That's the thing. The ninth-level Invocation allows the familiar to attack. You need a second Invocation entirely for the attack to actually be meaningful. You're using two Invocations and your bonus action to, in your example, allow your familiar to maybe attack, if it feels like it, at some nebulous point in the future, if and ONLY if it comes after you in the initiative order because the minute a new round starts the bonus action command falls off and your familiar goes back to not attacking.
How is that even remotely an acceptable use of two Invocations, one of them ninth freaking level?
I agree with Yurei’s interpretation. The attack happens immediately on your bonus action and does not require your familar’s reaction.
Assuming your familiar is already invisible, the familiar would attack with advantage and then lose invisibility. If the familiar survives until its turn, it can, once again, turn invisible. Rinse and repeat. As others have mentioned, the Sprite’s ranged attack is probably the most useful in this scenario.
I'm 99% with you two, but allowing your familiar to keep it's reaction after it attacks means it can attack twice in a round, which I don't believe is consistent with the rules as written (or intended for that matter).
I guess following my interpretation, you're missing out on allowing your familiar to cast a touch spell for you but that's effectively the only cost. Familiars don't really have much they can use their reactions on.
It's UA content, a DM is free to rule it whichever way she likes. In my head, the new invocations allow a Chain warlock, with heavy investment, to actually utilize their companion in combat. Even then it's a very dicey thing that will usually result in a ten-gold hour-long break after the fight, but it's possible where before, it really wasn't. The DC on the familiar's abilities is disastrously low and the fact that they devour your entire turn to use those abilities is just...ugh. Chain warlocks have long been relegated to the "RP people" out-of-combat twerps who use their empowered familiar as a glorified Arcane Eye spell.
Attempting to reduce Chainlocks to that same status by denying them effective use of their new Invocations kinda defeats the purpose of those new Invocations in the first place. Blade locks get fifty-seven extremely powerful Invocations that allows them to deal huge spike damage or change up their weapons or all kinds of other shit. Tome warlocks can regain eight hours of their adventuring day and gain access to every single ritual spell in the game. Chain warlocks have never had anything equivalent, and they still don't. They get some very useful tricks though, and I'm thrilled to see them.
Provided the DM allows those tricks to actually do their job.
I think allowing the Familiar to Attack twice is exactly what was intended.
That's silly. If the intent was to allow your familiar to attack twice, the invocation would say "Your familiar may attack twice instead of once when you attack with it." That achieves the same result without any confusion about bonus actions or turn order.
Allowing you to attack using your bonus action let's you actually use your familiar to do something in combat without sacrificing your own spell casting or eldrich blasting. It doesn't seem complicated at all - creatures don't perform actions without a cost and acting out of turn uses your reaction. 1 + 1 = 2
Name me a class or creature feature that allows something or someone to perform ANY action outside if its turn without using its reaction or a legendary action.
I think allowing the Familiar to Attack twice is exactly what was intended.
That's silly. If the intent was to allow your familiar to attack twice, the invocation would say "Your familiar may attack twice instead of once when you attack with it." That achieves the same result without any confusion about bonus actions or turn order.
Allowing you to attack using your bonus action let's you actually use your familiar to do something in combat without sacrificing your own spell casting or eldrich blasting. It doesn't seem complicated at all - creatures don't perform actions without a cost and acting out of turn uses your reaction. 1 + 1 = 2
Name me a class or creature feature that allows something or someone to perform ANY action outside if its turn without using its reaction or a legendary action.
Edit: accidental accidental redundancy
Oh my f-ing gosh. Attack twice if you give up both your Attack, AND your Bonus Action. Keep up with the conversation.
I was being hyperbolic (I suppose that didn't translate well in the post), but my point remains. Point to any feature of any class or creature that allows for actions to be performed out of turn without costing either a reaction or legendary action. To be consistent with the rules of 5th Edition, your familiar's attack MUST use it's reaction. WotC isn't going to make up an entirely new turn mechanic for a one sentence invocation in a playtest document.
“You can give up one Attack to let it Attack once on your initiative using its Reaction. You can give up your Bonus Action to allow it to Attack once on its own initiative as an Action.
