I couldn't find a difference between the one I downloaded November 6th and just a few minutes ago. Greater invisibility was not added in either version of the warlock.
So I maybe just cheated and ran through both documents side by side. Nobody was calling me anyways.
There were three changes, only two of which count as changes, only one of which was a nerf (if you can call it that, given the nature of this UA). The bard Expanded Spell List lost Phantasmal Force, probably because it was already on the bard spell list. Whoopsies. The Ranger's Aid spell was moved from 1st level to 2nd level, which makes sense because Aid was a 2nd-level spell to start with. And the Warlock lost both Phantasmal Killer and Greater Invisibility, as both spells showed up on the Expanded Spell Lists of specific patrons (Archfey for GI, Hexblade for PK).
Elsewise I'm not seeing any differences between the document I snagged within an hour or so of the UA being released and the one that's up now. So...there's that settled, I suppose.
Looks like the only changes they made were eliminating spells that were already granted to certain warlocks by existing patrons. it really wasn't nice to Archfey locks especially to give one of their best Archfey-specific tricks to every other warlock. As a big fan of Feylocks, I was a little disheartened to see my Greater Invisibility diffused out to the rest of the class.
I'm assuming that if any of this goes live, they'll swap some spells around. And really, the Animate Dead thing is not nearly so big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Any DM worth their salt steps on Coffeelocking horsepiss anyways, and this is just a new flavor of Coffeelock nonsense.
I like the changes, especially the ones to the Ranger, but I'd like to see more options for the Deft Explorer feature to give them a little bit more customization. I'd also like a clarification on the Favored foe feature. Does it replace Favored Enemy in its entirety, or only the first instance of it (The former seems more likely to me). Also, since Foe Slayer explicitly ties into Favored Enemy, how will it be affected if you replace it by Favored Foe (Presumably FS benefits will apply to whatever you have hunter's marked?)
Zoinker, when reading the document, the first section mentions that each feature is either listed as 'Enhance' or 'Replace' Enhance means that both the old feature and the new addition are live. Replace means that the old feature is removed and the new one stands alone. The Favored Foe feature Replaces Favored Enemy.
Favored Foe at 1st level replaces all instances of Favored Enemy in the default ranger. You no longer have a specific class of Favored Enemy, so getting new classes of them makes no sense. Effectively, the level 6 and 14 FE improvements fall off. Foe Slayer specifically calls out extra damage/attack against "your favored enemy"; Favored Foe marks a creature as your Favored Enemy, so Foe Slayer would work against anything you've used your special Hunter's Mark on.
Deft Explorer is interesting to me less as a weird Ranger-y mimicking of warlock invocations, but more in that you can choose the order of abilities you receive, effectively deciding which of your ranger-y exploration talents to focus on. Additional options for it might be fun, but somehow even as a big warlock fan I feel like it might also potentially detract from the feature. Suppose I'd be curious to see either way.
Ok, I'm not through the entire 16 pages of responses, but has anyone actually mentioned that Aim doesn't only apply to ranged attacks? If you are in melee with a creature, and haven't moved, you can elect to not move and use your bonus action to aim and give yourself advantage thereby giving yourself sneak attack. Rogues just got deadly both close up and far off.
Cunning Action: Aim 2nd-level rogue feature (enhances Cunning Action) You gain an additional way to use your Cunning Action: carefully aiming your next attack. As a bonus action, you give yourself advantage on your next attack roll on the current turn. You can use this bonus action only if you haven’t moved during this turn, and after you use the bonus action, your speed is 0 until the end of the current turn.
It says nothing about it having to be done with a ranged attack.
I dont know if it was mentioned, but the first thought in my mind was this is a way I can exploit elven accuracy with a melee rogue.
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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.
And really, the Animate Dead thing is not nearly so big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Any DM worth their salt steps on Coffeelocking horsepiss anyways, and this is just a new flavor of Coffeelock nonsense.
“Coffeelock”?!? I don’t get it. What am I missing?
And really, the Animate Dead thing is not nearly so big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Any DM worth their salt steps on Coffeelocking horsepiss anyways, and this is just a new flavor of Coffeelock nonsense.
