I've made plenty of "reasoned arguments". When the response I get is "I don't believe you, you're a terrible D&D player and a worse human being, **** off and never play anything but wizards you stupid ghost", why should I overextend unreasonable amounts of courtesy back to people who continually accuse me of horrible things because I hate Pact Magic and can back up why it's bad?
Because, again - Pact Magic is broken. If you don't get the EXACT PERFECT RIGHT CORRECT number of short rests, Pact Magic is either cripplingly underpowered or Godzilla Rampage overpowered. One single rest either direction from the Sweet Spot and the system falls over, breaks, and dies. The only logical reason anyone would want to retain the system is because they continually push for the Godzilla end of the scale. Pact Magic, in its current 2014 form people are so infuriatingly in love with, cannot be balanced properly. It is a feast or famine mechanic that completely screws over the game's intended attrition curves. Take ONE rest too "few", and you may as well not have spellcasting. Take ONE rest too many, and you may as well just have at-will fifth-level slots and be done with pretending you're trying to play fair.
The mechanic is broken. It does not behave properly. It cannot be retained in its current form.
I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Fey/Shadow-Touched are 2014 feats and not valid for the 2024 warlock. They're also limited-availability feats, not every DM allows any character to freely take those feats. No Fey/Shadow Touching? No Fey/Shadow-Touched.
As Mephista noted, the currently known/available 2024 feats offer virtually nothing to the warlock in terms of 'utility'. And whether or not you believe Invocations are a "cornerstone" of the class, Pact Magic Enjoyers clearly do not and feel like the only thing the class needs is more/better Pact Magic. Which is ironic, as eliminating non-spellcasting in favor of more spellcasting makes the warlock more closely akin to the long-rest spellcasters Pact Magic Enjoyers claim to loathe with their entire souls, not less.
I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Given that we can't get rid of it (at least, not until Tasha 2: Variant Boogaloo restores the UA5 variant Warlock one day, fingers crossed!) I proposed other potential solutions in my survey, such as giving Warlocks other ways to get true spell slots (beyond just Tome), as well as outright letting Warlock get both pact magic and very slow (1/3) spellcasting. Anything has to be better than 2014, and better than the Magical Cunning bandaid we got most recently.
I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
There’s also Fey Touched and Shadow Touched. Very useful for splashing utility spells. And, for everyone who missed, ignored, or disregarded my point the first time, these are not going to be the equivalent of a conventional full caster’s array. Warlocks are not supposed to be as good at regular spellcasting, they’re supposed to have powers that other casters don’t between their features and Invocations (which, contrary to certain misinformed assertions, I consider to be a cornerstone of the class). Which is why so many people had a problem with the half caster; rather than developing what makes Warlocks unique, it tried to force them into a half caster slot, with the option to spend further Invocations to be a 5/8’s caster. If you want to have a spell for every problem, that’s what the Wizard class is for foremost and the 4 other full caster classes also cover. Personally, I’d prefer Warlock have some more individuality and character rather than just being nearly identical to Sorcerers and Wizards, or worse a junior version of them.
I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Given that we can't get rid of it (at least, not until Tasha 2: Variant Boogaloo restores the UA5 variant Warlock one day, fingers crossed!) I proposed other potential solutions in my survey, such as giving Warlocks other ways to get true spell slots (beyond just Tome), as well as outright letting Warlock get both pact magic and very slow (1/3) spellcasting. Anything has to be better than 2014, and better than the Magical Cunning bandaid we got most recently.
I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
How hard is this to understand. People can like the core system but think it needs some tweaks. That is what the many tables had. 95% of the complaints were like I wish we got our 3rd spell at level 7 or something instead of level 11. Not man pact magic sucks, i hate pact magic. The mad fringe is the people who wanted to toss in entirely and apparently can't understand that full casters with their long rest recharge cause more issues than the warlock ever did. So yes, you are part of the mad fringe.
I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Isn't that the rub? People would rather something be Different than Good, and they're incapable of understanding that if they're not screeching hooligans shouting down any change whatsoever, and allowed the design team time to actually design? They could have both Different and Good.
