we start a new campaign next week and it will be my first campaign that uses the 2024 version. So i definitly want to use some of the changed abilities i realy like. I never played a Warlock before (planed a lot), but the spell Armor of Agathys always intrigued me and with the new version we finaly got rid of the stupid limitation on its own THP and can feed it with other THP. So it was soon very clear, that im going to play a Warlock in the new edition and try to make the best out of AoA.
I have two limitations. The first one is my own: no multiclass, i want to experience a class on its own when i play it for the first time. The second one comes from our DM: only backgrounds from the book (we will have first time players and want to keep it easy).
My first though was, which species can i use, to give me some tanky abilities. First i thought about something with natural armor, but as you can wear light armor this isnt very helpful at all. Than i looked for abilities and finaly decided on a Goliath with Stone Giant ancestry. The damage reduction allows me to reduce big hits, so that AoA remains in game for atleast another hit or gives me time to pump up my THP again.
For the stats im still realy undecided, mostly because the backgrounds dont allow a lot to play around (i hate that origin feats are tied to the backgrounds). For my build i have 3 major stats, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. We play with point buy, so i thought about the dirty way and go for 8/15/15/8/8/15, but to maximize that in the beginning i would have to take Charlatan (Skilled Feat), to bring all stats up to 16. Im fine with dumping Strength and Intelligence, but Wisdom would hurt a lot. Right now i think about taking Entertainer (Musician Feat) and go for 8/16/14/8/12/16. For me Dex and Cha are set (please educate me if im wrong). Dex will give me the needed AC and Charisma will be my offensive modifier for spells and melee attacks, so both should be as high as possible. Constitution would be nice for concentration, but AoA isnt concentration, so for the fundamental strategy it isnt as important and i miss only a few HP, but in the best case i wont need a lot of them, because i keep up my THP. But if you have better suggestions, please tell me.
At LvL1 i will start with Studded Leather and a Warhammer (cant take heavy weapons because my arms are to wobbly). I would take a throwing weapon to, because i can bind the pact weapon with a bonus action amd has nothing else to do with it. As my first Invocation i would choose Pact of the Blade for the Charisma modifier and proficiency with the Warhammer. My starting Cantrips are Blade Ward and Eldritch Blast, my first 2 Spells are Arms of Hadar and Witch Bolt, two very solid spells in my opinion. When i activate Blade Ward i have an AC of 16-19 and a juicy attack with +5 to hit and W10+3 damage. Not to bad.
With LvL2 the build starts to work. I chose Armor of Agathys as my third spell. My second Invocation will be Magic Initiate (Wizard), where i chose Mage Armor as the spell and Ray of Frost + Prestidigitation as Cantrips. Fiendish Vigor takes the place of the third Invocation. The 12 THP it provides for free are the perfect combination for AoA and most enemies wont break it with one hit in the earlier levels, smaller mobs most likely not even with 2 and everything that hits hard i´ll block with the Goliath ability. So LvL2 already increses my armor with mage armor + blade ward up to 17-20 and AoA + False Life provide a lot of extra tankynes and passive damage.
Third level delivers the next upgrade for the build. AoA gets up to 10 damage now. My next spell is Misty Step to provide some mobility and an usefull option for my bonus action. As the build focuses on keeping up AoA/THP i obviously pick a Fiend as my patron. The level 3 ability enables me to maybe tank one more hit with AoA and overall provides a lot of additional HP to fullfill my roll as a tank. The spells are all solid, but the Fire Shield at LvL 7 is the real deal, making enemies suffer from tons of retaliation damage (AoA + Fire Shield are 29 damage on average at this point)
Forth level is interesting. Third Cantrip = Mage Hand, 5th spell = Hold Person for some controll. But now there are some points i struggle with. A logical option would be War Caster or an ability score improvement. But, hear me out please, what if i go for Moderatly Armored at this point? With a good medium armor i can get the same or even better AC, but at the same time i could switch Mage Armor (from Magic Initiate) to False Life, granting me the ability to Upcast it from this point on with my own spell slots. This would be great for LvL 5, where a warlock gets third level magic and so False Life would give wooping 22 THP. For me this sound awesome :D . Probably i should start than with 8/15/15/8/12/16, so that i increase Dex to 16 through moderatly armored and chose crusher or speedy later on to increase constitution to 16 as well.
Fifth Level, the last one i realy planed for now. The chosen spell should be Vampiric Touch or Hunger of Hadar. The two new Invocations would definitly include Thirsting Blade for the Pact Weapon. The second one depends on the the choice i made at LvL4. If i picked Warcaster i would take Eldritch Smite for some big damage numbers, if i decided on the Moderatly Armored feat i would take Eldritch Mind to keep concentration.
