Balancing is easy, just make every character mechanically identical et voila, the game is perfectly balanced. The problem is that then it is really boring. If characters / builds have different strengths and weaknesses - which they should otherwise why have different builds? - then which character(s) are the best will depend on the specifics of the game. A party of an Eloquence Bard, a Sorcadin, a Tempest cleric, and a Zealot barbarian might on paper be incredibly powerful, but if the campaign is based in the underdark and is based on investigation, tracking, and eliminating a hive of mind flayers, they are do terribly, since probably all of them dumped Intelligence.
There is a bigger picture here though: Should the amount of combat per adventuring day affect the difficulty of the game. i.e should it be harder to fight 10 combats in a day, than to fight 4 combats in a day, than to fight 1 combat in a day? I would say, yes. And adventuring day with 10 combats in it should feel fundamentally different from an adventuring day with 4 combats in it, not just take longer IRL time to play.
That's the core problem: we know how to balance the system. What we don't know is how to balance the system in a way that the player base will accept, and it's not clear that it's even possible.
So in fairness to 4e, a HUGE contributor to it failing was that it ALSO had an OLG scandal attached. Normalized resources MIGHT actually be fine if the system surrounding it was popular and scandal free.
There is a bigger picture here though: Should the amount of combat per adventuring day affect the difficulty of the game. i.e should it be harder to fight 10 combats in a day, than to fight 4 combats in a day, than to fight 1 combat in a day? I would say, yes. And adventuring day with 10 combats in it should feel fundamentally different from an adventuring day with 4 combats in it, not just take longer IRL time to play.
I would say no -- the inevitable consequence of a resource depletion mechanic is that you have a large number of really boring encounters, because interesting encounters consume too many resources, and I'd much rather have one interesting combat than ten boring combats.
In a single combat day, the tension is "Can we win". In a ten combat day, the tension is "can we keep our resource usage below the correct usage curve, because if not we'll have to turn back before the day ends".
There is a bigger picture here though: Should the amount of combat per adventuring day affect the difficulty of the game. i.e should it be harder to fight 10 combats in a day, than to fight 4 combats in a day, than to fight 1 combat in a day? I would say, yes. And adventuring day with 10 combats in it should feel fundamentally different from an adventuring day with 4 combats in it, not just take longer IRL time to play.
I would say no -- the inevitable consequence of a resource depletion mechanic is that you have a large number of really boring encounters, because interesting encounters consume too many resources, and I'd much rather have one interesting combat than ten boring combats.
In a single combat day, the tension is "Can we win". In a ten combat day, the tension is "can we keep our resource usage below the correct usage curve, because if not we'll have to turn back before the day ends".
I disagree on the first point. Right now 5e has resource depletion mechanics, but the vast majority of games seem to only have a couple of encounters per day and those are still perfectly fine and fun games. You just need to scale up the difficulty of those encounters, so you end up with a small number of encounters where you are using resources every turn in order to win, rather than lots of easy encounters where you are trying to win while using as few resources as possible.
I disagree on the first point. Right now 5e has resource depletion mechanics, but the vast majority of games seem to only have a couple of encounters per day and those are still perfectly fine and fun games. You just need to scale up the difficulty of those encounters, so you end up with a small number of encounters where you are using resources every turn in order to win, rather than lots of easy encounters where you are trying to win while using as few resources as possible.
Games with only one encounter per day really aren't using resource depletion mechanics at all. If you're using multiple encounters, well, "can we win this fight at a sufficiently low cost to continue", while moderately interesting, is far less compelling than "can we win this fight at all".
D&D, for most of its history, has been engaged in a fight between dungeon design that wants resource depletion to be a thing, and players who are going to do everything they can to make sure that resource depletion isn't a thing. At a certain point, you should just give in and eliminate resource depletion as an important mechanic.
I don't get why everyone acts as players doing more short rests automatically fixes everything. Short Rests aren't planned in advanced most of the time. Usually whether or not a rest happens has FAR less to do with feature resources and more relating to how much hp your party has. When I've played warlock I would often find myself in a situation where we would short rest while I had all my pact slots, which is incredibly frustrating.
