Warlock Invocations

[Nemenia]

I'm looking into making a warlock, and I usually lean towards flavor over min/maxing in my characters, but I'm having alot of trouble justifying some of these. I know I'm not a terribly creative person, so I was hoping someone could give me some ideas or suggest cool (mostly within RAW) uses of these invocations. Thanks in advance!

My character is a Pact of the Tome warlock with the basic Find Familiar spell that focuses on being creepy and "witchy" and general sneaky underhandedness.

Ascendant Step: I get levitate saves you from fall damage, but otherwise, when would this come up to be useful? You can't move horizontally without holding something. For instance, if there were a pit trap, and you used levitate to save yourself from falling into it, you're still trapped, because you can't do anything but release the magic and drop in to it. Why use this spell on yourself at all?

One idea I had would be to invert yourself and levitate to the ceiling, then simply treat gravity as if it were reversed, walking on the ceiling because levitation is holding you against the ground. Is this reasonable?

Misty Visions: Sure you can make something up to a 15 foot cube, but it's purely visual and takes your action to do anything. Can't pretend to speak, etc. Why would I ever use this?

Otherwordly Leap: My jump distance is tripled. That would be great.. if my strength modifier wasn't 0, meaning I can't long jump at all and can get slightly higher with a high jump, in which case I would just take ascendant step and have infinite.

Sign of Ill Omen: At higher ranks, bestow curse has alot of options for flavor and scare factor, but since it requires a warlock spell slot and not the arcanum, at 5th level it's worse than any other debuff or increased damage spell available, isn't it?

Witch Sight: I understand the mechanical use of this, especially in the case of illusions at high ranks, but will this come up enough to be worth using? it seems so niche I don't know if it would be worth it.

[tieren]

Ascendant step can be useful for getting over walls or climbing up to second stories. Even in the hovering over a pit thing you are probably safe now to toss a rope to your group to pull you to safety.

Illusions are awesome, infinite illusions with no spell slots spent are awesomer. You can mislead pursuers, hide behind illusionary walls, scare off enemies with a new enemy suddenly appearing, use up their actions investigating whatever you summoned, block line of sight from an enemy spell caster to an ally, cheat and hide and go seek, you name it the only limit is your imagination.

Jump spell is lame, don't take that one.

I am also not generally a fan of the invocations that use one of your spell slots, wouldn't take bestow curse either, unless like you said for flavor purposes you really want to be that witch in the woods hexing people and putting curses on your enemies, etc...

I haven't tried witch sight yet, but I really like the eldritch sight one (free detect magic without a slot).

[RickAllison]

Jump spell is fantastic under certain circumstances. Just a low-Strength warlock is not one of those.

[Millstone85]

Ascendant Step: I get levitate saves you from fall damage, but otherwise, when would this come up to be useful? You can't move horizontally without holding something. For instance, if there were a pit trap, and you used levitate to save yourself from falling into it, you're still trapped, because you can't do anything but release the magic and drop in to it. Why use this spell on yourself at all?

One idea I had would be to invert yourself and levitate to the ceiling, then simply treat gravity as if it were reversed, walking on the ceiling because levitation is holding you against the ground. Is this reasonable?
Ascendant step can be useful for getting over walls or climbing up to second stories. Even in the hovering over a pit thing you are probably safe now to toss a rope to your group to pull you to safety.Both solutions seem fine to me.

The levitate spell is like a neat compromise between fly, spider climb and feather fall. Having that turned into a cantrip is plain awesome.

[hymer]

Just some I had a reaction to:


Ascendant Step: I get levitate saves you from fall damage, but otherwise, when would this come up to be useful? You can't move horizontally without holding something. For instance, if there were a pit trap, and you used levitate to save yourself from falling into it, you're still trapped, because you can't do anything but release the magic and drop in to it. Why use this spell on yourself at all?

You're a fairly squishy character with a strong ranged attack. Levitate is useful for getting out of melee range.


One idea I had would be to invert yourself and levitate to the ceiling, then simply treat gravity as if it were reversed, walking on the ceiling because levitation is holding you against the ground. Is this reasonable?

As DM I'd allow it, although I'd probably have your movement reduced a little.


Otherwordly Leap: My jump distance is tripled. That would be great.. if my strength modifier wasn't 0, meaning I can't long jump at all and can get slightly higher with a high jump, in which case I would just take ascendant step and have infinite.

Your jump distance before making Ahtletics checks is a number of feet equal to your strength score. Sounds like this would let you jump 30'.


Witch Sight: I understand the mechanical use of this, especially in the case of illusions at high ranks, but will this come up enough to be worth using? it seems so niche I don't know if it would be worth it.

The rate of illusions in your game may be low, but you would be a far better judge at this than other people in the forum.

Good luck! :smallsmile:

[Millstone85]

As DM I'd allow it, although I'd probably have your movement reduced a little.By half, since levitate allows you to move as if you were climbing.
That's why I would portray it more like spider climb than walking upside down.

[Segev]

Ascendant Step: I get levitate saves you from fall damage, but otherwise, when would this come up to be useful? You can't move horizontally without holding something. For instance, if there were a pit trap, and you used levitate to save yourself from falling into it, you're still trapped, because you can't do anything but release the magic and drop in to it. Why use this spell on yourself at all?

One idea I had would be to invert yourself and levitate to the ceiling, then simply treat gravity as if it were reversed, walking on the ceiling because levitation is holding you against the ground. Is this reasonable?I, personally, think this is brilliant. I may even steal it on a wizard if I pick up levitate for him.


Misty Visions: Sure you can make something up to a 15 foot cube, but it's purely visual and takes your action to do anything. Can't pretend to speak, etc. Why would I ever use this? I have a thread on illusionist tricks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477658-Illusionist-Tricks) which might help. It's not focused very much on silent image, but some of the discussion may be of interest.

Consider that you essentially have Malleable Illusions with your silent image, since you can re-cast it at will.

For your "witchy" character, surround yourself in fog, or disguise yourself as a tree (illusion around yourself), or create illusions of "stealthy" creatures just out of the corners of people's


Otherwordly Leap: My jump distance is tripled. That would be great.. if my strength modifier wasn't 0, meaning I can't long jump at all and can get slightly higher with a high jump, in which case I would just take ascendant step and have infinite.

Sign of Ill Omen: At higher ranks, bestow curse has alot of options for flavor and scare factor, but since it requires a warlock spell slot and not the arcanum, at 5th level it's worse than any other debuff or increased damage spell available, isn't it?Yeah, these two aren't very good.


Witch Sight: I understand the mechanical use of this, especially in the case of illusions at high ranks, but will this come up enough to be worth using? it seems so niche I don't know if it would be worth it.
This one could be useful.

I recommend the combination of the cantrip friends and the disguise self invocation; you can look as witchy or as gorgeous as you like, and you can use friends to get Advantage on social rolls and have somebody else get blamed for it (whether a real person you're giving a bad reputation, or a fake person whose face you'll stop wearing after getting what you want out of the mark).

[RedGeomancer]

Sign of Ill Omen: At higher ranks, bestow curse has alot of options for flavor and scare factor, but since it requires a warlock spell slot and not the arcanum, at 5th level it's worse than any other debuff or increased damage spell available, isn't it?

I think it's underrated. One significant advantage it has over comparable effects is that it no longer requires concentration when you use a 5th level slot. You could Bestow Curse *and* pile-on Hex or another debuff. Especially useful if you use it to impose disadvantage on an ability then hit them with a spell that requires saving throws on that ability, e.g. Wisdom → Hold Monster.

I also like that it lets you design custom effects, with DM approval.

