Repeat after me: the DM does not "hand out" short rests. The players choose when to take them.
Worth noting: many, MANY DMs feel a compulsive need to punish players for taking a short rest in hostile territory, ensuring that the rest is interrupted or contested every single time they can. And those moments where a DM cannot reasonably punish the rest itself, they instead choose to sabotage the party's progress and ensure the party knows that their decision to short rest is what caused their objective to fail.
DMs have been specifically training players to avoid short rests at all costs since 5e was released. Those DMs do not then also get to complain that players do not favor classes or abilities that key off of short resting. Not when it is the DM's fault players hate short rests in the first place.
You're both arguing in favor of an arbitrary and capricious Dungeon Master. Why?
Life itself is arbitrary and capricious. It all depends on the attitude at the table and how much DM is putting into describing the environment. If the DM doesn't want to bother evoking an atmosphere of urgency and danger, it's okay if players ask if they can have short rest or not. In this way, they're actually asking whether their characters can tell if it's safe enough to have a short rest. That way, the DM won't have to spend time describing noises from somewhere in the tunnel, the feeling of dread, the still warm bedrolls, etc.
Looking over all 12 classes in the PHB, eight of them have a Short Rest feature by 3rd level. Barbarians get one at 11th level, and rogues and warlocks get theirs at 20th level.
Why are you glossing over the fact that some classes rely on short rest much heavier than others? Are you not familiar with it, or you're just omitting it for the sake of winning argument points?
You read like a nihilist who doesn't want to actually roleplay in a roleplaying game. Players shouldn't be asking if it's okay, and the DM should be painting the picture regardless. Players decide, in character, what to do based on information from the DM. I feel sorry for you, if that's not your experience. Just because the big, wide world can be callous and uncaring doesn't mean the game table should be. People should care enough to put some work in. You get out of the experience what you put into it.
And I'm not glossing over anything. The sheer fact that so many classes have a reason to take a Short Rest so early is indicative of how prevalent they should be. One of them, the bard, is explicitly for making your Short Rest better. Everyone can recover hit points. And as for the key features by 3rd-level...
Channel Divinity (for clerics and paladins, so two classes)
Wild Shape
Second Wind and Action Surge
Ki Points
Arcane Recovery
Pact Magic
The idea that people shouldn't be taking a Short Rest, intentionally gimping their capabilities throughout the day, is insane. Even just one of those is enough of a reason to take a Short Rest.
There's a time for roleplay, and there's a time for a good ol' dungeon crawl. Of course, you could always say, "we take a short rest right in the middle of a siege and we don't give a damn". But there would be consequences.
You put wild shape and pact magic in the same list. That's what I'm talking about. One is mostly used as utility, another is core class functionality. Different short rest features have different weight, they're not all equal. Without channel divinity, the cleric is still at 90% power. Without ki, the monk can just punch. I'm not arguing against taking short rest. I'm arguing that short rest should have the same value for all classes.
Warlocks have to be CHA based. They tried doing INT/CON in 4e, and people demanded INT/CHA until they got said charisma powers. They tried doing INT in playtest for 5e, people wanted CHA. Two editions of attempting INT warlocks didn't work.
Honestly, this feels like a purely munchkin thing. Charisma simply sees much more obvious use outside combat than intelligenсe, and people just want to seduce barmaids. I never understood why an occultist and master of forbidden knowledge would be about charm and not about knowledge.
The current warlock does not live up to the class fantasy of being a warlock for many people. If you ask a random person about a fiendish warlock, they would think about hellfire, demon summoning, maybe curses (thank you, Warcraft), soul sacrifices, and edgy, spooky magic in general. Instead, we have a neutral energy blast, maybe an imp if you pick the right things with actual fiend summons near the end of most people's play cycles, no delving into things Man Was Not To Know, one itty bitty hex spell. They need to double down. I mean, heck, at first they were expecting you to use elementals instead of fiends even, and not even Conjure minor elementals. No, had to wait til level 9 to summon an elemental once a day. That is way too late.
Oh don't even get me started. When you hear "warlock", first thing you think about is dark magic, curses, summoning fiends and other horrors, profane rituals... But to get any cursing spell (like bane, bestow curse, or polymorph), you have to take an invocation, and even then you can cast it only once per day, and it still costs you a precious spell slot. A wizard is a better warlock than warlock!
