Hey all, first forum post so I’m sorry if this comes off a bit awkward.
So, I’m playing a winged tiefling warlock for a new campaign. I was originally planning to go plain warlock, but I decided to risk it all and roll my stats instead of pre-rolled.
I rolled well. Like, really well.
12, 13, 15, 15, 16, 17
So, putting the 17 in charisma, with the tiefling bonus, that’s a 19.
I’ve got the urchin background and am leaning Book warlock but miiight go blade. The other party members are a cleric, a druid, and an arcane archer.
How do I optimize my character to make the most of these really good stats? Should I multi-class?
it might be interesting to use darkness + devil’s sight + some levels in rogue and the magic stone cantrip & a slingshot for tons of sneak attack, but generally warlock & rogue don’t mesh well. Thoughts? Maybe I should go sorlock?
I dunno, I haven’t played dnd in years. Any tips or build ideas are appreciated !
Well, lets talk about what you want to do here. What's your goal beyond tiefling warlock? Do you want to go with lots of fire? The Flames of (insert hell level too lazy to look up) is a good feat if you go that way; boost to fire power. As a pure warlock, I tend to focus primarily on using Eldritch Blasts that shift enemies around; battlefield control is always good. Did you decide on a Patron?
Do you have some specific cantrips in mind with your Book Pact? A lot is going to depend on your party composition - no need to take Mage Hand or Guidance, for instance, if your group has an Arcane Trickster or Cleric/Druid. Most cantrips you really only one in the party. Some people like to do the Booming Blade / Shillegah combo with Book as a backup attack option. If you lack scouts / sneaks in your party, then taking Chain might be better than cantrips, the familiars are like a living Scry spell.
I'm disinclined to recommend Blade unless you go Hexblade, or you try to do the Fighter 1/Warlock X route. Multiclassing into sorcerer would just indicate a two level dip for Agonizing Blast, then ignoring Book - no need since Sorcerer will give you all the cantrips you might want, so any more is a bit redundant.
You have high enough stats across the board that you can dip any class you want, including monk or barbarian for crazy good AC without wearing armor. Here's a link to a Warlock 5/Monk 15 built using your stats, explanation below... Death from Above
Honestly I think the real story here is that your DM is letting you play a warlock with a fly speed, so assuming he doesn't keep you locked underground the entire campaign, congratulations you're invincible artillery starting at level 1. Eldritch blast is so good that using nothing but cantrips in battle is viable, leaving you free to take nothing but cool utility spells with your leveled spells... and also meaning you don't really suffer any ill effects from multiclassing, because it doesn't slow down the progression of your eldritch blast, which is all you'll ever do in combat. All you technically need are two levels of warlock (to pick up eldritch spear and agonizing blast), but sticking with it to 5, 7, or 9 will also gives you Grasp of Hadar, Repelling Blast, and Lance of Lethargy for further shenanigans (not worth giving up too many monk levels, but you could go full warlock and just use all of these). Go ahead and take Spell Sniper at 4, and now you can zap from 600 feet up, trivializing any combat that your party sees coming, and your earthly victims cant even benefit from anything less than full cover.
Really past level 2 there's nothing that you're going to get out of 18 more levels of warlock that are going to approach the power you already have, aside from neat invocations. So I think that the real optimization here is to focus on buffing your move speed and defenses after 2, to ensure that you can keep up with whatever's attempting to run away from your death rays, and to prevent yourself from being shot out of the sky. You said you wanted a pact, so that takes you to 3, and it makes sense to get a fourth level as well for the Feat and Cantrip you pick up then. So I would either do Warlock 4 (Fiend/Tome)/Monk 16 (Shadow) (slightly better stats because you have room to take Infernal Constitution at 20), or Warlock 5/Monk 15 (to get devil sight so that you can fly around in a bubble of your own darkness, and have slightly better spells). Warlock 5 sounds cooler, lets go with that.
