I’m currently working on a Celestial Warlock and gained access to feats temporarily, but I’m not sure if I made a mistake in the order I took them.
Currently they are as follows:
Fey Touched (Charisma)
+ 2 Charisma
Chef (constitution)
+ 2 Constitution
+2 Constitution
As you can see I’m building a beefy Warlock revolving around Gift of the Ever-Living ones (not sure if I pick it up to late in the build, but that’s a question for another time… unless you all have an opinion on when to take it. Currently my order of Eldritch Enchantments are Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Investment of the Chain Master, Eldritch Mind, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, and Voice of the Chain Master. Is that a good order?)
Anyway, should I go for maxing up my Charisma first, or do i move Chef up to level 8 to round up to an even number with a “half-feat” first?
Warlocks need Charisma. Or do you not care about your agonizing blast being worth it? Charisma first.
Eldrtich Mind is only a so so feat, it is not as good as the feat War Caster, and Invocations should be slightly better than a feat. Consider Chains of Carceri for your last or penultimate invocation, not much beats Hold Monster (Celestial/Fiend/Elemental) at will. By that level Fiends and Elementals become common. Trickster's Escape and Ghostly Gaze are also good.
Don’t focus one one familiar so much that you ignore the others, even the normal generic ones. They are all good at different things, so use the right familiar for the right job and you’ll get way more out of it. Chainlocks are on par with Tomelocks when played right, maybe even better depending on how you spec your PC.
Chef is kind of a waste at level 12, the thp and healing is just a rounding error for the most part at that level. I'd go for Resilient:Con instead to boost your concentration checks this would also allow you to skip Eldritch Mind and get Gift of the Everlasting ones online sooner.
If you want "beefiness" then Inspiring Leader + Tough is better than two CON ASIs.
IMO if you want your warlock to lean more into being a spellcaster specifically then go Tomelock and try to get the most bang you can out of the couple of spell slots you’re going to have at any given time and supplement that limited amount of spellcasting by choosing eldritch invocations that will add to your magical capabilities without actually costing you any of your slots whenever possible.
To get the most out of a Chainlock don’t make spellcasting your primary focus because you’ll either end up focusing on that and not getting much out of your familiar or focusing on the familiar so much your spellcasting will suffer or worst of all splitting your focus down the middle and being mediocre at everything. For a Chainlock I find it much better to go for a build that’s sort of a cross between a ranger a rogue and a bard in some ways in terms of what I can do. I don’t try to get fancy in combat I stick to “old reliable” eldritch blast with agonizing and either pull or slow on it or maybe both. I’ll take one or two concentration spells to use during combat like hex and darkness or something and the rest of my spell selection I dedicate to things that will be super useful outside of combat. Those spells might come in handy during combat too but that’s just a bonus to me. Stuff like spider climb for example. That spell is great in tons of situations. For Eldritch invocations I think that investment of the chain master and voice of the chain master are auto includes and the rest I focus on stuff that will be solid utility stuff all day long. Stuff like the one that lets you read every language for example. Stuff that will let you be just generally useful in a ton of different situations. It’s hard to be more specific than that because I don’t know what types of characters everyone else in the party is playing. A lot of the time it’s less than useful to be useful in all the exact same situations as someone else in that party. But along as you pick stuff that makes you useful in other ways then you’ll be fine.
IMO if you want your warlock to lean more into being a spellcaster specifically then go Tomelock and try to get the most bang you can out of the couple of spell slots you’re going to have at any given time and supplement that limited amount of spellcasting by choosing eldritch invocations that will add to your magical capabilities without actually costing you any of your slots whenever possible.
