#the coffeelock: for The That Guy In Lecture (derogatory) in your life

[utilitycaster]

could you elucidate on why coffeelocks are bad actually? my friend is a bit obsessed with them right now and i’ve never liked the specific build but i’d love to have concrete reasons that aren’t just opinions!

YES. Somewhere in my archives I think I actually did the math on like, how many short rests you have to take for this to pay any dividends, and it was a LOT, but that was during full lockdown iirc and you do not have to do this much work.

The basic gist of coffeelock for those wondering is that warlocks recharge spell slots on a short rest, and sorcerers can convert sorcery points into spell slots and vice versa. The idea is that if you take Pact of the Tome and then Aspect of the Moon as an eldritch invocation, you never have to long rest again and can just farm sorcery points/spell slots for 8 hours each night.

Now: the most obvious issue is that any reasonable DM who hears about this will look at you and say "I don't care if it's technically legal, I think it's annoying and I'm not going to let you do it." But let's assume your DM does not shut it down.

You have infinite spell slots at level 5. You are warlock 3 sorcerer 2. You know 7 spells total, which is what you'd know had you leveled to level 5 in either of these classes, except you also know 6 level 1 spells and 1 level 2 spell, max. Someone who leveled normally would have fireball, or dispel magic, or counterspell, and if they were divine soul they might even have revivify, but not you! This will eventually get slightly better at higher levels but if you're the party's main arcane caster this sucks and if you're in a party with fewer than like, five people, or perhaps a really caster heavy party, you're putting a lot of burden on other people to do the utility early on so that your dumb ass can cast magic missile 20 times a day or whatever.

I don't actually care for sorlock just generally, in the absence of coffeelock bullshit. Yes, it depends on the same main stat, but a bard or paladin combo will actually significantly broaden your repertoire. Sorcerer and Warlock have a LOT of spell overlap, and metamagic is one of those things that is like, super clutch 0.1% of the time and the rest of the time it's like oh ok (though I guess as a coffeelock you're not even really using metamagic! total waste of being a sorcerer, which is the weakest caster already! great job.). Meanwhile, two of the big strengths of warlock are 1. eldritch blast, a cantrip you can already cast infinite times without spell slots, and 2. eldritch invocations, which you have to level in warlock to get. Dipping into sorcerer means fewer invocations. Basically, all multiclassing is a trade off and I feel like this is at most the sum of its parts, certainly not more. I also think it's very tricky to play this in a way that is narratively interesting and makes sense for your character while also abiding by the specific leveling requirements of coffeelock. This isn't an issue in a one-shot but also in a one-shot you simply might not even take a long rest which renders the entire thing useless.

You have to take Pact of the Tome, which means you are spending all this time and effort and build for infinite spell slots but also you have, without any racial bonuses, literally 9 cantrips (ie, at-will spells) at level 5. And none of them are dispel magic, because that is too high for you for at least another 2 levels and that's only if you choose to continue in warlock. Also, actually, until you reach L9 in specifically divine soul sorcerer, you don't have greater restoration as discussed, so yeah your DM can just be like "oh you don't have to sleep but you do still gain exhaustion."

I lied and I did some math. So: you are a L5 coffeelock. let's say you have exhausted all your resources on day 1. You sit down for your little bullshit 8 short rests. You can never have more than two sorcery points, because the PHB page 101 says that you can't exceed the number of sorcery points shown on the table for your level. So every hour you convert one L2 spell slot (recharging) into a L1 spell slot (non-recharging), and repeat this (you can't convert both at once! because then you exceed two sorcery points!) and you end the night with 14 L1 spells and your two L2 warlock spell slots. If you are lucky, you might get like, one short rest if there is a monk or wizard or fighter in the party and they don't hate you so much that they're willing to go without ki points/second winds/arcane recovery, and they might. I guess you just stockpile low level spells indefinitely until you have to sleep finally? if you have a week of downtime do you just. walk around with hundreds of first level spell slots and not think this is the dumbest shit of all time? ooooh look at me i can cast fucking...detect magic for 24 hours straight. can't dispel any of it though!

Leveling up is a bitch too if I recall. You need to level up in sorcerer to get more points so you can eventually convert to higher level spells, and the exchange rate is not generous (like, if you're not sleeping, it's ok, but it's not in your favor as shown with the L2 to L1 conversion) and imo warlock is the superior class, and you're probably not really taking advantage of metamagic anyway so you're barely reaping the benefits of being a sorcerer except for flexible casting. Do you feel good about this? Is this fun for you? Your entire table is watching you count out your spell slots each night and hoping fervently you get audited by the IRS in real life but man you sure showed them by being able to cast chromatic orb a lot!

Also you can't use items that recharge on a long rest, only ones that recharge at dawn. Sucker.

This is all very long because I think coffeelock is an annoying build for people who think they are smart and really aren't, but the gist is that you trade away a great deal of your utility, ability to help the party, and ability to do anything except cast rather low-level spells in comparison to what everyone who made better decisions is doing. Also it's LAUGHABLY easy for the DM to fuck this over for you within the bounds of the rules even if they allowed it. Your patron gets annoyed that you're only leveling in sorcerer. Levels of exhaustion. Your patron, who communicates through dreams, straight up abandons you because you're not picking up their calls. You keep being put in positions where your 75 first level spells won't do shit and a single third level spell would. They taunt you with items that recharge on a long rest.

It's just...well, quantity over quality. Shein haul ass character build.