Kotath, I have had similar (but not the same) complaints about warlocks for some time now, their lore doesn't add up to me fully either. The way I always interpreted it was the eldritch being does NOT give them magical knowledge, that would essentially make them a jumpstarted wizard. What happens is you make an agreement that can take many different forms, servitude toward a task or goal, durational service, transactional (IE soul, or memories, or personality, alignment or other) but regardless of the form it takes the result is that the power the patron gives you is either inherent magical investiture (basically the patron modifies your body and makes you a semi magical creature, you aren't exactly casting spells, they are spell like abilities you "naturally" possess) OR the patron casts the spells for you. Both of those explanations to me satisfy why warlocks only cast spells at maximum strength, either they don't decide the power output at all or it was preinstalled in their biology and they really don't have magical knowledge in this circumstance.
Your theory about the patron "casting the spell for you" would just make them jumpstarted clerics, and you just said you took issue with warlocks being a jumpstarted <other core class>. Pick a lane.
The problem I then run into is spell casting requirements. Why does a warlock need a verbal or somatic component if they are not casting the spell, the patron is, or it's a natural biological force similar to flexing a muscle.
In either case waving your fingers in the air or chanting becomes harder to justify. Maybe you want to claim it's to invoke and notify my patron of the spell I wish to cast. Okay.
No. Not even clerics work this way. See above for the Weave. Even if your patron is a power source, casting a spell is manipulating the Weave, not petitioning your power source for power. The petition step occurs when you prepare your spells, if you prepare and you are a petitioner.
What if I serve an ancient one who is madness itself? Couldn't I just scream-cluck while flipping everyone off and headbang to activate my spells?
I mean, yes. Your V component could be scream-clucking, and your S component could be the middle finger.
Also, I would be naturally telepathic, so couldn't I just telepathically ask for the spell?
Do you have telepathy that works at infinite range across planar boundaries? If not, it's on your patron to listen to your thoughts, not on you to broadcast them. You can still think questions at your patron - many patrons are telepathic, no doubt - but you have no agency over getting them to pay attention to you, in general.
If my patron is sane and I am not casting, just notifying them what spell to cast for me, then my trigger phrase could be "Why hello there" while waving to cast like crown of madness on someone in a social situation and nobody have any idea what's happening because nothing I did was vaguely magical right? Who needs subtle spell in that case, just be a warlock.... I know that is game breaking it's just the lore of why they cast spells confuses me.
Yes, it was magical. But how you cast your spell isn't identical to how others cast theirs, which is why there's a skillcheck involved in recognizing a spell someone else casts. Someone who fails the check does not necessarily even know that what you did was a spell, per se, as opposed to something else.
Either they are wizards essentially or they shouldn't need to cast spells like other casters. I understand having to provide material components for spells, your patron agreed to sharing power with you, not goods and resources. But I don't understand their exact placement in the lore as it is now.
So here's how it works: you can think of the Weave as an energy field pervading all of reality. It reacts to a variety of things, including physical matter and sound waves. On a fundamental level, the components of a spell are you manipulating the Weave to achieve a desired effect. All spellcasters do this, without exception. You can loosely divide the 9 full or half spellcasters by spellcasting styles:
Artificers, Bards, Rangers, and Wizards learn how to manipulate the weave as a matter of organized study, although of course some are intuitively good at it.
Levels of competence vary here. The least competent are Bards and Rangers, both of whom have to memorize specific spells, one at a time. The next level up is Wizards, who can spend their morning memorizing new spells from their spellbook. The next level up is Artificers, who don't even need the book - they have their entire spell list in their head, and they only need to spend their morning reminding themselves how a given spell works.
Clerics and Druids tap an external power source to "prepare" spells they can cast later, then actually cast intuitively, based on what "feels right" for their power source.
Paladins and Sorcerers are self-powered, essentially - a Sorcerer learns spells intuitively based on what they're naturally good at thanks to their weird bodies, while a Paladin is so convinced they're right that that belief lends itself to them "figuring out" how to cast a spell.
Warlocks are essentially Sorcerers, but they don't have natural access to their abilities - instead, their patron modifies them to have their abilities, and teaches them how to use them.