“Coffeelock”?!? I don’t get it. What am I missing?
Coffeelock is a way to build Warlocks by multiclassing with Sorcerer to expand their available spell slots, and abuse short rests to regain those spell slots more quickly.
Basically, the concern with Animate Dead is that they'd burn all of their spell slots (and use sorcery points for extra slots to burn) to raise a bunch of undead, then take a short rest for an hour and have all of their spell slots back (and maybe sorcery points? I'm not sure if those come back on short or long rest). Theoretically, you could spend several hours casting the spells then resting to regain them, amassing a ridiculous amount of undead thralls.
The only situation I could see this being useful, maybe, is if the group was preparing to lay siege to a fortress or fight an army, as the coffeelock could amass a sizable horde of undead warriors to throw at the enemy. Outside of that, well, after 24 hours they have to recast Animate Dead to retain control of their horde, so they'd lock themselves into spamming short rests every day just to avoid their army turning on them.
A coffeelock is a multiclassing Sorcerer/Warlock. At level 2 in Sorcerer, you can convert spell slots to sorcery points, and sorcery points to spell slots through flexible casting. At level 2 in Warlock, you can get your 2 spell slots back on a short rest. A coffeelock abuses these mechanics (though it is legal RAW) to convert warlock spellslots to Sorcerer spellslots, so they can burn all their spells, have a short break and get them back. If they chain short rests, they can overclock their spellslots - take those two warlock spellslots, turn them into a sorcery points, repeat until your DM throws a PHB at your head.
If, for example, your coffeelock spends the morning lazily reading in the back of the cart, converting warlock spells to sorcery points every hour, you could easily have 8-10 points banked before anything happens, and could convert them to spellslots as needed. Should your coffeelock decide to subsist on coffee rather than sleep/long rest, your additional sorcery points wouldn’t reset and you could keep banking them.
A coffeelock is a multiclassing Sorcerer/Warlock. At level 2 in Sorcerer, you can convert spell slots to sorcery points, and sorcery points to spell slots through flexible casting. At level 2 in Warlock, you can get your 2 spell slots back on a short rest. A coffeelock abuses these mechanics (though it is legal RAW) to convert warlock spellslots to Sorcerer spellslots, so they can burn all their spells, have a short break and get them back. If they chain short rests, they can overclock their spellslots - take those two warlock spellslots, turn them into a sorcery points, repeat until your DM throws a PHB at your head.
If, for example, your coffeelock spends the morning lazily reading in the back of the cart, converting warlock spells to sorcery points every hour, you could easily have 8-10 points banked before anything happens, and could convert them to spellslots as needed. Should your coffeelock decide to subsist on coffee rather than sleep/long rest, your additional sorcery points wouldn’t reset and you could keep banking them.
Heh. Sorry about that, Sposta. Took me a while to catch what the hell the dang word meant, too.
To explain the full combo: "Coffeelock" refers to a Pact of the Tome Warlock (of any patron) and a Sorcerer (of any origin), minimum character level 5. Pact of the Tome allows the warlock to take Aspect of the Moon, removing the need for sleep to avoid sustaining Exhaustion, and allowing the warlock to avoid the requirement for long rests. This, in turn, allows the warlock to spend the eight hours of a long rest taking eight short rests, instead - regaining his Pact Magic spell slots each time. One 2nd-level Pact slot converts into one 1st-level Sorcerer slot, and Sorcerer spell slots created this way remain until the Coffeelock takes a long rest - which the Coffeelock has eliminated the need to do.
As such, a Coffeelock can, at fifth level (Warlock 3/Sorcerer 2) create sixteen first-level spell slots per long rest that only fall off when they're used, or when the Coffeelock itself is forced to long rest. The more sorcerer levels you gain, the higher the level of spell slots you can create - the only limitation being the fact that you can never have more sorcery points than sorcerer levels, so you need a minimum Sorcerer level per level of the target spell slots you want to create. The optimal* balance comes in at Sorcerer 6/Warlock 5, which allows the sorcerer half to store enough sorcery points to create a 4th-level spell slot, and allows two 3rd-level Pact Magic slots to break down into exactly the number of sorcery points required to make one. At those levels the Coffeelock can create one 4th (or 3rd, but who'd do that), two 2nd, or three 1st 'spare' spell slots per short rest.
