I'm looking to drum up some feedback on the Warlock subclass I put together.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/subclasses/1453170-the-astral-god

I left some comments there, hopefully I can remember to leave some more later.

What you're trying to do here feels a bit muddled. You add several benefits to encourage making unarmed strikes, but you also essentially allow Eldritch Blast to be a melee attack.

You don't need both. Just allow Eldritch Blast to work at point-blank range. Or if you really want a Punchlock, stop making Eldritch Blast a better option than punching.

Some other stuff could use some balancing as well. An additional 3 AC on top of medium armor is too much. An additional 12 damage on each Eldritch Blast is too much. A better route might be to encourage the spells that warlocks use to the same ends, like Armor of Agathys and Hex.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

What you're trying to do here feels a bit muddled. You add several benefits to encourage making unarmed strikes, but you also essentially allow Eldritch Blast to be a melee attack.

You don't need both. Just allow Eldritch Blast to work at point-blank range. Or if you really want a Punchlock, stop making Eldritch Blast a better option than punching.

Some other stuff could use some balancing as well. An additional 3 AC on top of medium armor is too much. An additional 12 damage on each Eldritch Blast is too much. A better route might be to encourage the spells that warlocks use to the same ends, like Armor of Agathys and Hex.

Thanks for the response scatterbraind!

The reason for trying to up the unarmed strikes a little was to keep some options open for players for narrative reasons, so they could make a non-lethal strike on someone. I don't think you can do a non-lethal strike with Eldritch Blast, but I may be crossing wires somewhere. Also in one of the campaigns I'm playing, there were creatures that reacted with random effects to magic attacks so I wanted to have an option to go to if that comes up. Otherwise, it is meant to lean into the Eldritch Blast usage across the board.

I got similar feedback from Quar1on about the 3 AC boost at level 1. I'll take another look at this and the Armor of Agathys is probably the solution to what I was trying to do. I was trying to compensate not being able to equip any shield by increasing AC.

I'll take another look at the second Eldritch Blast boost that makes it a +12 on top of everything else you may have worked out. I haven't gone through a campaign up to level 14 yet, so I may be incorrectly assuming there may be monsters at this level that could shrug off Eldritch Blast hits.
After reading through Eldritch Blast again...
I do not know why I did not see the extra beams that are there at higher levels, I definitely see the problem with this kind of boost now. At level 14 where the second boost pushes it to a +12 you have 3 beams that each do separate damage and could be focused on the same target. By that level you could have maxed out Charisma and have the potential of 1d10+17 (+12 and +5 CHA) for each blast...minimum 54 damage with 1 attack even if you roll a 1 with all three damage rolls (141 if you roll 10's on all three rolls). I'll be having another look at this for the next iteration.

I left some more comments! I'm honestly really hoping you use my idea of adding strength to eldritch blast damage when attacking at point-blank and flavoring it as punches, I'm proud of coming up with that. The only problem is all the magic items that increase strength could easily make it overpowered, so maybe dexterity would be a better option. Dexterity would also encourage having a higher AC, which seems to be one of your goals with the class. Maybe even a Warlock charisma-based version of Unarmored Defense instead of armor proficiency, to lean into the whole unarmed thing. I don't think Unarmored Defense would be much of an issue, as functionally speaking it's very similar to mage armor, which Warlocks can cast at will with an Invocation, give or take 1 AC.

Quote from Quar1on >>

I left some more comments! I'm honestly really hoping you use my idea of adding strength to eldritch blast damage when attacking at point-blank and flavoring it as punches, I'm proud of coming up with that. The only problem is all the magic items that increase strength could easily make it overpowered, so maybe dexterity would be a better option. Dexterity would also encourage having a higher AC, which seems to be one of your goals with the class. Maybe even a Warlock charisma-based version of Unarmored Defense instead of armor proficiency, to lean into the whole unarmed thing. I don't think Unarmored Defense would be much of an issue, as functionally speaking it's very similar to mage armor, which Warlocks can cast at will with an Invocation, give or take 1 AC.

