Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why 5e rules matter aka why the warlock is a broken shell

Those of you who made it this far, great. Please give this as fair a read as you can. I'm of the opinion that the 5e tabletop(tt) rules matter in the balance of BG3 because they informed the design of all the classes and class actions. I'm going to hone in on the warlock class to highlight this, but it applies across a number of classes in a variety of ways.

First, I want to establish that the warlock class design balance is 100% centered around the short/long rest rules of the tt game. Warlock have 2 spell slots until level 11 when they get 3. Those spell slots scale at the same rate that all primary casters do, at 9th level they all have 5th level spell slots. Warlocks have 2 5th level slots at 9th level, whereas other primary casters only have 1 until 10th level. Warlock spell slots are capped at 5th level, so any spell they use with those slots will be cast as a 5th level spell but they will never be able to use those slots to cast 6th level or higher spells. Sorcerers, wizards, bards, druids, and clerics also have 2 5th level spell slots at 10th level, but they also have 13 other spell slots of lower levels. How is this balanced? Why on earth would someone play a warlock character knowing you only get 2 spell slots compared to everyone else having 15 at a similar level? Well because those other classes have to manage their spell slots per long rest, so in a 24 hour period they have 15 spells. Warlocks on the other hand renew spell slots on a short rest, so in general play a Warlock gets to renew 3 times for every 1 time that other spell casters do.

Now you might point out, and rightly so, that warlocks still have fewer spell slots per long rest, which is true (at 10th level warlocks would have access to 8 spell slots if they used 3 short rests per long rest, vs 15 for other primary spell casters) but those spells are cast as 5th level spells. You might think half the spell slots cast at higher level sounds a little overpowered, but this is limited because warlocks have a maximum number of spells they can ever know, just like sorcerers and at 10th level they can know 10 spells and 4 cantrips. So they might know 2 spells from every spell level 1-5 or some other combination. And warlocks have a very limited number of spells they can chose to learn from each level. For example, a wizard can choose from 23 5th level spells using the PHB alone and all of the other primary spell casters have more than 10 5th level spells to choose from. Warlock have 4 5th level spells to choose from. They also have 4 4th level spells to choose from. And generally at any given spell level their choices are far fewer than other primary casters.

Ok, so warlocks know fewer total spells, have 2 or 3 spell slots that scale in power and are recovered on a short rest, and have significantly fewer spells to choose from. Why play a warlock? Well they have the best offensive cantrip in the game by a wide margin, eldritch blast, and the invocations to make it great. Why is eldritch blast the best? First it has the force damage type, and that is the least resisted damage type in the game. Second it can target multiple targets starting at level 5. Third it does great damage with long range. But finally when you add agonizing blast you get your charisma bonus to damage on EACH BEAM (and you can repel on each beam too if you take the repelling blast invocation). Compared to a firebolt cantrip which uses the same damage dice (d10) and has the same range, the firebolt uses the second most resisted and immune damage type in the game, and is an all or nothing spell, you hit or you don't and you can only ever manage to get your charisma bonus to damage 1x per firebolt. Eldritch blast suffers from RNG, because you have 3 dice rolls to make (at level 11), but each successful die add the charisma bonus to damage so if you hit 3 times with an 18 charisma you are doing 3d10+12 as a opposed to 3d10+4 on a firebolt. And if you are using repelling blast you can move a single target 30' (no save) or upwards of 3 targets 10' each.

Why do I say they are broken? Because by giving free long rests at any time you destroy the reason why warlocks have 2 spell slots. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to take a warlock over a different spell caster, and in fact you are gimping yourself if you do. By making that change they have fundamentally broken the balance of warlock and monk, as these two classes mechanics are based on short rest renewable resources, so that while every use of their abilities is more costly per usage, the resources renew more quickly to make up for it balancing out these classes. Without redesigning these class structures to be rebalanced under the endless long rest system, they are inherently weaker than the other classes because they pay more to do similar things as other classes. And this is just one area where the implemented rules have disrupted class balance in a foundational way; people have been railing on the breaking of the action economy and how it negatively impacts some classes while buffing other classes.