To get the most out of a Chainlock don’t make spellcasting your primary focus because you’ll either end up focusing on that and not getting much out of your familiar or focusing on the familiar so much your spellcasting will suffer or worst of all splitting your focus down the middle and being mediocre at everything. For a Chainlock I find it much better to go for a build that’s sort of a cross between a ranger a rogue and a bard in some ways in terms of what I can do. I don’t try to get fancy in combat I stick to “old reliable” eldritch blast with agonizing and either pull or slow on it or maybe both. I’ll take one or two concentration spells to use during combat like hex and darkness or something and the rest of my spell selection I dedicate to things that will be super useful outside of combat. Those spells might come in handy during combat too but that’s just a bonus to me. Stuff like spider climb for example. That spell is great in tons of situations. For Eldritch invocations I think that investment of the chain master and voice of the chain master are auto includes and the rest I focus on stuff that will be solid utility stuff all day long. Stuff like the one that lets you read every language for example. Stuff that will let you be just generally useful in a ton of different situations. It’s hard to be more specific than that because I don’t know what types of characters everyone else in the party is playing. A lot of the time it’s less than useful to be useful in all the exact same situations as someone else in that party. But along as you pick stuff that makes you useful in other ways then you’ll be fine.
I do not understand. Why would i avoid damage spells just because I have a familiar? If it’s AoE i only have like two from being a Celestial Warlock that come highly recommended: flame strike and wall of fire. Don’t get me wrong; i’m more than happy using hex and eldritch blast; i just don’t have as many eldritch invocations since im focusing on chainlock abilities late level.
Sorry if this is painfully obvious; truth be told I only played a few games before my group disbanded, so i atill have a lot to learn through experiences
Chef is kind of a waste at level 12, the thp and healing is just a rounding error for the most part at that level. I'd go for Resilient:Con instead to boost your concentration checks this would also allow you to skip Eldritch Mind and get Gift of the Everlasting ones online sooner.
If you want "beefiness" then Inspiring Leader + Tough is better than two CON ASIs.
I meant beefiness in regards to high normal health points to maximize the effectiveness of Gift of the Ever-Living ones. Chef was a way to get extra health on a short rest.
The only thing about doing Resilient: Constitution is I would have to wait u til level 12. Grant it, I guess i could start with Eldritch Mind and retrain it later, but I already have a lot of Eldritch Invocations packed in:
agonizing Blast, Mast of Many Faces (I took actor), Investment of the Chain Master, Repelling Blast (When I get Wall of Fire), Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, Voice of the Chain Master, and Shroud of Shadow (I only went up to Level 16)
Chef is kind of a waste at level 12, the thp and healing is just a rounding error for the most part at that level. I'd go for Resilient:Con instead to boost your concentration checks this would also allow you to skip Eldritch Mind and get Gift of the Everlasting ones online sooner.
If you want "beefiness" then Inspiring Leader + Tough is better than two CON ASIs.
I meant beefiness in regards to high normal health points to maximize the effectiveness of Gift of the Ever-Living ones. Chef was a way to get extra health on a short rest.
Chef doesn't increase your normal hit point maximum, and would give you 8 extra hit point healed per SR if you spend hit dice once you also have Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. In contrast, at level 12, when you are proposing to pick up Chef, Inspiring Leader gives you and your entire party 17 temporary hit points every SR. And Tough is equivalent to a +2 Constitution modifier (or +4 Con score) in terms of maximum HP.
IMO if you want your warlock to lean more into being a spellcaster specifically then go Tomelock and try to get the most bang you can out of the couple of spell slots you’re going to have at any given time and supplement that limited amount of spellcasting by choosing eldritch invocations that will add to your magical capabilities without actually costing you any of your slots whenever possible.
To get the most out of a Chainlock don’t make spellcasting your primary focus because you’ll either end up focusing on that and not getting much out of your familiar or focusing on the familiar so much your spellcasting will suffer or worst of all splitting your focus down the middle and being mediocre at everything. For a Chainlock I find it much better to go for a build that’s sort of a cross between a ranger a rogue and a bard in some ways in terms of what I can do. I don’t try to get fancy in combat I stick to “old reliable” eldritch blast with agonizing and either pull or slow on it or maybe both. I’ll take one or two concentration spells to use during combat like hex and darkness or something and the rest of my spell selection I dedicate to things that will be super useful outside of combat. Those spells might come in handy during combat too but that’s just a bonus to me. Stuff like spider climb for example. That spell is great in tons of situations. For Eldritch invocations I think that investment of the chain master and voice of the chain master are auto includes and the rest I focus on stuff that will be solid utility stuff all day long. Stuff like the one that lets you read every language for example. Stuff that will let you be just generally useful in a ton of different situations. It’s hard to be more specific than that because I don’t know what types of characters everyone else in the party is playing. A lot of the time it’s less than useful to be useful in all the exact same situations as someone else in that party. But along as you pick stuff that makes you useful in other ways then you’ll be fine.
