Hello warlocks! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out 51st episode of our eldritch invocation series. Man guys! I tell you i don’t know what the hell wizards of the coast was thinking when they made this. Full disclosure i don’t usually say that things are broken and i don’t usually point out combinations and articles because i don’t like creating metas.
But i haven’t seen anyone talk about this and i’m confused as heck why they aren’t talking about this so i’m gonna be the first one to point this out. So that way i can kind of claim it as my own. We’re talking about investment of the chain master dnd 5e build and if you’ve ever wanted to be a level two character and be virtually unkillable at least within a general sense of the word, then this is the invocation for you.
I don’t know, i know what this is trying to achieve and i’ll talk about that in a little bit, i think it achieves its goal way too well and i don’t know sorry i’m getting ahead of myself here i do apologize, we’re talking about investment of the chain master, it was added in during tasha’s cauldron of everything, it’s one of the extra invocations that was provided in the book so it’s canon as far as everything else is canon.
Now let’s dive into its description and let’s see if you guys can figure out what i’m getting at before i even complete the description, it’s really obvious at least i think it is. In any case let’s dive in.
Description
There is a prerequisite and that is you had to have picked the pact of the chain and it reads as followed.
Prerequisite: Pact of the Chain feature
When you cast find familiar, you infuse the summoned familiar with a measure of your eldritch power, granting the creature the following benefits:
- The familiar gains either a flying speed or a swimming speed (your choice) of 40 feet.
- As a bonus action, you can command the familiar to take the Attack action.
- The familiar’s weapon attacks are considered magical for the purpose of overcoming immunity and resistance to nonmagical attacks.
- If the familiar forces a creature to make a saving throw, it uses your spell save DC.
- When the familiar takes damage, you can use your reaction to grant it resistance against that damage.
Okay really good stuff! right so if you haven’t been involved in the warlock main community. You won’t know this but pact of the chain is quite arguably the least popular pact. When i first started playing warlock i was really in love with it. Thought it was really cool! It gives the dungeon master a ton to role play with and is very interesting in theory, however it doesn’t scale worth a damn at least in my opinion it doesn’t, there are some cool little tricks you can do at early levels but later on in the game it’s not very conducive to a well-balanced character.
That being said, this was aimed if now this isn’t confirmed but i can all but verify, that this was aimed at making the pact of the chain 5e a far more likeable option, that’s why there’s no level requirement over this nonsense as it’s meant to be taken at third level or as soon as possible when you get your pact features. Okay now that we’re done with that, let’s do a quick overview just to make sure we’re ll on the same page here.
Overview
So when you get your familiar it gains a fly or swim speed of 40feet. Most of them have a fly speed, so you’re likely going to give it a swim speed of 40 feet in addition to its fly speed so it can fly and swim and walk very interesting. You can use a bonus action to command the familiar to take the attack action. This is actually relatively controversial when 5e was released and when people were asking about the warlock, jeremy crawford got involved, sage advice got evolved all that good stuff.
So the question was is can the familiars take the attack action. Because if you read through the pact of the chain when you take an attack you can forgo your attack and give one of your attacks to your familiar and they’ll attack as a reaction. They can’t use the attack action just because of the way that find familiar is worded.
However now they can but you have to use your bonus action to command them so this is essentially gives them two attacks, you forgo your action to let them attack is a reaction and then you use your bonus action to let them attack is their action if that makes sense.
So at the end of the day you’re only really left with a reaction. Which is fine especially if you’ve taken the warcaster feat but we won’t even worry about that for now. Their attacks are also cnsidered to be magical which is great, at almost every level of play aside from the late game and even then there’s some argument to be made for that being where it’s most valuable but it kind of depends either way so you attack as though it’s magical unless they don’t have resistance to non-magical in which case it’s regular that’s the way it’s worded so it’s kind of the best of both worlds regardless really nice.
The familiar uses your spell save DC if it causes saving throws. Now this is the one that a lot of that is going to change the game for a ton of warlock mains and even i myself am considering messing around with this for a one shot just to push the upper limits of what this nonsense can do.
So what this means if it wasn’t abundantly obvious is you are now able to use your own spell save DC instead of whatever your familiar does and a lot of them have abilities namely the imp being able to poison and the pseudodragon being able to render people unconscious.
There’s a couple others as well, the quasi does something and the spirit or the sprite rather it can kind of gauge the alignment and emotions of a creature which is useful when its own right but nothing compared to the 3d6 poison damage caused by the imp or the ability to render unconscious for one hour caused by the pseudodragon.
