Making the Warlock from Scratch

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 1:50 pm

I was always fairly sure one could TWF fire bursts and normal one-handed weaponry, but now I come across TWFing fire bursts and rays of light. That happens to invent a new brand of awesome (if actually valid - something I wonder about as well), but might be too much. Thoughts?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:09 pm

The Spherelock is a great addition to TToA (The Tome of Awesome), but I think it could use a bit of a face lift. For one, the second level gives nothing except +1d6 eldritch blast to a straight spherelock. A bit of fire resistance could be useful at that point. A bonus feat would probably be going too far.

You could throw in some honest blast invocations, in the form of a selectable list. This would either include or augment the existing ones. Alternate energy types, setting people on fire, lowering SR...

Bigode wrote:I was always fairly sure one could TWF fire bursts and normal one-handed weaponry, but now I come across TWFing fire bursts and rays of light. That happens to invent a new brand of awesome (if actually valid - something I wonder about as well), but might be too much. Thoughts?

I don't think there's an 'offhand' ray of fire or eyebeam. If it worked, however, it would be very powerful.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:47 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote:TToA (The Tome of Awesome)

Bad name.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:The Spherelock is a great addition to TToA (The Tome of Awesome), but I think it could use a bit of a face lift. For one, the second level gives nothing except +1d6 eldritch blast to a straight spherelock. A bit of fire resistance could be useful at that point. A bonus feat would probably be going too far.

If you do manage to get revision from Cielingcat, please try with Koumei next.

Though I'm ... not actually seeing the problem with starting fiendish similarities off with one such feat - mind explaining?

CatharzGodfoot wrote:You could throw in some honest blast invocations, in the form of a selectable list. This would either include or augment the existing ones. Alternate energy types, setting people on fire, lowering SR...

Hm, one could say in its favor that it's simple. Not my personal preference as far things I wanna play, but might be valuable given some players, for various reasons (note also that "magical" characters tend to be on the high end of complexity, so simplicity in one of them might be especially valuable). Though I'm not saying I'm sure it's a bad idea, and I'd definitely love it if any class could be converted from simple to complex without changing the concept represented much, but I guess that's a pipe dream ...

CatharzGodfoot wrote:I don't think there's an 'offhand' ray of fire or eyebeam. If it worked, however, it would be very powerful.

Hm, you have 2 weapons. Do you think the fact that none's allocated to a literal hand means you can't TWF? Possibly right and surely better for balance, of course ...

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:40 am

Bigode wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:I don't think there's an 'offhand' ray of fire or eyebeam. If it worked, however, it would be very powerful.
Hm, you have 2 weapons. Do you think the fact that none's allocated to a literal hand means you can't TWF? Possibly right and surely better for balance, of course ...

You also get into the realm of 'attack action abilities' vs. 'weapons', which is fuzzy in the rules. Remember that Weapon Focus apparently requires a special exception to apply to 'touch attacks'. A supernatural ability that allows you to make ranged touch attacks is by no means a 'weapon' in any normal sense.

The most RAW ruling I can come up with is that when you make an attack or full attack action (possibly using your supernatural attack), you can make the appropriate number of off-hand attacks using an actual off-hand weapon as well.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:50 am

I think there's no reason for "Weaponlike Spells" in Complete Shit not apply to Sp and Su abilties as well, if it's assumed it worked decently with spells in the first place. Not to say we necessarily disagree. And your reading of TWF seems to be the most defensible for many reasons. What about the spherelock, though?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:40 pm

Bigode wrote:What about the spherelock, though?

A bonus feat is good for second level, but it does make for a very strong start.

And yeah, there are some big advantages to making spheres the only selectable class features.

Woodrow-.- · Post by **Woodrow-.-** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:30 pm

What about giving each Invocation Path a special ability that scales based on how far you are into the chain? Maybe a skill bonus or something. What about giving 2 "insert name" (I'll use 'Path Points') per level and each time you put a path point into one of the paths, you go up by one step on the list, capping the limit on how far you have gone in your path to half your level. So a 7th level Warlock could have put up to 3 path points in any one path and has invested 14 so far. That would make them slightly less 'I get everything castable by this class as an at-will ability' and turn them into 'I get most everything I'm capable of casting as an at-will ability.'

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:27 am

Woodrow-.- wrote:What about giving each Invocation Path a special ability that scales based on how far you are into the chain? Maybe a skill bonus or something. What about giving 2 "insert name" (I'll use 'Path Points') per level and each time you put a path point into one of the paths, you go up by one step on the list, capping the limit on how far you have gone in your path to half your level. So a 7th level Warlock could have put up to 3 path points in any one path and has invested 14 so far. That would make them slightly less 'I get everything castable by this class as an at-will ability' and turn them into 'I get most everything I'm capable of casting as an at-will ability.'

That warlock was made before the sphere mechanics were conceived, and they were a better idea all-around, so the OP class' dead ... and rightly so IMO (AFAICT, it'd be overpowered compared to most in the Tomes, and the full spellcasters Frank compared it to did suffer some downward adjustment). And if you wanna see a way more workable at-will-only class, try this (while I still regard the OP as a pretty good fix on WotC material, I mean Frank's below, that indeed works better).

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:03 pm

Bigode wrote:I was always fairly sure one could TWF fire bursts and normal one-handed weaponry, but now I come across TWFing fire bursts and rays of light. That happens to invent a new brand of awesome (if actually valid - something I wonder about as well), but might be too much. Thoughts?

Well, ok. I guess you can have spell casters dual wielding wands out of the box.

But it starts with this:

And turns into this:

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 5:19 pm

Heh, no dual-wielding Sp abilities, and no dual-wielding wands ...

belkalra · Post by **belkalra** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 6:43 am

question on the 4th level ability of the spherelock, what is the duration for the outsiders summoned?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 7:33 am

The Summon ability lasts 1 hour unless otherwise stated.

-Username17

The Gaming Den

Making the Warlock from Scratch

question on the sperelock