Prerequisite: 12th level, Pact of the Blade feature
When you hit a creature with your pact weapon, the creature takes extra necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum 1).
Lifedrinker: I Thirst for Something More
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
A slick black blade dripping with recently drawn blood has got edge to it. Pact of the Blade warlocks tend to revel in these images; the badass anti-hero with a dark past and might look a bit too much like a Castlevania villain for their own good. When you’re building this ultimate dark villainous hero, features like LIFEDRINKER stand out as Metal. As. Hell. Yet when you look beyond its title, Lifedrinker doesn’t really do anything with drinking life. It's just the ranger capstone feature.
Lifedrinker has two prerequisites, one written, and one secret. First, you need to be level 12 to get it, which sure, that’s reasonable. The second is that you’ve also taken the Thirsting Blade invocation, as it doubles Lifedrinker’s effectiveness. This can be a major damage bump on the multi-attacking bladelocks out there; getting a bonus +3 - +5 on every weapon hit quickly adds up, and seeing as warlocks love having high Charismas, it makes perfect sense. This isn’t a weak invocation, by any stretch.
What bums me out about Lifedrinker is the promised fantasy it doesn’t deliver on. Lifedrinker implies consumption of life. That to me screams draining enemies of their vitality as you bite into their necks or stab your magic greatsword through their bellies. It evokes a strong fantasy that tons of player’s desperately want and can’t get outside of trash like Vampiric Touch and Enervation. Lifedrinker says you drink life, but you don’t. You just add an extra modifier to your weapon hits.
The cardinal sin a D&D feature can commit is being boring when it sounds awesome, and that to me is Lifedrinker. This invocation you wait till 12th level to get doesn’t give you new things to do, it doesn't offer you new ways to play with your pact weapon. It doesn’t promote a specific fantasy. It just makes numbers go up. It could be so much more than that.
Give it flavor. Give it ribbons. They don’t need to be powerful, it has a powerful effect already, but for a class so dedicated to the edgy fantasies of undead lich patrons and devil contracts, being boring is just unacceptable.
If you’re a mid tier warlock with Thirsting Blade, this is a no-brainer. It's powerful. You’ll get more damage out of it. This is how you continue to scale in melee combat versus your fighter and paladin friends. You won’t stand above them with it, but you’ll come closer to where they’re at. If you don’t have Thirsting Blade, do not take this. If you have Pact of the Blade for flavor or niche utility usage, this isn’t good enough.
Why does this have to sound so promising, yet be a flat modifier adjustment? Boo, game designers. Boo to you.
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