Hello, I have a pretty simple question: is there a way to make a good melee focused warlock that doesn't require dual-classing or the hexblade archetype? (we've already integrated my character's background as a servant of the great old ones into the campaing and it would be too much hassle to change it last minute like that). I mean, the warlock has the pact of the blade feature, so i figure it is somewhat intended that they have a melee focused option, but they don't really seem to have the neccesary sustainability for taking many big hits and most things i came across paint them much more like a backrow mage than anything else. Any ideas on how to circumvent that issue? I'm grateful for any tipps in that regard. Thank you in advance.
I would run a Mountain Dwarf for the armor and using either The Fiend or the Celestial depending on if you want offensive or defensive. If you go the Great Old one that works too. Other than that gain feats related to melee fighting such as Great Weapon Master or Medium Armor Master.
The Hexblade patron gives Warlocks access to medium armor, shields, and martial weapons at 1st level that other patrons don’t have and they let you use your charisma score for attacking with your Pact weapon instead of strength or dexterity.
You won’t be quite as good as a Hexblade in melee, but you won’t be bad either if you optimize your warlock for melee. Focus your ability scores on dexterity and charisma, use finesse weapons, pick the eldritch invocations that are focused on melee, and consider picking up a feat to help your melee fighting at 8th level.
Here is what I would do. Keep 2 things in mind, first I dislike Hexblades, I just can’t like the concept even though I love warlocks, and second this still won’t make your character as good in melee as a Hexblade is.
1st level: Take the Green Flame Blade cantrip, make both your dexterity and your charisma 16, make your constitution 12, and buy studded leather armor and a couple of daggers. Studded leather is your best armor available at 1st level and daggers are your best choice for a weapon that uses your dexterity modifier for attacking instead of your strength. I’d take Eldritch Blast too for when you’re doing ranged attacks because they will happen sometimes. I’d learn Armor of Agathys and Dissonant Whispers as your spells because neither one of them uses concentration and you are going to be taking some damage.
2nd level: Replace your studded leather armor with the Armor of Shadows eldritch invocation, pick Fiendish Vigor as your other invocation, and pick any 1st level spell that you like.
3rd level: Pact of the Blade and replace Fiendish Vigor with Improved Pact Weapon, summoning a rapier as your pact weapon most of the time, and learn Mirror Image. You can swap out one of your 1st level spells that isn’t working out as well as you like for a 2nd level spell if you like too, I’d personally consider Misty Step for emergency escapes, but that’s my playing style.
4th level: Decision time. Do you increase your dexterity to 18 and gain a +1 to your initiative, AC, attack bonus, and damage with your Pact weapon? Or do you pick a feat? Lucky, Mobile, and Tough are all great picks for a melee warlock, but so is your dexterity. I’d pick based on how the campaign is going and based on how you’re interacting with the rest of your party. All of these options are good. Plus you get another cantrip, pick one that you like, I’d lean towards a utility one instead of a combat one, but that’s me.
5th level: You “need” to pick Thirsting Blade for 2 attacks per round with your Pact weapon or Eldritch Smite to do extra damage with your Pact weapon. If you pick Thirsting Blade you won’t be using Green Flame Blade any more because you can only do one melee attack when you use that spell. Plus you get to pick a 3rd level spell and if you don’t like how a lower even spell is working out you can swap it out for another 3rd level spell. It really doesn’t matter that much what you pick, you’re a melee character and you only have 2 spell slots so you won’t be casting spells other than cantrips very often in combat anyway.
That’s how I’d do the first few levels, more or less. It’s close to the best that you can do to build a warlock who’s focused on melee without picking the Hexblade in my opinion because you depend on charisma, dexterity, and constitution and Hexblades only depend on charisma and constitution. It’s also how I’d go to build a melee based warlock myself.
Githyanki Race isnt great for stats, but it does grant twohanded sword proficiency and medium armour. Its an option if you want to feat heavy armour and then heavy armour master at 4 and 8 at the expense of charisma to further increase the monster spell that is Armor of Agathys. Add in the blade ward cantrip and some fights may be ended mostly by you letting the enemy hit you.
Otherwise its easier to ensure you wont be hit. This can ruin your groups sight lines though. Pact of blade invocation allows you proficiency with any melee weapon if its your pact weapon. Devil sight means magical darkness is your friend. A polearm in the dark (or any other melee weapon you like and the mobile feat) will allow you the ability to strike and retreat with your victim having to guess where you are. Polearm Master and sentinel are a common pairing for other melee aficionado's and if you dont like the idea of mobile these two will assist you in avoiding harm whilst cutting down your target in relative impunity. With thirsting blade invocation, a bonus action haft attack and sentinels /polearms reaction strike you could be enjoying 4 attacks per round against your blind opponent at 5th level if you started as a variant human. All those attacks have advantage to hit so thats a possible 8 chances to crit per round, and if you hit with the reaction the victims movement is reduced to zero for the round - thanks Sentinel!
