Eldritch Chain and Skirmish

[weckar]

Eldritch Chain (Lesser Warlock Invocation) and the Scout's Skirmish... How do they interact? Do I apply it to each target because they all require an attack roll? Do I then roll it every time (full) or only once and halve it with the main damage afterward?

This is for the first Lesser invocation choice for a CG warlock. Fell Flight is not an option.

[illyahr]

Skirmish applies to each attack, and each target in the Eldritch Chain is a separate attack so you would get your Skirmish bonus to each target.

[Troacctid]

With a weaponlike spell that makes multiple attacks, bonus damage, including precision damage, is only applied to the first attack.


Some weaponlike spells can strike multiple times in the same round. When the caster gets a bonus on damage with such spells (including sneak attack damage), the extra damage applies only to the first attack, whether that attack hits or not.

(CAr 86)

[illyahr]

I stand corrected. :smallbiggrin:

[weckar]

That makes it a lot less useful. Alternate suggestions for an invoc maybe? I find most of them too dark (small d) to be used by a CG character...

[Zaq]

What do you want the character to do? Do you rely mainly on Blasting, Skirmishing, both, or neither? Lessers are pretty varied, so that really depends on what the rest of the character is like and what your goals are.

[Troacctid]

Flee the Scene, Walk Unseen, and Relentless/Voracious Dispelling are my usual top picks for utility. Charm is good if you're investing in Charisma, but works best on nongood Warlocks because it enables a Mindbender dip (and because, y'know, mind control). Eldritch Chain is good on certain builds, and Brimstone Blast is a necessary evil if you're going into Hellfire Warlock. The Dead Walk is very powerful, but has the [Evil] tag. I try to avoid taking Fell Flight if possible, because there are cheaper ways to get that effect.

[weckar]

That's a good quick list. It's a gestalt Scout/Warlock, mostly skirmishing with his blasts and specialising in dealing with (incorporeal) undead.
I already have great amounts of mobility (50 ft. land, 20ft. climb, plenty in the acrobatics skills) and thus far have mostly been picking passive invocations: Leaps and Bounds, baleful utterance (traded away for See the Unseen), Entropic Warding. Only got so many actions, and all that.
I can tumble out of most any situation (Got a +20), and the only real melee threat I deal with is grapples - but that rarely comes up, it seems.
It almost seems like the Skill-boosting least invocations are more generally useful, but I'd hate to 'waste' a lesser slot on another least passive...

[Troacctid]

If you're strictly ranged, consider switching Entropic Shield out for Darkness. It's not as good against true seeing or baatezu, but it applies against melee attacks, it can cover your allies, and you can use it to hide. Lighting is adjudicated based on the target's square, so as long as they're not inside the radius of the effect, it won't hinder your attacks.

[weckar]

I appreciate the secondary benefits of entropic shielding, and the fact that it requires no actions. And at longer range, my real threat is others at longer range. Plus, as far as I know Darkness is stationary. In combat I am anything but, so I will have to recast it quite often for it to stay effective.

[Troacctid]

Darkness has a duration 10 times longer than Entropic Shield and moves with you.

[weckar]

From the wording of the invocation I assumed it was an Always-On buff? Unlike the spell, of course.

[meemaas]

If you've got the stats and Travel Devotion to support it, going for Eldritch Glaive will allow you to apply Skirmish on every hit. There's a special note (I think in rules compendium) that allows full round actions to apply bonus damage to all hits.

[weckar]

glaive eh? Unfortunately I won't get iteratives for at least two more levels (hence why I stayed away from it as a least invocation) and I have neither the travel devotion nor the pouncebarian level to support it. Plus, that's the sort of thing I'd probably want that PHB2 feat for that allows you to shorten reach weapons...

[meemaas]

glaive eh? Unfortunately I won't get iteratives for at least two more levels (hence why I stayed away from it as a least invocation) and I have neither the travel devotion nor the pouncebarian level to support it. Plus, that's the sort of thing I'd probably want that PHB2 feat for that allows you to shorten reach weapons...

I do agree with you partially there. In the case of this Gestalt you'd have built around it to really use it and probably done swift hunter on your scout side.

That said, the last part still stands. If you can figure out a way to extend the casting time of your Eldritch Chain (to a full round action) it would work too. I don't know of any myself, but I'm sure someone on this forum knows if it's possible.

[Janthkin]

I understand that Chain is less attractive without chaining the bonus damage as well, but don't forget that it is very handy to mass-distribute debuff effects via Eldritch Blast - Noxious Blast or Incarnum Blast (if available) would benefit at the Greater level.

Are you using Eldritch Blast (Spear) while skirmishing, or actual weapons?

Relentless Dispelling is quality, if your party doesn't already include the capability. And for a ranged skirmisher, it's really useful to be able to remove buffs on your targets. (Voracious Dispelling is also an option, but I like the reroll effect more than the option to use area dispel.)

Sudden Swarm is hilarious, but very specific (hence the question about what your primary attack is) - if you aren't killing enemies with invocations, it's not particularly useful.

