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Archriete
2016-10-19, 06:28 PM
Just a little background, I've been making this warlock patron (a modification/conversion of the undying light patron) for use in friends campaign, I'll save you the majority of the random fluff, I'm just looking for a little help balancing it's mechanics.

I marked said friends comments towards specific abilities in brackets below each entry, but he suggested I put it forth to get crowd sourced before we come to any final decisions.

The Reaper King lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you.

Reaper King Expanded Spells
1st Ice Knife
2nd Snilloc's Snowball Storm
3rd Spirit Guardians (Necrotic only)
4th Ice Storm
5th Maelstrom

Broken Soul:
Starting at 1st level, your bond to the King of the Grave allows you to serve as a conduit for necrotic energy. You have resistance to necrotic damage, and when you cast a spell that deals necrotic damage or cold damage, you add your Charisma modifier to that damage. Additionally, you know the shape water and frostbite cantrips and can cast them at will. They don’t count against your number of cantrips known.

Final Death:
The Reaper King despises the walking dead, as they are an insult to the sanctity of the cycle of life and death, Starting at 6th level, any cold or necrotic damage dealt by spells or abilities of the warlock ignores the damage resistance or immunity of undead creatures they hit. Additionally you cast inflict wounds without expending a warlock spell slot once per short or long rest.
(DM recommended that initially it only grants the resistance bypass, and scales into the immunity bypass at 10 or 12)

Second Last Breath
Starting at 10th level, the necrotic forces running through your body allows you to overcome grievous injuries. When you would make a death saving throw, you can instead spring back to your feet with a rippling burst of necrotic energy. You immediately stand up (if you so choose), and you regain hit points equal to half your hit point maximum. All hostile creatures within 30 feet of you take 10 + your Charisma modifier necrotic damage and you regain additional hit points equal to a quarter of the total damage done by Second Last Breath. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
(Suggested that the initial damage be reduced if the abilities does scaled healing, d6+mod or something along those lines, but with healing scaled to half damage rather than quarter.)

Conviction of the Grave
The Grave is the only assured end for the living, but you will only go to meet your king when you've finished your work in this world. Starting at 14th level, you gain temporary hit points whenever you finish a long or short rest. These temporary hit points equal your warlock level + your Charisma modifier. Additionally, choose up to five creatures you can see at the end of your rest. Those creatures gain temporary hit points equal to half your warlock level + your Charisma modifier.

Any input is awesome guys, thanks ahead of time!

JeenLeen
2016-10-20, 11:21 AM
Warlock is a class I feel I'm not as good at evaluating as others, but I hope some of the below might be useful:

The expanded spell lists generally have 2 spells listed per level. I could see Inflict Wounds being another level 1 spell, even though that's largely redundant with the class feature.

Level 1 ability sounds good. I feel like it might be too redundant with Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast, but it's nice to give the player a way to avoid needing to invest in Agnoizing Blast.

Final Death: getting to cast Inflict Wounds once per rest doesn't seem in line with the "hating undead" fluff of this ability. No real critique of what it does.
I like the idea of, if you add Inflict Wounds to the extra spell list, letting them cast Cure Wounds once per day. This could also fit in the theme of 'keep the dead dead, and let the living live'.

Second Last Breath: this sounds really powerful, by being a good heal and AoE. Just being an auto-revive seems almost too powerful, but if you want to keep it, I'd recommend dropping the AoE or make it awaken you with 1 HP, and you gain more HP from the AoE.
I think this is especially useful given that, most often, one makes a death saving throw at the start of one's turn. That means, as is, you generally get a free AoE before your full set of actions. Rather brutal.
I could see possibly leaving as is if you move it to the main capstone.

Conviction of the Grave: although not really needed, I recommend adding a line that these hit points last until the creature completes a short or long rest. (Since temp HP don't stack, this doesn't matter, but most temp HP abilities have some line about how long they last.)

Archriete
2016-10-20, 03:02 PM
Hey! Thanks for the feedback.

I initially modeled the patron after the Undying Light one from the under dark unearthed arcana. I generally kept it quite similar to said patron, inversed the flavour of it a bit to suit the patron, and ran with it.

The spell list was a single spell per level, and they had a very similar ignore death save ability, except it dealt radiant damage instead of necrotic, and blinded hostiles hit for a round (without a save) instead of the health leech. At level 6 rather than 10, it's bonkers.

As far as the final breath goes, I can see your point, the idea was (with ignoring resistance/immunity for undead), a single target nuke spell for keeping the dead, well. Dead. But I'll see about swapping that around for something a bit more interesting instead.

I will definitely change up the wording on conviction though, thanks for that catch!

The Ship's dog
2016-10-20, 10:38 PM
Perhaps make the AoE and the heal only when you succeed on a saving throw against death? I feel like (as has already been stated) at level 10, an auto-revive is a bit too strong. Maybe you would bump up the level at which you get it.