Treantmonk's Temple is a YouTube channel that goes into the math to evaluate the power levels of things in D&D. Now, I'll confess that I have mixed feelings about optimizing and min-maxing in D&D. I don't think you should play a Paladin with 8 Charisma just because you want to play one that's kind of a mess (I convinced a friend to reconsider this by pointing out he was doing the opposite extreme of min-maxing) but at the same time, I think I have the most fun if you don't search out bizarre and out-of-character exploits to get super-powered characters who can never be challenged.
I've played Adventurer's League, and I know that some players enjoy the challenge of breaking the game that way, but the way I see it, especially in TTRPGs, the build should support the character and fantasy you're trying to portray.
Fantasy can include being a powerful adventurer, to be clear. But if your choices don't really serve the fantasy and are instead just about numbers going up, I think you and I play this game for very different reasons.
Indeed, sometimes if those choices arise naturally from the story, they can be great - Fjord in Critical Role's second campaign made total sense multiclassing into Paladin from Warlock (though I might argue that Ukotoa would have made more sense as a Great Old One patron. The Fathomless patron option didn't exist yet when that campaign started, which would otherwise be the obvious best pick).
Anyway, lest I get ahead of myself: Treantmonk's Temple did a video defending the One D&D version of the Warlock, and I thought I'd chip in my own impressions of what he argues.
As the video points out, the Warlock can still access spells at certain levels at the same rate of one every two that full spellcasters do - with the exception of having to wait until level 5 for both 2nd and 3rd level spells. You'll still be able to cast a 9th level spell at level 17, just as you can now. And by expanding the Warlock's spell choices to the entire Arcane spell list, they now have access to a ton of far, far better spells than they had before.
But let's talk about the issues that I have with the way this works (and fair warning, if you've read my earlier posts about Warlocks, some of these will be familiar).
The first, and simpler, of the issues I have is that this creates a bizarre shuffling required by the Warlock as they level up. If I want access to a 3rd level spell at 5th level, I'll pick up the Mystic Arcanum invocation. Cool, I have Fireball now. But when I hit level 7, and I want a 4th level spell, I'll need to spend another invocation to get, say, Polymorph. Now, when I hit 9th level and I want to get, say, Danse Macabre, I'd need another invocation... or, I could swap Fireball out from the first Mystic Arcanum and change it to Danse Macabre, and then take Fireball as a learned spell.
This is all doable, but it's a real fucking hassle. As an experienced player who understands the ins and outs of the game, I can manage this, but as a DM with players who might not have the comfort I do, I feel like this will be a tangled mess of trying to help someone fix their character sheet.
The second issue is one that is actually shared with the current version of Mystic Arcanum. Warlocks are weird in that, for low-to-low-mid-level spells, they love a spell that scales really well when upcast. In D&D, most spells fall short when you upcast them - you'd much rather cast Meteor Swarm than a 9th level Fireball, for example. But there are a handful of spells that are specifically intended for Warlocks that get much better when upcast. Armor of Agathys is my go-to example. At 1st level, it's unlikely this will protect against more than a single hit, and will do a grand total of 5 damage to the attacker. But at 5th level, the 25 temporary hit points could, depending on the foes you're facing, last two or three attacks, or even more, giving the spell a huge damage potential - if a creature hits you three times and their average damage is 8 or less, that's 75 cold damage you've put on them.
Likewise, the Tasha's 'Summon' spells like Summon Undead, Summon Shadowfiend, or Summon Aberration scale quite well with upcasting. Ironically, though, Warlocks will now find that Summon Aberration is a far better choice than the 3rd level spells of this list because it is natively 4th level. At level 7, I could use Mystic Arcanum to get Summon Aberration, and have a Beholderkin shooting mind beams out twice a round. If I wanted to do the same with my Skeletal Undead Spirit's Grave Bolts, I'd have to wait until level 13 because even if I can get Summon Undead at level 5, I won't have the spell slots to upcast it at 4th level until 8 levels later, and Mystic Arcanum does not allow upcasting. Indeed, I can grab Summon Fiend at level 11 to get three attacks per round from that minion before I can even give my skeleton a second attack.
Warlocks have never been able to do great high-level spell scaling, but they're built around automatic low-level spell scaling. This is a pretty profound change.
Now, maybe this isn't bad so much as it is different. In terms of power, you might be better off just taking higher-level spells via Mystic Arcanum instead. (Loathe as I am to admit it, the Summoned minions, cool as they are, have to hit a ton of times to equal a single Fireball that hits three or more targets).
One point I fully agree with Treantmonk on is that invocations are unbalanced. I adore Eyes of the Runekeeper from a flavor and vibe perspective, but in terms of player power, it falls so very far behind other options. Indeed, I think making Mystic Arcanum an Invocation feels very much like you're forced to choose between whether you want to be able to use that high level magic and whether you want the other customization options invocations give you. This was not a choice you had to make in the current version, so my initial reaction is to not like it.
But what's the counterbalance? I think that the Pact Boon redesign has made them all far more impactful. Pact of the Blade just does what it's advertised to do, and I think will encourage far, far more players to pick up the Blade without feeling they then have to go Hexblade. Pact of the Tome is actually very flexible now because you can cast it any time you have an hour to spare, swapping out the cantrips and ritual spells within. (Also interesting that the Tome pact lets you skip Agonizing Blast, or at least replace it at level 5).
Where I agree with Treantmonk profusely is that Hex feels like it should be better. The upgrade to increase its damage done is a bit of a wash (though it falls off in tier 4) but there are just far better spells to concentrate on.
I think I'd like to see either class features or the spell itself significantly redesigned. If we want Warlocks Hexing their foes, I think it's got to do more. The damage is not enough to justify itself when you could have, for instance, Summon Fiend up (at base level, the number of d6s a summoned Devil deals per round, without even accounting for bonuses, is twice that of a 5th level hex and available six levels earlier). A Hex should be debilitating in some way. Ability checks do happen sometimes in combat, but they're not as common as attack rolls and saving throws. One way this could make a huge impact is if, when cast at higher levels, the chosen ability score is further debilitated - maybe you start with ability checks, add saving throws when cast at 3rd level, and then add attack rolls made with that ability at 5th level. It's not game-breaking, but with no save, it can be a big deal.
And then maybe the damage doesn't go up to balance that. I don't know.
I'm sure, given the general sense from the community, that we'll see some big revisions to the Warlock in the playtest process, but what I'd hope for is to allow Warlocks to more smoothly access high-level magic, without a lot of swapping out in the leveling process.
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