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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next New Warlock Pact and Pact Boon



Wartex1
2015-01-22, 09:13 PM
Here they are:

Pact Patron: Death

Your patron is the collector of souls himself. Whether it be a god or other being, it chose you to be in its service. You may either be collecting souls for harvest, saving the lives of others in order to lessen its workload, or perhaps another, secret mission. You are the hand of demise, evil or good as it may be.

Expanded Spell List
Death 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:

1st
Ray of Sickness, Sleep
2nd
Pass without Trace, Spiritual Weapon
3rd
Speak With Dead, Spirit Guardians
4th
Phantasmal Killer, Death Ward
5th
Reincarnate, Dispel Evil and Good

Mercy of Death
You gain advantage on attack rolls against poisoned, diseased, or frightened characters or creatures. Poisoned, diseased, or frightened characters or creatures also have disadvantage on saving throws against your spells.

Death's Blessing
At 6th level, you can capture the soul of a recently deceased humanoid (within one hour of death). Once captured, during a long rest, you can process the soul and Death will take it, granting you a Death's Blessing. This can be used to cast one spell on the Death Expanded Spell List that you know without consuming a spell slot. Once you have cast a spell in this manner, a Death's Blessing is removed. You can only have up to a certain combined number of souls or Death's Blessings at a time (1 at 6th, 2 at 10th, and 3 at 14th).

Favor of Demise
At 10th level, whenever you would take damage, you may sacrifice a Death's Blessing as a reaction in order to negate damage up to twice your current level. If you would have received more damage than twice your level, then you take any overflow damage. You also gain resistance to Necrotic damage.

Vision of the Reaper
At 14th level, you can consume a Death's Blessing to cause others to see you as the collector of souls themselves, frightening them unless they pass a Wisdom Saving Throw equal to your Spell Save DC. Undead and other creatures who have extended their life through unnatural means have disadvantage on the save. Any creature who has made a successful save against this effect can no longer be affected by this feature. This effect lasts for 10 minutes.

Pact Boons:
Pact of the Chain: You may have a Crawling Claw or a Raven as your familiar. You may also have skeletal or spectral versions of other familiars.
Pact of the Blade: Your weapon might be skeletal in nature, or be made from stone that sends chills down the spine of whoever touches it. Your weapons might also be ethereal in appearance and covered in chains.
Pact of the Tome: Your Book of Shadows may be a weathered grimoire or the notes of a dead man. You may also have a tightly bound notebook with a lock on the cover.



Pact of the Lantern
Your patron gives you a mysterious source of light, be it a candle, a glowing stone, or a seemingly ordinary lantern. You can summon or dispel this magical object as a bonus action at will. This object floats and does not need to be held. The object provides bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light an additional 60 feet. No heat is produced by the light source. The light cannot be extinguished by any means, and shines through magical darkness. Once dispelled, the object cannot be summoned for another thirty minutes.

If your Patron is an Archfey, this object may appear as a series floating gems, while a Fiend’s Warlock may get a small image of an inferno. If your Patron is a Great Old One, an evershifting orb of liquid light could be your light source, while those who serve Death may end up receiving their own version of the Reaper’s hourglass.

Invocations:

Revealing Light
Requires Pact of the Lantern, 7th Level
The lantern's light shines through intangible illusions, revealing them as false. Any image created by minor illusion, major illusion, silent image, or other spells are affected by this.

Lantern of the Stars
Requires Pact of the Lantern
Whenever you dispel your light source, you may deal 1d4 (2d4 at 5th, 3d4 at 11th, and 4d4 at 17th respectively) radiant damage to all hostile creatures within a 30-foot radius.


Any particular thoughts regarding flavor or balance?

GorinichSerpant
2015-01-22, 10:51 PM
I can't say much about balance, but the fluff is really nice and the Pact abilitys are flavorful. Except the Reaper's Catch seems counter-intuitive for what I imagine to be Death's agenda. I think that Death would want mortals not messing around with souls and having them being sent to the afterlife like their supposed to. Allowing his minions capture and spend souls seems off to me.

When did Death have a lantern, or actually in what story or mythology did he?

I can't say much balance wise because I neither have a feel for balance nor the Player Handbook at hand to compare this to the other pacts or boons.

Wartex1
2015-01-22, 11:03 PM
I edited the part with the Reaper's lantern out.

As for the spending souls thing, the idea was that the soul would be paid to Death in exchange for a short burst of magical power. I might change the method of the exchange though. Maybe a quota of sorts, but that might ruin it for instances where Death wants less people to die.

