Should I "overhaul" or "update" 3.5's warlock?

[MonkeySage]

I've got friends on both sides: Those who think the Warlock update I've written up is too overpowered, because I kept the at will blasts and invocations; and those who think the warlock update is reasonable compared to other casters.

Personally, I like the update I've written, which I think preserves the spirit and mechanics of the original class, while including customization options and basically... Turning it into a Pathfinder class.

But I've gotten together with a friend who helped me also write up an alternative. It's a complete overhaul, which keeps at will blasts but reduces the damage to Monk Unarmed progression. In this version, Invocations are not at will, and Warlocks would actually get fewer uses of their invocations than even most spell casting classes. This version is less a caster and more a ranged dps that happens to use magic.

So questions:

Is the 3.5 Warlock, and by extension the update I've made, too powerful?

Is 10d6 damage (the progression cap i've got for my updated class) too much for an at will ability at level 20?

Should invocations remain an at will ability as well?

[Godskook]

10d6 at-will at level 20 is trivial. Rogues get that sort of damage as a -bonus- to a single attack, and get to make multiple attacks per round. One needs a better argument than "10d6 damage" to say a class is busted.

Sadly, you've not posted links to either of your proposed changes, so I doubt people are actually going to be able to help you much, lacking the proper context of these classes.

[Ignimortis]

I've got friends on both sides: Those who think the Warlock update I've written up is too overpowered, because I kept the at will blasts and invocations; and those who think the warlock update is reasonable compared to other casters.

Personally, I like the update I've written, which I think preserves the spirit and mechanics of the original class, while including customization options and basically... Turning it into a Pathfinder class.

But I've gotten together with a friend who helped me also write up an alternative. It's a complete overhaul, which keeps at will blasts but reduces the damage to Monk Unarmed progression. In this version, Invocations are not at will, and Warlocks would actually get fewer uses of their invocations than even most spell casting classes. This version is less a caster and more a ranged dps that happens to use magic.

So questions:

Is the 3.5 Warlock, and by extension the update I've made, too powerful?

Is 10d6 damage (the progression cap i've got for my updated class) too much for an at will ability at level 20?

Should invocations remain an at will ability as well?

Even with their at-will spellcasting, Warlocks are at best a high tier 4. They can't match up to a martial, even a mundane one like Fighter in damage per round, usually (unless the Fighter is built poorly), and their repertoire of spammable spells is very limited and very constrained by available powers. Therefore, 3.5 Warlock is not too powerful. If you're not playing it in a party of new players or something along those lines (low-op, low system mastery, adherence to classic tropes of Healer Cleric and Blasty Wizard), it can't be too powerful. If your players play with initiating classes (Path of War) or even Magus/Inquisitor level of power classes, Warlock probably needs buffs.

[MonkeySage]

This one is my update on the 3.5 Warlock. I gave them a Pact, and two Pact abilities, basically patrons. I may change that later if the class is found wanting.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-wUzWhHl4RHgeXasdWocjTq6GyASKu47rhIowUMJPWg/edit?usp=sharing

Here's the version I created with my friend.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ns1WJiOO4uX--dHnU7HndP1P9BYb4OvzfaseeQS1cbs/edit?usp=sharing


Pacts are an undeveloped idea so far.

[Hish]

Warlock is generally regarded as an excellently balanced class as written. It's often used as a balance point. I think it would suffer from either a nerf or a buff.

[Krazzman]

I've got friends on both sides: Those who think the Warlock update I've written up is too overpowered, because I kept the at will blasts and invocations; and those who think the warlock update is reasonable compared to other casters.

Personally, I like the update I've written, which I think preserves the spirit and mechanics of the original class, while including customization options and basically... Turning it into a Pathfinder class.

But I've gotten together with a friend who helped me also write up an alternative. It's a complete overhaul, which keeps at will blasts but reduces the damage to Monk Unarmed progression. In this version, Invocations are not at will, and Warlocks would actually get fewer uses of their invocations than even most spell casting classes. This version is less a caster and more a ranged dps that happens to use magic.