To be frank, any system that doesn't go all in on 1 type of resource scheduling is going to have issues. Mixing rest features only sets up situations where people have different priorities. Because your never going to be in a situation where everyone is equally happy with the resources they are getting back.
I think this is true if everything is "1 type of resource scheduling". I don't think it would be an issue for core class features. But there are other class features, like Action Surge, Wildshape, Channel Divinity, etc that I fine being on a different schedule. A mix of class features is fine. Having a couple main classes with features on one and all other classes on another is more of a problem.
So every class should have 1 or 2 base class features that benefit from a short rest or none should?
I’m not saying that it should be one way or another. I’m just saying that it is probably easier from a balance perspective that core features of a class (features that when gone has a big change on the character. Like a caster with no spell slots or Monk with no Ki/DP since core monk features use Ki/DP to work, etc) probably should be long rest. That way everyone is on the same page. But other class features are fine if some have SR recharge. But I don’t think all classes need to have a specific number, or any, SR features.
I thought 1DD was heading in that direction but it seems they turned away from that, like so many other things, with the monk in UA6. I anticipate Warlock going back to SR pact slots as well.
Sorry for the jumbled text. Forgot that spreadsheets don’t like to be copied and pasted.😋
Some improvement to the warlock.
The Warlock Level Proficiency Bonus Features Cantrips Known Spells Known Pact Slots Slot Level Invocations Known 1st +2 Pact Boon, Pact Magic 2 2 2 1st - 2nd +2 Eldritch Invocations 2 3 2 1st 2 3rd +2 Otherworldly Patron 2 4 2 2nd 2 4th +2 Ability Score Improvement 3 5 2 2nd 3 5th +3 3 6 3 3rd 3 6th +3 Otherworldly Patron feature 3 7 3 3rd 4 7th +3 3 8 3 4th 4 8th +3 Ability Score Improvement 3 9 3 4th 5 9th +4 Eldritch Power 3 10 4 5th 5 10th +4 Otherworldly Patron feature 4 10 4 5th 6 11th +4 Mystic Arcanum (6th level) 4 11 4 5th 6 12th +4 Ability Score Improvement 4 11 4 5th 7 13th +5 Mystic Arcanum (7th level) 4 12 4 5th 7 14th +5 Otherworldly Patron feature 4 12 4 5th 8 15th +5 Mystic Arcanum (8th level) 4 13 4 5th 8 16th +5 Ability Score Improvement 4 13 4 5th 9 17th +6 Mystic Arcanum (9th level) 4 14 5 5th 9 18th +6 Eldritch Master 4 14 5 5th 10 19th +6 Ability Score Improvement, 4 15 5 5th 10 20th +6 Epic Boon 4 15 5 5th 11 Pact Magic. You have a number of Pact Magic Slots to fuel your Warlock spells. Consult the Warlock table for the number of Pact Magic Slots. You get one expanded Pact Magic Slot when finish a short rest and all expanded Pact Magic Slots when you finish a long rest.
Eldritch Power. At 9th level you can draw on your inner reserve of mystical power while entreating your patron to regain expended spell slots. You can spend 10 minutes entreating your patron for aid to regain all your expended spell slots from your Pact Magic feature. Once you regain spell slots with this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can do so again.
Eldritch Master. Still thinking of something.
Invocations:
Fiendish Vigor As a bonus action for 1 hour you can give yourself temp-hp equal to 1d6+your Warlock level and you get Damage Reduction to Fire and Poison damage equal to your Warlock level divided by 4 rounded up. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can expand a Pact Slot to use this feature again.
Mask of Many Face’s. As an an action you can cast Disguise Self. When you make a Deception skill check to deceive anyone with the disguise you add proficiency or expertise if you already have proficiency in Deception. You can use this invocation twice between long rest. At 5th level you can expand a Pact Slot to use this again.
