend about 1/3 of the daily xp budget between short rests, and thus a day consists of one long rest and two short rests. As such, it shouldn't be a balance problem to limit short rests per long rest to something like three or four, or require an hour between short rests, it's just forcing game play to be closer to original intent.
My comment about eliminating short rests was in relation to the abuse of them (i.e., "I'm going to take a long rest but pretend it's 8 short rests because I want to game the system"). My general response as a DM is, if the players are going to abuse something, then I will take it away entirely.
I recognize that D&D is balanced very carefully around both short and long rests and that, realistically, you can't (without heavy modding) just take them out of the game.
Another thing I might do, if it's paired class combos that are the problem, is just say we are not using the multiclass rule option. Or if someone is abusing feats in some way, I would say "in this campaign we aren't doing feats."
My knee-jerk is to leave things wide open for players, but then if I start to see abuse, I lock it down... Usually, I try gentle reasoning first, but if the player demonstrates an adamantine desire to abuse the rules, then I come down like a ton of bricks. Anyone who has played with me as a GM will probably tell you, by the time I lower the boom, it's more than well deserved.
Fortunately my current players are not like this so it has not been an issue for many years.
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I think my inclination would be to rule that a PC can't have more spell slots than what they would normally have for their level. I consider myself a pretty lenient DM overall, but I'm not *that* lenient...
Mind you, I could see myself allowing it for a quick run that isn't meant to be serious, but I think I'd want to run my one-shot where everyone plays a Murderhobo first...
EDIT: Although, in fairness, I could see myself allowing it in a game where everyone's 20th level and supposed to be god-tier anyway, so *shrug*.
Hmmm.
The key to coffeelock is that they substitute a long rest with 8 short rests and never long rest allowing them to build up an infinite number of spell slots over subsequent days of rest.
A short rest is an hour. A long rest 8 hours. A DM is free to rule rests in whatever fashion they like but the rules don't explicitly state that a character can't take consecutive short rests.
Usually, the exhaustion penalty that comes from not taking a long rest is considered to be associated with sleeping or the elf trance state. Warlocks have an invocation that permits them to never sleep. If they don't sleep, how can they get exhausted if they don't take a long rest? (DM call on this one too).Thus the reasoning is that a warlock with the Aspect of the Moon invocation prevents the warlock from getting exhausted from missing long rests indefinitely.
Usually, this build involves Divine Soul sorcerer so that they can heal their own hit points using their vast number of spell slots - which takes away one of the other main reasons for taking a long rest. In addition, if the DM wants to get irritating about exhaustion and long rests then the level 9 divine soul sorcerer just takes Greater Restoration and casts it at the start of every day to get rid of any exhaustion they might accrue.
Builds are typically suggested to be 17 sorc/3 warlock so that they get back 4 sorc points/short rest. This would be 32 points for an 8 hour period where the other characters are long resting.
In a week this is 224 sorcery points that gets cycled into spell slots not including whatever they do with short rests granted during an adventuring day. This is 32 5th level spell slots which can be swapped back to sorcery points for metamagic or to cast as many 5th level spells as the character likes every combat. In addition, they get to restore another 32 points of spell slots for every evening.
This requires a DM to rule favorably on substituting short rests for a long rest (which is not expressly forbidden in the rules and tacitly allowed since the rules just indicate how long each type of rest period is - why can't a character say "I am taking a short rest", "I am taking another short rest" - the rules do not define any time required between short rests - only long rests). It also requires the DM to decide whether missing a long rest causes exhaustion even if the character has no need for sleep (why would a character get exhausted if they don't need to sleep and can keep doing stuff when everyone else sleeps?) OR a level 9 divine soul sorcerer that can cure the exhaustion that might accrue every day.
I've never seen one played since honestly it would not be fair to the other players at the table to allow it. Unlimited spell slots and unlimited sorcery points means that the sorcerer can cast max level spells with metamagic every combat round.
Also, it comes online at level 4 since the sorcerer will get 16 sorcery points every long rest - however, they will only be able to purchase 1st level spell slots since they only have room for two points in their sorcery pool. 3 sorc/2 warlock can purchase 2nd level spell slots. They end up with effectively unlimited 1st level slots at 4th level.
If you take away the ability to substitute long rests with short rests as a source of sorcery points and still require the character to take long rests then the character is no longer a coffeelock - they are just a sorlock doing exactly what the multiclass is intended to be able to do - cycle spell slots into sorcery points and possibly back into spell slots.