There are a handful of cool feats to support the build, though taking 3 ASI's is better for your saves and AC. Skulker could be fun (can hide in light clouds, and missing with Eldritch Blast from the sky won't reveal you), as could Mobile (gotta fly fast, fly 65 instead of 55 at max level and no slowing down in "difficult terrain" high winds), and Infernal Constitution will bump you up to the next Con tier and pick you up a couple of resistences... the ASI's will give you better raw stats, but honestly you won't be attacked much while flying high, so Skulker and Mobile could be fun!
Your build is viable at 1, comes online at warlock 2, and then you start getting exponentially slippier and harder to lock down as monk levels come online. At 20, you have at least 143 (or 163 if you buff con) HP, often are sitting on a pad of 10 temp HP from killing something, have AC 18, and proficiency in all saves (and can reroll fails once), all while flying 600 feet up, at 55 (or 65 with mobility) move speed, and doing 1d10+5 x 4 damage per round (plus 1d6 per shot, if you swoop low enough to hex a big juicy target). Victims on the ground can't run from you, and probably can't hide either unless they find total cover. You'll have a handful of spells that keep you out of trouble like Misty Step, Earthbind, as well as the ability to cast cool shadowy spell like effects with your monk levels like darkness, silence, invisibility, and pass without trace. Because you're a monk, you speak all languages, are practically immune to single projectiles by using your reaction, are immune to disease and poison, can't be charmed or frightened for very long, have evasion, and if something knocks you out of the air you can lessen the damage with a reaction. And if against all odds something manages to corner you on the ground and force you into a melee fight... they've made a terrible mistake, because you're actually a high level monk in disguise, and can unleash an absolutely crippling barrage of four 1d8+4 strikes and stuns in their face every round (again, plus another 1d6 if you hex first).
In short... if you know a fight is coming, nothing on earth can stand against you. You can level entire cities singlehandedly by raining destruction down on them from outside the range of most spells, and can easily deal with anything that flies up to face you one on one.
Not everyone wants to cheese eldritch blast, and honestly it doesn't take advantage of your stats as much as some other stuff would. For a weirder, and more stat intensive build... it could be fun to play a hexblade (pact of blade) 8/rogue (scout) 4/Barbarian (storm-desert) 8 grappler? :D 20 strength, 20 charisma, expertise on athletics, various aura abilities depending on whether you're raging or casting spells, grab people and fly them straight up in the air then drop them for damage, teleporting back to them to do it again next round... I dunno, it would be weird, but fun!
Whoa thanks that’s super helpful! That does sound really good, and would also work if my DM tries to keep us indoors or something. Though, for the pact, since I’d only be getting enough warlock levels for 3 invocations, is tome still a good option? With the two EB boosting ones and devil’s sight, I can’t learn rituals, and since i could only learn up to level 2 rituals if I did take it it probably wouldn’t be worth it. Though, the cantrips from tome sure are nice...
You’ve pretty much got me convinced to take monk levels, hahah. Spamming EB seems pretty all right when I’ve got featherfall and can catch non-magic projectiles while in the sky.
@chicken-champ that sounds... pretty wild lol. I don’t know if I’d be able to figure that one out, since it sounds pretty complicated & I’m still figuring out the rules to some degree. I’ll look into those though & see if the synergy would be worth trying to make it work.
Though, for the pact, since I’d only be getting enough warlock levels for 3 invocations, is tome still a good option? With the two EB boosting ones and devil’s sight, I can’t learn rituals, and since i could only learn up to level 2 rituals if I did take it it probably wouldn’t be worth it. Though, the cantrips from tome sure are nice...
You’ve pretty much got me convinced to take monk levels, hahah. Spamming EB seems pretty all right when I’ve got featherfall and can catch non-magic projectiles while in the sky.
If you drop down to Warlock 3, you'd bump your fists up to 1d10's instead of 1d8's, but nothing really else that you cared about, but losing the ability to see out of a bubble of darkness cast on yourself, downgrading your spell slots from 3rd level to 2nd level, knowing one less cantrip and two less spells. All the way down to Warlock 2 and you'd pick up a cool Monk 18 invisibility thing, but you may not play the character long enough to ever see that benefit, and in the meantime you're giving up another warlock spell, downgrading your slots all the way down to 1st level, and losing your three bonus cantrips from the tome pact. While that might make sense from a level 20 perspective, I don't think it will be as fun for you to play, most likely?
