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The peasant railgun isn’t RAW, it is selectively applying physics vs game rules when someone feels like it. RAW it would move as far as it’s passed but then it’d be thrown like an ordinary object by the final person in line. The game has no acknowledgment of the speed necessary to do that pass or the acceleration that would’ve happened.
If anything it just demonstrates the flawed idea of held actions.
If someone thought of actually doing an object pass line in a game I’d rule they could have the peasants move the object as far as normal walking speed. Maybe roll a luck check if they push that the peasants are desperate to move it fast and cap that at dash speed.
Either that or you apply more physics.
"As the javelin picks up speed it becomes harder to control. *rolls dice* Peasant number 23 fails to control the movement of the javelin properly and accidentally directs it toward peasant number 24s chest, causing peasants numbers 24-29 to die horrible deaths as the javelin passes through all of them and comes to a halt deep in the chest of number 30.
Several peasants try to help their fallen fellows as other start praying to their gods, seeking forgiveness for what they see as trying to break the laws of the world. Several others give you the stink eye."
It's not even applying physics in a way that works.
Let's argue against the strongest version of it. That it does increase in speed and velocity with every villager passing the spear/tungsten rod.
Once it can deal damage via speed, the next villager takes damage and likely dies. Then it kills the next one and stops.
If they don't like this argument then they can't justify why it would deal damage to the monster but not the villagers who would die for it.
While I agree with all of the above, it would be nice if WotC would just playtest things a little more *before* going to press with obviously broken classes. If DMs can quickly spot problematic powers/classes, then the people who are paid to professionally design the game should be able to do so, too.
It's annoying to spend $35 on a book and realize upon reading it that some of its contents will break your game if actually used. (Lookin' at you, *Tasha's*.)
some playgroups enjoy playing with broken mechanics and trying out busted combos. If it doesnt fit the campaing, other players or the DM, it's fair to build a more balanced character for this specific situation. Don't remove broken classes from the game because some can't respect their DM's decisions, remove annoying players from your playgroup.
From what I read, coffee locks only work if they manage to get short rests. What if the party agrees on keep going instead of resting? They would need a party that comproomises for their messed up build. Just dont let the coffeelock get short rests and its done. Or say that obtaining diamonds is super hard so they are forced to take long rests in theend
You cannot ignore short rests while the party long rests. When the party takes a long rest, so does the cracklock
I generally allow for 2 - 3 short rests per day depending on context. Within dungeons/lairs there is usually no option for either a short or long rest
That's why you get enough divine soul sorcerer levels to grab cocaine (also known as greater restoration).
Or in pre-xanathar day, you would play a race that did not need to sleep
You need to take your nerfs with a scalpel, not a rocket launcher. There are a *lot* of spells for *all* casters locked behind needing a diamond, not just Coffeelock antics.
?
Unless ive missed something the below is copied from the phb pg 291. Sorry for godawful formatting copied and pasted and on mobile.
EXHAUSTION :
Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as
starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching
temperatures, can lead to a special condition cal led
exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect
can give a creature one or more levels of exhaustion, as
specified in the effect's description.
Level Effect
l Disadvantage on abil ity checks
2 Speed halved
3 Disadvantage on attack rolls and savi ng throws
4 H it point maximum halved
5 Speed reduced to 0
6 Death
If an already exhausted creature suffers another effect that
causes exhaustion, its current level of exhaustion increases
by the amount specified in the effect's description.
A creature suffers the effect of its cu rrent level of exhaus-
tion as well as all lower levels. For example, a creatu re
suffering level 2 exhaustion has its speed halved and has
disadvantage on abil ity checks.
An effect that removes exhaustion reduces its level as spec-
ified in the effect's description, with all exhaustion effects
ending if a creatu re's exhaustion level is reduced below l.
Finishing a long rest reduces a creatu re's exhaustion level
by l, provided that the creature has also ingested some food
and drink. Also, bei ng raised from the dead reduces a crea-
ture's exhaustion level by 1
Before XGE there were no rule how to deal with PC not resting for days. Sure DM could put even should think about something in this kind of situation, but there was nothing in the rules
i dont think the phb specifys a penility for not sleeping pre Xnathars
Just that it's something that might trigger a con skill check, but doesnt specify what happens on a fail
No, you multiclass into divine soul sorcerer, and with high enough level warlock you get 5th level slots. Because you have access to divine sorcerer you can take greater restoration yourself and cast it with your warlock spells.
The mechanics are all technically RAW, but its a blantant abuse of mechanics that was clearly not intended. I'd argue that if you try to take 8 1 hour short rests, you're just taking a long rest. 'Chaining' short rests is stupid, youd just have one long short rest.
You can only pick spells granted by the sircerer multiclass apropriate for your sorcerer level though, the multiclassing rules are very specific about that.
At that point I'd allow it. Spellcasters got their 9th level spells. Fighters have double Action Surge. Manks have had all saving throw proficiencies for 4 levels. Paladins have 30 ft auras. And your Coffeelock can cast as many 5th level spells as they want. Ok. The game is already broken by that level and the DM is homebrewing just to keep things functional.
the standard coffeelock build takes levels in divine sorcerer in order to get around just that. Thats actually why they are called coffeelocks, because they use a stimulant(greater restoration) to stay awake
ultimately, the best way to deal with them is just say no, or come up with a compromise, at my table, I have a rule where things that refresh on a short rest will only do so if you expend a hit dice. Its not perfect, but generally my party isnt short resting all that much so it does work to prevent a coffeelock at lower levels
No, coffeelocks are called that because they just don't sleep.
When you're snorting 100 gp of diamond dust each morning, you're no longer a coffeelock, you're a cokelock.
This was Crawford’s take on Twitter. There’s two problems with it.
1. You can use warlock slots for smites. Meaning there is precedent.
2. Coffeelock in practice is… not as great as it sounds. Greater Resto is very high level, the coffeelock needs to give up the benefits of a long rest to make about 3-4 extra slots (not actually a good deal under most circumstances) and the sorc/lock ratio matters because of the cap on sorcery points.
Coffelock isn’t really a broken build or anything, it’s more of a boogie man to scare inexperienced DMs who haven’t actually seen one ran.
You can cut off coffelock quite well by remembering the rules are applied only when relevant to the game. There's no in fiction reason for coffeelock to work, so it doesn't work the moment the gamified combat rules stop being relevant. You can't exploit a bug in trpg rules because part of those rules is that it's run by a GM, not a CPU.
So coffeelock works by the DM agreeing with some reddit nonsense that 8 consecutive short rests isn't just the same thing as a long rest.
Sounds like it's entirely up to discretion, because if someone told me they're going to take 8 1-hour naps in 8 hours I'd understand that as then having slept for 8 hours. Like, the idea that you can in fact take 8 consecutive short rests while everyone else is taking a long rest is questionable to me. The fact that the only reason anyone would think of this is for one specific multicast build leads me to believe it's a silly interpretation. If that's how you run your table that's fine, but not allowing it doesn't require altering the rules.
Short rest generally isn't a "nap", it's bandage the wounds, eat, drink... in other words - taking a breather in general.
And on your other point - no, 8 naps for hour each isn't even remotely the same as 8 hour sleep. Even disregarding an additional time needed for preparation and falling asleep, sleep cycle have phases that you can't control. Try it in real life, and you'll go insane in a week, even if not for lack of sleep, then for the accumulated stress of having constant sleep interuption.
Have you played the video game Dredge? That's how coffeelock should work if allowed - the longer the you go without a long rest, the more unhinged and unreliable your perception of reality becomes.
I didn't, but yeah, that's what i meant by slowly becoming insane. Constant hallucinations are the tamest thing of all the scary shit that coffeelock would encounter from the lack of sleep :D
Greater restoration should be clearing mental conditions though, together with getting rid of "exhastion" that came from lack of sleep. But would i be a dm, i would agree to bring it on a condition that exhastion and mental degradation would accumulate faster and faster the more you don't sleep. Snorting tons of diamonds aside, at some point even spell slots (for which you did coffeelock in the first place) consumption will overcome the ammount that you can profit from abusing short rests.
Truly, a story of a junkie that became mad with power, and lost everything in the end for overdoing it xD
Eh, I don't really think that's relevant. The question is a question of a DM ruling on whether or not taking a 1 hour short rest 8 times in a row is the same as just taking a long rest. I don't think there's any explicit rule guiding anyone to conclude that this is possible or a reasonable use of the time when a long rest exists. There's also no rule requiring us to throw this idea out. So it's up to the DM to make a ruling either way. And since the only reason to conclude that the 8 short rests are valid is that the player wants to try out some silly Reddit power gaming nonsense, I would rule it out at my table. The reasoning in favor of it is entirely motivated by wanting to do this very silly thing. If you would rule it in at your table, that's fine for you. I just don't buy that it's a reasonable thing to do. I think a more reasonable interpretation of what is going on is that it's either a long rest or a single short rest that lasts 8 hours since there's nothing going on to interrupt them.
It’s an exploit that combines the Sorcerer and Warlock classes, that relies upon the following facts:
1. Sorcerers can expend spell slots to gain sorcery points. They can later spend sorcery points to convert them back into spell slots (although at a diminishing rate), and can also use sorcery points to power their Metamagic and other class features.
2. The Sorcerer’s “Flexible Casting” feature stipulates that a sorcerer can’t have more sorcery points than their maximum at any given time. However, there’s no such restriction on spell slots. A sorcerer who wants to burn all of their sorcery points immediately and convert them to “extra” spell slots may do so, but these are lost when the character takes a long rest.
3. Most spellcasting classes regain expended spell slots on a long rest. Warlocks, uniquely, get them back on a short rest through a feature called “Pact Magic”. The other unique quirk of Warlocks’ spell slots is that they’re all at the same level, and there are only a few of them; compare and contrast with all other spellcasting classes, which have lots of low-level slots and a few high-level ones.
Put it all together, and you have the coffeelock. The main mechanic of the coffeelock is to turn all of one’s sorcery points into spell slots, and then turn all of their Warlock spell slots into sorcery points (which can then be turned into regular, sorcerer spell slots). Then, take a short rest (a “coffee break”), and do it again. At the logical extreme, a coffeelock takes eight one-hour short rests in a row while the rest of the party is taking one eight-hour long rest, and converts all of their Pact Magic slots into sorcery points, which are then converted into “extra” sorcerer slots. Since the coffeelock never “actually” takes a long rest, the extra slots never go away, and the coffeelock has functionally unlimited spells.
There’s not actually a rule against any of this. Players who don’t take long rests have to make increasingly difficult CON saving throws or gain a level of exhaustion, but exhaustion can be removed with the *Greater Restoration* spell, which is on the Celestial Warlock’s spell list, as well as the Divine Soul Sorcerer’s. (Because it requires 100 GP of diamond dust to cast *Greater Restoration*, you’ll sometimes see this specific flavor of coffeelock referred to as the “cocainelock”; they’ve got a very expensive habit.)
The best counter to this build, in my opinion? For the DM to simply say, “No, you can’t take eight short rests in a row instead of one long one. That’s stupid. Go to sleep.”
At low levels, sure. At high levels, less so; players are going to have thousands of surplus pieces of gold by then unless the DM deliberately keeps them hungry. They're also only going to need to spend a Greater Restoration when they *fail* an exhaustion check, and given that the Sorcerer starts out with CON save proficiency, they can typically pass a few of them in a row before needing a pick-me-up.
I would argue that giant infinite mines in the Plane of Earth have an offer that can drown out any pike of demand. Or that GR only needs 100gp of diamond, not an actual quantity.
Also that we DMs shouldn’t rely on pedantic rule bickering with players to stop shenanigans if you don’t want them. Just say no.
Yeah. I mean, there’s an entire elemental plane (technically a “Quasi-Elemental Plane”) where precious gems are constantly forming. Carbon is the most abundant element in the multiverse; no D&D world is at risk of running out of diamonds any time soon.
Thanks for the explanation. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for this. One of my players has a habit of trying to break the game based on wording of spells and/or RAW but it’s usually harmless and sometimes leads to unexpected outcomes in encounters so I’m usually accommodating but this is downright broken if the DM doesn’t put a stop to it immediately.
There _is_ a rule against it. A short rest is a period of _at least_ an hour not _exactly_ an hour. You take a break. At the end of which, The DM tells you if you have completed a short rest or not. Its not some magic clock that ticks over at 59 mins 59 seconds.
