I've played sorlock from levels 1-12 (and one session of level 18 for a convention)
The other potential advantage to the coffee-lock is that it mitigates the warlock's huge disadvantage if you run into non-standard adventuring days that only last 5 minutes - which are more common than the 6 encounters with 2 rests in between day might suggest.
Lots of places won't follow this rule. Attacking a dungeon with any sort of organization is going to be a series that doesn't allow for rests.
For those days you need to bank some extra spells to have any chance at parity and then you'll just have extra lower level spells.
On normal days (just replenishing) you need to take 2 sets of 2 Short Rests to maintain parity in total spells / day as standard spell caster.
RP wise your party doesn't have much else to benefit form the second hour (although they could do rituals or something maybe, a fighter might get back an extra second wind, a Life cleric could just heal everyone again)
The last 5 adventure days in my current campaign I cast Aid on everyone and waited my hour to get those slots back and then didn't get another SR at all that day.
Well. Not yet. I'm a level 3 Warlock. Some friends and I are playing the Icewind Dale campaign.
During session zero. I made a warlock. The DM is pretty chill. His rules for character creation were:
- We use a modified variant of standard array.
- No unnoficial / homebrew content.
- You have until your second level up, (so, 1st minute into level 3) to break the space time continuum- make retroactive edits to your character. I.e race/ sex/ class/ subclass change. After that. Training wheels kick off and that what you have to build on.
After session zero and everyone else had left, I stayed back to chat about his rules of multiclassing. He said it was allowed but to let him know so we can try to weave it into the narrative.
Further context. I am a part of 3 different DnD groups. I have the worst luck at all 3. One DM has given me permission to fudge my rolls to sneak in a hit every now and again so long as the other players dont catch me. Its actually that bad. And yes, I already take the lucky feat
I was upfront and honest a out my intentions to go sorc/warlock. Because I love the concept of metamagic and like the warlock spell list. (Which is true, it's a build I'd love to play, cofeelock permitted or not)
I then asked him of his opinions on coffeelock. He was familiar and hesitant. I explained that the last thing I wanted to do was overshadow the other players or destroy the difficulty and break the world or narrative.
And that if he'd be gracious enough to let me have fun experimenting with it, we could put a ceiling on it or throttle it or nerf it as required.
I'm looking forward to being able to use metamagic to do things like empowered spell or heightened spell to give me a better chance of sucess / dealing non 1 dealing damage in combat. See what it feels like it will open a window for me to look through to see what its like to be a player that can contribute. I also intend on licking up the metamagic adept featx to pick an additional 2 metamagic options, which I intend on going twinned and quickened.
so its allowed to happen. We both settled on a fair comprimise: the fatigue rules applies unless I made myself no longer require a long rest.
And that I would need to perform a long rest to level up.
Done and paid for. I have my pact of the tome
I have my aspect of the moon invocation.
I'm an Eladrin. And my misty step is usable on a short rest.
My patron is a genie.
I want to convince him to allow me to use bottled respite on a short rest, and then if my bottle breaks, id be a le to use it again immediately after rcieving the replacement because it is not the same vessel. Not for any real ugent reason. It just sounds like a conduit for some creative and fun moments and out of the box thinking.
Not liking my chances on that front, but theres no real harm intended.
Everyone seems so ready to shut down or burn the coffeelock. But here's the thing. You can still only take one action and one bonus action and one reaction in combat.You can still only cast one non cantrip spell per turn.
I'm also the only spellcaster in the party. And also the partys face, meaning I need face spells. I'm also planning to be the party's healer, meaning I need slots to heal other players. And in later levels, haste, which if Im not mistaken, I could totally twincast.
2 spell slots arent going to cut it if I am filling the rile of face, healer and mage. If I want to be able to use metamagic at all.
I understand at certain tables or in the hands of certain players or with care free DMs that allow EVERYTHING because rule of cool, it can be catastrophic but needing to long rest to level I feel is a brilliant compromise. And it has all of us excited to see what journey my character goes through.
