After an the interesting analysis of the various Warlock Patrons and Invocations from Yharim , the comment from Demo_N and the Warlock backstory idea from Cardinal_Fang, I got to thinking on the Hexblade Warlock Patron, and realised that, as much as I am completely in love with the concept of an effective blade-wielding warlock, the Hexblade is not a confusing and (imho) not really well done subclass, and one that deprives other Patron of an effective recreation of an extremely good concept.
This, connected to the frankly underwhelming Pact of the Blade boon as it is now, brought me (not without encouragements from Yharim, whom I thank) to present to you all these homebrew Features to make the concept of the "Eldritch Warrior" available to any Patron, and "fix" (imho) the Pact of the Blade issues.
EDIT: For clarity, the intention of these homebrew features is to get rid of Hexblade as a Patron, and make the concept applicable and available to all other Patrons.
But enough of introductions, let's get to the good stuff, shall we?
Pact Boon
Pact of the Blade [Addition to current text] When wielding your pact weapon, you can use your Charisma instead of Strength or Dexterity for attack and damage rolls.
This makes the Pact of the Blade a much more interesting and mechanically worthy feature, without necessarily making it better than Pact of the Chain or Pact of the Tome, it's just a matter of what kind of character one wants to play
Invocations
Armor of Shadows [Addition to current text] Additionally, you can cast the Shield spell as a level 1 spell once each short rest, without expending a spell slot.
Improved Pact Weapon [Addition to current text] You can also decide to forego a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls to instead summon 2 one-handed weapons, unless your Pact weapon is a magic weapon.
Additionally, when performing the ritual to make a magic weapon your pact weapon, you can bond with up to two weapons as pact weapons. When trying to perform the 1-hour ritual on a third weapon, you have to break your bond with one of the previous two. When summoning your pact weapon, you choose which one will appear, or you can have them both appear as your action.
Patron's Blade [New Invocation] Prerequisite: 5th level, Pact of the Blade feature, Improved Pact Weapon
Your Patron bestows upon your Pact Weapon a sliver of their raw power. Each Pact weapon you create can now inflict damage of a type appropriate to your Patron:
The Archfey: Psychicor Acid The Celestial: Radiant or Lightning The Fiend: Fireor Psychic The Great Old One: Force or Thunder The Undying: Necroticor Acid The Raven Queen: Cold or Necrotic [The Raven Queen is a step-in for Shadowfell-based Patron]
Each damage type can be applied only to one pact weapon at a time. Should an enemy hit by your pact weapon be immune to the damage type granted by this feature, it instead counts as resistant to the damage type of your pact weapon.
Additionally, the bonus to attack and damage rolls increases with your level, becoming +2 at level 10 and +3 at level 15, with the same limitations imposed to the bonus from Improved Pact Weapon.
Hex of Despair [New Invocation] Prerequisite: 7th level, hex spell or a warlock feature that curses While a target is cursed by your hex spell or by a warlock feature of yours, such as Sign of Ill Omen, any weapon attack roll you make against the cursed target is a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20 on the d20.
These are all modifications or new Invocations aimed at making the concept more stable and to have it scale a bit better compared to (for example) the power and versatility boost of Eldritch Blast when Invocations are take into consideration. The rework of Improved Pact Weapon is also an effective mena to make a dual wielding BladeLock viable.
For the Patron's Blade invocation, I was fiddling with the idea of having two damage types associated with each Patron, for a greater variety, but got stuck on having to repeat at least one damage type, which I did not like too much :-/
These could be further expanded and of course modified, so any comment (constructive, please :) ) is very welcome!
The Hexblade warlock already has a feature for using charisma with their weapons.
Armor of shadows does NOT need a buff, it is already a permanent +3 to unarmored AC.
I like your idea for having an invocation to dual wield pact weapons, but I think the wording would be smoother if it were a separate invocation.
You forgot Hexblade in patron blade (maybe you forgot hexblade all together). And raven queen is UA (you probably knew that).
Hex of despair is good as is.
I probably didn't make my intention clear enough, my apologies ^^"
My intention is get rid of Hexblade as a patron altogether, and place the concept in a form usable by all Patrons, reason why I am taking some bits from it and adding them to other features/invocations and using the Raven Queen as a stand-in for a Shadowfell-based Patron (which I still think it's a worthy concept).
