Shattered Kingdoms

Fair point! I just hate the idea of warlocks getting looked at and still winding up with crappy elementals. Even if their spells got changed to work as you're proposing (and I like your ideas), I think flavor means a lot to this game and that's why elementals need as much attention as anything else.

Warlock pets get the same problem that Monks get in D&D: you're trying to do something that another class does by using items. By choosing a mechanic that avoids the pains and unreliabilities of acquisition, you somehow are seen to give a tacit consent to never be able to measure up to the performance of those who can suffer for their roles.

That is to say, necromancers and sorcerers, the other major spellcasting classes, have access to pets that come from areas. In other words, builders can always throw in another charm or control, but that cannot be said for the elemental. Eventually, power creep and such things mean that conjure elemental will never enjoy the same flexibility and usefulness of control undead or charm person.

This is further aggravated by mechanical differences in the spells themselves, particularly relating to pets. Warlocks are the only major casting class limited to one pet: necromancers can have more than two dozen, for example.

An interesting solution would be to allow a warlock a flavor-rich alternative to charm person based on commanding the elements, yielding in effect something like a simulacrum.

If I were the coder, I would allow a warlock to 'clone' a creature that could be charmed or controlled using the base elements and grant the ability to summon/dismiss this creature. A requirement such as a body part from the creature could add some spice, especially when it came to potentially cloning other players. The clone's death would require forging a new one, as opposed to something as silly as a timer.

If I thought golems and other such racial types were anywhere near balanced, I'd just suggest letting warlocks "craft" 'em. But that kind of thing, I imagine, would take a lot of effort. And would open the door to more item creation abilities. Which is where I think the game should be going, but oh well.

I do not think that giving the warlock more NPCs is going to increase their effectiveness. I'll address that later though.

One of the other problems with the warlock class is that the class is completely based on the idea of damage. There are scant few spells in the warlock spell set that are not based around this idea, and worse yet, all of the spells that the warlock has are based around the reflex saving throw. There is no variation such as giving the necromancer class several spells that can target several different saving throws. If one wants to negate a warlock, all a person has to do is focus on *one* of the enchant sets, or nearly full resistance by enchanting for MR. This would be helped if the spells of the warlock weren't considered magical in nature (although I cannot reason having your reflexes magically augmented not affecting the spells, so they should still receive a reflex save). It would allow the spells to bypass magical protection enchantments, be reflex saved against and still cause decent damage, unlike the current condition of what it is now.

I've come to this conclusion because even after all the buffing that has been done to magma spray (which is still a joke), the rest of the spells suffer horrendously from needing to bypass magical protection enchantments. This is further compounded by any spells such as as resist elements, which completely neuters a warlock, to protection or sanctuary. If a spell like resist elements is going to be in the game then it definitely needs looked at and wimped.

Back when I started the game, stone skin used to be the bee's knees just because there were so few weapons that had magical damage traits to them. I think there were only the bardiches from Sith'a'Niel, and the mottled pike that had a threat range to the warlock. Warlocks were valued highly for this, amongst their other wards that they could brew and hold. However, over the years the inundation of weapon types and addition of augmented attack types has dramatically increased, as I'm certain it's Dulrik's interest to make racial weaknesses viable. This coupled with the fix to brewed potions has made stone skin less than desirable. Obviously there needs to be some fix within the weapon system, which I think deserves a different thread altogether.

I'm going to talk about ironguard too. Ironguard is actually great, too great in fact. It shouldn't be able to reduce damage from iron weapons up to 100%. But it's sort of like stone skin, there are certain limitations to it, but in it's specific area, it's just way too good. It makes certain combinations such as elf merc/swash/paladin way too good, and deep-elf anything even better. I seriously think this spell needs a well-deserved wimp.

Also, if warlocks are intended to be a tougher mage class, I feel that they should receive less art trains (they aren't actually mages), to cap out around 8 somewhere, and more hp trains to reflect their ability to be tough and rugged. The cookie cutter design of wild card stat distribution just seems rather disheartening.

They should probably also exchange second attack for shield block. I can't even think of a reason to justify giving warlocks second attack. By the time the skill is available to be trained level wise, any benefit it would grant is removed by far more effective means such as fireball and earthquake, and any warlock that is attempting to do melee is just doing it wrong.

That's really quite the unfortunate situation, since playing a class does not necessarily impede your ability to think and judge clearly. In fact, no longer actively playing a class impedes your ability to remember that class clearly.

People have an illogical stance around here that playing a class makes you unable to complain about certain features.

The basic prejudice is that if you complain about your own class being underpowered, there's a good chance you just can't play it right. To give Kin due credit, bards and especially warlocks do need a boost.

[REDACTED] bards, they're fine.

Bards are ridiculous in a group.

Also Ridiculous solo.

Ridiculously crappy, yeah!