We will play Curse of Strahd, so we wont end at super high levels, maybe 13 or 14. I picked the Warhammer because it fits a Goliath and should be usefull against some undeads we will most likely encounter. I would love to read some feedback. Do you think this build is viable? Any ideas how to make it better? Or maybe i missed something or understood something wrong (english isnt my first language so its definitly possible).
For a starting feat/background look at farmer. It gives you tough which is an extra 2 points to HP. Farmer increases CON/Wis. If you increase con by 2 points and wisdom by 1, you may want to adjust the point buy so drop con to 14. That gives you 2 points to elevate wisdom to 10 so adding +1 ability gives you 11 or use the 2 points of point buy to raise wisdom to 9 and raise another stat from 8 to 9. Raise the ability +1 to wisdom now you are at 10 so no negatives.
Consider at level 1 (or later) the armor of shadows. You get the +3 boost via mage armor. Being an eldritch invocation, you can cast it on your self through the day/night so you get 24 hour coverage. Don't waste a feat to get acolyte and then you have mage armor only 1 time in a day.
Being a tank, you want to get in there so get a hex spell, and that can assist you in your melee fighting.
Without multiclassing, if you want to be a tank, you may want to rethink how much long distance spellcasting you want want (e.g. Fiend subclass fire ball) or to get in close and swing and hit (e.g. Fey subclass with multiple teleportations) If you want to be close, you will need to get Pact of the blade and hex, etc.
Another way to fight in close is to use the find familiar invocation which attacks as part of your reaction step. At higher levels, the familiar can be the "source" of your fireballs and other spells. If the Familar is invisible, that can be a lot of fun as those spells come from "nowhere".
There is another fun tactic that you can do with the Fiend Patron Warlock that I think might work well for you. Both Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield deal damage to your attacker when you are hit, and neither requires concentration. At level 9, with both spells active, each time you get hit with a melee attack, you will deal back 2d8+25 damage to your attacker.
This pairs well with the Fiendlock's Dark One's Blessing ability, which gives you temporary hit points each time you kill someone or they die within ten feet of you, because renewing your temporary hitpoints keeps Armor of Agathys from ending early. So long as you keep getting hit, and things keep falling around you, your armors will stay up, making you very costly to keep beat on.
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Greetings my fellow Warlocks,
we start a new campaign next week and it will be my first campaign that uses the 2024 version. So i definitly want to use some of the changed abilities i realy like. I never played a Warlock before (planed a lot), but the spell Armor of Agathys always intrigued me and with the new version we finaly got rid of the stupid limitation on its own THP and can feed it with other THP. So it was soon very clear, that im going to play a Warlock in the new edition and try to make the best out of AoA.
I have two limitations. The first one is my own: no multiclass, i want to experience a class on its own when i play it for the first time. The second one comes from our DM: only backgrounds from the book (we will have first time players and want to keep it easy).
My first though was, which species can i use, to give me some tanky abilities. First i thought about something with natural armor, but as you can wear light armor this isnt very helpful at all. Than i looked for abilities and finaly decided on a Goliath with Stone Giant ancestry. The damage reduction allows me to reduce big hits, so that AoA remains in game for atleast another hit or gives me time to pump up my THP again.
For the stats im still realy undecided, mostly because the backgrounds dont allow a lot to play around (i hate that origin feats are tied to the backgrounds). For my build i have 3 major stats, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. We play with point buy, so i thought about the dirty way and go for 8/15/15/8/8/15, but to maximize that in the beginning i would have to take Charlatan (Skilled Feat), to bring all stats up to 16. Im fine with dumping Strength and Intelligence, but Wisdom would hurt a lot.
Right now i think about taking Entertainer (Musician Feat) and go for 8/16/14/8/12/16. For me Dex and Cha are set (please educate me if im wrong). Dex will give me the needed AC and Charisma will be my offensive modifier for spells and melee attacks, so both should be as high as possible. Constitution would be nice for concentration, but AoA isnt concentration, so for the fundamental strategy it isnt as important and i miss only a few HP, but in the best case i wont need a lot of them, because i keep up my THP. But if you have better suggestions, please tell me.
At LvL1 i will start with Studded Leather and a Warhammer (cant take heavy weapons because my arms are to wobbly). I would take a throwing weapon to, because i can bind the pact weapon with a bonus action amd has nothing else to do with it. As my first Invocation i would choose Pact of the Blade for the Charisma modifier and proficiency with the Warhammer. My starting Cantrips are Blade Ward and Eldritch Blast, my first 2 Spells are Arms of Hadar and Witch Bolt, two very solid spells in my opinion. When i activate Blade Ward i have an AC of 16-19 and a juicy attack with +5 to hit and W10+3 damage. Not to bad.
