Unseelie Warlock Blast Essences

[Anime Sword Fighter]

Posting this here before I make the suggestion for potential feedback. Please tell me how broken/unbalanced it is.




Fiend warlocks have additional essences applied to their blasts, Essence of Fire, Cold, and Life-steal. Fey-locks do not have these bonuses. Here are the Fiend bonuses, for comparison:

Essence of Fire: Reduces the affected target's AB, and buffs the summon's AB for 4 rounds. Does not stack; each successive strike merely renews the duration. Scales based on the warlock's caster level:
Warlock Level 4: -1 AB to Target, +1 AB to Summon
Warlock Level 12: -1 AB to Target, +2 AB to Summon
Warlock Level 20: -2 AB to Target, +3 AB to Summon
Warlock Level 28: -2 AB to Target, +4 AB to Summon

Essence of Cold: Reduces the target's AC, and buffs the summon's AC for 4 rounds. Does not stack; each successive strike merely renews the duration. Scales based on the warlock's caster level:
Warlock Level 4: -1 AC to Target, +1 AC to Summon
Warlock Level 12: -1 AC to Target, +2 AC to Summon
Warlock Level 20: -2 AC to Target, +3 AC to Summon
Warlock Level 28: -2 AC to Target, +4 AC to Summon

Essence of Life-Steal: Steal's the target's HP and heals the summon. This adds an extra 1d4 Negative blast damage for every 3 Warlock levels, and heals the summon for 1d4 for every 3 Warlock levels. No healing takes place if the target is immune to negative energy damage.





I suggest the following bonuses to be added to Feylock's blasts to mirror their Fiend counterparts:

Essence of Acid (Acid Energy): Reduces Target's damage resistance and increases Warlock's attack bonus for 4 rounds. Does not stack; each successive strike merely renews the duration. Scales based on the warlock's caster level:
Warlock Level 4: -1 DR to Target, +1 AB to Warlock
Warlock Level 12: -1 DR to Target, +2 AB to Warlock
Warlock Level 20: -2 DR to Target, +3 AB to Warlock
Warlock Level 28: -2 DR to Target, +4 AB to Warlock

Essence of Electricity (Electric Energy): Reduces Target's Fortitude and increases Warlock's Reflex 4 rounds. Does not stack; each successive strike merely renews the duration. Scales based on the warlock's caster level:
Warlock Level 4: -1 Fortitude to Target, +1 Reflex to Warlock
Warlock Level 12: -2 Fortitude to Target, +2 Reflex to Warlock
Warlock Level 20: -3 Fortitude to Target, +3 Reflex to Warlock
Warlock Level 28: -4 Fortitude to Target, +4 Reflex to Warlock

Essence of Corruption (Positive Energy): Reduces Target's Will, and adds an extra 1d4 Positive blast damage for every 3 Warlock levels. Summons a leveled Spriggan for 4 rounds, cannot be resummoned until the normal cooldown ends. [Unsure about this one]

Thoughts?

[Flashish]

I don't feel like Feylock is close to as good as the other warlock options even if you gave them this. And I don't think the class is very powerful in general.

[Aren]

How about making electric blast behave like Gedlee's electric loop (A minor aoe)?

How about giving feylocks Dominate Monster (Could be on a CD to prevent abuse - instead of dominate person?) and ESF: Enchantment at 28?

Perhaps add charisma mod to EB-damage?

Maybe give them Cats Grace as well.

[Nitro]

Feylock is very binary. Either whatever you're fighting doesn't have protection from your CC and you win by default because you can spam CC forever. Or they have protection and You're forced into a battle of attrition because your damage isn't great and you don't have any real tools to peel people off you to give space for continuous casting (beyond just haste and running)

Funnily, fiendlocks get the best CC spells too (Balagarns, grease, darkness) and the best damage output (Ice storm) while the defensive powers a feylock gets to compensate are either broken (too low CL on shadow shield), useless after the low 10's of levels (ghostly visage) or all made useless by mind protection spells/freedom (all the CC spells).