[Addaran]

Ascendant Step: Another niche use is to use levitate on an enemy to take it out of the fight (if he doesn't have ranged weapons) or greatly diminish his power (melee monsters like orc or ogre who usually have a few javelins and nothing else for range).

Misty Visions: The illusion cantrip is ton of fun and utility, that one is even better. Just check one of the 4-5 threads about illusionnist tricks/abuses.

Otherwordly Leap: Pretty bad but like someone mentioned, your jumping distance is based on str, not str mod. Even at 8, jump will put you into crazy strong barbarian jumping ability.

Sign of Ill Omen: I don't like any of the "use a slot and only once per day" invocations, except the polymorph one (mostly cause it's a fun spell and very versatile)

Witch Sight: At the level you can get it, you already have your best invocations picked, so it's not a huge opportunity cost. Probably better then most of the other choices left.

[Citan]

Sign of Ill Omen: At higher ranks, bestow curse has alot of options for flavor and scare factor, but since it requires a warlock spell slot and not the arcanum, at 5th level it's worse than any other debuff or increased damage spell available, isn't it?


Hi!

I agree with most of your other analysises but this one misses the mark, by far. ;)
Bestow Curse cast as lvl 5 is non-concentration.
For a solo Warlock particularly, it can stacks with Hex.
For any Warlock in a group, a successful Bestow Curse can mean instawin or nearly (because you would obviously choose the "disadvantage on one saving throw" before your caster pal launches his own spell).

It's just too bad the Warlock has nothing built-in to affect the save roll, but still with max CHA you should have a decent chance to pull it off.

Only regret is that it is restricted to 1/long rest (certainly because other casters get 2*5th level max for most of their careers, but still, it's one of the few design choices I don't really understand)...

[Specter]

About Levitate: most falling traps are like 30 feet deep, and the worst of them have stuff like undead below. Levitate can be the difference between damage and death.

[Tanarii]

As other have mentioned, Jump allows you to jump triple your Str score instead of your Str score. So 30 ft instead of 10ft. No concentration either. How useful that is depends on your campaign of course.

Silent Image doesn't get noise, but you can cast Minor Illusion first to create that. Takes some planning ahead ... but the ability to do that at will can be crazy useful. But again, YMMV depending on what kind of campaign you're playing. If there is lots of exploration and social interactions, or it's a combat-as-war campaign, it can be invaluable.

Levitate is more niche IMO. It's mostly going to be useful if you're in an underdark campaign, or there is lots of wall scaling or building climbing in an urban campaign. Certain dungeons it can be very useful too. Depends on how often you're bypassing Climb checks ... which aren't required unless it's a particularly difficult climb (DM's judgement).

Sign of Ill Omen and the other 1/day (uses spell slot) spells are there if you want to have a more controller/debuffer-style warlock. It's not going to suit everyone.

[Asmotherion]

Some interesting combining mechanics:

Make him a Tiefling Variant (Wings) or Aasimar (or even Aracocra, but the other 2 options are a lot better). With Levitate at-will, and your wings, you can hover, and then use your wings for direction. In tight spaces like a dungeon, it might be imposible (or at least hard) to use your wings to fly effectively, but this way you'll be able to do so easily. Also, you won't have to face the danger of falling wile flying.

Get the best Eldritch Blast by combining Agonising and Repeling Blast invocations. Add hex, for a lot of at-will single target damage. Agonising Blast adds your Cha modifier to every beam of Eldritch Blast and Repeling can be used both for batlefield control AND to knock opponents on things (or other opponents) and (depending on your DM) get extra damage from it.

3 Sorcerer Levels gives you access to Quicken Spell. At higher levels, using one of your 5th level spell slots is enough to fuel Quicken Spell for 4 rounds. A quick calculation, where you use all your spell slots for spell points except from 1 1st level spell slot (to cast Hex), can keep you quickening for 15 rounds. If you instead use a 5th level spell slot for Hex (to keep concentrating on it all day long), you can quicken for 11 rounds the first time (the time you use Hex), and then, after each short rest, you can do so again for 10 rounds. As a Dragon Sorcerer, you also get the Armor Bonus you would get from Armor of Shadows, so you won't waste an Invocation to have a spell at-will that, either way you only need to cast once per day.

