There are 5 choices maximum: race, subrace, background, class, subclass. It’s a simple path to follow, with minimal customization. Even multiclassing isn’t terribly useful. Each class plays exactly the same as every other - you choose your class, and then your subclass, and you’re locked in. I’ve met plenty of fans who reduce it to “5e cuts down on the math and fiddly modifiers”, but 5e reduces more than that, really.ĥe streamlines the whole play of the game. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who even takes a cursory glance at both editions, but 3/3.5e and 5e play very differently from each other. Thus, I haven’t much problem with Warlocks themselves, just 5e’s implementation of them. These invocations are slightly overpowered, to allow them to outclass their spellcasting peers, but it fits within the play system of the game overall. Instead of customizing your character by what spells they can cast, with casting and play style determined by your class, Warlocks choose Invocations, which are essentially magical feats, and develop their play style in that way. For spellcasters, this is usually in the building of your spell list for rogues and rangers, it’s in the allocation of skill points for fighters, it's in feats, which they get broad choice from instead of pre-set class features every time they level up.ģe Warlocks, boiled down, are spellcasters that build and play like fighters. There, the playstyle and build of each class varies - you build up to a concept with the features that you choose, which in turn adapt the method in which you can best play your character. This isn’t much of a problem in 3.5e, unless you’re a particular stickler for worldbuilding.
So, an arcane spellcaster whose magic is received due to a body-or-soul connection? Allowing magic power to be cast without a spellbook and intensive arcane study? So.a sorcerer? 5e even suggests “you are favored by an Archfey” as a backstory for sorcerers in the Player's Handbook - that’s almost exactly a Pact of the Archfey Warlock right there. It’s concept is simple: a spellcaster that gains their powers through a pact with a powerful entity. It first showed up as a class in 3.5e, designed specifically to be able to outpower any other spellcaster of the same level.
To begin with, it helps to take a look at the origins of the warlock class.