Thanks again for the feedback, I'm going to copy/paste your two sets of feedback below so I don't lose it. I've never used the "Create New Version" button, so I don't want to accidentally lose access to the comments. As for the "flavoring it as punches" I think I'll leave that up to the player to do so with their DM, just to leave options open. I really like the idea though, but my initial thought was like an open palm blast like a martial arts move.

Quar1on's Feedback (my comments in red):

Quote from Ic3Ninj4 >>

Quar1on, thanks for commenting! I'm going to copy/paste your feedback with some responses in red. I look forward to any additional feedback you have.

 

1. Your wording is definitely better than 90% of the stuff on here, so stick with what you're doing. A small thing is that spells aren't generally capitalized.
Thank you for the comment about my use of wording! I capitalized the spell names because when I mouse over the tooltips the name of the spell is capitalized there and because it's the name of a thing (not describing it well). I thought of it like someone's name, where I wouldn't type out "james" I'd instead type "James" with the capitalization. I think I'll keep the spells capitalized just on personal preference, but I do appreciate the insight.

2. God? Warlocks don't generally do gods. Maybe Astral Entity or Astral Anomaly or Astral Traveler would be more fitting.
To be honest, I hadn't delved through too many other things about the Warlock to know this. I'll put some thought into this and see if I should rename it with the next iteration.

3. The descriptive paragraph at the top feels too specific (and put a space after your …). Also, I do not believe there are any arcane focuses that do not require being held.
I tried to describe how you would have come across this Astral ______, so it probably does need some rework to open up PC backstory options. I imagined having an arcane focus that hangs on your wrist, but you're right I need to revisit that to make it more flexible for player choice on flavor.

4. The description of "Astral God's Blessing" is confusing.
This was the first thing I put in, so I probably need to have another look at it. However, could you expand on what's confusing about it to help me out?

5. It's kinda lame that this class just doesn't work with Pact of the Blade. I don't really know how you would incorporate it, but it feels weird for it to basically not be an option. I love that you can use booming blade with your fists. The second bullet point of "Empty Hands" simply makes absolutely no sense, and the third is confusing too. Does it mean having extra attack lets you cast eldritch blast twice with one action? If not, why would you make an attack and then replace it with eldritch blast if you could just cast eldritch blast instead? Also, why is melee listed as different from melee weapon attack?
Pact of the Blade read as requiring a weapon in hand, which goes against the idea of this subclass leaning into not having weapons or shields equipped. I can look at trying to do some cleaver wordsmithing to work around it, but I wasn't too concerned with it for this initial release.
Second bullet of Empty Hands - I haven't spent the time to go through all of the skills/feats/spells available to check if any specifically state "magic weapon" versus just "weapon", so I hedged my bets and made sure that if such a thing were in place you'd meet the requirement of wielding a magic weapon for those cases.
Third bullet of Empty Hands - The reason I listed this bullet was to cover skills/feats/spells that notate they work off of a specific kind of attack, so it doesn't mean you can use Eldritch Blast as an extra attack at this stage. Instead of making a melee (unarmed strike), melee weapon (ex: dagger), or ranged weapon (ex: crossbow, light) attack you can use the Eldritch Blast attack to meet those conditions instead.
Third bullet of Empty Hands part 2 (melee vs melee weapon) - I meant to distinguish between the unarmed strike (melee) versus a melee weapon like a dagger. I should reword this to make that clearer.