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-01-22, 11:36 PM
Ooh! This looks good. From the top:



Pact Patron: Death

Your patron is the collector of souls himself. Whether it be a god or other being, it chose you to be in its service. You may either be collecting souls for harvest, saving the lives of others in order to lessen its workload, or perhaps another, secret mission. You are the hand of demise, evil or good as it may be.

Great flavor. Might want to add that you can be opposed to the Patron as well. Warlocks have a wide range of options on how they interact with their patron, so one of Death could be stealing His powers.



Mercy of Death
At 1st level, whenever you are within 10 feet of a dying creature, character, or other being, you may force them to fail all death saving throws, killing them instantly.

Whoah. That's good. Maybe too good? Getting to insta-gib a character is a big deal. This acts as the opposite of Spare the Dying, but its effect is crazy good. Perhaps you could reword it? Maybe: Any creature whose hit points are reduced to 0 or lower by an attack or effect from the Death Warlock suffers an automatic Failure on their first Death Save.


Reaper’s Catch
At 6th level, you can capture the soul of a recently deceased humanoid (within one hour of death). Once captured, during a long rest, you can process the soul and Death will take it, granting you a Death's Blessing. This can be used to cast one spell on the Death Expanded Spell List that you know without consuming a spell slot. Once you have cast a spell in this manner, Death's Boon is removed. You can only have one Death's Boon at any given time. You cannot hold more than one soul at a time. You cannot hold a Death's Boon and a soul simultaneously.

If collecting the actual soul is against the theme, perhaps: "At lvl 6, you may draw in the negative energy of a recently deceased humanoid (within one hour of death). This energy is the energy released as a soul crosses the veil of life and death. Once captured..."

Good ability though. I think you have the name mislabeled.


Favor of Demise
At 10th level, whenever you would take damage, you may sacrifice a Death's Blessing in order to negate damage up to twice your current level. If you would have received more damage than twice your level, then you take any overflow damage.

I think the last sentence is redundant. Perhaps you could also expend a "Death Point" to succeed on any one failed save?


Vision of Death
At 14th level, you can consume a Death's Blessing to cause undead and other creatures who have extended their life through unnatural means to see you as the collector of souls themselves, frightening them unless they pass a Wisdom Saving Throw equal to your Spell Save DC. This effect lasts for 10 minutes.

I don't see Death's Blessing. Did I miss it? Also, the "other creatures" line is a bit vague. It would be easier to just say "all undead".


Pact Boons:
Pact of the Chain: You may have a Crawling Claw as your familiar.
Pact of the Blade: Your weapon might be skeletal in nature, or be made from stone that sends chills down the spine of whoever touches it.
Pact of the Tome: Your Book of Shadows may be a weathered grimoire or the notes of a dead man.

What? No Skeleton minions?! Failed! -9,001/10 Would not Part with!


Pact of the Lantern
Your patron gives you a mysterious source of light, be it a candle, a glowing stone, or a seemingly ordinary lantern. You can summon or dispel this magical object as a bonus action at will. This object floats and does not need to be held. The object provides bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light an additional 60 feet. No heat is produced by the light source. The light cannot be extinguished by any means, and shines through magical darkness. Once dispelled, the object cannot be summoned for another thirty minutes.

If your Patron is an Archfey, this object may appear as a series floating gems, while a Fiend’s Warlock may get a small image of an inferno. If your Patron is a Great Old One, an evershifting orb of liquid light could be your light source, while those who serve Death may end up receiving their own version of the Reaper’s hourglass.

Alright. That's pretty sweet.


Revealing Light
Requires Pact of the Lantern, 7th Level
Any creature disguised by magic or invisible is revealed if within 90 feet of the light source.
This feature requires a line of sight.

Uhm. Perhaps too much? What if it just imparts Disadvantage to magic disguises and invisibility?


Lantern of the Stars
Requires Pact of the Lantern
Whenever you dispel your light source, you may deal 1d4 (2d4 at 5th, 3d4 at 11th, and 4d4 at 17th respectively) radiant damage to all hostile creatures within a 30-foot radius.

No real complaints on this one, but it seems like really low damage. Could it instead convert Eldritch Blast into Radiant damage? Or even all damage?

So far I'm pretty excited. I'd love to use this in a game sometime once it's ironed out. Please keep going!

Wartex1
2015-01-23, 07:35 AM
I made some more changes. Mercy of Death only fails one death saving throw and is a bonus action.

