Warlock Cantrip Invocations: Abandoning Eldritch Blast

image by John Stanko from the 5e Players Handbook

Because I really hate that warlocks are locked into the mandatory Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast build (hexblades exempt), I wanted to make some invocations that make other cantrips more tantalizing than multiple attacks and force damage. Sure, you might need to use the Pact of the Tome feature to get some of these cantrips, but now it might even be worth it!

I’m curious what you guys think of these. If you can think of any potential balance issues with stacking the invocations, multiclassing shenanigans, or general power balance issues, let me know! I don’t really mind that these first three invocations can stack with other ones. If players want their entire warlock build to revolve around one cantrip, I say let them.

Greater Cantrip

When you take this invocation, choose a cantrip that has a single target and deals damage after hitting with a spell attack. Each die roll that results in a number less than half of the die’s maximum gains a +1 bonus. 

For instance, if you roll 3d10 for an 11th-level fire bolt and roll a 3, 1, and an 8, the 3 increases to 4 and the 1 increases to 2.

Penetrating Cantrip

Prerequisite: 5th level warlock

When you take this invocation, choose a cantrip that has a single target and deals damage on a failed saving throw. Creatures have disadvantage on saving throws against the chosen cantrip.

Forked Cantrip

Prerequisite: 5th level warlock

When you take this invocation, choose a cantrip that meets the following requirements. 

Whenever you cast the chosen cantrip to target a creature, you can target an additional creature within range instead. When you target a second creature in this way, roll only half of the damage dice for the second creature, rounded up.

For instance, a 5th-level warlock casting infestation with this invocation could deal 2d6 poison damage to their first target, and 1d6 damage to their second target. At 11th level, the same warlock could deal 3d6 poison damage to the first target and 2d6 poison to their second target.

Burning Cantrip

Prerequisite: a cantrip that deals acid or fire damage

Whenever you deal acid or fire damage to a creature using a cantrip, the creature catches fire. The creature continues to take 2 damage of the same type at the start of each of their turns until they or another creature spends an action wiping off the acid or dousing the flames. This ability has no effect if the target is already on affected by this ability.

Debilitating Poison

Prerequisite: a cantrip that deals poison damage.

Whenever a creature takes poison damage from one of your cantrips, the creature gains disadvantage on skill checks and on saving throws to resist poison damage or the poisoned condition until the end of your next turn.

Distant Thunder

Prerequisite: Thunderclap cantrip

When you cast thunderclap, you can choose a point within 60 feet of you on the ground to be the origin of the spell. Each creature that fails their saving throw against the spell by 5 or more is knocked prone.

Frightening Touch

Prerequisite: Chill Touch cantrip

Your chill touch cantrip deals an additional amount of necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier. In addition, whenever you roll an 8 on a damage die for your chill touch cantrip, the target gains disadvantage on attack rolls until the end of your next turn. This has no effect on creatures immune to the frightened condition.

Gripping Frost

Prerequisite: Ray of Frost cantrip

Your ray of frost cantrip deals an extra amount of cold damage equal to your Charisma modifier. Whenever a creature takes damage from your Ray of Frost cantrip, their movement speed is halved instead of reduced by 10.

Immobilizing Grasp

Prerequisite: 5th level warlock, Shocking Grasp cantrip.

Your shocking grasp cantrip deals an additional amount of lightning damage equal to your Charisma modifier. In addition, whenever you roll for damage and at least two of the dice have the same result (two of a kind), the target is restrained until the end of their next turn. If at least three dice have the same result (three of a kind), the target is stunned until the end of their next turn instead. If at least four dice have the same result (four of a kind), the target is paralyzed until the end of their next turn instead.

Launch Stones

Prerequisite: 5th level warlock, magic stone cantrip

When you use your action to throw a stone affected by the magic stone cantrip, you can hurl an additional such stone. When you reach 11th level, you can hurl two additional stones instead. Each creature hit by a stone is knocked prone. Flying creatures are pushed 15 feet away instead of being knocked prone.

The best writing teacher I ever had wasn’t the one who taught me grammar and spelling. He wasn’t the one who taught me outlining and paragraph structure, nor was he the one who taught me about themes, motifs, and symbolism.

He said, “Wiggle your pencil.

Put the tip of your pencil to the paper and keep the eraser end wiggling.

If you have nothing to write, write that: I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, and eventually, by force of boredom, something else will come out.”

We would take 30 - 45 minutes every day to ‘wiggle our pencils’ in our wide-ruled notebooks, during which time, he was silent except to remind anyone who stopped to keep that pencil moving. 

I finished not one but two novel-length stories that year. It was fifth grade.

Wiggle your pencil.

fuckin lol

Another day, another politician that thinks Trump doing something they do means Trump should get all the criticism instead of realizing they’re both wrong

The difference here is that Trump spends tax payer money for his golfing and AOC spent her own paycheck on a video game to unwind. They literally aren’t the same thing at all

Right, where do you think that paycheck comes from?

Were you born this stupid or did you have to work at it?

Ok, just to be clear, do politicians get payed with tax money or not?

If you honestly think a government employee spending their own salary is functionally identical to charging leisure trips to your own golf courses to an expense account and billing the Secret Service for being there, just because they’re both paid for with taxpayer money, I can’t help you.

But what’s the difference in the end? They both paid for something with taxpayer money.

