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!"
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest. The DM can also rule that short rests take place for the entire party as well to put the coffelock again in check. If you want to make this somewhat usable, have a Bard cast catnap on you or carry a few scrolls with catnap when you really need to recharge.
Sidebar, the entire short rest mechanic for Warlocks to regain their slots due their reduced number, absolutely horrible gameplay design. Next expecting players to be able to take an hours rest in a populated dungeon with guards roaming or creatures looking for food, again bad idea. Short rests should be moved to 10 minutes (its what I did to have make any form of logical sense) and there is still a normal chance of an encounter depending on what the players do to protect themselves.
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest.
A good DM will have as many random encounters planned as make sense, and there is no rule limiting short rests per long rest.
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest.
A good DM will have as many random encounters planned as make sense, and there is no rule limiting short rests per long rest.
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.
The concept comes from an adventuring day for XP budget. If you aren't familiar with it, look it over.
To run the character listed it sounds like they'd want to take an excessive amount of short rests. IF you want to run a game where players take short rests after every fight, good for you. It lessens the game by removing fear. If players are always at full hit points, always can take a rest, never have to worry about death, which can happen with the short rest mechanic being abused, then you do you and I'll do me.
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest.
A good DM will have as many random encounters planned as make sense, and there is no rule limiting short rests per long rest.
It goes by the adventuring day concept.
The adventuring day concept says how many short rests are expected, but there is no rule saying that's how many are allowed. In practice the entire 'adventuring day' is possibly the most-ignored concept in 5e, not even WotC published adventures use it.
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest.
A good DM will have as many random encounters planned as make sense, and there is no rule limiting short rests per long rest.
It goes by the adventuring day concept.
The adventuring day concept says how many short rests are expected, but there is no rule saying that's how many are allowed. In practice the entire 'adventuring day' is possibly the most-ignored concept in 5e, not even WotC published adventures use it.
In your opinion, which is great for you. But for everyone else, we don't go of your opinion. For those of us using D&D Beyond Encounter Tracker, the Adventure Day budget is available for everyone to use. So yes, its pretty common to use.
Again, if you want to nerf encounters and go heavy on short rests, long rests, divine intervention whatever you do to make your players happy, then I say go for it. They must like it if they stay with you as a DM. I know me personally, if I'm playing with a smurf DM, I'm polite in the campaign, but I leave afterwards because its a waste of my time. Every DM is different and every audience to the DM is different. It sounds like you might be a wee bit more on the smurfy side than I am. I take it you roll behind a screen, so you can do what you want with the rolls for the "story" when need to be to keep the players from dying, let the players roll the death roll so they can metagame etc? No thank you if that's the case.
Couldn't agree more, Bodanger. Lost my long post, rewriting. Currently a Wood Elf with Strength 8 in Adamantine Plate (so, 25' movement) Clockwork Sorcerer 8, Order Cleric 1, Hexblade 2. DM granted my weekly request for Necklace of Prayer Beads so I cure my exhaustion and take *full days* of short rests during downtime. I have buttloads of spell slots. DM said not available of my highest spell slot, fine, I haven't pushed back on that. Level 5 is the highest level coffeelock MS will ever be able to stock up on. I always use my reaction each turn. I don't outshine the other players. More broken combo is Hexblade 1 (or 2?) Paladin x so you can constantly smite with your spell slots whenever you Crit. I'm happy, very happy with my character but if I was Sorcerer 11 I would've had Wall of Force ages ago and now be using Mass Suggestion in big fights. Coffeelock is cheesy seeming but not broken in my experience, either.
