You have advantage on Constitution saving throws that you make to maintain your concentration on a spell.
Eldritch Mind: Hold That Thought
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
War Caster is a feat that gives you advantage on saving throws made to maintain your concentration, the ability to cast spells with somatic components with your hands full of weapons, and a reaction to cast an action that would target that creature. Eldritch Mind is a warlock invocation that just offers the first line of text, and honestly, I don’t think that’s enough.
I already struggle to fit Warcaster onto my spellcasters, even my combat based ones. Having to sink a feat that could otherwise be an ability score improvement for your Dex or casting modifier is just such a tall order in those builds. Eldritch Mind competes with a different resource, but one that is as integral to a lot of builds as an ability score increase feels to me. Warlocks need things to do while they’re gated by their two pact magic slots. This passive effect, while nice to have for empowering your concentration effects and buying a few more rounds with them during tough fights, is hard to justify when it isn’t giving anything new for the warlock to do. It just sometimes extends effects you already have access to.
Instead, consider what something like Misty Visions or Gift of the Depths do; both offer you a new tool that lets you play the game slightly differently. Invocations like Fiendish Vigor and Mask of Many Faces, alongside the aforementioned Misty Visions, give you endless free casts of 1st level spells. That actually reasonably competes with full casters; they get more spell slots, but you get unlimited casts of specific spells. There’s a trade off there. With Eldritch Mind, you aren’t getting more resources you need to feel like you’re keeping up with the full casters, you’re just getting a tool that lets you use your fewer slots slightly better in dangerous situations.
Warlocks need their invocations to expand how they play. Thirsting Blade and Agonizing Blast empower an action those characters want to be taking over and over again in a powerful way you feel when using them. Eldritch Mind does a similar thing, but is entirely passive. You have next to no agency when it comes to determining how much value you can get out of your Eldritch Mind; it’ll be on the dice and your DM how challenged your concentration is. It feels worse to play with.
Beyond just feeling, the builds that use it have some real issues. On the ranged warlocks, you’re getting less out of this; you intend to take less damage based on your positioning, meaning you’re making fewer concentration saves and getting less out of this effect. Melee warlocks have a already very few spare invocations to take, often needing things like Thirsting Blade just to function in the mid tiers, and leaning heavily on Improved Pact Weapon and Fiendish Vigor-like invocations to stay alive and meaningfully contributing to fights. Taking Eldritch Mind would be nice for them, sure, but it just doesn’t quite do enough where I feel like I’d ever justify it over something to expand the out of combat capabilities on those characters after dedicating so many invocations to violence.
Eldritch Mind is an invocation you pick up near the top end of play when no other invocations really interest you I think, or if you’re feeling particularly dedicated to a single concentration based spell you want to define your character. Outside of these two situations, it just doesn’t do enough for me to say I’d recommend it over taking an invocation that gives you new actions to take, new tools to explore the game with. Warlock needs those too much to be able to justify a passive effect like this, especially in the lower tiers.
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