D&D (2024) 2024 Player's Handbook reveal: "New Warlock"

"The character builder's paradise".

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We last saw the Warlock in Playtest 7, with a lot of features from 2014 restored from the previous version. Still, a lot of questions (for me) remain: here's my list from before the video ran:

Spoiler

• Will the three pacts still be invocations, and will it be possible to get all of them by level 2? (I hope not). Yes.
• If they are invocations, will people still believe they are getting more invocations than thry had in 2014? Yes.
• What will the Pact of the Chain special creature options be? (We've seen the Sphinx of Wonder previewed already.) Is there still going to be a (M-sized) skeleton option? YES!
• Will Pact of the Tome still have the lame rewritten Ritual Caster rules, of only two 1st level rituals, and never any more? (I hope not). No answer, but I doubt it's been changed.
• Is it conceivable that anyone would not take Pact of the Blade as one of their Invocations? (Doubt it.) No answer. They did not talk about whether later invocations will give Extra attack, or other concerns here.
• Will anyone be able to take Eldritch Blast? "Warlock Specific"

(Happily, many of these questions were indeed answered in the video!).
I think warlock really benefits from having the subclasses come at level 3: you can "dabble" in the occult without selling your soul until level 3 (though admittedly, the wording of the fluff text does not require you to sell your soul).

OVERVIEW

• Invocations at 1, Magical Cunning at 2 (as in PT7)
• Crawford claims we will get more eldritch invocations. Assuming the table's as in PT7, this is a bit of a fudge: there's one for a pact at level 5 (no gain) and one extra, at level 5, and for most it will go, I feel, to another pact). Yes there's more flexibility.
• Main choices are Pact Boons. "This is a big deal" -- "it is a juicy choice" they say, and Crawford makes it clear you can get them all "over time". "Over time", though, is by level 2. To me this is too much too early.
• NEW: all pact boons at level 1 now.
• NEW: "More Spooky critter options" for Pact of the Chain, speaking to Patron types. Complete list: Slaad tadpole. Skeleton, Imp, Pseudodragon, Quasit, Sprite (Fey), Sphinx of Wonder (Celestial), Venomous Snake. All will be in the PHB.
• Spellcasting has been enhanced: more invocations work with warlock spells. Now they don't just affect Eldritch Blast (which is warlock-specific -- not clear how that's mechanized, though). You can have Ray of Frost with Repelling Blast.
• NEW: Lessons of the First Ones only lets you take an Origin Feat.
• Contact Patron at 9, Mystic Arcanum at 11+, expanded spell list (though not as big as sorcerer).
• All subclasses get an expanded spell list.

SUBCLASSES

ARCHFEY - "a teleportation fantasia"

• Gameplay was not living up to the flavour. Going "all-in" on Teleportation.
• Additional effects occur whenever you cast the spell, not just the free casting from Steps of the Fey. (Refreshing step and Taunting Step confirmed, as in PT7 apparently).
• Beguiling Defenses, causing psychic damage
• Bewitching magic at 14 as in PT7 -- "ridiculous in all the best ways".

CELESTIAL

• NEW: from expanded class spell list. Summon Celestial on spell list.
• NEW: Guiding Bolt, Cure wounds and Aid (Aid was not on PT7 list) on subclass list
• You can be "a hired hitman from the gods"
• NEW: Searing Radiance at 14 now can apply to an ally.

FIEND

• Magical weapons no longer pass your damage resitance (in reference to Fiendish Resilience at 10?)
• "tankiness" seen in BG3 is also here: Dark One's Blessing seems completely rewritten, as it was described in the Design Note of the PT7.

GREAT OLD ONE

• NEW: Summon Aberration might be a version of the Mind Flayer (an option in the Summon Abberation spell)
• when you do damage, you can do psychic.
• Psychic Spells for enchantment/illusion without Verbal/Somatic (but you still need Material); damage may be Psychic. Clairvoyant Combatant can be a battle of wills (focusing damage to one target -- a nod to AD&D psionic battles). Eldritch Hex also as in PT7.

 

[mellored]

If the options are better balanced against each other, that's cool.

They have 10 years of experience and feedback which they didn't the first time.

So yea, a much better eye for balance all around.

I notice that teleportation is more readily available, as is the ability to look like other people/things.

One subclass has teleportation as a main gimmick. The others don't have it.

Looking like others has been in there since day 1. And it's really fun.

I'm curious if Larian had access to some of the proposed changes while programming BG3.

BG3 came out while the playtest was just starting. And it's way to complex a game to go back and fiddle with working mechanics.

One thing I noticed was the Totem was renamed Wildheart in BG3 well before we had a Barbarian playtest. So they had to be at least talking.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Hexblade doesn't have that. Or at least, the Xanathar's Guide version didn't. It was partly left over Raven Queen flavor, partly vague handwaving at sentient weapons somehow being involved. I have not even once heard a compelling story about a Hexblade Patron as a patron. Not like the drama and theatrics that other Warlocks get up to with their Patrons.

