Am I missing something with glaivelock?

[morkendi]

So I am making a point to play things I never played before, so doing a warlock now. I see the post about glaivelock and have a question. Eldritch glaive says you use a full round action to make an attack. Yes you get attacks of opportunity and multiple attacks is you have +6, but full round action means you can only move 5 feet. So you can’t move to an opponent and attack like a normal melee. How is considered do good for a melee type character to lock themselves down like that? I understand all the hellfire damage and high numbers, but at the cost of not being able to move?

[Saintheart]

Traditionally that's what certain barbarian ACFs, Travel Devotion, or swift action teleports are used to facilitate.

[H_H_F_F]

There are ways to overcome issues like this. Travel devotion, for one.

[Chronos]

Normal melees can't move and make a full attack, either.

The only thing a glaivelock is missing is making a single melee attack as a standard action, but in that case, they can just make a normal eldritch blast as a standard action, instead.

[Darg]

Normally, people beef up the range of the glaive. Enlarge person doubles your reach for example.

[Gruftzwerg]

Traditionally that's what certain barbarian ACFs, Travel Devotion, or swift action teleports are used to facilitate.

I would like to add Quicken SLA via Escalation Mage as additional option here.
I used it for my lil STR 1 glaivelock build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?607457-The-Hellfire-Escalation-Glaivelock-A-Killer-Kobold-Build) ^^

[Biggus]

There's a thread here you might find useful: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?103358-3-X-Ways-to-get-Pounce-or-Free-Movement

[Troacctid]

You're not missing anything. Here's my section on the glaive in my Warlockopedia.

Eldritch glaive offers something pretty impressive: the ability to make multiple attacks with your eldritch blast. Not only do you gain additional attacks based on your BAB, you can also use it to make opportunity attacks, and unlike some other melee-based blast shapes I could name, it still targets touch AC.

So that's pretty great, but there are some drawbacks. For one thing, with your average BAB, you don't get a second attack until 8th level, and that's if you don't prestige. So if your game is starting at 1st level, it will be a long time before your glaive comes online. And the need to maintain a decent BAB screws up your ability to take prestige options like urban savant, paragnostic apostle, and sentinel of Bharrai. (Hellfire warlock is still great, though.) Furthermore, eldritch glaive requires a full round action, even if you're only making a single attack. This makes it cumbersome to use, because if you're not already in melee range, you won't have your move action to get there.

All these problems make eldritch glaive fairly ineffective at low levels, because you're doing a lot of extra work to do the same damage you were already doing with your regular eldritch blast. However, by the lategame, the problems will naturally start to fade away, and it becomes a superb multiplier for your damage while also applying eldritch essences multiple times (forcing two saves against noxious blast instead of one, for example), and by then you should have a familiar with a wand of benign transposition who can easily move you into position. So all in all, it's terrible early, but excellent late, and therefore a good candidate for swapping out or retraining.

Note that the Quicken Spell-Like Ability feat works very well with this one.
With a familiar who shares your UMD ranks, you should be able to utilize its action to teleport you where you need to go via a wand. Benign Transposition is only a 1st level spell, so wands of it are nice and cheap.

Definitely don't take Travel Devotion, it's terrible for warlocks and I really don't understand why people seem to like it so much. Quicken Spell-Like Ability is better, and usable more times per day. You could also get a pair of Quicksilver Boots or some Anklets of Translocation if that's more your jam.

[holbita]

Or just read the ability and see that it says... full round, and not full-attack. Hum... now we read the rules for standard actions

"Start/Complete Full-Round Action
The “start full-round action” standard action lets you start undertaking a full-round action, which you can complete in the following round by using another standard action. You can’t use this action to start or complete a full attack, charge, run, or withdraw"

So this means we can use the first turn to start the full round action. And on our second turn we can move near our opponent and "full-attack" them. Given that we are going for touch AC we can assume both attacks will hit. If so the possibility of an AoO in the mix makes this more damage than normal eldritch blast with just 6 BAB. If you get to 3 attacks or more with your BAB, or your opponent doesn't move away from you... that's going to heavily outpace the damage of a normal eldritch blast.