And since feylock has a busted capstone spell, there's usually no reason to go pure 30 warlock like there is for fiendlock which makes them very sad against any kind of SR, and even if the CL of shadow shield wasn't busted, it's an incredibly weak capstone compared to Ice Storm.

So with all that in mind, I honestly think Feylocks need a full rework. Their playstyle is potent but boring. In PvE they enable a party to glide through content thanks to their ability to CC everything under the sun and haste your main damage dealer. While in PvP they can either win an encounter or be an annoying gnat too tough to swat but only subpar damage.

For the proposed blasts, don't quote me on this but I don't think negative DR is a thing, I presume you intended the -2DR on the acid imbue to be for acid, and even if that works it's incredibly anemic. I'd change that to 10% Damage vulnerability to elemental damage.

Proposed electric would be beyond useless. Feylocks have no spells(one spell, Cloud of Bewilderment) that target fort saves and would barely benefit from it at all, nor would most feylocks benefit from Reflex saves since you'll likely be having decent DEX to fill out your elven chains. I'd change that to -will on the enemy and +will on the warlock if anything. But I think that's a bad idea too because it pushes Feylock further into the win or lose niche of being a savespell spammer.

Positive giving a temporary summon could theoretically be neat, but it'd have to be pretty carefully balanced. Might also end up entirely useless due to pathfinding issues and summoned creatures sometimes just hanging out for a whole round after being summoned due to lag.

[I_Am_King_Midas]

I personally don’t think the capstone is very strong for fiendlock either. You can’t quicken cast ice storm and it hurts your summon as well so it hardly gets used.
I would like to see both capstones re-examined.

[TimeAdept]

I personally don’t think the capstone is very strong for fiendlock either. You can’t quicken cast ice storm and it hurts your summon as well so it hardly gets used.
I would like to see both capstones re-examined.

The fiends have so much DR they'll take no damage from the physical part, probably resist most of the cold, then since you're using the Negative blast, they'll heal off the negative burst rider, coming out likely still healed even after taking ice storm damage.

It's potent as all get out. They're fine.

[MissEvelyn]

The only real change I'd love to see to Ice Storm is that it would stop destroying corpses. But that's more of a change to AoE spells in general than to warlocks.

[Aren]

The only real change I'd love to see to Ice Storm is that it would stop destroying corpses. But that's more of a change to AoE spells in general than to warlocks.

Yes please. So much this.

[Baron Saturday]

I would argue that what warlock needs, now that haks are in use, is to finally be its own class. Of all of Arelith's paths, warlock is the only one that tries to squeeze a D&D base class into the chassis of another, entirely different class. Bard has always been an awkwardly-fit shoe for the warlock, but it was the best one available. Haks can make the warlock a base class, selectable at character creation, with its own spellbook. I dream of a future in which warlocks can even choose from a list of spells and blast essences on level-up, as they do in NWN 2, rather than being forced into cookie-cutter spell lists and abilities.

This is, obviously, a rather large undertaking and unlikely to happen anytime soon, but I think it is preferable to continuing to tweak the current path.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I would argue that what warlock needs, now that haks are in use, is to finally be its own class. Of all of Arelith's paths, warlock is the only one that tries to squeeze a D&D base class into the chassis of another, entirely different class. Bard has always been an awkwardly-fit shoe for the warlock, but it was the best one available. Haks can make the warlock a base class, selectable at character creation, with its own spellbook. I dream of a future in which warlocks can even choose from a list of spells and blast essences on level-up, as they do in NWN 2, rather than being forced into cookie-cutter spell lists and abilities.

This is, obviously, a rather large undertaking and unlikely to happen anytime soon, but I think it is preferable to continuing to tweak the current path.

Seconded. Feylock is still much more playable than meme builds that do fine as well. And people still find the class fun. Best wait for developer(s) who want to make it their passion project to make it a base class.

[Subutai]

I generally see this as a desirable end goal for most, if not all, paths. Wild Mages aren't wizards, for example, but neither are they sorcerers. Wizards are just the closest fit. Even archers, spellswords, etc., could be split out into their own classes to give them a little more versatility. No reason that archery should be confined to elves and treehuggers, after all.