There's not really any fixing Pact Magic, sadly. It will always be a janky, awful, impossible-to-tune mess because the game wasn't built or intended for spellcasting to be pseudo-at-will via constant shoprt rest spam. Spellcasting is, broadly, too powerful to work well when there's no metering or limitations on its use the way Pact Magic Enjoyers keep pushing for, and at tables where short rests aren't infinite, instant, and 100% free the system breaks down the other direction. Bleh.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
Dudeicus has openly stated he believes Crawford is actively lying and that nobody actually has any problem with pact Magic; Wizards is just inventing the problem out of whole cloth to try and convince people their fix was justified. There's no real arguing with that. Much as it utterly infuriates me.
How hard is this to understand. People can like the core system but think it needs some tweaks. That is what the many tables had. 95% of the complaints were like I wish we got our 3rd spell at level 7 or something instead of level 11. Not man pact magic sucks, i hate pact magic.
Show your work. Link your source. Where do you have data claiming that everybody loooooves Pact Magic but just wants the most minor, meaningless, and unimpactful tweaks to it? I can go find the UA5 video in two minutes where Crawford states that Pact Magic has been a persistent thorn in Wizards' side and a problem with a large percentage of players since the game released. Find a source for your unsubstantiated claim that people don't actually have a problem with Pact Magic despite the game's head designers telling us lots of people have problems with Pact Magic.
A third slot per short rest at 7th level doesn't solve any of the problems I listed in my post, not even the "not enough slots" problem. And the Magical Cunning bandaid certainly doesn't either. I'm waiting to see what they come up with next, but I'm pretty low on hope that the community will allow the to actually fix the problems.
Neither of which are in 1dnd yet - reaching for non-UA stuff is kind of dishonest. If it wasn't, then we'd just say "Extra Invocation feat from Tasha's for every warlock!" Invocations which covers utility far better than Shadow or Fey ever could.
It should also be noted that we don't know if they'll keep it as a 4-level spell, or turn them into 1st level feats with a wait on achieving those higher level spells, akin to how elves and tieflings wait for their innate magic. Part of the reason why Fey and Shadow Touched were good feats was that they were great on a human spellcaster using their free feat for them. Its okay at level 4 and much less interesting at level 8- the magic doesn't scale, and its only once per day.
And the feats are offering spells the warlock really has access to already, at a level they'd already have access to said spells. Warlocks do not hurt in terms of number of spells known. Only the slots to cast said spells. If you have to take a feat for extra spell slots once per day for your base class, that's definitely a problem with the base class.
I like that the warlock isn't a "full" caster. I like that there are strategic and difficult decisions to be made about spells and powers. I like invocations and pact magic for the feel they help give the class - it doesn't feel like just one more caster or a mild variant of the wizard.
But frankly, I think Yurei makes a solid point in terms of the short rest mechanic for warlocks easily becoming something abused or something punitive. I've not experienced either extreme myself (I've certainly never taken 4 or more short rests in a day) but Crawford did come out and clearly say the combo of very few spell slots and dependency on short rests was a major source of unhappiness amongst players.
I absolutely don't want the warlock to lose its flavor; I don't want it to become a variant bard nor a competing class with wizards. I like that it's its own weird thing. It seems like there should be a fairly simple and straightforward revision for either recovery of spells or slight expansion of slots - or they should get bold and do a major reimagining of the class. Unfortunately, we've had neither of these things; both versions of the UA warlock were safe and unimaginative.
Pact Magic on short rests only is a problem. Its hard to deny that - we have videos from the devs that have said that, we have had multiple UAs trying to address it, we've tried patching it with magic items, and there's anecdotal evidence for both people enjoying it and many people -not- enjoying it.* As far as I can tell, NEITHER perspective have enough of a population to pass that 80% benchmark, or even the 70% one, which implies to me that we actually have close to a rather even split.
So, the devs are attempting to patch things to make them more enjoyable for all involved. Short rest monks and warlocks are here to stay. So, we need to have some way to make them work for a significant portion of the player base.
To me, the ideal is as follows - you can have one spell per combat, plus one being saved in the background for a pinch Counterspell or some other emergency spell cast per short rest. So, we should be able to replenish one spell slot after every fight. For out of combat, we should be able to rely on our Invocations.
Magical Secrets is too restrictive to pull that off right now, though it can be worked into the right direction, and Invocations... There's a lot of must-have combat invocations and while each out of combat invocation is practically infinite, in practice you don't really need to use the same invocation over and over in a single day, which means each utility pick is on a rather strict budget. I'd like to at least get one more Invocation at level 3. I want to have enough leeway that I can pick fun things in addition to must-have things.
* And, yes, both are "Real" fans of the warlock. And have found different things they enjoy within the class. We as a people are allowed to criticize and try to improve things we like. And we're allowed to like different things.
I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Given that we can't get rid of it (at least, not until Tasha 2: Variant Boogaloo restores the UA5 variant Warlock one day, fingers crossed!) I proposed other potential solutions in my survey, such as giving Warlocks other ways to get true spell slots (beyond just Tome), as well as outright letting Warlock get both pact magic and very slow (1/3) spellcasting. Anything has to be better than 2014, and better than the Magical Cunning bandaid we got most recently.
I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
How hard is this to understand. People can like the core system but think it needs some tweaks. That is what the many tables had. 95% of the complaints were like I wish we got our 3rd spell at level 7 or something instead of level 11. Not man pact magic sucks, i hate pact magic. The mad fringe is the people who wanted to toss in entirely and apparently can't understand that full casters with their long rest recharge cause more issues than the warlock ever did. So yes, you are part of the mad fringe.
Why do you think this is a complaint? Why is the solution to push the spell slot forward?
I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Given that we can't get rid of it (at least, not until Tasha 2: Variant Boogaloo restores the UA5 variant Warlock one day, fingers crossed!) I proposed other potential solutions in my survey, such as giving Warlocks other ways to get true spell slots (beyond just Tome), as well as outright letting Warlock get both pact magic and very slow (1/3) spellcasting. Anything has to be better than 2014, and better than the Magical Cunning bandaid we got most recently.
I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
How hard is this to understand. People can like the core system but think it needs some tweaks. That is what the many tables had. 95% of the complaints were like I wish we got our 3rd spell at level 7 or something instead of level 11. Not man pact magic sucks, i hate pact magic. The mad fringe is the people who wanted to toss in entirely and apparently can't understand that full casters with their long rest recharge cause more issues than the warlock ever did. So yes, you are part of the mad fringe.
Why do you think this is a complaint? Why is the solution to push the spell slot forward?
Because if people just wanted to play yet another full caster, they’d do that instead?
Because if people just wanted to play yet another full caster, they’d do that instead?
Nobody's ever asked to make the warlock a full caster. Hell, I was 100% on board with half-caster and a renewed focus/emphasis on Invocations, even if Mystic Arcanum as an Invocation wasn't a great call. Nobody wants, has ever asked for, or has ever assumed that the warlock would become a regular long-rest full caster. That's dumb. This does not mean that Pact Magic is not also dumb. There are options other than "2014 Pact Magic, 100% unmodified, and everyone who doesn't like 2014 Pact Magic can **** off a cliff and quit D&D forever" and "make the warlock a wizard clone."
You guys - the Pact Magic Enjoyers - are the ones who insist that warlocks retain full caster spell progression despite that not being remotely necessary for the class. Full caster spell progression is a huge advantage and eats a ton of class power budget. if you want your Bigger Thermos, i.e. Moar Pakt Majik, the extra full-progression casting has to come from somewhere. And we all know the only possible place it can come from, the only place you can cut power budget to make room for a Bigger Thermos, is Invocations. Ergo, y'all Pact Magic Enjoyers are pushing for a reduction or elimination of Invocations in favor of More Bigger Pact Magic.
That is not the way. It's an even worse idea than Mystic Arcanums as semi-forced Invocations. Invocations are the heart and soul of the class and we need that system strengthened and improved, not atrophied so you can get more raw casting power out of a fundamentally broken mechanism.
So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting? What I'm saying, is that upon character creation, the player can choose either to have their Warlock have half-caster progression or the Pact Magic progression similar to what is currently available. Would there be an unreasonable amount of additional benefits that would need to be provided for one type or another?
So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting?
Sure. Just create two classes with different names.
In theory, no; whether or not Wizards will actually devote the extra pages and ink to it is another matter.
