Mortalbane Warlock

[weckar]

Hi there.
The party warlock has been splat diving a bit, and found this feat called Mortalbane from BoVD. The idea is: more damage.

A disagreement has arisen, however, about how often she can apply it to her abilities. Are all her invocations separate spell-like abilities? How about a modified eldritch blast, does that get its own counter?

I'm sure this has come up before (what trick hasn't?) so please enlighten me about what has been ruled in the past.

[evangaline]

I know that it is possible to apply it ten times to the same spell, I do not know how.
This happened once (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?123544-Test-of-Spite-Olo-vs-9mm-the-second&p=6843840#post6843840) in the test of spite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?124216-The-Test-of-Spite-3-51), and it was added to a dispel.

[weckar]

Well, first off: it only applied to SLAs, not spells. Second: doing it 10 times per effect is mostly a matter of taking the feat twice. The real matter is how many unique SLAs the Warlock has, and which don't count as uniques...

[Gemini476]

First of all, Mortalbane is from the Book of Vile Darkness, not Exalted Deeds. It's also not a very evil feat, despite the book it's in. Which is slightly weird.

Secondly, yeah each invocation is a separate spell-like ability. You can only add Mortalbane to the damaging ones, and in the cases where the spell-like deals multiple instances of damage (like the Black Tentacles effect) then you get +2d6 for every single instance of damage.

Modified Eldritch Blasts are (as far as I'm aware) still Eldritch Blasts, and thus do not get separate counters.

It's a pretty good feat, all told, although if your player really wants to supercharge his Eldritch Blast I'd have to point them towards the Hellfire Warlock in the Fiendish Codex II.

[weckar]

First of all, Mortalbane is from the Book of Vile Darkness, not Exalted Deeds. My apologies, that mistaken initialism derived from an in-joke (Book of Evil Doom!).



It's also not a very evil feat, despite the book it's in. Which is slightly weird.

Secondly, yeah each invocation is a separate spell-like ability. You can only add Mortalbane to the damaging ones, and in the cases where the spell-like deals multiple instances of damage (like the Black Tentacles effect) then you get +2d6 for every single instance of damage.
Seriously? Dayum. Gotcha.


Modified Eldritch Blasts are (as far as I'm aware) still Eldritch Blasts, and thus do not get separate counters.
Noted. Although I am open to counter-reasoning, of course.


It's a pretty good feat, all told, although if your player really wants to supercharge his Eldritch Blast I'd have to point them towards the Hellfire Warlock in the Fiendish Codex II.Unfortunately, we are nowhere near the level where PrCs become an option. Not for another 6-9 months or so. This one in particular would take even longer. Mortalbane just stood out as an option for its complete lack of prerequisites.