Armor of shadows is not really a +3 to AC, it's a different AC calculation, and considering the Light Armor proficiency all Warlocks get from the get-go, it is more like a +1 on top of the best base Light Armor more than anything (and the convenience of not having to don armor). The addition of Shield as a once every short rest is just to play a bit more on the potential "tank", or in any case survivability side of a BladeLock build. EDIT: The fact that it would be also a boost to other Warlock builds does not make it overpowered, imho, but I am open to change it if more people feel it is too powerful as an addition to AoS and should be taken out/placed as a separate Invocation.
I thought of making the dual wield option a separate Invocation, but then decided to merge it with Improved... It's a change I am perfectly fine in making, but let's see what everyone else thinks on this one :)
Thanks to the input from Blublabolbolbol on the Discrod channel, pointing out a possibly OP combo between Hex of Despair and Agonizing Blast, Hex of Despair is now only valid for weapon attacks.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I am liking this a lot, and I didn't even think about dual-wielding warlocks. Different damage types is awesome, though now that I think of it, if you chose Archfey as your Patron, nothing except a helmed horror is immune or resistant to your attacks. Almost the same with Celestial and Great Old One. Fiend and Raven Queen both have damage types that can be resisted easily. Undying is one that is pretty balanced at the moment. I honestly think all of this is really cool, especially with the new and improved Invocations. shield once per rest may be debatable, but right now it seems pretty balanced. Overall I give this a 9/10, better than any subclass or Invocation has gotten yet (Except for Mask of Many Faces, but we can agree that is awesome, right?)
Edit: Right as I finished, you fixed the thing I made an essay on. Well, that's good, I guess. The rest of the stuff is awesome!
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Countershere(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
I am liking this a lot, and I didn't even think about dual-wielding warlocks. Different damage types is awesome, though now that I think of it, if you chose Archfey as your Patron, nothing except a helmed horror is immune or resistant to your attacks. Almost the same with Celestial and Great Old One. Fiend and Raven Queen both have damage types that can be resisted easily. Undying is one that is pretty balanced at the moment. I honestly think all of this is really cool, especially with the new and improved Invocations. [spell]shield[spell] once per rest may be debatable, but right now it seems pretty balanced. Overall I give this a 9/10, better than any subclass or Invocation has gotten yet (Except for Mask of Many Faces, but we can agree that is awesome, right?)
Edit: Right as I finished, you fixed the thing I made an essay on. Well, that's good, I guess. The rest of the stuff is awesome!
Thank you Yharim :)
It's true that Archfey, GOO and Celestial are a step above the rest in terms of enemies potentially being resistant to the damage from the Patron's Blade Invocation, but taking out Force, Psychic and Radiant makes it quite more difficult to attribute other damage types...
I guess Celestial could switch to Lightning, Archfey to Poison or Acid (making it the worst of the Patrons on this) and Great Old One to Thunder (the deafening sound of the void).
In any case, now that I think about it, probably GOO should have Force and Archfey Psychic... the problem is both types of damage are thematically appropriate to both Patrons ^^"
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Oh, I agree that they are thematically appropriate, but maybe the fire and cold damage need to ignore resistance or maybe treat immunity as resistance, seeing how fire and cold are often seen on the immunity and resistance parts of stat blocks.
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Countershere(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
Oh, I agree that they are thematically appropriate, but maybe the fire and cold damage need to ignore resistance or maybe treat immunity as resistance, seeing how fire and cold are often seen on the immunity and resistance parts of stat blocks.
Mmmh, indeed, looking at it from another angle might work better... I'll include an addendum that "Should an enemy hit by your pact weapon be immune to the damage type granted by this feature, it is instead only resistant to that damage type"
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
It's true that Archfey, GOO and Celestial are a step above the rest in terms of enemies potentially being resistant to the damage from the Patron's Blade Invocation, but taking out Force, Psychic and Radiant makes it quite more difficult to attribute other damage types...
I guess Celestial could switch to Lightning, Archfey to Poison or Acid (making it the worst of the Patrons on this) and Great Old One to Thunder (the deafening sound of the void).
In any case, now that I think about it, probably GOO should have Force and Archfey Psychic... the problem is both types of damage are thematically appropriate to both Patrons ^^"
Acid is actually less resisted than most people think, Psychic is more resisted than most think, and no body talks about Thunder being as good as it is.