Eight times. While the rest of the party is sleeping.
It is rulesmancy of the worst sort and DMs willing to tolerate it are increasingly few and far between, but it is technically legal per RAW, if clearly not RAI. People have similar concerns with Animate Dead being on the Warlock spell list - a Tome warlock with Aspect of the Moon could chain-shortrest their way into a monster zombie horde and gum up the game. Frankly, I don't see the issue - a player choosing to burn all their Pact slots creating and controlling zombies gets a bunch of CR 1/4 undead meatshields that a warlock able to do this in the first place has long since outleveled. And again, a DM is not likely to tolerate this Zombie Production Factory thing any more than they'd tolerate normal Coffeelocking.
Point of order - RAW, Aspect of the moon removes the need for sleep - not the need for a long rest. You can spend that time doing things other than sleeping, but if you don’t long rest, you get a level of exhaustion. The difference between one long rest and eight chained short rests is the kind of rulesmancy that a coffeelock is trying to exploit anyway.
If your group is prepping for a big battle and have others who can pick up the ability check load, taking a level of exhaustion (or two, if you’ve got some method of transporting your half-speed coffee crash), stashing a bunch of 4th level spells and having a full set of sorcery points for twinning/empowering/quickening/heightening those spells could be a major advantage, especially if you can also provide a small army of meatshield zombies to tie up your enemies actions. As a perpetual strategy, it’s going to be a handicap in no short order.
If you have a cleric in the party and the cash for it you can Greater Restoration your exhaustion away. The best part of this is it requires 100gp of diamond dust. Cocainelock. Not my original work.
Point of order - RAW, Aspect of the moon removes the need for sleep - not the need for a long rest. You can spend that time doing things other than sleeping, but if you don’t long rest, you get a level of exhaustion. The difference between one long rest and eight chained short rests is the kind of rulesmancy that a coffeelock is trying to exploit anyway.
If your group is prepping for a big battle and have others who can pick up the ability check load, taking a level of exhaustion (or two, if you’ve got some method of transporting your half-speed coffee crash), stashing a bunch of 4th level spells and having a full set of sorcery points for twinning/empowering/quickening/heightening those spells could be a major advantage, especially if you can also provide a small army of meatshield zombies to tie up your enemies actions. As a perpetual strategy, it’s going to be a handicap in no short order.
So if you do 8 short rests instead of a long one, how does that work as far as exhaustion accumulation goes?
A coffeelock is a multiclassing Sorcerer/Warlock. At level 2 in Sorcerer, you can convert spell slots to sorcery points, and sorcery points to spell slots through flexible casting. At level 2 in Warlock, you can get your 2 spell slots back on a short rest. A coffeelock abuses these mechanics (though it is legal RAW) to convert warlock spellslots to Sorcerer spellslots, so they can burn all their spells, have a short break and get them back. If they chain short rests, they can overclock their spellslots - take those two warlock spellslots, turn them into a sorcery points, repeat until your DM throws a PHB at your head.
If, for example, your coffeelock spends the morning lazily reading in the back of the cart, converting warlock spells to sorcery points every hour, you could easily have 8-10 points banked before anything happens, and could convert them to spellslots as needed. Should your coffeelock decide to subsist on coffee rather than sleep/long rest, your additional sorcery points wouldn’t reset and you could keep banking them.
Just pointing out that you cannot have more than the maximum number of sorcery points.
Also, I feel it is within a DM’s prerogative to take the position that the multiclass pact magic section ONLY gives permission to cast non-warlock spells using your pact magic spell slots, not do anything else that you might be able to do with spellcasting spell slots.
A coffeelock is a multiclassing Sorcerer/Warlock. At level 2 in Sorcerer, you can convert spell slots to sorcery points, and sorcery points to spell slots through flexible casting. At level 2 in Warlock, you can get your 2 spell slots back on a short rest. A coffeelock abuses these mechanics (though it is legal RAW) to convert warlock spellslots to Sorcerer spellslots, so they can burn all their spells, have a short break and get them back. If they chain short rests, they can overclock their spellslots - take those two warlock spellslots, turn them into a sorcery points, repeat until your DM throws a PHB at your head.
