Warlock in a campaign with few encounters

[Xapi]

So, I'm running a campaign where the PCs face 1 or two encounters per adventuring day at most. It seems the Warlock is designed for sustained spell capacity over however many encounters the party faces, but I feel I'm screwing the Warlock player in my party by having few big deadly encounters instead of several less deadly ones.

Sure, he Eldritch Blast's away all day, but it can make for a boring encounter.

Any idea how to fix this without changing My DMing style and also not telling the player yo pick a different clases or multiclass?

[Pex]

Multiply all short rest things by 3 has been well received. He gets 6 spell slots per long rest. Anything that's once per short rest is three times per long rest.

[Man_Over_Game]

My solution has been "Divide one encounter into two with a Short Rest".

Take an encounter, determine some kind of "halfway mark", every can choose to get the benefits of a Short Rest at the cost of Exhaustion, big changes happen on the battlefield, fight goes on. This also has the benefit of allowing you to make balance-changes on the fly, since you don't have to cram an entire day's worth of a party's resources into a single fight.

Alternatively, introduce more utility spells for Warlocks to use. They'd be excellent utility casters if they could actually cast stuff like that.

[J-H]

One of the builds I'm considering for a Kingmaker campaign is a Warlock.
What's happening the rest of the day? Short rests mean that your Warlock has 4-8 spell slots available for out of combat use.

How about 4-6 24-hour castings of Hallucinatory Terrain? Sending 6 times a day? Remove Curse more often than the party cleric can do it? Fly up to 10 minutes for 80 minutes climbs a mountain. Clairvoyance within a mile 6 times? Telekinesis for 1,000# 4-6 times a day, for 10 minutes at a time? You could leapfrog a wagon across a swamp with that.

The Warlock ends up with something like 15 spells known, so there is room for a couple of utility spells in the mix.

[Yakk]

Switch to "gritty" rests and scale combats.

Now after your "big fight" you only get a short rest before the next one.

[Man_Over_Game]

One of the builds I'm considering for a Kingmaker campaign is a Warlock.
What's happening the rest of the day? Short rests mean that your Warlock has 4-8 spell slots available for out of combat use.

How about 4-6 24-hour castings of Hallucinatory Terrain? Sending 6 times a day? Remove Curse more often than the party cleric can do it? Fly up to 10 minutes for 80 minutes climbs a mountain. Clairvoyance within a mile 6 times? Telekinesis for 1,000# 4-6 times a day, for 10 minutes at a time? You could leapfrog a wagon across a swamp with that.

The Warlock ends up with something like 15 spells known, so there is room for a couple of utility spells in the mix.

I'll be honest, the list is pretty pathetic. It really needs new life pumped into it. Here's all of the level 1-3 utility spells that isn't patron-specific:

Protection from Evil and Good ***
Dispel Magic
Magic Circle **
Remove Curse ***
Unseen Servant * ***
Comprehend Languages * ***
Tongues ***
Charm Person
Enthrall ***
Suggestion ***
Darkness ***
Illusory Script * ** ***
Invisibility
Major Image
Spider Climb ***
Fly
Gaseous Form ***

*: Ritual, very affordable with a feat or another class.
**: Has a cost per use, unlikely to be leveraged often by a Warlock's casting.
***: Has no upcasting option, generally a poor choice for a Warlock.

So if we remove everything that doesn't have a star (worthwhile things Warlocks would be good at regularly using), we're left with:
Dispel Magic
Charm Person
Major Image
Fly
Invisibility

Which isn't the worst list, but it's all pretty generic stuff.

[Democratus]

I think the best solution is to include the Warlock's patron in your campaign.

Have story elements, difficulties, revelations, etc. that are a result of the Warlock's bond to this otherworldly being.

It will make them glad they chose the class and serve to show why Warlocks aren't just a "short-rest spellcaster".