I like the idea of making Eldritch Blast a class ability. Not because of multiclass shinanigans, but because its a more elegant solution for making the blade pact work. Rather than making a general weapon, you make a weapon out of eldritch blast energy and use it. Combine with feats, upgrade with invocations. Eldritch blast should be flexible enough to feel like its a reflection of a sentient weapon as a Patron, or that you're using it with hellfire with a fiend patron, or whatever patron you have. It should be flexible. Making it a class feature also helps remove these invocation tax abilities, like agonizing blast or Extra Attack, or MAD issues. They are built in.
I mean, 3e and 4e both allowed eldritch blast to come in blade form. Eldritch Glaive and Eldritch Claw were both melee invocations in 3e, and 4e eldritch blade was an at will cantrip for warlock. 4e Essentials hexblade variant summoned various weapons to use, not used magic items.
Agreed that eldritch blast could use some flexibility, though iving it a patron-related damage type would inevitably make some patrons better than others, that would require compensation. Fire is much more commonly resisted than force or psychic.
And I dunno, something about constantly wielding a thing made of magic feels like Warcraft-ish high fantasy. For a hexblade, it just feels right to take a mundane weapon and infuse it with secret power, it's a part of being a warlock to pretend to be someone more inconspicuous. Also, the last campaign I finished was Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat as a hexblade warlock, and there was that moment of triumph when I looted Hazirawn, a sentient greatsword, from the corpse of Rezmir. We played it like "this it it, this is the thing that was calling out to me all this time, this is my patron, we finally reunited and now we are one, as we were always meant to be". But I speak for myself here.
One last thing that I also got really annoyed with. Patrons designed with a specific Blade/Book/Chain in mind. Like, you can literally see how the fiendish patron, along with the fiendish themed spells, really encourage you to hit the front lines, getting THP to thorn tank hits while dishing damage out in melee. I really hate that. If you're going to make blade, book and chain different options from your Patron, then don't make the Patrons obviously biased towards one of the three. They should all be openly flexible irregardless of other choices.
I mean, hexblade is an obvious crutch for pact of the blade. I suggested that patrons and pact boons switched places. Subclasses shouls be based on boons, and a choice of patron would grant you thematic spells and some invocations.
One last thing to consider. I think its likely that warlock will become a half-caster in the future without Pact Magic. Why? Artificer is one, and they work well with their totally-not-Invocations. Because the half-casters all have pet options (chain familiars, companions, mounts, golems / homoculi). Going half caster would allow the warlock to focus on their unique spells in the same way that rangers and paladins can focus on their smites and marks. We're alreadyy used to the hexblade and eldritch blast being considered core, so this lets us double down and make even more variety for them.
Playing a hexblade already feels like being a half-caster alright. Not that eldritch blast spam is much different.
Oh don't even get me started. When you hear "warlock", first thing you think about is dark magic, curses, summoning fiends and other horrors, profane rituals... But to get any cursing spell (like bane, bestow curse, or polymorph), you have to take an invocation, and even then you can cast it only once per day, and it still costs you a precious spell slot. A wizard is a better warlock than warlock!
Warlock should never have been charisma based, and people who think warlocks need to be charismatic morons are wrong. They are simply wrong. They are wrong. Even more than the limitations of Pact Magic, the fact that your warlock is required to be charismatic as hell but totally doesn't care a single wit about forbidden knowledge is fundamentally DUMB for the class the rules literally entitle "Delvers Into Secrets". Not "Delvers Into Panties." Not " Delvers Into Tinder." Not " Delvers Into Twitter Influencing." Delvers. Into. Secrets. Secrets, i.e. hidden knowledge, i.e. knowledge, i.e. FRIGGIN' INTELLIGENCE.
The 5e playerbase's gigantic collective weird hateboner for the Intelligence stat is dumb, bad, and wrong, and I will die on the hill labeled "your weird hateboner for Intelligence is dumb, bad and wrong." Stupid people don't make alliances with eldritch horrors from beyond reality for power. Foolish people, yes. A distinct general lack of Wisdom applies. But not stupid people. I absolutely detest that warlocks are charisma-based Fratbro perverts, and I will not bloody tolerate it if I have any damned choice in the matter whatsoever.
I guess the reasoning there is that you don't have to be brainy to make a pact with a sus otherworldly entity.