[Soranar]

even without ways to move and full attack, a warlock will typically do very well compared to most melee

he has a decent ranged touch attack

then he switches to a fairly good melee touch attack

and he has utility invocations

even without shenanigans most encounters start around 60 ft range (so you use eldritch blast once)

then you're within melee range for the rest of the fight so a 5ft step + reach is enough

[Rebel7284]

I think part of the reason that Travel Devotion is being suggested is that it overlaps with the easiest way for a warlock to get full BAB: Eldritch Disciple.

With Warlocks often having high Charisma, you can DMM Persist Divine Power and still have some Turn Undead uses left. Also, you can get Travel Devotion for free by trading in Travel Domain.

Definitely a mid-game combo since due to losing two caster levels, you are level 9 until you're persisting Divine Power.

Bonus! If you worship a dead deity, you can enter Ur-Priest and Eldritch Disciple, getting fast casting progression and getting 9th level spells before level 20, leaving some space for stuff like Hellfire Warlock and such. 😈

[Chronos]

One downside of it not actually being a full attack is that it doesn't work with Pounce (from the barbarian ACF or some other source).

[Crake]

Definitely don't take Travel Devotion, it's terrible for warlocks and I really don't understand why people seem to like it so much. Quicken Spell-Like Ability is better, and usable more times per day. You could also get a pair of Quicksilver Boots or some Anklets of Translocation if that's more your jam.

You know travel devotion lasts for a minute right? So its 10 rounds of swift action movement, vs quicken SLA only being 3 rounds, and anklets being 2 rounds. Plus, if you get something like nightsticks, or a cleric dip (which would also let uou get trsvel devotion for free instead of a domain), you can use it more

[Troacctid]

You know travel devotion lasts for a minute right? So its 10 rounds of swift action movement, vs quicken SLA only being 3 rounds, and anklets being 2 rounds. Plus, if you get something like nightsticks, or a cleric dip (which would also let uou get trsvel devotion for free instead of a domain), you can use it more
Combats don't last 10 rounds, and the swift action cost to initially activate the effect means you don't get to also do a swift move on the first round. So realistically, you'll get it in one combat per day, and you'll use it somewhere between 0 and 2 times during that combat, at the cost of not being able to use any other swift or immediate actions.

In comparison, a pair of quicksilver boots costs only 3,500 gp to give you that same benefit, except with no delay and at double the movement speed. Is your high-level character really going to light a whole feat slot on fire just to avoid spending 3,500 gp? Or, if you're an eldritch disciple, are you really going to trade a whole domain for it? Especially when your prestige class is already giving you four other separate ways to spend turning attempts, all of which also compete for your swift action?

[Rebel7284]

the swift action cost to initially activate the effect means you don't get to also do a swift move on the first round.

To be fair, I am not sure this is clear from the text. I have seem folks here rule that the swift action used to activate the feat ALSO triggers the first 30 feet of free movement. Not sure if this is the majority interpretation or not.

[Edit] And again, Travel Devotion gets much better if you can get if for free because you're entering Eldritch Disciple anyway. :smallsmile:

[Troacctid]

To be fair, I am not sure this is clear from the text. I have seem folks here rule that the swift action used to activate the feat ALSO triggers the first 30 feet of free movement. Not sure if this is the majority interpretation or not.
That's what the text says. It's a spell-like ability with a duration of 1 minute and an activation time of 1 swift action.
Once per day as a swift action, you can activate this ability to move up to your speed as a swift action each round. This effect lasts for 1 minute.
Similarly, a dragonblooded character can't cast arcane spellsurge as a swift action and then use its effect to cast another spell as a swift action. It's a known limitation.


[Edit] And again, Travel Devotion gets much better if you can get if for free because you're entering Eldritch Disciple anyway. :smallsmile:
Eldritch disciples don't get Travel Devotion for free. They have to sacrifice a domain (very expensive cost!) or spend a feat slot (also very expensive cost!) just like anyone else. Trading away the Travel domain on an eldritch disciple is madness IMO, since the free movement effect from the granted ability is better than Travel Devotion all on its own (even in spite of not working against mundane grapples), and it comes with one of the best sets of domain spells in the whole game.

[Chronos]

Or, of course, you could take some completely different domains, if that worked better for your character. Either way, a domain is a very steep opportunity cost.

