Hellfire Warlock

[Scarey Nerd]

It's been suggested that I take the prestige class Hellfire Warlock from Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells. I am a level 10 Warlock currently, what level would you suggest I begin getting into the prestige class? The absoulte earliest I can do it is ECL 12.

[Diarmuid]

ASAP. It boosts your damage output significantly.

[Feytalist]

Just make sure you pack a few wands of lesser restoration, or better yet, a rod of bodily restoration. You're going to need it. Heh.

[Telonius]

The easiest entry into the class is Warlock8/Binder1/Hellfire Warlock3. This is sometimes looked down upon, since immediate mitigation of the Con damage (through binding Naberius) looks an awful lot like getting something for nothing to some DMs. However, IMO this barely registers on the Cheese-o-Meter. Warlocks really do need a boost to damage to stay competitive.

[Essence_of_War]

Agreed 100% with Telonius.

This isn't even a cheese-blip. The Warlock's Eldritch Blast is so much weaker at higher levels than dedicated blasting from a full-caster or any perfectly reasonable melee combo that it needs the boost.

Now, on the other hand, expect some raised eyebrows if you try to use Legacy Champion to continue progression the hellfire warlock's class features...I still think this isn't THAT ridic, but unless your group is quite powerful, the DM may disagree.

[Keneth]

Proposing advancement via Legacy Champion will result in a hardcover Complete Tome of Horrors being thrown in the general direction of your head. I don't let my players advance any class that doesn't have at least 10 levels much like the rules for epic progression. You'll be better off arguing about whether or not Incarnate's Strongheart Vest will let you use your hellfire blast without any Con damage (it will).

[Essence_of_War]

Concur on the Tome.:smallamused:

It's worth asking your DM about both options. My experience has been that most DMs seem fine with the Binder+Naberious but typically think that preventing the damage through strongheart vest seems "shady".

YMMV.

[Adrayll]

If you plan on arguing the Strongheart Vest via Incarnum feats, I've heard the argument "DR 1/- doesn't make you immune to physical damage, QED, mitigating one CON damage doesn't trip the 'immune to CON damage clause.'" thrown around fairly frequently whenever this crops up.

[Keneth]

Yes, that's the semantics of it. Also completely fluff-wise, the entry says "When you are struck by an attack that would damage your ability scores, a wave of incarnum energy passes through you, blunting the effectiveness of the attack." So technically the ability still drains you but the vest blunts the effects, I don't see any problem with that.

[The_Snark]

Fluffwise it works perfectly. Hellfire takes a little bit of your soul as payment, and incarnum is the art of shaping soulstuff; the hellfire warlock is still paying the price, he's just paying it out of somebody else's soul. Great stuff for an evil or amoral warlock.

Balance-wise, some DMs have issues with it (a feat is sometimes easier to forgo than a level, and a binder/hellfire warlock using Naberius will at least suffer momentary weakness as he exercises his abilities). It really depends on the power level of your group.

[Keneth]

Any DM that considers hellfire warlock too strong should be beaten with a random wizard's spellbook. It's not like they get any love elsewhere. :smallannoyed:

[Hazzardevil]

Any DM that considers hellfire warlock too strong should be beaten with a random wizard's spellbook. It's not like they get any love elsewhere. :smallannoyed:

Actually they got a few neat tricks in some of the more obscure sourcebooks. Like At-will Polymorph that scales to a certain sized monstrous spider.

[Keneth]

Spider Shape is a nice trick. But that's all warlocks are, a bag of tricks, and not a very deep one at that. I love warlocks but without homebrewing some extra invocations and amping up some of their abilities, they can't compare to any of the more common casters.

[Person_Man]

Hellfire Warlock is free online at the WotC (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20061207a&page=3) website, in case anyone wants to look at it. Also, don't overlook the versatility of your Hellfire Infusion. It can be very handy when combined with custom wands or staffs.

