Balancing Eldritch Blast against other Cantrips for Warlocks in 5.5e

Hey everyone,

I'm running into trouble with the modern rules, as they are indicating that WOTC is trying to open up options for warlocks in regards to their Eldritch Blast choices; however WOTC seems to not be balancing the performance. Currently I'm trying to understand the following example:

Both Warlocks have taken Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast, both warlocks have 20 (+5) CHA score.

• Assuming hit: Warlock A casts Poison Spray. Warlock A, at level 20, would get 4d12 with a total 10ft knock back and +5 damage added from the CHA modifier.
• Assuming hit: Warlock B casts Eldritch Blast. Warlock B, at level 20, would get 4d10 with a total 40ft of knock back and a +20 damage added from the CHA modifier. While also being able to divide the knock back between 4 targets.

Warlock A would require taking the Mother of Sorrows subclass to overcome resistance/immunity to Poison (as Poison is a fairly common resistance), Warlock B would not have to worry about resistance as Force damage is the least resisted damage (likelihood is approximately <= 5%) type and could choose any subclass. 

RAW, it seems that there is no way WOTC can balance Eldritch Blast against any of the other cantrips, even though they're opening up Eldritch Invocations to allow the warlock to choose any cantrip. As a DM how do I make a game where my warlocks feel they are able to choose cantrips that are not Eldritch Blast without feeling like they made the "wrong" choice?

A Monte Carlos simulation run tells me the following:

• "Poison Spray can be expected to do between 29 and 32 total damage on hit 95%+ of the time, with a 10ft knockback on up to 1 target."
• "Eldritch Blast can be expected to do between 40 and 43 total damage on hit 95%+ of the time, with a 40ft knockback divided between 4 targets in 10ft increments."
  • "Assuming hit: An individual hit from Eldritch Blast will do 10 to 10 damage 95% of the time."

I am also working on adjusting my code to include "chance to hit", but I assume Eldritch Blast with it's 4x chance to hit is going to have a much higher likelihood to hit than the 1x chance Poison Spray gets.

Code used to simulate rolls (R 4.6.1): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awcFtrJlgWidL-ud1D9atcT83O4Z4ntE1JhUXjnaEiU/edit?usp=sharing

First are your players 20th level?

Repelling Blast says "...you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from you."  So a creature can only get pushed 10 feet. 

So you only can push 10 feet not 40.

Agonizing blast is also just 5 points not 20.  There is nothing that says you do 5 points per individual attack, you just get the 5 points added period.

Quote from Myojii >>

Hey everyone,

I'm running into trouble with the modern rules, as they are indicating that WOTC is trying to open up options for warlocks in regards to their Eldritch Blast choices; however WOTC seems to not be balancing the performance. Currently I'm trying to understand the following example:

Both Warlocks have taken Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast, both warlocks have 20 (+5) CHA score.

• Assuming hit: Warlock A casts Poison Spray. Warlock A, at level 20, would get 4d12 with a total 10ft knock back and +5 damage added from the CHA modifier.
• Assuming hit: Warlock B casts Eldritch Blast. Warlock B, at level 20, would get 4d10 with a total 40ft of knock back and a +20 damage added from the CHA modifier. While also being able to divide the knock back between 4 targets.

Warlock A would require taking the Mother of Sorrows subclass to overcome resistance/immunity to Poison (as Poison is a fairly common resistance), Warlock B would not have to worry about resistance as Force damage is the least resisted damage (likelihood is approximately <= 5%) type and could choose any subclass. 

RAW, it seems that there is no way WOTC can balance Eldritch Blast against any of the other cantrips, even though they're opening up Eldritch Invocations to allow the warlock to choose any cantrip. As a DM how do I make a game where my warlocks feel they are able to choose cantrips that are not Eldritch Blast without feeling like they made the "wrong" choice?

A Monte Carlos simulation run tells me the following:

• "Poison Spray can be expected to do between 29 and 32 total damage on hit 95%+ of the time, with a 10ft knockback on up to 1 target."
• "Eldritch Blast can be expected to do between 40 and 43 total damage on hit 95%+ of the time, with a 40ft knockback divided between 4 targets in 10ft increments."
  • "Assuming hit: An individual hit from Eldritch Blast will do 10 to 10 damage 95% of the time."

I am also working on adjusting my code to include "chance to hit", but I assume Eldritch Blast with it's 4x chance to hit is going to have a much higher likelihood to hit than the 1x chance Poison Spray gets.

Code used to simulate rolls (R 4.6.1): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awcFtrJlgWidL-ud1D9atcT83O4Z4ntE1JhUXjnaEiU/edit?usp=sharing

 What does this have to do with rules?

I don't think WotC was attempting to balance Agonizing Blast for each cantrip. Some people wanted to have a different signature cantrip and be able to use AB with that one, so WotC put in the option. It wasn't about balance, it was about allowing players who didn't want EB to still benefit from AB.

Agonizing blast is also just 5 points not 20.  There is nothing that says you do 5 points per individual attack, you just get the 5 points added period.

 

I can see how the rules do support adding it to each attack. The text says

Agonizing Blast

Prerequisite: Level 2+ Warlock, a Warlock Cantrip That Deals Damage

Choose one of your known Warlock cantrips that deals damage. You can add your Charisma modifier to that spell’s damage rolls.

Repeatable. You can gain this invocation more than once. Each time you do so, choose a different eligible cantrip.

Eldritch Blast says "damage rolls," plural. You make a separate attack roll for each beam. I suppose one could make one damage roll and multiple attack rolls, nothing in the rules for attack rolls says each attack roll has its own damage, but one attack roll and one damage roll is how it's typically done. I've never heard a Fighter making four attack rolls but only rolling one damage roll which is shared by each hit.

Also, because of the limited number of spell slots, I consider Warlocks gameplay loop as resembling a martial class more than a full caster class, and martial classes add their primary modifier to each attack. That's another reason why I think Agonizing Blast should apply to each beam of Eldritch Blast.

Eldritch Blast just scales too well for other cantrips to compete. The only other one I've seen Agonizing Blast taken with is True Strike, but even that can't keep up at higher levels.

Maybe they will at some point print another similarly strong catrip (that probably also needs to be exclusive to Warlocks to keep things balanced).

Quote from Character77006 >>

Repelling Blast says "...you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from you."  So a creature can only get pushed 10 feet. 

So you only can push 10 feet not 40. 

This isn't accurate. Repelling Blast says, "When you hit a Large or smaller creature with that cantrip, you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from you." Eldritch Blast has multiple chances to hit; therefore, multiple chances to push the creature 10 feet away from its position at the point upon which you hit it.

Quote from Character77006 >>

 

Agonizing blast is also just 5 points not 20.  There is nothing that says you do 5 points per individual attack, you just get the 5 points added period.

Similarly, Agonizing Blast says, "You can add your Charisma modifier to that spell’s damage rolls." Eldritch Blast makes multiple damage rolls, and so you can add your CHA to any of those.