While we don't have playtest 7 yet, one thing in the recent interview with Jeremy Crawford that came up vis a vis the Warlock is that they'll be going back to using Pact Magic.
But what does that mean?
Fundamentally, what it means is that Warlocks' relationship with Spell Slots is different than other spellcasters. As it works in the 2014 rules, a Warlock begins with only a single spell slot, and caps out at 4 at tier 4 (while you get your second spell slot at level 2, subsequent increases are tied to your tier, so level 11 and 17). While this means you have far fewer spell slots than, say, a Wizard, the big difference is that you regain those spell slots on a short rest, rather than a long rest.
The other wrinkle is that those spell slots scale. At level 3, when a Wizard gets 2 2nd level spell slots and a fourth 1st level spell slot, the Warlock's two spell slots both upgrade to 2nd level. Thus, if you take a single short rest during the day, you actually get effectively four 2nd level spell slots to the Wizard's two (ignoring Arcane Recovery).
Warlock spell slots stop scaling up when you hit level 9, and remain 5th level slots through the rest of your Warlock career.
Spell slots, however, are not the full extent of your spellcasting fuel. Warlocks, also, in the 2014 version of the class, get a feature called Mystic Arcanum at 11th level, and higher-level versions of it at 13, 15, and 17.
Each of these Mystic Arcana let you choose a spell of the level that full casters get at that level - 6th when you're level 11, 7th at level 13, 8th at level 15, and 9th at level 17. The feature allows you to cast these spells without expending a spell slot (which you wouldn't have to do so with) once per long rest.
Now, other pure spellcasters are also fairly limited in their high-level spells. A 20th level Wizard has two 6th level spell slots, and only a single 7th, 8th, and 9th level slot. So, in practice, while that Wizard might be able to Disintegrate twice in a day, they otherwise have the same daily capacity for high-level spellcasting.
Again, if we assume a single short rest per day, the Warlock has effectively 8 5th level spell slots, compared to a Wizard's 3. It's just that the Wizard also has four 1st level slots and 3 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level slots.
The upshot here is that Warlocks basically don't want to spend spell slots on minor effects - ever. A Wizard can easily toss out a few 1st level slots on things like disguise self or mage armor when they're high level, because a 1st level Magic Missile isn't going to keep up with their scaled up cantrips (or at least not be significantly better.
But a Warlock needs to treat every spell slot as a precious resource. This, then, is part of the reason that unlimited effects, like many Eldritch Invocations as well as the amazing Eldritch Blast cantrip (especially amazing when souped up with invocations) are such core parts of the Warlock's class.
This also creates a few incentives for a Warlock's use of spell slots.
First off, Warlocks love a spell that scales well. Armor of Agathys, for instance, is a defensive spell that gives you 5 temporary hit points, and as long as they persist, when a creature hits you with a melee attack, they take 5 cold damage. Both the temp HP and damage scale up, so that by level 9, you have 25 temp hp and are dealing 25 cold damage whenever a target hits you. While the first level version is going to probably only deal 5 damage, or 10 if you're lucky, against the right foes, a 5th level version could easily do 50 to 75 damage, or even 100 or more against a swarm of smaller foes.
If a spell doesn't scale with level, it starts to drop off in power compared to those that do.
Now, this scaling does hit a wall at level 9, because not only are our spells no longer automatically scaling to higher levels, but we actually no longer have any way to get them to scale further.
Warlocks were just shy of Wizards vis a vis the number of Summon spells from Tasha's they could learn (they only lack Summon Construct). These are actually great for a Warlock - a concentration spell that consistently does a lot of damage for an hour. But there's an odd breakpoint - Summon Aberration, Summon Fey, Summon Shadowspawn and Summon Undead are all under 5th level at base (most are 3rd level, while Aberration is 4th). These summon spells allow the summoned creature to attack at half the spell's level, rounded down, and the attacks hit harder depending on the spell level. So, cast at 5th level, each gets to attack twice per round, and the damage per hit is typically around 12.5-15 damage, or 25-30 damage for a full round (assuming attacks hit and don't crit).
Summon Fiend, however, is the only one of these that is higher-level, and thus we can only cast this at 6th level, and only if we've picked it as our mystic arcanum. The fiend's highest damage option will deal 2d6+3+the spell's level, which will average to 16 damage per attack, and gets to attack three times (48 damage per round).
Because of the oddities of Warlock magic, our Summon Undead will never be able to be cast at this level. And we'll never be able to upcast any of these to 8th level to get four attacks per round.
