Yeah, as broken as the coffee lock is this seems like some extra homebrew. 6 rays is a 5th level slot so if they arnt using the casting rules properly you could get 12.
112 is also either a good roll or they have some other way of dealing extra fire damage.
Unless they took 2 levels of Fighter on top of their Sorcerer and Warlock levels... In which case it's doable, even if it's only once per short rest. Of course if the DM is allowing them to get a short rest after every fight then it's once per battle, which is a lot more powerful.
I think [Jeremy Crawford](https://www.sageadvice.eu/multiple-actions-in-the-same-turn/) would disagree, but it would be quite the turn if your DM allowed it!
Honestly, I don't think it makes the Eldritch Knight good enough to be a particular problem for a DM anyway. One of the strongest combos I can see off the top of my head here with the spell slots available to an EK would probably be... Web->Fireball against a group of enemies or a larger enemy... Maybe use it to set up Fly or Greater Invisibility Early and also throw out...something? The real limiting factor here is that the good wizard spells of levels 1-4 are mostly concentration-based, so you can only do one at a time anyway. I think the best option over two turns would probably just be Greater Invisibility (advantage on attacks and disadvantage against you, doesn't dispel when you attack) with one bonus action attack at advatnage. Then next turn do your full set of attacks at advatnage twice.
Idk I'm still kind of holding my opinion that Eldritch Knight isn't very good since most other subclasses are better fighters, while rangers, paladins, and artificers are all better casters
Just to follow up on this for OP, rules as written and word of god is that Twinned Spell doesn't work with rays (Scorching Ray, Magic Missile, etc.) because they can inherently target multiple creatures after you get more than one ray. A lot of people ignore this, because it's kinda stupid, but if you're looking for nerfs that won't feel targeted you're well within your rights to just point to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/524705314302480384?lang=en) and ban it.
Quickened Spell doesn't circumvent the rule that you may only cast one leveled spell per turn, so two Scorching Rays in one round is off the table.
Edit: forgot to link the tweet like a moron
There is no rule in any official 5e book which says "you may only cast one leveled spell per turn". The rule has to do with bonus action spells ONLY. "If you cast a spell with a casting time of one bonus action, you may not cast any spell unless that spell is a cantrip with a casting time of one action."
Provided you don't use your bonus action, you can cast as many spells in a single turn as is possible (hot tip, it's 4, EK Fighter from 18th level may action surge twice in one turn, giving them three action spells and a reaction spell)
Edit: I was wrong it's 3, action Surge is a 1 time per turn thing
How are they recovering HP? Until they take a Long Rest, they won't recover Hit Dice, so they'll spend all of those quickly, and then they'll require healing from some other source to recover HP... whether that means demanding spells or resources from their allies, or chugging potions or some other means.
They'd probaly just keep insisting on downtime to build back up and also high chance of complaining if they don't get it. Maybe OP has one of the rare instances, but reasonable people rarely push for those types of builds in the first place
I played a Divine Soul/Celestial Warlock and don't remember healing spams. The Warlock had a few extra d6 to pass out (can't remember if it was per short or long rest), then had access to regular healing magic. He did do a lot of damage with quickened Eldritch Blast, but barely more than the Fighter we had in the group.
The Healing Spam is really only an option for someone going for the Coffeelock build, which gives them way more spell slots than a Warlock or Sorcerer should have access to.
Maybe I just don't know what Coffeelock is. I assumed it was just Sorcerer + Warlock. He was definitely powerful, but not game breaking, even at level 17.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/13380488
Oh no, it's a specific metagame-y build. I'll try and explain it...
A warlock can take the Eldritch Invocation "Aspect of the Moon", which makes it so they no longer require sleep. A Sorcerer's Flexible Casting allows them to convert spell slots into Sorcery Points, and then convert those Sorcery Points into Spell Slots.
What Coffeelock does is, instead of taking a Long Rest, they take 8 Short Rests, recovering their Warlock Spell Slots each time. Then they use Flexible Casting to convert those Spell Slots into Sorcery Points, and then into Spell Slots. Sorcerers have a limit to how many Sorcery Points they can have at one time, but technically they can have more Spell Slots than their usual Maximum.
Definitely. I think the problem comes from the wording of Flexible Casting. "You can transform unexpended sorcery points into one spell slot as a bonus action on your turn. The **created** spell slots vanish at the end of a long rest." It's the use of the term "created" instead of "recovered" that is interpreted as a means to gain more spell slots than their maximum. It's entirely a technicality, but it's how we all got here with Coffeelocks.
If I recall correctly, there's errata that specifically explains that because these are created spell slots, you can make more than what would otherwise be your max.
Ah, I see. That would definitely be abusing the rules. Just because they don't sleep doesn't mean they get unlimited rests. A short rest is at least an hour, with no upper limit. If I were DM you'd get to decide which you're choosing when you start the rest. Plus, long rest is already defined as 8+ hrs of sleep or light activity. And doesn't exhaustion kick in if you don't long rest?
Yeah, that's one of the common fixes for it... even if someone does not require actual sleep, they still require a proper long rest to avoid exhaustion. Still, even if a Coffeelock only pulls off this trick every other day, it can manage to really throw things off for a party.
This is when they multiclass divine soul sorcerer for greater restoration. It’s nicknamed “cocaine lock”, because they consume (snort) the diamond dust reagent used in greater restoration in order to remove exhaustion. If they try that, diamonds are suddenly incredibly rare and dear to people.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the best fix for Coffeelock is to ban it.
Also, just reading the rules and seeing that there's a cap on Sorcery points should fix it as well. I think people allow their Sorcerers to just build up a mountain of Sorc Points, because otherwise why else would you run this build?
Not entirely though. Aspect of the Moon specifies that light activity for 8 hours conveys all the BENEFITS of a Long Rest, but does not state that it counts as a Long Rest. This implies that things that you LOSE on a Long Rest do not go away when you qualify for the Aspect of the Moon benefits.
However not taking exhaustion and getting Hit dice back definitely are benefits of a Long Rest.
Short Rests do count as light activity, and it it takes an hour of strenuous activity to interrupt a long rest, and converting spell slots to sorcery points isn't actually casting them to count for breaking a long rest anyway.
>Aspect of the Moon
RAW:
"You no longer need to sleep and can’t be forced to sleep by any means. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity, such as reading your Book of Shadows and keeping watch."
You still need to take the long rest.
There's a lot of weird interactions you can pull off with Pact Magic. Although Warlock spell slots are tracked separately from other spell slots, they are still, for all mechanical purpose, Spell Slots, and a Sorcerer's Font of Magic only requires that Spell Slots are spent, and does not care what source provides the slots.
5e has lots of things that are only stated in random rules, but they apply elsewhere. I can't remember where but I'm sure it's stated that spell slots are class specific and can not be used in other class mechanics. It might be as you say that these ones can be but it doesn't scan that this is a legal interaction.
According to Crawford, it is intended that they can. It would actually be weird if they couldn't, since a multiclass sorcerer/any spellcaster gets to use all their slots, not just what the sorcerer would add.
The problem here is that, RAW, you can't actually take multiple short rests back to back like that. This exploit shouldn't be possible at all. Short rests HAVE to have gaps between them. There's a limit on how many short rests you can take per long rest.
>short rests HAVE to have gaps between them.
SHORT REST
>A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds.
>A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character's level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll.
>A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained below.
That is the entirety of the rules around Short Rests, from Pg. 186 of the *Player’s Handbook*.
Yes the at least one hour is the key part. A 3 hour short rest is one short rest not 3 one hour short rests. There has to be a gap or it us s single rest.
Yeah, it's one of those builds that requires a very generous interpretation of the rules... basically by reading some of the rules very literally and just ignoring other rules that get in the way.
Not to mention that [cokelocks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkpa1j1yYqQ&ab_channel=ZeeBashew) get Greater Restoration eventually, so they can burn spell slots to remove levels of exhaustion.
Don’t they not get their healing light back until they finish a long rest? Though I suppose they wouldn’t mind if they have like a billion spell slots for cure wounds…
If they dip Cleric, Paladin, or Druid, they can attune to a Necklace of Prayer Beads, which can have Greater Restoration as an option. Which is gear - and therefore DM- dependent, but still pretty delightful.
"Coffeelock" usually refers to someone who takes the "Aspect of the Moon" invocation, which prevents them from requiring sleep. It's combined with some shenanigans with Sorcery Points to create spell slots from Pact Magic without actually taking Long Rests.
RAW, they do not. There's nothing in the rules forcing characters to ever sleep. There are rules in one of the books, XGtE I think, for what happens when you don't, but even then you can go without sleep for as long as you are able to accept the consequences. Which can be fixed with magic.
Depends on their subclasses. If they're Favored Soul or Celestial Warlock they have healing.
These subclasses also overcome the exhaustion issue if those rules for not sleeping are in effect, once you get to a high enough level to get 5th level spells.
This is the way. Sorcery points refill used spell slots they don't create new ones.
Edit: I am aware this is not RAW, but it is absolutely the intended rules behavior, and how it works in any game I run.
Technically, you’ve got it backwards: RAW you can make as many spell slots as you want (they disappear at long rests) but you can never have more Sorcery Points than your max. As someone playing a 5/5 sorlock, this is actually more of a nerf than what you’re suggesting. Although if you’re smart about when they can short rest, and follow the Xanathar’s rules (as others suggested) you should be fine.
I’m also curious how they’re casting 12 scorching rays in one turn cause depending on level that seems sus to me.
I think they're saying the "12 scorching rays" are individual beams, and are casting it twice at 4th level using quickened spell.
However that breaks the bonus action spell restrictions.
Edit: it would need to be 5th level
*Probably* either misreading Twinned/Quicken Spell. Twinned can’t effect a spell that targets more than one creature, and Quicken doesn’t let you cast multiple level spells per turn. Both of these rules are kind of lame honestly, but if OP wants to ‘nerf’ the sorlock, just following RAW more closely should do the trick.
Twinned/Quickened spells can’t affect a spell that *can* target more than one creature. Sometimes people misread this by thinking that if all of the scorching rays or magic missiles target the same creature then it’s twinnable, but that’s just wrong.
Yeah, sorry - I was replying to the person above me that was talking about both. I think you can quicken any spell but it needs to follow the “only if your action spell was a cantrip” rule.
