I Don't Really Get Warlocks [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

KOLE

2018-09-21, 02:28 PM

I'm playing through my first campaign right now as a Barbarogue, accompanying me is a Conquest Paladin, Cavalier Fighter, and a Feylock.

At the same time, I'm researching all Full Caster classes as in every one shot and side campaign I've played in addition to this one I've only played martials. I'm also doing some homebrewing for a new full caster base class, so I'm paying a lot of attention to what each class gets vs the other.

In the campaign, we're in a VERY tight spot right now. Sparing details to get to the actual point of this topic, what was meant to be a recon mission into the court of tyrannical Giant king just turned into an encounter as our Paladin is an overzealous idiot (the character, not the player!). We're now locked into combat with a giant whom our DM has done a lot of work on (he apparently has legendary actions), a Shaman of some type (who we didn't count on), and the Giant's pet dire wolves, as well as a mead hall full of his Goblin and Orc warriors.

We had to end the session before combat began which is good because we have a week to figure out what the heck we're actually going to do as the DM has straight up said a TPK is possible due to our incompetence. Me and the Feylock player have been convening and scheming in anticipation, but all my ideas have gone out the window when I realized the Warlock ONLY HAS TWO SPELL SLOTS.

So I ran some math. We're level 5 right now. Comparing Warlock directly to wizard... The Wizard would have the same two 3rd level spells... and seven additional spells of lower value! In addition, the Wizard can get a single 3rd level spell back on a short rest, and has so many more spell choices.

I'm thinking right now just how handy a fireball or two would be. And grumbling at the situation we're in. Two spell slots for this huge encounter is not enough. I know some people will say Eldritch Blast makes up for it, but a Wizard can also take Toll the Dead for a realistic d12 cantrip.

Seeing how Warlocks work in an actual campaign, I just don't get it. Hexblades are great for a more Gish type, much better than even a Bladesinger, but outside of that I don't see what a Warlock does that a Wizard does better, other than armor prof and a slightly bigger hit die.

Can someone sell me here? I want to understand for my own homebrewing in the future. If you're going to be a full caster... Why not just be a full caster? More spells trumps just about everything else IMO.

MaxWilson

2018-09-21, 02:34 PM

Can someone sell me here? I want to understand for my own homebrewing in the future. If you're going to be a full caster... Why not just be a full caster? More spells trumps just about everything else IMO.

Warlocks do best when they can proactively control their pacing. For example, a warlock with Invisibility can afford to be invisible ALL THE TIME, resting every other hour.

When it comes to combat, warlocks want to practice hit-and-run tactics, whittling down monsters a few at a time instead of taking on a whole village of giants at one time. (Note that this is smart for other PCs too, even wizards, because taking a short rest gives fighters back Action Surge and wizards back spells via Arcane Recovery and Paladins back Channel Divinity, etc. But warlocks benefit more and more often.)

BaconAwesome

2018-09-21, 02:38 PM

ruy343

2018-09-21, 02:42 PM

Actually, in a sense, warlocks aren't a full caster.

I mean, they are, just like how bards, druids, and clerics are - they are just weaker in their spell capabilities than a wizard/sorcerer of equivalent level.

The Warlock list is actually quite full of useful spells, so its limitations come from the spell slot limit. That said, EVERY SINGLE SPELL that a warlock casts uses the highest available spell slot ALL THE TIME. That means that if your 5th level warlock casts burning hands (for example), he gets the bonus damage dice. Similarly, if he casts invisibility, since he's spending a third level slot, he can always target a second creature with the spell.

Warlocks also get proficiency with a variety of useful skills or weapon proficiencies (depending on your path through the class), and invocations that make the warlock quite capable of accomplishing a diverse number of tasks.

But yeah, in terms of straight-up burst damage, the warlock suffers. the warlock is better served by a full adventuring day, where a short rest is almost always possible between encounters. Basically, they can throw out their big guns at every encounter and not have to worry about using up their entire stock

KOLE

2018-09-21, 02:46 PM

But yeah, in terms of straight-up burst damage, the warlock suffers. the warlock is better served by a full adventuring day, where a short rest is almost always possible between encounters. Basically, they can throw out their big guns at every encounter and not have to worry about using up their entire stock

This might actually be a significant part of the problem- our DM usually does a lot of story, some intrigue, and one big encounter per session, usually with a long rest in between sessions.

rbstr

2018-09-21, 02:50 PM

Classes are not balanced around being able to blow all of their resources in a single fight. That will clearly skew power to long-rest based powers.
If you convert all slots to spell points as described in rules, Warlocks get approximately the same number of spellpoints as a wizard/whatever per day, assuming they get the average of two short rests per day the game is designed around. (Roughly, these are averages, some days you should have more or less)

Essentially that means a Warlock gets to use his big guns much more often. A level 5 Warlock with Fireball should get to drop at least 4 per day, if not 6. A wizard is getting 3 tops. This becomes more clear at level 7, when you get to level 4 spells. The Wizard gets 1 per day. The warlock gets 2 per short rest.
They also get MUCH better at-will damage options than a wizard via Eldritch blast and its associated invocations. EB is simply better than most level 1 damage spells by level 5. Plus armor prof and better hit die, which don't count for nothing. And several invocations give them very useful at-will spells.

BaconAwesome

2018-09-21, 02:53 PM

If your DM isn't giving enough encounters per day to force a few short rests, that will tend to increase the effectiveness of full casters. Some options are shorter short rests or even nerfing long rests a little, or the warlock can always multiclass into sorcerer, bard or paladin.

MaxWilson

2018-09-21, 02:57 PM

This might actually be a significant part of the problem- our DM usually does a lot of story, some intrigue, and one big encounter per session, usually with a long rest in between sessions.

Look for opportunities to use your abilities during "story" and "intrigue" time. E.g. if you cast Suggestion to get a witness to cooperate during interrogation, you'll have that spell slot back by the time the one big combat encounter rolls around.

That being said, the warlock spell list isn't very good for non-combat uses. A lot of the spells you'd want to use during story/intrigue time are on the wizard, cleric, or druid lists but not on the warlock list. Off the top of my head, Invisibility, Suggestion, and Unseen Servant are the only ones I can think of.

opticalshadow

2018-09-21, 03:03 PM

- Warlocks are short break casters, and get all their slots back on a short break. So your lock has only two slots, but she should blast them with abandon.

- Warlocks are blasters - Eldritch Blast + agonizing blast makes them about as good as any archer for consistent ranged damage, breaking up enemy concentration, and with the right invocations, even some control.

- Warlocks are faces. With all that charisma, a warlock should be good at persuasion, deception, or something good.

- Warlocks are weird. They don't have the raw power of a wizard, sorcerer or cleric, but they have weird powers, and can often do something no one else can. Also, when their invocations spells and features synergize, they can be very effective.

IMHO, like monks, warlocks are usually the answer to a question no one was asking, but if you figure out how they can contribute, they can be a lot of fun.

adding to this, warlocks really come out as much more well rounded as a jack of all trades then the other casters (except maybe clerics)

They can build to stand toe to toe with baddies, while still having nice range capabilities, because they get slots back so easily, unlike wiz or sorc who may hesitate on if a situation really calls for it, they can just blow up, often times by the trime a long rest comes up, the warlock will have casted many more upper levels spells then the other two classes.

They dont do any one thing the best, but they often can have better odds at doing things other arcance casters struggle with once you leave those comfort spots.

Man_Over_Game

2018-09-21, 03:06 PM

Warlocks are to Wizards as Fighters are to Barbarians.

You're selling burst potential and versatility for sustainability. Naturally, if you only have one fight a day, your Barbarian is going to outdo a fighter, and the same is true for Wizards vs. Warlocks.

For when a spellcaster complains that he's only sometimes useful, but can't keep up with the consistency of the melee combatants in his team, tell that mage to roll a Warlock.

It's good for a Warlock to be packing generic spells, not specialized ones. He'll be wanting to cast his spell slots between every short rest, so he'll always want something available. Because of this, he should always have some kind of spell available for both RP elements and combat that can be useful almost all of the time.

Less Comprehend Languages, more Unseen Servant. Less Cause Fear and more Hex. Invocations can also bring in a lot of versatile options, to open up more options in his spell list. Disguise Self as a Cantrip is extremely useful, as can be the ability to read all languages (assuming your DM has a use for it)

samcifer

2018-09-21, 03:45 PM

Man_Over_Game

2018-09-21, 03:59 PM

It's important to note that Warlock features are inherently powerful, unique and customizable. Telepathy, 1+Warlock Level in Healing Word uses, a permanent shield against undead are just the level 1 benefits. The Invocations are also quite powerful.

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day.
With about 1 short rest between every 2 encounters.

Naturally, if your DM homebrews fewer encounters, Warlocks will be inherently weaker than other spellcasting alternatives.

ciarannihill

2018-09-21, 04:01 PM

Callak_Remier

2018-09-21, 04:15 PM

Warlocks do best when they can proactively control their pacing. For example, a warlock with Invisibility can afford to be invisible ALL THE TIME, resting every other hour.

When it comes to combat, warlocks want to practice hit-and-run tactics, whittling down monsters a few at a time instead of taking on a whole village of giants at one time. (Note that this is smart for other PCs too, even wizards, because taking a short rest gives fighters back Action Surge and wizards back spells via Arcane Recovery and Paladins back Channel Divinity, etc. But warlocks benefit more and more often.)

From a Dms stand point that's annoying and wouldn't fly In most games

BaconAwesome

2018-09-21, 04:19 PM

What's the warlock's third level boon? That can also be very useful if used right.

Man_Over_Game

2018-09-21, 04:21 PM

From a Dms stand point that's annoying and wouldn't fly In most games
Keep in mind the number of encounters in a standard day is about 6. With two short rests a day (one every 3 hours), this is still feasible and debatably intentional by the developers. All the more reason to be upfront with your expectations with your players.

ciarannihill

2018-09-21, 04:25 PM

Keep in mind the number of encounters in a standard day is about 6. With two short rests a day (one every 3 hours), this is still feasible and debatably intentional by the developers. All the more reason to be upfront with your expectations with your players.

I think he may have been talking about infinite invisibility, but I'm not 100% certain.

ad_hoc

2018-09-21, 04:25 PM

Warlocks and Sorcerers have the most powerful spells.

The Warlock is getting 6 3rd level spells per day when the Wizard only has 3.

If you only ever have 1 or 2 encounters per day then the whole game will be messed up. It isn't the Warlock that is doing that.

MaxWilson

2018-09-21, 04:25 PM

The thing I truly hate about the class is how few spell slots they get unless you multiclass. It isn't until halfway through their career that they finally get enough slots to cast each turn of a battle and the most they ever get (not counting the one-shot high level spells they get) is 4, making them too reliant on basic attacks and/or cantrips, making them almost dependent on multi-classing just to be able to do anything good. If they at least had more spell slots I'd play a single-classed one, but otherwise, I'd never feel happy playing a single-class warlock.

Three remarks:

(1) Ask your DM if you can use DMG spell points for warlocks. (You have to do the math for your own spell points instead of using the DMG table, but it's straightforward math: just convert your spell slots into the equivalent number of spell points.)

(2) If you're a warlock expecting to cast leveled spells every round of a battle, you might as well be a wizard. Having the best cantrip in the game after invocations (e.g. Agonizing Repelling Eldritch Spear) is a large part of the appeal of playing a warlock, but if you're casting leveled spells every round you're probably not casting any cantrips at all.

(3) Nevertheless, your instincts are right: multiclassing is the way to go here, in part because of that whole cantrip thing. E.g. warbearians are incredibly fun if you've got the stats for it. Not necessarily stronger than your average character, but very versatile. Big strong barbarian who doesn't HAVE to beat on things with his axe all the time, can also switch it up and play witch doctor like Mola Ram, throwing curses or turning yourself into a T-Rex or potentially even a dragon.

I think he may have been talking about infinite invisibility, but I'm not 100% certain.

In practice it is bounded invisibility. You're not going to spend literally 100% of the time invisible any more than a cleric is literally going to keep Guidance up 24 hours a day--but unlike Guidance, Invisibility lasts for an hour. It's not unreasonable to expect a DM to let you cast Invisibility IV on yourself and two other PCs every hour or so for the duration of e.g. a 10-12 hour recon mission in a hobgoblin war camp. At some point you'll get tired and start making mistakes.

So, when I say "you can afford to keep Invisibility up ALL THE TIME," that doesn't mean you actually WILL keep it up all the time. But if it were a matter of life and death you could keep it up much longer than anyone else could.

Tanarii

2018-09-21, 04:57 PM

This might actually be a significant part of the problem- our DM usually does a lot of story, some intrigue, and one big encounter per session, usually with a long rest in between sessions.
That's going to be a significant problem for your Barbarogue (since you can't stack Rages), Fighter (Action Surge and Second Wind are short rest), and especially your warlock, as you've discovered. And HD for all of you, since you're effectively only accessing about 2/3 of your available hit points for the adventuring day.

The game is roughly balanced around 3 Deadly, 6 Medium, 4 Hard or 12 easy encounters, with two short rests, per adventuring day. If your DM isn't giving an opportunity for that, then they are going to cause balance issues. And they should have told you before you picked which characters you wanted to play.

Expected

2018-09-21, 08:21 PM

Vogie

2018-09-21, 09:09 PM

It's best to not think of Warlocks in the same vein of the rest of the casters... They're closer to a Paladin, Ranger, or a fighter archetype - like a Battlemaster Fighter or Arcane archer - than a wizard. Only instead of rolling to shoot a bow or stab with a sword, they're using Eldritch Blast, with the occasional augment of other spells. Unless they're Bladepact, then they're almost definitely shooting and stabbing.

Instead of hitting Fireball a handful of times to clear a hallway, they'd move their previously casted Hex onto a target as a bonus action, start blasting away at various targets with a handful of EB rays, followed by PAoE psychic damage as a bonus action via Maddening Hex. Voilà, you've got AoE without spending a spell slot.

Think of Warlocks more like a Mutant from X-Men than the Batman-esque Wizard. A Warlock isn't all that different from, say, Cyclops, Mystique Nightcrawler, or Gambit. They've got their one set of combos that they use most of the time, and try to weave that into all of their encounters... because that's what they've got. No one is going to expect Mystique to teleport, or Cyclops to shapeshift, or look to Wolverine and say "man, why don't you have laser eyes, man?? You're useless." At the same time, one expect wizards, and Batman, to be equally comfortable taking down a single opponent, multiple opponents, while also supplying Shark Repellent.

samcifer

2018-09-21, 09:09 PM

That's going to be a significant problem for your Barbarogue (since you can't stack Rages), Fighter (Action Surge and Second Wind are short rest), and especially your warlock, as you've discovered. And HD for all of you, since you're effectively only accessing about 2/3 of your available hit points for the adventuring day.

The game is roughly balanced around 3 Deadly, 6 Medium, 4 Hard or 12 easy encounters, with two short rests, per adventuring day. If your DM isn't giving an opportunity for that, then they are going to cause balance issues. And they should have told you before you picked which characters you wanted to play.

Wow that's a lot of encounters! My group usually only gets one or two combats per session (average session length 5 hrs or so), mostly due to two players wanting long rp sessions and the group takes frequent breaks for the bathroom, smoking, etc.

Pharaon

2018-09-21, 09:41 PM

Wow that's a lot of encounters! My group usually only gets one or two combats per session (average session length 5 hrs or so), mostly due to two players wanting long rp sessions and the group takes frequent breaks for the bathroom, smoking, etc.

That's the suggested number of encounters for the adventuring day, which isn't necessarily the same as a single game session. Many people treat them as the same for convenience but that can impact how classes play.

The solution to this is to either have the adventuring day stretch over several game sessions or switch to
the gritty realism rest variant (so you'd be short resting between sessions). Or both!

That being said, warlock is by far my favorite class. My table typically has 2-3 tough encounters per adventuring day and still usually gets the two short rests per day. While I can't cast leveled spells round after round like other casters, I've never felt underpowered compared to them.

Warlocks are wonderfully modular: between patron, pact, and invocations, warlock is basically Build-a-Class. That's the real pull to me; I can make a wide variety of mechanical and RP builds that might not quite fit in other classes.

ad_hoc

2018-09-21, 09:52 PM

It's best to not think of Warlocks in the same vein of the rest of the casters... They're closer to a Paladin, Ranger, or a fighter archetype - like a Battlemaster Fighter or Arcane archer - than a wizard. Only instead of rolling to shoot a bow or stab with a sword, they're using Eldritch Blast, with the occasional augment of other spells. Unless they're Bladepact, then they're almost definitely shooting and stabbing.

Instead of hitting Fireball a handful of times to clear a hallway, they'd move their previously casted Hex onto a target as a bonus action, start blasting away at various targets with a handful of EB rays, followed by PAoE psychic damage as a bonus action via Maddening Hex. Voilà, you've got AoE without spending a spell slot.

A 5th level Fiend Warlock can Fireball an average of 6 times a day.

Their raw magical might is far stronger than that of a Wizard. They have more encounter dominating spells than Wizards do. I'd rather cast a powerful spell in round 1 then a couple cantrips than 3 weaker spells.

Wizards shine in utility. Warlock's utility comes in the form of Invocations which are quite good.

JakOfAllTirades

2018-09-21, 10:32 PM

A 5th level Fiend Warlock can Fireball an average of 6 times a day.

Their raw magical might is far stronger than that of a Wizard. They have more encounter dominating spells than Wizards do. I'd rather cast a powerful spell in round 1 then a couple cantrips than 3 weaker spells.

Wizards shine in utility. Warlock's utility comes in the form of Invocations which are quite good.

The OP says he's playing a FeyLock (not sure which pact) so fireball won't be available to him. Without knowing what spells he's got, it's hard to give any advice other than "Hex and Agonizing Blast" as per usual. I've played several Fey/BladeLocks, and I'd be inclined to go with either Faerie Fire or Hypnotic Pattern here; something that gives the whole group advantage against a number of enemies, or temporarily takes them out of the fight, would be a good bet. Both of those require concentration, though, so no casting Hex while they're in use.

Actually, it sounds like they need an escape plan more than anything.

ad_hoc

2018-09-21, 10:48 PM

The OP says he's playing a FeyLock (not sure which pact) so fireball won't be available to him. Without knowing what spells he's got, it's hard to give any advice other than "Hex and Agonizing Blast" as per usual. I've played several Fey/BladeLocks, and I'd be inclined to go with either Faerie Fire or Hypnotic Pattern here; something that gives the whole group advantage against a number of enemies, or temporarily takes them out of the fight, would be a good bet. Both of those require concentration, though, so no casting Hex while they're in use.

Actually, it sounds like they need an escape plan more than anything.

Sure, I was just using Fireball as the quote I was replying to used that as an example.

Point is that a 5th level Warlock gets around 6 level 3 spells per day. So Fear, Hypnotic Pattern, Hunger of Hadar for spells effecting multiple creatures. The Warlock can do that at the start of almost every encounter.

I don't understand the idea that the Warlock lacks spell power.

n00b

2018-09-21, 11:06 PM

Sure, I was just using Fireball as the quote I was replying to used that as an example.

Point is that a 5th level Warlock gets around 6 level 3 spells per day. So Fear, Hypnotic Pattern, Hunger of Hadar for spells effecting multiple creatures. The Warlock can do that at the start of almost every encounter.

I don't understand the idea that the Warlock lacks spell power.

You're assuming they get short rests. The OP says they usually do not, so a Warlock in this setting would not have that many spells per day. In this situation the Warlock does indeed lack spell power.

Expected

2018-09-21, 11:12 PM

You're assuming they get short rests. The OP says they usually do not, so a Warlock in this setting would not have that many spells per day. In this situation the Warlock does indeed lack spell power.

Without adequate short rests, which the class is balanced for, the Warlock pales in comparison to any other caster due to its few spell slots.

samcifer

2018-09-21, 11:27 PM

Sure, I was just using Fireball as the quote I was replying to used that as an example.

Point is that a 5th level Warlock gets around 6 level 3 spells per day. So Fear, Hypnotic Pattern, Hunger of Hadar for spells effecting multiple creatures. The Warlock can do that at the start of almost every encounter.

I don't understand the idea that the Warlock lacks spell power.

You'r basing the 6 castings off of two short rests per day to refresh the two spell slots, correct?

MaxWilson

2018-09-21, 11:33 PM

Without adequate short rests, which the class is balanced for, the Warlock pales in comparison to any other caster due to its few spell slots.

Unless you have so little combat that concentration economy and action economy, not spell slots, are the bottlenecks. E.g. with two rounds of combat per day or less, warlocks are fine.

Tanarii

2018-09-21, 11:44 PM

Please, please ask the Warlock to cast Fireball (assuming they have it) in the mead hall! Hopefully the radius on Fireball is enough to hit everyone.

It's exciting when an AOE spell can hit many enemies at once.Feylocks don't get Fireball.

Wow that's a lot of encounters! My group usually only gets one or two combats per session (average session length 5 hrs or so), mostly due to two players wanting long rp sessions and the group takes frequent breaks for the bathroom, smoking, etc.You're a semi-regular in the 5e forums. I find it hard to believe you don't know this is the yardstick by which the default 5e adventuring day is measured. Whether your group plays with far less than the yardstick notwithstanding.

If a DM isn't running adventuring days by the standard (any) game assumes, then people have many options. A few off the top of my head:
- ask them to use the rest variants put in the DMG for exactly this purpose.
- ask them to let you retroactively swap to a different class. Personally I'd keep the same character (personality, race, etc), just swap classes. Clearly I was always a wizard, not a warlock!
- stop playing with a DM that clearly doesn't know what they're doing, because it's no fun.
- whatevs, don't care, I'm having fun anyway, so clearly the DM isn't doing anything wrong!