And I think it's fine if some patrons share damage types, or if the invocation just grants the same option regardless of patron be it a chosen one or a list of options.
It's true that Archfey, GOO and Celestial are a step above the rest in terms of enemies potentially being resistant to the damage from the Patron's Blade Invocation, but taking out Force, Psychic and Radiant makes it quite more difficult to attribute other damage types...
I guess Celestial could switch to Lightning, Archfey to Poison or Acid (making it the worst of the Patrons on this) and Great Old One to Thunder (the deafening sound of the void).
In any case, now that I think about it, probably GOO should have Force and Archfey Psychic... the problem is both types of damage are thematically appropriate to both Patrons ^^"
Acid is actually less resisted than most people think, Psychic is more resisted than most think, and no body talks about Thunder being as good as it is.
And I think it's fine if some patrons share damage types, or if the invocation just grants the same option regardless of patron be it a chosen one or a list of options.
I hereby demand DxJxC's post to be sticky in the main page of each sub-forum!
Seriously, thank you for taking the time and putting in the effort to do this, it's a super interesting thing to have handy when dealing with this kind of features :D
Having the feature give the same type of damage regardless of Patron takes away from my intention of adding further personality and uniqueness to each Patron (a tren I actually started some time ago with THIS homebrew version of the Pact of the Chain boon).
As to overlapping types, maybe you are right there is no real issue there, just my mind screaming EVERYTHING HAS TO BE UNIQUE! ... I'll shut that side down a second and add a secondary damage type for each Patron. Connected to this, I am also caressing the idea of allowing only one type per pact weapon, making it mandatory for a dual wielder to have one of each.
This has a nice flavor to me... I play my Hexblade fairly close to actually being Raven Queen anyway, and love the idea of attributing a type of specific, flavorful damage to pact weapon attacks. That's one thing I want to ask my DM about, and I bet he'd allow it. (He OP'd my pact weapon already...)
Only addition might be more smites... can't get enough of those things.
Crit on 19 or 20 is nice for Hex of Dispair, replacing the Hexblade's Curse (but granting it later...)
If you're eliminating the Hexblade patron, and by that action eliminating Hex Warrior (and the above noted Hexblade's Curse) should the PotB v2.0 include the medium armor / shields proficiency? It already covers the "any" weapon proficiency.
This has a nice flavor to me... I play my Hexblade fairly close to actually being Raven Queen anyway, and love the idea of attributing a type of specific, flavorful damage to pact weapon attacks. That's one thing I want to ask my DM about, and I bet he'd allow it. (He OP'd my pact weapon already...)
Only addition might be more smites... can't get enough of those things.
Crit on 19 or 20 is nice for Hex of Dispair, replacing the Hexblade's Curse (but granting it later...)
If you're eliminating the Hexblade patron, and by that action eliminating Hex Warrior (and the above noted Hexblade's Curse) should the PotB v2.0 include the medium armor / shields proficiency? It already covers the "any" weapon proficiency.
Thank you for your comment Mike_Rowe :)
I have to admit I am not a huge fan of Warlock in medium armor, so I am reluctant in adding it as a free proficiency ^^"
What I could do is maybe consider adding the option of creating a shield as part of the expanded possibilities of Improved Pact Weapon. This way there is no real need to add base proficiencies and all loadouts of weapons would be covered (two handed, dual wield, one handed+nothing, sword&broad, ranged).
What does everyone think about this?
On the smite thing... I think Eldritch Smite is all you would really ever need ;)
I have to admit I am not a huge fan of Warlock in medium armor, so I am reluctant in adding it as a free proficiency ^^"
What I could do is maybe consider adding the option of creating a shield as part of the expanded possibilities of Improved Pact Weapon. This way there is no real need to add base proficiencies and all loadouts of weapons would be covered (two handed, dual wield, one handed+nothing, sword&broad, ranged).
As a melee heavy Hexblade, I like the medium armor thing. Since mine uses a 2-handed weapon, a shield is off the table. Now, an up-powered Armor of Shadows, like you mention, with the additional Shield spell, might work.
I think of you were to add medium armor proficiency it would have to be another Invocation, but I do like the idea of Pact of the Blade being able to create a shield as well as a weapon, the only downside is that it would make Pact of the Blade clearly the best boon just cause you would get a +2 to AC, but I dunno.
