I'm a DM and never get to deep into the creation of characters so I'm not the best to help out when one of my players has an issue. That's why I'm here on the forum! :)
So we're 3 sessions deep into a new campaign and my wife chose Water Genasi Warlock. Her idea was to have a Warlock that would stay rather far away from harm, cast spells and summon things to help her out in fights. Now I can clearly see that she isn't having a lot of fun at the moment so I am willing to tweak her character a good bit but I have no idea how!
Can you guys help out and show us how a warlock like that would be build? Or let me know if it's just not possible and warlocks just inherently have a different play style.
thank you in advance!
Onoref
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Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
I have a few questions. You mention "far away from harm, cast spells and summon things to help her out in fights", but Warlocks only have 2 spells per Short Rest until 11th level. Their focus is more on having a few powerful spells and powerful cantrips. That said it's because all summoning spells are Concentration it does benefit from having a limited number of spells to cast.
1) What summoning spells do you plan to implement? The selection is very limited and focused on Fiends. Doing a quick search Warlock spells with the Summoning tag there is a total of 4 spells and a cantrip. Of those spells it starts out at 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th level. Summon Lesser Daemons is 3rd level and only gets a buff for being cast at higher levels at 6th, which Warlocks never have access to. Summon Greater Daemon is 4th and gets a buff for being cast at 5th. Infernal Calling if 5th level. Conjure Fae is 6th level so you have to choose it as your Mystic Arcanum.
2) Warlock Invocations at 9th lvl you can use: Minions of Chaos to cast Conjure Elemental once a day.
3) Hexblade at 6th level has access to Accursed Specter, which is effectively a "conjure" in a certain sense. Once per long rest you kill a humanoid you can bind it as a Spector until your long rest.
Thematically you might want to take Pact of the Chains.
Over all. This is definitely doable, not as much strong support as other classes to be summoners (Druids), but it's do able. There isn't much you can do in your concept until 5th level (3rd level spells), but once you hit 5th you can start doing it. You'll see buffs to your concept at 5th, 7th, 9th (Spell & Invocation), and 11th, and 6th if you're Hex Blade. Note: Hexblades do NOT have to be melee fighters. You get armor and shields and can hold at the back using Eldtrich Blast.
If this is AL play, then your +1 needs to be XgtE, because all the spells you want that are Warlock accessible are in that book!
The main issue I see with this is that the Warlock has very limited spell slots, which is something a summoner would want to have a few of in order to compensate for the possibly quick demise of their minions.
The Warlock list nonetheless has summoning spells, so the option is there, and if your wife doesn't really mind only being able to summon 2 times per fight (considering the possibility of a short rest between fights) then this is a build that can be done.
A non-hexblade or path of the blade Warlock gets most of her damage from Eldritch Blast, one of the most versatile cantrips in the game thanks to the Eldritch invocations that can be attached to it. Taking this into consideration, the best option (imho) in terms of Pact Boon would be to choose the Pact of the Chain, to already kickstart the summoner vibe. Pact of the Tome is sadly not a great option in this case, as there are no summoning spells that are also Ritual spells, aside from Find Familiar (quite odd, if you ask me). The Familiar given by Pact of the Chain is also improved when compared to the one from the Find Familiar spell, and gives access to other Eldritch Invocations that can make it even more useful.
The first real summoning spell is available as a 3rd level one, so 5th character level, so until then the best playstyle option would be to use Eldritch Blast to dish out damage, and have a couple of "oh-shit-button" spells should enemies somehow get near. From level 3 she would get the familiar from Pact of the Chain, again kickstarting the summoner flavor, and from 5th level she can effectively summon creatures.
It might not be exactly what she had envisioned, but is the closest thing available as a Warlock, I am afraid (I'd be happy to be proven wrong by other builds :) ).