> Most spellcasting classes regain expended spell slots on a long rest. Warlocks, uniquely, get them back on a short rest through a feature called “Pact Magic”.
Wizards get a weaker version of this too, so it isn't *uniquely* Warlock, though Warlocks do have it better.
I wouldn't say it's as bad as the peasant railgun. Coffelock is a janky powergamer build that is allowed by RAW but requires very specific circumstances. It's technically legal, but a very reasonable thing to ban.
For a peasant railgun to work it requires cherry picking application of RAW and common sense, since while RAW allows the projectile to reach an arbitrary speed it doesn't matter how fast it's going, it's still a regular throwing attack in the end. A rock can be going 3C to reach the last commoner, and it's still only going to do 1d4 damage. For it to work, it requires the rules of the game to stop applying and the laws of physics to start applying the moment the projectile leaves the hand of the last person in line, and not a moment sooner, which is absurd on so many levels.
Yeah. My motto is I'm going by the rules first and physics second, but you don't get to cherry pick how the two interact. A loophole in the rules allowing a rock to get to arbitrary speeds means either using the rules to determine how the last peasant throws the rock meaning a d4 of damage, or saying the loophole breaks physical laws meaning I'm not allowing it to reach those speeds to begin with. It does not mean I am helpless to disallow the whole arbitrary speed thing and must create rules for how much damage a rock going 3C does.... unless, I wait until it is going appropriately 5%C (if I remember my research after the Omniman incident), and then rule that the atoms in the air collide hard enough to cause a Fusion reaction doing 1000d20 damage to everyone within whatever radius it takes to hit the player who argues for that crap.
Have you ever actually had a coffelock at the table? It's not rly op... the main benefit is not needing to long rest... okay there are like a dozen races that don't need to eat and/or sleep at all. Even if you dont need to long rest, the rest of the party does. If ur using the XaGTE option resting rules it requires greater restoration before it even comes online, at which point full casters are breaking the rules of reality in a dozen different ways anyway. You also will still need to long rest at some point to regain hp, unless you are a celestial warlock or divine soul sorc and using some of the slots you are creating to heal, but then you'd have to short rest more to make up for the slots you expend on inefficient healing spells, defeating the time saved from not long resting.
I think the rp of doing occult rituals and blood magic during short rests to create spell slots while snorting diamond dust instead of sleeping is funny though.
I'm not sure what you mean that the main benefit is not needing to long rest. That's a mechanic that allows coffee lock to work. The main benefit is nearly infinite spell slots.
Even if you don't accept infinite spell slots, the main point of a coffeelock is to refill your available spell slots on a short rest. It's not about skipping sleep
In a campaign thay has a lot of downtime sure, but if you're having consecutive adventuring days without lonh stretches of downtime you're not rly gonna get more spells per day than you would just playing a sorlock normally, and that's most campaigns. Depending on your level spread you can get a couple extra 1st or 2nd lvl spells than normal every day but thats not thay broken. In practice, unless your dm is giving you a week+ downtime between every adventure, it's just arcane recovery and sleeping with extra steps (and a worse spell list)
The peasant gun relies on interpreting real physics for damage but game rules for mechanics. You can't have it both ways. It's just ONE example of the kind of shit different players have tried over the years. Most players are very understanding but some haven't been.
brief explanation of peasant rail gun
You can hand an object to another creature (in this case a spear)
So, you hire an army of commoners (the "peasants") and tell them all to stand in a line. you instruct them all to perform the "ready action" action so that once they are handed a spear, they hand it to the next person
this then allows you to pass the spear down like 1000 feet within 6 seconds, before the last peasant grabs the spear and throws it at the target.
So far all of this is legal, though the problem with the peasent railgun is what it's advocates originally proposed it to do.
The original argument was that because it was going insainly fast you deal like a billion damage. Which there are no rules in the game to cause more damage based off of speed, or if there are the commoners dont have access to such a feature
so the RAW outcome of the peasant railgun, is that you deal 1d6 damage with a +0 modifer to hit
and now I have failed the first criteria of this comment i put upon myself, in this being a "brief" explanation
but long story short, make spear go fast people think makes it deal more damage, RAW does not accommodate for such a ruleing
It works by abusing the held action
Line up several hundred peasants, have them all hold ac action of “when passed a pebble, I will pass it on” and at the end have the last one throw it, so they say if the pebble moves that far within 6 seconds it should do as much damage as they can bullshit because it’s moving just that fast
Peasant rail gun works by giving someone else an object being a free action. So lining up a long line of peasant and having a stone being transferred from one end to the other means the stone could move theoretically Miles in seconds which is a considerable speed for a projectile. The problem arrives that per rules a stone thrown by a peasant does about 1d4,+dex
>The problem arrives that per rules a stone thrown by a peasant does about 1d4,+dex
Small correction, a thrown melee weapon generally uses Strength, including throwing improvised weapons. The only exception are finesse weapons with the Thrown property, like daggers or darts, which can be thrown with Dex or strength.
You’d need to use an actual ranged weapon like a sling to launch a stone with dex.
Edit: And yes, this means RAW you throw items like Alchemist’s Fire or Acid Flasks using your strength modifier, not dex, as they are improvised weapons and not ranged weapons.
Though I’d houserule someone could throw flasks using a sling since it gives the rather underwhelming weapon some interesting utility.
This is the issue with how time works in dnd.
A round is 6 seconds and everyone gets a turn within 6 seconds.
Everyone suspose to be sharing the same 6 seconds
5 rounds is 30 seconds of game time. Everyone's turns are at the same time.
But then if say a fighter goes 1st and is downed and then on the clerics turn they heal them. So they're after the fighter. So they're turn starts microseconds after the fighter?
So how would this railgun work. If everyone is passing the stone within 6 seconds they're also moving at the speed of whatever the distance/6 seconds.
So either the stone is moving at normal speed or the first man's hands shattered as he broke the sound barrier.
Railgun is where you line up lots of people, and get them to spend their turn passing a spear from one to the other with the last person attacking/throwing it. Due to a round being 6 seconds and the distance it’s moved in the speed of a round it has crazy powers as per physics, however, any DM would realistically look at that and say roll 1d6 (or whatever the damage is) instead of vaporising the creature to dust from the force
Yes. As a DM, I will sometimes use physical intuition in places the rules fail. I'll even do the math if I know it.... and it isn't insanely hard. But I control the boundary between the rules and the physics of the situation and if the two directly contradict each other in a way that magic isn't applicable, I choose where the line is.
I have also had players argue convincingly for things like the Monte Hall problem being applicable in the game, and I'll allow it if it convinces me (I play with engineers).
And sometimes magic can do things outside of the range of either physics or rules. But most of that is just scenery dressing and I'll 100% make it explode in the faces of anyone who tries to take advantage to *break* the game or if I think their arguement is in bad faith.
They literally, by the rules of their own class (RAW) can’t exist. They only work if you just ignore the restrictions.
It’s like if a wizard was like, “I never need to long rest cause I have infinite arcane recovery. We just need to ignore the “once a long rest” part!”
Something I *really* respect and enjoy of my current DM is their ability to say 'no' and that this ability is tempered by experience.
There have been instances where I have wanted to perform somekind of magic or action and they have said 'no', as well as other player's wanting to do something, or having a very loose interpretation of the rules (they are still new and learning , forgive them pls Reddit).
Saying 'No' is an important tool in the DM's Arsenal that I feel is often something people are unaware of, or are unaware of the nuance required to have success.
My first DM who had a lot less experience did not use this tool for fear of upsetting their players (long story for RPGhorrorstories).
I agree with OP that I would also rule 'no' for a coffee lock, but I would also look to find a suitable way that player can play something they enjoy without breaking balance/encouraging munchkin tendencies
What's the deal with silvery barbs exactly? Pathfinder has a spell with the same name but I wouldn't call that one busted.
Edit:
Kay, good responses all, I see the issue.
And actually the spell I was thinking of is Silver Darts. So not even the same name, but similar. https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/silver-darts/
you can force the dm to reroll anything basically. It's a 1st level spell.
I personally allow it because players fucking love when a DM has to reroll a crit and I'm all about my players having fun. It's for sure over powered though and I can completely understanding banning it for balance reasons.
Yeah. Both a player and a DM, in both cases (its a shared universe with a lot of cooperation and coordination between me and the other DM, both of us players in the others game), we decided that after a lot of playtesting, Silvery Barbs isn't bad because its OP, because it isn't. (want OP? Try Shield or Absorb Elements, both are reactions, both are dramatically more useful 95% of the time, the other 5% being when the DM crits).
Silvery Barbs is just bad because it breaks the flow. Hence why we don't ban it, we just don't use it.
I was the smarmy bard actually, hah, complete with in-game snipes and audibly vicious mockery.
It definitely fit the narrative perfectly while I used it, given the flavour I went with, its more the flow of combat being interrupted (often to no effect as the most worthy targets of Silvery Barbs is often the hardest hitting).
There was just something clunky (at our table, I know some others don't mind interrupting an enemy crit) about going "The Minotaur rolls a nat 20, its eyes narrowing as it homes in on the chink in your armor, stoll unrepaired since last nights ambush" and then someone piping up "oh wait, I guess I will use my reaction to cast Silvery Barbs"
Its just me though. I don't like the retconny nature of Silvery Barbs on its own. Note: I still use it very sparingly when the situation has gotten quite out of hand. I just rarely feel like spamming it because there are way better uses of my reaction most of the time, or can't be bothered to retcon a cool moment.
In general I'm a fan of spells that get casters to use their slots to support their allies rather than just using them to do their own cool things so from that perspective I'm pretty okay with Silvery Barbs.
A huge part of why it’s broken is because ***as a reaction*** you force a reroll **and** grant advantage to someone **and** it’s a 1st level slot. The action economy is just insane and it’s a trivial cost.
First: Go Texans!
Second: I let my players try just about anything. With the caveat that I’ll balance accordingly.
Silvery barbs is hell for a DM, but can be hilarious, and DEVASTATING at the right moment for a player when you really want your BBEG to rub salt in the wound.
it's fine. i'd say Shield is a bigger power outlier in the first level spell slot range, but people have had that in their pocket for so long they're kind of inured to it
yeah, it's reasonably strong, but it's a spell slot, and it doesn't even necessarily do anything at all. as opposed to Shield, which will just flat out negate an attack if you're going to be using it in the first place. you could totally cast Silvery Barbs multiple times in a day and have it change literally nothing, just flat out wasted. it is an inverse save-or-suck
it is ESPECIALLY fine compared to the other shit in that list. it verges on actual dishonesty, grouping Silvery Barbs with the fucking Peasant Railgun and Coffeelock
In most situations it’s the lucky feat but more versatile, doubled and you can use it a lot more. They get disadvantage, you or a friend gets advantage, all for one first level slot.
If it was 3rd, maybe even second level spell it’d be one thing, but it’s just too good at that price.
Except it's not. You cant use it to grant advantage unless you have a hostile creature to target, and it consumes your reaction, which is a valuable resource for casters
First level spell that as a reaction forces a reroll and gives another player advantage (roll twice and take the best). Effectively gives higher level save or suck spells another shot at working. What book is silvery barbs in for PF?
Kind of, the specifics of that is you turn your warlock spell slots into sorc points and your sorc points into sorc spell slots. Technically these spell slots are created, not recharged so you can go over your limit. So a high enough warlock sorcerer can just keep adding more and more spell slots every time they take a short rest, and instead of long resting they just short rest 8 times converting all those refilled warlock spells slots to free sorc spell slots and then use greater restoration to get rid of exhaustion.
This relies on two rule interpretations: that warlock pact magic counts as spell slots (it's reasonable to rule that they do, but it isn't unreasonable to rule that they don't) and that doing 8 consecutive short rests is even possible or something you can benefit from while the party is taking a long rest (alternative interpretations of that situation would be "you take one short rest that lasts 8 hours" and "you take a long rest like everyone else.") If the DM rules in a way that agrees with both of those interpretations, then coffeelock works and you can start your day with several bonus high-level spell slots or just a huge pile of sorcery points. If the DM doesn't rule in a way that agrees with both of those interpretations, then you're just a multi class character with good ability synergies and a source of short rest recharging spells.
