Chaosmancer
2020-06-21, 06:14 PM
So, about six months ago I went on a spree of overhauling, fixing, and compiling every single class and subclass in the game. It started because I wanted to fix capstones and then I started including homebrew rules I had made and just exploded.
Today, I felt motivated to go back and fix the Hexblade, but as I did so and started a few other warlock changes I felt a desire to get feedback on all of this. So, there are going to be a series of posts, and I plan to talk about why I did what I did it.
This post is going to cover a few generic things and the Pact Boons.
1) I slightly increased the spell slots. Getting a fifth slot at 14th and a sixth at 18th. I just didn't like never getting more than a 4th slot.
2) All of the patron spells were automatically put on their spell lists. Just like cleric domain spells. Every single player I ever had thought that was RAW, and it is such a minor increase in power most of the time, I was fine with it. I mostly mention it because that explains some of the changes I made to those spells, especially for the former Hexblade.
Here is the new Capstone:
At 20th level, you have become a player in the great games of ancient powers, either by serving your Patron or usurping them.
You can cast Plane Shift once per short rest to travel a plane aligned with your patron. Additionally, your continued exposure to forces beyond the mundane world have left their mark upon you, giving you a +2 to Charisma and raising you ability score cap to 24.
Finally, drawing upon your wealth of connections and favors, you can auction off your health and power. As a bonus action you can either expend a Pact Magic spell slot to gain 4 Hit Dice (which you may spend immediately), or 4 Hit dice to regain a Pact Magic Spell slot.
The original ability essentially allowed you to fast short rest only to restore your spells. Which is fine but misses a few things. One, that is something that people have generally found a solution to by level 10. By level 20 you need more than that. Two, it misses the flavor of the Warlock.
See, by level 20 one of two things has generally happened. Either you have defeated your patron and no longer serve them, or you are pretty much all in on their plots and plans and are one of their most powerful lieutenants. Either way, Plane Shift is something you desperately need by that point. You need to be either visiting the realm you now control, or you need to be going to talk to your boss. Increasing Charisma is just a nice little boon.
The big thing, in my opinion, is the auction. This feels like it fits more with the type of dealmaker that Warlock's are. "Hey, I need health now, I'll give you some of my magical power in exchange."
"Oh crap, need that spell back, I'll give you a sliver of my soul in exchange"
Additionally, since it is only a bonus action, it can be done mid-combat as an emergency button.
I am aware that this is very powerful outside of combat. You could spend all six spell slots, recover 24d10 health and then take a short rest to recover all your spell slots. That is bonkers. It is also level 20 and warlock's more than any fit well into this style. You don't push them to breaking, and you give them a chance to start calling in favors? They are going to be crazy strong
Now for the Pact Boons
You gain proficiency with medium armor and shields. Additionally, you can use your bonus action to create a pact weapon in your empty hand. You can choose the form that this melee weapon takes each time you create it. You are proficient with it while you wield it and can use your Charisma modifier for the attack and damage rolls. This weapon counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Your pact weapon disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. It also disappears if you use this feature again, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
You can transform one magic weapon into your pact weapon by performing a special ritual while you hold the weapon. You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. You can then dismiss the weapon, shunting it into an extradimensional space, and it appears whenever you create your pact weapon thereafter. You can’t affect an artifact or a sentient weapon in this way. The weapon ceases being your pact weapon if you die, if you perform the 1-hour ritual on a different weapon, or if you use a 1-hour ritual to break your bond to it. The weapon appears at your feet if it is in the extradimensional space when the bond breaks.
So, two things here.
1) I took Hex warrior and put it in here. Medium armor, shields, CHA on attack/Damage. This lets other Patron's do the Blade Pact. I'm not too worried about the "but they have to change their entire style at 3rd level" because I generally start games at 3rd level
2) I switched it from an action to a bonus action. I like giving people the option to switch weapons mid-combat, use some of that flexibility from having proficiency in everything and a weapon that changes forms. No one wastes an action on this, them wasting a bonus action would be questionable.
Of course, this does make the boon quite a bit stronger than it was, so I went ahead and did something else.
Your patron gives you a grimoire called a Book of Shadows. When you gain this feature, choose three cantrips from any class’s spell list (the three needn’t be from the same list). While the book is on your person, you can cast those cantrips at will. They don’t count against your number of cantrips known. If they don’t appear on the warlock spell list, they are nonetheless warlock spells for you.
You also can inscribe magical rituals in your Book of Shadows. Choose two 1st-level spells that have the ritual tag from any class’s spell list (the two needn’t be from the same list). The spells appear in the book and don’t count against the number of spells you know. With your Book of Shadows in hand, you can cast the chosen spells as rituals. You can’t cast the spells except as rituals, unless you’ve learned them by some other means. You can also cast a warlock spell you know as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.