If your concern is not having the tome's ritual invocation, you certainly could drop Devil Sight (no more seeing out of darkness bubbles) or Eldritch Spear (Still attack from 240 feet away, which is pretty good, but not 600 feet good!) to pick that up by 5. About half of the ritual spells in the game are level 2 or lower, so you're really not missing out by much by only having 5 levels of warlock. Alternatively, you could take Warlock all the way to 7 to pick up that invocation... but you lose a lot of cool end game monk stuff (all saves, reroll save failures, languages, some speed) while picking up a warlock infernal patron feature that kinda does the same thing (add a bonus to saves as a reaction). If you were going to go warlock 7, I'd suggest using the archfey instead, because their level 6 patron feature (teleport and go invisible when taking damage as a reaction) is actually pretty dope.
But really, I'd suggest sticking with Warlock 5/Monk 15 and dropping Eldritch Spear or Devil Sight in favor of Book of Ancient Secrets, if rituals are what get you excited.
Okay, second idea... I can't think of any better use of such high stats than having three different caster classes, using three different mental stats... and taking them all to 20 :p
Warlock (Hexblade) 4/Druid (Moon) 8/Wizard (War Magic) 8. If you take nothing but ASI's, you'll have 20 Int/20 Wis/20 Cha by level 20, while still having respectable physical stats in human form (I'd suggest 12 str/13 dex/15 con). But you also can freely wild shape whenever things get too close and personal, becoming something Awesome like a Bear to sub in top-notch physical stats and a new beefy HP pool! You can buff your AC or saves as a reaction when hit thanks to war magic, and can wear armor and wield shields thanks to hexblade so you're not super squishy even when in spellcasting form, as well as hiding in darkness bubbles (the same trick as every build, its cool). With the book pact boon you can have up to 9 cantrips covering the breadth of elements or situations, in addition to a diverse selection of other leveled spells from your caster classes. The wizard and druid will eventually share spell slots up to 8th level, though each will only learn spells up to 4th level (so hey, at least they'll feel cool being upcast!).
Honestly there are a lot of cool mashups between warlocks and wizards... bladesinger is even better for the above 3-way build than warmage is, if your DM lets you use a non-elven bladesinger (+5 AC on your beast forms!!! Bonus movement, and +5 on concentration checks on spells like barkskin that you'll want up in bear form turn every beast into a tank!). Or enchanter 2/great old one 14 lets you create unlimited thralls without even using spells. Or Diviner 6/Warlock 9 will let you recover tons of wizard spell slots as long as you use the warlock 5th level slots for divination spells.
Three way caster could be really cool, and normally it can't be done... those stats are the perfect opportunity!
If I do Warlock 5/Monk 15, is tome still good or should I consider another pact? I’m not really into chain because out Druid already has a familiar and i don’t wanna steal her thunder lol. Does blade pact include monk weapons? Or maybe I should just stick to book & cantrips.
I’m concerned that splitting class 3-ways would make me too weak with no access to higher level stuff. i haven’t played 5e before so maybe I should keep it simple... or do some studying lol. Unlimited thralls sounds tempting, but I doubt my DM would allow that.
If I do Warlock 5/Monk 15, is tome still good or should I consider another pact? I’m not really into chain because out Druid already has a familiar and i don’t wanna steal her thunder lol. Does blade pact include monk weapons? Or maybe I should just stick to book & cantrips.
Pact of the Blade is mostly just for letting hexblades use 2 handed weapons, and won't transform whatever weapon you pick into a monk weapon using your martial arts die, so really you're better off flying around with empty hands or a focus than usinga pact weapon. If you're not interested in chain, you're left with book... either take it to 5 for rituals, or stop at 4 to get one extra feat by 20 but lose an invocation, or stop at 2 to lose the cantrips, rituals, and an invocation in exchange for getting into monk levels earlier, and eventually getting a ki-powered greater invisibility. All three are viable paths, and you really aren't locked into the decision until you hit level 20... if you're starting at level one or low level, maybe try going warlock-monk-warlock-monk for the first four levels, and then see how it's playing at the table, and if you're more excited about getting more spells or getting more monk stuff?
