Some warlocks get a book. Other warlocks get a sword. A few warlocks even get a familiar.
Not you, though. You get to choose whether you want a whip, or a bow, or a gun, or even a shield! Or fancy shoes!
AND you get thematic, balanced* invocations to support these choices! How lucky can you get?
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Special Mechanics:
- Pact of the Scourge - You get a whip! The whip has reach, but doesn't deal a whole lot of damage on its own. With invocations, you can attack up to twice and cast thorn whip once, all with one action.
- Pact of the Bastion - You get a shield! It gives you the always-handy +2 to AC, in addition to giving you access to invocations that allow you to better protect yourself and others.
- Pact of the Mystic Treader - You get fancy boots! They increase your move speed and give Dex folks access to jumps, in addition to making you much more mobile and even a little more skilled, with invocations.
- Pact of the Arc - You get a bow! It allows you to shoot eldritch blasts with your Dex modifier while being nimble and accurate with invocations.
- Pact of the Peacemaker - You get access to a bunch of guns! The invocations increase which guns you can use, as well as allow you some serious synergy with the hex spell.
Concerns:
- Damage is balanced roughly off the Bladelock for the Scourge and Peacemaker pacts, while Bastion, Arc, and Mystic Treader are assumed to use eldritch blast primarily for damage. Scourge/Peacemaker damage is approximately on the mark, but could use a closer look.
- Invocations are in the order of their pacts on the rest of the document, except the Bastion's invocations because I fucked that up and didn't want to have to fix ALL the formatting in the world to rectify it.
- I may have to add some verbage about Scourge's thorn whip either counting or not counting as casting a spell on that turn. I'm not sure which would be better.
- I know that the UA - Modern Magic supplement gives the option of using a gun as a part of a Blade pact, but that's not terribly thematically fitting nor balanced, as a gun-blade-pact easily does more damage than any other blade pact. The Peacemaker pact is balanced on typical Blade pact damage, while retaining more flavor.
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These are cool ideas I've been sitting on for a while, trying to figure out how to properly implement them. I've got them together enough to push forward to the next step - namely, asking other people for help because lord knows I can't fix balance issues myself.
If we can get these balanced and in order, I've got some great ideas for additional pacts, as a second pact-pack! Gotta make these ones work first, though, and I'd love to hear what input you guys have.
A newer version of this option is available.
A newer version of this option is available.
I love different warlock options, and these look cool, though I wonder about certain aspects, for instance, charisma is the key attribute for warlocks, but the pacts make it so you have to depend on your dexterity, which basically gives you another attribute you have to worry about. A hex-blade can pick up a whip and use their charisma for attack and damage and synergies it with their eldritch blast. Likewise, why would you use a bow to cast eldritch blast using your dexterity when your charisma is likely higher and synergies with agonizing blast?
ReplyDeleteThen some of the items seem to swerve into either overpowered or underpowered territory.
Pact of the blade lets you use any weapon, while pact of the bastion lets you use... a shield. Since shields are treated all the same it gives little versatility compared to a warlock just taking hex-blade with war-caster. Maybe expand 'bastion' to be armors, shields and cloaks that grants an ac bonus (for instance, half your proficiency since a +3 magic item is considered a rare magic item) so that if you make a magic shield/armor/cloak your pact bastion, it adds that bonus if not already have one.
Then you have a magic gun which can become any gun, is magical for overcoming resistances and immunities, and multiple abilities per invocation at no cost. I would put some sort of limiting factors in place, like using spell slots as ammunition or activation cost, or removing some of the extra features that make it far more powerful then other pacts.
In all it all looks very interesting, just needs some tweaking to make it more in line with the warlocks build and power balance.