I do not understand. Why would i avoid damage spells just because I have a familiar? If it’s AoE i only have like two from being a Celestial Warlock that come highly recommended: flame strike and wall of fire. Don’t get me wrong; i’m more than happy using hex and eldritch blast; i just don’t have as many eldritch invocations since im focusing on chainlock abilities late level.
Sorry if this is painfully obvious; truth be told I only played a few games before my group disbanded, so i atill have a lot to learn through experiences
You only really need one or two blaster spells like that. There’s really no point in taking a ton of those because you’re going to find yourself always using the same one or two all the time anyway and you’re only going to have 2 spell slots at a time until you hit 11th level when you bump up to a whopping 3 spell slots. Most campaigns never get that far, and almost none get to 17th level so chances are you’ll never get to 4 spell slots all at one time. If your table takes the recommended 2 short tests every adventuring day with 6 medium encounters per day then you only get to use one spell slot per encounter on average if you want one for every encounter. If you’re lucky your table might cop a third lunch break in a day every once in a while, but if your table is like most of them out there then you’ll be lucky to get even one short rest most days.
Anyone who tries to treat a Warlock the same as a full on spellcaster always ends up wildly disappointed with the class. They say it sucks and needs to be rewritten and people fight about it all the time on the internet. It’s not the class that’s the problem. The problem is the way people perceive it and try to make it do what it isn’t really designed to do. Kind of like if people were to play a fighter and say it isn’t sneaky enough and doesn’t have enough skill proficiencies so it isn’t good at enough stuff and therefore sucks and needs to be changed. Or like playing a rogue and saying it doesn’t get enough attacks and can’t wear heavy armor and doesn’t get enough HP so it sucks and needs to be changed. Both of those arguments are pretty ridiculous since the obvious answer to both of them is “play a different class.” Pick a class that actually does what you want your character to do. Right? So if you want to play a blaster who throws spells around like craycray and leaves smoking craters in the ground in your wake, play a wizard or sorcerer instead since they’re actually designed to do that sort of thing.
TL/DR #1: You just won’t use them most of the time.
A Chainlock is more like an ranger crossed with rogue in a lot of ways. Those classes aren’t serious damage powerhouses. They’re not chumps by any means but by the same token they don’t really layeth the smacketh down if you know what I mean. What they do well in combat though is to put up consistent numbers over the course of the day by taking advantage of anything that they can, and usually at range.
That’s what EB lets you do. With multiple attacks instead of just adding damage it means you’re more consistent with your DPR day after day, and with boosters like Agonizing Blast and hex it makes you a very very effective ranged combatant. More like a shooter who shoots magic than a shooter who shoots arrows or crossbow bolts. So by thinking of your warlock in those terms will help it make more sense. You kite around the battlefield running out from behind cover and let loose with your blasts before running back behind the safely of cover again. Use your familiar to turn invisible and sneak up on someone you can see through the familiar’s eyes but who can’t see you because you’re behind a rock or something. Then once your familiar is right next to them use it to deliver a devastating inflict wounds or something like that.
The utility you get with the better familiar options is fantastic and and with the upgrades you can give them through the Investment & Voice invocations dials that up to 11. Jump all over those as soon as you can pick them up IMO. If you’re going to play a Chainlock then play a Chainlock. Waiting until later levels that you might never even see kind of makes picking that boon a waste. Then adding more utility options on top of that makes you great at lots of different things all around (like a rogue or ranger or bard is good at lots of non-combat stuff). With those two invocations k mentioned you could literally be on another planet on the far side of the galaxy and not only be able to see and hear whatever your familiar can see and hear but actually be able to talk through it like the universe’s longest distance phone call ever. You could send your familiar to scout around while invisible while you and the rest of the party go deal with something else entirely. Then when you meet back up the familiar can not only actually explain what it saw it can draw you a flipping map.
Think of your Pact Magic as a way to supplement and support the stuff your familiar and invocations make you good at, and fill in any gaps that you find along the way.