Hey all, first forum post so I’m sorry if this comes off a bit awkward.
So, I’m playing a winged tiefling warlock for a new campaign. I was originally planning to go plain warlock, but I decided to risk it all and roll my stats instead of pre-rolled.
I rolled well. Like, really well.
12, 13, 15, 15, 16, 17
So, putting the 17 in charisma, with the tiefling bonus, that’s a 19.
I’ve got the urchin background and am leaning Book warlock but miiight go blade. The other party members are a cleric, a druid, and an arcane archer.
How do I optimize my character to make the most of these really good stats? Should I multi-class?
it might be interesting to use darkness + devil’s sight + some levels in rogue and the magic stone cantrip & a slingshot for tons of sneak attack, but generally warlock & rogue don’t mesh well. Thoughts? Maybe I should go sorlock?
I dunno, I haven’t played dnd in years. Any tips or build ideas are appreciated !
Well, lets talk about what you want to do here. What's your goal beyond tiefling warlock? Do you want to go with lots of fire? The Flames of (insert hell level too lazy to look up) is a good feat if you go that way; boost to fire power. As a pure warlock, I tend to focus primarily on using Eldritch Blasts that shift enemies around; battlefield control is always good. Did you decide on a Patron?
Do you have some specific cantrips in mind with your Book Pact? A lot is going to depend on your party composition - no need to take Mage Hand or Guidance, for instance, if your group has an Arcane Trickster or Cleric/Druid. Most cantrips you really only one in the party. Some people like to do the Booming Blade / Shillegah combo with Book as a backup attack option. If you lack scouts / sneaks in your party, then taking Chain might be better than cantrips, the familiars are like a living Scry spell.
I'm disinclined to recommend Blade unless you go Hexblade, or you try to do the Fighter 1/Warlock X route. Multiclassing into sorcerer would just indicate a two level dip for Agonizing Blast, then ignoring Book - no need since Sorcerer will give you all the cantrips you might want, so any more is a bit redundant.
You have high enough stats across the board that you can dip any class you want, including monk or barbarian for crazy good AC without wearing armor. Here's a link to a Warlock 5/Monk 15 built using your stats, explanation below... Death from Above
Honestly I think the real story here is that your DM is letting you play a warlock with a fly speed, so assuming he doesn't keep you locked underground the entire campaign, congratulations you're invincible artillery starting at level 1. Eldritch blast is so good that using nothing but cantrips in battle is viable, leaving you free to take nothing but cool utility spells with your leveled spells... and also meaning you don't really suffer any ill effects from multiclassing, because it doesn't slow down the progression of your eldritch blast, which is all you'll ever do in combat. All you technically need are two levels of warlock (to pick up eldritch spear and agonizing blast), but sticking with it to 5, 7, or 9 will also gives you Grasp of Hadar, Repelling Blast, and Lance of Lethargy for further shenanigans (not worth giving up too many monk levels, but you could go full warlock and just use all of these). Go ahead and take Spell Sniper at 4, and now you can zap from 600 feet up, trivializing any combat that your party sees coming, and your earthly victims cant even benefit from anything less than full cover.
Really past level 2 there's nothing that you're going to get out of 18 more levels of warlock that are going to approach the power you already have, aside from neat invocations. So I think that the real optimization here is to focus on buffing your move speed and defenses after 2, to ensure that you can keep up with whatever's attempting to run away from your death rays, and to prevent yourself from being shot out of the sky. You said you wanted a pact, so that takes you to 3, and it makes sense to get a fourth level as well for the Feat and Cantrip you pick up then. So I would either do Warlock 4 (Fiend/Tome)/Monk 16 (Shadow) (slightly better stats because you have room to take Infernal Constitution at 20), or Warlock 5/Monk 15 (to get devil sight so that you can fly around in a bubble of your own darkness, and have slightly better spells). Warlock 5 sounds cooler, lets go with that.