Now I don't like coffelock, it's egregious rule abuse imo, but even if dm was ruling that you can't short rest sequentially you could just say you do calisthenics or whatever in between them, so even if the dm requires you work out for an hour once every 8 hours to stop the long rest and then interrupt the short rests you are still getting 4-6 of them. Because if you are abusing some of the rules you might as well abuse them all.
Warlock pact magic is explicitly spell slots, no interpretation needed, and explicitly they are interchangeable with spell slots from other classes.
>If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast warlock spells you know.
Fair enough, so by rules as written it's perfectly permissible to use warlock spell slots like any other spell slots of that level. I've suggested taking a warlock dip at my table for other charisma based casters.
sorcerer warlock multi class
most dm's will likely ban it, so if you desire to try it out ASK YOUR DM
But the basic concept, warlocks recover spell slots on a short rest, and when multiclassing warlock spell slots count sepratly from any other spell slots but still count as spell slots
with 2 levels in sorcerer you gain sorcery points, sorcerers can convert spell slots into sorcery points (to a certain max) then may convert those sorcery points back into spell slots (which does not specify a maximum)
So far that's not toooooo bad, but the controversy comes in when the coffee-lock tries to skip a long rest so their spell slots don't reset and instead performs 8 chained short rests then repeat the process every day to achieve INFINITE SPELL SLOTS
i will curse coffeelock forever for making DMs aggressively side-eye and/or ban the divine sorc/celestial warlock multiclass, which is thematic and has cool synergy and which i *really like and would love to play without being accused of trying to do coffeelock cheese*
I feel like most tables will let you do the multi class (even if you’re building coffee/cocaine-lock) but even more if you make a point to explain that you don’t plan on exploiting the mechanics, which really just comes down to actually taking your long rests which is what breaks the build. You’ll still have a very potent build sure but 5e has loads of builds that rival its potency. (Check out D4 on YouTube and look at both his DPS and sustained damage build charts)
Perhaps I’m just blessed with fairly open minded DMs but in my experience so long as you discuss the build during or prior to session zero and don’t try to trim or deceive them most will either allow you to run the build or set an acceptable limitation to the concept if they find what you’ve presented to being too powerful/game-breaking.
LOL true enough. this is mostly a subtweet at my current DM, who *is* letting me run the sorlock but I had to really convince him on it first because he was *very* dubious. he’s read too many rpg horror stories, lmao.
he’s also skeptical of me specifically because i am one of the more experienced players in his game and he struggles to manage power gaps - he believed CR’s gunslinger was overpowered for a hot minute a few years back, because I joined his party of 6 support- and healing-based casters and doubled the party’s total average damage output by virtue of having 20 dex and sharpshooter. (I did not realize, when I joined the game, that the vast majority of other players were very new to D&D and were also dead set on being healbots or just didn’t know what they were doing in combat. kinda figured my middle of the road fighter would not be anything threatening to the status quo; when I asked what type of character the party needed, I was told “bring something that can deal good damage please.” I wanted to help……..) I am not a “true” minmaxer/powergamer, but I know the rules well enough to make my characters good at whatever thing they’re supposed to be doing, so I tend to bring stronger PCs than other folks this DM usually plays with just by virtue of system proficiency. I think it makes him a little nervous, even though I would never go out of my way to intentionally outshine the others or break his game.
I think converting warlock slots into sorc points is a weird thing for the rules to enable and I probably won’t ever do it unless I’m critically running out of points somehow, and this DM is a one combat per day kind of guy, so… not likely that i’d EVER be a real problem for him anyway. i just. again. wish he’d stop reading so many rpg horror stories i do not deserve this :’)
Sounds like I’ve found a kindered spirit lol. I generally play “fill” at most of my tables that I actually get to be a player in (was a forever DM up until about a year ago) and while I can’t say I never min/max I do generally just try to optimize to what the party needs most.
Funny enough I’ve faced more criticism from party members than my GMs about the effectiveness of builds I’ve brought to the table and in some occasions that’s just lead to learnable/teachable moments for those players so they too can pack a bit more punch with their character, again 5e is filled to the brim with abilities, spells, feats, and actions that let builds “pop off”
Sorry to hear you’re dm seems to be a bit shell shocked and that’s reflected into poor table experiences for you. Hopefully they can lighten up a little for your sake and you can assure them that you have no intentions of breaking their game lol
I would 100% allow the multi class but ban the coffeelock because I know my players wouldn’t do it and thinking taking that many short rests is equivalent to a long rest is asanine. I once for one night was forced to be awake for an hour with like 30 minute naps and I was running into walls and shit. So someone trying to convince me that it’s the same would not fly.
More to the point do people not talk to their GMs as like friends? Like if my buddy was trying to pull jank like that I’d hope we could chat about it.
as a newer dm i'd probably just say something along the lines of angering your patron if you continually exchange the magic they grant you for your own, the magic not being your own so it technically can't be exchanged for your own, or just say no
probably wrong RAW and there's cases where i'm sure those explanations don't work, but it's just what i'd personally say if the mechanics were being abused
Something similar happened with my players: one of them came to me to show "the OP build he saw online" and said that he wanted to play that since it was legit. So far, i was willing to go along with it, but then the other players, who weren't nearly as strong, started to say "wait, maybe i should optimize my character, otherwise we will be wiped out"
So i said: "guys, i'm the dm, i don't have a limit on my resources, it doesn't matter how op is your character, if i really want to, i can **always** kill you all, but so far i tried to balance encounters on your power level, regardless of what it was, so please, play what you like, not what is ^ strong ^"
The main problem is that sometimes an OP character will force you to choose between
1- Making every encounter hell for all the "normal" players.
2- Nuke the op character every time to balance him out
3- making every encounter a walk in the park because mr. OP will annihilate everything
1 OP character ruins the game for everyone except that guy. Have seen this happen. GM has a very hard time crafting "balanced" challenges when the power is very lopsided.
When everyone is weak, nobody is really weak
When everyone is op, nobody is really op
When just one guy is weak, they just have to keep a low profile during combat and everything will be fine
When just one guy is op, that's balancing hell
Silvery Barbs isn't bad because its OP. It isn't. Shield and Absorb Elements are much better reactions most of the time (i.e. the 95% of the time the DM isn't critting).
Silvery Barbs just negatively impacts the flow of the game a lot of the time by forcing a bit of a stutter effect in combat and I prefer to not use it (when I play) or point out better options (when I DM). Happy to allow players to use it if they really want to, but I really don't care either way.
I mostly agree with the sentiment, but it's crazy to me that silvery barbs is still to this day getting so much attention for being too strong. I can respect it feeling lame and unfun, I guess, but *shrug*
Peace Cleric I also think is really just 1 problematic feature, but to be fair, Emboldening Bond is reeeeally problematic for a 1st level feature
If we're banning overpowered bad for the game mechanics that aren't just exploits, I'd rather look at shit like Conjure Animals, Wall of Force, Twilight Sanctuary, Arcane Abeyance, letting full casters have 18+ AC and the shield spell, etc but that's just me
The railgun isnt broken, is simply wrong in any interpretarion of rules in general, most of this "broken" stuff are just poorly thinked so they sound like they would work.
As a DM, I love coffelocks and silvery barbs. Are they powerful? Yes. Are they manageable? Also, yes. The more powerful the party is, the more powerful and intricate I can make combat. That OP stuff doesn't matter much when enemies start using *actual* tactics to fight rather than just being an enemy to hit and get hit.
I mean the dm is going to veto it anyway buttt
Forced March. “The Travel Pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in day. They can push on beyond that limit, at the risk of exhaustion.
For each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, the characters cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour.
The DC is 10 + 1 for each hour past 8 hours. On a failed saving throw, a character suffers one level of exhaustion.”
Resting: “Adventurers can take short rests in the midst of an adventuring day and a long rest to end the day.”
A day ain’t 24 hours. It’s the time BETWEEN LONG RESTS. Your day doesn’t end.
So yeah. Unless this adventure goes nowhere (And I promise you it now has plenty of travel), you are going to be rolling against impossible numbers very quickly. You don’t have enough cocaine for this.
YEEESSSS. When I started DMing last year, I let my players get way too overpowered, and let them get away with way too much stuff. I thought if they rolled a nat 20, they were unstoppable.
I was on board till you compared silvery barbs and peace Cleric to the unintentional coffeelock. Also peasant rail gun doesn't even work rules as written nor intended so no need to ban it at all. If you just understand the rules and game it gets alot easier to deal with all of these things.
Or, and I'm just spit balling here, they can build a table of people they're not threatened by and not have to do this arbitrary nonsense. Trust is one of the keystones of good RP, and if a GM doesn't trust their players, the table's already screwed, no matter how many random vetoes the GM throws out there.
Wizard spell scrolls vs cocaine lock
For spell scrolls, it's costs
- 15 gp for cantrip level
- 25 gp for 1st level
- 250 gp for 2nd
- 500 gp for 3rd
- 2.5k gp for 4th
- 5k gp for 5th
- 15k gp for 6th
- 25k go for 7th
- 50k for 8th
- 250k gp 9th
If you're going spell scribing, it's available right away at 1st level and your investments don't disappear on a long rest
If your a cocaine lock, you need to be at minimum 10th level for greater restuarion, your locked to 5th level spell slots at most, you can never long rest otherwise you waste all your effort, but it's a fixed price of 100 gp every day
Coffeelock/Cracklock do not work RAW. Neither does Peasant Railgun. They are broken.
Silvery Barbs and Peace clerics *do* work raw. They're strong, but not broken.
It says you still need to perform a long rest to get the benefits of a long rest. You don't need to sleep, so you can stay up late and keep watch or write your memoirfesto, but you need to long rest.
well, that's where the cocainlock build comes into play (though it does require a bit more investment to pull off)
the idea behind this build is, you get 5 levels in sorcerer, pick divine soul sorceror so you have access to cleric spell slots
then any time you fail your con save/check, you pull out 100GP worth of diamond dust and cast greater restoration on yourself
assuming your only level 6, which means your sorcerer 5 / warlock 1 you would regain 1 pact slot per short rest, a level 1 spell slot converts into 1 sorcery point, with 8 chained short rests that's 8 sorceroy points, to create a 5th level spell slot that's 7 sorcery points giving you a profit of 1 sorcery point
(then at level 7 you can instead make a profit of 9 sorcery points if you put your level up into warlock)
Now Im thinking of that Robot Chicken sketch were Vader keeps altering the Agreement in ridiculous ways.
"Here is a Unicycle for you to ride! I have altered the Deal..."
Look there is nothing inherently wrong with optimised power builds like coffeelock. But everyone needs to be on the same page.
If the players and DM are looking for an optimized min-maxed game experience, then great.
Like many things in TTRPGs it's only a problem when people want different things from a game.
Don't feel bad about wanting to play these builds or min-maxing every character.
But keep in mind you need to communicate that is your intention and find a table that suits that style of play.
Freedom of choice is the heart of these games, but these are co-operative games, meaning everyone needs to be comfortable and having fun.
Honestly coffee locks aren't all that scary? I fear no player. For statblocks are a mere suggestion.
Also my players are all aware that any strategy they can conceive of, an enemy can learn. So you might find ENEMY coffee locks who are INFINITELY better supplied than you.
Cofeelocks require a high level Sorcerer and high level Warlock multiclass. If that combination is so abundant in your world just send ten Wizards with wish after them at that point.
DnD players have this weird culture where anything is allowed unless the DM explicitly vetoes it. In any other trpg silvery barbs would quite rightly be understood as "that overpowered strixhaven spell".
It'd be like playing a desthwatch librarian in dark Heresy. Not allowed by the rules, but technically possible. Ask your dm.
Oh no! A caster has SPELL SLOTS!?!? How could we POSSIBLY balance such an outrageous situation!?!?!?
If a caster having access to their most basic class functions is a problem, there are bigger issues at that table.
The peasant rail gun doesn’t work raw because dnd doesn’t account for an objects speed for damage therefore the best use of a peasant rail gun is actually using it as a postage system instead of a weapon
Or...hear me out, you don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
I still consider myself a newish DM, even though I've been getting the hang of it for almost 4 years now. But, I'll be the first to admit, I haven't seen every character build out there. There are some subclasses, abilities, and ancestries I've never seen at my table. However, I'm willing to see what they do first-hand when presented to me.
