Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
In this thread, the Warlock will be receiving a revision of its Patron and Boon features, in order to allow a multitude of playstyles that make each Patron and Boon feel unique and applicable. Props to Millstone85 for the inspiration!
Warlock Feature: Eldritch Power
Eldritch Blast is no longer a Cantrip, but is now a Warlock Feature. It deals a damage type based on the type of Patron you choose, using your Charisma Modifier for the attack. You can use it as an Action to make Ranged Spell attack that deals 1d8 damage with a range of 60ft. When you make a Weapon Attack, you can choose enhance that weapon with your Patron's power, using your Eldritch Blast's damage type for that attack.
Boon Modifications:
Pact of the Blade
Known as hexblades, these warlocks get better weapon and armor proficiencies, and are experts at applying their magic through their weapon.
Pact of the Blade users now gain Proficiency in Medium Armor.
You can conjure a magical weapon, a Pact Weapon, as an Action. This weapon is a melee weapon that deals 1d8 damage of your choice (chosen upon conjuring) of Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing, with 5 foot reach, and can be Thrown up to 15ft/30ft. Conjuring a new weapon will make your previous one disappear. However, you can enhance your weapon with one of these choices:
- Reach. Two Handed
- Light, Finesse. Wield a copy in your other hand.
- Bonus Action returns the weapon to your hand. Throwing range is doubled.
- Gain a +1 AC bonus for each adjacent enemy.
You can instead choose to expend a Spell Slot to conjure your Pact Weapon without an Action or to enhance a weapon you’re already wielding. Doing so grants you a bonus to your AC and to attacks you make with a weapon enhanced by Eldritch Power, equal to the level of the Spell Slot spent, until the start of your next turn.
Weapons enhanced by Eldritch Power may use your Charisma Modifier for its attack and damage rolls.
Pact of the Tome
Better known as occultists, these warlocks learn mastery over magic, and are adept at refining their Patron’s power to its full potential.
Warpcast: You now have the means of storing your Patron's Power for future use in the form of your Warpcast Level, which resets to 0 whenever you finish a Short or Long Rest. When you would expend a Warlock Spell Slot to cast a Warlock Spell, you can choose to cast the spell as a lower level than your Warlock Spell Slot level, increasing your Warpcast level by the difference.
The next time you cast a Warlock Spell of level 1 or higher that’s not larger than your Warpcast Level, you cast that spell without expending a spell slot as if it were cast at your Warpcast level. After a spell is cast this way, your Warpcast Level resets to 0.
If you cast your Eldritch Blast while your Warpcast level is 1 or higher, you may have the next Warlock Spell, with a level no greater than your Warpcast level and has a casting time of an Action, you cast before the end of your turn to have its casting time changed to a Bonus Action. Doing so reduces your Warpcast level to 0, and a spell cast this way gains no other benefits of your Warpcast feature.
Pact of the Chain
Better known as binders, these warlocks use lesser creatures as an extension of their influence, creating a chain of power from master to servant.
Follows the same rules as the standard Pact of the Chain.
When casting a Warlock spell with a Warlock Spell Slot, you may use a creature you can communicate with as a conduit for its power by spending your Bonus Action. The spell must have a casting time of an Action, a duration of Instantaneous, and can only target a single creature that the conduit can see. The conduit creature must be charmed by you or it must be a willing ally.
Doing so allows you to cast the spell as if you were in the creature’s location, if the creature spends their Reaction to do so. A charmed creature may resist spending their Reaction for this if they succeed on a Charisma Saving Throw, but does so with Disadvantage. Even though the spell is cast using the conduit’s senses, you must know where the target of the spell is, although the spell will have Disadvantage on any checks or attacks on targets you cannot see.
Patron Modifications:
Archfey Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Acid
Fiend Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Fire
Great Old One Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Psychic
Celestial Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Radiant
You no longer gain Sacred Fire as a cantrip.
Hexblade Patron
Renamed to the Tormented Patron.
Now focused around serving a Patron that is centered around vengeance, malice, retribution, or suffering. When souls of a certain power become consumed with pain and hate, they can turn into an entity of suffering. Either it feeds on these things in others, or it feeds on your own, or its own suffering becomes a conduit for others’.
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Poison
Level 1: Tormentor’s Curse (Replaces Hexblade’s Curse):
If you are attacked by a creature within 30ft of you while Concentrating on a spell, you may choose to afflict that target with a dark curse as a Reaction, causing Disadvantage on that attack. While the target is cursed this way:
- Any damage against the cursed target will grant you temporary hitpoints equal to the damage dealt, up to half of your Warlock Level (Rounded up). These temporary hitpoints last until the start of your next turn. If you must make a Concentration Saving Throw due to damage, you gain a bonus to your Saving Throw based on how many of these Temporary Hitpoints you had before damage was dealt.