[moonfly7]

So, I'm running a campaign where the PCs face 1 or two encounters per adventuring day at most. It seems the Warlock is designed for sustained spell capacity over however many encounters the party faces, but I feel I'm screwing the Warlock player in my party by having few big deadly encounters instead of several less deadly ones.

Sure, he Eldritch Blast's away all day, but it can make for a boring encounter.

Any idea how to fix this without changing My DMing style and also not telling the player yo pick a different clases or multiclass?

We play this way all the time, and to date we've had something like 5 warlocks who've never had a single issue. Heck, I played one in a game like this, it's not really a big issue. I think the warlock would rather have the whole party at peak capacity than everyone rolling hit dice and praying just so a single class feature can be used. Maybe not, but personally, I didn't choose warlock to get my spell slots back faster, I chose it for invocationa, pact, subclasses, flavor, and eldritch blast. Unless you're warlock has an issue and brings it up as hurting their play I wouldn't worry about it.

[stoutstien]

So, I'm running a campaign where the PCs face 1 or two encounters per adventuring day at most. It seems the Warlock is designed for sustained spell capacity over however many encounters the party faces, but I feel I'm screwing the Warlock player in my party by having few big deadly encounters instead of several less deadly ones.

Sure, he Eldritch Blast's away all day, but it can make for a boring encounter.

Any idea how to fix this without changing My DMing style and also not telling the player yo pick a different clases or multiclass?

Is this a perceived problem or a potential problem? Warlock incidentally doesn't really do that badly in games where there's only a few hard/deadly encounters if they are aware that is the status quo. They also have quite a few at will abilities in the form invocations to stretch their out of their resources even further. I think as long as the players know what they're getting into and plan accordingly they won't fall behind.

I guess my point is that the warlock dropping their big spell and in following it up with EB compared to a wizard dropping 2 spells aren't that different and the concentration limit/ total action economy keeps things close enough that most people wouldn't notice any gap.

[Pex]

In another perspective, as long as the party isn't long resting after every fight the fights you do have will take a lot out of the party. They will need and are able to short rest if just for the healing. With the party short or long resting after every fight the warlock is free to do as he pleases with his resources because he'll always get it back. He'll cast his two spells, use his Patron ability, and feel and be awesome. The party rests, a short rest because they have to, and the warlock gets it all back for the next fight. With the party alternating short/long rests after every fight the warlock never has to play the conservation of resources game. He's always at full power and plays at full power. It can be fun.

[Nagog]

I often feel the same way with the Warlock in my party; there are often sessions without any combat encounters (though that's libel to change now that we have a Fighter in the party).

A while back I presented them the opportunity to purchase a Bedroll of Catnap: Essentially allows them to cast the Catnap spell on themselves once per day. They purchased it, and I've noticed they've taken the initiative to pick up a few more utility spells, like Flock of Familiars, and use them frequently, relying on the Catnap to bring them up to max afterwards. Even back when I was playing a Wizard, I often only cast a small handful of spells per encounter, and kept most of my spells for utility outside of combat. Giving them the opportunity to do that allows for more versatile gameplay.

[Ganders]

First of all, there's a big difference between one encounter per day and two encounters per day. It makes a significant difference to the warlock's spellcasting. They maybe shouldn't be lumped together.


But to answer the jist of the question:
First, accept that the warlock will never be able to pull out the big guns in a fight as well as other casters. If the player is ok with being weak (and carried) in combat, but effective in other parts of the game, then that's fine. He will just have to choose his abilities for social and exploration success. All you have to do is make sure that it's not an all-combat game.

Making a warlock effective by giving more short rests per day is one way to balance them. But you can also do the opposite, design the warlock to minimize their dependence on spell slots. By leaning heavily on cantrips and rituals and anytime abilities like illusion, levitation, and telepathy, you don't have to worry about spell slots much at all. It won't be the strongest character, it'll never set the optimization boards on fire, but it can be quite viable to play a warlock with no spell slots at all. It might even dominate some scenarios. (Don't try this with a wizard or bard.) For some players out-of-combat success is fine.