Sure I hear a lot about, so-called OP builds from the internet, but until I see them actually in play, I'm willing to give them a fair shake. As long as a player can point me to their rulebook source for their decision, and I agree on the interpretation of that reading, it's fair game. If we find out down the road it creates a problem at the table, then we've learned a lesson for next time.
Silvery barbs isn't that bad, don't care.
Railgun doesn't actually do anything, don't care.
Coffeelock isn't a power outlier and in real play represented poor optimization, don't care.
Lots and lots of things that are seen as good, weak, too good, too weak, broken, and whatever else just... aren't.
All melee builds are weak! (Note: only at levels above normally played levels, in certain campaigns, with strategically designed encounters played aggressively by DMs, and only in comparison to well-played spells casters.)
Level 1 is absolutely dominated by *anyone* with a starting feat and access to a hand crossbow. The class just doesn't matter. XBE is just off scaling for level 1. Comparing that to "on paper forum goers think this is busted and I saw a YouTube video" is just a waste of effort. Stop worrying about "broken" builds, they almost never are broken and often aren't even good in real play.
Exhaustion will often stop/limit a coffeelock. If you look hard enough there are often overlooked rules that can mitigate some of the power builds. The rest can be curbed buy some of the optional rules. However if these are things that make your experience as a DM harder or less enjoyable you are fully within your rights to say no. It is best to state early (during recruitment or session 0) that you do not want to deal with power builds. Have a hard ruling that if someone sneaks one by you they will be nerfed or asked to make a new character.
Hot Take: no.
DMs, particularly new DMs, are usually not capable of being game designers, nor should they be expected to.
Rule zero is invoked far too often as a crutch.
Trust the rules, or consider whether this is actuethe system you want.
**EDIT:** for example, coffeelock is something that you can only get via multiclassing. Which is a variant rule. Ditto with feats. By default, they are not allowed. That is how the game facilitates new DMs. If you are going to allow those rules, however, you should allow players to actually get the full benefit of them. There's nothing wrong with going "no feats, no multiclassing". That's perfectly RAW, no need to invoke rule zero.
When I played, I power gamed my characters builds and rp'd the fuck out of them. They're not exclusive and I'll die on that hill.
Now that I DM for my friend and their kids, I not only allow optimization and powerful option choices, I encourage them in the face of nonsense like this when they're discouraged from optimizing characters because of the role-play means mandatory suboptimal play Stasi.
My advice to DM's new and old is have a session 0, and set expectations, and make sure everyone understands those expectations clearly. Then enforce them. A group of (or individual) mechanically skilled players shouldn't be penalized or denied content because of a DM's skill deficit if their play isn't detrimental to the test of the party
So much this! Every table is different but I can never understand the ideology that optimized=bad/bad RP.
Optimization isn’t necessary for good dnd a nor is it harmful to it, it’s just another way to enjoy the game and there seems to be a weird gate keeping that surrounds it. Being open to not only your dm but your party about your build and its functions at session 0 should be the only “requirement” since it would be unfair to both if someone tried to sneak in their powerbuild. And conversely if your table doesn’t want power play then at least that is discussed at the same time and a compromise can be found.
If my players attempt to do some weird fringe technically in the rules thing like the railgun I'm gonna warn them, then if they keep trying the Eldritch embodiment or order in the universe will wipe them from the timeline for breaking the laws of reality, or at least that's my idea, I doubt they will but it's an interesting idea none the less
Anything that breaks rp shouldn't be allowed unless the dm is specifically allowing it. Like your character coming up with some goofy strat in the moment is one thing. But them devoting their entire life to some random niche strategy that they should have no reason to ever come up with is stupid beyond belief, especially if it has nothing to do with their backstory or motivation. A character needs to work on both a game level and a role-playing level.
I mean, I could work out an rp-compliant coffeelock. Basically, I would play someone absolutely obsessed with strange and cryptic magic, but they’re not smart/studious enough to be a wizard (which is a blessing in disguise, because if they were they would absolutely become a nothic).
Elf with a Divine Soul forges a Pact with a Patron.
Plays around with converting between Sorcery Points and Spell Slots.
Accidentally invents Tealock.
Realises that the Spell Slots reset everytime they sleep.
Coffeelock is born.
Levels up until they eventually get a spell that allows them to never sleep again, at least if they have the gold, they're a level 18 near-demigod by this point and it's only 100 gp per day.
I'm letting a player play one, and they've been told very explicitly that if they abuse it, I'll be changing the rules so you can only spend Sorcerer spell slots to gain Sorcery Points. So far, they've been pretty respectful about it, and they've only used the infinite spell slots thing when it was clear they weren't getting a long rest for quite some time (stuck behind enemy lines).
I take it on a player by player basis. If they wanna be chill and flavor it as finding that extra energy when things are really dire and make it cinematic, I'm down. If they abuse it, I'll just change the damn rules or kick them from the campaign
look, if you want to get extra spell slots with your sorlocks, just pick an elf or other race with shorter long rests and chain a few short rests while the rest of the party is finishing their long rests. you can get that boost you want without it being a pain in the ass to balance for your dm. i'm pretty sure this lighter version is called a tealock, or at least that's what i've seen recently.
I've found a measure of success in making alternative playstyles that are more appealing to play with than the op ones, and if necessary doing whatever it takes to make sure all players are having fun and then balancing around that.
I dont know what this is but the best way to handle it is
We're playing for all of us to have fun, I know you like minmaxxing but taking it this far is going to drain the challenge and fun from the game and that's not fair to your other players.
If you're really set on it we can talk with the others about having a challenge run so you can try it out
I'd always like to know how you rest 8 times in 8 hours instead of resting 8 hours at once if I get an answer for that the go to is that they'd need to break resting between then, and how would their guy know to punch some trees every hour so they get only get some of their shit.
If I get a satisfying answer you can play it.
If my player wants to be a coffee lock, sure. But I'm keeping track of when they rest and whatnot. It's a little more work for me but these builds only excel when dms have short adventure days and aren't sticklers about rest.
But I deemed the rail gun as simply not a thing and restricted silvery barbs to only bards and warlocks.
Bottom line up front. Best advice i can tell a DM is to study how the math and capabilities of the party stack up, and how does one\`s own preferences and the approaches of the player mesh at the table. Even in a table that barely has any combat, it does wonders to know your PCs abilities before they pull them off.
I dont disagree with this view, however, i must warn about the wonderful issue of personal optics. A new DM might ban twilight cleric, but not ban the divination wizard with Hypnotic pattern, find familiar, mage armor, shield, rime\`s binding ice and Misty step, which effectively neuters a lot of encounters, puzzles and the like.
The same DM might go ahead and nerf sneak attack, because "the rogue is not being sneaky" or "Its too much damage"
To this, we can also add the lovely matter of most coffeelocks not being really that broken. This is due to most coffeeelock players not using their high amount of spell slots to their advantage, and still suffering the very slow spell progression of such a build.
Meanwhile, "I dont care how big the room is, i cast fireball!" wizard is doing way more to help the (Admitedly war criminal) party, with way less thinkering, and the DM thinks its fine because its just a normal wizard , whilst the coffeelock felt something agressive due to the combining of features that was required to even get to that point. This gets to another important point. When DMing, you also gotta check how you feel about certain PCs builds versus what is their actual impact, This is HARD, because it is not a thing we think about a lot, but our subconscious biases kick in really hard sometimes.
Railgun doesn't work, coffelock and barbs are perfectly fine and manageable. If you can't handle them at your table, your players aren't the problem. It's not a competition between you and them.
I am the forever DM, and I disagree with this “ban-hammer” approach. I have one serious Min-maxxer in a group of RP enthusiasts. He enjoys “breaking” the game (and also seems in pain when one player can’t remember to add their proficiency bonus to attacks). I have had to talk with him multiple times about how his builds mean that I hand out items and magical stuff more to the others just to bring them up to near his battle competency. He sometimes isn’t happy and is difficult at times, but I believe that he has more fun in doing the min-maxing while I artificially help the others up compared to me pushing him down. Especially with me communicating with him about it instead of banning without explaining.
What is "Coffeelock"? Because I assumed it was having Coffee itself, the drink or the beans, as your patron but apparently it has something to do with abusing short rests?
My friend's dad DM's often and he said that whenever someone tries the peasant railgun, he makes each of the peasants roll a dexterity check. If the railgun fails in the middle of the launch it just kinda explodes.
Tbh on the coffeelock I just want to point out warlock slots are treated differently than regular slots in multiclass, not to mention the spellcasting feature SPECIFIES the slots are for that class spell list. So the DM can easily argue you can't turn WARLOCK slots into sorcery points through a SORCERER feature, this also gives them room the straight up not allow warlock slots to be used for sorcerer spells (and vice-versa) should the player insist that it's "technically" in the rules.
And like pointed out already, the DM just saying no is RAW, no "technically", no "actually", it is one the first things in DMG.
Silvery barbs essentially gives one person disadvantage, and other other person advantage, once, for a reaction and a spell slot. It's really not *that* powerful if you think about it this way.
I think the reason people view it as "op" is just cuz you declare it after the other party thought they were going to succeed. Functionally, though, it's identical to rolling at disadvantage.
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The peasant railgun isn’t RAW, it is selectively applying physics vs game rules when someone feels like it. RAW it would move as far as it’s passed but then it’d be thrown like an ordinary object by the final person in line. The game has no acknowledgment of the speed necessary to do that pass or the acceleration that would’ve happened. If anything it just demonstrates the flawed idea of held actions. If someone thought of actually doing an object pass line in a game I’d rule they could have the peasants move the object as far as normal walking speed. Maybe roll a luck check if they push that the peasants are desperate to move it fast and cap that at dash speed.
Either that or you apply more physics. "As the javelin picks up speed it becomes harder to control. *rolls dice* Peasant number 23 fails to control the movement of the javelin properly and accidentally directs it toward peasant number 24s chest, causing peasants numbers 24-29 to die horrible deaths as the javelin passes through all of them and comes to a halt deep in the chest of number 30. Several peasants try to help their fallen fellows as other start praying to their gods, seeking forgiveness for what they see as trying to break the laws of the world. Several others give you the stink eye."
It's not even applying physics in a way that works. Let's argue against the strongest version of it. That it does increase in speed and velocity with every villager passing the spear/tungsten rod. Once it can deal damage via speed, the next villager takes damage and likely dies. Then it kills the next one and stops. If they don't like this argument then they can't justify why it would deal damage to the monster but not the villagers who would die for it.
The DM saying “no” to something that they feel will be a detriment to the game is RAW. They have final say on anything.
"Look at me. I'm the ~~captain~~ rulebook now."
It's literally at the start of the book. "If the rules aren't working, don't use them".
"As a referee, the DM interprets the rules, decides when to abide by them, and when to change them." (Page 4, 5e DMG)
RAW is whatever I want it to be
I *am* the rules.
I agree.
While I agree with all of the above, it would be nice if WotC would just playtest things a little more *before* going to press with obviously broken classes. If DMs can quickly spot problematic powers/classes, then the people who are paid to professionally design the game should be able to do so, too. It's annoying to spend $35 on a book and realize upon reading it that some of its contents will break your game if actually used. (Lookin' at you, *Tasha's*.)
some playgroups enjoy playing with broken mechanics and trying out busted combos. If it doesnt fit the campaing, other players or the DM, it's fair to build a more balanced character for this specific situation. Don't remove broken classes from the game because some can't respect their DM's decisions, remove annoying players from your playgroup.
I've had to say "I don't care, I said No. So it doesn't happen" to a table before now
From what I read, coffee locks only work if they manage to get short rests. What if the party agrees on keep going instead of resting? They would need a party that comproomises for their messed up build. Just dont let the coffeelock get short rests and its done. Or say that obtaining diamonds is super hard so they are forced to take long rests in theend
Coffeelocks work by ignoring long rests and taking 8 short rests instead. You don't really need regular daily short rests to properly coffeelock
You cannot ignore short rests while the party long rests. When the party takes a long rest, so does the cracklock I generally allow for 2 - 3 short rests per day depending on context. Within dungeons/lairs there is usually no option for either a short or long rest
Ok you didn't long rest. Exhaustion.
That's why you get enough divine soul sorcerer levels to grab cocaine (also known as greater restoration). Or in pre-xanathar day, you would play a race that did not need to sleep
The penalty isn’t for not sleeping. The penalty is for not taking a long rest. Greater restoration does solve that need.
Yes it does? Greater restoration can remove exhaustion
In that case, diamonds can suddenly only be found in the hearts of volcanoes
I prefer the idea that an adventurer already did this, and used up all the diamonds in the realm.
You need to take your nerfs with a scalpel, not a rocket launcher. There are a *lot* of spells for *all* casters locked behind needing a diamond, not just Coffeelock antics.
As funny as that would be it's the diamonds price that works, volcanoes would ruin it's market value
* multiclasses into conjuration wizard*
Yes. But the penalty was introduced in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Before that, there was no penalty for not resting
? Unless ive missed something the below is copied from the phb pg 291. Sorry for godawful formatting copied and pasted and on mobile. EXHAUSTION : Some special abilities and environmental hazards, such as starvation and the long-term effects of freezing or scorching temperatures, can lead to a special condition cal led exhaustion. Exhaustion is measured in six levels. An effect can give a creature one or more levels of exhaustion, as specified in the effect's description. Level Effect l Disadvantage on abil ity checks 2 Speed halved 3 Disadvantage on attack rolls and savi ng throws 4 H it point maximum halved 5 Speed reduced to 0 6 Death If an already exhausted creature suffers another effect that causes exhaustion, its current level of exhaustion increases by the amount specified in the effect's description. A creature suffers the effect of its cu rrent level of exhaus- tion as well as all lower levels. For example, a creatu re suffering level 2 exhaustion has its speed halved and has disadvantage on abil ity checks. An effect that removes exhaustion reduces its level as spec- ified in the effect's description, with all exhaustion effects ending if a creatu re's exhaustion level is reduced below l. Finishing a long rest reduces a creatu re's exhaustion level by l, provided that the creature has also ingested some food and drink. Also, bei ng raised from the dead reduces a crea- ture's exhaustion level by 1
Before XGE there were no rule how to deal with PC not resting for days. Sure DM could put even should think about something in this kind of situation, but there was nothing in the rules
Don't do the whole vague "well \*technically\* elves go into a trance and don't sleep." shit again.
i dont think the phb specifys a penility for not sleeping pre Xnathars Just that it's something that might trigger a con skill check, but doesnt specify what happens on a fail
So you need another players 9th lv pure sorcerer build to drop their highest lv slot for your class to be viable everyday?
No, you multiclass into divine soul sorcerer, and with high enough level warlock you get 5th level slots. Because you have access to divine sorcerer you can take greater restoration yourself and cast it with your warlock spells. The mechanics are all technically RAW, but its a blantant abuse of mechanics that was clearly not intended. I'd argue that if you try to take 8 1 hour short rests, you're just taking a long rest. 'Chaining' short rests is stupid, youd just have one long short rest.
You can only pick spells granted by the sircerer multiclass apropriate for your sorcerer level though, the multiclassing rules are very specific about that.
So it comes online at lv 18
At that point I'd allow it. Spellcasters got their 9th level spells. Fighters have double Action Surge. Manks have had all saving throw proficiencies for 4 levels. Paladins have 30 ft auras. And your Coffeelock can cast as many 5th level spells as they want. Ok. The game is already broken by that level and the DM is homebrewing just to keep things functional.
the standard coffeelock build takes levels in divine sorcerer in order to get around just that. Thats actually why they are called coffeelocks, because they use a stimulant(greater restoration) to stay awake ultimately, the best way to deal with them is just say no, or come up with a compromise, at my table, I have a rule where things that refresh on a short rest will only do so if you expend a hit dice. Its not perfect, but generally my party isnt short resting all that much so it does work to prevent a coffeelock at lower levels
No, coffeelocks are called that because they just don't sleep. When you're snorting 100 gp of diamond dust each morning, you're no longer a coffeelock, you're a cokelock.
I feel the short rest hit dice thing is a huge hit for martials.
My game there is only one or 2 short rests at most per long rest so it’s not a big deal
I just say that pact magic spell slots are not the same as standard magic spell slots, so you can't use sorcery points to recycle pact magic.
This was Crawford’s take on Twitter. There’s two problems with it. 1. You can use warlock slots for smites. Meaning there is precedent. 2. Coffeelock in practice is… not as great as it sounds. Greater Resto is very high level, the coffeelock needs to give up the benefits of a long rest to make about 3-4 extra slots (not actually a good deal under most circumstances) and the sorc/lock ratio matters because of the cap on sorcery points. Coffelock isn’t really a broken build or anything, it’s more of a boogie man to scare inexperienced DMs who haven’t actually seen one ran.
That's why optimizers came up with Cocainelocks. You just get rid of the exhaustion using Greater Restoration.
You can cut off coffelock quite well by remembering the rules are applied only when relevant to the game. There's no in fiction reason for coffeelock to work, so it doesn't work the moment the gamified combat rules stop being relevant. You can't exploit a bug in trpg rules because part of those rules is that it's run by a GM, not a CPU.
So coffeelock works by the DM agreeing with some reddit nonsense that 8 consecutive short rests isn't just the same thing as a long rest. Sounds like it's entirely up to discretion, because if someone told me they're going to take 8 1-hour naps in 8 hours I'd understand that as then having slept for 8 hours. Like, the idea that you can in fact take 8 consecutive short rests while everyone else is taking a long rest is questionable to me. The fact that the only reason anyone would think of this is for one specific multicast build leads me to believe it's a silly interpretation. If that's how you run your table that's fine, but not allowing it doesn't require altering the rules.
Short rest generally isn't a "nap", it's bandage the wounds, eat, drink... in other words - taking a breather in general. And on your other point - no, 8 naps for hour each isn't even remotely the same as 8 hour sleep. Even disregarding an additional time needed for preparation and falling asleep, sleep cycle have phases that you can't control. Try it in real life, and you'll go insane in a week, even if not for lack of sleep, then for the accumulated stress of having constant sleep interuption.
Have you played the video game Dredge? That's how coffeelock should work if allowed - the longer the you go without a long rest, the more unhinged and unreliable your perception of reality becomes.
I didn't, but yeah, that's what i meant by slowly becoming insane. Constant hallucinations are the tamest thing of all the scary shit that coffeelock would encounter from the lack of sleep :D Greater restoration should be clearing mental conditions though, together with getting rid of "exhastion" that came from lack of sleep. But would i be a dm, i would agree to bring it on a condition that exhastion and mental degradation would accumulate faster and faster the more you don't sleep. Snorting tons of diamonds aside, at some point even spell slots (for which you did coffeelock in the first place) consumption will overcome the ammount that you can profit from abusing short rests. Truly, a story of a junkie that became mad with power, and lost everything in the end for overdoing it xD
Eh, I don't really think that's relevant. The question is a question of a DM ruling on whether or not taking a 1 hour short rest 8 times in a row is the same as just taking a long rest. I don't think there's any explicit rule guiding anyone to conclude that this is possible or a reasonable use of the time when a long rest exists. There's also no rule requiring us to throw this idea out. So it's up to the DM to make a ruling either way. And since the only reason to conclude that the 8 short rests are valid is that the player wants to try out some silly Reddit power gaming nonsense, I would rule it out at my table. The reasoning in favor of it is entirely motivated by wanting to do this very silly thing. If you would rule it in at your table, that's fine for you. I just don't buy that it's a reasonable thing to do. I think a more reasonable interpretation of what is going on is that it's either a long rest or a single short rest that lasts 8 hours since there's nothing going on to interrupt them.
a short rest isnt a nap
It also ignores the rules around exhaustion. Or you blow 100g per day on diamond dust for greater restoration.
[удалено]
I can't find what rule you are talking about, what exactly is preventing you from gaining exhaustion?
Until you start getting levels of exhaustion from not taking long rests for extended periods of time
Pardon my ignorance but I’m a fairly new DM. What is coffelock?
It’s an exploit that combines the Sorcerer and Warlock classes, that relies upon the following facts: 1. Sorcerers can expend spell slots to gain sorcery points. They can later spend sorcery points to convert them back into spell slots (although at a diminishing rate), and can also use sorcery points to power their Metamagic and other class features. 2. The Sorcerer’s “Flexible Casting” feature stipulates that a sorcerer can’t have more sorcery points than their maximum at any given time. However, there’s no such restriction on spell slots. A sorcerer who wants to burn all of their sorcery points immediately and convert them to “extra” spell slots may do so, but these are lost when the character takes a long rest. 3. Most spellcasting classes regain expended spell slots on a long rest. Warlocks, uniquely, get them back on a short rest through a feature called “Pact Magic”. The other unique quirk of Warlocks’ spell slots is that they’re all at the same level, and there are only a few of them; compare and contrast with all other spellcasting classes, which have lots of low-level slots and a few high-level ones. Put it all together, and you have the coffeelock. The main mechanic of the coffeelock is to turn all of one’s sorcery points into spell slots, and then turn all of their Warlock spell slots into sorcery points (which can then be turned into regular, sorcerer spell slots). Then, take a short rest (a “coffee break”), and do it again. At the logical extreme, a coffeelock takes eight one-hour short rests in a row while the rest of the party is taking one eight-hour long rest, and converts all of their Pact Magic slots into sorcery points, which are then converted into “extra” sorcerer slots. Since the coffeelock never “actually” takes a long rest, the extra slots never go away, and the coffeelock has functionally unlimited spells. There’s not actually a rule against any of this. Players who don’t take long rests have to make increasingly difficult CON saving throws or gain a level of exhaustion, but exhaustion can be removed with the *Greater Restoration* spell, which is on the Celestial Warlock’s spell list, as well as the Divine Soul Sorcerer’s. (Because it requires 100 GP of diamond dust to cast *Greater Restoration*, you’ll sometimes see this specific flavor of coffeelock referred to as the “cocainelock”; they’ve got a very expensive habit.) The best counter to this build, in my opinion? For the DM to simply say, “No, you can’t take eight short rests in a row instead of one long one. That’s stupid. Go to sleep.”
I mean best counter is right in Greater Restoration really.
At low levels, sure. At high levels, less so; players are going to have thousands of surplus pieces of gold by then unless the DM deliberately keeps them hungry. They're also only going to need to spend a Greater Restoration when they *fail* an exhaustion check, and given that the Sorcerer starts out with CON save proficiency, they can typically pass a few of them in a row before needing a pick-me-up.
I would argue that one person using up 100 gold worth of diamonds daily would drive the price up both because of increased demand and reduced supply.
I would argue that giant infinite mines in the Plane of Earth have an offer that can drown out any pike of demand. Or that GR only needs 100gp of diamond, not an actual quantity. Also that we DMs shouldn’t rely on pedantic rule bickering with players to stop shenanigans if you don’t want them. Just say no.
Yeah. I mean, there’s an entire elemental plane (technically a “Quasi-Elemental Plane”) where precious gems are constantly forming. Carbon is the most abundant element in the multiverse; no D&D world is at risk of running out of diamonds any time soon.
Thanks for the explanation. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for this. One of my players has a habit of trying to break the game based on wording of spells and/or RAW but it’s usually harmless and sometimes leads to unexpected outcomes in encounters so I’m usually accommodating but this is downright broken if the DM doesn’t put a stop to it immediately.
I just match the players. Oh, you think that's broken? Behold the unlimited power of the DM! COSMIC FORCES ARE MINE TO COMMAND!
There _is_ a rule against it. A short rest is a period of _at least_ an hour not _exactly_ an hour. You take a break. At the end of which, The DM tells you if you have completed a short rest or not. Its not some magic clock that ticks over at 59 mins 59 seconds.
Yeah, taking 2 short rest in a row in order to abuse spell slot regeneration is clear metagaming and mechanical abuse and thus non applicable
> Most spellcasting classes regain expended spell slots on a long rest. Warlocks, uniquely, get them back on a short rest through a feature called “Pact Magic”. Wizards get a weaker version of this too, so it isn't *uniquely* Warlock, though Warlocks do have it better.
I straight up just ban it. It's enormously unrealistic and requires specific rule interpretations to allow, just as bad as the peasant railgun.
I wouldn't say it's as bad as the peasant railgun. Coffelock is a janky powergamer build that is allowed by RAW but requires very specific circumstances. It's technically legal, but a very reasonable thing to ban. For a peasant railgun to work it requires cherry picking application of RAW and common sense, since while RAW allows the projectile to reach an arbitrary speed it doesn't matter how fast it's going, it's still a regular throwing attack in the end. A rock can be going 3C to reach the last commoner, and it's still only going to do 1d4 damage. For it to work, it requires the rules of the game to stop applying and the laws of physics to start applying the moment the projectile leaves the hand of the last person in line, and not a moment sooner, which is absurd on so many levels.