- If the target dies while cursed, you gain HP equal to your Proficiency bonus.
Using this feature while a different creature is cursed will cause the curse to end early on the previous target.
Spell List Changes:
- Level 1: Guiding Bolt, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
- Level 2: Mirror Image, Silence
- Level 3: Nondetection, Remove Curse
- Level 4: Compulsion, Phantasmal Killer
- Level 5: Contagion, Telekinesis
Undying Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Necrotic
Now focused around a Patron that has mastery over both life and death. As a result, you have a bit more mastery over both.
Level 1: Among the Unliving (Changed from Among the Dead):
You gain Spare the Dying, as before.
You gain advantage on Saving Throws to resist disease, as before.
Undead and Elementals are naturally charmed by you. These creatures may spend their action to make an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your Warlock Spell Save DC in order to see through the effect. If they witness you making a hostile action against one of their allies, or one of their allies making a hostile action against you, they are immune to this effect for 24 hours.
Level 6: (In addition to Defy Death): You now know Nystul’s Magic Aura as a Warlock Spell and may cast it on yourself without expending a Warlock Spell Slot. You can only do this once per Short or Long Rest.
Level 10: (In addition to Undying Nature)
For your Among the Unliving feature, in addition to Undead and Elemental creatures being charmed by you, Blindsense now does not assist any creature in detecting you.
Spell List Changes:
- Level 1: Cure Wounds, Ray of Sickness
- Level 2: Protection from Poison, Lesser Restoration
- Level 3: Animate Dead, Life Transference
- Level 4: Polymorph, Stoneskin
- Level 5: Antilife Shell, Contagion
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Interesting! I'm going to see if I can offer some helpful comments on each part.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Man_Over_Game
Warlock Feature: Eldritch Power
Eldritch Blast is no longer a Cantrip, but is now a Warlock Feature. It deals a damage type based on the type of Patron you choose, using your Charisma Modifier for the attack. You can use it as an Action to make Ranged Spell attack that deals 1d8 damage with a range of 60ft.
Turning EB into a class feature is something I've seen mentioned often when it comes to warlock changes. It prevents other classes from getting Eldritch Blast via Magic Initiate or Spell Sniper, and it lets warlocks pick an extra cantrip. A perhaps unexpected change is that EB no longer works with Spell Sniper, so no more sniping from 600 feet away. Likewise, anything that interacts with spells no longer effects EB.
I'm confused as to why you'd want to nerf EB, though? 1d10 at 120 feet was fine before. Since it's no longer a cantrip, it doesn't have to compete with other cantrips such as Fire Bolt. I could understand the nerf if it was to make it more competitive with other cantrips, but that's no longer an issue. Why not just leave it as-is?
You should probably also make sure to specify that EB is, indeed, magic, since it is no longer a cantrip. Using a spell attack, as you've mentioned, is probably sufficient. Alternatively, you could leave it as a cantrip and simply give it to every warlock for free.
Something you might consider is rolling the EB and pact boon invocations into the base class. For example, as you level, you can occasionally choose an EB enhancement, and automatically get all your pact-specific invocations as regular class features. Of course, this is quite the power spike, so it might need to come at the expense of something else. Maybe a simple option would be that as you level you get two extra invocations that can only be spent on EB invocations, and one invocation that can only be spent on a pact invocation. It would be logical for these to come at levels 6, 10, and 14.
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When you make a Weapon Attack, you can choose enhance that weapon with your Patron's power, using your Eldritch Blast's damage type for that attack.
This seems like something that should perhaps be unique to Blade pact warlocks. Also, does this cost anything to do?
Overall, I like what you've done here. I do wonder a bit about this making magic weapons less useful to bladelocks, since they can no longer make them pact weapons. What I might do is allow them to touch one magic weapon to add that to their list of possible enhancement choices. Doing so makes the magic weapon disappear until either you die or you touch a different magic weapon to make an enhancement choice. You can only do this with one magic weapon at a time.
You might also consider giving them a +1 and +2 bonus at certain warlock levels, as if the weapon was now a weapon +1 or +2.
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- Gain a +1 AC bonus for each adjacent enemy.
So if I'm surrounded, I get a +8 to AC? Why is this here, where did it come from?
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You can instead choose to expend a Spell Slot to conjure your Pact Weapon without an Action or to enhance a weapon you’re already wielding. Doing so grants you a bonus to your AC and to attacks you make with a weapon enhanced by Eldritch Power, equal to the level of the Spell Slot spent, until the start of your next turn.
