Eldritch Fisherman- trolling for enemies with Sea Sorcerer

[Degwerks]

Tried my best for a catchy title hope it wasn't too lame.

The basis of this for fun shenanigans build is to grab an enemy from range and force him into your melee range. Great for snagging the casters, archers and leader types from the back ranks.

Sea Sorcerer at level 1 gives you Curses of the Sea, 3 types that you choose from when you deal damage with a cantrip. The one I'm bringing attention to is Forced Movement.

Forced Movement curse of the sea allows you to add an additional 15 feet of movement, once per turn, to one enemy when your cantrip deals any kind of movement to an enemy.

By taking Eldritch Blast cantrip, Grasp of Hadar and if you want to, Repelling Blast invocations, you could drag an enemy 25 feet closer to you or could repel him back up to 55 feet.

By using Hexblade you can focus on Charisma as your melee and ranged stat.
Now in order for this to work where you can Eldritch Grasp of Hadar an enemy 25 ft to you and hit them in melee in the same turn is 7th level, with Haste up from Sorcerer 5 and 2 levels of Warlock, preferably Hexblade. Or Sorcerer 3 / Hexblade 2 using Quickened Eldritch Blast and then melee attack or Melee Cantrips.

You could also go EK 7/ Sea Sorcerer 1/ Hexblade 2 for the EK ability to make a bonus action weapon attack after casting a cantrip.

Where it really gets fun is 10-13th level. You'll have 2-3 eldritch blasts, and if you went Blade Pact you'll get Eldritch Smite. Drag an enemy 25 ft closer to you for at least 2d10 +10 charisma mod, 1d8 weapon + 4d8 eldritch smite + 5 charisma mod and knock them prone.

Other stuff that you can do is the Cloak of Flies invocation, it inflicts your charisma mod poison damage to anyone within 5 ft of you. Warcaster feat to cast a reaction opportunity attack Booming Blade if they try to leave your poison aura, smiting again if you want. Or shoot him again with Eldritch Grasp of Hadar (at disadvantage likely) and drag him back.

If I were to do this I would want minimum of 7-9 levels of Blade Pact Hexblade / 1-6 Sea Sorcerer / 7 EK. Taking Agonizing Blast, Grasp of Hadar, Eldritch Smite, Cloak of Flies and maybe either Repelling Blast or Kiss of Mephistopheles. I'd want to get Charisma to 20 and Warcaster and have either Close Quarters Shooter or Dueling fighting style or take Crossbow Expert & Dueling style.

Another fun shenanigan would be Oath of Conquest Paladin 7-8 / Sea Sorcerer 5 / Hexblade Bladepact 7-8. A crazy divine/cursing pirate of sorts. The 7th level Oath feature gives you a 10 ft aura that deals psychic damage of half your paladin aura to anyone who is frightened of you and makes their speed zero while they're frightened. Combine that with Cloak of Flies and they're taking 8-9 damage a round in your aura and can't move while frightened and if you hit them with Eldritch Smite they're also prone and can't get up. This is easy to set up by using a bonus action to cast Wrathful Smite and then Eldritch Smite & Divine Smite on your follow up melee attacks.
You'll only be able to do Eldritch Grasp of Hadar as a Quickened cantrip, then Smite after they're reeled in or cast Booming Blade smite, on 2nd round if they're still there, cast Wrathful and Eldritch Smite.

[nickl_2000]

Not ideal for fishing, but you could also take the Infestation spell from UA started spells. It makes them use up 20 feet of their movement. Given that most creatures have a movement of only 30 feet. You could put them at a point where they couldn't get back into melee with you or your teammates (and provoke an AoE).

I wonder, if you are a Sorc with War Caster had someone next to you and you cast infestation with the movement curse, causing them to leave you threat zone (thus provoking an AoO). Then hit them with another infestation also cursed with the movement curse. Do they not get to move anymore since they have used up all their movement?

It's an interesting movement lockdown scenario with only cantrips and a feat that most will want as early as possible.