If, for example, your coffeelock spends the morning lazily reading in the back of the cart, converting warlock spells to sorcery points every hour, you could easily have 8-10 points banked before anything happens, and could convert them to spellslots as needed. Should your coffeelock decide to subsist on coffee rather than sleep/long rest, your additional sorcery points wouldn’t reset and you could keep banking them.
Just pointing out that you cannot have more than the maximum number of sorcery points.
Also, I feel it is within a DM’s prerogative to take the position that the multiclass pact magic section ONLY gives permission to cast non-warlock spells using your pact magic spell slots, not do anything else that you might be able to do with spellcasting spell slots.
It's certainly in the DM's prerogative, but I feel like WotC specifically left this as an option for a reason. I think it'd be less punitive to simply talk to the player about not being so exploitative or come up with in-game reasons that limit this short rest tomfoolery. Maybe your Patron hates the mingling of their gifts and other magics. Maybe the process is so noisy and chaotic it effects the sleep of other party members or attracts the attention of powerful monsters (Nothing that murders them outright, this isn't meant to be a punishment... You just want to introduce an element of risk). Maybe they roll on the wild magic or even flesh warping table (a little extreme but can be fun) so that there's a risk vs. reward element to the whole process once they go over a certain amount of rests. I usually like to have a risk involved in certain behavior rather than going, "You can't do that"
Unrelated note. I just realized the Unarmed fighting style is the equivalent of spending a fighting style to have have a quarterstaff permanently attached to your body... Which isn't a complaint... Just an observation.
Thank you everyone for all of your explanations. I appreciate all of you.
I know just how to nip that in the bud if it ever comes up in my campaign.
“Alright, you can do it... but you will have double Disadvantage on everything, and all enemies will have Advantage on all Attacks and Saving Throws against you until you LR if you do.
I couldn't find a difference between the one I downloaded November 6th and just a few minutes ago. Greater invisibility was not added in either version of the warlock.
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules
So I maybe just cheated and ran through both documents side by side. Nobody was calling me anyways.
There were three changes, only two of which count as changes, only one of which was a nerf (if you can call it that, given the nature of this UA). The bard Expanded Spell List lost Phantasmal Force, probably because it was already on the bard spell list. Whoopsies. The Ranger's Aid spell was moved from 1st level to 2nd level, which makes sense because Aid was a 2nd-level spell to start with. And the Warlock lost both Phantasmal Killer and Greater Invisibility, as both spells showed up on the Expanded Spell Lists of specific patrons (Archfey for GI, Hexblade for PK).
Elsewise I'm not seeing any differences between the document I snagged within an hour or so of the UA being released and the one that's up now. So...there's that settled, I suppose.
Please do not contact or message me.
And yet they didn't remove animate dead from the warlock? Wtf
Looks like the only changes they made were eliminating spells that were already granted to certain warlocks by existing patrons. it really wasn't nice to Archfey locks especially to give one of their best Archfey-specific tricks to every other warlock. As a big fan of Feylocks, I was a little disheartened to see my Greater Invisibility diffused out to the rest of the class.
I'm assuming that if any of this goes live, they'll swap some spells around. And really, the Animate Dead thing is not nearly so big a deal as everyone makes it out to be. Any DM worth their salt steps on Coffeelocking horsepiss anyways, and this is just a new flavor of Coffeelock nonsense.
Please do not contact or message me.
I like the changes, especially the ones to the Ranger, but I'd like to see more options for the Deft Explorer feature to give them a little bit more customization. I'd also like a clarification on the Favored foe feature. Does it replace Favored Enemy in its entirety, or only the first instance of it (The former seems more likely to me). Also, since Foe Slayer explicitly ties into Favored Enemy, how will it be affected if you replace it by Favored Foe (Presumably FS benefits will apply to whatever you have hunter's marked?)
Zoinker, when reading the document, the first section mentions that each feature is either listed as 'Enhance' or 'Replace' Enhance means that both the old feature and the new addition are live. Replace means that the old feature is removed and the new one stands alone. The Favored Foe feature Replaces Favored Enemy.