Couldn't agree more, Bodanger. Lost my long post, rewriting. Currently a Wood Elf with Strength 8 in Adamantine Plate (so, 25' movement) Clockwork Sorcerer 8, Order Cleric 1, Hexblade 2. DM granted my weekly request for Necklace of Prayer Beads so I cure my exhaustion and take *full days* of short rests during downtime. I have buttloads of spell slots. DM said not available of my highest spell slot, fine, I haven't pushed back on that. Level 5 is the highest level coffeelock MS will ever be able to stock up on. I always use my reaction each turn. I don't outshine the other players. More broken combo is Hexblade 1 (or 2?) Paladin x so you can constantly smite with your spell slots whenever you Crit. I'm happy, very happy with my character but if I was Sorcerer 11 I would've had Wall of Force ages ago and now be using Mass Suggestion in big fights. Coffeelock is cheesy seeming but not broken in my experience, either.
Are you doing coffee lock +order cleric with silvery barb allowed? Because I actually think that combo in particular is probably worth banning.
Yes 👍, yes I am. Hmm. Silvery Barbs is a lot for other classes but Order Cleric adds an immediate attack with it for your ally's reaction. In my defense, I was a Coffeelock level 1 Order domain Cleric before Silvery Barbs was published. I was following Treantmonk's Do-it-all God Mage video plus adding Coffeelock.
Yes 👍, yes I am. Hmm. Silvery Barbs is a lot for other classes but Order Cleric adds an immediate attack with it for your ally's reaction. In my defense, I was a Coffeelock level 1 Order domain Cleric before Silvery Barbs was published. I was following Treantmonk's Do-it-all God Mage video plus adding Coffeelock.
Yeah that combo is probably as overpowered as they come imo, especially if you have a rogue to give an extra sneak attack to. If people debate on if silvery barbs is overpowered, the ability to have it also grant an attack and have as many uses as sorc points allow would definitely be the thing to put it over the top.
Sorcerer lets you just stack up 1st level slots so you can cast Silvery every round, and warlock makes it so you can still do good baseline damage with just your EB/hex.
I kind of like the build just because you'd be able to pick almost all utility spells and get to be really good at problem solving out of combat.
Coffee locks are similar to phone plans that allow your data to roll over. The issue occurs when you let the coffee lock chain short rests to produce a bank of spell slots, with some magical assistance they could potentially never take a long rest and so those slots never expire. Its probably very similar to the optional spell points rule that gives allot of flexibility to cast allot of low level spells.
I keep my party capped at 4 so some optimization is possible. Then this came around. And oh yeah, I dm for little girls. My 11yr daughter is an archfey warlock with Tasha/Zebina as her patron. At 5 she wanted wild magic. They are all 10 now and finished the bonus WBtWL missions. The druid just got greater resto and my daughter just figured out she no longer has to sleep. She has the Metamagic Adept Feat already, so she can hold up to 7 points and produce 6 points with her 2 lvl 3 pact slots, 8 times per long rest. She just has to stay relatively uninjured. For their next campaign I’m counting her lock as two pc’s to bring the groups number to 5 for balancing
My 11yr daughter lucked into one when she went from archfey warlock to wild magic sorcerer during Wild Beyond the Witchlight. They are going nuts now. This weekend the girl’s druid just got level 5 spells and they now have greater restoration on demand
What I don't understand is that all the extra slots made by this built can only be used once. They don't refresh on a short rest (as they are sorcerer slots) and are removed on a long one. Say you are sorc 3/war 3 you convert a 2nd lvl pact magic into 2 points then turn that into a 1st lvl sorc slot that can be used once then never again. You use a 2nd lvl slot to cast a 1st lvl spell at 1st lvl and waste 2 bonus actions. This seems like a pretty bad combo - or have I missed something obvious?
What I don't understand is that all the extra slots made by this built can only be used once. They don't refresh on a short rest (as they are sorcerer slots) and are removed on a long one. Say you are sorc 3/war 3 you convert a 2nd lvl pact magic into 2 points then turn that into a 1st lvl sorc slot that can be used once then never again. You use a 2nd lvl slot to cast a 1st lvl spell at 1st lvl and waste 2 bonus actions. This seems like a pretty bad combo - or have I missed something obvious?
Yes you have missed something.
If the party rest somewhere for a week, then the coffeelock can stay up for several hours each night doing short rests, and thus gaining one additional slot/point every hour that they aren't adventuring.
