The Student and The Master [Warlock personal homebrew]

[Bjarkmundur]

I have a Warlock duo, and I wanted to share with you their special features.

One studied at a Collage, whilst the other one was forced to learn and experiment with magic without any training.

They now work together, sharing their expertise in two different ways of magic, to further advance their magical prowess.

The design goal is to allow one player to have a mechanic that interprets the years spent studying minor magic (pact of the Tome), and the other to feel like he's 'discovering' powerful spells in his downtime. It think these features accomplish that goal pretty well.

Selftought Spellcaster: (replaces pact of the Tome). During a long rest you can choose a Spell School to study. As an action you can attempt to cast a spell from your chosen school. Make a check using your spellcasting ability modifier against a DC of 15. On a success you cast a random spell from your chosen school, and you can add the spell to your warlock spell list. You regain use of this feature after a long rest. You can only cast spells for which you have an appropriate level spell slot.
Your maximum number of spells added to your spell list using this feature is equal to your level. If you already have the maximum amount of spells learned through this feature, and you successfully cast a random spell, you can choose to replace it with another spell learned with this feature"

Don't worry about balance too much. These features are not going into a book to be used by anyone, these are my Houserules used by my players, and if something doesn't feel right during playtesting we will simply change it. Even if it has an unsuspected affect on the power level of these characters, the other players will simply gain a hero feature or a magical item to bump them up to the same level.
It's all just for fun and immersion.

[JNAProductions]

Selftaught Spellcaster is not something I would EVER use in combat, but I'd use it every day I'm not adventuring just to expand the spell list.

I'd highly consider replacing it with something else.

[Bjarkmundur]

I'd love a little more helpful comment.

Are you thinking something along the lines of

"as long as the feature isn't abused and the player won't simply use it during short rests to gain access to new spells, it should be fine"

Or do you mean "the warlock is balanced in such a way that many spells break the class, and that's why you should be vary when expanding the warlock spell list"

My player fully understands that this was intended as a fun random spell combat mechanic, and won't use it during downtime, without asking permission first.

Even with a week of downtime I'd probably not allow him to use it, but instead say "You're guaranteed a single success, so you can add one random spell of a school you choose to your spell list."

Just to be safe I could say.

"Your maximum number of spells added to your spell list using this feature is equal to your level. If you already have the maximum amount of spells learned through this feature, and you successfully cast a random spell, you can choose to replace it with another spell learned with this feature"

This allows all kinds of Shenanigans, such as simply picking the divination school or necromancy school once you've learned all the spell's you can, in hope for gaining information or luckily roll for a ressurection spell when you need it.

[JNAProductions]

Okay-then it’ll work for your table.

But it’s very easy to abuse by gaining every single spell, as the mechanics work right now. Assuming a +4 Charisma, you get a new spell every other day. (And that assumes proficiency does NOT apply.)

If your player intends on using it only in combat, then it won’t break anything, barring exceptional luck on the random spell, but there’s no restriction that requires it to be combat only. You can DM fiat anything to make it work, but I’d recommend making something that works without needing it.

Maybe something like giving them a spellbook, as a Wizard has, and letting them learn extra spells from their list normally, and learn any spell from found scrolls.

[Bjarkmundur]

I like that, thank you :)

[Bjarkmundur]

Spellbook fits the flavor, so let's take a look.

In the wizard's case, he learns spells and adds them to his book. Since it's a game there has to be some limitations to which spells he can learn, so a spell list is used.
The books is his encyclopedia, and he can prepare a number of spells from it. That's when the wizard practises and memories spells he has catalogued in his book.
Whenever the wizard levels up he learns more spells through research and academic study, and adds rjem to his book.
Whenever he finds a scroll or other written-down spells, he can copy them into his book.
The wizard has the basic understanding on how the weave works, so he only needs instruction specific to the spell, and then he can cast it.

The standard warlock also gains access to new spells as he gains levels, but how is this knowledge delivered to him? Is it just a vague description ("his Patron")? If so, the means of which a Warlock learns new spells is completely up to the player.
If so I can assume that the spells he learns are also from his research and trial and error.
My warlock does not have the basic understanding of the weave, so he needs to learn each spell in full. This is why he has fewer spells known, but does not need to prepare them. He already knows them by heart.

So my flavour already exists within the class. My new design goal could be to find a way to, mechanically, make this flavour more prominent. This would mean that I'd have to find an interactive way for him to discover spells, but like the wizard is limited to a spell list my warlock to is limited to his spell list. This makes discovering unknown spells difficult, since the warlock spell list isn't exactly miles long.

1. How do I make it interactive?
2. How do I keep the mistery alive?
3. How do I make it exiting?
4. How do I make it flavorful
5. Is it necessary to stay within the Warlock's spell list?

If I stick to the basic warlock guidelines, aren't I just putting requirements to a feature that should be available to my player anyways? As I DM I'd rather give him access to MORE than his base class, rather than LESS.

I don't want to GIVE him more spell options, I want him to FIND them, so just handing out spell Scrolls isn't an option to me.

I'm tempted to keep the feature relatively as-is, but limit it to twice per level. But that both seems odd and makes the random spellcasting pretty rare. Since the goal is to make the flavour prominent, I don't think that would be the way to go.

Did we completely glance over the fact the Warlock can only retrain one spell each level? Meaning that a discovered spell can only be picked at the next level, meaning there's an obvious delay from when a spell is cast until the spell is learnt.
I could have the Random Spell List reset every level, meaning that when he levels up he's gonna have to choose two of the random spells cast since the last time he leveled up. Also feels clunky, but it might work.

I could simply limit how many of these Random Spells can be known at a time. So that even if his spell list has 6 extra spells at level 3, he can only use a 2 of them? That feels clunky though.

Are there any homebrewes for different PACT OF THE TOME out there?

[Bjarkmundur]

"When you gain a Warlock level you can choose one spell from your List of Discovered Spells and add it to your list of known spells instead of a spell from your warlock spell list."