If you keep on the Warlock Path, and since you already decided on Tome Pact, book of ancient Secrets is gold.

[Nemenia]

Some interesting combining mechanics:

Make him a Tiefling Variant (Wings) or Aasimar (or even Aracocra, but the other 2 options are a lot better). With Levitate at-will, and your wings, you can hover, and then use your wings for direction. In tight spaces like a dungeon, it might be imposible (or at least hard) to use your wings to fly effectively, but this way you'll be able to do so easily. Also, you won't have to face the danger of falling wile flying.

Get the best Eldritch Blast by combining Agonising and Repeling Blast invocations. Add hex, for a lot of at-will single target damage. Agonising Blast adds your Cha modifier to every beam of Eldritch Blast and Repeling can be used both for batlefield control AND to knock opponents on things (or other opponents) and (depending on your DM) get extra damage from it.

3 Sorcerer Levels gives you access to Quicken Spell. At higher levels, using one of your 5th level spell slots is enough to fuel Quicken Spell for 4 rounds. A quick calculation, where you use all your spell slots for spell points except from 1 1st level spell slot (to cast Hex), can keep you quickening for 15 rounds. If you instead use a 5th level spell slot for Hex (to keep concentrating on it all day long), you can quicken for 11 rounds the first time (the time you use Hex), and then, after each short rest, you can do so again for 10 rounds. As a Dragon Sorcerer, you also get the Armor Bonus you would get from Armor of Shadows, so you won't waste an Invocation to have a spell at-will that, either way you only need to cast once per day.

If you keep on the Warlock Path, and since you already decided on Tome Pact, book of ancient Secrets is gold.

I appreciate the in depth info, but this is about min maxing, not invocations, which is what I wanted. Thanks though!

[Nemenia]

The advice and support for the invocations has been really helpful! Thanks for all the info guys!

[Breaklance]

If you want to be really sneaky and underhanded when you can grab the invocation that lets you use disguise self at will and then pickup the cantrip Friends.

Step 1: disguise self to an entirely different race
Step 2: go to the market place
Step 3: cast friends on any vendor who has something you want
Step 4: run away
Step 5: drop the disguise spell

Friends is a charm effect so they'll know afterwards you bewitched them but now they'll be looking for vengeance on someone completely different

[Ashrym]

Ascendant Step
Misty Visions
Otherwordly Leap
Sign of Ill Omen
Witch Sight

Ascendant step is nice. A warlock cannot levitate others per the description but it does enable moving out of melee (which is why it's nice) and replacing climbing. It's an easy mobility upgrade.

Moving along the ceiling is old school and I like the take of walking on the ceiling as a visual.

Misty visions is awesome because of the versatility of illusions. They block line of sight and generally take physical interaction to identify. Taking it at low level for an at will ability when other casters need slots is pretty sweet.

Otherwordly leap is okay. Increased mobility is useful and it will give you a 30 ft running or 15 ft standing broad jump. I tend not to bother with it.

Sign of ill omen is useful even taking one slot with a daily restriction. The at will SLA's cast at the lowest level while the take a slot SLA's cast at the standard spell level the warlock uses. Bestow curse in a fifth level slot no longer requires concentration and that makes it worthwhile.

Generally, any take a slot SLA will add versatility but key pact abilities take precedence and at will allows more use. Take a slot invocations are all okay abilities with decent spells but I tend to give them tertiary consideration in preference of at will.

Witch sight depends on the campaign. I find it more flavorful than practical based on my experience. Too situational.

