If you like the way D&D's eldritch blast works in Baldur's Gate 3, now you can blast away in Skyrim too

In Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, warlocks don't get a lot of spell slots from whatever patron they cut a deal with to get their magic powers. It's not as bad as it seems though, both because those spell slots refresh even if you take just a short rest, and because warlocks have access to one of the best cantrips in D&D.

Cantrips are spells you don't need to spend a slot to cast, endlessly repeatable little powerhouses that warlocks in particular rely on. None more so than eldritch blast, a straightforward damage-dealer that can be improved as you level. Agonizing blast is an upgrade invocation that increases its damage, while repelling blast adds a knockback effect, pushing away enemies you hit. 

The latter is what makes it so useful in Baldur's Gate 3, where you're constantly fighting on the edges of cliffs and chasms. Doesn't matter how big that bag of hit points you're facing is, nobody survives being pushed off a floating platform in the Astral Plane.

Know what other RPG has a lot of fighting on cliffs? Good old Skyrim, and now its players can get in on the eldritch action. Thanks to a mod for Skyrim Special Edition by Shepiao, the Dragonborn can hurl green bolts of energy too, and they come with repelling blast built in. Using the same effect as the unrelenting force dragonshout, Skyrim's eldritch blast spell lets you hurl bandits off ledges to their death, after which you can climb down and loot them.

You can download the Eldritch Blast mod from Nexus Mods, which is also home to Baldur's Gate 3 mods like the one that lets you increase your party size to eight. I'll definitely be downloading that for my second playthrough.

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Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.