There are a handful of cool feats to support the build, though taking 3 ASI's is better for your saves and AC. Skulker could be fun (can hide in light clouds, and missing with Eldritch Blast from the sky won't reveal you), as could Mobile (gotta fly fast, fly 65 instead of 55 at max level and no slowing down in "difficult terrain" high winds), and Infernal Constitution will bump you up to the next Con tier and pick you up a couple of resistences... the ASI's will give you better raw stats, but honestly you won't be attacked much while flying high, so Skulker and Mobile could be fun!
Your build is viable at 1, comes online at warlock 2, and then you start getting exponentially slippier and harder to lock down as monk levels come online. At 20, you have at least 143 (or 163 if you buff con) HP, often are sitting on a pad of 10 temp HP from killing something, have AC 18, and proficiency in all saves (and can reroll fails once), all while flying 600 feet up, at 55 (or 65 with mobility) move speed, and doing 1d10+5 x 4 damage per round (plus 1d6 per shot, if you swoop low enough to hex a big juicy target). Victims on the ground can't run from you, and probably can't hide either unless they find total cover. You'll have a handful of spells that keep you out of trouble like Misty Step, Earthbind, as well as the ability to cast cool shadowy spell like effects with your monk levels like darkness, silence, invisibility, and pass without trace. Because you're a monk, you speak all languages, are practically immune to single projectiles by using your reaction, are immune to disease and poison, can't be charmed or frightened for very long, have evasion, and if something knocks you out of the air you can lessen the damage with a reaction. And if against all odds something manages to corner you on the ground and force you into a melee fight... they've made a terrible mistake, because you're actually a high level monk in disguise, and can unleash an absolutely crippling barrage of four 1d8+4 strikes and stuns in their face every round (again, plus another 1d6 if you hex first).
In short... if you know a fight is coming, nothing on earth can stand against you. You can level entire cities singlehandedly by raining destruction down on them from outside the range of most spells, and can easily deal with anything that flies up to face you one on one.
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Not everyone wants to cheese eldritch blast, and honestly it doesn't take advantage of your stats as much as some other stuff would. For a weirder, and more stat intensive build... it could be fun to play a hexblade (pact of blade) 8/rogue (scout) 4/Barbarian (storm-desert) 8 grappler? :D 20 strength, 20 charisma, expertise on athletics, various aura abilities depending on whether you're raging or casting spells, grab people and fly them straight up in the air then drop them for damage, teleporting back to them to do it again next round... I dunno, it would be weird, but fun!
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Whoa thanks that’s super helpful! That does sound really good, and would also work if my DM tries to keep us indoors or something. Though, for the pact, since I’d only be getting enough warlock levels for 3 invocations, is tome still a good option? With the two EB boosting ones and devil’s sight, I can’t learn rituals, and since i could only learn up to level 2 rituals if I did take it it probably wouldn’t be worth it. Though, the cantrips from tome sure are nice...
You’ve pretty much got me convinced to take monk levels, hahah. Spamming EB seems pretty all right when I’ve got featherfall and can catch non-magic projectiles while in the sky.
@chicken-champ that sounds... pretty wild lol. I don’t know if I’d be able to figure that one out, since it sounds pretty complicated & I’m still figuring out the rules to some degree. I’ll look into those though & see if the synergy would be worth trying to make it work.
If you drop down to Warlock 3, you'd bump your fists up to 1d10's instead of 1d8's, but nothing really else that you cared about, but losing the ability to see out of a bubble of darkness cast on yourself, downgrading your spell slots from 3rd level to 2nd level, knowing one less cantrip and two less spells. All the way down to Warlock 2 and you'd pick up a cool Monk 18 invisibility thing, but you may not play the character long enough to ever see that benefit, and in the meantime you're giving up another warlock spell, downgrading your slots all the way down to 1st level, and losing your three bonus cantrips from the tome pact. While that might make sense from a level 20 perspective, I don't think it will be as fun for you to play, most likely?