Armor of Shadows As an action you can cast Mage Armor on yourself without needing material components. You also get damage reduction to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage equal to you warlock level divided by 4 rounded up. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can use your pact slots to use it again.
Eldritch Magic. Prerequisite 5th level. When you select this invocation you can select one spell from any spell-list equal to or lower than your highest pact slot. It counts as a warlock spell for you and doesn’t count towards your spells known. You can cast it once without expanding a pact slot per long rest. You can also use your pact slots to cast the spell. This invocation can be taken more than once.
Eyes of the Rune Keeper. As an action you can cast Comprehend Language. Also while it is active you can use any non-warlock cantrip or 1st level spell scroll. You can attempt to use any non-warlock spell scroll up to 5th level if you can pass a charisma ability check with a DC equal to 10+the level of the spell. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can use your pact slots to use it again.
Eldritch Scribe. Prerequisites: Pact of Tome, proficiency in Arcana. You can craft spell scrolls of Warlock spells you know at half the time and cost. Also at the end of long rest you can change a Warlock spell of 5th level or lower you know with another one.
Hexer Prerequisite 5th level. You can cast Hex without requiring concentration once per rest. Also the extra damage applies per hit during your turn only instead of just once.
I disagree on the first point. Right now 5e has resource depletion mechanics, but the vast majority of games seem to only have a couple of encounters per day and those are still perfectly fine and fun games. You just need to scale up the difficulty of those encounters, so you end up with a small number of encounters where you are using resources every turn in order to win, rather than lots of easy encounters where you are trying to win while using as few resources as possible.
Games with only one encounter per day really aren't using resource depletion mechanics at all. If you're using multiple encounters, well, "can we win this fight at a sufficiently low cost to continue", while moderately interesting, is far less compelling than "can we win this fight at all".
D&D, for most of its history, has been engaged in a fight between dungeon design that wants resource depletion to be a thing, and players who are going to do everything they can to make sure that resource depletion isn't a thing. At a certain point, you should just give in and eliminate resource depletion as an important mechanic.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If a game has a resource depletion mechanic, tables are free to ignore it and have a LR after every encounter if they want to. But the reverse is not true. So given you want your game to appeal to the maximum number of tables then you should include resource depletion mechanics so that those who want to play that way, who want to have super long adventuring days where players have to be creative and think of stuff outside of what is written on their character sheets - because everything on their character sheets is used up - can do so. While tables who don't want to play like that can easily homebrew that all resources recharge after 1 minute of not being in combat, or just choose to only have 1 encounter per day - and BOTH tables are happy to play the game.
However, if you have a game that doesn't have resource depletion mechanics - doesn't have limited resources at all - then the tables who like the former play style of stumbling along on 1 hp with no spell slots and only your wits to save you - can't play that way and will have to find a different game system.
Aside: if you don't like resource depletion mechanics, why would you play with spellslots at all? Why not just make every ability, every spell, castable at will? It would save so much headaches of book-keeping, and it still would come down to "can we survive" a combat you just need to increase the difficulty of the combat by a lot.
Hexer Prerequisite 5th level. You can cast Hex without requiring concentration once per rest. Also the extra damage applies per hit during your turn only instead of just once.
I'm so, so tired of these "just give me hex at 0 cost" proposals. Honestly, they should just remove Hex entirely and give Warlock an Invocation:
Hexer As a bonus action you deal 1d6 necrotic damage to one creature you can see within 60 ft of you. This damage increase to 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 11, and 4d6 at level 17.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If a game has a resource depletion mechanic, tables are free to ignore it and have a LR after every encounter if they want to. But the reverse is not true. So given you want your game to appeal to the maximum number of tables then you should include resource depletion mechanics so that those who want to play that way.
That's not an option. You simply can't balance for both -- you have to pick one. Unless you give everyone the same recovery mechanic. And all evidence is that the number of tables that willingly engage with resource depletion mechanics is very small.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If a game has a resource depletion mechanic, tables are free to ignore it and have a LR after every encounter if they want to. But the reverse is not true. So given you want your game to appeal to the maximum number of tables then you should include resource depletion mechanics so that those who want to play that way.
