Should warlock have one more spell slot?

[Spacehamster]

So looking over the good old lockaroony it feels like he is stuck on two slots way too long so were wondering if having him start with two short rest slots and gain a 3rd one at 5th level and then gain 4th and 5th on 11/17 would break anything? Only thing I could see is 1 level hexblade dip becoming slightly too powerful.

In my opinion this would make the warlock slightly less crap in a short rest deprived group and quite much more potent when getting two short rests per adventure day, would still need to think through what he uses his slots with but not be as careful with it.

[rbstr]

No. The number of slots is intentional and designed to make sure they don't out-fireball a Wizard (or other full caster) over the intended average adventuring day.

A warlock with two short rests per day has roughly the same number of spellpoints worth of slots per day as a long-rest recharge full caster.
If you intend for a campaign to deviate from that short/long rest ratio significantly maybe make a change. Otherwise leave it alone.

[Spacehamster]

No. The number of slots is intentional and designed to make sure they don't out-fireball a Wizard (or other full caster) over the intended average adventuring day.

A warlock with two short rests per day has roughly the same number of spellpoints worth of slots per day as a long-rest recharge full caster.
If you intend for a campaign to deviate from that short/long rest ratio significantly maybe make a change. Otherwise leave it alone.

Problem lies in that some groups don’t do even one short rest tho.

[rbstr]

So take some short rests? Like, you're never in a position to want to spend hit die? Does the balance even matter if that's the case? You're clearly not facing any sort of significant attrition between long rests.

Short rests are pretty critical part of the way the game is designed. If the campaign or party doesn't use them they're deviating pretty heavily from the intended balance. Battle masters, Monks, and even moon druids are pretty heavily disadvantaged by that format. Bardic inspiration, Channel divinity and more. This isn't a "warlock" issue.

If you intend on not having short rests I suggest you just triple all the short rest resources and make them all long rest dependent.

[Master O'Laughs]

It is a highly situational problem. If your gamin group seems to not take short rests at all or 1/day. Then it would not imbalance the warlock during days filled with combat. On days where you can take as many short rests as you want since there is a lot of RP going, I do not think it would heavily imbalance anything since that would seem the normal place for a warlock to get an edge.

If your group starts to take 3+ short rests per day then the issue may need to be re-visited.

[Joe the Rat]

I'm not sold on more total, but I can feel a case for accelerating the slot acquisition. The trick is finding a reasonable pre-11 level where the 3rd slot wouldn't blow the relative power curve.

[Vogie]

If a campaign wasn't having a normal number of short rests, you could ask for a custom feat made that matches the Arcane Archer and Monk's ability to make a single spell slot available when you roll initiative with none available. But as they've mentioned, that's more a requirement based around a mismanagement of adventuring day expectations

[Amdy_vill]

i have played with many warlock and have played one and i have never felt they need more spell slots.

[Waterdeep Merch]

If your DM isn't letting you take short rests, don't play a warlock. They're too dependent on them to be divorced from the mechanic. I'd instead play a cleric or wizard and take warlock-esque spells if I was adamant about the flavor.

Trying to rebalance the entire warlock chassis to work off long rests alone would be a nightmare, and probably just end up as a traditional vancian full caster. I'd have to cripple their invocations, too, for balance reasons. Way easier to just not use them.

[Theodoxus]

I on the other hand have just started playing two different warlocks in two AL games and do in fact feel slightly hampered by only 2 spells per rest.

In one game, I'm playing a Life Cleric 1/Celestial Warlock 4 - and because of the lack of spells (and a desire to get my next ASI as quickly as possible) am going to Cleric 4/Warlock 4. I use my cleric slots every adventuring day, because inevitably, I've used my 2 warlock slots and need to spend the cleric resources before the next short rest. We rest fairly often, but between Hex and AOEs, healing tends to also be required. Cleric 3 is the sweet spot, with 6 long rest spells, but that ASI at 4 will be a huge boon, boosting both Wis and Cha to 18 =D After that, I'm not sure if I'm going to favor one class or the other.

In the other game, I've been playing a straight Celestial Warlock 4 - though I'm going to rebuild it to a Hexblade as the party just recently got a paladin, and between a cleric, bard, paladin and me - we overhealed (well, really competed to heal) the party, so I figured I'd go more hit and run with a glaive from behind the tanks (said cleric and paladin). But here too, I've been finding the lack of spell slots pretty harsh. This particular DM though does one deadly+ encounter per evening, so I do run into the 'I'm novaing my slots, just like the wizard, but he has 5 times the spells slots' problem. So, less a class specific issue than a DM/Table issue, but my two anecdotal experiences add up to a problem.

Since I'm AL, there's nothing I can do about it, but in regular games, I suggest either asking the DM for 3x the slots as rbstr suggested, or, my preference, allow Warlocks to use the spell point variant.

A lot of times, you don't really need or want an upcast spells (some don't offer any benefit to it, others like Hex, are just longer times, which is wasted if you lose Conc) But burning 2 spells points for Hex when you have 14, is way better than burning a whole 5th level slot.

[Justin Sane]

Trying to rebalance the entire warlock chassis to work off long rests alone would be a nightmare, and probably just end up as a traditional vancian full caster. I'd have to cripple their invocations, too, for balance reasons. Way easier to just not use them.Triple the uses, and say they recharge on a Long Rest. Do this for every "Once per Short Rest" ability. Nightmare over.

[Matticusrex]

you have just discovered one of 5E's biggest flaws, short-rest resources. Simply change a short rest to 5 minutes/ 2 times per day, and you fix everything.

[Spacehamster]

Feel like they should just be half casters with long rest slots instead.

[rbstr]

A Half-caster Warlock would require several new class (or patron) features since they're a full caster and spell levels typically consume roughly a whole level of "feature budget" for a class.
That means:
At least 4 new features to go at the levels they currently receive 6th-9th level spells. (levels 11, 13, 15, and 17)
An additional 1st level feature since spellcasting would move to level 2.
Extra attack or something equivalent at level 5.
And an 18th level feature.

So you're basically making a new class at this point. Might as well homebrew up something brand new without the other baggage.

[Greywander]

Another suggestion I've seen for when you have a mix of short and long rest classes in a party that never takes short rests is to give each character a couple "points" that can be spent out of combat to get the benefits of a short rest instantly. You get these points back after a long rest. This way, short rest classes can refresh their abilities without holding up the rest of the party.

You could shorten short rests to 5-10 minutes, but that would probably lead to taking a short rest after every fight. If you can short rest after every fight, then short rest classes are going to dominate the long rest classes.

Personally I'd like to see more incentive to short rest when you're a long rest class, maybe refreshing 1/4 of long rest resources or something. A barbarian might want to short rest to use hit dice, but a wizard is going to be more concerned about their spell slots. This, however, is a different (albeit related) issue from what the OP was asking, and would be worthy of its own thread if anyone wished to discuss it further.

[Arvin Natsuko]

you have just discovered one of 5E's biggest flaws, short-rest resources. Simply change a short rest to 5 minutes/ 2 times per day, and you fix everything.

I'm using this exactly rule in my current game. It's working just fine. The Warlock (Palalock) is doing OK.