I don't mind the Hex one as it means you don't need to upcast it to get maximum damage now. But EB should be Warlock exclusive imo.
Actually, with pact magic upcasting is the default anyway. The playtest 5 version would therefore be a lot stronger than the 2014 one.
Only if you want to have to concentrate on Hex. The playtest 5 warlock was far better than what we went back to in playtest 7.
Really though, reverting eldritch blast is the bad thing. Now that it doesn't scale on warlock levels, the multi-beam two level dip is back on the table. It's a really poor balance decision. You don't need to be a full warlock to get the heart of warlock: eldritch blast spam+ hex. Why play a full warlock when you can dip a couple levels, get what you want from it and be so much better as a spell caster as a sorcerer?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Playtest 5 was pretty much useless as a dedicated caster and lacked the built in martial support to truly function as a half caster like a Paladin or Ranger. It was basically the worst of both worlds for anything but EB spam.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
How is being a half caster but stuck in light armor with no fighting style not exactly what I described? And no, having a number of full caster level casts you can count with one hand is not near a game changer.
How is being a half caster but stuck in light armor with no fighting style not exactly what I described? And no, having a number of full caster level casts you can count with one hand is not near a game changer.
As opposed to not being a spellcaster at all but stuck in light armor with no fighting style and a number of full caster level casts you can count on the fingers of one finger? Like the 2014 and UA7 versions?
How is being a half caster but stuck in light armor with no fighting style not exactly what I described? And no, having a number of full caster level casts you can count with one hand is not near a game changer.
As opposed to not being a spellcaster at all but stuck in light armor with no fighting style and a number of full caster level casts you can count on the fingers of one finger? Like the 2014 and UA7 versions?
Umm, did you mean “fingers of one hand”? Because even setting aside your issue with short rests, they get their second spell slot at 2nd level. And yes, having a full caster’s suite of spells to choose from is far superior, particularly when you can refresh 5th level slots with a short rest. With UA7 the refresh rate is improved; could maybe stand to have a use progression like Channel Divinity on a Cleric, but in terms of actually being an effective caster, there’s no comparison. Particularly since 5 taxes invocations to still have a weak spell pool.
No, I said fingers of one finger and I meant fingers of one finger. It's been well known for many years that Pact Magic is so hedged in, limited, and restricted that it's functionally equivalent to having no spellcasting at all, and no amount of disingenuous white-room math ignoring inconvenient table realities will ever 'prove' otherwise. If you're so opposed to warlocks having weak casting while being stuck in light armor with no fighting style, you should hate the 2014 design because 2014 Pact Magic is significantly weaker and less useful than half-casting. My rangers and artificers are much stronger spellcasters than my warlocks; Invocations are the ONLY thing carrying the 2014 warlock class.
I mean you are just wrong. While I don't think the half caster model overall was weaker, it was not more powerful. If your rangers are better casters than your warlock that is a user error problem.
That being said there were good things in play test 5(not the halfcasting that sucked, mechanically balanced but destroyed the flavor of the class) and there were good things in play test 7. Hopefully they grab the best of both when putting together the final class while hopefully fixing hex which was bad in both. If you are going to have a spell iconic to your class and have invocations based around it they are going to need to do something about concentration with it. Otherwise its a iconic spell that is never used past 5th level. Remove contraction at X level, allow the warlock to concentrate on 2 spells as long as one is hex something. Also let people use a bonus action to swap targets even when the target is still alive, allow you to swap the stat it penalizes as well. Hopefully add some invocations that allow you to expand the hex side of hex applying other penalties to the target, allowing it to help more in social situations stealth etc.
Playtest 5 was pretty much useless as a dedicated caster and lacked the built in martial support to truly function as a half caster like a Paladin or Ranger. It was basically the worst of both worlds for anything but EB spam.
I agree on a certain level. Yes, you couldn't really play a dedicated caster which I think is easily done with the play test 7 and 2014 versions. It just played like a really bad wizard. And it didn't really function like a normal half caster model. But it was some weird kludge of a thing that was playable and roughly as balanced as the 2014 version. Just not as a caster or a martial half caster.
