Warlock kit

[Daeva]

Right, after finally getting my first kit up and running I've decided to try another one that fits in slightly better with the game . . .

 

The class I'm thinking of making is that of the warlock from DnD (it was always my favorite class). I would very much appreciate peoples' opinions on the balance / role-playing suitability for it. The kit is as follows:

 

WARLOCK: Born of a supernatural bloodline, a warlock seeks to master the perilous magic that suffuses his soul. Unlike sorcerers and wizards, who approach arcane magic through the medium of spells, a warlock invokes powerful magic through nothing more than an effort of will. By harnessing his innate magical gift through fearsome determination and willpower, a warlock can perform feats of supernatural stealth, beguile the weak-minded, or scour his foes with blasts of eldritch power.

 

Advantages:

- thief proficienies & THAC0 progression

- special warlock specific invocations

- Fiendish Resilience special ability at levels 8, 13 & 18. This ability bestows regeneration upon the character for 30 secs.

- Energy resistance to fire, cold and electric: 5% at level 10, 10% at level 20.

- Imbue item special ability at level 12. This ability allows the warlock to create a magical longsword, quaterstaff or dagger of +3 enchantment once a day.

 

Disadvantages:

- NO access to normal mage spells.

- 5% chance of wild surge when every invocation is cast.

- -2 con at character creation.

- only 1 lore per level.

- can only be of chaotic or evil allignments.

 

Okay that's pretty much the kit, the invocations work as best I was able to imitate the true DnD style - that is, they can be cast an infinite amount of times per day(!) but you only know a *very* limited number of them.

 

The HLAs for the kit are:

Use Any Item, Evasion, Greater Evasion, Whirlwind, Improved Eldritch Blast, Tracking

 

The basic invocation, Eldritch Blast is as follows:

Nd6 dark damage to one target withing 30' (no save but SR applies). N increases by one every 3 levels up to a maximum of 9. At level 9 is gains the knock-back effect and at level 20 it has a chance to render the victim unconcious.

 

There are 40 invocations to choose from and you gain the use of 2 every 3 levels (ish) to a maxium of 18 at level 30. You can never select more than 2 from any one invocation level. (some of my favourite invocations: Eldritch Blast, Baleful Utterance (disintegrate), Warlock's Call (gate), Flee The Scene (dimension door and frozen project image), Dark Discorperation, Retributive Invisibility and many more).

[Biubid_boy]

There already is a Warlock kit in 'The Darkest Days', but yours sound much more interesting.

[BigRob]

It's a very interesting idea, but it seems overpowered to me. I think the kit's ability to cast the invocations an unlimited number of times per day is what's doing it. The ability to spew out 9d6 damage every round without limit is likely to win any encounter if your fighters can stay upright long enough to hold the enemies away for the warlock. And the ability to cast Gate at will is a guaranteed win if there's someone to cast protection from Evil about the place.

 

It would be better if you just gave them a large number of invocations of each level per day, but even then the thief Thaco and proficiencies plus the regeneration make this a very powerful "mage" to start with. The inability to use scrolls and/or wands would go a long way to pulling this one back, I think.

[Daeva]

Aw - and I'd just worked out how to allow him to cast unlimited spells per day and all . . .

 

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough, but he already cannot use scrolls (or, obviously rings of wizardry and such though I'm not sure how to code that as yet - I will probably add wands as well). The problem I had with the number of invocations is simply that he is supposed to be able to caste a few invocations a large number of times (ala a sorceror) however, my recent experience is that setting up that kind of sorceror-like ability is a pain and inelegant at best . . .

 

One thing I was thinking of doing is having the ability to cast one or two invocations per spell level but that each invocation has a chance (say 75%) of restoring itself after being cast - that way it's not totally unlimited but neither is it severly restricted the way a mage is.

 

Do you have any thoughts on how else I could accomplish the casting ability?

[Biubid_boy]

Maybe each spell should re-memorise itself after a random duration. That way, you have a chance of being both very good and mediocre during combat. Kinda suits the 'raw' feeling you were going for, don't you think?

[Daeva]

Maybe each spell should re-memorise itself after a random duration.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What so that it has the delayed effect of restoring itself after, say, 1 min? I really like that idea, actually, also I could add the effect that each invocation causes you fatigue of 1 hour, or similar to make it emphasise the sheer will power required . . .

[Biubid_boy]

I originally thought you could do it by having the the 're-learn' effect duration set to delayed, and then use the effect 'Change Spell Duration' with some random numbers to make it randomer. But now I realise that the 're-learn' part would be an effect, not a spell. It could still work...

[Simbriant]

I originally thought you could do it by having the the 're-learn' effect duration set to delayed, and then use the effect 'Change Spell Duration' with some random numbers to make it randomer. But now I realise that the 're-learn' part would be an effect, not a spell. It could still work...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think the relearn ability would definately help to balance out the class. Simply giving the warlock unlimited usage of his eldritch abilities would make the class very munchkin friendly.

 

Warlocks are fun though. I once ran a Ravenloft campaign where one of the PCs was a warlock. He was also one of the more famous blacksmiths in town and used his eldritch abilities to help with that. That was such a fun campaign. ^^

[Daeva]

I originally thought you could do it by having the the 're-learn' effect duration set to delayed, and then use the effect 'Change Spell Duration' with some random numbers to make it randomer. But now I realise that the 're-learn' part would be an effect, not a spell. It could still work...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, I could always set it so that casting any one spell has a 10% probability of restoring a spell with a delayed duration of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 secs that would immitate the random element relatively well and could be easily included with every spell.