6. "Unarmed Shroud" doesn't really seem to have any reason to be separate from "Empty Hands." That aside, +3 TO AC!?!?!? WOAH. That is way too high for ANY feature, let alone a level one feature that ALSO gives you proficiency with medium armor. I would recommend getting rid of that AC boost entirely, armor proficiency is enough. Unarmed strikes do 1+1d4+strength modifier+charisma but only to hit? WHY? Why would anybody put a good stat in strength and do that when they could just cast eldritch blast (as most of the other features recommend)? Also, why the random +1?
I had Unarmed Shroud listed as a separate feature so I could easily reference back to it in a later feature that increases the AC again. I put it at a +3 because I was denying shields from being equipped and wanted to cover the possibility of being in close and personal in early game fights. I also figured that since the "Empty Hands" feature denied the option of Pact of the Blade I'd give an additional concession with the AC trade off. However, I can take another look at this and lower it after some number crunching.
Being transparent, I was struggling with getting this to work a little bit and only got as far as being able to manipulate the "to hit" value based on the charisma modifier. The "random +1" was to cover if someone running this on a standard array could dump strength and still do at least 1 damage with the unarmed strike (it's "0" otherwise because of the -1 strength modifier). I also leaned into the unarmed combat aspect and added the 1d4 to the unarmed strike. I know that this seems like leaning into Eldritch Blast hard (because this subclass is), but I wanted to leave open the option to do a non-lethal strike with a plain unarmed strike that I'm assuming can't be done with an Eldritch Blast attack. I fully expect it to be mostly an unused thing, but I'm leaving it there so people have narrative options with this subclass.

Quote from Quar1on >>

Thanks for the feedback feedback! To be specific, the part of "Astral God's Blessing" that I find confusing is "Some of these spells feel innate as if a switch had been flipped imbuing you with magic akin to a Sorcerer." It just feels kind of weird, and it's bit hard to parse. If you want warlocks to have a more viable nonlethal option, perhaps you could give them the option to do nonlethal damage with their eldritch blast (which fits more with the rest of the subclass buffing your eldritch blast). Also, unarmed strikes are technically melee weapon attacks, despite using no weapon. Weapon attack is basically just a term to say it's not a spell attack. I don't see why multiple of your features make it so that you CAN get up close and personal, but none of them really give any reason to. It's not like you'll be able to do more damage by eldritch blasting at close range (although now that I think about it, adding strength to damage when eldritch blasting somebody within 5 feet would be a cool feature for this subclass). Also, I am going to remain adamant that the +3 to AC is unnecessary. I understand the want to make up for the lack of shield, but... Warlocks don't have shield proficiency, so they aren't really missing out. Proficiency with medium armor is a huge boost to AC, up to +3 already if you go from studded leather to half plate (and don't have over 15 in dex). I would also continue to recommend combining the two features, as there is already a noticeably immense list of features, and they have the same requirements anyways.
The part about the Sorcerer is probably a carry over from when I started this out and was trying to allow access to the Sorcerer's spell list in addition to the Warlock. I started seeing double entries coming up when selecting spells though and scrapped the idea. I will come back to this and redo the wording to make it more coherent.
Good point about the nonlethal Eldritch Blast, I could just add that as a decision choice under the reasoning that you are supposed to be controlling the flow of the energy around and threw you (like pulling a punch).

7. Something I just realized is that this class doesn't have an expanded spell list, which warlock subclasses usually do. That would probably be a good thing to add. I would recommend adding shield of faith or shield, as that seems to be in line with the stuff you want to do.
I was having issues with things coming up preventing publishing because of "licensed content" or "private homebrew spells" on other home brew creations I am toying with, so I did away with the extra spells for this first go. I'll definitely take another look at adding it in though and I agree those two spells would be great candidates for what I was envisioning.

8. "Eldritch Boost" is way too powerful. A solid +4 to EVERY eldritch blast means that, if you hit both blasts, have a +4 in charisma, and have agonizing blast, you can do 2d10+16 force damage. As a single action. With a cantrip. At 6th level. Considering it's also alongside 3 other features at 6th level alone, I would recommend just getting rid of it. Plus, static bonuses aren't things that ever really happen; they're either rolled or have to do with stats.
I'll chalk this one up to the same mistake I made with other feedback where I overlooked the Eldritch Blast getting extra beams at higher levels. This will likely get dissolved, or at the very least cut back.

