I don't have time to peck out a new core design for D&D on my phone between calls at work, sadly. But what I can tell you is that it doesn't matter if you retune the numbers so that an 18 or even a 16 is as comparatively successful as a 20 is now won't solve anything. The 20 will still be *more* successful than the 18 or 16. Same reason why the+2 stat books are generally among the most highly valued items in D&D - a 22 is more successful and powerful than a 20.
The game is built on the assumption of party play, and that each member of the party has their own strengths and weaknesses that balance out to allow the whole to shine more than the sum of its parts. That's all well and good (it's actually not, it's an AWFUL paradigm that actually hampers teamwork far more than it encourages it, but that's a discussion for another thread), but it has the natural knock-on effect of pressuring players towards hyperspecialization. That is, players are shoved towards the idea of absolutely maximizing their strengths, devoting as much of their build budget as possible to making their one core thing as absolutely powerful as they can possibly get it, because in The Ideal Party the egregious weakness and lack of broad functionality this leaves the player stuck with doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you are an absolutely amazing world-class master at one extremely narrow focus and absolutely hopeless in everything else, because you're traveling with two to five other world-class masters of the things you're hopeless at and you can just punt to them. And because a world-class master is able to defeat challenges a merely exceptional character cannot, the overall player consensus is that specialization and "relying on your friends to do their part" is better than any alternative.
One need only look at the closest real-world analogs to Adventuring Parties - military special forces units and elite mercenary teams - to know that this view is fundamentally stupid. Such units not only encourage extensive cross-training amongst the unit's specialties, they *require* it. To say nothing of the common problem of the party's Expert on (X) being knocked out or otherwise unable to do (X) at the time, rendering the party absolutely helpless within the purview of (X).
The way other, better games often handle this is by making skill modifier progression nonlinear, i.e. the first few levels of skill training are inexpensive and easy to acquire, but higher levels/ranks in the skill require increasingly greater investment per point to obtain. Players still want to progress their specialty as much as they reasonably can, but in such a system basic cross competency is much less punitive to acquire. There's the tiniest hint of this in D&D - a 14 or 15 in Point Buy stat generation each cost two points to acquire instead of one - but nowhere else in D&D is there any extra cost for jumping from 18 to 20 - or any *reduced* cost for jumping from 12 to 14.
How can you fix that? It'd require rebuilding the entire way D&D works, so we really can't. But as a slap patch, you could change the Ability Score Improvement feat to state: "Increase one ability score of 16 or higher by 2, or two ability scores by 1. If a score you increase was 15 or below before you increased it, increase it by 2 instead."
That makes it *much* easier for MAD characters to obtain reasonable numbers in their multiple scores, and offers a powerful incentive for players to decide to broaden their skill base rather than go deep and narrow. Getting a stat to 16 takes half the build budget of getting one higher than 16. Paladins (and monks, and rangers, and...) can much more easily get their sub stats to acceptable levels and have a real chance of building towards two 20s at high levels without crippling themselves in every other number.
If you do that? Then get rid of autogishing (i.e. attacking with your casting stat) entirely. NO class or subclass gets a feature that lets them attack with a mental stat. Instead, give gishy things like Blade pact ways to be effective in martial combat through means other than raw stat power. The 16-DX warlock isn't as accurate or powerful with their rapier as the duelist ranger with 20 DX, but they can armor themselves in magic, curse their enemies to impose penalties on their attacks ("I don't have to be strong if I can make you weak instead"), or deal extra eldritch damage with their strikes. Without having to constantly spell tax themselves by using goddamn Hex.
That's the real answer - autogishing is a lazy solution that unfairly singles out certain combos as Okay while punishing anyone who doesn't get it. Delete autogishing, make obtaining "Good" numbers cheaper than obtaining "Great!" numbers, and make classes that are built on a hybrid approach actually feel like effective hybrid characters rather than two half-crippled specialists awkwardly bolted together in a way that makes them just automatically worse than all forms of specialization.
There are several reasons to dip Warlock in it's current (UA7) form: 1) Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Hex for 1 level dip 2) Pact of the Blade + BA swappable weapon mastery + Hellish Rebuke 3) 2x extra 1st level spells + 5 cantrips + access to any 1st level ritual spell you might want 4) bonus 1st level feat : Tough, Alert, Light Amour...
#1 and #2 are solvable by making their multiattack dependent on Warlock levels. #3 hm... you'd have to put a level requirement on Pact of the Tome #4 you'd have to get rid of Lessons of the First Ones.
I don't have time to peck out a new core design for D&D on my phone between calls at work, sadly. But what I can tell you is that it doesn't matter if you retune the numbers so that an 18 or even a 16 is as comparatively successful as a 20 is now won't solve anything. The 20 will still be *more* successful than the 18 or 16. Same reason why the+2 stat books are generally among the most highly valued items in D&D - a 22 is more successful and powerful than a 20.
