I <3 ChainLocks

[Captain Morgan]

Just played my first 5e session, and I went with Pact of the Chain over Tome knowing it was probably inferior mechanically. My improved Familiar, Fritters, was freaking MVP. Patron was Great Old One.

It started when I made telepathic contact with some sort of driad and got charmed for doing so. I told the party the driad was legit and was about to walk them into her trap, but luckily Fritters (who had been off my person at the time) passed his save, notified the party that something was amiss, and helped me break the charm.

I was considering the Invocation to give no distance limit for my telepathic bond. Then I realized Fritters had a full mile's worth of telepathic sense relaying, so I turned him into an Imp and sent him off to scout. Fritters found our enemies, knocked over some things in a nearby room, causing some demons to split off to investigate. The group was a cinch to take out thus divided.

I was planning on taking an Invocation for Devil's Sight, perhaps to combo with Hunger of Hadar and/or Darkness. Then I realized Fritters could just share his Imp's perfect dark vision with me, or his Pseudodragon's blind sense.

All this, plus Magic Resistance? MAN. Fritters is my favorite.

I know none of this is new per se, but I was amazed at how much utility I squeezed out of this guy. And where the Pact of the Tome sort of demands one of your precious Invocations, the Chain wound up saving me a couple of them.

Anyone else have fun Chainlock stories?

[Madfellow]

Anyone else have fun Chainlock stories?

One of my players recently rolled up a Tome Pact Warlock but he used the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation to get the Find Familiar spell. He went with an octopus named George, fitting for a Great Old One patron. :smallamused: When the party needed to scout out a warehouse by the docks, he threw it into the water to go look ahead. When interacting with NPCs, he would use Awakened Mind telepathy to make people think the octopus was talking. :smallbiggrin:

[coredump]

Hmmm.... I have a Warlock2/WizX character. (No, not for EB) It never occured to me that I could change familiars each time I cast the spell.... that is pretty neat.

I may pick up another level of Warlock...

[Captain Morgan]

One of my players recently rolled up a Tome Pact Warlock but he used the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation to get the Find Familiar spell. He went with an octopus named George, fitting for a Great Old One patron. :smallamused: When the party needed to scout out a warehouse by the docks, he threw it into the water to go look ahead. When interacting with NPCs, he would use Awakened Mind telepathy to make people think the octopus was talking. :smallbiggrin:

Fan-freaking-tastic. I'd like to be under the sea...


Hmmm.... I have a Warlock2/WizX character. (No, not for EB) It never occured to me that I could change familiars each time I cast the spell.... that is pretty neat.

I may pick up another level of Warlock...

Yeah, a lot of the perks for the Chain Pact are not immediately apparent. Probably because to do so you need to look at:

A) The Warlock chapter in the Player's handbook.
B) The find familiar's spell buried in the spell list.
C) At least 5 different pages in the Monster Manual.

Having all the details spread out so far makes it easy to miss something, especially if you don't have hard copies of the books and rely on PDFs. Blade and Tome 'Locks seem more self contained by comparison.

[EroGaki]

Just played my first 5e session, and I went with Pact of the Chain over Tome knowing it was probably inferior mechanically. My improved Familiar, Fritters, was freaking MVP. Patron was Great Old One.

It started when I made telepathic contact with some sort of driad and got charmed for doing so. I told the party the driad was legit and was about to walk them into her trap, but luckily Fritters (who had been off my person at the time) passed his save, notified the party that something was amiss, and helped me break the charm.

I was considering the Invocation to give no distance limit for my telepathic bond. Then I realized Fritters had a full mile's worth of telepathic sense relaying, so I turned him into an Imp and sent him off to scout. Fritters found our enemies, knocked over some things in a nearby room, causing some demons to split off to investigate. The group was a cinch to take out thus divided.

I was planning on taking an Invocation for Devil's Sight, perhaps to combo with Hunger of Hadar and/or Darkness. Then I realized Fritters could just share his Imp's perfect dark vision with me, or his Pseudodragon's blind sense.

All this, plus Magic Resistance? MAN. Fritters is my favorite.

I know none of this is new per se, but I was amazed at how much utility I squeezed out of this guy. And where the Pact of the Tome sort of demands one of your precious Invocations, the Chain wound up saving me a couple of them.

Anyone else have fun Chainlock stories?

I'm happy to have read this. I've been wrestling back and forth between going tome and chain. It's good to see chain is more useful than it first appears.

[Atalas]

It is, for both game and RP purposes. I played a GOO Chainlock, and had lots of fun with him. My psuedodragon familiar, Jafar, spent a lot of his time tormenting the group's paladin. The group was two smaller parties that combined for the same quest and, well, the pally was already hearing voices thanks to another player who just sometimes showed, so he was a book (Bard whose soul was bound to a book. He, ah, had previously died on the same quest we were now on). so, paladin is slowly being driven crazy by a rather perverted, bi-sexual bard (would hit on ANYTHING with a Charisma score of at least 14).

Now, we missed the part where the mind talk of the GOO warlock only allowed one-way communication, so I basically had telepathy as a level seven character. So, now my tiefling warlock (yeah, cliche, but I was playing it up) AN D his familiar was spending time projecting thoughts and into the paladin's mind, and since he knew nothing about us he had NO idea in-game where it was coming from, and his player played it fantastically. Even better, for the rest of us, our DM was instituting that the paladin was gaining insanity points. Yeah. and when I realized what would happen when he reached 100%, I started gleefully giving him images and thoughts to mess him up. Like our half-orc barbarian taking care of some, uh, 'manly needs'. Though we were gonna be nice at times, because we were about to go into a cave and the paladin was the only one without darkvision, or echolocation in the case of the blind archery-focused ranger. so, Jafar was g nna sit on the paladin's shoulder or rest on top of his head and project a real-time image of what he 'saw' to the paladin... though likely with looking at the half-orc's rear. oh, and the entire party was male, so, yeah. we were driving the paladin nuts both in-game and out.

short of it, familiars can be awesome and utterly broken if used right, and by that I mean creatively. I wouldn't recommend just anyone picking up a familiar, but if you're real good at thinking outside the box, I say go for it and let loose!

[Naanomi]

The social implications of the sprite's heart sight is also something to consider. Not much actually deals with alignment mechanically, but here is a flawless way to find out something important about a person's nature that is virtually unique in its specificity