One thing I thought could be cool is if you could add in fighting styles so that dual wielding would be more effective, but that's probably a bit much, and definitely steps on the Martial classes turf.
Overall I think this is good, but now I'm curious about buffing the other two boons, I did a post about buffing The Chain, but I'm not sure how or if Tome should be buffed.
I think of you were to add medium armor proficiency it would have to be another Invocation, but I do like the idea of Pact of the Blade being able to create a shield as well as a weapon, the only downside is that it would make Pact of the Blade clearly the best boon just cause you would get a +2 to AC, but I dunno.
One thing I thought could be cool is if you could add in fighting styles so that dual wielding would be more effective, but that's probably a bit much, and definitely steps on the Martial classes turf.
Overall I think this is good, but now I'm curious about buffing the other two boons, I did a post about buffing The Chain, but I'm not sure how or if Tome should be buffed.
I am not sure Pact of the Chain or Pact of the Tome need buffing, to be honest, even with these changes to Pact of the Blade. What they could use, in my view, is more personality based on the Patron (I realise now I had forgotten to add THIS link in a previous post about more Patron specific Chain choices, fixed)
Adding the shield from the get-go could indeed change this, reason why I would be more inclined towards adding that option to Improved Pact Weapon.
It would still be extremely tempting, but if one is more interested in a caster style Warlock, they would still not go towards Pact of the Blade, imho, as Chain and Tome can still offer A LOT to a caster.
The thing is that Chainpacts don't scale as well as Blade or Tome, (except for the absolutely overpowered Invocation that gives maximized healing). Chainlocks honestly need a buff to the familiars that give more health. The familiars at the moment are really squishy, and a single hit at higher level guarantees they're dead. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but there should be more utility, both in combat and out, to Chainlocks. Maybe being able to cast any spell through your familiar? This should probably be a different discussion, but I just wanted to bring up that the cantrips for Tome scale with level, and you can get powerful invocations for Blade (Especially with the additions you've made), but nothing for Chain.
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The thing is that Chainpacts don't scale as well as Blade or Tome, (except for the absolutely overpowered Invocation that gives maximized healing). Chainlocks honestly need a buff to the familiars that give more health. The familiars at the moment are really squishy, and a single hit at higher level guarantees they're dead. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but there should be more utility, both in combat and out, to Chainlocks. Maybe being able to cast any spell through your familiar? This should probably be a different discussion, but I just wanted to bring up that the cantrips for Tome scale with level, and you can get powerful invocations for Blade (Especially with the additions you've made), but nothing for Chain.
I see what you mean, and indeed Chainlocks get comparatively little mileage at higher levels.
I think this could be solved by adding one or two additional Invocations. I like your idea of allowing any spell to use the Familiar as point of origin or delivery method (for touch spells), this could also combo well with Voice of the Chain Master (possibly even TOO well... might be best to limit it to 100 feet). Another option I was thinking on is an Invocation allowing to "supercharge" your familiar for a short while (did someone say mega-evolution? <.<), something like up to CHA mod in turns, to have it take on a more powerful form (something like Barbed Devil or Tanarukk for Imp and Quasit , wyvern or Young White Dragon/Young Brass Dragon for the Pseudodragon... the hardest one would be finding something suitable for the Sprite, as in the 5-7 range there is basically nothing Fey that I feel could fit...
I can brainstorm other ideas, trying to find something for out of combat (although the spellcasting one is multi-functional already)
EDIT One thing to remember, though, is that to be considered better performing that Chain or Tome, a Bladelock would need to invest their invocations heavily on the current and above additional PotB ones, so leaving behind stuff like Lance of Letargy, Agonizing blast etc, which would still be there and perfectly valid for Chain and Tomelocks, which would still balance out the better melee performance of the Bladelock, imho. I know these do not relate directly with the pact boon choice being made, so they are "neutral" invocations, but I feel a Bladelock is somewhat forced to follow a specific set of invocations to be as performing as it can be, leaving behind other stuff that could still be useful.