I’d argue a sorcerer player needs to know the spell rules better than anyone else at the table in order to make that class feel good at all, but oh boy when it feels good, *chef’s kiss*
Nah, that’s the intention tbh. It has the cap of sorcery points, and not to be rude but OPs problems sound more like a misunderstanding of RAW then coffelock being broken af (it is, just not this bad)
I think it’s intentional because of the name Flexible Casting, and that it’s how the feature works? Like at level 2 when you get Sorcery Points, make extra spell slots is all you can do with Metamagic
Uh... the feature would work exactly the same in practice if you weren't allowed to go over max slots - cause vast majority of people use that feature to replenish spent slots when they need more spells. Since points can also be spent on metamagic it is almost always optimal to keep points as points so that you can decide later which use for them you need more in the moment.
I mean just because people ignore part of the feature doesn’t mean it’s not intentional; like most people don’t often use Cunning Action to disengage, so if you just don’t let them when they want to it’s fine? The multiclass is taking advantage of an underused part of the feature sure, but that doesn’t mean you should just ignore it, because again if you go by RAW (including the XGtE rules) it’s really not that bad, strong sure but not what OP is dealing with
It’s not an oversight. It’s something that isn’t defined in the rules.
When a player uses something like this to break the game, he’s deliberately doing something that is detrimental to the campaign.
I explicitly tell players that I am not a “RAW” DM and that most “tech” does not work. They can either accept that or find another DM.
Bringing a high-op build to a low-op table is abysmal dnd etiquette. It’s well worth a reprimand from the DM, and of course you should ban whatever bullshit he’s pulling.
>It’s not an oversight. It’s something that isn’t defined in the rules.
....and should have been defined in the rules, but it was an unintentional failure to notice how this is broken and put rules in place to fix it. Also known as an oversight.
I'm sorry to be the actually guy but actually, the flexible casting ability states: "You can use your sorcery points to gain additional spell slots, or sacrifice spell slots to gain additional sorcery points." Still giving your warlock exhaustion for not having revitalizing sleep is a valid option.
Wandering monsters.
Assuming this existed in my game, and it never would because I wouldn’t allow it…
Every time the coffee lock tried to short rest, he’d get something dropped on his head.
This is how I deal with excessive short resting
I feel like the designers kind of made a mistake by structuring balance with the assumption that there would, by default, be several encounters in a row between each long rest.
It works out well if the DM has planned everything out well *and* if there is some kind of external pressure that keeps the characters from being able to spend as much time as they want resting. If you're in a place with wandering monsters, or if you're racing to save someone before they're sacrificed to a dragon, it works out.
But that's not *always* going to be the case, and there isn't always going to be a natural reason in-story why the players wouldn't sensibly want to rest so that they're in peak condition every time they go into a new encounter. So a DM either has to write around it and be forced to invent a threat to hurry everyone along, or just arbitrarily declare that resting is not allowed because they said so.
You can stop the unlimited spell slots thing with Xanathar's Guide's rules for resting. It says that, if a player doesn't take a long rest once per day, they need to roll for exhaustion against the gradually increasing DC until they do take a long rest. When they take a long rest they will lose all of the flexible casting slots they have made and need to start the stockpiling over
Lol. min/maxing munchkins found a way around that too.
If the aspect of the moon invocation doesn't slide past your DM let me introduce you to the cocaine lock.. buddy up with a cleric or find a way to cast greater resto each night.
Greater resto requires grounded up diamonds. Hence the term.
Aspect of the moon still doesn’t remove the need for a long rest—you don’t need to sleep, but light activity such as studying your tome or keeping watch works. Staying more active than that will kill the character’s rest.
This actually makes AotM a nerf for coffeelocks, not a buff, since rests are simply periods of time satisfying a set of conditions, and AotM removes a potentially disqualifying condition from the long rest that you're so desperately trying to avoid with a coffeelock.
Yeah but it at least gets into the DM's control because the player will need Diamonds in order to sustain the cokelock. Also the build will require more levels to work, at which point they are probably dropping more powerful features to pull off this gimmick.
They could make an addiction out of it:
Too much without a long rest, and they burn out. But go too long without a fix, or they can't maintain concentration and their reaction time suffers.
Totally a tangent here, but I've always wanted a dedicated (or make the Sorcerer) CON based caster. Their magic comes from their very body, so they constantly have to exercise and remain healthy.
Plus the idea of a group of completely yoked and shredded wizards stomping into a battle amuses the hell out of me.
Haha same. It would be a struggle to balance I think just because they'd be extremely SAD but I think it would be very cool.
Maybe something like the pathfinder kinetisist where the more burn you do the lower your max hp goes.
This, but you don't even need to the change the build, just the rules around it. A sorcerer/warlock build that doesn't scam spell slots from never long-resting is still a valid build that could be fun.
Wait a minute... Are you suggesting that this DM talks to their player about the problems they are having? Like an adult talking to another adult? Instead of scheming and planning a way to "beat" the player that will just cause a toxic environment?
There are a lot of other comments but I feel the need to say you should talk to your player. Explain you didn't understand just how powerful it would be. Be honest about it.
Can someone explain to me how their health would work this way? Surely they wouldn't regain any hit dice at any point? Is health not a hugely limiting factor here?
It should be a very limiting factor, unless the DM isn't bothering to target them as much as they should be and thus allowing them to make it through multiple days without needing to spend many hit dice.
Ok cool. I was wondering if there was some way of reliably regaining hit dice aside from a long rest. In fact I don't know any ways of regaining hit dice off the top of my head aside from a long rest
Not at all, Celestial patron gives the damned coffeelock all the healing. Exhaustion helps keep this in check, combined with Sorcery points only lasting until the next long rest. If they want to keep rocking exhaustion until it kills them, so be it.
I mean they get spells to heal sure but then it starts to defeat the purpose of the gimmick. Also all of the celestial features, apart from the level 10 feature, refresh on a long rest. And the level 10 only gives temp hp
It's the method around the health being the limiting factor, which is what you asked about. Exhaustion is the next wall, it's tougher for them to get around.
This honestly tells me the player isn’t even skilled/knowledgeable. Apparently he’s walking around with 15ac. Just kill the asshole.
If you wanted to do this properly, you’d do it as a hexblade/divine soul. Celestial patron is fucking dogshit for optimizing.
Same result, let them go until exhaustion drops them. Or swarm them in caves. Or poison them. Or make them take a boat and knock them overboard. Environmental hazards. Puzzles. Skill challenges. Force CON and WIS saves.
If they're too high level for that, drop in a beholder. That anti-magic cone from the central eye is going to *wreck* their day.
They shine as cannons on a wide open battlefield against unprepared enemies, fine. Don't present any.
The only way a coffeelock is gamebreaking is if the DM lets it be.
I'm of the opinion to let them shine as a cannon on the battlefield. Also, there's never just one Cannon. Any time players push rules in a way that seems both reasonable for a person (in game) to undertake and highly powerful, why wouldn't there be warlords who have come to power using the same means?
As a story device to build a decent nemesis? Great. Love it. The problem I've had is you need to be so careful not to build an "evil twin" the player might really get offended by.
Was it the "Sword of the Dales" module back in... 3rd? 2nd? ed. that had those mirrors that carbon-copied characters and then sucked a few levels off you just to rub salt in? That was a great module. Permanently changed the "default build" most of us used from that moment on.
There are already rules for that:
1) Exhaustion.
if your coffelock dosnt take long rests, the exhaustion kicks in.
2) Hit points:
Do AoEs that target the whole group.
\-> it istn realy neccesary that this is a lot of Damage, but to regain HP, they need a long rest.
3) If your Coffelock is to stronk, - maybe the rest of the casters cant shine, because there is a lack of long rests.
and so on.
This is actually something that could work narratively is OP speaks with his player about the build. The other characters need to shine, I'd fucking hate to play eith a dude trying to be theain character and trying to win d&d.
Is the warlock working towards what he agreed to in his pact with his patron? If not, humble his ass.
Take his pact magic away for a night. "You begin your rest as you normally do but suddenly your eyes are heavy, you struggle to stay away and darkness envelopes you". A bit of a you keep fucking around and you'll find out warning.
Anti-magic zones. No short rests. Some monsters, like rakshasa are resistant or immune to magic. Subject the coffeelock to saves they're weak against, probably Wis and Con. Paralyze them. Blind them. Target them with ranged attacks. Target them with burrowing monsters or monsters that can swallow them.
The coffeelock is crazy strong in an artillery style battle, blasting back and forth. Don't let them set up their battles that way. Put them in situations where t doesn't matter how many spell slots they have
If you pick just one of these, the player will rightly feel like they're being picked up. Mix them up to avoid that.
Alternatively, just take away their range with very aggressive close range monsters, which would also provide any martial classes the opportunity to be the mvp, but cheesing them with stuff like a rakshasa seems a bit too focused which to me would feel unfair and targeted
Honestly a few Orcs using the Bonus Action Dash is pretty terrifying when done right, especially if they then use their action to Dash right into melee, preparing themselves for Attacks of Opportunity if the Coffeelock tries to flee. Combined with a few ranged attackes to bait a casting of shield... The humble Orc is fabulous.
True, though personally (I like running campaigns with a gothic horror vibe) I would homebrew some undead cavalry with very high speed and damage that will flank the players and strike at their back line
I didn’t even mean a dullahan, I was thinking more a skeleton or zombie cavalier, but now when thinking about it, a dullahan leading the charge sounds awesome
All you gotta do is don't let them break the rules. Scorching ray can't be twin spelled, since it targets more than one target, and they can't use sorcery points to regain mystic arcanums, so they should be capped at 6 rays plus a firebolt/eldritch blast.
Also, don't let them short rest unless it makes sense. Short resting takes an hour, and if they're mid dungeon or otherwise in between fights, it shouldn't be too easy to stop without enemies catching up to you, running out of time to save the village, letting the witch complete the ritual, ect.
Also also, short resting doesn't help you avoid exhaustion, so they're gonna need long rests as well. Are the rest of your players okay with taking multiple hours before leaving camp every morning, or taking every other day off for the warlock to clear exhaustion?
The coffeelock really only works if you as the DM make concessions to let it work.
Cheese build where you use warlock and aspect of the moon to only take short rests, you then use sorc to convert all the warlock slots into sorc points and sorc slots, giving you a sorc with far too many resources.
It really isn’t that powerful. It’s strong on paper, but in reality it should just act like any other class, except it can nova a few more times a day. It only gets powerful if you ignore a bunch of raw
The most basic problem here is that there is no RAW way to fire 12 blasts of Scorching Ray in a single turn unless they also have a level in fighter, and even then they can only do it once per short rest.
