Explain to me how not being able to upcast spells like Armor of Agathys at the same rate as before is not a nerf.
Which is going to save you more HP in the long run? 25 temporary hit points, or up to 7 castings of Shield? (or Absorb Elements? Or Silvery Barbs? Or...)
Action Surge absolutely is a primary resource just like Pact slots are for 5e Warlocks.
It's really not. A fighter who has used it and not had the chance to short rest is still very much a Fighter. A 5e Warlock who hasn't had the chance to rest is an Expert with a Cantrip.
Do you understand just how much damage Armor of Agathys can do to enemies? You can annihilate a bunch of smaller enemies with the cold damage it does. If you are using Armor of Agathys just for the temporary hp, you are playing the game wrong.
A Fighter without an action surge is just a guy that hits something twice with a stick every turn. I don't want to argue about this particular issue, because I think all classes should be at equal footing when it comes to short vs long rest. I refuse to acknowledge the argument that "short rests are bad because not everyone gets to do short rests" while the people implementing that change give short rest abilities to other classes. I wish Wizards of the Coast just came out and admitted that having to add wording to include Pact Magic in spellcasting features that interact with spellslots was so tedious they wanted to streamline things.
If Pact Magic people can sneer at the UA warlock as "just a shitty goth ranger", I'm allowed my colorful recontextualizations of the shitty terrible arguments Pact Magic people are making.
Y'all want your terrible worthless Pact Magic? Make it an Invocation. "Pact Magic: select a spell of 1st level or higher from the arcane spell list, up to the level shown for your level in the table below. You gain a spell slot, which you can use to cast the selected spell or any other spells you know. if expended, you regain this spell slot when you complete a short or long rest. This spell slot increases in level as you reach new levels in this class, as shown in the table below. Whenever you gain a level, you can change the spell you selected with this Invocation. You can select this Invocation multiple times, but the number of times you select it cannot exceed your proficiency bonus."
There. Done. Terrible shitty Pact Magic is preserved for the Pact Magic crowd, and the rest of us can get on with actually being spellcasters and being able to actually use utility magic. You wanna go all bloody in on Pact Magic? Take the Invocation as often as your proficiency allows. The rest of us can nab it maybe once or twice when there's nothing better to grab or when one specific spell makes sense for a character, and just generally enjoy having an actually functional warlock.
And people are allowed to point out that you are throwing a temper tantrum.
On reflection, I think a lot of the problem with short rest features is that short rests are pretty poorly implemented in 5e. This isn't really limited to warlocks, so maybe the start is to just change short rest mechanics so people actually take something close to the design number of short rests per day. I created a thread on at least one thought for how to fix it.
1. Just like 5e short rest recharge. At 3rd along with gaining your subclass you gain a feature called Draw Power.
Draw Power- You spend one minute concentrating (as if concentrating on a spell) on the source of your magical power replenishing some of it. At the end of the minute make a d20 test with your Spellcasting modifier DC 10+ the level of your pact magic spell slot. If the check is successful you regain 1 expended pact magic spell slot. You may use this feature a number of times equal to you pb and regain all uses when you complete a long rest.
This is both stronger and weaker than my earlier version since it relies on a check, but also allows for the 5e short rest recharge as well.
2. Far more complicated but offering more castings of spells by changing pact magic functionality. Instead of always casting at your highest level you get 1 slot that stays at each level as your pact magic grows. Also on a short rest you recover expended slots equal to your warlock level. So a level 6 warlock could recover a 1st, 2nd and 3rd level slot, or two 3rd level slots
1st one 1st level pact slot
2nd two 1st level pact slots
3rd one 1st level pact slot, one 2nd level pact slot
4th one 1st lvl slot, two 2nd lvl slots
5th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl
6th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, two 3rd lvl
7th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl, one 4th lvl
8th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl, two 4th lvl
9th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl, one 4th lvl, one 5th lvl
10th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl, one 4th lvl, two 5th lvl
11th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd lvl, one 4th lvl, three 5th lvl
No change until 17
17th one 1st lvl, one 2nd lvl, one 3rd, one 4th, four 5th lvl
Note that at 11th level you can’t recharge all 3 of your 5th level slots on a single short rest as you only recharge up to 11 levels worth of spell slots. The same is true at 17th level.
It is possible to combine the Draw Power feature from my first option with my second option if only having a short rest recharge mechanic is too restrictive. Then draw power would only restore half your warlock level worth of pact magic slots
i thumbed your post for the #1, but #2 could use some heavy pruning.
how about keep the UA design but replace one single spell slot at character levels 5, 9, 13, & 17 (per half-caster progression) with one corresponding "pact magic" slot. pact magic spell-level progression would use the Mystic Arcanum chart and refresh on the 'draw power' rule above (or short rest) (or i'm still partial to selling some of your max hitpoints for refreshed slots).
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Do you understand just how much damage Armor of Agathys can do to enemies? You can annihilate a bunch of smaller enemies with the cold damage it does. If you are using Armor of Agathys just for the temporary hp, you are playing the game wrong.
That's nice. I'd still rather have Shield. And not having to beg my party for short rests.
i thumbed your post for the #1, but #2 could use some heavy pruning.
how about keep the UA design but replace one single spell slot at character levels 5, 9, 13, & 17 (per half-caster progression) with one corresponding "pact magic" slot. pact magic spell-level progression would use the Mystic Arcanum chart and refresh on the 'draw power' rule above (or short rest) (or i'm still partial to selling some of your max hitpoints for refreshed slots).
The biggest problem isn’t the lack of rechargeable slots it’s needing better spell progression. By level 9 Warlocks need 5th level slots for spells like armor of agathys, hellish rebuke, their summons and many of their spells. Half caster is only good if you want focus on reaction based defensive spells.
I have seen a lot of your comments about not taking short rests, have you seen the DMG pg 267 Epic Heroism?
It sounds like a conscious choice your table is making that results in penalize some class features. Short Rests are in the PH and DMG as core game mechanics, if your table is choosing to forgo them in favor of some other goal that is a choice. People in this discussion are not saying your table is wrong, but you have to recognize this a general discussion about warlocks and the future of D&D. Many people have not encountered issues taking short rests, many others have acknowledged the difficulties you have voiced. The game already has contingencies for parties that don't want to take breaks, I would suggest you explore them.
Also, what's with the '30 short rest' & '12 hour yoga' talk, you're constructing straw men to fight. Most groups are taking 1-3 short rests per day and saving the no time to breath, adrenaline pumping, Jason Statham action for the final boss. Again, I'm not saying they are right and you are wrong, you just need to meet the discussion where other people are coming from.
It is my opinion that the problems with taking Short Rests is not a problem with the Warlock class but the Short Rest mechanic. Many people don't know when or choose not to take a Short Rest, an hour seems so long, so maybe It could be 30min, or 20min, or 10min but you put a cap on the number of Short Rests per Long Rest.
My take on the change from Pact Magic to Spellcasting. All the unique flavor of the warlock class is in it's atypical Pact Magic system and the Half Casting proposal betrays that. Warlock Pact Magic is tall and slim while Half Casting is short an stocky, while limited in depth, it reaches as high as Full Casters. When I first read the 2014 PHB Warlock class I dismissed it as weak. Then I dug into the Spell Lists, Mystic Arcanum and Invocations and I fell in love with the class, I don't get to play all the characters I design but over half (maybe 2/3) of them have been Warlocks. There are things to change about the class and that may well include how the the Short Rest mechanic interacts with Pact Magic. If Warlocks gained an extra Pact Magic slot at 5th level, or Concentration was easier to maintain like Proficiency in Constitution Saves, or a bonus when concentrating on a Warlock exclusive spell (Hex, Shadow of Moil ect.) the limited slots would be less of an issue. Perhaps instead of a Short Rest, Pact Magic slots could come back naturally after 1 hour (share this tech with other Short Rest'ers). The gameplay of the Warlock is to cast a spell that persists, round after round buffing and/or debuffing. Maybe instead of Spells List, Pact Magic should have a Curse list that is different from the Spells list and Spells can only be cast when they are Invocations or as part of a Curse granted by Subclass Patron features like the Shadow Arts features from Way of the Shadow Monks.
It is my opinion that the problems with taking Short Rests is not a problem with the Warlock class but the Short Rest mechanic. Many people don't know when or choose not to take a Short Rest, an hour seems so long, so maybe It could be 30min, or 20min, or 10min but you put a cap on the number of Short Rests per Long Rest.
My take on the change from Pact Magic to Spellcasting. All the unique flavor of the warlock class is in it's atypical Pact Magic system and the Half Casting proposal betrays that. Warlock Pact Magic is tall and slim while Half Casting is short an stocky, while limited in depth, it reaches as high as Full Casters. When I first read the 2014 PHB Warlock class I dismissed it as weak. Then I dug into the Spell Lists, Mystic Arcanum and Invocations and I fell in love with the class, I don't get to play all the characters I design but over half (maybe 2/3) of them have been Warlocks. There are things to change about the class and that may well include how the the Short Rest mechanic interacts with Pact Magic. If Warlocks gained an extra Pact Magic slot at 5th level, or Concentration was easier to maintain like Proficiency in Constitution Saves, or a bonus when concentrating on a Warlock exclusive spell (Hex, Shadow of Moil ect.) the limited slots would be less of an issue. Perhaps instead of a Short Rest, Pact Magic slots could come back naturally after 1 hour (share this tech with other Short Rest'ers). The gameplay of the Warlock is to cast a spell that persists, round after round buffing and/or debuffing. Maybe instead of Spells List, Pact Magic should have a Curse list that is different from the Spells list and Spells can only be cast when they are Invocations or as part of a Curse granted by Subclass Patron features like the Shadow Arts features from Way of the Shadow Monks.
If you cap the number of short rests so it balances with the long rests, just make it a long rest mechanic on the pact magic. One of the fun things about warlocks is how you can manipulate the short rests to your advantage. After a long rest cast hex, and immediately take a short rest for your breakfast/while people are taking down the camp, boom free hex. Spam cast a big spell with short rests getting a dozen 5th level spells or more cast in a day. So sure some days you may be a couple spells short due to the story/encounter design, but other days you are up big. If that kind of fun is gone, just make it a long rest recharge with enough slots to cover it.
Keep the short rest, add some 10 minute ritual that costs a hit die usable once per day at level 5, twice per day at level 11. For the short rests are impossible to come by crowd they can probably squeeze in a ritual once or twice a day, it wont effect the overall balance much. I saw one suggestion to give them cats grace so the whole party gets a short rest making it more likely they'd want it, but hey make this ritual have the side effect that casting stat party members benefit from a short rest at its conclusion. Maybe tune the spells cast per short rest up slightly like 3 at level 5-7, 4 at 11-13, 5 at 17.
Warlocks as designed in 5e are basically two things pact magic(with mystic arcanums built in) & invocations. While both need work(I think invocations more than pact magic) throwing one of them out stops them from being the warlock.
If you cap the number of short rests so it balances with the long rests, just make it a long rest mechanic on the pact magic. One of the fun things about warlocks is how you can manipulate the short rests to your advantage. After a long rest cast hex, and immediately take a short rest for your breakfast/while people are taking down the camp, boom free hex. Spam cast a big spell with short rests getting a dozen 5th level spells or more cast in a day.
Yeah, you've just described why Wizards wants to get rid of the short rest recharge.
If you cap the number of short rests so it balances with the long rests, just make it a long rest mechanic on the pact magic. One of the fun things about warlocks is how you can manipulate the short rests to your advantage. After a long rest cast hex, and immediately take a short rest for your breakfast/while people are taking down the camp, boom free hex. Spam cast a big spell with short rests getting a dozen 5th level spells or more cast in a day.
Yeah, you've just described why Wizards wants to get rid of the short rest recharge.
It came up in Pantagruel's short rest thread, but one of the major problems with shoet rest-based classes really is reliability. Some tables take no shorts and their SR classes are super undertuned. Some tables just automatically give you a free short after every fight and SR classes are *over*tuned. Wizards can't really win because unlike long rests, they can't control or even account for how often short rests happen in a game. They can't design a class around "the normal" amount of short rests because there IS no normal.
Yes yes, "The DMG says two short tests a day!" Problem: that's horse shit. Players dictate how often short rests happen, with the DM weighing in only inasmuch as they can dump monsters on a rest and ruin it. Tables that want to SR after every encounter can't really be stopped from doing so save via monster dumping, and a DM who dumps monsters on every rest is generally considered a bad DM.
So Wizards has to try and balance SR classes around a completely unknown and arbitrary number of shorts in any given day and surprising no one with a brain, you can't really do that. The class almost universally underperforms or overperforms because NO ONE restricts themselves to just two shorts a day. Either they don't generally bother with shorts at all or they're pushing for as many shorts as they can possibly browbeat the party into giving them because they're actively trying to break the system.
It's why I strongly favor the idea of changing short rests to once per day period, i.e. "once you complete a short rest, you cannot benefit from another one until you complete a long rest". Then rejigger the game math around the idea that shorts can only ever happen once a day and suddenly you're good. You know what players are working with and you can tune shit properly, which you CANNOT do in a " players can short rest anywhere between zero and four hundred and eighty two times per adventuring day" situation.
Y'all wanna keep your short rest shit? Then short ******* rests have to change, and you are NOT ALLOWED to complain about it.
It came up in Pantagruel's short rest thread, but one of the major problems with shoet rest-based classes really is reliability. Some tables take no shorts and their SR classes are super undertuned. Some tables just automatically give you a free short after every fight and SR classes are *over*tuned. Wizards can't really win because unlike long rests, they can't control or even account for how often short rests happen in a game.
