Pact of the Broom Warlock

[Wasp]

I was thinking about giving Warlocks a Witchy Pact Boon inspired by witch folklore/fairy tales.

Pact Boon: Pact of the Broom
Your patron gives you an Eldritch Broom. The Eldritch Broom counts as a quarterstaff when used as a weapon. You are proficient with it while you wield it. The Eldritch Broom counts as magical for the Purpose of overcoming Resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

You can use your action make your Eldritch Broom disappear or reappear in your empty hand.

In addition you learn the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. The spell doesn’t count against your number of Spells known. When you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks to allow your familiar to make one Attack of its own with its Reaction.

----

What do you think of this as a starting point? What kind of Eldritch Invocations would you add to that?

I was thinking about

one that let's you cast animate object on the broom without using a spell slot, prerequisite Pact of the Broom and 9th level (Inspiration: The Sorcerer's Apprentice)

and one that let's you fly on your broom. Not sure about the balancing there.

[Yakk]

You don't appear to be able to use the Broom to cast spells, which I guess fits the Witch idea.

While this gives you the "broom and cat" of a Witch, it doesn't do much unique with them. You are sort of a half blade half chain. That doesn't feel great.

As an idea, what if the Witch pact was based off of investing of spirits into things. So the Witch's familiar was an animal with a spirit bound in it, as is the broom, as are the witches potions. The core would then be the Cauldron, where you make your spirit-bound potions, and the familiar/broom would be things you'd get as invocations.

Pact Boon: Path of the Cauldron
You are given a Eldritch Cauldron and the loyalty of up to your proficiency bonus spirits. These spirits are useless unless first brewed into a potion. Doing so requires 10 minutes, and can be done during a long or short rest.

Familiar Spirit: You can feed this potion to a creature that would be suitable to summon via Find Familiar to turn that creature into a Familiar. The spirit remains in the Familiar until the Familiar is killed.
Animate: As an action you can rub this potion on a broom or other medium wooden object to animate it, as if you had cast Animate Objects and only selected it. The animated object is concentrating on its own animation; if it takes damage, it must make a concentration save. You can only have one such object animated at a time and giving it an order requires an action. The spirit remains in the object until the object is no longer animated, and the effect lasts indefinitely.
Healing: Brewing this potion requires that you sacrifice a HD and deal that same amount of damage to another creature. When you drink this potion, you roll the HD you sacrificed, and regain that many HD. Drinking the potion frees the spirit.
Spell: You donate one of your spell slots to the spirit and brew it into a potion. You cannot regain that spell slot until the spirit is freed. Select a spell you know that targets exactly one creature, does not require concentration, and has a casting time of 1 action or 1 bonus action. Anyone who drinks the potion casts the spell targeting themselves. The spirit is freed when the potion is drunk or destroyed, and the spell duration has ended.

Probably too hefty. Could start with just healing, and have invocations grant other brews.

[quindraco]

I was thinking about giving Warlocks a Witchy Pact Boon inspired by witch folklore/fairy tales.

Pact Boon: Pact of the Broom
Your patron gives you an Eldritch Broom. The Eldritch Broom counts as a quarterstaff when used as a weapon. You are proficient with it while you wield it. The Eldritch Broom counts as magical for the Purpose of overcoming Resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

You can use your action make your Eldritch Broom disappear or reappear in your empty hand.

In addition you learn the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. The spell doesn’t count against your number of Spells known. When you take the Attack action, you can forgo one of your own attacks to allow your familiar to make one Attack of its own with its Reaction.

----

What do you think of this as a starting point? What kind of Eldritch Invocations would you add to that?

I was thinking about

one that let's you cast animate object on the broom without using a spell slot, prerequisite Pact of the Broom and 9th level (Inspiration: The Sorcerer's Apprentice)

and one that let's you fly on your broom. Not sure about the balancing there.

This is the finest approach I've seen yet to being a witchy warlock- be aware, last I checked some of the runes still needed work, due to issues like lacking a time limit, but it's an excellent starting point. In this example, you get your broom at level 6, not level 3, since it's from your patron, not a pact boon.

