I'm curious how other people and groups flavor their warlocks EB. Been watching several vids about how other people have done this themselves and it really got me going on thinking about how far are some people are willing to push "what an EB is." I know for my group, we started with just allowing damage type changes, but now with my group being a bit more experienced with 5e and homebrewing in general, we've been experimenting with adding additional mechanics and effects to EB at the cost of a damage die reduction.

I don't know that I've heard of anyone really altering EB. It's already so powerful, there's little point (even the damage type is probably the best in the game--I'd only ever change it psychic, if at all.)

Yeah, as is EB is really powerful and doesn't need to be changed to make it better. I just know that after playing/seeing enough Blaster Caster warlocks just seeing the same EB over and over it just gets a little tiresome and seems a little weird that there is no difference between EB for the subclasses other subclasses other than flavor. Which has always been something that I found a little weird, so why not have other invocations that are subclass based that can further alter your EB or other EB alternatives that also can use the EB invocations

Mostly what I see is different descriptions of what it looks like, and how it sounds, which can be cool. Plus, not everyone has to use all the invocations on it (especially if you're going Hexblade.)

Let's be honest, a blaster warlock focused squarely on EB is a powerful archetype, but if that's the ONLY warlock you're seeing, it just sounds like some folks might be afraid to branch out and try different things with the class.

I suppose, if you took some time to roleplay it, an undying patron Warlock might be able to make damage necrotic or a Fiendlock do fire damage. Maybe there's a homebrew invocation you can create to do so, and rather than flavor EB itself, use an Invocation to do just that. The warlock is tailor made for customization, so that's the route I'd go if I wanted to touch up my EB

I've always thought it was a little weird that it HAD to be that one spell, Eldritch Blast. I would have thought each warlock would simply get to choose a "specialized cantrip", with all their EB invocations instead powering up that one cantrip. That way, you could choose Fire Bolt, Ray of Frost, etc. and get a different feel from it.

I even suggested changing it to that to my group, but no one seemed interested.

And why would they, the amount of damage and utility that the warlock gets from their invocations from EB scaling via additional bolts vs just damage is too much. In order to have a cantrip match up with EB it needs to add an additional bolt, beam, dart or whatever when it scales for it to be even have a chance in being an alternative to EB. For example, why use firebolt even if you allow it to benefit from the invocations because it only procs an invocation once vs the bonus effects procing each on bolt of EB. One EB alternative I made for the Fiend warlock is infernal spear, is it perfect solution, probably not. Heck at the moment, I can't even find a way with the current homebrew system for these kinds of cantrips to actually apply the EB invocations. So even if a player does use this cantrip, they would have to remember and add the correct changes themselves.

Quote from FallenPhoenixIV >>

And why would they, the amount of damage and utility that the warlock gets from their invocations from EB scaling via additional bolts vs just damage is too much. In order to have a cantrip match up with EB it needs to add an additional bolt, beam, dart or whatever when it scales for it to be even have a chance in being an alternative to EB.

Well, yes, if the only important thing is damage per round. I've already acknowledged that EB uses probably the best damage type in the game--from that standpoint, there's theoretically no reason to make any change.

But the point of this thread is (from my perspective,) what if you're wanting to flavor your warlock differently, and don't mind trading off some damage and/or utility? Simplest way to do that, it seems to me, is to allow swapping other cantrips in for EB. Maybe you want a fire theme and like the side-effects of potentially burning down whatever structure you attack. If that's the case, you may actually value Fire Bolt higher than EB, so long as you got access to the same invocations with it.

As I said though, apparently everyone's fine with vanilla EB-blasting warlocks, which is perfectly okay; I just find it a little odd.

My Eldritch Blast is reflavored to look like daggers made of silvery moonlight. Nothing is changed about it, mechanically, but I usually think 'reflavor' means to change something cosmetic.

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

My Eldritch Blast is reflavored to look like daggers made of silvery moonlight. Nothing is changed about it, mechanically, but I usually think 'reflavor' means to change something cosmetic.

 Agreed. I always see orange-green flamelike emanations in the style of hand drawn animation on celluloid film like movies from the ‘80s. Just like the flames Julian Sand’s Warlock used in the movie.