Except that one of the features of the sorcerer is that they can purchase spells slots for which they don't have slots if they want to. A 7th level sorcerer has 7 sorcery points which will allow them to purchase a 5th level spell slot if they want to - this is intentional and by design.
This ability is limited by the statement "Any spell slot you create with this feature vanishes when you finish a long rest." Having more spell slots of specific levels than is listed is one of the explicit features of the sorcerer. If they want to spend 2 sorcery points to have 5 first level spell slots then that is the intended ability for the sorcerer. The issue is that these extra spell slots only go away on a long rest and if a sorcerer can avoid taking a long rest they never lose the extra spell slots. (This is the key justification for the coffeelock).
Coffeelocks just combine avoiding long rests with substituting long rests with 8 short rests and the warlock short rest spell slots to generate an unlimited number of spell slots (if the DM allows it - which most don't). Just combining sorcerer and warlock and converting short rest spell slots is a character working as intended - coffeelock specifically depends on avoiding long rests so they don't lose the slots AND substituting long rests with short ones to generate large numbers of sorcery points over time.
Keep in mind that the character only loses these spell slots on a long rest - so RAW, incapacitated, unconscious or even dead might not lose these extra spell slots (though this is entirely up to the DM - but a DM that would allow it in the first place would probably go along).
@David 42: I'm aware. I just think in this scenario it's overly cheesy and would probably rule that it could only be done to replenish spent spell slots, which functionally isn't much different from how it works normally. That and I would *not* let the whole "I had 8 short rests" argument fly...
While true, it is only a very minor nerf to sorcerers to restrict them to recovering slots (it has a slight effect on action economy because creating spell slots costs a bonus action) and you can remove it totally by eliminating the bonus action requirement (you also want to cap sorcery points).
A short rest is at least an hour. I would take thast two mean that 2 hours of downtime is a single short rest not 1. While the rules don't explicity stare you can not take consecutive short rests they do say that short rests can be longer than an hour which I believe implies it.
I would also ruile that if they fulfill the conditions of a long rest they have one. For an Warlock with Aspect of the moon that means 8 hours of downtime. For characters that require sleep and don't get it I would be looking at exhaustion.
I've played sor-lock a bunch of times and I have to say that in practice the build runs into problems that people don't take into account when saying the are over powered on paper.
I didn't find it at all overpowered for a few reasons:
-You miss out on high level spells.
While other casters in your party are throwing fireballs, your extra first level spell slots aren't that impressive. You are always going to be giving up access to the most powerful spells for more weaker spells.
-Spell slot action economy
Even if you have more spell slots, they are at a lower level than if you didn't multiclass. You can still only spend 1 spell slot per turn so your damage output isn't going to be anything crazy. The exception to this are reactions, and having a bunch of slots to cast shield and hellish is very nice, and is where the build shines. What ends up happening is that fights end way before all those saved up slots become useful, and you realize that having high level spells and slots has a huge advantage over lots of lower slots. This is especially true when you consider that tactically the best thing to do in combat is to focus fire one enemy doing as much damage as fast as possible to kill it and get an advantage in action economy.
-Eldritch blast.
Because of the spell slot situation, Eldritch blast + hex is going to be the best damage option almost all the time (other than aoes). This makes all those spell slots you stack up pretty useless. The only thing that really lets you use your spell slots on as a bonus action is 1 concentration spell, like hex, and if your a divine soul, spiritual weapon, and healing word. If you really were power gaming, you wouldn't be doing any of those, you would, hex, hbc, quicken, double eldritch blast, and then bonus action convert slots to points when you were out of sorc points.
Because the quicken+EB is your highest damage output, you are going to want to refill your sorc points with your short rests. To do this you either need to use up most of your coffee lock earned slots, or you'd need to have a pretty high level warlock slot. And if you have higher level warlock slots, that means you don't have high level sorc spells/slots and have fewer sorc points to use before you need to start wasting bonus actions converting slots to keep on using quicken.
That being said, if you just allow a sor-lock rest at any down time/travel, it can be excessive. Especially if they are divine soul and this allows them to just heal everyone up to full after every combat. This includes if you are using exhaustion checks because a sor-lock can have con save proficiency, +2d4 (favored by the gods), and maybe resistance for anther 1d4.
What suck about the bad rep of sorlocks is that this multiclass is a great way of working around having only 1-3 slots as a warlock and pretty much needing at least 1 of them to be used on hex. It's not just a cheesy power-game multiclass, it's also a good way to have a warlock feel like a spell caster instead of a narcoleptic that needs to nap after everything they do in order to not be handicapped.