The game is built on the assumption of party play, and that each member of the party has their own strengths and weaknesses that balance out to allow the whole to shine more than the sum of its parts. That's all well and good (it's actually not, it's an AWFUL paradigm that actually hampers teamwork far more than it encourages it, but that's a discussion for another thread), but it has the natural knock-on effect of pressuring players towards hyperspecialization. That is, players are shoved towards the idea of absolutely maximizing their strengths, devoting as much of their build budget as possible to making their one core thing as absolutely powerful as they can possibly get it, because in The Ideal Party the egregious weakness and lack of broad functionality this leaves the player stuck with doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you are an absolutely amazing world-class master at one extremely narrow focus and absolutely hopeless in everything else, because you're traveling with two to five other world-class masters of the things you're hopeless at and you can just punt to them. And because a world-class master is able to defeat challenges a merely exceptional character cannot, the overall player consensus is that specialization and "relying on your friends to do their part" is better than any alternative.
One need only look at the closest real-world analogs to Adventuring Parties - military special forces units and elite mercenary teams - to know that this view is fundamentally stupid. Such units not only encourage extensive cross-training amongst the unit's specialties, they *require* it. To say nothing of the common problem of the party's Expert on (X) being knocked out or otherwise unable to do (X) at the time, rendering the party absolutely helpless within the purview of (X).
The way other, better games often handle this is by making skill modifier progression nonlinear, i.e. the first few levels of skill training are inexpensive and easy to acquire, but higher levels/ranks in the skill require increasingly greater investment per point to obtain. Players still want to progress their specialty as much as they reasonably can, but in such a system basic cross competency is much less punitive to acquire. There's the tiniest hint of this in D&D - a 14 or 15 in Point Buy stat generation each cost two points to acquire instead of one - but nowhere else in D&D is there any extra cost for jumping from 18 to 20 - or any *reduced* cost for jumping from 12 to 14.
How can you fix that? It'd require rebuilding the entire way D&D works, so we really can't. But as a slap patch, you could change the Ability Score Improvement feat to state: "Increase one ability score of 16 or higher by 2, or two ability scores by 1. If a score you increase was 15 or below before you increased it, increase it by 2 instead."
That makes it *much* easier for MAD characters to obtain reasonable numbers in their multiple scores, and offers a powerful incentive for players to decide to broaden their skill base rather than go deep and narrow. Getting a stat to 16 takes half the build budget of getting one higher than 16. Paladins (and monks, and rangers, and...) can much more easily get their sub stats to acceptable levels and have a real chance of building towards two 20s at high levels without crippling themselves in every other number.
If you do that? Then get rid of autogishing (i.e. attacking with your casting stat) entirely. NO class or subclass gets a feature that lets them attack with a mental stat. Instead, give gishy things like Blade pact ways to be effective in martial combat through means other than raw stat power. The 16-DX warlock isn't as accurate or powerful with their rapier as the duelist ranger with 20 DX, but they can armor themselves in magic, curse their enemies to impose penalties on their attacks ("I don't have to be strong if I can make you weak instead"), or deal extra eldritch damage with their strikes. Without having to constantly spell tax themselves by using goddamn Hex.
That's the real answer - autogishing is a lazy solution that unfairly singles out certain combos as Okay while punishing anyone who doesn't get it. Delete autogishing, make obtaining "Good" numbers cheaper than obtaining "Great!" numbers, and make classes that are built on a hybrid approach actually feel like effective hybrid characters rather than two half-crippled specialists awkwardly bolted together in a way that makes them just automatically worse than all forms of specialization.
Wait, you typed all that out on your phone? Quickly! Get back to whatever RTS scene you're taking a break from, because your APM is through the roof! I can almost hear the clicking from all the way over here! :D
(I's impressed)
EDIT: Do you feel that if the game had a more fleshed-out teamwork mechanic (more than just advantage: yes/no), it would mollify the hyperspecialisation fixation? If three people with 14 INT could together come to the same conclusion that an 18 INT character could, in about the same amount of time? And equivalent examples of other challenges? It wouldn't take anything away from the Great Focused Master. They could still shine on their own. But it would present an option for a group to meaningfully work together and at least act as the sum of their parts, without essentially turning into a game of Pokemon (Go! Bard, I choose you! Use 'Persuasion'!). You -could- still play that way, but you wouldn't -have- to, if you'd rather play a band of dilettantes.
I dunno. I just sometimes feel the current system has painted itself into a corner, where it slowly succumbs to point inflation. Hmms.
That's the real answer - autogishing is a lazy solution that unfairly singles out certain combos as Okay while punishing anyone who doesn't get it. Delete autogishing, make obtaining "Good" numbers cheaper than obtaining "Great!" numbers, and make classes that are built on a hybrid approach actually feel like effective hybrid characters rather than two half-crippled specialists awkwardly bolted together in a way that makes them just automatically worse than all forms of specialization.
If it's actually a problem that MAD classes are less effective than SAD (I don't dispute it's true, I'm just not convinced that the vast majority of D&D players notice or care, but that's beside the point), then the real solution is to eliminate SAD classes entirely. Make every class need to build around multiple stats, possibly varying which one on subclass. If people want to do the single-stat easy build, then make them be bad at some of their class features to pay for it.
