Base Class: Warlock
Your patron is a God that roams the Astral Plane. This God's form shifts and changes seemingly every time they appear before you. Sometimes they are in the form of a man, sometimes a woman, and sometimes they are just a disembodied voice echoing in your ears. When they choose to show a solid form, their features are always obscured as if a projection of stars and galaxies fills the space their silhouette occupies.
You have bound yourself to this traveler in the hopes of being able to escape to earthly realms, though you don't remember how you ended up in the Astral Plane to begin with. Your pact with this Astral God gives you a surge of power on the promise you will never equip or summon a weapon or a shield. The Astral God will teach you to fight with empty hands, but will let you hold an arcane focus of your choice for casting...though they recommend you find a way to wear the focus rather than hold it in your hands.
Astral God's Blessing
The Astral God has granted you increased magical power, expanding your knowledge of spells and ability to use them. Some of these spells feel innate as if a switch had been flipped imbuing you with magic akin to a Sorcerer.
Starting at 1st level, your patron bestows upon you the Eldritch Blast cantrip by default. This does not count towards your cantrip count.
Empty Hands
The Astral God has demonstrated how to fight with empty hands with devastating effect. You have no need for weapons, as you are one yourself.
Starting at 1st level, you gain the following effects while your hands are empty. Pact of the Blade, spells that summon a weapon into your hand (ex: Shadow Blade), or equipping a shield nullifies these effects.
- You meet the requirement of wielding a melee weapon for spells that require it (ex: Booming Blade).
- You meet the requirement of wielding a magical weapon for spells or skills that require it.
- Your Eldritch Blast can be used in place of a melee, melee weapon, or ranged weapon attack.
- Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage with Eldritch Blast.
Unarmed Shroud
The Astral God has shown you how to bend energy around your body, creating a shroud of protective force against attacks of all kinds. This technique requires the free use of your hands to manipulate the flow, so it is only usable while unarmed.
Starting at 1st level, while you do not have a weapon equipped you gain the following:
- Your AC is +3.
- You gain proficiency with Medium Armor.
- Your Unarmed Strike attack is 1 + 1d4 + your Strength modifier.
- Your Unarmed Strike attack adds your Charisma modifier to the "to hit" value.
Eldritch Boost
The Astral God has put you to trial. Through your exhaustive efforts you have gained their favor again. Your patron grants you a boon of power.
Starting at 6th level, your Eldritch Blast does an additional 4 damage.
Astral God's Vitality
The Astral God's interest in you has grown. They have gifted you a boon of some of their vitality.
Starting at 6th level, you have the Tough feat.
Extra Attack
The Astral God rewards your exploits with some additional training. You've suffered much for this knowledge, but have learned a new trick to allow you an additional opportunity to strike.
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, rather than once, whenever you take the Attack action or cast a spell.
Astral Spell Pool
The Astral God notices other Warlocks across the planes are limited in their use of spells. Your patron has seen fit to allow you to cast additional spells and promises more as you earn them.
Starting at 6th level, you gain the following:
- You gain a pool to cast extra spells with, starting with 1 slot (this pool only resets after a long rest).
Astral Spell Pool - Extra Slot
The Astral God feels you are worthy to earn another slot for the Astral Spell Pool.
Starting at 10th level, you gain two additional slots for the Astral Spell Pool. This brings the spell pool total to 3 slots.
Astral God's Sight
The Astral God has enjoyed watching your exploits. Your patron would like to give you a little bit more of an edge. They cover your eyes and you can feel a burning sensation in your eye socket, which steadily becomes hotter and hotter until it's on the verge of pain...then it suddenly dissipates to a cool numbness that fades away.
Starting at 10th level, you have gained the following:
- Blindsight up to 20 feet.
- Darkvision up to 90 feet.
- Truesight up to 90 feet.
