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I hated the warlock class...it was rediculusly overpowered compared to other classes, and it was a game breaker...whenever i allowed a player to play a warlock in my games (three times), he broke my game, in the end i had to ask a player in one to bear with me, and had to outright kill other two, because the players refused to actualy help me tell a good story and not try to break the game. I knew the class really well, so, i didn't just kill them out of ingorance.
I am thankful that Paizo hasn't considered to put the warlock in their rules. It is a bad class, that should have never existed in 3.5 rules.
Could you please point out WHAT in the warlock class was overpowered?
The biggest thing about the 3.5 Warlock that made it so powerful was the invocations combined with the eldritch blast, I remember my power gamer days, and my multi classed fighter/warlock who in the end was doing around 12d6+ damage in a single round with no cap on the amount of times a day I was able to use it.
Not sure if he means the 4e Warlock, because I have yet to even pick up the book, that is why I cannot comment on it.
Eldritch blast?
Maybe if you were playing E3. :)
Warlocks peak around level 3. A 2d6 ranged touch attack is really good at level 3... it only goes downhill from there. Warlocks had some clever tricks, but eldritch blast certainly never tipped the balance.
The problem I had with Warlocks (particular in lower levels) was that they were kinda boring to play. A combat round usually went something like "I throw eldritch blast. Again."
That said, you could sneak some silliness out of them (like, say, Hellfire Warlock/Binder) but that wasn't a flaw with the class itself, imho.
Edit: I was playing a Kalashtar warlock in our old Eberron game. Picking the Psionic Shot feats to add another 4d6 damage to his eldritch blasts (he usually wasn't using his move action for anything, so regaining his psionic focus every round was easy). It worked pretty well, but also never felt particular strong (picking the celestial warlock prestige class didn't help :p).
Eldritch blast?
What's wrong with eldricht blast O_o?
I hated the warlock class...it was rediculusly overpowered compared to other classes, and it was a game breaker...whenever i allowed a player to play a warlock in my games (three times), he broke my game, in the end i had to ask a player in one to bear with me, and had to outright kill other two, because the players refused to actualy help me tell a good story and not try to break the game. I knew the class really well, so, i didn't just kill them out of ingorance.
I am thankful that Paizo hasn't considered to put the warlock in their rules. It is a bad class, that should have never existed in 3.5 rules.
The class is not open content so it can't be remade in its original form, and it was pretty much a weak class. Other than the first 2 or 3 levels it sucked.
Just forgot, there is a Pathfinder Warlock, albeit a less powerful and less well known one, it's in Pathfinder's Tome of Secrets.
Just forgot, there is a Pathfinder Warlock, albeit a less powerful and less well known one, it's in Pathfinder's Tome of Secrets.
There is another one - the witch.
The witch is plenty of "at-will" hexes, even if none of those is blasty. Moreover, has normal spells and a familiar.
Luckily. Because even if apparently very powerful, the warlock was actually laughably weak. EB damage disappears after the first levels, and you cannot full attack with it before epic (and a web enhancement feat).
Moreover, the number of invocation was too low. You had to choose between have a sucky and no versatile blasting attack, and zero utilities, or have a versatile and quite cool blasting attack (areas, change of element) and zero utilities. The class had to get twice the invocations know to be actually good.
Warlocks are an example of a ill-conceived class, typical of the Completes serie by Wotc A designer said that they feared that the new classes could outshine the old ones.
Result? Ninja, Warlock, Swashbuckler, Samurai. Hexblade. I mean, just compare ninja and samurai with the paizo versions.
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you know what's good about the warlock? the way eldricht shape and eldricht essence is handled would be a good start for the World of Power. We will see.
The Tome of Secrets has a warlock class for PF - though the execution is really crappy as it uses Pathfinder Beta rules.
The book has that feel of "We wanted to be super-quick to push something out for Pathfinder" to it.
Anyway, an attack that does half your level in damage (more or less) isn't that great, even if you can do it all day long. Wizards will outdamage you in the times they have magic, unless they don't bother with damage spells and go for the kill directly, and warriors will outperform you, too, and some of them get to do their thing all day long.
Dunno...still a ray that dealt a xd6 damage increased every other level, and only needed to hit a touch ac is powerful...not to mention various invocations.
It really isn't. Early in the Warlock's history, people panicked about being able to use eldritch blast an unlimited number of times and it got such a reputation as overpowered from the people that never played it that it swamped any real reports of playability.