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/n3cht7

[BerzerkerUnit]

I’ve always thought of a Witch as being a series of aesthetic choices for a Druid/Warlock/Wizard. Even Artificer, particularly if you’re an Alchemist though they are rather weak.

Especially with Tasha’s spend Wildshape for a familiar alt feature. Druid can meet the demand.

I saw a Cauldron pact boon a few years back that was pretty sweet. It had a series of invocations that let you boil so many hit dice of creatures to make different potions. It was really good.

[Greywander]

While this gives you the "broom and cat" of a Witch, it doesn't do much unique with them. You are sort of a half blade half chain. That doesn't feel great.
This. Take Pact of the Tome and you can grab Shillelagh as one of your cantrips, and take the invocation to add ritual spells to your book to get Find Familiar. It does everything that your pact does, but more and better.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying you need to look at the options you're competing with and give people a reason to choose Pact of the Broom instead of Chain or Blade or Tome. Likewise, you want to make sure people still have a reason to choose those other pacts, so you can't make your pact too good either.

I've also attempted to make some homebrew for a warlock-based witch, but instead of the pact I went for a homebrew patron (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?632828-Witch-subclass-for-the-warlock). I didn't bother with adding a broom, since the Broom of Flying is an uncommon magic item that doesn't require attunement, i.e. it shouldn't be too hard to get (especially if your DM is choosing what items to hand out to best suit each player) and doesn't cost anything to use.

I think a custom pact boon could work fine, I just didn't think I would have been able to fit everything I wanted for the witchy concept into a pact boon. If you focus in on a specific aspect of witches and make that into the pact boon, I think that could work. You could even fill in the rest with invocations that require that pact. If you go that route, think about what the most central part of the witch concept is, what it is that every single witch will have. Is it the broom? The cauldron? The familiar? I'm not sure myself, but whatever it is would be the main pact boon, with everything else being optional invocations.


I’ve always thought of a Witch as being a series of aesthetic choices for a Druid/Warlock/Wizard. Even Artificer, particularly if you’re an Alchemist though they are rather weak.

Especially with Tasha’s spend Wildshape for a familiar alt feature. Druid can meet the demand.

I saw a Cauldron pact boon a few years back that was pretty sweet. It had a series of invocations that let you boil so many hit dice of creatures to make different potions. It was really good.
Yeah, druid might be a better fit for a base class for a witch character. For myself, I just really wanted to do it with the warlock partly because a warlock feels very different from other types of casters, which is on brand for an illegal/outcast magic user like what witches usually are. But the only witchy things a druid really lacks are good curses, which can easily be fixed with a subclass expanded spell list. TL;DR, druid is a better chassis that gets more of the things you'd want out of the box, but warlock is more mechanically interesting for the concept.

I kind of wonder what each caster class would feel like if they all played more like warlocks. Imagine different wizard subclasses getting at-will casting for thematic spells, like illusionists getting free illusions, or conjurers getting free teleports. Hmm, that might be something I can look into for a future homebrew project. I think warlocks are better balanced against martials anyway, and I've long felt like the warlock is what happens when you build a caster class using the guidelines for martial classes.

[Grim Portent]

Wouldn't the more iconic take on a witch's broom be for it to fly?

It would be hard to balance, but flying on a broom is the enduring image associated with witches.


Something like;

Pact of the Broom
Your patron bestows upon you an Eldritch Broom. The broom can be ridden with a flying speed of (10 x your proficiency bonus) feet. Riding the broom requires the use of both hands. While flying you are considered to be concentrating on a spell. One tiny creature, such as a cat or toad, can ride with you, otherwise the broom cannot carry anything other than you and your equipment.

If your broom is lost or destroyed, you can conjure a new one during a short rest.

In addition you learn the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. It does not count against your spells known.



