Warlocks hold a special place in my heart. I want the best for them, and all their moral ambiguity. Of all the class revisions, the Warlock may be the most radically changed, and that includes the Ranger. These class overviews haven't been simple or short, but buckle up, because this is going to be a long one.
One of the ways that Mages have been distinguished in this playtest is the fact that they have unique spells. This won't be exclusive to them - Bards will see Vicious Mockery and Dissonant Whispers moved to be only for them - but in each case, some class features are now treated as spells.
Warlocks have also been shuffled around a bit thanks to the standardization of subclass feature levels. Conceptually, the Warlock has likely made multiple bargains and pacts, and acquire their Pact Boon potentially before meeting their ultimate patron, possibly from another entity who could be totally unaligned with that patron, or might actually be the patron in disguise.
And this leads us to another mindblowing change: your spellcasting ability will vary depending on the Pact Boon you pick. Each boon has two options among the three "mental" abilities, and so even two Bladelocks might use a different spellcasting ability. The ramifications of this for multiclassing are pretty crazy.
The other huge change is that they now have the traditional spellcasting feature, with Pact Magic gone. We'll delve into the nuances of this when we get into the features, but that's pretty damn huge.
A less profound, but welcome, change is that all Warlocks now get training with Medium Armor, which will be most relevant to Blade warlocks, but is going to make having a decent AC a lot easier (though Shields are not included).
So, let's get into features. As before, the Warlock has a lot of customization through Eldritch Invocations, but there are fewer options because may have been folded into the Pacts and the new Mystic Arcanum (which is now an invocation).
At level 1, you get Pact Boon and Spellcasting.
Pact Boon, as before, has you choose from one of three options (the Talisman did not make the cut for this). Additionally, you automatically learn Eldritch Blast and Hex, meaning no Warlock is left without it.
Hex, incidentally, has been redesigned. It only triggers once per turn, but now deals an additional d6 when cast at 3rd level or higher, and goes up to a total of 3d6 at 5th level, along with the old enhancement to its duration.
This seems designed to make it function better with non-Eldritch Blast cantrips, though I think this amounts to a nerf. By the time one can cast 5th level Hex, which for the new Warlock is 17th level, you're going to have access to much more powerful spells like Summon Fiend to concentrate on.
Eldritch Blast has been subtly tweaked - it now scales only with your Warlock level and not with your overall level. Thus, it actually winds up falling behind in potential compared to other cantrips if you've only gotten it via multiclassing or other means.
I think this is part of a way to try to make committing to the Warlock as a main class rather than as a couple-level dip more appealing.
But now, let's talk about the actual pacts boons.
Your Pact Boon will do two things. The first, is that it determines the two spellcasting abilities you can choose from to be your primary ability that works with your class features and spellcasting.
Pact of the Blade can use Wisdom or Charisma
Pact of the Chain can use Intelligence or Charisma
Pact of the Tome can use Intelligence or Wisdom.
So, in fact, my original Warlock character would have to swap out his favored ability, as he was meant to go Tome at 3rd level.
Each of these pacts also gives you a special cantrip, which provides the functionality of the boon:
Blade gives you Pact Weapon.
This spell takes an action and lasts 24 hours (no concentration). You either conjure a simple or magic weapon or bond with an existing magical weapon, in both cases lacking the Heavy property, and the spell fails if you touch a magic item that is attuned to someone else. For the duration, you get the following benefits:
You can use your spellcasting ability modifier for attack and damage rolls instead of Strength or Dexterity.
You have proficiency in the weapon.
If the weapon has the Thrown property, it returns to your hand immediately after hitting or missing a target.
The spell ends early if you cast it again or die, and conjured weapons vanish in this case.
When you reach 5th level as a Warlock, you get the Extra Attack feature when using the weapon associated with this cantrip.
So: this more or less does exactly what I'd been saying Pact of the Blade should do, which is to roll in much of the Hexblade's Hex Warrior features. Bladelocks of all patron types can now be totally effective with weapons and still good with their spells, and there is much rejoicing (indeed, with Medium Armor, you can now get into melee without needing a high investment in Dex).