9. "Astral God's Vitality" is pretty lame. With AC as high as it is AND an extra +2 hp/level, this class is going to be way too powerful. If you REALLY want to have more hit points (which should barely even be considered unless you remove the +3 to AC), then you could make it like Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer's "Draconic Resilience" instead of just saying "you have a feat now."
Great suggestion, I'll read through the Draconic Resilience for the Sorcerer and figure something out that makes this more balanced.

10. This extra attack is weird. First of all, as you already said, unarmed strikes are very impractical for this class. Second of all, it works with spells????? How????? Do you mean if I do something like cast shocking grasp, I can attack twice with it? What if I cast eldritch blast? At 6th level you already attack twice with eldritch blast, so does this make you attack four times instead?? Honestly, I would just get rid of this feature too. It doesn't make any sense.
This was meant to allow the additional attack of Eldritch Blast. However, this was also me overlooking the additional beams feature at higher levels.

11. "Astral Spell Pool" both doesn't make any sense, AND doesn't work with any of the other features at all. What do you mean extra spell? Like an extra Warlock spell slot that you can do anything with? If so, that's incredibly overpowered. Besides, it doesn't make sense with the rest of the cantrip-focused class to have more spell slots. This is another feature I would recommend giving the boot to.
This is my poor attempt at trying to give the Warlock more spell utility to work with. They for from 1 pact slot to 2 at level 2, but don't get another until level 11 (and it only goes up by 1 to a total of 3). So casting Armor of Agathys and then using Hellish Rebuke (or any other spell really) would be all they could do until they take a rest. I'll think it over some more, but this may stay in a cut down form. I tried to make sure it would on be able to refresh on a Long Rest until you hit level 14, then like the normal Pact Slots it would refresh on a Short or Long rest.

12. Not much to say about the next feature that I haven't already said, besides the fact that it's somehow even more overpowered.
I assume this is the "Astral Spell Pool - Extra Slot" at level 10, which is ordered in the presentation right after "Astral Spell Pool". This will be revisited with the Astral Spell Pool as a collective chain.

13. WHAT!?!??! "Astral God's Sight" GIVES YOU TRUESIGHT?!?!?!? TO 90 FEET!??! No way that should be a feature! Anyways, what's the point of having darkvision and blindsight if you have truesight? Truesight does everything that they do, but better. If you really want enhanced sight, give a once/short rest feature that gives you truesight up to 20 feet for a minute. Anything else will be WAY too overpowered.
When I was reading the descriptions of each type of sight I was reading them as doing different things instead of Truesight doing all the features of the other two. Maybe I am not understanding these clearly so I'll do some more research on them. However, I do like the idea of the Truesight being an activated feature instead of an always on thing.

14. With "Astral God's Avatar," you should probably use way less description. You shouldn't really describe how the power is given, but rather how it looks or feels when used, and even then you should leave most of it up to the player to decide. Great, an EXTRA +8 to eldritch blast damage. That means, assuming all blasts hit, a +5 in charisma, and agonizing blast, you could do 3d10+51 force damage. As an action. Using a cantrip. As a 14th level Warlock. And once you hit 17th level, that damage goes up to 4d10+68. With a single bullet point of one of two features. Let's also not forget about the +4 to AC, and the four random languages that have no point. I would recommend completely revamping this feature to be a limited, once/short rest thing that grants you increased speed and an extra eldritch blast per eldritch blast.
As before, I'll chalk the damage boost up to overlooking the additional beams at higher levels, this is likely to be demolished out of the feature in the next iteration.
Reading through some sample text from the other Patron options, I felt I should describe a bit how the powers were bestowed on your character a little because it's more infusing with power than what felt like someone flicking their finger and saying "there ya go". However, I agree this is probably limiting the creative freedom of others that may have more interesting ideas about how this happens, I'll work on rewording to open it up more for flavorful interpretation on the "how".
Bullets 1 and 3 from the list will get a removal/rework along with prior associated features that chained to these. Bullets 4 and 5 were more to go along with the idea of being like an emissary of this Astral _____ patron, so adding the additional languages will probably stay unless enough overhaul is done to need a rethink on the nature of the patron. Bullet 2 is going to stay and be reworked into the new format somehow to maintain the additional reach gain.

