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View Full Version : Warlock Feats inspired by MammonAzreal's rewrite



Zarthrax
2012-03-12, 01:57 AM
I wanted to brew up a feat for a character idea I'm gonna run in a game, then thought 'why stop at just one'?

Divided by Bloodline-

Any-

Powerful Blood

Prerequisites: A Level Adjustment, Racial Hit Dice, or both (must be of the same type of creature as your bloodline)

Benefits: Your Level Adjustment or Racial Hit Dice (if any) stack with your Warlock level when determining bloodline abilities. You also ignore alignment requirements when choosing bloodlines, as long as they are bloodlines that you possess.

For instance, a Half Demon (+4) Warlock 2 would have all the bloodline abilities of a Warlock of 6th level, but only if it was taking the Demonic Bloodline.

Special: If the character has multiple qualifying LA or RHD, then he must take this feat for each one he wants to advance.


Fey-

Favored of the Queen

Prerequisites: Must worship the Queen of Air and Darkness, Eldritch Blast 1d6, Fey Heritage class feature

Benefits: You may now, instead of taking feats, use them to instead gain Heritage abilities. This only applies to levels that don't already advance Heritage abilities.

Special: If you go back to taking Warlock levels and advance Heritage, instead take the next ability higher than what you already have.

Normal: You don't advance bloodlines without taking Warlock levels.

Design Notes: Basically designed this for a Warlock/Cleric/Eldritch Disciple of the Queen of Air and Darkness, using her writeup in Dragon 359. She basically screams 'I cheat at everything', and that was before I even read the Dicefreaks stuff that had been created.

Edit- Changed to reflect balance issues. Fluff still to come.

Eladrin Borne

Prerequisites: Warlock level 1, this feat may only be taken at first level.

Benefits: Warlocks born of the Eladrin are in tune with the wild, but also the greater good.

Starting at 2nd level and every level you would gain a heritage benefit thereafter, you may instead choose the appropriate benefit from either the Fey bloodline or the Angelic bloodline.

Note: If you take an ability that gains an improved ability later, you must either take that improved ability later on or take the choice you didn't at lower levels.

Example: Morthos takes Smite Evil as his 4th level ability. At 10th level, he must either take Improved Smite Evil or Woodland Stride. At 16th level, he would either choose Improved Smite Evil or Wild Growth, if he previosly chose Woodland Stride.

Design Notes: Came up with this particular idea just this morning. What's the only type of angel that is very fey themed? Eladrin. Once I had that epiphany, this wrote itself.



Undead-


My Father's Childe

Prerequisites: Eldritch Blast 8d6, Undead Bloodline

Benefits: Your....unique parentage allows you to do much worse things than normal.

When your character's background is written, define for the DM the actual undead creature you are descended from. (This can be as vague as giving a type or as detailed as a full writeup, depending on DM requirements) A number of times per day equal to your Charisma modifier, you may apply the effects of one special attack that type of undead is known for to a victim of one of your eldritch blasts upon a successful hit. This ability must be announced before the attack is rolled. A miss wastes that use of the ability for the day. The DM has full authority on what constitutes the special attack that your undead forebear is known for.

Design Notes: Just an intensification of the bloodline, allowing for a bit more flavor. I'm leery of allowing access to a lich's paralyzing touch, but at this high level, things of that nature should be easy enough to dispel.
Normal:

Madara
2012-03-12, 09:12 PM
They look good, and pretty balanced. The second one wouldn't come into play for quite some time.:smallconfused:

Zarthrax
2012-03-13, 02:15 PM
True, but again, that's to prevent someone from saying "Daddy was a vampire, Momma was a lich" and tossing out 1 negative level and permanent paralysis on every blast.

I would definitely consider lowering the requirement to something like 4d6 for something like a ghoul or a ghast. Say the more esoteric the undead involved, the higher the EB requirement?

Also, added another Fey feat.