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Borrowed Knowledge Prerequisite: 7th level, Book of Ancient Secrets
While taking a short or long rest, you can spend 1 hour to inscribe in your Tome from the Pact of the Tome feature a spell not present in the Warlock spell list that another creature within 60 feet of you is able to cast. You will be able to cast this spell once without expending a Warlock spell slot at the current level of your Warlock spell slots. The spell disappears from your Tome if you do not cast it within 8 hours or at the beginning of your next short or long rest.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Although it did make sense that Bladelocks have to try harder to use their boon well, cause they're basically just changing their combat role to melee, so they have to be better at melee than they are at just spamming Eldritch Blast, which takes a lot of effort. Whereas the other two just gain more utility without having to change anything.
I hope this Isn't considered too far off the original thread topic, but as for buffing Chain locks, my thought is just, the Familiar's minimum hit dice are equally to your proficiency bonus, and when they roll for hit points they take the max number. Also they use your proficiency bonus instead of theirs.
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Hi everyone o/
After an the interesting analysis of the various Warlock Patrons and Invocations from Yharim , the comment from Demo_N and the Warlock backstory idea from Cardinal_Fang, I got to thinking on the Hexblade Warlock Patron, and realised that, as much as I am completely in love with the concept of an effective blade-wielding warlock, the Hexblade is not a confusing and (imho) not really well done subclass, and one that deprives other Patron of an effective recreation of an extremely good concept.
This, connected to the frankly underwhelming Pact of the Blade boon as it is now, brought me (not without encouragements from Yharim, whom I thank) to present to you all these homebrew Features to make the concept of the "Eldritch Warrior" available to any Patron, and "fix" (imho) the Pact of the Blade issues.
EDIT: For clarity, the intention of these homebrew features is to get rid of Hexblade as a Patron, and make the concept applicable and available to all other Patrons.
But enough of introductions, let's get to the good stuff, shall we?
Pact Boon
This makes the Pact of the Blade a much more interesting and mechanically worthy feature, without necessarily making it better than Pact of the Chain or Pact of the Tome, it's just a matter of what kind of character one wants to play
Invocations
These are all modifications or new Invocations aimed at making the concept more stable and to have it scale a bit better compared to (for example) the power and versatility boost of Eldritch Blast when Invocations are take into consideration.
The rework of Improved Pact Weapon is also an effective mena to make a dual wielding BladeLock viable.
For the Patron's Blade invocation, I was fiddling with the idea of having two damage types associated with each Patron, for a greater variety, but got stuck on having to repeat at least one damage type, which I did not like too much :-/
These could be further expanded and of course modified, so any comment (constructive, please :) ) is very welcome!
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
The Hexblade warlock already has a feature for using charisma with their weapons.
Armor of shadows does NOT need a buff, it is already a permanent +3 to unarmored AC.
I like your idea for having an invocation to dual wield pact weapons, but I think the wording would be smoother if it were a separate invocation.
You forgot Hexblade in patron blade (maybe you forgot hexblade all together). And raven queen is UA (you probably knew that).
Hex of despair is good as is.
I probably didn't make my intention clear enough, my apologies ^^"
My intention is get rid of Hexblade as a patron altogether, and place the concept in a form usable by all Patrons, reason why I am taking some bits from it and adding them to other features/invocations and using the Raven Queen as a stand-in for a Shadowfell-based Patron (which I still think it's a worthy concept).
Armor of shadows is not really a +3 to AC, it's a different AC calculation, and considering the Light Armor proficiency all Warlocks get from the get-go, it is more like a +1 on top of the best base Light Armor more than anything (and the convenience of not having to don armor).
The addition of Shield as a once every short rest is just to play a bit more on the potential "tank", or in any case survivability side of a BladeLock build.
EDIT: The fact that it would be also a boost to other Warlock builds does not make it overpowered, imho, but I am open to change it if more people feel it is too powerful as an addition to AoS and should be taken out/placed as a separate Invocation.
I thought of making the dual wield option a separate Invocation, but then decided to merge it with Improved... It's a change I am perfectly fine in making, but let's see what everyone else thinks on this one :)
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Thanks to the input from Blublabolbolbol on the Discrod channel, pointing out a possibly OP combo between Hex of Despair and Agonizing Blast, Hex of Despair is now only valid for weapon attacks.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I am liking this a lot, and I didn't even think about dual-wielding warlocks. Different damage types is awesome, though now that I think of it, if you chose Archfey as your Patron, nothing except a helmed horror is immune or resistant to your attacks. Almost the same with Celestial and Great Old One. Fiend and Raven Queen both have damage types that can be resisted easily. Undying is one that is pretty balanced at the moment. I honestly think all of this is really cool, especially with the new and improved Invocations. shield once per rest may be debatable, but right now it seems pretty balanced. Overall I give this a 9/10, better than any subclass or Invocation has gotten yet (Except for Mask of Many Faces, but we can agree that is awesome, right?)