What I don't understand is that all the extra slots made by this built can only be used once. They don't refresh on a short rest (as they are sorcerer slots) and are removed on a long one. Say you are sorc 3/war 3 you convert a 2nd lvl pact magic into 2 points then turn that into a 1st lvl sorc slot that can be used once then never again. You use a 2nd lvl slot to cast a 1st lvl spell at 1st lvl and waste 2 bonus actions. This seems like a pretty bad combo - or have I missed something obvious?
Yes you have missed something.
If the party rest somewhere for a week, then the coffeelock can stay up for several hours each night doing short rests, and thus gaining one additional slot/point every hour that they aren't adventuring.
In addition to this, the effectiveness of the coffee lock increases significantly with level.
The key to a coffeelock is that they never take a long rest. They only take short rests. Every 8 hour long rest becomes 8 short rests for the coffeelock. One of the most common picks for a coffeelock is the divine soul sorcerer since they can restore any missing hit points with healing spells rather than hit dice. A week of downtime becomes 56 short rests for the coffeelock.
A fifth level spell slot costs 7 sorcery points. A level 10 character, 7 divine soul sorcerer/3 warlock (though 2 warlock works fine - it just gains 2 sorcery points/short rest instead of 4).
A sorcerer can have a maximum of 7 sorcery points. Every 2 hours of short rests a sorcerer would get 8 sorcery points from converting the short rest warlock spell slots to sorcery points, sufficient to purchase a 5th level spell slot. After a week, they would have 28x 5th level spell slots. They could use a 5th level spell slot, every turn of every combat and not run out for quite a while - and every day they would get another 4 x 5th level slots back. Instead of 28x 5th level slots they could get 28x3rd level slots AND 28 x 1st level slots. With 2 weeks of downtime they could have 28 x 5th, 28 x 3rd and 28x 1st. They could also convert those spell slots back to sorcery points if they wanted to use metamagic or happened to want any 4th or 2nd level spell slots but the sorcerer is likely better off upcasting.
However, making this work requires the DM to go along with the rules interpretation that allows it to work.
- a DM can decide that a long rest is not the same as 8x short rests - if your character spends a long time resting it is a long rest. The DM could also decide that if you don't get a long rest due to the character taking being active and preventing the long rest then they get one short rest instead. Nothing in the rules says that extended periods of rest can be broken up into short rests.
- a DM can rule that a character that doesn't take a long rest acquires a level of exhaustion. This is in Xanathar's annd works fine until the divine soul sorcerer is level 9 and can cast greater restoration every day using one of their 5th level slots - this removes the exhaustion.
- there is a warlock invocation that removes the need for sleep. Some folks interpret this as not needing a long rest since sleeping/trance is an integral part of a long rest. However, sleeping and a long rest are not necessarily the same so a DM can require a character who doesn't need to sleep to still require a long rest.
Anyway, with favorable rulings a coffeelock has an infinite number of spell slots to use (limited only by how much downtime they can use to accumulate slots).
OK this is one thing I can agree with.
The English language sucks. xP
An even more optimized way: a good alignment divine soul sorcerer gets cure wounds for free.
A good DM will have so many random encounters planned for an hour rest that it will not be worth trying. Plus you can only have 2 short rests per long rest. The DM can also rule that short rests take place for the entire party as well to put the coffelock again in check. If you want to make this somewhat usable, have a Bard cast catnap on you or carry a few scrolls with catnap when you really need to recharge.
Sidebar, the entire short rest mechanic for Warlocks to regain their slots due their reduced number, absolutely horrible gameplay design. Next expecting players to be able to take an hours rest in a populated dungeon with guards roaming or creatures looking for food, again bad idea. Short rests should be moved to 10 minutes (its what I did to have make any form of logical sense) and there is still a normal chance of an encounter depending on what the players do to protect themselves.
A good DM will have as many random encounters planned as make sense, and there is no rule limiting short rests per long rest.