Astral God's Avatar
The Astral God is pleased with your progress and has one final thing to teach you. They grip you by the wrists and turn your palms up, holding you firmly as they squeeze down on your wrists, feeling like they mean to sever your hands from you. A burning feeling encircles your wrists beneath their hands, hotter than the time they held their hand over your eyes. You feel as if the skin is being seared from inside, then as their grip softens the cooling numbness follows and fades as they release you.
The Astral God then places their palm over your mouth, the hot burning sensation returning...though not as hot as a moment ago. They also place their other palm on the top of your head, the hot burning sensation catching up to the intensity on your lips. After a few moments the cooling numbness fades in and then dissipates as they pull their hands away.
With this you are given the title The Astral God's Avatar.
Starting at 14th level, you gain the following:
- Your Eldritch Blast does an additional 8 damage (total of 12 damage above the base, not including proficiency bonuses).
- Your Eldritch Blast has an additional 60 feet of range.
- Your AC increases by an additional +4 (total of +7 including Unarmed Shroud).
- You learn the Language "Celestial". If you already learned "Celestial", then you may go back and replace that language with another.
- You choose 1 rare language and 2 additional languages to learn.
Astral Spell Pool - Extra Slot
The Astral God feels you are worthy to earn more slots for the Astral Spell Pool.
Starting at 14th level, you gain two additional slots for the Astral Spell Pool. This brings the spell pool total to 5 slots. You may also now recover these slots either during a Short or Long rest.
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Posted Oct 8, 2022Thanks for the feedback feedback! To be specific, the part of "Astral God's Blessing" that I find confusing is "Some of these spells feel innate as if a switch had been flipped imbuing you with magic akin to a Sorcerer." It just feels kind of weird, and it's bit hard to parse. If you want warlocks to have a more viable nonlethal option, perhaps you could give them the option to do nonlethal damage with their eldritch blast (which fits more with the rest of the subclass buffing your eldritch blast). Also, unarmed strikes are technically melee weapon attacks, despite using no weapon. Weapon attack is basically just a term to say it's not a spell attack. I don't see why multiple of your features make it so that you CAN get up close and personal, but none of them really give any reason to. It's not like you'll be able to do more damage by eldritch blasting at close range (although now that I think about it, adding strength to damage when eldritch blasting somebody within 5 feet would be a cool feature for this subclass). Also, I am going to remain adamant that the +3 to AC is unnecessary. I understand the want to make up for the lack of shield, but... Warlocks don't have shield proficiency, so they aren't really missing out. Proficiency with medium armor is a huge boost to AC, up to +3 already if you go from studded leather to half plate (and don't have over 15 in dex). I would also continue to recommend combining the two features, as there is already a noticeably immense list of features, and they have the same requirements anyways.
7. Something I just realized is that this class doesn't have an expanded spell list, which warlock subclasses usually do. That would probably be a good thing to add. I would recommend adding shield of faith or shield, as that seems to be in line with the stuff you want to do.
8. "Eldritch Boost" is way too powerful. A solid +4 to EVERY eldritch blast means that, if you hit both blasts, have a +4 in charisma, and have agonizing blast, you can do 2d10+16 force damage. As a single action. With a cantrip. At 6th level. Considering it's also alongside 3 other features at 6th level alone, I would recommend just getting rid of it. Plus, static bonuses aren't things that ever really happen; they're either rolled or have to do with stats.
9. "Astral God's Vitality" is pretty lame. With AC as high as it is AND an extra +2 hp/level, this class is going to be way too powerful. If you REALLY want to have more hit points (which should barely even be considered unless you remove the +3 to AC), then you could make it like Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer's "Draconic Resilience" instead of just saying "you have a feat now."
10. This extra attack is weird. First of all, as you already said, unarmed strikes are very impractical for this class. Second of all, it works with spells????? How????? Do you mean if I do something like cast shocking grasp, I can attack twice with it? What if I cast eldritch blast? At 6th level you already attack twice with eldritch blast, so does this make you attack four times instead?? Honestly, I would just get rid of this feature too. It doesn't make any sense.