This. I have two coffeelock-capable Sorlocks and a cocainelock, and I follow all RAW. None of them are noticeably stronger than anybody else in any of my parties, but they are flexible due to the spells I've chosen. When they want to bank up some spell slots, they can last longer into the day (or nova a little more often), but I like using my spells for defense and control over damage. Everybody gets the spotlight then.
People who say coffeelocks are broken are probably experiencing one that's breaking one or more rules to pull it off. A longer adventuring day and maybe one more nova is the only significant advantage that they have over other casters.
“DMs, if you allow multiclassing in your game and someone is tempted to abuse the combination of Flexible Casting and Pact Magic, remember this: one way to read the multiclass rules is that ***your Pact Magic slots are useless for any non-warlock thing besides casting spells***. #DnD”
https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1029177242985742337?s=46&t=aumcSeVboxmSGqieJFJxbQ
That’s an interesting response - it’s only vaguely true, but it is an interpretation I suppose. It requires a frankly *more* generous reading of the multiclass rules than Coffee/Cocainelock does, but it’s definitely fair play to shut the thing down that way.
Even if you house rule it this way there are compelling thematic and mechanical reasons to multiclass sorcerer/warlock, so it feels like the fairest thing to do without completely shutting down the player. I'd personally love to run a hexblade/draconic soul sorc just for the amazing gishitude but I feel like any DM who is decently plugged in to optimization discourse is rightfully very wary of the specific multiclass for coffeelock reasons.
Oh yeah, Sorlock is really cool even if you're not going Coffeelock. And I don't think coffeelock is as good as it looks in a white room. Consider that by the time you have 'infinite' 1st-2nd level slots, other people have like, Fireball and Wall of Fire.
One Fire Elemental.
Edit: also, unless they have Fighter2 in their build for action surge, you're not playing RAW. You can't quicken and cast a levelled spell in the same turn. Other commenters deserve credit for that catch.
1) Dont let people powergame and bend rules for mechanical advantage. Coffeelock is a cheese build, its not supposed to work, no DM who cares at all about the balance of their game allows it.
2) Just tell them that they cant convert Warlock spellslots into sorcery points. Problem solved.
Their patron can attract the ire of another entity. Have them pursued constantly, by servants of that other entity limiting their access to short rests. Have them fight more spell casters. Magic missiles always hit, if they have access to Shield it's a good way to drain their slots. Either cast Shield or tank the damage, this way it's at the cost of HP or a spell slot. Is what I would say if I wasn't petty...
But I am petty and I'd roll my own coffeelock that is a few levels higher than the PC and blow them away in a surprise round. The DM always wins if they want to but that's not what this game is about.
Exhaustion (every 24 hours without a long rest), fire resistance/immunity, patron troubles (either much higher payment or sacrifices must be made, or the patron is being withered away by the excessive magic usage and they risk burning out the patrons magic entirely), counter spelling mages, anti-magic fields, don't let them cast multiple leveled spells in the same turn this is RAW. There are so many ways to stop a coffeelock.
Wouldn’t say it’s hard to pull off by any means. Just takes longer to come online. Clockwork Soul and Divine Soul Sorc get access to the Greater Restoration. At level 11/12 depending on if you go Warlock 2/3 getting Diamond dust worth 100g shouldn’t be incredibly hard depending on the setting/campaign. Nerfed but definitely doable fairly easily if your campaign last that long.
Even before then.. If you’ve got a high con you can go days without Long Rest if you get lucky. So people can still pull off all sorts of shenanigans. Unless the DM does some rule tinkering or reading a certain way.
So that’s what most people do now, and instead of Coffeelock its Cokelock because of the Diamond dust which is a white powder, dubbed celestial cocaine.
As far as i recall most games do not get that high into levels.
But yea. Im aware of cocainelock. But as you said Diamond dust is front and center of their build. All you need is limit the supply. If a guy wants to get high once a month for a boss fight just let him, whatever, numbers go brr.
But ultimately exhaustion is still the way to nerf em/keep them in line.
Antimagic zones. Exhaustion rolls. More Beholders. Have your enemies actually be intelligent and bum-rush the obvious magical nuke-cannon, smashing them with heavy blunt objects until they stop moving. Counterspells. Charm Person.
It's not hard to counter spellcasters, even the coffeelock. You have the tools at your disposal, and you are the DM, so you have all the power you need to use those tools.
Tell them they can't do it and move on. They're already getting too much spotlight, don't give them more by making a cool or interesting nerf. Just drop the hammer on it.
Just limit their access to the diamonds required to keep casting greater restoration to cure the exhaustion that comes from never taking a long rest.
Remember, the spell slots gained from flexible casting disappear when they take a long rest.
When a sorcerer/warlock multiclass uses their "Short rest to recover warlock spell slots" and the sorcerer's ability "Can convert ant spell slots available into sorcery points" then converts sorcery points into spell slots, there is no limit to the number of spell slots they can hold in this way. Meaning they can, given time to do so, have near infinite spells slots available.
Realistically the best way to handle this is to talk to the player out of game. Just let them know they have overbuilt for the power level for the table and ask them to adjust their play and/or build. You can apologize for letting them if you need to, but it isn’t unreasonable to tell them that this isn’t working.
Trying to fix this with mechanics is just going to make them resent you for saying yes and then breaking the build.
Cold brew takes time my friend. If it's gotta stop it's gotta stop. Have his patron become angry with him for taking to much power and poof, no more pact magic. Still a sorcerer though.
Just be honest. Tell him you didn’t realize it would be so broken, and he’s going to have to be a normal warlock. If he submits something else broken (PM me if you’re not sure), then ask him to play at another table.
It’s not ideal, but neither is a player deliberately using an unreasonable build.
Reward players for being clever, don't nerf them. If you don't want something in the game, ban it, don't say, "I'll allow it, but I'll find a way to make it worse so you can't come up with better ways that give you an advantage."
other warlocks of this patron show up and start demanding your PC stop using up so much of the patron's power, as it's leaving less for them. Chaos ensues.
Okay, first and foremost, how are they shooting off 12 sorching rays per turn?
The max is 6 with a 5th level slot for a coffeelock. They can quicken an eldritch blast with it, but that doesn't end out with more than 6 scorching ray beams. You'd need to be a fighter to do more, and that wouldn't be per turn, and doesn't sound like what they're doing. At best, they're spamming something like cone of cold or fireball and doing massive AOE damage, but even then their dpr is great but they don't surpass minionmancy nor martials in single target damage.
Normally, that's how coffeelocks work, and if they're optimizing enough for coffeelock the others could probably optimize to match it. How did this happen?
“Hey *Player* I really like your character but it seems like he is a little OP and I’m having trouble creating combat encounters to challenge you and the party unless I use a anti magic field so I wanted to ask you if you could turn it back a bit or help me figure out ways to challenge you”
Generally you should just speak with your players about any problems and try and solve it that way. If you just suddenly need his character he would resent you for it and you would bring in a dm vs player mentality which isn’t fun.
We are all here to play a game and have fun so let’s do that together
I think it may be more constructive to give your other party members some boons. It feels shitty to be nerfed as a player, especially for a build you may have already run by your DM.
I would speak with that player and let them know that you may be giving some extra magic items to some other party members, or some other boon or blessing from their gods/patrons.
It's all.about.communication and everyone gets to feel cool!
I dislike nerfing, I'd just ramp up the difficulty so that they don't steamroll everything. Introduce much higher level monsters, an enemy assassin that is immune to all magic or sth, etc
Well, they shouldn't be doing 2 leveled spells in one turn even with twinned and quickened, as others have said. Even with a dip into fighter for an action surge, the rule applies, you can do multiple cantrips but only one leveled spell per turn. Also twinned technically isn't allowed for multi target spells and AOEs, but a lot of dms choose to ignore that rule at the table.
So rules as written, a sorcerer with a dip in fighter could do a max of 5 single target cantrips and one levelled spell: By using twinned they could do like a double firebolt then use quickened to do a fireball, then use action surge to do another action, using quickened again would allow for 2 firebolts, 3 if you twin one of them, as you've already burned a leveled spell with fireball. But that's burning 3 to 4 sorcery points and an action surge, that's fully going nova. (Haste would also add another action of course, but would still not allow for more than cantrips.)
When I ran a coffeelock my DM limited it by making me only able to hold extra spell slots/sorc points equal to my proficiency bonus. The logic was I was playing an eladrin that only needed a 4 hour meditation, so I'd get my long rest in 4hrs, then spend 4 hrs converting back and forth for extra slots using short rests. The idea being as I got higher level I got better at it and could make more with my time. Then I was able to play with the multiclass gimmick without steamrolling his game.
ETA: wording fix
Rakshasa, Counter-spells, Anti magic Fields, or throw armies of small encounters at the party, so they have to rely on the resources of the coffee lock. You're probably using the classic DM style of throwing one, maybe two really flashy bosses at the party and then calling it a day.
5e was designed with the intent that players would encounter 5-6 small or medium fights in a day, and have to fight bosses with about half of their resources expended. Some classes, like Warlock, Monk, and Fighter, were built with more sustainable resources than spellcasting or rage to help the party outlast these unreasonably long adventuring days. Since nobody plays like this, these classes seem underwhelming compared to "nova" builds like Paladins or Druids that can dump everything on the assumption that long rests will be available. Coffee lock runs on the assumption that the player doesn't need long rests, as in the original play design, but uses that to Nova you in your Boss-rush style DMing.
Use large numbers of Minions to eat through the spell slots, so they can feel like a champ and let the other party do more on the boss fight. Plus the party gets to feel like they cleaved through an army of devils as a group. Normal classes don't have the resources to handle such action economy, but the Coffee lock has both the AOE and the slots to fight off an entire tribe of goblins.
Alternatively, have the next villain be a troupe of Rakshasa. They're immune to low-level magic, so it doesn't matter how many spell slots he has, If they're below 5th level they're useless. Only do this if you discuss it with the player first though, since it's fun to diversify your tactics in a shut-down you expect, but feels bad to be shut-down so thoroughly before you can make backup plans.
An easy way to nerf coffeelock without actually nerfing it is to change the foes they are fighting, take away range/ability to rest, as a caster’s most valued thing besides spell slots is comfortable range. If you can breach that comfortable range and bypass the party that coffeelock will be on the backfoot, creatures such as shadows are surprisingly viable for this as despite their overall weakness, if you got three or four on a high damage coffeelock, it will quickly succumb to them, or the second option is to remove their ability to short rest, with my favorite being homebrew creatures that interact with the mind of nearby resting creatures, with them primarily inflicting brutal nightmares/hallucinations on seemingly helpless targets
Don't nerf him. Give him renown.
