Warlock Eldritch Invocations

Fellow Warlocks of the Book, Blade and Chain,

We know that our Eldritch Invocations is half of a Warlock's Fun and Power. What are your experiences on them?

What's your favorite, why? What's you least favorite, why?

Here are some of my comments on some:

* Agonizing Blast
- the usual first pick for blaster (eldritch blast) warlocks
- however with my recent acquisition of magic items, recently I seldom use eldritch blast and just spams Fireball or Thunderbolt at high levels.

* Armor of Shadows
- invocation slots are a precious commodity, I can just wear a good armor and just pick another invocation
- does not fit with my theme

* Ascendant Step
- as a blaster, I was really excited to get this and be an turret that spams AOE and eldritch blasts 20ft above the battle field
- since I have acquired a Broom of Flying so I skipped this

* Beguiling Influence
- already took Deception and Persuasion skills, skipped

* Chains of Carceri
- I have yet to gain level 15 as a Warlock, though the monster types affected are limited, since its a hold monster at-will ability, this is awesome in the right campaign and monsters choices

* Devil's Sight
- as a blaster, I can't have my vision impaired, this is a must
- Combo with Darkness spell makes it awesome for defensive and offensive
- a few times my PC was saved by melee ambushes by casting Darkness on me and fleeing the attacker
- Darkness spell also for defensive purposes when dueling with a fellow spell caster/long range attackers
- take note normal dark vision only works for natural darkness and not with magical darkness

* Eldritch Sight
- cool at-will ability but I think not the first option you pick
- some magic items grants at-will/limited detect magic

* Eyes of the Rune Keeper
- nice combo for Pact of Book?
- can be DM dependent if your DM believes the 'You can read it, but it does not automatically mean that you understand it' debate

* Fiendish Vigor
- a buffer of 1d4 + 4 Temp HP is great for lower levels
- Fiend Patrons may skip this since Dark One's Blessing already provides temp HP and temp HPs does not stack

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* Mask of Many Faces
- most of my memorable and fun moments are with this
- for enemy infiltration/deception purposes

* Minions of Chaos
- cool yet once per day and a concentration check, else your summon can wreck havoc in your party
- i guess will depend on the situation and campaign
- magic items can also let you summon elementals

* Mire the Mind
- planning on getting this next
- once per day but can be a game changer for cut throat battles

* Misty Visions
- one of my favorite because illusions (Have you seen Eight in Stranger Things)
- Visual illusion, most of my out of the box thinking moments are using this
- combined with minor illusion to accompany visuals with sound (cast separately or with a fellow spell caster)

* Repelling Blast
- cool that it can push regardless of size and its still per eldritch blast hit right?
- most of the time I don't need to push enemies around if our melee party members are toe to toe with the enemies
- depends on the terrain, traps, if there's a need to push - one time I was able to push enemies on a lava pit. if there's a need to push and you have the terrain to make if effective then the stars are in our favor

* Sculptor of Flesh
- would be great if a party member volunteers to be a beast
- once per day, meh ok

* Voice of the Chain Master
- as a pact of the chain warlock I haven't got the need to let my familiar speak using my voice however making your familiar scout for you regardless of distance (as long as you are on the same plane) sure is awesome

* Aspect of the Moon
- see combo with coffee sorcerer/warlock then ask your DM if he will allow it

* Cloak of Flies
- as a long range attacker, this does not appeal to me unless my DM also says the flies around me grants me partial cover or disadvantage to my attacker with long range attacks

* Ghostly Gaze
- Byakugan for 1 minute every short rest, awesome
- circumstantial but great for investigations and looking for traps

* Lance of Lethhargy
- will sure be annoying if combined with Repelling blast
- push an enemy 10ft away (per eldritch blast hit) and at the same time reduce speed by 10ft
- that's like reducing a minimum of 20ft of movement per round

* Shroud of Shadow
- invisibility at-will, what's not to love?
- can't wait to hit level 15

* Tomb of Levistus
- grants you an emergency panic button per short rest, for nova spells or attacks that deals huge damage in a round
- the more warlock levels you have the more you can reap its benefit
- my warlock can currently soak 100 points of damage
- losing 1 turn is still better than losing several turns because your dead or rolling for death saves

um... you haven't actually answered your own question. anyway...

Playing a Blade Pact Warlock, specifically Hexblade, the best from my experience are Thirsting Blade and Lifedrinker - basically, no-brainers for a Gish. That said, it kinda sucks to have static bonuses rather than extra dice to roll, as critical hits are hardly better than regular hits (1d8+11 vs 2d8+11 - recently I rolled 1+1+11=13 for a "crit").

Anyway, least favourite is most of them - there are so many, even at level 13 or so you have a few, most of which don't get used much. I'd say your Spells are still more than 50%, based on my experience.

