I main a fighter/warlock because i think Pact of the Blade is awesome, but also for the armor and weapon expertise provided by martial classes. My build however revolves around medium armor and shields, whereas if I were to roll A Paladin/Warlock and had a 15 in strength anyway, I should take a two-handed weapon, right?
I’m just not familiar with what feats to take that go along with my charisma Pact of the Blade build. But hen again, using a weapon as a pact weapon and thus making it a charisma weapon is optional, right? So in theory I could put in the 13 charisma and pump the rest into strength with strength feat builds. My question is, which ones?
…the other option is to just go 13 in strength and forgo the heavy armor altogether, but I really have no idea where to begin there. I’ve heard about it in post, but not enough to build my own!
So, what advice do you champions of the light have for me?
everything else they give is pretty much similar between the two.
=== Polearm Build
You can start with chain mail and any heavy melee weapon you like. Would recommend Greatsword or Maul at start.
Warlock 4 - take Warcaster (charisma)
Warlock 8 - take polearm master (strength) - switch to using a heavy polearm
Warlock 12 - take great weapon master (strength) - can upgrade to plate
Warlock 16 - take ASI (Charisma *2)
Warlock 19 - take Boon of Combat Prowess, Dimensional Travel or True Sight
==== non-polearm
Warlock 4 - take Warcaster (charisma)
Warlock 8 - take great weapon master (strength)
Warlock 12 - take ASI (Charisma *2)
Warlock 16 - take another strength based half-feat, i.e. crusher (get plate armor)
Warlock 19 - take Boon of Combat Prowess, Dimensional Travel or True Sight
---
For warlock subclasses, anything but Great Old One generally works good for this style of Gish build, plenty of sources of temporary HP or other utilities to survive, I personally like Archfey for the misty step as a reaction but that doesn't 100% go with a polearm build where fiend can be good. One problem with going with 1 level of Paladin is that your constitution saving throws will not have proficiency like with fighter, however paladin does give early access to Divine Favor for the early levels.
For multiclass, the Paladin 6/Warlock X tends to work best due to Aura of Protection and taking either Oath of Vengeance or Oath of Devotion for their channel divinity options. At 1 or 2 levels fighter is slightly better than paladin but at 3-8 levels, Paladin is easily better than fighter for multiclassing for warlock.
The PAM+GWM build is one of the few cases where it's worth delaying the +5 modifier until level 16.
Interesting. So you recommend starting at 13 Strength, lower dexterity and medium armor despite having less of a boost to your medium armor and then wait until 12 or 16 to get plate via feet's?
The only thing about the 6/14 build is no epic boon feat, but depending on how long the campaign lasts you can get one from your DM, ao I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise.
You've brought up a lot of great points that I am definitely going to hang onto! I really appreciate it!
13 strength is a requirement to multiclass Paladin and is a requirement for Chain Mail and heavy melee weapons, so it's required for multiclassing with Paladin. For Fighter, you can get away with higher dexterity since Fighter's multiclassing ability score is either strength or dexterity 13. If you go 1st level as Paladin then you're probably going the heavy armor route since you have heavy armor proficiency at that point.
Instead of 6/14, you can do 8/12 and pick up two epic boons but that is a bit different of a build would have to choose between PAM or GWM (can't have both and can't get plate, PAM can be used to raise dexterity however). Notably Paladin gets Aura of Protection at level 6 which is one of the strongest features in the game. With this you'd lose your level 14 warlock subclass feature but get the level 7 paladin subclass feature.
Oh! I had it backwards! I thought armor was 15 and heavy weapons were 13. Thank you for clearing that up.
I also admit i do like taking two epic boons just because you can’t be sure if you can ever get more than one on normal builds.
Perhaps this is a bad idea, but I ended up going with a strength build instead of 14+2 12 15+1 8 8 14, keeping the great weapon master and Polearm master but dropping warcaster since I’m not using a shield and changing the +2 from Charisma to Strength, then adding the Boons of Combat Prowess and Dimensional Travel to take my strength score to 22. To do this, I had to take a background that overwrote my species stat boosts and went with the Farmer background. Does this seem like the way?
I main a fighter/warlock because i think Pact of the Blade is awesome, but also for the armor and weapon expertise provided by martial classes. My build however revolves around medium armor and shields, whereas if I were to roll A Paladin/Warlock and had a 15 in strength anyway, I should take a two-handed weapon, right?
