I’m thinking of multiclassing my warlock as an arcane trickster rogue, but I don’t have access to the rule books until I can look at my friend’s copies.
My plan is to try to use the warlock skills to get constant advantage and use sneak attack all the time. Our party is a Druid, an arcane archer, a cleric and I’m playing the warlock.
We did an intro/ tutorial session, but the dm is chill and is letting me work more on my character for a few days, so I can rearrange my stats and stuff if I need to.
I’ve got a variant winged tiefling with stats of 17, 16, 15, 15, 13 and 12. I’m thinking fiend for temp hp and pact of the tome, but might be convinced to go other pacts? We’re starting at level 3 but if I go warlock 2/ rogue one I don’t have to pick yet.
My idea is to eventually go warlock 5 or 7 and the rest in rogue (arcane trickster). I want to get the find familiar spell eventually so I can use the familiar to gain advantage, and also use the darkness/ devil’s sight combo to make a murder cloud (I talked to the cleric about this, he could lob fireballs in it that if I failed to avoid I’d only take quarter damage from with hellish resistance + uncanny dodge).
With th the sentinel feat, enemies in melee couldn’t escape the cloud easily and I could get spells to drag enemies in. With booming blade they’d also take damage for even trying to run. I wouldn’t want to only have one trick, but with the familiar and the mage hand thing, even without a darkness spam I could probably get advantage a lot. Also, I’d definitely pick up the shadow blade spell.
So I think arcane trickster would be best - combining relentless hex with swashbuckler could be good, but I’m not sure it would give me anything more than that.
So I’m hoping for tips or level distribution ideas - I’m new to 5e and appreciate any help.
i made another thread a while ago about multiclassing my warlock, but I wanted to make a more specific one about this particular build idea.
I would probably stop at 3 levels of Warlock, or 4 for ASI. If you want a familiar, you should definately go pact of the chain and get an Imp which can see through magical darkness like you, and turn invisible when out of the darkness. However, if you are inside magical darkness, you are generally going to have advantage anyway and if you are going for a melee build, hexblade with pact of the blade is more powerful. Personally I think having the Imp is more fun regardless of it being sub-optimal though. GOO pact gives you telepathy which is helpful for communicating with your party while hidden if you plan on being the knife in the dark.
I would probably stop at 3 levels of Warlock, or 4 for ASI. If you want a familiar, you should definately go pact of the chain and get an [creature]Imp[/creature] which can see through magical darkness like you, and turn invisible when out of the darkness. However, if you are inside magical darkness, you are generally going to have advantage anyway and if you are going for a melee build, hexblade with pact of the blade is more powerful. Personally I think having the Imp is more fun regardless of it being sub-optimal though. GOO pact gives you telepathy which is helpful for communicating with your party while hidden if you plan on being the knife in the dark.
While having an imp is fun and probably insanely useful, for gaining Advantage in combat nothing beats the Owl, which can abuse Fly-By for OA-immune Help actions. =D
Honestly, this is just not going to be as effective a build as the warlock/monk we discussed earlier. It sounds like you're interested in 1) building for melee attacks in a cloud of darkness, and 2) having some 'control' to lock enemies into your cloud, which is fine but doesn't really synergize that well with rogue classes as well as it would with fighter, paladin, or just straight melee warlock. I will also warn straight up that this concept doesn't really synergize specifically with you being a winged tiefling, or with being an arcane trickster… if you're in melee you're not flying, arcane trickster brings literally nothing to a melee character whoalready will have advantage through darkness bubble shenanigans, and you'll have to keep your intelligence up for spells cast with those trickster spell slots (unless you exclusively use them for buffs, in which case, you're wasting Arcane Trickster abilities). If you must go winged warlock/rogue, Swashbuckler would make more sense as a rogue subclass, since it lets you do fly-by attacks at level 3 and add charisma to initiative... but then, that doesn't mesh with locking down targets in a bubble, but rather keeping the bubble centered on yourself.
Hexblade won't get you much of anything useful, if you plan on swinging a Shadow Blade or using Booming Blade/Green-flame Blade in combat. As a multiclassed rogue interested in putting evasion rolls to good use, we're already going to be maxing dex out, so using Charisma to attack and wearing heavier armor is largely meaningless. You'll get access to the Shield spell eventually through Arcane Trickster, which is the last real argument in Hexblade's favor; you might as well stick with Fiend for some temp HP if you're only doing a 2-5 level dip.