On your adventures, you can add other ritual spells to your Book of Shadows. When you find such a spell, you can add it to the book if the spell’s level is equal to or less than half your warlock level (rounded up) and if you can spare the time to transcribe the spell. For each level of the spell, the transcription process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp for the rare inks needed to inscribe it.
If you lose your Book of Shadows, 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 book. The book turns to ash when you die.
I combined the Boon and the Book of Ancient Secrets.
No one takes the Tome pact without getting the book, unless they are going Tome exclusively to shillelagh and be a Gish, or they have some other strange plan. And since I made the blade pact more powerful, it felt wrong to still have this boon only be three cantrips.
In my head, this essentially is just removing an invocation tax. The Tome is going to have one more invocation than they might have had otherwise, and the choice of that Invocation could fit in a few different places, so I'm okay with this.
Of course, that all meant that I needed to also look at Chain.
You learn the Find Familiar spell. You can cast this spell ritually without components and with the casting time reduced to 10 minutes.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms based upon your Patron: Imp (Devils), Pseudodragon (Fey), Quasit (Demons), Will O' Wisp (Undying or Cursed), or Sprite (Fey). [I don't have a good choice for Abberation other than the Gazer, which has a very powerful ability to stun and inflict status effects]
Your familiar takes its turn at the same time you do, and is not prevented from taking the attack action. Additionally, you can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence. While perceiving through your familiar’s senses, you can also speak through your familiar in your own voice, even if your familiar is normally incapable of speech.
So, I spent years torn about the Chain pact, and only recently started playing one. Feylock with a Sprite. And I have gotten a massive amount of utility out of it, but there have been a lot of things that went into that that are not really in a normal game.
So, what have I done here? Shortened the casting time. It is a minor thing, but I wanted to make you better at this and an hour is a long time.
Added a few more familiars. I plan on working on the Pact of the Undying, so I kept the Will-o-wisp. Plan on looking into adding mephits or something for Genie as well.
And then I just took away limits. You familiar can attack. This is quite powerful for the Imp, but not really for anything else. If I have this for my Sprite, I would still have her use the help action constantly instead of hitting for 1 damage. (Frankly, I wonder if the Imp is just too powerful as a familiar, maybe lower their poison damage)
Then I gave them Voice of the Chain Master. I recently was able to use it with amazing effect for my Feylock... but that was to shadow an enemy army while we marched the army we commanded to cut them off in a geopolitical move. But, most games are not going to need that sort of long term, long distance scouting where miles over days are in play.
So, since it is so niche, I gave it to them for free, and started working with the other invocations to give you other options of things to do.
Today, I felt motivated to go back and fix the Hexblade, but as I did so and started a few other warlock changes I felt a desire to get feedback on all of this. So, there are going to be a series of posts, and I plan to talk about why I did what I did it.
This post is going to cover a few generic things and the Pact Boons.
1) I slightly increased the spell slots. Getting a fifth slot at 14th and a sixth at 18th. I just didn't like never getting more than a 4th slot.
2) All of the patron spells were automatically put on their spell lists. Just like cleric domain spells. Every single player I ever had thought that was RAW, and it is such a minor increase in power most of the time, I was fine with it. I mostly mention it because that explains some of the changes I made to those spells, especially for the former Hexblade.
Here is the new Capstone:
At 20th level, you have become a player in the great games of ancient powers, either by serving your Patron or usurping them.
You can cast Plane Shift once per short rest to travel a plane aligned with your patron. Additionally, your continued exposure to forces beyond the mundane world have left their mark upon you, giving you a +2 to Charisma and raising you ability score cap to 24.
Finally, drawing upon your wealth of connections and favors, you can auction off your health and power. As a bonus action you can either expend a Pact Magic spell slot to gain 4 Hit Dice (which you may spend immediately), or 4 Hit dice to regain a Pact Magic Spell slot.
The original ability essentially allowed you to fast short rest only to restore your spells. Which is fine but misses a few things. One, that is something that people have generally found a solution to by level 10. By level 20 you need more than that. Two, it misses the flavor of the Warlock.
See, by level 20 one of two things has generally happened. Either you have defeated your patron and no longer serve them, or you are pretty much all in on their plots and plans and are one of their most powerful lieutenants. Either way, Plane Shift is something you desperately need by that point. You need to be either visiting the realm you now control, or you need to be going to talk to your boss. Increasing Charisma is just a nice little boon.
The big thing, in my opinion, is the auction. This feels like it fits more with the type of dealmaker that Warlock's are. "Hey, I need health now, I'll give you some of my magical power in exchange."
"Oh crap, need that spell back, I'll give you a sliver of my soul in exchange"
Additionally, since it is only a bonus action, it can be done mid-combat as an emergency button.
