D&D (2024) Dear Team WotC: Better Pact Magic Fixes

[mellored]

Changed my mind.

Bards should be half casters with access to all spell lists. Full dilettante

 

[Charlaquin]

Mage =\= wizard.

A mage is an arcane spellcaster whose primary mechanical niche is Spellcasting.

Is pedantry really this appealing to y’all? I don’t understand what is satisfying about this sort of thing.

Semantics can be a pretty effective rhetorical tactic, and we have a lot of rhetoricians here.

 

[Gorck]

I posted this in the poll thread, but maybe it would get more traction here:

I think, rather than going with a 1/2 caster progression, they should just lop off the 6-9 half of the full caster progression:

Spoiler: Current UA 1/2 caster progression

View attachment 283313

Spoiler: My proposed progression

View attachment 283314

You'd still get up to 5th level spells, with the option of 6th-9th from mystic Arcanum, but you'd get them much sooner.

 

[Reef]

How about this idea: Keep Pact Magic the same, but remove recharge on Short Rest, and add:

Pact Meditation: A warlock can spend one minute meditating to refocus their internal energies. After doing so, they regain one Pact Magic spell slot. This can be done an number of times equal to the Proficiency Bonus of the Warlock. All uses of Pact Meditation are regained after a Long Rest.

It wouldn't be the first time they've used Prof Bonus instead of Short Rest abilities. This provides a more reliable recharge. It ends up being slightly less spells if a warlock routinely takes 2 short rests, but not needing a full hour might balance that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You know, it sounds crazy at first blush, but there might be something to this. A lot of design space is unavailable because wizards (and sorcerers, and now warlocks) can use the entire Arcane list.

Not that the idea of a scholarly user of magic should be ditched, but the idea that such a scholar must be a Swiss Army knife of magic. Even wizard "specialists" are only half-heartedly specialized, they can still do everything.

I'm going to disagree because there is a difference between in character and out of character decisions. Out of character a wizard and sorcerer alike can choose from the entirety of the arcane list. In character the wizard can learn any arcane spell they have the opportunity to learn; if they can get the books or scrolls and are high enough level they can add it to their spell book - but a sorcerer doesn't have the in character possibility of entirely tailoring their spell list. They get what they get even if the player has tailored the list.

 

[Gorck]

It wouldn't be the first time they've used Prof Bonus instead of Short Rest abilities.

A slight tangent, but now that you've mentioned it, I don't recall seeing many "Proficiency Bonus" dependent abilities in this packet (or any of the OneD&D packets thusfar). That seemed to be all the rage back in the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything days, to the point where everybody was making fun of it. But it looks like WotC is steering away from that now.

 

[mellored]

A slight tangent, but now that you've mentioned it, I don't recall seeing many "Proficiency Bonus" dependent abilities in this packet (or any of the OneD&D packets thusfar). That seemed to be all the rage back in the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything days, to the point where everybody was making fun of it. But it looks like WotC is steering away from that now.

A lot of things scale the same as proficiency bonus.
But they changed it for multiclassing dips.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Right.

I would rather have a different class than yet another arcane caster.

The arcane spell list is not interesting enough to need 4 classes using it. (Or even 3 for that matter, but that seems like an even more futile battle).

IMO
Wizards get slots.
Sorcerers get spell points.
Bards get scaling slots.
Warlocks get invocations only.

Ah! Okay I figured it out. You view the spell slot as a significant mechanic. I do not. If the monk had 1/monk level 1st level spell slots instead of ki, and everything costed the same number, I wouldn’t care at all. It would have literally no effect on how I see the class.

If they relaxed FOB and the other basic ki abilities with spells, as such, I’d be pissed, because now you’ve made the monk a spellcaster.

I proposed and will still advocate for giving rangers abilities that are not spells, that are powered by their spell slots, because if they aren’t casting spells they are spell-less.

If the warlock had a class feature that didn’t use the term spell slot, but let you cast any of your known spells twice before needing to recharge, I’d be fine with that, as long as they get 3rd level spells at 5th level, and 9th level spells at 17th or whatever, and they can cast thier 1-5 level spells several times a day.

Just trade up your lower level slots for higher ones. Adds up to about the same.

I.e. at level 11, a sorcerer can have 6 level 5 slots.

So just ignore most of what the class is even about, just to satisfy someone else’s focus on spell slots themselves as what defines a magical class.

No.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I actually wish that sorcerers just had extra spell slots and metamagic and such just cost spell x slot levels, so that if it costs 3 slots, you can pay that with 3 1st levels, 1 3rd level, or 1 1st and 1 2nd. If you only have a 4th level, you get a 1st level back when you spend 3 spell slots on a thing.

 

[Remathilis]

A slight tangent, but now that you've mentioned it, I don't recall seeing many "Proficiency Bonus" dependent abilities in this packet (or any of the OneD&D packets thusfar). That seemed to be all the rage back in the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything days, to the point where everybody was making fun of it. But it looks like WotC is steering away from that now.

Prof/day are more common in feats, species and some subclasses, but they seem to need shying away from it for main class features due to multi-classing issues.

Channel divinity was prof/day, but channel nature is 2-4 uses per day plus regain a use on SR. That was to stop a druid1/something else from having 6 channels.

That said, I'm glad they aren't just resorting to prof/day for everything and really looking at different rates of gain.