Invocations: When Have They Shined For You?

[gfishfunk]

I know a lot of people use Warlock Invocations to do very basic stuff: + CHA to your Eldritch Blast, knock back, and armor. That is all well and good, but I am curious when any of those other, less 'optimal' but potentially more fun invocations really shined in a game for you.

I run a Warlcok 4 / Barbarian 1 Dragonborn Bladelock as the party tank and the only real melee in the party of five. The guy rolls enemies, and rarely relies on weird little tricks (like darkness + Devil Sight, which I have but I hate doing the same thing over and over again no matter how well it works).

We were fighting a succubus that used magic to make some stuffed wild game to come to life and then shape shifted into a crowd. No one was let out of the room. I started looking at all my resources to figure out if I had a way to find the Succubus and I took a moment to read 'Detect Magic', an at will spell used through Eldritch Sight. I gained it mostly to find magic items and hidden doors and stuff. If you detect a magical aura while concentrating on it, it will highlight a faint aura around any visible creature or object that is magical -- I was able to identify which person in the crowd was the succubus.

There are a lot of things that could go wrong: random people with a magical item on them, a minor curse on a family, etc.. but now I am wondering why I would not be casting it every ten minutes every day, all day.

How about you: any invocation that has gotten way more mileage than you previously thought?

[Millstone85]

For the moment, I have Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast and Voice of the Chain Master.

I consider AB to be the sort of purely mechanical buff you are talking about. Arguably a "tax" for a class that works best as a blaster.

But I think RB has the potential to be both mechanically sound and very flavorful. I already had a small laugh when I was able to push a wall cawling enemy off its wall. Now I have high hopes for enemies on horses and such.

VotCM hasn't been so useful or fun yet, but it really completes the taste of Pact of the Chain.

Eldritch Sight should be my next choice, especially if I can convince the DM to let the Spellplague, or whatever weird wild magic our campaign involves, ping as such on my radar.

Devil's Sight + darkness and Mask of Many Faces + friends are things I wouldn't dare bring to the table. They just feel cheesy to me.

[Joe the Rat]

Devil's Sight (SEE IN ALL DARK), Mask of Many Faces (with friends) and Misty Visions are also popular picks with a lot of range.

Eldritch Sight is awesome. >snap fingers< What do I see? Find magic items, find passages hidden behind illusions, see the abyssal influences infused in the local faezress, etc. Find the cursed statue. If you don't have a wizard or cleric with it prepared/in book, you become the default magic finder. The main reason you might not have it always on is if you use a lot of Hex.

My home game has a Warlock with Eyes of the Rune Keeper. If knowledge is power, then being able to reading everything gives you one hell of a key. Being able to read the Abyssal instructions for bypassing a deadly doorway. Reading the Celestial instructions on a device so they send the Cambion away rather than release it into the room. Being able to read the incantations written in a language that's been dead for 10,000 years to activate an artifact... There are very few secrets. DDAL-EX 05-01? Not a bad place to be able to read languages.

Repelling Blast is a bundle of fun. It's hard to beat no-save pushing. I've only seen it used to deliver someone to a long drop twice, but there's something really satisfying about having a monster fight their way out of the Hunger of Hadar, only to be blown back into it.

[Sirdar]

Mask of Many Faces can be used to conceal your Armor of Agathys (good in case your enemies are aware of the AoA spell).

I also use MoMF to invert my colors. White haired half-drow becomes black haired white skinned human or elf. It is of course DM dependent if this 'optic trick' gives you extra time when someone reveals your identity.

[Millstone85]

there's something really satisfying about having a monster fight their way out of the Hunger of Hadar, only to be blown back into it.That's also on my list of things to do at least once with Repelling Blast. :smallsmile:

[Gastronomie]

Well, one player at one of the games I play in took Eyes of the Rune Keeper.

