The Coffeelock: An Infinite Number of Spell Slots for the Low, Low Price of Never Sleeping Again

Before we get to the main course of this article, a brief disclaimer: don’t do this. Come on.

With that disclaimer, we can now add a second disclaimer: okay but if you do do this, the whole point of this article isn’t ‘how to piss off your DM and other players with a broken character’, it’s ‘how to make this entertaining’. I’m a performer, not a powergamer.

Okay, with that out of the way, we can get started!

The Coffeelock is one of those Munchkin character builds that abuses a loophole in the game’s rules – in this case, the Sorcerer’s Font of Magic feature – to gain a completely ridiculous benefit – in this case, a theoretically infinite number of spell slots.

You may have heard of the Coffeelock before; it’s somewhat infamous in the character optimisation circles of the internet. It’s been called ‘unanimously hated’ by Reddit’s r/powergamermunchkin, and if those people think it’s bad, it’s got to be pretty awful.

And yeah, it is. It’s a completely broken build that requires little-to-no effort on the Player’s part. You just need to be level 5, with 3 levels in Warlock and 2 in Sorcerer. You choose Pact of the Tome and one specific invocation.

That’s it. That’s the build.

A level 2 Sorcerer has Font of Magic, which can be used to convert Spell Slots into Sorcery Points, and Sorcery Points into temporary Spell Slots of up to level 5.

At level 3, a Warlock that takes the Pact of the Tome can take the Eldritch Invocation ‘Aspect of the Moon’, which states – and I quote – ‘You no longer need to sleep and can’t be forced to sleep by any means’.

Temporary Spell Slots are only lost on a long rest.

Warlock Spell Slots are regained on a short rest.

So, by feeding their Warlock Spell Slots through the Font of Magic conversion machine to make temporary Spell Slots, and taking a short rest to regain those Warlock Slots, the Coffeelock accrues more and more and more temporary Slots that would only disappear should they sleep. And they don’t need to sleep.

But what of exhaustion, I hear you ask? Yes, the Aspect of the Moon says I don’t need sleep, but I still need rest, or I’m going to be stacking up exhaustion levels, right? There’s that optional rule in Xanathar’s Guide and my DM is using it!

Well, there are a few solutions for this. Maybe you cast Greater Restoration on yourself with one of your abundant Spell Slots? Then again, you’d need the Celestial Patron for that, plus you can’t do that right from level 5. Maybe you have a friend or an NPC that can cast it for you? Maybe you don’t.

Or you make a Warforged. They don’t need to sleep. You wouldn’t even need to take the Aspect of the Moon invocation if you did that! Then again, maybe you’re in a world that doesn’t have Warforged? It’s hardly a universal solution.

Hey, you know what is a universal solution? Coffee. Everyone loves coffee. And surely your character is no exception; it’s in the build’s name and everything.

That said, maybe you’re in a setting where they don’t call it coffee; maybe they call it ‘Java’ or ‘Joseph’ or ‘Blackwater’ or ‘Hot Brown Morning Potion’ or ‘Beanjuice’ or, uh, a ‘Potion of Vitality‘.

Oh!

So, your Sorcerer-Warlock-mixup also brews a potion or two on the side! And they need to drink their Potion regularly, or they’ll either:

1. Fall asleep and lose all their accrued Spell Slots, becoming all but powerless, or
2. Die

Which, according to my friend Adam, is sort of how coffee works anyway.

Here’s an example you could find in any normal game:

DM: ‘Coffeelock, you’ve just finished Short Rest and you’re brewing up your potion to stave off the effects of the 4 levels of exhaustion you have. Can you roll Perception for me?’

Coffeelock: ‘Ooh, that’s a 4 with the exhaustion disadvantage. I really should have had a cup earlier, but there wasn’t much chance to do so during the prison break and the Giant attack, was there?’

DM: ‘That’s bad news then… you’re so engrossed in your potion brewing, watching it pour through the filter and everything, that you don’t notice the nemesis frog hopping up to try and break your mug.’

Coffeelock: ‘The frog again?!’

DM: ‘It followed you from the swamp, yeah. I mean, you did sit on its house. Roll initiative.’

If you’re going to attempt this, you have to be prepared to lose all the slots you’ve spent so long building up if you don’t get your coffee potion. You have to be prepared for your DM to use this as a balancing feature; a restraining bolt on your stupid character. You have to remember that you’re telling a story together, and that story can’t be interesting if a character has way too much power with no limits.

That’s why Gandalf had to leave Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit, and why the Doctor is so often separated from the TARDIS, and why, uh, Shadow the Hedgehog wears those gold rings on his wrists.

There’s never a main character in D&D, but if you’re going to attempt this, you need to be even further away from the Protagonist spot than everybody else. Otherwise, everyone else is going to hate you being at the table. With great power, etc. etc.

So, please, if you want to build this – it does sound hilarious, I get it – really lean into your dependence on the special bean drink. Maybe get a mug that says ‘Don’t ask me to cast spells until I’ve had my hot brown morning potion’. It’d have to be a big mug, I suppose.

Or alternatively, please refer back to that first disclaimer.

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Plus, if you liked this article and you also like podcasts, maybe check out Roll History, where Vesper and Sami discuss stupid stuff like this regularly! Or don’t; I’m a website, not a cop