Whispers of the Grave, Relentless Hex, Tomb of Levistus - all fun and flavourful, but hardly used over many many levels of play. I've had a couple of players take the "see in the dark" one, but while it seems really powerful it's not my style and for them it only worked well a couple of times as I recall.

That's my experience of Warlocks - lots of cool flavour, lots of abilities in your tool kit, but most of them end up being corner cases, hardly used.

You need to think of your limited resources when you evaluate these abilities. Your most limited constraints are the few number of spell slots per SR you get, and only being able to concentrate on one spell at a time. This makes all of the invocations that grant access to a spell once per LR non-starters for me. It also limits the value of the unlimited use concentatrion spells like the ones gained from Shroud of Shadows or Ascendent Step. If I'm taking one of those, I plan to have it in play constantly, meaning I do not concentrate on Hex or other spells.

For a non-melee warlock, I tend to go all in on Eldritch Blast. I have an NPC Warlock Pirate that blasts away with Eldritch Blast from incredible distances, pushing enemies from Crow's Nests (or overboard), and doing enough damage to slowly tear apart a hull on a large ship. He is a Tomelock and also has a nice collection of rituals and cantrips that serve him well at sea.

I like that the Warlock is one of the most customisable classes. For me its issue is not enough spells known.

My Warlock is based on a shadow mage (I found that the shadow sorcerer suffers from insufficient shadow flavour). I mixed and matched class features from the fey and fiendish pacts, reflavoured with a shadow theme (so misty escape is now a bonus action from shadow to shadow). She is more of a utility build so I picked A lot of at will invocations such as Misty Visions, Ascendant Step, and Armour of Shadows along with Devil's Sight for a Darkness combo.

I got really bored with Eldritch Blast very quickly so put more focus into Firebolt as my signature cantrip (from a feat) and Green Flame Blade.

green_destiny said:

* Fiendish Vigor
- a buffer of 4 Temp HP is great for lower levels
- Fiend Patrons may skip this since Dark One's Blessing already provides temp HP and temp HPs does not stack

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4 THP? You've got the dang thing at will, keep casting it until you roll an 8

In retrospect, most of the "spend-a-warlock-spell-slot-to-cast-this-once-a-day" invocations could have either a) had the spell in the warlock list to begin with (thief of five fates, sign of ill omen) or b) cast it once a day without using a warlock spell slot. Some are questionable, especially by the time you get them (otherworldly leap), others are flavorful but hard to spend an invocation slot on (One with shadows).

That said, Mask of Many Faces is kind of useful and neat, depending on the campaign style. The Eldritch blast enhancing invocations are useful, Devil's sight is usually a powerful ability.

Pauln6 said:

I like that the Warlock is one of the most customisable classes. For me its issue is not enough spells known...

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With far more spells known than spells per day, I have never seen this as a problem. My warlocks prepare Hex as a 'most of the time' spell and then have a laundry list of other spells known that cover a wide variety of situations, but few rarely ever get cast. If the warlock capped out at 5 spells known it would not make a huge difference in my warlocks.

jgsugden said:

With far more spells known than spells per day, I have never seen this as a problem. My warlocks prepare Hex as a 'most of the time' spell and then have a laundry list of other spells known that cover a wide variety of situations, but few rarely ever get cast. If the warlock capped out at 5 spells known it would not make a huge difference in my warlocks.

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I don't think I've ever used Hex but with so much at will magic plus rituals as a Tomelock, I don't feel short on magic at all. I probably miss having more choice of beefier spells to replicate more of my 3e or 4e version, especially versatile ones like shadow conjuration of evocation.

Pauln6 said:

I don't think I've ever used Hex but with so much at will magic plus rituals as a Tomelock, I don't feel short on magic at all. I probably miss having more choice of beefier spells to replicate more of my 3e or 4e version, especially versatile ones like shadow conjuration of evocation.

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This seems to be misdirected: I was saying that with far more spells known than spell slots, spells known is not a limitation. I find that most of my slots get used in a small circle of spells, including Hex, leaving a lot of spells known unused. However, with Rituals (I favor Tomelock as well), a lot of cantrips, and special abilities from invocations, my Warlock(s) tend to also feel flush with magic as well... but they do spend over half of their combat rounds casting Eldritch Blast.

Gadget said:

In retrospect, most of the "spend-a-warlock-spell-slot-to-cast-this-once-a-day" invocations could have either a) had the spell in the warlock list to begin with (thief of five fates, sign of ill omen) or b) cast it once a day without using a warlock spell slot. Some are questionable, especially by the time you get them (otherworldly leap), others are flavorful but hard to spend an invocation slot on (One with shadows).

That said, Mask of Many Faces is kind of useful and neat, depending on the campaign style. The Eldritch blast enhancing invocations are useful, Devil's sight is usually a powerful ability.

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Yea, that's one of my house rules for warlock also (changing the 1/LR invocations to not take a spell slot.) It changes them from "hard pass" to "fits a more caster-like warlock concept".