A fiend, archfey, or genie probably won't care if you've been hitting the books if they want to make a deal with you. The most "cerebral" patron is probably the Great Old One because you kinda have to hit the books to make contact with them in the first place usually, and you'll probably need that big brain to withstand all the psychic damage you're likely to take from interacting with them.
That being said, I'm also on board with Warlocks being INT-based, since their whole schtick is about gaining magical knowledge from an entity. This is especially obvious with Pact of the Tome.
People wouldn't be insisting that all warlocks needed to be horny morons if Intelligence actually had a function in the game. Give Intelligence an actual function, and maybe people would be less fixated on the idea of forcing all warlocks to be fratboy sex offenders with the intellect of a sack of dead weasels.
And frankly? The whole "you don't need to be smart to make a deal!" thing is idiotic. If a fey, fiend, or genie wants your soul, it takes a whole helluva lot of keen wit to come out the other side with awesome magic powers. Those entities do not and never have cared about your degree of Game, outside of using rampant horniness as an easy way to get you to sign away your soul for nothing. Someone who gets the better end of a warlock pact needs to be INTELLIGENT to do so, not just friggin' horny.
People wouldn't be insisting that all warlocks needed to be horny morons if Intelligence actually had a function in the game. Give Intelligence an actual function, and maybe people would be less fixated on the idea of forcing all warlocks to be fratboy sex offenders with the intellect of a sack of dead weasels.
I think the main reason Intelligence doesn't is because it's probably the easiest one to break. The saying "knowledge is power" isn't an exaggeration.
Except no DM in the history of D&D has ever denied their players knowledge for want of an ability check. DMs trip over themselves to exposit lore - you could get all the knowledge you could ever want with an Intelligence score of literally zero in most games. It's patently absurd, I don't even know why "knowledge" skills exist in this game. And of course people are going to dump and disregard Intelligence if everybody gets the "benefits" of Intelligence for free-ninety-nine all game every game. It's beyond idiotic and it drives me nuts.
According to the PHB, the primary components of the Charisma ability score are confidence, eloquence, and leadership. Not seduction, or persuasion, even.
I've always viewed the Charisma basis for Warlocks being about force of personality and confidence bordering on arrogance, not about being spellcasting lotharios.
(Obviously, with skills like persuasion and performance being tied to Charisma, it's not out of line to rope in horniness with Warlocks. But as first and primarily defined by the book, the ability score isn't about....scoring.)
So I'm good with CHA being the warlock's primary ability. It takes some arrogance to bargain with great powers and get something in return.
And frankly? The whole "you don't need to be smart to make a deal!" thing is idiotic. If a fey, fiend, or genie wants your soul, it takes a whole helluva lot of keen wit to come out the other side with awesome magic powers. Those entities do not and never have cared about your degree of Game, outside of using rampant horniness as an easy way to get you to sign away your soul for nothing. Someone who gets the better end of a warlock pact needs to be INTELLIGENT to do so, not just friggin' horny.
They need to be able to both have a brain but also be able to cobble together a convincing argument, which is where Persuasion (or Deception, depending on how you do it) comes in, which are both Charisma-based skills as it stands. in all fairness, Charisma isn't just about being horny. It's also about navigating social interactions in general, whether it be with another mortal or with an immortal being who can kill you just by looking at you.
Except no DM in the history of D&D has ever denied their players knowledge for want of an ability check. DMs trip over themselves to exposit lore - you could get all the knowledge you could ever want with an Intelligence score of literally zero in most games. It's patently absurd, I don't even know why "knowledge" skills exist in this game. And of course people are going to dump and disregard Intelligence if everybody gets the "benefits" of Intelligence for free-ninety-nine all game every game. It's beyond idiotic and it drives me nuts.
Except DMs do gate-keep information to some degree. They won't hold back everything, but they also won't tell the players literally all the info. There's a reason divination or divination-like spells like detect magic, scrying, and speak with dead see use in pretty much every campaign they're in.
All of which is meant to excuse that your knowledge-hungry Delver Into Secrets is dumber than the Memebarian and displays absolutely no interest in, talent for, or faculty with forbidden knowledge and ancient secrets?
WHY?
