Escalation Mages + Warlock?

[CyberThread]

I know how some say they are good with warlock, becuase they get to upgrade natrually, but I have a problem.


How do the shadow abilities interact with the warlock, as they heighten spells, not spell like abilities, which are two different feat chains.

[AmberVael]

Assuming you mean Shadow Focus, power, growth, and haste...

There's a line under the Escalation (Su) heading, right above Shadow Focus, which says:


Escalation effects can be applied to spell-like abilities just as if they were spells.

[CyberThread]

So what would happen if you tried to


Heighten/Empower/Widen a eldtrich blast

or would some of them only work if you used one of the various shaping abities?

((side note, if you used a warlock rod to modify the blast, can it be comboed with this?))

[AmberVael]

For the following, it's worth noting that an Eldritch Blast normally has an effective spell level of 1, unless modified by a blast shape or essence with a higher level (as per errata).

If you heighten a plain Eldritch Blast with Shadow Focus, it will effectively be a spell level higher than normal. Given that Eldritch Blast does not normally provoke a save or involve level based effects though, this does very little- but it may assist with certain other spell-level based effects (things similar to Globe of Invulnerability). If you use it on Eldritch Blast when you have a save based Essence or Blast Shape on it though, the save goes up by one.

Empowering an Eldritch Blast with Shadow Power will work as normal, letting your eldritch blast deal more damage.

Shadow Growth will only work if you have an appropriate Blast Shape up- such as Line or Cone.


I'm not sure what you mean by 'warlock rod.' I assume you mean Rods of Eldritch Power, which can add blast shapes or essences.
In theory, I believe it would work just as if you possessed the blast or essence yourself. However, the Rods require a swift action to activate. An escalation effect also requires a swift action to activate- since you normally only get one swift per turn, you can normally only use one of them.

[CyberThread]

Thank you very much for the clarity.