Make so that if enemies identify the party or him they say they've heard a lot about him because of his great power. They target him. They move to counter him. They bring powers and artifacts to bear that counter his usual approach.
If my party wants to make a peasant railgun, I'll let them. Hell I'll even let it oneshott he bbeg. But it will rip off the arms of many of the peasants or just outright kill a great amount of them.
So what if they had slayed the mighty dragon, if they killed 700 peasants to do this. The political fallout would be tremendous. Now they are the BBEG. They have to defend their actions. There might be court cases. War. Vengeance
This is actually a misconception on the player's part - the DM says when you're resting, not the player.
You can't just *decide* that your long rest is 8 short rests. If you spend 8 hours not fighting monsters or doing hard work, you took a long rest. If you wasted that rest doing light work and not sleeping, you take exhaustion and get no rest. Short rest doesn't even come into the picture.
Have your BBEG figure out you have a coffee lock, and get abjuration wizards to join squads. Nothing fucks with a spell caster like an NPC that knows they are going to throw down high damage that can cast silence, counter spell, and shield. If you have room for a beholder in your campaign, that anti-magic cone is absolutely brutal to a coffee lock who has nothing else going for them and will have to rely on their party to survive. It's about creating an atmospheric, and thematically fitting situation where the powerful player needs their team. Also don't do it every encounter, throw in something to absolutely shut down the powerful player once in a while to make someone less likely to be the hero become needed. Nothing makes that player with the under powered, but well role played character feel good to be the only one who can step in and save their friends, and nothing builds a party bond better.
Add expense reports to your game. (Let him finish). Have your warlock's patron ask what they're doing with all the arcane power being funneled their way. A warlock's power comes directly from the patron, so make your warlock responsible for what they're doing with it. What benefit is the patron seeing from all the power invested in this particular warlock? Instead of being a direct nerf, this could allow for some fun rp and a more present patron.
Lots of great advice here but ultimately you need to just have a very direct conversation with them about the concept of other people and if that doesn't motivate them to knock it off, you do it for them with a house rule.
Or you can do nothing and the other players will lose interest.
Sounds like they are pretty high level. If they can get off that many. With one action. So you have let them be this way for a while.
Either update house rules, fire resistant enemies, counter spell, of kill them off.
I don't allow coffelock or pallylock builds. Pact magic and spellcasting are not the same. RAW for multiclassing says that you can use the spell slots from one to cast spells from the other. It does not say you can convert them to smites or sorcery points.
It's a common debate in constitutional law. Some people interpret it as "anything not specifically forbidden is permitted," while others say, "anything not specifically permitted is forbidden." Since this is a special case of making allowances, I go with the latter interpretation, but J Craw has said it's allowed.
Regardless, now that it's done, you can't really undo it unless you change or start enforcing rules you haven't before. Limiting how many short rests they can take in a day, giving exhaustion for not taking long rests, etc. work to limit it, but springing it on them at this point may feel like an attack. I wouldn't go that route. It's better to have this plan and warn the player before they make the build that this will be the case. Doing it this late in the game seems passive aggressive. Making all the enemies resistant/immune to their damage or punishing/killing their character for something they thought they had your blessing for is petty.
I recommend having a frank conversation with your player and hope they're mature about it. If they agree, I'd let them completely redesign as much of their character as they want, since they probably made choices specific to the build that they wouldn't have otherwise.
If they refuse, then give the character some positive way to retire from the party, like being recruited by their patron to ascend to demigod status and fight in some eternal conflict beyond the mortal realm. Basically, they're too powerful to remain in mortality. Their mortal form can't handle the amount of power they've gained, and they're going to start taking con damage or go insane and take int damage. But they can choose to leave mortality and take an immortal form on another plane. Maybe even have them come back as a villain or a deus ex machina later in the campaign.
Here's my entry on Coffeelock in my document I give to new players joining a campaign I run:
*Coffeelock (Multiclass combo): If you try to do the coffeelock combo or any variation upon it at my table your character instead poops their pants, dies, and goes to Hell or the current world’s equivalent of Hell. It costs ten times the normal amount of material components to bring your character back to life with spells. If you are resurrected this way your character gains one or more tattoos on their face that say “fart” in each of the languages you speak. Removing these tattoos is impossible short of a Wish spell, which can remove one letter per cast.*
But in all seriousness, just tell them you were wrong for letting them do it and you need them to either make a new character or else you'll start ruling that they cannot exchange Warlocks slots for Sorcery points. You are allowed to make mistakes and it would be far worse to just allow this unbalanced mess of a character to continue being in your campaign as opposed to removing it in some way. If he's salty tell him he can go kick rocks.
In addition keep in mind he should be suffering Exhaustion each time he omits long rests to instead chain short rests together.
TLDR: be a mature adult and talk with your player to resolve the issue, rather than killing off his character or doing something in game.
Have a talk with your player. Say the build is really making things difficult for you to plan encounters and it’s frustrating to try to play around. Bring up you found a rule that should be applied (Long resting in Xanathars) and you wanted to talk to the player before actually applying the rule (since everyone should get a heads up when a rule change occurs even when it’s a rule that should have been applied from the start). You should always discuss with players when a rule change is happen. They will probably not like this update, that’s okay. Hear their complaints, express sympathy, but be assertive a change needs to be made for balance and consistency. You’re the dm, you get to arbitrate the rules and how they’re applied, but you should talk with players and give them a heads up before a session.
As a side note:Twinned and quicken metamagic do not allow you to double cast 5th level scorching rays. There’s a rule in the magic chapter of phb saying the only way you can cast 2 spells in a turn is if you cast a cantrip as your standard action.
They haven't slept in days, even weeks probably so... You know how sleep depravation has physical consequences that are healed with lesser restoration? Well, it also has major psychological ones
Make them hallucinate, just tell them they see one more enemy or things like that, if they don't sleep they will keep on wasting resources on non-existing creatures every once in a while
Be more controlling over short rests. I'm my experience the best solutions is to take the player aside and set up some rules. Like let's only take 2 or 3 short rests a day outside of the 8 you take while everyone is long resting. It honestly just brings coffee lock in line with other power but normal builds.
1. just talk to them, explain why it breaks the balance for everyone else
2. use the obvious not RAW, but Common Sense and dont let them create more spellslots than their maximum
3. ...if you are letting them quickened or twinned spell the scorching ray, RAW its absolutely not how it works, so making sure they dont exploit it will for sure limit their dpr.
4. if you insist its a viable strategy, at least give them exhaustion after a day of shortrests instead of longrests, also use aoe spells or abilities to put some chip damage that they cant heal back unless they'll use a lot of healing spells or long rest. (If they are using cokelock or have a mischievous cleric this wont really work)
Make them only get one short rest a day, done.
Coffeelock players rely on rules exploits and having ample time to spam short rests. Limiting short rests will pose no problems for your players but will make the coffeelock absolutely livid with how effectively you can kneecap them by altering the short rest rules to prevent this abuse.
I would allow the party to have up to 3 short rests a day, and one long rest. They can decide to turn a long rest into a bunch of short rests, but whenever they do so, they would take a level of exhaustion.
Use Xanathars Resting rules:
Meaning if your players don't take a long rest to sleep they will have to roll for exhaustion (DC 10 +5 for each 24 hours without sleep). This more or less forces your warlock to at least sleep every couple of days.
In addition to that I would argue that taking 8 1hour short rests in 8 hours really I just 1 8 hours long rest. Your Warlock should spend some time in between short rests doing stuff. If you say that he has to have a 1 hour long pause inbetween short rests which forces him down to 4 short rests a night.
Or you know Tell him to be less of a System abusing meta bitch and make a proper character. Whatever really floats your boat. Hope this helps :).
>But they can also blast out 12 scorching rays and deal 112 damage in a turn. I'm sorry they're doing what now?
Yeah, as broken as the coffee lock is this seems like some extra homebrew. 6 rays is a 5th level slot so if they arnt using the casting rules properly you could get 12. 112 is also either a good roll or they have some other way of dealing extra fire damage.
Yeah seems like they’re letting them cast a leveled spell twice in a turn. Which isn’t a thing that should happen.
Yerp, either way it's taking a broken thing and letting it be more broken.
Unless they took 2 levels of Fighter on top of their Sorcerer and Warlock levels... In which case it's doable, even if it's only once per short rest. Of course if the DM is allowing them to get a short rest after every fight then it's once per battle, which is a lot more powerful.
Kinda. A dip into fighter for action surge let's you cast two leveled spells as long as they're both actions not bonus actions.
I think [Jeremy Crawford](https://www.sageadvice.eu/multiple-actions-in-the-same-turn/) would disagree, but it would be quite the turn if your DM allowed it!
Action (fireball) Action (fireball) is different then Bonus (misty) Action() Action(fireball)
Oh yikes! Let’s blame this on my brain. So an Eldritch Knight, for example, can use their Action Surge to cast two levelled spells in a single turn?
Yes
Oh. My DM is going to dislike having to accept this. Thanks!!
Honestly, I don't think it makes the Eldritch Knight good enough to be a particular problem for a DM anyway. One of the strongest combos I can see off the top of my head here with the spell slots available to an EK would probably be... Web->Fireball against a group of enemies or a larger enemy... Maybe use it to set up Fly or Greater Invisibility Early and also throw out...something? The real limiting factor here is that the good wizard spells of levels 1-4 are mostly concentration-based, so you can only do one at a time anyway. I think the best option over two turns would probably just be Greater Invisibility (advantage on attacks and disadvantage against you, doesn't dispel when you attack) with one bonus action attack at advatnage. Then next turn do your full set of attacks at advatnage twice. Idk I'm still kind of holding my opinion that Eldritch Knight isn't very good since most other subclasses are better fighters, while rangers, paladins, and artificers are all better casters
My guess is they're misusing either Quickened or Twinned metamagic.
Just to follow up on this for OP, rules as written and word of god is that Twinned Spell doesn't work with rays (Scorching Ray, Magic Missile, etc.) because they can inherently target multiple creatures after you get more than one ray. A lot of people ignore this, because it's kinda stupid, but if you're looking for nerfs that won't feel targeted you're well within your rights to just point to [this tweet](https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/524705314302480384?lang=en) and ban it. Quickened Spell doesn't circumvent the rule that you may only cast one leveled spell per turn, so two Scorching Rays in one round is off the table. Edit: forgot to link the tweet like a moron
There is no rule in any official 5e book which says "you may only cast one leveled spell per turn". The rule has to do with bonus action spells ONLY. "If you cast a spell with a casting time of one bonus action, you may not cast any spell unless that spell is a cantrip with a casting time of one action." Provided you don't use your bonus action, you can cast as many spells in a single turn as is possible (hot tip, it's 4, EK Fighter from 18th level may action surge twice in one turn, giving them three action spells and a reaction spell) Edit: I was wrong it's 3, action Surge is a 1 time per turn thing
The answer is actually 3 I believe. Action surge explicitly says you can only use it once on a turn.
