Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Messing around with warlocks and looking at discussions around these forums it is plainly obvious that without multi-classing the 5.5 Warlock's AC is low and there isn't much that can be done about it without multi-classing for armor, and even doing this usually only results in ok armor of around 18 to 20 at best with not enough slots to justify things like shield. In these cases I believe the best way to optimize a straight class 5.5 is to not worry about armor as part of your considerations and instead focus on other defensive options and other skill and save considerations. Constitution is going to be important and I feel so are things that increase your health like the tough origin feat, the fiendish vigor invocation or even being something like a dwarf to increase your health. After Constitution what other stat do you guys think you focus on for skills? Intellect to go with the Warlocks vast array of int based skills on its skill list? Wisdom to make your wisdom saves as good as possible? or do we go dex still despite not worrying about AC just to get better stealth and sleight of hand.
The other thing I feel is a problem with Warlocks in 5.5 is their spell list. It seems to be one of the smallest and weakest lists in the game making every warlock heavily reliant on their subclass having a good spell list to offset the otherwise mediocre list of the warlock. The question is how much do you guys rely on the subclass lists and how much reliance is too much reliance?
For example the Archfey list has sleep on the list, a spell that doesn't upcast at all, but provides lockdown for a small area and can hit 2 creatures, 3 if very lucky. Does having this spell make you less likely to grab Tasha's hideous laughter or make you rush hypnotic pattern less in favor of spells that your list doesn't have a role for even though it is clearly the less powerful spell by the time you get it? Or do you completely ignore this spell and treat it as blank on the spell list? Does it depend on the situation?
Finally, at higher levels the mystic arcanums only allow you to pick a spell and you can only cast that spell at that level. Has anyone ever asked their DM if they can pick a lower level spell for their higher level arcanum? For example if I wanted to take Etherealness as the 8th level mystic arcanum how likely would you as a DM allow it and how often has your DM allowed it when you asked for similar? I presume it is not allowed by the rules.
If not which spells are your favorites?
Level 6 seems to have a lot of great options with eye bite, summon fiend, arcane gate, and tasha's cauldron all seeming pretty good to me.
Level 7 I seem to struggle with force cage is good but it is prohibitively expensive unless it is towards the end of the campaign and you are ready to go all out and are only going to cast this once or twice anyway. For games that are continuing long past 13 I think I like etherealness as a scouting tool because no concentration and long 8 hour duration, but curious what others go with here.
level 8 and 9 spells all seem so good that it is hard to choose.
Sorry if this is a lot of questions, just curious if anyone else is messing with full warlock builds and what they have found as they do so.
I mean, 18 is the average I get with a level dip in paladin with heavy armor and a shield. A defensive fighting style would bump it up, but that means an extra level in it. You could do it as a fighter though for one level! I’m not sure how much of this you have already figured out.
You can get shield with either the Acolyte or a Custom background. Many use magic initiate wizard to obtain blade ward, booming blade and shield. I don’t personally because acolyte doesn’t work for the stat spread, and to me using a custom background feels a bit like cheating to me, so I see your predicament. The only other way to get shield is to go old school hexblade warlock, and to get the extra spell slots go paladin. It’s only two with a one level dip though.
A bit of a tangent here, but going more levels in paladin can get you more spell slots to use to save your pact magic for big spells. Ones that don’t “level up” well like hex, darkness and suggestion all work well. I get though that it becomes less of a warlock at this point though.
Anyway, health and constitution are definitely important, and tough can be an appealing choice. Remember you can always get it via Lessons of the First Ones. I save it in my level 20 build for the very last Eldritch Invocation. You could always take it sooner to get a bit more out of it faster, but I chose to wait because it scales as you level up, and I felt I got more out of using other invocations first. I don’t use fiendish vigor personally though.
For a pure warlock build, dexterity definitely would come next to further boost your armor.
The trade-off with your spell list is you get eldritch blast as well as boosts for it via the eldritch invocations. Personally, i don’t think it matters if you rely on your pact spell list too much, but that’s just me. My personal favorite is wall of fire. I take repelling blast at warlock level 7 for this exact reason.
Sleep is a great spell at earlier levels. While you could multiclass for normal level one spell slots to use it with, you rarely use sleep outside of the beginning levels anyway, so to me it makes little difference. I personally don’t use tasha’s hideous laughter but love hypnotic pattern (except for the friendly fire, or course).