I favor master of myriad forms and visions of the distant realms for high level invocations. Whispers of the grave is fun and might have the flavor you want. You can kill first and ask questions later with that ability. Alter self or change self keep can keep the corpse from recognizing you as an enemy.

[Joe the Rat]

Optimal? Maybe not. Flavorful? Yep.

Witch Sight: See through all of the shenanigans that Warlocks use to cause trouble.
Eyes of the Rune Keeper: Make your money in text translations. Never have to delve through dangerous ancient ruins, because your DM will get tired of having to come up with translations for the "ancient runes of an unknown language" that decorate the place.
Sculptor of Flesh: Turn someone into a newt.
Beast Speech: Talk to a newt. Or other animals. Maybe witchy, maybe to Doolittle.

[gfishfunk]

My main premise with invocations is that they tend to help in non-combat situations. There really are plenty of invocations that give combat benefits -- you can take all combat invocations if you want. The majority of yours below tend to be non-combat OR pre-combat benefits that can really be milked.

This is very DM dependent: a lot of DMs like encounters to get sprung on players without giving them a chance to prepare. Some DMs like to give their players a chance to foresee and plan out prior to an encounter; for these types, the invocations below can work wonders.


Ascendant Step: I get levitate saves you from fall damage, but otherwise, when would this come up to be useful? You can't move horizontally without holding something. For instance, if there were a pit trap, and you used levitate to save yourself from falling into it, you're still trapped, because you can't do anything but release the magic and drop in to it. Why use this spell on yourself at all?

It can be super useful before combat if you know combat is imminent and you have some set up time. Levitate up to the top of a tree for good sniping, or up the side of a building or whatever. Best used on very dynamic battle maps.

Outside of combat, it is useful for infiltration in city-areas. Levitate up to a window or onto a roof. Levitate between buildings. Creaky floor? Levitate + Stealth.


Misty Visions: Sure you can make something up to a 15 foot cube, but it's purely visual and takes your action to do anything. Can't pretend to speak, etc. Why would I ever use this?

This is mostly out-of-combat useful, but highly DM dependent. Can you fool some enemies into thinking that there is a large pit fiend conveniently located around the outside of you? Can you convince them that there is a tree in your space? Can you convince them that this is a continuous wall rather than forked passage?

DM dependent: My DM always has someone look quizzically at the image, then check it to see if it is real. Like you would normally do when you suddenly see a pit fiend. Its not super useful for me. If one of my players used it, I would bend over backwards to make my villains believe it were there and act accordingly.

In short, useful outside of combat if you have time to put together a plan.


Otherwordly Leap: My jump distance is tripled. That would be great.. if my strength modifier wasn't 0, meaning I can't long jump at all and can get slightly higher with a high jump, in which case I would just take ascendant step and have infinite.

It is not terrible if you have an exploration campaign with a lot of random jumps and crap. As it takes an action to activate, nearly useless in combat. Generally, you can rig something else outside of combat...like levitate.


Sign of Ill Omen: At higher ranks, bestow curse has alot of options for flavor and scare factor, but since it requires a warlock spell slot and not the arcanum, at 5th level it's worse than any other debuff or increased damage spell available, isn't it?

Not necessarily: Bestow Curse can be encounter ruining...but it usually is not. One of the possible effects is to potentially make an enemy lose its action every round on a failed wisdom save. That can seriously nerf an otherwise deadly encounter - but its a matter of saves. On the downside, this spell is an action to cast.

A couple things to note:
- Bestow Curse does scale in certain ways: When cast as a level 4 spell at a higher level (which you should be able to do since you are casting it with a Warlock spell slot), the duration is better: 10 minutes.
- The spell requires a touch attack, meaning that either you need to be in melee (bladelock or tomelock with sheleliah) or you can use a familiar to do the touch attack on your behalf (a la chainlock, tomelock + book of ancient familiars to get Find Familiar, or through a feat).
- One of the possible effects is to add 1d8 to all damage (spell or melee) from your PC. Since this is not a concentration spell, you can double up using this spell and Hex--it just eats up your first action.