I'm also not the most broken build at the table. We have an artificer whose working towards a 33+ AC
Dead simple. Elf. Trance. Sorcerer and Warlock to taste. Nothing else needed. For added humor, GenieLock. The Vessel lets you take a Short Rest once per day in 10 minutes, and you're all safe and secure inside it. You can see and hear everything around you, so you can do the entire 8 hours everyone else is taking a Long Rest in to be on watch while you do your Long Rest in 4 hours.
I'm also not the most broken build at the table. We have an artificer whose working towards a 33+ AC
Detracting from the topic, but I gotta know what this artificer build is!
And to keeping on topic, eventually I will multiclassing my sorcerer into warlock but my race is a Yuan-ti so I won't be a coffeelock. Still excited to see where it goes!
Truth be told, I've always viewed the Coffeelock as more of a thought experiment than an actual viable play build, along with other seemingly OP builds. They all sound great and seem massively over powering on paper, but in an actual context of play, they just don't pan out for a variety of reasons or just seemed to not reach level of what can be calculated on paper. But this is also dependent on the DM's ability, the other players and what the campaign is like. What seems like the most likely scenario, the player who is making the Coffeelock (or other OP design) notices that they could be or possibly could be outshining the rest of the party and just either consciously or subconsciously scales back. I have seen this happen a lot when DMing or playing and there is one player that seems to be doing everything just to start feeling guilty and makes changes. Now of course there are exceptions to this.
But in things like this, you always look at RAW to see if it can be done, but then you have to think of the Social Contract and ask if it should be done. I have ran Adventure League tables where someone has just tanked out a character and at that point, I just tune out and run everything at base because 6 other people at the table aren't have any fun while one is just dominating.
So I’m thinking of playing one in the upcoming campaign. I normally DM. I’ve created a spreadsheet to see if it is worth doing a 9/5 sorcerer warlock split. Burning all of the warlock slots for sorcery points, and then turning those into spell points (for sorcerers I just happen to like spell points more). It only ends up being more spell points then I would normally have per long rest IF I don’t cast all of my spell points during the adventuring day. Otherwise I end up with on less spell point per day with zero sorcery points and zero warlock slots. It just doesn’t seem worth it unless I limit my casting to 50% on day one, 60% on day 2, etc. Not to mention that I would never be using any metamagic. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
Wow, first time I've read, at length, a thread about the "broken" mechanics this build offers. Won't be an issue in anything I ever run, as I would let the players know immediately, the spell slots on your sheet after a full rest is the MAX you will have at any given time a that level. this notion of accumulating a slew of spell slots above what your class setup offers is inane and I simply wouldn't allow it.
Good luck to anyone playing with it, I guess. I can't really say what would drive someone to try and "break" the game by manipulating mechanics the way this seems to allow, but I will say, anyone that driven to "break" something, isn't someone I would want to share a table with, from either side.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Wow, first time I've read, at length, a thread about the "broken" mechanics this build offers. Won't be an issue in anything I ever run, as I would let the players know immediately, the spell slots on your sheet after a full rest is the MAX you will have at any given time a that level. this notion of accumulating a slew of spell slots above what your class setup offers is inane and I simply wouldn't allow it.
Good luck to anyone playing with it, I guess. I can't really say what would drive someone to try and "break" the game by manipulating mechanics the way this seems to allow, but I will say, anyone that driven to "break" something, isn't someone I would want to share a table with, from either side.
It really isn't broken in practice. It's strong but not broken. -Combat can be broken down into action economy, and for coffee locks you trade out high level spells for more low level spells. The more you go into warlock the lower your max level spell slot will be. -You still only get 1 action per round, and now you are going to be using that action to cast a lower level slot, because of pact magic, you don't have higher slots to upcast. -You never get the big spells, and if you are playing with other casters that don't multiclass so heavily you will notice the difference. -As a Sor/Lock, most of the time, optimal damage will be from Eldrich blast + Hex + Quicken, with a possible hexblades curse. This only needs a level 1 slot so having all those extra spells doesn't really do anything for your damage. -The way it works out, if you actually do the math on sorc point conversion and being restricted by maximum, you end up wasting points due to overflow if you want to try to get 5th level slots.
In short, action economy makes it so casting higher level slots is way more impactful than having more lower level slots. You EB+quiken is going to be better damage most of the time. Where the build shines most is in having lots of extra slots utility spells out of combat and casting reactions like counterspells, shields, hellish rebuke etc.
