Eldritch Blask or Pact Blade for Soul Knife?

[Z3ro]

So I'm starting a new campaign soon at level three and I'm looking to do a soul-knife refluff. My DM is pretty lenient when it comes to refluffing as long as the crunch stays the same, and I've always liked the soul-knife fluff, so I figured I'd give it a try in 5E.

I'm pretty set on Warlock, but the question now is do I use EB as my mind blade, or my pact blade. EB would require warcaster to really use well, but aside from that everything else looks like it favors EB over the pact blade. I can even use EB with a "throw mind blade" type feature, which I can't do with the pact blade as well. The only advantage I can think of is that pact blade works better with magic items, and we tend to run medium to heavy magic campaigns. Also, if I go EB, which other pact would be better, chain or tome?

Aside from the blade issue, which patron do you think would work better? Fiend seems kind of a no-brainer for a primarily melee-focused warlock, plus hurl through hell makes a great knife to the soul substitute. But great old one has more telepahtic-styled abilities, which seem to fit well for a psionic character. Thoughts?

[Easy_Lee]

Ask your DM if he's okay with this:

Hungering Blade: you may cast Eldritch blast in melee range with no penalty, making a melee attack with your pact weapon in place of each melee spell attack.
Lifedrinker: when you kill a foe with your pact weapon, you may recover health equal to the damage dealt by the killing blow. This does not work on targets below CR1.

That lets you have a bladelock that scales exactly the same as a normal warlock casting EB. It also lets you take repelling blast and knock targets around with your weapon.

For patron choice, Fiend is better in combat and old one is better out. That's a personal choice and is campaign dependent.

[Ralanr]

Flavor wise, old one warlock.

Why not both? There are three EB invocations and two blade ones. You can fill those up easily (the only one you really need is cha damage). Could fluff it as dual wielding.

[CyberThread]

maybe you should be asking on the homebrew thread this item was created in ?

[Z3ro]

Ask your DM if he's okay with this:

Hungering Blade: you may cast Eldritch blast in melee range with no penalty, making a melee attack with your pact weapon in place of each melee spell attack.
Lifedrinker: when you kill a foe with your pact weapon, you may recover health equal to the damage dealt by the killing blow. This does not work on targets below CR1.

That lets you have a bladelock that scales exactly the same as a normal warlock casting EB. It also lets you take repelling blast and knock targets around with your weapon.

For patron choice, Fiend is better in combat and old one is better out. That's a personal choice and is campaign dependent.

Not bad options, but my DM is as much against home-brew as his is for refluffing.


Flavor wise, old one warlock.

Why not both? There are three EB invocations and two blade ones. You can fill those up easily (the only one you really need is cha damage). Could fluff it as dual wielding.

Not looking to do both, as there are plenty of other invocations I'd prefer.


maybe you should be asking on the homebrew thread this item was created in ?

No homebrew; I'm simply looking at existing choices with some refluff. Everything mechanically should still work how it's written on the page.

[Paeleus]

Hungering Blade: you may cast Eldritch blast in melee range with no penalty, making a melee attack with your pact weapon in place of each melee spell attack.
Lifedrinker: when you kill a foe with your pact weapon, you may recover health equal to the damage dealt by the killing blow. This does not work on targets below CR1.


Would the Hungering Blade invocation you suggest lead to 4 weapon attacks when EB gets 4 beams? Or is the wording throwing me off?

[Easy_Lee]

Would the Hungering Blade invocation you suggest lead to 4 weapon attacks when EB gets 4 beams? Or is the wording throwing me off?

It would, you're right. Since it's not the attack action, it wouldn't qualify for things like polearm mastery or dual wield. However, it would allow for a four attack action before fighters get it. In my opinion, the issue here is that fighters get their fourth hit too late; it should come at 17 just like EB and other cantrips.