Eldritch Glaive.

[NegInfinity]

I think I found a way to make eldritch glaive acceptable for the server.

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Proposed version:

Least; 2nd; Blast Shape
Your eldritch blast takes on physical substance, appearing
similar to a glaive. As a full-round action, you can make a
single melee touch attack as it wielding a reach weapon. If you
hit, your target is affected as if struck by your eldritch blast
(including any eldritch essence applied to the blast). Unlike
hideous blow (Complete Arcane 134), you cannot combine your
eldritch glaive with damage from a held weapon.

Basically... switches eldritch blast to one melee touch attack that deals damage once and provokes attack of opportunity. Melee touch hideous blow. That's it. Oh, and it should spawn glaive and play hitting animation.

If someone wants multi-hit version, there's few ways about it:
1. Roll several melee touch attacks and still deal damage once if one of melee touch attacks hits.
2. Cap maximum number of hits (each dealing full EB damage) to, say, two, but still deal full eb damage.
3. Lock warlock in place for one round, but still deal multiple attacks.

I think that #1 multi-hit version would be appropriate as well.

Here's full original text ofr eldrtich glaive:

Hidden: show

Least; 2nd; Blast Shape
Your eldritch blast takes on physical substance, appearing
similar to a glaive. As a full-round action, you can make a
single melee touch attack as it wielding a reach weapon. If you
hit, your target is affected as if struck by your eldritch blast
(including any eldritch essence applied to the blast). Unlike
hideous blow (Complete Arcane 134), you cannot combine your
eldritch glaive with damage from a held weapon.
Furthermore, until the start of your next turn, you also
threaten nearby squares as if wielding a reach weapon, and
you can make attacks of opportunity with your eldritch glaive.
These are melee touch attacks.
If your base attack bonus is +6 or higher, you can (as part
of the full-round action) make as many attacks with your
eldritch glaive as your base attack bonus allows. For example, a
12th-level warlock could attack twice, once with a base attack
bonus of+6, and again with a base attack bonus of +1.

[Deathgrowl]

Seems fine, as it is only once per round. What's the purpose, though? It's exactly the same as a normal blast, except you have to be in melee range. All it adds is a bit of animation.

[NegInfinity]

Seems fine, as it is only once per round. What's the purpose, though? It's exactly the same as a normal blast, except you have to be in melee range. All it adds is a bit of animation.

It is different from normal blast because it uses melee touch instead of ranged touch.

Aside from that, flavor mostly. Because waving around blades made out of raw magical energy is cool..

Either way, this is the most nerfed version I could think of that would most likely be allowed here.

If you can think of a way to beef it up and make it worth investing for other reasons than "flavor" or switching to melee touch, feel free to propose it.

PnP eldritch glaive allowed several attacks per round (with full blast damage each), each using melee touch. also, it appears that it had some movement restrictions to it.

[Deathgrowl]

Mechanically, what is the benefit of being melee touch over ranged touch? If there is none, this is the exact opposite of Eldrich Spear (which makes the range longer). All it does is make eldrich blast less powerful. But adds some flavour animation.

I don't see any reason to not add this. But is it worth the work? How many are going to pick this invocation over other invocations where you already have a quite limited amount of known invocations?

I'm all for flavour, by the way. Excellent suggestion as far as flavour is concerned. I'm just not convinced it will be used by more than one character.

[NegInfinity]

Mechanically, what is the benefit of being melee touch over ranged touch?

Different base attribute for the bonus to hit. Melee touch scales with strength. Ranged touch scales with dex. It might result in something interesting, just not sure in what exactly.

I'm just not convinced it will be used by more than one character.

Well, there were several more powerful variations provided.
0. Just plain melee touch with EB damage, once per round. (original proposition)
1. Roll multiple melee touch attacks (according to your BAB) and deal full eldritch blast damage if one of them hits. Higher BAB will increase hit chance this way.
2. Do multiple attacks with full damage each, but cap total number of attacks. Say, to two or three attacks per round max.
3. No limit or number of attacks, but you lock character in place for duration of the spell. (because there were some complications with eldritch glaive moement, IIRC).
4. Or you can just go with kaedrin version.

Now, what will that be? ^_^.

Remember, as I said, if you have a decent way to beef it up while ensuring that it is acceptable for bgtscc, feel free to propose it.

If you think that there's no benefit, then maybe capping it to two or three attacks that can deal damage would be still acceptable.

[Lux]

I like it too. Perhaps it could do with a teensy more power or some other flavour to compare to the ranged touch attack otherwise it's like Deathgrowl said: Melee TA are less useful than Ranged TA. But that's a balance question. I'm bookmarking this at any rate.

[NegInfinity]

I like it too. Perhaps it could do with a teensy more power or some other flavour to compare to the ranged touch attack otherwise it's like Deathgrowl said: Melee TA are less useful than Ranged TA. But that's a balance question. I'm bookmarking this at any rate.

Well, another way to go about it is to still deal multiple hits and have each hit after 1st deal reduced damage.

For example, full blast on first hit, 1/2 on 2nd, 1/4th on 3rd etc . Or you could just have halved damage for every hit after 1st (because glaive would have reduced AB for each consequentual attack, so you'll only deal insane damage if you're lucky enough to roll d20 several times in a row).

with any of this approaches, you'll have a reason to use glaive, BUT you'll be putting character at risk by doing so.

It is also possible to add fun things like making it fail if character holds a weapon in right hand, etc.

Either way, it would be nice to have this, it is just someone (from QC?) needs to decide how much extra damage is it worth for a warlock to get close and personal to the target. The most conservative proposition is "it is worth no extra damage", meaning you'll only get plain blast that uses melee touch.

[Young Werther]

Melee touch attack could be boosted by daggerspell mage 5. Also I like this idea so str warlocks are more viable. Warlocks are a really flexible class (usually) we should add more options.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that melee bypasses Storm Avatar.

[metaquad4]

What about hitting for the same amount of attacks as your regular attacks (1-6 attacks), but the damage is spread about between those blasts (is such a thing possible to make?).

So, with a BAB of 16 you have 4 attacks. If you had 12d6, then it would hit 4 times and do 3d6 on each hit

It'd probably calculate the full damage first, then spread the damage out between the attacks.

Either that, or option 1 (Roll several melee touch attacks and still deal damage once if one of melee touch attacks hits.) imo. Either or wouldn't be too awful.

Personally, I think the reduced damage/hit is a neat idea, but I doubt the decision makers would go for it. Considering, an optimal warlock will already go into harm's way, with the radial AoE blasts (several 4th level invocations offer a good degree of protection, and those ones are the only ones really worth taking. The stunning one is ok on a DC lock, but that is about it.).

[NegInfinity]

What about hitting for the same amount of attacks as your regular attacks (1-6 attacks), but the damage is spread about between those blasts (is such a thing possible to make?).

I considered this too, but....

That'll make invocation almost completely pointless, because you'll be consistently dealing less damage than with your normal blast - simply because at least one of them will not hit.

Personally, I think the reduced damage/hit is a neat idea, but I doubt the decision makers would go for it.

I've considered making some tables to demonstrate damage spread for warlock level vs specific ac, but I might only get to that on the weekend. Due to the way random chances works, I think that a glaive where subsequent hits deal halved damage (meaning all hits after first one are 1/2 of full eldritch blast, and not 1 1/2 1/4 1/8) could be at tolerable power level here.

[Karond]

Instead of having +EB, which turns them all into dualwielders, one could just spike damage or to hit with a flat bonus. Seems acceptable given that you can't do any blast shape changes, and I presume to essences either? If so, the bonus could be fairly decent (like +10 damage or hit chance) and still be balanced.

[NegInfinity]

Instead of having +EB, which turns them all into dualwielders, one could just spike damage or to hit with a flat bonus. Seems acceptable given that you can't do any blast shape changes, and I presume to essences either? If so, the bonus could be fairly decent (like +10 damage or hit chance) and still be balanced.

Karond, what are you talking about?

Eldritch Glaive is a pretty much a halbred made out of eldritch blast and exists for one round (when you cast the blade). You form the weapon out of raw energy, hit stuff with it and it instantly dissipates. It is not treated as a real weapon and it is treated as melee touch attack. Enchantment Bonus? Dual Wielding? What? It is not this kind of invocation. You can't dual-wield it. You don't get any enchantment bonuses on it. You can't weapon focus in it. You can't GMW it. Etc, etc, etc.

You CAN apply essences to it. Because it is made out of eldritch blast stuff.

[Karond]

0. Just plain melee touch with EB damage, once per round. (original proposition)

Based that on the above. If you get the EB of your weapon added to glaive damage, why wouldn't you want to dualwield to get double the EB bonus to glaive? But I guess you meant Eldritch Blast instead of the far more common use of EB (Enchantment Bonus).

If essences are still applied it might still need some form of bonus, as just a short-range melee touch once per round isn't all that.

[Steve]

I would imagine that an Eldritch Glaive could happen using both hands, thus, two attacks.

If Eldritch Glaive gave 2 attacks per round, as MRA, and each attack providing full Eldritch damage, that could be powerful.

But, it wouldn't work if a Shield was equipped, and would still be a question of whether bracers or gloves of EB would count toward the damage/AB.

So, Glaive would then be an alternate route from either Eldritch Spear, or Hideous Blow (where the former is a RTA and bypasses a host of AC, and the latter benefits from the weapon wielded, in both DMG and AB).

[Young Werther]

You could add strength bonus *1.5 to the damage and maybe a little extra for being a glaive. Or maybe you could have the glaive do a "cleave" effect where it targets multiple creatures around you each with a melee check.