Need help building a Warlock

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Quote from jl8e >>

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" My character is already Fighter 1 / Warlock 2. I cant change its base now."

Probably should lead with that next time.

"Strength 16, Dexterity 8, Constitution 14, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 10, Charisma 17."

Well, if all your levels are a sunk cost, id say go all warlock at this point. Your charisma is higher and youre closer to maxing out cha to 20, which maxes your damage. Fighter lets you wear plate, and with a dex of 8, you need plate.

With a dex of eight, you need plate.

Trademarked by me.

Other than that, focus on eldritch blast and hex. Get spell sniper so you can attack when an enemy is next to you.  Prep for battle with the highest level armor of agythys you can cast.  Then you will dish out damage every time you get hit, and you dont take damage yourself.

The only other option that may make sense is if you go all sorcerer from here. Assuming youre level 3, 1 fighter 2 warlock. The advantage of sorcerer is more slots for armor of agythys and better aoe and control spells. 

The thing about most spell casters is their cantrips suck so they usually throw a weak cantrip or a slotted spell. The solution is usially a warlock dip for eb/ab and then save your slots for when you really need them..

You are already there. The 1 level of fighter is really the only level i would have avoided. So if you go all sorcerer from here out, eb/ab for free damage dealing. Spell sniper to use it in melee. And the rest in sorcerer for juicy spell slots for amor of agythys and more aoe options.

 I disagree here. If you're going to be wearing heavy armor, and I agree that it seems like the plan, go for the blade pact. It synergies with the fighter level better, letting you use the weapon masteries.

And jumping into a second caster class just dilutes both of them, keeping you from getting higher-level spells in either of them. More slots for armor of agathys is less useful than higher-level slots for it.

 
For masteries: Part of it depends on how the DM runs the monsters. If there is usually one big-bad, then weapon masteries are more useful. If there are a dozen or two dozen baddies, then I'm not sure masteries are that great.

Best as I can see, the masteries that make a difference are:

light/nick: do that 4 attacks per round thing at level 5,  which I hate.

vex: helps a rogue qualify for sneak attack next turn. lets them not have to hide all the time, or steady aim, which is good.

graze: even if you miss, you do some damage. if you're trying to break concentration of an evil mage, or if you're just trying to pile on the damage, this is nice.

The other properties are meh

push/topple/slow:  This may sound useful, but average movement of a monster is 30 feet. These all subtract 10 to 15 feet of movement.  Many of them require a melee attack, which means you're already on top of them. and if they have 20 feet of movement left, they can usually close with you. So slowing an enemy isn't that useful. The one case I can see where this could be powerful is a whip (slow) with slasher feat (hamstring), you can reduce enemy speed by 20 feet, AND whip has a range of 10 feet, so you can slow enemy to 10ft and back up so they can't even melee you on their next turn. THAT is pwoerful.  TOPPLE? you topple someone, they go prone, you melee them at advantage, meanwhile, every range attacker in your party attacks at disadvantage, so its a wash.  In a party of 4, if the party is split range vs melee, I think putting the range attacks at disadvantage is much worse. The enemy usually gets 1 attack for the party's 4, so action economy works best when you maintain that rate of fire. Topple actually slows down the party's attacks per turn, removing the ranged attacks until the enemy stands up. If the entire party is melee, great. but I've never seen a party built like that.

Push might help if a caster sets up an AOE centered on the enemy, and the enemy tries to escape aoe, you can push them back in. Sounds nice. I can't remember last time I saw that actually happen in play.

Cleave: If you hit enemy, you can also try to hit an enemy 5 ft away. fine, I suppose if you've got groups of enemies close together. But how often do you have that?

Vex: next attack roll at disadvantage: fine, I suppose, in the case where its a single enemy and they do one attack per round. But lots of enemies, or an enemy that does lots of attacks, or can switch to something that forces a save? Little to no effect.

In theory, you get a lot of masteries, and then you pick the weapon that has the best mastery for the encounter. I suppose. But really, the more damage you do, the faster the encounter ends, and only some masteries help do that.

"More slots for armor of agathys is less useful than higher-level slots for it."

This also depends on teh campaign. Used to be the average number of encounters per long rest was six to eight. if you get to long rest in between, great for the warlock. But if not, you run out of those pact slots pretty quick.

Current average is apparently one to three encounters per long rest, so basically everyone can nova, and there's little benefit to playing a zero-resource class like a plain fighter. 

I tend to run three to six encounters per long rest in my campaign. and I tend to run a LOT of monsters per encounter. I don't know if 2 pact slots will be enough. The sorcerer in the party is generally extremely happy because the bad guys always include a horde they can fireball.   A warlock with Armor of Agythys will run out of temp hp against a horde pretty quick. So its better suited for a DM who tends to run only a couple of monsters per encounter. If the DM deploys dozens of bad guys per encounter, the warlock is going to need more slots for armor of agythys.

Also, I think the party was described as 2 bards and 2 druids. Absolutely no one has fireball? Someone needs fireball.

Warlock is designed for maximum single-target damage: eldritch blast/agonizing blast/hex/Armor of agythys. All of them work GREAT in a single target environment. If encounters tend towards a small number of monsters, go pure warlock. The rare time you encounter a horde, drop circle of death or something.   As long as you can short rest and get yoru hex/armor of agythys slots back, your fine.

But burning a level 5 pact slot on Hex kinda sucks. Either do FeyTouched feat to pick up a free casting of Hex, or dip into sorcerer or something to get a couple extra level one slots. 

And then depending on teh campaign, the dm, and the usual kind of encounters, you might wanna get more sorcerer levels to throw down a fireball, have more slots, and have more spell options. 

 About a large number of enemies, I will rely on Dark One's Blessing. Our Druids will abuse Conjure animals soon. My concern is about the dragons (we are playing Tyranny of Dragons).

My Warlock is similar.  I didn't worry about getting Extra Attacks as EB is great and True Strike not only gets you the damage output if you decide to melee, it also means you just need enough strength to wear your chosen armor.