Honestly, the only relevance I'm seeing between Warlock and the build you've described is 1) devil's sight so as to see through darkness, 2) the opportunity to take an improved invisible familiar that can also see through darkness, via Pact of the Chain, and 3) Free mage armor? You're taking a second class that gives cantrips, so I really don't think you need Pact of the Tome any more like you had discussed in the other thread. If you want a familiar anyway, its hard to see why you wouldn't want Pact of the chain to give you a better one that can Help while invisible and see through darkness... but with you taking a second class that will be handing out spell slots, I suppose there's also an argument to be made for doing Pact of the Blade instead, so that you can take Eldritch Smite as your 5th level invocation. If you stick to only using your Arcane Trickster slots for casting, as a fifth level warlock that's twice per encounter that you can drop a +4d8 auto-prone attack on top of your other sneak attack damage, but...
This really feels like trying to jam together two classes that don't fit together that well, into a playstyle that doesn't really favor either, on top of a race with wasted features. Is pinning people in a bubble of darkness while the caster drops fireballs on you the main concept? Or what else seems most "fun" about what you're trying to accomplish?
The race is mostly a campaign setting thing- lots of the plot will probably involve traveling between the ground and floating islands/ cities. Like yeah it’ll be useful in combat, but I expect a fair amount of fighting to happen indoors.
warlock/ monk still sounds good, but I’m more trying to figure out how to do more damage if I’m not sniping from far away while still avoiding damage. Getting tons of sneak attacks sounds cool and fun, and we have no one else with any sneaking talent.
with EB, I always have reliable damage, so I’m looking for other options to spice it up.
I just think the Eldritch Trickster angle is too hard to work in. Like, Eldritch Trickster barely works with itself: it wants you to hide and cast spells so that foes have disadvantage on their saves, but that means you're not sneak attacking. Those spells you're casting are likely to be straight damage spells, because if you're hiding in darkness or casting from invisibility or something, you're already using up your concentration slot, so clearly you aren't casting a debuff on the enemy... but your melee sneak attacks will probably do more damage than any spell you would be able to cast. And it wants you to be targeted by spells so as to steal them, which means you either aren't hiding or are hanging out in the scrum of other characters, rarely where a rogue wants to be. It takes you 13 levels to even be able to use the hand in combat to give yourself advantage, something that you already could have found more reliable ways to do 10 levels ago with a different rogue subclass.
If your priority is to do a ton of damage ranged, but also even more damage up close, consider a Sorcadinlock? Paladin 5/Sorceror 10/Hexblade (Pact of Blade) 5. You still get eldritch blast+agonizing blast, for 4d10+20 (+hexes etc), the best ranged attack in the game. Also, you can quicken it with sorcerer points to do that twice per round! But also in melee, you can simultaneous divine smite (+2d8-5d8, depending on level of sorc/paladin slot burned) and eldritch smite (+4d8 and auto prone) on the same attack, x2 attacks per round, and use charisma to hit and for bonus damage. Using a fifth-level shadowblade (cast with sorcerer slot), you're doing 4d8, +5d8 for consuming a 4th level sorc spell slot, +4d8 and auto prone for consuming a warlock spell slot, +5 cha, +2 (dueling style), +6 proficiency (hexblade curse), +1d6 (hex), and crit on a 19-20... for an average of 75 per hit, times two hits in the first "alpha strike" round when you still have warlock slots, and then 57x2 in future rounds. You lose out on one ASI but don't really need it, having room to build to 20 charisma, 20 dexterity, and 16 constitution, with proficiency in Dex, Con, Wis, and Charisma saves. And with your urchin background, you're plenty stealthy (and don't need to wear heavy armor to spoil that, will have a mage armor AC of 18), and still can play with darkness shenanigans for additional sneakiness/defense. You don't need any particular sorcerer origin (shadow sounds thematic, but storm could work too, or anything) or Paladin oath (though conquest and oathbreaker both have cool channel divinity options for you).
To do the basic version of the build, you just need Paladin 2 (to unlock divine smite), so Paladin 2/Warlock 1 is a fine enough jumping off point for you and then you can build from there.
Or again, if you don't want to be fancy and minmaxy, just do a straight rogue (swashbuckler)/warlock, which will give you plenty of charisma synergy, the ability to do fly-by-attacks, and huge sneak attack damage when fighting in your darkness bubble.
Dang, those both sound really good... thanks for the detail on the sorlockadin levels, i think I’ll go with that if I can think of a way to make it work character-wise. Maybe oathbreaker and a god vs. patron type problem?
swashbuckler/ warlock sounds intriguing too though, what kind of level distribution would you recommend for that?
