So in our last session, my ranger died and I’m now rolling up a new character. We have a lack of a caster in our party, particularly a utility caster or Swiss Army knife.
Party currently consists of a fighter, monk, rogue, bard, cleric. The bard tends to miss sessions though. So we have a lot of martials, and then our cleric who is brand new to D&D and tends to be stingy with her spell slots.
I’m looking to fill our caster/utility hole and right now I’ve got a Archfey Tomelock rolled up. We’re Level 4 and my two invocations would be Agonizing Blast and then Book of Ancient Secrets. Pact of Tome and Book of Secrets really let me take a ton of utility cantrips and then ritual casting to cover that whole. It’s also not a super RP heavy campaign but we do lack a face and the Warlock would definitely fill that too.
We tend to take about 3-4 short rests per long rest as our DM is fairly lenient about them. Does anybody have any strong leanings one way or another about Warlock vs Wizard for this party? Wizard is obviously a better caster but Warlock fills a ton of holes and is so versatile!
There are pros and cons and it depends on your dm but overall I would say the wizard is more versatile.
At level 4 a tomelock has 6 cantrips compared to 4 on a wizard so the advantage there goes to the warlock
Excluding anything found during the campaign a warlock at level 4 knows 5 level spells and has 2 ritual spells in his book he can cast given 10 minutes. A wizard at level 4 will know 12 can prepare 4+int which will be about 8. So he can have 8 spells prepared and 4 others that are rituals so he can cast any of those in 10 minutes. The wizard can only learn ritual spells that are on his list but that l8st is diverse enough to be a minor issue.
On top of those the warlock can add any ritual they find to their book while the wizard can add any wizard spell. The number of ritual spells is quite small so if your dm rolls for what spells you find or follows a campaign book you might get very few extra spells, I had a tomelock join a To a campaign at level 5 and still only had the initial 2 spells in his book when we finished at level 11. Wizard spells are much more numerous so allocations like that will be better for the wizard.
As you progress the levels the wizard will increase the number of prepared spells above the warlocks known spells but will have a lot of spells in their book that they can prepare for a particular circumstance for example if you know you are going after a devil take out fireball and replace it with lightning bolt.
Have you considered an Artificer? The Alchemist is actually pretty good utility including on demand, if slow, flight. Choose the infusions that could most cover the utility that your party is missing. Also you can create literally any toolkit your party might need.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The fist thing I think with utility caster is a bard. I know you have one, but two can be cool. And you could have jam sessions when the other one does show up. But a wizard, as others have suggested, is great utility and will give you some offensive oomph. Or a sorcerer so you can sculpt spells and drop fireballs around your fighter.
Try and see if your \dm will allow you to start off with more than the standard 2 ritual spells which would make the warlock really useful from a utility perspective. Chose a race that gives you useful innate spell casting and if you cn afford it a level of Arcana domain cleric will give you another 5 cantrips - take the utility ones as your casting stat will probably not be very high and rely on your warlock cantrips for combat.
When the bard shows up you have a face, do you have a "boffin" for all the history, investigation, arcana checks etc?
A level of cleric would also give you armor proficiency though you or your dm might consider it cheesy unless your character has a good reason for that level. If you take it with warlock half the time all your spells will be a level lower which is a high price, though you do get a couple of 1st level spells slots for things like hex or bless.
With 3 to 4 short rests a day the warlock would be more powerful than the wizard on a dungeon crawl. At level5 the warlock can cast 8 to 10 3rd level spells where the wizard can only cast 3 with arcane recovery along with 3 2nd and 4 1st level. Though the warlock can not save them for the boss fight.
At level 5 cantrips will do about as much damage as low level spells especially with things like agonizing blast and hex so a warlock is better as a damage dealer while the wizard can control 5he battlefield and buff / debuff better.
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So in our last session, my ranger died and I’m now rolling up a new character. We have a lack of a caster in our party, particularly a utility caster or Swiss Army knife.
Party currently consists of a fighter, monk, rogue, bard, cleric. The bard tends to miss sessions though. So we have a lot of martials, and then our cleric who is brand new to D&D and tends to be stingy with her spell slots.
I’m looking to fill our caster/utility hole and right now I’ve got a Archfey Tomelock rolled up. We’re Level 4 and my two invocations would be Agonizing Blast and then Book of Ancient Secrets. Pact of Tome and Book of Secrets really let me take a ton of utility cantrips and then ritual casting to cover that whole. It’s also not a super RP heavy campaign but we do lack a face and the Warlock would definitely fill that too.
We tend to take about 3-4 short rests per long rest as our DM is fairly lenient about them. Does anybody have any strong leanings one way or another about Warlock vs Wizard for this party? Wizard is obviously a better caster but Warlock fills a ton of holes and is so versatile!
Wizards are definitely the better option for casting, if you need spells in a pinch, you don't want to be limited to just 2 slots.
At low levels the Warlock will be potent, but at higher levels, the Wizard is going to be more versatile, especially with the right Arcane Tradition.
There are pros and cons and it depends on your dm but overall I would say the wizard is more versatile.
At level 4 a tomelock has 6 cantrips compared to 4 on a wizard so the advantage there goes to the warlock
Excluding anything found during the campaign a warlock at level 4 knows 5 level spells and has 2 ritual spells in his book he can cast given 10 minutes. A wizard at level 4 will know 12 can prepare 4+int which will be about 8. So he can have 8 spells prepared and 4 others that are rituals so he can cast any of those in 10 minutes. The wizard can only learn ritual spells that are on his list but that l8st is diverse enough to be a minor issue.
On top of those the warlock can add any ritual they find to their book while the wizard can add any wizard spell. The number of ritual spells is quite small so if your dm rolls for what spells you find or follows a campaign book you might get very few extra spells, I had a tomelock join a To a campaign at level 5 and still only had the initial 2 spells in his book when we finished at level 11. Wizard spells are much more numerous so allocations like that will be better for the wizard.
As you progress the levels the wizard will increase the number of prepared spells above the warlocks known spells but will have a lot of spells in their book that they can prepare for a particular circumstance for example if you know you are going after a devil take out fireball and replace it with lightning bolt.
Have you considered an Artificer? The Alchemist is actually pretty good utility including on demand, if slow, flight. Choose the infusions that could most cover the utility that your party is missing. Also you can create literally any toolkit your party might need.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The fist thing I think with utility caster is a bard. I know you have one, but two can be cool. And you could have jam sessions when the other one does show up.
But a wizard, as others have suggested, is great utility and will give you some offensive oomph. Or a sorcerer so you can sculpt spells and drop fireballs around your fighter.
There's a lot to think about. If you're confident this going to higher levels, Wizards are just ridiculous (in a good way).
But, if you're getting 3--4 short rests per day, that's 6-8 spell slots that are ALL scaled to your highest level.
I don't think there's a bad choice. The Wizard is the king of battlefield control, if God Wizard is your thing.
Try and see if your \dm will allow you to start off with more than the standard 2 ritual spells which would make the warlock really useful from a utility perspective. Chose a race that gives you useful innate spell casting and if you cn afford it a level of Arcana domain cleric will give you another 5 cantrips - take the utility ones as your casting stat will probably not be very high and rely on your warlock cantrips for combat.
When the bard shows up you have a face, do you have a "boffin" for all the history, investigation, arcana checks etc?
A level of cleric would also give you armor proficiency though you or your dm might consider it cheesy unless your character has a good reason for that level. If you take it with warlock half the time all your spells will be a level lower which is a high price, though you do get a couple of 1st level spells slots for things like hex or bless.
With 3 to 4 short rests a day the warlock would be more powerful than the wizard on a dungeon crawl. At level5 the warlock can cast 8 to 10 3rd level spells where the wizard can only cast 3 with arcane recovery along with 3 2nd and 4 1st level. Though the warlock can not save them for the boss fight.
At level 5 cantrips will do about as much damage as low level spells especially with things like agonizing blast and hex so a warlock is better as a damage dealer while the wizard can control 5he battlefield and buff / debuff better.