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.
This upsets me in many ways, and in my opinion is a terrible DMing rule. First just let me say that I'm sure you are a fair and good DM with a lot of experience, but the "No rules until I need rules" mentality hurts me. As a DM, you should be setting the rules of the campaign at session zero. Session zero is the talking session before the game begins, introduction of characters so the DM knows who is going to be in their campaign and how to utilize them in the story and connect the players together, and most importantly, for the DM to set the rules.
If at session zero you realize you're going to have a game mechanics abuser, this is the time to shut them down and tell them that this just isn't going to work and that abusing the rules to make something like a Coffeelock Warlock, that isn't in your best interests, be addressed. Not let the game run and when you see abuse, then introduce new rules. You're changing the game and this can affect all the players, not just one.
Though I do typically run games with players that love to discuss the ways rules can be broken, abused, bent, etc I am also thankful that my people also know when rules shouldn't be broken to a certain extent, and we all play fun and great campaigns together. Not that I myself am actually against Coffeelocks because as stated in other posts on here, there are so many good ways to limit the Coffeelock when a DM puts their mind to it.
the biggest problem is the possible exhaustion from not taking a long rest.
There are so many ways around this.
Many races, like warforged or Reborn have a trait that (I'm paraphrasing) reads: "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep my magical means."
The phrasing "Does not require sleep" means you can function without it - It's not required. Meaning it's not essential to your existence. Meaning it can't cause you exhaustion, or any real negative consequence on your character for having them go without it.
But even if you want to play a specific race, Warlocks can also choose an invocation; "Aspect of the moon" that reads functionally the same way. Note: Aspect of the moon is only available to Warlocks that choose the pact of the Tome, so this starts restricting specific options within your warlock class. If this is a dealbreaker though, refer above - Look at what your race is REALLY giving you..
At the end of the day though, there is that cost where that condition MUST be met for a coffeelock to truly take off. Coffeelock is capable of some incredible things. But you MUST have that "Does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep, not even by magical means" feature from somewhere. It's as important as having the "pact magic" and "font of magic" features. Without those 3 things, the Coffeelock doesn't exist or work.
Although all of the above (Aspect, Warforged, etc) does include the (Paraphrasing) "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep by magical means" is also usually met by conditions that must be met during a period of Long Rest so that they meet the requirements to succeed on the Long Rest in an alternative to sleep, not just ignoring sleep.
Now this is the part that always gets me thinking. Number 1, okay, we're not trying to achieve the Long Rest, however they always say that you require to not exert yourself. Doing light reading while sitting in a chair keeping watch for instance. Now in my personal opinion, converting magical energy is something that requires effort, especially in big doses like the coffeelock can achieve. Although you do not require sleep, sleep is not the only thing that exhausts people. Doing hard work does and without rest for days would get the same result. Now fair enough, you're "short" resting in the game, but every hour you're still putting in 5 minutes of hard work converting magical energy. Would that be enough? Circumstantial enough to not allow enough rest to not get exhausted?
Or 2. Look at it from the same sort of perspective. The Aspect, Warforged, Etc etc! don't say that you don't get exhausted because you no longer have to sleep, they offer alternatives to not sleeping while Long Resting. When reading for instance Aspect, it now says you don't need to sleep anymore. Yay! But it also says INSTEAD that "To gain the benefits of a long rest". One of the benefits of a Long Rest is not gaining the Exhaustion level. Therefore, as rules as written, if you don't Long Rest, you don't gain the BENEFITS of the Long Rest. Short Rest all you like, you're not gaining the benefits of a Long Rest.
Although all of the above (Aspect, Warforged, etc) does include the (Paraphrasing) "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep by magical means" is also usually met by conditions that must be met during a period of Long Rest so that they meet the requirements to succeed on the Long Rest in an alternative to sleep, not just ignoring sleep.
Now this is the part that always gets me thinking. Number 1, okay, we're not trying to achieve the Long Rest, however they always say that you require to not exert yourself. Doing light reading while sitting in a chair keeping watch for instance. Now in my personal opinion, converting magical energy is something that requires effort, especially in big doses like the coffeelock can achieve. Although you do not require sleep, sleep is not the only thing that exhausts people. Doing hard work does and without rest for days would get the same result. Now fair enough, you're "short" resting in the game, but every hour you're still putting in 5 minutes of hard work converting magical energy. Would that be enough? Circumstantial enough to not allow enough rest to not get exhausted?
