Eldritch Blast: Blast from the Cast

Usable By: Warlock

Spell Level: 0 (cantrip)

School: Evocation

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 120 feet

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S

A beam of crackling energy streaks toward a creature within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1d10 force damage.

The spell creates more than one beam when you reach higher levels: two beams at 5th level, three beams at 11th level, and four beams at 17th level. You can direct the beams at the same target or at different ones. Make a separate attack roll for each beam.

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Eldritch Blast is the warlock cantrip everyone knows the class for. It's honestly closer to a class feature to many than a cantrip, as it can feel like how warlocks are intended to navigate the game in its entirety. A lot of invocations warlocks get to pick from require Eldritch Blast and empower it in some way, making it an easy and obvious option to build around. With just Agonizing Blast, warlocks can have a solid scaling damage option, and don’t even need to worry about continuing to take levels in warlock. With all of that being said, I can’t in good faith recommend Eldritch Blast for warlocks. It's just so boring to me.

Warlocks are closer to artificers in the lower tiers than full casters. They’re these little magical toolboxes with some neat invocations, decent weapon and armor proficiencies, and a varied array of directions you can build towards to create the exact character you want. The warlock class offers the most choices per level out of any class; you get a subclass and spell selections at 1, a new spell and warlock invocations at 2, and new spells and a pact boon choice at three (two of which offer you more customization options within them). This makes them exceptional options to dip a few levels into if you want a robust diversity of options to enhance any build.

This puts Eldritch Blast in kind of an odd spot. If you pick Eldritch Blast at 1st level, a lot of your other choices down the road start to lean heavily on it. Agonizing Blast feels like an invocation you have to take, otherwise Eldritch Blast feels worse than a shortbow would in the low tiers. Hex and Shadow of Moil meld into that build really easily. By default, instead of opening up new options to explore, instead of expanding your toolbox of nifty arcane toys to play with, it becomes more and more enticing to just continue to improve the one thing you know you do well. Suddenly, every encounter starts to feel exactly the same; bonus action marking spell into action Eldritch Blast. Its range makes you not really care about your position, and its effectiveness makes you feel like you’re contributing without really asking you to make many meaningful decisions. Because you only get two or three spell slots for the first half of the game, it can start to feel like all you can do, and it makes a lot of people bored with the class.

Eldritch Blast is powerful. Eldritch Blast is easy to use. If you don’t want to worry about combat at all, and want to dedicate almost all of your options to out of combat features, you can absolutely pick up Agonizing Blast and Eldritch Blast and never think about a combat feature ever again. If you want to engage in combat in diverse ways, making interesting decisions, care about your speed, positioning, and other options, Eldritch Blast isn’t going to do that. It tends to just become a default, something you do every round regardless of other options because it's the best and easiest option available. I’m a big proponent of a pair of short swords, a short bow, and a +2 Dex on warlocks in the early tiers. This will often be just enough combat prowess without needing to spend any of your build decisions to get there.

I do feel it's important I mention some of the “cheesier” builds with Eldritch Blast, specifically on Sorcerers with a two level warlock dip. Quicken spell opens up bonus action Eldritch Blasts, and pact magic spell slots can be easily converted into sorcery points. You can easily throw together builds whose entire goal is to fire out two or more casts of Eldritch Blast a round, often resulting in six to ten bolts dealing 1d10+5 damage each. Grab a couple of fighter levels for a bonus to your AC and action surge and you can have a once per short rest three Eldritch Blast casts a round for up to FIFTEEN in a single turn, resulting in massive damage off of just cantrip casts and short rest recharging features. It's pretty bananas.

All things considered I probably am not representative of how most people feel about Eldritch Blast, but I personally don’t find it to be that fun to play with. I want my in game features to offer me rewards for interesting positional trade-offs, and Eldritch Blast is just good regardless of circumstances. At its floor, it's a slightly better Fire Bolt, and its ceiling has some major potential to turn a warlock into a gatling gun. You don’t have to dedicate any part of your build outside of a learned cantrip to it, but it encourages you to do so, especially with how limiting pact magic is. This might result in the build feeling boring to navigate and play; I’d recommend martial builds over this basically every time, especially at lower level tables. Besides by gripes, it's a powerful spell that is cheap to take and rewards sinking features into it. Boring, but undoubtedly powerful.

5e Spells

Eldritch Blast: Blast from the Cast