Warlock Tweaks
Entreat Patron
Once per day, warlocks can spend a minute in concentration entreating their patron for power. At the end of the minute, they gain the benefits of the short rest for the purposes of regaining class features, such as Pact casting. This ritual fails if any spells they have cast are still in effect when they start they start the ritual. After doing so, taking a short rest does not allow them to regain any uses of their class features until their next long rest.
Pact Magic
Spell list:
You gain Warlock Homebrew Spells. Remove Poison Spray and Toll the Dead from the warlock cantrip list.
Eldritch Powers
You know one Eldritch Power of your choice from the warlock spell list. An Eldritch Power is a spell that can be cast at will, without using a spell slot and without being prepared in advance. Your patron has gifted you the ability to produce the effect over and over. A Eldritch Power’s spell level is 0.
Eldritch Mastery
At 2nd level, your patron has invested in you more power, which manifests in improvements to your Eldritch Powers. You gain an benefit depending on the power you chose:
Sundering Blade. You gain proficency in medium armor. On a hit with your Eldrich Blade, your next attack against the target before the end of your next turn is at advantage.
Agonizing Bolt. On a hit with your Eldritch Bolt, you add your charisma modifier to the damage it deals on a hit.
Calamitous Orb. When a creature succeeds on a saving throw against your cantrips or Eldritch Power, the creature takes half the damage (if any) but suffers no additional effects. Additionally, each time you cast Eldritch Orb you choose one the following damage types and gain the corresponding benefit.
| Type | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Force | On a failed save, creatures are pushed 5 feet away from the origin of the area of effect. If the it is centered on a creature, you choose. |
| Lightning | You can change the lighting of the area until the start or end of your next turn. You can also choose for the area to be heavily obscured. |
| Thunder | A structure or nonmagical object that isn’t being worn or carried takes double damage if it’s in the spell's area. |
| Radiant | The area of effect increases by 5 feet. |
| Psychic | A cantrip you cast at that creature on your next turn deals additional psychic damage equal to its damage die. |
| Necrotic | On a failed save, creatures can't regain hit points until the end of their next turn. |
Eldritch Powers
Eldritch Bolt
Eldritch Power
(Same as Eldritch Blast)
Eldritch Orb
Eldritch Power
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 60 feet
- Components: V, S
- Duration: 1 round.
You conjure an dark indigo ball of energy and hurl it a point within range where it silently detonates in a shadowy explosion. Each creature in a 5 foot diameter Sphere centered on that point must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 1d8 necrotic damage. When you cast the cantrip, you can hold back its power and charge it, concentrating the energy with both hands. On a subsequent turn you can spend your action to release it at a point within range or dispell the effect (no action required). The spells area of effect increases to a 10 ft diameter.
The spell's damage increases by 1d8 when your warlock level reaches 5th (2d8), 11th (3d8), and 17th (4d8).
Eldritch Blade
Eldritch Power
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: 5 feet
- Components: V, S
- Duration: Until dispelled.
You create a weapon in your empty hand, which takes on the form of any melee weapon. When you cast this spell, and as an action on your subsequent turns, you can make a melee spell attack with this weapon against a target within 5 feet. On a hit, you deal 1d12 force damage and you apply a minor jinx to the creature. It has disadvantage on its attacks against you until the end of its next turn.
The weapon can take on any melee weapon. You can use this weapon as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells and your spell attack modifier for attack and damage rolls with this weapon.
This spell ends if your weapon is more than 5 feet away from you for than a minute. It also ends if you cast this spell again, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
The spell’s damage increases by 1d12 when your warlock level reaches 5th (2d12), 11th (3d12), and 17th (4d12).