15. Is the idea to have 9 Warlock spell slots instead of 4? I really hope not. I once again recommend demolishing this feature.
This will be revisited with the Astral Spell Pool as a collective chain.

And that about wraps up my feedback!

Quote from Ic3Ninj4>>

The reason for trying to up the unarmed strikes a little was to keep some options open for players for narrative reasons, so they could make a non-lethal strike on someone. I don't think you can do a non-lethal strike with Eldritch Blast….

Technically there is no such thing as “nonlethal damage” in 5e, but there are rules for knocking a creature out. The (current) rules for that are as follows:

Knocking a Creature Out

Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

So as long as you make it so the player can use eldritch blast as a “melee spell attack,” then they can use it to knock a creature out.

I hope that helps.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Quote from Ic3Ninj4>>

The reason for trying to up the unarmed strikes a little was to keep some options open for players for narrative reasons, so they could make a non-lethal strike on someone. I don't think you can do a non-lethal strike with Eldritch Blast….

Technically there is no such thing as “nonlethal damage” in 5e, but there are rules for knocking a creature out. The (current) rules for that are as follows:

Knocking a Creature Out

Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.

So as long as you make it so the player can use eldritch blast as a “melee spell attack,” then they can use it to knock a creature out.

I hope that helps.

Yes, that helps out a whole lot! Thanks for the information IamSposta!

Happy to help.

I could use some feedback on this because I'm caught between minds on how to implement this. I am wanting to have an expanded spell list that doesn't eat up the known spells the player can select. Below I've copied what I currently have in place.

What I'm debating is whether to keep each level as granting both spells listed, or make things a little more challenging and have the player select between the two spells listed so they only get 1. I am certain I am going to keep Shield as described below the table.

The Astral Traveler knows the challenges of being unarmed and unarmored in the face of foes that mean to do you harm. Your patron grants you additional spells by default, which do not count towards your known spell limit, but still consume spell slots when cast.

The Astral Traveler Expanded Spell List

You also have access to learning the 1st level Shield spell, but it does count towards your known spell limit if learned.

Why are the levels these spells are gained at so weird? You should look at another Warlock expanded spell list and base yours off of that. For some reason you seem to completely skip 3rd level spells. I also don't see why you put so much emphasis on cantrips in this subclass, yet seem to want to give the player greater access to levelled spells as well (with your expanded spell pool feature, too). It really seems like you want to focus on improving two wildly different parts of the class, which is inevitably going to make an unorganized subclass that is stretched too thin. As for the spells in general, I would recommend allowing for more smites and letting them work with eldritch punches. As for the choices of spells themselves...

• Shield of faith isn't a great choice, as it doesn't really fit your theme, since you seem to be stepping away from the god thing. I would recommend replacing it with inflict wounds, false life, ensnaring strike, longstrider, expeditious retreat, zephyr strike, or any of the smites from the paladin spell list.
• Thunderwave is perfect, as it can be upcasted and is melee-ranged.
• Misty step is already on the Warlock spell list. Consider replacing it with branding smite or blur.
• Scorching ray is an odd choice, as it's very much a ranged spell. Consider replacing it with branding smite or blur.
• There are no 3rd level spells, so I will just say blinding smite, Ashardalon's stride or blink (which sends you to the ethereal plane, but you can change it to astral) would be cool.
• Blight is already on the Warlock spell list. Consider replacing it with staggering smite, freedom of movement, or stoneskin.
• Death ward is a good choice!
• Cone of cold is very much not melee, having a 60 foot range. Consider replacing it with banishing smite or steel wind strike.
• Telekinesis is a cool choice! You can bring your enemies close to you, and they'll be easier to hit due to being restrained.