Let me see if I am getting this straight. My paladin is lv10, and does 1d10+18 damage per hit, and definitely hits on the first attack except on bosses, likely the second as well. In 9 out of 10 fights, one of the casters drops either Haste or Blessing of Fervor on him, meaning his damage output is 3d10+56 per round. Add smite and it goes to 3d10+86 per round.
This is not an optimized character. He has a +2 sword (+2), powerattacks (+9), uses a bastard sword twohanded (+6 due to 18str with belt), and has his Warrior of Holy Light aura going almost every fight (+1). Pretty straightforward.
And you are saying that the notion of someone dropping 5d6 in a line is overpowered?
Warlock10: 5d6 for an average of 17
Paladin10: 3d10+56 for an average of 82
You need to catch 5 people to do more damage total.
Having something available all day is not a gamebreaker. You don't NEED to be able to do something all day. You need to kick down the opposition when it comes at you.
Warlock is good for one thing: Newbies. It gives them something VERY easy to play. You have a handful of abilities, and you can use them as you wish.
Dunno...still a ray that dealt a xd6 damage increased every other level, and only needed to hit a touch ac is powerful...not to mention various invocations.
The invocations mostly suck, and the damage sucks also. At level 20 the warlock is doing about 10d6 which averages out to about 35 points of damage assuming it overcomes SR.
A rogue does a lot more damage than that, and they don't get too much respect around here.
Hitting the touch AC is not that impressive if the monster decides to ignore you and go after more dangerous opponents. Summoned monsters do more damage than the warlock.
Dunno...still a ray that dealt a xd6 damage increased every other level, and only needed to hit a touch ac is powerful...not to mention various invocations.
At level 20, that's 10d6 damage. Or an average of 35 damage every round (let's assume you always hit). That is, for all intents and purposes, nothing.
Edit. Damn you Wraith, beaten by 38 seconds. Stupid work. :p
Dunno...still a ray that dealt a xd6 damage increased every other level, and only needed to hit a touch ac is powerful
At level 20, that's an average of 35 points of damage per round, providing you hit all the time (and never have a crit). Fighters are going to laugh at that. They'll tell you to go away play with the low-level characters that are already starting to out-perform you in the damage department.
The touch AC part might be fine, but a warrior will have a better attack bonus, which will even it out (how much will depend on the circumstances).
More importantly, they will have several attacks - each dealing much more than 35 points of damage on level 20.
I've seen fighters around level 10 for whom 80 points of damage per round was commonplace.
And rogues at level 20 get 10d6 extra to all their attacks provided they can sneak attack, and they have more attacks, too. Maybe not against touch (unless they use magic).
The invocations mostly suck, and the damage sucks also. At level 20 the warlock is doing about 10d6
Warlock had 9d6. I guess 10d6 is too powerful.
To be fair, in a game where AoE attacks are good (like mines a lot of times) some good eldricht shape invocation raised damage significantly.
But how many times you have to do it to avoid thinking "why I didn't simply rolled a Sorcerer?"
And rogues at level 20 get 10d6 extra to all their attacks provided they can sneak attack, and they have more attacks, too. Maybe not against touch (unless they use magic).
Rogue senak attacked with alchemical weapons too in 3.5.
Warlock had 9d6. I guess 10d6 is too powerful.
To be fair, in a game where AoE attacks are good (like mines a lot of times) some good eldricht shape invocation raised damage significantly.
But how many times you have to do it to avoid thinking "why I didn't simply rolled a Sorcerer?"
Oh right, 10d6 was too awesome. And even with the blast shapes, you are still being outperformed by a fireball from a caster 10 levels below you.
Yeah, the warlock was sadly underpowered.
Warlock had 9d6. I guess 10d6 is too powerful.
To be fair, in a game where AoE attacks are good (like mines a lot of times) some good eldricht shape invocation raised damage significantly.
But how many times you have to do it to avoid thinking "why I didn't simply rolled a Sorcerer?"
Oh right, 10d6 was too awesome. And even with the blast shapes, you are still being outperformed by a fireball from a caster 10 levels below you.
Yeah, the warlock was sadly underpowered.
A cool concept was a melee warlock, using a non Complete arcane invocation called Eldricht Glaive. As a full round action you were able to full attack in melee with you eldricht blast. But even then, absolutely not OP.
Warlock had 9d6. I guess 10d6 is too powerful.
To be fair, in a game where AoE attacks are good (like mines a lot of times) some good eldricht shape invocation raised damage significantly.