I made the wording for Reaper's Ctach more clear (since I wrote it then decided to change Death's Boon to Death's Blessing, but I didn't do all of it).

Revealing Lantern is now an at-will Detect Magic and Detect Secret Doors, but everything can see what it reveals.

I didn't include a part on working against Death because I always felt that the patron could revoke all the power they gave to the warlock, similar to a Cleric.

Also, a lack of skeletons is because I'm trying to keep the familiars pretty small.

GorinichSerpant
2015-01-23, 08:22 AM
You could give a skeletal version of an ordinary familiar. Also ravens, ravens are very much in theme with this patron. Probably better then the crawling hand.

I'm imagining that processing a soul involves does some tiresome paperwork that Death has to do for every soul he harvests. Which would mean that you could technically make an error and cause the soul not to go to the right place or something. That just seems like a wonderful opportunity for story. If I was Dming, I'd allow a deception or Arcana check to hide something in the paperwork so that nobody notices. If the PC starts abusing it, then it means he's doing it often enough that Death notices the inconsistencies which leads to trouble.

What is the flavor reason for the lantern boon existing? Blade is based around the story of power hungry warriors, Tome is for the seekers of dark knowledge and chain is based off the idea of familiars. What concept is the lantern boon based off?

Wartex1
2015-01-23, 10:56 AM
The flavor reason for the Lantern is for "Seeing the Unknown" since it lights up the area and can see secret doors and stuff.

Should I swap the "Detect Magic" part for seeing through magically disguised creatures?

Wartex1
2015-01-23, 11:19 PM
Made some more edits.

Does anyone have any more thoughts or suggestions before I finalize it?

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-01-24, 01:04 AM
Made some more edits.

Does anyone have any more thoughts or suggestions before I finalize it?

Looks good to me. My only thing would be to let Favor also allow you to auto-save on something. Maybe at lvl10 you auto-succeed at your first Death Save?

Also, Reaper's Catch should just be called Death's Blessing, as per the description. But outside of that, I'm definitely planning on introducing this to my games! :smallbiggrin:

Logosloki
2015-01-24, 06:30 AM
I love the flavour text, shows you really have put some thought into this. As Ninjadeadbeard typed, I would also put my vote behind calling 'Reaper's Catch' Death's blessing instead.

Wartex1
2015-01-24, 09:30 AM
I made the name change, also added the ability to recover from unconsciousness with a Death's Blessing, though I may make it automatic since how would one use it while unconscious? I also changed Vision of Death/Vision of the Reaper so that it can perform outside settings which lack an abundance of undead.

Inchoroi
2015-01-24, 09:02 PM
As cool as this is, I question the level 1 feature. The reason is: when would a monster roll death saving throws? Generally, once they're dropped to 0hp, any enemy is just dead. At least, this is my experience (and from what I remember from the books).

Amnoriath
2015-01-24, 09:54 PM
All in all the Pact needs a boost everywhere.
1. Most of the spells here are already on the Warlock's list or get them at will through invocations.
2. Your first ability is almost never going to be used unless the DM is thinking of having a recurring BBEG and things went sideways for him. You can instead give him the Spare the Dying cantrip with another option.
3. Your other abilities actually are quite flavorful and work well the problem is that any of them can only be used once a day. No other pact has such limited resources. Infact it is standard that there is at least a couple of things are passive and not resource based much less 1/day resource to be shared.
4. For something that specializes in death it has little capability of dealing it out. Obviously for balance it needs to be restrained but currently even if you increase the Death's Blessing resource as it gains levels it amounts to saving a slot, reduce damage/auto self-revive, or maybe frighten a few creatures.

Wartex1
2015-01-24, 10:20 PM
After triple-checking the PHB, you can get 1st-level False Life as an invocation. You can also get Feign Death, Gentle Repose, and Commune as ritual spells via Tome. You can also get Hallow, Evard's Black tentacles, and Sleep from the various other Patrons. I'm keeping sleep, but I'll change the others.

I'll also allow having more than one soul/Death's Blessing but will have a level requirement (1 per Patron bonus of course).

As for Death's Mercy, I'll maybe change it to a touch attack, or some sort of undead-killer feature.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

EDIT: Made the changes. Had to get rid of some of the original flavor in spell choice, but got it done. Removed the unconscious bit for Favor of Demise and gave necrotic resistance. Mercy of Death is now a "pick off the weak ones" passive.

Wartex1
2015-01-25, 05:28 PM
Does everyone feel that this is ready to be finalized?