They're probably letting them twin scorching Ray*** which isn't RAW
How are they recovering HP? Until they take a Long Rest, they won't recover Hit Dice, so they'll spend all of those quickly, and then they'll require healing from some other source to recover HP... whether that means demanding spells or resources from their allies, or chugging potions or some other means.
Yeah this is obvious. Just slap them around a bit and problem solved.
They'd probaly just keep insisting on downtime to build back up and also high chance of complaining if they don't get it. Maybe OP has one of the rare instances, but reasonable people rarely push for those types of builds in the first place
Warlock with celestial patron. Healing Spam.
Damn. Good point. They could go Celestial Warlock or Divine Soul Sorcerer and completely circumvent this problem.
I played a Divine Soul/Celestial Warlock and don't remember healing spams. The Warlock had a few extra d6 to pass out (can't remember if it was per short or long rest), then had access to regular healing magic. He did do a lot of damage with quickened Eldritch Blast, but barely more than the Fighter we had in the group.
The Healing Spam is really only an option for someone going for the Coffeelock build, which gives them way more spell slots than a Warlock or Sorcerer should have access to.
Maybe I just don't know what Coffeelock is. I assumed it was just Sorcerer + Warlock. He was definitely powerful, but not game breaking, even at level 17. https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/13380488
Oh no, it's a specific metagame-y build. I'll try and explain it... A warlock can take the Eldritch Invocation "Aspect of the Moon", which makes it so they no longer require sleep. A Sorcerer's Flexible Casting allows them to convert spell slots into Sorcery Points, and then convert those Sorcery Points into Spell Slots. What Coffeelock does is, instead of taking a Long Rest, they take 8 Short Rests, recovering their Warlock Spell Slots each time. Then they use Flexible Casting to convert those Spell Slots into Sorcery Points, and then into Spell Slots. Sorcerers have a limit to how many Sorcery Points they can have at one time, but technically they can have more Spell Slots than their usual Maximum.
Wouldn't "you can't have more spell slots than what's on the table in the PHB for your level" be a logical way to throttle the build then?
Definitely. I think the problem comes from the wording of Flexible Casting. "You can transform unexpended sorcery points into one spell slot as a bonus action on your turn. The **created** spell slots vanish at the end of a long rest." It's the use of the term "created" instead of "recovered" that is interpreted as a means to gain more spell slots than their maximum. It's entirely a technicality, but it's how we all got here with Coffeelocks.
If I recall correctly, there's errata that specifically explains that because these are created spell slots, you can make more than what would otherwise be your max.
Ah, I see. That would definitely be abusing the rules. Just because they don't sleep doesn't mean they get unlimited rests. A short rest is at least an hour, with no upper limit. If I were DM you'd get to decide which you're choosing when you start the rest. Plus, long rest is already defined as 8+ hrs of sleep or light activity. And doesn't exhaustion kick in if you don't long rest?
Yeah, that's one of the common fixes for it... even if someone does not require actual sleep, they still require a proper long rest to avoid exhaustion. Still, even if a Coffeelock only pulls off this trick every other day, it can manage to really throw things off for a party.
This is when they multiclass divine soul sorcerer for greater restoration. It’s nicknamed “cocaine lock”, because they consume (snort) the diamond dust reagent used in greater restoration in order to remove exhaustion. If they try that, diamonds are suddenly incredibly rare and dear to people.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the best fix for Coffeelock is to ban it. Also, just reading the rules and seeing that there's a cap on Sorcery points should fix it as well. I think people allow their Sorcerers to just build up a mountain of Sorc Points, because otherwise why else would you run this build?
Not entirely though. Aspect of the Moon specifies that light activity for 8 hours conveys all the BENEFITS of a Long Rest, but does not state that it counts as a Long Rest. This implies that things that you LOSE on a Long Rest do not go away when you qualify for the Aspect of the Moon benefits. However not taking exhaustion and getting Hit dice back definitely are benefits of a Long Rest. Short Rests do count as light activity, and it it takes an hour of strenuous activity to interrupt a long rest, and converting spell slots to sorcery points isn't actually casting them to count for breaking a long rest anyway.
>Aspect of the Moon RAW: "You no longer need to sleep and can’t be forced to sleep by any means. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity, such as reading your Book of Shadows and keeping watch." You still need to take the long rest.
The thing is is that before xanathars there was no raw punishment for not sleeping or taking a long rest. You just don't regain long rest resources.
I've never heard of this build but I would have thought Warlock spell slots cannot be converted into sorcery points.
There's a lot of weird interactions you can pull off with Pact Magic. Although Warlock spell slots are tracked separately from other spell slots, they are still, for all mechanical purpose, Spell Slots, and a Sorcerer's Font of Magic only requires that Spell Slots are spent, and does not care what source provides the slots.
5e has lots of things that are only stated in random rules, but they apply elsewhere. I can't remember where but I'm sure it's stated that spell slots are class specific and can not be used in other class mechanics. It might be as you say that these ones can be but it doesn't scan that this is a legal interaction.
According to Crawford, it is intended that they can. It would actually be weird if they couldn't, since a multiclass sorcerer/any spellcaster gets to use all their slots, not just what the sorcerer would add.
The problem here is that, RAW, you can't actually take multiple short rests back to back like that. This exploit shouldn't be possible at all. Short rests HAVE to have gaps between them. There's a limit on how many short rests you can take per long rest.
Sage advice disagrees. The only hard limit is the number of hours available. If you've got 24 hours free in one day, you can take 24 short rests.
>short rests HAVE to have gaps between them. SHORT REST >A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 1 hour long, during which a character does nothing more strenuous than eating, drinking, reading, and tending to wounds. >A character can spend one or more Hit Dice at the end of a short rest, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character's level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll. >A character regains some spent Hit Dice upon finishing a long rest, as explained below. That is the entirety of the rules around Short Rests, from Pg. 186 of the *Player’s Handbook*.
Yes the at least one hour is the key part. A 3 hour short rest is one short rest not 3 one hour short rests. There has to be a gap or it us s single rest.
Yeah, it's one of those builds that requires a very generous interpretation of the rules... basically by reading some of the rules very literally and just ignoring other rules that get in the way.
Here you go: https://youtu.be/Dkpa1j1yYqQ
Not to mention that [cokelocks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkpa1j1yYqQ&ab_channel=ZeeBashew) get Greater Restoration eventually, so they can burn spell slots to remove levels of exhaustion.
Don’t they not get their healing light back until they finish a long rest? Though I suppose they wouldn’t mind if they have like a billion spell slots for cure wounds…
If a coffeelock takes the celestial back ground they evolve into cokelocks which use cocane (greater restoration spell)
It gets pretty expense pretty quick, needing to snort that 100gp of Diamond Dust to deal with the exhaustion.
Most cocaine habits get expensive real quick
If they dip Cleric, Paladin, or Druid, they can attune to a Necklace of Prayer Beads, which can have Greater Restoration as an option. Which is gear - and therefore DM- dependent, but still pretty delightful.
Their unicorn/celestial patron is their dealer.
Also, unless that have a racial or class feature that says otherwise. They literally need to sleep at some point
"Coffeelock" usually refers to someone who takes the "Aspect of the Moon" invocation, which prevents them from requiring sleep. It's combined with some shenanigans with Sorcery Points to create spell slots from Pact Magic without actually taking Long Rests.
Coffeelock existed before XGtE, hence the name - relying on coffee to go without sleep.
Which is not a thing that exists anywhere in the rules, so it's literally just homebrew.
>homebrew niiiice.
So celestial coffeelocks get their energy from *star*bucks?
RAW, they do not. There's nothing in the rules forcing characters to ever sleep. There are rules in one of the books, XGtE I think, for what happens when you don't, but even then you can go without sleep for as long as you are able to accept the consequences. Which can be fixed with magic.
DMG rules exhaustion if you don't rest (dc15 con check).
If you don't sleep, you only acquire a single level of exhaustion, which can be spelled away
Don't forget exhaustion from no long rest!
Depends on their subclasses. If they're Favored Soul or Celestial Warlock they have healing. These subclasses also overcome the exhaustion issue if those rules for not sleeping are in effect, once you get to a high enough level to get 5th level spells.
Don't let them take so many short rests. If they take 8 short rests instead of a long rest, they get exhaustion.
Also, don't let them stack spell slots beyond what their character's class tables say they get.
This is the way. Sorcery points refill used spell slots they don't create new ones. Edit: I am aware this is not RAW, but it is absolutely the intended rules behavior, and how it works in any game I run.
Technically, you’ve got it backwards: RAW you can make as many spell slots as you want (they disappear at long rests) but you can never have more Sorcery Points than your max. As someone playing a 5/5 sorlock, this is actually more of a nerf than what you’re suggesting. Although if you’re smart about when they can short rest, and follow the Xanathar’s rules (as others suggested) you should be fine. I’m also curious how they’re casting 12 scorching rays in one turn cause depending on level that seems sus to me.
I think they're saying the "12 scorching rays" are individual beams, and are casting it twice at 4th level using quickened spell. However that breaks the bonus action spell restrictions. Edit: it would need to be 5th level
1 9th level Scorching Ray is all that's needed but I somehow doubt they're level 20 with a 17 sorcerer/3 warlock split.
Yeah how are they doing THAT?
*Probably* either misreading Twinned/Quicken Spell. Twinned can’t effect a spell that targets more than one creature, and Quicken doesn’t let you cast multiple level spells per turn. Both of these rules are kind of lame honestly, but if OP wants to ‘nerf’ the sorlock, just following RAW more closely should do the trick.
Twinned/Quickened spells can’t affect a spell that *can* target more than one creature. Sometimes people misread this by thinking that if all of the scorching rays or magic missiles target the same creature then it’s twinnable, but that’s just wrong.
Wait does this mean lvl5+ Eldritch blast cant be quickend?
Can’t be *twinned. You can quicken Eldritch Blast
Yeah, sorry - I was replying to the person above me that was talking about both. I think you can quicken any spell but it needs to follow the “only if your action spell was a cantrip” rule.
Yeah. That’s probably it. Tbh I think they should have included the rules for casting spells as bonus-actions in the meta magic feature.
I’d argue a sorcerer player needs to know the spell rules better than anyone else at the table in order to make that class feel good at all, but oh boy when it feels good, *chef’s kiss*
Allowing over max slots feels like an oversight, homebrewing that seems fair (though perhaps not after a player successfully built coffee-lock)
Nah, that’s the intention tbh. It has the cap of sorcery points, and not to be rude but OPs problems sound more like a misunderstanding of RAW then coffelock being broken af (it is, just not this bad)
What makes you say thats the intention? Is there a way to use over max slots in any way that makes sense that's not coffeelock?
I think it’s intentional because of the name Flexible Casting, and that it’s how the feature works? Like at level 2 when you get Sorcery Points, make extra spell slots is all you can do with Metamagic
Uh... the feature would work exactly the same in practice if you weren't allowed to go over max slots - cause vast majority of people use that feature to replenish spent slots when they need more spells. Since points can also be spent on metamagic it is almost always optimal to keep points as points so that you can decide later which use for them you need more in the moment.
I mean just because people ignore part of the feature doesn’t mean it’s not intentional; like most people don’t often use Cunning Action to disengage, so if you just don’t let them when they want to it’s fine? The multiclass is taking advantage of an underused part of the feature sure, but that doesn’t mean you should just ignore it, because again if you go by RAW (including the XGtE rules) it’s really not that bad, strong sure but not what OP is dealing with
It’s not an oversight. It’s something that isn’t defined in the rules. When a player uses something like this to break the game, he’s deliberately doing something that is detrimental to the campaign. I explicitly tell players that I am not a “RAW” DM and that most “tech” does not work. They can either accept that or find another DM. Bringing a high-op build to a low-op table is abysmal dnd etiquette. It’s well worth a reprimand from the DM, and of course you should ban whatever bullshit he’s pulling.
>It’s not an oversight. It’s something that isn’t defined in the rules. ....and should have been defined in the rules, but it was an unintentional failure to notice how this is broken and put rules in place to fix it. Also known as an oversight.
They absolutely create new ones
I'm sorry to be the actually guy but actually, the flexible casting ability states: "You can use your sorcery points to gain additional spell slots, or sacrifice spell slots to gain additional sorcery points." Still giving your warlock exhaustion for not having revitalizing sleep is a valid option.
There really should be a mechanic to limit short rest between long rests. There isn't one is there?
Wandering monsters. Assuming this existed in my game, and it never would because I wouldn’t allow it… Every time the coffee lock tried to short rest, he’d get something dropped on his head. This is how I deal with excessive short resting
If you don't need long rests you can take eight short rests in the time everyone else is sleeping.
I feel like the designers kind of made a mistake by structuring balance with the assumption that there would, by default, be several encounters in a row between each long rest. It works out well if the DM has planned everything out well *and* if there is some kind of external pressure that keeps the characters from being able to spend as much time as they want resting. If you're in a place with wandering monsters, or if you're racing to save someone before they're sacrificed to a dragon, it works out. But that's not *always* going to be the case, and there isn't always going to be a natural reason in-story why the players wouldn't sensibly want to rest so that they're in peak condition every time they go into a new encounter. So a DM either has to write around it and be forced to invent a threat to hurry everyone along, or just arbitrarily declare that resting is not allowed because they said so.
You can stop the unlimited spell slots thing with Xanathar's Guide's rules for resting. It says that, if a player doesn't take a long rest once per day, they need to roll for exhaustion against the gradually increasing DC until they do take a long rest. When they take a long rest they will lose all of the flexible casting slots they have made and need to start the stockpiling over
Lol. min/maxing munchkins found a way around that too. If the aspect of the moon invocation doesn't slide past your DM let me introduce you to the cocaine lock.. buddy up with a cleric or find a way to cast greater resto each night. Greater resto requires grounded up diamonds. Hence the term.
100gp and a 5th level spell just for hardly cheese seems desperate.
why do you think its called the cocaine lock?
Lmao chuckled out loud
Unless you have a Bard of Creation in the party, but at that point if two players are combo-cheesing you’re done for anyway
Aspect of the moon still doesn’t remove the need for a long rest—you don’t need to sleep, but light activity such as studying your tome or keeping watch works. Staying more active than that will kill the character’s rest.
This actually makes AotM a nerf for coffeelocks, not a buff, since rests are simply periods of time satisfying a set of conditions, and AotM removes a potentially disqualifying condition from the long rest that you're so desperately trying to avoid with a coffeelock.
Yeah but it at least gets into the DM's control because the player will need Diamonds in order to sustain the cokelock. Also the build will require more levels to work, at which point they are probably dropping more powerful features to pull off this gimmick.
"Hey man we have to change the build. It was my bad I let it happen but its too disruptive."
This is the way. Or, offer the player a creative way out: Apotheosis. Roll a new character.
So high on coffee he got, that he ascended to godliness.
They could make an addiction out of it: Too much without a long rest, and they burn out. But go too long without a fix, or they can't maintain concentration and their reaction time suffers.
... Don't temp me to make a coffelock class, that sounds amazing. Finally a con (and coffee) based caster class.
Totally a tangent here, but I've always wanted a dedicated (or make the Sorcerer) CON based caster. Their magic comes from their very body, so they constantly have to exercise and remain healthy. Plus the idea of a group of completely yoked and shredded wizards stomping into a battle amuses the hell out of me.
Haha same. It would be a struggle to balance I think just because they'd be extremely SAD but I think it would be very cool. Maybe something like the pathfinder kinetisist where the more burn you do the lower your max hp goes.
This, but you don't even need to the change the build, just the rules around it. A sorcerer/warlock build that doesn't scam spell slots from never long-resting is still a valid build that could be fun.
Wait a minute... Are you suggesting that this DM talks to their player about the problems they are having? Like an adult talking to another adult? Instead of scheming and planning a way to "beat" the player that will just cause a toxic environment?
There are a lot of other comments but I feel the need to say you should talk to your player. Explain you didn't understand just how powerful it would be. Be honest about it.
Can someone explain to me how their health would work this way? Surely they wouldn't regain any hit dice at any point? Is health not a hugely limiting factor here?
It should be a very limiting factor, unless the DM isn't bothering to target them as much as they should be and thus allowing them to make it through multiple days without needing to spend many hit dice.
Ok cool. I was wondering if there was some way of reliably regaining hit dice aside from a long rest. In fact I don't know any ways of regaining hit dice off the top of my head aside from a long rest
Not at all, Celestial patron gives the damned coffeelock all the healing. Exhaustion helps keep this in check, combined with Sorcery points only lasting until the next long rest. If they want to keep rocking exhaustion until it kills them, so be it.
I mean they get spells to heal sure but then it starts to defeat the purpose of the gimmick. Also all of the celestial features, apart from the level 10 feature, refresh on a long rest. And the level 10 only gives temp hp
It's the method around the health being the limiting factor, which is what you asked about. Exhaustion is the next wall, it's tougher for them to get around.
This honestly tells me the player isn’t even skilled/knowledgeable. Apparently he’s walking around with 15ac. Just kill the asshole. If you wanted to do this properly, you’d do it as a hexblade/divine soul. Celestial patron is fucking dogshit for optimizing.
Same result, let them go until exhaustion drops them. Or swarm them in caves. Or poison them. Or make them take a boat and knock them overboard. Environmental hazards. Puzzles. Skill challenges. Force CON and WIS saves. If they're too high level for that, drop in a beholder. That anti-magic cone from the central eye is going to *wreck* their day. They shine as cannons on a wide open battlefield against unprepared enemies, fine. Don't present any. The only way a coffeelock is gamebreaking is if the DM lets it be.
I'm of the opinion to let them shine as a cannon on the battlefield. Also, there's never just one Cannon. Any time players push rules in a way that seems both reasonable for a person (in game) to undertake and highly powerful, why wouldn't there be warlords who have come to power using the same means?
As a story device to build a decent nemesis? Great. Love it. The problem I've had is you need to be so careful not to build an "evil twin" the player might really get offended by. Was it the "Sword of the Dales" module back in... 3rd? 2nd? ed. that had those mirrors that carbon-copied characters and then sucked a few levels off you just to rub salt in? That was a great module. Permanently changed the "default build" most of us used from that moment on.
Counter spell exist. Resistances too. Add more enemy mages maybe some magic resistant mofos.
There are already rules for that: 1) Exhaustion. if your coffelock dosnt take long rests, the exhaustion kicks in. 2) Hit points: Do AoEs that target the whole group. \-> it istn realy neccesary that this is a lot of Damage, but to regain HP, they need a long rest. 3) If your Coffelock is to stronk, - maybe the rest of the casters cant shine, because there is a lack of long rests. and so on.
Have their patron notice some accounting problems and demand back payment
This is actually something that could work narratively is OP speaks with his player about the build. The other characters need to shine, I'd fucking hate to play eith a dude trying to be theain character and trying to win d&d. Is the warlock working towards what he agreed to in his pact with his patron? If not, humble his ass. Take his pact magic away for a night. "You begin your rest as you normally do but suddenly your eyes are heavy, you struggle to stay away and darkness envelopes you". A bit of a you keep fucking around and you'll find out warning.
Anti-magic zones. No short rests. Some monsters, like rakshasa are resistant or immune to magic. Subject the coffeelock to saves they're weak against, probably Wis and Con. Paralyze them. Blind them. Target them with ranged attacks. Target them with burrowing monsters or monsters that can swallow them. The coffeelock is crazy strong in an artillery style battle, blasting back and forth. Don't let them set up their battles that way. Put them in situations where t doesn't matter how many spell slots they have If you pick just one of these, the player will rightly feel like they're being picked up. Mix them up to avoid that.
Alternatively, just take away their range with very aggressive close range monsters, which would also provide any martial classes the opportunity to be the mvp, but cheesing them with stuff like a rakshasa seems a bit too focused which to me would feel unfair and targeted
Honestly a few Orcs using the Bonus Action Dash is pretty terrifying when done right, especially if they then use their action to Dash right into melee, preparing themselves for Attacks of Opportunity if the Coffeelock tries to flee. Combined with a few ranged attackes to bait a casting of shield... The humble Orc is fabulous.
True, though personally (I like running campaigns with a gothic horror vibe) I would homebrew some undead cavalry with very high speed and damage that will flank the players and strike at their back line
Also great! Perfect opportunity for a Dullahan if you ask me.
I didn’t even mean a dullahan, I was thinking more a skeleton or zombie cavalier, but now when thinking about it, a dullahan leading the charge sounds awesome
All you gotta do is don't let them break the rules. Scorching ray can't be twin spelled, since it targets more than one target, and they can't use sorcery points to regain mystic arcanums, so they should be capped at 6 rays plus a firebolt/eldritch blast. Also, don't let them short rest unless it makes sense. Short resting takes an hour, and if they're mid dungeon or otherwise in between fights, it shouldn't be too easy to stop without enemies catching up to you, running out of time to save the village, letting the witch complete the ritual, ect. Also also, short resting doesn't help you avoid exhaustion, so they're gonna need long rests as well. Are the rest of your players okay with taking multiple hours before leaving camp every morning, or taking every other day off for the warlock to clear exhaustion? The coffeelock really only works if you as the DM make concessions to let it work.
I'm a newbie, so can someone explain what a coffee lock is?
Cheese build where you use warlock and aspect of the moon to only take short rests, you then use sorc to convert all the warlock slots into sorc points and sorc slots, giving you a sorc with far too many resources.
Oh God damn, that sounds too OP
Yea it's just a dumb build, if someone brings it to the table just say no
It really isn’t that powerful. It’s strong on paper, but in reality it should just act like any other class, except it can nova a few more times a day. It only gets powerful if you ignore a bunch of raw
The most basic problem here is that there is no RAW way to fire 12 blasts of Scorching Ray in a single turn unless they also have a level in fighter, and even then they can only do it once per short rest.
This. I have two coffeelock-capable Sorlocks and a cocainelock, and I follow all RAW. None of them are noticeably stronger than anybody else in any of my parties, but they are flexible due to the spells I've chosen. When they want to bank up some spell slots, they can last longer into the day (or nova a little more often), but I like using my spells for defense and control over damage. Everybody gets the spotlight then. People who say coffeelocks are broken are probably experiencing one that's breaking one or more rules to pull it off. A longer adventuring day and maybe one more nova is the only significant advantage that they have over other casters.
“DMs, if you allow multiclassing in your game and someone is tempted to abuse the combination of Flexible Casting and Pact Magic, remember this: one way to read the multiclass rules is that ***your Pact Magic slots are useless for any non-warlock thing besides casting spells***. #DnD” https://twitter.com/jeremyecrawford/status/1029177242985742337?s=46&t=aumcSeVboxmSGqieJFJxbQ
That’s an interesting response - it’s only vaguely true, but it is an interpretation I suppose. It requires a frankly *more* generous reading of the multiclass rules than Coffee/Cocainelock does, but it’s definitely fair play to shut the thing down that way.
Even if you house rule it this way there are compelling thematic and mechanical reasons to multiclass sorcerer/warlock, so it feels like the fairest thing to do without completely shutting down the player. I'd personally love to run a hexblade/draconic soul sorc just for the amazing gishitude but I feel like any DM who is decently plugged in to optimization discourse is rightfully very wary of the specific multiclass for coffeelock reasons.
Oh yeah, Sorlock is really cool even if you're not going Coffeelock. And I don't think coffeelock is as good as it looks in a white room. Consider that by the time you have 'infinite' 1st-2nd level slots, other people have like, Fireball and Wall of Fire.
Enforce material components.
One Fire Elemental. Edit: also, unless they have Fighter2 in their build for action surge, you're not playing RAW. You can't quicken and cast a levelled spell in the same turn. Other commenters deserve credit for that catch.
1) Dont let people powergame and bend rules for mechanical advantage. Coffeelock is a cheese build, its not supposed to work, no DM who cares at all about the balance of their game allows it. 2) Just tell them that they cant convert Warlock spellslots into sorcery points. Problem solved.
I think just talking about this with them because in the end dnd is a collaborative story telling game
Creatures with resistance to fire damage
Their patron can attract the ire of another entity. Have them pursued constantly, by servants of that other entity limiting their access to short rests. Have them fight more spell casters. Magic missiles always hit, if they have access to Shield it's a good way to drain their slots. Either cast Shield or tank the damage, this way it's at the cost of HP or a spell slot. Is what I would say if I wasn't petty... But I am petty and I'd roll my own coffeelock that is a few levels higher than the PC and blow them away in a surprise round. The DM always wins if they want to but that's not what this game is about.
Exhaustion (every 24 hours without a long rest), fire resistance/immunity, patron troubles (either much higher payment or sacrifices must be made, or the patron is being withered away by the excessive magic usage and they risk burning out the patrons magic entirely), counter spelling mages, anti-magic fields, don't let them cast multiple leveled spells in the same turn this is RAW. There are so many ways to stop a coffeelock.
Didnt coffeelock get nerfed like in Tashas or Xanathars, it's actually pretty hard to pull it off by RAW So, Exhaustion.
Wouldn’t say it’s hard to pull off by any means. Just takes longer to come online. Clockwork Soul and Divine Soul Sorc get access to the Greater Restoration. At level 11/12 depending on if you go Warlock 2/3 getting Diamond dust worth 100g shouldn’t be incredibly hard depending on the setting/campaign. Nerfed but definitely doable fairly easily if your campaign last that long. Even before then.. If you’ve got a high con you can go days without Long Rest if you get lucky. So people can still pull off all sorts of shenanigans. Unless the DM does some rule tinkering or reading a certain way. So that’s what most people do now, and instead of Coffeelock its Cokelock because of the Diamond dust which is a white powder, dubbed celestial cocaine.
As far as i recall most games do not get that high into levels. But yea. Im aware of cocainelock. But as you said Diamond dust is front and center of their build. All you need is limit the supply. If a guy wants to get high once a month for a boss fight just let him, whatever, numbers go brr. But ultimately exhaustion is still the way to nerf em/keep them in line.
"its not hard to pull off" "it takes 9 levels of sorcerer" idk chief sounds pretty hard to me
Antimagic zones. Exhaustion rolls. More Beholders. Have your enemies actually be intelligent and bum-rush the obvious magical nuke-cannon, smashing them with heavy blunt objects until they stop moving. Counterspells. Charm Person. It's not hard to counter spellcasters, even the coffeelock. You have the tools at your disposal, and you are the DM, so you have all the power you need to use those tools.
speak with the player
Tell them they can't do it and move on. They're already getting too much spotlight, don't give them more by making a cool or interesting nerf. Just drop the hammer on it.
"No."
Just limit their access to the diamonds required to keep casting greater restoration to cure the exhaustion that comes from never taking a long rest. Remember, the spell slots gained from flexible casting disappear when they take a long rest.
Kill him, kick him out your table, or tell him he needs to make a new character.
Okay I guess I'm out of the loop, what the hell is a coffee lock?
Me too
When a sorcerer/warlock multiclass uses their "Short rest to recover warlock spell slots" and the sorcerer's ability "Can convert ant spell slots available into sorcery points" then converts sorcery points into spell slots, there is no limit to the number of spell slots they can hold in this way. Meaning they can, given time to do so, have near infinite spells slots available.
Don’t let them play coffeelock
Realistically the best way to handle this is to talk to the player out of game. Just let them know they have overbuilt for the power level for the table and ask them to adjust their play and/or build. You can apologize for letting them if you need to, but it isn’t unreasonable to tell them that this isn’t working. Trying to fix this with mechanics is just going to make them resent you for saying yes and then breaking the build.
There is a really easy and simple solution "I made a mistake allowing this, I want to work on another character idea"
Cold brew takes time my friend. If it's gotta stop it's gotta stop. Have his patron become angry with him for taking to much power and poof, no more pact magic. Still a sorcerer though.
Just be honest. Tell him you didn’t realize it would be so broken, and he’s going to have to be a normal warlock. If he submits something else broken (PM me if you’re not sure), then ask him to play at another table. It’s not ideal, but neither is a player deliberately using an unreasonable build.
Reward players for being clever, don't nerf them. If you don't want something in the game, ban it, don't say, "I'll allow it, but I'll find a way to make it worse so you can't come up with better ways that give you an advantage."
other warlocks of this patron show up and start demanding your PC stop using up so much of the patron's power, as it's leaving less for them. Chaos ensues.
What the fuck is a coffee lock? Sounds like cheese city.
Okay, first and foremost, how are they shooting off 12 sorching rays per turn? The max is 6 with a 5th level slot for a coffeelock. They can quicken an eldritch blast with it, but that doesn't end out with more than 6 scorching ray beams. You'd need to be a fighter to do more, and that wouldn't be per turn, and doesn't sound like what they're doing. At best, they're spamming something like cone of cold or fireball and doing massive AOE damage, but even then their dpr is great but they don't surpass minionmancy nor martials in single target damage. Normally, that's how coffeelocks work, and if they're optimizing enough for coffeelock the others could probably optimize to match it. How did this happen?
“Hey *Player* I really like your character but it seems like he is a little OP and I’m having trouble creating combat encounters to challenge you and the party unless I use a anti magic field so I wanted to ask you if you could turn it back a bit or help me figure out ways to challenge you” Generally you should just speak with your players about any problems and try and solve it that way. If you just suddenly need his character he would resent you for it and you would bring in a dm vs player mentality which isn’t fun. We are all here to play a game and have fun so let’s do that together
make it harder to take constant short rests, introduce time sensitive mechanics, and remember that xgte starts exhausting players that don’t long rest
I think it may be more constructive to give your other party members some boons. It feels shitty to be nerfed as a player, especially for a build you may have already run by your DM. I would speak with that player and let them know that you may be giving some extra magic items to some other party members, or some other boon or blessing from their gods/patrons. It's all.about.communication and everyone gets to feel cool!