But how many times you have to do it to avoid thinking "why I didn't simply rolled a Sorcerer?"
Oh right, 10d6 was too awesome. And even with the blast shapes, you are still being outperformed by a fireball from a caster 10 levels below you.
Yeah, the warlock was sadly underpowered.
Not to mention an empowered firebrand for 15d6x1.5 with surgical precision.
Whenever someone played a warlock, the experience seemed to be the same: "Can I switch character? This sucks and is boring."
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Not to Mention that Eldritch Blast could be negated by Spell Resistance as well as most invocations related to it ("Except Vitriolic Blast if I remember)
IMHO the Warlock was nice only as a 3-4 level dip for Rogue who wanted an extra bonus to will saves and an always ready to perform range attack purely for surprise attacks. ("Pls don't kill me I'm unarmed... EB+Sneak in point blank)
Personally, in my games, we never got the "boring" part. The warlock has some nice tricks it can pull off if you focus on the non-EB invocations. Though, yes, mechanically, very inferior.
(It *did* gestalt nicely with rogue though. If you think 10d6 eldritch blast is weak, add 10d6 sneak attack damage with that always-invisible invocation. Pretty useful.)
Personally, in my games, we never got the "boring" part. The warlock has some nice tricks it can pull off if you focus on the non-EB invocations. Though, yes, mechanically, very inferior.
(It *did* gestalt nicely with rogue though. If you think 10d6 eldritch blast is weak, add 10d6 sneak attack damage with that always-invisible invocation. Pretty useful.)
The Dragonfire Adept from Dragon magic had more luck in my games (but perhaps had a better player).
Said this, yeah - gestalted with rogue, with the invisibility and stuff, is really awesome (and for the true lovers of d6). Gestalt is a complete different beast, 'though.
I'm afraid I don't understand the O.P.'s joyful statement. Setting aside the fact that there's nothing particularly overpowered about the class, Pathfinder can include the warlock class if desired; its system being compatible with 3.5 and all.
And even if Paizo re-published the Warlock class in some supplement, it could likewise be disregarded if seen as undesirable. If it was so detrimental and despised, why would anyone allow it three times in their campaign?
as a general rule to your group, you, as a GM, have the right to say that all things are subject to GM approval, as I did with my group when I was GMing, for example, before the APG was published, the Summoner playtest class was not allowed in my campaign, simply because after playtesting and reading it myself, I found it to be too powerful. Thankfully they fixed the issues with the class for the published APG.
But a class is only as powerful as the player that puts thought into it, no class is too powerful, actually I take that back, a 3.5 lycanthrope (werebear) with the Warshaper PrC is too much for me, and I was the one to figure it out. But all examples aside, it's the way you think about the class that makes it what it is.
It's easy to make a class look mediocre and inferior just by not thinking about how to go about creating the character, and not having a concept past level 1, and on the other hand, it's also easy to follow optimisation rules and make a character look seriously overpowered.
The same as any driver, it's the person behind the scenes that count, not the thing they are driving.
The Warlock was a fun class with useful powers that didn't require constant resource management. It was the perfect class to hand the newbie who wanted to play a caster. As a 3-level dip for Sorcerer/Eldritch Theurge, it was a handy bit of utility and longevity for a character who might otherwise risking going nova.
Personally, I think every caster should have gotten a little bit of the Warlock. Pathfinder has taken a step in the right direction.
The class is not open content so it can't be remade in its original form, and it was pretty much a weak class. Other than the first 2 or 3 levels it sucked.I hated the warlock class...it was rediculusly overpowered compared to other classes, and it was a game breaker...whenever i allowed a player to play a warlock in my games (three times), he broke my game, in the end i had to ask a player in one to bear with me, and had to outright kill other two, because the players refused to actualy help me tell a good story and not try to break the game. I knew the class really well, so, i didn't just kill them out of ingorance.
I am thankful that Paizo hasn't considered to put the warlock in their rules. It is a bad class, that should have never existed in 3.5 rules.
This is what I love about gaming, every group is different. I've seen a lot of Warlock's in 3e, but they were never OMG game-breaking. Effective if used right, but never crippled the campaign.
But to be fair, I've broken games in half with a multi-classed Shadowcaster/Warmage, 2 classes reviled as underpowered and useless. So, anything can happen. Best part was, the campaign was run buy a guy who was a notorious power-gamer, knew all the combos that destroyed games, and was a big fan of Warlocks. I retired the character voluntarily just so the game didn't collapse.