So questions:

Is the 3.5 Warlock, and by extension the update I've made, too powerful?

Is 10d6 damage (the progression cap i've got for my updated class) too much for an at will ability at level 20?

Should invocations remain an at will ability as well?

Would you mind posting what you changed? Have seen the update to your thing... your first thing was spot on (save for the BaB).

I personally would leave him as is, giving invocations at levels 1 and each even level. Then bring in a few things from the Kineticist, maybe.... or at least give Eldritch Glaive and Eldritch Claws as basic options, buff Hideous Blow. And then add some sort of Pact abilities that tie the character to something and give them bonuses akin to bloodlines/mysteries/schools/Domains whatever.

[MonkeySage]

I've posted two spreadsheets on the changes I've made so far, but yeah my idea with the Pacts was that they worked similar to Bloodlines or something like that.

[Blu]

tbh i don't understand why on both the update and the overhaul you changed Warlock bab to Low.

Overhaul: Eldritch blast takes a Standard action to cast and even with the normal progression(up to 9d6) is known to do low damage in higher levels, changing the damage to the Unarmed monk progression is just bad. Also the Overhaul goes against the spirit of the Warlock, instead of having resourse management they have less powerfull At-will abilitys. By this point you can just as much call it a completly different class. Considering you intended him to be a "ranged dps" having a low bab goes completly against it.

Update: If it were not for the change in BAB i would say it's okay. Considering you are porting it to pathfinder maybe a small buff would be good but it seems the Pacts would cover that alright.

Thing is, Warlock is not an overpowered class and in the rare cases of people who think so are normally newer players that get surprised when one class gets to role a bunch of d6's.

[Elricaltovilla]

So you want to take a moderately okay 3.5 class and nerf it to make it fit in Pathfinder? If you wanted a poorly made warlock update, paizo already covered that with the kineticist (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/occult-adventures/occult-classes/kineticist/).

The warlock is totally fine for Pathfinder as written. Probably a bit undertuned even.

[MonkeySage]

Like I said, I preferred the Update, personally- I had no desire to nerf what I thought was already a fair class. The Overhaul was built almost entirely to address concerns about spell like abilities being at will, and I'm definitely not sold on it.

[Elricaltovilla]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded. Outside of levels 1-3 spellcasters just don't really run out of spells on a usual day. And nothing that the warlock has really raises any alarm bells. If anything, I'd say your update doesn't do enough. They could definitely use more invocations, and with only one Eldritch blast per round, their damage is bottom of the barrel. They need a whole lot more to be combat capable.

[Knaight]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded. Outside of levels 1-3 spellcasters just don't really run out of spells on a usual day. And nothing that the warlock has really raises any alarm bells. If anything, I'd say your update doesn't do enough. They could definitely use more invocations, and with only one Eldritch blast per round, their damage is bottom of the barrel. They need a whole lot more to be combat capable.

It's mostly because there are a lot of spells that would be genuinely overpowered as at will SLAs. None of those made it into the Warlock list, but a quick skim of even level 5 or 6 spells will be enough to spot some, let alone level 7+. Handing out at will SLAs is something that warrants caution, and with the Warlock it was clearly taken. There's the combat focus where the action economy balances it on its own just fine, there's some minor utility spells and buffs and debuffs useful outside of combat, all of which were selected not to do anything too major. The designers were very conservative there, a little excessively so, but had they not been it would have been easy to create a class that might have necessitated the creation of tier zero just for it.

Picture a psion who gets the usual powers, but all of them are cast at full CL at will. Even with the fairly significant limit on powers known that character is completely ridiculous. Something like a wizard or cleric who select SLAs using their existing slot structure, but all of them are at will? That's entirely too much.

[OgresAreCute]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded. Outside of levels 1-3 spellcasters just don't really run out of spells on a usual day. And nothing that the warlock has really raises any alarm bells. If anything, I'd say your update doesn't do enough. They could definitely use more invocations, and with only one Eldritch blast per round, their damage is bottom of the barrel. They need a whole lot more to be combat capable.

