Warlock Invocation: Eldritch Glaive

[Kaedrin]

I'm contemplating adding this invocation to the 1.33 Beta 5 but I wanted to get some feedback first.

This is a Lesser Invocation (Shape) that allows you to make a melee touch attack a number of times equal to how many normal melee attacks you would get based on your BAB (ie, 15 BAB = 3 attacks). The damage is equal to your blast damage (the glaive weapon is composed out of your blast energy).

So a level 9 warlock would deal two attacks (melee touch at +9 and +4) that do 5d6 magic damage.

In order to limit the power of this invocation I'm either going to cap it at 2 or 3 attacks and NOT having it affected by Eldritch Mastery.

The PnP feat that mastery replaced was meant to allow a blast to be replaced with two blasts a round. Eldritch Glaive is supposed to be a full round action so the two shouldn't be mixable.

Your BAB in PnP is NOT supposed to progress beyond 20th which means 3 attacks was the PnP cap.

Thoughts? Balance concerns? Is 2 attacks a round enough (since it gets the essence still) to improve Warlocks without going too far?

Like all content, this spell can easily be removed by setting the REMOVED flag to 1 in the spells.2da.

[nicethugbert]

A level 20 Warlock has a 10d6 EB, for 35 average damage and a crappy 19-20/x2 crit at best. My melee toons easily do that damage with +5 enh 2d6 elemental damage. My clc09/SL10/FB03 on LDOA does ~70 per hit, if not more, often crits for ~150, has 5 attacks per round with Divine Power and Battletide, and a the AB to put all those attacks to good use.

The EG Warlock is not the only build to consider. Splashing Warlock for EG adds magic damage to other builds especially if you make this more like a regular melee attack. What fighter wouldn't dip a level for 1d6 magic damage added to their weapon?

Let's not forget the other side of the equation, the opponents. Touch AC sounds good, until modders start to increase it. Then the EG Warlock becomes a dex build so his DCs suck. Thereby, weakening his EG. There are magic resist items in the game, also acid resist, immunities.

So, EG is not absolutely overpowered, only relatively so, at best.

I think regardless of the default state you choose, modders should be able to easily modify all the parameters to their liking. The biggest problem is the sudden introduction of this into a mod that is not prepared for it. Modders need a way to quickly control this while they take the time to adapt their system. It should probably ship in the off state.

In the spirit of modification, I think it should be configurable to any number of attacks per round, touch AC or full AC, with bonuses or without, as easily as possible. I think PnP defaults are fine for most settings.

[giant2005]

NTB, we won't have to worry about splash builds because it is a touch attack - that fighter with 1 level of Warlock using this would be doing 1D6 damage x the number of attacks he has. His weapon damage wouldn't be included in the calculations. However, if it could be used in conjunction with the Daggercast feature of the Daggerspell shaper (or any similar abilities), then it might be a problem.

TBH Kaedrin, I'm not really seeing any need to nerf the ability.
It is a shape which means to use it only a single target will be effected. Unless against a single enemy, in most situations using the glaive will actually reduce a Warlock's DPS - hitting one enemy four times is never going to be as good as hitting ten enemies once.
Not to mention a Warlock who had no need for strength previously, would now have to focus on it somewhat increasing his MAD and actually weakening his other primary abilities.
The way you wrote it up, it actually sounds pretty powerful but in practise it won't be. If Hideous Blow was working as intended and user friendly, I would choose that over Eldritch Glaive 100% of the time.

Also I'm not sure your arguement that in PnP, Mastery shouldn't be usable with Glaive is a good one. All blasts were full round actions as they are in NWN2, Eldritch Glaive isn't any different in that regard. Other than your balance concerns, there isn't any reason it should be any different in NWN2 either.

[nicethugbert]

I mention splash classes because of the possibility that EG may be set up as a regular melee attack instead of a touch attack.