Something doesn't have to be overpowered in combat to be game breaking. How many people are talking about unlimited cantrips causing them grief and "ruining my campaign idea".
A could see an energy based attack that could deal a lot of damage that bypassed a number of mundane defenses, causing some grief in the hands of a player who tried to be inventive without a care to the effect on the game world.
However, the impression from the OP's further posts seem to be that he didn't like the damage it dealt. Which, as has been stated, isn't that bad.
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Personally, in my games, we never got the "boring" part. The warlock has some nice tricks it can pull off if you focus on the non-EB invocations. Though, yes, mechanically, very inferior.
(It *did* gestalt nicely with rogue though. If you think 10d6 eldritch blast is weak, add 10d6 sneak attack damage with that always-invisible invocation. Pretty useful.)
It also gestalted nicely with the soulknife. Taking the blast shape invocation that allowed you to channel your eldritch blast through a melee weapon, you can get all the benefits of your eldritch blast plus all the benefits of your mind blade in one strike.
Give her Arcane Blast and she even has a substitute for Eldritch Blast (although more limited).There is another one - the witch.
The witch is plenty of "at-will" hexes, even if none of those is blasty. Moreover, has normal spells and a familiar.
Nice. :)
Am I the only one who thought that what the warlock really brough to the table was long duration sensory / divinatory enhancments to me that was where you could bring your utility to the table. The damage was Meh even with the warlock damage boosting items.
Am I the only one who thought that what the warlock really brough to the table was long duration sensory / divinatory enhancments to me that was where you could bring your utility to the table. The damage was Meh even with the warlock damage boosting items.
Dragonsong, I don't understand... what do those have to do with combat? ;)
When I played warlock, I was barely doing anywhere near the damage of the fighter.
Half the time, for utility, I had to pull something out of my hiney. It was like Oh yay! I can walk on walls for ever. "You are in the middle of a wide open field with no walls to walk on."
I can shatter solid objects! "They are using whips and magic, and wear cloth and leather. and that one is a bear."
Really that was pretty much what being a warlock is really like. Its like a sourc only even more limited on its spell functions, and its only real saving grace is you can cast them as many times per day as you wanted, many of which would mean once per day.
The only good thing about being a warlock is I had style.
Am I the only one who thought that what the warlock really brough to the table was long duration sensory / divinatory enhancments to me that was where you could bring your utility to the table. The damage was Meh even with the warlock damage boosting items.Dragonsong, I don't understand... what do those have to do with combat? ;)
+1
My experiences with Warlock always led me to feel that it was a playable class, but hardly broken...
Oh, and they make awesome, dare I say the best, healers!
It started during an age of worms game when the cleric started taking levels of warlock to help with his UMD. His justification was that it would leave more spells open for damage and help with group DPS. he ended up with 3 levels of cleric and 10+ levels of warlock. The party did not survive the adventure.
The GameMastery Critical Hit cards made my warlock of a few years ago fun. There was one card, where your blast ends up causing the target to shoot through time, that I got multiple times. I ended up making up some BS about his background studying chonomancy magic.
Hah, when I first read that I thought it said he had studied for a B.S. in chronomancy...
I hated the warlock class... but it was not overpowered.
I hated it because 1 + 2 = 3
1) In the flavor text, warlocks have a fiendish ancestry and/or they made a pack with some fiends.
2) Fiends, of any kind, don't have the eldritch blast ability.
3) Warlock can use eldritch blast AT WILL.
Also, I never was a big fan of at-will abilities, which are the only kind of abilities the warlock has. The class also didn't have a lot of support, like almost all of the 3.X non-core classes.
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Hama is new to the boards, or he would know better than to start this discussion. This horse is dead and buried and there is no need at all to continue whipping it.
On the other hand, I love the concept of Warlock. The 3.5 execution was less than shining example of creativity, but the idea itself has merits. SmiloDan has done a great conversion of the class, combining it with Hexblade, and I have seen more than a few Sorcerer bloodlines that simulate Warlock pretty well.
... and it was a game breaker...whenever i allowed a player to play a warlock in my games (three times), he broke my game, in the end i had to ask a player in one to bear with me, and had to outright kill other two, because the players refused to actualy help me tell a good story and not try to break the game....
That sounds like more of a player problem than a broken class problem. It also might be that any class/combo/spell can "break" a campaign if the campaign isn't ready for it.
