Stealing, like many crimes, has different degrees of severity. Steal an apple and you’re a petty thief. Steal a chicken and you’re a poultry thief. Steal the heart of the lord’s daughter, the apple of his eye, and you’re likely a poetic thief.
Steal a cursed apple from the garden of Hell itself, originally intended for the devil’s greatest servant? You’re a Pact-Thief.
Rogue-PactThief-v3.1
You can also click here to view the PDF separately!
The Pact-Thief, possibly the single least well advised choice of profession you’ll ever find. Thievery isn’t the best career at the best of times, but if you’re going to do it at least don’t be mad enough to try to steal from people like Asmodeus (ruler of the Nine Hells) or Hadar (hungering psionic entity from the Far Realms). Steal from someone smaller. Like Vecna.
Features:
- Updated to function with any patron, and any pact! That’s right, don’t just steal from fiends, archfey, and great old ones, but celestials and Shadowfell entities as well!
- Once again, sneakily attack with eldritch blast using your Eldritch Finesse! It’s just like doing it with a dagger, just… more forceful.
- Steal an invocation or two as well! You can’t take just any of them, but you can choose from quite a few options!
- Misplace Blame even earlier in your career! Why wait to the very end before throwing people under the bus?
- And lastly, we’re back to grand theft arcanum! Get that 4th level spell, and pay for it with your patron’s credit card – they won’t mind (probably)!
Design Notes:
- Edit: Funnily enough, somebody stole the actual effect of Misplace Blame and so the original version of the doc didn’t have it. –glares at rogues–
- Anyway, it’s in there now! Thanks /u/Crowloq for pointing that out to me.
- Firstly, this is likely to appear in a DM’s Guild product in the future! Just wanted to get that out there.
- And now for a special note on Agonizing Blast. I can just tell, already, that people are going to ask why that’s the only eldritch blast invocation I didn’t include on the pact-thief list. The reason for that is simple; it’s class identity. Having eldritch blast as a spellcasting modifier adding damage cantrip is something that’s unique to the warlock (and evocation wizards but that isn’t important here). Additionally, Agonizing Blast is unneeded in a class that gets to add Sneak Attack to eldritch blast. It’d just be overkill, literally.
- Otherwise, we’ll see what people think! I love the pact-thief, to this day it’s one of my favorite class options I’ve ever made. I love the flavor of it, and I think it’s been fun in each iteration. Now, however, is time to move it to something consistent and solid.
- For that reason, I’ve uncoupled the choice of Patron and Pact from most of the rest of the class. Your Patron gives you extra spells to choose from, and your Pact gives you a Pact Boon. This future-proofs the class, ensuring it should function correctly with whatever new warlock options get released later.
- I brought back Sneak Attack for eldritch blast since I was repeatedly told it was some people’s favorite part of the subclass. I worry that may be because it’s overpowered, but if that’s the case I plan to just limit it like it was before. You can add Sneak Attack, but can only fire one ray of eldritch blast if that’s what you want to do.
- Finally, I moved Misplace Blame a bit earlier since it’s a key part of the subclass’s identity, and I moved Arcanum Larceny later to make sure the subclass gets its 4th level spells at a similar time to when the arcane trickster does (though pact-thief still gets it sooner, which I’m fine with).
- Ultimately, I’m happy with the result. We’ll see what everyone else thinks though, which is why I’m not quite ready to declare this the “final” version. Not yet, but soon.
Let me know what you think!