The trade economy there is giving up an entire Attack to let the Familiar make an out of sequence Attack on your initiative using its Reaction. You give up a simple Bonus Action to allow the Familiar to Attack on its turn using its Action, something it cannot do otherwise.
It’s a mix and match. You could choose to do neither, either, or both.”
It looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I don't see how useful it is for a level 9 invocation to do something a level 3 ranger ability let's you do by default. But that's just my opinion, obviously you feel differently.
I think we've both laid out arguments consistent with the rules and it'll be up to a DM to decide which explanation is the most satisfying. I believe when/if this is published, it'll end up reworded in such a way that it can only be interpreted one way.
My question is less about wording and more about utility/desirability. People already tell everyone who says "I'm thinking about playing a warlock, what advice do you have?" to avoid pact of the Chain at all costs, at all times, for all reasons. There's been entire Internet Basement Troll theses on why Pact of the Chain is by far the weakest option and should probably just be culled from the PHB. I'm the only warlock player I've ever met/spoken to who has a strong preference for Chain over Blade or Tome, and even I can't justify Chain on more than maybe one warlock concept I tinker with in five.
Do these Invocations address that imbalance? Every other Invocation in the list is "Your Pact of the Blade weapon now does something awesome", and PotB warlocks now get access to free armor, to boot. Pact of the Tome gets, pretty inarguably, the single most powerful ability in the entire warlock class entry - the ability to learn every single ritual spell in the game, regardless of spellcasting class or restrictions.
Chain gets...the ability to use Hold Monster once per day on one of three pretty dang rare classes of enemies. At 15th level. Elsewise they get the very useful but not exciting ability to communicate with their familiar across any distance, and the ability to maximize their hit dice when they heal on a short rest. Chain warlocks get no super-amazing cool lynchpin abilities the way Tome warlocks do, they only have three special invocations instead of the two hundred and seventy-four Pact of the Blade-exclusive Invocations, and what Invocations we do get are minor utility or overspecialized to the point of uselessness.
Why do we then want to ensure that the new Invocations out there are also overspecialized into uselessness, or so minor and generally meh that it doesn't make sense to pick them and use them over the more generally potent/useful standard-issue Invocations in the list?
*Shrug* I love my chain warlock and seldomly look wistfully at other pacts. I see the invocations in this UA as bringing blade (for non-hexblade warlocks) and chain pacts up to par with tome and hexblade blade pact. The fundamental problem with pact of the blade (if you have a not-broken patron) is the inherent squishiness of a warlock (d8 hit die and only light armor proficiency). Being able to wrap yourself in heavy armor let's you build a different kind of bladelock that focuses on strength weapons (particularly two-handed and reach weapons) without pushing your ability score burden too far. With the current set of invocations, bladelocks can either pump dex (for armor and to-hit) and summoning a rapier or roll a hexblade with a whole PHB worth of weapon choices.
The new chain invocations fix the issue you've already pointed out (what to do with your familiar in combat) while also giving you something useful to do with your bonus action. That seems like a win to me all around. You don't need to modify the rules to make it good - it already is good. It makes the sprite and quasit viable combat options so you've actually got meaningful choice in what form your familiar takes. The improved familiar invocation brings a level of parity to your options so they're all similarly effective while also allowing their unique attributes to actually come into the equation.
That's the thing. The ninth-level Invocation allows the familiar to attack. You need a second Invocation entirely for the attack to actually be meaningful. You're using two Invocations and your bonus action to, in your example, allow your familiar to maybe attack, if it feels like it, at some nebulous point in the future, if and ONLY if it comes after you in the initiative order because the minute a new round starts the bonus action command falls off and your familiar goes back to not attacking.
How is that even remotely an acceptable use of two Invocations, one of them ninth freaking level?
That isn't how rounds work. When something lasts a round, it ends on the same initiative it started. Abilities don't end when the round ends anyway, they end when they say they end. In this case it ends when the familiar attacks. Obviously, this ability is going to need to have its wording improved.
Blade locks get fifty-seven extremely powerful Invocations that allows them to deal huge spike damage or change up their weapons or all kinds of other shit.
57? Pact of blade gets 4 out of 46 invocations.