I realize it is probably not a realistic desire, but thought it might be an interesting thought experiment that might turn the conversation away from two sides simply repeating that the other side is wrong. It seems obvious that at some tables Pact Magic is irretrievably broken and can never work, while at others it is a reasonable and functional system that adds variety to the game.
So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting? What I'm saying, is that upon character creation, the player can choose either to have their Warlock have half-caster progression or the Pact Magic progression similar to what is currently available. Would there be an unreasonable amount of additional benefits that would need to be provided for one type or another?
some sort of multi-class mash up between warlock and, say, wizard maybe? one where you could sorta balance out one side having more levels and the other having less?
...i feel like more people would say "flavor is free, go play a wizard with a planar contact/contract" if this was a less polite forum. if it seems like things get a little heated, at least take heart that this 'easy button' is so often kept in check. mostly because that answer doesn't really satisfy, i get it, but you just know it's on the devs minds when they're pushing warlock class playtests out to the backburner repeatedly.
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So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting? What I'm saying, is that upon character creation, the player can choose either to have their Warlock have half-caster progression or the Pact Magic progression similar to what is currently available. Would there be an unreasonable amount of additional benefits that would need to be provided for one type or another?
some sort of multi-class mash up between warlock and, say, wizard maybe? one where you could sorta balance out one side having more levels and the other having less?
...i feel like more people would say "flavor is free, go play a wizard with a planar contact/contract" if this was a less polite forum. if it seems like things get a little heated, at least take heart that this 'easy button' is so often kept in check. mostly because that answer doesn't really satisfy, i get it, but you just know it's on the devs minds when they're pushing warlock class playtests out to the backburner repeatedly.
I guess in reality, I already have made and played a character that is the half-caster version of the Warlock, by multiclassing into Sorcerer. Currently it is 6 Dao Genie Tomelock/4 Shadow Sorcerer (but will go exclusively Warlock from now on), so it has 4 1st level slots, 3 2nd level slots and 2 3rd level Pact Magic slots, so slightly better than a half caster because the highest level slots recover on a short rest. The reason I did this is because I built around casting Spike Growth and forced movement, and I can't say my narrative reason for multiclassing was super strong. I might have considered going straight Warlock if half-casting were a choice (to keep as many 2nd level slots as possible), but then the character would probably be much weaker because the extra invocations and Warlock features would not have compensated for all the great stuff Sorcerer gives him.
So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting? What I'm saying, is that upon character creation, the player can choose either to have their Warlock have half-caster progression or the Pact Magic progression similar to what is currently available. Would there be an unreasonable amount of additional benefits that would need to be provided for one type or another?
In theory, anything's possible. In practice I find the idea vanishingly unlikely. This is effectively smashing two separate classes together into a single Frankenstein whole; it would be far more complicated and likely take up way more page space to explain than simply writing up two entirely separate classes would be. It's also the case that the rest of the class's features are built/set up around the presence of different spell levels - spellcasters generally don't get class/subclass features at the same time they get a new level of spell, and those "new spell level" numbers are sharply different for pact Magic and half-casting. The halfcaster warlock would technically be entitled to more features than the Pact Magic warlock, which would ignite even more nerdrage.
It's a fascinating idea to consider intellectually, but it'd be way more of a hassle than it was worth to actually do.
some sort of multi-class mash up between warlock and, say, wizard maybe? one where you could sorta balance out one side having more levels and the other having less?
...i feel like more people would say "flavor is free, go play a wizard with a planar contact/contract" if this was a less polite forum. if it seems like things get a little heated, at least take heart that this 'easy button' is so often kept in check. mostly because that answer doesn't really satisfy, i get it, but you just know it's on the devs minds when they're pushing warlock class playtests out to the backburner repeatedly.
That's been the thing most of the Pact Magic Enjoyers have hurled into the teeth of both fans of the UA5 build and people who simply don't like Pact Magic. "Just fukkin' multiclass, dumbass." "Just fukkin' play a wizard and pretend you have a contract, idiot. F l A v O r i S f R e E, after all." Never mind that "Flavor is free" is one of the stupidest lines in all of tabletop gaming, right up there with "Failure is more interesting than success". If flavor was "free", we'd never have needed/developed more than one tabletop gaming rules system, nor figured out rules beyond "flip a coin to see if you succeed or fail at whatever you try and do."
