Infernal Creations

Infernal Creators are artificers who look to Avernus not as a place of worship or temptation, but as an unparalleled source of power. Through precise contracts, arcane containment, and ruthless ingenuity, they bind infernal beings into constructs, engines, and weapons—forcing devils to fuel inventions designed for war and devastation.

Unlike warlocks, Infernal Creators do not bargain for personal power. Their agreements are impersonal and exacting, crafted to extract energy and obedience from infernal entities while shielding the artificer from direct corruption. To an Infernal Creator, a devil is not a patron or master, but a component—dangerous, volatile, and immensely effective when properly restrained.

Their creations bear the unmistakable marks of their origin: hellfire cores, infernal sigils, chained containment arrays, and machines that hum with restrained malice. Such practices earn these artificers fear and condemnation, particularly from religious orders and planar scholars, yet even their harshest critics cannot deny the results. Where conventional artifice fails, infernal engineering endures.

Level 3: Infernal Core Engine

An Infernal Core Engine is a compact containment device of reinforced steel, alchemical glass, and infernal sigils, designed to imprison and exploit a critically weakened infernal entity. The entity bound within the core is typically a lesser devil captured on the brink of destruction—its physical form ruined and its infernal essence stabilized just enough to prevent dissipation.

The core does not house a willing occupant. Through precise contracts, binding circles, and layered containment protocols, the artificer strips the infernal entity of agency, reducing it to a living power source. Residual malice, rage, and infernal magic are continuously siphoned from the bound being and converted into usable energy, manifesting as hellfire, force, or necrotic output depending on the artificer’s design.

Though diminished, the infernal entity remains aware, its essence endlessly compressed and regulated within the core. Infernal Core Engines are designed to prevent escape, rebellion, or independent action, functioning as inert devices rather than creatures. Any personality or influence from the bound entity is intentionally suppressed, though prolonged use may cause faint whispers, heat distortion, or fluctuations in output as the core is stressed.

As an Infernal Creator grows in experience, they refine their containment methods, reinforcing contracts, upgrading materials, and expanding the core’s output capacity. While the infernal entity within can never regain its former strength, increasing demand upon the engine risks instability, making proper maintenance and control as important as the power it provides.

Hellforged Conduit

As your mastery over infernal engineering deepens, the Infernal Core Engine no longer functions as a volatile auxiliary device but as a fully integrated component of your arsenal. Through reinforced conduits, layered runic channels, and refined containment protocols, infernal energy is bled off continuously and safely, eliminating the need to rely solely on dangerous overloads.

You have learned to regulate the flow of power drawn from the bound infernal entity, allowing its suppressed malice to suffuse your weapons in a controlled and deliberate manner. Even when not actively overdriving the core, your strikes carry a faint echo of hellfire, scorching metal and flesh alike, or leaving behind a necrotic chill born of infernal decay.

Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you deal additional fire or necrotic damage (your choice) equal to your Intelligence modifier. This damage represents a stable output from your Infernal Core Engine and requires no activation or expenditure of spell slots.

Hellforged Conduit marks the transition from experimental infernal machinery to reliable battlefield engineering. Your weapons no longer merely channel infernal power in moments of crisis—they hum with it constantly, a testament to your growing control over forces that were never meant to be harnessed.

Infernal Core Protocols

At 9th level, your understanding of infernal containment and power routing reaches a new level of sophistication. No longer limited to a single operational output, your Infernal Core Engine can be reconfigured to prioritize different battlefield functions through carefully engineered infernal protocols.

Each protocol represents a distinct containment philosophy, defined by how tightly the bound infernal entity is restrained and how its power is redirected. By altering runic lattices, contractual clauses, and mechanical regulators, you decide whether infernal energy manifests as raw destruction, oppressive restraint, or hardened defense.

At the end of a long rest, you choose one Infernal Core Protocol to be active. The chosen protocol remains in effect until you finish another long rest and select a different protocol. Only one protocol can be active at a time.

As you continue to advance as an Infernal Creator, additional protocols may become available, further expanding the versatility and lethality of your Infernal Core Engine.