If it takes them all and is a hexblade, it can do up to 36 (4d6+22) per turn +27 (6d8) from smite which it can do 4 times. Agonizing blast can do 42 (4d10+20) +14 (4d6) from hex every turn. So those 4 invocations and specific subclass are less powerful than 1 invocation and any subclass (when comparing using minimum slots) and doesn't even account for range advantage. I never considered bladelock to be worth the investment.
If you look at the beast master ranger, their pet doesn't get multi-attack until level 11. If there was an invocation to give your familiar the capacity to attack twice in a round, it should be at least that level. Not to mention that the attacks from a warlock familiar have a much higher damage ceiling than those of a CR 1/4 beast, along with potential status and control effects on top. I recognize that the wording of this invocation mirrors that of the ranger pet, but that has to be an oversight (unless you want to give beast master rangers yet another thing to complain about).
Edit: I just reread the new beast master pet stat blocks in the feature variant UA and a base ability of both is that the ranger can command it to attack as a bonus action. A level 9 invocation that duplicates a level 3 ranger ability seems like a pretty raw deal.
If you look at the beast master ranger, their pet doesn't get multi-attack until level 11. If there was an invocation to give your familiar the capacity to attack twice in a round, it should be at least that level. Not to mention that the attacks from a warlock familiar have a much higher damage ceiling than those of a CR 1/4 beast, along with potential status and control effects on top. I recognize that the wording of this invocation mirrors that of the ranger pet, but that has to be an oversight (unless you want to give beast master rangers yet another thing to complain about).
Edit: I just reread the new beast master pet stat blocks in the feature variant UA and a base ability of both is that the ranger can command it to attack as a bonus action. A level 9 invocation that duplicates a level 3 ranger ability seems like a pretty raw deal.
Won't argue with you there, but following that line of logic (warlocks getting access to a beast master ranger feature after the ranger), wouldn't an invocation that gives your familiar multi-attack require a higher level than 11 since that's when the ranger gets it?
Won't argue with you there, but following that line of logic (warlocks getting access to a beast master ranger feature after the ranger), wouldn't an invocation that gives your familiar multi-attack require a higher level than 11 since that's when the ranger gets it?
Does the Ranger have to give up both their Attack, and their Bonus Action for the companion to get Multiattack?
Per this UA, only their bonus action, but their pet can't liberally sprinkle poison across the battlefield with a DC of 17+. In the PHB though, it costs the ranger one of it's attacks to command its pet the attack - a similar cost to the base familiar attack -though the pet takes its turn on the ranger's initiative so it doesn't use its reaction to execute the attack, it can just use it's action. Also, a pet isn't a familiar and that makes a difference.
The spell description for Find Familiar state that a familiar cannot take the attack action. The only way you're able to attack through it is by using its reaction. You can't command it to take the attack action on its turn because that's not something it's actually allowed to do. If the intent of the invocation was to allow the familiar to take the attack action on its turn, it would have to specifically mention that your familiar is now allowed to do that since it normally can't.
That's the thing. The ninth-level Invocation allows the familiar to attack. You need a second Invocation entirely for the attack to actually be meaningful. You're using two Invocations and your bonus action to, in your example, allow your familiar to maybe attack, if it feels like it, at some nebulous point in the future, if and ONLY if it comes after you in the initiative order because the minute a new round starts the bonus action command falls off and your familiar goes back to not attacking.
How is that even remotely an acceptable use of two Invocations, one of them ninth freaking level?
Please do not contact or message me.
I agree with Yurei’s interpretation. The attack happens immediately on your bonus action and does not require your familar’s reaction.
Assuming your familiar is already invisible, the familiar would attack with advantage and then lose invisibility. If the familiar survives until its turn, it can, once again, turn invisible. Rinse and repeat. As others have mentioned, the Sprite’s ranged attack is probably the most useful in this scenario.
I'm 99% with you two, but allowing your familiar to keep it's reaction after it attacks means it can attack twice in a round, which I don't believe is consistent with the rules as written (or intended for that matter).
I guess following my interpretation, you're missing out on allowing your familiar to cast a touch spell for you but that's effectively the only cost. Familiars don't really have much they can use their reactions on.
