Warlock Half-caster+

[Garfunion]

What if instead of pact magic we give the warlock half-caster+ spellcasting similar to the Artificer.
Obviously we have to change our mystical arcanum works and perhaps even reduce the amount invocations they get but, could it work?

[Galithar]

It COULD work, but would need some significant tweaking. It would be more like writing a new class instead of tweaking an existing class. Even if you kept most of the class the same to balance it with half caster progression they would need something to make up for the lost power.

[MrStabby]

I sketched out something like this, at a glance it looked ok.

Half spell progression but still on a short rest recovery.

You gain a lot of flexibility. You lose a bit of peak power though. On average you suffer because the warlock typical resource free action (eldritch blast) is so good that this is what each spell slot is up against. Your low level spells, if they take an action, are a lot less shiny with EB than if you were using say firebolt.

This was however, before hexblade was released. Getting such good non-action cost spells that you can use a lot more would be pretty busted.

[Man_Over_Game]

It'd be a solution I'd recommend for a table that doesn't have too many encounters, since it means that a Warlock wouldn't need to be reliant on their Short Rest recharging.

On the other hand, I don't feel that there'd be enough of a difference between Warlocks, Sorcerers and Bards to justify it. With the Warlock's feature and spell thematics, it seems to fall somewhere between the partyboy skillmonkey Bard and the hermit spellslinger Sorcerer. Removing the most unique trait of Warlocks will end up making them feel bland.

[Garfunion]

I understand many of the shortcomings of this change however i’m just trying to find out if these changes are more feasible than trying to redesign the sorcerer class to be a warlock.

Someone on the homebrew forums who’s DM doesn’t like the short rest mechanic of the warlock, is attempting to redesign the sorcerer class into a warlock. I want to provide them with a better solution.

[Garfunion]

Actually how about an alternative direction. We giving the warlock the same spell slot progression as a normal full caster however they don’t get any spell slot levels past 5th. So a level 20 warlock would have 4(1st), 3(2nd), 3(3rd), 3(4th), and 3(5th) level spell slots.
Mystical Arcanum uses no spell slot but can only be used once per day per mystical Arcanum spell. Leave invocation progression alone and any invocation that allows you to cast a spell once per day using a spell slot just doesn’t use a spell slot.

[carrdrivesyou]

It COULD work, but would need some significant tweaking. It would be more like writing a new class instead of tweaking an existing class. Even if you kept most of the class the same to balance it with half caster progression they would need something to make up for the lost power.

I have to echo this. The end result would be less of a "warlock" and more of a weird, albeit, new class altogether.

1.You are giving the character far more spell slots than normal, so they would have to be long rest casters for any sense of balance to be maintained.

2. Invocations would not necessarily be scaled to match, and would be either the same scale as a full feat, or become more like ribbon abilities, depending on choice.

3. The class as a whole would lose its current theme, and would play mostly the same up to about 8th level though.

4. Overall the higher levels would be obnoxious as Eldritch Blast would be on par with your higher level options in terms of damage output.

I personally think it's a bad idea to try and rework an existing class. The end result would be either super OP or extremely reminiscent of the broken Truenamer class of 3.5. I would think you would be better served by creating your own class altogether.