The Gray Portrait

Your dedication to art and beauty has led you to discover the art of creating a Gray Portrait: an artifact that your soul and body are bound to that channels the ambitions you have always held but never revealed. The portrait reflects your inner self and the dark desires you hold, and suffers the damage you would take, the diseases you would contract, and the cruelty you may inflict. It grants you the power to use your art to perform feats of incredible magic, and to paint beauty and ugliness alike upon the fabric of reality. This freedom often has hideous consequences, as you are forever tormented by the demands of that horrible self that lurks within your painted mirror. You are not yourself. You are a copy, a false perfection created by a master, and your master’s demands must be met. The Portrait requires it.

Traits of the Artist

Binding one’s life to an artwork is not something done without consequence and takes a toll upon the mind and body alike. Consider adding one or more of these traits when creating a warlock or after acting without care for the consequences.

1. d20 Trait
   
2. You suffer bouts of paranoia.
   
3. You insist on having only the finest food and drink.
   
4. You sometimes talk in your sleep, laughing at the misfortune you have seen during the day.
5. You are extremely critical of other artists.
   
6. You are a shameless self-promoter, even when doing so would be inappropriate.
   
7. You move in a way that appears exceptionally imprecise, but is still surprisingly fluid.
   
8. You laugh uncontrollably at odd times.
   
9. You tend to look down on those of lower social or economic standing.
   
10. You oftentimes ignore social standards regarding dress and fashion.
    
11. Your appearance becomes debauched, refined, youthful, or charming, and always stays that way.
    
12. Your skin becomes like plastic, smooth and free from marks or imperfections.
    
13. Your eyes are deep and captivating.
    
14. Your hands are always freshly manicured.
    
15. Your heartbeat can’t be heard, only felt.
    
16. Clothing or armor you wear for long periods of time assumes the appearance of what you were wearing in your Gray Portrait.
    
17. Your blood slowly becomes paint when exposed to air.
    
18. Your hair is always how it was in your Portrait.
    
19. A scent of paint, cut stone, wood, or clay seems to follow you everywhere.
20. When you cast a spell, a shadowy duplicate of yourself seems to stand beside you.
21. Your eyes visibly sparkle when you look upon the object of your desires.
    

Eldritch Invocations

Frame of Reference

Prerequisites: 11th level, Gray Portrait patron

While you are within an art demiplane, you can use your bonus action to teleport to any location within the demiplane that you can see. You can also use your action to create an art demiplane in a different piece of real art you can see and teleport to a location within that demiplane. The new piece of real art must be within 60 feet of the original piece.

Living Art

Prerequisites: Gray Portrait patron, Pact of the Chain feature

When you have an animate image as your familiar, it gains additional hit points equal to your warlock level. You can use your action to change the size of your animate image to any size category of your choosing.

Magnum Opus

Prerequisites: 18th level, Gray Portrait patron

You can cast mirage arcane and symbol without expending a spell slot. You can cast one of these spells once. After you do so, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Signature Work

Prerequisites: 16th level, Gray Portrait patron

You can cast programmed illusion without expending a spell slot. When you cast this spell, you can choose a cantrip that you know. The illusion can cast this cantrip once per minute as part of its programming. It uses your warlock spellcasting ability for attack rolls and saving throw DC, and treats your character level as its own. If you grant a cantrip to an illusion and the illusion would suffer damage if it were real, it is immediately dispelled. Once you cast this spell using this invocation, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.

Thou Art Immortal

Prerequisites: 10th level, Gray Portrait patron

You no longer age and cannot be magically aged. You gain resistance to necrotic damage and immunity to effects that would reduce the value of your maximum hit points, such as a vampire’s life draining attack.

Expanded Spell List

The Gray Portrait 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.

Fiend Expanded Spells

Spell Level	Spells
1st	Color Spray, Sanctuary
2nd	Calm Emotions, Enhance Ability
3rd	Glyph of Warding, Sending
4th	Death Ward, Stone Shape
5th	Mislead, Seeming

Bound to the Portrait

At 1st level, you create and magically bind yourself to your Gray Portrait. The Gray Portrait is a Small or Medium object that weighs at least 15 pounds, has AC 15, hit points equal to four times your warlock level, resistance to all damage, and uses your statistics for saving throws. It can be repaired at a rate of 1 hit point per minute. You can choose to see through the Portrait’s eyes at any time and are always aware of its current state. If your portrait is destroyed, you tirelessly construct another during your next long rest, and you gain no benefit from that long rest. If a spell has the sole effect of restoring you to life, such as revivify, the caster can cast the spell on the portrait as though it were your whole corpse without using material components,causing you to step forth from your portrait. However, if your portrait is destroyed and you are dead, you can’t be revived without the use of the wish spell. You can use your action to cure yourself of any effect that is causing you to be poisoned, diseased, cursed, blinded, or deafened, sending the affliction to appear on your portrait. You can’t do this if it is destroyed.

Hunger Within

At 6th level, your portrait’s desires begin to catch up to you, and only cruelty or creation will sate it. Whenever a creature succeeds on a saving throw against a spell you cast using a warlock spell slot, you can use your bonus action to tear an unseen fraction of their life from them. When you do, you learn the target’s ability scores. For 1 minute, you gain advantage on ability checks and saving throws associated with their highest ability score, and they gain disadvantage on their first saving throw associated with that score. Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

The Painted World

At 10th level, your distinction between reality and the false world of art grows ever thinner. As a bonus action, you can touch an artwork that is Large or larger, creating a portal to a demiplane. The demiplane can be up to 100 feet in every dimension, depending on the level of detail present in the artwork. Any object, creature, or effect can pass through into the art demiplane freely as though the art was an open doorway to another room. The demiplane duplicates the subject of the artwork, containing all objects and locations depicted therein. Everything within the artwork is static, including painted creatures, instantly disintegrates to dust if removed, and has no value. While within, everything from the real world changes in appearance to match the style of the art. A creature trying to detect that something within the art demiplane is real has disadvantage on checks made to do so, and creatures standing still within the art demiplane have advantage on Stealth checks. While you are in an art demiplane, you have advantage on checks made to identify objects, people, and concepts represented within. If you leave the demiplane or if the painting is an animate image and it changes appearance or moves, every creature and object that entered from the real world is immediately ejected and the demiplane vanishes.

The Canvas of Reality

At 14th level, you learn to change the fabric of the universe to suit the cruel desires of your portrait. Whenever you cast a spell using a warlock spell slot, you can choose a 20-foot cube you can see within 60 feet of you. You can reshape unattended nonmagical objects within that space into different nonmagical objects. The new objects must be of the same size category as the previous objects or smaller and must be of equal or lesser value (measured in gold pieces) and can be of any material or quality so long as it meets the other requirements. For example, you could turn a pile of crates into a collection of chairs, a tree into a mound of ash, a diamond into a fine ruby, or a fortress wall into a pile of sand.