TL/DR #2: You could be so much better at other stuff instead that not being good at that stuff is almost a waste in some ways. In that case you would do better to take Tomepact instead and grab find familiar as a ritual and just have a regular familiar if that’s all your going to use it for.
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I’m currently working on a Celestial Warlock and gained access to feats temporarily, but I’m not sure if I made a mistake in the order I took them.
Currently they are as follows:
Fey Touched (Charisma)
+ 2 Charisma
Chef (constitution)
+ 2 Constitution
+2 Constitution
As you can see I’m building a beefy Warlock revolving around Gift of the Ever-Living ones (not sure if I pick it up to late in the build, but that’s a question for another time… unless you all have an opinion on when to take it. Currently my order of Eldritch Enchantments are Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Investment of the Chain Master, Eldritch Mind, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, and Voice of the Chain Master. Is that a good order?)
Anyway, should I go for maxing up my Charisma first, or do i move Chef up to level 8 to round up to an even number with a “half-feat” first?
Warlocks need Charisma. Or do you not care about your agonizing blast being worth it? Charisma first.
Eldrtich Mind is only a so so feat, it is not as good as the feat War Caster, and Invocations should be slightly better than a feat. Consider Chains of Carceri for your last or penultimate invocation, not much beats Hold Monster (Celestial/Fiend/Elemental) at will. By that level Fiends and Elementals become common. Trickster's Escape and Ghostly Gaze are also good.
Which familiar are you planning on getting?
The imp.
Don’t focus one one familiar so much that you ignore the others, even the normal generic ones. They are all good at different things, so use the right familiar for the right job and you’ll get way more out of it. Chainlocks are on par with Tomelocks when played right, maybe even better depending on how you spec your PC.
Ok good to know. Thank you.
how would you recommend me specing it?
Chef is kind of a waste at level 12, the thp and healing is just a rounding error for the most part at that level. I'd go for Resilient:Con instead to boost your concentration checks this would also allow you to skip Eldritch Mind and get Gift of the Everlasting ones online sooner.
If you want "beefiness" then Inspiring Leader + Tough is better than two CON ASIs.
IMO if you want your warlock to lean more into being a spellcaster specifically then go Tomelock and try to get the most bang you can out of the couple of spell slots you’re going to have at any given time and supplement that limited amount of spellcasting by choosing eldritch invocations that will add to your magical capabilities without actually costing you any of your slots whenever possible.
To get the most out of a Chainlock don’t make spellcasting your primary focus because you’ll either end up focusing on that and not getting much out of your familiar or focusing on the familiar so much your spellcasting will suffer or worst of all splitting your focus down the middle and being mediocre at everything. For a Chainlock I find it much better to go for a build that’s sort of a cross between a ranger a rogue and a bard in some ways in terms of what I can do. I don’t try to get fancy in combat I stick to “old reliable” eldritch blast with agonizing and either pull or slow on it or maybe both. I’ll take one or two concentration spells to use during combat like hex and darkness or something and the rest of my spell selection I dedicate to things that will be super useful outside of combat. Those spells might come in handy during combat too but that’s just a bonus to me. Stuff like spider climb for example. That spell is great in tons of situations. For Eldritch invocations I think that investment of the chain master and voice of the chain master are auto includes and the rest I focus on stuff that will be solid utility stuff all day long. Stuff like the one that lets you read every language for example. Stuff that will let you be just generally useful in a ton of different situations. It’s hard to be more specific than that because I don’t know what types of characters everyone else in the party is playing. A lot of the time it’s less than useful to be useful in all the exact same situations as someone else in that party. But along as you pick stuff that makes you useful in other ways then you’ll be fine.
I do not understand. Why would i avoid damage spells just because I have a familiar? If it’s AoE i only have like two from being a Celestial Warlock that come highly recommended: flame strike and wall of fire. Don’t get me wrong; i’m more than happy using hex and eldritch blast; i just don’t have as many eldritch invocations since im focusing on chainlock abilities late level.
Sorry if this is painfully obvious; truth be told I only played a few games before my group disbanded, so i atill have a lot to learn through experiences
I meant beefiness in regards to high normal health points to maximize the effectiveness of Gift of the Ever-Living ones. Chef was a way to get extra health on a short rest.