That's not an option. You simply can't balance for both -- you have to pick one. Unless you give everyone the same recovery mechanic. And all evidence is that the number of tables that willingly engage with resource depletion mechanics is very small.
I agree with you. I think that depletion mechanics would probably make martials feel a bit more powerful. I am generally not a fan of gritty realism, but a wizard not being able to just long rest constantly would likely change their play habits. Being unable to just resource dump might make martials feel a bit stronger.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Balancing is easy, just make every character mechanically identical et voila, the game is perfectly balanced. The problem is that then it is really boring. If characters / builds have different strengths and weaknesses - which they should otherwise why have different builds? - then which character(s) are the best will depend on the specifics of the game. A party of an Eloquence Bard, a Sorcadin, a Tempest cleric, and a Zealot barbarian might on paper be incredibly powerful, but if the campaign is based in the underdark and is based on investigation, tracking, and eliminating a hive of mind flayers, they are do terribly, since probably all of them dumped Intelligence.
I think you're bumping up against one of the inherent problems with 5E (as I see it): the attempt to make all classes all things to all people.
To step back for a sec: one of the best things about 5E is that it tries to give every character something to do in times of combat or role play. As someone who played 1E AD&D back in the day, I can tell you that having a low level wizard (magic user) or rogue (thief) often suuuuuucked not just because they were so very squishy but because they ran out of options in a hurry. But I think 5E's obsession with making all classes equally swingy or impactful in all situations is a mistake, and I think players wanting every class to be "equal" in terms of impact or efficacy is also a mistake. 5E's strength is also its weakness: its very flexibility and streamlined nature (comparatively) means you lose a lot of flavor; and frankly a lot of the subclasses available just feel like "Hey I want to be a cleric but also punch things" rather than being really distinctive.
I've never been an optimizer or min/maxer and I simply don't care which build gives me 2.5 more hit points of damage per attack. I'm ok with a rogue not having the same impact on combat as a paladin, a monk not being as effective against a magically armored foe as a wizard, etc. "Balance" for me isn't about all classes being mathematically equal or near to it; it's all classes presenting great RP and mechanical options that help create a rounded party or at least a focused one.
You mean having 1 magic missile to cast/day to go with your 3 hit points and your dagger/darts wasn't fun?
The fact is, that a lot of 5e requires you to mentally skin things into what you're looking for. Classes are a chassis, and things get a lot more fun when you mentally de-couple the class name from the mechanics.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If a game has a resource depletion mechanic, tables are free to ignore it and have a LR after every encounter if they want to. But the reverse is not true. So given you want your game to appeal to the maximum number of tables then you should include resource depletion mechanics so that those who want to play that way.
That's not an option. You simply can't balance for both -- you have to pick one. Unless you give everyone the same recovery mechanic. And all evidence is that the number of tables that willingly engage with resource depletion mechanics is very small.
Sure you can. By having two different ways that characters are limited: 1 by resources per day, 2 by actions per round. Which is exactly how spellcasters are currently balanced, in a long adventure day they are limited by the number of spellslots, and short adventure days they are limited by the number of levelled spells they can cast per turn and by the limit of 1 concentration spell at a time. These result in two dofferent power levels but each is balanced.
You mean having 1 magic missile to cast/day to go with your 3 hit points and your dagger/darts wasn't fun?
Heh. We houseruled that magic-users got bonus spells for intelligence the same way clerics did for wisdom. It helped....some, but not enough for levels 1-5 if you were a single-classed magic-user.
Sure you can. By having two different ways that characters are limited: 1 by resources per day, 2 by actions per round.
Um... that completely and utterly fails unless both characters are limited in the same way. A character reliant on daily resource has dramatically different damage per round in a day with 3 rounds of combat vs a day with 20. A character reliant on at-will resources does not. There is always a critical number of rounds per day at which one option or the other is better. You can tweak the system to change what that number is, but you can't change the fact that such a number exists.