These are the same people who complain about the wizard being Intelligence-focused because "you shouldn't have to be smart to wave your fingers around, say a few words, and conjure up fire! You should be able to be a Wisdom wizard because I want to be able to ignore Intelligence and put my points in a stronger stat wizards should be about experiencing magic, not knowing things!" Why does anyone listen to that kind of tripe?
According to the PHB, the primary components of the Charisma ability score are confidence, eloquence, and leadership. Not seduction, or persuasion, even.
I've always viewed the Charisma basis for Warlocks being about force of personality and confidence bordering on arrogance, not about being spellcasting lotharios.
(Obviously, with skills like persuasion and performance being tied to Charisma, it's not out of line to rope in horniness with Warlocks. But as first and primarily defined by the book, the ability score isn't about....scoring.)
So I'm good with CHA being the warlock's primary ability. It takes some arrogance to bargain with great powers and get something in return.
Well, if you make tool shaped exactly like a schlong, don't be surprised when people use it... accordingly. Striking the deal is something that happens exactly once during a warlock's carreer. But it is the search of knowledge that drives the warlock to make a bargain in the first place, and it is knowledge that the pact rewards a warlock with. Finally, even JC stated that if a warlock abandons (or is abandoned by) the patron, he doesn't lose the powers that he already has. Knowledge is warlock's power. Warlock is not a magic gold-digger, and patron is not a magic sugardaddy.
All of which is meant to excuse that your knowledge-hungry Delver Into Secrets is dumber than the Memebarian and displays absolutely no interest in, talent for, or faculty with forbidden knowledge and ancient secrets?
WHY?
These are the same people who complain about the wizard being Intelligence-focused because "you shouldn't have to be smart to wave your fingers around, say a few words, and conjure up fire! You should be able to be a Wisdom wizard because I want to be able to ignore Intelligence and put my points in a stronger stat wizards should be about experiencing magic, not knowing things!" Why does anyone listen to that kind of tripe?
I honestly have no contact/familiarity with this argument (that warlocks are "dumb" just because Intelligence isn't their primary ability score). So I, at least, am not making any of them, for or against!
(Also, I, at least, RP my warlocks as VERY interested in forbidden lore, histories, and secrets. Anything that might lead to additional power without having to spend hours memorizing more spells or poring over big spellbooks. All about the perceived shortcuts to power gained through ancient arcana.)
Also when I said knowledge is power, I wasn't just referring to lore dumps.
I was also referring to metagame knowledge. That is, a character is so intelligent that they can read off the stat block for a creature they're looking at in in-universe terms. They know exactly how many hit points a creature has left to use things like power word kill with actual reliability. They basically have the Keen Mind feat but without the actual feat. They can see patterns with such clarity that they can predict things almost to the point where they have mundane divination powers.
All of which is meant to excuse that your knowledge-hungry Delver Into Secrets is dumber than the Memebarian and displays absolutely no interest in, talent for, or faculty with forbidden knowledge and ancient secrets?
WHY?
These are the same people who complain about the wizard being Intelligence-focused because "you shouldn't have to be smart to wave your fingers around, say a few words, and conjure up fire! You should be able to be a Wisdom wizard because I want to be able to ignore Intelligence and put my points in a stronger stat wizards should be about experiencing magic, not knowing things!" Why does anyone listen to that kind of tripe?
I honestly have no contact/familiarity with this argument (that warlocks are "dumb" just because Intelligence isn't their primary ability score). So I, at least, am not making any of them, for or against!
(Also, I, at least, RP my warlocks as VERY interested in forbidden lore, histories, and secrets. Anything that might lead to additional power without having to spend hours memorizing more spells or poring over big spellbooks. All about the perceived shortcuts to power gained through ancient arcana.)
They are not required to be dumb and I generally put as many discretionary points as I can there, but the reality is you need Chr to be a warlock then you need con and dex to survive which does not leave much left for int and as is you get the joy of dumping wisdom as well so you end up with no good saves that come up often and your thinking stats are going to be bad to slightly above average whether its int or wis. Man the save system in 5e is just bad.
Also when I said knowledge is power, I wasn't just referring to lore dumps.
I was also referring to metagame knowledge. That is, a character is so intelligent that they can read off the stat block for a creature they're looking at in in-universe terms. They know exactly how many hit points a creature has left to use things like power word kill with actual reliability. They basically have the Keen Mind feat but without the actual feat. They can see patterns with such clarity that they can predict things almost to the point where they have mundane divination powers.