Favored Foe at 1st level replaces all instances of Favored Enemy in the default ranger. You no longer have a specific class of Favored Enemy, so getting new classes of them makes no sense. Effectively, the level 6 and 14 FE improvements fall off. Foe Slayer specifically calls out extra damage/attack against "your favored enemy"; Favored Foe marks a creature as your Favored Enemy, so Foe Slayer would work against anything you've used your special Hunter's Mark on.
Deft Explorer is interesting to me less as a weird Ranger-y mimicking of warlock invocations, but more in that you can choose the order of abilities you receive, effectively deciding which of your ranger-y exploration talents to focus on. Additional options for it might be fun, but somehow even as a big warlock fan I feel like it might also potentially detract from the feature. Suppose I'd be curious to see either way.
Please do not contact or message me.
Ok, I'm not through the entire 16 pages of responses, but has anyone actually mentioned that Aim doesn't only apply to ranged attacks? If you are in melee with a creature, and haven't moved, you can elect to not move and use your bonus action to aim and give yourself advantage thereby giving yourself sneak attack. Rogues just got deadly both close up and far off.
Cunning Action: Aim
2nd-level rogue feature (enhances Cunning
Action)
You gain an additional way to use your Cunning
Action: carefully aiming your next attack. As a
bonus action, you give yourself advantage on
your next attack roll on the current turn. You can
use this bonus action only if you haven’t moved
during this turn, and after you use the bonus
action, your speed is 0 until the end of the
current turn.
It says nothing about it having to be done with a ranged attack.
I dont know if it was mentioned, but the first thought in my mind was this is a way I can exploit elven accuracy with a melee rogue.
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
“Coffeelock”?!? I don’t get it. What am I missing?
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Coffeelock is a way to build Warlocks by multiclassing with Sorcerer to expand their available spell slots, and abuse short rests to regain those spell slots more quickly.
Basically, the concern with Animate Dead is that they'd burn all of their spell slots (and use sorcery points for extra slots to burn) to raise a bunch of undead, then take a short rest for an hour and have all of their spell slots back (and maybe sorcery points? I'm not sure if those come back on short or long rest). Theoretically, you could spend several hours casting the spells then resting to regain them, amassing a ridiculous amount of undead thralls.
The only situation I could see this being useful, maybe, is if the group was preparing to lay siege to a fortress or fight an army, as the coffeelock could amass a sizable horde of undead warriors to throw at the enemy. Outside of that, well, after 24 hours they have to recast Animate Dead to retain control of their horde, so they'd lock themselves into spamming short rests every day just to avoid their army turning on them.
A coffeelock is a multiclassing Sorcerer/Warlock. At level 2 in Sorcerer, you can convert spell slots to sorcery points, and sorcery points to spell slots through flexible casting. At level 2 in Warlock, you can get your 2 spell slots back on a short rest. A coffeelock abuses these mechanics (though it is legal RAW) to convert warlock spellslots to Sorcerer spellslots, so they can burn all their spells, have a short break and get them back. If they chain short rests, they can overclock their spellslots - take those two warlock spellslots, turn them into a sorcery points, repeat until your DM throws a PHB at your head.
If, for example, your coffeelock spends the morning lazily reading in the back of the cart, converting warlock spells to sorcery points every hour, you could easily have 8-10 points banked before anything happens, and could convert them to spellslots as needed. Should your coffeelock decide to subsist on coffee rather than sleep/long rest, your additional sorcery points wouldn’t reset and you could keep banking them.
Time for some "Orcs Attack!"
Heh. Sorry about that, Sposta. Took me a while to catch what the hell the dang word meant, too.
To explain the full combo: "Coffeelock" refers to a Pact of the Tome Warlock (of any patron) and a Sorcerer (of any origin), minimum character level 5. Pact of the Tome allows the warlock to take Aspect of the Moon, removing the need for sleep to avoid sustaining Exhaustion, and allowing the warlock to avoid the requirement for long rests. This, in turn, allows the warlock to spend the eight hours of a long rest taking eight short rests, instead - regaining his Pact Magic spell slots each time. One 2nd-level Pact slot converts into one 1st-level Sorcerer slot, and Sorcerer spell slots created this way remain until the Coffeelock takes a long rest - which the Coffeelock has eliminated the need to do.