You're overstating your case. Wizards can't control or account for how often long rests happen either. The only way to do that is by using non-time-based limits on resting -- i.e.
You cannot take a short rest until you overcome X difficulty worth of encounters
You cannot take a long rest until you overcome Y difficult worth of encounters
which I strongly doubt would be popular with D&D players.
And yet long rest resource metering works just fine for LR-centric classes. Yes, some tables do the Fifteen Minute Workday, but you can't stop that short of what Wizards already did - you only get one long rest a day, period. If a DM does their job and makes the world move regardless of whether the players move or not, Fifteen Minute Workday resolves itself because eventually the sluggards realize that the Forces of Evil have grown too powerful to stop while the "Heroes" were being dainty little baby people.
That doesn't apply to short rests. You can secure a technically unlimited number of short rests in an adventuring day. Hell, Coffeelocks RELY on unlimited shorts in a day. You can't build a "daily" resource budget that works equally well for both "Zero" and "Unlimited" shorts. You simply, mathematically, cannot.
So either shorts get the same strict metering as longs or you can't have short-centric classes. One or the other MUST be true. So which one do you want, y'all - strictly, mechanically limited short rests or short-centric classes?
i thumbed your post for the #1, but #2 could use some heavy pruning.
how about keep the UA design but replace one single spell slot at character levels 5, 9, 13, & 17 (per half-caster progression) with one corresponding "pact magic" slot. pact magic spell-level progression would use the Mystic Arcanum chart and refresh on the 'draw power' rule above (or short rest) (or i'm still partial to selling some of your max hitpoints for refreshed slots).
The biggest problem isn’t the lack of rechargeable slots it’s needing better spell progression. By level 9 Warlocks need 5th level slots for spells like armor of agathys, hellish rebuke, their summons and many of their spells. Half caster is only good if you want focus on reaction based defensive spells.
i suggested above that at character-level 9 the warlock have two pact slots which would cast or up-cast one spell each to a max of spell-level 5 (per the Mystic Arcanum table (UA-2023-PH-Playtest5, page 37)).
if you're saying that the half-caster would not have any known 5th (or 4th!) level spells, well... that's a good point. i was keeping it brief but i assume the pact slot feature would include verbiage about using a Mystic Arcanum invocation locked spell.
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I have often said, short rests aren't taken. They are given. When you short rest and if that rest is effective is dependent on the adventure and the story. I am usually comfortable with the idea that we can plan that there will be at least 1 short rest. Characters will need and want to spend their hit dice between fights.
Number of short rests is not as much of an issue with classes other than warlock because the abilities they gain back are limited in their use by comparison to spells. In addition, what happens during short rests is SPENDING a resource not gaining one.
The next most reliant on short rests is monk, but again that is because how many features and abilities are tied to ki and how few they get that aren't.
Yes bard, druid, and cleric have short rest abilities, but they all have specific uses and still have full casting along side it.
Even the wizads short rest recovery is limited to just once.
I'm going to apologise in advance. I haven't read all the replies yet, so I might be parroting other comments, but I was really disappointed with the changes to Warlock.
I would prefer the patron/subclass selection to be at level 1, just for roleplaying expedience. Initially, I thought subclass progression would be tied to your class grouping (Expert/Priest/Mage/Warrior), but the fact that it's universal for all classes obliges Warlock to get theirs at level 3. Personally, I don't love it, but it's not the most major change, nor a dealbreaker for me.
Moving the pacts to cantrips is fine - it works. Eldritch Blast even works as a staple for me, frankly. Gibing Rangers 'Hunter's Mark' as a staple feels far lazier. At least Eldritch Blast has been a long-standing and intentional part of the Warlock's identity. 'Hunter's Mark' accidentally became essential to the Ranger because of the flaws with how it was written in the 5E PHB. So yeah.. this feels less egregious than that.
What I was really gutted with was the loss of Pact Magic. I get that they're saying the Warlock didn't have enough spell slots to please people, but couldn't they just have like.. spell slots tied to their proficiency bonus? That's the new hotness with the UAs recently, and it would double the Warlock's available spell slots by 20th level, which is surely enough. The counterargument I have seen is that OneD&D/the revised rules are trying to move away from features relying on short rests, but Wizards are still being supplied with Arcane Recovery, soooo...
The decision to just drop Pact Magic takes so much of the unique playstyle of Warlocks vs. other spellcasting classes, and it feels lazy. If OneD&D/the revised rules are aiming to simplify the game, the new spell progression table being supplemented by Mystic Arcanum seems to me like an absolute mess: it still has the limitations of the previous Mystic Arcanum, and broadly means to serve the same purpose, so why is it there at all? To get level 3 & 4 spells sooner based on their half-caster progression table? When you aren't casting spells at their highest spell slot, this is hardly compensation for how rapidly the Warlock will be outpaced by the Sorcerer and Wizard. Furthermore, half of the Eldritch Invocations are useless now. Being able to cast 'Mage Armour' and 'Jump' at will is far less useful when the Warlock is as spell slot-rich as other casters, and I can't think of any reason to take any of the 'cast a spell' invocations with this new iteration of Warlock.
So we have a somewhat reorganised version of the 5E Warlock, but with this massive change to their spellcasting feature which completely jars with other aspects of the class. I don't know why the team decided to do this, and with all due respect, I'm willing to wager they haven't really thought it through. Fun fact: in the 'Experts' UA that was released, spellcasting feats still stipulated 'Spellcasting, or the Pact Magic Feature' as a prerequisite, which I'm taking as further fuel for my theory that the decision to completely rework (or give up) on the Warlock's spellcasting mechanics is a fairly recent one on the part of the OneD&D team, and it isn't one they have taken the time to think through properly.
And yet long rest resource metering works just fine for LR-centric classes.
No, it really doesn't; a significant fraction of the issues with martial vs caster has to do with how much of their power is tied up in at-will abilities (attack actions and cantrips) vs consumable abilities (spells and other long rest abilities), because a single super-deadly encounter, while it takes longer than a medium encounter, does not take 6x as long, and thus the spellcaster can maintain a much higher burn rate; if a martial and a caster are balanced in a 6 encounter day, the caster probably winds up twice as powerful as the martial in a 1 encounter day, and the martial winds up at around 1.5x as powerful as the caster in a 12 encounter day.
In terms of balancing martials vs casters, it would be much more effective to make short rest spellcasting the standard, but spells per day are one of those sacred cows of D&D.
You're not getting spell slots based on proficiency bonus.
Firstly, proficiency bonus scales independent of class levels. That means a single or double level dip gives the same level of progression as going full class. The reason they're changing the proposed Cleric.
Secondly, going into a fight with four level 5 slots is one thing. Going in with six is something else. That's twice as many as a full caster, and it can be done after every short rest, or after using Eldritch Master.
Every class is now subclass at level 3, subclass feature at level 6, subclass feature at level 10, subclass feature at level 14. Part of it is probably for programming into their virtual tabletop. Don't try to overthink it.
I suppose a possible alternative would be to treat Mystic Arcanum as a spell slot that can be used to cast the spell linked to it, or to upcast a lower level spell. That would make using invocations for Mystic Arcanum even more important than it is now though.
It came up in Pantagruel's short rest thread, but one of the major problems with shoet rest-based classes really is reliability. Some tables take no shorts and their SR classes are super undertuned. Some tables just automatically give you a free short after every fight and SR classes are *over*tuned. Wizards can't really win because unlike long rests, they can't control or even account for how often short rests happen in a game. They can't design a class around "the normal" amount of short rests because there IS no normal.
Yes yes, "The DMG says two short tests a day!" Problem: that's horse shit. Players dictate how often short rests happen, with the DM weighing in only inasmuch as they can dump monsters on a rest and ruin it. Tables that want to SR after every encounter can't really be stopped from doing so save via monster dumping, and a DM who dumps monsters on every rest is generally considered a bad DM.
The first thing I will say is that the Dungeon Master is able to heavily impact how often short rests are taken. Even with time pressure, it is very possible that your players are able to short rest (for 1 hour) even if the timing dictates that they are not able to long rest (8 hours).
I agree that short rest features are a lot harder to design, and that it makes sense to either modify the guidelines and mechanics around them or to remove certain mechanics that recharge after this type of rest. However, I will say that there is technically a supposedly normal/typical amount here, though I doubt anyone has the statistics for how many short rests DMs make room for and how many of those rests players actually take. I genuinely would be quite interested in seeing the data on this, because the consensus among most communities seem to be that short rests are used a very varying amount of times depending on the game and the table.
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Do you understand just how much damage Armor of Agathys can do to enemies? You can annihilate a bunch of smaller enemies with the cold damage it does. If you are using Armor of Agathys just for the temporary hp, you are playing the game wrong.
A Fighter without an action surge is just a guy that hits something twice with a stick every turn. I don't want to argue about this particular issue, because I think all classes should be at equal footing when it comes to short vs long rest. I refuse to acknowledge the argument that "short rests are bad because not everyone gets to do short rests" while the people implementing that change give short rest abilities to other classes. I wish Wizards of the Coast just came out and admitted that having to add wording to include Pact Magic in spellcasting features that interact with spellslots was so tedious they wanted to streamline things.