I’m just not familiar with what feats to take that go along with my charisma Pact of the Blade build. But hen again, using a weapon as a pact weapon and thus making it a charisma weapon is optional, right? So in theory I could put in the 13 charisma and pump the rest into strength with strength feat builds. My question is, which ones?
…the other option is to just go 13 in strength and forgo the heavy armor altogether, but I really have no idea where to begin there. I’ve heard about it in post, but not enough to build my own!
So, what advice do you champions of the light have for me?
If we assume standard array, I would probably advise something like
Strength 13, Constitution: 15(14+1), Dexterity 10*, Intelligence 8, Wisdom 12*, Charisma 17(15+2) for this build
*can easily switches these, either way works just as well overall.
Fighter - gives weapon mastery (*3), a fighting style, Second Wind, strength & constitution saving throw proficiency
Paladin - gives weapon mastery (*2), paladin spellcasting (2x1st level spell slots, 2 prepared spells), lay on hands (5HP), strength & wisdom saving throw proficiency
everything else they give is pretty much similar between the two.
=== Polearm Build
You can start with chain mail and any heavy melee weapon you like. Would recommend Greatsword or Maul at start.
Warlock 4 - take Warcaster (charisma)
Warlock 8 - take polearm master (strength) - switch to using a heavy polearm
Warlock 12 - take great weapon master (strength) - can upgrade to plate
Warlock 16 - take ASI (Charisma *2)
Warlock 19 - take Boon of Combat Prowess, Dimensional Travel or True Sight
==== non-polearm
Warlock 4 - take Warcaster (charisma)
Warlock 8 - take great weapon master (strength)
Warlock 12 - take ASI (Charisma *2)
Warlock 16 - take another strength based half-feat, i.e. crusher (get plate armor)
Warlock 19 - take Boon of Combat Prowess, Dimensional Travel or True Sight
---
For warlock subclasses, anything but Great Old One generally works good for this style of Gish build, plenty of sources of temporary HP or other utilities to survive, I personally like Archfey for the misty step as a reaction but that doesn't 100% go with a polearm build where fiend can be good. One problem with going with 1 level of Paladin is that your constitution saving throws will not have proficiency like with fighter, however paladin does give early access to Divine Favor for the early levels.
For multiclass, the Paladin 6/Warlock X tends to work best due to Aura of Protection and taking either Oath of Vengeance or Oath of Devotion for their channel divinity options. At 1 or 2 levels fighter is slightly better than paladin but at 3-8 levels, Paladin is easily better than fighter for multiclassing for warlock.
The PAM+GWM build is one of the few cases where it's worth delaying the +5 modifier until level 16.
Interesting. So you recommend starting at 13 Strength, lower dexterity and medium armor despite having less of a boost to your medium armor and then wait until 12 or 16 to get plate via feet's?
The only thing about the 6/14 build is no epic boon feat, but depending on how long the campaign lasts you can get one from your DM, ao I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise.
You've brought up a lot of great points that I am definitely going to hang onto! I really appreciate it!
13 strength is a requirement to multiclass Paladin and is a requirement for Chain Mail and heavy melee weapons, so it's required for multiclassing with Paladin. For Fighter, you can get away with higher dexterity since Fighter's multiclassing ability score is either strength or dexterity 13. If you go 1st level as Paladin then you're probably going the heavy armor route since you have heavy armor proficiency at that point.
Instead of 6/14, you can do 8/12 and pick up two epic boons but that is a bit different of a build would have to choose between PAM or GWM (can't have both and can't get plate, PAM can be used to raise dexterity however). Notably Paladin gets Aura of Protection at level 6 which is one of the strongest features in the game. With this you'd lose your level 14 warlock subclass feature but get the level 7 paladin subclass feature.
Oh! I had it backwards! I thought armor was 15 and heavy weapons were 13. Thank you for clearing that up.
I also admit i do like taking two epic boons just because you can’t be sure if you can ever get more than one on normal builds.
Perhaps this is a bad idea, but I ended up going with a strength build instead of 14+2 12 15+1 8 8 14, keeping the great weapon master and Polearm master but dropping warcaster since I’m not using a shield and changing the +2 from Charisma to Strength, then adding the Boons of Combat Prowess and Dimensional Travel to take my strength score to 22. To do this, I had to take a background that overwrote my species stat boosts and went with the Farmer background. Does this seem like the way?
Chain Mail is 13. The other, better heavy armors are 15.
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