I think allowing the Familiar to Attack twice is exactly what was intended.
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It's UA content, a DM is free to rule it whichever way she likes. In my head, the new invocations allow a Chain warlock, with heavy investment, to actually utilize their companion in combat. Even then it's a very dicey thing that will usually result in a ten-gold hour-long break after the fight, but it's possible where before, it really wasn't. The DC on the familiar's abilities is disastrously low and the fact that they devour your entire turn to use those abilities is just...ugh. Chain warlocks have long been relegated to the "RP people" out-of-combat twerps who use their empowered familiar as a glorified Arcane Eye spell.
Attempting to reduce Chainlocks to that same status by denying them effective use of their new Invocations kinda defeats the purpose of those new Invocations in the first place. Blade locks get fifty-seven extremely powerful Invocations that allows them to deal huge spike damage or change up their weapons or all kinds of other shit. Tome warlocks can regain eight hours of their adventuring day and gain access to every single ritual spell in the game. Chain warlocks have never had anything equivalent, and they still don't. They get some very useful tricks though, and I'm thrilled to see them.
Provided the DM allows those tricks to actually do their job.
Please do not contact or message me.
That's silly. If the intent was to allow your familiar to attack twice, the invocation would say "Your familiar may attack twice instead of once when you attack with it." That achieves the same result without any confusion about bonus actions or turn order.
Allowing you to attack using your bonus action let's you actually use your familiar to do something in combat without sacrificing your own spell casting or eldrich blasting. It doesn't seem complicated at all - creatures don't perform actions without a cost and acting out of turn uses your reaction. 1 + 1 = 2
Name me a class or creature feature that allows something or someone to perform ANY action outside if its turn without using its reaction or a legendary action.
Edit: accidental accidental redundancy
Oh my f-ing gosh. Attack twice if you give up both your Attack, AND your Bonus Action. Keep up with the conversation.
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I was being hyperbolic (I suppose that didn't translate well in the post), but my point remains. Point to any feature of any class or creature that allows for actions to be performed out of turn without costing either a reaction or legendary action. To be consistent with the rules of 5th Edition, your familiar's attack MUST use it's reaction. WotC isn't going to make up an entirely new turn mechanic for a one sentence invocation in a playtest document.
Which is why I wrote this twice before:
“You can give up one Attack to let it Attack once on your initiative using its Reaction. You can give up your Bonus Action to allow it to Attack once on its own initiative as an Action.
The trade economy there is giving up an entire Attack to let the Familiar make an out of sequence Attack on your initiative using its Reaction. You give up a simple Bonus Action to allow the Familiar to Attack on its turn using its Action, something it cannot do otherwise.
It’s a mix and match. You could choose to do neither, either, or both.”
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It looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I don't see how useful it is for a level 9 invocation to do something a level 3 ranger ability let's you do by default. But that's just my opinion, obviously you feel differently.
I think we've both laid out arguments consistent with the rules and it'll be up to a DM to decide which explanation is the most satisfying. I believe when/if this is published, it'll end up reworded in such a way that it can only be interpreted one way.
The wording will definitely be cleaned up.
My question is less about wording and more about utility/desirability. People already tell everyone who says "I'm thinking about playing a warlock, what advice do you have?" to avoid pact of the Chain at all costs, at all times, for all reasons. There's been entire Internet Basement Troll theses on why Pact of the Chain is by far the weakest option and should probably just be culled from the PHB. I'm the only warlock player I've ever met/spoken to who has a strong preference for Chain over Blade or Tome, and even I can't justify Chain on more than maybe one warlock concept I tinker with in five.
Do these Invocations address that imbalance? Every other Invocation in the list is "Your Pact of the Blade weapon now does something awesome", and PotB warlocks now get access to free armor, to boot. Pact of the Tome gets, pretty inarguably, the single most powerful ability in the entire warlock class entry - the ability to learn every single ritual spell in the game, regardless of spellcasting class or restrictions.