A few important notes on the OP: Uncanny Dodge is not effective against fireballs. It specifically refers to attacks that hit, while the rules do not interpret offensive spells with saving throws as attacks.
That said, a couple more levels gets you Evasion which does specifically apply to saving throws, and does not require the use of your Reaction.
I think Devil's Darkness and Sneak Attack synergize very well. As does Sneak Attack and Familiar Help. Between the two there is a lot of overlap, but that's not necessarily harmful. Warlock and Rogue both have access to effective Bonus Actions, and that overlap may make things difficult when you have an excess of actions you'd like to perform. If you don't want to use your spell slot on Darkness you can Hide as a Bonus Action after attacking. If you are Concentrating on Hex you will lose that if you cast Darkness, but targeting an enemy with Hex takes your Bonus Action. So the overlap there can be problematic.
Taking a fifth level can be beneficial to pick up Thirsting Blade if you take Pact of the Blade, but that will have a small benefit next to Sneak Attack, which won't apply to more than one attack in a turn.
If you take Find Familiar from the Arcane Trickster spells you are limited to Conjuration and Illusion schools for the remaining spells.
Hexblade is the most mechanically effective pact, but that's boring. Pact of the Fiend suits your character concept better. That said, Hexblade uniquely adds Shield to your spell list which is greatly bolstered by spell slots from different classes, and so Synergizes well with Arcane Trickster.
Finally, if you don't want to get blasted with Fireballs simply use a bow. Devil's Darkness, is especially potent with a ranged character as is Sneak Attack.
TL;DR there's a lot of overlapping and synergizing abilities that you should definately consider before jumping into this build. It turns into a very complicated character mechanically.
If you're considering Swashbuckler / Warlock, have you considered Blood Hunter and taking the Order of the Profane Soul? It's a physical fighter with a light version of the Warlock path and if you wanted more, you could add more Warlock levels on top.
No, I haven’t looked at it - my character’s backstory relies really heavily on him being a warlock. And I’m not too set on physical fighting, I just want to maximize damage in close quarters since I’m already set for range damage with EB.
The Profane Soul is available at level-3 where you're starting, and is granted all of the same options for patrons as the Warlock. So it likely fits well with your story.
Blood Hunter is not official content so your DM may deny the option. It's a complicated class with each Archetype having features as significant of most classrs, rather than an addition of minor features.
I’m thinking of multiclassing my warlock as an arcane trickster rogue, but I don’t have access to the rule books until I can look at my friend’s copies.
My plan is to try to use the warlock skills to get constant advantage and use sneak attack all the time. Our party is a Druid, an arcane archer, a cleric and I’m playing the warlock.
We did an intro/ tutorial session, but the dm is chill and is letting me work more on my character for a few days, so I can rearrange my stats and stuff if I need to.
I’ve got a variant winged tiefling with stats of 17, 16, 15, 15, 13 and 12. I’m thinking fiend for temp hp and pact of the tome, but might be convinced to go other pacts? We’re starting at level 3 but if I go warlock 2/ rogue one I don’t have to pick yet.
My idea is to eventually go warlock 5 or 7 and the rest in rogue (arcane trickster). I want to get the find familiar spell eventually so I can use the familiar to gain advantage, and also use the darkness/ devil’s sight combo to make a murder cloud (I talked to the cleric about this, he could lob fireballs in it that if I failed to avoid I’d only take quarter damage from with hellish resistance + uncanny dodge).
With th the sentinel feat, enemies in melee couldn’t escape the cloud easily and I could get spells to drag enemies in. With booming blade they’d also take damage for even trying to run. I wouldn’t want to only have one trick, but with the familiar and the mage hand thing, even without a darkness spam I could probably get advantage a lot. Also, I’d definitely pick up the shadow blade spell.
So I think arcane trickster would be best - combining relentless hex with swashbuckler could be good, but I’m not sure it would give me anything more than that.
So I’m hoping for tips or level distribution ideas - I’m new to 5e and appreciate any help.
i made another thread a while ago about multiclassing my warlock, but I wanted to make a more specific one about this particular build idea.
I would probably stop at 3 levels of Warlock, or 4 for ASI. If you want a familiar, you should definately go pact of the chain and get an Imp which can see through magical darkness like you, and turn invisible when out of the darkness. However, if you are inside magical darkness, you are generally going to have advantage anyway and if you are going for a melee build, hexblade with pact of the blade is more powerful. Personally I think having the Imp is more fun regardless of it being sub-optimal though. GOO pact gives you telepathy which is helpful for communicating with your party while hidden if you plan on being the knife in the dark.