And people are allowed to point out that you are throwing a temper tantrum.
On reflection, I think a lot of the problem with short rest features is that short rests are pretty poorly implemented in 5e. This isn't really limited to warlocks, so maybe the start is to just change short rest mechanics so people actually take something close to the design number of short rests per day. I created a thread on at least one thought for how to fix it.
i thumbed your post for the #1, but #2 could use some heavy pruning.
how about keep the UA design but replace one single spell slot at character levels 5, 9, 13, & 17 (per half-caster progression) with one corresponding "pact magic" slot. pact magic spell-level progression would use the Mystic Arcanum chart and refresh on the 'draw power' rule above (or short rest) (or i'm still partial to selling some of your max hitpoints for refreshed slots).
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Fixed that for you.
That's nice. I'd still rather have Shield. And not having to beg my party for short rests.
The biggest problem isn’t the lack of rechargeable slots it’s needing better spell progression. By level 9 Warlocks need 5th level slots for spells like armor of agathys, hellish rebuke, their summons and many of their spells. Half caster is only good if you want focus on reaction based defensive spells.
Yurei1453
I have seen a lot of your comments about not taking short rests, have you seen the DMG pg 267 Epic Heroism?
It sounds like a conscious choice your table is making that results in penalize some class features. Short Rests are in the PH and DMG as core game mechanics, if your table is choosing to forgo them in favor of some other goal that is a choice. People in this discussion are not saying your table is wrong, but you have to recognize this a general discussion about warlocks and the future of D&D. Many people have not encountered issues taking short rests, many others have acknowledged the difficulties you have voiced. The game already has contingencies for parties that don't want to take breaks, I would suggest you explore them.
Also, what's with the '30 short rest' & '12 hour yoga' talk, you're constructing straw men to fight. Most groups are taking 1-3 short rests per day and saving the no time to breath, adrenaline pumping, Jason Statham action for the final boss. Again, I'm not saying they are right and you are wrong, you just need to meet the discussion where other people are coming from.
It is my opinion that the problems with taking Short Rests is not a problem with the Warlock class but the Short Rest mechanic. Many people don't know when or choose not to take a Short Rest, an hour seems so long, so maybe It could be 30min, or 20min, or 10min but you put a cap on the number of Short Rests per Long Rest.
My take on the change from Pact Magic to Spellcasting. All the unique flavor of the warlock class is in it's atypical Pact Magic system and the Half Casting proposal betrays that. Warlock Pact Magic is tall and slim while Half Casting is short an stocky, while limited in depth, it reaches as high as Full Casters. When I first read the 2014 PHB Warlock class I dismissed it as weak. Then I dug into the Spell Lists, Mystic Arcanum and Invocations and I fell in love with the class, I don't get to play all the characters I design but over half (maybe 2/3) of them have been Warlocks. There are things to change about the class and that may well include how the the Short Rest mechanic interacts with Pact Magic. If Warlocks gained an extra Pact Magic slot at 5th level, or Concentration was easier to maintain like Proficiency in Constitution Saves, or a bonus when concentrating on a Warlock exclusive spell (Hex, Shadow of Moil ect.) the limited slots would be less of an issue. Perhaps instead of a Short Rest, Pact Magic slots could come back naturally after 1 hour (share this tech with other Short Rest'ers). The gameplay of the Warlock is to cast a spell that persists, round after round buffing and/or debuffing. Maybe instead of Spells List, Pact Magic should have a Curse list that is different from the Spells list and Spells can only be cast when they are Invocations or as part of a Curse granted by Subclass Patron features like the Shadow Arts features from Way of the Shadow Monks.
If you cap the number of short rests so it balances with the long rests, just make it a long rest mechanic on the pact magic. One of the fun things about warlocks is how you can manipulate the short rests to your advantage. After a long rest cast hex, and immediately take a short rest for your breakfast/while people are taking down the camp, boom free hex. Spam cast a big spell with short rests getting a dozen 5th level spells or more cast in a day. So sure some days you may be a couple spells short due to the story/encounter design, but other days you are up big. If that kind of fun is gone, just make it a long rest recharge with enough slots to cover it.
Keep the short rest, add some 10 minute ritual that costs a hit die usable once per day at level 5, twice per day at level 11. For the short rests are impossible to come by crowd they can probably squeeze in a ritual once or twice a day, it wont effect the overall balance much. I saw one suggestion to give them cats grace so the whole party gets a short rest making it more likely they'd want it, but hey make this ritual have the side effect that casting stat party members benefit from a short rest at its conclusion. Maybe tune the spells cast per short rest up slightly like 3 at level 5-7, 4 at 11-13, 5 at 17.