I am aware that this is very powerful outside of combat. You could spend all six spell slots, recover 24d10 health and then take a short rest to recover all your spell slots. That is bonkers. It is also level 20 and warlock's more than any fit well into this style. You don't push them to breaking, and you give them a chance to start calling in favors? They are going to be crazy strong
Now for the Pact Boons
You gain proficiency with medium armor and shields. Additionally, you can use your bonus action to create a pact weapon in your empty hand. You can choose the form that this melee weapon takes each time you create it. You are proficient with it while you wield it and can use your Charisma modifier for the attack and damage rolls. This weapon counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.
Your pact weapon disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. It also disappears if you use this feature again, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
You can transform one magic weapon into your pact weapon by performing a special ritual while you hold the weapon. You perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a short rest. You can then dismiss the weapon, shunting it into an extradimensional space, and it appears whenever you create your pact weapon thereafter. You can’t affect an artifact or a sentient weapon in this way. The weapon ceases being your pact weapon if you die, if you perform the 1-hour ritual on a different weapon, or if you use a 1-hour ritual to break your bond to it. The weapon appears at your feet if it is in the extradimensional space when the bond breaks.
So, two things here.
1) I took Hex warrior and put it in here. Medium armor, shields, CHA on attack/Damage. This lets other Patron's do the Blade Pact. I'm not too worried about the "but they have to change their entire style at 3rd level" because I generally start games at 3rd level
2) I switched it from an action to a bonus action. I like giving people the option to switch weapons mid-combat, use some of that flexibility from having proficiency in everything and a weapon that changes forms. No one wastes an action on this, them wasting a bonus action would be questionable.
Of course, this does make the boon quite a bit stronger than it was, so I went ahead and did something else.
Your patron gives you a grimoire called a Book of Shadows. When you gain this feature, choose three cantrips from any class’s spell list (the three needn’t be from the same list). While the book is on your person, you can cast those cantrips at will. They don’t count against your number of cantrips known. If they don’t appear on the warlock spell list, they are nonetheless warlock spells for you.
You also can inscribe magical rituals in your Book of Shadows. Choose two 1st-level spells that have the ritual tag from any class’s spell list (the two needn’t be from the same list). The spells appear in the book and don’t count against the number of spells you know. With your Book of Shadows in hand, you can cast the chosen spells as rituals. You can’t cast the spells except as rituals, unless you’ve learned them by some other means. You can also cast a warlock spell you know as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.
On your adventures, you can add other ritual spells to your Book of Shadows. When you find such a spell, you can add it to the book if the spell’s level is equal to or less than half your warlock level (rounded up) and if you can spare the time to transcribe the spell. For each level of the spell, the transcription process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp for the rare inks needed to inscribe it.
If you lose your Book of Shadows, 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 book. The book turns to ash when you die.
I combined the Boon and the Book of Ancient Secrets.
No one takes the Tome pact without getting the book, unless they are going Tome exclusively to shillelagh and be a Gish, or they have some other strange plan. And since I made the blade pact more powerful, it felt wrong to still have this boon only be three cantrips.
In my head, this essentially is just removing an invocation tax. The Tome is going to have one more invocation than they might have had otherwise, and the choice of that Invocation could fit in a few different places, so I'm okay with this.
Of course, that all meant that I needed to also look at Chain.
You learn the Find Familiar spell. You can cast this spell ritually without components and with the casting time reduced to 10 minutes.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms based upon your Patron: Imp (Devils), Pseudodragon (Fey), Quasit (Demons), Will O' Wisp (Undying or Cursed), or Sprite (Fey). [I don't have a good choice for Abberation other than the Gazer, which has a very powerful ability to stun and inflict status effects]
Your familiar takes its turn at the same time you do, and is not prevented from taking the attack action. Additionally, you can communicate telepathically with your familiar and perceive through your familiar’s senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence. While perceiving through your familiar’s senses, you can also speak through your familiar in your own voice, even if your familiar is normally incapable of speech.
So, I spent years torn about the Chain pact, and only recently started playing one. Feylock with a Sprite. And I have gotten a massive amount of utility out of it, but there have been a lot of things that went into that that are not really in a normal game.
So, what have I done here? Shortened the casting time. It is a minor thing, but I wanted to make you better at this and an hour is a long time.
Added a few more familiars. I plan on working on the Pact of the Undying, so I kept the Will-o-wisp. Plan on looking into adding mephits or something for Genie as well.
And then I just took away limits. You familiar can attack. This is quite powerful for the Imp, but not really for anything else. If I have this for my Sprite, I would still have her use the help action constantly instead of hitting for 1 damage. (Frankly, I wonder if the Imp is just too powerful as a familiar, maybe lower their poison damage)
Then I gave them Voice of the Chain Master. I recently was able to use it with amazing effect for my Feylock... but that was to shadow an enemy army while we marched the army we commanded to cut them off in a geopolitical move. But, most games are not going to need that sort of long term, long distance scouting where miles over days are in play.
So, since it is so niche, I gave it to them for free, and started working with the other invocations to give you other options of things to do.