Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
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.
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:
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.
What does this have to do with rules?
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
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.
I can see how the rules do support adding it to each attack. The text says
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).
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.
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.
I think this is probably a DMing question, more than a rules question. In the spirit of being helpful, though, I'll say this.
Eldritch Blast is an undeniably powerful cantrip that does a lot of work to offset the warlock's comparative lack of spell slots; but mechanically (and particularly in 5.5e) I don't think the disparity is as big an issue as it often seems to be. Just my opinion, but here's why.
The fact that Eldritch Blast allows multiple beams is great - it's also a balancing factor that lowers the likelihood of higher damage outputs. The chance of landing all four beams is something like 18%, and for every beam you miss, you lose out on damage and bonus effects. By comparison, when your Firebolt/Poison Spray/whatever hits, you get all the damage dice. When they crit, you roll eight dice. Ultimately, it's a trade-off: higher likelihood of dealing some damage and effects, at the cost of packing less of a punch on the bigger hits.
I also think you're looking at the far end of the scale, and that skews how the issue's perceived. The example you've given suggests that your players are at least level 17. By that stage, warlocks have access to 9th level spells and some really meaty class/subclass features. They should also have a range of magical items, and your bosses should be hitting around CR20. At that stage, 40ft of pushback and 20 extra damage isn't going to break the bank - and that's assuming it all lands, and that your boss doesn't have anything in its kit to counteract those effects.
Realistically, your players are going to land 2-3 of those beams, which results in a lower damage output when you put it side-to-side with other attack cantrips - especially with Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast opening up to any cantrip in the warlock's kit. With that in mind, I'd tell your players that Eldritch Blast is extremely cool and very flexible, but definitely not a necessity to play warlock successfully. Let them go with whatever they're vibing with, and try not to sweat the optimisation side of things.
You can only move a target 10 feet away. Period, if they are hit by multiple pushes they still only move a total of 10 feet. So if you say that if I have 10 attacks I can push 10 feet for every attack then of course it is not balanced because of your interpretation. If they can only move 10 feet, no matter the amount, then it is balanced.
So you combine all of your damage and add 5 points. That is balanced. It does not say you add 5 points for each induvial attack. Again, adding 5 points to each attack is not balanced because of your interpretation.
This is as much an "interpretation" as "interpreting" the sentence "the sky is blue" as meaning that the sky is red.
Every single DM I've ever played with (and myself) applies this rule as it is written: you apply the bonus to each damage roll.
And no, this is not OP. There's a reason why Agonizing Blast + Eldritch Blast is only available to Warlocks: this is their Bread 'n Butter. Warlock play differently than other spellcasters. You standard Wizard or Sorcerer will spend most fights using their spells slots to deal their best damage or for crowd control , and fall back to cantrips when they run out or to take care of trash mobs.
Warlocks only have 2 to 4 spell slots. They're not meant to be casting 3 Fireballs per fight. They're meant for concentration spell like summoning, or damage riders, or buffs and debuffs, or lingering AoEs.
That's not how they mainly deal damage. That's why AB/EB is more powerful than other cantrips: you should not compare it to Firebolt. You should compare it to a Fighter's weapon attacks. And guess what: a Fighter gets to add their ability modifier to the damage of each of their attacks too!
While we don't have Sage Advice specific to the 2024 rules yet, previous advice on spells like Eldritch Blast clarified that you should resolve attacks consecutively, not all at once. That means you roll one beam's attack, then you roll its damage - including the bonus from Agonizing Blast, and any additional effects, like the 10ft pushback from Repelling Blast. This matches up with the PHB, which says that you resolve the attack on a hit.
As a point of note, your interpretation doesn't work because Eldritch Blast specifically allows you to target multiple creatures. It's not possible to tally your damage and add the Agonizing/Repelling Blast bonuses in those instances, and there's nothing in the wording of either Invocation which specifies that they work differently when targeting one creature vs multiple.
That just isn't what it actually says in the rules. It very explicitly says "when you hit", and with this spell you can hit more than once, so this effect can trigger more than once.
If the intent were for the effect to be limited in the way you're describing, it would say that in the description of Repelling Blast. Take a look, for instance, at the "Slow" weapon mastery property, which does limit the degree to which its effect can stack multiple times. That limitation is explicitly stated in the description. There's no such statement with Repelling Blast.
Again, that's just not what the rules say. Each blast from Eldritch Blast is a separate attack roll and a separate damage roll. If you're directing them at the same target, then you can add them all up to make the bookkeeping easier, but that's just for the sake of convenience; it doesn't magically make it a single damage roll.
Whether you feel these effects are "balanced" or not is a separate question. You thinking they're not "balanced" doesn't mean the rules don't say what they say.
pronouns: he/she/they
My mentioning of balance was in response to the original question.
I do question the interpretation of this is per attack vice the total spell.
There is no verbiage that it is for each attack. The verbiage is for the spell. all of the individual attacks make up the spell. If each individual attack received the bonus or the amount of feet, then the rules would say that. Instead the rules are referring to the total spell damage/feet moved.
If there are four attacks they are all done simultaneously so therefore they 10 feet is as far as something is pushed because you can only push it 10 feet away. All hit and they all move the target 10 feet at the same time. Total distance traveled is still only 10 feet.
Referring you to my previous posts on this, as the wording which supports this has been pointed out.
The PHB and Sage Advice clarify that the attacks are resolved consecutively, not all at once. You make the attack, you determine if it hits, you roll and apply damage and effects.
There are four attacks. Each attack hits separately. 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." You can hit a creature up to four times; ergo, you can push it up to four times.
Likewise, Agonizing Blast says, "Choose one of your known Warlock cantrips that deals damage. You can add your Charisma modifier to that spell’s damage rolls." You can make up to four damage rolls; therefore, you can add your Charisma modifier to each of those damage rolls.
Your interpretation is incorrect. We know this because we can compare the text from Repelling Blast in the PHB
5e/2014:
5.5e/2024
Compare this to the text from XGtE's Grasp of Hadar:
Grasp of Hadar specifies the effect once on each of your turns. Repelling Blast does not. If it was meant to only apply once per turn, they could have used wording similar to that for Grasp of Hadar for Repelling Blast.