I've had a concept floating around my head for an "amnesiac" Reborn Hexblade Warlock whose story begins by being found hanging by the neck from a tree with a broken off spearhead embedded in their ribcage.

The spearhead claims to be all that remains of Gungnir (the spear of the Norse god Odin) and offers wisdom and power in return for the warlock's aid in gathering materials needed to "reforge" it into a weapon worthy of the gods once again.

Whether or not the spearhead actually is a piece of Gungnir, whether it is even the "true" patron or merely the vehicle through which some other power interacts with the warlock, how/if Odin and other figures from Norse myth factor in, who the warlock originally was, and how/why they ended up hanging from a tree, etc. are all open questions.

 

[Scribe]

Personally, I hope they do get to keep three attacks. I mean, with one Invocation EB is better than a Fighter with a Longbow. They get just as many attacks and they get their fourth one sooner. I don’t understand why adding a third melee attack is so game breaking.

Because it's a caster. It's not game breaking, its offensive.

 

[Stalker0]

Well, it's one at level 5 (based on what we've seen, and that in my mind doesn't really match the rapturous self-congratulations they have givne themselves (in the playtest and this video) for expanding it.

to be fair, they are treating any change.....even just moving an ability a few levels, as a kind of revolutionary change worthy of cheers.


Now its a PR piece, the goal is to build hype, so I understand it. But yeah in comparison to that getting more invocations IS actually a decent boost.

 

[mellored]

Personally, I hope they do get to keep three attacks. I mean, with one Invocation EB is better than a Fighter with a Longbow.

it's not.
Archery style makes up the smaller damage die.
Action Surge is more attacks.
Better armor, HP, second wind
And more add-ons with feats, subclasses, and magic weapons.

EB+Agonizing Blast is slightly weak.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Just out of curiosity, when did teleportation become a Fey thing? The designers keep pushing teleportation as something with Fey flavor, and I'm not getting why. Blink dog, I guess? That feels a bit tenuous to me. Historically, Fiends have had a lot more teleportation magic than Fey. I've always thought of Enchantment and Illusion as the signature magic of the Fey.

Teleportation was definitely built up as the eladrin's schtick in 4e, and I think that may have bled over into fey in general ever since.

Rather than "teleportation", per se, I think the idea is intended more as briefly stepping out of the Material Plane and into the Feywild, then back again, which I feel is fairly thematically appropriate for fey.

 

[Stalker0]

Just out of curiosity, when did teleportation become a Fey thing? The designers keep pushing teleportation as something with Fey flavor, and I'm not getting why. Blink dog, I guess? That feels a bit tenuous to me. Historically, Fiends have had a lot more teleportation magic than Fey. I've always thought of Enchantment and Illusion as the signature magic of the Fey.

there have been bits of it like the blink dog, I know the connection was very solidly made in 4e with the eladrin and its innate teleportation.

 

[tglassy]

Because it's a caster. It's not game breaking, its offensive.

That’s a little overblown, and it isn’t like Warlocks are like other casters. Few spell slots, fewer spell options, can’t ups cast past 5th lvl spells, the list goes on.

it's not.
Archery style makes up the smaller damage die.
Action Surge is more attacks.
Better armor, HP, second wind
And more add-ons with feats, subclasses, and magic weapons.

EB+Agonizing Blast is slightly weak.

If you’re going to add in other class features, feats, subclasses, and magic items, add in Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Dark One’s Luck, Spell Sniper, Eldritch Lance, Armor of Shadows, Ascendant Step, a Rod of the Pact Keeper and a Staff of Power, and you’ve got an EB that’s +5 damage and +1 ft push per attack with an quarter mile range and an insane boost to their attack roll.

When it comes to ranged attacks, Warlocks are the only ones who can look at a Ranger and say “That’s Cute.”

 

[mellored]

GOO + chain (imp or other invisible) + gaze of 2 minds + repelling blast on mind sliver.

Now you can silently push enemies around from around a corner.

 

[Charlaquin]

From the sounds of the video they’ve folded a lot of the hexblade into the blade pact.

Which makes sense, because Hexblade was always more of a fix for the blade pact than an actual patron choice. The concept was super nebulous and vague.

“Your patron is a sentient weapon, like the black blade, but just kidding, it’s actually the Shadowfell, which wouldn’t you know it, is where all sentient weapons that make pacts with warlocks get their sentience from. But also maybe it’s the raven queen? You edgy kids who want to play gishes like the Raven Queen, right? Yeah, let’s go with that, it’s the Raven Queen giving consciousness to a bunch of magic swords.”

Good riddance, I say.