D&D: Unearthed Arcana – Warlocks n’ Wizards
Warlocks and Wizards gain access to power…UNLIMITED POWER!!! thanks to this week’s Unearthed Arcana
That’s right, it’s time to make sure that your spellbook doesn’t get mixed up with your tome of shadows, because you don’t want to make THAT mistake. Again. Anyway it’s probably fine, and that elder thing that spoke to you from the void between the stars seemed so very nice. I mean sure you keep wondering about those eldritch runes that seem to crop up around you, and there seem to be more tentacles than usual–but, that’s not a bad thing, right?
Hmm. Maybe it’s time to find a different patron. Good thing there’s a new Unearthed Arcana this week, because Warlocks have a veritable arsenal of new character options, including two new patrons and a cornucopia of Eldritch Invocations. Wizards in contrast only have one new Arcane Tradition–BUT–it is the one that you have been waiting for. So let’s take a look at the Hexblade, Raven Queen, and learn a little more about the Loremaster.
- You have made your pact with a powerful, sentient magic weapon carved from the stuff of the Shadowfell. The Raven Queen forged the first of these weapons. They, along with the hexblade Warlocks, are another tool she can use to manipulate events in the Material Plane.
- Your Patron is the Raven Queen, a mysterious being who rules the Shadowfell from a palace of ice deep within that dread realm. The Raven Queen’s followers are expected to serve her will in the world, and bds her agents to defeat those who seek to cheat death.
- Lore Mastery is an arcane tradition fixated on understanding the underlying mechanics of magic. Known as savants, followers of this tradition are a bookish lot whos ee beauty and mystery in the application of magic.
Hexblade
The Hexblade, as you might expect, is all about hexing people and wielding a blade. At one point they were also all about chewing bubblegum, but they ran out. But what they lack in gum-chewing abilities they more than make up for with their melee-focused build. It feels like there’s finally a viable way to do the whole Pact of the Blade melee Warlock that, under previous patrons, just wasn’t quite up to par.
Not so any longer though. Taking the Hexblade pact you swear your pact with a powerful sentient magic weapon–which, not gonna lie, is a little weird even for D&D, especially since they are just sort of a different extension of the Raven Queen, it almost feels like a copout, lorewise. But that aside, when you take this pact you gain proficiency with medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. Additionally you can use your Charisma instead of Strength or Dex when attacking with a non-two-handed weapon. So right away, you get a little extra resiliency.
Besides, nothing bad ever came from using a sword that’s probably cursed. Right, Siegfried?
You also get a curse once/rest that you can use to add your proficiency bonus to the target, crit on a 19 or 20, and you regain hp when the target dies. That’s the bread and butter of the archetype right there, along with the expanded spell list that incorporates a number of the Paladin smiting/melee type spells. This archetype is all about making a solid alpha strike.
At 6th level you get a cool shadow hound that you can use to meld with a target’s shadow and keep them from getting cover from your attacks, and you can track them across the planes. At 10th level, you get a 4+ save on all of attacks by your cursed targets–you don’t need an action or a reaction, it seems. It’s just, roll a d6, on a 4+ the attack misses. And at 14th level you can curse targets as much as you want without resting.
All in all, pretty powerful stuff. This is a much stronger gish option–you’ll still get the most mileage out of Eldritch Blast (aka the best cantrip in the game) BUT you’ll also be able to punish people in melee, especially when you can curse more than one target per rest.
Raven Queen
Ahh the Raven Queen. Another 4th Edition favorite. She’s a mysterious being who rules over the Shadowfell and her whole business is making sure that beings fated to die, actually die. She hates it when people cheat death, and in 4th, she had the Shadar-kai–she might still if all this is a lead up to another PHB. But either way, for now, she has her Warlocks.
Never more raven symbols than in this article!
The Pact of the Raven Queen is like adding a drop of necromancy to your Warlock. You’ll never raise the dead–which would be weird, given the Raven Queen’s proclivities anyway–but you will get good at spells that let you fake death, life, or kill other creatures. You also get a Sentinel Raven which is a spirit that can either perch on your shoulder and grant you Darkvision out to 30 feet and a bonus to your Perception, or it can take flight and you can use its senses while it’s within 100 feet. In combat it acts on its own, but this is of dubious use. I suppose you can always have an aid another action, if nothing else?
At 6th level, you can merge with the raven (lots of merging in this batch), which is basically you become the raven and can only take limited actions, but you can also fly. At 10th level it shields you, making you immune to fear, resistance to necrotic, and most powerfully, it grants you advantage on death saving throws, being one of the few things in the game to impact that save.
And to cap it all off, starting at 14th level you can cast finger of death once per day, which fits thematically. The finger of death is so…well…you know.
I don’t know that this one is quite as strong as the Hexblade–but I like the flavor elements of it. I feel like it has a lot of potential as a support class–you get spiritual weapon which is one of the best support spells in the game–and I am sure the raven could come in handy in that regard. But. It doesn’t quite feel at the same level as the other pacts, even the “weaker” ones. But I guess that’s so, well, you know…
Warlock Invocations
Real quick, I just want to run through some of these. There are some fantastic new invocations up for playtest. None are quite as good as “you can add your charisma damage to eldritch blast” but, there are a lot of cool options here, like the Frost Lance which lets your Eldritch Blast reduce the speed of enemies by 10 feet. Or the Kiss of Mephistopheles, which lets you cast Fireball as a bonus action one you hit a creature with your Eldritch blast. You have to use one of your Warlock slots, oh no, but man this is another feather in the cap for Fiend Pact warlocks.
Lore Mastery
This archetype is phenomenal. It would be amazing if it only had one of its 2nd level class features and nothing else. Instead, it has that and so much more.
For starters, this class is all about experimenting with magic. Lore Masters care more about the art of casting a spell than what happens afterwards, which is manifested mechanically as the ability to alter your spells. This means whenever you cats a spell that deals acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, radiant, or thunder damage, you can substitute that damage type with one other type from that list which means that all your spells do force damage forever. Unless you want to exploit a vulnerability, in which case, great. But yeah, use the Force. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. For the low low price of “this is part of the same class feature” you can ALSO change the saving throw from one ability score to another of your choice. So you can make a Dex save an Intelligence save. Or a Wisdom save a Strength save. Basically the more you know your enemies, the better you’ll be at taking them down. Sure you can only do the save swap thing once per rest, but holy cow that’s powerful.
AND THERE ARE STILL OTHER FEATURES.
Running through them: at 2nd level you can use your Intelligence for initiative and get double your proficiency bonus on any knowledge skills you’re proficient in. At 6th level you can continue to tweak your spells, giving yourself a pseudo metamagic abiltiy. For a 1st level spell you can deal an extra 2d10 force damage. For a 2nd level slot you can cast your spell out to a mile. And for a 3rd level slot, you can increase the spell’s save DC by 2. Of all the abilities, I think I like this one the least. It feels like the Wizard is honing in on something that was uniquely the sorcerer’s. I liked that they got metmagic and wizards didn’t–it made them feel more distinct. Also boosting your DC seems like it sets a dangerous precedent–sure it’s at a cost that’s honestly probably not worth it, especially since if you really want a spell to land you can just swap the save to a weak ability. But still.
At 10th level you can swap out one prepared spell for another from your spellbook once per rest, which sits much better with me, weirdly. And then at 14th level you can, once per day, duplicate one spell of your choice from any class’s spell list (you have to use all the right slots). So, some pretty powerful flexibility for these guys.
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