Some thoughts on the Warlock

[Lily]

So warlock is my favorite class in 5e and I was really excited to see what would be done with them during the story of BG3 considering there wasn't much there in early access. As far as story or character options it was fairly bare bones and after plaything through the game once on a pure warlock and again on a bard the comparison of how much one impacts dialog is night and day. Even during the first part of my cleric playthrough had more in ways of dialog than my warlock which I found to be disappointing.

Now, Warlock is a RP heavy class in 5e, your patron is such a massive part of the story telling and we get that with Wyll but not Tav. Tav has a little bit more in Act 3 but the patron only offers guidance maybe twice in the entire game that I've seen and who your patron is I only know of mattering twice.

I understand that the game had to be released at some point and some things had to be sacrificed in order to get the game out the door, but this isn't the only issue I have with the way warlock was implemented. It would have been nice to be able to choose a patron on character creation since the Rule books do suggest some along with their subclasses and it would have been nice to be able to choose the nature of the pact. But I understand that this is a lot of work.

Other Criticism I have is how the Pact boons and some of the invocations are balanced. In some cases we get pact boons which function like their 5e counterpart, such as Agonizing blast which is great. Some cases they're better than their 5e counterpart like Minions of chaos and Mire the mind are way better than they are in 5e and i'm on board for that change to let use these as long as we have spell slots rather than burning so many resources.

But others I don't understand why they weren't tuned up considering the nature of BG3 such as Pact of the Chain not scaling well into late game even with the extra attack or Book of ancient secrets both giving us spells which are out damaged by cantrips at this point in the game but also saying it gives us the ability to copy rituals into our book of shadows when that isn't actually the case at all.

Another problem I found is the Archfey Warlock's Misty Escape requires concentration. This makes the reaction anti synergistic with some of warlock's favorite concentration spells and if you're using pact of the tome and haste on yourself or an ally well they just lost their action next turn. Misty Escape shouldn't be concentration for the invisibility. This makes the ability way too punishing to use.

Invocations should should also be able to be changed out on level up. One invocation changed out if you want to when you level up like it is in 5e. That might be a Tasha's option rule but something I think should be adopted into the game.

The Pact boons are also Not that synergistic when multiclassing except for blade. Blade has some really fun combinations with weapon users but Tome and Chain really don't. I'd like to have more reasons to take more levels in warlock for different builds rather than just for the blade pact.

I don't want to be too negative because I absolutely love the game, but Bard feels way more complete as a class than warlock does and warlock was already kinda a wonky class and it just feels incomplete.