Besides. Warlock/wizard multiclasses are a total nonstarter in the first place because as we went over earlier in the thread, warlocks aren't allowed to have Intelligence or Wisdom scores higher than 8.
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I think you are just proving my point. That is not a reasoned argument, that is unreasoning hyperbole. The system works perfectly fine and only degrades at extremes. If you have a table with tons of encounters and 0 rests yes it does not work. If you have some weird table where you can take 4+ short rests routinely it also fails. But everything in between it works perfectly fine. It might be slightly better or slightly worse than some baseline model but 2 less or 2 more spells per day wont break the game. You do not need a wizards utility and number of spells to be a good class.
Fey/Shadow-Touched are 2014 feats and not valid for the 2024 warlock. They're also limited-availability feats, not every DM allows any character to freely take those feats. No Fey/Shadow Touching? No Fey/Shadow-Touched.
As Mephista noted, the currently known/available 2024 feats offer virtually nothing to the warlock in terms of 'utility'. And whether or not you believe Invocations are a "cornerstone" of the class, Pact Magic Enjoyers clearly do not and feel like the only thing the class needs is more/better Pact Magic. Which is ironic, as eliminating non-spellcasting in favor of more spellcasting makes the warlock more closely akin to the long-rest spellcasters Pact Magic Enjoyers claim to loathe with their entire souls, not less.
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I agree that Pact Magic sucks as a subsystem. Between their paucity at low to mid levels, rest discrepancies, multiclassing issues, degenerate interactions like coffeelock, and upcasting/scaling issues due to their slot cap, there's just too many issues it causes with the rest of the system. But too many people value novelty over consistency, so they're keeping it anyway.
Given that we can't get rid of it (at least, not until Tasha 2: Variant Boogaloo restores the UA5 variant Warlock one day, fingers crossed!) I proposed other potential solutions in my survey, such as giving Warlocks other ways to get true spell slots (beyond just Tome), as well as outright letting Warlock get both pact magic and very slow (1/3) spellcasting. Anything has to be better than 2014, and better than the Magical Cunning bandaid we got most recently.
Per Crawford, many tables have the rest issues with 2014 Warlock that took them down this path of trying to fix it in the first place. It's not some mad fringe. That their first draft attempt got shouted down doesn't change that.
This.
How hard is this to understand. People can like the core system but think it needs some tweaks. That is what the many tables had. 95% of the complaints were like I wish we got our 3rd spell at level 7 or something instead of level 11. Not man pact magic sucks, i hate pact magic. The mad fringe is the people who wanted to toss in entirely and apparently can't understand that full casters with their long rest recharge cause more issues than the warlock ever did. So yes, you are part of the mad fringe.
Isn't that the rub? People would rather something be Different than Good, and they're incapable of understanding that if they're not screeching hooligans shouting down any change whatsoever, and allowed the design team time to actually design? They could have both Different and Good.
There's not really any fixing Pact Magic, sadly. It will always be a janky, awful, impossible-to-tune mess because the game wasn't built or intended for spellcasting to be pseudo-at-will via constant shoprt rest spam. Spellcasting is, broadly, too powerful to work well when there's no metering or limitations on its use the way Pact Magic Enjoyers keep pushing for, and at tables where short rests aren't infinite, instant, and 100% free the system breaks down the other direction. Bleh.
Dudeicus has openly stated he believes Crawford is actively lying and that nobody actually has any problem with pact Magic; Wizards is just inventing the problem out of whole cloth to try and convince people their fix was justified. There's no real arguing with that. Much as it utterly infuriates me.
EDIT:
Show your work. Link your source. Where do you have data claiming that everybody loooooves Pact Magic but just wants the most minor, meaningless, and unimpactful tweaks to it? I can go find the UA5 video in two minutes where Crawford states that Pact Magic has been a persistent thorn in Wizards' side and a problem with a large percentage of players since the game released. Find a source for your unsubstantiated claim that people don't actually have a problem with Pact Magic despite the game's head designers telling us lots of people have problems with Pact Magic.