Melee warlock is possible (even without hexblade) with pact of blade and all the blade pact invocations you can take.
The thing that bugs me, is that agonizing blast build's require way fewer invocations to match it in terms of power, thus being more variable and versatile, and agonizing blast will still end up out performing pact of blade (plus 4 different melee invocations) past level 11.
Agreed completely! The first time I read the 5e Warlock concept I thought about Marvel’s Ghost Rider, but it’s next to impossible to create him in 5e because of that issue!
Just out of curiosity and for future reference: I am sticking with GOO for this campaing, but since i want to test Hexblade eventually, is there any benefit of getting Pact of Blade as a Hexblade-Warlock? I don't really see any. Sure, if you are into it, it allows you to dual wield, but aprt from that.... You already have your Hexblade as a weapon and while the Pact of Blade could benefit from being able to use long distance weaponary with the right invocations, you can do pretty much the same damage with your standard eldritch blast spells. So unless it's possible to turn your hexblade weapon into your pact weapon, thus getting all the benefits from your invocations on it, which i don't think is how it works, i really don't see the benefit.
The hexblade can use one handed melee weapons utilising their charisma to hit and damage. If they have pact of the blade they can use any pact weapon. (including two handed weapons) Useful if you want to make yourself single attribute dependant or have something in mind with a larger weapon. Hope that helps spark some imagination! Enjoy your service to the eldritch abominations that will destroy our reality!
Just out of curiosity and for future reference: I am sticking with GOO for this campaing, but since i want to test Hexblade eventually, is there any benefit of getting Pact of Blade as a Hexblade-Warlock? I don't really see any. Sure, if you are into it, it allows you to dual wield, but aprt from that.... You already have your Hexblade as a weapon and while the Pact of Blade could benefit from being able to use long distance weaponary with the right invocations, you can do pretty much the same damage with your standard eldritch blast spells. So unless it's possible to turn your hexblade weapon into your pact weapon, thus getting all the benefits from your invocations on it, which i don't think is how it works, i really don't see the benefit.
All of the melee invocations require pact of blade, so that is a reason. But also to dual wield, use two handed weapons, and ranged weapons.
But you are still looking at investing 4 invocations to possibly do 2d10+22 plus 2 smites at level 12 vs 3d10+15 with just agonizing blast at level 11.
Agonizing blast build is friendlier to multiclass too, so you could build a level 11 sorlock and do 6d10+30 damage in a turn.
I had a warlock who wasn't pact of the blade or a hexblade, and he still ran head first into battle. While it was kinda his flaw to underestimate all opponents and charge into battle, he wasn't the one to hold back on casting spells, even with his few slots. Using spells in close range combat seems to be rather easy while most people don't do it. All of his invocations were just ones with unlimited uses that didn't do anything in respects to damage. He also got a proficiency in rapiers and used a great sword that was a big part of the campaign, so it gave proficiency while held. While he was a fiend warlock, great old one can still handle close up combat with tasha's hideous laughter keeping an enemy down while you fight off another. Something like suggestion or charm person is good to, while mine just used command as a go to spell. Blight can do heavy damage, then dimension door and etherealness were fun spells to sneak up or confuse enemies.
Mystic Arcanum is a big thing, and imprisonment is by far the easiest way to handle an enemy, even a tarrasque can be made into a meaningless enemy if you make it use up legendary resistance. Just kill it after you chain it or something, or keep it in a gem as a prize.
Melee warlock is possible (even without hexblade) with pact of blade and all the blade pact invocations you can take.
The thing that bugs me, is that agonizing blast build's require way fewer invocations to match it in terms of power, thus being more variable and versatile, and agonizing blast will still end up out performing pact of blade (plus 4 different melee invocations) past level 11.
Yeah in all honesty, the Hexblade invocations should be build ins for the Pact of the Blade feature, only that you unlock them at the approriate lvl, and have other/new invocations.
Thirsting blade and Lifedrinker are Obligatory when you make a Blade Pact/Hexblade anyways, so why not build it in the feature.
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"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Anything with high dex and pact of the blade to get a rapier makes you no worse than a rogue. Take the unlimited mage armor invocation and you effectively have +1 studded leather.