If your concern is not having the tome's ritual invocation, you certainly could drop Devil Sight (no more seeing out of darkness bubbles) or Eldritch Spear (Still attack from 240 feet away, which is pretty good, but not 600 feet good!) to pick that up by 5. About half of the ritual spells in the game are level 2 or lower, so you're really not missing out by much by only having 5 levels of warlock. Alternatively, you could take Warlock all the way to 7 to pick up that invocation... but you lose a lot of cool end game monk stuff (all saves, reroll save failures, languages, some speed) while picking up a warlock infernal patron feature that kinda does the same thing (add a bonus to saves as a reaction). If you were going to go warlock 7, I'd suggest using the archfey instead, because their level 6 patron feature (teleport and go invisible when taking damage as a reaction) is actually pretty dope.
But really, I'd suggest sticking with Warlock 5/Monk 15 and dropping Eldritch Spear or Devil Sight in favor of Book of Ancient Secrets, if rituals are what get you excited.
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Okay, second idea... I can't think of any better use of such high stats than having three different caster classes, using three different mental stats... and taking them all to 20 :p
Warlock (Hexblade) 4/Druid (Moon) 8/Wizard (War Magic) 8. If you take nothing but ASI's, you'll have 20 Int/20 Wis/20 Cha by level 20, while still having respectable physical stats in human form (I'd suggest 12 str/13 dex/15 con). But you also can freely wild shape whenever things get too close and personal, becoming something Awesome like a Bear to sub in top-notch physical stats and a new beefy HP pool! You can buff your AC or saves as a reaction when hit thanks to war magic, and can wear armor and wield shields thanks to hexblade so you're not super squishy even when in spellcasting form, as well as hiding in darkness bubbles (the same trick as every build, its cool). With the book pact boon you can have up to 9 cantrips covering the breadth of elements or situations, in addition to a diverse selection of other leveled spells from your caster classes. The wizard and druid will eventually share spell slots up to 8th level, though each will only learn spells up to 4th level (so hey, at least they'll feel cool being upcast!).
Honestly there are a lot of cool mashups between warlocks and wizards... bladesinger is even better for the above 3-way build than warmage is, if your DM lets you use a non-elven bladesinger (+5 AC on your beast forms!!! Bonus movement, and +5 on concentration checks on spells like barkskin that you'll want up in bear form turn every beast into a tank!). Or enchanter 2/great old one 14 lets you create unlimited thralls without even using spells. Or Diviner 6/Warlock 9 will let you recover tons of wizard spell slots as long as you use the warlock 5th level slots for divination spells.
Three way caster could be really cool, and normally it can't be done... those stats are the perfect opportunity!
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If I do Warlock 5/Monk 15, is tome still good or should I consider another pact? I’m not really into chain because out Druid already has a familiar and i don’t wanna steal her thunder lol. Does blade pact include monk weapons? Or maybe I should just stick to book & cantrips.
I’m concerned that splitting class 3-ways would make me too weak with no access to higher level stuff. i haven’t played 5e before so maybe I should keep it simple... or do some studying lol. Unlimited thralls sounds tempting, but I doubt my DM would allow that.
Pact of the Blade is mostly just for letting hexblades use 2 handed weapons, and won't transform whatever weapon you pick into a monk weapon using your martial arts die, so really you're better off flying around with empty hands or a focus than usinga pact weapon. If you're not interested in chain, you're left with book... either take it to 5 for rituals, or stop at 4 to get one extra feat by 20 but lose an invocation, or stop at 2 to lose the cantrips, rituals, and an invocation in exchange for getting into monk levels earlier, and eventually getting a ki-powered greater invisibility. All three are viable paths, and you really aren't locked into the decision until you hit level 20... if you're starting at level one or low level, maybe try going warlock-monk-warlock-monk for the first four levels, and then see how it's playing at the table, and if you're more excited about getting more spells or getting more monk stuff?
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