That sort of crazy stuff.
Its one of the flaws with int and knowledge skills etc going back to 4e as well(3e at least you got crafting and well more skill points) nothing you say is wrong, but it requires not only a good DM to do it but more DM investment the other stats just roll in value wise with no effort on the DMs part, int they have to put effort into making it shine.
Also when I said knowledge is power, I wasn't just referring to lore dumps.
I was also referring to metagame knowledge. That is, a character is so intelligent that they can read off the stat block for a creature they're looking at in in-universe terms. They know exactly how many hit points a creature has left to use things like power word kill with actual reliability. They basically have the Keen Mind feat but without the actual feat. They can see patterns with such clarity that they can predict things almost to the point where they have mundane divination powers.
That sort of crazy stuff.
None of this is true. A DM might award you such knowledge, but they do not have to and absolutely nothing in the game tells them to. It'd certainly be cool if Intelligence and/or proficiency and a high enough bonus in certain knowledge-based skills allowed you to do such things, but they do not. And most ordinary DMs will go well out of their way to ensure you never get to see any of these benefits, because giving a character that kind of knowledge is considered "metagaming", and ergo inimical to life itself.
Also when I said knowledge is power, I wasn't just referring to lore dumps.
I was also referring to metagame knowledge. That is, a character is so intelligent that they can read off the stat block for a creature they're looking at in in-universe terms. They know exactly how many hit points a creature has left to use things like power word kill with actual reliability. They basically have the Keen Mind feat but without the actual feat. They can see patterns with such clarity that they can predict things almost to the point where they have mundane divination powers.
That sort of crazy stuff.
None of this is true. A DM might award you such knowledge, but they do not have to and absolutely nothing in the game tells them to. It'd certainly be cool if Intelligence and/or proficiency and a high enough bonus in certain knowledge-based skills allowed you to do such things, but they do not. And most ordinary DMs will go well out of their way to ensure you never get to see any of these benefits, because giving a character that kind of knowledge is considered "metagaming", and ergo inimical to life itself.
I.....never said it was true. I never actually claimed it allowed anyone to do any of this. That's my point.
I said that Intelligence probably doesn't get jack as an ability score because it seems (at least to me) to be easy to break. You thought I was talking about the DM giving lore info. And I said what you quoted here to point out I was talking about more than just that, and that Intelligence (backed by the mechanics) effectively giving a PC permission to metagame the heck out of the game is one possible approach to make it more attractive.
Worth noting: many, MANY DMs feel a compulsive need to punish players for taking a short rest in hostile territory, ensuring that the rest is interrupted or contested every single time they can. And those moments where a DM cannot reasonably punish the rest itself, they instead choose to sabotage the party's progress and ensure the party knows that their decision to short rest is what caused their objective to fail.
DMs have been specifically training players to avoid short rests at all costs since 5e was released. Those DMs do not then also get to complain that players do not favor classes or abilities that key off of short resting. Not when it is the DM's fault players hate short rests in the first place.
Please do not contact or message me.
There's a time for roleplay, and there's a time for a good ol' dungeon crawl. Of course, you could always say, "we take a short rest right in the middle of a siege and we don't give a damn". But there would be consequences.
You put wild shape and pact magic in the same list. That's what I'm talking about. One is mostly used as utility, another is core class functionality. Different short rest features have different weight, they're not all equal. Without channel divinity, the cleric is still at 90% power. Without ki, the monk can just punch. I'm not arguing against taking short rest. I'm arguing that short rest should have the same value for all classes.
Honestly, this feels like a purely munchkin thing. Charisma simply sees much more obvious use outside combat than intelligenсe, and people just want to seduce barmaids. I never understood why an occultist and master of forbidden knowledge would be about charm and not about knowledge.
Oh don't even get me started. When you hear "warlock", first thing you think about is dark magic, curses, summoning fiends and other horrors, profane rituals... But to get any cursing spell (like bane, bestow curse, or polymorph), you have to take an invocation, and even then you can cast it only once per day, and it still costs you a precious spell slot. A wizard is a better warlock than warlock!
Agreed that eldritch blast could use some flexibility, though iving it a patron-related damage type would inevitably make some patrons better than others, that would require compensation. Fire is much more commonly resisted than force or psychic.