This is pretty cool. What's the bonus? Perhaps equal to the spell slot level? That might be too strong, actually.
The whole warpcast thing is interesting. Not sure how I feel about it yet. It's also not clear if you still get the three cantrips or not.
What about something like this? If you add 1 minute to the casting time of a spell (i.e. "if you're not in combat"), you can cast the spell without expending a spell slot.
Alternatively, bake Book of Ancient Secrets into the base pact boon, and change the invocation to add one spell for each level up to 5th to your ritual book, even if it doesn't have the ritual tag.
I like this. It really lets you get full use out of your familiar. I might restrict the "casting through someone else" to just the familiar, but leaving it open-ended like this allows for more potential use-cases.
One thing I'm wondering about is, if charmed creatures have disadvantage on saves to resist being cast through, and willing creatures won't resist and therefore don't need to save, then who makes the save regularly, without disadvantage? No one?
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Patron Modifications:
One thing I'm wondering is if EB still does force damage, and these other damage types are just alternatives. If so, then it should be fine. If not, and these are the only damage type you have for EB, then some changes need to be made. Fire, and especially poison, are some of the most commonly resisted damage types. I would change the Tormented patron to use magical piercing damage instead of poison. I might let Fiend patrons have both fire and cold; neither is a great damage type, but being able to choose either gives you some versatility.
Quote:
Hexblade Patron
Renamed to the Tormented Patron.
[...]
Undying Patron
I don't actually have enough experience with either of these to leave a comment on them yet.
You've inspired me to look into creating an elemental patron, like a djinni or something. Seems like a missing gap in the list of possible patrons.
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Man_Over_Game
Archfey Patron
- Eldritch Blast damage type: Acid
...
Hexblade Patron- Eldritch Blast damage type: Poison
I understand that you are trying to give each patron its own damage type, but I don't understand the decision to make Archfey deal acid damage, and poison damage is the worst type of damage, because of how many things which are outright immune to it. I would argue to change the Tormented to necrotic, or maybe even just back to force. Maybe Archfey could be thunder damage, since it seems pretty eclectic?
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
thoroughlyS
I understand that you are trying to give each patron its own damage type, but I don't understand the decision to make Archfey deal acid damage, and poison damage is the worst type of damage, because of how many things which are outright immune to it. I would argue to change the Tormented to necrotic, or maybe even just back to force. Maybe Archfey could be thunder damage, since it seems pretty eclectic?
You cannot choose a damage type that you think is better due to resistance and immunities. You should be choosing a damaged type that best reflects the theme.
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Garfunion
You cannot choose a damage type that you think is better due to resistance and immunities. You should be choosing a damaged type that best reflects the theme.
Except you completely can. There's no one right way to make brew.
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JNAProductions
Except you completely can. There's no one right way to make brew.
Sure if you want to min/max the system. I prefer a more natural themed approach.
What makes sense for the theme not what damage type is the least resisted/immune.
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Garfunion
Sure if you want to min/max the system. I prefer a more natural themed approach.
What makes sense for the theme not what damage type is the least resisted/immune.
And that’s fine-but your way is not the only way. A fluffy option that’s mechanically weak will be picked rarely, if at all, meaning it’s wasted text.
Now, you could give them poison AND abilities to bypass resistance/immunity, to make it both fluffy and effective, but you don’t have to.
Re: Warlock, Revised (Massive Revision of Boons and features)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Garfunion
Sure if you want to min/max the system. I prefer a more natural themed approach.
What makes sense for the theme not what damage type is the least resisted/immune.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
JNAProductions
And that’s fine-but your way is not the only way. A fluffy option that’s mechanically weak will be picked rarely, if at all, meaning it’s wasted text.
I actually tried to do both.
I considered the standing of each patron and matched them with elements that balanced out.
The Undying (now Tormented) would be very strong and aggressive compared to the rest, so it got the weakest EB. Coincidentally, it has a powerful feature that scales with damage, which is hard to abuse with a heavily-resisted damage type. Even considering the poison, would someone pick it? I like to think so.
Archfey doesn't have much damage in its features, and so got a fairly universal element (Acid).
Similarly, Wizard schools are matched up with an inversely powerful magic type. Divination is the weakest magic type, yet has some of the most powerful features. Transmutation is the most versatile of the magic types for Wizard, yet the school provides hardly any combat benefit. As a result, all of the Wizard schools are "even". I tried to follow that practice, so that every Patron is a difficult choice to make. That way, making a choice is mostly dependent on what kind of option fits your concept, rather than one providing a strictly mechanical increment.
