Pact of The Tome

The Pact of The Tome

Your patron gives you a grimoire called a Book of Shadows. When you gain this feature, choose three cantrips from any class’s spell list (the three needn’t be from the same list). While the book is on your person, you can cast those cantrips at will. They don’t count against your number of cantrips known. If they don’t appear on the warlock spell list, they are nonetheless warlock spells for you.
If you lose your Book of Shadows, you can perform a 1-hour ceremony to receive a replacement from your patron. This ceremony can be performed during a Short or Long Rest, and it destroys the previous book. The book turns to ash when you die.

Eldritch Invocations

See the Warlock article.
The pact of the Tome currently has four unique invocations. We only recommend using one of them, but they all have a bit of use.

Book of Ancient Secrets

Prerequisite: Pact of the Tome feature
You can now inscribe magical rituals in your Book of Shadows. Choose two 1st-level spells that have the ritual tag from any class’s spell list (the two needn’t be from the same list). The spells appear in the book and don’t count against the number of spells you know. With your Book of Shadows in hand, you can cast the chosen spells as rituals. You can’t cast the spells except as rituals, unless you’ve learned them by some other means. You can also cast a warlock spell you know as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.
On your adventures, you can add other ritual spells to your Book of Shadows. When you find such a spell, you can add it to the book if the spell’s level is equal to or less than half your warlock level (rounded up) and if you can spare the time to transcribe the spell. For each level of the spell, the transcription process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp for the rare inks needed to inscribe it.
The Book of Ancient Secrets gives you two 1st-level rituals from any class list. You can cast them as rituals. You can also put other rituals into your book and cast them as rituals. This is interesting. There are a few strong ritual spells, like Alarm, that you can cast with these slots. Other options include Find Familiar or Identify. As you explore, you can add summoning rituals, Augury, Contact Other Plane, and other random options to your list. This can grant you a lot of utility, and is not as bad as it may seem! Not a bad pick for a Warlock who is bored outside of a fight.

Aspect of the Moon

Allows the Tome user to be immune to sleep, both natural and otherwise. This allows you to keep watch all night. Alternatively, your Wizard can cast Alarm. Or you can keep a shift. Anything to give you another Invocation slot. This is an alright choice if you have no other choices but… C’mon.

Far Scribe

Allows you to write someone’s name on a page, up to your Proficiency Bonus. You get to cast the Sending spell to that target. Considering you normally use Sending on your party members, this isn’t abysmal. Good information and combat preparation. If your party is planning a big split soon that might overcome the range limit of Message, this should be on your mind.

Gift of the Protectors

The Gift of the Protectors is weird. Extremely strong, and a must-have for Tome wielders, but still weird. It’s a strictly defensive buff, allowing you to keep someone from dying by having their name on a page. If they get K.O.’d but not killed, they drop to 1 HP instead. This happens once per day, and you can have a number of names equal to your Proficiency Modifier on the page. Keeping your Cleric off the ground is critical to winning fights, and this adds another layer of safety to battle that you can’t ignore. This is a strong contender for taking Tome in the first place. But, it is kind of random that it’s here. Talisman probably deserves something like this.

Non-Tome Invocations

The basic invocations aid Tome a lot. We recommend stacking Eldritch Blast invocations and then taking Gift of the Protectors. Far Scribe is optional.
Otherwise, you can grab things like Beguiling Influence or Bewitching Whispers to help you outside of fights. If you’re worried about your in-fight durability, then Armour of Shadows or Fiendish Vigour might be wanted.

Wrapping up the Pact of the Tome

The Tome might be the best scaling pact that doesn’t require a ton of Invocation dedication. Cantrips are legitimately solid tools! However, that shouldn’t keep you from trying out the Far Scribe and Gift of the Protectors options. Those are great tools that Warlocks need! Try this out the next time you think Warlocks are too combat-focused, and you’ll see how good they can be outside of combat!

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