The other problem is that D&D does not understand what "hybrid class" actually means and arguably never has. A proper hybrid class is not A and B. There is a *huge* difference between two sets of class features sitting next to each other on a sheet doing nothing for each other and a character that uses its training in multiple disciplines to produce abilities and effects not possible for someone of either parent discipline alone. One of the reasons Divine Smite is one of the most beloved and popular abilities in 5e is that it's damn near the ONLY ability in the entire game that acts as a true fusion of magical acumen and martial might. A pure spellcaster cannot (effectively) Smite, and a pure swordsman cannot Smite - you *have* to be the fusion class to get the fusion ability.
If more hybrid classes/subclasses followed this approach? There would be drastically less need to multiclass in order to try and assemble inter-class synergies that approximate this sort of fusion design.
The other problem is that D&D does not understand what "hybrid class" actually means and arguably never has. A proper hybrid class is not A and B. There is a *huge* difference between two sets of class features sitting next to each other on a sheet doing nothing for each other and a character that uses its training in multiple disciplines to produce abilities and effects not possible for someone of either parent discipline alone. One of the reasons Divine Smite is one of the most beloved and popular abilities in 5e is that it's damn near the ONLY ability in the entire game that acts as a true fusion of magical acumen and martial might. A pure spellcaster cannot (effectively) Smite, and a pure swordsman cannot Smite - you *have* to be the fusion class to get the fusion ability.
If more hybrid classes/subclasses followed this approach? There would be drastically less need to multiclass in order to try and assemble inter-class synergies that approximate this sort of fusion design.
While it would be an insurmountable undertaking, it would also be awesome if something like this could be implemented.
Take for instance the Rogue. They can pick locks really good. But what if they have the Knock spell? Synergy would be to let them gaining extra effects from it. Their Invisibility would be even sneakier. Spider Climb better (somehow). And so on.
Yeah, that'd be an amazing (and infinitely complicated) thing, if magical options also offered non-magical synergies. Flame Blade dealing more damage if you have martial weapon proficiency.
One of the reasons Divine Smite is one of the most beloved and popular abilities in 5e is that it's damn near the ONLY ability in the entire game that acts as a true fusion of magical acumen and martial might.
The 'attack and cast a cantrip' of swordmages and (in UA) eldritch knights also mostly works that way. On the other end of things, if there were more buffing spells that were either caster-only or significantly better when used on the caster there would be room for "enhances self with magic then thwacks people with a sword".
Fixing SAD vs MAD is a separate issue, really. The way video games tend to handle this is by applying extreme diminishing returns to ability scores -- for example, ability score modifiers could be
0-10: (score-10)
11-12: +1
13-15: +2
16-19: +3
20-24: +4
25-30: +5
Then ASIs give 4 points instead of 2.
If you don't want to redefine everything's stats, next step is to instead change costs. For example, the point build table could be
8: -1
10: 0
11: 1
12: 2
13: 3
14: 5
15: 7
16: 9
17: 12
18: 16
19: 20
20: 25
And then an ASI gives you 6 points to spend however you like (ASIs in character creation are deleted; just give people 33 points).
Yeah, same thing I tried to address - until going from 18 to 20 is more expensive than going from 12 to 14 is, D&D will always be super punitive towards MADness and will pressure players towards attribute hyperfocus. I do like the idea of eliminating direct ASI and making it all Point But, but I doubt that's in the cards at all.
I seem to be on the hook for starting a game soon, maybe I'll try the ASI variant I suggested with the players in it and see where it goes. It's the crudest solution, bug also technically the easiest to hack into the existing game.
Maybe the issue isn't the MAD nature of some hybrid classes which are supposed to be a bit more flexible and reach their total power budget by being pretty good an a couple of things vs great at one thing like a SAD class would be. Maybe the issue is the way the pact is built, and instead of allowing you to use CHA to attack it should allow you to use STR/DEX to channel pact spells through your weapon...
That wouldn't help the Paladin though, they'd still be MAD - needing Str/Dex for their Warlock casting and Cha for their Paladin casting. And even if you make it so all their casting keys off Str - which isn't great from a verisimilitude standpoint unless you're making an overt comedy game - they'd still have the hanging chad of needing 13 Cha in addition to needing Str and Con for melee, and 14 Dex unless they're going for heavy armor.
Again, I don't think attacking with Cha is the problem; I think the problem is being able to do that with any weapon under the sun AND get its Mastery. There's no tradeoff there. If they were, say, barred from heavy weapons with Blade Pact, then all of a sudden you'd have plenty of Paladins who'd rather use a polearm staying in their main class.
How can you fix that? It'd require rebuilding the entire way D&D works, so we really can't. But as a slap patch, you could change the Ability Score Improvement feat to state: "Increase one ability score of 16 or higher by 2, or two ability scores by 1. If a score you increase was 15 or below before you increased it, increase it by 2 instead."