Hope this helps o/
EDIT: You would also have the option to design specific spells, different from the already available ones, to give more choice to your wife's character in terms of what/how many creatures to summon, and you could go as far as to make the lvl 1 or 2 spells in order for her to be able to start sooner to get the sweet excitement of plucking creatures from their homeplane and drag them over to the Material plane :P
I think I got enough info now to tweak her character a bit so that she can have more fun. I'll also look into maybe creating a spell myself that helps her feel more like the warlock she wants to be ;) Gonna think about that a bit more though, needs to be something balanced.
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Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
I think I got enough info now to tweak her character a bit so that she can have more fun. I'll also look into maybe creating a spell myself that helps her feel more like the warlock she wants to be ;) Gonna think about that a bit more though, needs to be something balanced.
I would suggest a cantrip for this, something that would require concentration and allows the Warlock to summon for 1 minute a low-level creature (just one I'd say) that would allow for a "better" (as in higher CR) creature to be summoned with levels (usual 5th, 11th, 17th progression).
It might be nice to tie the nature of the creature to the Warlock Patron, like starting with Imp for The Fiend, a Gazer for The Great Old One, a celestial version of a low-CR (like 1/2 tops) beast for The Celestial, any low CR (again I'd put a 1/2 CR max at start) Fey for The Archfey, maybe a Shadow for The Undying and a Flying Sword for The Hexblade.
Just throwing out ideas, I am sure you'll come up with something fitting (which I'd be interested in seeing once you create it) :)
Maybe just multiclass into sorcerer from more spell slots which equals more summons per day. Make sure she takes the war caster feat and definitely grab summon greater demons...As the DM you could have her find a ring of spell storing in the next treasure hoard. There are also plenty of other magic items that can summon elementals.
I think I got enough info now to tweak her character a bit so that she can have more fun. I'll also look into maybe creating a spell myself that helps her feel more like the warlock she wants to be ;) Gonna think about that a bit more though, needs to be something balanced.
I would suggest a cantrip for this, something that would require concentration and allows the Warlock to summon for 1 minute a low-level creature (just one I'd say) that would allow for a "better" (as in higher CR) creature to be summoned with levels (usual 5th, 11th, 17th progression).
It might be nice to tie the nature of the creature to the Warlock Patron, like starting with Imp for The Fiend, a Gazer for The Great Old One, a celestial version of a low-CR (like 1/2 tops) beast for The Celestial, any low CR (again I'd put a 1/2 CR max at start) Fey for The Archfey, maybe a Shadow for The Undying and a Flying Sword for The Hexblade.
Just throwing out ideas, I am sure you'll come up with something fitting (which I'd be interested in seeing once you create it) :)
Did you just pull all of that out of thin air? Sounds great!
So gameplay wise, I guess we look at it more as a summon demon spell and less as a sumon familiar spell. So she summons a demon on a spot she can see, role life for it, role initiative and I (the DM) controls it from there? Like greater demon it just attacks whatever is closest to it and non-demon?
I'll link the spell when I got it done :)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
I think I got enough info now to tweak her character a bit so that she can have more fun. I'll also look into maybe creating a spell myself that helps her feel more like the warlock she wants to be ;) Gonna think about that a bit more though, needs to be something balanced.
I would suggest a cantrip for this, something that would require concentration and allows the Warlock to summon for 1 minute a low-level creature (just one I'd say) that would allow for a "better" (as in higher CR) creature to be summoned with levels (usual 5th, 11th, 17th progression).
It might be nice to tie the nature of the creature to the Warlock Patron, like starting with Imp for The Fiend, a Gazer for The Great Old One, a celestial version of a low-CR (like 1/2 tops) beast for The Celestial, any low CR (again I'd put a 1/2 CR max at start) Fey for The Archfey, maybe a Shadow for The Undying and a Flying Sword for The Hexblade.
Just throwing out ideas, I am sure you'll come up with something fitting (which I'd be interested in seeing once you create it) :)
Did you just pull all of that out of thin air? Sounds great!
So gameplay wise, I guess we look at it more as a summon demon spell and less as a sumon familiar spell. So she summons a demon on a spot she can see, role life for it, role initiative and I (the DM) controls it from there? Like greater demon it just attacks whatever is closest to it and non-demon?