It goes by the adventuring day concept.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/creating-adventures#ShortRests
Short Rests
In general, over the course of a full adventuring day, the party will likely need to take two short rests, about one-third and two-thirds of the way through the day.
The concept comes from an adventuring day for XP budget. If you aren't familiar with it, look it over.
To run the character listed it sounds like they'd want to take an excessive amount of short rests. IF you want to run a game where players take short rests after every fight, good for you. It lessens the game by removing fear. If players are always at full hit points, always can take a rest, never have to worry about death, which can happen with the short rest mechanic being abused, then you do you and I'll do me.
The adventuring day concept says how many short rests are expected, but there is no rule saying that's how many are allowed. In practice the entire 'adventuring day' is possibly the most-ignored concept in 5e, not even WotC published adventures use it.
In your opinion, which is great for you. But for everyone else, we don't go of your opinion. For those of us using D&D Beyond Encounter Tracker, the Adventure Day budget is available for everyone to use. So yes, its pretty common to use.
Again, if you want to nerf encounters and go heavy on short rests, long rests, divine intervention whatever you do to make your players happy, then I say go for it. They must like it if they stay with you as a DM. I know me personally, if I'm playing with a smurf DM, I'm polite in the campaign, but I leave afterwards because its a waste of my time. Every DM is different and every audience to the DM is different. It sounds like you might be a wee bit more on the smurfy side than I am. I take it you roll behind a screen, so you can do what you want with the rolls for the "story" when need to be to keep the players from dying, let the players roll the death roll so they can metagame etc? No thank you if that's the case.
Couldn't agree more, Bodanger. Lost my long post, rewriting. Currently a Wood Elf with Strength 8 in Adamantine Plate (so, 25' movement) Clockwork Sorcerer 8, Order Cleric 1, Hexblade 2. DM granted my weekly request for Necklace of Prayer Beads so I cure my exhaustion and take *full days* of short rests during downtime. I have buttloads of spell slots. DM said not available of my highest spell slot, fine, I haven't pushed back on that. Level 5 is the highest level coffeelock MS will ever be able to stock up on. I always use my reaction each turn. I don't outshine the other players. More broken combo is Hexblade 1 (or 2?) Paladin x so you can constantly smite with your spell slots whenever you Crit. I'm happy, very happy with my character but if I was Sorcerer 11 I would've had Wall of Force ages ago and now be using Mass Suggestion in big fights. Coffeelock is cheesy seeming but not broken in my experience, either.
Are you doing coffee lock +order cleric with silvery barb allowed? Because I actually think that combo in particular is probably worth banning.
Yes 👍, yes I am. Hmm. Silvery Barbs is a lot for other classes but Order Cleric adds an immediate attack with it for your ally's reaction. In my defense, I was a Coffeelock level 1 Order domain Cleric before Silvery Barbs was published. I was following Treantmonk's Do-it-all God Mage video plus adding Coffeelock.
Yeah that combo is probably as overpowered as they come imo, especially if you have a rogue to give an extra sneak attack to. If people debate on if silvery barbs is overpowered, the ability to have it also grant an attack and have as many uses as sorc points allow would definitely be the thing to put it over the top.
Sorcerer lets you just stack up 1st level slots so you can cast Silvery every round, and warlock makes it so you can still do good baseline damage with just your EB/hex.
I kind of like the build just because you'd be able to pick almost all utility spells and get to be really good at problem solving out of combat.
That seems like a "suddenly, ice mephits in every encounter" type combo. Fog cloud shuts down an amazing number of tactics.
Coffee locks are similar to phone plans that allow your data to roll over. The issue occurs when you let the coffee lock chain short rests to produce a bank of spell slots, with some magical assistance they could potentially never take a long rest and so those slots never expire. Its probably very similar to the optional spell points rule that gives allot of flexibility to cast allot of low level spells.
I keep my party capped at 4 so some optimization is possible. Then this came around. And oh yeah, I dm for little girls.