Edit: changed the eldritch blast section to reflect an 11th level caster rather than a 17th level caster as we should have access to 11th level characters in BG3 but likely not 17th level.

Its not entirely broken but I agree warlocks are a little... not great right now, in fact they are the worst class right now sadly, especially with no multiclassing. The only reason right now to pick a warlock is the granted fiend temp hp and the pact of the chain summon for an imp or quasit, when we should be also picking them for cool stuff like pact of the blade for weapon, or tome pact for cantrips and spells, eldritch invocations for free at will stuff or augments to power, as well as the short rest burst spell slots. As BG3 is now though, warlocks are very lacking not even considering the infinite long rests. Their features are gimped with Chain missing Pseudodragon and Sprite, missing other pact boons, missing invocations, the second pact (Great old One) basically doing nothing I feel, and Eldritch Blast isn't close to being the power house it could and should be.
Overall Warlock isn't exactly the class it should be right now, and Warlock is my favorite class in Tabletop 5e and nearly every build I do includes it in some way. I actually thought it would be the easiest to implement into a videogame due to how modular it is.

I really hope Larian tries to fix things by making more areas invalid for long resting and thus requiring short rests AND fixing the powers and adding that which is missing to warlock. There is a lot for them to work with, especially in new content with Tasha's.

I hope to eventually be able to make my 3Warlock/?Wizard for Summoning madness but that'd require the Warlock to be fixed (And for the familiar to not count against concentration summons, cause right now they do for some ungodly reason.)

Rest less often?
Nothing in the game requires you to take long rests.

I long rest as little as possible even when my main is a mage. (My first long rest is usually at the Druid Grove after I've defeated the Bugbear assassin and the Harpies.


It's your choice.

If you want your Warlock to shine a little brighter only take long rests after every 5 or 6 encounters.

And that is a BS argument, you are essentially saying gimp your other characters to make your warlock seem balanced. That isn't a meaningful choice in terms of gameplay, that is a meta choice on whether or not you want to play with a self imposed handicap. Yeah, you can polish a turd, but it's still a turd no matter how shiny you make it or how much you wish it were something else.

Be straight up: they are garbage.
And yet, virtually every other stream I watch, people are playing them, even asserting they OP.
669.6 hours of playing SOLO playthroughs, testing SOLO builds, equipment and weapon(s) load outs for those build, etc. And I have yet to SOLO EA Act 1 with a warlock (but it has been done from one or two players that I know who likewise only play SOLO). SOLO warlock is an utter pain in the arse when compared to all the other classes currently in this game that can SOLO EA Act 1 with relative ease. Maybe once they hit level 5, maybe, I dunno, will see then.

Yeah, reason I say not outright broken is they actually could be worse, at least they are functional and some eldritch invocations are good right now like at will beastspeach, and some are getting mileage out of em. But overall, yeah they suck hard right now. But I make my MC one anyways cause they are still my favorite class in normal 5e and the Imp is the closest I can get to achieving my love for summoning. But god could they be so much more, heck, Warlock should be the class that can solo when applied right cause of their versatility and modular format, not what they are now which is only Hex and EB cause anything else is a waste of spellslots.

It's unfortunate really, to be honest...I actually think warlock has great potential but in its current state, I don't want to touch it.
But again, in all fairness, most people that play BG3 play full parties were I do not, so my lenses of looking at Warlock are tainted from that SOLO perspective.

Well their issues are just as glaring in a party tbh.

I feel like my warlock is being outdone in things like utility, damage, versatility, so on. The only 'OP' thing is that the imp is pretty much infinite and with some creativity you can cheese combat by making enemies fight a summon that keeps sneaking up on them constantly. And i guess they make a good face but Bard, when that comes out, will outdo em in that regard easily.

True in specialization the warlock almost always will get outdone in 5e, but the way they are constructed it is supposed to make up for that with surprising amount of flexibility and free stuff. But they do not feel like nor play like they should in BG3 right now and I hope they get fixed, with situations that favor their short rest nature and their stuff available. The shell is there its just empty I think?