I'll link the spell when I got it done :)
It's the simplest way to make a summoning cantrip that came to my mind. Glad you like it :)
I would probably suggest to make it so that the summoned creature acts on command of the caster, by having the warlock use their Bonus Action to have it do stuff, so it is under the control of the player and it doesn't feel like something they just popped into existence to then leave on their own, which would also "burden" you as DM with keeping track of another thing on top of everything else.
All the creatures I listed as potential candidates are fairly weak and their combat usefulness could be limited, but based on the creature summoned they can be useful for other things that is not combat (like for example the Imp ability of going invisible makes them good scouts, but at the same time the lack of telepathic bond doesn't make them comparable to have the same Imp as a Familiar, balancing out the cantrip, imho).
Also, Imp is probably out of scale with the rest, now that I have a better look at it, so maybe a Dretch might be best.
So here is what I have right now: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/46499-summon-minimal-creature The pseudodragon is a form of artistical freedom because I just can't find any other good 1/4CR creatures. The only odd one out that I honestly don't have an alternative for is the gazer, if anyone can find a 1/4CR monster that fits with The Great Old One let me know. The 1/4CR means that the lock get's an extra attack roll that potentially hits for a D6 +1 or +2 on a bonus roll. I think that's fair enough at lvl 1-3. Also the plan is to level the creature together with the warlock so the name might not be a good one at later levels and obviously I'm taking advice on what creatures to use at higher lvls.
All round I'm looking for opinions, so let me know what you all think!
Ah ok, for me the link worked ... obviously so I had no idea it didn't work for the rest. By the way, do I publish it or is it a matter of waiting for the mods to run through the content and make sure it doesn't include dick pics?
Here's the description of the spell:
You utter foul words, summoning demons from the chaos of the Abyss.
Yeah, publishing a homebrew is a matter of the mods looking at it to make sure it doesn't go against any rules of the platform. It can take a bit...
The description seems fine, but I'd suggest you to take inspiration from the Beast Companion description from the Beastmaster Ranger on how to put down what the caster can actually have the summoned creature do, as I think those limitations are appropriate.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Skimming, I was going to say something and saw it was only lightly touched on:
You can reflavor any spell you want.
For example, if I want to play a Necromancer character I flavor the Eldritch Blasts as being small floating skulls wreathed in ethereal blue flames with gaping jaws as they streak across the deck of a ship, bursting in little puffs of tortured souls on impact.
Similarly you might say your Eldritch Blasts are small fire spirits (With or without changing the elemental type. Force is perhaps the strongest element, so changing the element to anything else would in fact be a nerf anyway as far as balance is concerned), or ghostly cannonballs fired from a spectral flintlock pistol you call to your hand at your leisure, or you temporarily summon a small angel that flies in the air over your shoulder, nocking a few arrows with your enemies names on them, vanishing once loosed / an imp holding a pitchfork and sending a few bolts of flame at your enemies.
Basically you can reflavor any spell into a "summon", with the projectile or effect itself being the summon, or just a summoned creature appearing to make the attack for you.
Pretty much necessary with how bad summon rules are in 5e, in my opinion, making it hard to even feel like you're playing a summoner. Something games almost always get wrong yet it's my favorite archetype after Necromancer. Luckily I can get my necromancer kicks in via non-summoning ways.
Hey guys,
I'm a DM and never get to deep into the creation of characters so I'm not the best to help out when one of my players has an issue. That's why I'm here on the forum! :)
So we're 3 sessions deep into a new campaign and my wife chose Water Genasi Warlock. Her idea was to have a Warlock that would stay rather far away from harm, cast spells and summon things to help her out in fights. Now I can clearly see that she isn't having a lot of fun at the moment so I am willing to tweak her character a good bit but I have no idea how!
Can you guys help out and show us how a warlock like that would be build? Or let me know if it's just not possible and warlocks just inherently have a different play style.
thank you in advance!
Onoref
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master
Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
I have a few questions.
You mention "far away from harm, cast spells and summon things to help her out in fights", but Warlocks only have 2 spells per Short Rest until 11th level. Their focus is more on having a few powerful spells and powerful cantrips.
That said it's because all summoning spells are Concentration it does benefit from having a limited number of spells to cast.
1) What summoning spells do you plan to implement? The selection is very limited and focused on Fiends.
Doing a quick search Warlock spells with the Summoning tag there is a total of 4 spells and a cantrip.
Of those spells it starts out at 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th level.
Summon Lesser Daemons is 3rd level and only gets a buff for being cast at higher levels at 6th, which Warlocks never have access to.
Summon Greater Daemon is 4th and gets a buff for being cast at 5th.
Infernal Calling if 5th level.
Conjure Fae is 6th level so you have to choose it as your Mystic Arcanum.
2) Warlock Invocations at 9th lvl you can use: Minions of Chaos to cast Conjure Elemental once a day.
3) Hexblade at 6th level has access to Accursed Specter, which is effectively a "conjure" in a certain sense. Once per long rest you kill a humanoid you can bind it as a Spector until your long rest.
Thematically you might want to take Pact of the Chains.
Over all. This is definitely doable, not as much strong support as other classes to be summoners (Druids), but it's do able. There isn't much you can do in your concept until 5th level (3rd level spells), but once you hit 5th you can start doing it. You'll see buffs to your concept at 5th, 7th, 9th (Spell & Invocation), and 11th, and 6th if you're Hex Blade.
Note: Hexblades do NOT have to be melee fighters. You get armor and shields and can hold at the back using Eldtrich Blast.
If this is AL play, then your +1 needs to be XgtE, because all the spells you want that are Warlock accessible are in that book!
Hi Onoref! o/ Welcome to the forums
The main issue I see with this is that the Warlock has very limited spell slots, which is something a summoner would want to have a few of in order to compensate for the possibly quick demise of their minions.
The Warlock list nonetheless has summoning spells, so the option is there, and if your wife doesn't really mind only being able to summon 2 times per fight (considering the possibility of a short rest between fights) then this is a build that can be done.
A non-hexblade or path of the blade Warlock gets most of her damage from Eldritch Blast, one of the most versatile cantrips in the game thanks to the Eldritch invocations that can be attached to it.
Taking this into consideration, the best option (imho) in terms of Pact Boon would be to choose the Pact of the Chain, to already kickstart the summoner vibe. Pact of the Tome is sadly not a great option in this case, as there are no summoning spells that are also Ritual spells, aside from Find Familiar (quite odd, if you ask me). The Familiar given by Pact of the Chain is also improved when compared to the one from the Find Familiar spell, and gives access to other Eldritch Invocations that can make it even more useful.
The first real summoning spell is available as a 3rd level one, so 5th character level, so until then the best playstyle option would be to use Eldritch Blast to dish out damage, and have a couple of "oh-shit-button" spells should enemies somehow get near. From level 3 she would get the familiar from Pact of the Chain, again kickstarting the summoner flavor, and from 5th level she can effectively summon creatures.
It might not be exactly what she had envisioned, but is the closest thing available as a Warlock, I am afraid (I'd be happy to be proven wrong by other builds :) ).
Hope this helps o/
EDIT: You would also have the option to design specific spells, different from the already available ones, to give more choice to your wife's character in terms of what/how many creatures to summon, and you could go as far as to make the lvl 1 or 2 spells in order for her to be able to start sooner to get the sweet excitement of plucking creatures from their homeplane and drag them over to the Material plane :P
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Thanks for all the answers guys!
I think I got enough info now to tweak her character a bit so that she can have more fun. I'll also look into maybe creating a spell myself that helps her feel more like the warlock she wants to be ;) Gonna think about that a bit more though, needs to be something balanced.
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master
Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I like it, effectively turn "Bonfire" into a creature?