Or 2. Look at it from the same sort of perspective. The Aspect, Warforged, Etc etc! don't say that you don't get exhausted because you no longer have to sleep, they offer alternatives to not sleeping while Long Resting. When reading for instance Aspect, it now says you don't need to sleep anymore. Yay! But it also says INSTEAD that "To gain the benefits of a long rest". One of the benefits of a Long Rest is not gaining the Exhaustion level. Therefore, as rules as written, if you don't Long Rest, you don't gain the BENEFITS of the Long Rest. Short Rest all you like, you're not gaining the benefits of a Long Rest.
Long rests can be interrupted for up to 1 hour without having to restart the long rest. And still obtaining the benefits of a long rest. that's 100 rounds of combat. Which is 100 turns for a player character.
converting sorcery spells to spell slots and vice versa is an action. meaning it happens in less than six seconds. As you have 30 ft of movement, an action AND a bonus action in a 6 second window in combat. meaning they could do this 100 times, have 100 bonus actions and whatever their movement per turn * 100 spare, and not be so exerted and exhausted that they must restart their long rest.
But we're talking about a character build that NEVER long rests here. (When I ran this build, my DM and I came to a comprimise that the whole party required a long rest to level up. This put a soft cieiing on the coffeelock, and only served as a detriment to the party. As I didn't have a sufficient number of spell slots to self heal (given my hit dice are my spell slots as well), heal others in between (and during) encounters, being the party's face and needing to resort to spells when CHA checks were failed (stupid dice) and using magic in combat, as a weapon.
to address your Or 2. point, We are talking about a build that NEVER gains the benefits of Long resting. And, providing they do not require sleep, they would never suffer a penalty. For never long resting.
A coffeelock never replenishes their hit dice, or gets spell slots granted from a class that isn't warlock back. In addition to having to choose a specific race (or pact boon, tome, as described in more detail above) these are costs that must be paid for the coffeelock to function in practice. So I think it's kind of harmful to players when you're talking about causing penalties for not long resting to apply to characters that have sacrificed so many things that they could have chosen and had fun with for "does not require sleep" to mean nothing, if that's what's being implied(?)
Although all of the above (Aspect, Warforged, etc) does include the (Paraphrasing) "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep by magical means" is also usually met by conditions that must be met during a period of Long Rest so that they meet the requirements to succeed on the Long Rest in an alternative to sleep, not just ignoring sleep.
Now this is the part that always gets me thinking. Number 1, okay, we're not trying to achieve the Long Rest, however they always say that you require to not exert yourself. Doing light reading while sitting in a chair keeping watch for instance. Now in my personal opinion, converting magical energy is something that requires effort, especially in big doses like the coffeelock can achieve. Although you do not require sleep, sleep is not the only thing that exhausts people. Doing hard work does and without rest for days would get the same result. Now fair enough, you're "short" resting in the game, but every hour you're still putting in 5 minutes of hard work converting magical energy. Would that be enough? Circumstantial enough to not allow enough rest to not get exhausted?
Or 2. Look at it from the same sort of perspective. The Aspect, Warforged, Etc etc! don't say that you don't get exhausted because you no longer have to sleep, they offer alternatives to not sleeping while Long Resting. When reading for instance Aspect, it now says you don't need to sleep anymore. Yay! But it also says INSTEAD that "To gain the benefits of a long rest". One of the benefits of a Long Rest is not gaining the Exhaustion level. Therefore, as rules as written, if you don't Long Rest, you don't gain the BENEFITS of the Long Rest. Short Rest all you like, you're not gaining the benefits of a Long Rest.
Long rests can be interrupted for up to 1 hour without having to restart the long rest. And still obtaining the benefits of a long rest. that's 100 rounds of combat. Which is 100 turns for a player character.
to address your Or 2. point, We are talking about a build that NEVER gains the benefits of Long resting. And, providing they do not require sleep, they would never suffer a penalty. For never long resting.