A tenth-level artificer has nine leveled spells it can cast in a day - four first, three second, two third. An equivalent level warlock gets two whole entire leveled spells in a day. They're fifth level, yes, but nine third-or-lower is in fact much stronger than two fifth.
In one more level, the warlock gains a third fifth-level slot. The artificer, in turn, gains between seven and eleven additional leveled spellcastings, based on how much fuel their Intelligence gives Spell Storing Item. Sixteen to twenty third-or-lower spells is, in fact, much stronger than three fifth-level spells.
Pact. Magic. Sucks. It is crippling the warlock class. There is no good way to keep it that does not cripple the warlock class.
They get two spell slots per Short Rest. You have previously expressed that at your tables Short Rests seemingly are not allowed, but that's demonstrably not a universal experience. That's not to say relying on Short Rests is perfect, which is why people have been advocating for something like the feature in UA7, which as I said they could stand to have grow in uses a bit. Warlocks also have access to a number of Invocations that allow them to casts spells at will, including things like Disguise Self, Silent Image, Speak with Dead, Levitate, and Detect Magic. Take even two of those on top of two rests a day, and I will call the resultant 9 5th level spells, at 6th level spell, and two unlimited use spells at 11th level comparable in quality to being able to spam a single 1st or 2nd level spell on top of the half caster distribution. Particularly when I look at the 1st and 2nd level options for an Artificer. Spell-storing Item sounds impressive, but the options aren't exactly game changers.
A tenth-level artificer has nine leveled spells it can cast in a day - four first, three second, two third. An equivalent level warlock gets two whole entire leveled spells in a day. They're fifth level, yes, but nine third-or-lower is in fact much stronger than two fifth.
In one more level, the warlock gains a third fifth-level slot. The artificer, in turn, gains between seven and eleven additional leveled spellcastings, based on how much fuel their Intelligence gives Spell Storing Item. Sixteen to twenty third-or-lower spells is, in fact, much stronger than three fifth-level spells.
Pact. Magic. Sucks. It is crippling the warlock class. There is no good way to keep it that does not cripple the warlock class.
Yes, if you get two or six or twelve or a hundred and fifty-nine or four hundred and eighty-two or three thousand seven hundred and ninety-one short rests a day, Pact Magic goes from cripplingly awful to outrageously overpowered. That is not a positive thing. It is not GOOD. A feature that ranges from almost nonfunctional to Godzilla Threshold overpowered if it doesn't get the exactly "correct" number of short rests is a BAD FEATURE. Especially if the entire class it's built into hinges on that feature.
Short rests are perfectly "allowed" at my table. They're simply not desirable. Nor is mine the only table this is true for. We deserve to play D&D too, ne? And it'd be nice if we could play warlocks when we do it.
Yes, if you get two or six or twelve or a hundred and fifty-nine or four hundred and eighty-two or three thousand seven hundred and ninety-one short rests a day, Pact Magic goes from cripplingly awful to outrageously overpowered. That is not a positive thing. It is not GOOD. A feature that ranges from almost nonfunctional to Godzilla Threshold overpowered if it doesn't get the exactly "correct" number of short rests is a BAD FEATURE. Especially if the entire class it's built into hinges on that feature.
Short rests are perfectly "allowed" at my table. They're simply not desirable. Nor us mine the only table this is true for. We deserve to play D&D too, ne? And it'd be nice if we could play warlocks when we do it.
Well, already knowing that THEY WILL NOT MAKE BIG CHANGES, the only option we have left is to FIX THE COVENANT MAGIC, REMOVING THE TOTAL DEPENDENCY ON THE SHORT RESTS WITHOUT BREAKING THE WARLOCK. That's why my proposal to make "MAGICAL CUNNING" recover ALL pact spaces, and short rests only recover 1 point is NOT only closer to what they propose instead of a radical change (Which they won't do), but it approaches, without short breaks or with just one, approximately the number of total pact spaces they planned for the warlock in a full day that they stipulated as the pre-established one for playing. And taking MANY SHORT BREAKS wouldn't be AS beneficial and BREAKING as it is now.