 

BTW - if anyone could please explain to me how to allow the kit to use thief weapons and armour (it doesn't matter if this means it can no longer use mage stuff) I would very much appreciate it, since simply setting the usability flags to those of a thief seem to have no effect . . .

[Deathsangel]

What I notice is Baleful Utterance might need a new name. Truenamers use Utterances, rather make it Baleful Invocation (just got Tome of Magic and I have Complete Arcana as well ) Warlock is a cool class by the way, just like the Binder

 

You also might want to severly test this kit. Why? Use Any Item might just gives him access again to the wizardy rings and you need to see what it does. Neither do I understand why you want to give him the HLA of tracking (or whirlwind attack), as you can read above I know the Warlock from Complete Arcana, but that doesn't make sense. You also have hardly any HLA that can be re-chosen, making his HLA at later levels less significant. I think temporary magic resistance and damage reduction are more in line with PnP Warlock. You could also add some other that modifies his eldritch blast like the invocations you have or can you already do that?

 

P.s. Great admirration for your skill, as you say you find this easy. I am coding NPC's and quests (for the Mod for the Wicked that is), but I still want to create one kit and some other stuff and I am having a very hard time with it...

[BigRob]

Well, I could always set it so that casting any one spell has a 10% probability of restoring a spell with a delayed duration of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 secs that would immitate the random element relatively well and could be easily included with every spell.

 

That seems much more balanced. In a fight, even ten seconds it a fairly long time and waiting 100 seconds to recast a spell would be painful. I'm still not sure that this would not be overpowered, but now I think it's something you'd have to play with to find out.

 

 

BTW - if anyone could please explain to me how to allow the kit to use thief weapons and armour (it doesn't matter if this means it can no longer use mage stuff) I would very much appreciate it, since simply setting the usability flags to those of a thief seem to have no effect . . .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm not sure how to do this off-hand. It could be that you may need to use thief as a base class to allow this, and then add the warlock invocation/spellcasting abilities from there.

[Biubid_boy]

Yea, I thought of the that way of doing the 're-learn' just after I posted. Looks like you beat me to it though .

[Daeva]

What I notice is Baleful Utterance might need a new name. Truenamers use Utterances, rather make it Baleful Invocation (just got Tome of Magic and I have Complete Arcana as well ) Warlock is a cool class by the way, just like the Binder

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, I got the name from the DnD 3.5 base classes index, and, to be honest I prefer the name Baleful Utterance, however, I don't suppose it matters overly much and it's no real trouble to change it . . .

 

You also might want to severly test this kit. Why? Use Any Item might just gives him access again to the wizardy rings and you need to see what it does. Neither do I understand why you want to give him the HLA of tracking (or whirlwind attack), as you can read above I know the Warlock from Complete Arcana, but that doesn't make sense. You also have hardly any HLA that can be re-chosen, making his HLA at later levels less significant. I think temporary magic resistance and damage reduction are more in line with PnP Warlock. You could also add some other that modifies his eldritch blast like the invocations you have or can you already do that?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I've already tested the Use Any Item HLA and it causes no end of problems (not least allowing the warlock to learn normal mage spells) so I'm scrapping that idea. I included tracking since I remember warlocks having the ability to sense magic but I suppose that isn't really reflected in the tracking ability. All in all I haven't really thought out the HLAs particularly and will need to return to them later.

 

One question I do have is that I seem to be unable to remove any of the existing mage kits since they do not function as ordinary kits due to this I'm forced to make the character creation continue in-game (lower level to one and apply XP) which I'm none too keen on so if anyone could please explain to me how (or indeed if it's even possible to remove an existing mage kit) I would be extremely grateful. Tah

 

EDIT: can't spell, ah well . . .

[Deathsangel]

What I notice is Baleful Utterance might need a new name. Truenamers use Utterances, rather make it Baleful Invocation (just got Tome of Magic and I have Complete Arcana as well ) Warlock is a cool class by the way, just like the Binder

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, I got the name from the DnD 3.5 base classes index, and, to be honest I prefer the name Baleful Utterance, however, I don't suppose it matters overly much and it's no real trouble to change it . . .

 

Yes, I know you are actually right as this is the least invocation known as Baleful Utterance (I just checked), just a bit weird as Utterances are atually the domain of Truenamers. However, that book came at a latter date of course and as BG2 doesn't know truenamers you might want to keep the same name.

 

What do you think of my suggestions of HLA?

[Daeva]

What do you think of my suggestions of HLA?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I really liked the ideas of temporary magic resistance and damage reduction. The idea of improving the eldritch blast is also good but I'm having difficulty deciding just what kind of improvements would be best. The way I've coded it is so that you can gain an improved version of you eldritch blast pretty much every spell level (Sickening blast, Frightful blast, Beshadowed blast, Vitriolic blast, Eldritch chain, Utterdark blast, Eldritch doom (? - not sure about this one)). Any thoughts on this would be very much appreciated.

 

EDIT: forgot about Cold-Fire Blast