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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Hi everyone, I'd like your opinion on a character I'm going to create.
I want to create a Fighter 1 / Warlock X. He's a Goliath (Stone), and his first level is Fighter. The other levels will be Warlock.
Consider two options:
1) Focused more on magical attacks:
Strength 16, Dexterity 8, Constitution 14, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 10, Charisma 17.
He would use heavy armor, shield, longsword. Pact of the Chain (familiar to help), Pact of the Blade.
At Warlock level 4 I would take Spellsniper to attack with Eldritch Blast up close without suffering disadvantage (my group needs a frontliner), focusing on pushing enemies with Repelling Blast and throwing them towards the damage areas of my teammates' spells. Initially I will concentrate on Hex and at higher levels I would have a summon (Summon Undead or Summon Fey) to complement my damage. He would deal single target damage from a distance. At level 8, I would put +2 Charisma to reach 20 Charisma. I would try to get a Rod of the Pactkeeper.
2) Focused more on physical attacks:
Strength 17, Dexterity 8, Constitution 14, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 10, Charisma 16. He would use heavy armor, a maul. Pact of the Chain (familiar to help), Pact of the Blade.
At level 4 I would take Great Weapon Master. At level 8 I would take Heavy Armor Master to reduce damage taken (I know, I wouldn’t get 20 Strength, but I think the damage reduction from the feat combined with the Goliath's resistance could greatly enhance my Armor of Agathys).
The goal here is to deal a lot of damage with melee attacks, invest my spell slots in Agathys Armor, and use the damage reduction feat to make Agathys Armor last as long as possible. He has always concentrating on Bladeward to increase his AC.
Which of these options would be mathematically more powerful, and which subclass would best fit each one? The rules I can use are only the D&D Player's Handbook 5.5 (2024), Heroes of Faerûn (2025), Astarion Book of Hunger, Exploring Eberron and Eberron Forge of the Artificer. All from the 5.5 version of D&D.
If you have another good option, I would love to know :)
I can't speak to "mathematically more powerful" because that's never something I care about, but I'm currently playing a Fighter/Sorcerer who does the same Armor of Agathys/damage reduction combo you're thinking about with the second option, albeit in a different way. I can say it's extremely satisfying to get hit in melee, and then have the enemy take more damage than they manage to inflict upon you
One thing to watch out for is not to boost your AC too high if you want to get max utility out of that combo. My little guy's a DEX build with an AC of 20, and there have been times I've slapped on an upcast AoA, only to go the entire combat without anyone laying a finger on me. If you get something like the Tough feat in there so you can soak more damage, you can more easily leave your AC in a "hittable" range
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Thank you very much for your answer :)
At Warlock level 4....
Assuming you are starting at level 1 and advancing, you do realize that warlock 4 is actually level 5 for everyone? Any boost from starting as fighter 1 will be harder to justify as your mates get ASI/Feat boost at level 4, but your multiclass means you get it at level 5.
Warlock becomes very nice at level 5, but you and everyone else will be at level 6 when you get it.
Dex 8 may cause more problems then it is worth by using it as a dump. -1 initiatives, -1 dex saves to get 1/2 damage.
There’s a small problem with your setup: you cannot cast most spells with your hands full like they are with a sword and shield. If you want to use the shield eventually, I’d start with just the longsword until then so you can use it as a two-handed weapon until you get warcaster at level 5 (Warlock level 4). If you are going pact of the blade anyway, I wouldn't worry about spell sniper personally. Having said that, if you want to go the AoA route, you might not want a shield anyway and focus more on HP rather then AC.
Just for fun, I’ll attach my old Fighter 1/Warlock 19 build. I’m not sure which subclass you are going with, but I went with Celestial and made my character have as much health as possible so that when searing bengence or boon of recovery activated I’d get back as much health as possible. The biggest difference between our builds is I went Charisma and medium armor instead of strength and heavy armor. Hopefully it helps; I took great pride in it before I switched to Paladin 1/Warlock 19 and had to go with some strength as well as dropped my Constitution in favor of better mental stats. Anyway, here it is:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/150088777
Best of luck, fellow warlock!
P.S.: One final fact I just thought of you might want to take i to consideration that I did not know about originally: The starting heavy armor chain mail only requires a strength of 13 to wear, so if you weren’t going to use a heavy weapon (at least originally, or if you are sticking with default equipment) you can start out with either a 13 or a 14 and either take a +2 to strength or a +1 feat to strength and use those extra points elsewhere and still get advanced heavy armor when it matters later. Just a thought.
The rules of somatic components says a spellcaster must use at least one of their hands to perform the movements. But the rules of material components says i need to hold the components and It can be the same hand used to perform Somatic components. This same rule say I can substitute these components for a spellcasting focus if im holding it, but Pact of the blade turns my weapon into my Spellcasting Focus. So, while im holding my pact longsword I can perform material and somatic components using the same hand.
Oh, ok. Clearly I still have much to learn.
On one hand, now I’m wondering whether or not to go spell sniper. War Caster is still really good though. On the other hand, if you are going Pact of the Blade anyway, I don’t see the point of spell sniper for up close combat… unless you are using AoE spells and want to repelling blast people into them.
I have a different understanding, you may want to discuss with your DM how that is interpreted. But all have said I can keep the pact sword but not the shield.
Basically I intend to have options to "stop" enemies from attacking my party. Weapon masteries, Topple, Push, Sap in adition of Repelling blast to hit those far from me. I want to protect my bros. ha ha ha. My party is really "unique" we have a Valor bard, a lore Bard, a Stars druid and a Moon Druid. Yes its weird, but its what I have now ha ha ha.
Option 1 is probably not going to work that well: