The Invoker (D&D3.5) (E6)

[Tvtyrant]

The Invoker
“He’s not like any wizard I ever seen. He never gets tired and just keeps on slinging those spells as fast as I can swing my sword. I think maybe he’s a Warlock and he is just pretending to be a wizard for the girls.”

The Invoker is a homebrewed base player class that has cropped up whenever I read the Warlock or Dragon Fire Adept’s class features. Both of those classes offer an amazing ability in the form of invocations but they stifle them by making each one a permanent choice and giving them very few. The Invoker chooses a different path.

An Invoker gets up each day and summons the representatives of the very cosmos, albeit in minor form. These representatives are called the Elemental Court, and they are willing to cut deals with a properly motivated individual. The Invoker then asks for a Boon from the council, an ability that individuals within the court grant him to do what he likes with for 24 hours. Each court member can only grant an individual one Boon a day, and the level of Boon is dictated by their own personal power. The Invoker’s relationship with the fundamental order of creation improves through his daily communication with its anthropomorphic representatives, and he gains additional Boons with each passing level. The Invoker gains additional powers and followers as well, abilities granted to the Invoker by the council on a more or less permanent basis than his invocations.

Invoker

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special

1st|+0|+0|+0|+2|Cosmos Favor, Boon

2nd|+1|+0|+0|+3|Elemental Bodyguard

3rd|+1|+1|+1|+3|Cosmos Favor,

4th|+2|+1|+1|+4|Elemental Bodyguard

5th|+2|+1|+1|+4|Cosmos Favor

6th|+3|+2|+2|+5|Court Intervention

[/table]
Alignment: Any
Hit Die: 1d4

Class Skills:
The Invoker’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Speak Language (None), Spellcraft (Int), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
Skill Points at Each Level: 4 + Int modifier

Boon:

Boons are the slots that an Invoker places his invocations in. An Invoker can change which invocations he has access to each day by appealing for new Boons from the elemental court.

An Invoker gains extra Boons as he levels, his fame spreading to the cosmos and gaining him more backers within the Elemental Court. There are two levels to an Invoker’s daily Boons, Low and High. Low Boons are granted by the weaker and more easily impressed members of the elemental court, who are limited in the power that they can grant a mortal. High boons are granted by the great lords of the court, who need to be impressed by an individual’s abilities and record before they are willing to part with their powers. An invoker has a number of Low Boons equal to his level in Invoker, and a number of High Boons equal to his level in Invoker -4 (2 at level 6.)

The lists for invocations that can be bound to a Boon are found at the bottom of the page.

Cosmos Favor:

A Cosmos Favor is a permanent and unchanging ability granted by a member of the court to an Invoker when they have received a certain level of notoriety. An Invoker gets a favor at levels 1, 3 and 5 from the favor list.

Spoiler: Cosmos Favors

Show

Deflecting Winds:

The Invoker has received the favor of protection from a wind elemental from the court. He gains a deflection bonus to AC equal to his charisma modifier as a swift action 3/day for one turn per use.

Healing Waters:

The Invoker has received the favor of healing from a water elemental of the court. He recovers his charisma modifier worth of HP 6/day as a swift action.

Sheltering Earth:

The Invoker has received the favor of survival from an earth elemental of the court. He gains his charisma modifier worth of damage reduction/adamantine 3/day as a swift action for 1 turn per use.

Rampaging Fire:

The Invoker has received the favor of power from a fire elemental of the court. He gains his charisma modifier worth of extra damage on the next attack 6/day as a swift action.

Elemental Bodyguard:

Starting at level 2 the Invoker has become important enough that the forces of creation grant him a bodyguard to keep him alive. The guard follows all of the Invokers instructions as best it can. This guard is refreshed back to life and full health each morning when the Invoker finishes requesting his Boons, although the guard remains exactly the same unless the Invoker requests a new guard from the list. This request is granted immediately but the Invoker loses access to one Boon of the highest level he can use.

At level 2 an Invoker gains a small elemental bodyguard of the fire, earth, air or water type and is normal for its type. At level 4 this bodyguard is upgraded to a mephit, an elemental outsider with a great variety of powers and abilities (mephit bodyguards are also normal for their type.)

Court Intervention:

At level 6 an Invoker gains the ability to summon the aid of the court to save himself once per day. Once a day when the Invoker would drop below 0 hit points he is whisked away and replaced with a medium elemental randomly chosen from the fire, water, earth or air type. The attack that would have dropped the Invoker below 0 hit points instead damages the elemental in his place. If the elemental is slain by the attack the Invoker still takes full damage from the attack, but if not the elemental draws the entirety of the damage away and fights in the Invoker’s stead until it dies.