[JaronK]

I've never been sure about the Legacy Champion advancement, but a Major Bloodline would definitely work, so there's that. It's also less of a difference. But even if Legacy Champion is allowed... well, it's just damage once a round. A charger does far more.

JaronK

[The_Snark]

Any DM that considers hellfire warlock too strong should be beaten with a random wizard's spellbook. It's not like they get any love elsewhere. :smallannoyed:

"Too strong" is an entirely relative term. In a group where people play monks and archer-rangers and fighters with mostly core feats and wizards that spam magic missile/fireball/cone of cold? It might be a little out of place, yeah.

[Provengreil]

Spider Shape is a nice trick. But that's all warlocks are, a bag of tricks, and not a very deep one at that. I love warlocks but without homebrewing some extra invocations and amping up some of their abilities, they can't compare to any of the more common casters.

that's all wizards are, too, a bag of tricks. tricks win the game in D&D. as for whether warlocks aren't powerful enough, that really depends on the group; my personal preferred balance point is tier 4, so they're fine out of the box for me where for others, like probably yourself, they need an upgrade.

[Axinian]

that's all wizards are, too, a bag of tricks. tricks win the game in D&D. as for whether warlocks aren't powerful enough, that really depends on the group; my personal preferred balance point is tier 4, so they're fine out of the box for me where for others, like probably yourself, they need an upgrade.

Wizards are a bit more than a bag of tricks. They're a bag of EVERY trick, and then some more things that are significantly stronger than tricks.

[Provengreil]

Wizards are a bit more than a bag of tricks. They're a bag of EVERY trick, and then some more things that are significantly stronger than tricks.

not, I find, in practice. In theory, a wizard has every trick, but he has what I like to call Schrodinger's Spell List, which is cheating. No, the warlock will not match the wizard, ever, in power of best tricks or number of the same, at any level. But let's not derail the thread; all my OP was meant to convey was that whether a warlock is too weak is subjective, I only brought up the wizard because calling the warlock invocations tricks is dismissive of the idea that the strongest classes in the game are also made of "tricks."

[Socratov]

While I love warlocks and especially their hellfire couterparts, i don't agree on on the strongheart vest. A level of binder for naberius is fine since it heals the con loss, but before we go into the age old and never ending argument of strongheart vest vs. Naberius I'd like to point to my sig where Psyren has used a tiny bit of roleplaythinking to discuss incarnum vs. soul from a fiendish perspective...

[Keneth]

not, I find, in practice. In theory, a wizard has every trick, but he has what I like to call Schrodinger's Spell List, which is cheating. No, the warlock will not match the wizard, ever, in power of best tricks or number of the same, at any level. But let's not derail the thread; all my OP was meant to convey was that whether a warlock is too weak is subjective, I only brought up the wizard because calling the warlock invocations tricks is dismissive of the idea that the strongest classes in the game are also made of "tricks."
Exempting the odd illusionist wizard, their spells can hardly be called tricks. They're rarely underhanded, they tend to work every time, and unlike invocations, they're not just an annoyance for the enemy most of the time.

And apart from rare fanatics and complete beginners, the chances of the warlock being the best character in a party are slim at best. A straight-up fighter can outshine a glaivelock up until high-levels if it's not purposefully sabotaged and given a decent selection of weapons. You might sacrifice some of your much-needed invocations and/or feats to gain some decent battlefield control but ultimately you're stuck with those few tricks and you better hope that the rest of the party members are more adaptable on a day-to-day or encounter basis.


While I love warlocks and especially their hellfire couterparts, i don't agree on on the strongheart vest. A level of binder for naberius is fine since it heals the con loss, but before we go into the age old and never ending argument of strongheart vest vs. Naberius I'd like to point to my sig where Psyren has used a tiny bit of roleplaythinking to discuss incarnum vs. soul from a fiendish perspective...
But then nowhere does it say that the blast drains incarnum, the description of the vest says that it sends a wave of incarnum energy through your body to blunt the damage. And since we're on the topic, the word "soul" is mentioned nowhere in the hellfire warlock's description, hellfire drains your "essence". Now let me quote you a line straight from the introduction of Magic of Incarnum.


