Amechra
2020-04-11, 05:13 PM
Isn't it kinda weird that Warlocks only have two Pact Boons? Here's a new one, plus some invocations that will help you out:
Pact of the Blade:
Your patron gives you a ceremonial melee weapon appropriate to its nature, referred to as your Soulblade. You may consider it to be a magical weapon for the purposes of bypassing resistance or immunity. Whenever you would make one or more spell attacks as part of casting a cantrip, you may replace those attacks with a single weapon attack made with your Soulblade. If you hit, reduce the damage from the cantrip by one die.
If you lose your Soulblade, you can perform a 1-hour ceremony to receive a replacement from your patron. This ceremony can be performed during a short or long rest, and it destroys the previous weapon. The weapon turns to smoke when you die.
Mantle of the Pactbound
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade
When you perform the ceremony to replace your Soulblade, you receive a set of ceremonial clothing appropriate to your patron. As long as you are wearing that clothing and no other armor, you may calculate your AC as 13 + your Charisma modifier due to your patron's protection. When you replace your Soulblade or die, any previous sets of ceremonial clothing you possess crumble into dust.
Thirsting Blade
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade, 5th level
When you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack with your Soulblade as a bonus action.
Some considerations:
1) The wording is designed so that it doesn't work well with Eldritch Blast. Because that would be boring. The goal here is to turn cantrips into single-target smites, not to give the Warlock easy access to a fighter's number of attacks that each have +Cha to damage.
2) I'm debating whether or not to extend this to work with Cantrips that call for a saving throw. As it stands, there are really only 5-6 cantrips this works with, and a few of them don't do anything for you until 5th level. I'm mostly concerned with Acid Splash (because it would let you make two attacks unless I'm really specific with my wording), and how Toll the Dead would give you +1d12 - +3d12 damage onto an attack at-will (which can actually crit.) If I do this, I'll have to figure out what to do with Sacred Flame as well.
3) Currently, I'm not sure if you'd advantage on your melee weapon attack if you replaced the spell attack from Shocking Grasp against a target wearing metal armor. I'm leaning towards no, but I don't really see a reason why it would be terribly broken.
4) I'm debating making an Invocation that basically just gives you Weapon Bond from the Eldritch Knight (kinda like how Thirsting Blade gives you War Magic), but I don't really feel like its necessary.
5) I'm not sure how to deal with the whole "everyone but you has a magical weapon" thing - I mean, I guess I didn't say that the Soulblade can't be a magic weapon if the DM wants it to be...
6) Mantle of the Pactbound is probably raising some eyebrows. My justification is that it gives you an AC of 16-18 which is kinda the bare minimum for any melee character that doesn't have some other method of not dying (bonus action disengages, resistance to most damage, etc). I mean, at worst it lets a Hexblade be even more Charisma SAD, but I'm balancing around a theoretical Hexblade that wasn't overtuned.
Thoughts? Concerns?
Pact of the Blade:
Your patron gives you a ceremonial melee weapon appropriate to its nature, referred to as your Soulblade. You may consider it to be a magical weapon for the purposes of bypassing resistance or immunity. Whenever you would make one or more spell attacks as part of casting a cantrip, you may replace those attacks with a single weapon attack made with your Soulblade. If you hit, reduce the damage from the cantrip by one die.
If you lose your Soulblade, you can perform a 1-hour ceremony to receive a replacement from your patron. This ceremony can be performed during a short or long rest, and it destroys the previous weapon. The weapon turns to smoke when you die.
Mantle of the Pactbound
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade
When you perform the ceremony to replace your Soulblade, you receive a set of ceremonial clothing appropriate to your patron. As long as you are wearing that clothing and no other armor, you may calculate your AC as 13 + your Charisma modifier due to your patron's protection. When you replace your Soulblade or die, any previous sets of ceremonial clothing you possess crumble into dust.
Thirsting Blade
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade, 5th level
When you use your action to cast a cantrip, you can make one weapon attack with your Soulblade as a bonus action.
Some considerations:
1) The wording is designed so that it doesn't work well with Eldritch Blast. Because that would be boring. The goal here is to turn cantrips into single-target smites, not to give the Warlock easy access to a fighter's number of attacks that each have +Cha to damage.
2) I'm debating whether or not to extend this to work with Cantrips that call for a saving throw. As it stands, there are really only 5-6 cantrips this works with, and a few of them don't do anything for you until 5th level. I'm mostly concerned with Acid Splash (because it would let you make two attacks unless I'm really specific with my wording), and how Toll the Dead would give you +1d12 - +3d12 damage onto an attack at-will (which can actually crit.) If I do this, I'll have to figure out what to do with Sacred Flame as well.
3) Currently, I'm not sure if you'd advantage on your melee weapon attack if you replaced the spell attack from Shocking Grasp against a target wearing metal armor. I'm leaning towards no, but I don't really see a reason why it would be terribly broken.
4) I'm debating making an Invocation that basically just gives you Weapon Bond from the Eldritch Knight (kinda like how Thirsting Blade gives you War Magic), but I don't really feel like its necessary.
5) I'm not sure how to deal with the whole "everyone but you has a magical weapon" thing - I mean, I guess I didn't say that the Soulblade can't be a magic weapon if the DM wants it to be...
6) Mantle of the Pactbound is probably raising some eyebrows. My justification is that it gives you an AC of 16-18 which is kinda the bare minimum for any melee character that doesn't have some other method of not dying (bonus action disengages, resistance to most damage, etc). I mean, at worst it lets a Hexblade be even more Charisma SAD, but I'm balancing around a theoretical Hexblade that wasn't overtuned.
Thoughts? Concerns?