Warlocks, revisited

Quite a long time ago, I talked about tweaking D&D 5e warlocks to reduce the system issues with eldritch blast and grant them more flexibility as a class. I also mentioned that I'd prefer to make broader changes.

I am nothing if not inclined to suddenly drop things I've been working on in favour of immediate whims reliable, so I'm going to revisit this topic now.

A quick refresher

My previous suggestions for warlocks were basically to remove all built-in scaling from eldritch blast, but add in an update of the old "lesser invocation" shtick which grants upgrades for your eldritch blast at 5th, 11th and 16th level, with a broader and (dare I suggest) more interesting set of options.

But why stop there, after all?

Expanded warlocks

My first step is to address the annoying and unnecessary limitation of warlocks to a single cantrip. Yes, you can eventually learn up to four, but fundamentally your job as a warlock is assumed to be using eldritch blast. There is no real reason for this - certainly not once my Lesser Invocations come into play.

Warlock spell list

Cantrips (0 level): add vicious mockery and thaumaturgy to the spell list. Archfey pacts gain druidcraft as a bonus cantrip. Fiend pacts gain produce flame. Great Old One pacts gain message.

Lesser Invocations

Warlocks can learn Lesser Invocations at 5th, 11th and 16th level.

The invocations Ascendant Step, Beast Speech, Eldritch Sight, Eyes of the Rune Keeper, Gaze of Two Minds, Mask of Many Faces, Misty Visions, Otherworldly Leap and Thief of Five Fates all become Lesser Invocations.

Any Lesser Invocation can also be learned using an Eldritch Invocation slot.

A damage-dealing cantrip is any cantrip that can intrinsically inflict damage - for the warlock, this will be eldritch blast, vicious mockery and produce flame, plus any cantrips obtained from other sources. It doesn't apply to cunningly finding ways to inflict damage using prestidigitation or any such nonsense.

Twin Blast: when you use eldritch blast, you create a second beam. You can direct the beams at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each beam. Prerequisite: 5th level in this class.

Triple Blast: when you use eldritch blast, you create a third beam. You can direct the beams at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each beam. Prerequisite: 11th level in this class and twin blast.

Eldritch Volley: you create a fourth beam. You can direct the beams at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each beam. Prerequisite: 17th level in this class and triple blast.

Erupting Blast: when you use the eldritch blast cantrip you can trigger this ability. You produce a single beam, which explodes as a sphere with a 5ft. radius. Each creature in the blast must make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid damage.

Sweeping Blast: when you use the eldritch blast cantrip you can trigger this ability. Instead of beams, the blast becomes a 15ft. cone with a range of Self. Each creature in the blast must make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid damage.

Eldritch Spear: the range of any damage-dealing warlock cantrips is doubled.

Agonizing Curse: when you cast a cantrip that inflicts damage, add your Charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit.

Repelling Curse: when you hit a creature with a damage-dealing cantrip, you can push the target up to 10 feet away in a straight line.

Unbalancing Curse: when you hit a creature with a damage-dealing cantrip, the target must roll a Dexterity save against your spellcasting ability DC or fall prone.

Luring Curse: when you hit a creature with a damage-dealing cantrip, you can pull the target up to 10 feet towards you in a straight line.

Vampiric Curse: once per round, when you damage a creature with a cantrip, you gain temporary hit points equal to half your Charisma bonus, rounded up (minimum 1).

Occluding Curse: when you hit a creature with a damage-dealing cantrip, you befuddle their senses, gaining half cover against the target until the start of your next round.

New Hexes

The following two spells are added to the warlock spell list.

Beguiling Hex

1st-level enchantment
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range:Self
Components: V, S, M (the petrified eye of a newt)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
You place a curse on a creature that you can see within range. Until the spell ends, the target suffers disadvantage on attack rolls against you and your allies. Whenever you or your allies do anything harmful to the target, this effect is suppressed until the end of its next turn. Also choose one ability when you cast the spell. The target has disadvantage on ability checks made with the chosen ability.

If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends, you can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to curse a new creature.

A remove curse cast on the target ends this spell early.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd or 4th level, you can maintain your concentration on the spell for up to 8 hours. When you use a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can maintain your concentration on the spell for up to 24 hours.