It is, very literally, the essence of all creatures. Now explain to me again why that wouldn't work.

[candycorn]

not, I find, in practice. In theory, a wizard has every trick, but he has what I like to call Schrodinger's Spell List, which is cheating. No, the warlock will not match the wizard, ever, in power of best tricks or number of the same, at any level. But let's not derail the thread; all my OP was meant to convey was that whether a warlock is too weak is subjective, I only brought up the wizard because calling the warlock invocations tricks is dismissive of the idea that the strongest classes in the game are also made of "tricks."

Difference: If the wizard needs a different trick, 8 hours of rest, and he's fine.

If the warlock needs one? Gain some levels. Plural.

So we have wizard and warlock, who just finished a foray into the lands of the white dragon. Wizard still has several fire spells memorized, when their patron tells them that the fire elementals have destroyed the harvest, and need to be hunted down and exterminated.

Wizard gives the town a fireworks show that evening (for giggles), and memorizes cold spells.

Warlock... Well, warlock gets to keep all his stuff just like it is.

It's not the tricks. It's the fact that the wizard gets more different tricks, and can change them faster, whereas a warlock has much fewer tricks, but unlimited use of them.

The former is better.


Now explain to me again why that wouldn't work.
Because it's not YOURS. Those devils are a bit picky, something about pacts and somesuch. Evidently, it's considered a bit gauche in devil circles to sell the soul of someone else.

Source: Hellfire Warlock:
Because the diabolical forces behind the power of hellfire demand part of your essence in exchange for this granted power...

[Keneth]

Because it's not YOURS. But then again, there's no such thing as your essence as far as incarnum is concerned, just like there's no such thing as your magic as far as the weave is concerned. And as I said in the previous post, there's no mention in the fluff about hellfire blast draining the vest instead, that's just how people like to imagine the exchange since a warlock draining others' souls sounds cool. Your soul is basically just a shell and incarnum is the delicious gooey goodness that makes the insides (come to think of it, there should be tons of soulmelders in the nine hells since they literally run on the stuff). Look at it this way, it doesn't matter where the blood comes from, but once you get a transfusion, it's your blood. Hellfire drains the essence away and the soulmeld fills the void.

[Socratov]

thank you Candycorn, you win a 'like'.

But the question is not if it's allowable by raw, but what still belongs to raw. some people regard the whole devils being pickish on souls as flavortext, others have the opinion it is included in raw. The best course of action is to ask what your DM thinks. If he thinks incarnum works, by all means use it. Otherwise you will have to go with a level of binder.

On another note, the use of legacy champion to advance hellfire blastis actually supported by raw. the hellfire blast is a classfeature, and it is defined as beïng 2d6 per level. and although hellfire warlock is a 3 level PrC, so you can't epicly advance it, Legacy champion (much like uncanny trickster) doesn't advance the PrC, but a classfeature.

the fact you are giving up on advancement in invocations is enough balance (besides the fact you can only blast once per turn as a standard action, depending on the essences and shapes maybe quickened). so even balance wise it checks out (maybe tiny blip on the chees-o-meter). You will lose versitality in tricks, then again, you will be able to do 1 trick much better, much like an overspecialized wizard, an ubercharger, a sneak attack rogue or an apostle of peace/[whatshisname] emissary.


But then again, there's no such thing as your essence as far as incarnum is concerned, just like there's no such thing as your magic as far as the weave is concerned. And as I said in the previous post, there's no mention in the fluff about hellfire blast draining the vest instead, that's just how people like to imagine the exchange since a warlock draining others' souls sounds cool. Your soul is basically just a shell and incarnum is the delicious gooey goodness that makes the insides (come to think of it, there should be tons of soulmelders in the nine hells since they literally run on the stuff).