For the damage I was toying with the idea of letting them make full attacks/iterative attacks with EB. Reasoning was you can already do this with Eldritch Glaive so it should be no big deal. Only problem I can think of is using it with Eldritch Chain + a debuff blast essence to force the DM to make like 12 fort saves and slowing the game to a halt.

[Cosi]

Spellcasters typically run out of actions in combat long before they run out of spell slots. This is why casting celerity is ever anything but a sucker's game. As a result, at-will combat abilities should pay a relatively low effectiveness premium relative to ones with daily limits. Looked at from this perspective, the Warlock should not only not be nerfed, it should be buffed and likely quite substantially.

Outside of combat things are different, but everything that isn't combat is generally an afterthought in class evaluation.

[ngilop]

I feel the biggest offender in regards to the warlock is its too small number of invocations.

in the most generic fix I have done, I give a second set of invocations that are limited to ONLY blast shape/essence invocations. I will never feel that 12 is a good enough number for a character when you have to slit those 12 into 3 separate categories.

[Aetis]

At-will vs per day is really dependent on how many encounters you typically run per game day as a DM.

I don't think doing 4-5 encounters per day really tests the resource management of a wizard player.

How many encounters do your typical players face in each game day?

[Kitsuneymg]

Just use spheres of power. The entire casting system is closer to warlock than vancian. Destruction covers all your warlock blasts with death allowing for the less damaging debuff ones. But it’s a whole system that already exists and recreates the flavor of the warlock casting, but for a variety of different levels of martial/magical desires.

[Florian]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded.

The same reason ToB-style encounter powers are not used by Paizo. The underlying core mechanics of PF1 are still based entirely on the concept of resource attrition over time and investing WBL to enhance character performance. That's why the actual updated version of the Warlock is the Witch and why the Kineticist has Burn and should still pack a weapon of some kind and invest in it.

[Troacctid]

This one is my update on the 3.5 Warlock. I gave them a Pact, and two Pact abilities, basically patrons. I may change that later if the class is found wanting.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-wUzWhHl4RHgeXasdWocjTq6GyASKu47rhIowUMJPWg/edit?usp=sharing
I would consider this version of warlock to be significantly worse than the Complete Arcane one, as it delays the already slow invocation known progression for no benefit. Assuming 1st level = least, 2nd level = lesser, etc., I would add another least at level 2, another lesser at level 7, another greater at level 12, and another dark at level 17. Perhaps these invocations depend on your pact. Remove the alignment restriction, go back to medium BAB, and make it 4 skill points per level if you haven't already. And please stick to least/lesser/greater/dark instead of confusing numerical grades; it's pretty silly to be getting a 4th level spell as a 2nd level invocation at 6th level. (Maybe change "dark" to something less pact-specific.)


Here's the version I created with my friend.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ns1WJiOO4uX--dHnU7HndP1P9BYb4OvzfaseeQS1cbs/edit?usp=sharing
Eww. Gross. No. That's terrible.

Warlock does not need nerfs. Period. It's not even close to being overpowered.

[Mordaedil]

I feel the biggest offender in regards to the warlock is its too small number of invocations.

in the most generic fix I have done, I give a second set of invocations that are limited to ONLY blast shape/essence invocations. I will never feel that 12 is a good enough number for a character when you have to slit those 12 into 3 separate categories.

This is generally how I feel too. I think even getting one new invocation every level wouldn't make too much of a difference.

[OgresAreCute]

In my houserules I tried to address both the damage issues and the invocation issues, but it hasn't been playtested so I dunno how terrible it is. I also didn't make this for pathfinder so I didn't add new class features or subclass options.


Warlock:

Increase skill points to 4+int per level
Add Diplomacy as class skill.
Increase hit dice to d8
You can make iterative attacks with Eldritch Blast as a full-round action.
Start with 2 invocations at level 1 and gain a new invocation at every level after.
Can pick invocations from both Warlock and Dragonfire Adept lists.



The most important change here is probably the invocation frequency, which lands you at 21 invocations at level 20. Then, since there might not be 21 interesting invocations on the warlock list I just let you pick from the DFA list as well without having to spend a feat on it.