Warlocks as designed in 5e are basically two things pact magic(with mystic arcanums built in) & invocations. While both need work(I think invocations more than pact magic) throwing one of them out stops them from being the warlock.
Yeah, you've just described why Wizards wants to get rid of the short rest recharge.
Because people can have fun playing their game.
It came up in Pantagruel's short rest thread, but one of the major problems with shoet rest-based classes really is reliability. Some tables take no shorts and their SR classes are super undertuned. Some tables just automatically give you a free short after every fight and SR classes are *over*tuned. Wizards can't really win because unlike long rests, they can't control or even account for how often short rests happen in a game. They can't design a class around "the normal" amount of short rests because there IS no normal.
Yes yes, "The DMG says two short tests a day!" Problem: that's horse shit. Players dictate how often short rests happen, with the DM weighing in only inasmuch as they can dump monsters on a rest and ruin it. Tables that want to SR after every encounter can't really be stopped from doing so save via monster dumping, and a DM who dumps monsters on every rest is generally considered a bad DM.
So Wizards has to try and balance SR classes around a completely unknown and arbitrary number of shorts in any given day and surprising no one with a brain, you can't really do that. The class almost universally underperforms or overperforms because NO ONE restricts themselves to just two shorts a day. Either they don't generally bother with shorts at all or they're pushing for as many shorts as they can possibly browbeat the party into giving them because they're actively trying to break the system.
It's why I strongly favor the idea of changing short rests to once per day period, i.e. "once you complete a short rest, you cannot benefit from another one until you complete a long rest". Then rejigger the game math around the idea that shorts can only ever happen once a day and suddenly you're good. You know what players are working with and you can tune shit properly, which you CANNOT do in a " players can short rest anywhere between zero and four hundred and eighty two times per adventuring day" situation.
Y'all wanna keep your short rest shit? Then short ******* rests have to change, and you are NOT ALLOWED to complain about it.
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You're overstating your case. Wizards can't control or account for how often long rests happen either. The only way to do that is by using non-time-based limits on resting -- i.e.
which I strongly doubt would be popular with D&D players.
And yet long rest resource metering works just fine for LR-centric classes. Yes, some tables do the Fifteen Minute Workday, but you can't stop that short of what Wizards already did - you only get one long rest a day, period. If a DM does their job and makes the world move regardless of whether the players move or not, Fifteen Minute Workday resolves itself because eventually the sluggards realize that the Forces of Evil have grown too powerful to stop while the "Heroes" were being dainty little baby people.
That doesn't apply to short rests. You can secure a technically unlimited number of short rests in an adventuring day. Hell, Coffeelocks RELY on unlimited shorts in a day. You can't build a "daily" resource budget that works equally well for both "Zero" and "Unlimited" shorts. You simply, mathematically, cannot.
So either shorts get the same strict metering as longs or you can't have short-centric classes. One or the other MUST be true. So which one do you want, y'all - strictly, mechanically limited short rests or short-centric classes?
Choose.
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i suggested above that at character-level 9 the warlock have two pact slots which would cast or up-cast one spell each to a max of spell-level 5 (per the Mystic Arcanum table (UA-2023-PH-Playtest5, page 37)).
if you're saying that the half-caster would not have any known 5th (or 4th!) level spells, well... that's a good point. i was keeping it brief but i assume the pact slot feature would include verbiage about using a Mystic Arcanum invocation locked spell.
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Yurei is right about the short rest issue here.
I have often said, short rests aren't taken. They are given. When you short rest and if that rest is effective is dependent on the adventure and the story. I am usually comfortable with the idea that we can plan that there will be at least 1 short rest. Characters will need and want to spend their hit dice between fights.
Number of short rests is not as much of an issue with classes other than warlock because the abilities they gain back are limited in their use by comparison to spells. In addition, what happens during short rests is SPENDING a resource not gaining one.
The next most reliant on short rests is monk, but again that is because how many features and abilities are tied to ki and how few they get that aren't.
Yes bard, druid, and cleric have short rest abilities, but they all have specific uses and still have full casting along side it.
Even the wizads short rest recovery is limited to just once.
I'm going to apologise in advance. I haven't read all the replies yet, so I might be parroting other comments, but I was really disappointed with the changes to Warlock.
I would prefer the patron/subclass selection to be at level 1, just for roleplaying expedience. Initially, I thought subclass progression would be tied to your class grouping (Expert/Priest/Mage/Warrior), but the fact that it's universal for all classes obliges Warlock to get theirs at level 3. Personally, I don't love it, but it's not the most major change, nor a dealbreaker for me.