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A third slot per short rest at 7th level doesn't solve any of the problems I listed in my post, not even the "not enough slots" problem. And the Magical Cunning bandaid certainly doesn't either. I'm waiting to see what they come up with next, but I'm pretty low on hope that the community will allow the to actually fix the problems.
Neither of which are in 1dnd yet - reaching for non-UA stuff is kind of dishonest. If it wasn't, then we'd just say "Extra Invocation feat from Tasha's for every warlock!" Invocations which covers utility far better than Shadow or Fey ever could.
It should also be noted that we don't know if they'll keep it as a 4-level spell, or turn them into 1st level feats with a wait on achieving those higher level spells, akin to how elves and tieflings wait for their innate magic. Part of the reason why Fey and Shadow Touched were good feats was that they were great on a human spellcaster using their free feat for them. Its okay at level 4 and much less interesting at level 8- the magic doesn't scale, and its only once per day.
And the feats are offering spells the warlock really has access to already, at a level they'd already have access to said spells. Warlocks do not hurt in terms of number of spells known. Only the slots to cast said spells. If you have to take a feat for extra spell slots once per day for your base class, that's definitely a problem with the base class.
Here's the thing.
I like that the warlock isn't a "full" caster. I like that there are strategic and difficult decisions to be made about spells and powers. I like invocations and pact magic for the feel they help give the class - it doesn't feel like just one more caster or a mild variant of the wizard.
But frankly, I think Yurei makes a solid point in terms of the short rest mechanic for warlocks easily becoming something abused or something punitive. I've not experienced either extreme myself (I've certainly never taken 4 or more short rests in a day) but Crawford did come out and clearly say the combo of very few spell slots and dependency on short rests was a major source of unhappiness amongst players.
I absolutely don't want the warlock to lose its flavor; I don't want it to become a variant bard nor a competing class with wizards. I like that it's its own weird thing. It seems like there should be a fairly simple and straightforward revision for either recovery of spells or slight expansion of slots - or they should get bold and do a major reimagining of the class. Unfortunately, we've had neither of these things; both versions of the UA warlock were safe and unimaginative.
Pact Magic on short rests only is a problem. Its hard to deny that - we have videos from the devs that have said that, we have had multiple UAs trying to address it, we've tried patching it with magic items, and there's anecdotal evidence for both people enjoying it and many people -not- enjoying it.* As far as I can tell, NEITHER perspective have enough of a population to pass that 80% benchmark, or even the 70% one, which implies to me that we actually have close to a rather even split.
So, the devs are attempting to patch things to make them more enjoyable for all involved. Short rest monks and warlocks are here to stay. So, we need to have some way to make them work for a significant portion of the player base.
To me, the ideal is as follows - you can have one spell per combat, plus one being saved in the background for a pinch Counterspell or some other emergency spell cast per short rest. So, we should be able to replenish one spell slot after every fight. For out of combat, we should be able to rely on our Invocations.
Magical Secrets is too restrictive to pull that off right now, though it can be worked into the right direction, and Invocations... There's a lot of must-have combat invocations and while each out of combat invocation is practically infinite, in practice you don't really need to use the same invocation over and over in a single day, which means each utility pick is on a rather strict budget. I'd like to at least get one more Invocation at level 3. I want to have enough leeway that I can pick fun things in addition to must-have things.
* And, yes, both are "Real" fans of the warlock. And have found different things they enjoy within the class. We as a people are allowed to criticize and try to improve things we like. And we're allowed to like different things.
Why do you think this is a complaint? Why is the solution to push the spell slot forward?
Because if people just wanted to play yet another full caster, they’d do that instead?
Nobody's ever asked to make the warlock a full caster. Hell, I was 100% on board with half-caster and a renewed focus/emphasis on Invocations, even if Mystic Arcanum as an Invocation wasn't a great call. Nobody wants, has ever asked for, or has ever assumed that the warlock would become a regular long-rest full caster. That's dumb. This does not mean that Pact Magic is not also dumb. There are options other than "2014 Pact Magic, 100% unmodified, and everyone who doesn't like 2014 Pact Magic can **** off a cliff and quit D&D forever" and "make the warlock a wizard clone."
You guys - the Pact Magic Enjoyers - are the ones who insist that warlocks retain full caster spell progression despite that not being remotely necessary for the class. Full caster spell progression is a huge advantage and eats a ton of class power budget. if you want your Bigger Thermos, i.e. Moar Pakt Majik, the extra full-progression casting has to come from somewhere. And we all know the only possible place it can come from, the only place you can cut power budget to make room for a Bigger Thermos, is Invocations. Ergo, y'all Pact Magic Enjoyers are pushing for a reduction or elimination of Invocations in favor of More Bigger Pact Magic.
That is not the way. It's an even worse idea than Mystic Arcanums as semi-forced Invocations. Invocations are the heart and soul of the class and we need that system strengthened and improved, not atrophied so you can get more raw casting power out of a fundamentally broken mechanism.
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So, since this debate between Pact Magic and the UA5 half-caster Warlock seems impossible to resolve, do any of you think that there is any way to balance providing a person building a Warlock character the choice between Pact Magic and half casting? What I'm saying, is that upon character creation, the player can choose either to have their Warlock have half-caster progression or the Pact Magic progression similar to what is currently available. Would there be an unreasonable amount of additional benefits that would need to be provided for one type or another?
In theory, no; whether or not Wizards will actually devote the extra pages and ink to it is another matter.
Sure. Just create two classes with different names.
I realize it is probably not a realistic desire, but thought it might be an interesting thought experiment that might turn the conversation away from two sides simply repeating that the other side is wrong. It seems obvious that at some tables Pact Magic is irretrievably broken and can never work, while at others it is a reasonable and functional system that adds variety to the game.
some sort of multi-class mash up between warlock and, say, wizard maybe? one where you could sorta balance out one side having more levels and the other having less?
...i feel like more people would say "flavor is free, go play a wizard with a planar contact/contract" if this was a less polite forum. if it seems like things get a little heated, at least take heart that this 'easy button' is so often kept in check. mostly because that answer doesn't really satisfy, i get it, but you just know it's on the devs minds when they're pushing warlock class playtests out to the backburner repeatedly.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I guess in reality, I already have made and played a character that is the half-caster version of the Warlock, by multiclassing into Sorcerer. Currently it is 6 Dao Genie Tomelock/4 Shadow Sorcerer (but will go exclusively Warlock from now on), so it has 4 1st level slots, 3 2nd level slots and 2 3rd level Pact Magic slots, so slightly better than a half caster because the highest level slots recover on a short rest. The reason I did this is because I built around casting Spike Growth and forced movement, and I can't say my narrative reason for multiclassing was super strong. I might have considered going straight Warlock if half-casting were a choice (to keep as many 2nd level slots as possible), but then the character would probably be much weaker because the extra invocations and Warlock features would not have compensated for all the great stuff Sorcerer gives him.
In theory, anything's possible. In practice I find the idea vanishingly unlikely. This is effectively smashing two separate classes together into a single Frankenstein whole; it would be far more complicated and likely take up way more page space to explain than simply writing up two entirely separate classes would be. It's also the case that the rest of the class's features are built/set up around the presence of different spell levels - spellcasters generally don't get class/subclass features at the same time they get a new level of spell, and those "new spell level" numbers are sharply different for pact Magic and half-casting. The halfcaster warlock would technically be entitled to more features than the Pact Magic warlock, which would ignite even more nerdrage.
It's a fascinating idea to consider intellectually, but it'd be way more of a hassle than it was worth to actually do.
That's been the thing most of the Pact Magic Enjoyers have hurled into the teeth of both fans of the UA5 build and people who simply don't like Pact Magic. "Just fukkin' multiclass, dumbass." "Just fukkin' play a wizard and pretend you have a contract, idiot. F l A v O r i S f R e E, after all." Never mind that "Flavor is free" is one of the stupidest lines in all of tabletop gaming, right up there with "Failure is more interesting than success". If flavor was "free", we'd never have needed/developed more than one tabletop gaming rules system, nor figured out rules beyond "flip a coin to see if you succeed or fail at whatever you try and do."
Besides. Warlock/wizard multiclasses are a total nonstarter in the first place because as we went over earlier in the thread, warlocks aren't allowed to have Intelligence or Wisdom scores higher than 8.
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