[Kurald Galain]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded. Outside of levels 1-3 spellcasters just don't really run out of spells on a usual day.

This bears repeating. Spellcasters really don't run out of spells. Sure, theoretically they could, but in practice they have WAY more spell slots than there are combat rounds in a day.

Having unlimited-use abilities just isn't a big deal in most campaigns. A 7th-level sorcerer could e.g. cast Scorching Ray twelve times per day and Magic Missile another eight times, and it is exceedingly rare to have that many rounds of combat in a day. This isn't even a great build so if your warlock deals less damage than that it's a problem (that's 8d6+8 per round at level 7, assuming draconic bloodline).

And yes, the big issue warlocks face is having too few invocations. When I played one I ended up spending all my feats on extra invoc AND dipping a level of wizard for versatility.

[EldritchWeaver]

Just use spheres of power. The entire casting system is closer to warlock than vancian. Destruction covers all your warlock blasts with death allowing for the less damaging debuff ones. But it’s a whole system that already exists and recreates the flavor of the warlock casting, but for a variety of different levels of martial/magical desires.

For someone who only wants to import a single class, SoP is far too much. Still, it has classes and mechanics, which can be used as point of comparison. SoP achieves a good balance, but low optimized martials will feel disadvantaged. Which explains the nerfed version of OP's friend.

[Sto]

In my houserules I tried to address both the damage issues and the invocation issues, but it hasn't been playtested so I dunno how terrible it is. I also didn't make this for pathfinder so I didn't add new class features or subclass options.



The most important change here is probably the invocation frequency, which lands you at 21 invocations at level 20. Then, since there might not be 21 interesting invocations on the warlock list I just let you pick from the DFA list as well without having to spend a feat on it.

Last Warlock we played with had Eldritch Blast on iterative attacks. It didn't break anything, only two of use had read it and the DM was fairly new. He outclassed us at early levels because we were a low OP party, and the Warlock had been reading handbooks. When my character died I switched to a two weapon fighting build and could match it in damage. We never seriously considered it game breaking, and it was a pretty fun campaign.

[gkathellar]

I strongly recommend the Avowed, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509440-Forrestfire-Studios-Playtest-The-Avowed-a-3pp-warlock-with-a-psychic-bent) a really in-depth PF remodeling of the warlock with tremendous build versatility. It can function not only as an ersatz warlock or DFA, but also in such a wide variety of roles that I’d not hesitate to play in a party of all Avowed.

[MonkeySage]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N5xNjxiV-06GLEFeXix6kpXZuXbK0wxZmWlnzBmrCf0/edit?usp=sharing

An update of my update. ^^

At this point I'm really starting to wonder if this topic actually belongs in Homebrew... Bit worried.

Also, thinking I should grant another Pact Ability, perhaps at level 14 since the only thing they get is Pact DR

[Hurnn]

I did an easy update for warlocks that just rolled in the DFA abilities to give more variety of powers. I also increased the amount of pacts they could have by about 50%

[ngilop]

you need to explain what your pacts actually do.


just throwing out the barebones of a class and not explaining anything does not lend itself very well to a judgement call on if it is 'balanced' or not.

[MonkeySage]

The Pact abilities were sort of intended to be similar to Cleric domain powers, in particular.What they do depends on whether the Pact was made with an Azata or an Aberration or a Demon, something like that. For example, if it was made with a creature from the Plane of Shadow, then it might allow access to the Shadow Jump ability. If it was with a Demon or a Devil, might be a summoning ability. Now these wouldn't be at will, and like I've said it's very much an undeveloped idea.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Imo the simplest way to bring the Warlock up to PF’s power level (and patch their low invocation total) would be to roll the Binder into the class, treat the granted abilities of vestiges as special Invocations gained while they’re bound, and reflavor the Warlock stuff as coming from vestiges rather than devils.

You’re still selling your soul for power, it’s just piecemeal rather than all at once, and your low invocations suddenly make sense seen next to the Occultist and their low spells known: both classes derive most of their power from these modular objects/pacts!