In short, this is decent for a bladelock or a chainlock, not great for you.


Witch Sight: I understand the mechanical use of this, especially in the case of illusions at high ranks, but will this come up enough to be worth using? it seems so niche I don't know if it would be worth it.

Its niche and very DM dependent. This doesn't let you see through illusions, just through illusions/shape change centered on creatures. I would skip it unless you know your DM loves throwing in that kind of stuff.

[Segev]

Clearly, if your DM is having his NPCs quizzically examine and poke at the illusory pit fiend, the solution is to summon a real pit fiend...and watch the NPCs waste time quizzically examining and poking at it as the devil takes his opportunity attack for their being open and not defending themselves.

[gfishfunk]

Clearly, if your DM is having his NPCs quizzically examine and poke at the illusory pit fiend, the solution is to summon a real pit fiend...and watch the NPCs waste time quizzically examining and poking at it as the devil takes his opportunity attack for their being open and not defending themselves.

He is a good DM for a lot of aspects of the game, but he has his quirks. One big quirk is that alternative solutions to combat tend to bother him. As a result, I view it as a story driven dungeon crawl: we are going to fight and kill everything, but there is going to be plot between the fights. It does not reward creative thinking and it is not my favorite way of playing, but (for what it is), the game is still a lot of fun. /shrug/

[Tanarii]

DM dependent: My DM always has someone look quizzically at the image, then check it to see if it is real. Like you would normally do when you suddenly see a pit fiend. Its not super useful for me. If one of my players used it, I would bend over backwards to make my villains believe it were there and act accordingly.You forgot blue: "Like you would normally do when you suddenly see a pit fiend" :smallbiggrin:

[Gignere]

Clearly, if your DM is having his NPCs quizzically examine and poke at the illusory pit fiend, the solution is to summon a real pit fiend...and watch the NPCs waste time quizzically examining and poking at it as the devil takes his opportunity attack for their being open and not defending themselves.

You mean why wouldn't you poke a silent pit fiend that doesn't make any noise. Maybe if you combined the silent image with minor illusions.

[Ashrym]

Instead of pit fiends, work on monsters that are typically quiet.

Spectres, wraith, ghosts, stalking tigers. Whatever might be expected to be quiet. Leaves covering a pit excavated with mold earth is handy but it needs picked up via tome pact or some other method.

Using silent image to create concealment is the most common use but it can just as easily be treasure to lure opponents to a dangerous area.

Stealth proficiency should be taken to make the most of misty visions.

[Segev]

You mean why wouldn't you poke a silent pit fiend that doesn't make any noise. Maybe if you combined the silent image with minor illusions.

If he specified it was a silent image, I missed it. I was assuming major image for exactly that reason.

[Gignere]

If he specified it was a silent image, I missed it. I was assuming major image for exactly that reason.

The warlock invocation is unlimited silent image not major image.

[SharkForce]

I appreciate the in depth info, but this is about min maxing, not invocations, which is what I wanted. Thanks though!

it is also not entirely accurate. for example, a level 3 sorcerer can have 3 sorcery points at a time, no more... so you can forget about getting 5 SP out of a max-level warlock slot, and converting spell slots costs your bonus action so you won't be quickening anything on the round you do it. which means it's more like quickening something once every 2 rounds.

(this is not to say that the 3 level sorcerer dip is necessarily a bad idea, just that it won't work quite as advertised).

[Segev]

The warlock invocation is unlimited silent image not major image.

While this is a thread on Warlock invocations, the fact that he indicated he was hesitant to pick up the warlock invocation suggests to me that his experience with his DM didn't involve that particular invocation. I could, of course, be wrong.

[Finback]

Sculptor of Flesh: Turn someone into a newt.


But they get better.

(plot twist: everyone now thinks said person is mad, because they're clearly NOT a newt)