[Crake]

Combats don't last 10 rounds, and the swift action cost to initially activate the effect means you don't get to also do a swift move on the first round. So realistically, you'll get it in one combat per day, and you'll use it somewhere between 0 and 2 times during that combat, at the cost of not being able to use any other swift or immediate actions.

This is you projecting your experiences, not objective fact. For a lot of people combat lasts MORE than 10 rounds, sometimes significantly moreso. And in particularly mobile combats, you may get up to the full 10 rounds of activation out of it, giving you way more value than quicken, or other items, which come with the opportunity cost of eating up those given item slots

[Thunder999]

It's literally the same as every melee character in the game, you either invest in a way to move as a swift action, or only full attack after one side closes the distance.
Everyone wants to stand still and full attack until the other side dies, that's just what 3.5 melee combat looks like.

[Crake]

It's literally the same as every melee character in the game, you either invest in a way to move as a swift action, or only full attack after one side closes the distance.
Everyone wants to stand still and full attack until the other side dies, that's just what 3.5 melee combat looks like.

Not everyone. Sometimes its better to do single big hits and keep on the move, denying your enemy their full attack, and just outpace their single attack damage.

[Rebel7284]

Eldritch disciples don't get Travel Devotion for free. They have to sacrifice a domain (very expensive cost!) or spend a feat slot (also very expensive cost!) just like anyone else. Trading away the Travel domain on an eldritch disciple is madness IMO, since the free movement effect from the granted ability is better than Travel Devotion all on its own (even in spite of not working against mundane grapples), and it comes with one of the best sets of domain spells in the whole game.

I accept your point that Travel domain specifically is one of the better domains. With that said:

Remember that the domain granted power is only usable a number of rounds equal to your cleric level, so 4 rounds a day with the basic entry, or even 3 rounds a day with a Binder dip (possibly even less with some niche builds like Human Paragon). It's certainly a good ability even for a few rounds, but so is Travel Devotion. As far as spell access, yes, Travel has some good spells, but most of them become much less important if there is a Wizard in the party already or with a gold investment (Belt of the Wide Earth), plus there are other domains such as Portal that give fairly similar spell access.

With all of this in mind, I think it's a fair trade in most games. True it is not "free", but definitely not "madness" either.

[Biggus]

That's what the text says. It's a spell-like ability with a duration of 1 minute and an activation time of 1 swift action.


It doesn't say that you have to do anything in particular to activate it; it's a perfectly fair reading that you activate it by moving, not as a separate action.


This is you projecting your experiences, not objective fact. For a lot of people combat lasts MORE than 10 rounds, sometimes significantly moreso.

Wow, really? I agree that combat often goes on more than 3 rounds (4-6 is fairly common in my experience) but I think I've seen about two combats ever that went over 10 rounds.

[H_H_F_F]

Wow, really? I agree that combat often goes on more than 3 rounds (4-6 is fairly common in my experience) but I think I've seen about two combats ever that went over 10 rounds.

Especially in mid-levels, I've definetly had encounters which were fight-run-fight-run, with the running often being the literal run action. I've had more mobile characters move-and-shoot to give the heavyweights some time to take their distance. Those "I run towards the treeline" rounds go by very quickly, and they easily stack up.

I've had a sled-chase in a snowstorm that ran for a full 4 hour session, and my players in that campaign were quick and decisive while taking their turns. I have no idea how many rounds it was, but the number was high.

[Crake]

Wow, really? I agree that combat often goes on more than 3 rounds (4-6 is fairly common in my experience) but I think I've seen about two combats ever that went over 10 rounds.

I mean, if you do combat as just a static “run in and slap each other” encounter, im sure itll be quick, but if enemies use tactics, like archers ducking from cover to cover, enemies splitting up, mounted enemies, environmental hazards, combat will frequently take more than 10 rounds

[Darg]

It doesn't say that you have to do anything in particular to activate it; it's a perfectly fair reading that you activate it by moving, not as a separate action.

It says it takes a swift action to start the ability and then a swift action to take advantage of it every round.


Once per day as a swift action, you can activate this ability to move up to your speed as a swift action each round.

So while it could be "fair," it would be nowhere close to being RAW.