Chain gives Pact Familiar
This is a cantrip that takes 1 hour to cast, and summons a friendly creature with a set stat block to act as your familiar. The Familiar works similarly to the one from Find Familiar, and uses your reaction to make its attack. You can pick its creature type from among Aberrations, Celestials, Dragons, Fey, Fiends, or Undead. The type determines the damage of its Eldritch Strike attack, which deals 2 + half your warlock level in damage. Aberrations deal acid, Celestials deal radiant, Dragons deal fire, Fey deal psychic, Fiends deal poison, and Undead deal necrotic. The familiar can also turn itself invisible as an action until the end of its next turn. The familiar also has a 40-foot hovering fly speed, an AC of 10 + your spellcasting ability modifier, and has HP equal to 5 + your Warlock level.
At 5th level, you can communicate telepathically at any distance on the same plane rather than the standard 120 feet.
While I don't know if this is quite as good as an Imp, and I worry for such a squishy familiar that only gets to attack in melee range, but this gives it the scaling of the other new conjuration spells, which is nice. There are, of course, some other invocations that enhance the familiar, including bonuses that depend on the type conjured.
Tome gives the cantrip Book of Shadows
This cantrip takes 1 hour, and allows you to conjure a book of eldritch magic, which gives you the following benefits:
When the book appears, you can choose two cantrips and two 1st level spells with the ritual tag. These can come from the Arcane, Divine, or Primal spell lists, as long as you don't have them prepared already. You have the chosen spells prepared while the book is on your person.
You can also use the book as a spellcasting focus.
The book disappears if you cast the spell again or die.
At 5th level, you now get to add your Warlock spellcasting ability modifier to the damage rolls of any cantrip you cast that doesn't already have that modifier added to its rolls.
Ok, like the Blade boon, this folds in a number of old eldritch invocations. Interestingly, this actually lets you skip Agonizing Blast once you hit level 5.
Phew. We're halfway through level 1.
Now, let's talk spellcasting.
The long and short of it is that Warlocks are now effectively half-casters, with a spell progression that takes us to 5th level spells when we hit 17th level in the class. However, you'll still have access to higher-level spells though Mystic Arcanum, which is now an Eldritch Invocation you can pick up multiple times, and which becomes available at level 5.
Warlocks have full access to the Arcane spell list, and can ultimately prepare 15 spells by level 19, which does not count the free spells from Pact Boon or Mystic Arcanum. Now, "prepare" is similar to the Sorcerer in that they're really "learned" spells, as you can only swap them out when you level up.
Warlocks will have more spell slots to cast with, but they now recharge on a long rest, like other classes. They also don't get scaling spell slots - you'll still have 1st level slots to toss out when you're high level, and so spell scaling will be something you need to consider.
This post is already going to be very long, but I feel like I could write a whole other post about this change. I think it solves a big problem that Warlocks have always had, which is that their spellcasting feels too constrained. But I also think that the implementation here has robbed the Warlock somewhat of their identity - not just through their weird spellcasting, but also their identity as a full caster.
As it currently stands, a Warlock cannot cast Shatter until they hit 5th level, meaning that Wizards and Sorcerers are leaving them in the dust. And if my Undead Warlock takes Summon Undead as a Mystic Arcanum at level 5 (as opposed to just learning it at that level) I don't believe I'll be able to upcast it to 4th level until I hit level 13, whereas under the current system I will automatically do so when I hit level 7.
I think the intention is to pick up several Mystic Arcanum invocations and just swap out their spells as you level up and can naturally learn the ones you had previously used, but this feels inelegant.
I wonder if it would be game-breaking to simply allow a Warlock to use the same pure-spellcasting scaling as any other spellcaster. Honestly, I don't actually hate the Pact Magic system, and might have felt it "fixed" by simply increasing the spell slots you had to work with. Maybe just double or triple the number you get and have them recharge on a long rest.
Finally moving on, at level 2, you get Eldritch Invocation.
You now get a total of 9 invocations rather than 8, and on top of that, a lot of invocations have been folded into the Mystic Arcanum invocation. Invocations come at levels 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17.
I won't go into each of these - a lot of them are familiar, while some have been folded into the pact boons. But we need to take a look at Mystic Arcanum.
Mystic Arcanum requires you to be 5th level or higher. You choose a spell from the Arcane spell list that has a level for which you qualify, as shown in a table (it's the level you'd need if you were a Wizard or Sorcerer to cast it). You can cast the spell without expending a spell slot once per long rest. You can pick this invocation up multiple times, as long as you learn a spell that is different from any other spell you've chosen for this invocation.