Edit: Right as I finished, you fixed the thing I made an essay on. Well, that's good, I guess. The rest of the stuff is awesome!
Subclass Evaluations So Far:
Sorcerer
Warlock
My statblock. Fear me!
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Counters here(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
Thank you Yharim :)
It's true that Archfey, GOO and Celestial are a step above the rest in terms of enemies potentially being resistant to the damage from the Patron's Blade Invocation, but taking out Force, Psychic and Radiant makes it quite more difficult to attribute other damage types...
I guess Celestial could switch to Lightning, Archfey to Poison or Acid (making it the worst of the Patrons on this) and Great Old One to Thunder (the deafening sound of the void).
In any case, now that I think about it, probably GOO should have Force and Archfey Psychic... the problem is both types of damage are thematically appropriate to both Patrons ^^"
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Oh, I agree that they are thematically appropriate, but maybe the fire and cold damage need to ignore resistance or maybe treat immunity as resistance, seeing how fire and cold are often seen on the immunity and resistance parts of stat blocks.
Subclass Evaluations So Far:
Sorcerer
Warlock
My statblock. Fear me!
Hosted a battle between the Cult of Sedge and the Forum Counters here(Done now). I_Love_Tarrasques has won the fight, scoring a victory for the fiendish Moderators.
Mmmh, indeed, looking at it from another angle might work better...
I'll include an addendum that "Should an enemy hit by your pact weapon be immune to the damage type granted by this feature, it is instead only resistant to that damage type"
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I actually compiled the number of monsters resistant, immune, and vulnerable to each damage type here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/rules-game-mechanics/32799-ranking-damage-types-by-usefulness?comment=6
Acid is actually less resisted than most people think, Psychic is more resisted than most think, and no body talks about Thunder being as good as it is.
And I think it's fine if some patrons share damage types, or if the invocation just grants the same option regardless of patron be it a chosen one or a list of options.
I hereby demand DxJxC's post to be sticky in the main page of each sub-forum!
Seriously, thank you for taking the time and putting in the effort to do this, it's a super interesting thing to have handy when dealing with this kind of features :D
Having the feature give the same type of damage regardless of Patron takes away from my intention of adding further personality and uniqueness to each Patron (a tren I actually started some time ago with THIS homebrew version of the Pact of the Chain boon).
As to overlapping types, maybe you are right there is no real issue there, just my mind screaming EVERYTHING HAS TO BE UNIQUE! ... I'll shut that side down a second and add a secondary damage type for each Patron.
Connected to this, I am also caressing the idea of allowing only one type per pact weapon, making it mandatory for a dual wielder to have one of each.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
This has a nice flavor to me... I play my Hexblade fairly close to actually being Raven Queen anyway, and love the idea of attributing a type of specific, flavorful damage to pact weapon attacks. That's one thing I want to ask my DM about, and I bet he'd allow it. (He OP'd my pact weapon already...)
Only addition might be more smites... can't get enough of those things.
Crit on 19 or 20 is nice for Hex of Dispair, replacing the Hexblade's Curse (but granting it later...)
If you're eliminating the Hexblade patron, and by that action eliminating Hex Warrior (and the above noted Hexblade's Curse) should the PotB v2.0 include the medium armor / shields proficiency? It already covers the "any" weapon proficiency.
Thank you for your comment Mike_Rowe :)
I have to admit I am not a huge fan of Warlock in medium armor, so I am reluctant in adding it as a free proficiency ^^"
What I could do is maybe consider adding the option of creating a shield as part of the expanded possibilities of Improved Pact Weapon. This way there is no real need to add base proficiencies and all loadouts of weapons would be covered (two handed, dual wield, one handed+nothing, sword&broad, ranged).
What does everyone think about this?
On the smite thing... I think Eldritch Smite is all you would really ever need ;)
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
As a melee heavy Hexblade, I like the medium armor thing. Since mine uses a 2-handed weapon, a shield is off the table. Now, an up-powered Armor of Shadows, like you mention, with the additional Shield spell, might work.
