A Thom Which is Beyond

For what might be my final post of 2023, I thought we might take a look at how Thom would be different if we had built him using the That Which is Beyond patron, a Warlock subclass built by KibblesTasty as an improvement on the Great Old One Patron. Great Old One isn’t horribly bad, but many of its features have been left behind by 5e Power creep while others remain underpowered and not fitting themewise in their own right.

With that in mind, I’ve done a level-by-level build for a version of Thom using this subclass and I’ll be going over where things differ and what new decisions I made in light of those changes.

Unfortunately I cannot link you directly to the subclass, as the creator has not made it available for free on his website. The best I can do is link you the original kickstarter page, where $10 will get you a PDF copy of his first book.

Starting off at Level 1, we get our first big difference. There’s a much larger variety of ways to get access to Telepathy that works both ways, so getting a one-way version as your sole feature for level 1 in a subclass doesn’t exactly give much. That Which is Beyond makes it two-way. But that’s not all, we also gain a limited ability to use the Telepathic Intrusion psionic power (originally build for Kibs’ Psion class) as a bonus action.

Telepathic Intrusion allows us to inflict 1d8 psychic damage if the target fails a Wisdom save. Now getting this as a bonus action ability on TOP of two-way telepathy might seem like far too much, but we can only use it a number of times equal to our proficiency bonus, and these uses recharge on a long rest, not a short one. At our current level of 7, that amounts to three times a day. We’ll have to pick and choose when to use this very carefully.

We’re otherwise going to keep the same options as Thom picked originally: Eldritch Blast and Chill Touch as his level 1 cantrips, the Actor feat as his free feat for being a Variant Human (let’s be real, is it even a Variant anymore? I don’t know of a single person who plays a human who doesn’t use this), and Hex and Terrifying Visions as his two first-level spells. Okay, so Terrifying Visions is different, but since Dissonant Whispers is not published in the SRD (and thus cannot legally be included in any third party materials that are being sold), Kibbles created Terrifying Visions as a copy of the spell for his book. The only different between the two is the nature of the effect is visual rather than auditory, mechanically the spells work identically.

For Level 2, we’re going to keep to the same Invocations of Devil’s Sight and Agonizing Blast, but instead of taking Arms of Hadar, we’re going to grab the other bonus spell granted by both subclasses, Hideous Laughter. Arms was a spell that felt thematic but in practice never ended up being particularly useful. Having a chance to incapacitate a single target without harming them, however, I can think of multiple occasions when that would have been useful in the campaign.

Level 3 will see no changes from original Thom. We’re still going to take Pact of the Tome and the same three cantrips (Guidance, Minor Illusion, and Mind Sliver), and we’re still going to pick up Detect Thoughts as our new spell. All of these have been entirely too useful not to keep.

Level 4 is going to be a big changeup. Original Thom took Toll the Dead as his new cantrip, Darkness as his new spell, and for a Feat grabbed Eldritch Adept, taking the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. We’re gonna keep Darkness, but otherwise everything else will change.

Toll the Dead is an interesting and perfectly good cantrip, but it doesn’t really fit our theme, and frankly Thom has Mind Sliver if we need to use a cantrip that requires a saving throw due to adjacent enemy threats. The utility of Mage Hand is something I can recall wishing I had access to more than once, and once we hit level 8, I am more than likely going to retrain Toll the Dead to this. Here, we’re just going to take it right away.

The Book of Ancient Secrets invocation is designed to give the Warlock some utility in the form of allowing ritual spells. I could have, perhaps, done a more effective set of choices in my initial rituals, but I think for the purposes of our build, we’ll just go ahead and take the invocation I eventually replaced it with, Repelling Blast. As of yet, we don’t have any of our big “Lay down an area of doom” spells to push foes into, but we’re getting there.

Darkness hasn’t seen much use from me in the campaign thus far, aside from that one fight where I cast it on myself to make eldritch blast attacks with advantage. We’ll actually be replacing it with another spell very shortly, however.

For Level 5, we’re keeping things mostly the same here. Enemies Abound will be our new spell, Eldritch Mind is our new invocation. Thom originally retrained Arms of Hadar for Hunger of Hadar at this level. We didn’t take Arms of Hadar here, so instead we’re gonna replace Darkness. Since Rho has ruled that my Devil’s Sight invocation can see through Hunger of Hadar, the spell is something of a direct upgrade over Darkness. I can’t use it as defensively, but as a disorienting measure on foes, Hunger adds damage on top of that. I’ve made far too many good uses of this spell not to pick it up again.

Level 6 sees us pick up our next subclass features. Rather than the extremely unthematic Entropic Ward, we get advantages on saving throws to be Charmed or Frightened, plus the Terrifying Modifier is added to our uses of Telepathic Intrusion, causing enemies who fail the save to now additionally be Frightened of us until the end of our next turn. This is a much more useful and helpful ability, plus it frankly feels entirely more thematic to the idea of a psionic-based warlock fueled by the powerful mind of an eldritch being.

For our new spell, I’ve chosen to pick up Suggestion, just as I had with the original version of Thom. I am also electing to retrain Detect Thoughts for Delve Mind, a new spell granted by the subclass that replaces Clairvoyance in the spells granted list. Delve Mind allows us to access the memories of the past twelve hours on a failed Intelligence save. While this is certainly powerful, it does mean I sacrifice Detect Thoughts’ ability to freely scan the surface thoughts of a creature with no save required, and while I am somewhat reluctant to lose that, access to 12 hours worth of memories is worth it, in my estimation.

Finally, we come to where Thom is at currently, with Level 7, We’re going to keep things mostly the same here, taking Black Tentacles for our new spell and Ghostly Gaze for our new Invocation. We’re also going to retrain out Hex, just as we did on our original build, but this time we’re replacing it with another new spell from the Spells Granted list – Summon Horror. You might think this is similar to Summon Aberration, and you’d be right. There are some key differences, however. The Horror Spirit the new spell summons has far less HP than the Aberration (25 vs 40 HP), but the horror spirit has resistance against non-magical B/P/S damage and is immune to poison damage on top of the Psychic immunity both possess. The Horror Spirit also lacks a ranged combat option, requiring it to be in melee range to attack, though each of its form variations have different options that aid it in melee combat as well. It’s been far too simple just to summon the Beholder version of the Aberrant Spirit and use its ranged eye rays, I think the use of the Horror will make for a more interesting set of combat options to help my friends.

And there we have it. As of this post, we have not yet resumed Plus 5 to Hit’s Rime campaign, so I am still making final decisions on what Thom will take at level 8, but I have little reason to believe that we’d be seeing any major differences here, aside from maybe a retraining choice that wouldn’t apply. I’ll try to have a post detailing our level 8 choices up before we record our next episode on the 15th of January. Until then, thank you for reading and happy new year!