With LvL2 the build starts to work. I chose Armor of Agathys as my third spell. My second Invocation will be Magic Initiate (Wizard), where i chose Mage Armor as the spell and Ray of Frost + Prestidigitation as Cantrips. Fiendish Vigor takes the place of the third Invocation. The 12 THP it provides for free are the perfect combination for AoA and most enemies wont break it with one hit in the earlier levels, smaller mobs most likely not even with 2 and everything that hits hard i´ll block with the Goliath ability.
So LvL2 already increses my armor with mage armor + blade ward up to 17-20 and AoA + False Life provide a lot of extra tankynes and passive damage.
Third level delivers the next upgrade for the build. AoA gets up to 10 damage now. My next spell is Misty Step to provide some mobility and an usefull option for my bonus action.
As the build focuses on keeping up AoA/THP i obviously pick a Fiend as my patron. The level 3 ability enables me to maybe tank one more hit with AoA and overall provides a lot of additional HP to fullfill my roll as a tank. The spells are all solid, but the Fire Shield at LvL 7 is the real deal, making enemies suffer from tons of retaliation damage (AoA + Fire Shield are 29 damage on average at this point)
Forth level is interesting. Third Cantrip = Mage Hand, 5th spell = Hold Person for some controll.
But now there are some points i struggle with. A logical option would be War Caster or an ability score improvement. But, hear me out please, what if i go for Moderatly Armored at this point? With a good medium armor i can get the same or even better AC, but at the same time i could switch Mage Armor (from Magic Initiate) to False Life, granting me the ability to Upcast it from this point on with my own spell slots. This would be great for LvL 5, where a warlock gets third level magic and so False Life would give wooping 22 THP. For me this sound awesome :D . Probably i should start than with 8/15/15/8/12/16, so that i increase Dex to 16 through moderatly armored and chose crusher or speedy later on to increase constitution to 16 as well.
Fifth Level, the last one i realy planed for now. The chosen spell should be Vampiric Touch or Hunger of Hadar. The two new Invocations would definitly include Thirsting Blade for the Pact Weapon. The second one depends on the the choice i made at LvL4. If i picked Warcaster i would take Eldritch Smite for some big damage numbers, if i decided on the Moderatly Armored feat i would take Eldritch Mind to keep concentration.
We will play Curse of Strahd, so we wont end at super high levels, maybe 13 or 14. I picked the Warhammer because it fits a Goliath and should be usefull against some undeads we will most likely encounter.
I would love to read some feedback. Do you think this build is viable? Any ideas how to make it better? Or maybe i missed something or understood something wrong (english isnt my first language so its definitly possible).
For a starting feat/background look at farmer. It gives you tough which is an extra 2 points to HP. Farmer increases CON/Wis. If you increase con by 2 points and wisdom by 1, you may want to adjust the point buy so drop con to 14. That gives you 2 points to elevate wisdom to 10 so adding +1 ability gives you 11 or use the 2 points of point buy to raise wisdom to 9 and raise another stat from 8 to 9. Raise the ability +1 to wisdom now you are at 10 so no negatives.
Consider at level 1 (or later) the armor of shadows. You get the +3 boost via mage armor. Being an eldritch invocation, you can cast it on your self through the day/night so you get 24 hour coverage. Don't waste a feat to get acolyte and then you have mage armor only 1 time in a day.
Being a tank, you want to get in there so get a hex spell, and that can assist you in your melee fighting.
Without multiclassing, if you want to be a tank, you may want to rethink how much long distance spellcasting you want want (e.g. Fiend subclass fire ball) or to get in close and swing and hit (e.g. Fey subclass with multiple teleportations) If you want to be close, you will need to get Pact of the blade and hex, etc.
Another way to fight in close is to use the find familiar invocation which attacks as part of your reaction step. At higher levels, the familiar can be the "source" of your fireballs and other spells. If the Familar is invisible, that can be a lot of fun as those spells come from "nowhere".
There is another fun tactic that you can do with the Fiend Patron Warlock that I think might work well for you. Both Armor of Agathys and Fire Shield deal damage to your attacker when you are hit, and neither requires concentration. At level 9, with both spells active, each time you get hit with a melee attack, you will deal back 2d8+25 damage to your attacker.
This pairs well with the Fiendlock's Dark One's Blessing ability, which gives you temporary hit points each time you kill someone or they die within ten feet of you, because renewing your temporary hitpoints keeps Armor of Agathys from ending early. So long as you keep getting hit, and things keep falling around you, your armors will stay up, making you very costly to keep beat on.