Full List of Issues
* EB only goes to 9d6 damage without vitrolic blast.
* Have to take certain invocations to maintain playable at higher levels
*few options is not an acceptable trade off for unlimited use
*special abilities (energy resistance, damage reduction) are at embarrassingly low levels when you get them and, IIRC, don't improve much
*They spam embarrassingly low damage endlessly as their big shtick.
*A Minor Globe of Invuln. will make you immune to that damage.
* Most modifiers to that little damage are either so minor you don't care, have terrible (non-scaling) save DCs or both.
*They get fewer "spells" known than the frigging Sorcerer, and with an even smaller selection
*Of those, some are plain crap, and many don't really benefit from the at-will thing. Examples: self-only buff that lasts all day, "Duration: Concentration" and the like
*The few good combinations they can pull off, the Wizard can do better and (usually) earlier, and still cast other useful spells. Getting to add CL *Cold damage each round to the Black Tentacles is not a valid pay-off.
*If you even care about making your at-will damage trick good, you need to jump through hoops (HF Warlock, Racial Bloodline Levels, the Soulmeld Feat, a non-CA Blast Shape (Eldritch Glaive), Quicken SLA...)
*The DR and ER are flat-out insulting, and the FH is only useful if you are in a game that lacks wands of CLW
*They need more feats than they have, and they need more skills than they have
*They have maybe five PrCl choices and nearly all of them suck balls
*Secondly, almost all their powers that have out of combat utility are nerfed so that you can't get any benefit for having the ability to spam them.
*Like any Cha-based arcana caster, you need a high CHA which (outside of your class abilities doesn't do much - you don't get more skill points like the wizard or even a higher will save / spot check). You can have a bonus on Diplomacy checks instead, which will not quite counteract the likely RP penalties of being a warlock i.e. everyone possibly wanting to burn you at the stake.
*Even from Cha, benefit is relatively lower as there is no increase in number of powers known (flexibility), only save DCs and a few tangential effects like Dark Ones' Own Luck.
*Of their limited options, most will probably have to be spent upgrading the eldritch blast via essence or blast shape invocations.
*No races with significant synergy with the class (e.g. nothing with favoured class- warlock, and Cha bonuses for PC races are rare).
*The level-1 trap option (Hideous Blow) I think deserves special mention - a Concentration check required to use like any SLA, and the power makes actually harder with the Eldritch Blast harder.
*They did escape the normal proviso/kick to the groin with regard to use of metamagic feats on spontaneous effects - since they're not capable of using metamagic normally at all.
*Take Black Tentacles. Awesome spell, having it at will should be even more awesome, since you can fill a room, sculpt walls, or re-net stragglers. But it turns out that it's way less exciting as a level 11 ability than a level 7 one. Too many grapple checks are too high by that point.
*Lower level abilities must be usable through all 20 levels to be viable as a choice.
So far a nice compilation. Thanks. (I'll continue to add anything new)K wrote:Warlocks are a response to two facts:
1. People keep taking monster races because they like at will spell-like abilities.
2. There are no dedicated "dark magic" spellcasters. Even Necromancers are played as "the guys who use fruity Hideous Laughters and Glitterdusts and illusion spells and sometimes casts Animate Dead.