[Maxilian]

Sounds interesting, but what is the point of Bladepact? (you don't get the lvl 12 ability to add CHA, so you can't add CHA twice, the Eldrith Smite is nice, but you don't have that many spell slots.)

Taking so many warlocks lvl, make you quite squishy in melee though.

[Maxilian]

Not ideal for fishing, but you could also take the Infestation spell from UA started spells. It makes them use up 20 feet of their movement. Given that most creatures have a movement of only 30 feet. You could put them at a point where they couldn't get back into melee with you or your teammates (and provoke an AoE).

I wonder, if you are a Sorc with War Caster had someone next to you and you cast infestation with the movement curse, causing them to leave you threat zone (thus provoking an AoO). Then hit them with another infestation also cursed with the movement curse. Do they not get to move anymore since they have used up all their movement?

It's an interesting movement lockdown scenario with only cantrips and a feat that most will want as early as possible.

I believe forced movement does not provoke OA. (including the one caused by this spell)

[Pichu]

I love that you can play Paddle Ball with the enemy.

GOO Warlock 2/Sea Sorcerer 3
Invocations: Grasp of Hadar, Repelling Blast
Metamagic: Quicken Spell


A: Eldritch Blast (Repelling, push back 50 ft)
BA: Quicken Eldritch Blast (GoH, pull towards 50 ft)

[Maxilian]

I love that you can play Paddle Ball with the enemy.

GOO Warlock 2/Sea Sorcerer 3
Invocations: Grasp of Hadar, Repelling Blast
Metamagic: Quicken Spell


A: Eldritch Blast (Repelling, push back 50 ft)
BA: Quicken Eldritch Blast (GoH, pull towards 50 ft)

The BA EB won't pull them 50 feets, because unlike the repelling invocation, GoH only happens once per turn. (no idea why, i mean GoH is a weaker version of the repelling invocation)

[nickl_2000]

I believe forced movement does not provoke OA. (including the one caused by this spell)

Forced movement does provoke an AoO if it uses up movement. So, if you cast dissonant whispers and force someone to move that way, it does create an AoO. If you cast thorn whip and move someone that way it does not. I'm sure it's a DMs call in the end (especially since it is a UA spell). However, I would argue that the phrasing here implies that the target move instead of me moving the target

Thorn Whip
if the creature is Large or smaller, you pull the creature up to 10 feet closer to you.

Focus here on the words "you pull." This means that I am acting on them.


Infestation
If the target takes any of that damage, the target moves 5 feet in a random direction

Here the subject of the sentence is the target. They are the ones doing the movement (not me moving them). This implies to me that they use up movement and that they would provoke AoOs.



That being said, this is, quite literally, a matter of semantics. If it works it would be an interesting method.

[tieren]

I'm playing a sea sorcerer now, the curse effect doesn't come up as much as you would think.

Unless you quicken and apply and proc in the same turn, it seems my targets die to something else before the next turn when I could start to benefit from them being cursed.

I also think you should look at the lightning lure cantrip, possibly with the distance metamagic (or spell sniper feat). With the curse proc you could grab someone 30 feet away and pull them 25 feet towards you. if you don't need that much moevement you can use the lightning damage type to add +cha to dmg as the curse proc instead.

[Degwerks]

Yeah Infestation and Lightning Lure would work well too. Lightning lure is pretty decent for having 2 choices of the Curse of the Sea. Plus it's called Lightning Lure and its for your Eldritch Fisherman :)

Blade Pact is needed to get Eldritch Smite, and knock them prone, getting up from prone uses 1/2 their movement helping keep them close to you and giving advantage on further attacks by you while prone or to allies next to you. Granted you might not want to do that at all and just focus on Pinballing/Paddle-Balling an enemy on the battlefield, dragging or pushing him towards your melee allies or Hopefully a Ranger or Druid that has Spike Growth up.

Hexblade gives you medium armor and shields, hit point squishy moderately but decently armored. To focus on Pinball/Paddle-ball methods you'll need at least 5 levels of Warlock.