My 11yr daughter is an archfey warlock with Tasha/Zebina as her patron. At 5 she wanted wild magic. They are all 10 now and finished the bonus WBtWL missions. The druid just got greater resto and my daughter just figured out she no longer has to sleep. She has the Metamagic Adept Feat already, so she can hold up to 7 points and produce 6 points with her 2 lvl 3 pact slots, 8 times per long rest. She just has to stay relatively uninjured.
For their next campaign I’m counting her lock as two pc’s to bring the groups number to 5 for balancing
My 11yr daughter lucked into one when she went from archfey warlock to wild magic sorcerer during Wild Beyond the Witchlight. They are going nuts now. This weekend the girl’s druid just got level 5 spells and they now have greater restoration on demand
What I don't understand is that all the extra slots made by this built can only be used once. They don't refresh on a short rest (as they are sorcerer slots) and are removed on a long one. Say you are sorc 3/war 3 you convert a 2nd lvl pact magic into 2 points then turn that into a 1st lvl sorc slot that can be used once then never again. You use a 2nd lvl slot to cast a 1st lvl spell at 1st lvl and waste 2 bonus actions. This seems like a pretty bad combo - or have I missed something obvious?
Yes you have missed something.
If the party rest somewhere for a week, then the coffeelock can stay up for several hours each night doing short rests, and thus gaining one additional slot/point every hour that they aren't adventuring.
In addition to this, the effectiveness of the coffee lock increases significantly with level.
The key to a coffeelock is that they never take a long rest. They only take short rests. Every 8 hour long rest becomes 8 short rests for the coffeelock. One of the most common picks for a coffeelock is the divine soul sorcerer since they can restore any missing hit points with healing spells rather than hit dice. A week of downtime becomes 56 short rests for the coffeelock.
A fifth level spell slot costs 7 sorcery points. A level 10 character, 7 divine soul sorcerer/3 warlock (though 2 warlock works fine - it just gains 2 sorcery points/short rest instead of 4).
A sorcerer can have a maximum of 7 sorcery points. Every 2 hours of short rests a sorcerer would get 8 sorcery points from converting the short rest warlock spell slots to sorcery points, sufficient to purchase a 5th level spell slot. After a week, they would have 28x 5th level spell slots. They could use a 5th level spell slot, every turn of every combat and not run out for quite a while - and every day they would get another 4 x 5th level slots back. Instead of 28x 5th level slots they could get 28x3rd level slots AND 28 x 1st level slots. With 2 weeks of downtime they could have 28 x 5th, 28 x 3rd and 28x 1st. They could also convert those spell slots back to sorcery points if they wanted to use metamagic or happened to want any 4th or 2nd level spell slots but the sorcerer is likely better off upcasting.
However, making this work requires the DM to go along with the rules interpretation that allows it to work.
- a DM can decide that a long rest is not the same as 8x short rests - if your character spends a long time resting it is a long rest. The DM could also decide that if you don't get a long rest due to the character taking being active and preventing the long rest then they get one short rest instead. Nothing in the rules says that extended periods of rest can be broken up into short rests.
- a DM can rule that a character that doesn't take a long rest acquires a level of exhaustion. This is in Xanathar's annd works fine until the divine soul sorcerer is level 9 and can cast greater restoration every day using one of their 5th level slots - this removes the exhaustion.
- there is a warlock invocation that removes the need for sleep. Some folks interpret this as not needing a long rest since sleeping/trance is an integral part of a long rest. However, sleeping and a long rest are not necessarily the same so a DM can require a character who doesn't need to sleep to still require a long rest.
Anyway, with favorable rulings a coffeelock has an infinite number of spell slots to use (limited only by how much downtime they can use to accumulate slots).
at 100 gp / casting greater restoration isn't quite on demand
The solution to lack of sleep is really expensive components...
There's an assumption in the difficulty of a given encounter that characters are starting at full health, I believe.
CoffeeLock healing is one way to make this assumption in reality although ANY Warlock healing can make that happen with enough short rests.