So I would have a MINIMUM 4 spaces in 1 day, more than 5e and UA7, yes, you will surely continue to complain, it will not be enough, but since they will NOT eliminate the pact magic I think you will have to accept it in silence, or do homebrew, that's what closer to a "Solution" for the warlock that they will offer us, at least until they release 6e.
Now, let's stop arguing about this in this topic, the topic is the flexibility of spellcasting characteristic for warlock.
Crawford said it in the very beginning. Pact Magic makes people hoard those precious two spell slots for situations that may never arise, so warlocks end up not casting spells at all. Either that, or you spend your two spell slots and then you're out for the rest of the day. Not only that, warlocks also end up with less utility, because utility spells tend to not scale. Blowing a 5th level spell slot on a 2nd level utility spell? Show me a warlock who would do this without gritting their teeth. Invocations don't cover as much as the whole spell list does. A short rest class in a long rest game simply doesn't work.
What infuriates me is that WotC tried half-caster approach, got burned, and instantly dropped the concept without even trying to iterate. Now we'll be stuck with disfunctional Pact Magic on crutches because some people just want stuff that they're used to, even if it sucks.
I mean, at least it could be spell points system so that warlocks could cast lower level spells and not spend the entire resource pool in just two huge chunks.
Sadly, its a lost fight. We're back to short rest classes vs long rest classes and putting the onerous on the DM and Players to figure out a solution. At best, we can try and ask for more reliable Magic Secrets recharge (which is kind of like getting a Pact Rod for free. Which is nice, but also implies that getting a pact rod was kind of assumed, which wasn't nice earlier.)
They claim that they want to make all classes have some kind of short rest recovery, which would be great if it happens and help a lot, but we shall see if it happens. I'm doubtful, given the direction the new Barbarian goes in.
Crawford said it in the very beginning. Pact Magic makes people hoard those precious two spell slots for situations that may never arise, so warlocks end up not casting spells at all. Either that, or you spend your two spell slots and then you're out for the rest of the day.
Man. It's like there's only, like...three entire people in the whole-ass forum that listened when Crawford said this, plain as day.
Not only that, warlocks also end up with less utility, because utility spells tend to not scale. Blowing a 5th level spell slot on a 2nd level utility spell? Show me a warlock who would do this without gritting their teeth. Invocations don't cover as much as the whole spell list does. A short rest class in a long rest game simply doesn't work.
Good warlock players do it. They don't like it, but they'll do it. Provided literally any other spellcaster doesn't do it for them, because warlock "utility" is basically no such thing, Invocations aside. And the people who're so hot to keep Pact Magic are willing to trade away the Invocation system to do it, sooooooo.................
What infuriates me is that WotC tried half-caster approach, got burned, and instantly dropped the concept without even trying to iterate. Now we'll be stuck with disfunctional Pact Magic on crutches because some people just want stuff that they're used to, even if it sucks.
I mean, at least it could be spell points system so that warlocks could cast lower level spells and not spend the entire resource pool in just two huge chunks.
See, spell points would solve the issue instantly. Let the warlock have the stupid dumb pointless "Full Caster Progression, Short Rest Recharge" Pact Magic people are willing to sacrifice the entire rest of the class to retain, but give them only 30% or so the spell points of a proper spellcaster and an extremely limited ability to regain a few of them on short rest. Boom. Done. Problem solved. You can cast your one oversized spell, or a few smaller ones, as the situation needs. But noooooo, can't do that. That would be too much like changing things. And dead gods know we can't change anything in our 2024 Evolution of Fifth Edition.