A coffeelock never replenishes their hit dice, or gets spell slots granted from a class that isn't warlock back. In addition to having to choose a specific race (or pact boon, tome, as described in more detail above) these are costs that must be paid for the coffeelock to function in practice. So I think it's kind of harmful to players when you're talking about causing penalties for not long resting to apply to characters that have sacrificed so many things that they could have chosen and had fun with for "does not require sleep" to mean nothing, if that's what's being implied(?)
I agree with everything else which is why I haven't quoted it, but that's almost exactly what I'm saying. Because no where does it say in the rules that "sleeping" is the defining feature of a Long Rest. Requiring or not requiring to do so is not the thing that gives you the benefit of the Long Rest. As Written, the only thing that provides you the benefit of Long Resting is performing the Long Rest in question, regardless of what you do during it. If you don't Long Rest, you can't gain the benefits of Long Resting, which in short will (eventually) give you exhaustion.
The part that annoys me most is that even if this were true, a Coffeelock can be built to negate it. The Celestial and Divine Soul subclasses to Sorc and Lock can negate this. You can learn Greater Restoration and Healing all to yourself without the need of outside aid.
However I completely disagree with what you said with Long Resting at the beginning, as it states clearly that if a Long Rest is interrupted for any reason, it must start over, whether an hour or 7 is past during the rest.
However I completely disagree with what you said with Long Resting at the beginning, as it states clearly that if a Long Rest is interrupted for any reason, it must start over, whether an hour or 7 is past during the rest.
Note quite true...
If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity — at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity — the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
Long rests can be interrupted for up to 1 hour without having to restart the long rest.
I interpret the "at least one hour" to only apply to walking -- any amount of fighting or casting spells interrupts. Because, well, no-one ever spends an hour fighting or casting spells, so the restriction is meaningless if you assume one hour applies to all of those, and the rule as written can be interpreted either way, English does not have particularly strong associative rules.
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I've played sorlock from levels 1-12 (and one session of level 18 for a convention)
The other potential advantage to the coffee-lock is that it mitigates the warlock's huge disadvantage if you run into non-standard adventuring days that only last 5 minutes - which are more common than the 6 encounters with 2 rests in between day might suggest.
Lots of places won't follow this rule. Attacking a dungeon with any sort of organization is going to be a series that doesn't allow for rests.
For those days you need to bank some extra spells to have any chance at parity and then you'll just have extra lower level spells.
On normal days (just replenishing) you need to take 2 sets of 2 Short Rests to maintain parity in total spells / day as standard spell caster.
RP wise your party doesn't have much else to benefit form the second hour (although they could do rituals or something maybe, a fighter might get back an extra second wind, a Life cleric could just heal everyone again)
The last 5 adventure days in my current campaign I cast Aid on everyone and waited my hour to get those slots back and then didn't get another SR at all that day.
Yes. Coffeelock here.
Well. Not yet. I'm a level 3 Warlock. Some friends and I are playing the Icewind Dale campaign.
During session zero. I made a warlock. The DM is pretty chill. His rules for character creation were:
- We use a modified variant of standard array.
- No unnoficial / homebrew content.
- You have until your second level up, (so, 1st minute into level 3) to break the space time continuum- make retroactive edits to your character. I.e race/ sex/ class/ subclass change. After that. Training wheels kick off and that what you have to build on.
After session zero and everyone else had left, I stayed back to chat about his rules of multiclassing. He said it was allowed but to let him know so we can try to weave it into the narrative.
Further context. I am a part of 3 different DnD groups. I have the worst luck at all 3. One DM has given me permission to fudge my rolls to sneak in a hit every now and again so long as the other players dont catch me. Its actually that bad. And yes, I already take the lucky feat
I was upfront and honest a out my intentions to go sorc/warlock. Because I love the concept of metamagic and like the warlock spell list. (Which is true, it's a build I'd love to play, cofeelock permitted or not)
I then asked him of his opinions on coffeelock. He was familiar and hesitant. I explained that the last thing I wanted to do was overshadow the other players or destroy the difficulty and break the world or narrative.
And that if he'd be gracious enough to let me have fun experimenting with it, we could put a ceiling on it or throttle it or nerf it as required.