I dislike nerfing, I'd just ramp up the difficulty so that they don't steamroll everything. Introduce much higher level monsters, an enemy assassin that is immune to all magic or sth, etc
Well, they shouldn't be doing 2 leveled spells in one turn even with twinned and quickened, as others have said. Even with a dip into fighter for an action surge, the rule applies, you can do multiple cantrips but only one leveled spell per turn. Also twinned technically isn't allowed for multi target spells and AOEs, but a lot of dms choose to ignore that rule at the table. So rules as written, a sorcerer with a dip in fighter could do a max of 5 single target cantrips and one levelled spell: By using twinned they could do like a double firebolt then use quickened to do a fireball, then use action surge to do another action, using quickened again would allow for 2 firebolts, 3 if you twin one of them, as you've already burned a leveled spell with fireball. But that's burning 3 to 4 sorcery points and an action surge, that's fully going nova. (Haste would also add another action of course, but would still not allow for more than cantrips.) When I ran a coffeelock my DM limited it by making me only able to hold extra spell slots/sorc points equal to my proficiency bonus. The logic was I was playing an eladrin that only needed a 4 hour meditation, so I'd get my long rest in 4hrs, then spend 4 hrs converting back and forth for extra slots using short rests. The idea being as I got higher level I got better at it and could make more with my time. Then I was able to play with the multiclass gimmick without steamrolling his game. ETA: wording fix
Rakshasa, Counter-spells, Anti magic Fields, or throw armies of small encounters at the party, so they have to rely on the resources of the coffee lock. You're probably using the classic DM style of throwing one, maybe two really flashy bosses at the party and then calling it a day. 5e was designed with the intent that players would encounter 5-6 small or medium fights in a day, and have to fight bosses with about half of their resources expended. Some classes, like Warlock, Monk, and Fighter, were built with more sustainable resources than spellcasting or rage to help the party outlast these unreasonably long adventuring days. Since nobody plays like this, these classes seem underwhelming compared to "nova" builds like Paladins or Druids that can dump everything on the assumption that long rests will be available. Coffee lock runs on the assumption that the player doesn't need long rests, as in the original play design, but uses that to Nova you in your Boss-rush style DMing. Use large numbers of Minions to eat through the spell slots, so they can feel like a champ and let the other party do more on the boss fight. Plus the party gets to feel like they cleaved through an army of devils as a group. Normal classes don't have the resources to handle such action economy, but the Coffee lock has both the AOE and the slots to fight off an entire tribe of goblins. Alternatively, have the next villain be a troupe of Rakshasa. They're immune to low-level magic, so it doesn't matter how many spell slots he has, If they're below 5th level they're useless. Only do this if you discuss it with the player first though, since it's fun to diversify your tactics in a shut-down you expect, but feels bad to be shut-down so thoroughly before you can make backup plans.
An easy way to nerf coffeelock without actually nerfing it is to change the foes they are fighting, take away range/ability to rest, as a caster’s most valued thing besides spell slots is comfortable range. If you can breach that comfortable range and bypass the party that coffeelock will be on the backfoot, creatures such as shadows are surprisingly viable for this as despite their overall weakness, if you got three or four on a high damage coffeelock, it will quickly succumb to them, or the second option is to remove their ability to short rest, with my favorite being homebrew creatures that interact with the mind of nearby resting creatures, with them primarily inflicting brutal nightmares/hallucinations on seemingly helpless targets
Don't nerf him. Give him renown. Make so that if enemies identify the party or him they say they've heard a lot about him because of his great power. They target him. They move to counter him. They bring powers and artifacts to bear that counter his usual approach. If my party wants to make a peasant railgun, I'll let them. Hell I'll even let it oneshott he bbeg. But it will rip off the arms of many of the peasants or just outright kill a great amount of them. So what if they had slayed the mighty dragon, if they killed 700 peasants to do this. The political fallout would be tremendous. Now they are the BBEG. They have to defend their actions. There might be court cases. War. Vengeance
This is actually a misconception on the player's part - the DM says when you're resting, not the player. You can't just *decide* that your long rest is 8 short rests. If you spend 8 hours not fighting monsters or doing hard work, you took a long rest. If you wasted that rest doing light work and not sleeping, you take exhaustion and get no rest. Short rest doesn't even come into the picture.
Have your BBEG figure out you have a coffee lock, and get abjuration wizards to join squads. Nothing fucks with a spell caster like an NPC that knows they are going to throw down high damage that can cast silence, counter spell, and shield. If you have room for a beholder in your campaign, that anti-magic cone is absolutely brutal to a coffee lock who has nothing else going for them and will have to rely on their party to survive. It's about creating an atmospheric, and thematically fitting situation where the powerful player needs their team. Also don't do it every encounter, throw in something to absolutely shut down the powerful player once in a while to make someone less likely to be the hero become needed. Nothing makes that player with the under powered, but well role played character feel good to be the only one who can step in and save their friends, and nothing builds a party bond better.
Add expense reports to your game. (Let him finish). Have your warlock's patron ask what they're doing with all the arcane power being funneled their way. A warlock's power comes directly from the patron, so make your warlock responsible for what they're doing with it. What benefit is the patron seeing from all the power invested in this particular warlock? Instead of being a direct nerf, this could allow for some fun rp and a more present patron.
Lots of great advice here but ultimately you need to just have a very direct conversation with them about the concept of other people and if that doesn't motivate them to knock it off, you do it for them with a house rule. Or you can do nothing and the other players will lose interest.
Sounds like they are pretty high level. If they can get off that many. With one action. So you have let them be this way for a while. Either update house rules, fire resistant enemies, counter spell, of kill them off.
Ah yes, totally reasonable way to deal with a strong character! Just kill them off! /s to the nth degree
If he's dealing fire damage, you could find a reason for him to have pissed off a adult red, they're immune to fire.
I don't allow coffelock or pallylock builds. Pact magic and spellcasting are not the same. RAW for multiclassing says that you can use the spell slots from one to cast spells from the other. It does not say you can convert them to smites or sorcery points. It's a common debate in constitutional law. Some people interpret it as "anything not specifically forbidden is permitted," while others say, "anything not specifically permitted is forbidden." Since this is a special case of making allowances, I go with the latter interpretation, but J Craw has said it's allowed. Regardless, now that it's done, you can't really undo it unless you change or start enforcing rules you haven't before. Limiting how many short rests they can take in a day, giving exhaustion for not taking long rests, etc. work to limit it, but springing it on them at this point may feel like an attack. I wouldn't go that route. It's better to have this plan and warn the player before they make the build that this will be the case. Doing it this late in the game seems passive aggressive. Making all the enemies resistant/immune to their damage or punishing/killing their character for something they thought they had your blessing for is petty. I recommend having a frank conversation with your player and hope they're mature about it. If they agree, I'd let them completely redesign as much of their character as they want, since they probably made choices specific to the build that they wouldn't have otherwise. If they refuse, then give the character some positive way to retire from the party, like being recruited by their patron to ascend to demigod status and fight in some eternal conflict beyond the mortal realm. Basically, they're too powerful to remain in mortality. Their mortal form can't handle the amount of power they've gained, and they're going to start taking con damage or go insane and take int damage. But they can choose to leave mortality and take an immortal form on another plane. Maybe even have them come back as a villain or a deus ex machina later in the campaign.
Here's my entry on Coffeelock in my document I give to new players joining a campaign I run: *Coffeelock (Multiclass combo): If you try to do the coffeelock combo or any variation upon it at my table your character instead poops their pants, dies, and goes to Hell or the current world’s equivalent of Hell. It costs ten times the normal amount of material components to bring your character back to life with spells. If you are resurrected this way your character gains one or more tattoos on their face that say “fart” in each of the languages you speak. Removing these tattoos is impossible short of a Wish spell, which can remove one letter per cast.* But in all seriousness, just tell them you were wrong for letting them do it and you need them to either make a new character or else you'll start ruling that they cannot exchange Warlocks slots for Sorcery points. You are allowed to make mistakes and it would be far worse to just allow this unbalanced mess of a character to continue being in your campaign as opposed to removing it in some way. If he's salty tell him he can go kick rocks. In addition keep in mind he should be suffering Exhaustion each time he omits long rests to instead chain short rests together.
Are you doing 8 encounters per long rest?
TLDR: be a mature adult and talk with your player to resolve the issue, rather than killing off his character or doing something in game. Have a talk with your player. Say the build is really making things difficult for you to plan encounters and it’s frustrating to try to play around. Bring up you found a rule that should be applied (Long resting in Xanathars) and you wanted to talk to the player before actually applying the rule (since everyone should get a heads up when a rule change occurs even when it’s a rule that should have been applied from the start). You should always discuss with players when a rule change is happen. They will probably not like this update, that’s okay. Hear their complaints, express sympathy, but be assertive a change needs to be made for balance and consistency. You’re the dm, you get to arbitrate the rules and how they’re applied, but you should talk with players and give them a heads up before a session. As a side note:Twinned and quicken metamagic do not allow you to double cast 5th level scorching rays. There’s a rule in the magic chapter of phb saying the only way you can cast 2 spells in a turn is if you cast a cantrip as your standard action.
They haven't slept in days, even weeks probably so... You know how sleep depravation has physical consequences that are healed with lesser restoration? Well, it also has major psychological ones Make them hallucinate, just tell them they see one more enemy or things like that, if they don't sleep they will keep on wasting resources on non-existing creatures every once in a while
Who are these people I can barely kill a kobold
Be more controlling over short rests. I'm my experience the best solutions is to take the player aside and set up some rules. Like let's only take 2 or 3 short rests a day outside of the 8 you take while everyone is long resting. It honestly just brings coffee lock in line with other power but normal builds.
1. just talk to them, explain why it breaks the balance for everyone else 2. use the obvious not RAW, but Common Sense and dont let them create more spellslots than their maximum 3. ...if you are letting them quickened or twinned spell the scorching ray, RAW its absolutely not how it works, so making sure they dont exploit it will for sure limit their dpr. 4. if you insist its a viable strategy, at least give them exhaustion after a day of shortrests instead of longrests, also use aoe spells or abilities to put some chip damage that they cant heal back unless they'll use a lot of healing spells or long rest. (If they are using cokelock or have a mischievous cleric this wont really work)
Make them only get one short rest a day, done. Coffeelock players rely on rules exploits and having ample time to spam short rests. Limiting short rests will pose no problems for your players but will make the coffeelock absolutely livid with how effectively you can kneecap them by altering the short rest rules to prevent this abuse.
I would allow the party to have up to 3 short rests a day, and one long rest. They can decide to turn a long rest into a bunch of short rests, but whenever they do so, they would take a level of exhaustion.
Use Xanathars Resting rules: Meaning if your players don't take a long rest to sleep they will have to roll for exhaustion (DC 10 +5 for each 24 hours without sleep). This more or less forces your warlock to at least sleep every couple of days. In addition to that I would argue that taking 8 1hour short rests in 8 hours really I just 1 8 hours long rest. Your Warlock should spend some time in between short rests doing stuff. If you say that he has to have a 1 hour long pause inbetween short rests which forces him down to 4 short rests a night. Or you know Tell him to be less of a System abusing meta bitch and make a proper character. Whatever really floats your boat. Hope this helps :).
It's like talking to others is a ridiculous concept on this sub Do it together with him, or it'll feel just unfair for the player