Daithi

2018-09-21, 11:45 PM

Personally, the warlock is one of my favorite characters. Eldritch Blast is a great cantrip that can be spammed all day long, also pairs well with Hex and Agonizing Blast for more damage, it scales really well, and is outstanding for long range sniper attacks. Normally, I'd also multiclass with Sorcerer to quicken or twin Eldritch Blast which just results in a huge amount of damage as you're firing more bolts that all get doubled.

The Invocations are really good as well. I'm a fan of Eldritch Spear which plays into the Sniper character. Although I also like Mask of Many Faces which lets you play a Game of Thrones Arya Stark type character but with magic. Devil's Sight and Darkness is also a wicked combination and you don't have to screw your party over with it either if you're using it as a sniper to stay hidden as you spam EB from a distance. Fiendish Vigor is also really good at lower levels where it works almost like regeneration. The biggest problem is deciding on which ones to take and when.

On top of all of this, you get 2 spell slots and they replenish after a freaking short rest. You can also get a great familiar, which can be paired with Sorcerer's spell Dragon Breath. Or, you can get a spell book that is full of a ton of ritual spells. Or, you can go the hexblade route, which is my preference. Although, if UA is allowed a Raven Queen warlock is really really cool.

That's my 2 cents anyway.

MaxWilson

2018-09-21, 11:57 PM

You're a semi-regular in the 5e forums. I find it hard to believe you don't know this is the yardstick by which the default 5e adventuring day is measured. Whether your group plays with far less than the yardstick notwithstanding.

It's actually pretty common to have more narratively-driven games with fewer combats per day. See poll results here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?469801-(Poll)-How-much-combat-per-adventuring-day

This is fine. 5E doesn't care if you have short adventuring days; you're just not "supposed" to have super-long ones unless you are an experienced DM. (IMO you should definitely exceed the 5E recommended guidelines if your players are at all skilled, because the DMG guidelines are extremely easy, but the point is that having few combats in a day is fine and expected.)

See for example https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1012366625985609728

D&D doesn’t require a certain number of encounters per day.

The “Dungeon Master’s Guide” gives the number of encounters a typical group can face before tuckering out.

There’s no minimum.

Tanarii

2018-09-22, 12:01 AM

There's no minimum in the same way that you don't have to do any push-ups in the morning. But you're not going to be challenged. :smallamused: And the classes certainly aren't (roughly) balanced around "one big encounter per day".

Quoxis

2018-09-22, 12:06 AM

„Guh, why does the fighter class even exist? If you wanna do melee damage, be a gwm barbarian!“

lperkins2

2018-09-22, 12:25 AM

So, I've dabbled a bit with rebalancing short-rest classes to let them keep up with long rest classes for campaigns which usually have only 1 or 2 combat encounters between rests. The trick is to achieve roughly the intended power levels without changing the feel of the class.

For warlock, this means giving them their full complement of top level slots, recharging on a long rest instead of a short rest. I actually use the spell point system to calculate the number of slots they should get, since that keeps them in line with the other classes better, but remember warlocks only get slots of the maximum level. At level 5, this gives 5 level 3 slots for the day (one fewer than they would have if they got their 2 short rests).

Do note that if you have the true 15 minute adventuring day, this won't help all that much, or rather, it will imbalance things in the other direction. A wizard at 5th level has 9 total spell slots, but only 2 at top level, so on the 3rd round of combat, the warlock will outstrip the wizard in pure alpha-strike power until round 7 or so. If your one big encounter is shorter than 7+ rounds, you probably want to only increase the number of slots by half, or there abouts.

Honestly, I don't know what WotC was thinking with including classes which recover resources on different schedules. Thematically, they're great, but mechanically, it constrains the kinds of adventuring days you can have, if you have a mixed party.

ad_hoc

2018-09-22, 12:41 AM

You're assuming they get short rests. The OP says they usually do not, so a Warlock in this setting would not have that many spells per day. In this situation the Warlock does indeed lack spell power.

That's not a problem with the Warlock.

Of course a short rest class in a game without short rests will feel under powered.

In a regular game the Warlock has more concentrated spell power than a typical full caster. Rivaled only by the Sorcerer.

To say they are a half caster is ridiculous.

Wow that's a lot of encounters! My group usually only gets one or two combats per session (average session length 5 hrs or so), mostly due to two players wanting long rp sessions and the group takes frequent breaks for the bathroom, smoking, etc.

Per session and per long rest are different things.

samcifer

2018-09-22, 01:21 AM

Feylocks don't get Fireball.

You're a semi-regular in the 5e forums. I find it hard to believe you don't know this is the yardstick by which the default 5e adventuring day is measured. Whether your group plays with far less than the yardstick notwithstanding.

If a DM isn't running adventuring days by the standard (any) game assumes, then people have many options. A few off the top of my head:
- ask them to use the rest variants put in the DMG for exactly this purpose.
- ask them to let you retroactively swap to a different class. Personally I'd keep the same character (personality, race, etc), just swap classes. Clearly I was always a wizard, not a warlock!
- stop playing with a DM that clearly doesn't know what they're doing, because it's no fun.
- whatevs, don't care, I'm having fun anyway, so clearly the DM isn't doing anything wrong!

I've only played 5e with my current group and our pace of play is rather odd. We only play homebrewed campaigns that are paced differently from official module and have an average of 1 or two battles per session t, which suffer from frequent breaks in mid-combat. There tend to be 5 pcs and the dm.

Actually, even when I played 4e, that was homebrewed campaigns as well. I've never once played any of the official module campaigns.

qube

2018-09-22, 02:33 AM

I'm thinking right now just how handy a fireball or two would be. And grumbling at the situation we're in.Fiendlocks have that. While feylocks don't, wizards who don't have fireball in their spellbook

Two spell slots for this huge encounter is not enough. I know some people will say Eldritch Blast makes up for it, but a Wizard can also take Toll the Dead for a realistic d12 cantrip.(1) typically, a warlock's Eldritch blast doesn't do 1d10 damage. it does 1d10+CHA mod damage. Per Ray! (a.k.a. resulting in a 2d10+2*CHA mod at lvl 5). It also works on force opposite to necrotic - the latter of which has the problem of a significant amount of monsters (especially most of not all undead) have resistances if not immunity to.

IMHO, like monks, warlocks are usually the answer to a question no one was asking, but if you figure out how they can contribute, they can be a lot of fun.beautifully said.

This might actually be a significant part of the problem- our DM usually does a lot of story, some intrigue, and one big encounter per session, usually with a long rest in between sessions.yeah ... D&D 5E is balanced for, per long rest,
8 encounters
3 short rests
~20 rounds of combat
(edit: I see people claiming 6 encounters / 2 short rest ... I don't recall my sources - so I might be off, but the idea is still there)

When the wizard almost litterly is able to blast 4 times the amount of intended resources in an encounter ... of course they are going to look as though comming up short.

If it becomes a problem - this should be brought up with your DM. Because just like melee characters royally suck if the DM decides to only let you fight flying archers - the problem isn't the warlock, but how the character interacts with the encounters.

Quick and dirty solution - I'd double the amount of spellslots the warlock gets (4 instead of 2).

ciarannihill

2018-09-22, 08:38 AM

In practice it is bounded invisibility. You're not going to spend literally 100% of the time invisible any more than a cleric is literally going to keep Guidance up 24 hours a day--but unlike Guidance, Invisibility lasts for an hour. It's not unreasonable to expect a DM to let you cast Invisibility IV on yourself and two other PCs every hour or so for the duration of e.g. a 10-12 hour recon mission in a hobgoblin war camp. At some point you'll get tired and start making mistakes.

So, when I say "you can afford to keep Invisibility up ALL THE TIME," that doesn't mean you actually WILL keep it up all the time. But if it were a matter of life and death you could keep it up much longer than anyone else could.

Oh, no I got that, I just meant I thought the quote from @Callak_Remier was in response to that part of your initial post, as opposed to the part about hit-and-run tactics. Quote stacks get a bit finicky. :smallsmile:
As for the rest of your post, I think you're spot on with the recommendations.

For what it's worth, it's perfectly fine to have encounters/adventuring days where a specific character doesn't necessarily shine, although I do recommend changing it up so that all characters get their moments of glory (though that's not always in the cards depending on player actions).

From a tactical perspective, I would try to use the environment to my advantage, try to find a bottleneck to make the numbers you're up against less meaningful or, since it's a Giant's lair, see if there are areas (like stairs or furniture or imperfections in stonework given the size they might be proportionate to the party) that would make it easy to run and hide, use guerilla tactics to whittle down the foes until you can either escape or take them on directly. If you can find a bottleneck, the Warlock casting Darkness to allow stealthing away can enable the guerilla tactics.

Or you can try to de-escalate again. Make concessions to the giant, try to take down a large foe quickly and intimidate the rabble, or just focus on escape.

Thankfully this is DnD and not a videogame, you haven't saved before a boss fight way under leveled to beat it without the ability to leave and grind. You have theoretically infinite solutions so long as you think them through and roll well enough.

rbstr

2018-09-22, 08:50 AM

Tanarii

2018-09-22, 11:21 AM

I've only played 5e with my current group and our pace of play is rather odd. We only play homebrewed campaigns that are paced differently from official module and have an average of 1 or two battles per session t, which suffer from frequent breaks in mid-combat. There tend to be 5 pcs and the dm. For sure. My point was I've seen you post of the forums enough it's surprising to me that you wouldn't be aware that's not the recommended balance point for 5e combat / resource draining encounters.

I mean, the DMG tells us so. The text is wrong because if you look at the preceding tables it's 6-8 Medium (not Hard) encounters. But it says "Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer." (DMG p84)

Note that "can handle" is not the same as: 'must always have'. Which is what JCs tweet was saying, there isn't a required minimum. But it does tell us the built-in (rough) design balance point for capabilities.

Plus the DMG then goes on to provide two rest variants, which tell you what they're good for. And Gritty rest is for time out of the dungeon, with fewer combats and more social/intrigue:

GRITTY REALISM
This variant uses a short rest of 8 hours and a long rest of 7 days. This puts the brakes on the campaign, requiring the players to carefully judge the benefits and drawbacks of combat. Characters can't afford to engage in too many battles in a row. and all adventuring requires careful planning.
This approach encourages the characters to spend time out of the dungeon. It's a good option for campaigns that emphasize intrigue, politics, and interactions among other PCs, and in which combat is rare or something to be avoided rather rhan rushed into. (DMG p267)

So if someone has a DM only running a big (Deadly difficulty) encounter every in-game day or two, and it bothers them because of the effect on balance, step one is to ask the DM if she can please consider the variant rule specifically designed for it.

MaxWilson

2018-09-22, 11:59 AM

It really doesn't have anything to do with being on official module or not. Class' resources are balanced around ~2 short rests per long rest. That's just how it is.

The DM is free to do whatever the heck they want...but it's not the Warlocks' fault there's one combat a day. It's on the DM of the one-combat per day campaign to actually understand the system a bit and do gritty resting or just warn you not to take a short-rest based class. And if he doesn't recognize that you as a player should inform him. There are tons of ways to fix this: Fix the encounter pacing, change to gritty rests, just give the warlock regular spell slots, change to a different class.

Typically it is the players' fault if they're not taking enough breaks. A really bad DM will just make encounters appear out of thin air to attack you, but you shouldn't play with bad DMs. Play with DMs who let you be proactive, which can sometimes include holing up in a dungeon room somewhere (or inside a Rope Trick extradimensional space) to catch your breath.

In a dungeon crawl, it isn't the DM's fault if players choose to kick down the next door before they're recovered from the previous one.

In a game with lots of intrigue and roleplaying and only one or two fights per session, there should be plenty of chances to rest. Just ask your DM, "Hey, we've been sitting around in this parlour for more than an hour doing nothing but planning what tuxedos we'll wear to the ball. That's pretty non-strenuous activity. Can I claim short rest benefits and get my spell slots back?"

For sure. My point was I've seen you post of the forums enough it's surprising to me that you wouldn't be aware that's not the recommended balance point for 5e combat / resource draining encounters.

I mean, the DMG tells us so. The text is wrong because if you look at the preceding tables it's 6-8 Medium (not Hard) encounters.

If you do the math it's typically more like 5 Medium encounters, if you assume an "average" Medium encounter halfway between Medium and Hard. E.g. four 1st level PCs have a daily XP budget of 1200 XP, and since the average Medium encounter is 250 XP (halfway between 200 XP/Medium and 300 XP/Hard) you can fit in 4.8 Medium encounters per day on average without going over budget. If you deliberately made them the easiest possible Medium encounters (200 XP) you could fit as many as six though.

Or you could fit in two or three Deadly encounters, which is a lot more challenging and has higher dramatic stakes. IMO that's more fun, but the DMG does recommend spreading them out so the players could get in a short rest between Deadly combats. E.g. you save the farmer and her family from three orcs (600 adjusted XP) by killing the orcs, but it turns out there are three more of them who went out on a scouting mission and are expected back within an hour or two, and you have to deal with them too or they will kill the farmer's family for revenge.

samcifer

2018-09-22, 12:06 PM

The real issue is that two of the players are rather outgoing and assertive people while the rest of us are more passive in personality. Because of this, those two players tend to both dominate every rp encounter as well as make them last longer. The rest of us don't end up doing much rp-ing and I often only feel relevant as a player curing combats. plus that's the only time we get xp, so the more combats we can get, the better. Sadly it's hard to get to them much of the time. :(

MaxWilson

2018-09-22, 12:11 PM

The Aboleth

2018-09-22, 12:15 PM

Personally, I feel like it should largely be the party's responsibility to tell me when they'd like to rest. DMs have enough on their plate as-is, they shouldn't also have to ask the party "Do you want to take a rest?" after an encounter. YMMV, though.

If your DM isn't willing to give you short rests, perhaps they would be amicable to giving the Warlock an extra spell slot or two? That might balance things out a bit (maybe not--this is just an on-the-fly suggestion, but I don't see 1 more slot, especially if you house-rule it to be a lower-level slot, being too OP at first glance).

Or, you can talk to your DM and see if you can handwave the Warlock as taking a short rest while the rest of the party are doing things like exploring or doing social encounters. I've done this in my games before, as the Warlock player isn't much for RP interactions anyway (they have a speech disability in real life), so whenever the other players are doing their thing I just let the Warlock short rest "off panel" and that solves things pretty well.

Again, YMMV with these suggestions.

JakOfAllTirades

2018-09-22, 12:17 PM

Typically it is the players' fault if they're not taking enough breaks. A really bad DM will just make encounters appear out of thin air to attack you, but you shouldn't play with bad DMs. Play with DMs who let you be proactive, which can sometimes include holing up in a dungeon room somewhere (or inside a Rope Trick extradimensional space) to catch your breath.

In a dungeon crawl, it isn't the DM's fault if players choose to kick down the next door before they're recovered from the previous one.

In a game with lots of intrigue and roleplaying and only one or two fights per session, there should be plenty of chances to rest. Just ask your DM, "Hey, we've been sitting around in this parlour for more than an hour doing nothing but planning what tuxedos we'll wear to the ball. That's pretty non-strenuous activity. Can I claim short rest benefits and get my spell slots back?"

The bolded text above is spot-on. However, for a mixed party of long-rest v. short-rest classes, it's often up to the Warlock (or whoever recovers on short rests) to put their foot down and tell everyone else, That's it guys we're stopping here for a bit. If the rest of the party has any sense they'll agree; a Warlock without any spell slots is no help to them, after all. Not to mention any patron features that recharge on a short rest. (Quite a few, depending on the patron.)

And they might even get used to spending their own hit dice to heal instead of using spells and potions. Seriously, if they're not in the habit of taking short rests, how are they handling healing? This entire "no short rest" concept sounds wasteful AF from a healing standpoint.

Tanarii

2018-09-22, 12:24 PM

Btw samcifer I looked back and my original response to you was rudely phrased. Sorry.

Pex

2018-09-22, 12:27 PM

The game is roughly balanced around 3 Deadly, 6 Medium, 4 Hard or 12 easy encounters, with two short rests, per adventuring day. If your DM isn't giving an opportunity for that, then they are going to cause balance issues. And they should have told you before you picked which characters you wanted to play.

Often a DM can't say how many encounters per day there will be on average because he doesn't know himself. It might be more predictable if running a module, but there are variables he can't account for, such as how long real world time one combat takes or how long out of combat roleplaying and investigation takes. Pacing changes for what happens in a game session and what happens in a game day. If there is a problem it can only be noticed as the game sessions happen. Not just for the warlock the DM needs to find the right pacing of how often a short rest happens as his particular campaign progresses. It's good for the rules to advise, but in practice campaigns often don't follow the recommended pacing by their own natural development.

tieren

2018-09-22, 12:36 PM

I second Tanaril's suggestion to use the gritty realism variant.

You can keep your same playstyle per session (lots of rp with one big fight) and make managing long rest resources more important (because they would only recharge once a week).

For the OP's particular situation, I would cast Hunger of Hadar to block off the mead hall from the rest of the fight (the thing is 20 feet in radius, thats 40 feet in diameter), and then using repelling blast to knock as many things as you can into it.

A wizard could do something similar with sleet storm in terms of area denial, but it wouldn't do damage and he'd have no way of knocking things back into it without using more leveled spells (thunderwave maybe?).

Daithi

2018-09-22, 12:43 PM

Just thought I'd mention that there are two options to the short rest problem.

1) Multiclass as a sorcerer and convert spell slots to sorcerery points so they can be used later in the day for your big encounter. Note: this is not the coffeelock as it is expected you will be using the spells and they will be lost on a long rest.

2) Get a Ring of Spell Storing. If the DM doesn't normally have a lot of encounters then this would allow the Warlock to save a few spells for when they're needed later during the big encounter.

Although, I think the Warlock is a great character regardless.

tieren

2018-09-22, 12:53 PM

I know you shouldn't count on magic items, but a rod of the pact keeper will give you an extra slot to play with too.

Also on the OP, other slot could be used to cast blink (fey lock list) and give him a 50/50 shot at not being hittable between turns.

If I see a caster with a big aoe area denial damaging spell, popping in and out of reality and using force blasts to knock enemies back into the dark void, I have trouble seeing where a wizard would be much more magical.

I personally played a feylock illusionist I really loved, at low levels when wizards are hoarding their spell slots I was using the misty visions invocation to drop silent images at will all day long, dozens of 1st level slots a wizard just would never be able to spare. I certainly felt a lot more magical than the guy dropping fire bolts with a slot left after his mage armor worried he might need shield.

lperkins2

2018-09-22, 12:54 PM

And they might even get used to spending their own hit dice to heal instead of using spells and potions. Seriously, if they're not in the habit of taking short rests, how are they handling healing? This entire "no short rest" concept sounds wasteful AF from a healing standpoint.

Well, except if they're novaing, they may well not hardly need any healing. That's the way it usually went in my party when we got into rocket tag, the enemies could one-shot a PC, so we did everything possible to avoid getting hit.

Sinon

2018-09-22, 02:11 PM

It's best to not think of Warlocks in the same vein of the rest of the casters... They're closer to a Paladin, Ranger, or a fighter archetype - like a Battlemaster Fighter or Arcane archer - than a wizard. Only instead of rolling to shoot a bow or stab with a sword, they're using Eldritch Blast, with the occasional augment of other spells. Unless they're Bladepact, then they're almost definitely shooting and stabbing.
This.

Though the warlock has considerable casting power, and in no way should they be thought of as a half-caster, they tactically shouldn't be thought of as a full caster either.

Over the course of a typical day, they can keep pace with a frugal wizard, but until very high levels, they don't ever have his potential cast spell after spell after spell in a single combat.

But that's not a flaw. If you want to pound nails in, grab a hammer; don't complain about the ineffectiveness of a screwdriver.

In the initial scenario, your wizard would benefit from casting a nice fireball, but not before splitting up some of the bad guys with a wall or keeping the minions out of the battle with something like hypnotic pattern. That will allow the warlock to cast a spell on something that improves their tactical ability, like darknesss or fly, and focus fire on the same opponent as the paladin to take him out fast, or use invocations like repelling blast to group those still in the fight together for the wizard's fireball to scorch as many people as possible.

JakOfAllTirades

2018-09-22, 02:29 PM

Well, except if they're novaing, they may well not hardly need any healing. That's the way it usually went in my party when we got into rocket tag, the enemies could one-shot a PC, so we did everything possible to avoid getting hit.

Good point. I've played with groups who did that and it's a viable strategy as long as it works.. The thing is, it doesn't always go according to plan.

MrStabby

2018-09-22, 04:17 PM

Warlocks are fine. All you need to do is to persuade your enemies to attack you in equal sized batches and giving you time to get a bit of a breather in between them. As long as you can do this you are fine.

Otherwise yeah, they kind of suck. Not terrible actually, but not great. The lack of flexibility is really painful. No joy from getting great value from a low level spell. No joy from casting levelled spells turn after turn. The need to hold back everything because if you expend anything, then you will be seriously lacking in punch for the big encounter.

This isn't so bad on other classes but a lot of people pick up the Warlock expecting a full caster.

lperkins2

2018-09-22, 04:22 PM

Good point. I've played with groups who did that and it's a viable strategy as long as it works.. The thing is, it doesn't always go according to plan.

Right. Thing is we were well into rocket-tag territory, so it not going to plan was more likely to involve revivify than short rest hit dice use (the DM basically gave several of the monsters an auto-crit worth of bonus damage dice, which on an actual crit would outright kill any of the PCs).

samcifer

2018-09-22, 10:03 PM

Btw samcifer I looked back and my original response to you was rudely phrased. Sorry.

Thank you for the apology. Much appreciated and no worries. :)

samcifer

2018-09-22, 10:16 PM

That's too bad. If it were up to you, would you rather

(A) Have ways to get XP outside of combat through roleplaying, or

(B) Have more combats?

I'd say at least give one third xp from completing a social encounter that we would have gotten from a combat enounter of the same level. That way we'd be motivated to fight without becoming murder hobos while feeling that we gained something from a non-combat encounter.

MaxWilson

2018-09-23, 12:29 AM

I'd say at least give one third xp from completing a social encounter that we would have gotten from a combat enounter of the same level. That way we'd be motivated to fight without becoming murder hobos while feeling that we gained something from a non-combat encounter.

Sounds reasonable. I hope your DM eventually starts doing this.

Drascin

2018-09-23, 01:59 AM

Wow that's a lot of encounters! My group usually only gets one or two combats per session (average session length 5 hrs or so), mostly due to two players wanting long rp sessions and the group takes frequent breaks for the bathroom, smoking, etc.

Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed. "The game is balanced around at least six medium encounters a day" mostly means "the game is not balanced around the way people actually play this game". Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions. Hell, taking into account all the sessions where we don't have even a single fight, I think the average fights per session can't be much higher than 1.

ad_hoc

2018-09-23, 02:11 AM

Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed. "The game is balanced around at least six medium encounters a day" mostly means "the game is not balanced around the way people actually play this game". Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions. Hell, taking into account all the sessions where we don't have even a single fight, I think the average fights per session can't be much higher than 1.

Every WotC adventure I have played has been based around this model.

It is the default way to play.

Astofel

2018-09-23, 03:02 AM

Every WotC adventure I have played has been based around this model.

It is the default way to play.

It's the default way according to the rules, but from what I've seen it seems like very few people actually play this way. I for one certainly don't, although I recently I have been trying to structure my campaigns to have a bit more encounters so my players can't just nova everything. It's a shame I'm terrible at designing dungeons.

As much as I love 5e, this is my greatest issue with it. The designers have failed in that their game is balanced around a playstyle that nobody seems to actually use. 5e could become a much better game if it was balanced around 2-4 encounters instead of 6-8.

Millstone85

2018-09-23, 03:04 AM

Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed. "The game is balanced around at least six medium encounters a day" mostly means "the game is not balanced around the way people actually play this game". Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions. Hell, taking into account all the sessions where we don't have even a single fight, I think the average fights per session can't be much higher than 1.As said before, this is because people fail to realise that "a day" =/= "a session".

It is supposed to take several sessions in real life to go through a day in the story.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-23, 04:18 AM

I haven't had the thread, so maybe this has been explained already, but a warlock has approximately the same power as any other full caster.
If you do the math on the spell slots they get per short rest, they basically use the spell point variant and have the same number of points that a wizard would have for the day. But they don't have any flexibility in using them, they can only create slots of their highest level slot available. That loss in flexibility is offset by their patron's powers, invocations, and eldritch blast.
So they have the same lasting power as any other caster, but don't have the same nova capability if your DM runs a five minute adventuring day (which he isn't supposed to anyway).

Compare your wizard, as above. At 5th level that wizard has 2 3rd level slots, 3 2nd levels slots, 4 1st level slots, and arcane recovery for a 3rd level or a 1st and a 2nd. Let's call that a 3rd.
Translated into spell points, that's 4*2(8)+ 3*3(9) + 2*5(10) + 5 = 32 spell points for the day.
The warlock has 2 3rd level slots that he starts with, and they refresh in a short rest. Two short rests are recommended, so they get 2*5 + 2*5 + 2*5 = 30 spell points.
Wizard: 32
Warlock: 30.... Plus his patron abilities, plus his invocations, plus the best at-will ranged damage in the game (save for a few specialty builds).
They are on quite equal footing, power wise. The warlock just plays differently than the wizard.

TLDR: Warlocks are full casters. They just work differently than the other ones.

MrStabby

2018-09-23, 04:23 AM

The problem is that this assumes a) the spell points variant actually closely reflects the power of spells of different levels, and b) that there is no value to the flexibility of using your daily power in different ways.

Both assumptions could generously be described as suspect.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-23, 04:36 AM

I was addressing that in an edit while you wrote that.
Whether or not it is something you personally like is subjective. But they are indeed on equal power footing.

Ignimortis

2018-09-23, 04:36 AM

Warlocks only function properly if your DM follows the guidelines of a standard adventuring day and provides opportunities for short rests. Yes, you might get 6 spellcasts per day if you're doing that. If not, then you're a glorified magic archer with your d10+CHA arrows of pure magical force (or a less tough Fighter with your 2d6+CHA greatsword of enchanted steel), who can also cast two spells per day, and maybe one or two spells outside that once per day, because most invocations aren't at-will somehow despite coming up later than actual spells.

Since those adventuring day guidelines rarely adhere to any actual story flow - I certainly can't recall any stories that had heroes fight more than three battles per day, and not with short rests inbetween - that often falls flat. Most DMs I've seen prefer huge cinematic battles that really favor long-rest classes in 5e, even if they do try to play up the attrition angle by inserting 1 or 2 lesser encounters beforehand.

Conversely, it is also hard to design a dungeon that would make sense in a short rest context - as in, you can stop and rest for an hour undisturbed, but you can't do that for long rests. Having a timed mission to prevent that usually prevents short rests as well, because an hour is too long by most people's perception.

Here's a fun fact: short rests used to take 5 minutes in the D&D Next playtest almost up to 5e's release, then they were suddenly changed to 1 hour. I would suggest that changing them back to 5-10 minutes and limiting players to 2 short rests per long rest can work wonders, if you do actually fight multiple battles per day, then essentially your Warlocks and your Fighters have per-encounter powers, which are far more fun to use.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-23, 04:41 AM

We get two rests on almost every adventuring day.
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. It's an anecdote.

Alternately, if your party gets used to the five minute adventuring day (which is the DM's error) and the DM suddenly throws a longer day at the party (to correct that error), then the warlock is the only spellcasting party member who has any gas left in the tank....

ad_hoc

2018-09-23, 05:01 AM

MrStabby

2018-09-23, 05:53 AM

I was addressing that in an edit while you wrote that.
Whether or not it is something you personally like is subjective. But they are indeed on equal power footing.

Simply asserting that they are on equal power does not make it so. All this does is show that it is possible to construct a scale such that an arbitrary measure on one class is the same as an arbitrary measure on another. It shows that you can create a mapping between two numbers, not that either of these measures "power".

We get two rests on almost every adventuring day.
Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. It's an anecdote

Well nice of you to share your persona anecdote, I guess.

Now in campaigns I have played in monsters don't generally get together and decide to split themselves up into equally difficult encounters then throw themselves at the party with nice equally spaces short rests between them. Sometimes there are easy encounters. Sometimes there are deadly encounters. In such a world being able to use your resource in a granular enough way that it is efficient is a really big source of power. I get that not all campaigns are like this though.

Zalabim

2018-09-23, 06:24 AM

Now in campaigns I have played in monsters don't generally get together and decide to split themselves up into equally difficult encounters then throw themselves at the party with nice equally spaces short rests between them. Sometimes there are easy encounters. Sometimes there are deadly encounters. In such a world being able to use your resource in a granular enough way that it is efficient is a really big source of power. I get that not all campaigns are like this though.
Granularity of resource use is nice, but warlocks have invocations that they can benefit from in every combat, spells that can last a long time for multiple encounters, spells that can have a greater effect immediately, and even spells that can be used as a reaction, so they can use their resources slowly or quickly, all or nothing, and so spend less than one slot for an entire easy encounter or both slots even in a single round. Are warlocks not granular enough? I find the difference in spell lists makes much more of an impact.

MrStabby

2018-09-23, 06:45 AM

Tanarii

2018-09-23, 07:59 AM

Now in campaigns I have played in monsters don't generally get together and decide to split themselves up into equally difficult encounters then throw themselves at the party with nice equally spaces short rests between them. Sometimes there are easy encounters. Sometimes there are deadly encounters. In such a world being able to use your resource in a granular enough way that it is efficient is a really big source of power. I get that not all campaigns are like this though.
If your DM is regularly using assumptions wildly out of base with the assumptions of the game, it's on them to spend some time adjusting the game if needed.

I mean if none of the players care, there's no point. But clearly people DO care since this is a regular subject on this forum.

Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions.Wow. Only having 6 encounters in a day before resting seems wildly low to me, compared to pre-WoTC assumptions of how to play. It makes "true" dungeons hard to design.

Callak_Remier

2018-09-23, 08:00 AM

Spell list makes more of an impact? Maybe.

I do think these things are tied together though. How many different spells do warlocks of a given level actually cast? As not that many spells upcast that well I see warlocks generally casting from a narrow pool of their higher level spells (up to getting mystic arcana anyway) supplemented by an invocation or two. Yes, hold person or invisibility may remain on their spell list but tending to see pretty infrequent casting.

A wizard on the other hand is actually likely to cast from a selection of level 1 spells, and level 2 and level 3 and so on. I practice the Warlock spell slots are so restrictive that they narrow down the spell list greatly.

Should have stayed in wizard school.
If you want More spell selection, play a Wizard.
But bare in mind that is all the Wizard get Spells just spells.
No fancy Cantrips, no meta Magic, no armor, very weak early level archetype features, a gradual path of increasing power.

If you are playing a Warlock. Don't gripe that you don't have the strength and flexibility of another class who sacrifices early game power for late game potential

sophontteks

2018-09-23, 08:13 AM

- The game is balanced around several encounters per day.
- Encounters does not mean combat.
- 5e is balanced around not being just a combat grind.
- Spells are used in encounters outside of combat pretty frequently.
- It shouldn't be too hard, or unrealistic, to "take a break" after a couple such serious challanges.

Considering the above, Warlocks almost always have their best spells available for every encounter, while other casters can only use their best spells a few times per day. Warlocks use invocations to compensate for their lack of lesser spells, and several invocations are available at will.

No doubt warlocks lose the casting flexibility of a wizard, but they should be able to cast much more max level spells then any caster.

Tanarii

2018-09-23, 08:21 AM

- The game is balanced around several encounters per day.
- Encounters does not mean combat.
It does, however, mean situations expected to cost a certain amount of resources equivalent to a combat encounter.

Notwithstanding players managing to do something clever of course. Talking your way out of a combat or finding a way to bypass it, when neither was likely, and saving resources, IMO still counts.

But talky-time enounters or puzzle encounters, sans-resources, shouldn't be worth more than an Easy encounter, which is the highest encounter challenge to that doesn't expect any significant resource expenditure.

(IMO in some many cases time might be considered an important resource to be expended or not in encounters.)

Edit: my campaign is generally & particularly combat heavy, but even so I consider ideally at least 1/3 of an adventuring day should be non-combat or light-combat challenges, and when throwing together adventuring areas (usually from various online materials) try to purloin/adapt encounters so players are likely to have to expend resources to resolve then. It's not that easy to eyeball though.

sophontteks

2018-09-23, 08:53 AM

It does, however, mean situations expected to cost a certain amount of resources equivalent to a combat encounter.

Notwithstanding players managing to do something clever of course. Talking your way out of a combat or finding a way to bypass it, when neither was likely, and saving resources, IMO still counts.

But talky-time enounters or puzzle encounters, sans-resources, shouldn't be worth more than an Easy encounter, which is the highest encounter challenge to that doesn't expect any significant resource expenditure.

(IMO in some many cases time might be considered an important resource to be expended or not in encounters.)

Edit: my campaign is generally & particularly combat heavy, but even so I consider ideally at least 1/3 of an adventuring day should be non-combat or light-combat challenges, and when throwing together adventuring areas (usually from various online materials) try to purloin/adapt encounters so players are likely to have to expend resources to resolve then. It's not that easy to eyeball though.
This would vary from campaign to campaign. My bard saved his spells specifically for social encounters in CoS, and they were quite a challenge as well. It required all of our wits to keep from being killed and combat was not an option. Combat was suicide. Honestly that may be the problem. DMs allow combat to be the option all of the time. Every encounter is balanced around being an appropriate challenge for the party to fight, so there is little need to seek alternatives. Perhaps this is a habit created by previous editions?

In theory evading a fight or talking your way out of it should have just as much of a challenge, and just as much work, as fighting itself. And there are other RPGs that revolve far less around combat successfully.

EDIT: It may be useful to talk about my own experience DMing for new players. I put a lot of work into the storyline in my survival adventure (OotA) and, while these new players loved the game, they actually considered combat to be the low points. I put a lot into the non-combat encounters of course, but I didn't expect them to completely outshine the combat encounters. They were serious challenges and made up the bulk of the campaign.

Tanarii

2018-09-23, 09:46 AM

For sure, it's absolutely possible to use, or anticipate the use of, resources for non-combat encounters. The question should be: are there resources that can be expended to resolve or enhance the odds of resolving this encounter?

IMO it doesn't matter if the party actually has the resources at hand. If they don't, it will be harder for them to overcome the encounter.

There are many resources in game, especially spells, that can be used to help overcome social and exploration pillar challenges.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-23, 10:35 AM

It's the default way according to the rules, but from what I've seen it seems like very few people actually play this way. I for one certainly don't, although I recently I have been trying to structure my campaigns to have a bit more encounters so my players can't just nova everything. It's a shame I'm terrible at designing dungeons.

As much as I love 5e, this is my greatest issue with it. The designers have failed in that their game is balanced around a playstyle that nobody seems to actually use. 5e could become a much better game if it was balanced around 2-4 encounters instead of 6-8.

Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed. "The game is balanced around at least six medium encounters a day" mostly means "the game is not balanced around the way people actually play this game". Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions. Hell, taking into account all the sessions where we don't have even a single fight, I think the average fights per session can't be much higher than 1.

If one defines encounters to include things which have the potential to drain resources, even if no combat occurs (or even no resources end up getting drained, such as a trap which you discover and disarm/avoid instead of blunder into and take damage), I can't think of a (non-all-social) adventure I had before ~2000 where there weren't many more than 6-8 encounters per 'dungeon.'

The problem, in my mind, is that the (likely) true distribution of encounters/day of people's playstyle is bi-modal, with one peak near 1-4 (especially during travel, with 0-1 encounters per day), and another peak in the 6-12 range (dungeons or 'dungeons', with some variation depending on how dungeoncrawly they end up being). The DMG advice on making a 'day' not be a day is useful, but you almost want to vary it in-campaign quite often. I agree that the assumptions that the game makes for 5e is a weakness of the system. However, the best ways to address it have been tried (4e/ completely alternate recharge system like in other, non-D&D systems) and been rejected by the fan base. It's not like the 15-min. work day wasn't a serious issue in other editions as well.

SpanielBear

2018-09-23, 12:14 PM

It's best to not think of Warlocks in the same vein of the rest of the casters... They're closer to a Paladin, Ranger, or a fighter archetype - like a Battlemaster Fighter or Arcane archer - than a wizard. Only instead of rolling to shoot a bow or stab with a sword, they're using Eldritch Blast, with the occasional augment of other spells. Unless they're Bladepact, then they're almost definitely shooting and stabbing.

I agree with this as well; it very much feels like a warlock is a ranged damage dealer with a bag of scenario dependant tricks that supplement their effectiveness. They aren't their bread and butter.

If I'm in combat, I'm using my eldritch blast (+invocations) to lay down fire support with a variety of effects. My other invocations and cantrips can be used to supplement that- chill touch to stop regen, minor illusion, anything I like if I'm a tome lock. I can cast hex with one spell slot and bounce that off enemies as we go; up to 8 hours if I like. Leaves me on slot spare for the clutch move- a suggestion, fireball, counterspell whatever.

The higher I go, the more of this I can do- more damage, more at wills or spell-like abilities, and eventually an extra spell slot.

I agree that a warlock is a subpar wizard or sorceror. So don't try and be one. Be a warlock- be sneaky, be cunning, use that charisma bonus to wheedle your way out of trouble, then hit them with hypnotic pattern and clean up.

MrStabby

2018-09-23, 12:24 PM

If your DM is regularly using assumptions wildly out of base with the assumptions of the game, it's on them to spend some time adjusting the game if needed.

I mean if none of the players care, there's no point. But clearly people DO care since this is a regular subject on this forum.

I don't think having encounters of varying level of difficulty is "wildly out of base with the assumptions of the game". If it was then why put guides in the DMG for easy through to deadly encounters? In fact the existance of such a thing suggests to me that there is an expectation that DMs can challenge players through a really wide range of difficulties.

Some days may have an easy morning then a couple of back to back deadly encounters in the afternoon. I see no assumptions in the game that this violates. What it does mean is that the inability to pass resources over a short rest is a big downside. It also means that in the hardest of fights, when it really counts for staying alive, what matters most is the maximum amount of power you can deploy in that encounter.

Tanarii

2018-09-23, 12:44 PM

Warlocks get enough spell slots to cast per encounter:
0.5: level 1
1.0: level 2-10
1.5: level 11-16 (plus 1-3 arcanum per day)
2.0: level 17-20 (plus 4 arcanum per day)

Other full casters get per encounter:
<1: level 1-2
~1: level 3-4
~1.5: level 5-6
~2: level 7-8
~2.5: level 9+ (plus once per day level 6+ Starting at 11th)

So there is sweet spot where spellcasting full casters get a decent advantage in spell slots, and it's about levels 7-10. Especially at levels 9 & 10, when they get 1-2x5th and 3x4th, so they are getting very close to a warlocks 1x5th per encounter, and getting a whole level 1-3 slot on top of that as a second cast per encounter.

But even so, between patron features, pact boon, invocations, and all their slots being 5th level the warlock isn't lagging much.

And of course this all goes out the window in games with very few short rests per long rest, a whole lot more short rests than expected.

Pex

2018-09-23, 02:10 PM

As said before, this is because people fail to realise that "a day" =/= "a session".

It is supposed to take several sessions in real life to go through a day in the story.

It's supposed to take however long it takes in a particular campaign's circumstances and possibly factoring in real life of how often players can even come to the game to have a session. When you're playing once every two or three weeks real world time, it can be rather frustrating not being able to use a class feature for 2 or 3 real world months because you haven't rested yet.

Sception

2018-09-23, 07:37 PM

Classes are not balanced around being able to blow all of their resources in a single fight. That will clearly skew power to long-rest based powers.

This is one thing i actually miss about 4th edition. I mean, yeah it hurt variety some for every class to have the same number of resources on the same times, but at least you weren't jerking around the class balance if you happened to average a few more or a few less encounters per day than average, and if you were running a full 6 encounter day, you didnt have to twist your adventure in weird shapes to ensure the party would be able to take multiple hour-long uninterupted breaks.

Don't get me wrong, I like 5th better overall, but too much of the mechanical design, particularly when it comes to inter-class balance, leans too heavily on some rather limiting and often inaccurate assumptions about encounter pacing.

sophontteks

2018-09-23, 08:04 PM

It's supposed to take however long it takes in a particular campaign's circumstances and possibly factoring in real life of how often players can even come to the game to have a session. When you're playing once every two or three weeks real world time, it can be rather frustrating not being able to use a class feature for 2 or 3 real world months because you haven't rested yet.
Well, I mean, its taking 2-3 real world months because they aren't playing more then once a month. I think the frustration has more to do with how sparse the sessions are in this case.

ad_hoc

2018-09-23, 08:43 PM

Tanarii

2018-09-23, 09:10 PM

This is one thing i actually miss about 4th edition. I mean, yeah it hurt variety some for every class to have the same number of resources on the same times, but at least you weren't jerking around the class balance if you happened to average a few more or a few less encounters per day than average, and if you were running a full 6 encounter day, you didnt have to twist your adventure in weird shapes to ensure the party would be able to take multiple hour-long uninterupted breaks.

Don't get me wrong, I like 5th better overall, but too much of the mechanical design, particularly when it comes to inter-class balance, leans too heavily on some rather limiting and often inaccurate assumptions about encounter pacing.I feel like short rests work better as "yeah, you've got enough time for a break" from the DM, as opposed to a specific time. 10 minutes to and hour as necessary.

But for some classes, that can be a bit abused outside a dungeon scenario. An hour puts the breaks on that kind of abuse. Conversely it can make dense dungeons, or scenarios like invading a fortified position, difficult. Otoh that really just means players need to be aware that in those situations, they need to be considerably more powerful than their opponents before they engage in many back-to-back fights.

Ignimortis

2018-09-23, 09:34 PM

All of the WotC adventures manage pacing just fine. If you want to learn 5e, you really should run a published adventure first.

If Sarah Connor could walk away from The Terminator whenever she wanted to rest up and refuel it would be a dull movie with no tension.

That's the thing about long rests, they kill the tension. There is no drama. That's why there are short rests.

So do short rests, because an hour is too long to keep up the tension actually going. If your pursuers actually give you an hour to rest and recuperate, then they're not really good at keeping pressure up. It's somewhat more plausible than 8 hours for a long rest, but it's still too long. I mean, in an hour you could've cooked a dinner with your supplies, bandaged everyone two times over, sing a song and even take a nap if nobody needs you to do something. In 10 minutes, however, it's down to a few bandages, some salted meat strips from your backpack, a swig from your flask and a cigarette break at best.

The Aboleth

2018-09-23, 09:34 PM

I feel like short rests work better as "yeah, you've got enough time for a break" from the DM, as opposed to a specific time. 10 minutes to and hour as necessary.

This is exactly how I run short rests in my games. I describe it to my players as "long enough to catch your breath after a particularly grueling workout."

I agree it can be abused, but fortunately my players don't abuse loopholes in my house rules.

ad_hoc

2018-09-23, 10:30 PM

So do short rests, because an hour is too long to keep up the tension actually going. If your pursuers actually give you an hour to rest and recuperate, then they're not really good at keeping pressure up. It's somewhat more plausible than 8 hours for a long rest, but it's still too long. I mean, in an hour you could've cooked a dinner with your supplies, bandaged everyone two times over, sing a song and even take a nap if nobody needs you to do something. In 10 minutes, however, it's down to a few bandages, some salted meat strips from your backpack, a swig from your flask and a cigarette break at best.

The tension remains because the spent resources and wounds remain. The players know that they can't keep going forever. I'm not talking about the narrative time. That is easily changed as needed. What is important is that long rests (regardless of how much narrative time they take) don't occur after each encounter. 6-8 encounters on average. If you want to know how to do this, just run a published adventure. It will teach you how to play 5e.

Most (99%) action movies aren't non-stop action for 2 hours. There are breaks. Sarah Connor loses the Terminator from time to time.

Think of a zombie movie. The protagonists escape the immediate threat for a while. But tension is still rising as they are getting tired, running out of resources, safe places, there are more coming, etc. If instead, they could just return to a completely safe location to rest for however long they want whenever they want, that would make for a dull movie.

Ignimortis

2018-09-23, 10:46 PM

The tension remains because the spent resources and wounds remain. The players know that they can't keep going forever. I'm not talking about the narrative time. That is easily changed as needed. What is important is that long rests (regardless of how much narrative time they take) don't occur after each encounter. 6-8 encounters on average. If you want to know how to do this, just run a published adventure. It will teach you how to play 5e.

Most (99%) action movies aren't non-stop action for 2 hours. There are breaks. Sarah Connor loses the Terminator from time to time.

Think of a zombie movie. The protagonists escape the immediate threat for a while. But tension is still rising as they are getting tired, running out of resources, safe places, there are more coming, etc. If instead, they could just return to a completely safe location to rest for however long they want whenever they want, that would make for a dull movie.

That's the point, the narrative time is exactly what bugs some people about short rests even if they're fine with running megadungeons where you can easily have a 12-encounter adventuring day. It's an ok mechanic, it just takes too much time per RAW. And that's the part where short-rest classes tend to suffer, and the warlock is the most limited and resource-dependent of them all for fun mechanics. Monks retain a few neat tricks without Ki points, Fighters don't get much if they're not BMs anyway, but a Warlock without spell slots is a magically-flavoured Champion Fighter. Which is probably dull for people who actually wanted to deal with spells and their implied complexity.

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 01:27 AM

Its too much time from what standpoint? Do people feel its narratively more realistic for people to fight an entire day straight with no rest?
I disagree.

MaxWilson

2018-09-24, 01:45 AM

Its too much time from what standpoint? Do people feel its narratively more realistic for people to fight an entire day straight with no rest?
I disagree.

It can be hard to justify enemies giving the PCs a full hour to catch their breath. If you invade a hobgoblin outpost, kill the sentries, and take the warlord captive for interrogation, you can understand how that might cause some confusion and that it might take a few minutes for the hobs to organize a counterattack, because monsters don't and shouldn't think in bullet time (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BulletTime) like players and therefore PCs do--but a full hour? That feels artificial, and only happens if the players are taking deliberate steps to divide the enemy and defeat them in detail, or if the DM is making it easy on the players by doing it for them by fiat.

That style of pacing makes sense in a Gold Box-style CRPG but not in realistic fantasy world.

qube

2018-09-24, 01:46 AM

This is one thing i actually miss about 4th edition. I mean, yeah it hurt variety some for every class to have the same number of resources on the same times, but at least you weren't jerking around the class balance if you happened to average a few more or a few less encounters per day than average, and if you were running a full 6 encounter day, you didnt have to twist your adventure in weird shapes to ensure the party would be able to take multiple hour-long uninterupted breaks.

Don't get me wrong, I like 5th better overall, but too much of the mechanical design, particularly when it comes to inter-class balance, leans too heavily on some rather limiting and often inaccurate assumptions about encounter pacing.Except we're not talking about "a few more or a few less encounters per day"

If your DM doesn't play by intented rules, it would be better to let the party balance itself around simelar mechanical classes. For example, a party of fighter, warlock, moon druid, rogue.

That's the point, the narrative time is exactly what bugs some people about short rests even if they're fine with running megadungeons where you can easily have a 12-encounter adventuring day.you wanna do 12 encounters without even short rests? Damn, your DM should learn to drop some level appropriate encounters.

Ignimortis

2018-09-24, 02:09 AM

It can be hard to justify enemies giving the PCs a full hour to catch their breath. If you invade a hobgoblin outpost, kill the sentries, and take the warlord captive for interrogation, you can understand how that might cause some confusion and that it might take a few minutes for the hobs to organize a counterattack, because monsters don't and shouldn't think in bullet time (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BulletTime) like players and therefore PCs do--but a full hour? That feels artificial, and only happens if the players are taking deliberate steps to divide the enemy and defeat them in detail, or if the DM is making it easy on the players by doing it for them by fiat.

That style of pacing makes sense in a Gold Box-style CRPG but not in realistic fantasy world.

Precisely. If you invade some location and break through the vanguard, you could take a few minutes to patch yourselves up after a hard battle, but an hour just makes it seems fake, like nobody cares already. The same is true for caves and other dungeons, where you'd expect monsters to roam and not just wait for you to come and kill them.

I know that it's not true for every possible situation, but it appears often enough.

you wanna do 12 encounters without even short rests? Damn, your DM should learn to drop some level appropriate encounters.

Actually, most DMs I played with usually dropped 1-2 deadly encounters and called that a day, because after that you're done anyway - no slots, no health, and a short rest won't save you. There were two megadungeons, one of which I don't recall that well, and the other had us retreating to a safe zone every 2-3 combats and taking a rest, which basically made us choose between taking a 3-hour break (back, rest, there again - each an hour) or a 10-hour break (back, rest 8 hours, there again). Since there wasn't a timer per se, and the risk of running into an enemy was the same for staying put and trying to short-rest or for backtracking to a 100% safe zone, you can imagine what we chose to do.

lperkins2

2018-09-24, 02:14 AM

All of the WotC adventures manage pacing just fine. If you want to learn 5e, you really should run a published adventure first.

So, I've not looked through that many WotC published adventures, but the ones I've seen don't actually seem to handle adventuring days well throughout.

Specifically, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the long trip on the road often has 1 encounter per day, which means novaing. LMoP was slightly better, with some time pressure, but a cagey party could often significantly reduce or eliminate that, and then take their time.

Unless you change the balance some way, or have either an all long or all short rest party, 5e only works 'as intended' for dungeon crawls and similar slog-fests.

Waazraath

2018-09-24, 03:57 AM

So, I've not looked through that many WotC published adventures, but the ones I've seen don't actually seem to handle adventuring days well throughout.

Specifically, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the long trip on the road often has 1 encounter per day, which means novaing. LMoP was slightly better, with some time pressure, but a cagey party could often significantly reduce or eliminate that, and then take their time.

Unless you change the balance some way, or have either an all long or all short rest party, 5e only works 'as intended' for dungeon crawls and similar slog-fests.

As a player in Out of the Abyss and a DM for Princes of the Apocalyps, I can say they both do fine. Some days there are more than the 'average' 6-8 encounters, sometimes less, and that makes it fine; as long as the players have to take into account that an adventuring day might be very intensive, the can't afford to nova the first encounter.

Drascin

2018-09-24, 04:43 AM

you wanna do 12 encounters without even short rests? Damn, your DM should learn to drop some level appropriate encounters.

I'm pretty sure he's saying the opposite, that he'd like to do short rests but finding excuses to constantly let people have frequent hour-long camp sessions in the middle of a sequence is hard.

Ignimortis

2018-09-24, 05:07 AM

I'm pretty sure he's saying the opposite, that he'd like to do short rests but finding excuses to constantly let people have frequent hour-long camp sessions in the middle of a sequence is hard.

Precisely. There are some circumstances where that's appropriate, but it's a very rare narrative circumstance that lets you stop for an hour and doesn't let you stop for eight.

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 06:52 AM

An hour is not that long. Thats the time it takes to patchup your wounds, eat some food, and refresh yourself. If an encounter requires you to push yourself so greatly, you should feel the fatigue wearing down on your party.

An hour is not that long, espesially before industrialization kicked us into the time hypersensitive people we are today. What is really unrealistic narratively is how blisteringly fast combat is in game. That if you follow game time as its measured in rounds, each round is 6-10 seconds. Combat takes up to 1 minute total. Takes up to 1 minute to move to the next combat. You see the narrative problem here?

Most DMs handwave the passage of time because how its measured in game is completely unrealistic. The short rest taking an hour stands out for being one of the only things that makes sense.

Ogun

2018-09-24, 07:26 AM

To the OP, your Gm has specifically said you might suffer a TPK , because of your poor choices?
This sounds like you have managed to compress many encounters into one.
I would run.
Running is good RP for all but the most vainglorious, and can be a sound tactical choices as well.

As for the balance of Warlocks, I've been playing rpg for decades, and we have always solved balance issues by not playing character choices that didn't play well.
Or at least well enough.

I wouldn't count on a Warlock in the way I would count on a Bard/Cleric/Wizard/Sorcerer/Druid,mostly because they don't have slots for buffing.
They are not full casters in my mind.
They are fun,they do enough damage and they can be great at social encounters.
Hope your Feylock has Thunderous Step, good luck!

qube

2018-09-24, 10:15 AM

I'm pretty sure he's saying the opposite, that he'd like to do short rests but finding excuses to constantly let people have frequent hour-long camp sessions in the middle of a sequence is hard.Personally, I don't find it odd tp have, an hour rest every 2-3 combats. With reencatment we do about 6 skirmishes during mass combat, and after that, an hour of rest is quite welcome. And mind you - that's 6 encounters where the worst wound you get is a bruise. If you don't see it narritivily making sense that your tank needs his wounded bandaged after even multiple combats ... I have questions with your survival skills.

Precisely. There are some circumstances where that's appropriate, but it's a very rare narrative circumstance that lets you stop for an hour and doesn't let you stop for eight.... OK, but that's not an argument. Don't forget

"A character can’t benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period"

Willie the Duck

2018-09-24, 10:22 AM

Given how much we here cannot agree on whether a one hour rest is realistic or unrealistic, I can understand why the designers had trouble, and left in language to suggest DMs alter things to fit their own expectations.

It seems to me that they actively decided to make SR-recharging different from 4e's encounter powers (or 3e's 'for the rest of the encounter' timing), and shorter than a per-day effect. Between those two outer boundaries, there is a lot of room, and I can see why no one decision would be the correct one. However, it is easy to change.

MaxWilson

2018-09-24, 10:44 AM

Actually, most DMs I played with usually dropped 1-2 deadly encounters and called that a day, because after that you're done anyway - no slots, no health, and a short rest won't save you. There were two megadungeons, one of which I don't recall that well, and the other had us retreating to a safe zone every 2-3 combats and taking a rest, which basically made us choose between taking a 3-hour break (back, rest, there again - each an hour) or a 10-hour break (back, rest 8 hours, there again). Since there wasn't a timer per se, and the risk of running into an enemy was the same for staying put and trying to short-rest or for backtracking to a 100% safe zone, you can imagine what we chose to do.

Note that long rest is often going to have to be more like a 24-hour break. (Back, chillax until it's been 24 hours since your last rest, there again.) Only in rare cases can you actually get in a long rest after a hard fight in only 8 hours: basically, you have to be timing your hard fights very carefully, or you have to be deliberately avoiding resting beforehand (which implies exhaustion penalties).

Personally, I don't find it odd tp have, an hour rest every 2-3 combats. With reencatment we do about 6 skirmishes during mass combat, and after that, an hour of rest is quite welcome.

Next time your monsters lose a fight, have them run away and attempt a short rest to get HP back and find reinforcements before re-enaging the PCs. See how likely it is for the PCs to give them that "quite welcome" hour of rest. That's basically what you're describing here: both sides take a break.

qube

2018-09-24, 11:32 AM

Next time your monsters lose a fight, have them run away and attempt a short rest to get HP back and find reinforcements before re-enaging the PCs. See how likely it is for the PCs to give them that "quite welcome" hour of rest. That's basically what you're describing here: both sides take a break.wouldn't it only be "basically what I'm describing", if we are talking about PCs that are running away from a losing battle?

I mean, you're being very oddly specific in saying "Next time your monsters lose a fight,", while in 99% of the cases we're talking about, the players - the characters we're looking for to take a short rest or not - were victorious.

So, if you want to see how it looks with the shoo on the other foot, I remember my PCs had to run from an encounter. They were able to flee to a save location, and take a breather. Guess what the wounded monsters did? They didn't follow the PCs back into town another encounter of unknown strength (sure, the PCs were weaker, but their might be other guards). Oppositely, they licked up their own wounds, drank to their victory, put up a barricade, hid a couple of caltrops and hunting traps, and released an Otyugh.

But back to your post ... I know for a fact my players won't just head over heals run after them. it's tabletop roleplay, not computer hack and slash. More then once I've let the escaped creatures team of with the ones of "the next room". My players learned that it's better not to go "oh lets just do another encounter - we're only at half hp" - unless they have to.

Tanarii

2018-09-24, 02:05 PM

An hour is not unrealistic, given the benefits of a short rest.

It may, however, be difficult.

In certain scenarios, it may be very hard for PCs to find an unthreatened hour. In that case, having long rest mechanics or no rest mechanics will be a huge advantage.

Of course, all those encounters better be easier than Easy, or else the party is going to find itself worn and and up a creek without a paddle.

Or else you use the Epic heroism Rest Variant and make the heroes ridiculously heroic. Ive used it. I makes the heroes unstoppable killing machines for "invade the heavily populated & defended dungeon/ stronghold" scenarios

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 03:39 PM

MrStabby

2018-09-24, 04:15 PM

Speaking of poor narrative time lapses. Isn't it funny how finding time to rest is ridiculous, yet finding time to loot is mandatory?

In game it takes under 10 seconds to search a room via. perception check. Maybe up to 30 seconds if your searching various objects. How long, realistically, does it take for someone to actually search a room? Like, it takes me 10 minutes just to find my keys half the time.

Now this searching isn't strenuous activity to me. You can look for stuff while resting and all the sudden it starts to sound a whole lot more plausable to be doing this. I mean, the party is already realistically spending 30-60 minutes searching the room and formulating their plans (something which isn't measured in game time at all.) and all of this isn't strenuous activity.

Now, sure, we could play with the raw rules that the party is going in full sprint, thrashing around the room for loot in seconds time, and finishing several combat encounters all in under 10 minutes, but this is going pretty strongly against the narrative arguement.

Imagine finishing this massive dungeon and the DM being like "Well its still 9am, what next?"

Heh, this is a good point. I had run into a little of this before but it does make sense that searching is longer.

My experience is that certain time elements get hand waved... how long does it take to remove a suit of plate mail? How long to do so from a non-responsive dead enemy?

Even rituals to read languages, detect magic and identify have been hand waved in some campaigns I have seen. I can think of one case where pretty much an hour was spent in a room casting rituals, removing armour, picking locks and so on. If we were to add realistic search time to this it would go right over the top.

Millface

2018-09-24, 04:30 PM

I ran Tomb of Annihilation recently and kept track of the time throughout. They entered one day around 6 A.M. They spent about 6 days in the Tomb. When they searched, I added minutes, when they did rituals I counted that, short rests I counted that. They did have some issue every now and then getting 16 hours out of a day in a dungeon, but not much and it certainly didn't ruin the experience.

You'd have to do a fair bit of hand waving to make a "massive" dungeon last such a short amount of in game time. I haven't read all the arguments here, but I for sure haven't seen any issue with the hour long short rest.

ad_hoc

2018-09-24, 04:33 PM

In game it takes under 10 seconds to search a room via. perception check. Maybe up to 30 seconds if your searching various objects. How long, realistically, does it take for someone to actually search a room? Like, it takes me 10 minutes just to find my keys half the time.

Does it though?

Or is it just left up to the DM to adjudicate?

The game specifically doesn't say how long it takes, because it depends.

10 minutes sounds about right. When I set a scene and characters go about their business then I work in 10 minute chunks. Check all the nooks and crannies for secrets? Comb through a bookshelf looking for anything interesting? Etc. 10 minutes.

Noticing a goblin hiding behind a barrel takes a different amount of time than opening all the barrels and crates in a room looking for treasure.

Sception

2018-09-24, 04:48 PM

I for sure haven't seen any issue with the hour long short rest.

My problem is that it doesn't do its intended job of spreading short rests oit to every two to 3 encounters. It can be difficult as a dm to craft scenarios whete the party can take hour long breaks after every couple encounters, but can't take such breaks after every single encounter. 4e handled this with for milestonds in a purely gameist manner, every couple encounters you just got one, without any in game justification, because they were a non-diagetic game abstraction, like hit points or class level.

Imo that, along with short rests just assumed after every encounter, worked better, because you could let encounter pacing play out naturally based on the sessions narrative flow, without risking any game breaking or fun ruining balance problems because you violated all these heavy handed mechanical assumptions imposed on your narrative framework.

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 04:53 PM

Does it though?

Or is it just left up to the DM to adjudicate?

The game specifically doesn't say how long it takes, because it depends.

10 minutes sounds about right. When I set a scene and characters go about their business then I work in 10 minute chunks. Check all the nooks and crannies for secrets? Comb through a bookshelf looking for anything interesting? Etc. 10 minutes.

Noticing a goblin hiding behind a barrel takes a different amount of time than opening all the barrels and crates in a room looking for treasure.
It specifically calls it out. Under actions its a search check. A turn is 6-10 seconds and an action is only a part of that turn, so its actually a good bit less.

I totally agree with your logic. 10 minutes to search one thing really good, but RAW it takes like 5 seconds.

This is the time frame which people are weighing a short rest against. When everything is measured in seconds and minutes, an hour seems ridiculous, but they are handwaving hours away all the time without even thinking about it.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-24, 05:16 PM

Simply asserting that they are on equal power does not make it so. All this does is show that it is possible to construct a scale such that an arbitrary measure on one class is the same as an arbitrary measure on another. It shows that you can create a mapping between two numbers, not that either of these measures "power".

Well nice of you to share your persona anecdote, I guess.

The warlock spell slot progression was built upon the foundation of the mathematics of the spell system.
Mathematics don't care about your personal feelings, and are just about as neutral of a comparison measure as you're going to find. Not arbitrary at all.

ar·bi·trar·y
ˈärbəˌtrerē/Submit
adjective
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

Mathematics are not arbitrary in any way. Math is science. Science is a system. Basing comparison on a scientific system is not arbitrary.
Your desire to ignore the math is what is arbitrary.

And you're welcome, seeing as the entire point was that my anecdotal evidence contradicts his own.... which is irrelevant, because the mathematics state my case for me.

If the DM follows the suggested resting criteria and the suggested pacing guidelines, Warlocks and other full casters are of nearly equivalent spellcasting power levels, proven by mathematics. They may use different mechanics, and you clearly have a personal bias in this matter, but neither of those things change the math of their respective spellcasting power levels.
If the DM doesn't do those things, the problem isn't with the Warlock class.

ad_hoc

2018-09-24, 05:21 PM

It specifically calls it out. Under actions its a search check. A turn is 6-10 seconds and an action is only a part of that turn, so its actually a good bit less.

I totally agree with your logic. 10 minutes to search one thing really good, but RAW it takes like 5 seconds.

This is the time frame which people are weighing a short rest against. When everything is measured in seconds and minutes, an hour seems ridiculous, but they are handwaving hours away all the time without even thinking about it.

Where? Can you give me a page number?

Are you saying "I search the country for treasure" takes 6 seconds? I highly doubt that is anywhere in the rules.

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 07:01 PM

Where? Can you give me a page number?

Are you saying "I search the country for treasure" takes 6 seconds? I highly doubt that is anywhere in the rules.
Look under actions. It doesn't literally say 6 seconds but you can extrapolate data...
If a turn lasts 6-10 seconds.
And you can search as an action within a turn.
You can determine that a search action takes less then 6-10 seconds.

Here is what a search action is:
"When you take the Search action, you devote your attention to finding something. Depending on the Nature of your Search, the GM might have you make a Wisdom (Perception) check or an Intelligence (Investigation) check."

ad_hoc

2018-09-24, 07:16 PM

Look under actions. It doesn't literally say 6 seconds but you can extrapolate data...
If a turn lasts 6-10 seconds.
And you can search as an action within a turn.
You can determine that a search action takes less then 6-10 seconds.

Here is what a search action is:
"When you take the Search action, you devote your attention to finding something. Depending on the Nature of your Search, the GM might have you make a Wisdom (Perception) check or an Intelligence (Investigation) check."

Right, you're spending your action trying to find something. And the DM might call for a check.

Nowhere does it say you can spend your action to search a room to find anything and everything. Success, failure, uncertainty (with different difficulty levels), etc. are all up to the DM.

5e is just not built that way. It is open ended as there are an endless amount of different circumstances.

Pex

2018-09-24, 08:17 PM

Right, you're spending your action trying to find something. And the DM might call for a check.

Nowhere does it say you can spend your action to search a room to find anything and everything. Success, failure, uncertainty (with different difficulty levels), etc. are all up to the DM.

5e is just not built that way. It is open ended as there are an endless amount of different circumstances.

It makes no sense for a DM to place something PCs are meant to find then deny them finding it because they rolled a 3 or whatever. It's fine for the roll to mean they don't find the Thing that round when how long it takes matters, such as in combat or not combat yet but the monster is coming. When it's just searching the room they should find whatever is important enough to be found. Call it taking a few minutes but they find it. At the very least if there is a roll that determines how long it takes. If the total perception roll is 7 that can be 5 minutes but they find the Thing. Had it been a roll of 15 they happened to start their search where the Thing is.

ad_hoc

2018-09-24, 08:38 PM

It makes no sense for a DM to place something PCs are meant to find then deny them finding it because they rolled a 3 or whatever. It's fine for the roll to mean they don't find the Thing that round when how long it takes matters, such as in combat or not combat yet but the monster is coming. When it's just searching the room they should find whatever is important enough to be found. Call it taking a few minutes but they find it. At the very least if there is a roll that determines how long it takes. If the total perception roll is 7 that can be 5 minutes but they find the Thing. Had it been a roll of 15 they happened to start their search where the Thing is.

I don't know why you are replying to me.

sophontteks

2018-09-24, 08:55 PM

Right, you're spending your action trying to find something. And the DM might call for a check.

Nowhere does it say you can spend your action to search a room to find anything and everything. Success, failure, uncertainty (with different difficulty levels), etc. are all up to the DM.

5e is just not built that way. It is open ended as there are an endless amount of different circumstances.
But what you were arguing was this...

The game specifically doesn't say how long it takes, because it depends.

And it does. It takes an action. And we do know how long an action is.
Your DM can rule whatever he wants. That's what the rules are.

And the entire point was that, because searching is very specifically mentioned as taking an action to accomplish, among many other things, people generally feel look at time in minutes and seconds. If turns were a larger timelapse I don't think people would be as opposed to a short rest taking an hour. But as its written an hour is 600 actions worth of time. An eternity in the game. Its here where the time inconsistency lies, not with the short rest. Players feel that its a long time because they can do so much in such a short timeframe.

guachi

2018-09-24, 09:10 PM

Yeah, that's a thing I've noticed. "The game is balanced around at least six medium encounters a day" mostly means "the game is not balanced around the way people actually play this game". Like I have never played a game where you'd have six fights a day every day, and the mere thought seems absurd even in my most combat heavy, dungeoncrawly 2E adventures, much less in more recent editions. Hell, taking into account all the sessions where we don't have even a single fight, I think the average fights per session can't be much higher than 1.

It's easy to fix if your Long Rest is seven days instead of 8 hours. And if you do Gritty Realism so PCs don't get all of their HP back after one Long Rest.

I've run it that way (more or less. I've eliminated short rests for resource replenishment and everything operates on a Long Rests) for three years and love it very much.

Tanarii

2018-09-24, 09:22 PM

But what you were arguing was this...

And it does. It takes an action. And we do know how long an action is.
Your DM can rule whatever he wants. That's what the rules are.
Nothing says it takes an action to search an entire room. It may take 10 of them, or a minute, of search "actions" to search an entire room. It may take longer depending on the size and contents of the room.

And that's doing it quick and dirty using passive investigation or perception. If you take as long as it takes to automatically succeed, then it takes ten times as long. Searching an entire room thoroughly may take ten minutes or more that way.

ad_hoc

2018-09-24, 09:31 PM

But what you were arguing was this...

And it does. It takes an action. And we do know how long an action is.
Your DM can rule whatever he wants. That's what the rules are.

It really doesn't though.

Nowhere in the rules does it say how long it takes to search a 10x10 room that has 5 crates, 3 barrels, and a weapons rack.

Nor does it say how long it takes to search a castle.

Or a city.

Etc.

It also doesn't say whether PCs are successful or not. They might make a check, they might not. They might succeed, they might not.

Malifice

2018-09-24, 09:47 PM

qube

2018-09-25, 07:28 AM

Aside from Tanarii's and ad_hoc's point

It takes an action. And we do know how long an action is.No, we don't. a round is 6 seconds. actions is something you do during your turn, which is a a subsection of round, which is something you do during combat.

Outside of initiative however, when the adrenaline has stopped pomping (before you try to argue the that in-combat speed must be equal to out-of-combat speed), it's up to the DM to decide how long something takes.

Coffee/RedBull/... don't exist in D&D. Please don't consider PCs to be 100% hyper all throughout the day.

Xetheral

2018-09-25, 07:59 AM

Warlocks and other full casters are of nearly equivalent spellcasting power levels, proven by mathematics. They may use different mechanics, and you clearly have a personal bias in this matter, but neither of those things change the math of their respective spellcasting power levels.

Quibble: one can use mathematics to prove that the classes are of nearly equivalent daily spell points (given particular resting rates). You can't use mathematics to prove that they are of equivalent "spellcasting power levels" because how powerful a class feature is is a subjective measure.

Example: imagine a class that knows only a single first level spell and only ever gets first level spell slots, but they get enough of them per day to match a same-level wizard's daily spell-point total. You can use mathematics to show that they the daily spell-points are the same, but you can't use mathematics to show that someone is wrong for thinking this hypothetical class has less spellcasting power than a wizard.

(And if you're personally defining "spellcasting power level" as "number of daily spell points (given particular resting rates)" then your argument is meaningless for anyone who is claiming the classes have unequal spellcasting power based on a different definition.)

Reth

2018-09-25, 02:59 PM

This might actually be a significant part of the problem- our DM usually does a lot of story, some intrigue, and one big encounter per session, usually with a long rest in between sessions.

Yeah, that's a problem for warlocks, really depended on the DM making enough encounters happen between long rests. We do about 3 really deadly encounters per day it seems most of the time. It's fine for me because I've always felt like I had to MC out of warlock anyway with another full caster so that I didn't forced to cast my lower level spells with highest level slot.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 04:27 PM

Quibble: one can use mathematics to prove that the classes are of nearly equivalent daily spell points (given particular resting rates). You can't use mathematics to prove that they are of equivalent "spellcasting power levels" because how powerful a class feature is is a subjective measure.

Spell points = spellcasting power, so yeah.
All other measurements are arbitrary. Mathematics are not.

Xetheral

2018-09-25, 04:31 PM

Spell points = spellcasting power, so yeah

To my understanding, people who argue that Warlocks don't have enough "spellcasting power" aren't using the term to mean "spell points". Which makes your proof fail as a counter-argument.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 05:01 PM

To my understanding, people who argue that Warlocks don't have enough "spellcasting power" aren't using the term to mean "spell points". Which makes your proof fail as a counter-argument.

Right.
Because they're using their subjective dislike of the mechanics. Their bias against the design. Their feelings.... which I addressed in my original post.

Just because they don't like it doesn't prove it unequal. It is equal, proven by math. Their feelings don't change that.

As to your earlier claim comparing against an hypothetical caster with a million 1st level spells: this is not a proper example.
The warlock has twenty-five 5th level spells,one 6th, one 7th, one 8th, and one 9th.
One could argue that the removal and replacement of nineteen 1st-4th level slots with twenty-five 5th level slots actually gives the warlock *more* raw power in comparison.

Xetheral

2018-09-25, 06:25 PM

Right.
Because they're using their subjective dislike of the mechanics. Their bias against the design. Their feelings.... which I addressed in my original post.

Just because they don't like it doesn't prove it unequal. It is equal, proven by math. Their feelings don't change that.

You've only shown spellcasting power to be equal if you measure it by spellpoints (and then only with particular resting rates). If one uses any other measure, subjective or not, your analysis that spellpoints are equal has no bearing whatsoever.

To put it another way, your argument that Warlocks have equal spellcasting power is based on the premise that "spellcasting power" refers to spell points. Strictly as a matter of logic, your argument cannot be used to refute arguments that don't share the same premise.

As to your earlier claim comparing against an hypothetical caster with a million 1st level spells: this is not a proper example.
The warlock has twenty-five 5th level spells,one 6th, one 7th, one 8th, and one 9th.
One could argue that the removal and replacement of nineteen 1st-4th level slots with twenty-five 5th level slots actually gives the warlock *more* raw power in comparison.

Under your definition that "spellcasting power" refers to daily spell points (with particular resting rates), my hypothetical class with many slots for a first level spell with the same number of daily spell points as a Wizard must have equal spell power. Right? The point of the example was to show the limitations of your definition, since I doubt many people would say the hypothetical class can match a wizard's spell power.

(Also, a Warlock never has 25 5th level slots at any combination of rests per day and Warlock level. Warlocks get 5th level spell slots in increments of 2, 3, or 4 per short rest, all of which are relatively prime with 25.)

At the end of the day, you're misusing math when you offer your analysis as "proof" that other posters are wrong when they claim that Warlocks have less spellcasting power than Wizards. The only thing your analysis shows with math is that the classes get similar numbers of spell points per day (with particular resting rates). That's as far as the math goes.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 07:10 PM

Xetheral

2018-09-25, 07:36 PM

I'm open to you showing me another non-arbitrary, systematic way of attributing and comparing spell power other than mathematics.
The one and only stipulation being that, if you can't, you have to concede that math is the best way to do it.
Give it a shot.

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding me or what. I don't care at all if you want to argue that comparing daily spell points quantitatively is the (subjectively) "best" method for making comparisons of "spellcasting power". There are lots of comparison methods out there, and everyone is free to have (and promote) their own preferences regarding which are the most advantageous.

But that's not what you were doing. You were invoking the imprimatur of "math" to claim that you'd proven other posters wrong, yet your analysis depended on a premise that was incompatible with the claims you were trying to disprove. That's what I'm objecting to.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-25, 07:56 PM

If the DM follows the suggested resting criteria and the suggested pacing guidelines, Warlocks and other full casters are of nearly equivalent spellcasting power levels, proven by mathematics. They may use different mechanics, and you clearly have a personal bias in this matter, but neither of those things change the math of their respective spellcasting power levels.
If the DM doesn't do those things, the problem isn't with the Warlock class. I will say this about the short rest. The players ... DM and PC alike ... need to embrace that little feature of the game. They need to talk about it since it applied unevenly across classes.

It took our first group a dozen sessions to get all six players to "get" short rests.

Our second group, I had to keep reminding people to consider using their SR.

Our fifth group, I still have to remind the wizard about his arcane recover.

It's a neat feature, but the Dm and the players all need to "get" it. Some folks do, and some folks don't.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 09:22 PM

I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding me or what. I don't care at all if you want to argue that comparing daily spell points quantitatively is the (subjectively) "best" method for making comparisons of "spellcasting power". There are lots of comparison methods out there, and everyone is free to have (and promote) their own preferences regarding which are the most advantageous.

But that's not what you were doing. You were invoking the imprimatur of "math" to claim that you'd proven other posters wrong, yet your analysis depended on a premise that was incompatible with the claims you were trying to disprove. That's what I'm objecting to.

I understand you.
I don't think you understand me.
I'm saying that this is the best/only way to quantify it. People want to complain about the Warlock's spellcasting power level? Ok, but we need to quantify it first.
I have offered what I believe to be the only reliable way of doing so.
I have also offered to listen to any other suggestions on how to do so, which you refuse to give.

If you think there is a problem, you need to first define that problem *without* regards to your feelings, and then offer a solution.
My contention is that there isn't actually a problem other than peoples' personal bias, as shown by mathematics.
You disagree.
Okay, so show me how and why I'm wrong, and do so with verifiable, standardized, systematic, non-arbitrary measures.

I'll be waiting.

Cerefel

2018-09-25, 09:58 PM

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 10:03 PM

Spell points are a poor metric for measuring things like power. It's actually less useful than looking at the number of spell slots available, because it obscures the ratio of power to endurance (for example, a single arbitrarily high-level spell slot could equal the same number of spell points as an arbitrary number of first-level spell slots). It makes more sense to just try and analyze the effects that the available spell slots could have in the context of the game.

No, that doesn't make more sense, because how effective that slot could be varies based on player and character decisions with regards to how it will be used. In short, it is subjective.
Math is objective.

I am backing my points up with objective empirical data, and you guys are disputing it based on subjective decisions and feelings.

Cerefel

2018-09-25, 10:10 PM

It may be difficult (or even impossible) to measure, but that doesn't make it subjective. The power of a given spell slot isn't dependent on your opinion of it, there is an objective amount of power there even if we can't measure it or express it in a single number. The system we're trying to quantify has such a blindingly huge number of factors that it would be unreasonable to assume we can easily boil it down to one value.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 10:14 PM

Cerefel

2018-09-25, 10:19 PM

And yet you wouldn't say that mathematics would be the best way we have of doing it?

Nobody here is trying to claim that math is not a good way to approach the topic. However, spell points don't equate to power

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-25, 10:49 PM

Nobody here is trying to claim that math is not a good way to approach the topic. However, spell points don't equate to power

Then once again I ask you to provide me with a better way to quantify it.

A spell slot comes with an objective level of power associated with it. On this we agree.
They higher level the slot, the more power comes with it.
This is precisely how the spell point system operates, and is exactly why those points don't work on a 1:1 basis.
Ignoring use case, ignoring personal bias, and ignoring outliers such as the shield spell, a 1st level slot is worth 2 spell points.
That's spell power = 2.
Adding all of the slots up, and converting them to spell points is quite literally the best measure of spellcasting power that we have.
Is math all encompassing? Of course not.
Is math the best measure we have? Of course it is.

If anyone thinks this is wrong, they are welcome to prove it to me and offer a better way to measure it.
Still waiting for that last part.

Cerefel

2018-09-25, 11:34 PM

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 12:02 AM

The spell point system is a bad metric for spellcasting power because it assumes that any combination of (for example) 2 second-level spells is equal in power to 1 fourth-level spell, when in fact many fourth-level spells are unequal in power to other fourth-level spells.
Already addressed, when I said:
Ignoring use case, ignoring personal bias, and ignoring outliers

Also, you keep asking everyone to provide a better system of measurement, but that assumes the existence of any suitable system of measurement in the first place. A different system doesn't need to be proven correct in order for yours to be proven incorrect.

I don't need you to prove my metric is "incorrect." I just need you to prove that there is a better one. Until you can do that, math is the best we have.
As of yet, not only have you not proven there is a better way, you haven't even outlined any alternative at all.

You guys are all just screaming that my way sucks, but you aren't suggesting a better way, even thought I CONTINUALLY ask for you to do so.

Still waiting.
Stop saying my way sucks if you aren't going to offer an alternative. Otherwise you're just arguing for the sake of argument rather than discussing how to resolve a percieved issue.

MrStabby

2018-09-26, 01:06 AM

I'm open to you showing me another non-arbitrary, systematic way of attributing and comparing spell power other than mathematics.
The one and only stipulation being that, if you can't, you have to concede that math is the best way to do it.
Give it a shot.

Yeah... this doesn't follow. Even if it did - then so what?

No, that doesn't make more sense, because how effective that slot could be varies based on player and character decisions with regards to how it will be used. In short, it is subjective.
Math is objective.

I am backing my points up with objective empirical data, and you guys are disputing it based on subjective decisions and feelings.

I am pretty sure you don't know what empirical means. I am also having some doubts about "objective" as well. Emperical would pertain to experiential data gathered from playing the game. You have provided none of this. Spell points is someone's opinion on how resources match up. Just because someone put numbers to something doesn't make those numbers right.

Then once again I ask you to provide me with a better way to quantify it.

A spell slot comes with an objective level of power associated with it. On this we agree.
They higher level the slot, the more power comes with it.
This is precisely how the spell point system operates, and is exactly why those points don't work on a 1:1 basis.
Ignoring use case, ignoring personal bias, and ignoring outliers such as the shield spell, a 1st level slot is worth 2 spell points.
That's spell power = 2.
Adding all of the slots up, and converting them to spell points is quite literally the best measure of spellcasting power that we have.
Is math all encompassing? Of course not.
Is math the best measure we have? Of course it is.

If anyone thinks this is wrong, they are welcome to prove it to me and offer a better way to measure it.
Still waiting for that last part.

This bolded part is just an assertion. Either that or devoid of all information. Either you define a level 1 slot as being worth two points (in which case - so what? - this is just the personal bias you were looking to avoid) or you actually believe a spell point is some kind of consistent yardstick and that a slot is worth it, irrespective of class, spells known or anything else.

I don't need you to prove my metric is "incorrect." I just need you to prove that there is a better one. Until you can do that, math is the best we have.
As of yet, not only have you not proven there is a better way, you haven't even outlined any alternative at all.

You guys are all just screaming that my way sucks, but you aren't suggesting a better way, even thought I CONTINUALLY ask for you to do so.

Still waiting.
Stop saying my way sucks if you aren't going to offer an alternative. Otherwise you're just arguing for the sake of argument rather than discussing how to resolve a percieved issue.

It seems your argument is "math is good. Spell points has numbers therefore is math. Math is good therefore spellpoints are a good way to measure this".

Firstly - and has been pointed out many times already - just because you put numbers into something doesn't make those numbers relevant. Nor does it make those numbers right even if they are relevant. Sure someone has published an opinion in the DMG that these things are equivelant, but the whole contention in the OP is that this is wrong. The contention is that a metric that equates the two is a wrong metric (in the non mathematical sense).

That said if you want something better it shouldn't be too hard given how badly the spell point system sucks.

First of all lets start with the spell point system. It has some features right - specifically the value of a spell slot increases monotonically with level.

But level of spell slot isn't as important as what you do with it. So lets throw in a factor there: sqrt(0.5+Nc+0.5Nb) where Nc is the number of spells known/prepared of level c but not including rituals (if you don't need a spell slot to cast them then this doesn't increase the value of the spell slot) - the level of the spell slot, and Nb being the number of spells known/prepared of lower levels that benefit from being upcasted. This means that your single class with more options of spells gains more from a higher level spell slot than a multiclass character that can only use it to upcast lower level spells

Next, a spell slot represents a problem solved or damage dealt or some impact on the game. Any good metric should capture the opportunity cost. So lets be explicit to remove spells known that are less effective than the character's resource free actions. If your action enables you to shoot someone for 30 damage then a low level spell that does half of that isn't going to be a good use of the spell slot and doesn't capture the marginal value of it.

Is this right? No of course not. It's maths and numbers and a formula but so what? It tries to capture some other stuff and it fudges a bad system. There is more fudging to do as you want to capture the benefit of different levels of spell to chose from, the ability to pass on unused resources over a short rest and other tools like a wizard's arcane recovery.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 02:58 AM

That was a whole lot of words to type for you to not offer a better way to measure it.

MrStabby

2018-09-26, 03:07 AM

That was a whole lot of words to type for you to not offer a better way to measure it.

But that's the whole point. Just because something has maths in doesn't make it right. Nor does it make it better than something that doesn't have maths in it. I think you are slowly beginning to get the point though so I won't labour it.

I don't have a problem with maths. I love it, I have studies it and I use it every day in my job. It doesn't mean that I think every element that has numbers in is right or appropriate though.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 03:38 AM

I don't think you get my point at all.
I hear tons and tons of complaints about my reasoning and about the metric I'm using, but I see ZERO suggestions as to what would be a better way to do it.
Just because you can concoct some craziness in order to prove a point that didn't need proving doesn't change this fact.
Show me something as an alternative, or stop responding.
I will do the latter myself, until someone suggests something reasonable (particularly to you, since you seen to be of a mind to attack me personally).

Still waiting.

ad_hoc

2018-09-26, 03:39 AM

The problem with using spell points is the question of whether they are accurate. And then we're right back where we started.

2nd level spell is worth 3 points. 3rd level spell is worth 5.

I would rather have 2 3rd level spells than 4 2nd level ones. That is 10 pts vs 12.

Not only do the 3rd level spells have much greater power, they cost fewer actions and have their effect sooner.

At the end of the day I think Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock are well balanced against each other. If you hate Warlock casting don't play them.

RedWarlock

2018-09-26, 04:33 AM

DBZ, you are literally (metaphorically/emphatically) comparing apples to oranges, you realize that, right? As a metaphor: Because you can point to this pile of 20 apples, vs that pile of 18 orange, and say that they are better, because there is more, because it's a higher number, because math, and therefor you're right.

But that's not what anyone else is talking about. "Spell power" is a vague term, to which you are applying spell point value as a measure, when that designation is entirely arbitrary. They can't offer a better measure, because there probably isn't one, and they're ALSO saying that yours isn't a good measure either. You saying it is "because math" doesn't make it universally true, only true to the arbitrary standard you yourself have defined.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 05:14 AM

They can't offer a better measure, because there probably isn't one, and they're ALSO saying that yours isn't a good measure either.

I never said it was a good measure. I have repeatedly said that it was the best measure that we had.
But that emboldened portion? That's right on the nose, and that's my entire point. Don't complain about the metric I'm using when it's literally the best metric we have to use. Especially if you can't even offer another option.

"Spell power" is a vague term, to which you are applying spell point value as a measure, when that designation is entirely arbitrary.
IT ISN'T ARBITRARY.
It is the measure that the designers used when designing the Warlock. It's the measure that they used to keep Pact Magic and Mystic Arcanum on equal footing with traditional casters.
It isn't arbitrary at all.
Just because you guys don't like what that math tells you doesn't make it arbitrary.

RedWarlock

2018-09-26, 05:47 AM

IT ISN'T ARBITRARY.
It is the measure that the designers used when designing the Warlock. It's the measure that they used to keep Pact Magic and Mystic Arcanum on equal footing with traditional casters.
It isn't arbitrary at all.
Just because you guys don't like what that math tells you doesn't make it arbitrary.

"Spell points == spell power" is TOTALLY arbitrary. The number of spell slots/spell points assigned to each class is a concrete number, but you referring to that as "spell power" is an arbitrary designation, and THAT is what everyone else is getting caught on, because those two words, "spell power", can mean a dozen different things to ten other people.

Asmotherion

2018-09-26, 06:34 AM

Simplified Warlock:

The Warlock Class works around 4 core Pilars:

-Eldritch Blast is it's main Weapon. It has a lot of support mechanics through invocations (like Agonising Blast), and spells (Like Hex or AoEs to Drive your targets into via Repeling Blast, an other Invocation). Hexblades might sub this for regular weapons (or might get both).

I don't really get non Cha Based BladeLocks, so I won't comment on that.

-Pact Magic is a different kind of magic system all together. You have a lot less spell slots (2 for most of your playthrough, eventually 3 and up to 4 at the end game), but: They are always cast at the highest level.

The other upside is they Recharge during a Short Rest. Depending on Variant Rules your DM may be using (10 minute short rests for example, or even longer short and long rests), or at least as long as your DM allows the party to Rest between encounters, this can give you a better flow of magic in your campain than the rest of the party, as long as you know how to use your spell slots.

-Then, you have Invocations. Invocations give you custom Magical effects, kinda like Customising your Extra Class Features, witch is very cool in it's own right, and one of the greatest things in the Warlock Class in my oppinion. Some allow you to cast specific spells at-will, allowing you a lot more versality, others allow you a passive ability, and others the ability to cast a more powerful spell once, using one of your spell slots (oppening up some potential versality to your combinations).

-Finally, you have your Pact Boon, which helps you define your role in the party. Are you the Keeper of the Forbiden Tome, the Wielder of the Cursed Weapon or the Master of the Exotic Familiar? Get some bonuses from it that help you on your already customised path, and don't forget to thank your patron for the excelent gift.

Overall, the Warlock Class offers a lot of Customisation. As I view it, that's more or less it's concept, game wise.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 07:17 AM

"Spell points == spell power" is TOTALLY arbitrary. The number of spell slots/spell points assigned to each class is a concrete number, but you referring to that as "spell power" is an arbitrary designation, and THAT is what everyone else is getting caught on, because those two words, "spell power", can mean a dozen different things to ten other people.
One more time. It isn't arbitrary.
Raw spellcasting power, independent of class or features or spell lists, can only be determined in this one way. By the number of, and levels of, spell slots.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
Those spell slots can each be granted a numerical value, equivalent to that of the spell points chart.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
This is what was used by the designers when creating the warlock. This is what was used by the designers to get the warlock class balanced as a caster compared to the other, more traditional spellcasters.
They used that method because that method determines raw spellcasting power.
This is why I use it as my basis for comparison. I use it for this purpose because the designers used it for that purpose.
What friggin part of that is arbitrary?

I'll say this again. Just because you don't like what it tells you doesn't make it arbitrary.

I'm done debating this point with you.
Offer another suggestion of how to compare them, or continue arguing for the sake of argument.
Offer another suggestion.
Offer another suggestion.
Offer another suggestion.

Offer. Another. Suggestion.

Xetheral

2018-09-26, 07:35 AM

I understand you.
I don't think you understand me.
I'm saying that this is the best/only way to quantify it. People want to complain about the Warlock's spellcasting power level? Ok, but we need to quantify it first.
I have offered what I believe to be the only reliable way of doing so.
I have also offered to listen to any other suggestions on how to do so, which you refuse to give.

If you think there is a problem, you need to first define that problem *without* regards to your feelings, and then offer a solution.
My contention is that there isn't actually a problem other than peoples' personal bias, as shown by mathematics.
You disagree.
Okay, so show me how and why I'm wrong, and do so with verifiable, standardized, systematic, non-arbitrary measures.

I'll be waiting.

You claim to understand me, but your response suggests otherwise. Your assertion that yours is the "best/only" method to quantify spellpower is entirely irrelevant to my point. I'm trying to point out a fundamental problem with your argument that can't be corrected by showing your methodology to be superior to other methodologies. Similarly, even if I did present a methodology that you agreed was superior to your own, it wouldn't even strengthen my objection to your methodology.

I'll try again to re-explain my underlying point:

The claim "Warlocks have less spellcasting power than Wizards" is not a quantitative claim because "spellcasting power" is not well-defined. Ergo, it cannot be disproven quantitatively because it is not subject to measurement. At best, it can be modelled quantitatively, and the results of the model offered to try to persuade the claimant and others. But any such model is not, and cannot be, proof that the claim is wrong.

You have modelled the claim using spellpoints. Great! You can offer that model to try to persuade the claimant and others. What you cannot do, and what no quantitative model ever could, is prove that the claim is wrong. Even if I did as you suggested, and offered a way to quantify spellcasting power that you agreed was superior to spell points, that "better" method still couldn't be used to disprove the claim that "Warlocks have less spellcasting power than Wizards."

What it all boils down to: you're misusing the mathematical term "proof" by claiming that you have proved something that fundamentally isn't subject to proof or disproof.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-26, 07:43 AM

Simplified Warlock:

The Warlock Class works around 4 core Pilars:

-- snip a fine summary--
Overall, the Warlock Class offers a lot of Customisation. As I view it, that's more or less it's concept, game wise. Thanks for interrupting the DBZ and others arguing into the void with a nice summary of the Warlock class. I wish Pact of the Blade had been a little stronger originally, and hexblade a bit less front loaded. The two are both, in my view, a bit too far from center compared to each other.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 07:44 AM

Wrong.
It absolutely is quantitative, and can be measured as such.
It is not qualitative though, because each spellcasting class had its own list, its own features, its own recovery method, etc.
Not qualitative across the board.
Absolutely quantitative across the board.

Zalabim

2018-09-26, 08:07 AM

My problem is that it doesn't do its intended job of spreading short rests oit to every two to 3 encounters. It can be difficult as a dm to craft scenarios whete the party can take hour long breaks after every couple encounters, but can't take such breaks after every single encounter. 4e handled this with for milestonds in a purely gameist manner, every couple encounters you just got one, without any in game justification, because they were a non-diagetic game abstraction, like hit points or class level.

Imo that, along with short rests just assumed after every encounter, worked better, because you could let encounter pacing play out naturally based on the sessions narrative flow, without risking any game breaking or fun ruining balance problems because you violated all these heavy handed mechanical assumptions imposed on your narrative framework.
The limitation with assuming a short rest after every encounter is that you then provide resources in quantities that are to be used in every encounter. Being flexible with how often short rests are interspersed with encounters opens up flexibility in how many short rest resources can be allotted to a character and how that character spends those resources between short rests. If the expectation is normally that there's two encounters before a rest, then a character has the potential to use up to twice as many of their short rest resources in a single, particularly challenging encounter. Or use up less than normal on an easier encounter and carry the remainder to another.

the ability to pass on unused resources over a short rest
Since I've seen this mentioned more than once now, I wanted to point out that warlocks can keep the Hex spell across rests, and some of their patron features offer benefits that persist beyond a short rest, like the healing from Hexblade's Curse and the Temp HP from Dark One's Blessing. The big leveling factor though is that wizards still have to obey the hardest limits on power: Concentration and action economy. In the maybe-TPK like the OP is facing, a couple fireballs would be awfully nice, but there's really no guarantee any particular character will still be standing when round three rolls around.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-26, 08:09 AM

The limitation with assuming a short rest after every encounter is that you then provide resources in quantities that are to be used in every encounter.
As laid out, it's after every two encounters, roughly, if we look at the 6-8 with 2 or 3 short rests adventure day before resources are exhausted model the Crawford has clarified in a tweet.

Xetheral

2018-09-26, 08:24 AM

One more time. It isn't arbitrary.
Raw spellcasting power, independent of class or features or spell lists, can only be determined in this one way. By the number of, and levels of, spell slots.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
Those spell slots can each be granted a numerical value, equivalent to that of the spell points chart.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
This is what was used by the designers when creating the warlock. This is what was used by the designers to get the warlock class balanced as a caster compared to the other, more traditional spellcasters.
They used that method because that method determines raw spellcasting power.
This is why I use it as my basis for comparison. I use it for this purpose because the designers used it for that purpose.
What friggin part of that is arbitrary?

(Emphasis added.) You appear to be using "arbitrary" in the rhetorical sense, where it means, approximately, "not well justified". However, in mathematics (the context you have explicitly invoked with your claim to have disproven others "with math"), "arbitary" means, approximately, "one among many".

The bolded section of the above is the step that is arbitrary in the mathematical sense. You have to "grant a numerical value" because the slots don't already have one. There are many possible numerical values one could grant, which makes the choice of any particular value arbitrary, by the mathematical definition. The moment you pick any numerical value, you're outside the realm of proof, and into the realm of modelling.

Wrong.
It absolutely is quantitative, and can be measured as such.
It is not qualitative though, because each spellcasting class had its own list, its own features, its own recovery method, etc.
Not qualitative across the board.
Absolutely quantitative across the board.

Consider the analogous claim: "X tank has more combat power than Y tank". This claim is not quantitative because "combat power" is not a well-defined unit, and thus cannot be measured. There are many possible ways to quantitatively model combat power, but the choice of any particular modelling method is arbitrary (in the mathematical sense). Ergo, one cannot use mathematics to "prove" the claim true or false based on the results of any particular model, even if there were widespread agreement that a particular model was superior to others.

The Aboleth

2018-09-26, 10:33 AM

Just because you guys don't like what that math tells you doesn't make it arbitrary.

Hello, Pot! Meet Kettle.

Some spells are widely agreed to be better than others. Eldritch Blast is widely agreed to be a great damage-dealing cantrip--maybe the best damage-dealing cantrip, especially at low levels. When facing an enemy that is vulnerable to fire, however, one could reasonably say that Firebolt is the more powerful cantrip to use--despite the fact that, on average, fire is one of the most commonly resisted damage types in the game.

It's subjective and situation-dependent, is what I'm saying, and you can't just ignore that because you don't like subjectivity. Everything about a spell's power is subjective because spells don't exist in the real world, so we have to come up with a way to quantify an already abstract concept--and no matter what method we choose, that method will always have some level of subjectivity because we are trying to quantify make-believe things.

You don't like other people's methods, and prefer to use spell points? That's fine, but don't act like it's objectively better and then be a jerk to people for not agreeing with you. It's ALL subjective, and your passive-aggressive "Still waiting" comments aren't helping to bring anyone over to your point of view.

Ruebin Rybnik

2018-09-26, 10:34 AM

One more time. It isn't arbitrary.
Raw spellcasting power, independent of class or features or spell lists, can only be determined in this one way. By the number of, and levels of, spell slots.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
Those spell slots can each be granted a numerical value, equivalent to that of the spell points chart.
That determines raw spellcasting power.
This is what was used by the designers when creating the warlock. This is what was used by the designers to get the warlock class balanced as a caster compared to the other, more traditional spellcasters.
They used that method because that method determines raw spellcasting power.
This is why I use it as my basis for comparison. I use it for this purpose because the designers used it for that purpose.
What friggin part of that is arbitrary?

I'll say this again. Just because you don't like what it tells you doesn't make it arbitrary.

I'm done debating this point with you.
Offer another suggestion of how to compare them, or continue arguing for the sake of argument.
Offer another suggestion.
Offer another suggestion.
Offer another suggestion.

Offer. Another. Suggestion.

(Emphasis added.)Lets say you aren't being arbitrary. The other big issue is that even with just looking at one spell slot there are to many variables to determine that it is = X amount of power. It would be more accurate to say it = X amount of potential. Spell points = spell power is great on paper. However when you apply this to what really happens with PCs, NPCs, and monters making choices; on top of how the dice roll will affect those choices; it just doesnt add up.

So sure a 3rd lvl slot has the potential to do 8d6 with a Fireball, or maybe give your whole party advantage on attacks with Hypnotic Pattern. Those are just AoE spells good against groups, then there are sigle target spells and non combat spells. In the end dicounting use and choice for the sake of your point only makes it less valid.

strangebloke

2018-09-26, 11:18 AM

Pact magic is not weaker than regular spellcasting. It's less flexible.

You can't drop five leveled spells in a single encounter. If you cast any spell that doesn't scale, you're wasting spell power. If you go between a pair of short rests without spending your resources, you're effectively wasting them.

Moreover, warlocks have a middling quality spell list, mystic incarnum is actually just really bad, and warlocks don't get many spells known. They aren't nearly as strong a caster as a wizard.

...but they also get light armor, better hit points, invocations, and pact boons.

So don't compare them to a wizard. Compare them to a bard. Warlocks fill the same niche.

Bards can drop a lot of spells in a single combat, but since most of their good combat spells are concentration, there really isn't a great reason to do that, so their power in a single combat is comparable. Bards can pick up expertise in a few skills, but warlocks can achieve similar effects through their invocations and/or pact boons. A bard with expertise in stealth and disguise fills a similar role to a Tomelock with at-will disguise self, silence, and invisibility. The bard list is completely lacking in damaging spells, whereas the Warlock list is heavily oriented for direct damage. The bard gets bardic inspiration, the warlock gets ritual casting or a super-familiar. Bards can specialize through their secrets choices, Warlocks get their invocations.

TL;DR: I think that the warlock is weak compared with a bard, but I also think that bards are one of the most overpowered classes in 5e, but that no one minds because bards are very much so relegated to the role of support character.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 03:22 PM

Xetheral

2018-09-26, 05:17 PM

Strangebloke and I agree on it.

Everyone else is being ridiculous.
So you're telling me that:
1) using the numbers laid out but the designers
2) in the manner with which they laid out those numbers
3) in the same capacity that they laid out those numbers
4) to gague the relative spellcasting power of a class specifically designed around those numbers
.... is an arbitrary use of those numbers....
Ridiculous. Entirely and completely ridiculous.
Nice try.

ar·bi·trar·y
ˈärbəˌtrerē/Submit
adjective
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

I'm using that methodology because that's what the designers used. There is a reason. It isn't random and it isn't based on personal whim. It uses a system.
It uses the same system the designers used.
Using the same system that the designers used for the same propose that the designers used it is not an arbitrary use of that system, no matter how many times you say that it is.

The designers used that non-arbitrary system when creating the Warlock class to keep its casting balanced against other more traditional casters.
My use of it to compare spellcasting power levels between the different classes is not arbitrary in any way. It's literally what the designers did when creating the class.
If you think my usage of it in this way is arbitrary, then you quite simply don't know what the word means.

You could argue that the creation of the spell point system itself was arbitrary.
But after that creation the designers used it in multiple ways, one of which was the creation of the warlock class' spell slot progression.
The creation of spell points may have been arbitrary. My usage of it in this case was and is not. I use it for this purpose not arbitrarily, but rather because the people who designed the class we're discussing used it for this purpose.

Repeatedly claiming that my usage of the spell point system in this manner is arbitrary does not make it so.
I had an extremely good reason to use spell points. I use them because that's what the designers used. This explicitly makes it not an arbitrary decision, no matter how many times you repeat it.

When we say your choice of spell points was "arbitrary", we are using "arbitrary" in the sense it has in mathematics, which differs from the definition you quoted above. So no one is accusing you of making the decision to use spell points for your analysis based on random choice or personal whim. You have good reasons to do so! But the fact that you made a decision at all regarding how to quantify "spellcasting power" means that your analysis can never rise to the level of mathematical proof about others' claims.

I apologize if you feel attacked--that is certainly not my intention. My point remains that when you claim your spellpoint analysis (the specific case where spellpoints = "spellcasting power", which you selected for good reasons) mathematically proves that Warlocks have equal spell casting power to Wizards (the general case, where "spellcasting power" is not well-defined) you're wrong because at a basic, fundamental level, a mathematical proof can't do that. You're simply misusing the term "proof".

SpanielBear

2018-09-26, 05:36 PM

(snipped for brevity)

…

I'm using that methodology because that's what the designers used. There is a reason. It isn't random and it isn't based on personal whim. It uses a system.
It uses the same system the designers used.
Using the same system that the designers used for the same propose that the designers used it is not an arbitrary use of that system, no matter how many times you say that it is.

The designers used that non-arbitrary system when creating the Warlock class to keep its casting balanced against other more traditional casters.
My use of it to compare spellcasting power levels between the different classes is not arbitrary in any way. It's literally what the designers did when creating the class.
If you think my usage of it in this way is arbitrary, then you quite simply don't know what the word means.

…

You keep saying you are using the same system the designers used, and that this metric was the one they used to balance the classes.

That... cannot be correct.

Leaving aside the non-magic using classes, even within the spell-casters we have variation in armour proficiencies, class abilities, specialisms and attacks-per-round.

However they are balancing (or trying to balance, YMMV) all those variables, they couldn't do it just by going "Well the spell slots add up, jobs a good'un".

Or else do we argue that all paladins are weaker than clerics, because the have less spell slots? Does the dream druid's expanded spell lists not feature when balancing them against a moon-druid's wild shapes?

I mean, I do think you're onto something when you call class comparison subjective- at the end of the day, a class is either fun or not fun and that's not exactly an objective set of criteria. I just don't think that's the problem we're trying to solve. We want to try to answer what there is to 'get' about warlocks.

I love the warlock, for what it's worth, but I also agree with those who say it isn't as good a pure spell caster as a wizard or sorcerer. You would argue that it is based on spell slots? Fair enough, but I don't think that's satisfactory. Where you have your maths, I have my subjective experience that I am going to be doing a lot less high level spells in a combat and a lot more cantrips instead. I am going to be better at face roles; exceptional with the right invocations (which don't feature in your spell point calculations) whereas a wizard will probably be muttering in a corner. Your maths may be objective, but its... kinda unhelpful when describing what there is to get about the class.

"What's the difference between wizards and warlocks?"

"All we can really say is that they have the same spell points. Everything else is arbitrary."

MrStabby

2018-09-26, 05:44 PM

"I use them because that's what the designers used."

Ok. Now it seems like we are getting somewhere.

Now there is a difference between an appeal to authority and no reason. There is also a difference between an appeal to authority and maths as well.

The problem is that the context is a question over whether the Warlock is well designed. It is the point of the OP.

The argument that it's all OK because the designers expected that spell "power" would work in a certain way is a bit circular. To argue that the designers didn't make a mistake because their choices agree with the assumptions they make doesn't really take us any further- especially in the context of questioning whether in this case the design assumptions have worked.

If someone finds Warlock spell slots underwhelming it doesn't help to suggest that they shouldn't because that is how the designers intended them to be. I think the contention isn't that there was a typo that made the class painful but that it was a flaw in the design process.

Sure the designers may have followed the spell point table, but that may just mean that if there is a design flaw (as the OP raised) then it is entirely possible that the flaw is in the table.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 05:45 PM

You keep saying you are using the same system the designers used, and that this metric was the one they used to balance the classes.

That... cannot be correct.

Leaving aside the non-magic using classes, even within the spell-casters we have variation in armour proficiencies, class abilities, specialisms and attacks-per-round.

It is exactly correct.
Those differences your speak of are balanced via spell list differences. But every caster who gets 9th level spellcasting, ALL OF THEM, follow this exact same formula with regards to spell slots and raw spellcasting power. The simple fact is that all of the other ones have the same casting mechanic. The warlock uses a different mechanic, but that different mechanic follows the same raw spellcasting power level formula. In order to keep them equal in raw casting power, the designers used spell points as a basis for translation, and that is how and why the warlock gets 1 slot at level 1, 2 @ 2, 3 @ 11, etc.
It isn't random.

ad_hoc

2018-09-26, 05:50 PM

MrStabby

2018-09-26, 05:51 PM

It is exactly correct.
Those differences your speak of are balanced via spell list differences. But every caster who gets 9th level spellcasting, ALL OF THEM, follow this exact same formula with regards to spell slots and raw spellcasting power.

Other than wizards who have arcane recovery. And druids with natural recovery. And sorcerers with font of magic. But other than that yes. There is a pattern.

JakOfAllTirades

2018-09-26, 05:54 PM

SpanielBear

2018-09-26, 06:05 PM

It is exactly correct.
Those differences your speak of are balanced via spell list differences. But every caster who gets 9th level spellcasting, ALL OF THEM, follow this exact same formula with regards to spell slots and raw spellcasting power. The simple fact is that all of the other ones have the same casting mechanic. The warlock uses a different mechanic, but that different mechanic follows the same raw spellcasting power level formula. In order to keep them equal in raw casting power, the designers used spell points as a basis for translation, and that is how and why the warlock gets 1 slot at level 1, 2 @ 2, 3 @ 11, etc.
It isn't random.

That's true, and a fair point. But I still think it isn't really helpful to shut down all discussion around every other feature of any class because they aren't mathematical.

I mean, you yourself are saying they balance the classes through access to different spell lists. That means that a Paladin's 3rd level spell slot is going to be different qualitatively than a Wizards. So to compare the classes and discuss them, you're going to have to go into those differences that aren't easily quantifiable.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 06:09 PM

Other than wizards who have arcane recovery. And druids with natural recovery. And sorcerers with font of magic. But other than that yes. There is a pattern.

Not other than that.
Including that.
The long rest designed full 9th level casters who have a minor recovery method are the ones which basically have no place in melee.
The other ones (bard, moon druid, cleric) all do much, much better in melee. The bard has light/medium armor, more weapons, and potentially an extra attack. The moon druid has wild shape. The cleric has medium/heavy armor and a melee damage bonus.
The casters who don't get these goodies get a minor recovery mechanic, specifically because they'll be casting more spells out of necessity.

Not other than those things.
Including those things.

That's true, and a fair point. But I still think it isn't really helpful to shut down all discussion around every other feature of any class because they aren't mathematical.

I mean, you yourself are saying they balance the classes through access to different spell lists. That means that a Paladin's 3rd level spell slot is going to be different qualitatively than a Wizards. So to compare the classes and discuss them, you're going to have to go into those differences that aren't easily quantifiable.

The raw power potential of that slot doesn't change. The raw power potential is a constant. The spell list differences reign that potential in, purposefully, to account for all those other things the paladin gets which the wizard doesn't.
The paladin gets a bunch more features.
The wizard gets a larger, more diverse spell list.
But a 3rd level slot is a 3rd level slot, regardless of who has it.

MrStabby

2018-09-26, 06:22 PM

Are we talking about the power of spell slots here or the power of classes?

Saying "Yeah, ok. Pact magic is less powerful but it is balanced out by other strong class features" is very different from saying "Pact magic is as strong as the spellcasting feature".

I am not saying the former is not still controversial, but being clear about whether we are comparing casting features or classes might be useful to avoid people talking past each other.

SpanielBear

2018-09-26, 06:27 PM

…

But a 3rd level slot is a 3rd level slot, regardless of who has it.

No it isn't. One 3rd level slot can be used to cast fireball. The other cannot. One turns up at level five. The other does not. Telling me that a paladin and a wizard are balanced because they both have level 3 spell slots tells me absolutely nothing. In order to explain that difference, you have to go into all the other class features, what they mean and their relative effects. You also have to explain why a Paladin doesn't get fireball, which will, I guarantee, be a conversation that will boil down to gut feeling and subjectivity.

That's not intended to be a criticism, either. I think by and large the game and classes feel balanced. I just think that trying to say it was done using one perfect variable and that that is utterly objective is mistaken, and doesn't come near to answering the question raised by the OP.

qube

2018-09-26, 07:05 PM

My contention is that there isn't actually a problem other than peoples' personal bias, as shown by mathematics.[quote]My contention is that your mathematics are based upon presumptions others are not willing to take - which makes your mathematics a tube build on sand.

If your proof is only valid if A = B, then only the people who accepts A = B, will accept your proof.
But you haven't proven A = B - you've only said it. And that's the "sand", the instability.

Your proof stands and falls with the unproven - and by many unaccepted - claim that A = B. It's why your proof is a tube: what you put in one side, you get the exact same thing out the other: vaild -> valid, unvalid -> invalid. An actual proof isn't a tube, but a block -- there's nothing to put in one side. It rests on the rock foundations which are the axioms everyone agrees upon,

Unless you actually prove it, opposite to claiming "it's the only way", or "there are no better ways", or "it's what the devs use" (because the devs are infalible beings they can't be wrong?) ... it's still keeps being the same problem.

it's sand.

[QUOTE=DivisibleByZero;23394216]I'm saying that this is the best/only way to quantify it. People want to complain about the Warlock's spellcasting power level? Ok, but we need to quantify it first.Okidoki. Quantification tim
Spell level (lvl 2 = 2x lvl 1)
the bland sorcery point table system you propose
a upgrade-by-convert-via-sorcery-points-system
(a lvl 2 spell is equivalent to 3 lvl 1 spells, as you need to burn 3 lvl 1 spells to get a lvl 2)
average between a downgrade-by-convert-via-sorcery-points-system and upgrade-by-convert-via-sorcery-points-system (and there are in fact 2 ways to calc the average)
3 x lvl 1 => 3 sp => 1 x lvl 2 (3:1) or (1:3)
1 x lvl 2 => 2 sp => 1 x lvl 1 (1:1)
average(3/1, 1/1) = average(3, 1) = 2 = 2/1 ---> lvl 2 vs lvl 1 has a 1:2 ratio
average(1/3, 1/1) = 2/3 ---> lvl 2 vs lvl 1 has a 2:3 ratio
spell effect based (ex. using average damage of a generic single target spell of a certain level)
0.5 second of thought. 4 different ways opposite to quantify spell, which will give different results for comparing spell levels.

I'm using that methodology because that's what the designers used. There is a reason. It isn't random and it isn't based on personal whim. It uses a system.
It uses the same system the designers used.
As pointed out before, all you verify is that the game designers didn't mess up their maths. But you baselessly assume their methodology was correct.

I just need you to prove that there is a better one.No, because that's trying to shift the burden of proof.

What you need is for us to agree with your assumption that spell points (and the way you use them) is sufficiently correct enough.

Trying to convince us that we need to take your way, just because some of us don't immediately can come up with an alternative (or, maybe worse - we can, but you don't like proposed alternatives), it's that easy, and most likely, simply isn't going to fly.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-26, 07:27 PM

Spell points.
Not sorcery points.
There's a difference.

Look at the variant spell point system in the DMG. It aligns perfectly with the full caster's spell slots mathematically.
Take a warlock's spell slots and multiply it by 1+# of short rests to get a total at any level. Compare the two. Add for any Mystic Arcanum that might be present at that level.
You'll see that the Warlock was built using the spell point variant, with the stipulation that the warlock can only create a slot of his highest level available (any excess points are lost, because there aren't enough to create a slot of his highest level, but that's all he can do).
There was method to the warlock's spell slots. It wasn't random.

A warlock uses the spell point variant by default, but can only create spells of his highest level.
On any given adventuring day that follows the suggested resting rates, he has the same raw spellcasting power of any of the other full casters, but he trades spellcasting versatility for Invocations and a Pact Boon.

If you took any of the other casters and forced them to use the spell point system (or a psion from 3.5, for example), and told them that they could ONLY create spells of their highest level (up to 5th, one each after that) then 5e warlock casting is EXACTLY what you'd end up with.
Warlocks are no less powerful than other casters. They simply lack the versatility that other casters have.
People confuse the two. And since they hate the lack of versatility that they confused with raw power, they think the warlock is weaker than the others.
It isn't weaker. It's less versatile.

strangebloke

2018-09-26, 08:09 PM

Thanks for pointing out the flaws in Pact Magic so I don't have to. I'd like to note that Mystic Arcana have the opposite problem: while Pact Magic spells are always upcast, Mystic Arcana can never be upcast, ever. Tallying up spell points (vs. Wizards, or Bards, either one) doesn't tell the whole story because it doesn't account for the Warlock's appalling lack of flexibility.

And how exactly do you calculate spell points for at-will invocations? If I've got a 1st level spell I can cast once per round 24 hours a day, how many spell points is that worth?

Let's see... 24 hours times 60 minutes times 10 castings per minute equals: 28,800 spell points per day! Awesome!!!

I think spell points are a foolish oversimplification of what's going on. Clerics and wizards have equal spell points, but their spellcasting features are not at all equals.

Mystic Arcanum is bad because it's completely inflexible. You can't upcast anything beyond fifth level.

I'd honestly say that bard spellcasting and warlock pact magic and mystic Arcanum are roughly equivalent.

Cerefel

2018-09-26, 10:16 PM

At this point can someone just make another thread for the quantification of spellcasting power? It's really getting in the way of the warlock discussion

qube

2018-09-27, 12:19 AM

Spell points.
Not sorcery points.
There's a difference.Cool. So, what you're saying is that I've come up with 6 different ways to quantify a spell instead of 5. GREAT !

...Recall when you said the following?

That was a whole lot of words to type for you to not offer a better way to measure it.

That's a whole lot of words to type for you to not offer a proof of why spellpoints would be the best way to use as quantifier to gauge the power of spellcaster.

I see a whole lot of "if we use spellpoints, then they end up equal" - but that's circular reasoning. You prepresume they have to end equal, pick a qualifier that supports your premise ... and loo and behold, if you use that quanitfier, they end up equal. That's not "proof" - but clear fallicious reasoning.

You should FIRST establish why spellpoints are the correct way to quantify, WITHOUT looking at the classes; and only SECONDAIRLY apply your quantifier to the classes to guage wether they end up balanced or not.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 12:30 AM

Or you should just ask the designers whether they used that model when designing the Warlock.
I don't need to.
I did that years ago.

qube

2018-09-27, 01:30 AM

Or you should just ask the designers whether they used that model when designing the Warlock.
I don't need to.
I did that years ago.But the designers didn't claim they had proof the warlock was balanced, now did they. YOU did.

Basically, this ends up being your "proof"

Circular reasoning / Divine fallacy

The Game devs didn't just throw random numbers on a piece of paper. They thought about it, and with their thought process (which they also wrote down as spellpoints) they ended up deciding the numbers

Proof warlocks balanced

Well, we should use spellpoints, because the game devs used them, and then you can see it all adds up !

Somehow you've missed the MOST IMPORANT ASPECT of the entire thing - which is ACTUALLY PROVING that the method the game devs used to is balanced. Opposite to that, you just tried to ram it down our throats, calling it the best/only way to quantify spells (which, as pointed out, is obvioulsy nonsense)

Wanna see how stupid that is? This is your proof:

I've got proof the warlock beastmaster ranger is balanced.

The game devs used a method to create it.

If we use the same method, it adds up.

Q.E.D.

Why did they use that reason? Dunno. Ask them.

"proof"? Consider it debunked.

RedWarlock

2018-09-27, 02:16 AM

Not to keep dealing nonlethal damage to the horse at -10 hp, but quantifying it purely via spell points was also a distinction you (DBZ) chose. Ignoring class features, ignoring spell lists, these are decisions you made which others were not allowed a point in deciding. The other forum members may not agree that those details should be set aside, and they may feel that those details are a crucial factor in deciding how to compare the classes' capabilities and the power of their spellcasting.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 03:29 AM

But the designers didn't claim they had proof the warlock was balanced, now did they. YOU did.

They did it that way IN ORDER TO BALANCE THEM, so yes, they did make that claim the moment the book was released.

I think some of you either don't know, or forgot, exactly how much playtesting went (and goes) into DnD5e.
Like earlier when someone claimed that I wasn't using the word "empirical" correctly when discussing a subject that I personally know was playtested vigorously in what is hands down the most playtested TTRPG ever released.

Not to keep dealing nonlethal damage to the horse at -10 hp, but quantifying it purely via spell points was also a distinction you (DBZ) chose. Ignoring class features, ignoring spell lists, these are decisions you made which others were not allowed a point in deciding. The other forum members may not agree that those details should be set aside, and they may feel that those details are a crucial factor in deciding how to compare the classes' capabilities and the power of their spellcasting.

Spell lists are inconsequential when determining the raw spellcasting power potential of a spell slot.
Class features are inconsequential when determining the raw spellcasting power potential of a spell slot.

Those things may be "crucial" when comparing different classes' capabilities, but they are inconsequential when determining the raw potential of a slot.
A 3rd level slot is a 3rd level slot, no matter what class is written on your character sheet.
The question was never about the capabilities of the different classes. The question was whether or not they were balanced against each other via raw power potential. You're arguing a straw man.

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 03:41 AM

No we are not.

You are arguing that there is only one metric to consider.

We are arguing that there are many.

You have *never* accounted for how "raw spell power" balances non-spell slot features. You have appealed to authority, but all you have demonstrated is that spell casters all end up with the same number of spell slots.

Great. Spell casters with the same spell power have the same spell power.

That is a tautology. That is unhelpful. It is especially unhelpful when spell-power is *not* a complete picture of the class- as you yourself have conceded, saying that spell slots available to each class is determined by spell selection.

We are not asking what makes a warlock the same as a wizard. We are explicitly looking at the differences between them, and what the consequences of those distinctions are.

Addendum: To paraphrase the OP, the original question was "what role does a warlock fill that a wizard doesn't?"

"Warlocks and wizards have equivalent spell power", while true, doesn't answer the question because it doesn't explain any of the differences. Saying that isn't a strawman, it's illustrating why we are not accepting your argument.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 03:46 AM

You have *never* accounted for how "raw spell power" balances non-spell slot features.

Because they don't.
Those things are balanced in other ways, like with smaller/different spell lists. That has nothing to do with the raw potential of a slot.
You're pretending that it does.
It doesn't.

As far as pure, raw spellcasting potential power goes, warlocks, wizards, clerics, druids, and bards are all equals. The all also have many differences which shine in different circumstances. But as far as raw spellcasting power goes, they're all on an even playing field unless your DM doesn't follow the suggested rest guidelines.

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 03:49 AM

Because they don't.
Those things are balanced in other ways, like with smaller/different spell lists. That has nothing to do with the raw potential of a slot.
You're pretending that it does.
It doesn't.

I apologise, I amended my question before reading your response. That edit is pertinent, but I will say again- insisting that discussions only refer to raw spell power doesn't answer the OP's question. That's why we all want to widen the debate.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 03:52 AM

I call BS.
You just shifted the goal post from "Your measurement is arbitrary" to "OK, you're right, but that doesn't tell the whole story."

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 04:14 AM

I call BS.
You just shifted the goal post from "Your measurement is arbitrary" to "OK, you're right, but that doesn't tell the whole story."

I believed your measurement was arbitrary. You demonstrated it wasn't. Arguing in good faith, I conceded that point, but remained unsatisfied. So I thought about why that was, and responded accordingly.

That's not moving the goal posts. That's how a discussion works. Otherwise we'd just keep saying the same thing over and over...

.... wait.

Chaosmancer

2018-09-27, 06:38 AM

As far as pure, raw spellcasting potential power goes, warlocks, wizards, clerics, druids, and bards are all equals. The all also have many differences which shine in different circumstances. But as far as raw spellcasting power goes, they're all on an even playing field unless your DM doesn't follow the suggested rest guidelines.

Or unless you count ritual casting which allows for free spells without the use of a slot (not all warlock's get that)

Or unless you count eldritch invocations which allow for spells to be cast for free.

Or you count recovery features which clerics and bards don't get.

And, claiming they are equal as long as enough rests are taken for them to be equal shows they are only equal at a specific point. Fewer or more rests (by this metric) makes them potentially stronger or weaker. The entire point of the first half of this thread was that despite 6-8 encounters with short rests after every two enounters being the recommendation almost NO ONE follows that metric. Organic games do not usually allow for strict adherence to a schedule. This isn't wrong of the DM, it is a natural consequence of allowing the game freedom for anything to happen.

So is such a variably balanced class, which requires this strict schedule adherence to remain competitive a good design compared to classes which are not balanced around a particular schedule? Saying yes because you follow the schedule avoids the question.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 07:55 AM

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that literally every single one of those points has already been addressed save for ritual casting, and that can be had by anyone for a feat.

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 08:00 AM

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-27, 08:01 AM

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that literally every single one of those points has already been addressed save for ritual casting, and that can be had by anyone for a feat. Except that feats are optional. :smallwink: As is multi-classing. (IIRC, the feats weren't part of the balance framework, but that may be too simplistic a way of saying that).

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 08:18 AM

Except that feats are optional. :smallwink: As is multi-classing. (IIRC, the feats weren't part of the balance framework, but that may be too simplistic a way of saying that).

Okay, then we can say that the class most commonly referred to as the most overpowered class in the game is too weak, because the bard doesn't have ritual casting. :smallwink:

But it's still irrelevant, as that isn't something which factors into the spell slot or spell points tables, and is a class feature, and as we've already discussed, different classes have different features to keep balance between casting and other class roles. That is to say, it had nothing to do with this conversation to begin with.
Ritual casting isn't something that factors into caster balance with regards to raw power potential. It's something added to classes after that raw spellcasting power balance has already been established.
The baseline of every 9th level caster, sans every other feature, is equal.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-27, 08:27 AM

Okay, then we can say that the class most commonly referred to as the most overpowered class in the game is too weak, because the bard doesn't have ritual casting. :smallwink:

But it's still irrelevant, as that isn't something which factors into the spell slot or spell points tables, and is a class feature, and as we've already discussed, different classes have different features to keep balance between casting and other class roles. That is to say, it had nothing to do with this conversation to begin with.
Ritual casting isn't something that factors into caster balance with regards to raw power potential. It's something added to classes after that raw spellcasting power balance has already been established.
The baseline of every 9th level caster, sans every other feature, is equal.
I am not disputing that, and am not really in this argument since the short rest appears to be a core piece of the game design that any number of players and DM's don't grok, don't apply, or a bit of both. When the resource exhaustion game model/framework is applied (which means understood by the DM and the players) then those short rest class and sub class features add significantly to play. I've seen the difference in the groups I play in. (Monk ki recharges, for the win!)

But in a couple of groups (including one I am currently in) short rest awareness simply isn't there. Which is weird, since a core game feature for healing is the HD on short rest deal.

Warlocks and short rests: to get the warlock to be able to manifest the designed features, short rests need to be a thing. For that matter, the difference for my Champion fighter, in terms of action surges and second winds at Tier 3 is not trivial. He is a lot more effective when he's able to do a bit of recharge before "the adventure" day ends.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-27, 08:48 AM

I am not disputing that, and am not really in this argument since the short rest appears to be a core piece of the game design that any number of players and DM's don't grok, don't apply, or a bit of both. When the resource exhaustion game model/framework is applied (which means understood by the DM and the players) then those short rest class and sub class features add significantly to play. I've seen the difference in the groups I play in. (Monk ki recharges, for the win!)

But in a couple of groups (including one I am currently in) short rest awareness simply isn't there. Which is weird, since a core game feature for healing is the HD on short rest deal.

Warlocks and short rests: to get the warlock to be able to manifest the designed features, short rests need to be a thing. For that matter, the difference for my Champion fighter, in terms of action surges and second winds at Tier 3 is not trivial. He is a lot more effective when he's able to do a bit of recharge before "the adventure" day ends.

Precisely.
The problem is that players who don't understand this fact try to pawn blame off on the warlock design.
That isn't where the fault lies.

Ruebin Rybnik

2018-09-27, 09:02 AM

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that literally every single one of those points has already been addressed save for ritual casting, and that can be had by anyone for a feat.

OK DBZ you are staying the spell points are the best method to determine raw spell power; not class power, and the makes Warlocks equal to other full casters. Let's go with that. So ignoring all non-spell casting class features except spell recovery, which you have to have to say the warlock is equal at level 20. Well go with 2 short rests as designed for balance.

Bard – no recovery – 133 points
Cleric – no recovery – 133 points
Sorcerer – 4 spell points per SR – 133+20+8 = 161 points (165 with 3 SR)
Warlock – 4 5lvl/SR + Eldritch M. – 28+28+28+28= 112 points (140 with 3 SR)
Wizard – 2 5lvl slots per LR – 133+14 = 147 points

By your own metric Warlock is not even on par with Bard/Cleric unless you get 3 short rests, and none of these three are ever equal with Sorcerer/Wizard.

[Edit] Corrected Wizards total points as that can only do Arcane recovery once per LR. Still the Warlock only gets close if the get 3 SR.

tieren

2018-09-27, 09:28 AM

I also think ignoring the invocations is a mistake, some of them allow you to cast 600 first level spells per hour, how do you decide how many spell points that is worth?

qube

2018-09-27, 09:30 AM

They did it that way IN ORDER TO BALANCE THEM.

I think some of you either don't know, or forgot, exactly how much playtesting went (and goes) into DnD5e.Yes ... I get that. We all do. That's the point of me pointing out the horrible flaw in your proof:

I've got proof the warlock beastmaster ranger is balanced.

The game devs used a method to create it.

If we use the same method, it adds up.

Q.E.D.

Why did they use that reason? Dunno. Ask them.

YES, They did it that way IN ORDER TO BALANCE THEM. That they used a method to balance the DOES NOT MEAN THEY SUCCEEDED (dispite playtesting - for if that logic were valid, beastmaster would be balanced).

TO PROVE they succeeded you can't simply DUPLICATE the creation process and say you get equivalent results. A flawed method, like the one used to create the beastmaster, will ALSO give equivalent results.

And if your proof both works for balanced & unbalanced classes - it sure as heck doesn't prove a class is balanced

strangebloke

2018-09-27, 09:33 AM

I also think ignoring the invocations is a mistake, some of them allow you to cast 600 first level spells per hour, how do you decide how many spell points that is worth?

Using that metric, being a ritual caster is better than being a wizard.

Not all equal-leveled spells are created equal. A wizard 5th level spell slot is better than a Sorcerer 5th level spell slot is better than a Bard 5th level spell slot. Spell slot value is determine by the exact nature of the class's spellcasting feature and spell list.

qube

2018-09-27, 09:35 AM

I also think ignoring the invocations is a mistake, some of them allow you to cast 600 first level spells per hour, how do you decide how many spell points that is worth?Not to mention the humongous difference between 'just' a cantrip and the potential an eldritch blast has.

There's an obvious power difference there, as a die+mod is aprox twice the value of just a die.

Xetheral

2018-09-27, 09:47 AM

Precisely.
The problem is that players who don't understand this fact try to pawn blame off on the warlock design.
That isn't where the fault lies.

Regardless of where fault lies, I think it's reasonable to say that having classes benefit unequally from each type of rest makes it more challenging to run the game in less-typical paradigms.

For example, in a game with variable attendance, it can be useful and fun to run an episodic campaign where each session ends with the characters at a fixed location. That way all the PCs are together at the start of the next session, no matter who shows up to play. But that requires either each session to be a new "adventuring day" (making it challenging to squeeze in lots of encounters), or else has individual PCs each present for only part of an adventuring day. Either way, the balance is trickier than it would be if the classes benefited from each type of rest more uniformally. Do you agree?

tieren

2018-09-27, 09:49 AM

Using that metric, being a ritual caster is better than being a wizard.

Not all equal-leveled spells are created equal. A wizard 5th level spell slot is better than a Sorcerer 5th level spell slot is better than a Bard 5th level spell slot. Spell slot value is determine by the exact nature of the class's spellcasting feature and spell list.

I didn't say it should be treated equally, I said I thought it was wrong to not consider it.

Ritual casting can't make anyone stronger than a wizard because wizards already have ritual casting.

Ritual casting is only going to be able to cast 6 spells in one hour, does that make invocations 100 times stronger? I don't think so, but it is stronger, and since no other class can duplicate it should be considered when evaluating casting power.

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 09:56 AM

Edit: This was just sarcasm, I regret it. I apologise, it was unnecessary.

MaxWilson

2018-09-27, 10:58 AM

Wizard – 2 5lvl slots per SR – 133+14+14 = 161 points (175 with 3 SR)

You can only use Arcane Recovery once per long rest.

Ruebin Rybnik

2018-09-27, 11:06 AM

You can only use Arcane Recovery once per long rest.

Ahh my mistake, missed the once per long rest in the text. Thanks for the catch, i fixed it with an edit.

Chaosmancer

2018-09-27, 01:29 PM

Alright, fine.

I enjoy the OP's question, can we please get back to that.

Let's for the sake of sanity take it as read that spell power is equal.

What makes a warlock and wizard distinct, and how do you get the most out of your Warlock?

Good point, and apologies. Though I'm probably going to respond to zero a few more times

For me, warlock's are versatile. If I was playing a game with a solo or duo, I'd look into warlocks. I don't think I'd ever be satisfied by their spellcasting, but it doesn't take much to make them effective enough at combat, social encounters, and infiltration. I don't think they'd ever be as good as a specialist though, so in larger parties their drawbacks and repetitive nature would stand out more.

You can build a warlock to fit just about any niche well enough I think, especially by mid-levels when you have enough invocations to have a variety of odd ball abilities. They are almost never going to be defined by their actual spellcasting though, they just don't have enough there, either in useful unique spells or spell slots.

Chaosmancer

2018-09-27, 01:49 PM

Had you read the thread, you would have seen that literally every single one of those points has already been addressed save for ritual casting, and that can be had by anyone for a feat.

The only response I saw to Arcane Recovery type features was "these classes make up for it with better proficiencies and melee capabilities". However, that doesn't use math. That's an assertion of truth with no backing. Within your framework only the numbers matter, so how many spell points is proficency with medium armor and shields worth? People have been saying your examination falls short because it doesn't cover enough ground to show the whole picture, and even if you want to only claim balance amongst raw spells without other features, you will run into this interconneted issue. A hexblade tomelock has rituals, martial weapons proficiency and medium armor proficency. That needs to be balanced against lore bards with light armor, some weapons, and no ritual or recovery feature as well as wizards with essentially no weapons or armor, rituals, and a recovery feature. Most of these abilities (ritual casting and recovery features) increase spell power by giving more access to spell slots per day, it can't be ignored if you want to claim spell points show the classes are balanced and that is supposed to be irrefutable proof of balance.

Okay, then we can say that the class most commonly referred to as the most overpowered class in the game is too weak, because the bard doesn't have ritual casting. :smallwink:

But it's still irrelevant, as that isn't something which factors into the spell slot or spell points tables, and is a class feature, and as we've already discussed, different classes have different features to keep balance between casting and other class roles. That is to say, it had nothing to do with this conversation to begin with.
Ritual casting isn't something that factors into caster balance with regards to raw power potential. It's something added to classes after that raw spellcasting power balance has already been established.
The baseline of every 9th level caster, sans every other feature, is equal.

Right, different features of the game need to be balanced against each other.

Warlocks are more than their pact magic spellcasting.

So looking at pact magic in a vaccuum and saying "After three short rests between which all warlock spells are used their spell points would equal to a wizards full complement of daily spell points" should never mean "wizards and warlocks are perfectly balanced as long as warlocks get three short rests" because you are assuming all other aspects are properly balanced. If those other factors you are not considering are not balanced then the classes are not balanced, whether or not their potential spells per day are balanced.

MaxWilson

2018-09-27, 02:07 PM

What makes a warlock and wizard distinct, and how do you get the most out of your Warlock?

According to Harry Dresden, being a wizard is all about being prepared: foresight. A wizard in the Dresdenverse can punch way out of his league if he knows what to expect--knowledge is power.

This translates reasonably well to 5E, although not nearly as well as in some other games like AD&D. In 5E there are a number of wizardly tactics which you can do in advance to prepare for a threat, ranging from raising undead warriors to Planar Binding of elementals to setting up Glyphs and Guards and Wards and Contingencies and Clones on yourself.

Warlocks can cast only a subset of those proactive type spells, which pushes warlocks towards a more reactive playstyle, which is really unfortunate because their casting mechanics would better match the proactive wizardly style.

Honestly, you could probably have a fun game by giving warlocks long-rest casting a la wizards, and giving wizards short rest casting a la warlocks. It would reward wizards who think ahead. (It would also result in huge amounts of Tiny Servant/Animate Dead spam though, if you didn't change those spells at the same time you changed the system.)

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 02:10 PM

Good point, and apologies. Though I'm probably going to respond to zero a few more times

For me, warlock's are versatile. If I was playing a game with a solo or duo, I'd look into warlocks. I don't think I'd ever be satisfied by their spellcasting, but it doesn't take much to make them effective enough at combat, social encounters, and infiltration. I don't think they'd ever be as good as a specialist though, so in larger parties their drawbacks and repetitive nature would stand out more.

You can build a warlock to fit just about any niche well enough I think, especially by mid-levels when you have enough invocations to have a variety of odd ball abilities. They are almost never going to be defined by their actual spellcasting though, they just don't have enough there, either in useful unique spells or spell slots.

I quite agree that that spell casting feels limited (objective or not, subjectively I've cast my two spells and the druid keeps on trucking), but the class as a whole still feels satisfying. I like the way the class is so open in build- you don't just pick a sub-class at level 2 or 3, thanks to invocations and pact magic you have choices all the way through your progression. As someone who really likes the roleplaying side of things, I like that my class feels like it's growing organically with my character rather than locked into a pre-programmed route. So depending on how the character has developed, their powers can reflect that.

This is definitely a niche thing and just how I play, but I also actually kind of like being limited a little- it makes me think outside the box and be creative with the tools I do have. It's easy to run a dungeon with a full spell book, running it with cantrips and detect magic (and a full party to hide behind :smalltongue:) and nothing else leads to some really cool moments. But that is definitely a personal thing, and I agree that if that was what the class was designed around lots of people would reasonably find it frustrating- and indeed do.

According to Harry Dresden, being a wizard is all about being prepared: foresight. A wizard in the Dresdenverse can punch way out of his league if he knows what to expect--knowledge is power.

This translates reasonably well to 5E, although not nearly as well as in some other games like AD&D. In 5E there are a number of wizardly tactics which you can do in advance to prepare for a threat, ranging from raising undead warriors to Planar Binding of elementals to setting up Glyphs and Guards and Wards and Contingencies and Clones on yourself.

Warlocks can cast only a subset of those proactive type spells, which pushes warlocks towards a more reactive playstyle, which is really unfortunate because their casting mechanics would better match the proactive wizardly style.

Honestly, you could probably have a fun game by giving warlocks long-rest casting a la wizards, and giving wizards short rest casting a la warlocks. It would reward wizards who think ahead. (It would also result in huge amounts of Tiny Servant/Animate Dead spam though, if you didn't change those spells at the same time you changed the system.)

I should make it clear I'm in the pro-warlock camp, although I am not unaware of its shortcomings.

That's a cool way to think about it though. Prepared vs Innate. It kind of drifts into the sorcerer/wizard distinction too though, and warlocks still feel a bit different to both, at least to me. I guess the difference between warlock and sorcerer is that the warlock is earning power (but unlike the wizard doesn't really (in character) choose what comes, it's all in the patron's gift), whereas a sorcerer is unlocking their own potential?

MaxWilson

2018-09-27, 02:22 PM

That's a cool way to think about it though. Prepared vs Innate. It kind of drifts into the sorcerer/wizard distinction too though, and warlocks still feel a bit different to both, at least to me. I guess the difference between warlock and sorcerer is that the warlock is earning power (but unlike the wizard doesn't really (in character) choose what comes, it's all in the patron's gift), whereas a sorcerer is unlocking their own potential?

Interesting. I on the other hand don't think WotC did a good job of differentiating wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other. Are warlocks about leveraging forbidden knowledge? Then they are like wizards, but then why is Charisma important to them? If knowing the right secrets is their key to power, they should be Int-based. (Apparently this was the original intent, but it was changed due to playtest feedback, according to https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/810215324784193536?lang=en) Are warlocks about leveraging a connection to a powerful entity like a demons or a dragon? Then how is a warlock different from a Dragon Sorcerer or Divine Soul or a cleric, except in metagame (mechanical) terms?

Different strokes though. I'm happy you're happy with the level of differentiation that exists.

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 02:34 PM

Interesting. I on the other hand don't think WotC did a good job of differentiating wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers from each other. Are warlocks about leveraging forbidden knowledge? Then they are like wizards, but then why is Charisma important to them? If knowing the right secrets is their key to power, they should be Int-based. (Apparently this was the original intent, but it was changed due to playtest feedback, according to https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/810215324784193536?lang=en) Are warlocks about leveraging a connection to a powerful entity like a demons or a dragon? Then how is a warlock different from a Dragon Sorcerer or Divine Soul or a cleric, except in metagame (mechanical) terms?

Different strokes though. I'm happy you're happy with the level of differentiation that exists.

Heh, I do get why that's not universal though! I do see what you mean about the distinction being ill-defined- I can explain it away for myself, but that's also partly me being forgiving because I'm enjoying the character. Exploring how to make those differences more distinct doesn't seem like a bad idea.

The warlock's modularity remains its main draw, for me.

Chaosmancer

2018-09-27, 03:02 PM

I quite agree that that spell casting feels limited (objective or not, subjectively I've cast my two spells and the druid keeps on trucking), but the class as a whole still feels satisfying. I like the way the class is so open in build- you don't just pick a sub-class at level 2 or 3, thanks to invocations and pact magic you have choices all the way through your progression. As someone who really likes the roleplaying side of things, I like that my class feels like it's growing organically with my character rather than locked into a pre-programmed route. So depending on how the character has developed, their powers can reflect that.

Oh yeah, I can defintely see that aspect of it. Actually, mechanically, other than their patron and boon, a warlock is not locked into any choices. They can switch out spells and invocations every level.

Lorewise, they could even switch their boon or patron. Everything is part of a contract and contracts can be altered, bought and sold, or any number of other things. Which gives a lot of cool story opportunities.

I'll be frank, story-wise, warlock's are so rich in potential. Pact magic is quite literally my only complaint with them.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-27, 04:40 PM

If knowing the right secrets is their key to power, they should be Int-based. (Apparently this was the original intent, but it was changed due to playtest feedback, according to https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/810215324784193536?lang=en) Are warlocks about leveraging a connection to a powerful entity like a demons or a dragon? Aye, one of the things that disappointed me about their design choices: Warlock as Int caster a far better char concept. *sigh( what might have been )

While I have finally accepted Charisma casters, I wish WoTC had never done that with 3e ... but they did.

Asmotherion

2018-09-27, 04:48 PM

Aye, one of the things that disappointed me about their design choices: Warlock as Int caster a far better char concept. *sigh( what might have been )

While I have finally accepted Charisma casters, I wish WoTC had never done that with 3e ... but they did.

It's really a theme, and makes sence if you think about it. Someone with a personality strong enough that can "Convince" the world around him to change based on his ideals and purpose, either through deception, intimidation or diplomacy with it (it, being the weave).

It is different than the intelligence caster who analises "how it works" to replicate it's effects through experimentation.

Or the Wisdom caster, who gets a "deeper, instinctive understanding" of it, getting in harmony with it (it being his Deity's will OR Nature's Will), to better be able to manifest it through the weave.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-27, 05:52 PM

It's really a theme, and makes sence if you think about it. I have thought about it. I read the entire PHB description of the class. Int fits it better. But, as they admitted later, they bowed to fan pressure ... and so for about four years we get a neverending series of complaints (at least at GiTP discussions) regarding the Warlock dip with paladins and sorcerers ... and now that silliness that is coffee locks ...

I suppose that if the Warlock had gone Int, someone would have found a hole or loophole to dive through and the wiz/warlock multiclass would get a lot of complaints about that.

(On the other hand, The Archfey/Ancients Warlock/Paladin MC really appeals to me, in terms of theme and tone, so the Cha deal fits that like a glove).

SpanielBear

2018-09-27, 06:01 PM

Asmotherion

2018-09-27, 08:14 PM

I have thought about it. I read the entire PHB description of the class. Int fits it better. But, as they admitted later, they bowed to fan pressure ... and so for about four years we get a neverending series of complaints (at least at GiTP discussions) regarding the Warlock dip with paladins and sorcerers ... and now that silliness that is coffee locks ...

I suppose that if the Warlock had gone Int, someone would have found a hole or loophole to dive through and the wiz/warlock multiclass would get a lot of complaints about that.

(On the other hand, The Archfey/Ancients Warlock/Paladin MC really appeals to me, in terms of theme and tone, so the Cha deal fits that like a glove).

Meh, Haters gonna Hate :P

I love Warlock Dipping, I do it all the time XD And with Cha being my favorite attribute for thematic reasons, I'm glad for the outcome. Couldn't ask for a better Warlock really. A true successor to his 3.5 Original Incarnation.

After all, Negotiating with Planar Entities to get your very essance transformed into a greater Form of Existance needs Charisma. And that's how I view the Warlock. An Esotericist who masters the Arcane Arts through Inner Transformation and Guidance of a Patron Spirit he Convinces to do so through Charisma, instead of Being Nesseserally Born with Magic (Sorcerer) or Experimentation and Study of Magic (Wizard).

Think John Dee for example. Certainly a very Intelligent man, but you don't become Advisor to the Queen without an even Greater amount of Charisma.

KorvinStarmast

2018-09-27, 08:56 PM

I love Warlock Dipping, I do it all the time XD And with Cha being my favorite attribute for thematic reasons, I'm glad for the outcome. Couldn't ask for a better Warlock really. I suggest that you read men and magic, and see where the warlock stood. Warlock was a class level of magic user, originally. :smallwink: So was Sorcerer.

The problem with charisma as a casting ability is that charisma and (RL) the table occupants are far too often strangers. So maybe it is, contra my somewhat archaic take on where Cha fits into the game, the ultimate fantasy element of the fantasy RPG: the Cha based PC. :smallcool: Irony rocks, to be sure.

Its original role as an ability score was as a very, very useful piece of the game: when you were trying to get NPCs to work with you or for you ... again, see Men and Magic, and the 2d6 reaction table. For my money, that beat the 1d20 ad mods cha persuasion/deception scheme by an order of magnitude.

But times change, and WoTC understood their customer base. So good for them.

And let's face it; it fits the Bard to a T.

DivisibleByZero

2018-09-28, 04:08 AM

Fixed the following for you.

Bard/Cleric/Moon Druid/Sorcerer – sorcery points should be spent on metamagic if you have a brain = 133 points

Wizard/Land Druid – 2 5lvl slots per LR – 133+14 = 147 point

Warlock – 4 5lvl/SR + Eldritch Master + Mystic Arcanum – 28+28+28+28+9+10+11+13 = 155 points (183 with 3 SR) (127 with only 1 SR, which is very comparable to the other nonrecovery casters above)

By your own metric Warlock is not even on par with Bard/Cleric unless you get 3 short rests, and none of these three are ever equal with Sorcerer/Wizard.

Convenient how you forget that part. Those 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells make a difference in the math, don't they?

And as you can see, your final point is just flat out incorrect. With Mystic Arcanum, the warlock beats everyone with 2 SRs, and falls a mere 6pts behind most of them with only 1 SR.
That's less than half the difference between a moon druid and a land druid.
That's inconsequential.

So if he only gets 1 SR, the difference is inconsequential.
If he gets 2 SRs, he has more raw power than any other caster, period.
And so I repeat: He isn't less powerful than the others. Quite the opposite. He is less versatile, and many people confuse the two.

Asmotherion

2018-09-28, 05:25 AM

I suggest that you read men and magic, and see where the warlock stood. Warlock was a class level of magic user, originally. :smallwink: So was Sorcerer.

The problem with charisma as a casting ability is that charisma and (RL) the table occupants are far too often strangers. So maybe it is, contra my somewhat archaic take on where Cha fits into the game, the ultimate fantasy element of the fantasy RPG: the Cha based PC. :smallcool: Irony rocks, to be sure.

Its original role as an ability score was as a very, very useful piece of the game: when you were trying to get NPCs to work with you or for you ... again, see Men and Magic, and the 2d6 reaction table. For my money, that beat the 1d20 ad mods cha persuasion/deception scheme by an order of magnitude.

But times change, and WoTC understood their customer base. So good for them.

And let's face it; it fits the Bard to a T.

My take on it is that, on previous incarnations of D&D before 3rd edition, only Wizards were avalable (though with a Diferent Name in 1st Ed) as Playing Characters, wile other caster tropes were not suported by the the then mechanics, as well as there was not enough need to create as much variation/classification of character tropes back then. It was the start of it all, and all that was needed was one "Mage" class to fit the trope.

As D&D evolved, so did pop culture, and featured archetypes/character tropes, as did D&D to include them. The Warlock, as I see him, comes from a generation of the Charismatic Gothic/Metal Hero, a bit dark, a bit sexy, knows what he's doing. He's more of a Dark Mage than the Bard. More directly involved with magic than the Rogue (for example, the Arcane Trickster). Has more weird Powers than the Sorcerer (Depends on the Sorcerer). And less bookish and analytical than the Wizard.

On the other hand, I could suggest the Dragon Age Tabletop; It fits into the 1st edition "Few Class" Paradigm, were there is only one generic Mage class, and from that point, it depends on their specialisations and spell selection. There is also a Warrior and a Rogue Class.

Tanarii

2018-09-28, 08:16 AM

Aye, one of the things that disappointed me about their design choices: Warlock as Int caster a far better char concept. *sigh( what might have been ) Yeah, that bothers me too. I mean, Cha warlocks are fine too, because "cult leader" archetype. But I much prefer the "scholars of eldritch lore that makes a dire bargain" archetype. Even though it's narrower. At least in terms of popularity in fiction.

Its original role as an ability score was as a very, very useful piece of the game: when you were trying to get NPCs to work with you or for you ... again, see Men and Magic, and the 2d6 reaction table. For my money, that beat the 1d20 ad mods cha persuasion/deception scheme by an order of magnitude.I thought it's original role was number of followers? (aka Henchmen or Retainers)

The reaction roll was basically just a Persuasion check with different dice.

Zalabim

2018-09-28, 08:43 AM

I treat warlocks as using an unconventional, even dangerous, kind of magic power. It's not just magic you learned from the Fiend, (I mean, sure, it is that), but Fiendish magic. The warlock learns/acquires the power of their teacher, so they use that power like their teacher. In my view, there's room for warlocks using different attributes depending on the source of their power, and since they choose a patron at level 1 that could even be modeled in the game mechanics.

Willie the Duck

2018-09-28, 09:13 AM

I thought it's original role was number of followers? (aka Henchmen or Retainers)
The reaction roll was basically just a Persuasion check with different dice.

A little of both. The primary thing listed under Charisma was # of henchmen and loyalty base. The only part about reaction rolls being the line "Finally, the charisma will aid a character in attracting various monsters to his service." So, on the face of it, charisma only helps with reactions if the PCs offer to hire the monsters they come across. It is, however, very much like what eventually becomes the general reaction table (the 2d6 table from B/X that most people remember, I guess BECMI did a cascading table). For reference, from Men& Magic:
"Monsters can be lured into service if they are of the same basic alignment as the player-character, or they can be Charmed and thus ordered to serve. Note, however, that the term "monster" includes men found in the dungeons, so in this way some high-level characters can be brought into a character's service, charisma
allowing or through a Charm spell. Some reward must be offered to a monster in order to induce it into service (not just sparing its life, for example). The monster will react, with appropriate plusses or minuses, according to the offer, the referee rolling two six-sided dice and adjusting for charisma:
Dice Score Reaction
2 Attempts to attack
3-5 Hostile reaction
6-8 Uncertain
9-11 Accepts offer
12 Enthusiast, Loyalty +3
An "Uncertain" reaction leaves the door open to additional reward offers, but scores under 6 do not.

Capture of Non-Player Monsters: Morale dice can cause a man or intelligent monster to attempt to surrender or become subdued. When this happens an offer of service can be made (assuming that communication is possible) as outlined above. Subdued monsters will obey for a time without need to check their reactions,
and such monsters are salable (see Volume II). Loyalty of Non-Player Characters (Including Monsters): Men, dwarves and elves will serve as retainers with relative loyalty so long they receive their pay regularly, are treated fairly, are not continually exposed to extra-hazardous duty, and receive bonuses when they are taking part in some dangerous venture. Judgement of this matter is perforce subjective on the part of the campaign referee, but there is a simple guideline: When one or more of such characters are taken into service a loyalty check is made by rolling three-six-sided dice. Adjustments are made for charisma and initial payments for service, and the loyalty of the character(s) noted by the referee. (The player will not have any knowledge of what it is without some method of reading minds.)

Loyalty Score Morale
3 or less Will desert at first opportunity
4-6 -2 on morale dice
7-8 -1 on morale dice
9-12 Average morale dice
13-14 + 1 on morale dice
15-18 +2 on morale dice
19 and above Need never check morale

Non-player characters and men-at-arms will have to make morale checks (using the above reaction table or "Chainmail") whenever a highly dangerous or un-nerving situation arises. Poor morale will mean that those in question will not perform as expected.
Periodic re-checks of loyalty should be made. Length of service, rewards, etc. will bring additional plusses. Poor treatment will bring minuses."