I'm looking forward to being able to use metamagic to do things like empowered spell or heightened spell to give me a better chance of sucess / dealing non 1 dealing damage in combat. See what it feels like it will open a window for me to look through to see what its like to be a player that can contribute. I also intend on licking up the metamagic adept featx to pick an additional 2 metamagic options, which I intend on going twinned and quickened.
so its allowed to happen. We both settled on a fair comprimise: the fatigue rules applies unless I made myself no longer require a long rest.
And that I would need to perform a long rest to level up.
Done and paid for. I have my pact of the tome
I have my aspect of the moon invocation.
I'm an Eladrin. And my misty step is usable on a short rest.
My patron is a genie.
I want to convince him to allow me to use bottled respite on a short rest, and then if my bottle breaks, id be a le to use it again immediately after rcieving the replacement because it is not the same vessel. Not for any real ugent reason. It just sounds like a conduit for some creative and fun moments and out of the box thinking.
Not liking my chances on that front, but theres no real harm intended.
Everyone seems so ready to shut down or burn the coffeelock. But here's the thing. You can still only take one action and one bonus action and one reaction in combat.You can still only cast one non cantrip spell per turn.
I'm also the only spellcaster in the party. And also the partys face, meaning I need face spells. I'm also planning to be the party's healer, meaning I need slots to heal other players. And in later levels, haste, which if Im not mistaken, I could totally twincast.
2 spell slots arent going to cut it if I am filling the rile of face, healer and mage. If I want to be able to use metamagic at all.
I understand at certain tables or in the hands of certain players or with care free DMs that allow EVERYTHING because rule of cool, it can be catastrophic but needing to long rest to level I feel is a brilliant compromise. And it has all of us excited to see what journey my character goes through.
I'm also not the most broken build at the table. We have an artificer whose working towards a 33+ AC
Easy coffeelock upgrade; play as a reborn or warforged then get magic initiate (cleric) for cure wounds or good berry
[roll]7d6[/roll]
Every post these dice roll increasing my chances of winning the yahtzee thread (I wish (wait not the twist the wish threa-!))
Drummer Generated Title
After having been invited to include both here, I now combine the "PM me CHEESE 🧀 and tomato into PM me "PIZZA🍕"
Dead simple. Elf. Trance. Sorcerer and Warlock to taste. Nothing else needed. For added humor, GenieLock. The Vessel lets you take a Short Rest once per day in 10 minutes, and you're all safe and secure inside it. You can see and hear everything around you, so you can do the entire 8 hours everyone else is taking a Long Rest in to be on watch while you do your Long Rest in 4 hours.
<Insert clever signature here>
Don’t you only need pact magic and font of magic to get it going?
The invocation that makes sure you don't need to sleep is important for coffee locks otherwise they still need to rest or they will die of fatigue.
The rest of the shenanigans aren't as op as they are portrayed to be.
Detracting from the topic, but I gotta know what this artificer build is!
And to keeping on topic, eventually I will multiclassing my sorcerer into warlock but my race is a Yuan-ti so I won't be a coffeelock. Still excited to see where it goes!
Truth be told, I've always viewed the Coffeelock as more of a thought experiment than an actual viable play build, along with other seemingly OP builds. They all sound great and seem massively over powering on paper, but in an actual context of play, they just don't pan out for a variety of reasons or just seemed to not reach level of what can be calculated on paper. But this is also dependent on the DM's ability, the other players and what the campaign is like. What seems like the most likely scenario, the player who is making the Coffeelock (or other OP design) notices that they could be or possibly could be outshining the rest of the party and just either consciously or subconsciously scales back. I have seen this happen a lot when DMing or playing and there is one player that seems to be doing everything just to start feeling guilty and makes changes. Now of course there are exceptions to this.
But in things like this, you always look at RAW to see if it can be done, but then you have to think of the Social Contract and ask if it should be done. I have ran Adventure League tables where someone has just tanked out a character and at that point, I just tune out and run everything at base because 6 other people at the table aren't have any fun while one is just dominating.