Yes, if you get two or six or twelve or a hundred and fifty-nine or four hundred and eighty-two or three thousand seven hundred and ninety-one short rests a day, Pact Magic goes from cripplingly awful to outrageously overpowered. That is not a positive thing. It is not GOOD. A feature that ranges from almost nonfunctional to Godzilla Threshold overpowered if it doesn't get the exactly "correct" number of short rests is a BAD FEATURE. Especially if the entire class it's built into hinges on that feature.
Short rests are perfectly "allowed" at my table. They're simply not desirable. Nor is mine the only table this is true for. We deserve to play D&D too, ne? And it'd be nice if we could play warlocks when we do it.
I don't know, how many times will it take for you to understand your table is the outlier. For the people who the 1/2 caster version did not work why is it okay for their tables not to be able to play warlock.
I don't know, how many times will it take for you to understand your table is the outlier. For the people who the 1/2 caster version did not work why is it okay for their tables not to be able to play warlock.
Crawford said it in the very beginning. Pact Magic makes people hoard those precious two spell slots for situations that may never arise, so warlocks end up not casting spells at all. Either that, or you spend your two spell slots and then you're out for the rest of the day.
We are not "outliers".
We are not aberrant mutants that should stop playing anything but wizards, the way you keep bloody insisting.
Tons of people, everywhere, have serious problems with Pact Magic. Problems that Magical ******* Cunning do not, and never WILL, fix. It's not a ******* "skill issue", it's a human psychology issue. The class is explicitly built in such a way that it triggers and encourages hoarding instincts in the human brain that you have to actively fight against to actually use your class resource. The game's head designer has stated this, outright. And you keep blatantly and willfully ignoring it.
Was the half-caster approach The Answer? Maybe not. But neither is Pact Magic. But because y'all pitched an Internet-wide shitfit, we don't get to find the actual Answer, now. We're stuck with Pact Magic. Which means warlocks continue to be unable to cast leveled spells.
So I guess it doesn't matter what their casting ability is in the end after all. They're never gonna ******* use it.
Only if you want to have to concentrate on Hex. The playtest 5 warlock was far better than what we went back to in playtest 7.
Really though, reverting eldritch blast is the bad thing. Now that it doesn't scale on warlock levels, the multi-beam two level dip is back on the table. It's a really poor balance decision. You don't need to be a full warlock to get the heart of warlock: eldritch blast spam+ hex. Why play a full warlock when you can dip a couple levels, get what you want from it and be so much better as a spell caster as a sorcerer?
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Playtest 5 was pretty much useless as a dedicated caster and lacked the built in martial support to truly function as a half caster like a Paladin or Ranger. It was basically the worst of both worlds for anything but EB spam.
That's not even slightly true.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
How is being a half caster but stuck in light armor with no fighting style not exactly what I described? And no, having a number of full caster level casts you can count with one hand is not near a game changer.
As opposed to not being a spellcaster at all but stuck in light armor with no fighting style and a number of full caster level casts you can count on the fingers of one finger? Like the 2014 and UA7 versions?
Please do not contact or message me.
Umm, did you mean “fingers of one hand”? Because even setting aside your issue with short rests, they get their second spell slot at 2nd level. And yes, having a full caster’s suite of spells to choose from is far superior, particularly when you can refresh 5th level slots with a short rest. With UA7 the refresh rate is improved; could maybe stand to have a use progression like Channel Divinity on a Cleric, but in terms of actually being an effective caster, there’s no comparison. Particularly since 5 taxes invocations to still have a weak spell pool.
No, I said fingers of one finger and I meant fingers of one finger. It's been well known for many years that Pact Magic is so hedged in, limited, and restricted that it's functionally equivalent to having no spellcasting at all, and no amount of disingenuous white-room math ignoring inconvenient table realities will ever 'prove' otherwise. If you're so opposed to warlocks having weak casting while being stuck in light armor with no fighting style, you should hate the 2014 design because 2014 Pact Magic is significantly weaker and less useful than half-casting. My rangers and artificers are much stronger spellcasters than my warlocks; Invocations are the ONLY thing carrying the 2014 warlock class.
Please do not contact or message me.