The only thing about doing Resilient: Constitution is I would have to wait u til level 12. Grant it, I guess i could start with Eldritch Mind and retrain it later, but I already have a lot of Eldritch Invocations packed in:
agonizing Blast, Mast of Many Faces (I took actor), Investment of the Chain Master, Repelling Blast (When I get Wall of Fire), Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, Voice of the Chain Master, and Shroud of Shadow (I only went up to Level 16)
Chef doesn't increase your normal hit point maximum, and would give you 8 extra hit point healed per SR if you spend hit dice once you also have Gift of the Ever-Living Ones. In contrast, at level 12, when you are proposing to pick up Chef, Inspiring Leader gives you and your entire party 17 temporary hit points every SR. And Tough is equivalent to a +2 Constitution modifier (or +4 Con score) in terms of maximum HP.
You only really need one or two blaster spells like that. There’s really no point in taking a ton of those because you’re going to find yourself always using the same one or two all the time anyway and you’re only going to have 2 spell slots at a time until you hit 11th level when you bump up to a whopping 3 spell slots. Most campaigns never get that far, and almost none get to 17th level so chances are you’ll never get to 4 spell slots all at one time. If your table takes the recommended 2 short tests every adventuring day with 6 medium encounters per day then you only get to use one spell slot per encounter on average if you want one for every encounter. If you’re lucky your table might cop a third lunch break in a day every once in a while, but if your table is like most of them out there then you’ll be lucky to get even one short rest most days.
Anyone who tries to treat a Warlock the same as a full on spellcaster always ends up wildly disappointed with the class. They say it sucks and needs to be rewritten and people fight about it all the time on the internet. It’s not the class that’s the problem. The problem is the way people perceive it and try to make it do what it isn’t really designed to do. Kind of like if people were to play a fighter and say it isn’t sneaky enough and doesn’t have enough skill proficiencies so it isn’t good at enough stuff and therefore sucks and needs to be changed. Or like playing a rogue and saying it doesn’t get enough attacks and can’t wear heavy armor and doesn’t get enough HP so it sucks and needs to be changed. Both of those arguments are pretty ridiculous since the obvious answer to both of them is “play a different class.” Pick a class that actually does what you want your character to do. Right? So if you want to play a blaster who throws spells around like craycray and leaves smoking craters in the ground in your wake, play a wizard or sorcerer instead since they’re actually designed to do that sort of thing.
A Chainlock is more like an ranger crossed with rogue in a lot of ways. Those classes aren’t serious damage powerhouses. They’re not chumps by any means but by the same token they don’t really layeth the smacketh down if you know what I mean. What they do well in combat though is to put up consistent numbers over the course of the day by taking advantage of anything that they can, and usually at range.
That’s what EB lets you do. With multiple attacks instead of just adding damage it means you’re more consistent with your DPR day after day, and with boosters like Agonizing Blast and hex it makes you a very very effective ranged combatant. More like a shooter who shoots magic than a shooter who shoots arrows or crossbow bolts. So by thinking of your warlock in those terms will help it make more sense. You kite around the battlefield running out from behind cover and let loose with your blasts before running back behind the safely of cover again. Use your familiar to turn invisible and sneak up on someone you can see through the familiar’s eyes but who can’t see you because you’re behind a rock or something. Then once your familiar is right next to them use it to deliver a devastating inflict wounds or something like that.
The utility you get with the better familiar options is fantastic and and with the upgrades you can give them through the Investment & Voice invocations dials that up to 11. Jump all over those as soon as you can pick them up IMO. If you’re going to play a Chainlock then play a Chainlock. Waiting until later levels that you might never even see kind of makes picking that boon a waste. Then adding more utility options on top of that makes you great at lots of different things all around (like a rogue or ranger or bard is good at lots of non-combat stuff). With those two invocations k mentioned you could literally be on another planet on the far side of the galaxy and not only be able to see and hear whatever your familiar can see and hear but actually be able to talk through it like the universe’s longest distance phone call ever. You could send your familiar to scout around while invisible while you and the rest of the party go deal with something else entirely. Then when you meet back up the familiar can not only actually explain what it saw it can draw you a flipping map.
Think of your Pact Magic as a way to supplement and support the stuff your familiar and invocations make you good at, and fill in any gaps that you find along the way.