While having an imp is fun and probably insanely useful, for gaining Advantage in combat nothing beats the Owl, which can abuse Fly-By for OA-immune Help actions. =D
Honestly, this is just not going to be as effective a build as the warlock/monk we discussed earlier. It sounds like you're interested in 1) building for melee attacks in a cloud of darkness, and 2) having some 'control' to lock enemies into your cloud, which is fine but doesn't really synergize that well with rogue classes as well as it would with fighter, paladin, or just straight melee warlock. I will also warn straight up that this concept doesn't really synergize specifically with you being a winged tiefling, or with being an arcane trickster… if you're in melee you're not flying, arcane trickster brings literally nothing to a melee character whoalready will have advantage through darkness bubble shenanigans, and you'll have to keep your intelligence up for spells cast with those trickster spell slots (unless you exclusively use them for buffs, in which case, you're wasting Arcane Trickster abilities). If you must go winged warlock/rogue, Swashbuckler would make more sense as a rogue subclass, since it lets you do fly-by attacks at level 3 and add charisma to initiative... but then, that doesn't mesh with locking down targets in a bubble, but rather keeping the bubble centered on yourself.
Hexblade won't get you much of anything useful, if you plan on swinging a Shadow Blade or using Booming Blade/Green-flame Blade in combat. As a multiclassed rogue interested in putting evasion rolls to good use, we're already going to be maxing dex out, so using Charisma to attack and wearing heavier armor is largely meaningless. You'll get access to the Shield spell eventually through Arcane Trickster, which is the last real argument in Hexblade's favor; you might as well stick with Fiend for some temp HP if you're only doing a 2-5 level dip.
Honestly, the only relevance I'm seeing between Warlock and the build you've described is 1) devil's sight so as to see through darkness, 2) the opportunity to take an improved invisible familiar that can also see through darkness, via Pact of the Chain, and 3) Free mage armor? You're taking a second class that gives cantrips, so I really don't think you need Pact of the Tome any more like you had discussed in the other thread. If you want a familiar anyway, its hard to see why you wouldn't want Pact of the chain to give you a better one that can Help while invisible and see through darkness... but with you taking a second class that will be handing out spell slots, I suppose there's also an argument to be made for doing Pact of the Blade instead, so that you can take Eldritch Smite as your 5th level invocation. If you stick to only using your Arcane Trickster slots for casting, as a fifth level warlock that's twice per encounter that you can drop a +4d8 auto-prone attack on top of your other sneak attack damage, but...
This really feels like trying to jam together two classes that don't fit together that well, into a playstyle that doesn't really favor either, on top of a race with wasted features. Is pinning people in a bubble of darkness while the caster drops fireballs on you the main concept? Or what else seems most "fun" about what you're trying to accomplish?
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
The race is mostly a campaign setting thing- lots of the plot will probably involve traveling between the ground and floating islands/ cities. Like yeah it’ll be useful in combat, but I expect a fair amount of fighting to happen indoors.
warlock/ monk still sounds good, but I’m more trying to figure out how to do more damage if I’m not sniping from far away while still avoiding damage. Getting tons of sneak attacks sounds cool and fun, and we have no one else with any sneaking talent.
with EB, I always have reliable damage, so I’m looking for other options to spice it up.
I just think the Eldritch Trickster angle is too hard to work in. Like, Eldritch Trickster barely works with itself: it wants you to hide and cast spells so that foes have disadvantage on their saves, but that means you're not sneak attacking. Those spells you're casting are likely to be straight damage spells, because if you're hiding in darkness or casting from invisibility or something, you're already using up your concentration slot, so clearly you aren't casting a debuff on the enemy... but your melee sneak attacks will probably do more damage than any spell you would be able to cast. And it wants you to be targeted by spells so as to steal them, which means you either aren't hiding or are hanging out in the scrum of other characters, rarely where a rogue wants to be. It takes you 13 levels to even be able to use the hand in combat to give yourself advantage, something that you already could have found more reliable ways to do 10 levels ago with a different rogue subclass.