Maybe just multiclass into sorcerer from more spell slots which equals more summons per day. Make sure she takes the war caster feat and definitely grab summon greater demons...As the DM you could have her find a ring of spell storing in the next treasure hoard. There are also plenty of other magic items that can summon elementals.
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master
Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
I would probably suggest to make it so that the summoned creature acts on command of the caster, by having the warlock use their Bonus Action to have it do stuff, so it is under the control of the player and it doesn't feel like something they just popped into existence to then leave on their own, which would also "burden" you as DM with keeping track of another thing on top of everything else.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
ok, we're going places people! ;)
So here is what I have right now: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/46499-summon-minimal-creature
The pseudodragon is a form of artistical freedom because I just can't find any other good 1/4CR creatures. The only odd one out that I honestly don't have an alternative for is the gazer, if anyone can find a 1/4CR monster that fits with The Great Old One let me know. The 1/4CR means that the lock get's an extra attack roll that potentially hits for a D6 +1 or +2 on a bonus roll. I think that's fair enough at lvl 1-3.
Also the plan is to level the creature together with the warlock so the name might not be a good one at later levels and obviously I'm taking advice on what creatures to use at higher lvls.
All round I'm looking for opinions, so let me know what you all think!
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master
Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
We unfortunately cannot see the spell until it is published :( could you put here the list of creatures maybe?
An alternative to the Gazer... Mordekaine's Tome of Foes introduces the Star Spawn Grue, which seems like a good candidate.
As to the name of the spell, if you are going to allow it only for Warlocks how does "Patron's spawn" or "Patron's envoy" sound?
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Ah ok, for me the link worked ... obviously so I had no idea it didn't work for the rest.
By the way, do I publish it or is it a matter of waiting for the mods to run through the content and make sure it doesn't include dick pics?
Here's the description of the spell:
You utter foul words, summoning demons from the chaos of the Abyss.
Depending on Warlock Patron:
For the duration of the summon you may use a bonus action to command the creature.
When the spell ends or the creature's HP reaches 0 it vanishes.
I unfortunately don't have the Tome of Foes yet so can't judge on that Star Spawn Grue.
I do indeed like the Patron's envoy idea!
Campaign - Der Alten: Dungeon Master
Campaign - The Naked Dwarf: Dungeon Master
Yeah, publishing a homebrew is a matter of the mods looking at it to make sure it doesn't go against any rules of the platform. It can take a bit...
The description seems fine, but I'd suggest you to take inspiration from the Beast Companion description from the Beastmaster Ranger on how to put down what the caster can actually have the summoned creature do, as I think those limitations are appropriate.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Might just be easier to allow her to rebuild to another class. Druids are the best summoners in 5e. Especially if you choose Circle of the Shepherd.
Skimming, I was going to say something and saw it was only lightly touched on:
You can reflavor any spell you want.
For example, if I want to play a Necromancer character I flavor the Eldritch Blasts as being small floating skulls wreathed in ethereal blue flames with gaping jaws as they streak across the deck of a ship, bursting in little puffs of tortured souls on impact.
Similarly you might say your Eldritch Blasts are small fire spirits (With or without changing the elemental type. Force is perhaps the strongest element, so changing the element to anything else would in fact be a nerf anyway as far as balance is concerned), or ghostly cannonballs fired from a spectral flintlock pistol you call to your hand at your leisure, or you temporarily summon a small angel that flies in the air over your shoulder, nocking a few arrows with your enemies names on them, vanishing once loosed / an imp holding a pitchfork and sending a few bolts of flame at your enemies.
Basically you can reflavor any spell into a "summon", with the projectile or effect itself being the summon, or just a summoned creature appearing to make the attack for you.
Pretty much necessary with how bad summon rules are in 5e, in my opinion, making it hard to even feel like you're playing a summoner. Something games almost always get wrong yet it's my favorite archetype after Necromancer. Luckily I can get my necromancer kicks in via non-summoning ways.