Chain gets...the ability to use Hold Monster once per day on one of three pretty dang rare classes of enemies. At 15th level. Elsewise they get the very useful but not exciting ability to communicate with their familiar across any distance, and the ability to maximize their hit dice when they heal on a short rest. Chain warlocks get no super-amazing cool lynchpin abilities the way Tome warlocks do, they only have three special invocations instead of the two hundred and seventy-four Pact of the Blade-exclusive Invocations, and what Invocations we do get are minor utility or overspecialized to the point of uselessness.
Why do we then want to ensure that the new Invocations out there are also overspecialized into uselessness, or so minor and generally meh that it doesn't make sense to pick them and use them over the more generally potent/useful standard-issue Invocations in the list?
Please do not contact or message me.
*Shrug* I love my chain warlock and seldomly look wistfully at other pacts. I see the invocations in this UA as bringing blade (for non-hexblade warlocks) and chain pacts up to par with tome and hexblade blade pact. The fundamental problem with pact of the blade (if you have a not-broken patron) is the inherent squishiness of a warlock (d8 hit die and only light armor proficiency). Being able to wrap yourself in heavy armor let's you build a different kind of bladelock that focuses on strength weapons (particularly two-handed and reach weapons) without pushing your ability score burden too far. With the current set of invocations, bladelocks can either pump dex (for armor and to-hit) and summoning a rapier or roll a hexblade with a whole PHB worth of weapon choices.
The new chain invocations fix the issue you've already pointed out (what to do with your familiar in combat) while also giving you something useful to do with your bonus action. That seems like a win to me all around. You don't need to modify the rules to make it good - it already is good. It makes the sprite and quasit viable combat options so you've actually got meaningful choice in what form your familiar takes. The improved familiar invocation brings a level of parity to your options so they're all similarly effective while also allowing their unique attributes to actually come into the equation.
Using its action. The part of its stat block its attacks are listed under.
That isn't how rounds work. When something lasts a round, it ends on the same initiative it started. Abilities don't end when the round ends anyway, they end when they say they end. In this case it ends when the familiar attacks. Obviously, this ability is going to need to have its wording improved.
I agree. Or attacking and delivering a spell. Or attack while you use its senses.
57? Pact of blade gets 4 out of 46 invocations.
If it takes them all and is a hexblade, it can do up to 36 (4d6+22) per turn +27 (6d8) from smite which it can do 4 times. Agonizing blast can do 42 (4d10+20) +14 (4d6) from hex every turn. So those 4 invocations and specific subclass are less powerful than 1 invocation and any subclass (when comparing using minimum slots) and doesn't even account for range advantage. I never considered bladelock to be worth the investment.
If you look at the beast master ranger, their pet doesn't get multi-attack until level 11. If there was an invocation to give your familiar the capacity to attack twice in a round, it should be at least that level. Not to mention that the attacks from a warlock familiar have a much higher damage ceiling than those of a CR 1/4 beast, along with potential status and control effects on top. I recognize that the wording of this invocation mirrors that of the ranger pet, but that has to be an oversight (unless you want to give beast master rangers yet another thing to complain about).
Edit: I just reread the new beast master pet stat blocks in the feature variant UA and a base ability of both is that the ranger can command it to attack as a bonus action. A level 9 invocation that duplicates a level 3 ranger ability seems like a pretty raw deal.
Rangers need the help, Warlocks not so much.
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Won't argue with you there, but following that line of logic (warlocks getting access to a beast master ranger feature after the ranger), wouldn't an invocation that gives your familiar multi-attack require a higher level than 11 since that's when the ranger gets it?
Do
Does the Ranger have to give up both their Attack, and their Bonus Action for the companion to get Multiattack?
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Per this UA, only their bonus action, but their pet can't liberally sprinkle poison across the battlefield with a DC of 17+. In the PHB though, it costs the ranger one of it's attacks to command its pet the attack - a similar cost to the base familiar attack -though the pet takes its turn on the ranger's initiative so it doesn't use its reaction to execute the attack, it can just use it's action. Also, a pet isn't a familiar and that makes a difference.
The spell description for Find Familiar state that a familiar cannot take the attack action. The only way you're able to attack through it is by using its reaction. You can't command it to take the attack action on its turn because that's not something it's actually allowed to do. If the intent of the invocation was to allow the familiar to take the attack action on its turn, it would have to specifically mention that your familiar is now allowed to do that since it normally can't.