And I dunno, something about constantly wielding a thing made of magic feels like Warcraft-ish high fantasy. For a hexblade, it just feels right to take a mundane weapon and infuse it with secret power, it's a part of being a warlock to pretend to be someone more inconspicuous. Also, the last campaign I finished was Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat as a hexblade warlock, and there was that moment of triumph when I looted Hazirawn, a sentient greatsword, from the corpse of Rezmir. We played it like "this it it, this is the thing that was calling out to me all this time, this is my patron, we finally reunited and now we are one, as we were always meant to be". But I speak for myself here.
I mean, hexblade is an obvious crutch for pact of the blade. I suggested that patrons and pact boons switched places. Subclasses shouls be based on boons, and a choice of patron would grant you thematic spells and some invocations.
Playing a hexblade already feels like being a half-caster alright. Not that eldritch blast spam is much different.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of your points.
A cleric is a better warlock than warlock. Clerics get bane, bestow curse, animate dead, speak with dead. Trickery clerics also get polymorph and modify memory, the latter of which warlocks didn't even get in the PHB.
Warlock should never have been charisma based, and people who think warlocks need to be charismatic morons are wrong. They are simply wrong. They are wrong. Even more than the limitations of Pact Magic, the fact that your warlock is required to be charismatic as hell but totally doesn't care a single wit about forbidden knowledge is fundamentally DUMB for the class the rules literally entitle "Delvers Into Secrets". Not "Delvers Into Panties." Not " Delvers Into Tinder." Not " Delvers Into Twitter Influencing." Delvers. Into. Secrets. Secrets, i.e. hidden knowledge, i.e. knowledge, i.e. FRIGGIN' INTELLIGENCE.
The 5e playerbase's gigantic collective weird hateboner for the Intelligence stat is dumb, bad, and wrong, and I will die on the hill labeled "your weird hateboner for Intelligence is dumb, bad and wrong." Stupid people don't make alliances with eldritch horrors from beyond reality for power. Foolish people, yes. A distinct general lack of Wisdom applies. But not stupid people. I absolutely detest that warlocks are charisma-based Fratbro perverts, and I will not bloody tolerate it if I have any damned choice in the matter whatsoever.
Please do not contact or message me.
I guess the reasoning there is that you don't have to be brainy to make a pact with a sus otherworldly entity.
A fiend, archfey, or genie probably won't care if you've been hitting the books if they want to make a deal with you. The most "cerebral" patron is probably the Great Old One because you kinda have to hit the books to make contact with them in the first place usually, and you'll probably need that big brain to withstand all the psychic damage you're likely to take from interacting with them.
That being said, I'm also on board with Warlocks being INT-based, since their whole schtick is about gaining magical knowledge from an entity. This is especially obvious with Pact of the Tome.
People wouldn't be insisting that all warlocks needed to be horny morons if Intelligence actually had a function in the game. Give Intelligence an actual function, and maybe people would be less fixated on the idea of forcing all warlocks to be fratboy sex offenders with the intellect of a sack of dead weasels.
And frankly? The whole "you don't need to be smart to make a deal!" thing is idiotic. If a fey, fiend, or genie wants your soul, it takes a whole helluva lot of keen wit to come out the other side with awesome magic powers. Those entities do not and never have cared about your degree of Game, outside of using rampant horniness as an easy way to get you to sign away your soul for nothing. Someone who gets the better end of a warlock pact needs to be INTELLIGENT to do so, not just friggin' horny.
Please do not contact or message me.
I think the main reason Intelligence doesn't is because it's probably the easiest one to break. The saying "knowledge is power" isn't an exaggeration.
Except no DM in the history of D&D has ever denied their players knowledge for want of an ability check. DMs trip over themselves to exposit lore - you could get all the knowledge you could ever want with an Intelligence score of literally zero in most games. It's patently absurd, I don't even know why "knowledge" skills exist in this game. And of course people are going to dump and disregard Intelligence if everybody gets the "benefits" of Intelligence for free-ninety-nine all game every game. It's beyond idiotic and it drives me nuts.
Please do not contact or message me.
According to the PHB, the primary components of the Charisma ability score are confidence, eloquence, and leadership. Not seduction, or persuasion, even.