As such, a Coffeelock can, at fifth level (Warlock 3/Sorcerer 2) create sixteen first-level spell slots per long rest that only fall off when they're used, or when the Coffeelock itself is forced to long rest. The more sorcerer levels you gain, the higher the level of spell slots you can create - the only limitation being the fact that you can never have more sorcery points than sorcerer levels, so you need a minimum Sorcerer level per level of the target spell slots you want to create. The optimal* balance comes in at Sorcerer 6/Warlock 5, which allows the sorcerer half to store enough sorcery points to create a 4th-level spell slot, and allows two 3rd-level Pact Magic slots to break down into exactly the number of sorcery points required to make one. At those levels the Coffeelock can create one 4th (or 3rd, but who'd do that), two 2nd, or three 1st 'spare' spell slots per short rest.
Eight times. While the rest of the party is sleeping.
It is rulesmancy of the worst sort and DMs willing to tolerate it are increasingly few and far between, but it is technically legal per RAW, if clearly not RAI. People have similar concerns with Animate Dead being on the Warlock spell list - a Tome warlock with Aspect of the Moon could chain-shortrest their way into a monster zombie horde and gum up the game. Frankly, I don't see the issue - a player choosing to burn all their Pact slots creating and controlling zombies gets a bunch of CR 1/4 undead meatshields that a warlock able to do this in the first place has long since outleveled. And again, a DM is not likely to tolerate this Zombie Production Factory thing any more than they'd tolerate normal Coffeelocking.
Please do not contact or message me.
Point of order - RAW, Aspect of the moon removes the need for sleep - not the need for a long rest. You can spend that time doing things other than sleeping, but if you don’t long rest, you get a level of exhaustion. The difference between one long rest and eight chained short rests is the kind of rulesmancy that a coffeelock is trying to exploit anyway.
If your group is prepping for a big battle and have others who can pick up the ability check load, taking a level of exhaustion (or two, if you’ve got some method of transporting your half-speed coffee crash), stashing a bunch of 4th level spells and having a full set of sorcery points for twinning/empowering/quickening/heightening those spells could be a major advantage, especially if you can also provide a small army of meatshield zombies to tie up your enemies actions. As a perpetual strategy, it’s going to be a handicap in no short order.
If you have a cleric in the party and the cash for it you can Greater Restoration your exhaustion away. The best part of this is it requires 100gp of diamond dust. Cocainelock. Not my original work.
So if you do 8 short rests instead of a long one, how does that work as far as exhaustion accumulation goes?
Just pointing out that you cannot have more than the maximum number of sorcery points.
Also, I feel it is within a DM’s prerogative to take the position that the multiclass pact magic section ONLY gives permission to cast non-warlock spells using your pact magic spell slots, not do anything else that you might be able to do with spellcasting spell slots.
It's certainly in the DM's prerogative, but I feel like WotC specifically left this as an option for a reason. I think it'd be less punitive to simply talk to the player about not being so exploitative or come up with in-game reasons that limit this short rest tomfoolery. Maybe your Patron hates the mingling of their gifts and other magics. Maybe the process is so noisy and chaotic it effects the sleep of other party members or attracts the attention of powerful monsters (Nothing that murders them outright, this isn't meant to be a punishment... You just want to introduce an element of risk). Maybe they roll on the wild magic or even flesh warping table (a little extreme but can be fun) so that there's a risk vs. reward element to the whole process once they go over a certain amount of rests. I usually like to have a risk involved in certain behavior rather than going, "You can't do that"
Unrelated note. I just realized the Unarmed fighting style is the equivalent of spending a fighting style to have have a quarterstaff permanently attached to your body... Which isn't a complaint... Just an observation.
Thank you everyone for all of your explanations. I appreciate all of you.
I know just how to nip that in the bud if it ever comes up in my campaign.
“Alright, you can do it... but you will have double Disadvantage on everything, and all enemies will have Advantage on all Attacks and Saving Throws against you until you LR if you do.
Sure, you can change your mind.”
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting