The new Undead Patron for Warlocks out of the Ravenloft book will let you do better Necrotic Damage and a whole lot more.
Today we cover the last of the new subclasses out of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. And in many ways it’s the one that embodies the setting the most, because its chief weapon is fear. Fear and surprise. Its two chief weapons are fear and surprise. And the ability to undergo a necrotic transformation.
That is to say, if you look amongst its tools, you’ll find the very essence of the Demiplane of Dread. Because these Warlocks make a dread bargain with a creature that defies the cycle of life and death. Be it a lich, vampire, or some other ancient evil that has long forsaken its mortal soul for power. Exactly the kind of patron that would make for a Darklord. And their Warlocks seem to wield the stuff of dread itself.
The Undead Patron Warlock – Hope You Like Battle Transformations
At its core, this is a Warlock class that is about unleashing the power of undeath. Through spells, sure, but also through your core ability, which is transforming into an avatar of undeath for a minute or so at a time. And, you’d better like that idea if you want to take this subclass, because most of the features revolve around your dread transformation.
That’s not inherently a bad thing. Though I tend to like it when you get a cool thing from the get-go and then get to do more with it, instead of feeling like you just get incremental improvements. Because I just want to feel like I get to do more cool things as I level up. Even so, the whole subclass builds on itself pretty well.
It all starts at level 3 with Form of Dread. This is your core feature as an Undead Patron Warlock. It gives you the ability to transform into an undead form for one minute at a time. Transforming gives you three main benefits: you gain 1d10 + Warlock level temporary hit points, you are immune to being Frightened, and most importantly, once per turn, whenever you hit someone with an attack roll, you can make a creature save or be Frightened until the end of your next turn.
This means if you’re hitting someone with your Eldritch Blast or with your Pact of the Blade weapon, you’re also giving people the Frightened Condition, which means creatures can’t willingly move closer to you and have Disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. Handy if you have something like Repelling Blast, which pushes enemies away.
You also gain a list of bonus Undead Spells, which helps define your character a little more. These include “dread-themed” debuffs like Bane, and Ray of Sickness, as well as actual necromancy like Summon Undead, Speak with Dead, plus some anti-life spells like Antilife Shell, Cloudkill, and Phantasmal Killer.
It’s not a bad list of spells. But I will say for a subclass that has everything revolve around the Form of Dread, this is one of the only features that doesn’t really touch on it. A surprising lack of attack roll spells on the list; though that’s not a bad thing.
Higher Level, More Dread
As mentioned, the Form of Dread is the main focal point of the subclass. It’s not the only thing your higher level features improve, but they all kind of dance around it. Like level 6’s Grave Touched, which lets you ignore Resistance to Necrotic Damage, and change the damage type of a spell to Necrotic, sure. But its main benefit is whenever you hit a creature with an attack roll and deal Necrotic Damage while in Form of Dread, you can roll one additional damage die when determining how much damage it takes. And as a nice little ribbon, you don’t gain Exhaustion or need to sleep.
Then at level 10, Necrotic Husk gives even more benefits to you, especially when in Form of Dread. You have Resistance to Necrotic Damage normally, and immunity while transformed. You can also erupt in a burst of deathly energy when you would be reduced to 0 hit points and not killed outright. Sure, you take an Exhaustion level for it, but it works once per Short or Long Rest.
The whole subclass caps off with the level 14 feature, Superior Dread. As you might imagine, this improves your Form of Dread. You gain Resistance to normal damage as well as a fly speed. And it’s not the Phantom Rogue’s paltry 10′ fly speed, it’s whatever your base speed is. But the main benefit is whenever you cast a Warlock Conjuration or Necromancy spell, you can do it without any components except for costly Material ones.
All in all, not bad. Sure everything revolves around your undead form, but you can adopt that form up to your Charisma modifier times per day, so that gives you five different fights, basically, where you can hit that form. That’s usually more than enough, but your mileage may vary depending on DM.
Okay, but, here’s the thing… if you bargain with a Lich, don’t give them your soul. They get hungry!
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Source: Bell of Lost Souls