MammonAzrael
2012-03-13, 04:12 PM
First, let me say I'm flattered you liked my work well enough to base some brewing of your own off it! As a corollary , if you liked it so much, you should post on it! :smalltongue: (and a link to the class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226021) makes it easilr for others to read and reference) Even if you're just saying you like it and will be using it! Now, with that said...

Favored of the Queen is way too powerful. For the cost of a single feat it gives you access to up to 8 class features, each of which should be worth at least a feat in it's own right. I considered a feat that acted like Practiced Spellcaster/Manifester for your heritage, boosting your effective warlock level for heritage by 4, up to your total HD, and that is too strong. If you want to unlock the power of your heritage, then you need to either take the levels in warlock, or a PrC that explicitly grants heritage as a class feature. Right now it's like you have a feat with a prereq of 2 levels of fighter that says "PrCs that grant full base attack bonus stack with your fighter levels to grant bonus fighter feats."

On a non-power note, the feat is way too specific. Why do you have to worship the Queen of Air and Darkness? Why is this Fey specific, and not available to other heritages? There could be flavor reasons why these restrictions exist, but you have not provided any.

Eladrine Borne is a solid feat, and one I rather like. However, since Eladrin is on the docket of future heritages, it won't be needing a feat. :smallsmile:

My Father's Childe I like quite a lot, and will steal/modify it and add it to the class thread if you don't mind.

Zarthrax
2012-03-14, 12:48 AM
First, let me say I'm flattered you liked my work well enough to base some brewing of your own off it! As a corollary , if you liked it so much, you should post on it! :smalltongue: (and a link to the class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226021) makes it easilr for others to read and reference) Even if you're just saying you like it and will be using it! Now, with that said...

Favored of the Queen is way too powerful. For the cost of a single feat it gives you access to up to 8 class features, each of which should be worth at least a feat in it's own right. I considered a feat that acted like Practiced Spellcaster/Manifester for your heritage, boosting your effective warlock level for heritage by 4, up to your total HD, and that is too strong. If you want to unlock the power of your heritage, then you need to either take the levels in warlock, or a PrC that explicitly grants heritage as a class feature. Right now it's like you have a feat with a prereq of 2 levels of fighter that says "PrCs that grant full base attack bonus stack with your fighter levels to grant bonus fighter feats."

On a non-power note, the feat is way too specific. Why do you have to worship the Queen of Air and Darkness? Why is this Fey specific, and not available to other heritages? There could be flavor reasons why these restrictions exist, but you have not provided any.

Eladrine Borne is a solid feat, and one I rather like. However, since Eladrin is on the docket of future heritages, it won't be needing a feat. :smallsmile:

My Father's Childe I like quite a lot, and will steal/modify it and add it to the class thread if you don't mind.

Sorry not to post over there sooner with these. I was gonna try to have more than just a couple of feats before I posted the thread, and a few more than that before I actually linked on your rewrite.

Favored of the Queen-

Hmmmmm, I'm unaware of any PrCs that would advance Heritage. Sounds like a fine thing to rewrite Eldritch Disciple for.

Powerwise, you're probably right. Considering the fluff behind it is basically being a cleric of the Queen as well as having her (in all likelyhood, temporary) favor, maybe I should add those as prerequisites as well, basically adding DM Fiat to attaining it.

Flavor wise, I wanted to basically go with 'The Fey cheat, Evil cheats, Evil Fey cheat so hard you might as well not play'. The appropriate Fey ruler for that was the Queen, and considering she actually got a writeup in Dragon Magazine 359 (the last print issue), that's where most of the inspiration came from. The Dicefreaks view of her didn't exactly help matters. (http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewforum.php?f=13)

So, to fix things, how about changing it so that instead of taking feats after this one, they can spend their feats to get the heritage abilities?

Eladrin Borne-

Thanks! I basically wrote this as a counter to the previous feat. Evil cheats, but Good plans ahead, Hannibal Smith-style!

In that case, the feat could probably be renamed when the time comes.

My Father's Childe-

Not a bit! Go right ahead! I'm considering providing a table for various undead that would determine based on background when someone could take the feat a bit better than a flat 16th level.