Githyanki Race isnt great for stats, but it does grant twohanded sword proficiency and medium armour. Its an option if you want to feat heavy armour and then heavy armour master at 4 and 8 at the expense of charisma to further increase the monster spell that is Armor of Agathys. Add in the blade ward cantrip and some fights may be ended mostly by you letting the enemy hit you.
Otherwise its easier to ensure you wont be hit. This can ruin your groups sight lines though. Pact of blade invocation allows you proficiency with any melee weapon if its your pact weapon. Devil sight means magical darkness is your friend. A polearm in the dark (or any other melee weapon you like and the mobile feat) will allow you the ability to strike and retreat with your victim having to guess where you are. Polearm Master and sentinel are a common pairing for other melee aficionado's and if you dont like the idea of mobile these two will assist you in avoiding harm whilst cutting down your target in relative impunity. With thirsting blade invocation, a bonus action haft attack and sentinels /polearms reaction strike you could be enjoying 4 attacks per round against your blind opponent at 5th level if you started as a variant human. All those attacks have advantage to hit so thats a possible 8 chances to crit per round, and if you hit with the reaction the victims movement is reduced to zero for the round - thanks Sentinel!
You would need for the heavy armor feat to have medium armor proficiency first. Which you can get with a Mountain Dwarf.
Cheers Houligan, UoN you are correct Mountain dwarf is an alternative that has already been put forward, Githyanki was an alternative which lends itself to warlocks for flavour (but not really for stats)
I am running a melee Warlock build now, without the Hex Blade patron.
I took my first level in Cleric (War) and then every level after in Warlock, selecting the Pact of the Blade. This gave me proficiency in shields and heavy armor. PLUS a couple of Cleric Spell slots and cantrips for extra utility.
Edit: I am also using the Fallen Aasimar race and the Fiend patron.
I run a Great Old One, Pact of the Blade Warlock. I'm, currently, at level 10.
He's Dex. based. At level 2 I took Improved Pact Weapon and Armor of Shadows. My first two spells were Armor of Agathys (which I still have) and Hunger of Hadar.
Wizard: Yes. I cast the Wish spell and I wish that everybody loves me!
DM: You transform into an irresistible, magnificent feast. It was so great, all who participated in devouring you tell of the joy they felt with tears in their eyes and all who hear the tale only feel sorrow that they weren't there to eat.
Eh, I have played a close fighting EB Warlock for a stretch. Dual focused on Con/Cha, Variant Human with Medium Armor feat. Grabbed a shield and whatever armor I could afford at the time (magic shields are also much better than magic armor for bonuses and availability). I used Armor Of Agathys and would deliberately provoke attacks of opportunity by backing out of reach and the blasting away.
I think my level 8 ASI was resilient Con (to get Con to 16), but Crossbow Expert can work just as well to work around the disadvantage of ranged attacks in melee.
I was Fiend, Pact of the Chain, took the invocation that maxes HP recovery (much better return for the healer on their spells), plus temporary hit points whenever I dropped something to replace the buffer when Armor of Agathys was done.
When I got Soul Cage it just got better with 16hp/bonus action 8x day.
Hello, I have a pretty simple question: is there a way to make a good melee focused warlock that doesn't require dual-classing or the hexblade archetype? (we've already integrated my character's background as a servant of the great old ones into the campaing and it would be too much hassle to change it last minute like that).
I mean, the warlock has the pact of the blade feature, so i figure it is somewhat intended that they have a melee focused option, but they don't really seem to have the neccesary sustainability for taking many big hits and most things i came across paint them much more like a backrow mage than anything else.
Any ideas on how to circumvent that issue? I'm grateful for any tipps in that regard. Thank you in advance.
I would run a Mountain Dwarf for the armor and using either The Fiend or the Celestial depending on if you want offensive or defensive. If you go the Great Old one that works too. Other than that gain feats related to melee fighting such as Great Weapon Master or Medium Armor Master.
The Hexblade patron gives Warlocks access to medium armor, shields, and martial weapons at 1st level that other patrons don’t have and they let you use your charisma score for attacking with your Pact weapon instead of strength or dexterity.
You won’t be quite as good as a Hexblade in melee, but you won’t be bad either if you optimize your warlock for melee. Focus your ability scores on dexterity and charisma, use finesse weapons, pick the eldritch invocations that are focused on melee, and consider picking up a feat to help your melee fighting at 8th level.
Here is what I would do. Keep 2 things in mind, first I dislike Hexblades, I just can’t like the concept even though I love warlocks, and second this still won’t make your character as good in melee as a Hexblade is.
1st level: Take the Green Flame Blade cantrip, make both your dexterity and your charisma 16, make your constitution 12, and buy studded leather armor and a couple of daggers. Studded leather is your best armor available at 1st level and daggers are your best choice for a weapon that uses your dexterity modifier for attacking instead of your strength. I’d take Eldritch Blast too for when you’re doing ranged attacks because they will happen sometimes. I’d learn Armor of Agathys and Dissonant Whispers as your spells because neither one of them uses concentration and you are going to be taking some damage.
2nd level: Replace your studded leather armor with the Armor of Shadows eldritch invocation, pick Fiendish Vigor as your other invocation, and pick any 1st level spell that you like.
3rd level: Pact of the Blade and replace Fiendish Vigor with Improved Pact Weapon, summoning a rapier as your pact weapon most of the time, and learn Mirror Image. You can swap out one of your 1st level spells that isn’t working out as well as you like for a 2nd level spell if you like too, I’d personally consider Misty Step for emergency escapes, but that’s my playing style.
4th level: Decision time. Do you increase your dexterity to 18 and gain a +1 to your initiative, AC, attack bonus, and damage with your Pact weapon? Or do you pick a feat? Lucky, Mobile, and Tough are all great picks for a melee warlock, but so is your dexterity. I’d pick based on how the campaign is going and based on how you’re interacting with the rest of your party. All of these options are good. Plus you get another cantrip, pick one that you like, I’d lean towards a utility one instead of a combat one, but that’s me.
5th level: You “need” to pick Thirsting Blade for 2 attacks per round with your Pact weapon or Eldritch Smite to do extra damage with your Pact weapon. If you pick Thirsting Blade you won’t be using Green Flame Blade any more because you can only do one melee attack when you use that spell. Plus you get to pick a 3rd level spell and if you don’t like how a lower even spell is working out you can swap it out for another 3rd level spell. It really doesn’t matter that much what you pick, you’re a melee character and you only have 2 spell slots so you won’t be casting spells other than cantrips very often in combat anyway.
That’s how I’d do the first few levels, more or less. It’s close to the best that you can do to build a warlock who’s focused on melee without picking the Hexblade in my opinion because you depend on charisma, dexterity, and constitution and Hexblades only depend on charisma and constitution. It’s also how I’d go to build a melee based warlock myself.
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Githyanki Race isnt great for stats, but it does grant twohanded sword proficiency and medium armour. Its an option if you want to feat heavy armour and then heavy armour master at 4 and 8 at the expense of charisma to further increase the monster spell that is Armor of Agathys. Add in the blade ward cantrip and some fights may be ended mostly by you letting the enemy hit you.
Otherwise its easier to ensure you wont be hit. This can ruin your groups sight lines though. Pact of blade invocation allows you proficiency with any melee weapon if its your pact weapon. Devil sight means magical darkness is your friend. A polearm in the dark (or any other melee weapon you like and the mobile feat) will allow you the ability to strike and retreat with your victim having to guess where you are. Polearm Master and sentinel are a common pairing for other melee aficionado's and if you dont like the idea of mobile these two will assist you in avoiding harm whilst cutting down your target in relative impunity. With thirsting blade invocation, a bonus action haft attack and sentinels /polearms reaction strike you could be enjoying 4 attacks per round against your blind opponent at 5th level if you started as a variant human. All those attacks have advantage to hit so thats a possible 8 chances to crit per round, and if you hit with the reaction the victims movement is reduced to zero for the round - thanks Sentinel!
Melee warlock is possible (even without hexblade) with pact of blade and all the blade pact invocations you can take.
The thing that bugs me, is that agonizing blast build's require way fewer invocations to match it in terms of power, thus being more variable and versatile, and agonizing blast will still end up out performing pact of blade (plus 4 different melee invocations) past level 11.
Agreed completely! The first time I read the 5e Warlock concept I thought about Marvel’s Ghost Rider, but it’s next to impossible to create him in 5e because of that issue!
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Just out of curiosity and for future reference: I am sticking with GOO for this campaing, but since i want to test Hexblade eventually, is there any benefit of getting Pact of Blade as a Hexblade-Warlock? I don't really see any. Sure, if you are into it, it allows you to dual wield, but aprt from that.... You already have your Hexblade as a weapon and while the Pact of Blade could benefit from being able to use long distance weaponary with the right invocations, you can do pretty much the same damage with your standard eldritch blast spells. So unless it's possible to turn your hexblade weapon into your pact weapon, thus getting all the benefits from your invocations on it, which i don't think is how it works, i really don't see the benefit.
