Potential of the PF (3rd Party) Warlock

[Spore]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/adamant-entertainment/warlock

Greetings playground,

I need you to gauge the potential a Warlock has. I feels too me like a simple and T3ish variant for arcane "casters". But it borders into T4 because of the lack of skills and your very very limited amount of magic tricks as well as written support for the class.

[j_spencer93]

I would say you are about right, but i am not a big pathfinder player and not the best at casters powers either.

[master4sword]

From my perspective it appears to be a somewhat underpowered class with multiple abilities that don't function as intended by RAW.

Chassis: d8 hit die, medium BAB, good Will, 2+Int skills. Okay, but not great.

Arcane Armor Mastery: Arcane spell failure chance doesn't normally affect anything except arcane spells, so by RAW this ability prevents the penalty from applying to abilities it already doesn't.

Cantrips: Learns cantrips, but there's no spells-per-day table, or any indication that you can cast them. I expect the intention is "learn Cha-mod cantrips and use them at will", which offers a few nice, low-level tricks, though by RAW you might not be able to cast them without multiclassing.

School Abilities: These range from nice to powerful, as only the class features borrowed from the Wizard seem to have any limits per day. One option I noticed, however, does stand out as being potentially broken. At 4th level, by RAW, you can have infinite-use 24-hour duration summons; spend an hour summoning in the morning while the casters are preparing spells and you have between 60 and 60d3 minions who last all day, though that seems to be the only school ability that's particularly abusable; the rest seem like reasonable at-will powers (though I just skimmed the options rather than checking them all, so there may be others worth bringing up).

Damage Reduction: First off, DR already doesn't block cold/fire/electricity, so if you pick those three you've effectively got DR 2/-. Not that DR 2 at 3rd level is overpowered or anything, just noting that since you have to pick three options to beat your DR, and three of the options already bypass DR just by the base rules, it's effectively just DR/-. Also, you have to pick 3 options out of 5, so you HAVE to pick at least one of the energy options. Gets up to DR 6 at 19th, which is nice but not a lot in the long run.

Dead Levels: Two levels give you nothing. That's four if you count the levels that only give you Arcane Armor Mastery (which does nothing by RAW). Generally, Pathfinder classes only have dead levels if they're spellcasters.


After closer look you might be able to break into T3 with decent school ability selection, though T4 does look about right.

[The Ravensong]

As Master4Sword said, there are some design errors in the class they way it's RAW interacts with the rules themselves. It's also worth noting that the classes RAW doesn't say you treat your wizard level as your warlock level for the school abilities. It definitely needs a FAQ/Rewrite/A discussion with your DM, but it's... alright. To put things in perspective, I had been running a 3.5 glaivelock in a pathfinder campaign, and the DM asked me to run this warlock (which notably lacks untyped damage and eldritch glaive) to reign me in. He let me go back to the 3.5 Warlock after I pointed out some of the more glaring writing issues (but he's decided to keep eldritch blast something that I have to choose an element for whenever I use it, with the agreement that he'll give me a little more slack with other elements of the build he'd disliked before... and the promise that I'd hand him an even less restrained version to use as a villain :P)

[Spore]

I am unsure how to port the - obviously more complicated but better - 3.5 Warlock into PF but if you've done it please tell me the modifications you and your DM made. Also do I understand it correctly that the Warlock is basically the Sorcerer but different? Where is the difference fluffwise?

[The Ravensong]

I am unsure how to port the - obviously more complicated but better - 3.5 Warlock into PF but if you've done it please tell me the modifications you and your DM made. Also do I understand it correctly that the Warlock is basically the Sorcerer but different? Where is the difference fluffwise?
To be honest, you can bump the 3.5 warlocks HD up to d8 to bring it into line with all the other 3.5 d6 classes and you'll be good to go. The 3.5, fluffwise, is very similar to the sorcerer, but the similarities end there for the most part.
Rather than spells, you have a small number of "invocations" which are spell like abilities that usually will mimic spells of a similar level. By level 20 you'll have accrued a grand total of 12 of these spell like abilities (which'll give you an idea as to how few you'll actually have) but you can use them as often as you want; as opposed to a sorcerer, who knows more spells, but casts them a limited number of times per day; or the wizard, who has an even greater repertoire with an even more limited usages per day.
The bread and butter of the Warlock is the Eldritch Blast class feature, which is a ranged touch attack that does untyped damage. Untyped damage usually isn't an issue until you start hitting mid-high level monsters that have damage reduction and elemental resistances that can slow down the fighters and "true" spellcasters in the party.
There are certain builds of warlock that escalate this untyped damage very quickly, to the point where you're throwing fistfuls of dice every turn that ignore a good chunk of many high CR creatures defenses (which is what is supposed to make them the higher Challenge Rating in the first place)
When I'd been invited to the campaign being run by this particular DM, the other players told me they were playing relatively highly optimized characters, so I brought a glaivelock (one of the more offensive warlock builds) thinking that I'd be able to keep up if I played cleverly enough. As it turned out, the party was actually low to mid-op and my warlock was ending encounters more quickly than the DM liked (and out damaging the rest of the party by himself).
The Offending Build was an Ifrit-Were Direbat (lycanthrope for the campaign setting, it really wasn't central to the build) Warlock5/Mindbender1/Warshaper3/Hellfire Warlock3
Through feats and magic items, my eldritch blast damage was increased to 8d6 base damage per eldritch blast.
Through magic items with uses per day and the Hellfire Blast ability from the Hellfire warlock, this could reach up to 18d6 per eldritch blast.
The Eldritch Glaive blast shape turns my 60 ranged touch attack effectively into a melee touch weapon with a 20 ft reach (Due to being large sized with extra reach from the Warshaper class) so, in a lucky turn, that turns into 36d6 damage (BAB +9/+4) to one target that ignores damage reduction and elemental resistances... 54d6 if the enemy has the audacity to provoke an attack of opportunity afterwords. So when we reached the first big bad, who was a little less bigger and badder than I'd been lead to believe by my fellow party members, he was eradicated in one turn. At which point the DM set his pencil down, and asked to go through my build with me. We confirmed that I followed all of his instructions, hadn't mistakenly purchased or crafted any items I shouldn't have been able to access, and was politely asked to tone down the character to better match the power level of the group (which I was glad to do).

What the DM and I settled on for reigning in my character (again, the problem was a relatively high-op character in comparison to the others) was that my eldritch blasts would no longer be untyped (letting me choose the element each time I cast it), and politely asking that I not nova through the charges on the magic items that improve my damage. (I also spent most of my treasure developing a law library and running a business). Another offer I had under the table if he wasn't satisfied with that alone was "charged items that increase my damage would draw extra charges when being used for full attacks and attacks of opportunities".

Most DMs I've spoken to feel that the warlock is pretty much pathfinder friendly right out of the box (it still doesn't hold a candle to a well prepared wizard, especially conjurers or necromancers), but I was more than happy to "put some weights on his ankles" as it were, because the rest of the party needed to be having fun too.

As far as HOW the warlock works, as I said before, your basic attack is the Eldritch Blast. 60ft ranged touch (ignores armor, natural armor, and shields), roughly 1d6/2 levels of damage on a hit. Honestly not much to write home about because the sorcerer and the wizard are far outpacing you for damage with the action economy unless the adventuring day runs particularly long and they've run out of spells.
Eldritch Blast is modified by two types of "invocations" (those spell like abilities mentioned earlier)
The first are the Blast Shape Invocations. These typically make it into something other than a ranged touch attack.
Eldritch Spear increases the range to 250 ft
Eldritch Glaive turns it into a 10ft reach melee touch attack (which allows for additional attacks as AoO and base attack bonus allow)
Hideous Blow allows you to add your Eldritch Blast damage to a weapon attack (really the worst of all the options)
Eldritch Chain allows your 60ft ranged touch to jump to another target when it hits someone (very much like the chain lightning spell)
Eldritch Cone turns it into a cone shape (like cone of cold)
Eldritch Doom turns it into a blast that effects all enemies within 20ft of you
These are all mutually exclusive, you can't have a 250ft range 20ft blast of 10ft reach attacks channeled through your melee weapon in a cone. That'd be silly.
What you CAN do, however, is also add on an Eldritch Essence Invocation
Frightful Blast adds the additional effect that your target (or targets, with the right shapes) must succeed on a will save or be frightened if they're hit by the blast
Sickening Blast is much the same, but with the Sickened status effect
Beshadowed Blast blinds
Brimstone Blast turns it into fire damage (boo), but sets things on fire (yay!)
Hellrime Blast turns it into cold damage (boo), but adds a Dex penalty to your victims (yay!)
... and so on and so forth, giving you a few different combinations of Shape+Essence to make a unique attack.
The Other Invocations are the ones that often mimic other spells, like Fly, Darkness, Animate Dead, Fog Cloud, etc.

So, over the course of 20 levels, you get to pick a combination of 12 Invocations that either enhance your eldritch blast or give you another trick up your sleeve (such as the dread Baleful Puppymorph build). There are also a select few feats that also alter your eldritch blast, like Eldritch Claw, which turns your Eldritch Blast into claws (which is the basis of another relatively rude warlock build). And you can spend feats to expand your repertoire of spell like abilities.
I hope this helps you manage the Warlocks phenomenal cosmic power (and itty-bitty living space)
Happy Blasting

[TheIronGolem]

Frankly, I'd say even T4 is a generous assessment of Adamant's Warlock; it feels like T5 to me, and not even a high T5 at that.

Sure, it has access to a lot of different powers, but not good ones like flight or invisibility. Instead, it gets the bargain-bin powers that are just along for the ride when the Wizard picks his specialty, and rarely see use because spells make them obsolete - only the Warlock gets them instead of spells rather than in addition to them. And since those powers weren't designed with any kind of synergy in mind, it's hard to turn them into any kind of cohesive whole. It just end up with a grab bag of cute little tricks that are only situationally useful - it's basically the Monk of casters.

School abilities aside, it would be a T4 class if it was at least decent at one useful thing (namely blasting) blasting like its 3.5 counterpart...but its equivalent of Eldritch Blast is stripped of all the support that it had. Blast shapes and essences are what gave EB the ability to deal with multiple targets, operate at various ranges, and add a side of debuffs to your damage entree. This Warlock lacks any of that. Changing damage types on the fly is okay for the mid-levels when you frequently run into enemies that resist one or two types, but it won't help much in the high levels when you're fighting stuff that resists (or is outright immune to) damn near everything - and it still doesn't compare to the untyped damage of 3.5's Warlock.

In short, Adamant Entertainment, your Warlock is bad and you should feel bad.

[Erik Vale]

It all depends on your school choices. Do you choose a crappy blasting power, or at will dominate monster?

Because it can't change things around, I'd say it's T:2 at max optimisation. However, it's floor is T:6