I mean you are just wrong. While I don't think the half caster model overall was weaker, it was not more powerful. If your rangers are better casters than your warlock that is a user error problem.
That being said there were good things in play test 5(not the halfcasting that sucked, mechanically balanced but destroyed the flavor of the class) and there were good things in play test 7. Hopefully they grab the best of both when putting together the final class while hopefully fixing hex which was bad in both. If you are going to have a spell iconic to your class and have invocations based around it they are going to need to do something about concentration with it. Otherwise its a iconic spell that is never used past 5th level. Remove contraction at X level, allow the warlock to concentrate on 2 spells as long as one is hex something. Also let people use a bonus action to swap targets even when the target is still alive, allow you to swap the stat it penalizes as well. Hopefully add some invocations that allow you to expand the hex side of hex applying other penalties to the target, allowing it to help more in social situations stealth etc.
I agree on a certain level. Yes, you couldn't really play a dedicated caster which I think is easily done with the play test 7 and 2014 versions. It just played like a really bad wizard. And it didn't really function like a normal half caster model. But it was some weird kludge of a thing that was playable and roughly as balanced as the 2014 version. Just not as a caster or a martial half caster.
A tenth-level artificer has nine leveled spells it can cast in a day - four first, three second, two third. An equivalent level warlock gets two whole entire leveled spells in a day. They're fifth level, yes, but nine third-or-lower is in fact much stronger than two fifth.
In one more level, the warlock gains a third fifth-level slot. The artificer, in turn, gains between seven and eleven additional leveled spellcastings, based on how much fuel their Intelligence gives Spell Storing Item. Sixteen to twenty third-or-lower spells is, in fact, much stronger than three fifth-level spells.
Pact. Magic. Sucks. It is crippling the warlock class. There is no good way to keep it that does not cripple the warlock class.
It.
Needs.
To.
Go.
Please do not contact or message me.
They get two spell slots per Short Rest. You have previously expressed that at your tables Short Rests seemingly are not allowed, but that's demonstrably not a universal experience. That's not to say relying on Short Rests is perfect, which is why people have been advocating for something like the feature in UA7, which as I said they could stand to have grow in uses a bit. Warlocks also have access to a number of Invocations that allow them to casts spells at will, including things like Disguise Self, Silent Image, Speak with Dead, Levitate, and Detect Magic. Take even two of those on top of two rests a day, and I will call the resultant 9 5th level spells, at 6th level spell, and two unlimited use spells at 11th level comparable in quality to being able to spam a single 1st or 2nd level spell on top of the half caster distribution. Particularly when I look at the 1st and 2nd level options for an Artificer. Spell-storing Item sounds impressive, but the options aren't exactly game changers.
No.
How many times do we have to have this fight?
Yes, if you get two or six or twelve or a hundred and fifty-nine or four hundred and eighty-two or three thousand seven hundred and ninety-one short rests a day, Pact Magic goes from cripplingly awful to outrageously overpowered. That is not a positive thing. It is not GOOD. A feature that ranges from almost nonfunctional to Godzilla Threshold overpowered if it doesn't get the exactly "correct" number of short rests is a BAD FEATURE. Especially if the entire class it's built into hinges on that feature.
Short rests are perfectly "allowed" at my table. They're simply not desirable. Nor is mine the only table this is true for. We deserve to play D&D too, ne? And it'd be nice if we could play warlocks when we do it.
Please do not contact or message me.
Well, already knowing that THEY WILL NOT MAKE BIG CHANGES, the only option we have left is to FIX THE COVENANT MAGIC, REMOVING THE TOTAL DEPENDENCY ON THE SHORT RESTS WITHOUT BREAKING THE WARLOCK. That's why my proposal to make "MAGICAL CUNNING" recover ALL pact spaces, and short rests only recover 1 point is NOT only closer to what they propose instead of a radical change (Which they won't do), but it approaches, without short breaks or with just one, approximately the number of total pact spaces they planned for the warlock in a full day that they stipulated as the pre-established one for playing. And taking MANY SHORT BREAKS wouldn't be AS beneficial and BREAKING as it is now.