Okay. It’s very simple: When the government disburses money to its employees in the form of a salary, the transaction where the taxpayer is concerned is concluded. The taxpayer has paid the employee for services rendered. What that employee does with that salary after that isn’t the taxpayer’s business, since the taxpayer already got what they paid for.

To put it another way, you wouldn’t argue that Doris from the DMV is “spending taxpayer money” when she spends some of her salary on a pedicure and claim it’s the equivalent of a presidential golfing trip, or that a soldier buying a case of beer with his salary is a waste of tax money. Because you are paying them for the job they did.

In other words, it’s not fucking taxpayer money anymore.

It is, however, still taxpayer money when it is part of an account set aside for expenses incurred in the execution of one’s duties, and the President uses it to pay himself for taking vacations, and to pay himself again for the taxpayer-provided security detail.

And even if I were to play your stupid false equivalence game: At $300 per console and a game price of $59.99, AOC would have to buy 369,455 Nintendo Switches with a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for each to reach the $133 million racked up by Trump’s golf trips. So even if you were to blubber about how it’s all a tragic loss of taxpayer money either way, there’s your fucking difference you goddamn moron.

We’re done here.

@rosemarymonth Day 10: AU week day 3, 4RE W3 TH3R3 Y3T, THE RETURN

In which Dave wusses out of skating on his new, sick, UNREAL AIR so Rose decides to show him its no big deal, and proceeds to Totally Eat Shit.

collab with @rose-ebottles, SNOP.png made by @kanayamaryamistrans and @frantastically

bonus hospital scene:

me: zach callison is talented and should be taken seriously and be able to go far in his career without being tied to steven universe

also me: someone please draw steven like this

added some connverse :)

oh. my. god. that is beautiful

This

Someone's trying to follow me and my mom home, Jesus Christ this is terrifying

Ok, just pulled into a fire station.

Word of advice, if someone tries to flag you down on a highway, pointing to the back of your car, there isn’t anything wrong. They want to kill you. Never stop for them.

They may try to pin you in a lane on the highway. They won’t let you get ahead of them, they will try to prevent you from getting behind them. Fuck traffic laws. Gun it, throw on your brakes, honk your horn and do not stop. get away from them at all costs. Don’t go home, go to the police or go to a fire station. Explain what happened and have them look over ur car.

Reblog this around. Seems like common sense, but also not something that can happen to everyone.

I was on the I-5 in Washington State. The van was white, with blacked out windows. There was graffiti or something on the right side of the van, but I was too scared to read it.

Everyone please be safe, if you are in the Puyallup or Tacoma area, please be even more careful.

based off of this !!!

One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed about non-natives appropriating our stuff is they never want anything but sage, smudging, and feathers.

Native people will share: our food, our music, our dancing, our art.

But no one is interested in those. They don’t CARE about our food and music. We never see those things in popular culture. Non-natives just want to take our religious items, because they feel entitled to the things people don’t want to share.

A Tribe Called Red (techno Native beats):

Taboo #noDAPL protest music (Native Hip Hop):

Supaman (Prayer loop song, Rap)

Check em out. Add on. Support Native Artists. Spread the love y'all

Good musical options. 🙌🏼

Snotty nose rez kids (hip hop) + Drezus (rap)

Blackfoot (rock)

Blackfire (punk/rock)

Silla+Rise (Throat singing blended with spacey electro beats)

Kelly Fraser (Pop)

T-Rhyme (Hip Hop)

Piqsiq (Throat Singing Electro)

Tanya Tagaq (Avant Guard, Punk, throat singer)

Iskwè (Pop/Electronic)

And the iconic Buffy Sainte Marie (Folk/Rock/Electronic)

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

TO THOSE MAKING NATIVE OCS

I see this a lot, no one has actual names, or any reference for names, that are legit Native American, varying among the tribes, for their characters.

Babynames.com and shit like that will give you names made up by white people.

However, I’ve got your solution.

Native-Languages  is a good website to turn to for knowledge on a lot of native things, including native names. If you’re unsure about the names you’ve picked, they even have a list of made up names here!

Please don’t trust names like babynames.com for native names, they’re made up and often quite offensive to the cultures themselves.

Decided to change it up this Inktober, into COMICTOBER! 

Heres day one: POISONOUS

sometimes i see an annoying ass post on the dash & im like wtf i’m gonna unfollow whoever made me witness this 😤 but then i look & it’s my Beloved Bastard Mutual so i can’t do it……. i have to let the gremlin run wild….

Thread on abortion. Men bear no responsibility. Women are expected to suffer. This is part of our patriarchal culture and it has to change.

fucking sburb you funky little homestuck

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE Let’s say it’s 6.15pm and you’re going home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself..!! NOW HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE… Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can perhaps buy precious time to get themselves to a phone and dial 911. Rather than sharing another joke please contribute by broadcasting this which can save a person’s life! Be prepared and become part of the solution. Get your free next-of-kin notification card today. Click here: https://www.InCaseOfEmergencyCard.com/

major signal boost

Reblogging cause this could save someone’s life

This could save many lives, reblog

!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everyone needs to reblog!!

This is for everybody

Lets get the word.just a quick reblogg…and you might save someones life..💯💯

Good information, thanks for this public service announcement!

A curious Naval sword with an 1805 pattern silver gilt stirrup hilt, British, ca. 1817-1823, housed at the National Museum of Scotland.

The director of cybersecurity from the Electronic Freedom Foundation is offering to help women who have been threatened with compromise of their devices.

I better see EVERYBODY reblogging this