Prerequisite: Pact of the Talisman feature
When the wearer of your talisman is hit by an attacker you can see within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction to deal psychic damage to the attacker equal to your proficiency bonus and push it up to 10 feet away from the talisman's wearer.
Rebuke of the Talisman: Step Off
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
The Pact Boons are four options (three from the Player’s Handbook and one from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything) that define a play pattern different warlocks are looking to go towards. Pact of the Blade pushes a character towards martial melee combat and multi-attacking with Thirsting Blade, Pact of the Chain gives a character a familiar and the tools to act as a more supportive jack of all trades, and Pact of the Tome gives warlocks tools to empower the full caster fantasy they otherwise lack with bonus cantrips from any class. These three did a pretty solid job covering character build diversity; creating new Pacts that could achieve the same goal is certainly challenging. Pact of the Talisman, on its own, comes nowhere close to Chain or Tome, acting as a Guidance-like skill buff a few times per long rest on its own. It can only ever affect the worn creature as well, meaning it's often a selfish option that’s only kind of empowering you. It doesn’t give a clear direction to build towards. You just will be slightly better at skill checks typically, and rarely have moments to give that boon to a buddy. It doesn’t deliver as a boon on its own.
Rebuke of the Talisman gives you a reason to stick it on somebody other than yourself if you’re a ranged warlock, which is nifty, and a reason to want to take damage for some melee warlock builds. This, to me, needs to be a base feature of the pact, not an expanded invocation, especially given the reactive nature of it. What it rewards you with for successfully choosing what character is likely to get damaged the most is a free reaction that deals a tiny amount of psychic damage and a 10 ft. push. Seeing as the damage is once a round and capping out at a bonus 6 damage in the very highest tiers of play, the bulk of what you need to care about is the push, and to its credit, there is some nifty building to go with here. This encourages you to work in Hunger of Hadar and other area of effect damaging spells into your build that can act as a payoff for clever positioning and getting melee enemies into impossible situations. Sticking a damaging area spell on top of an engaging enemy that they can exit to attack from can give you a fairly consistent way to set up a fight; the fighter stands ten feet out from the damage with your talisman. When they’re hit, the creature is thrown back into the damage, which can occasionally be the first time a creature enters a damaging area on its turn, dealing bonus damage and forcing saves.
If you’re looking to play a Pact of the Talisman warlock, Rebuke of the Talisman probably needs to be the reason. It's the real central feature that gives you a specific play pattern to work with: the battlefield controller warlock. You set up an ally in one position with your talisman, pick up the push and pull Eldritch Blast invocations, and use your concentration to create a large damaging area you manipulate baddies into over and over again. Rebuke can play a major role in that build in fantasy, and that’s more or less entirely independent of Pact of the Talisman’s base text.
Want to be the battlefield controller, pushing stuff around into areas of damage you and your friends set up? Looking to play the eldritch tactician? Rebuke of the Talisman can be a reaction you weaponize incredibly efficiently in that build. Beyond that, if you aren’t looking to majorly take advantage of the shove effect, I can’t really see this finding its way onto character sheets unless you’re absolutely starved for a reaction and don’t want to switch to a better pact.
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