So I would have a MINIMUM 4 spaces in 1 day, more than 5e and UA7, yes, you will surely continue to complain, it will not be enough, but since they will NOT eliminate the pact magic I think you will have to accept it in silence, or do homebrew, that's what closer to a "Solution" for the warlock that they will offer us, at least until they release 6e.
Now, let's stop arguing about this in this topic, the topic is the flexibility of spellcasting characteristic for warlock.
Crawford said it in the very beginning. Pact Magic makes people hoard those precious two spell slots for situations that may never arise, so warlocks end up not casting spells at all. Either that, or you spend your two spell slots and then you're out for the rest of the day. Not only that, warlocks also end up with less utility, because utility spells tend to not scale. Blowing a 5th level spell slot on a 2nd level utility spell? Show me a warlock who would do this without gritting their teeth. Invocations don't cover as much as the whole spell list does. A short rest class in a long rest game simply doesn't work.
What infuriates me is that WotC tried half-caster approach, got burned, and instantly dropped the concept without even trying to iterate. Now we'll be stuck with disfunctional Pact Magic on crutches because some people just want stuff that they're used to, even if it sucks.
I mean, at least it could be spell points system so that warlocks could cast lower level spells and not spend the entire resource pool in just two huge chunks.
Sadly, its a lost fight. We're back to short rest classes vs long rest classes and putting the onerous on the DM and Players to figure out a solution. At best, we can try and ask for more reliable Magic Secrets recharge (which is kind of like getting a Pact Rod for free. Which is nice, but also implies that getting a pact rod was kind of assumed, which wasn't nice earlier.)
They claim that they want to make all classes have some kind of short rest recovery, which would be great if it happens and help a lot, but we shall see if it happens. I'm doubtful, given the direction the new Barbarian goes in.
Man. It's like there's only, like...three entire people in the whole-ass forum that listened when Crawford said this, plain as day.
Good warlock players do it. They don't like it, but they'll do it. Provided literally any other spellcaster doesn't do it for them, because warlock "utility" is basically no such thing, Invocations aside. And the people who're so hot to keep Pact Magic are willing to trade away the Invocation system to do it, sooooooo.................
See, spell points would solve the issue instantly. Let the warlock have the stupid dumb pointless "Full Caster Progression, Short Rest Recharge" Pact Magic people are willing to sacrifice the entire rest of the class to retain, but give them only 30% or so the spell points of a proper spellcaster and an extremely limited ability to regain a few of them on short rest. Boom. Done. Problem solved. You can cast your one oversized spell, or a few smaller ones, as the situation needs. But noooooo, can't do that. That would be too much like changing things. And dead gods know we can't change anything in our 2024 Evolution of Fifth Edition.
God I hate this place, these days.
Please do not contact or message me.
I don't know, how many times will it take for you to understand your table is the outlier. For the people who the 1/2 caster version did not work why is it okay for their tables not to be able to play warlock.
We are not "outliers".
We are not aberrant mutants that should stop playing anything but wizards, the way you keep bloody insisting.
Tons of people, everywhere, have serious problems with Pact Magic. Problems that Magical ******* Cunning do not, and never WILL, fix. It's not a ******* "skill issue", it's a human psychology issue. The class is explicitly built in such a way that it triggers and encourages hoarding instincts in the human brain that you have to actively fight against to actually use your class resource. The game's head designer has stated this, outright. And you keep blatantly and willfully ignoring it.
Was the half-caster approach The Answer? Maybe not. But neither is Pact Magic. But because y'all pitched an Internet-wide shitfit, we don't get to find the actual Answer, now. We're stuck with Pact Magic. Which means warlocks continue to be unable to cast leveled spells.
So I guess it doesn't matter what their casting ability is in the end after all. They're never gonna ******* use it.
Please do not contact or message me.
Except for the large majority that made the warlock the 3rd most popular class. They will probably use pact magic.