Sure you can. By having two different ways that characters are limited: 1 by resources per day, 2 by actions per round.
Um... that completely and utterly fails unless both characters are limited in the same way. A character reliant on daily resource has dramatically different damage per round in a day with 3 rounds of combat vs a day with 20. A character reliant on at-will resources does not. There is always a critical number of rounds per day at which one option or the other is better. You can tweak the system to change what that number is, but you can't change the fact that such a number exists.
That's because of the quadratic scaling of magic, no inherent to the concept of LR spellslots. A high level warlock with 3 fifth level spells per SR still has dramatically different DPR than a similarly levelled martial despite them both being designed around SR recharge.
You mean having 1 magic missile to cast/day to go with your 3 hit points and your dagger/darts wasn't fun?
The fact is, that a lot of 5e requires you to mentally skin things into what you're looking for. Classes are a chassis, and things get a lot more fun when you mentally de-couple the class name from the mechanics.
That's because of the quadratic scaling of magic, no inherent to the concept of LR spellslots.
No, the scaling of magic is a different problem. The problem with LR recovery is much more fundamental.
To give a simple example, let's say PC 1 has an effectiveness of 2 (invariant), whereas PC 2 has an effectiveness of 3 for up to 10 rounds of a day, then drops to a 1.
In a day with 20 rounds, PC 1 and PC 2 both have average effectiveness 2
In a day with 10 rounds, PC 1 has average 2, PC 2 has average 3.
In a day with 40 rounds, PC 1 has average 2, PC 2 has average 1.5.
That's just math, and some variant of it will be true no matter how you design your consumable resources, unless you design your consumable resources to be completely useless.
That's just math, and some variant of it will be true no matter how you design your consumable resources, unless you design your consumable resources to be completely useless.
But that's the thing, right now in 5e that's pretty much how it works out.
If you're in a game with 10 combats per day, then the average CR of the monsters in those combats is going to be pretty low, otherwise you're party is dead after the second one. This means that those monsters are more likely to fail saves against spells, there is more likely to lots of enemies per combat making AoE magic ultra effective etc... All of which increases the power of the spellcasters.
If you're in a game with 1 combat per day, then the average CR of the monsters is WAY higher than those in a game with 10 combats per day. Which means those monsters are much more likely to save from spells, they are much more likely to have legendary resistances, and are much more likely to be solo-boss monsters all of which makes spells a lot less effective.
e.g. you can cast Polymorph every round in your one-combat-per-day group, but if the monster has an 80% chance of success, you aren't going to be as effective than if you had cast Polymorph 3x each time in a different combat across a 10-combat-day where the monster had a 40% chance to succeed the save.
You can't assume a character is equally effective in an ultra difficult single-combat-per-day as they are in a series of 10 easy encounters. Just consider Fireball, in a 5th level party. Now if you're fighting 10 combats per day, most likely at least one of those will involve a large number of CR 1/2 monsters which you can insta-kill with a single fireball, whereas if you're fighting 1 combat per day, you're unlikely to see any monster of CR 1 or lower in that combat, so you're Fireball isn't going to insta-kill anything, it will just soften up a couple of enemies.
Balancing is easy, just make every character mechanically identical et voila, the game is perfectly balanced. The problem is that then it is really boring. If characters / builds have different strengths and weaknesses - which they should otherwise why have different builds? - then which character(s) are the best will depend on the specifics of the game. A party of an Eloquence Bard, a Sorcadin, a Tempest cleric, and a Zealot barbarian might on paper be incredibly powerful, but if the campaign is based in the underdark and is based on investigation, tracking, and eliminating a hive of mind flayers, they are do terribly, since probably all of them dumped Intelligence.
There is a bigger picture here though: Should the amount of combat per adventuring day affect the difficulty of the game. i.e should it be harder to fight 10 combats in a day, than to fight 4 combats in a day, than to fight 1 combat in a day? I would say, yes. And adventuring day with 10 combats in it should feel fundamentally different from an adventuring day with 4 combats in it, not just take longer IRL time to play.