Edit: Having thought more about it, you might also look at the Witch for some templating. Rearrange the Invocations into three categories, add an "Extra Blast Shape/Essence" feat, etc. I've edited that and a couple of things for better flow but this is still mostly just a Binder/Warlock gestalt as a single class.

The New Warlock

d8 Hit Die, 2+INT skill points, Good Fort/Will saves, 3/4 BAB
Class skills are Acrobatics, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Disguise, Intimidate, Knowledge (Arcana, Religion, Planes), Linguistics, Profession, Sense Motive, Spellcraft, and Use Magic Device.

1)Soul Binding, Eldritch Blast 1d6, Lesser Invocations
2)Pact Augmentation, Bonus Feat, Detect Magic
3)Damage Reduction 1, Eldritch Blast 2d6
4)Deceive Item
5)Pact Augmentation, Eldritch Blast 3d6
6)Soul Guardian (Fear)
7)Bonus Feat, Eldritch Blast 4d6, Damage Reduction 2
8)Soul Binding (2 vestiges), Pactbound Resilience
9)Soul Guardian (Slippery Mind), Eldritch Blast 5d6
10)Pact Augmentation, Energy Resistance 5, Greater Invocations
11)Eldritch Blast 6d6, Damage Reduction 3
12)Bonus Feat, Imbue Item
13)Soul Guardian (Energy Drain/Negative Levels), Eldritch Blast 7d6, Pactbound Resilience 2
14)Soul Binding (3 vestiges)
15)Eldritch Blast 8d6, Damage Reduction 4
16)Pact Augmentation
17)Bonus Feat, Eldritch Blast 9d6
18)Pactbound Resilience 5, Dark Invocations
19)Soul Guardian (Mind Blank), Eldritch Blast 10d6, Damage Reduction 5
20)Pact Augmentation, Soul Binding (4 vestiges), Energy Resistance 10

[Troacctid]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N5xNjxiV-06GLEFeXix6kpXZuXbK0wxZmWlnzBmrCf0/edit?usp=sharing

An update of my update. ^^

At this point I'm really starting to wonder if this topic actually belongs in Homebrew... Bit worried.

Also, thinking I should grant another Pact Ability, perhaps at level 14 since the only thing they get is Pact DR
Giving an extra invocation of each grade doesn't help if all your invocations come 10 levels late. You need it to come when it's still relevant. If your fix is SLOWING invocation progression compared to the original version of the class, you're going in the wrong direction.

[Cosi]

The same reason ToB-style encounter powers are not used by Paizo. The underlying core mechanics of PF1 are still based entirely on the concept of resource attrition over time and investing WBL to enhance character performance. That's why the actual updated version of the Warlock is the Witch and why the Kineticist has Burn and should still pack a weapon of some kind and invest in it.

The underlying mechanics of PF are exactly the same as the underlying mechanics of 3e. That was the entire point of PF. The only major change was that Paizo added a bunch of fiddly nonsense to classes. So the real thing that a PF Warlock should get is a long list of demonic Patrons to choose from so that a Warlock of Orcus is sufficiently different from a Warlock of Demogorgon.

[upho]

Spell like abilities being at will mean nothing, trust me. I don't know where the irrational fear of at-will abilities comes from but it's pretty unfounded. Outside of levels 1-3 spellcasters just don't really run out of spells on a usual day. And nothing that the warlock has really raises any alarm bells. If anything, I'd say your update doesn't do enough. They could definitely use more invocations, and with only one Eldritch blast per round, their damage is bottom of the barrel. They need a whole lot more to be combat capable.This bears repeating. Spellcasters really don't run out of spells. Sure, theoretically they could, but in practice they have WAY more spell slots than there are combat rounds in a day.This bears repeating yet again!

However, it sure doesn't hurt to also repeat that this is true only in relation to generous daily use limits and the typically much greater impact of other parameters, such as action economy limitations and simply having the right tools for whatever the job is. Otherwise, for example the daily use limits on the highest level spells a vancian full caster can cast certainly has a very noticeable impact on their actual power in a vast majority of levels and games, including most games where the number of adventuring days including more than say six rounds of combat are rare.