So if you want to think of Warlocks as jump-started anything, they're more jump-started Sorcerers than anything else. They're nothing like Wizards - they can't teach anyone else their abilities, not even a fellow Warlock of the same Patron! Sorcerers can't either, of course, not even other Sorcerers of the same Origin.
At the end of the day it's play a super bland fighter, wizard (I just don't like wizard mechanics), or cleric if you want to be optimally useful in a group.
What's your definition of useful? I'd rather have a level 6 paladin in my party than a level 6 fighter any day of any week. I'm not following what your rubric is.
This is the rules and game mechanics forum, and I don't see a rules and game mechanics question here, so I'm not sure how to help you. If you want to head over to Tips & Tactics or one of the class forums, like the Warlock forum, you can ask for build advice in terms of making yourself useful. It is the case that different classes are good at different things and many people agree that not all classes are well balanced against each other, but you're making even broader statements than that.
Sorry, as you can see from my post count, I am new to this forum, didn't know where to post this. It felt like it fell under mechanics because my rant is about mechanical interactions of abilities more than anything. As for my criteria, why ever take a paladin? If you want healing, resurrection, support, and undead/evil smiting, clerics do it all better. If you want melee damage fighters may do less against very specific enemies but overall significantly more and more consistently. If you want everything else, it's the wizard, information gathering, transportation, spell damage, coercion, etc. The other classes have cool lore and flavor niches but all of your vital roles are there and done best in those 3. Again, I am new, I could be wrong about that, I have researched and scrapped a lot of character concepts and that's just been my observation.
The best healer isnt the cleric, the best dps isnt the fighter, the best mage is probably the wizard but other can do it too :)
A paladin can do incredible amounts of damage easily, especially against undead. Their smite ability is incredible. Also the aura they bring to the group is incredible, asuming a 20 charisma, they add +5 to all saves for everyone nearby, you know how laughable that makes spells? Add in immunity to fear, charm or even half damage from all spells (meaning you take roughly 1/4 dmg from a fireball for instance.
If you want to be a great healer there's a few druid variants, the shepherd is great as well as the moon druid which has an incredible feature just like the celestial warlock, which means they get one die/level they can use as a bonus action to heal. Since bonus action means you can still use your regular action this means you can do other things too, while still doing the best healing = bringing someone up from 0 hp, LEVEL TIMES/DAY. One of the best healing spells is named healing word, is a level 1 spell and does the same. The clerics can use it maybe 4-5 times a day at best. A moon druid or celestial warlock could do it 20 times each day and still have their regular spellslots left. Just as some examples.
The barbarian, while having less attacks than a fighter can easily do just as much damage on average or even more, this doesn't mean the fighter is worse, just that they are different. But saying you need to be a fighter for melee is wrong.
As for multiclassing, if you thought a regular paladin was good now that I explained them a tiny bit, then you should know the best paladin is a multiclass paladin. Paladin sorcerer for instance is incredible again! Paladin smite is great, deals lots of damage... Paladin+sorcerer = more spell slots = more smites! = overpowered!
Anyways, while you might think it's not synergistic, it kinda is really. Some classes work better than others for sure but honestly you don't need to be a warlock to be sworn to a demon, just do it!
Warlocks have a certain number of spells known, whereas wizards prepare certain spells at the end of a long rest.
This is the main educational difference between the two - warlocks don't need to write any of their spells down because they always know all of their spells and can cast them at any time.
But those are words and gestures. They being different words and gestures is no different than different words and gestures casting different wizard spells. If that is all they are, why couldn't they be learned? And why charisma not intelligence to learn and power words and gestures?
Learning the words doesn't cause the words to do anything. Typically the words for a warlock (or cleric) spell are a patron invocation and aren't functional unless that's your patron.
But the argument is that they still function even if you completely ignore your patron, giving them no reason whatsoever to care when you invoke them... At that point, are they really still your patron?
It's highly possible that some patrons might be unaware of their warlocks entire existence, see the entry for the GOOlock:
The Great Old One might be unaware of your existence or entirely indifferent to you, but the secrets you have learned allow you to draw your magic from it.
I don't think that a patron's feelings towards you really matter to your abilities at all. While some DMs might use the master/apprentice or master/servant relationship to say that a patron might withold further teachings/bestowing of power, there is clear evidence in RAW that it is possible to have absolutely no relationship with your patron at all, good or ill.
