Base Class: Warlock
Your patron is an ancient sentient tree or plant, a being that has witnessed generations and civilizations pass like seasons. Your patron may be an elder treant, such as the treant Turlang, or some other tree or plant that was long ago awakened, and has gathered vast knowledge over many lifetimes. You were chosen to bear a portion of this being’s power, and spread its influence. Your patron may wish for you to protect the natural world, travel to far off lands that it cannot, or it may have another motive that seems inscrutable to short-lived mortals. You may have gained this pact by proving yourself as worthy to your patron in a brave feat to protect its forest, or after your patron saved your life as a child when your parents left you for dead.
Expanded Spell List
The Plant lets you choose from an expanded list of spells when you learn a warlock spell. The following spells are added to the warlock spell list for you.
Plant Expanded Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
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1st |
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2nd |
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3rd |
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4th |
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5th |
Bonus Cantrips
At 1st level, you learn the druidcraft and thorn whip cantrips. They count as warlock cantrips for you, but they don’t count against your number of cantrips known.
Friend to Flora
Starting at 1st level, you become a kindred spirit to plants. You have advantage on any ability check to interact socially with a plant until you or your companions do anything harmful to it.
Botanical Empowerment
At 1st level, your patron allows you to utilize their gifted magic more effectively. You receive the following benefits when casting these spells from your Pact of the Plant Expanded Spell List:
- When you cast entangle, you ignore its difficult terrain and you ignore the Strength saving throw to restrain creatures in its area of effect.
- When you cast goodberry, the berries restore hit points equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1).
- When you cast barkskin targeted on yourself, you do not expend a spell slot and the spell does not require concentration.
- When you cast spike growth, you ignore its difficult terrain and piercing damage.
- When you cast plant growth using 1 action, you and up to five creatures of your choosing can move through its area normally (by only spending 1 foot of movement for every 1 foot you move), and when you cast plant growth over 8 hours, you enrich all plants in a 2 mile radius.
- When you cast speak with plants, its duration is increased to 1 hour, and you ignore any difficult terrain you create with it.
- When you cast grasping vine, any creature you direct the vine to lash out at has disadvantage on their Dexterity saving throw against it.
- When you cast guardian of nature and choose the Great Tree form, its duration is increased to 10 minutes and you make Charisma-based attack rolls with advantage.
- When you cast awaken on a plant, the plant gains an Intelligence of 10 + your Charisma modifier, gains the ability to speak all languages you know, and gains temporary hit points equal to twice your Warlock level.
- When you cast tree stride, its duration is increased to 10 minutes.
Arboriform
Starting at 6th level, your patron brings you closer to being like them. For every 5 years that pass, your body ages only 1 year.
In addition, whenever you cast barkskin on yourself or cast guardian of nature and choose the Great Tree form, your appearance becomes even more dendriform. You gain False Appearance for the spell’s duration. While you remain motionless, you are indistinguishable from a normal tree.
Photosynthetic Skin
Beginning at 10th level, you can absorb energy from sunlight. While you are in direct sunlight, you gain temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier at the start of each of your turns.
In addition, while you stand firmly upright on solid non-metal, non-stone ground while in direct sunlight, you can root yourself as a bonus action. Arboreal tendrils grow from your feet and dig into the ground. Your speed becomes 0, and you gain advantage on any saving throws to push you, pull you, or knock you prone. You remain rooted until you are pushed, pulled, or knocked prone, or until you choose to separate from your roots as a bonus action. As long as you are rooted and in direct sunlight, you regain hit points equal to your Charisma modifier at the start of each of your turns. Once you root yourself in this way, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.
The Gift of Life
At 14th level, you can share the gift of life with your fellow flora. You can cast awaken on plants without using material components.
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Posted Jan 4, 2022Of course! No worries, friend. Thank you for taking enough interest to not only read this subclass, but think about it, and taking the time to comment (and respond to my reply!)
Most people won't do any one of those things haha!
If you have any other questions or concerns about any of my homebrew subclasses here on D&D Beyond (which unfortunately are only a small handful of my total homebrew work, mainly because the homebrew uploading interface sucks) or the game in general, please just ask!
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Posted Jan 3, 2022Thank you for the polite and educating response. I am fairly new to dnd and I seem to have misunderstood the rules regarding temporary HP.
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Posted Jan 2, 2022Thanks so much for your comment! I appreciate you taking the time, and apologize I didn't respond earlier! DnD Beyond does not like to send me notifications when I receive comments... I had to stumble upon this randomly when opening this old subclass!
I really appreciate you taking the time to give your thoughts, but I heartily disagree, mainly because temporary hit points don't stack. The primary rule regarding temporary hit points is that they never stack (unless a spell or effect explicitly says it can stack with itself, superseding the general rule). From the Player's Handbook:
So Photosynthetic Skin can only give a maximum of 5 hit points at a time to a 20 CHA Plant Warlock. These hit points refresh every round, of course, but you can't stack up 10 temp HP, much less thousands—that's explicitly against the rules of how temporary hit points function. Temporary hit points never mix or stack. This kind of 'gain 1 to 5 temp HP at the start of your turn' passive ability can be found in a few official subclasses, and I felt it fit thematically with a Plant-based Warlock, with a theme of arboreal growth and healing.
The much stronger ability in this feature is the second clause to root oneself to the ground, allowing you to directly heal hit points. Any kind of passive normal healing in a subclass feature is very strong, but I felt this was balanced by it necessitating the reduction of your speed to 0, allowing any enemies to outplay you or escape your pursuit if you stop to heal with this ability, leaving it to be used as a full heal outside of combat-like ability, once per long rest (and still only while in sunlight, meaning not in a cave or dungeon or castle as typical for a campaign climax), which while strong, still fit well with the themes of this subclass and didn't feel broken.
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Posted Jun 12, 2021Photosynthetic Skin is too powerful the way it is worded. Since a turn is 6 seconds long and a level 10 warlock would probably have +5 CHA, they would gain 50 temporary HP for every minute they spend in sunlight. So they could spend hours under the sun before combat and rack up thousands of extra HP before a big fight. It would be less broken if you made it normal healing rather than temporary HP.