I will say that Starfinder did this and I found it to be pretty effective. The one caveat though is you'd still have the problem whereby MAD classes like Monk still look samey early on because ASI is really the only viable option for their ASI until they have 18/20 in each stat. Also, if you make the +2 threshold 15, for them to benefit they've have to start the game with 14 or lower, so I'd consider making this "below 17" instead, letting them get to double 18s right away.
1. Make it so that Pact of the Blade doesn't work with Extra Attack feature, and requires warlock-specific upgrade to make another attack.
2. Make warlocks an Int class. Boom, no more hexadins and coffeelocks. Wizards won't be likely to dip for Pact of the Blade alone because it lacks any defensive capabilities. Good luck going into melee as a lightly armored d6 HP class. That opens the door for Eldritch Knight multiclass though.
On the topic of hybrid classed and MADness, IMO the hybrid aspect should present a choice, not an obligation. When you pick a half-caster, by choosing whether to go Str/Dex or Wis/Cha, you choose whether you want more martial or more caster in your character. More holy or more warrior. Given that half-casters never become as powerful as fullcasters in terms of how much dice they throw at the enemies, their spell selection should mostly be buffs, summons, and utility, with a range of spells that will still be effective with zero Wis/Cha so that martial-leaning hybrids will still have something to use their spell slots for. For caster-leaning hybrids, there should be features or spells that compensate their lack of brute force. More powerful smites, more powerful summons, etc. If going martial is about a simple, steady damage bonus and mundane skills, going caster should be about more situational surges of power, lower floor, higher ceiling kind of gameplay that rewards using your resources effectively.
Which is why I insist that monks should be a pure Dex class. Unlike half-casters that inherently have two paths of development, monks only have one, they don't have a spellcaster aspect. They need Wis as an additional requirement for their basic martial functionality. So long as their beseline survivability depends on both Dex and Wis, going Dex or going Wis is not a choice. Imagine if barbarian was like monk, and Rage needed high Wisdom to function.
Bladelocks are a unique case, because they're SAD hybrids. They have both martial and caster aspect riding on the same stat due to a feature they can get at 1st level. And their pact magic slots allow them (in theory) to throw as much dice at the enemies as a full caster would. In practice, using pact magic slots for anything but Armor of Agathys or Shadow of Moil is a waste, and warlock is built in such a way that they have either eldritch blast or Pact of the Blade as their main source of damage, and spell slots should augment it rather than try to compete. Two spell slots burnt for damage can't compete with infinite eldritch blasts in the more or less long run anyway.
So another way to fix bladelock, is... to make it MAD. To apply the same logic as to other hybrids - present a choice to go heavier into martial or caster side. That, however, requires a deeper rework of the class and is not going to happen. Defensive capabilities, like medium armor, have to be built in, spell list would need a range of spells that would work for a low Cha, high Str/Dex warlock, and features like Hex or Eldritch Smite would need to compensate low Str/Dex for Cha-leaning bladelocks, rewarding them for using their resources. The problem is that pact magic slots is the most limited kind of resource in the entire game. You get only two uses between short rests for most of the campaign, there's barely anything to manage. Which is why I advocate for half-caster approach. Or perhaps a spell point system that would allow warlocks to not spend resources in such huge chunks.
The core problem is that you need to make sure the class is functional from level 1, but that opens up dipping. It's not really unique to warlocks, a lot of classes get you large bonuses from a one level dip. A lot of multiclassing problems would be solved by making characters start at level 2 or 3.
For Pact of the Blade, here are the options to make it less dippable. Any 1 should suffice.
(As noted earlier) Change Warlocks from Charisma to Intelligence.
(As noted earlier) Requiring a prerequisite for Pact of the Blade.
(As noted earlier) Pact of the Blade attacking with CHA does not take effect till a later level.
Make Shillelagh easily available to Paladins. It currently is via Magic Initiate (which lets you choose your casting stat). Perhaps Fighting Style: Blessed Warrior that gives 2 cantrips from the Cleric list, and adding Shillelagh to the Cleric list.
To make EB + AB less dippable, here are possibilities.
Make EB scale with Warlock level, as in a previous UA.
Make AB scale with Warlock level. "You may add your CHA modifier to a damage roll of cantrips you cast. At level 5 add 2*CHA instead. At level 11 add 3*CHA. At level 17 add 4*CHA." Then AB works on cantrips other than EB too.
The core problem is that you need to make sure the class is functional from level 1, but that opens up dipping. It's not really unique to warlocks, a lot of classes get you large bonuses from a one level dip. A lot of multiclassing problems would be solved by making characters start at level 2 or 3.
Dipping is good when when you get the entire feature at level 1. If it scales with class level, then it won't be as attractive for a dip as you get it at minimum power.
As a Bonus Action, you can trace arcane sigils in the air to conjure a pact weapon in your hand—a Simple or Martial melee weapon of your choice with which you bond—or create a bond with a magic weapon you touch. Until the bond ends, you have proficiency with the weapon, you can use its Mastery property, and you can use it as a spellcasting focus. WheneverOnce per turn when you attack with the bonded weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier for the attack and damage rolls, instead of using Strength or Dexterity, and you can cause the weapon to deal Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant damage or its normal damage type.