So, really, what's strange is that Warlocks are great with scaling spells up until they can cast 5th level spells, but then they're locked into spells that need to be cast at their "native" level.
I'll confess that my concern - the lack of scaling for higher-level spells - is probably a lesser concern to most of the community. Indeed, the problem may be more with the choice of high-level spells, which tends to leave something to be desired.
But the larger issue I think for a lot of players is that feeling of having to be so precious with spell slots. Looking at your character sheet and seeing you merely had two up through tier 2, which many campaigns (and certainly published adventures) seem to be limited to, means you feel like you're always running out.
Personally, I think that's more of an issue of mentality - you need to think of yourself as the magic-martial class, who treats their Eldritch Blast like the Ranger treats their Longbow. But it's a concern that WotC tried to address in playtest 5 quite radically: giving Warlocks traditional spellcasting, only at a half-caster rate.
I wrote more than one post about how I disliked this change. It did give the Warlock more spell slots to spend, but it left them stuck with low-level slots that were not going to have the impact that higher-level spells would, and forced them to spend precious eldritch invocations on Mystic Arcanum features just to match pure caster spell level progression. One of the ironies to this was that you could cast a 6th level Summon Fiend several levels before you could cast a 4th level Summon Undead.
And so, while I've been critical of a lot of the One D&D playtest's backsliding toward conservatism, the reversion of Warlocks to using Pact Magic is something that I was happy to hear.
That said, what will Pact Magic look like?
First, we should ask what the core of Pact Magic is.
Is it that we have fewer slots, but which recharge on a short rest?
Or is it that the spell slots scale up every two levels until we hit level 9/spell level 5?
If we go with the first option, what if we took the idea of Warlocks as half casters and divided them not horizontally, but vertically? In other words, a Sorcerer starts with 2 1st level spell slots, then gets a third at level 2 and a fourth at level 3. What if a Warlock instead got 1 spell slot at level 1, and then got a second at level 3, and that was all the 1st level slots they'd get? But then, also at level 3, they get their sole 2nd level spell slot. This would leave them with about half (a little less) as many spell slots as other pure casters, but with the opportunity to get them back in the middle of the day. Yes, a level 9 Warlock only gets one 5th level spell to cast in a single encounter, but they also have a 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and two 1st level slots.
This would give Warlocks more spell slots to spend on smaller effects, but wouldn't have them butting up against other pure casters, and preserve the power space for effects like Eldritch Blast and the Pact Boons (which I hope remain similar to how they were in playtest 5, though I'm fine with Warlocks going back to all being Charisma-based).
Alternatively, if the real thing is that they have scaling spell slots, what if we just gave them twice as many, but have them recharge on a long rest? At 1st level, you'd have two, and then four at level 2, up through 10th level, and the six at 11, and 8 at 17. Essentially, this would "bake in" the short rest you normally need to recharge these slots in the middle of the day. But it would deny you the chance to get another set of slots if your group is willing to take two short rests.
There are upsides and downsides here: currently, if a level 8 Warlock uses one of their spell slots and then the group takes their one short rest of the day, the Warlock might only effectively get to spend three spell slots per day, and this would ensure you get the full four. But, of course, there's the other scenario, where that Warlock could potentially get six in a day if the party's willing to take more short rests.
Personally, I'd prefer something akin to the latter scenario. I actually like that the Warlock doesn't have a bunch of low-level spell slots kicking around, because I think this can then push the design of the class into more interesting invocation features that can take the place of low-level utility spells. If I want Mage Armor, I don't want to cast 1st level spells! I'll just take Armor of Shadows.
The progression of that spell slot system could also be adjusted for smoother power progression. Maybe you start with two, get three at level 3, four at level 5, six at level 7, seven at level 9, eight at level 11, and then maybe nine at level 15 and round out at ten at level 17. 10 5th level slots might seem like a ton, but if it's per long rest, that's actually fewer than a current tier 4 Warlock gets with two short rests in a day.
In theory playtest 7 is due soon, though whether that means in the next few days or the next couple weeks I don't know for sure. I'm eager to see what their next pass on the whole thing is.
(As a note, I think my issues with Mystic Arcanum could be solved thusly: you learn a spell of X level (6th, 7th, 8th, 9th) and you get a single spell slot of that level. Unlike the spell slots granted by your pact magic feature, these only come back on a long rest. This would allow upcasting of 1-5th level spells and also allow these spells to be upcast. It could even give us the opportunity to learn other high-level spells amongst our "spells known.)
No comments:
Post a Comment