So I’m thinking of playing one in the upcoming campaign. I normally DM. I’ve created a spreadsheet to see if it is worth doing a 9/5 sorcerer warlock split. Burning all of the warlock slots for sorcery points, and then turning those into spell points (for sorcerers I just happen to like spell points more). It only ends up being more spell points then I would normally have per long rest IF I don’t cast all of my spell points during the adventuring day. Otherwise I end up with on less spell point per day with zero sorcery points and zero warlock slots. It just doesn’t seem worth it unless I limit my casting to 50% on day one, 60% on day 2, etc. Not to mention that I would never be using any metamagic. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
Wow, first time I've read, at length, a thread about the "broken" mechanics this build offers. Won't be an issue in anything I ever run, as I would let the players know immediately, the spell slots on your sheet after a full rest is the MAX you will have at any given time a that level. this notion of accumulating a slew of spell slots above what your class setup offers is inane and I simply wouldn't allow it.
Good luck to anyone playing with it, I guess. I can't really say what would drive someone to try and "break" the game by manipulating mechanics the way this seems to allow, but I will say, anyone that driven to "break" something, isn't someone I would want to share a table with, from either side.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It really isn't broken in practice. It's strong but not broken.
-Combat can be broken down into action economy, and for coffee locks you trade out high level spells for more low level spells. The more you go into warlock the lower your max level spell slot will be.
-You still only get 1 action per round, and now you are going to be using that action to cast a lower level slot, because of pact magic, you don't have higher slots to upcast.
-You never get the big spells, and if you are playing with other casters that don't multiclass so heavily you will notice the difference.
-As a Sor/Lock, most of the time, optimal damage will be from Eldrich blast + Hex + Quicken, with a possible hexblades curse. This only needs a level 1 slot so having all those extra spells doesn't really do anything for your damage.
-The way it works out, if you actually do the math on sorc point conversion and being restricted by maximum, you end up wasting points due to overflow if you want to try to get 5th level slots.
In short, action economy makes it so casting higher level slots is way more impactful than having more lower level slots. You EB+quiken is going to be better damage most of the time. Where the build shines most is in having lots of extra slots utility spells out of combat and casting reactions like counterspells, shields, hellish rebuke etc.
the biggest problem is the possible exhaustion from not taking a long rest.
This upsets me in many ways, and in my opinion is a terrible DMing rule.
First just let me say that I'm sure you are a fair and good DM with a lot of experience, but the "No rules until I need rules" mentality hurts me. As a DM, you should be setting the rules of the campaign at session zero. Session zero is the talking session before the game begins, introduction of characters so the DM knows who is going to be in their campaign and how to utilize them in the story and connect the players together, and most importantly, for the DM to set the rules.
If at session zero you realize you're going to have a game mechanics abuser, this is the time to shut them down and tell them that this just isn't going to work and that abusing the rules to make something like a Coffeelock Warlock, that isn't in your best interests, be addressed. Not let the game run and when you see abuse, then introduce new rules. You're changing the game and this can affect all the players, not just one.
Though I do typically run games with players that love to discuss the ways rules can be broken, abused, bent, etc I am also thankful that my people also know when rules shouldn't be broken to a certain extent, and we all play fun and great campaigns together. Not that I myself am actually against Coffeelocks because as stated in other posts on here, there are so many good ways to limit the Coffeelock when a DM puts their mind to it.
There are so many ways around this.
Many races, like warforged or Reborn have a trait that (I'm paraphrasing) reads: "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep my magical means."
The phrasing "Does not require sleep" means you can function without it - It's not required.
Meaning it's not essential to your existence.
Meaning it can't cause you exhaustion, or any real negative consequence on your character for having them go without it.
But even if you want to play a specific race, Warlocks can also choose an invocation; "Aspect of the moon" that reads functionally the same way.
Note: Aspect of the moon is only available to Warlocks that choose the pact of the Tome, so this starts restricting specific options within your warlock class. If this is a dealbreaker though, refer above - Look at what your race is REALLY giving you..
At the end of the day though, there is that cost where that condition MUST be met for a coffeelock to truly take off. Coffeelock is capable of some incredible things. But you MUST have that "Does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep, not even by magical means" feature from somewhere. It's as important as having the "pact magic" and "font of magic" features.
Without those 3 things, the Coffeelock doesn't exist or work.