Spoiler: Low Boons

Show

All-Seeing Eyes
Aquatic Adaptation
Baleful Utterance
Beguiling Influence
Breath of the Night
Dark One's Own Luck
Call of the Wild
Cocoon of Refuse
Darkness
Deafening Roar
Devil's Sight
Drain Incarnum
Earthen Grasp
Entropic Warding
Leaps and Bounds
Magic Insight
Miasmic Cloud
Otherworldly Whispers
Scalding Gust
See the Unseen
Serpent's Tongue
Soulreaving Aura
Spiderwalk
Summon Swarm
Swimming the Styx

Spoiler: High Boons

Show

Charm
Cold Comfort
Crawling Eye
Curse of Despair
The Dead Walk
Disembodied Hand
Dread Seizure
Fell Flight
Flee the Scene
Energy Resistance
Enthralling Voice
Hungry Darkness
Ignore the Pyre
Mask of Flesh
Relentless Dispelling
Spider-Shape
Steal Incarnum
Stony Grasp
Sudden Swarm
Thieves' Bane
Voidsense
Voracious Dispelling
Walk Unseen
Wall of Gloom
Weighty Utterance
Witchwood Step

[Tvtyrant]

This is a very lazy class to put together, but I really wanted something that used the at-will features of a Warlock or Dragon Fire Adept and crossed it with the ability to swap them out. It is probably stupidly strong, but I am not very talented at home brew. Feel free to comment!

[Hamste]

What's with the table? Low boon is placed multiple times at each level which seems odd and confusing considering they only get an additional low boon every level. At level 4 you have elemental bodyguard twice and Cosmos favor even though you do not get one at that level.

I might not be seeing the pattern to the table because I just woke up but it seems to be very messed up.

[Tvtyrant]

What's with the table? Low boon is placed multiple times at each level which seems odd and confusing considering they only get an additional low boon every level. At level 4 you have elemental bodyguard twice and Cosmos favor even though you do not get one at that level.

I might not be seeing the pattern to the table because I just woke up but it seems to be very messed up.

That was weird. I have no idea what happened with the table, it was not originally formatted that way. Fixed.

[Baniff]

I would allow Healing Waters to restore actual hit points. As it is now, the earth favor is just a better version of it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tvtyrant
"...I think maybe he’s a Warlock and he is just pretending to be a wizard for the girls.”

--Wait, wizards get girls?!

[Hamste]

--Wait, wizards get girls?!

The have the ability to get extravagant meals from no where in the blink of an eye, they get paid extreme amounts of money for sitting on their butts all day while they mutter and flail around, the have the ability to go any place in the world they care to go quickly and the law will never mess with them. Wizards are like the billionaires of our world...of course they get girls (guys as well).

Warlocks on the other hand are more like the people who do the wizard's taxes.


Anyways, I love the theme of this homebrew. I, however, have no idea the types of invocations so I can't be that helpful.

[Tvtyrant]

I would allow Healing Waters to restore actual hit points. As it is now, the earth favor is just a better version of it.

Done and done!

[bobthe6th]

The Invoker a wizardy/alchemist user of the invocations system...

As for your class... the name is weird, and the fluff weirder. First of all... the elementals have nobility? Secondly, They pay enough attentions to humans to grant power? Finally... why isn't this called the "elementalist" or "Elemental Courtier" rather then "Invoker?"

For the capstone... were does the caster go? To the elemental planes? To 5ft behind the summoned elemental? Were?

The favors are all over the place... you could get A hefty AC buff, Some really nice DR, A handful of HP(Probably never more then 1 HD), or +4-5 damage...
So in order of usefulness Earth>Air>Water>Fire.

[Tvtyrant]

The Invoker a wizardy/alchemist user of the invocations system...

As for your class... the name is weird, and the fluff weirder. First of all... the elementals have nobility? Secondly, They pay enough attentions to humans to grant power? Finally... why isn't this called the "elementalist" or "Elemental Courtier" rather then "Invoker?"

For the capstone... were does the caster go? To the elemental planes? To 5ft behind the summoned elemental? Were?

The favors are all over the place... you could get A hefty AC buff, Some really nice DR, A handful of HP(Probably never more then 1 HD), or +4-5 damage...
So in order of usefulness Earth>Air>Water>Fire.

1. There is also a 4E invoker, two ninjas in 3.5 and about 40 million monk classes. I'm not going to change the name because someone else picked the most obvious name for an invocation based class

The elementals have a court in my world, if not in others they can swap it for fey/gods/demons or whatever else they want. The elemental court are the beings that make fire hot and water wet, and they provide favors to Invokers because the invokers are capable of talking to them and no one else is.

Not an elementalist because it doesn't use any elemental powers, and the name would be horridly misleading. It Invokes packs it makes with higher ups, and uses invocations.

The caster just goes. I could make it a particular place, but based on similar abilities in other classes that just makes it easier to break mechanically. Simply gone is the easiest way to prevent exploits. I basically think of it as a replacement summon (like clerics can get in splats) that happens under a particular circumstance as a defensive ability. If I was going to be pressed for a location I would say they get pulled apart into their base elements and put back together when the elemental dies.

A fair point. I think I will up the number of uses on fire and water then. The goal is for a neat ability that sees regular use but doesn't overly effect the game. Gaining DR, AC, HP or a minor damage boost is fun without giving any real avenues for exploitation.