Can you help optimise this build?

[Steveburger]

I have been looking into playing a glaive using warlock because I like the feel of the warlock invocations, the ease of steadily increasing damage without micromanagement, and the flavor of the whole class and the PrCs in general. I have a general build made up but I'm not good at squeezing out every last drop of efficiency out of my characters. In fact, I would say I'm horrible at it and this is my real first attempt at making a powerful character (I lean more towards RP themed or oriented characters).

I'll give you the basic break down of the build and then explain a little bit about what I was hoping to accomplish:

Human, One flaw.
1) Warlock (glaive evocation) Extend Spell, Battle Caster, Ability Foc. (Glaive)
2) Cleric
3) Cleric Divine Metamagic
4) Cleric
5) Eldritch Disciple
6) Eldritch Disciple Travel Devotion
7) Eldritch Disciple
8) Eldritch Disciple
9) Eldritch Disciple Persistent Spell
10) Binder
11) Hellfire Warlock
12) Hellfire Warlock Extra Turning
13) Hellfire Warlock
14) Eldritch Disciple
15) Eldritch Disciple No idea/ Extra turning?
16) Eldritch Disciple
17) Eldritch Disciple
18) Eldritch Disciple No idea/ Extra Turning?
19) Warlock
20) Warlock

EDIT: This build, as far as I am aware, would give me the following benefits:
-Full BAB from Persistent Divine Power
-3 Least, Lesser and Greater invocations. 1 Dark Invocation.
-Healing and buffing capabilities
-7D6 Eldritch Blast
-Potential 13D6 Eldritch Blast every round.
-Potential 13D6 Eldritch Blast as an immediate action 1/round.
-Mitigation of Con damage from Hellfire Blast through Binder (Naberius)
-Fair mobility via Travel Devotion.
-Lots of ongoing damage from Vitriolic Blast due to 2-4 attacks per round.

I've put the feats where I think they should be in order to get the character rolling early. I took Travel Devotion before Persistent Spell because I thought it would be more integral to the glaiving to have good mobility and I don't get access to Divine Power until character level 9 (effectively cleric 7 for lvl4 spells). After getting Persistent Spell, Travel Devotion would be for emergencies only, so I can afford to Persist Divine Power. The next available feat is Extra Turning to allow Travel Devotion to come back into use more frequently. I intend to use most of the cleric spells for support and buffing. I don't really like Vancian casting because I suck at spell selections and tactical use, so I just pick generic spells that will be good for 90% of situations. E.g. Cure Moderate is good for any combat where things are stabbing you. Bless is nice for helping you and your friends be better murder-hobos.

This build is not about being the most ultimate glaivelock ever, or an "at level 20" build.

What I'm trying to make is a Glaivelock that is fairly solid using a minimum amount of simple cheese (Im not good at the optimization game) without having to wait until level 20 for it to be effective. The goal is to get this guy as effective as possible, as soon as possible.

If anyone could help me with making this build viable in low levels or simply proof read the build to make sure it doesn't have any glaring flaws, it would be greatly appreciated!


Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Wings of Peace]

Ur-Priest instead of Cleric would give you a stronger late game. Strongheart Vest instead of Binder would also save you a level.

[Steveburger]

I had to look up Ur-Priest because I've never used it before or seen it used in a game so I wasn't aware of the rules. Same goes for the Strongheart Vest.

With the Ur-priest, it has some feat requirements that I would have filled by level 18, so I would only be getting 2 levels at most. If I took it earlier than the two open feat slots I've got, It would push back Hellfire Warlock or Binder. Also, I'm not sure if this character is going to be evil or not. I was looking at going Chaotic Good, but that's not really a big deal I suppose. People generally think "Evil alignment? You must eat babies and murder women!" to which I would probably respond "Must? I'd given it some thought, I won't lie, but I'm not so sure its a requirement...".

The only thing I can see Ur-Priest giving me that I don't already get is Divine SR 15, which seems rather specific. Yeah it would be good in an evil campaign, but I don't see that giving me more power in the majority of games or campaigns. The Siphon Spellpower ability looks the same to me as Practiced Spellcaster but the feat doesn't restrict you by times per day.

Steal Spell-Like Ability is neat, but 10 levels of this PrC isn't applicable in this build.


As far as the Strongheart Vest goes, I am looking through the book and trying to figure out how this chakra business works. It looks like with the Shape Soulmeld feat lets me pick a meld and bind it but I'm still looking for level requirements etc for picking Strongheart Vest and binding it, if there are any. If there aren't any requirements and its as easy as "grab the feat and bam you're in business", I would have to weigh the two options against eachother.