This improves when you gain additional warlock levels, as follows
At two levels, you can use the mastery property of the chosen weapon.
At three levels, you can cause the weapon to deal Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant damage instead of its normal damage type
At five levels, you are no longer limited to once per turn.
This barely affects single class warlocks -- enemies that are immune to normal damage aren't particularly common before level 3, and unless you're using polearm mastery multiple attacks aren't a factor before level 5 -- but severely limits the value of a dip to other classes.
Curious why warlocks have to be bad because paladins would occasionally like to be less MAD in a system that savagely penalizes anything MAD?
Perhaps the answer to "how do we make multiclassing warlock bad/undesirable?" is "make the awful Six Sacred Score D&D stat system less awful" rather than just straight up making warlocks worse?
I mean we could overhaul the entire underlying game system that D&D is built upon. Or we could think of ways of making the Warlock class less of a boost for other classes without diminishing the power of pure Warlocks.
It seems it would just be easier to make the pact invocations all have the prerequisite of being a second level warlock. Then it would be ineligible for the Eldritch Adept feat and require at least a dip of two levels, which might make people think twice. Some might complain that they can't build around CHA from first level, but in general first level really does not last very long, and it might only be the difference between +2 and +3 for the ability modifier at that point.
I think not being able to benefit from your main stat for several levels is simply bad design, and very un fun.
Sorry, but where do you get several levels from? I am saying make them wait to second level, which is one level. Also, since the Warlock is a spellcaster with cantrips based on their casting ability, as well as first level spells, their main stat does still give them benefits for those couple of encounters to get up to 300 experience points. That is usually at most one or two sessions, and many groups do not even start at first level.
Sorry, I mixed up the 5E version and the UA7 versions in my head when replying to you and somehow thought Warlocks would have to wait until 3rd level to get Pact of the Blade.
Though I still think that not being able to benefit from your main offensive stat from level 1 is bad design.
I don't think Warlock being attractive to dip is inherently problematic. Warlock is supposed to be the easy route to gain magical power, the caster that would appeal most to dabblers who don't have the capacity for study or piety and lack a powerful bloodline/legacy; being something other classes can and would dip actually fits with that fantasy/identity perfectly.
Rather, the issue I see is that you get too much power for dipping a level or two Warlock currently. Casters dipping it get the best damaging cantrip in the game, which autoscales to all 4 lasers and 4x Cha with just two levels of Warlock; and for martials/gishes, Blade Pact gives you Cha to attack and Mastery with any weapon under the sun with just one level. And you can easily grab both. It's too much frontloading of power.
All they really need to do is:
Revert Eldritch Blast to only scale with Warlock level. Keep Agonizing Blast working with any cantrip as the multiclass-warlock option.
Blade Pact should only work with some weapons natively (e.g. Simple and 1H Martial weapons.) If you want a Warlock with Cha to attack with any weapon as well as its Mastery, that should be Hexblade's niche.
Hexblade as a Patron shouldn't exist. The entire subclass is a band-aid fix to originally poorly thought out Pact of the Blade.
There are other threads for arguing about Warlock spellslots and whatnot, but I feel like there is one discussion that should be had about another major issue that comes up in other discussions all the time, and that is the fact that Warlocks are often relegated to a secondary class for other CHA classes to take few levels in to improve their own mechanics.
The latest round of Unearthed Arcana material has made Warlocks even more dippable than they are in 5th Edition. Right now the Pact of the Blade Invocation doesn't even have prequisites, so when combined with the Eldritch Adept feat, other classes don't even need to take a level in Warlock to get CHA for attacks.
So lets assume our goal is to make Warlocks less dippable, how should WotC go about doing it, without gimping early level Bladelocks by locking CHA for attacks at higher levels?
I spent some think pondering on this, and the best I could come up with is to reword the Pact of the Blade Eldritch Invocation so that you separate the Charisma for attacks and Charisma for damage rolls features, and allow adding Charisma to damage only once per turn (keep Charisma for all attack rolls). You would then reword the Thirsting Blade Invocation so that it allows you to add Charisma to the damage rolls of each of your attacks when using an Extra Attack feature.
wait wait, hold on. these are two different issues. is the goal to deny class levels to the uncommitted? or is the goal to deny pacts to the uninitiated?? see, because if you just want to keep people from dipping into 1 or 2 warlock levels, then that feat sorta solves most of MY issues. it also answers the question of "but what if some other class character makes a deal with a Power?" which turns out to be: you get a feat and that feat allows an invocation.
now, if the question is instead truly how to keep people from taking only a level or two of warlock and then scampering off, then require 13 CHA & 13 INT to multiclass. anything else forgets that they're already delaying progression in their main class which puts them behind the power curve already. most martial classes will find it easier to make a deal for the sword.
having said that, the pact of blade should not provide proficiencies for weapons until level 3 or so. same or later for weapons mastery in that pact. as for pact of the tome, it might need to reduce number of spells or move some things to a later level just because this spellcasting focus could be smuggled into some places which might enable exploit shenanigans yet unknown. pact of the chain is a familiar and those are already in magic initiate feat so, eh, leave it.