With an invocation or two to make it only need one hand so you can shoot non-concentration spells off from broom back and something gimmicky along the lines of a fear inducing cackle, or a curse of some kind that can be used while riding the broom. Oh and an invocation to fly perfectly in any weather, including tornados.

[Greywander]

It would be hard to balance, but flying on a broom is the enduring image associated with witches.
Which is why it might make more sense to make it a level-gated invocation. Most full casters are getting Fly at 5th level, but that requires a spell slot and concentration. Also, as previously mentioned, Broom of Flying is only uncommon and doesn't require attunement. I feel like a broom granted by an invocation should be at least as good as the Broom of Flying, if not better.

I'd probably gate the invocation at 7th level, and have it allow you to conjure a broom with the same properties as the Broom of Flying. Add some kind of unique quirk to it to make players keep it even after finding a Broom of Flying, maybe something as simple as allowing it to be used as a Shillelagh'd quarterstaff, but preferably something more on the Exploration pillar. I'd then have the main pact boon focus on something else. Pact of the Cauldron seems to be a common suggestion, but you could pick something else suitably witchy.

Alternatively, you could always just ask the DM for a Broom of Flying. They can make you work for it, but it's not exactly a super rare or powerful item, and it would be thematically appropriate for your character.

[awa]

You could balance it some if you threw some limits at the broom, for instance maybe the broom can be ridden all day long but you need both hands to guide it thus preventing you from attacking or casting spells while ridding it. Another possible limit would be lower maneuverability and no hover option.
At higher levels you could remove these limits.

The balance issues of flight become far less important once you cant just sit out of reach and wipe out monster lacking ranged options.

[Greywander]

You could balance it some if you threw some limits at the broom, for instance maybe the broom can be ridden all day long but you need both hands to guide it thus preventing you from attacking or casting spells while ridding it. Another possible limit would be lower maneuverability and no hover option.
At higher levels you could remove these limits.

The balance issues of flight become far less important once you cant just sit out of reach and wipe out monster lacking ranged options.
Again, the Broom of Flying is a readily available magic item that doesn't require attunement. I think it's generally bad game design if a class's major mechanic can be completely replaced with a cheap magic item. Because of this, I'd personally lean toward not having the broom as a class feature at all and just ask your DM for the magic item, but if you must make it a class feature I think it works better as an invocation. If you get the real Broom of Flying, then you can just switch out your invocation, but ideally the invocation would still offer some benefit that would make it worth keeping. I'd also make the class feature at least as good as the Broom of Flying, or alternatively with its own perks so it might be better in some ways and worse in others. If you go that second route, then maybe getting a real Broom of Flying would let you have the best of both worlds.

Part of the problem is that the Broom of Flying itself doesn't have very clear rules on how it's used. Nothing says it requires your hands, for example, but a DM could always rule that it does. It does seem inordinately strong for an uncommon magic item that doesn't require attunement, which seems to be a clue that there's some sort of limitation that isn't immediately clear. Compare and contrast the Winged Boots and Wings of Flying, which both require attunement and have limited use, making them seem inferior (although Wings of Flying are slightly faster).

[Wasp]

Thank you all for your feedback. I think I should get back to the drawing board! :smallbiggrin:

(Hmmm... Pact of the Ring... now that sounds precioussssss!)

[Greywander]

Thank you all for your feedback. I think I should get back to the drawing board! :smallbiggrin:

(Hmmm... Pact of the Ring... now that sounds precioussssss!)
There's definitely demand for something like this, so keep working on it. As I mentioned, I made it a warlock subclass rather than a pact boon, but the principle should be the same. I could probably take all of the subclass features and turn them into invocations, except for one which would become the main pact boon. In your case, even if you did a Pact of the Broom, you'd want to add some pact-specific invocations that would help fill out the witch concept. So it was never going to be just the main pact boon. As I mentioned previously, I think the broom works better as an invocation, in which case you would just take one of your other invocations and make it the pact boon instead.

I think I might take another stab at the idea myself. I'll try fixing up the subclass I wrote up, and might also trying doing a pact boon option as an alternative to the subclass.