No, unfortunately it’s not allowed to pick a lower level mystic arcanum. Even if you could, i would think you would be using the same level mystic arcanum slot, so you’d have to pick between which one you want to use. While it’s good to have options, I can’t see giving up a whole level of spells for it.
Those are the best level 6 options I agree. To me the nerf to forcecage via the regrediants are just too much to me. Plus, for whatever reason, I always loved crown of stars. To me, Dominate monster at level 8 and true polymorph at level 9 are the clear winners. I wish maddening darkness was more practical at level 8 though.
To answer your question, I unfortunately no longer mess around with pure warlock builds. The upsides to multiclasing in favor of dumping the weak warlock capstone are just too great. I use to run a pure warlock build back in 5, but devouring blade just has too much potential.
Don’t worry about asking too many questions. That’s what the community is here for. I just hope my limited experience was helpful enough!
p.s.: Here’s a cooy of my build if you are interested. I know it’s not pure warlock, but I’m very proud of the synergies between the two I have come up with and believe there are even more if you are willing to do more than dip. I do realize it may not be your cup of tea though, which is fine by me. I thought I would include it anyway just in case.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/138128127
Good luck, fellow warlock!
Ya I know you can get a good armor class with multi-classing, especially fighter and Paladin. Bladelock Paladins especially with the high strength being needed for heavy weapons with pact of the blade anyway in addition to taking lessons of the first for shield spell is definitely a strong way to get huge AC and enough first level slots to have a reasonable number of shield casts. However, a pure warlock will never have enough slots for shield even if they can get it lessons of the first ones and the AC they can get will never be high enough to really matter with the best they can hope for being 15 with studded leather and 16 with mage armor from invocations. By the time the warlock is in the mid levels a CR 5 or 6 the monsters all have +7 to +10 and are hitting on 8's and lower and at even higher levels you start getting +12's to even +15's at that point without some very strong magic armor you are getting hit by as low as a 1 meaning you are getting auto hit. So the figure with a full warlock is your AC is not going to be high enough to matter so Con needs to be your highest secondary because you are going to get hit and then after it is all about what skills you and your party need.
I understand not getting fiendish vigor, especially if you are playing a subclass like fiend that gets a lot of Temp HP for free. Though I will argue at low levels fiendish vigor is a huge boost to survivability and at mid levels it is also a solid amount an example is a warlock with just one cast of false life from fiendish vigor at level 5 will have the same amount of health as a barbarian with the same con bonus and with the ability to essentially heal 1/5th of that with just an action, though generally ya I feel fiendish vigor can be dropped at higher levels for tough, but even that I am hesitant on that because at level 6 tough and fiendish vigor are equal in amount of health provided, but fiendish vigor refreshes that 12 as soon as the fight is done without having to spend hit dice so the question ends up being over the course of they day which is really better?
I also was considering intellect over dex in a pure warlock build simply dependent on what role you are playing within the party. If no one is playing a wizard or no one else focuses on intellect at all the team is likely looking to the warlock to fit the role of arcane expert and investigator, both of which are skills on the warlock list. And with the AC not being good regardless I feel it is more important to perform that role successfully than it is to have a mediocre AC.
Edit: by the way the character you linked was listed as private. Head to the home portion of it and change it to public for it to be viewable.
www.dndbeyond.com/characters/163128966/V1ltf0 (an example of a character with the philosophy listed above, mind you I picked tome and didn't pick find familiar, but the idea with tome is you would just cast find familiar than take a short rest and change out the spell while keeping the familiar).
Charisma,con then dex
giving up dex is a foolish decision because quite a few spells require dex saves like for example fireball and dex increases your AC and initiative
Personally I would take armor of shadows and get mage armor but it's not required
for melee with warlock I would suggest doing a polearm sentinel build with repelling blast
On a separate note most people multi class for various reasons
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Before you even assign ability scores, I recommend to decide which type of warlock you want to be, either a sword welding type melee fighter or stand in the back and just cast spells at range.
I have found you can't do both, the melee type uses all of your (fighting) invocations. So trying to hybrid fails.
Technically a warlock is probably not MAD, but it helps to have a few good abilities.