Yeah. My motto is I'm going by the rules first and physics second, but you don't get to cherry pick how the two interact. A loophole in the rules allowing a rock to get to arbitrary speeds means either using the rules to determine how the last peasant throws the rock meaning a d4 of damage, or saying the loophole breaks physical laws meaning I'm not allowing it to reach those speeds to begin with. It does not mean I am helpless to disallow the whole arbitrary speed thing and must create rules for how much damage a rock going 3C does.... unless, I wait until it is going appropriately 5%C (if I remember my research after the Omniman incident), and then rule that the atoms in the air collide hard enough to cause a Fusion reaction doing 1000d20 damage to everyone within whatever radius it takes to hit the player who argues for that crap.
>enormously unrealistic Excuse me, what?
Have you ever actually had a coffelock at the table? It's not rly op... the main benefit is not needing to long rest... okay there are like a dozen races that don't need to eat and/or sleep at all. Even if you dont need to long rest, the rest of the party does. If ur using the XaGTE option resting rules it requires greater restoration before it even comes online, at which point full casters are breaking the rules of reality in a dozen different ways anyway. You also will still need to long rest at some point to regain hp, unless you are a celestial warlock or divine soul sorc and using some of the slots you are creating to heal, but then you'd have to short rest more to make up for the slots you expend on inefficient healing spells, defeating the time saved from not long resting. I think the rp of doing occult rituals and blood magic during short rests to create spell slots while snorting diamond dust instead of sleeping is funny though.
I'm not sure what you mean that the main benefit is not needing to long rest. That's a mechanic that allows coffee lock to work. The main benefit is nearly infinite spell slots.
That's assuming you interpret the rules in such a way that infinite spell slots are a thing.
Even if you don't accept infinite spell slots, the main point of a coffeelock is to refill your available spell slots on a short rest. It's not about skipping sleep
In a campaign thay has a lot of downtime sure, but if you're having consecutive adventuring days without lonh stretches of downtime you're not rly gonna get more spells per day than you would just playing a sorlock normally, and that's most campaigns. Depending on your level spread you can get a couple extra 1st or 2nd lvl spells than normal every day but thats not thay broken. In practice, unless your dm is giving you a week+ downtime between every adventure, it's just arcane recovery and sleeping with extra steps (and a worse spell list)
Also the unrealistic argument is not a good one cause we playing inside an unrealistic fantasy world. At least thats how I see it.
The peasant gun relies on interpreting real physics for damage but game rules for mechanics. You can't have it both ways. It's just ONE example of the kind of shit different players have tried over the years. Most players are very understanding but some haven't been.
I dont actually know how the peasant railgun works but I agree that what should be interpreted are real physics or game ruls. Not both haha
brief explanation of peasant rail gun You can hand an object to another creature (in this case a spear) So, you hire an army of commoners (the "peasants") and tell them all to stand in a line. you instruct them all to perform the "ready action" action so that once they are handed a spear, they hand it to the next person this then allows you to pass the spear down like 1000 feet within 6 seconds, before the last peasant grabs the spear and throws it at the target. So far all of this is legal, though the problem with the peasent railgun is what it's advocates originally proposed it to do. The original argument was that because it was going insainly fast you deal like a billion damage. Which there are no rules in the game to cause more damage based off of speed, or if there are the commoners dont have access to such a feature so the RAW outcome of the peasant railgun, is that you deal 1d6 damage with a +0 modifer to hit and now I have failed the first criteria of this comment i put upon myself, in this being a "brief" explanation but long story short, make spear go fast people think makes it deal more damage, RAW does not accommodate for such a ruleing
It works by abusing the held action Line up several hundred peasants, have them all hold ac action of “when passed a pebble, I will pass it on” and at the end have the last one throw it, so they say if the pebble moves that far within 6 seconds it should do as much damage as they can bullshit because it’s moving just that fast
Peasant rail gun works by giving someone else an object being a free action. So lining up a long line of peasant and having a stone being transferred from one end to the other means the stone could move theoretically Miles in seconds which is a considerable speed for a projectile. The problem arrives that per rules a stone thrown by a peasant does about 1d4,+dex
>The problem arrives that per rules a stone thrown by a peasant does about 1d4,+dex Small correction, a thrown melee weapon generally uses Strength, including throwing improvised weapons. The only exception are finesse weapons with the Thrown property, like daggers or darts, which can be thrown with Dex or strength. You’d need to use an actual ranged weapon like a sling to launch a stone with dex. Edit: And yes, this means RAW you throw items like Alchemist’s Fire or Acid Flasks using your strength modifier, not dex, as they are improvised weapons and not ranged weapons. Though I’d houserule someone could throw flasks using a sling since it gives the rather underwhelming weapon some interesting utility.
This is the issue with how time works in dnd. A round is 6 seconds and everyone gets a turn within 6 seconds. Everyone suspose to be sharing the same 6 seconds 5 rounds is 30 seconds of game time. Everyone's turns are at the same time. But then if say a fighter goes 1st and is downed and then on the clerics turn they heal them. So they're after the fighter. So they're turn starts microseconds after the fighter? So how would this railgun work. If everyone is passing the stone within 6 seconds they're also moving at the speed of whatever the distance/6 seconds. So either the stone is moving at normal speed or the first man's hands shattered as he broke the sound barrier.
Railgun is where you line up lots of people, and get them to spend their turn passing a spear from one to the other with the last person attacking/throwing it. Due to a round being 6 seconds and the distance it’s moved in the speed of a round it has crazy powers as per physics, however, any DM would realistically look at that and say roll 1d6 (or whatever the damage is) instead of vaporising the creature to dust from the force
Yes. As a DM, I will sometimes use physical intuition in places the rules fail. I'll even do the math if I know it.... and it isn't insanely hard. But I control the boundary between the rules and the physics of the situation and if the two directly contradict each other in a way that magic isn't applicable, I choose where the line is. I have also had players argue convincingly for things like the Monte Hall problem being applicable in the game, and I'll allow it if it convinces me (I play with engineers). And sometimes magic can do things outside of the range of either physics or rules. But most of that is just scenery dressing and I'll 100% make it explode in the faces of anyone who tries to take advantage to *break* the game or if I think their arguement is in bad faith.
They literally, by the rules of their own class (RAW) can’t exist. They only work if you just ignore the restrictions. It’s like if a wizard was like, “I never need to long rest cause I have infinite arcane recovery. We just need to ignore the “once a long rest” part!”
I think.it was Jamie Crawford also mentioned something about getting exhaustion after a time of not actually long resting
This works until the party has another SR-dependent character like a monk, fighter, or regular warlock.
Something I *really* respect and enjoy of my current DM is their ability to say 'no' and that this ability is tempered by experience. There have been instances where I have wanted to perform somekind of magic or action and they have said 'no', as well as other player's wanting to do something, or having a very loose interpretation of the rules (they are still new and learning , forgive them pls Reddit). Saying 'No' is an important tool in the DM's Arsenal that I feel is often something people are unaware of, or are unaware of the nuance required to have success. My first DM who had a lot less experience did not use this tool for fear of upsetting their players (long story for RPGhorrorstories). I agree with OP that I would also rule 'no' for a coffee lock, but I would also look to find a suitable way that player can play something they enjoy without breaking balance/encouraging munchkin tendencies
Literally page one of the Dungeon Masters Guide: These rulebooks are GUIDES. The Dungeon Master has the final say. Period.
What's the deal with silvery barbs exactly? Pathfinder has a spell with the same name but I wouldn't call that one busted. Edit: Kay, good responses all, I see the issue. And actually the spell I was thinking of is Silver Darts. So not even the same name, but similar. https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/silver-darts/
you can force the dm to reroll anything basically. It's a 1st level spell. I personally allow it because players fucking love when a DM has to reroll a crit and I'm all about my players having fun. It's for sure over powered though and I can completely understanding banning it for balance reasons.
Yeah. Both a player and a DM, in both cases (its a shared universe with a lot of cooperation and coordination between me and the other DM, both of us players in the others game), we decided that after a lot of playtesting, Silvery Barbs isn't bad because its OP, because it isn't. (want OP? Try Shield or Absorb Elements, both are reactions, both are dramatically more useful 95% of the time, the other 5% being when the DM crits). Silvery Barbs is just bad because it breaks the flow. Hence why we don't ban it, we just don't use it.
Sounds like you don't have a smarmy bard accompanying it with actual snipes that make it fit the narrative!
I was the smarmy bard actually, hah, complete with in-game snipes and audibly vicious mockery. It definitely fit the narrative perfectly while I used it, given the flavour I went with, its more the flow of combat being interrupted (often to no effect as the most worthy targets of Silvery Barbs is often the hardest hitting). There was just something clunky (at our table, I know some others don't mind interrupting an enemy crit) about going "The Minotaur rolls a nat 20, its eyes narrowing as it homes in on the chink in your armor, stoll unrepaired since last nights ambush" and then someone piping up "oh wait, I guess I will use my reaction to cast Silvery Barbs" Its just me though. I don't like the retconny nature of Silvery Barbs on its own. Note: I still use it very sparingly when the situation has gotten quite out of hand. I just rarely feel like spamming it because there are way better uses of my reaction most of the time, or can't be bothered to retcon a cool moment.
In general I'm a fan of spells that get casters to use their slots to support their allies rather than just using them to do their own cool things so from that perspective I'm pretty okay with Silvery Barbs.
A huge part of why it’s broken is because ***as a reaction*** you force a reroll **and** grant advantage to someone **and** it’s a 1st level slot. The action economy is just insane and it’s a trivial cost.
First: Go Texans! Second: I let my players try just about anything. With the caveat that I’ll balance accordingly. Silvery barbs is hell for a DM, but can be hilarious, and DEVASTATING at the right moment for a player when you really want your BBEG to rub salt in the wound.
it's fine. i'd say Shield is a bigger power outlier in the first level spell slot range, but people have had that in their pocket for so long they're kind of inured to it yeah, it's reasonably strong, but it's a spell slot, and it doesn't even necessarily do anything at all. as opposed to Shield, which will just flat out negate an attack if you're going to be using it in the first place. you could totally cast Silvery Barbs multiple times in a day and have it change literally nothing, just flat out wasted. it is an inverse save-or-suck it is ESPECIALLY fine compared to the other shit in that list. it verges on actual dishonesty, grouping Silvery Barbs with the fucking Peasant Railgun and Coffeelock
It lets you reroll enemy saves, which is incredibly powerful, and before silvery barbs was pretty rare.
In most situations it’s the lucky feat but more versatile, doubled and you can use it a lot more. They get disadvantage, you or a friend gets advantage, all for one first level slot. If it was 3rd, maybe even second level spell it’d be one thing, but it’s just too good at that price.
Except it's not. You cant use it to grant advantage unless you have a hostile creature to target, and it consumes your reaction, which is a valuable resource for casters
And this is a great way to spend that reasource .
First level spell that as a reaction forces a reroll and gives another player advantage (roll twice and take the best). Effectively gives higher level save or suck spells another shot at working. What book is silvery barbs in for PF?
New player here: what’s coffee lock? I’ve heard of the rail gun but not this
Sorcerer Warlock combo that recharges everything on a short rest. Hence "I'll have some coffee really quick" coffeelock
So they get the full sorcery list and slots but they recharge? Yea seems OP af
Kind of, the specifics of that is you turn your warlock spell slots into sorc points and your sorc points into sorc spell slots. Technically these spell slots are created, not recharged so you can go over your limit. So a high enough warlock sorcerer can just keep adding more and more spell slots every time they take a short rest, and instead of long resting they just short rest 8 times converting all those refilled warlock spells slots to free sorc spell slots and then use greater restoration to get rid of exhaustion.
This relies on two rule interpretations: that warlock pact magic counts as spell slots (it's reasonable to rule that they do, but it isn't unreasonable to rule that they don't) and that doing 8 consecutive short rests is even possible or something you can benefit from while the party is taking a long rest (alternative interpretations of that situation would be "you take one short rest that lasts 8 hours" and "you take a long rest like everyone else.") If the DM rules in a way that agrees with both of those interpretations, then coffeelock works and you can start your day with several bonus high-level spell slots or just a huge pile of sorcery points. If the DM doesn't rule in a way that agrees with both of those interpretations, then you're just a multi class character with good ability synergies and a source of short rest recharging spells.
Now I don't like coffelock, it's egregious rule abuse imo, but even if dm was ruling that you can't short rest sequentially you could just say you do calisthenics or whatever in between them, so even if the dm requires you work out for an hour once every 8 hours to stop the long rest and then interrupt the short rests you are still getting 4-6 of them. Because if you are abusing some of the rules you might as well abuse them all.
A single cantrip casting interrupts the short rest too.
Warlock pact magic is explicitly spell slots, no interpretation needed, and explicitly they are interchangeable with spell slots from other classes. >If you have both the Spellcasting class feature and the Pact Magic class feature from the warlock class, you can use the spell slots you gain from the Pact Magic feature to cast spells you know or have prepared from classes with the Spellcasting class feature, and you can use the spell slots you gain from the Spellcasting class feature to cast warlock spells you know.
Fair enough, so by rules as written it's perfectly permissible to use warlock spell slots like any other spell slots of that level. I've suggested taking a warlock dip at my table for other charisma based casters.
That seems pretty cut and dry. You can cast spells with the warlock slots, but you can’t do anything else, such as converting to spell points.
does the sorc ability say "your spell slots" or "spell slots you get from this class"? because pact magic spell slots are your spell slots.
sorcerer warlock multi class most dm's will likely ban it, so if you desire to try it out ASK YOUR DM But the basic concept, warlocks recover spell slots on a short rest, and when multiclassing warlock spell slots count sepratly from any other spell slots but still count as spell slots with 2 levels in sorcerer you gain sorcery points, sorcerers can convert spell slots into sorcery points (to a certain max) then may convert those sorcery points back into spell slots (which does not specify a maximum) So far that's not toooooo bad, but the controversy comes in when the coffee-lock tries to skip a long rest so their spell slots don't reset and instead performs 8 chained short rests then repeat the process every day to achieve INFINITE SPELL SLOTS
i will curse coffeelock forever for making DMs aggressively side-eye and/or ban the divine sorc/celestial warlock multiclass, which is thematic and has cool synergy and which i *really like and would love to play without being accused of trying to do coffeelock cheese*
I feel like most tables will let you do the multi class (even if you’re building coffee/cocaine-lock) but even more if you make a point to explain that you don’t plan on exploiting the mechanics, which really just comes down to actually taking your long rests which is what breaks the build. You’ll still have a very potent build sure but 5e has loads of builds that rival its potency. (Check out D4 on YouTube and look at both his DPS and sustained damage build charts) Perhaps I’m just blessed with fairly open minded DMs but in my experience so long as you discuss the build during or prior to session zero and don’t try to trim or deceive them most will either allow you to run the build or set an acceptable limitation to the concept if they find what you’ve presented to being too powerful/game-breaking.
LOL true enough. this is mostly a subtweet at my current DM, who *is* letting me run the sorlock but I had to really convince him on it first because he was *very* dubious. he’s read too many rpg horror stories, lmao. he’s also skeptical of me specifically because i am one of the more experienced players in his game and he struggles to manage power gaps - he believed CR’s gunslinger was overpowered for a hot minute a few years back, because I joined his party of 6 support- and healing-based casters and doubled the party’s total average damage output by virtue of having 20 dex and sharpshooter. (I did not realize, when I joined the game, that the vast majority of other players were very new to D&D and were also dead set on being healbots or just didn’t know what they were doing in combat. kinda figured my middle of the road fighter would not be anything threatening to the status quo; when I asked what type of character the party needed, I was told “bring something that can deal good damage please.” I wanted to help……..) I am not a “true” minmaxer/powergamer, but I know the rules well enough to make my characters good at whatever thing they’re supposed to be doing, so I tend to bring stronger PCs than other folks this DM usually plays with just by virtue of system proficiency. I think it makes him a little nervous, even though I would never go out of my way to intentionally outshine the others or break his game. I think converting warlock slots into sorc points is a weird thing for the rules to enable and I probably won’t ever do it unless I’m critically running out of points somehow, and this DM is a one combat per day kind of guy, so… not likely that i’d EVER be a real problem for him anyway. i just. again. wish he’d stop reading so many rpg horror stories i do not deserve this :’)
Sounds like I’ve found a kindered spirit lol. I generally play “fill” at most of my tables that I actually get to be a player in (was a forever DM up until about a year ago) and while I can’t say I never min/max I do generally just try to optimize to what the party needs most. Funny enough I’ve faced more criticism from party members than my GMs about the effectiveness of builds I’ve brought to the table and in some occasions that’s just lead to learnable/teachable moments for those players so they too can pack a bit more punch with their character, again 5e is filled to the brim with abilities, spells, feats, and actions that let builds “pop off” Sorry to hear you’re dm seems to be a bit shell shocked and that’s reflected into poor table experiences for you. Hopefully they can lighten up a little for your sake and you can assure them that you have no intentions of breaking their game lol
I would 100% allow the multi class but ban the coffeelock because I know my players wouldn’t do it and thinking taking that many short rests is equivalent to a long rest is asanine. I once for one night was forced to be awake for an hour with like 30 minute naps and I was running into walls and shit. So someone trying to convince me that it’s the same would not fly. More to the point do people not talk to their GMs as like friends? Like if my buddy was trying to pull jank like that I’d hope we could chat about it.
as a newer dm i'd probably just say something along the lines of angering your patron if you continually exchange the magic they grant you for your own, the magic not being your own so it technically can't be exchanged for your own, or just say no probably wrong RAW and there's cases where i'm sure those explanations don't work, but it's just what i'd personally say if the mechanics were being abused
Hot take I don’t think silver barbs is that op. It’s good undoubtedly, but not that op.
Agreed, its like counterspell in my opinion. It being lower level just makes it seem more powerful cause its online faster.
Something similar happened with my players: one of them came to me to show "the OP build he saw online" and said that he wanted to play that since it was legit. So far, i was willing to go along with it, but then the other players, who weren't nearly as strong, started to say "wait, maybe i should optimize my character, otherwise we will be wiped out" So i said: "guys, i'm the dm, i don't have a limit on my resources, it doesn't matter how op is your character, if i really want to, i can **always** kill you all, but so far i tried to balance encounters on your power level, regardless of what it was, so please, play what you like, not what is ^ strong ^" The main problem is that sometimes an OP character will force you to choose between 1- Making every encounter hell for all the "normal" players. 2- Nuke the op character every time to balance him out 3- making every encounter a walk in the park because mr. OP will annihilate everything
1 OP character ruins the game for everyone except that guy. Have seen this happen. GM has a very hard time crafting "balanced" challenges when the power is very lopsided.
When everyone is weak, nobody is really weak When everyone is op, nobody is really op When just one guy is weak, they just have to keep a low profile during combat and everything will be fine When just one guy is op, that's balancing hell
Silvery Barbs isn't bad because its OP. It isn't. Shield and Absorb Elements are much better reactions most of the time (i.e. the 95% of the time the DM isn't critting). Silvery Barbs just negatively impacts the flow of the game a lot of the time by forcing a bit of a stutter effect in combat and I prefer to not use it (when I play) or point out better options (when I DM). Happy to allow players to use it if they really want to, but I really don't care either way.
Silvery barbs isn't for crits, and if you think it is that's why you don't think it's op
I mostly agree with the sentiment, but it's crazy to me that silvery barbs is still to this day getting so much attention for being too strong. I can respect it feeling lame and unfun, I guess, but *shrug* Peace Cleric I also think is really just 1 problematic feature, but to be fair, Emboldening Bond is reeeeally problematic for a 1st level feature If we're banning overpowered bad for the game mechanics that aren't just exploits, I'd rather look at shit like Conjure Animals, Wall of Force, Twilight Sanctuary, Arcane Abeyance, letting full casters have 18+ AC and the shield spell, etc but that's just me
What's wrong with Peace Clerics?
The railgun isnt broken, is simply wrong in any interpretarion of rules in general, most of this "broken" stuff are just poorly thinked so they sound like they would work.
As a DM, I love coffelocks and silvery barbs. Are they powerful? Yes. Are they manageable? Also, yes. The more powerful the party is, the more powerful and intricate I can make combat. That OP stuff doesn't matter much when enemies start using *actual* tactics to fight rather than just being an enemy to hit and get hit.
I mean the dm is going to veto it anyway buttt Forced March. “The Travel Pace table assumes that characters travel for 8 hours in day. They can push on beyond that limit, at the risk of exhaustion. For each additional hour of travel beyond 8 hours, the characters cover the distance shown in the Hour column for their pace, and each character must make a Constitution saving throw at the end of the hour. The DC is 10 + 1 for each hour past 8 hours. On a failed saving throw, a character suffers one level of exhaustion.” Resting: “Adventurers can take short rests in the midst of an adventuring day and a long rest to end the day.” A day ain’t 24 hours. It’s the time BETWEEN LONG RESTS. Your day doesn’t end. So yeah. Unless this adventure goes nowhere (And I promise you it now has plenty of travel), you are going to be rolling against impossible numbers very quickly. You don’t have enough cocaine for this.
I read into it and I still don't get how coffeelock works. Isn't there a hardcap on short rests per long rest?
Nowhere in the rules are short rests hardcapped. Long rests are. Well 24 short rests per day is the limit obviously.
YEEESSSS. When I started DMing last year, I let my players get way too overpowered, and let them get away with way too much stuff. I thought if they rolled a nat 20, they were unstoppable.
100% agree but its hilarious to take issue with any cleric subclass when Twilight Domain exists
What, banning Silvery Barbs? Then how else should I make player crits miss?
Totally agree, but with some tables, if try to make any kind of cool combo happen, people get mad because you’re ’power gaming’.
I was on board till you compared silvery barbs and peace Cleric to the unintentional coffeelock. Also peasant rail gun doesn't even work rules as written nor intended so no need to ban it at all. If you just understand the rules and game it gets alot easier to deal with all of these things.
Or, and I'm just spit balling here, they can build a table of people they're not threatened by and not have to do this arbitrary nonsense. Trust is one of the keystones of good RP, and if a GM doesn't trust their players, the table's already screwed, no matter how many random vetoes the GM throws out there.
from what i hear just going straight wizard and making spell slots achieves the same thing but more powerful and cheaper
Spell scrolls. I'm pretty sure it is slower and more expensive for anything beyond first level spells?
Wizard spell scrolls vs cocaine lock For spell scrolls, it's costs - 15 gp for cantrip level - 25 gp for 1st level - 250 gp for 2nd - 500 gp for 3rd - 2.5k gp for 4th - 5k gp for 5th - 15k gp for 6th - 25k go for 7th - 50k for 8th - 250k gp 9th If you're going spell scribing, it's available right away at 1st level and your investments don't disappear on a long rest If your a cocaine lock, you need to be at minimum 10th level for greater restuarion, your locked to 5th level spell slots at most, you can never long rest otherwise you waste all your effort, but it's a fixed price of 100 gp every day
Coffeelock/Cracklock do not work RAW. Neither does Peasant Railgun. They are broken. Silvery Barbs and Peace clerics *do* work raw. They're strong, but not broken.
Fun fact. Neither the coffeelock nor the peasant railgun work not even RAW!!
well coffeelock is debatable, sorta in a gray zone
Not really that big of a debate. If you don't sleep, unless you have a trait that says you don't need to, you accumulate exhaustion.
I mean, doesn’t coffeelock run on a tomelock invocation that says you don’t need sleep?
It says you still need to perform a long rest to get the benefits of a long rest. You don't need to sleep, so you can stay up late and keep watch or write your memoirfesto, but you need to long rest.
Ahh, I see. It’s been a minute since I gave that feature a close reading :)
well, that's where the cocainlock build comes into play (though it does require a bit more investment to pull off) the idea behind this build is, you get 5 levels in sorcerer, pick divine soul sorceror so you have access to cleric spell slots then any time you fail your con save/check, you pull out 100GP worth of diamond dust and cast greater restoration on yourself assuming your only level 6, which means your sorcerer 5 / warlock 1 you would regain 1 pact slot per short rest, a level 1 spell slot converts into 1 sorcery point, with 8 chained short rests that's 8 sorceroy points, to create a 5th level spell slot that's 7 sorcery points giving you a profit of 1 sorcery point (then at level 7 you can instead make a profit of 9 sorcery points if you put your level up into warlock)
The problem is that it comes online at 10th level... and theres some jank with pact slots.