Weakening Hex

1st-level enchantment
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range:Self
Components: V, S, M (the petrified eye of a newt)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
You place a curse on a creature that you can see within range. Until the spell ends, whenever the target would deal damage, the damage is reduced by 1d6. Also choose one ability when you cast the spell. The target has disadvantage on ability checks made with the chosen ability.

If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends, you can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to curse a new creature.

A remove curse cast on the target ends this spell early.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd or 4th level, you can maintain your concentration on the spell for up to 8 hours. When you use a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can maintain your concentration on the spell for up to 24 hours.

Spell Taxes

Eldritch Invocations that provide additional once-use spellcasting do not expend a warlock spell slot when cast, but are cast at that level.

Thief of Five Fates is adapted to match the Fiendish Vigour pattern, allowing the warlock to cast bane at will as a 1st-level spell without expending spell slots or material components.

This is a mixture of simplicity and balance. I have not seen a single argument anywhere that supports the decision that a warlock gaining the ability to cast one extra spell once per long rest (from compulsion, confusion, conjure elemental, slow, polymorph and bane) should not only cost a precious Invocation slot, but also a very precious spell slot.

Warlock spell slots are all the highest possible level, which means losing one to cast a measly 1st-level spell is a terrible trade-off. This makes selecting Thief of Five Fates in particular a bad option, considering especially that it's competing with hex for attention. As I've mentioned before, spells that scale are still much worse than spells of appropriate level. Compulsion doesn't scale at all, remaining a 4th-level spell forever, and the mighty benefit offered is... forcing a target to move in a circle around you as long as you maintain concentration and it doesn't pass its saving throws.

Finally, the only argument I've seen advanced in defence is that it's necessary to prevent warlocks from "spamming" these spells, using their multiple high-level slots. This begs the question: why is the spell-slot cost added? An ability that can only be used once per long rest is already unspammable.

A 10th-level warlock can expect to cast six 5th-level spells per day, although at least one of those will be hex, and only two can be cast between short rests, and if they wish to cast a low-level spell that gains no benefit in that situation from being cast in a higher-level slot it's just hard cheddar. Meanwhile, other 10th-level casters can cast eleven spells per day, two of them 5th level, and can cast all eleven of these in a single encounter if they choose, and can choose what level to cast each of them at. The warlock's spell-scaling ability can be quite powerful, but it isn't automatically so. In fact, a high proportion of its spells require concentration (and thus clash badly with hex), and many of them are non-damaging spells that scale with duration.

To take a simple example: a 10th-level warlock could easily expend their two per-rest spell slots on hex and hellish rebuke, dealing 5d10 damage to a single enemy that has damaged them (save for half). A 10th-level wizard or sorcerer can meanwhile non-optimally cast eight fireballs, dealing a total of 24+27+20 = 71d6 damage (save for half) to enemies within a large blast radius - and have plenty of lower-level slots to spare. If the warlock wants a better exchange rate, she might end up using scrying, hold monster, fly or blight. It's still not looking great. Warlocks' spell choices are actually pretty limited to begin with, and far less devastating than the options most other classes have, in large part because they're designed specifically to prevent the warlock having spells that are effective for spamming at max level.

Even if gaining the ability to once-per-day cast bane without using a spell slot were somehow utterly devastating, in a way that having the ability to cast hold monster six times per day mysteriously isn't - how exactly would limiting her to one bane and five hold monsters make all the difference?

I'm not actually suggesting the warlock is underpowered here; the class mechanics are different. What I am saying is that allowing the warlock to spend a precious resource on buying one additional spell that can be only used once per day doesn't seem a big enough benefit to remotely justify burning one of their spell slots as well; and that chipping a spell slot off the warlock's options doesn't seem to do anything to prevent abuse.

As far as I can see, the sole justification here would be that a warlock might take multiple Invocations to gain extra spells. In which case, yes, a 9th-level warlock might be able to cast bane, slow, confusion and conjure elemental once each per day at 5th level, as well as two other 5th level spells, and could conceivably blow them all in a single scene to devastating effect.

Well, I say devastating. All four of those are concentration spells, so casting all four presupposes that three of them are very quickly useless or negated, so they'd only be devastating if each one somehow allows your party to quickly eliminate the targets of that particular spell before turning on another group that wasn't affected. We're talking about a pretty specific encounter here to be honest, and also one in which just using hex and eldritch blast or, you know, your normal assortment of powerful spells wouldn't have been about as effective.