A "pact" is not necessarily a contract, at least as described for each patron. A fiend warlock could have a literal contract with an archdevil, yes, but they could also have weathered and been transformed by a Sybriex, or been woven into one of Fraz Urb'luu's lies without their own consent. A feylock might have stumbled into an ancient grotto and been bound by the arcane magics that affect any who enter, or accepted and eaten a berry from the strange elf that seemed to vanish when they looked away for a second. A GOOlock could have opened an eldritch tome and been exposed (and altered) by the strange runes that communicated the thoughts of Cthulu. So on and on. Each of these might not entail a specific relationship, or any at all, with the patron in question.
Traditionally in the literature on which they are based, GOOLocks or equivalent typically pay a price by way of the magic itself being corrupting rather than the patron taking any direct or conscious hand.
My comment was in response to your comment (bolded above for clarity) to prove that, yes, it is possible to have a patron who does not care about your invoking of them while remaining your patron. A GOOlock whose patron is unaware of them will still be the GOOlocks patron no matter how the GOOlock acts, whether "for" or "against" the GOO's aims (assuming they have any or that they are comprehensible to mortals).
I haven't read too much if this thread, but I'll address 2 of your concerns.
"Why is multiclassing weaker (lvl 20 Fighter example)?"
It isn't. The subclasses' signature features are gained at lvl 1-3. These features are generally more powerful than the rest of the features. Also, it sounds odd to say this, but multiclassing is a way of specialising your character concept mechanically, to fit your fighting style. You can come up with some wacky combos this way, but they'd still be rather balanced. If the extra attack feature stacked, no one would focus on a single class unless WoTC decided to give all the classes a major boost in power towards the higher levels.
"It is unrealistic that people don't change their path throughout their life"
Yes indeed, but you're looking at the adventurers the wrong way. The adventurer life, that D&D is built around, is a change in the characters' path from whatever they were doing before. It doesn't matter if they were a soldier or a priest before, they weren't really adventurers (generally). The background you decide to give your character describes why they decided to change their path whether planned or not. Likewise, when the character is fed up with his life as an adventurer, he retires, thus once again changing his path. So there's at least 2 incorporated path-changes in the game, the rest is entirely up to you.
Remember, D&D is a roleplaying game, and while it's nice to have supporting mechanics that make everything you do optimal, life isn't that straightforward. So add roleplay and flavour where you need it to support your character concept when the mechanics do not.
I think that, having played 3.5 edition where multiclassing was much easier to do, there were soooooo many problems with it. So, 5e was designed to deal with those problems. Players were making the most rediculous min-maxed multiclassed characters and the game was breaking down. 4th ed. balanced every class with precision, and it was one thing I really liked about it. 5e has been very cautious with multiclassing in order to avoid the 3.5 mess, but it went back to unbalanced classes. Really, at high levels a wizard is going to toast everyone. I hope 6th ed. brings some help to balance classes.
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Your theory about the patron "casting the spell for you" would just make them jumpstarted clerics, and you just said you took issue with warlocks being a jumpstarted <other core class>. Pick a lane.
Because that's how you manipulate The Weave. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Weave
No. Not even clerics work this way. See above for the Weave. Even if your patron is a power source, casting a spell is manipulating the Weave, not petitioning your power source for power. The petition step occurs when you prepare your spells, if you prepare and you are a petitioner.
I mean, yes. Your V component could be scream-clucking, and your S component could be the middle finger.
Do you have telepathy that works at infinite range across planar boundaries? If not, it's on your patron to listen to your thoughts, not on you to broadcast them. You can still think questions at your patron - many patrons are telepathic, no doubt - but you have no agency over getting them to pay attention to you, in general.
Yes, it was magical. But how you cast your spell isn't identical to how others cast theirs, which is why there's a skillcheck involved in recognizing a spell someone else casts. Someone who fails the check does not necessarily even know that what you did was a spell, per se, as opposed to something else.
So here's how it works: you can think of the Weave as an energy field pervading all of reality. It reacts to a variety of things, including physical matter and sound waves. On a fundamental level, the components of a spell are you manipulating the Weave to achieve a desired effect. All spellcasters do this, without exception. You can loosely divide the 9 full or half spellcasters by spellcasting styles:
So if you want to think of Warlocks as jump-started anything, they're more jump-started Sorcerers than anything else. They're nothing like Wizards - they can't teach anyone else their abilities, not even a fellow Warlock of the same Patron! Sorcerers can't either, of course, not even other Sorcerers of the same Origin.