I've always viewed the Charisma basis for Warlocks being about force of personality and confidence bordering on arrogance, not about being spellcasting lotharios.
(Obviously, with skills like persuasion and performance being tied to Charisma, it's not out of line to rope in horniness with Warlocks. But as first and primarily defined by the book, the ability score isn't about....scoring.)
So I'm good with CHA being the warlock's primary ability. It takes some arrogance to bargain with great powers and get something in return.
They need to be able to both have a brain but also be able to cobble together a convincing argument, which is where Persuasion (or Deception, depending on how you do it) comes in, which are both Charisma-based skills as it stands. in all fairness, Charisma isn't just about being horny. It's also about navigating social interactions in general, whether it be with another mortal or with an immortal being who can kill you just by looking at you.
Except DMs do gate-keep information to some degree. They won't hold back everything, but they also won't tell the players literally all the info. There's a reason divination or divination-like spells like detect magic, scrying, and speak with dead see use in pretty much every campaign they're in.
All of which is meant to excuse that your knowledge-hungry Delver Into Secrets is dumber than the Memebarian and displays absolutely no interest in, talent for, or faculty with forbidden knowledge and ancient secrets?
WHY?
These are the same people who complain about the wizard being Intelligence-focused because "you shouldn't have to be smart to wave your fingers around, say a few words, and conjure up fire! You should be able to be a Wisdom wizard because
I want to be able to ignore Intelligence and put my points in a stronger statwizards should be about experiencing magic, not knowing things!" Why does anyone listen to that kind of tripe?Please do not contact or message me.
Well, if you make tool shaped exactly like a schlong, don't be surprised when people use it... accordingly. Striking the deal is something that happens exactly once during a warlock's carreer. But it is the search of knowledge that drives the warlock to make a bargain in the first place, and it is knowledge that the pact rewards a warlock with. Finally, even JC stated that if a warlock abandons (or is abandoned by) the patron, he doesn't lose the powers that he already has. Knowledge is warlock's power. Warlock is not a magic gold-digger, and patron is not a magic sugardaddy.
I honestly have no contact/familiarity with this argument (that warlocks are "dumb" just because Intelligence isn't their primary ability score). So I, at least, am not making any of them, for or against!
(Also, I, at least, RP my warlocks as VERY interested in forbidden lore, histories, and secrets. Anything that might lead to additional power without having to spend hours memorizing more spells or poring over big spellbooks. All about the perceived shortcuts to power gained through ancient arcana.)
Also when I said knowledge is power, I wasn't just referring to lore dumps.
I was also referring to metagame knowledge. That is, a character is so intelligent that they can read off the stat block for a creature they're looking at in in-universe terms. They know exactly how many hit points a creature has left to use things like power word kill with actual reliability. They basically have the Keen Mind feat but without the actual feat. They can see patterns with such clarity that they can predict things almost to the point where they have mundane divination powers.
That sort of crazy stuff.
They are not required to be dumb and I generally put as many discretionary points as I can there, but the reality is you need Chr to be a warlock then you need con and dex to survive which does not leave much left for int and as is you get the joy of dumping wisdom as well so you end up with no good saves that come up often and your thinking stats are going to be bad to slightly above average whether its int or wis. Man the save system in 5e is just bad.
Its one of the flaws with int and knowledge skills etc going back to 4e as well(3e at least you got crafting and well more skill points) nothing you say is wrong, but it requires not only a good DM to do it but more DM investment the other stats just roll in value wise with no effort on the DMs part, int they have to put effort into making it shine.
None of this is true. A DM might award you such knowledge, but they do not have to and absolutely nothing in the game tells them to. It'd certainly be cool if Intelligence and/or proficiency and a high enough bonus in certain knowledge-based skills allowed you to do such things, but they do not. And most ordinary DMs will go well out of their way to ensure you never get to see any of these benefits, because giving a character that kind of knowledge is considered "metagaming", and ergo inimical to life itself.
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I.....never said it was true. I never actually claimed it allowed anyone to do any of this. That's my point.
I said that Intelligence probably doesn't get jack as an ability score because it seems (at least to me) to be easy to break. You thought I was talking about the DM giving lore info. And I said what you quoted here to point out I was talking about more than just that, and that Intelligence (backed by the mechanics) effectively giving a PC permission to metagame the heck out of the game is one possible approach to make it more attractive.