A couple more things: I would recommend allowing this subclass to use their 9th level Mystic Arcanum to cast astral projection, regardless of what they have prepared. I also think that a feature on the side that make your speed in the astral plane go up with level would be cool, and it would be circumstantial enough that it wouldn't offset balance at all.

The question still remains with the spells if I should be granting both at each level, or should I be making the player choose from one of them?

Quote from Quar1on >>

Why are the levels these spells are gained at so weird? You should look at another Warlock expanded spell list and base yours off of that. For some reason you seem to completely skip 3rd level spells.

This is a departure from the normal Warlock Subclass expanded spell list. I guess I should name it something different to make that clear. The Levels you're seeing correspond to the levels of the Warlock that you gain the spells at, not the spell levels themselves. It follows the pattern with the Otherworldly Patron Features.

Quote from Quar1on >>

As for the spells in general, I would recommend allowing for more smites and letting them work with eldritch punches. As for the choices of spells themselves...

• Shield of faith isn't a great choice, as it doesn't really fit your theme, since you seem to be stepping away from the god thing. I would recommend replacing it with inflict wounds, false life, ensnaring strike, longstrider, expeditious retreat, zephyr strike, or any of the smites from the paladin spell list.
• Thunderwave is perfect, as it can be upcasted and is melee-ranged.
• Misty step is already on the Warlock spell list. Consider replacing it with branding smite or blur.
• Scorching ray is an odd choice, as it's very much a ranged spell. Consider replacing it with branding smite or blur.
• There are no 3rd level spells, so I will just say blinding smite, Ashardalon's stride or blink (which sends you to the ethereal plane, but you can change it to astral) would be cool.
• Blight is already on the Warlock spell list. Consider replacing it with staggering smite, freedom of movement, or stoneskin.
• Death ward is a good choice!
• Cone of cold is very much not melee, having a 60 foot range. Consider replacing it with banishing smite or steel wind strike.
• Telekinesis is a cool choice! You can bring your enemies close to you, and they'll be easier to hit due to being restrained.

A couple more things: I would recommend allowing this subclass to use their 9th level Mystic Arcanum to cast astral projection, regardless of what they have prepared. I also think that a feature on the side that make your speed in the astral plane go up with level would be cool, and it would be circumstantial enough that it wouldn't offset balance at all.

I'm keeping the Shield of Faith in place, as a part of the adjustments I've made I took away the AC boosts I had in there originally and changed it to being an unarmored bonus similar to the Monk (AC 10 + Dex + Cha).

I've swapped out the Misty Step for the Blur, since the idea to give Misty Step without consuming a known spell slot was to give options on getting out of range of melee attackers. However, allowing the player to still pick up Misty Step on their own and also give access to imposing disadvantage on attack rolls against them gives some more flexibility with how players choose to play the subclass.

The Scorching Ray was there to give the player access to dealing fire damage with multiple rays as an option instead of the Force damage from Eldritch Blast. However, in the process of removing the previous "Extra Attack" feature I swap this to allowing the player to swap the Eldritch Blast damage type to Radiant damage, so putting in Branding Smite here would play into the balance between using Force damage and Radiant damage.

For Blight, I am tempted with the Freedom of Movement swap....I'm going to have to give this one some more thought. I thought about it some more and moved forward with swapping Blight for Freedom of Movement.

Cone of Cold was to give some more elemental options. Sadly I can't make use of the options you mentioned. I keep having issues with "licensed content" warnings if I add something that's outside of the Basic Rules list of spells. However, having removed Scorching Ray and narrowing the elements at the player's disposal (now Force, Radiant, Thunder and Necrotic) I'm looking at changing this out to Arcane Hand or Contagion. I thought about this some more and moved forward with changing out Cone of Cold with Arcane Hand.

I'm going to keep this called "Expanded Spell List" for now, so below is the updated list of spells gained at each Warlock Level.

Still need to decide if I'm going to give out both at each level or make the player choose between the two options (or if moving towards choosing then adding a third option to select from).