Assault Protocol

When Assault Protocol is engaged, containment thresholds within your Infernal Core Engine are deliberately relaxed, allowing greater volumes of infernal energy to surge through your weapon systems. Though still bound by contracts and stabilizing runes, the infernal entity within the core is permitted brief moments of violent output, converting its rage into raw, devastating force.

Your attacks under Assault Protocol strike with unnerving intensity, each blow carrying echoes of hellfire and infernal wrath. Rather than subtle control or defensive reinforcement, this protocol embodies decisive aggression—designed to overwhelm enemies quickly before prolonged engagement can threaten containment integrity.

Assault Protocol represents the Infernal Creator’s willingness to accept calculated risk in exchange for overwhelming power, trusting in their engineering and discipline to keep catastrophe just barely at bay.

Bulwark Protocol

When operating under Bulwark Protocol, your Infernal Core Engine diverts power away from offensive output and into layered defensive systems. Infernal runes reinforce armor plating, pressure fields absorb incoming force, and containment seals tighten to prevent sudden surges from destabilizing the core. The bound infernal entity is suppressed more aggressively, its power redirected into fortification rather than violence.

While this protocol is active, your core constantly reinforces your position, allowing you to endure punishment that would cripple lesser combatants. Rather than reacting only in moments of crisis, Bulwark Protocol establishes a continuous defensive baseline, making you exceptionally difficult to overwhelm in prolonged engagements.

Bulwark Protocol reflects the Infernal Creator’s understanding that survival is a form of dominance. By outlasting your enemies and denying them decisive blows, you impose a slow, inevitable victory through superior engineering and infernal restraint.

While Bulwark Protocol is active, you gain resistance to fire or necrotic damage (your choice when you activate this protocol).

In addition, your Emergency Containment feature becomes more efficient. When you use Emergency Containment, you reduce the triggering damage by an additional amount equal to your Intelligence modifier.

Suppression Protocol

When operating under Suppression Protocol, you reinforce the containment lattice of your Infernal Core Engine, diverting infernal power away from raw destruction and into systems of restraint and control. Infernal sigils flare across your armor and weapons as invisible chains, crushing pressure, and binding fields manifest around your enemies, enforcing a cruel and methodical order reminiscent of Avernus itself.

While this protocol is active, your attacks subtly anchor hostile creatures in place, disrupting their ability to maneuver freely. In moments of heightened threat, you can project a localized suppression field that denies enemies the ability to react or reposition, briefly locking down the battlefield and allowing your allies to press the advantage.

Suppression Protocol embodies the infernal philosophy of domination through law rather than chaos—your foes are not merely defeated, but constrained, regulated, and broken by design.

While Suppression Protocol is active, once per turn when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can reduce the target’s speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn.

In addition, you gain the ability to project a suppression field, disrupting hostile reactions and agility. The rules for this effect are detailed in the actions granted by this protocol.

Axiom of the Infernal Engine

At 15th level, your Infernal Core Engine is no longer an unstable compromise between mortal ingenuity and infernal power. Through redundant containment systems, reinforced contractual clauses, and absolute command over infernal law, you have transformed the engine into a perfected construct governed entirely by your design.

You gain mastery over your Infernal Core Protocols, allowing you to temporarily exceed their normal limitations. As a bonus action, you can initiate an Emergency Override, forcing the engine into a controlled state of maximum efficiency for 1 minute. While Emergency Override is active, you gain the benefits of two Infernal Core Protocols simultaneously, instead of only one.

In addition, your containment systems operate at near-flawless efficiency. You gain resistance to fire and necrotic damage. If you already have resistance to either damage type, you instead gain immunity to that damage type while Emergency Override is active.

Finally, your authority over infernal contracts is absolute. You have advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened, and fiends have disadvantage on saving throws against effects created by your Infernal Core Engine. Any fiend that knowingly enters a nonmagical agreement with you is bound by infernal law, and willfully breaking such an agreement carries consequences determined by the DM, appropriate to the nature of the contract.

Once you use Emergency Override, you cannot do so again until you finish a long rest.