I think this notion on a pure warlock build is itself foolish. If an opponent hits on a 3 or a 4 making them hit on a 5 or a 6 is making very little different to a character's survivability since you took them from hitting 80% to just 70% of the time reducing the amount you get hit by just 12.5% compared to if increasing your dex would bring the opponent from needing a 12 to hit to a 14 to hit taking their chance to hit from a 40 to a 30 % which is an increase chance to miss of 25% which is double the effectiveness of increased armor.
Just to take the two example builds, mine vs yours in this case. I have 55 health with fiendish vigor you have 38 health. My health is roughly 40% larger than yours off a single cast of fiendish vigor with us both having the ability to gain temp hp in fight through the use of archfey misty step. your ac is 15 with mage armor on, mine is 13. The monsters at this level have an average +7 to hit. you are thus getting hit on an 8 or better or 65% of the time and I am getting hit 75% of the time which is around 13% more which means just this example shows that the 12 temp hp from fiendish vigor is nearly twice as effective in your total effective hp than taking armor of shadows to make that +1 difference in your AC because with just one cast it would increase your health by 30% while the 1 armor is taking from a 70% chance to get hit to a 65% chance to get hit which is an increase in chance to miss of just 7%.
Same thing with dex saves the average DC is a 14 or a 15 so you are failing on a 11 or a 12 and it is only going to get worse as proficiencies increase. I feel if the save is what we are worried about then wisdom should be the item we are pumping because we have proficiency in wisdom saves thus a 1 or 2 bump will actually make a meaningful increase to our chance to save taking us from failing on a 10 or 11 to only failing on an 8 or 9 and below. Wisdom saves are also typically worse to fail than dex saves, dex saves make you take damage but wisdom failed saves can take you out of the fight entirely.
of course this changes with multi-classing due to armor dips getting medium armor and a shield takes your base AC to 17 without any dex bumps which means enemies hit only 55% of the time and bumping your dex to +2 changes it to only being hit 45% which is a 18% increase which is nearly 75% increase in effectiveness of that +2 AC boost over the +2 in a 13 to 15 route.
Just need to correct myself about one thing there are more wisdom save spells than dex save spells (by like 3)
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I didn’t realize it was that close! Still, I’m not sure my build has any room for increases in dex, int, or wis.
Both searing vengeance and boon of recovery allow you to recover half of your health, so my build revolves around having a high health.
Also, I chose to stick with a longsword until i get access to a rapier for my build instead of a two-handed weapon. I probably should change it, but I feel like if i don’t use a shield I’m missing out on a war caster feature. I’d like to go back in and change that feat and go two-handed, but my mind has been elsewhere. My current campaign uses a Barbarian/Fighter, and I’m doing my first one-shot coming up. I’m open to suggestions though!
Remember it isn't about the number of spells rather the number of monsters forcing wisdom saves vs dex saves and the impact of those effects. Just looking at CR 5 and 6 creatures in the 5.5 PHB there are 10 creatures that force wisdom saves and 8 that force dex saves. The ones that target dex saves are nearly all fire or cold damage from fireball cone of cold and breath weapons and just do damage, the drider being the main exception to that. While those that target wisdom nearly all take you out of the fight with things like confusion glare, paralyzing, Tasha's hideous laughter, less so with phantasmal killer. So wisdom can be targeted more by monsters and failing the save has a worse impact on you as a player.
That’s a good point… or at least it said something to me. I can handle damage; I can’t handle being out of combat. Still, my build is already stretched thin: 15/8/15+1/8/8/15+2. At least my race/species grants advantage on wisdom and charisma checks.
I saw the level 20 character, not sure what level you are actually playing at or if it is a level 20 one shot, but going to 13+1 on con would allow you to get 4 more points to take wisdom to 12 and create +2 more to wisdom saves. Which as I said earlier does make a big difference when you have wisdom proficiency.
Edit: Also will say that if you are playing to 20 most warlocks should multi-class the warlock capstone just isn't very good. It is when not playing to 20 that you have reason to not multi-class. Like if only going to 11 for 6th level spells and the 3rd slot or 12 of playing blade lock to get the 3rd strike. 14 is the subclass capstone which are all pretty good. 9 is 5th level spells so on and so forth.