11. "Astral Spell Pool" both doesn't make any sense, AND doesn't work with any of the other features at all. What do you mean extra spell? Like an extra Warlock spell slot that you can do anything with? If so, that's incredibly overpowered. Besides, it doesn't make sense with the rest of the cantrip-focused class to have more spell slots. This is another feature I would recommend giving the boot to.
12. Not much to say about the next feature that I haven't already said, besides the fact that it's somehow even more overpowered.
13. WHAT!?!??! "Astral God's Sight" GIVES YOU TRUESIGHT?!?!?!? TO 90 FEET!??! No way that should be a feature! Anyways, what's the point of having darkvision and blindsight if you have truesight? Truesight does everything that they do, but better. If you really want enhanced sight, give a once/short rest feature that gives you truesight up to 20 feet for a minute. Anything else will be WAY too overpowered.
14. With "Astral God's Avatar," you should probably use way less description. You shouldn't really describe how the power is given, but rather how it looks or feels when used, and even then you should leave most of it up to the player to decide. Great, an EXTRA +8 to eldritch blast damage. That means, assuming all blasts hit, a +5 in charisma, and agonizing blast, you could do 3d10+51 force damage. As an action. Using a cantrip. As a 14th level Warlock. And once you hit 17th level, that damage goes up to 4d10+68. With a single bullet point of one of two features. Let's also not forget about the +4 to AC, and the four random languages that have no point. I would recommend completely revamping this feature to be a limited, once/short rest thing that grants you increased speed and an extra eldritch blast per eldritch blast.
15. Is the idea to have 9 Warlock spell slots instead of 4? I really hope not. I once again recommend demolishing this feature.
And that about wraps up my feedback!
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Posted Oct 8, 2022Quar1on, thanks for commenting! I'm going to copy/paste your feedback with some responses in red. I look forward to any additional feedback you have.
1. Your wording is definitely better than 90% of the stuff on here, so stick with what you're doing. A small thing is that spells aren't generally capitalized.
Thank you for the comment about my use of wording! I capitalized the spell names because when I mouse over the tooltips the name of the spell is capitalized there and because it's the name of a thing (not describing it well). I thought of it like someone's name, where I wouldn't type out "james" I'd instead type "James" with the capitalization. I think I'll keep the spells capitalized just on personal preference, but I do appreciate the insight.
2. God? Warlocks don't generally do gods. Maybe Astral Entity or Astral Anomaly or Astral Traveler would be more fitting.
To be honest, I hadn't delved through too many other things about the Warlock to know this. I'll put some thought into this and see if I should rename it with the next iteration.
3. The descriptive paragraph at the top feels too specific (and put a space after your …). Also, I do not believe there are any arcane focuses that do not require being held.
I tried to describe how you would have come across this Astral ______, so it probably does need some rework to open up PC backstory options. I imagined having an arcane focus that hangs on your wrist, but you're right I need to revisit that to make it more flexible for player choice on flavor.
4. The description of "Astral God's Blessing" is confusing.
This was the first thing I put in, so I probably need to have another look at it. However, could you expand on what's confusing about it to help me out?
5. It's kinda lame that this class just doesn't work with Pact of the Blade. I don't really know how you would incorporate it, but it feels weird for it to basically not be an option. I love that you can use booming blade with your fists. The second bullet point of "Empty Hands" simply makes absolutely no sense, and the third is confusing too. Does it mean having extra attack lets you cast eldritch blast twice with one action? If not, why would you make an attack and then replace it with eldritch blast if you could just cast eldritch blast instead? Also, why is melee listed as different from melee weapon attack?
Pact of the Blade read as requiring a weapon in hand, which goes against the idea of this subclass leaning into not having weapons or shields equipped. I can look at trying to do some cleaver wordsmithing to work around it, but I wasn't too concerned with it for this initial release.
Second bullet of Empty Hands - I haven't spent the time to go through all of the skills/feats/spells available to check if any specifically state "magic weapon" versus just "weapon", so I hedged my bets and made sure that if such a thing were in place you'd meet the requirement of wielding a magic weapon for those cases.
