The Infernal Scholar

A bargain with a planar entity promises knowledge beyond all reckoning. The Infernal Scholar may appear in many forms, but the simplest and perhaps most alluring is that of a fellow learner or seeker of truth, one who always seems to have more answers, more insight, and more expertise on virtually every subject.

For a promise of future favors or service, the Infernal Scholar may grant a warlock uncanny abilities: the power to compel truth, the gift of sight beyond his own vision, and perhaps most unsettling, the ability to twist other creatures' own thoughts against them. A warlock may greedily accept this bargain, but it comes with no guarantee of truth beyond the warlock's ability to discern it. The Scholar has its own purpose, unknowable and incomprehensible. Its tireless pursuit has gone on an eternity longer than the mortals who deal with it, and yet it continues.

Warlocks who ally themselves with the Infernal Scholar are typically intelligent, perhaps even wise, more so than they are manipulative or guileful. While it is not unheard of for a wily mortal to bargain with the Scholar with the intent to deceive or swindle it, those who are drawn in by the Scholar's offer tend to be obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge and learning. Perhaps he seeks the answer to a question that has bedeviled him all his life; perhaps she is driven by desperation to learn how to save a loved one; perhaps he is simply of insatiable mind, determined not to go to his grave until he has unlocked all of the secrets of the world.

Infernal Scholar-aligned warlocks rely on Intelligence rather than Charisma for spellcasting. Many of their powers focus on establishing insight or knowledge, whether by drawing it from the ether or imposing their will on other creatures, or else on using psionic abilities granted from their patron to disrupt or assault the minds of attackers.

Expanded Spell List

The Infernal Scholar 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.

Infernal Scholar Expanded Spells

SPELL LEVEL	SPELLS
1st	detect magic, command
2nd	silence, zone of truth
3rd	hypnotic pattern, sending
4th	arcane eye, phantasmal killer
5th	modify memory, contagion

Additionally, you use Intelligence as your spellcasting ability, rather than Charisma for a standard warlock.

Voracious Mind

Starting at 1st level, your mind is prone to overactivity. When you take a long rest, you may choose either to restore the full amount of HP that you normally would, or to subtract one-quarter of your max HP from the amount you would be healed in order to gain advantage on your next three Intelligence or Charisma checks. If you are forced to roll with disadvantage on any of the checks for which you would have advantage from Voracious Mind, it does not consume the effect for that check. Advantage is gained through this effect for three checks in total.

You may choose this effect even if you are at full HP or are missing fewer than one-quarter of your max HP before long rest. You cannot heal for a negative amount, so if one-quarter of your max HP is greater than the amount you would be healed, then you will not heal from long rest if you choose to gain advantage on your Intelligence and Charisma checks instead.

Learn From Experience

Starting at 6th level, you have gained the expertise to identify the weak points and blind spots of your enemies during battle. When you reduce a hostile creature to 0 HP, gain +1 to hit for all attack actions against any creature of the same race until combat ends. This effect stacks.

Eldritch Interpreter

Starting at 10th level, you understand and can speak all exotic languages. You are proficient in the Abyssal, Celestial, Deep Speech, Draconic, Infernal, Primordial, Sylvan, and Undercommon languages, including the ability to read and write them in any script. If you were already proficient in one or more exotic language, you gain proficiency in the others, but there is no additional effect. Furthermore, your mental fortitude is now such that creatures cannot penetrate your thoughts. Any attempts to communicate with you through a mental or psychic link, or to examine or magically divine your thoughts, will fail unless you willingly allow it.

Unfazed

Starting at 14th level, there is little that can stand in the way of your burning mind. You are shielded from effects that disrupt your basic senses of sight and sound. You cannot be affected by blindness or deafening. Any attempt at blinding or deafening you will fail, regardless of the situation, and the creature who makes the attempt will take 8d10 psychic damage immediately after that action. Damaging attacks that have blindness or deafening as an additional effect may still hit you for normal damage, with the attacker taking their damage after the attack either hits for damage or fails altogether. This effect applies even if blindness or deafness are self-inflicted or inflicted by a friendly creature. You can still experience reduced vision as a result of darkness or dim lighting, although if magical darkness is cast on your location, it counts for the purpose of this effect as a blinding attack and will fail.