Those are what’s gonna be really messing with this nonsense. In addition to that if you thought all that was bad enough whenever the familiar takes damage you use your reaction to grant resistance that damage and that clears up your reaction, so the way your standard turn can go if you want now is you take the attack action but you forego it, so your familiar attacks on your behalf and that uses the familiar’s reaction, then you use your bonus action to command your familiar to take the attack action which is a second attack.
And then if they get hit you use your reaction to give them resistance to whatever the heck they got hit by, effectively doubling their life expectancy. This is messed up man, this is really messed up and this is an addition to the familiar’s abilities to be able to or the ability for you to be able to cast through them using touch spells it doesn’t sound super interesting until you remember that a ton of healing spells are usable through touch.
So it is now possible to use all of your turn-based resources on your familiar which i might argue is what this pact should have done in the first place but they’ve added in a couple invocations since this was since the pact of the chain was released, that was that were aimed at balancing it a little bit more in favor of the player and if you take just one of those, this becomes a very lethal combo. What do i mean by that well let’s get to my personal thoughts here. You can also check out dnd 5e spells.
Thoughts
The invocation i am talking about is called voice of the chain master we’ve written an article on it already click the link but i’ll give you the rundown here. It lets you communicate and perceive through your familiar senses as long as you are on the same plane of existence.
Additionally you can speak through your familiar using this exact same trait. So what this now means i can’t believe i’m saying this is so messy. So what this effectively means is you can be on the other side of of the material plane and still actively in combat with your familiar which is lunacris.
The only problem with this at a glance is the find familiar spell. It has a range of 10 feet which isn’t super great. That being said, it is tricky, you might be able to get away with combining this with another warlock with the pack to the talisman and then using the couple of their invocations to bring you over or some sort of teleportation but that’s really the only reason why this wouldn’t work is because of the nature of the find familiar spell’s range.
However aside from that it is one hell of a messy combination and you don’t even have to take it to an extreme. You can just be chilling out in a heavily populated area relatively close to the action whereas then you can get there in like a handful of turns if you took the dash action. But it’s just messed up or you’re familiar could why would you even leave really.
A lot of familiars have great mobility and now you add in the swim speed as well since most of them already have fly speed of 40 feet, there’s no real reason to double down on that nor really would it the way it’s worded makes it pretty clear it’s maximum of 40 feet.
Regardless you have this sweet fly speed which can be doubled by taking the dash action, they arrive in combat they can still attack although you have to forgo one of your actions to do so. It’s just messy combo, so what does that mean that means at level two realistically assuming you take both of the invocations we’ve gone over and assuming you have the imp which i consider to be the best familiar, i know that’s up for debate but i like them and i’ve used them quite a bit to various effectiveness throughout the years.
But that means you can send your IMP boy into combat for you not only can he heal for you not only can you cast spells. Let’s forgo all of that and let’s just assume he does regular attacks. So the imp does 1d4 plus three piercing damage and on a failed constitution save they take an extra 3d6 poison damage or half as much on a success. Now let’s assume most of them are going to be successes because you’re using your spell save DC for that constitution save.
Instead of the imps DC 11 which is pretty abysmal but we’re using your spell save dc for it. So that’s pretty cool. Let’s assume the IMP’s invisible most of the time so he’s not really going to get hit a ton, he’s only going to really attack run away repeat.
That means every round you’re dealing really 2d4 plus 6 piercing damage and an additional 6d6 poison damage. Which in the late game might not be a super huge amount but bear in mind that, if that creature has resistance to non-magical attacks and weapons you’re now magical. And if it does nd if it has resistance to magical attacks they count as unmagical.
So i don’t know man, i think this might have actually over balanced the pact of the chain in favor of the player which i’m not necessarily complaining about but they’re virtually at no risk of losing life now and i feel like that might remove some of the fun out of the game. Since a couple of the familiars have the ability to become straight up and visible or change their shape.
It’s a very likely that they’re not going to be primary threats in combat and in addition to that, a lot of them can technically wear armor so do bear that in mind as well. I don’t know, i love warlocks i’ve always loved warlocks i think they’re really neat. I’m making all these assumptions without actually playing through with this particular invocation but this is massive.
I think the best way of changing it would be to add a level requirement onto it. Like level five i think would be fine because that’s the point where warlocks kind of start to drop off a little bit, relative to a couple of the other full casters and that would give them a much needed boost, but as far as i’m concerned investment of the chain master in alongside with the voice of the chain master is a messy messy combination and i can actually see a lot of dms in my mind right now banning the hell out of it. I haven’t heard anyone bring this up yet, as far as i know i’m the first but man is that messy.
Conclusion
In any case maybe i’m overreacting, maybe i’m missing something if you think i am let me know down beneath in the comment section. And that being said, i hope you all have a wonderful day and as always happy adventuring.