The point I was trying to make was that core Warlock features shouldn't be something that other classes get to access( and arguably be better with than pure Warlocks) with just 1 or 2 level dips, or heaven forbid, just by taking a feat and never taking any levels in Warlock at all.
I disagree with the part about no proficiencies before level 3, because to me it would sound stupid that your Patron essentially gives you a practice sword before you get to use the real weapon.
For blade pact, what if at level 1 you could use your cha for damage but not attack, then at level 4ish you get to use it for both. That way any dip that wants to turn some other class into a SAD class needs multiple warlock levels to do so, setting their other features back one tier.
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I don't have time to peck out a new core design for D&D on my phone between calls at work, sadly. But what I can tell you is that it doesn't matter if you retune the numbers so that an 18 or even a 16 is as comparatively successful as a 20 is now won't solve anything. The 20 will still be *more* successful than the 18 or 16. Same reason why the+2 stat books are generally among the most highly valued items in D&D - a 22 is more successful and powerful than a 20.
The game is built on the assumption of party play, and that each member of the party has their own strengths and weaknesses that balance out to allow the whole to shine more than the sum of its parts. That's all well and good (it's actually not, it's an AWFUL paradigm that actually hampers teamwork far more than it encourages it, but that's a discussion for another thread), but it has the natural knock-on effect of pressuring players towards hyperspecialization. That is, players are shoved towards the idea of absolutely maximizing their strengths, devoting as much of their build budget as possible to making their one core thing as absolutely powerful as they can possibly get it, because in The Ideal Party the egregious weakness and lack of broad functionality this leaves the player stuck with doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you are an absolutely amazing world-class master at one extremely narrow focus and absolutely hopeless in everything else, because you're traveling with two to five other world-class masters of the things you're hopeless at and you can just punt to them. And because a world-class master is able to defeat challenges a merely exceptional character cannot, the overall player consensus is that specialization and "relying on your friends to do their part" is better than any alternative.
One need only look at the closest real-world analogs to Adventuring Parties - military special forces units and elite mercenary teams - to know that this view is fundamentally stupid. Such units not only encourage extensive cross-training amongst the unit's specialties, they *require* it. To say nothing of the common problem of the party's Expert on (X) being knocked out or otherwise unable to do (X) at the time, rendering the party absolutely helpless within the purview of (X).
The way other, better games often handle this is by making skill modifier progression nonlinear, i.e. the first few levels of skill training are inexpensive and easy to acquire, but higher levels/ranks in the skill require increasingly greater investment per point to obtain. Players still want to progress their specialty as much as they reasonably can, but in such a system basic cross competency is much less punitive to acquire. There's the tiniest hint of this in D&D - a 14 or 15 in Point Buy stat generation each cost two points to acquire instead of one - but nowhere else in D&D is there any extra cost for jumping from 18 to 20 - or any *reduced* cost for jumping from 12 to 14.
How can you fix that? It'd require rebuilding the entire way D&D works, so we really can't. But as a slap patch, you could change the Ability Score Improvement feat to state: "Increase one ability score of 16 or higher by 2, or two ability scores by 1. If a score you increase was 15 or below before you increased it, increase it by 2 instead."
That makes it *much* easier for MAD characters to obtain reasonable numbers in their multiple scores, and offers a powerful incentive for players to decide to broaden their skill base rather than go deep and narrow. Getting a stat to 16 takes half the build budget of getting one higher than 16. Paladins (and monks, and rangers, and...) can much more easily get their sub stats to acceptable levels and have a real chance of building towards two 20s at high levels without crippling themselves in every other number.
If you do that? Then get rid of autogishing (i.e. attacking with your casting stat) entirely. NO class or subclass gets a feature that lets them attack with a mental stat. Instead, give gishy things like Blade pact ways to be effective in martial combat through means other than raw stat power. The 16-DX warlock isn't as accurate or powerful with their rapier as the duelist ranger with 20 DX, but they can armor themselves in magic, curse their enemies to impose penalties on their attacks ("I don't have to be strong if I can make you weak instead"), or deal extra eldritch damage with their strikes. Without having to constantly spell tax themselves by using goddamn Hex.
That's the real answer - autogishing is a lazy solution that unfairly singles out certain combos as Okay while punishing anyone who doesn't get it. Delete autogishing, make obtaining "Good" numbers cheaper than obtaining "Great!" numbers, and make classes that are built on a hybrid approach actually feel like effective hybrid characters rather than two half-crippled specialists awkwardly bolted together in a way that makes them just automatically worse than all forms of specialization.
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There are several reasons to dip Warlock in it's current (UA7) form:
1) Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Hex for 1 level dip
2) Pact of the Blade + BA swappable weapon mastery + Hellish Rebuke
3) 2x extra 1st level spells + 5 cantrips + access to any 1st level ritual spell you might want
4) bonus 1st level feat : Tough, Alert, Light Amour...