Although all of the above (Aspect, Warforged, etc) does include the (Paraphrasing) "does not require sleep and cannot be put to sleep by magical means" is also usually met by conditions that must be met during a period of Long Rest so that they meet the requirements to succeed on the Long Rest in an alternative to sleep, not just ignoring sleep.
Now this is the part that always gets me thinking. Number 1, okay, we're not trying to achieve the Long Rest, however they always say that you require to not exert yourself. Doing light reading while sitting in a chair keeping watch for instance. Now in my personal opinion, converting magical energy is something that requires effort, especially in big doses like the coffeelock can achieve. Although you do not require sleep, sleep is not the only thing that exhausts people. Doing hard work does and without rest for days would get the same result. Now fair enough, you're "short" resting in the game, but every hour you're still putting in 5 minutes of hard work converting magical energy. Would that be enough? Circumstantial enough to not allow enough rest to not get exhausted?
Or 2. Look at it from the same sort of perspective. The Aspect, Warforged, Etc etc! don't say that you don't get exhausted because you no longer have to sleep, they offer alternatives to not sleeping while Long Resting. When reading for instance Aspect, it now says you don't need to sleep anymore. Yay! But it also says INSTEAD that "To gain the benefits of a long rest". One of the benefits of a Long Rest is not gaining the Exhaustion level. Therefore, as rules as written, if you don't Long Rest, you don't gain the BENEFITS of the Long Rest. Short Rest all you like, you're not gaining the benefits of a Long Rest.
Long rests can be interrupted for up to 1 hour without having to restart the long rest. And still obtaining the benefits of a long rest. that's 100 rounds of combat. Which is 100 turns for a player character.
converting sorcery spells to spell slots and vice versa is an action. meaning it happens in less than six seconds. As you have 30 ft of movement, an action AND a bonus action in a 6 second window in combat. meaning they could do this 100 times, have 100 bonus actions and whatever their movement per turn * 100 spare, and not be so exerted and exhausted that they must restart their long rest.
But we're talking about a character build that NEVER long rests here. (When I ran this build, my DM and I came to a comprimise that the whole party required a long rest to level up. This put a soft cieiing on the coffeelock, and only served as a detriment to the party. As I didn't have a sufficient number of spell slots to self heal (given my hit dice are my spell slots as well), heal others in between (and during) encounters, being the party's face and needing to resort to spells when CHA checks were failed (stupid dice) and using magic in combat, as a weapon.
to address your Or 2. point, We are talking about a build that NEVER gains the benefits of Long resting. And, providing they do not require sleep, they would never suffer a penalty. For never long resting.
A coffeelock never replenishes their hit dice, or gets spell slots granted from a class that isn't warlock back. In addition to having to choose a specific race (or pact boon, tome, as described in more detail above) these are costs that must be paid for the coffeelock to function in practice. So I think it's kind of harmful to players when you're talking about causing penalties for not long resting to apply to characters that have sacrificed so many things that they could have chosen and had fun with for "does not require sleep" to mean nothing, if that's what's being implied(?)
I agree with everything else which is why I haven't quoted it, but that's almost exactly what I'm saying. Because no where does it say in the rules that "sleeping" is the defining feature of a Long Rest. Requiring or not requiring to do so is not the thing that gives you the benefit of the Long Rest. As Written, the only thing that provides you the benefit of Long Resting is performing the Long Rest in question, regardless of what you do during it. If you don't Long Rest, you can't gain the benefits of Long Resting, which in short will (eventually) give you exhaustion.
The part that annoys me most is that even if this were true, a Coffeelock can be built to negate it. The Celestial and Divine Soul subclasses to Sorc and Lock can negate this. You can learn Greater Restoration and Healing all to yourself without the need of outside aid.
However I completely disagree with what you said with Long Resting at the beginning, as it states clearly that if a Long Rest is interrupted for any reason, it must start over, whether an hour or 7 is past during the rest.
You rule it how you like, I'm just quoting sage advice and RAW :)
Note quite true...
I interpret the "at least one hour" to only apply to walking -- any amount of fighting or casting spells interrupts. Because, well, no-one ever spends an hour fighting or casting spells, so the restriction is meaningless if you assume one hour applies to all of those, and the rule as written can be interpreted either way, English does not have particularly strong associative rules.