If your priority is to do a ton of damage ranged, but also even more damage up close, consider a Sorcadinlock? Paladin 5/Sorceror 10/Hexblade (Pact of Blade) 5. You still get eldritch blast+agonizing blast, for 4d10+20 (+hexes etc), the best ranged attack in the game. Also, you can quicken it with sorcerer points to do that twice per round! But also in melee, you can simultaneous divine smite (+2d8-5d8, depending on level of sorc/paladin slot burned) and eldritch smite (+4d8 and auto prone) on the same attack, x2 attacks per round, and use charisma to hit and for bonus damage. Using a fifth-level shadowblade (cast with sorcerer slot), you're doing 4d8, +5d8 for consuming a 4th level sorc spell slot, +4d8 and auto prone for consuming a warlock spell slot, +5 cha, +2 (dueling style), +6 proficiency (hexblade curse), +1d6 (hex), and crit on a 19-20... for an average of 75 per hit, times two hits in the first "alpha strike" round when you still have warlock slots, and then 57x2 in future rounds. You lose out on one ASI but don't really need it, having room to build to 20 charisma, 20 dexterity, and 16 constitution, with proficiency in Dex, Con, Wis, and Charisma saves. And with your urchin background, you're plenty stealthy (and don't need to wear heavy armor to spoil that, will have a mage armor AC of 18), and still can play with darkness shenanigans for additional sneakiness/defense. You don't need any particular sorcerer origin (shadow sounds thematic, but storm could work too, or anything) or Paladin oath (though conquest and oathbreaker both have cool channel divinity options for you).
To do the basic version of the build, you just need Paladin 2 (to unlock divine smite), so Paladin 2/Warlock 1 is a fine enough jumping off point for you and then you can build from there.
Or again, if you don't want to be fancy and minmaxy, just do a straight rogue (swashbuckler)/warlock, which will give you plenty of charisma synergy, the ability to do fly-by-attacks, and huge sneak attack damage when fighting in your darkness bubble.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Dang, those both sound really good... thanks for the detail on the sorlockadin levels, i think I’ll go with that if I can think of a way to make it work character-wise. Maybe oathbreaker and a god vs. patron type problem?
swashbuckler/ warlock sounds intriguing too though, what kind of level distribution would you recommend for that?
A few important notes on the OP: Uncanny Dodge is not effective against fireballs. It specifically refers to attacks that hit, while the rules do not interpret offensive spells with saving throws as attacks.
That said, a couple more levels gets you Evasion which does specifically apply to saving throws, and does not require the use of your Reaction.
I think Devil's Darkness and Sneak Attack synergize very well. As does Sneak Attack and Familiar Help. Between the two there is a lot of overlap, but that's not necessarily harmful. Warlock and Rogue both have access to effective Bonus Actions, and that overlap may make things difficult when you have an excess of actions you'd like to perform. If you don't want to use your spell slot on Darkness you can Hide as a Bonus Action after attacking. If you are Concentrating on Hex you will lose that if you cast Darkness, but targeting an enemy with Hex takes your Bonus Action. So the overlap there can be problematic.
Taking a fifth level can be beneficial to pick up Thirsting Blade if you take Pact of the Blade, but that will have a small benefit next to Sneak Attack, which won't apply to more than one attack in a turn.
If you take Find Familiar from the Arcane Trickster spells you are limited to Conjuration and Illusion schools for the remaining spells.
Hexblade is the most mechanically effective pact, but that's boring. Pact of the Fiend suits your character concept better. That said, Hexblade uniquely adds Shield to your spell list which is greatly bolstered by spell slots from different classes, and so Synergizes well with Arcane Trickster.
Finally, if you don't want to get blasted with Fireballs simply use a bow. Devil's Darkness, is especially potent with a ranged character as is Sneak Attack.
TL;DR there's a lot of overlapping and synergizing abilities that you should definately consider before jumping into this build. It turns into a very complicated character mechanically.
Extended Signature
Yeah I don’t like too too complicated so I might go with what Chicken_champ suggested instead.
If you're considering Swashbuckler / Warlock, have you considered Blood Hunter and taking the Order of the Profane Soul? It's a physical fighter with a light version of the Warlock path and if you wanted more, you could add more Warlock levels on top.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
No, I haven’t looked at it - my character’s backstory relies really heavily on him being a warlock. And I’m not too set on physical fighting, I just want to maximize damage in close quarters since I’m already set for range damage with EB.
The Profane Soul is available at level-3 where you're starting, and is granted all of the same options for patrons as the Warlock. So it likely fits well with your story.
Blood Hunter is not official content so your DM may deny the option. It's a complicated class with each Archetype having features as significant of most classrs, rather than an addition of minor features.
Extended Signature
Thanks everyone, I think I’m gonna go with warlock/ swashbuckler because it sounds easy enough and pretty good.