+1 Shortrest classes drew the short end of the stick with the current resting system.

To be fair, even 5e seems to have the problem of the "15 minute adventuring day" so truer to the rules wouldn't necessarily solve all the problems with the warlock

And D&D is said to be balanced around 6 to 8 encounters a day, according to the Dungeon Master's Guide, so is it really "gimping" if you're playing rules as intended?

Maybe empty husk would have been a more apt description. But I'll be honest, I'm very much concerned that monk will be garbage as well for most of the same reasons. And I have my doubts about how they will implement bard and sorcerer spell casting without preparation. Every time they cut a corner on one of the classes without compensating that class to maintain the class balance they just hurt the classes. Cunning action a rogue skill? Lol, lets just give it to everyone for free. Rogues don't need that, never mind that it is the 2nd level ability and one of the more valuable ones at that. Barbarians get reckless attack, bards get jack of all trades, clerics get channel divinity, druids get wild shape, fighters get action surge, rogues get ...

Actually true to the rules would mean characters couldn't benefit from a long rest more than 1x/24 hours. Most tables I've played at use a 3/1 or 4/1 short to long rest rule unless there is a long downtime like overland travel, etc...

So you are looking for Larian to "gimp your other characters" because you don't have the self control to not rest after every battle?
By making the choice to have your characters take an 8 hour rest after every 3 minutes of combat you are literally meta-gaming each battle.
Starting a battle with less than full resources isn't a handicap -- it's Dungeons and Dragons.

If you are doing something that is diminishing your game-play enjoyment then stop doing it.
To use your own vernacular, you are the one who is bringing the turd. If you don't like how it smells then stop bringing it.

Yup, long rests need to be few and far between. Maybe fixed places like in Solasta?

There is literally a mechanic at play here, it's called short rest. It is there for a reason, and the warlock and monk classes are based around it. Other classes are not gimped if they can't do a full long rest after every combat, they are designed such that they have significantly more resources than monks and warlocks specifically so they can more easily operate between long rests. The current system is essentially tearing out the long rest/short rest class design and not rebalancing the classes that were SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED AND BALANCED on the notion you can only take 1 long rest every 24 hours, but you can have multiple short rests in between.

If you don't think they damaged those classes by breaking the mechanic that they were designed around, well I don't see any point in discussing it with you any further because I really don't think you are terribly familiar with 5e class design.

Again, this sounds like a self-control issue. I took a total of zero long rests on the way to level 3 with my party, and a total of 0ne long rest after reaching level 3. I've since taken a second long rest, not because I was forced too at the time, but because I wanted to move some of the plotline along.

My interest at this point is for more features/abilities/spells to be released for the classes currently available, and for additional classes to first be released. Concerns about balancing one class against another should be dealt with way down the road, once all classes and sub-classes are in play, and far more class/sub-class features are released and functional.

I'm kind of confused what the complaint here is. I've been limiting my long rests due to not wanting to miss story content, and my warlocks have been gold. We've run two of them (Wyll and another PC) in our party and they've consistently been fantastic. I've had a harder time correctly metering out my Eldrich Knight's spell slots since I've been conserving them for long rests, which I haven't taken often to prevent the world from progressing too far. I think the time mechanic that has always existed in Baldur's Gate games will continue to balance out the rest mechanic the more content that gets created.

I think maybe my experience with Warlocks in BG3 has been different but I have found em to be subpar nearly every combat, and only really shined in the dungeon with the hag. But limiting long rests may change this, though I haven't felt like long resting affects the world much?

If there is a time limit/mechanic, that would balance things out. But currently there’s no penalty to wasting time. You can long rest before every encounter without consequence.

I see, well I'm wholeheartedly here for adding more time passing on rest mechanics. I know there were some things that moved on but I guess they were mostly inconsequential so far. They still did a good job of making me FEEL like I was on the clock, but it would be better to add more quests and things that you can miss and the like. I can say from experience that if you're avoiding long resting too much Warlocks kinda feel like the best casters, at least they did to me.