Level Up (A5E) Thoughts on Eldritch Blast options for Warlock

Verall said:

That’s a general rule though.

“Thirsting Blade Prerequisite: 5th level, Pact of the Blade feature You can attack with your pact weapon twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.”

The invocation would be a specific rule, in this instance stating an additional attack for your pact weapon. One of your dual wielded weapons wouldn’t be a pact weapon so wouldn’t be able to make a second attack.

Is there something I’m missing?

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With regards to off hand attacks, I would treat Thirsting Blade the same as extra attack. Do you believe Thirsting Blade should not be treated the same because the words “extra attack” are not used?

Deadmanshand said:

With regards to off hand attacks, I would treat Thirsting Blade the same as extra attack. Do you believe Thirsting Blade should not be treated the same because the words “extra attack” are not used?

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I’d like it to be treated as extra attack, but I’m a player not, the DM, so when I start making extra attacks with my offhand I’d like it to be clearly backed up by the rules.

Would you add Life drinker to the offhand damage? It uses the same wording.

lichmaster said:

I think your off-hand attack would be a normal secondary weapon attack, if you have any

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So a single attack for the offhand?

Verall said:

I’d like it to be treated as extra attack, but I’m a player not, the DM, so when I start making extra attacks with my offhand I’d like it to be clearly backed up by the rules.

Would you add Life drinker to the offhand damage? It uses the same wording.

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I am not sure what you are implying here. Thirsting Blade gives you two attacks with your pact weapon.

So if that weapon is one handed and does not have the heavy property, then you may use another weapon in your off hand that has the dual wielding property. As a 1-4th level warlock that is one main hand attack and as a bonus action, an off hand attack. As a 5th level warlock you can do two attacks with pact weapon and two attacks with the off hand weapon (assuming the above criteria is met).

I am the Narrator at my table and I would rule it that way. In fact our group has a Rogue/Warlock melee build who is looking forward to reaching 5th level in warlock.

Deadmanshand said:

I am not sure what you are implying here. Thirsting Blade gives you two attacks with your pact weapon.

So if that weapon is one handed and does not have the heavy property, then you may use another weapon in your off hand that has the dual wielding property. As a 1-4th level warlock that is one main hand attack and as a bonus action, an off hand attack. As a 5th level warlock you can do two attacks with pact weapon and two attacks with the off hand weapon (assuming the above criteria is met).

I am the Narrator at my table and I would rule it that way. In fact our group has a Rogue/Warlock melee build who is looking forward to reaching 5th level in warlock.

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What I’m getting at is the thirsting blade is not the extra attack feature, it does not state as much anywhere in the feature, in fact going as far as to say the extra attack is for the pact weapon.

For what it’s worth were I the DM in my group I would be inclined to agree with your ruling.
I was simply hoping that amongst the discussions in this thread there was a more ironclad rule to back up that interpretation.

Verall said:

What I’m getting at is the thirsting blade is not the extra attack feature, it does not state as much anywhere in the feature, in fact going as far as to say the extra attack is for the pact weapon.

For what it’s worth were I the DM in my group I would be inclined to agree with your ruling.
I was simply hoping that amongst the discussions in this thread there was a more ironclad rule to back up that interpretation.

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Yeah, I think a plain text reading pretty clearly goes the other way, but I wouldn't have a problem allowing it.

It's likely an oversight that Thirsting Blade wasn't written as Extra Attack. Otherwise, I could go say Fighter 5/Warlock 5, and get both Extra Attack and the additional attack from Thirsting Blade, depending on how you read it.

For highest effectiveness, use a double weapon with your Warlock, so that you get the Lifedrinker benefit to your off-hand attacks too.

Any way we can ping the designers to get that clarification?

Tessarael said:

It's likely an oversight that Thirsting Blade wasn't written as Extra Attack. Otherwise, I could go say Fighter 5/Warlock 5, and get both Extra Attack and the additional attack from Thirsting Blade, depending on how you read it.

For highest effectiveness, use a double weapon with your Warlock, so that you get the Lifedrinker benefit to your off-hand attacks too.

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ay

I do not believe that it is an oversight. The wording for the Thirsting Blade feature is nearly identical to that used in O5E. It does not use the term Extra Attack because it only applies to the pact weapon (as per Mearles and Crawford). This issue does not occur in O5E because in that situation the bonus action off hand is always a single attack. The designers of A5E wanted to give a little bit more love to the bonus action off hand attacks as a throw back to 3E.

I allow it at my table, as Thirsting Blade is effectively Extra Attack for the pact weapon. A single extra 1d4 or 1d6 attack is not going to ruin my game.

Verall said:

So a single attack for the offhand?

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Well, if you're making a normal melee attack with the pact weapon I'd say yes, because RAW thirsting blade doesn't give you the Extra Attack feature (don't know if this is RAI or not), which is required for making a second off-weapon attack.

However, if you're using Eldritch Scythe, at level 5 you get extra blast, which allows you to make 2 Eldritch Scythe attacks, and it specifically says that this counts as the Extra Attack feature. Since when you use Eldritch Scythe you're still using the Attack action, if you're using a non heavy one handed melee weapon you can make off-hand attacks. Since you qualify as having Extra attack, you can make 2 off hand attacks this way (no Scythe with the off hand, though).

Given this, I'd say that Thirsting Blade is more useful for non-melee characters, which wouldn't take Eldritch Scythe, because ES would scale better and allow you to make more off-hand attacks

Edit: On second thought, you could use your NON pact weapon for Eldritch Scythe with the main hand, and then the pact weapon on the off-hand. This would allow you to use the pact weapon twice in the off hand as a normal off hand attack (since ES counts as Extra Attack from level 5), but this may be beneficial depending on the properties of the pact weapon. I still think that for a melee warlock with Path of the Blade, Thirsting blade is an inferior choice to Eldritch Scythe