MOAR Smites!
I think of you were to add medium armor proficiency it would have to be another Invocation, but I do like the idea of Pact of the Blade being able to create a shield as well as a weapon, the only downside is that it would make Pact of the Blade clearly the best boon just cause you would get a +2 to AC, but I dunno.
One thing I thought could be cool is if you could add in fighting styles so that dual wielding would be more effective, but that's probably a bit much, and definitely steps on the Martial classes turf.
Overall I think this is good, but now I'm curious about buffing the other two boons, I did a post about buffing The Chain, but I'm not sure how or if Tome should be buffed.
I am not sure Pact of the Chain or Pact of the Tome need buffing, to be honest, even with these changes to Pact of the Blade. What they could use, in my view, is more personality based on the Patron (I realise now I had forgotten to add THIS link in a previous post about more Patron specific Chain choices, fixed)
Adding the shield from the get-go could indeed change this, reason why I would be more inclined towards adding that option to Improved Pact Weapon.
It would still be extremely tempting, but if one is more interested in a caster style Warlock, they would still not go towards Pact of the Blade, imho, as Chain and Tome can still offer A LOT to a caster.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
The thing is that Chainpacts don't scale as well as Blade or Tome, (except for the absolutely overpowered Invocation that gives maximized healing). Chainlocks honestly need a buff to the familiars that give more health. The familiars at the moment are really squishy, and a single hit at higher level guarantees they're dead. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but there should be more utility, both in combat and out, to Chainlocks. Maybe being able to cast any spell through your familiar? This should probably be a different discussion, but I just wanted to bring up that the cantrips for Tome scale with level, and you can get powerful invocations for Blade (Especially with the additions you've made), but nothing for Chain.
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I see what you mean, and indeed Chainlocks get comparatively little mileage at higher levels.
I think this could be solved by adding one or two additional Invocations. I like your idea of allowing any spell to use the Familiar as point of origin or delivery method (for touch spells), this could also combo well with Voice of the Chain Master (possibly even TOO well... might be best to limit it to 100 feet).
Another option I was thinking on is an Invocation allowing to "supercharge" your familiar for a short while (did someone say mega-evolution? <.<), something like up to CHA mod in turns, to have it take on a more powerful form (something like Barbed Devil or Tanarukk for Imp and Quasit , wyvern or Young White Dragon/Young Brass Dragon for the Pseudodragon... the hardest one would be finding something suitable for the Sprite, as in the 5-7 range there is basically nothing Fey that I feel could fit...
I can brainstorm other ideas, trying to find something for out of combat (although the spellcasting one is multi-functional already)
EDIT
One thing to remember, though, is that to be considered better performing that Chain or Tome, a Bladelock would need to invest their invocations heavily on the current and above additional PotB ones, so leaving behind stuff like Lance of Letargy, Agonizing blast etc, which would still be there and perfectly valid for Chain and Tomelocks, which would still balance out the better melee performance of the Bladelock, imho.
I know these do not relate directly with the pact boon choice being made, so they are "neutral" invocations, but I feel a Bladelock is somewhat forced to follow a specific set of invocations to be as performing as it can be, leaving behind other stuff that could still be useful.
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Very nice ideas. And I agree that the investment cost for bladelocks is very high.
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I also just had this crazy idea for Tomelocks...
Borrowed Knowledge
Prerequisite: 7th level, Book of Ancient Secrets
While taking a short or long rest, you can spend 1 hour to inscribe in your Tome from the Pact of the Tome feature a spell not present in the Warlock spell list that another creature within 60 feet of you is able to cast.
You will be able to cast this spell once without expending a Warlock spell slot at the current level of your Warlock spell slots. The spell disappears from your Tome if you do not cast it within 8 hours or at the beginning of your next short or long rest.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Although it did make sense that Bladelocks have to try harder to use their boon well, cause they're basically just changing their combat role to melee, so they have to be better at melee than they are at just spamming Eldritch Blast, which takes a lot of effort. Whereas the other two just gain more utility without having to change anything.
I hope this Isn't considered too far off the original thread topic, but as for buffing Chain locks, my thought is just, the Familiar's minimum hit dice are equally to your proficiency bonus, and when they roll for hit points they take the max number. Also they use your proficiency bonus instead of theirs.