Walk Unseen is always worth considering; 24 hour duration on an at-will Invisibility is pretty good, particularly in the levels where you gain access to it. And you can swap it out at higher levels, when everything you're fighting has Blindsight/Blindsense/True Seeing going - that might be the time to go back for Eldritch Chain.

[weckar]

I did actually swift hunter on my scout side up until lv 5, but on that side I am now moving into Enlightened spirit (+4d6 damage, +2AC skirmish seemed good enough, especially with the ability to hurt undead with it). My skirmish weapon of choice is either my eldritch blast or Ghostbane quarterstaff, depending on the enemy.

Also, I am intrigued by the dispelling options. As far as I can see neither of those is an eldritch essence (too bad), but can someone please go over the pros and cons of each? Thanks :)

[Zaq]

The advantage of Relentless Dispelling is that it's more likely to (eventually) succeed, and it can be used as an action advantage. You get two dispels for the price of one action, so it's useful if you might not roll well enough to strip off all the buffs you want to strip the first time around, and it's also useful because it automatically tries to dispel anything that gets reapplied to the target between when you cast the first invocation and the start of your next turn. It should be your go-to choice if you generally fight things with CL high enough that you won't automatically succeed in dispelling what you want to dispel, and like I said, it's really funny if you dispel someone, they reapply the buff, and then it automatically gets dispelled again with no action from you.

Voracious Dispelling can do damage, but that's not really the benefit of it (it's such a small amount of damage that it basically doesn't matter, and since it's conditional on the target having effects to strip in the first place, it really doesn't make a difference). The advantage over Relentless Dispelling is that you can use the area version of Dispel Magic or the targeted version, while Relentless Dispelling only allows the targeted version. So it should be your go-to choice if you expect to need to dispel effects from lots of different targets at once. (Do be aware that by RAW, if multiple targets are all buffed with a single spell effect, such as Haste affecting the whole party, you only need to dispel it from one target to dispel the whole thing. Dispel ends the spell, and there's only one spell, not one spell per target. But make sure your GM agrees with that; some GMs houserule otherwise.)

Speaking of GM rulings and houserules, check with your GM to see if Voracious Dispelling can be used to counterspell. There's a general rule on MM1 pg. 315 that states that "spell-like abilities cannot be used to counterspell," so by RAW, you can't use Voracious Dispelling to mimic the Counterspell function of Dispel Magic. Some GMs will agree, however, that the general blanket ban on using SLAs to counterspell is preventing the (rarely-used) option of counterspelling a spell with the same spell (so an Ogre Mage can't use its Cone of Cold SLA to counterspell a Wizard casting Cone of Cold, even though a Sorcerer casting Cone of Cold could use that spell to counterspell the Wizard) as opposed to the function of Dispel Magic being used as a general counterspell. RAW is clear that it doesn't work, but I don't really think it's actually overpowered to allow it to work, so it's worth having the conversation with your GM. If your GM agrees and you actually like counterspelling, that's an argument in favor of Voracious over Relentless (since Voracious copies "Dispel Magic as the spell" and can therefore use any of the three options, while Relentless specifies the targeted option only).

Also worth noting is that both Relentless and Voracious abruptly stop being useful after level 10. Since they copy Dispel Magic and not Greater Dispel Magic, you have a maximum bonus of +10 on your dispel check from your CL. I do not believe that the Warlock has any RAW invocations that mimic Greater Dispel (the DFA gets Devour Magic, though it has the downside of being used at touch range only), so if this character is still around by the time level 11 rolls around, talk with your GM about either retraining into a more generally useful invocation or about bending the rules to keep the invocation useful (possibly at the cost of a feat or something; whatever your GM thinks is fair).

[weckar]

Enlightened spirit gets a pretty good dispell kind of thing, so I'm not worried about later levels.

Thank you for clearing up a few confusions. One nagging thing that remains in my mind is whether either of these can suppress/nullify magic items or traps?

[Zaq]

Both of them would work on magic items or magic traps, assuming that normal Dispel Magic can work on the target in question. The targeted version of Dispel Magic lets you target "one object, creature, or spell," and it specifically includes magic items. Both Relentless and Voracious can use the targeted version of DM, so that's good to go there. The area version of Dispel Magic (which Voracious can do but Relentless cannot) can affect "objects that are the target of one or more spells" and it can affect spells within the area (dispelling the whole thing if the point of origin is in the area and just dispelling part of it if not), but it specifically can't suppress magic items.

Transform Magic (the dispel that Enlightened Spirit gets access to) is indeed Greater Dispel, but it comes awfully late, so there will almost certainly be sort of a "donut hole" where your regular dispelling invocation has capped out but before you get access to Transform Magic, so be aware of that.

[weckar]

Thanks, I'll be taking Relentless :)

[Troacctid]

From the wording of the invocation I assumed it was an Always-On buff? Unlike the spell, of course.
It has no listed duration, so it uses the duration of the spell it's based on. Since it has two separate effects based on spells with different durations, each effect uses the duration of its respective spell: 1 hour/level for Pass without Trace, 1 minute/level for Entropic Shield.