Ofcourse Devils are soulmelders. the whole thing is: the devils grant you the use of hellfire, in exchange for (tiny bits of) your soul. Again, I suppot Psyren in the tofu explanation


Look at it this way, it doesn't matter where the blood comes from, but once you get a transfusion, it's your blood. Hellfire drains the essence away and the soulmeld fills the void.

by raw, strongheart vest says it reduces the CON dmg by 1. the question is is reduction preventing the damage, or is it instantly healing the damage... In my (humble) opinion reduction is a preventive effect, thus you don't sacrifice the con, thus you don't get the hellfire... but this is open to opinion.

[Greymane]

I'm AFB at the moment, but as I recall the wording of Strongheart Vest and Hellfire Blast is picky. The Strongheart Vest reduces the Con damage by one, it does not make you immune to Con damage.

... I thought the entry in Hellfire Warlock said "...if you are immune to this damage..." but it only stipulates if you're immune to Con damage or not. This argument is every bit as shaky as I've seen, then. That said, I'm of the opinion that the vest does, in fact, make you immune to THIS particular Con damage, and thus you can't Hellfire Blast with it.

I'm all for houseruling otherwise, Hellfire Warlock is hardly broken, but that seems the most sensical way to handle it. Especially when the forces of hell demand some of YOUR essence to power it.

[Scarey Nerd]

I have another question. Under the Hellfire Warlock entry, it says under Invoking that as you progress through the Hellfire Warlock levels, you gain new invocations known, Eldritch Blast damage and invoker level. My question is thus: If I am a level 11 Warlock and I begin progression into Hellfire Warlock, I have 6d6 damage on my Eldritch Blast. When I am Warlock 11/Hellfire Warlock 3, I have 7d6 damage, right? I then continue on my merry way through Warlock. I reach Warlock 14/Hellfire Warlock 3. Do I now have 8d6 Eldritch Blast damage, or stay at 7d6?

[Keneth]

the whole thing is: the devils grant you the use of hellfire, in exchange for (tiny bits of) your soul. Again, I suppot Psyren in the tofu explanation The devils are getting your actual soul when you're done anyway since that's the price of using hellfire in the first place (it's a corrupt act anyway you look at it). All the devils want is essence since that's what fuels the whole diabolical economy and any essence you have is yours to give. Incarnum is raw essence, it bears no signature, no particular flavor, it doesn't matter where it comes from, it can be part of you, part of the plants around you (which have no souls for the most part), or it might be the essence of something that died ages ago or hasn't even been born yet. Once again, there's no such thing as your essence, or rather, whatever essence you can get is yours by de facto.

And the tofu is a bad example altogether since souls are actually made from incarnum whereas steaks are not made from tofu. :smalltongue:


by raw, strongheart vest says it reduces the CON dmg by 1. the question is is reduction preventing the damage, or is it instantly healing the damage... RAW doesn't mention the how, that's up to the fluff, and the fluff makes no mention of preventing the cost only mitigating the effects after the fact. If you're gonna be nitpicking about the word "your" which is complete fluff, you can't go and generalize what damage reduction is then.


@Scarey Nerd: For the purposes of eldritch blast damage (and invocations), you add your warlock and hellfire warlock levels together.

[Adrayll]

Hey doesn't Hellfire warlock advance warlock invocations as part of it's class features? So would legacy champion not advance the Hellfire Warlock's advancing of Warlock invocations? Yo dog I heard you like...

[Telonius]

I have another question. Under the Hellfire Warlock entry, it says under Invoking that as you progress through the Hellfire Warlock levels, you gain new invocations known, Eldritch Blast damage and invoker level. My question is thus: If I am a level 11 Warlock and I begin progression into Hellfire Warlock, I have 6d6 damage on my Eldritch Blast. When I am Warlock 11/Hellfire Warlock 3, I have 7d6 damage, right? I then continue on my merry way through Warlock. I reach Warlock 14/Hellfire Warlock 3. Do I now have 8d6 Eldritch Blast damage, or stay at 7d6?