#1 and #2 are solvable by making their multiattack dependent on Warlock levels.
#3 hm... you'd have to put a level requirement on Pact of the Tome
#4 you'd have to get rid of Lessons of the First Ones.
Wait, you typed all that out on your phone? Quickly! Get back to whatever RTS scene you're taking a break from, because your APM is through the roof! I can almost hear the clicking from all the way over here! :D
(I's impressed)
EDIT: Do you feel that if the game had a more fleshed-out teamwork mechanic (more than just advantage: yes/no), it would mollify the hyperspecialisation fixation? If three people with 14 INT could together come to the same conclusion that an 18 INT character could, in about the same amount of time? And equivalent examples of other challenges? It wouldn't take anything away from the Great Focused Master. They could still shine on their own. But it would present an option for a group to meaningfully work together and at least act as the sum of their parts, without essentially turning into a game of Pokemon (Go! Bard, I choose you! Use 'Persuasion'!). You -could- still play that way, but you wouldn't -have- to, if you'd rather play a band of dilettantes.
I dunno. I just sometimes feel the current system has painted itself into a corner, where it slowly succumbs to point inflation. Hmms.
If it's actually a problem that MAD classes are less effective than SAD (I don't dispute it's true, I'm just not convinced that the vast majority of D&D players notice or care, but that's beside the point), then the real solution is to eliminate SAD classes entirely. Make every class need to build around multiple stats, possibly varying which one on subclass. If people want to do the single-stat easy build, then make them be bad at some of their class features to pay for it.
The other problem is that D&D does not understand what "hybrid class" actually means and arguably never has. A proper hybrid class is not A and B. There is a *huge* difference between two sets of class features sitting next to each other on a sheet doing nothing for each other and a character that uses its training in multiple disciplines to produce abilities and effects not possible for someone of either parent discipline alone. One of the reasons Divine Smite is one of the most beloved and popular abilities in 5e is that it's damn near the ONLY ability in the entire game that acts as a true fusion of magical acumen and martial might. A pure spellcaster cannot (effectively) Smite, and a pure swordsman cannot Smite - you *have* to be the fusion class to get the fusion ability.
If more hybrid classes/subclasses followed this approach? There would be drastically less need to multiclass in order to try and assemble inter-class synergies that approximate this sort of fusion design.
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While it would be an insurmountable undertaking, it would also be awesome if something like this could be implemented.
Take for instance the Rogue. They can pick locks really good. But what if they have the Knock spell? Synergy would be to let them gaining extra effects from it. Their Invisibility would be even sneakier. Spider Climb better (somehow). And so on.
Yeah, that'd be an amazing (and infinitely complicated) thing, if magical options also offered non-magical synergies. Flame Blade dealing more damage if you have martial weapon proficiency.
Yep! This is a rabbit hole :)
The 'attack and cast a cantrip' of swordmages and (in UA) eldritch knights also mostly works that way. On the other end of things, if there were more buffing spells that were either caster-only or significantly better when used on the caster there would be room for "enhances self with magic then thwacks people with a sword".
Fixing SAD vs MAD is a separate issue, really. The way video games tend to handle this is by applying extreme diminishing returns to ability scores -- for example, ability score modifiers could be
Then ASIs give 4 points instead of 2.
If you don't want to redefine everything's stats, next step is to instead change costs. For example, the point build table could be
And then an ASI gives you 6 points to spend however you like (ASIs in character creation are deleted; just give people 33 points).
Yeah, same thing I tried to address - until going from 18 to 20 is more expensive than going from 12 to 14 is, D&D will always be super punitive towards MADness and will pressure players towards attribute hyperfocus. I do like the idea of eliminating direct ASI and making it all Point But, but I doubt that's in the cards at all.
I seem to be on the hook for starting a game soon, maybe I'll try the ASI variant I suggested with the players in it and see where it goes. It's the crudest solution, bug also technically the easiest to hack into the existing game.
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That wouldn't help the Paladin though, they'd still be MAD - needing Str/Dex for their Warlock casting and Cha for their Paladin casting. And even if you make it so all their casting keys off Str - which isn't great from a verisimilitude standpoint unless you're making an overt comedy game - they'd still have the hanging chad of needing 13 Cha in addition to needing Str and Con for melee, and 14 Dex unless they're going for heavy armor.
Again, I don't think attacking with Cha is the problem; I think the problem is being able to do that with any weapon under the sun AND get its Mastery. There's no tradeoff there. If they were, say, barred from heavy weapons with Blade Pact, then all of a sudden you'd have plenty of Paladins who'd rather use a polearm staying in their main class.
I will say that Starfinder did this and I found it to be pretty effective. The one caveat though is you'd still have the problem whereby MAD classes like Monk still look samey early on because ASI is really the only viable option for their ASI until they have 18/20 in each stat. Also, if you make the +2 threshold 15, for them to benefit they've have to start the game with 14 or lower, so I'd consider making this "below 17" instead, letting them get to double 18s right away.