So in fairness to 4e, a HUGE contributor to it failing was that it ALSO had an OLG scandal attached. Normalized resources MIGHT actually be fine if the system surrounding it was popular and scandal free.
I would say no -- the inevitable consequence of a resource depletion mechanic is that you have a large number of really boring encounters, because interesting encounters consume too many resources, and I'd much rather have one interesting combat than ten boring combats.
In a single combat day, the tension is "Can we win". In a ten combat day, the tension is "can we keep our resource usage below the correct usage curve, because if not we'll have to turn back before the day ends".
I disagree on the first point. Right now 5e has resource depletion mechanics, but the vast majority of games seem to only have a couple of encounters per day and those are still perfectly fine and fun games. You just need to scale up the difficulty of those encounters, so you end up with a small number of encounters where you are using resources every turn in order to win, rather than lots of easy encounters where you are trying to win while using as few resources as possible.
Games with only one encounter per day really aren't using resource depletion mechanics at all. If you're using multiple encounters, well, "can we win this fight at a sufficiently low cost to continue", while moderately interesting, is far less compelling than "can we win this fight at all".
D&D, for most of its history, has been engaged in a fight between dungeon design that wants resource depletion to be a thing, and players who are going to do everything they can to make sure that resource depletion isn't a thing. At a certain point, you should just give in and eliminate resource depletion as an important mechanic.
I’m not saying that it should be one way or another. I’m just saying that it is probably easier from a balance perspective that core features of a class (features that when gone has a big change on the character. Like a caster with no spell slots or Monk with no Ki/DP since core monk features use Ki/DP to work, etc) probably should be long rest. That way everyone is on the same page. But other class features are fine if some have SR recharge. But I don’t think all classes need to have a specific number, or any, SR features.
I thought 1DD was heading in that direction but it seems they turned away from that, like so many other things, with the monk in UA6. I anticipate Warlock going back to SR pact slots as well.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
Sorry for the jumbled text. Forgot that spreadsheets don’t like to be copied and pasted.😋
Some improvement to the warlock.
The Warlock
Level Proficiency Bonus Features Cantrips Known Spells Known Pact Slots Slot Level Invocations Known
1st +2 Pact Boon, Pact Magic 2 2 2 1st -
2nd +2 Eldritch Invocations 2 3 2 1st 2
3rd +2 Otherworldly Patron 2 4 2 2nd 2
4th +2 Ability Score Improvement 3 5 2 2nd 3
5th +3 3 6 3 3rd 3
6th +3 Otherworldly Patron feature 3 7 3 3rd 4
7th +3 3 8 3 4th 4
8th +3 Ability Score Improvement 3 9 3 4th 5
9th +4 Eldritch Power 3 10 4 5th 5
10th +4 Otherworldly Patron feature 4 10 4 5th 6
11th +4 Mystic Arcanum (6th level) 4 11 4 5th 6
12th +4 Ability Score Improvement 4 11 4 5th 7
13th +5 Mystic Arcanum (7th level) 4 12 4 5th 7
14th +5 Otherworldly Patron feature 4 12 4 5th 8
15th +5 Mystic Arcanum (8th level) 4 13 4 5th 8
16th +5 Ability Score Improvement 4 13 4 5th 9
17th +6 Mystic Arcanum (9th level) 4 14 5 5th 9
18th +6 Eldritch Master 4 14 5 5th 10
19th +6 Ability Score Improvement, 4 15 5 5th 10
20th +6 Epic Boon 4 15 5 5th 11
Pact Magic.
You have a number of Pact Magic Slots to fuel your Warlock spells. Consult the Warlock table for the number of Pact Magic Slots. You get one expanded Pact Magic Slot when finish a short rest and all expanded Pact Magic Slots when you finish a long rest.
Eldritch Power.
At 9th level you can draw on your inner reserve of mystical power while entreating your patron to regain expended spell slots. You can spend 10 minutes entreating your patron for aid to regain all your expended spell slots from your Pact Magic feature. Once you regain spell slots with this feature, you must finish a long rest before you can do so again.