8d6. The wording is a bit sloppy, but it's pretty clearly intended to stack.

[Socratov]

Hey doesn't Hellfire warlock advance warlock invocations as part of it's class features? So would legacy champion not advance the Hellfire Warlock's advancing of Warlock invocations? Yo dog I heard you like...

after just reaching for the book and carefully reading, it does. would like to see an optimised epic warlock with bloodline levels, legacy champion and uncanny trickster...

[Big Fau]

not, I find, in practice. In theory, a wizard has every trick, but he has what I like to call Schrodinger's Spell List, which is cheating. No, the warlock will not match the wizard, ever, in power of best tricks or number of the same, at any level. But let's not derail the thread; all my OP was meant to convey was that whether a warlock is too weak is subjective, I only brought up the wizard because calling the warlock invocations tricks is dismissive of the idea that the strongest classes in the game are also made of "tricks."

Just going through the God Handbook and picking four Marx'ed or higher spells of each level from near-random schools will get you by for most campaigns.

The Wizard's "trick" isn't that he has Schrödinger's gun, it's that the ammo he uses has a very high mix of Encounter Enders and Campaign Breakers.


The Warlock's trick is that he never runs out of ammo.

[candycorn]

But then again, there's no such thing as your essence as far as incarnum is concerned.
Precisely.

As far as incarnum is concerned, there isn't.

As far as the devils granting your powers of concerned, there most certainly is. And you can't pay for your devil stuff with everyone's loot. You pay for it with your loot. Because the devils demand you pay for it with yours.

[JaronK]

Precisely.And you can't pay for your devil stuff with everyone's loot. You pay for it with your loot. Because the devils demand you pay for it with yours.

Why would the devil demand that? All the source material says devils happily trade other people's souls around... it's like a currency for them.

JaronK

[Scarey Nerd]

Why would the devil demand that? All the source material says devils happily trade other people's souls around... it's like a currency for them.

JaronK

As I recall, there was once a famous Captain who sold his soul to a certain man, and tried to give 100 in exchange. Don't remember his name, just that he was a pirate so brave on the oceans blue...

[Socratov]

As I recall, there was once a famous Captain who sold his soul to a certain man, and tried to give 100 in exchange. Don't remember his name, just that he was a pirate so brave on the oceans blue...

you, sir, made my day.

On a more focused note, devils trade souls around like currency, true. but when making deals with living creatures (i.e. the ones actually carrying a mortal soul, ready to be sold into slavery or whatever) they demand you give up your soul since you cant sell what isn't legally yours. since the posession of your souls is a purely personal matter (pun intended), you cant trade the promise of your soul with some soul substitute (or for fluff puposes, soul tofu). consider the following fluff: wouldn't the soul of a paladin be of more worth to devils (it is a rare prize the have a paladin's soul fall into the hands of devils) then a soul from, say, an utter rotten and spoiled character which would end up in hell anyway?

TL;DR: devils don't care whose soul it is when using it like currency, they do care about whose soul it is when procuring the soul

[candycorn]

Why would the devil demand that? All the source material says devils happily trade other people's souls around... it's like a currency for them.

JaronK

Because the class ability says they do.


Because the diabolical forces behind the power of hellfire demand part of your essence in exchange for this granted power...

Any other questions?

[Boci]

Because the class ability says they do.



Any other questions?

Yes. How can it tell the difference?



consider the following fluff: wouldn't the soul of a paladin be of more worth to devils (it is a rare prize the have a paladin's soul fall into the hands of devils) then a soul from, say, an utter rotten and spoiled character which would end up in hell anyway?

No. As of Fiendish Codex II, both will release harvistable energy when they are tortured into the form of a lemur. It makes no mention of one releasing more than the other.

[Big Fau]

Because the class ability says they do.



Any other questions?

