What is everyone's thoughts on taking defensive duelist on a caster warlock as a way to get a shield spell like ability that it can spam despite the lack of low level spell slots it can even be done with a simple dagger. This thought came up along with the idea of taking eldritch mind and pact of the blade even on a spell casting primarily warlock to avoid the need for warcaster and allow the lock to get defensive duelist and spell sniper and still have a weapon and shield in hand and still be able to cast and use the Defensive duelist reaction.
This is an interesting way to build a Warlock. It should be perfectly viable, and a pretty decent way to utilize your reaction defensively without blowing spell slots on Shield. Out of curiosity, where are you getting the Shield proficiency? Subclass? Multiclass?
This is an interesting way to build a Warlock. It should be perfectly viable, and a pretty decent way to utilize your reaction defensively without blowing spell slots on Shield. Out of curiosity, where are you getting the Shield proficiency? Subclass? Multiclass?
In this theoretical build it would likely be a 1 level armor multi-class dip. Options available for warlock for this are, Fighter, Paladin (if going strength and blade), Ranger, Druid and Cleric, though considering I said this is a caster warlock I think I was considering Cleric and/or ranger as top contenders. Both are going to need at least a 13 in wisdom which isn't too high a cost with important skills like perception being linked to wisdom and with wisdom saves being something that a warlock can be good at. Ranger provides free castings of hunter's mark which is another version of hex for most warlocks and a skill, but the weapon mastery is kind of wasted, and Clerics would provide 4 more first level preps, and get more cantrips and would allow the warlock to add their wisdom to their arcana check making the cost of getting a 13 or 14 wisdom smaller as well.
Edit: of course you could not get a shield at all, but your overall AC would suffer, but that also means you wouldn't need pact of the blade on your caster focused character because they would have a hand free, but you would probably want some way to boost your natural AC before using DD to get to at least 16 or 17+ AC.
What is everyone's thoughts on taking defensive duelist on a caster warlock as a way to get a shield spell like ability that it can spam despite the lack of low level spell slots it can even be done with a simple dagger. This thought came up along with the idea of taking eldritch mind and pact of the blade even on a spell casting primarily warlock to avoid the need for warcaster and allow the lock to get defensive duelist and spell sniper and still have a weapon and shield in hand and still be able to cast and use the Defensive duelist reaction.
This is an interesting way to build a Warlock. It should be perfectly viable, and a pretty decent way to utilize your reaction defensively without blowing spell slots on Shield. Out of curiosity, where are you getting the Shield proficiency? Subclass? Multiclass?
In this theoretical build it would likely be a 1 level armor multi-class dip. Options available for warlock for this are, Fighter, Paladin (if going strength and blade), Ranger, Druid and Cleric, though considering I said this is a caster warlock I think I was considering Cleric and/or ranger as top contenders. Both are going to need at least a 13 in wisdom which isn't too high a cost with important skills like perception being linked to wisdom and with wisdom saves being something that a warlock can be good at. Ranger provides free castings of hunter's mark which is another version of hex for most warlocks and a skill, but the weapon mastery is kind of wasted, and Clerics would provide 4 more first level preps, and get more cantrips and would allow the warlock to add their wisdom to their arcana check making the cost of getting a 13 or 14 wisdom smaller as well.
Edit: of course you could not get a shield at all, but your overall AC would suffer, but that also means you wouldn't need pact of the blade on your caster focused character because they would have a hand free, but you would probably want some way to boost your natural AC before using DD to get to at least 16 or 17+ AC.