Eldritch Master. Still thinking of something.
Invocations:
Fiendish Vigor
As a bonus action for 1 hour you can give yourself temp-hp equal to 1d6+your Warlock level and you get Damage Reduction to Fire and Poison damage equal to your Warlock level divided by 4 rounded up. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can expand a Pact Slot to use this feature again.
Mask of Many Face’s.
As an an action you can cast Disguise Self. When you make a Deception skill check to deceive anyone with the disguise you add proficiency or expertise if you already have proficiency in Deception. You can use this invocation twice between long rest.
At 5th level you can expand a Pact Slot to use this again.
Armor of Shadows
As an action you can cast Mage Armor on yourself without needing material components. You also get damage reduction to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage equal to you warlock level divided by 4 rounded up. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can use your pact slots to use it again.
Eldritch Magic.
Prerequisite 5th level.
When you select this invocation you can select one spell from any spell-list equal to or lower than your highest pact slot. It counts as a warlock spell for you and doesn’t count towards your spells known. You can cast it once without expanding a pact slot per long rest. You can also use your pact slots to cast the spell. This invocation can be taken more than once.
Eyes of the Rune Keeper.
As an action you can cast Comprehend Language. Also while it is active you can use any non-warlock cantrip or 1st level spell scroll. You can attempt to use any non-warlock spell scroll up to 5th level if you can pass a charisma ability check with a DC equal to 10+the level of the spell. You can use this feature twice per long rest. At 5th level you can use your pact slots to use it again.
Eldritch Scribe.
Prerequisites: Pact of Tome, proficiency in Arcana.
You can craft spell scrolls of Warlock spells you know at half the time and cost. Also at the end of long rest you can change a Warlock spell of 5th level or lower you know with another one.
Hexer
Prerequisite 5th level.
You can cast Hex without requiring concentration once per rest. Also the extra damage applies per hit during your turn only instead of just once.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. If a game has a resource depletion mechanic, tables are free to ignore it and have a LR after every encounter if they want to. But the reverse is not true. So given you want your game to appeal to the maximum number of tables then you should include resource depletion mechanics so that those who want to play that way, who want to have super long adventuring days where players have to be creative and think of stuff outside of what is written on their character sheets - because everything on their character sheets is used up - can do so. While tables who don't want to play like that can easily homebrew that all resources recharge after 1 minute of not being in combat, or just choose to only have 1 encounter per day - and BOTH tables are happy to play the game.
However, if you have a game that doesn't have resource depletion mechanics - doesn't have limited resources at all - then the tables who like the former play style of stumbling along on 1 hp with no spell slots and only your wits to save you - can't play that way and will have to find a different game system.
Aside: if you don't like resource depletion mechanics, why would you play with spellslots at all? Why not just make every ability, every spell, castable at will? It would save so much headaches of book-keeping, and it still would come down to "can we survive" a combat you just need to increase the difficulty of the combat by a lot.
I'm so, so tired of these "just give me hex at 0 cost" proposals. Honestly, they should just remove Hex entirely and give Warlock an Invocation:
Hexer
As a bonus action you deal 1d6 necrotic damage to one creature you can see within 60 ft of you. This damage increase to 2d6 at level 5, 3d6 at level 11, and 4d6 at level 17.
That's not an option. You simply can't balance for both -- you have to pick one. Unless you give everyone the same recovery mechanic. And all evidence is that the number of tables that willingly engage with resource depletion mechanics is very small.
I agree with you. I think that depletion mechanics would probably make martials feel a bit more powerful. I am generally not a fan of gritty realism, but a wizard not being able to just long rest constantly would likely change their play habits. Being unable to just resource dump might make martials feel a bit stronger.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I think you're bumping up against one of the inherent problems with 5E (as I see it): the attempt to make all classes all things to all people.