The hexblade can use one handed melee weapons utilising their charisma to hit and damage. If they have pact of the blade they can use any pact weapon. (including two handed weapons) Useful if you want to make yourself single attribute dependant or have something in mind with a larger weapon. Hope that helps spark some imagination! Enjoy your service to the eldritch abominations that will destroy our reality!
All of the melee invocations require pact of blade, so that is a reason. But also to dual wield, use two handed weapons, and ranged weapons.
But you are still looking at investing 4 invocations to possibly do 2d10+22 plus 2 smites at level 12 vs 3d10+15 with just agonizing blast at level 11.
Agonizing blast build is friendlier to multiclass too, so you could build a level 11 sorlock and do 6d10+30 damage in a turn.
I had a warlock who wasn't pact of the blade or a hexblade, and he still ran head first into battle. While it was kinda his flaw to underestimate all opponents and charge into battle, he wasn't the one to hold back on casting spells, even with his few slots. Using spells in close range combat seems to be rather easy while most people don't do it. All of his invocations were just ones with unlimited uses that didn't do anything in respects to damage. He also got a proficiency in rapiers and used a great sword that was a big part of the campaign, so it gave proficiency while held. While he was a fiend warlock, great old one can still handle close up combat with tasha's hideous laughter keeping an enemy down while you fight off another. Something like suggestion or charm person is good to, while mine just used command as a go to spell. Blight can do heavy damage, then dimension door and etherealness were fun spells to sneak up or confuse enemies.
Mystic Arcanum is a big thing, and imprisonment is by far the easiest way to handle an enemy, even a tarrasque can be made into a meaningless enemy if you make it use up legendary resistance. Just kill it after you chain it or something, or keep it in a gem as a prize.
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Here, have some homebrew classes! Subclasses to? Why not races. Feats, feats as well. I have a lot of magic items. Lastly I got monsters, fun, fun times.
Yeah in all honesty, the Hexblade invocations should be build ins for the Pact of the Blade feature, only that you unlock them at the approriate lvl, and have other/new invocations.
Thirsting blade and Lifedrinker are Obligatory when you make a Blade Pact/Hexblade anyways, so why not build it in the feature.
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Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
Anything with high dex and pact of the blade to get a rapier makes you no worse than a rogue. Take the unlimited mage armor invocation and you effectively have +1 studded leather.
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You would need for the heavy armor feat to have medium armor proficiency first. Which you can get with a Mountain Dwarf.
Githyanki also get Medium Armor Proficiency as a racial trait, just like mountain dwarves.
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Cheers Houligan, UoN you are correct Mountain dwarf is an alternative that has already been put forward, Githyanki was an alternative which lends itself to warlocks for flavour (but not really for stats)
I am running a melee Warlock build now, without the Hex Blade patron.
I took my first level in Cleric (War) and then every level after in Warlock, selecting the Pact of the Blade. This gave me proficiency in shields and heavy armor. PLUS a couple of Cleric Spell slots and cantrips for extra utility.
Edit: I am also using the Fallen Aasimar race and the Fiend patron.
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I run a Great Old One, Pact of the Blade Warlock. I'm, currently, at level 10.
He's Dex. based. At level 2 I took Improved Pact Weapon and Armor of Shadows. My first two spells were Armor of Agathys (which I still have) and Hunger of Hadar.
Here's a link so you have an idea: https://ddb.ac/characters/2965589/njgscv.
DM: Are you sure?
Wizard: Yes. I cast the Wish spell and I wish that everybody loves me!
DM: You transform into an irresistible, magnificent feast. It was so great, all who participated in devouring you tell of the joy they felt with tears in their eyes and all who hear the tale only feel sorrow that they weren't there to eat.
Eh, I have played a close fighting EB Warlock for a stretch. Dual focused on Con/Cha, Variant Human with Medium Armor feat. Grabbed a shield and whatever armor I could afford at the time (magic shields are also much better than magic armor for bonuses and availability). I used Armor Of Agathys and would deliberately provoke attacks of opportunity by backing out of reach and the blasting away.
I think my level 8 ASI was resilient Con (to get Con to 16), but Crossbow Expert can work just as well to work around the disadvantage of ranged attacks in melee.
I was Fiend, Pact of the Chain, took the invocation that maxes HP recovery (much better return for the healer on their spells), plus temporary hit points whenever I dropped something to replace the buffer when Armor of Agathys was done.
When I got Soul Cage it just got better with 16hp/bonus action 8x day.
Very survivable front line-ish fighter
Abide.