-Tripping is not that great a tactic if you fight a typical array of monsters(large, huge, 4 legged or ultra strong, etc...), but if all you face are medium sized humanoids, broken.
-Any survival game where you want the players to be desperate for food and water, will be broken by Create Water.
I would be interested to know how the player broke the campaigns with a warlock.
ps: warlocks are a great gestalt class.
Every group has different groups as to what is broken...sometimes with in the same group. Sure don't know why the OP allowed the warlock 3 times or had to 'kill them off' instead of just asking the player to change character...but hey whatever.
But it reminds of a funny story in a game I was playing in I was playing a Barbarian/Frenzy Berserker...I was dealing out massive amounts of damage. Played the character one adventure before I was asked by the group to change characters. Which I was fine with(though in hind sight I should have just retrained my Frenzy Berserker levels for Barbarian...but that is not important). The complaint of the warmage character was I dealing too much damage(not that I could easily start attacking the group...it was my damage output that rubbed him the wrong way. I was dealing probably 150 damnage a round...
The next adventure he cast a spell that ended up dealing 110+ damage to about 8 creature with in 20' radius of him. Dealing about 880+ damage...when I pointed out that if my Frenzy Berserker was broken...than that spell was broken...his response was priceless I thought "But I am a arcane caster". Well atleast I got that spell banned.
Another story about how people may overreact to things being broken when they are not...I was playing a psion and at about 3 rd level had a very lucky day in which I crit with a power twice...from that point forward due to those crits one of the players thought psion was broken just based on that.
What is broken, metagaming, rules lawyering, railroading, etc are a matter of perspective sometime built entirely on just one bad experience.
In your example however you are adding spells from another class entirely to buff your paladin. While I get what you are trying to get at you have to take the paladin abilities alone to factor in DPR.
Cept the thing is.. You can't add those same spells to increase the warlocks damage.
Besides, boots of speed, or something similar giving you haste 3/day.
And if you are gonna say you cannot use equipment..
In your example however you are adding spells from another class entirely to buff your paladin. While I get what you are trying to get at you have to take the paladin abilities alone to factor in DPR.Let me see if I am getting this straight. My paladin is lv10, and does 1d10+18 damage per hit, and definitely hits on the first attack except on bosses, likely the second as well. In 9 out of 10 fights, one of the casters drops either Haste or Blessing of Fervor on him, meaning his damage output is 3d10+56 per round. Add smite and it goes to 3d10+86 per round.
This is not an optimized character. He has a +2 sword (+2), powerattacks (+9), uses a bastard sword twohanded (+6 due to 18str with belt), and has his Warrior of Holy Light aura going almost every fight (+1). Pretty straightforward.
And you are saying that the notion of someone dropping 5d6 in a line is overpowered?
Warlock10: 5d6 for an average of 17
Paladin10: 3d10+56 for an average of 82You need to catch 5 people to do more damage total.
Having something available all day is not a gamebreaker. You don't NEED to be able to do something all day. You need to kick down the opposition when it comes at you.
Warlock is good for one thing: Newbies. It gives them something VERY easy to play. You have a handful of abilities, and you can use them as you wish.
Then it is 2d10+36 (47). Let's say I only get off a single hit for some reason, and then get reduced to using Vital Strike: 2d10+18 (29). Well above 5d6 (17.5). Sure, the blast hits easier, but after lv10, everything and their uncle has Spell Resistance, meaning the Warlock not only has to hit, but get through SR as well. My paladin will hit most anything, and go through any troublesome DR as long as the target is evil (which is 80-90% of everything you face at high level).
This is also not factoring in his ability to enhance his sword to get the Holy or Axiomatic property for an additional 2d6 against evil or chaotic enemies, nor his smite evil.
The Warlock gets good at taking out mook-level baddies at some point (don't remember when he gets the chain-blast), otherwise, he is a poor man's sorcerer that can do the same trick ad infinitum.
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the only times ive seen warlok work have been:
1)in the beginning of a ravenloft module (zombies have no ranged attacks)
2)gestalted with scout
3)10th leve gestalted with rogue/scout/psycic warrior and twinked to the gills for a mad empowered EB/skirmish/sneak attack/greater psionic shot. i could pump out around 20d6 shots just about every round, then maximize and/or quicken spell like ability.
The 1st 2 I dm'd for, the last one I made in a friends campaign after he had his dmnpc kill my character because I was a LN ranger/dread necro/impure prince and he was a LD-bag werebear pally with made up abilities that the dm wanted to run.