I suppose you could cast one of those in each of four encounters to great effect? Although they do all allow saving throws every round, so it's not likely to be that devastating. I can see it might be slightly unbalanced, although I'm not yet convinced it's significantly more unbalanced than all the other casters who can hurl twice as many spells around (albeit mostly of lower level). And again, you're giving up hex damage so you won't be wreaking havoc yourself. And you're losing the opportunity to take any of the other Invocations that do other stuff, like invisibility or perfect darkvision or skills or bonus attacks or pact benefits or truesight or ramping up your eldritch blast.

This isn't just about mechanics, either. Whatever the mechanical ins and outs of it are, the price tag of those Invocations is demonstrably something that puts players off selecting them - in particular, it puts them off choosing any that seem at all suboptimal. The prospect of having to burn a spell slot if you ever wanted to use the ability is alarming, even if that might prove a reasonable exchange in the situations where you might consider using it anyway.

What's the point?

All of this has one very simple aim: to help the warlock diversify.

Changing the way eldritch blast scales by swapping auto-scaling for lesser invocations means players have a much broader set of options for how they wish to play. They can stick with the default gameplay of hurling lots of blasts around (and coupling it with hex to deal heavy damage to a single enemy), but they can also opt for area attacks, or close-ranged abilities that burn through mobs, or abilities that move and hamper enemies. This grants them a bit of the flexibility in playstyle that is open to other full casters.

Moving some of the lower-powered Invocations to the Lesser Invocation slot makes it more likely they'll actually be chosen. They are no longer competing with heavy hitters like bonus spellcasting, additional skills or extra attacks.

Making the extra spells not cost a spell slot makes them a much less offputting option, which means players should be more likely to choose them.

Finally, opening the floor to a bigger range of cantrips, and tying this in with a new set of hexes, should allow much more variation in playstyle. Instead of simply being a damage dealer, you should be able to do other things with your warlock.

If you're not fussed about DPS, take vicious mockery as your damage cantrip to curse your enemies, perhaps coupled with Unbalancing Curse or Occluding Curse, and then take Lesser Invocations that do other things. You can make a trickster warlock with Ascendant Step and Misty Visions, without worrying that you've lost the chance to do more potent things. You're exchanging the power of a full-blown eldritch blast for a range of other interesting abilities, and you might not even bother using hex at all. This opens your way to using other concentration spells like charm person, hold person or fly.

As a fiendlock, you can use your free produce flame for attacks. It's short-ranged, but frees you up to take other cantrips, which is potentially vital given how few other spells you can cast. True strike might be a good bet for those damage-dealing spells your patron bestows, or chill touch is a longer-ranged option with a less-resisted damage type. You might take Mask of Many Faces or Thief of Five Fates early on for some weird cursey abilities, and then perhaps grab some of those slightly more potent one-use spells. You might spec for a stealthy role, grabbing extra skills along with Devil's Sight and One with Shadows, Visions of Distant Realms, and some stealthy spells.

You can even make a warrior-warlock who relies on mundane weaponry for their combat capabilities, and chooses spells like armour of Agathys or fly to boost their capabilities. Hex (in one or other of its forms) remains a reasonable bet, but you could forget all the eldritch blast-related Invocations and go for Otherworldly Leap, Armor of Shadows, and Fiendish Vigor. Or grab one or other damage cantrip, add Luring Curse, and run around dragging enemies around (chill touch is particularly flavourful here). You can drag them away from your squishier friends into combat with yourself, then drop arms of Hadar. Or pull the old darkness+Devil's Sight, although that does get old.

Fancy being more of a support character who's still somewhat combat-effective? Take Erupting Blast to turn your eldritch blast into a small AoE, making you reasonably effective in combat, and then play around with Eyes of the Rune Keeper, Beast Speech, and other fun minor abilities. You can choose your spells and major Invocations for greater mechanical effect - slow will probably serve you well, and each of the patrons offers some useful spells.

* a fun idea, but I didn't want to start messing around with cantrips used by other classes. Changing eldritch blast alone is relatively simple. Because the other cantrips scale, I didn't like to give them options that would potentially boost them to be as powerful as 1st-level spells or even moreso.