D&D (2024) I like the new Warlock

[Flobby]

I loved pact magic until I actually played it. Sounds cool but wasnt fun in my experience. And kind of a pain to multiclass

 

[Mirrorrorrim]

that depends... if you make something more peopel like that's great, but taking away something I and my group likes sucks. I don't know what is wrong with people... you have likke 5 caster classes in the game and only 1 pact magic class, so taking away the 1 pact magic hurtss those of us that like pact magic.

It is a bad thing to take the 1 example of short rest caster and remove it and put yet another long rest caster in it's place... long rest full and half casters are a dime a dozen.

Wrong with people, hmm? Interesting take. That is what triggered me to respond.

Neither the design team, nor playtest-Warlock lovers, are taking any thing away from you. But I'll get back to that.

First, it's the first public playtest of the Warlock that is not final. The designers will make changes based on the popularity of the content. If you're so confident that more people love the 2014 Warlock, then trust that they will rally and the D&D team will alter course and try a new tact. But this is nothing more than you liking something and others liking something else. You have a responsibility to provide your feedback to get your preferences and suggestions heard. And people who feel differently, who feel that the Warlock design is disruptive to their games, will do the same. You don't have to agree with each other.

If the playtest design is popular and does move away from Pact Magic, it will be because there is more interest in something new being added to the game as another option. But the new does not invalidate the old. You still have your 2014 Warlock with a lot of subclasses, which will still be fully playable alongside 2024 classes. Heck, I bet there will be more (and I bet better) options from 3rd parties who want to continue to support the 2014 design, whether Pact Magic survives or not.

However, if the Warlock design goes back to Pact Magic (because it proved to be a bit more popular after all), but it doesn't fix the issues that other players have with it, those people will never see the finished version of a new Warlock option that they were excited about. Those people don't have a 10-year old class to play that they really like. They will actually have lost something (even if it was less popular than the 2014 version). It's not like the playtest Warlock will be in an SRD for people to riff off of, like the 2014 Warlock is.

The same goes for the playtest druid as well. If the designers go back to Monster Manual scraping, that will suck for a lot of people. But I doubt 2014 Warlock and Druid lovers care about that outcome. Whatever design gets printed, the people who love it will cheer. But the designers have no malice in this. They are running a popularity contest. Popularity is never 100% and someone isn't going to get what they want.

So don't go asking why something is wrong with others. You're not right. I'm not right. We just have different opinions regarding this matter, and are each trying to justify why our preferences are valid and deserve a place in the game.

I know I can get defensive too. But while I quoted you for using the "wrong with people" comment, I'd like to close by saying that both sides should avoid assuming malice from another side, even if we want slightly (or wildly) different things. This isn't a moral or ethical issue that requires umbrage and hostility towards others.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I can say when we went through Curse of Strahd there were definitely times where a short rest would have gotten us killed. Stuff was lurking everywhere, wandering monsters are in that adventure quite a bit, and it was difficult to pull off a short rest at times. You needed a secure spot. Even a resting spell would sometimes result in a massive ambush against us the moment the spell ended. The adventure literally tells the DMs things like, "the werewolves attack with surprise when the characters decide to take a short or long rest." Most sections of that adventure tell the DM to "Check for a random encounter after every X minutes" with X varying from a "every 10 minutes the characters spend resting" to every 30 minutes, and the chance of an encounter ON EACH CHECK being 15% to 25% chance. That means every short rest is 2 to 6 checks each. Odds are very high of a random encounter interrupting that rest.

If you found it was easy to rest any time you wanted in Strahd, might I suggest your DM was going easy on you, and ignoring a decent bit of the adventure text.

I helped a newbie run that adventure, I have run it twice myself, and I have played in it 3 or 4 times depending on how you count the time I helped the newbie run it.

I fought strahd once, and I have never gotten to run the strahd fight BUT every time made it well into the second city at least before the game fell apart.

The second time I ran it, I did so with modifications to make it harder.

You are overselling how hard that adventure is. Of all the complaints I have had IRL "its too hard and I can't rest" is never one.

having said that it is the 2nd best adventure 5e has from WotC and the hardest one they have out (although to be fair Frost maiden is a really close call there)

Are there sections of this (and every homebrew I have ever run or played in) that are not areas you get to rest in, sure... but that is far from the default of the adventure. ESPECIALLY with experienced players

wow... so we played wrong... not we have different experience, but our DM was bad... the lengths some of yall will go through.

I don't think that is what @Mistwell meant... and where I understand times are rough and this thread and this site is more wild west then norm I think you are over reaching here. I agree with you, there are plenty of short rest opportunities. I had a warlock in every single version of this adventure and not once did they feel we didn't let them recharge (once I had a house ruled monk that got weird stuff on a short rest too)

 

[Mistwell]

I helped a newbie run that adventure, I have run it twice myself, and I have played in it 3 or 4 times depending on how you count the time I helped the newbie run it.

I fought strahd once, and I have never gotten to run the strahd fight BUT every time made it well into the second city at least before the game fell apart.

The second time I ran it, I did so with modifications to make it harder.