Edit: Something you may want to consider adding is The Demented One's additional Invocations (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26394). A lot of them feel very Fey-ish, with many others being flavorful for many heritages.

MammonAzrael
2012-03-14, 02:22 AM
Sorry not to post over there sooner with these. I was gonna try to have more than just a couple of feats before I posted the thread, and a few more than that before I actually linked on your rewrite.

No worries. Don't feel like you needs some minimum amount of content before posting though! :smallsmile:


Favored of the Queen-

Hmmmmm, I'm unaware of any PrCs that would advance Heritage. Sounds like a fine thing to rewrite Eldritch Disciple for.

There aren't, as heritage only exists for my re-write of the class. I may make some once I finish with the re-write, but that's a ways off still. Frankly, I don't think Eldritch Disciple needs any re-writing, and is fine as-is. If I were to re-write it to advance Heritage abilities...well, I'd probably cut every single other class feature it has, since it's full invocation advancement and 9/10 divine spellcasting. And obviously then it wouldn't be the Eldritch Discple anymore! :smalltongue: (yes, I consider casting advancement enough of a class feature for a whole level. It's that strong.)

The Heritage class features are strong enough on their own that they should never be advanced for free. If I make PrCs for it in the future, they may stack with Warlock for progressing certain Heritages, but as a trade off they will have multiple levels devoid of class features, since they're expected to be gaining those Heritage features.


Powerwise, you're probably right. Considering the fluff behind it is basically being a cleric of the Queen as well as having her (in all likelyhood, temporary) favor, maybe I should add those as prerequisites as well, basically adding DM Fiat to attaining it.

Flavor wise, I wanted to basically go with 'The Fey cheat, Evil cheats, Evil Fey cheat so hard you might as well not play'. The appropriate Fey ruler for that was the Queen, and considering she actually got a writeup in Dragon Magazine 359 (the last print issue), that's where most of the inspiration came from. The Dicefreaks view of her didn't exactly help matters. (http://dicefreaks.superforums.org/viewforum.php?f=13)

DM fiat is fine, but that's usually something that you just discuss with your DM for a unique homebrew, unique to that character, rather than a feat or whathaveyou that any character (that meets the prereqs) can take.

The flavor aspect is fine, it just isn't present in the feat. I suggest adding a fluff paragraph (usually done in italics) describing the fluff of the feat.


So, to fix things, how about changing it so that instead of taking feats after this one, they can spend their feats to get the heritage abilities?

I can see this, as I'd value a feat roughly the same as a heritage ability, and they're a limited resource. I may post a feat in the next update that increases your warlock level by 2 (up to your HD) for the purposes of determining your Heritage abilities.

The idea is that your Heritage doesn't unlock itself. If you want those powers, you have to spend a significant amount of time and effort to unlock them. This is commonly portrayed as gaining levels, which is why if you PrC there is no option for advancing your Heritage (you're putting your time and effort into learning the PrC class abilities, not your Heritage ones). But spending a feat probably represents enough focus and effort to unlock a new ability.


Eladrin Borne-

Thanks! I basically wrote this as a counter to the previous feat. Evil cheats, but Good plans ahead, Hannibal Smith-style!

In that case, the feat could probably be renamed when the time comes.

It's obviously fine and unique until I get Eladrin up! :smalltongue: I may take this and make a dual-parentage feat, if I can work out the details and flavor to my satisfaction.


My Father's Childe-

Not a bit! Go right ahead! I'm considering providing a table for various undead that would determine based on background when someone could take the feat a bit better than a flat 16th level.

Shiny.


Edit: Something you may want to consider adding is The Demented One's additional Invocations (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26394). A lot of them feel very Fey-ish, with many others being flavorful for many heritages.

*nod* The Demented One has done some great work. I've got his and some others earmarked to be combed through once I finish the official invocations. Thanks for the lookout though!

Zarthrax
2012-03-16, 03:51 AM
Updated the crunch for Chosen of the Queen. Fluff will have to wait for my weekend.

Zarthrax
2012-05-01, 12:54 AM
Added Powerful Blood. Thoughts?