The best healer isnt the cleric, the best dps isnt the fighter, the best mage is probably the wizard but other can do it too :)
A paladin can do incredible amounts of damage easily, especially against undead. Their smite ability is incredible. Also the aura they bring to the group is incredible, asuming a 20 charisma, they add +5 to all saves for everyone nearby, you know how laughable that makes spells? Add in immunity to fear, charm or even half damage from all spells (meaning you take roughly 1/4 dmg from a fireball for instance.
If you want to be a great healer there's a few druid variants, the shepherd is great as well as the moon druid which has an incredible feature just like the celestial warlock, which means they get one die/level they can use as a bonus action to heal. Since bonus action means you can still use your regular action this means you can do other things too, while still doing the best healing = bringing someone up from 0 hp, LEVEL TIMES/DAY. One of the best healing spells is named healing word, is a level 1 spell and does the same. The clerics can use it maybe 4-5 times a day at best. A moon druid or celestial warlock could do it 20 times each day and still have their regular spellslots left. Just as some examples.
The barbarian, while having less attacks than a fighter can easily do just as much damage on average or even more, this doesn't mean the fighter is worse, just that they are different. But saying you need to be a fighter for melee is wrong.
As for multiclassing, if you thought a regular paladin was good now that I explained them a tiny bit, then you should know the best paladin is a multiclass paladin. Paladin sorcerer for instance is incredible again! Paladin smite is great, deals lots of damage... Paladin+sorcerer = more spell slots = more smites! = overpowered!
Anyways, while you might think it's not synergistic, it kinda is really. Some classes work better than others for sure but honestly you don't need to be a warlock to be sworn to a demon, just do it!
Warlocks have a certain number of spells known, whereas wizards prepare certain spells at the end of a long rest.
This is the main educational difference between the two - warlocks don't need to write any of their spells down because they always know all of their spells and can cast them at any time.
My comment was in response to your comment (bolded above for clarity) to prove that, yes, it is possible to have a patron who does not care about your invoking of them while remaining your patron. A GOOlock whose patron is unaware of them will still be the GOOlocks patron no matter how the GOOlock acts, whether "for" or "against" the GOO's aims (assuming they have any or that they are comprehensible to mortals).
I haven't read too much if this thread, but I'll address 2 of your concerns.
"Why is multiclassing weaker (lvl 20 Fighter example)?"
It isn't. The subclasses' signature features are gained at lvl 1-3. These features are generally more powerful than the rest of the features. Also, it sounds odd to say this, but multiclassing is a way of specialising your character concept mechanically, to fit your fighting style. You can come up with some wacky combos this way, but they'd still be rather balanced. If the extra attack feature stacked, no one would focus on a single class unless WoTC decided to give all the classes a major boost in power towards the higher levels.
"It is unrealistic that people don't change their path throughout their life"
Yes indeed, but you're looking at the adventurers the wrong way. The adventurer life, that D&D is built around, is a change in the characters' path from whatever they were doing before. It doesn't matter if they were a soldier or a priest before, they weren't really adventurers (generally). The background you decide to give your character describes why they decided to change their path whether planned or not. Likewise, when the character is fed up with his life as an adventurer, he retires, thus once again changing his path. So there's at least 2 incorporated path-changes in the game, the rest is entirely up to you.
Remember, D&D is a roleplaying game, and while it's nice to have supporting mechanics that make everything you do optimal, life isn't that straightforward. So add roleplay and flavour where you need it to support your character concept when the mechanics do not.
I think that, having played 3.5 edition where multiclassing was much easier to do, there were soooooo many problems with it. So, 5e was designed to deal with those problems. Players were making the most rediculous min-maxed multiclassed characters and the game was breaking down. 4th ed. balanced every class with precision, and it was one thing I really liked about it. 5e has been very cautious with multiclassing in order to avoid the 3.5 mess, but it went back to unbalanced classes. Really, at high levels a wizard is going to toast everyone. I hope 6th ed. brings some help to balance classes.