You are overselling how hard that adventure is. Of all the complaints I have had IRL "its too hard and I can't rest" is never one.

Weird man, I never said anything about how hard the adventure is but you devoted the bulk of your post to a total strawman.

I said it was hard to get a rest in due to the wandering monsters. Not that the adventure was hard as a generalization. With most classes not needing short rests to adventure throughout a day, a well built party can just secure an area by keeping going with some healing spells and no rests. Which is a disadvantage for a monk or warlock but not for any other class. That's all I was speaking to - rests.

having said that it is the 2nd best adventure 5e has from WotC and the hardest one they have out (although to be fair Frost maiden is a really close call there)

Are there sections of this (and every homebrew I have ever run or played in) that are not areas you get to rest in, sure... but that is far from the default of the adventure. ESPECIALLY with experienced players

Well you tell me how you're getting through rests easy with wandering monster checks every 10 to 30 minutes. It is the default of the adventure. How are you not triggering a wandering monster with TEN checks during just a short rest for example (which I think is the check quantities in the castle)? You'd have to been extremely lucky.

 

[tetrasodium]

Weird man, I never said anything about how hard the adventure is but you devoted the bulk of your post to a total strawman.

I said it was hard to get a rest in due to the wandering monsters. Not that the adventure was hard as a generalization. With most classes not needing short rests to adventure throughout a day, a well built party can just secure an area by keeping going with some healing spells and no rests. Which is a disadvantage for a monk or warlock but not for any other class. That's all I was speaking to - rests.




Well you tell me how you're getting through rests easy with wandering monster checks every 10 to 30 minutes. It is the default of the adventure. How are you not triggering a wandering monster with TEN checks during just a short rest for example (which I think is the check quantities in the castle)? You'd have to been extremely lucky.

Like this...

Spoiler: CoS Pg28

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
Dangers abound in the land of Barovia. Check for a random encounter after every 30 minutes that.the ad
venturers spend on the roads or in the wilderness (don't check if they have already had two random encounters
outdoors in the past 12 hours):
If the characters are on ·a road, an encounter occurs on a roll of 18 or higher on a d20.
, If the characters are in the wilderness, an encounter occurs on a roll of 15 or higher on a d20.

If an encounter occurs, roll on the daytime or the nighttime encounter table, depending on the time, or have Strahd's spies appear (see the "Strahd's Spies" sidebar).

5e rests are designed to succeed eventually with guaranteed success if the players just keep trying. Rather than designing some to allow ravenloft to once again have ravenloft specific rules for things like resting & recovery the 5e CoS simply chose to accept that trolling players to make resting annoying should have a limit.

The GM tools you are trying to point at simply do not exist in the 5e CoS book.

 

[renbot]

Thank you, that's very flattering. Unfortunately, between my job, 4 kids, and 3 different campaigns running, my game design has to be limited to random bon mots on the interwebs.

That's just lazy talk!!

 

[mamba]

having said that it is the 2nd best adventure 5e has from WotC and the hardest one they have out (although to be fair Frost maiden is a really close call there)

which one is the best one ? Usually CoS is considered that…

 

[Mistwell]

Like this...

Spoiler: CoS Pg28

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
Dangers abound in the land of Barovia. Check for a random encounter after every 30 minutes that.the ad
venturers spend on the roads or in the wilderness (don't check if they have already had two random encounters
outdoors in the past 12 hours):
If the characters are on ·a road, an encounter occurs on a roll of 18 or higher on a d20.
, If the characters are in the wilderness, an encounter occurs on a roll of 15 or higher on a d20.

If an encounter occurs, roll on the daytime or the nighttime encounter table, depending on the time, or have Strahd's spies appear (see the "Strahd's Spies" sidebar).

5e rests are designed to succeed eventually with guaranteed success if the players just keep trying. Rather than designing some to allow ravenloft to once again have ravenloft specific rules for things like resting & recovery the 5e CoS simply chose to accept that trolling players to make resting annoying should have a limit.

The GM tools you are trying to point at simply do not exist in the 5e CoS book.

You cited the OUTDOOR rule. Most of what we're talking about was indoor. I even specifically mentioned the 10 checks per hour for the castle itself, which definitely isn't that outdoor rule. Nor is the outdoor rule applicable to the specific creatures I mentioned earlier who wait for the PCs to be resting before attacking.

This isn't one of those discussions where you playing "gotcha" is helpful. The general claim I made is a lot of WOTC adventures it's harder to short rest like people were saying. The response was this adventure, and it's a false claim, and I think you know it's a false claim or else you wouldn't be playing the game you just played about the outdoor rules in response.

Can we agree a lot of WOTC adventures do not make it easy to take a short rest very often?

 

[Charlaquin]

Can we agree a lot of WOTC adventures do not make it easy to take a short rest very often?

I don’t agree, as that hasn’t been consistent with my experience playing or running published adventures at all.

 

[Mistwell]

I don’t agree, as that hasn’t been consistent with my experience playing or running published adventures at all.

Yes I know. I was talking to someone else. I think we already established you disagree, right?