Pact Weapons

What's the most interesting or creative ways you've used (or your players have used) the Pact Weapon warlock feature?

make a wizard staff like the staff of power or of the magi your pact weapon

That doesn't seem interesting or creative. Anything outside the box that they did with the boon?

it was impossible to keep the fuckers locked up

I'm really disappointed with the Blade Pact to be honest. You don't really have a reason to ever de-summon your weapon, since it takes a full action to summon. If it was a bonus action, then maybe you could do some fancy shit with extra attack and changing the weapon form, but as is it's really just flavor

Steal a weapon maybe? You could shove some valuable ornamental weapon into your Pact Weapon and then just desummon it. That's all I can think of really

My group houserules that if your pact weapon is currently summoned, but sheathed or otherwise not in your hand, you can teleport it directly to your hand as a bonus action.

Not exactly that much more helpful, but it's something.

There's an idea, though I can't recall how long it takes to turn an existing weapon into your pact weapon.

make surgical tools over the course of a surgery

Well, I TRIED to expand "weapon" to be "anything you can hit a guy with" so my character could make household objects, like a goblet or chair, just to RP with but my GM vetoed it

that sounds pretty stupid

an hour, I think
and it has to be magical

that would be WAY overpowered dude, you could make a steel chair and then you'd be invincible

I'd agree with your DM and that shit is ridiculously OP and you really shouldn't be surprised it got shot down.

>steel chair

I feel like I'm missing something

i'm sorry for watermark I googled steel chair meme and it gave me this

I didn't mean specifically the chair but being able to conjure "anything you can hit someone with" as an Action, without expending a resource at all, is not something I'd give a player access to.

Anything specific you're thinking of? I was envisioning mostly basic objects that'd give you the standard 1d4 improvised damage.

Are you thinking I'd be a shithead and start summoning boulders over people?

How easy would it be to turn that into "if I can hold it I can hit someone with it" and now you can summon any handheld/liftable object. It's just terribly broken.

Bump.

Has anyone tried using the pact weapon 10 foot pole style or other summon/dismiss shenanigans?

well he can't summon magical things

3 Battlemaster: The most important aspect about this is action surge for assassinations, meaning you could only take 2 levels, but one more level for superiority dice seems like a reasonably good trade off. This will also allow you to take either Dueling or the dual wield martial feature.
Finally, 11 (or 9) Rogue: this gets you sneak attack and assassinate, not to mention some handy proficiencies and expertise. Utilising action surge on a high priority target when assassinating, means you can deal multiple hits with automatic critical and sneak attack damage. As mentioned above, you can also cast darkness on your next turn (quickened if you want to attack immediately) and use it to give you sneak attacks on all your following attacks in most situations.
The main hiccup I see here is that darkness and inevitably some of your other spells will require components/an arcane focus. The way I see getting around this is either disguising your arcane focus, potentially using minor illusion, attaching it to your pact weapon as a small crystal, causing it to appear when you summon it (nothing says you cant do this, but it would be up to your GM) or hiding it on your person, which as a rogue with expertise in sleight of hand, should be pretty easy. I had the idea of having your arcane focus made to look like a tooth and replacing one of your own teeth with it, meaning you could pull it out and start utilising it without anyone knowing you had it on you.
This build would need dex and charisma which is a natural fit for a rogue anyway, has access to strong melee damage via sneak attack, strong defence via darkness imposed disadvantage and 18 AC with 20 dex, even when unarmoured and a whole bunch of fun utility. You can also summon a bow rather than a rapier with your blade pact if you can't cast magic, but need ranged damage. While this may not be the most damaging build, it certainly does seem like it would be a hell of a lot of fun to play.

cont.

Fucken posted it backwards,
is me

I had the image in my head of someone being dragged before an enemy king; bound, gagged, unarmed and unarmoured, for all intents and purposes, he is seemingly helpless. The character then conjures a weapon out of nowhere, teleports behind the king, despite being bound and gagged, murderlerders him and then slinks into the shadows and escapes. This was the build I came up with to facilitate the idea.
3(or 5) Blade Pact Warlock; to be able to conjure a weapon out of nowhere. It requires no components, somatic or vocalisations and is never said to be magical, meaning this should always work, outside of any extreme circumstances. By taking Devil's Sight, you would be able to cast darkness on yourself to provide yourself advantage and enemies disadvantage on any attacks, granting you sneak attacks on following rounds. You could also simply drop darkness and then misty step outside of it and hide to seemingly vanish if you need to make an escape. This also provides 2 short rest renewable level 2 (or 3 if you go to 5) spells and agonising blast eldritch blast should you so choose. It may be practical to drop 2 levels of rogue (bringing you to Assassin 9) and go to 5 bladelock to get the thirsting blade invocation for an extra attack and also 3rd level spells.
3 Draconic Sorcerer; for subtle and quickened metamagic, draconic resilience for more hp and unarmoured AC. By taking subtle spell metamagic, you could use one of your three sorcerer points a day to cast a spell without vocal or somatic components. This means that even if you are gagged/in a silence zone and manacled, you could simply misty step out of the area, which (according to sage advice) would let you also teleport out of your restraints. This also lets you have one other metamagic, which would likely be Quickened spell, due to the nature of the build, but YMMV. This also gives you 4 1st level spells and 2 2nd level spells daily.

TL;DR use it to create an assassin, walk into a place "unarmed", sleight of hand summon your blade, misty step to target and assassinate.
Follow it up with a darkness cast on self + devils sight for constant advantage on attacks and disadvantage on enemy attacks on you. This = sneak attacks every round.

would action surge help with sneak attack? I thought you could only sneak attack once per turn.

Unrelated, something I always loved doing as a tank battlemaster was giving our assassin sneak attack on my turn using commander's strike.

dont worry man, i like the idea of a super low Int barbarian who has never had training with a real weapon and feels more comfortable in a brawl with a chair or fire poker

Action surge doesn't help with sneak, but the extra hits it provides would work with assassinate and therefore autocrit.
If you go 5 lock then you can hit 4 times with an action surge (plus one if you have an offhand) and have them all crit on assassinate. Meaning you would do (assuming you are using dueling martial feature and therefore no off hand) 8d8 + sneak attack, which at 9 rogue is 5d6 I believe, double to 10d6 + 4 dex modifier bonuses (20 damage with 20 dex) + 8 damage from dueling style if using.
All in all 8d8+10d6+20+8 if you can surprise your target. You can follow this up with 2d8+5d6+10+4 attacks with a fair amount of certainty on most due to darkness/devils sight imposed advantage on your attacks causing sneak attack.

I think the implication is that having every utility item on the equipment list at hand is too much. Need to reach a place? You have a pact ladder of indefinite length. Want to spy on something? Summon your pact binoculars. In need of food? No worries, just get some fish with your pact fishing pole or pact net, then debone or skin them with your pact knife, before grilling them in your pact skillet and serving it at your pact table.

Which might actually be a lot of fun, but it also runs into the problem where you might default to "I summon my pact weapon" too often, and it could prevent other party members from adopting a niche in those situations and show off their character.