So Monday we took a first look at adapting the 5e Warlock class for Starfinder (tackling proficiencies and the class table), and yesterday we outlined how we are going to handle spell access and spell slots.

It’s time to tackle a Patron.

Your patron is one of the crucial elements of the warlock. It represents the otherwordly force with which you have made a pact, and from which you gain your powers. The concept is vaguely similar to mystic connections, but warlocks interact with their patrons using different rites and rituals, and have access to their own list of possible patrons.

At 1st level each patron gives you an eldritch blast, a special way to boost the save DC of spells you cast, and access to a series of patron gifts you can choose from at higher levels.

While we’d likely to patrons for at least a half-dozen options in a full version of the class, for now let’s create the classic fiendish patron option.

Fiendish Patron
You are somehow bound to a fiend from the lower planes of existence, and in a different way it is bound to you. You might have sought out this pact using nearly-post ancient traditions of soul-beinding and true names, or it may have occurred without any desire for it on your part.

You might have stumbled across some unhold alien atifact and trigger it to make a pact with no understanding of what you were doing. You might have been born during a complex galactic conjunction that marked you forever before you could even talk. Your parents might have been experimented upon by unethical fiendomancers seeking a way to imbue future generations with infernal power.

However your patron came to fuel a pact with you, this is a being whose aims are evil, even if you strive against those aims. Such beings desire the corruption or destruction of all things, ultimately including you. Fiends powerful enough to forge a pact include demon lords, archdevils, pit fiends and balors that are especially mighty, and ultroloths and other lords of the yugoloths.

Eldritch Blast (Su)
You gain the power to channel a form of fiendish fire as an attack against your foes. Select a weapon you are proficient with from the flame category, which uses batteries or petrol and has a usage of 4 or less. It must have an item level no greater than your warlock level. Once this decision is made it cannot be changed until you gain another warlock level.

If you have at least one hand free, you can make eldritch blast attacks that act as if you were attacking with this weapon. It is treated as an integral weapons except as noted. You use your key ability modifier, rather than Strength or Dexterity, to add to your attack rolls with your eldritch blast. You may choose to make half your eldritch blast damage untyped planar hellfire. If you run out of petrol or battery charges, you can “reload” your eldritch blast as a standard action.

Your eldritch blast can benefit from effects that could augment the weapon it is emulating. You can place fusion seals on yourself to affect your eldritch blast as if you were the weapon it is emulating.

Dark One’s Power
Starting at 1st level, when you reduce a hostile creature to 0 or fewer hit points, you gain a Dark Point. When you cast a spell, you can expend a Dark Point to cause its save DC to be 10 +1/2 your warlock level +your key ability modifier. This is adjusted by any abilities or feats that adjust your spell’s save DCs. You lose all unused Dark Points when you recuperate.*

Fiendish Eldritch Master
At 20th level, you gain the ability to open rifts between planes. This allows you to use plane shift or summon monster VI as a spell-like ability once per day.

Additionally, you can select any one patron gift from any patron that does not list a level requirement, or any patron gift from your own patron.

*Recuperate is my proposed game term to represent when a character spends 1 Resolve Point to regain Stamina Points following a 10-minute rest.

So, what patron gifts will the Fiendish patron allow a star warlock to choose from? Check in tomorrow to find out!

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