To step back for a sec: one of the best things about 5E is that it tries to give every character something to do in times of combat or role play. As someone who played 1E AD&D back in the day, I can tell you that having a low level wizard (magic user) or rogue (thief) often suuuuuucked not just because they were so very squishy but because they ran out of options in a hurry. But I think 5E's obsession with making all classes equally swingy or impactful in all situations is a mistake, and I think players wanting every class to be "equal" in terms of impact or efficacy is also a mistake. 5E's strength is also its weakness: its very flexibility and streamlined nature (comparatively) means you lose a lot of flavor; and frankly a lot of the subclasses available just feel like "Hey I want to be a cleric but also punch things" rather than being really distinctive.
I've never been an optimizer or min/maxer and I simply don't care which build gives me 2.5 more hit points of damage per attack. I'm ok with a rogue not having the same impact on combat as a paladin, a monk not being as effective against a magically armored foe as a wizard, etc. "Balance" for me isn't about all classes being mathematically equal or near to it; it's all classes presenting great RP and mechanical options that help create a rounded party or at least a focused one.
You mean having 1 magic missile to cast/day to go with your 3 hit points and your dagger/darts wasn't fun?
The fact is, that a lot of 5e requires you to mentally skin things into what you're looking for. Classes are a chassis, and things get a lot more fun when you mentally de-couple the class name from the mechanics.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Sure you can. By having two different ways that characters are limited: 1 by resources per day, 2 by actions per round. Which is exactly how spellcasters are currently balanced, in a long adventure day they are limited by the number of spellslots, and short adventure days they are limited by the number of levelled spells they can cast per turn and by the limit of 1 concentration spell at a time. These result in two dofferent power levels but each is balanced.
Heh. We houseruled that magic-users got bonus spells for intelligence the same way clerics did for wisdom. It helped....some, but not enough for levels 1-5 if you were a single-classed magic-user.
Um... that completely and utterly fails unless both characters are limited in the same way. A character reliant on daily resource has dramatically different damage per round in a day with 3 rounds of combat vs a day with 20. A character reliant on at-will resources does not. There is always a critical number of rounds per day at which one option or the other is better. You can tweak the system to change what that number is, but you can't change the fact that such a number exists.
That's because of the quadratic scaling of magic, no inherent to the concept of LR spellslots. A high level warlock with 3 fifth level spells per SR still has dramatically different DPR than a similarly levelled martial despite them both being designed around SR recharge.
I agree completely.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
No, the scaling of magic is a different problem. The problem with LR recovery is much more fundamental.
To give a simple example, let's say PC 1 has an effectiveness of 2 (invariant), whereas PC 2 has an effectiveness of 3 for up to 10 rounds of a day, then drops to a 1.
That's just math, and some variant of it will be true no matter how you design your consumable resources, unless you design your consumable resources to be completely useless.
But that's the thing, right now in 5e that's pretty much how it works out.
If you're in a game with 10 combats per day, then the average CR of the monsters in those combats is going to be pretty low, otherwise you're party is dead after the second one. This means that those monsters are more likely to fail saves against spells, there is more likely to lots of enemies per combat making AoE magic ultra effective etc... All of which increases the power of the spellcasters.
If you're in a game with 1 combat per day, then the average CR of the monsters is WAY higher than those in a game with 10 combats per day. Which means those monsters are much more likely to save from spells, they are much more likely to have legendary resistances, and are much more likely to be solo-boss monsters all of which makes spells a lot less effective.
e.g. you can cast Polymorph every round in your one-combat-per-day group, but if the monster has an 80% chance of success, you aren't going to be as effective than if you had cast Polymorph 3x each time in a different combat across a 10-combat-day where the monster had a 40% chance to succeed the save.
You can't assume a character is equally effective in an ultra difficult single-combat-per-day as they are in a series of 10 easy encounters. Just consider Fireball, in a 5th level party. Now if you're fighting 10 combats per day, most likely at least one of those will involve a large number of CR 1/2 monsters which you can insta-kill with a single fireball, whereas if you're fighting 1 combat per day, you're unlikely to see any monster of CR 1 or lower in that combat, so you're Fireball isn't going to insta-kill anything, it will just soften up a couple of enemies.