In short, it rarely matters whether you have say 10, 30 or unlimited uses of a standard action combat related ability, but it sure can matter a lot whether you have 1, 3 or unlimited uses if the ability is powerful and generally applicable enough.


The same reason ToB-style encounter powers are not used by Paizo. The underlying core mechanics of PF1 are still based entirely on the concept of resource attrition over time and investing WBL to enhance character performance. That's why the actual updated version of the Warlock is the Witch and why the Kineticist has Burn and should still pack a weapon of some kind and invest in it.This is surely the case. But this is largely irrelevant, as neither the adventure design guidelines or Paizo's own APs were written in accordance with this attrition concept and the actual daily use limits of class abilities. At least not past the earliest levels. It's just yet another outdated artifact from a much earlier edition of the game which hasn't caught up with the changes to the related actual mechanics or overall design goals. As an aside, I think the designers of 3e had a pretty good excuse for missing these mismatches, but when it comes 3.5 and especially PF, I find it surprising and seriously annoying that the designers still thought it a good idea to have bread-and-butter 1st level combat abilities with 10+ daily use limits. Especially since this poor design has clearly influenced later mechanics and sustained the irrational fear of at-will Elric mentioned. The kinny exemplifies this in may ways.


The underlying mechanics of PF are exactly the same as the underlying mechanics of 3e. That was the entire point of PF. The only major change was that Paizo added a bunch of fiddly nonsense to classes.This is a bit OT, but I think there's some truth to this if looking at say the vanilla versions of the CRB casters. However, that's also a very tiny portion of the 1PP class options available in the game. And when it comes to the features of those other options, I think they're definitely more than "a bunch of fiddly nonsense" on average. And quite a few of them are actually class defining (barbarian rage powers, oracle mysteries, fighter advanced training, bloodrager bloodlines, witch hexes, etc, etc).


So the real thing that a PF Warlock should get is a long list of demonic Patrons to choose from so that a Warlock of Orcus is sufficiently different from a Warlock of Demogorgon.That's at least one important part of the solution also IMO. And coincidentally, the mentioned excellent Avowed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509440-Forrestfire-Studios-Playtest-The-Avowed-a-3pp-warlock-with-a-psychic-bent) does this, on top of adding a lot of other great and varied options to the warlock concept. And it's also very well balanced IMO, with the power flexibility making it easy to match with basically anything from low-op martials to high-op magi.


And yes, the big issue warlocks face is having too few invocations. When I played one I ended up spending all my feats on extra invoc AND dipping a level of wizard for versatility.Indeed. And again, the Avowed delivers in spades.


I strongly recommend the Avowed, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509440-Forrestfire-Studios-Playtest-The-Avowed-a-3pp-warlock-with-a-psychic-bent) a really in-depth PF remodeling of the warlock with tremendous build versatility. It can function not only as an ersatz warlock or DFA, but also in such a wide variety of roles that I’d not hesitate to play in a party of all Avowed.And I strongly second this recommendation. It really is a remarkably well-designed and fun PF expansion of the 3.5 warlock.

@ MonkeySage: If you're not interested in using the Avowed for whatever (weird) reason, I really recommend you at the very least use it as inspiration and a goal to aspire to for your homebrew. And perhaps most importantly, it could also be of great help when it comes to balance, as its mechanical power progression should be seen as nothing less than the gold standard for a PF warlock class.

And yeah, the second version you made with your friend is needlessly and horribly over-nerfed IMO.

By the way, did I mention you should check out the Avowed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509440-Forrestfire-Studios-Playtest-The-Avowed-a-3pp-warlock-with-a-psychic-bent)? Well, you should.

The Avowed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?509440-Forrestfire-Studios-Playtest-The-Avowed-a-3pp-warlock-with-a-psychic-bent) is your best friend.

Really.

[Malroth]

If you fully take advantage of their ability to play artificer and are in a high wealth game with downtime then they can be a low tier 2 but otherwise warlock is a prettty poor matchup to even a bow based fighter. Slight buffs are probably in order to bring a poorly built Warlock up to the higher floor avalible in Paizo games.