The key word there is "part". You do give them part of your soul when you die. Until then, they'll have to be content with raw soulstuff.

[Hyfigh]

I let the Vest fly because it's a feat or level tax on an already weak class... Doesn't make much sense to not let them have it.

[AmberVael]

If you want to argue over whether it works from a fluff perspective, I would like to point out that the fluff of strongheart vest doesn't have incarnum acting as a substitute for you. When you take damage, it isn't that strongheart vest takes damage instead... it just blocks it. It's a shield, and is described that way. By that logic, you can't use Hellfire Blast, 'cause the devils get nothing at all, not even some incanum.

By RAW, it works. You're not immune, the damage is reduced. That it is reduced to zero matters not. That logic is frankly sound, though obviously it skirts entirely around all the fluff and description of what both things actually are. But RAW doesn't care about that, just the stripped down mechanics.

In terms of balance, frankly, it's not anything to worry about. You want to ban it in your game? Sure, that's fine, different power levels for different people. It's not going to break things like other optimization can though.

In terms of refluffing it, or even just interpreting it a bit differently or going with it, I think it has some potential. Letting devils siphon it away has interesting implications about your morality, and what they actually want. If you consider it to be a shield, but allow it anyway, maybe the devils are angry at you for breaking the rules, but you worded your contract just right against them.

[Necroticplague]

Oh hey, this thread again? It seems every time this pops up, it gets derailed by someone mentioning Strongheart Vest, after all the things that increase effective Hellfire level are brought up. Heck, the whole "incarnum tofu" quote was made after me and Socratov got in this exact argument. That being said, I'll just post my two cents:

The hellfire warlock only checks for two things: A con score, and immunity to con damage. Assuming you're a normal human (part of being norml is being alive),the first part is taken care of. So the qestion is: Does strongheart vest make you immune to con damage? No. It nowhere says " You become immune to ability damage." And if you want to argue about immunity to that con damage, I would like you to note it never says that, just blanket immunity to con damage. Heck, if you used a magic item that absorbed the first three points of ability damage every day (I know it's in the MIC, but its name escapes me), it still wouldn't stop Hellfire Blast from working, because it still isn't immunity to ability damage.

So by RAW, Strongheart Vest is perfectly fine.

And if you want to argue RAI, then I'll just point out that on the internet, we go with RAW>RAI for standardization purposes during discussions such as this (where different people can have different interpretations of intent), and that the intent was to stop you from picking it up with no investments, whaeras we are investing a precious rescource into this (you don't get a whole lot of feats during your career).

[Keneth]

As far as the devils granting your powers of concerned, there most certainly is. Actually there isn't, we're dealing with essence here, not actual souls, the devils don't care. Hellfire is just a loophole for devils because it allows them to acquire the energy without harvesting souls.


TL;DR: devils don't care whose soul it is when using it like currency, they do care about whose soul it is when procuring the soul See above, devils aren't procuring anyone's soul when you use hellfire blast, just some raw energy. They're getting your soul when you die anyway.

And the devils actually care a great deal whose soul it is when trading with it, in fact that's the only time they'd care about whether or not the soul was a paladin, because after the soul is commited into the system it simply gets drained of all its essence and the husk turned into a lemure as was already mentioned above.


If you want to argue over whether it works from a fluff perspective, I would like to point out that the fluff of strongheart vest doesn't have incarnum acting as a substitute for you. When you take damage, it isn't that strongheart vest takes damage instead... it just blocks it. It's a shield, and is described that way. By that logic, you can't use Hellfire Blast, 'cause the devils get nothing at all, not even some incanum. Actually it's not described as a shield at all, you've actually said it yourself that it doesn't take damage instead of you, which is exactly what a shield does. What it does say is that it protects you by sending a wave of incarnum energy through you every time you take damage which reduces the effectiveness of the attack but doesn't prevent it. In the case of a hellfire blast, you essence gets drained but the vest makes sure you are not weakened by it.