Pact Boon
Pact of the Blade
removed
Pact of the Talisman
See: Pact of the Talisman
Spells
Aftershock
1st-level Evocation
- Casting Time: 1 bonus action
- Range: self
- Components: V, M (any weapon)
- Duration: Concentration, up to one minute
You destabalize the lingering magical energies of a spell you cast earlier this turn to explode with one last spasm. This effect only occurs on a spell that damages creatures in an area of effect on a failed save. Creatures in the area of effect of that spell must make a dexterity saving throw or take 1d6 force damage
On a subsequent turn, you can use your bonus action to destabilize another spell and repeat the effect.
Blood ward
1st-level Necromancy
- Casting Time: 1 bonus action
- Range: 5 feet
- Components: V
- Duration: Concentration, up to an hour
You place a blood ward on a creature that you can see within range. Until the spell ends, that creature has disadvantage on attack rolls to hit you.
Additionally, you gain 1d10 temporary hit points each time you hit a creature with an melee attack. You gain a bonus to your concentration check equal to the number of these temporary hitpoints you had before the triggering damage was applied.
If the target drops to 0 hit points before this spell ends, you can use a bonus action on a subsequent turn of yours to ward a new creature. A remove curse cast on the target ends this spell early.
Eldritch Invocations
At 2nd level, you gain one eldritch invocation of your choice. Remove all invocations with the blade pact prerequisite.
Apocryphal Orb
You can choose to cast your Eldritch orb with a range of self and increase the diameter of the area of effect by 10 feet.
Overarching Rules:
The Entreat Patron feature is intended to be implemented in parallel with similar features for Fighter Battlemaster and Monk. Below is a table for the ability name and regained features for each:
Class Ability Name Regained Features Warlock Entreat Patron Pact Casting Slots Monk Meditate Ki Fighter Focus Superiority Die
Summary
The changes to warlock are only in the first 3 levels, plus additional homebrew spells to fill the pact of the blade niche.
- At level one you choose between one of the 3 "Eldritch Powers" and learn it. They are like cantrips but you can't learn these any other way and they scale off warlock level.
- At level two, you gain "Eldritch Mastery," Which improves your cantrips overall. This replaces one of your invocations.
- At level three, blade pact is replaced by Talisman pact (Peanut), and Cauldron pact (In Progress).
Notes
The issue with warlocks is that:
- They present too few combat choies,
- There are several instances where they allow you to choose between significant in-combat boosts and flavorful out of combat features. Agonizing blast and Eldritch blast are the prime examples of this.
- They attempt to satisfy the gish niche through an pact, which is ill suited for the job as pacts don't have much combat budget and are more suited for fun OOC Utility. As a result to keep up with other martials they need additional invocation taxes. Then, if we spend every invocation on martial combat, we are a full casting martial.
- EB shouldn't scale off player level. Its more of a class feature. You can't multiclass 2 levels in any other class and get the same amount of at-will DPR as the class you're multiclassing into.
Our solution involves several changes to how warlocks work. Listed in no particular order:
- Supplement the warlock spell list with melee spell options, remove blade pact. We can prevent melee warlock from stepping on martials' shoes by giving them windows of strength via spellcasting.
- EB now scales off class level, but is given freely. (this amounts to a slight buff, a +1 cantrip)
- Offer an alternative to EB, which is a blade pact cantrip, which retains the aesthetic of having a weapon. We can make blade pact cantrip competitive if we have people choose between EB and blade pact cantrip instead of giving both. Our implementation is designed to improve survivability and increase reliability of bladelock playstyle, which would otherwise be untenable.
- Offer another alternative to EB, which is Eldritch Orb. This does less damage on average than EB but is more flexible and situationally stronger. It also improves the spell-slingy feel as it replaces what would be low spell slot AOE spell casts.
- We do a simple damage buff to all cantrips (Potent spellcasting). This isn't a perfect solution, since EB scales multiplicatively at lvl 5 (100% increase in DPR) while the others will not (50% increase in DPR). In general though, this will improve the viability of other cantrips without increasing power creep by much
- EB is competitive at lvl 1 because of hex. Add in other lvl 1 spells that synergize with other eldritch powers as well.