Third bullet of Empty Hands - The reason I listed this bullet was to cover skills/feats/spells that notate they work off of a specific kind of attack, so it doesn't mean you can use Eldritch Blast as an extra attack at this stage. Instead of making a melee (unarmed strike), melee weapon (ex: dagger), or ranged weapon (ex: crossbow, light) attack you can use the Eldritch Blast attack to meet those conditions instead.
Third bullet of Empty Hands part 2 (melee vs melee weapon) - I meant to distinguish between the unarmed strike (melee) versus a melee weapon like a dagger. I should reword this to make that clearer.
6. "Unarmed Shroud" doesn't really seem to have any reason to be separate from "Empty Hands." That aside, +3 TO AC!?!?!? WOAH. That is way too high for ANY feature, let alone a level one feature that ALSO gives you proficiency with medium armor. I would recommend getting rid of that AC boost entirely, armor proficiency is enough. Unarmed strikes do 1+1d4+strength modifier+charisma but only to hit? WHY? Why would anybody put a good stat in strength and do that when they could just cast eldritch blast (as most of the other features recommend)? Also, why the random +1?
I had Unarmed Shroud listed as a separate feature so I could easily reference back to it in a later feature that increases the AC again. I put it at a +3 because I was denying shields from being equipped and wanted to cover the possibility of being in close and personal in early game fights. I also figured that since the "Empty Hands" feature denied the option of Pact of the Blade I'd give an additional concession with the AC trade off. However, I can take another look at this and lower it after some number crunching.
Being transparent, I was struggling with getting this to work a little bit and only got as far as being able to manipulate the "to hit" value based on the charisma modifier. The "random +1" was to cover if someone running this on a standard array could dump strength and still do at least 1 damage with the unarmed strike (it's "0" otherwise because of the -1 strength modifier). I also leaned into the unarmed combat aspect and added the 1d4 to the unarmed strike. I know that this seems like leaning into Eldritch Blast hard (because this subclass is), but I wanted to leave open the option to do a non-lethal strike with a plain unarmed strike that I'm assuming can't be done with an Eldritch Blast attack. I fully expect it to be mostly an unused thing, but I'm leaving it there so people have narrative options with this subclass.
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Posted Oct 8, 2022There's quite a bit I'd like to cover here.
1. Your wording is definitely better than 90% of the stuff on here, so stick with what you're doing. A small thing is that spells aren't generally capitalized.
2. God? Warlocks don't generally do gods. Maybe Astral Entity or Astral Anomaly or Astral Traveler would be more fitting.
3. The descriptive paragraph at the top feels too specific (and put a space after your …). Also, I do not believe there are any arcane focuses that do not require being held.
4. The description of "Astral God's Blessing" is confusing.
5. It's kinda lame that this class just doesn't work with Pact of the Blade. I don't really know how you would incorporate it, but it feels weird for it to basically not be an option. I love that you can use booming blade with your fists. The second bullet point of "Empty Hands" simply makes absolutely no sense, and the third is confusing too. Does it mean having extra attack lets you cast eldritch blast twice with one action? If not, why would you make an attack and then replace it with eldritch blast if you could just cast eldritch blast instead? Also, why is melee listed as different from melee weapon attack?
6. "Unarmed Shroud" doesn't really seem to have any reason to be separate from "Empty Hands." That aside, +3 TO AC!?!?!? WOAH. That is way too high for ANY feature, let alone a level one feature that ALSO gives you proficiency with medium armor. I would recommend getting rid of that AC boost entirely, armor proficiency is enough. Unarmed strikes do 1+1d4+strength modifier+charisma but only to hit? WHY? Why would anybody put a good stat in strength and do that when they could just cast eldritch blast (as most of the other features recommend)? Also, why the random +1?
Trust me, I have much more to say, but it's late and I'm tired so maybe I'll continue this in the morning.