The DM occasionally throws in a moment where it can shine. Knowing the DM (he's a skilled DM for sure), he's probably doing it on purpose - throwing in those chances even when it's unrequired plot-wise - but every time the warlock gets to read something the others can't, both his character and himself get really happy.

If anything, the situational Invocations sorta stimulate good DMs into creating situations in which they're useful. This is a way of thinking I try to incorporate in my games as well.

[mephnick]

Our warlock is a charlatan GOO pact with MoMF and a headband of comprehend languages. He's a social machine. The party doesn't even fight half the combats another party would.

[JakOfAllTirades]

My last character got a lot of mileage out of Ascendant Step. While it's no substitute for flying, I found at will levitation extremely useful. Never needed to bother with Athletics skill rolls to climb, and it was also good as a readied action when I thought I might fall.

[Millstone85]

My last character got a lot of mileage out of Ascendant Step. While it's no substitute for flying, I found at will levitation extremely useful. Never needed to bother with Athletics skill rolls to climb, and it was also good as a readied action when I thought I might fall.Yeah, levitate is somewhere between feather fall, fly and spider climb.

[Lorn]

MoMF is amazing. Our current game involved, for a while, trying to Not Be Found - having any face you want in a crowd is awesome. Being a half elf and able to trivially adopt more/less human or elven features is handy, especially in a war-torn world... especially when you then take the Actor feat. I've also used it for a straightforward peaceful approach to other races (less likely to attack on sight if you look like one of them, right?) and in a couple instances to troll the barbarian by mimicing the orc they were flirting with.

Repelling Blast I last used to knock a dragon 20' back away from us (closer to the flying barbarian trying to hit it, away from us squishy casters!) and a githyanki off a boat into the sea. Makes for some really satisfying corpsegrinding and, as said above, really handy for keeping someone inside a HoH/Black Tentacles/other crowd control spell.

The ritual book invocation is utterly fantastic, especially in giving the additional cantrips.

Eyes of the Rune Keeper is pretty good, though to be honest I generally just have a ritual casting of Comprehend Languages. Slower, but more versatile.

I keep looking at Devil's Sight, but my current warlock is a half-elf so it's not massively useful.

[Millstone85]

The ritual book invocation is utterly fantastic, especially in giving the additional cantrips.You are thinking of the pact boon that is a prerequisite for the invocation.
The invocation itself is only about rituals, not cantrips.

[brainface]

Master of Many Faces is the bestest.

I used it once to trail an assassin through a city as various innocuous townsfolk, gain entry to their room by posing as their employer, knock them out, and escort them back to our lair posing as a guardsman. (In a fit of irony, the assassin was a doppelganger.)

Really, whenever our city campaign is in intrigue mode, I get to disguise as innocuous bystander or anonymous official-looking person without any resource cost, it's a very rewarding ability.

[Breaklance]

My home game has a Warlock with Eyes of the Rune Keeper. If knowledge is power, then being able to reading everything gives you one hell of a key. Being able to read the Abyssal instructions for bypassing a deadly doorway. Reading the Celestial instructions on a device so they send the Cambion away rather than release it into the room. Being able to read the incantations written in a language that's been dead for 10,000 years to activate an artifact... There are very few secrets. DDAL-EX 05-01? Not a bad place to be able to read languages.
.

My party's rogue has a trinket with a bunch of mismatched runes on it that don't seem to make sense that he's really interested in. He's asked the party wizard about it and took it to a magic library to see if anyone can decipher what it means/does

Sadly he didn't ask me the bardlock so everytime I've gotten invocations I don't choose eyes of the rune keeper cause metagaming.

I did use MoMF reversely in which while not disguised I was accused of killing someone I didn't so after getting out if that situation I kept my disguise up all the time to lose the people chasing me

[BW022]

How about you: any invocation that has gotten way more mileage than you previously thought?

On a cleric/bladelock....

Fiendish Vigor at low levels is great at low levels. It buys you a round at lower levels and saves healing. IMO, terrific at low levels, but can be swapped out when 5th+ level invocations become available.