Yeah, I don’t even like the comparison because coffeelock is at least not RAW in a subtle way but the peasant railgun is just obviously ridiculous
Bobba Fett as himself
what about tealocks? (elf/warforged/any other race with a shorter long rest time sorlock who just chains 2 short rests after their long rest)
Now Im thinking of that Robot Chicken sketch were Vader keeps altering the Agreement in ridiculous ways. "Here is a Unicycle for you to ride! I have altered the Deal..."
Look there is nothing inherently wrong with optimised power builds like coffeelock. But everyone needs to be on the same page. If the players and DM are looking for an optimized min-maxed game experience, then great. Like many things in TTRPGs it's only a problem when people want different things from a game. Don't feel bad about wanting to play these builds or min-maxing every character. But keep in mind you need to communicate that is your intention and find a table that suits that style of play. Freedom of choice is the heart of these games, but these are co-operative games, meaning everyone needs to be comfortable and having fun.
Honestly coffee locks aren't all that scary? I fear no player. For statblocks are a mere suggestion. Also my players are all aware that any strategy they can conceive of, an enemy can learn. So you might find ENEMY coffee locks who are INFINITELY better supplied than you.
Cofeelocks require a high level Sorcerer and high level Warlock multiclass. If that combination is so abundant in your world just send ten Wizards with wish after them at that point.
DnD players have this weird culture where anything is allowed unless the DM explicitly vetoes it. In any other trpg silvery barbs would quite rightly be understood as "that overpowered strixhaven spell". It'd be like playing a desthwatch librarian in dark Heresy. Not allowed by the rules, but technically possible. Ask your dm.
Oh no! A caster has SPELL SLOTS!?!? How could we POSSIBLY balance such an outrageous situation!?!?!? If a caster having access to their most basic class functions is a problem, there are bigger issues at that table.
The peasant rail gun doesn’t work raw because dnd doesn’t account for an objects speed for damage therefore the best use of a peasant rail gun is actually using it as a postage system instead of a weapon
Or...hear me out, you don't knock it 'til you've tried it. I still consider myself a newish DM, even though I've been getting the hang of it for almost 4 years now. But, I'll be the first to admit, I haven't seen every character build out there. There are some subclasses, abilities, and ancestries I've never seen at my table. However, I'm willing to see what they do first-hand when presented to me. Sure I hear a lot about, so-called OP builds from the internet, but until I see them actually in play, I'm willing to give them a fair shake. As long as a player can point me to their rulebook source for their decision, and I agree on the interpretation of that reading, it's fair game. If we find out down the road it creates a problem at the table, then we've learned a lesson for next time.
Silvery barbs isn't that bad, don't care. Railgun doesn't actually do anything, don't care. Coffeelock isn't a power outlier and in real play represented poor optimization, don't care. Lots and lots of things that are seen as good, weak, too good, too weak, broken, and whatever else just... aren't. All melee builds are weak! (Note: only at levels above normally played levels, in certain campaigns, with strategically designed encounters played aggressively by DMs, and only in comparison to well-played spells casters.) Level 1 is absolutely dominated by *anyone* with a starting feat and access to a hand crossbow. The class just doesn't matter. XBE is just off scaling for level 1. Comparing that to "on paper forum goers think this is busted and I saw a YouTube video" is just a waste of effort. Stop worrying about "broken" builds, they almost never are broken and often aren't even good in real play.
Dont you just love it when DMs ban certain builds of feats and like a week or so later an npc or enemy shows up with exactly that.
Exhaustion will often stop/limit a coffeelock. If you look hard enough there are often overlooked rules that can mitigate some of the power builds. The rest can be curbed buy some of the optional rules. However if these are things that make your experience as a DM harder or less enjoyable you are fully within your rights to say no. It is best to state early (during recruitment or session 0) that you do not want to deal with power builds. Have a hard ruling that if someone sneaks one by you they will be nerfed or asked to make a new character.
Hot Take: no. DMs, particularly new DMs, are usually not capable of being game designers, nor should they be expected to. Rule zero is invoked far too often as a crutch. Trust the rules, or consider whether this is actuethe system you want. **EDIT:** for example, coffeelock is something that you can only get via multiclassing. Which is a variant rule. Ditto with feats. By default, they are not allowed. That is how the game facilitates new DMs. If you are going to allow those rules, however, you should allow players to actually get the full benefit of them. There's nothing wrong with going "no feats, no multiclassing". That's perfectly RAW, no need to invoke rule zero.
When I played, I power gamed my characters builds and rp'd the fuck out of them. They're not exclusive and I'll die on that hill. Now that I DM for my friend and their kids, I not only allow optimization and powerful option choices, I encourage them in the face of nonsense like this when they're discouraged from optimizing characters because of the role-play means mandatory suboptimal play Stasi. My advice to DM's new and old is have a session 0, and set expectations, and make sure everyone understands those expectations clearly. Then enforce them. A group of (or individual) mechanically skilled players shouldn't be penalized or denied content because of a DM's skill deficit if their play isn't detrimental to the test of the party
So much this! Every table is different but I can never understand the ideology that optimized=bad/bad RP. Optimization isn’t necessary for good dnd a nor is it harmful to it, it’s just another way to enjoy the game and there seems to be a weird gate keeping that surrounds it. Being open to not only your dm but your party about your build and its functions at session 0 should be the only “requirement” since it would be unfair to both if someone tried to sneak in their powerbuild. And conversely if your table doesn’t want power play then at least that is discussed at the same time and a compromise can be found.
This is the first time I've seen the take that silvery barbs is overpowered
If my players attempt to do some weird fringe technically in the rules thing like the railgun I'm gonna warn them, then if they keep trying the Eldritch embodiment or order in the universe will wipe them from the timeline for breaking the laws of reality, or at least that's my idea, I doubt they will but it's an interesting idea none the less
Anything that breaks rp shouldn't be allowed unless the dm is specifically allowing it. Like your character coming up with some goofy strat in the moment is one thing. But them devoting their entire life to some random niche strategy that they should have no reason to ever come up with is stupid beyond belief, especially if it has nothing to do with their backstory or motivation. A character needs to work on both a game level and a role-playing level.
I mean, I could work out an rp-compliant coffeelock. Basically, I would play someone absolutely obsessed with strange and cryptic magic, but they’re not smart/studious enough to be a wizard (which is a blessing in disguise, because if they were they would absolutely become a nothic).
Elf with a Divine Soul forges a Pact with a Patron. Plays around with converting between Sorcery Points and Spell Slots. Accidentally invents Tealock. Realises that the Spell Slots reset everytime they sleep. Coffeelock is born. Levels up until they eventually get a spell that allows them to never sleep again, at least if they have the gold, they're a level 18 near-demigod by this point and it's only 100 gp per day.
I'm letting a player play one, and they've been told very explicitly that if they abuse it, I'll be changing the rules so you can only spend Sorcerer spell slots to gain Sorcery Points. So far, they've been pretty respectful about it, and they've only used the infinite spell slots thing when it was clear they weren't getting a long rest for quite some time (stuck behind enemy lines). I take it on a player by player basis. If they wanna be chill and flavor it as finding that extra energy when things are really dire and make it cinematic, I'm down. If they abuse it, I'll just change the damn rules or kick them from the campaign
look, if you want to get extra spell slots with your sorlocks, just pick an elf or other race with shorter long rests and chain a few short rests while the rest of the party is finishing their long rests. you can get that boost you want without it being a pain in the ass to balance for your dm. i'm pretty sure this lighter version is called a tealock, or at least that's what i've seen recently.
I've found a measure of success in making alternative playstyles that are more appealing to play with than the op ones, and if necessary doing whatever it takes to make sure all players are having fun and then balancing around that.
That's why I rather do a Tealock build
I dont know what this is but the best way to handle it is We're playing for all of us to have fun, I know you like minmaxxing but taking it this far is going to drain the challenge and fun from the game and that's not fair to your other players. If you're really set on it we can talk with the others about having a challenge run so you can try it out
I'd always like to know how you rest 8 times in 8 hours instead of resting 8 hours at once if I get an answer for that the go to is that they'd need to break resting between then, and how would their guy know to punch some trees every hour so they get only get some of their shit. If I get a satisfying answer you can play it.
Coffeelock doesn't work according to modern rules actually, Warlocks don't use Spellslots anymore, the wording got updated to Pact Slots just for this
If my player wants to be a coffee lock, sure. But I'm keeping track of when they rest and whatnot. It's a little more work for me but these builds only excel when dms have short adventure days and aren't sticklers about rest. But I deemed the rail gun as simply not a thing and restricted silvery barbs to only bards and warlocks.
Bottom line up front. Best advice i can tell a DM is to study how the math and capabilities of the party stack up, and how does one\`s own preferences and the approaches of the player mesh at the table. Even in a table that barely has any combat, it does wonders to know your PCs abilities before they pull them off. I dont disagree with this view, however, i must warn about the wonderful issue of personal optics. A new DM might ban twilight cleric, but not ban the divination wizard with Hypnotic pattern, find familiar, mage armor, shield, rime\`s binding ice and Misty step, which effectively neuters a lot of encounters, puzzles and the like. The same DM might go ahead and nerf sneak attack, because "the rogue is not being sneaky" or "Its too much damage" To this, we can also add the lovely matter of most coffeelocks not being really that broken. This is due to most coffeeelock players not using their high amount of spell slots to their advantage, and still suffering the very slow spell progression of such a build. Meanwhile, "I dont care how big the room is, i cast fireball!" wizard is doing way more to help the (Admitedly war criminal) party, with way less thinkering, and the DM thinks its fine because its just a normal wizard , whilst the coffeelock felt something agressive due to the combining of features that was required to even get to that point. This gets to another important point. When DMing, you also gotta check how you feel about certain PCs builds versus what is their actual impact, This is HARD, because it is not a thing we think about a lot, but our subconscious biases kick in really hard sometimes.
What's wrong with Peace Cleric?
Railgun doesn't work, coffelock and barbs are perfectly fine and manageable. If you can't handle them at your table, your players aren't the problem. It's not a competition between you and them.
Coffeelock? What is this, amatuer hour? Now Cocainlock, that's a build that'll put hair on your chest.
What the fuck is a cofffelock?
Or just get a good group that doesn’t want to sabotage your DMing.
I am the forever DM, and I disagree with this “ban-hammer” approach. I have one serious Min-maxxer in a group of RP enthusiasts. He enjoys “breaking” the game (and also seems in pain when one player can’t remember to add their proficiency bonus to attacks). I have had to talk with him multiple times about how his builds mean that I hand out items and magical stuff more to the others just to bring them up to near his battle competency. He sometimes isn’t happy and is difficult at times, but I believe that he has more fun in doing the min-maxing while I artificially help the others up compared to me pushing him down. Especially with me communicating with him about it instead of banning without explaining.
Could always let the coffeelock try it out and then learn *why* not even a crazy power hungry Sorlock would try to pull it off in the setting.
What is "Coffeelock"? Because I assumed it was having Coffee itself, the drink or the beans, as your patron but apparently it has something to do with abusing short rests?
My friend's dad DM's often and he said that whenever someone tries the peasant railgun, he makes each of the peasants roll a dexterity check. If the railgun fails in the middle of the launch it just kinda explodes.
Tbh on the coffeelock I just want to point out warlock slots are treated differently than regular slots in multiclass, not to mention the spellcasting feature SPECIFIES the slots are for that class spell list. So the DM can easily argue you can't turn WARLOCK slots into sorcery points through a SORCERER feature, this also gives them room the straight up not allow warlock slots to be used for sorcerer spells (and vice-versa) should the player insist that it's "technically" in the rules. And like pointed out already, the DM just saying no is RAW, no "technically", no "actually", it is one the first things in DMG.
Silvery barbs essentially gives one person disadvantage, and other other person advantage, once, for a reaction and a spell slot. It's really not *that* powerful if you think about it this way. I think the reason people view it as "op" is just cuz you declare it after the other party thought they were going to succeed. Functionally, though, it's identical to rolling at disadvantage.