Moving the pacts to cantrips is fine - it works. Eldritch Blast even works as a staple for me, frankly. Gibing Rangers 'Hunter's Mark' as a staple feels far lazier. At least Eldritch Blast has been a long-standing and intentional part of the Warlock's identity. 'Hunter's Mark' accidentally became essential to the Ranger because of the flaws with how it was written in the 5E PHB. So yeah.. this feels less egregious than that.
What I was really gutted with was the loss of Pact Magic. I get that they're saying the Warlock didn't have enough spell slots to please people, but couldn't they just have like.. spell slots tied to their proficiency bonus? That's the new hotness with the UAs recently, and it would double the Warlock's available spell slots by 20th level, which is surely enough. The counterargument I have seen is that OneD&D/the revised rules are trying to move away from features relying on short rests, but Wizards are still being supplied with Arcane Recovery, soooo...
The decision to just drop Pact Magic takes so much of the unique playstyle of Warlocks vs. other spellcasting classes, and it feels lazy. If OneD&D/the revised rules are aiming to simplify the game, the new spell progression table being supplemented by Mystic Arcanum seems to me like an absolute mess: it still has the limitations of the previous Mystic Arcanum, and broadly means to serve the same purpose, so why is it there at all? To get level 3 & 4 spells sooner based on their half-caster progression table? When you aren't casting spells at their highest spell slot, this is hardly compensation for how rapidly the Warlock will be outpaced by the Sorcerer and Wizard. Furthermore, half of the Eldritch Invocations are useless now. Being able to cast 'Mage Armour' and 'Jump' at will is far less useful when the Warlock is as spell slot-rich as other casters, and I can't think of any reason to take any of the 'cast a spell' invocations with this new iteration of Warlock.
So we have a somewhat reorganised version of the 5E Warlock, but with this massive change to their spellcasting feature which completely jars with other aspects of the class. I don't know why the team decided to do this, and with all due respect, I'm willing to wager they haven't really thought it through. Fun fact: in the 'Experts' UA that was released, spellcasting feats still stipulated 'Spellcasting, or the Pact Magic Feature' as a prerequisite, which I'm taking as further fuel for my theory that the decision to completely rework (or give up) on the Warlock's spellcasting mechanics is a fairly recent one on the part of the OneD&D team, and it isn't one they have taken the time to think through properly.
It works for them, it does not work for every other class that has to play with them.
No, it really doesn't; a significant fraction of the issues with martial vs caster has to do with how much of their power is tied up in at-will abilities (attack actions and cantrips) vs consumable abilities (spells and other long rest abilities), because a single super-deadly encounter, while it takes longer than a medium encounter, does not take 6x as long, and thus the spellcaster can maintain a much higher burn rate; if a martial and a caster are balanced in a 6 encounter day, the caster probably winds up twice as powerful as the martial in a 1 encounter day, and the martial winds up at around 1.5x as powerful as the caster in a 12 encounter day.
In terms of balancing martials vs casters, it would be much more effective to make short rest spellcasting the standard, but spells per day are one of those sacred cows of D&D.
You're not getting spell slots based on proficiency bonus.
Firstly, proficiency bonus scales independent of class levels. That means a single or double level dip gives the same level of progression as going full class. The reason they're changing the proposed Cleric.
Secondly, going into a fight with four level 5 slots is one thing. Going in with six is something else. That's twice as many as a full caster, and it can be done after every short rest, or after using Eldritch Master.
Every class is now subclass at level 3, subclass feature at level 6, subclass feature at level 10, subclass feature at level 14. Part of it is probably for programming into their virtual tabletop. Don't try to overthink it.
I suppose a possible alternative would be to treat Mystic Arcanum as a spell slot that can be used to cast the spell linked to it, or to upcast a lower level spell. That would make using invocations for Mystic Arcanum even more important than it is now though.
The first thing I will say is that the Dungeon Master is able to heavily impact how often short rests are taken. Even with time pressure, it is very possible that your players are able to short rest (for 1 hour) even if the timing dictates that they are not able to long rest (8 hours).
I agree that short rest features are a lot harder to design, and that it makes sense to either modify the guidelines and mechanics around them or to remove certain mechanics that recharge after this type of rest. However, I will say that there is technically a supposedly normal/typical amount here, though I doubt anyone has the statistics for how many short rests DMs make room for and how many of those rests players actually take. I genuinely would be quite interested in seeing the data on this, because the consensus among most communities seem to be that short rests are used a very varying amount of times depending on the game and the table.
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