Mask of Many Faces is good a most levels, depending upon the campaign and cunning of the player. In social campaigns, those with lots of humanoids, and when players are intelligent, they can be extremely useful. Disguising yourself as another PC -- make a bladelock look like a wizard, make a blastlock look like a fighter, is great. Disguising yourself as another NPC race (orc, hobgoblin, etc.) can be great for scouting, getting inside before an attack, causing disruption, or just making it hard for them to target you.

Sculpt the Flesh It's 7th+, and uses a slot, but polymorph is just so useful. Gain movement (flying, climbing, swimming), breathing underwater, senses, scouting, carrying (horse), busting doors, squeezing through bars, etc., etc. alone makes it worthwhile, but the ability to become a large hit point shield (or for another PC to do so) is easily worth a slot -- especially for folks who routinely run out of spell slots.

Thirsting Blade If you are a bladelock... why not? Even for those with good eldritch blasting, it is so useful from 5th to 10th-levels and even thereafter if stuck in melee.

[Slipperychicken]

but now I am wondering why I would not be casting it every ten minutes every day, all day.

In universe? None. Your character has every reason to keep it on 24/7.

In the metagame? Your GM may quickly get sick of giving you information "for free" and start looking for excuses to keep your power from being useful. I have had this experience with similar powers in several systems.

[MildMedium]

Repelling Blast is a bundle of fun. It's hard to beat no-save pushing. I've only seen it used to deliver someone to a long drop twice

Earlier this year, I played a warlock/paladin with repelling blast in a campaign that heavily featured airships... I must have pinged three or four heavy-plate-wearing enemy knights off thousand-foot drops per fight. It was so much fun.

[SilverStud]

I play warlocks so much. Since I'm always vhuman, Devil's Sights is especially good. Even if you have darkvision, it's good, actually. Because here's the thing. It's 120 feet, and all darkness becomes as if Brightly Lit to you and you only. Darkvision just bumps dark to dim and dim to bright. Devil's sight also negates magical darkness.

So when has my invocation shone? Whenever the DM puts in magical darkness! It's hilarious. It's awesome to be able to act in debilitating situations.

[NecroDancer]

The polymorph invocation will pay off when I become a T-Rex. The rest of my party has forgotten that dinosaur are considered beasts so I can't wait to surprise them when I turn into one.

[Arial Black]

My Ftr 1/War (now) 7 in CoS chose Beast Speech (at-will speak with animals) as one of her first two invications.

As well as being flavourful, it allowed me to make friends with a raven (which turned out to be a wereraven), a sabre-tooth tiger, and a mad girl who thought she was a cat.

She pretended that she couldn't speak or understand us because, well, she was a cat! I told her (truthfully) that I had the magic power to converse with animals and cats are animals so she could talk with me. She bought it!

I got Inspiration for that. :smallsmile:

[Xetheral]

I play warlocks so much. Since I'm always vhuman, Devil's Sights is especially good. Even if you have darkvision, it's good, actually. Because here's the thing. It's 120 feet, and all darkness becomes as if Brightly Lit to you and you only. Darkvision just bumps dark to dim and dim to bright. Devil's sight also negates magical darkness.

So when has my invocation shone? Whenever the DM puts in magical darkness! It's hilarious. It's awesome to be able to act in debilitating situations.

Wasn't there a tweet that while Devil's Sight turns darkness to bright light it doesn't do anything at all in dim light?

[Khutef]

My Undying tomelock (lvl 6) has gotten good usage of Fiendish Vigor and the ritual invocation.

Vigor has been so good to startle simpleminded mooks. He has challenged many times enemies to 1v1 duels and after the first hit is absorbed by temp hp he says:
"Did you really think that you could make me bleed?" Follow that with a Intimidation roll and duel is almost over :)

Rituals are a must for my party, because I'm the only arcane caster.