The Old Black Magic!
Here at Little Red Goblin Games, we’ve had our design goblins busily bargaining with fey and conversing with terrifying creatures from beyond the stars to try and bring you, the readers, a set of flavorful new rules to enjoy. The invoker is a bitter-sweet new class loosely based on other bargain-forging classes from the past some of you might be familiar with.
While the Invoker provides players with the sort of arcane firepower they might expect from certain older classes that make pacts with fell spirits, it’s also packed with new flavorful abilities. The Invoker isn’t the first class to grant a character dark and mysterious powers thanks to bargains with darker forces, and it probably won’t be the last, but we think you’ll find our take on these soul-bartering fiends and anti-heroes to be one of the most flavorful, evocative, and happily melancholy classes you’ve played in a long time.
Class Highlights:
At Will Spell Casting
Pacts with all sorts of unsavory forces
Roleplaying mixed with mechaincs (taboos & boons)
Occult powers dripping with imagery for the low-low price of your character's soul
This PDF is 29 pages long, featuring original full color art by Carl Potter, fully hyperlinked, and has been playtested and balanced in public playtests!
Product Availability
Fulfilled immediately.
Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at
store@paizo.com.
I haven't been into 3.X for as long as some players so I was never intimately acquainted with the Warlock but from word of mouth I've come to understand the appeal. One of which is the concept of unlimited blasts or unlimited magic in general. With spell slots being rather unintuitive to a beginner there's a certain charm to just simply throwing energy bolts and not having to worry about having to cherry pick spells out of a long list of trap options and situational effects. The Invoker is a class that embodies that kind of concept. Its a simple caster that shoots it's laser and cast a few spell-ish things without worry. Its a mage at it's simplest and to an extent at it's most boring.
The main class feature is a standard action Mystic Blast that deals untyped 1d6 damage that scales up to 10d6 every odd level. These blasts can be enhanced later with Blast Traits ranging from status effects and damage type changes to changing the shape and range.
They also gain Incantations which are pretty much at-will spells that have 4 levels of effects. They come about the same rate as witch hexes.
The most interesting feature is the Pact class feature, representing 4 mystery-like packages that grant skill bonuses and a choice of powers to gain when you get it. It also grants a taboo that gives some sort of penalty, weakness or restriction.
The class is rather simple and easy to grasp for new players. It's indefinite casting does make it relatively conservative and while it can look scary it's not that strong of a class. It feels sort of what the Witch could have been. Overall it's a decent and functioning class. I've seen Warlock-y classes in other products but I think this one is unique in that its not terribly clever or complicated which gives it an appeal that other warlock classes don't have. It also has a really high floor for optimization making me feel like I could hand this to a player that is new to the minute strategies in regular casting that makes it so powerful but wants to contribute and feel like an actual caster without hassle.
There are a few quirks I didn't like, a few abilities that outright require GM fiat but those are few and far between and not really worth the nitpick. If you want a very basic no hassle caster for you games I would reccomend picking this up. It doesn't exactly contribute something incredibly necessary to the game but its simple and fun to play leaving me to give it 4 stars.
The basics:
*Has an at-will energy blast with a logical damage increase progression
*Has up at-will spell-like abilities
*Learns abilities for enhancing the energy blast
*4 different pacts to choose from(Demon, Devil, Fey, Lovecraftian-horror), which grant an ability to the user certain thematically different abilities at certain level.
The good:
*Over the course of the levels, the energy blast gains optional effects to enhance it in addition to its at-will spell-like abilities.
*Pact abilities are obtained throughout the class levels
*The new feats are decently balanced
*The energy blast deals untyped damage or a damage type based off the nature of the pact the Invoker has, which lets the user balance power & flavor.
*The various incantations(spell-like abilities) & pact abilities are very flavorful
*There is a good bit of content for the money
The bad:
*a minor formatting issue or two
Overall
When I first review it, it needed some work. The developers were quick & thorough with their adjustments. Now, this is a pretty solid class that really gets the occult feel down. I highly recommend it.
Sure, they are:
Ancestor Pact (kinda aberration-ish)
Celestial Pact (kinda good-aligned outsider-ish. Remember, "good" doesn't always mean nice.)
+12 new invocation
+7 new blast traits
+4 new feats
+9 Invoker magic items
+A short player's guide to the invoker.
+A favored class table.
Hi, first of all my group and I absolutely love this class, you did an amazing work and I can't wait to download Tome of Tomes too. I have two question about how the class works:
1. If I have the demon pact (which allows me to add my level to Mystic Blast damage) and the Mystic Arrow/Mystic Blade blast trait, am I able to add my level to the damage of the arrow/blade, in addition to my Mystic Blast damage?
2. If I take Vital Strike feat, am I able to apply it to the attack made with Mystic Arrow/Blade?
Thank you
1. If I had to rule it, they are two separate kinds of actions.
So they wouldn't be able to apply at the same time.
If you, as a GM, want to allow it (say you find they are dropping behind in damage or it's something important to them) you could allow it.
2. So, in game terms, Vital Strike can't be used with any other full round action (like it can't be used with a charge) though it can be modified by things that modify attacks (such as power attack). Using vital Strike IS a full round action so they don't have a standard after that.
