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Kane0
2013-01-10, 03:44 AM
Hey guys.

For an upcoming game, I am thinking of making a houserule change to the stock 3.5 Warlock for the player. He mainly just wants to be a blastlock and I'm aiming to equalize the blastslock's damage output to closer match a Glaivelock or Clawlock's output.

Houserule: You may make as many Eldritch blasts as your BAB allows as a full attack action, but these blasts may not have any essences or shapes applied.
Taking a feat allows you to apply a single essence and the eldritch spear blast shape should you have it, but these modifications must be applied to all blasts made as part of the full attack and the effects cannot apply to a single target more than once.

So, does anyone else use this kind of houserule? How has it worked for you? Is there anything catastrophic this may cause? Overall opinions?

Cheers!

genericwit
2013-01-13, 04:37 PM
Well being a blastlock means they can just sit out of combat, so maybe allowing full damage at each blast might be a bit too much. Consider that they can then just spam blasts in a round and spend the rest of their invocations on self-buffs, battlefield control, and social skills, and have to take many fewer risks. The trade off with glaivelocks/clawlocks is that they are super squishy and willingly putting themselves at a deadly range.

Maybe consider allowing them to use split ray, meaning that they can fire two blasts but only with a certain amount of essences [such that it wouldn't put them over the normal metamagic cap] OR do something like T.G. Oskar's fix, and allow them to fire at their BAB, BUT every time they add a new blast each blast loses 1d6 damage. So they can fire three at bab 11, but each blast does 2d6 less damage than normal.

bobthe6th
2013-01-13, 04:54 PM
well, until mid levels it won't matter. At high levels it could deal some reasonable damage. I couldn't say either way. Though honestly, I would just give them a shape that lets them blast at up to 20ft a number of blasts equal to 1/4 their CL.

Kane0
2013-01-13, 06:51 PM
@genericwit
He will be doing full damage (and a useful amount for a change) but the tradeoff is that he cannot bestow any debuffs that are so useful. This change improves the raw damage output while not making the debuffer route redundant.
Warlocks that choose to go melee with glaive or claw will get comparable damage to this and will also be able to deliver the debuffs, so blastlocks will hopefully have their niche worthwhile again without stepping on the other warlock's toes.

@bobthe6th
True, maybe let him add his Cha mod to damage to help in the lower levels.
I think I have a shape around in one of my old threads that will do the trick.