Yeh! Playtest that and let us know how it went! :)
1. Make it so that Pact of the Blade doesn't work with Extra Attack feature, and requires warlock-specific upgrade to make another attack.
2. Make warlocks an Int class. Boom, no more hexadins and coffeelocks. Wizards won't be likely to dip for Pact of the Blade alone because it lacks any defensive capabilities. Good luck going into melee as a lightly armored d6 HP class. That opens the door for Eldritch Knight multiclass though.
On the topic of hybrid classed and MADness, IMO the hybrid aspect should present a choice, not an obligation. When you pick a half-caster, by choosing whether to go Str/Dex or Wis/Cha, you choose whether you want more martial or more caster in your character. More holy or more warrior. Given that half-casters never become as powerful as fullcasters in terms of how much dice they throw at the enemies, their spell selection should mostly be buffs, summons, and utility, with a range of spells that will still be effective with zero Wis/Cha so that martial-leaning hybrids will still have something to use their spell slots for. For caster-leaning hybrids, there should be features or spells that compensate their lack of brute force. More powerful smites, more powerful summons, etc. If going martial is about a simple, steady damage bonus and mundane skills, going caster should be about more situational surges of power, lower floor, higher ceiling kind of gameplay that rewards using your resources effectively.
Which is why I insist that monks should be a pure Dex class. Unlike half-casters that inherently have two paths of development, monks only have one, they don't have a spellcaster aspect. They need Wis as an additional requirement for their basic martial functionality. So long as their beseline survivability depends on both Dex and Wis, going Dex or going Wis is not a choice. Imagine if barbarian was like monk, and Rage needed high Wisdom to function.
Bladelocks are a unique case, because they're SAD hybrids. They have both martial and caster aspect riding on the same stat due to a feature they can get at 1st level. And their pact magic slots allow them (in theory) to throw as much dice at the enemies as a full caster would. In practice, using pact magic slots for anything but Armor of Agathys or Shadow of Moil is a waste, and warlock is built in such a way that they have either eldritch blast or Pact of the Blade as their main source of damage, and spell slots should augment it rather than try to compete. Two spell slots burnt for damage can't compete with infinite eldritch blasts in the more or less long run anyway.
So another way to fix bladelock, is... to make it MAD. To apply the same logic as to other hybrids - present a choice to go heavier into martial or caster side. That, however, requires a deeper rework of the class and is not going to happen. Defensive capabilities, like medium armor, have to be built in, spell list would need a range of spells that would work for a low Cha, high Str/Dex warlock, and features like Hex or Eldritch Smite would need to compensate low Str/Dex for Cha-leaning bladelocks, rewarding them for using their resources. The problem is that pact magic slots is the most limited kind of resource in the entire game. You get only two uses between short rests for most of the campaign, there's barely anything to manage. Which is why I advocate for half-caster approach. Or perhaps a spell point system that would allow warlocks to not spend resources in such huge chunks.
The core problem is that you need to make sure the class is functional from level 1, but that opens up dipping. It's not really unique to warlocks, a lot of classes get you large bonuses from a one level dip. A lot of multiclassing problems would be solved by making characters start at level 2 or 3.
For Pact of the Blade, here are the options to make it less dippable. Any 1 should suffice.
To make EB + AB less dippable, here are possibilities.
Dipping is good when when you get the entire feature at level 1. If it scales with class level, then it won't be as attractive for a dip as you get it at minimum power.
A less dippable pact of the blade would be
This barely affects single class warlocks -- enemies that are immune to normal damage aren't particularly common before level 3, and unless you're using polearm mastery multiple attacks aren't a factor before level 5 -- but severely limits the value of a dip to other classes.
Make Warlock an intelligence based class.
Turn Eldritch Blast into a Warlock class feature that increases in power at certain Warlock levels.
Pact Magic slots can only be used for Warlock spells and Warlock class features.
Scale eldritch blast by class level, make pact of the blade a way to modify eldritch blast into melee.
I mean we could overhaul the entire underlying game system that D&D is built upon. Or we could think of ways of making the Warlock class less of a boost for other classes without diminishing the power of pure Warlocks.
Sorry, I mixed up the 5E version and the UA7 versions in my head when replying to you and somehow thought Warlocks would have to wait until 3rd level to get Pact of the Blade.
Though I still think that not being able to benefit from your main offensive stat from level 1 is bad design.
Hexblade as a Patron shouldn't exist. The entire subclass is a band-aid fix to originally poorly thought out Pact of the Blade.
The point I was trying to make was that core Warlock features shouldn't be something that other classes get to access( and arguably be better with than pure Warlocks) with just 1 or 2 level dips, or heaven forbid, just by taking a feat and never taking any levels in Warlock at all.
I disagree with the part about no proficiencies before level 3, because to me it would sound stupid that your Patron essentially gives you a practice sword before you get to use the real weapon.
For blade pact, what if at level 1 you could use your cha for damage but not attack, then at level 4ish you get to use it for both. That way any dip that wants to turn some other class into a SAD class needs multiple warlock levels to do so, setting their other features back one tier.