D&D Next: Star Pact Homebrew

Rounding out the warlock pacts. I dug the binder from 3rd Edition in concept if nothing else, and loved warlocks and hexblades in 4th Edition. I initially wanted to base the pact off of something from the Cthulhu mythos, but then thought that something actually D&D–in this case the gibbering mouther–would make more sense.

Star Pact: Cho’athonaug
The Sovereign of Whispers is an amorphous mass of eyes and babbling mouths that drifts deep within the Far Realm. Those willing to risk their sanity can occasionally glean powerful secrets.

Level 1: Cho’athonaug’s voice fills your mind as an endless torrent of garbled words. With effort you can sometimes sift through the words and glean useful information. You sometimes whisper seemingly random words or short phrases.

Benefit: You can spend one of your patron’s favors to gain advantage on Intelligence checks for one minute, but you gain disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws.

Level 3: A needle-toothed mouth grows somewhere on your body. It sometimes mutters cryptic phrases and mimics your speech, making it sound as if there are two or more voices speaking at once.

Benefit: As an action, you can force the mouth to gibber incoherently. Each adjacent creature must make a Wisdom save (DC 10 + your Intelligence modifier) or suffer disadvantage on attacks and checks until the end of your next turn.

Level 5: Your body becomes slightly amorphous. Your movements become slightly awkward, and your joints sometimes bend in unnatural ways, which can be used to your advantage.

Benefit: As an action, you can spend one of your favors to reduce the damage you take by 1d6 until the end of your next turn.

Warlock Invocations

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Incantation of the Outer Gate
Lesser invocation

You open the outermost threshold of the Far Realm, allowing only a portion of an alien entity to intrude.
As a consequence of knowing this incantation, tendrils seem to write beneath your skin.
Effect: You conjure the tentacle of a Far Realm being within 50 feet of you. It is Medium-size, and attacks a creature within 10 feet of its location that you can see. On a hit, the creature takes 3d8 bludgeoning damage and is restrained until it makes a Strength check to escape.
Thereafter, you can use an action to make the tentacle attack another creature within its reach. The tentacle remains for 1 minute before vanishing back to the Far Realm.

Character Concept: The Voice of the Stars

I love aberrants–especially when I get to unleash them on my players–as well as things generally associated with them, such as the star pact and psionics. I figure, why not have both?

This character could have been a survivor from an illithid colony, a failed ceremorphosis candidate, got too close to the Far Realm, read a tome she should not have (if you want to tap H.P. Lovecraft), or was otherwise exposed to some aberrant force. Perhaps her psionic talents attracted the attention of an otherworldly entity, or perhaps psionics were part of the package deal.

At any rate, you start with a hybrid psion/warlock, with the telepathy focus and star pact respectively. The theme is kind of iffy; if you have a background for what your character was all about before this went down, you could go with that (like guttersnipe or outlaw if you nabbed the book-that-should-not-have-been-opened), though seer is good if you want to focus on the whole fate aspect.

Powers are pretty easy to juggle, you will just want to make sure that your Intelligence and Charisma are both set to 16. The telepathy focus works out well, as it is linked to Charisma. I think the only real flaw here is that some star-pact spells are dependent on Constitution, which might be a problem if your DM won’t let you just pen in “charisma” over the power description.

You will probably want to dump your first feat on Hybrid Talent so you can pick up something extra. After that just nab a rod or orb and you are good to go, though if your DM is cool with it you might want to ask about re-skinning a few more things:

• Tentacle Lash: I like the idea of a servant (or slave?) of the stars being mutated by her “gifts”. The tentacle might always be present, or extend from her hand or even mouth. You could even go so far as to have the character have an entire face of tentacles, complete with a lamprey-like mouth or beak ala the mind flayer. This is just a re-skinned basic melee attack, or even eldritch strike. I would have it otherwise function as a short- or longsword.
• Maddening Drone: More of a warlock power, you have lots of little mouths that whisper secrets and prophecies. This would just deal psychic damage within a close burst. Might not be “balanced”, but is thematic and cool. Could have a push effect. If you went with this as a daily I could see it dazing or even stunning.
• Mind Blast: You could simply reskin thunderwave to deal psychic damage and swap out of the push effect for something like a defense or attack penalty, or prevent targets from making opportunity attacks for a turn. Alternatively, save kickers for the augmented versions, up to and including a one-turn daze effect.
• Thought Shackles: The dominated condition does not start until 5th level, and even then it is for one turn. Still you could deal psychic damage, then have the target make a melee basic attack. Or you could have it so that you can make the target use one until they shake the effect off with a save. Like, they get to take their turn, but on your turn you can take control briefly. Something that seems quasi-mind flayery.

As a fan of homebrew content and sticking to a concept, I would consider my patron star’s goals and theme when picking, altering, or creating new spells, as well as how the character’s psionic powers develop. 

I guess the only bad part about this character is that it is seemingly more suited to a villain, though you could go the route of a kind of grim-dark hero. Depending on the complexity of the star’s machinations, the character’s actions could coincide with the rest of the party. Hell, one star might have the character move against the other one.

Star Cults

In the near future my group will be going up against a star cult, which prompted me to create some new monsters in accordance with my level and thematic requirements. If they’re reading this, they can go ahead and take a peak, or stop and be surprised.

Neophytes are cult newbies that haven’t been “rewarded” with any appreciable mutations. They’re better when they can get flanking, but in general aren’t that much trouble.

Acolytes are neophytes turned up to 11. They are more dangerous when flanking, but due to whispered portents and multiple eyes cannot be flanked. Also, they can teleport, which is great for maneuvering but also to gain combat advantage against an enemy.

Warlocks are, well, warlocks. They can tear open the planar fabric to conjure up clusters of grasping tentacles, or emblazon their foes with baleful signs. Mostly they just stick to eldritch blast while applying their curse.

Husks are the cult’s guardians. Most people that are exposed to the baleful energy of stars die. They’re the lucky ones. These guys didn’t die, and now simply exist as roughly humanoid cinders that obey their masters. Husks draw their enemies close with their gravity well so that they can crush them with fiery slams, and can even fold space in order to better protect their charges.

Voices claim to speak for the stars, when they say anything coherent at all. They spend most of their time frantically scrawling the messages that the numerous mouths on their bodies whisper to them, which they can levy on their foes in order to instill insanity and terror.

Star Pact Hexblades

I’d almost completely overlooked this addition to the hexblade pact choices, available before Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdom was supposed to be in stores. I’m not complaining, as the star pact has always been my favorite anyway. The article provides some interesting flavor as to the nature(s) of stars and a hexblade’s relationship to them, if any. One thing of particular note is that under the races section, shades get quite a bit of mention, including confirmation that they will be in Heroes of Shadow. A nifty not-quite-easter egg.

The rest of the article has a sidebar on the Revelations of Melech, a list of known stars and qualities, in addition to new class features. Unfortunately there are no extra powers (or feats) for levels where you would get to pick something, so hopefully your DM will let you peruse Player’s Handbook and/or Arcane Power for thematic options. Most of the class features allow you to deal radiant and/or psychic damage with some blind kickers here and there, and the summons let you conjure up an invisible entity that eats thoughts or an emotion sapping void. I like the neither are really described (thought the way walker is mentioned as being vaguely humanoid), as it better invokes a Lovecraftian flavor.