Ok, so, here are my issues: the first is that, in order to recreate the spell options of a current Warlock, you'd need to use four of your eldritch invocations on this feature to get your 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spell. Yes, we have one more Invocation than we did before, and perhaps more importantly, we have a lot of invocations that have been rolled into the pact boon. But I think that between the design of Warlocks' spellcasting and this invocation, you're forcing players to choose between being an advanced spellcaster of having the fun customizability of a warlock beyond spellcasting, which is a choice that players do not currently have to make.
And, as pointed out before, this implementation is awkward. The Warlock in the 2014 PHB is the absolute king of low-to-mid-level scaling spells, but this change makes such spells worse for them than for other Mages. It also creates a painful juggling act. I might want to pick up, say, Hunger of Hadar at 5th level, but then I'm inevitably going to swap it out if I hit level 9 because now I can just learn it normally, and I'll want to use that invocation slot for something harder to get, like a 5th level spell.
At 3rd level, you pick your subclass.
At 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19, you get feats.
At level 11, you get Contact Patron.
This gives you Contact Other Plane as an always-prepared spell, and you can cast it once per long rest without expending spell slot, and you automatically succeed on the spell's saving throw.
This is fun - a flavorful spell that doesn't always fit in a Warlock's loadout, but that feels particularly suited to the Warlock's transactional relationship with an otherworldly entity.
At level 18, you get Hex Master.
This lets you cast Hex without expending a spell slot.
I don't think this is all that exciting, given that at this level, you're hopefully concentrating on a better spell. And given that this isn't even letting you cast it at its highest scaling, it's underwhelming.
Overall thoughts: I absolutely love the change to Pact Boon. I think it makes the feature work far better than it previously did and opens up a lot of new possibilities for Warlocks. I'm skeptical about the idea of having different spellcasting abilities. I know a lot of people wanted an Intelligence Warlock for flavor reasons, but I think some systems might kind of breakdown if a class is so variable.
I would like to see another take on the Spellcasting feature. This tries to solve the issue of Warlocks feeling like they can never expend their spell slots, and also the problem of being so reliant on short rests. But I think this introduces more problems than it solves. I've already touched on that, though, so we can move on to the default subclass: The Fiend.
The Fiend is a natural fit for default subclass.
At 3rd level, you get Patron Spells and Dark One's Blessing.
This upgrade to the old expanded spell list now makes it work the way that a Paladin's Oath Spells do. This means the spells are added to your prepared list, and not simply to your potential choices when selecting spells, which is great. Also, like the new paladin, you get to cast each of these spells once for free per day.
As before, the spells scale from 1st to 5th level, though they now come at the levels the Warlock gets such spell slots.
Fiendish Warlocks get Burning Hands, Command, Scorching Ray, Suggestion, Fear, Stinking Cloud, Blight, Wall of Fire, Flame Strike, and Insect Plague.
This swaps out Blindness/Deafness, Fireball, Fire Shield, and Hallow for Suggestion, Fear, Blight, and Insect Plague. The loss of Fireball is a little sad, but now that all Warlock can take it, it's not as bad (though only being able to get it at level 9 or with Mystic Arcanum then makes it sad again).
The overall change of making these work like other subclass spells is a no-brainer, but appreciated.
Dark One's Blessing now also goes off if an enemy creature within 5 feet of you drops to 0 hit points. The temp HP also now scales with whatever your spellcasting ability modifier is.
This is a nice way to let at least melee warlock benefit even if someone "kill-steals" an enemy.
At 6th level, you get Dark One's Own Luck.
This works the same, except that rather than a single use that recharges on a short rest, you get a number of uses equal to your spellcasting ability modifier per long rest.
This is a subtle change, but likely a buff in almost all cases.
At 10th level, you get Fiendish Resilience.
This works almost exactly the same, but you can no longer choose Force as your damage resistance, and there's no rider for silvered weapons.
At level 14, you get Hurl Through Hell.
The only change here is that you can now use this feature again if you expend a spell slot of 4th level or higher.
So, the Fiend was already probably the best of the PHB subclasses for the Warlock, and this is very much a "not broke, don't fix" approach to the subclass. Again, I love the change to Patron Spells, which feels like what the Expanded Spell List was always meant to be.
I suspect that we're going to see more iteration and big changes to the Warlock in future UAs. I think there's a good intent here, but we're not quite there yet.
Next post, we'll take a look at The Wizard, which will close out the five classes previewed in this UA, and leaving us waiting patiently for the new Monk.
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