As it stands, I see Binder 1 with Naberius being more effective because it heals 1 ability damage from each stat every round, where Strongheart only gives you an effective DR 1. So if you get hit for 2 con damage, lets say, you still take 1 with Strongheart, where as Naberius will heal it over 2 rounds. Also Naberius gives you access to disguise self at will, access to trained-only skills for use, free command/5rnds, and taking 10 on diplomacy/bluff. That's just the one vestige but I do feel this vestige to be the best of the 1st lvl options. If I take a feat to get Strongheart, I get a level of warlock (for 17 total) which lands me an extra 1D6 in Eldritch Blast... and thats it. I stand to gain the most from another level of cleric, giving me +1 fort and +1 will, along with some spell slots, but I dont know if it's a fair trade for all that the Binder 1 can give.

Thank you for the suggestions though. I wouldn't have thought of them on my own. I don't want to look like I dismissed them both out of hand, as I think I gave them a fair chance.... that is, unless there's something else that would play into it that I've missed or am not aware of :smallredface:

[TroubleBrewing]

As far as the Strongheart Vest goes, I am looking through the book and trying to figure out how this chakra business works. It looks like with the Shape Soulmeld feat lets me pick a meld and bind it but I'm still looking for level requirements etc for picking Strongheart Vest and binding it, if there are any. If there aren't any requirements and its as easy as "grab the feat and bam you're in business", I would have to weigh the two options against eachother.

It's that one.

[Steveburger]

Ah ok, thanks Grey. :smallsmile:

[gorfnab]

If you go with Ur-Priest try this build

Hellfire Ur-Lock
1) Warlock - Iron Will, Spell Focus Evil
2) Warlock
3) Warlock - Extend Spell
4) Warlock
5) Binder
6) Ur-Priest - Persistent Spell
7) Ur-Priest
8) Eldritch Disciple
9) Eldritch Disciple - DMM Persistent Spell
10) Hellfire Warlock
11) Hellfire Warlock
12) Hellfire Warlock - Travel Devotion
13) Eldritch Disciple
14) Eldritch Disciple
15) Eldritch Disciple or Mindbender - Mindsight (if Mindbender) or open feat
16) Eldritch Disciple
17) Eldritch Disciple
18) Eldritch Disciple - open feat
19) Eldritch Disciple
20) Eldritch Disciple

[Mnemnosyne]

There is one additional advantage to the strongheart vest and that's that you can use both of your hellfire abilities in the same round without taking any con damage. With Naberius, if you used both hellfire blast and hellfire shield in the same round, you would have to take a break for one round from using both so your con could recover (or just live with the negative until the end of the encounter, whatever). Point is, with strongheart vest, your hellfire warlock abilities can never do any damage to you at all, because none of them do more than 1 point of ability damage.

Something you might want to consider is pumping up that hellfire warlock level through Legacy Champion or...what was it, uncanny trickster? Or bloodlines. RAW these all work, but bloodlines (to my mind) stems from the most iffy interpretation of the rules.

Also, let's lose Ability Focus since it does either nothing (neither eldritch blast, nor eldritch glave, nor hellfire blast allow a saving throw for anything) or very little (if it applies to a blast essence, +2 dc against the saving throw still probably isn't worth a feat, at least not at 1st level). In addition, why battle caster? So you can cast in medium armor? Sure, your cleric dip will give you the proficiency and you'll be able to turn heavy armor into medium armor from certain materials, but does it really give you that much of a bonus over using a mithril breastplate and pumping it up with magic vestment? I don't think it's worth the feat.

Instead, we'll take Shape Soulmeld: Strongheart Vest so we don't have to sacrifice a caster level (of both cleric AND warlock) to Binder. This also allows us to take an additional level of actual Warlock, at least netting you the innate Detect Magic ability.

Additionally, you're taking persistent spell wrong - you need persistent spell before DMM, and DMM only applies to one metamagic feat. Furthermore, you're taking Eldritch Disciple at 5 - when you don't actually qualify. It requires 8 ranks in Knowledge (Religion) which means you need to hit character level 5 as something else, then take Eldritch Disciple.

1) Cloistered Cleric. Domains: Planning and Charm. Bonus Domain: Knowledge - trade for Knowledge Devotion. Feats: Travel Devotion, Shape Soulmeld: Strongheart Vest, Extra Turning.
2) Warlock.
3) Warlock. Feat: Persistent Spell.
4) Cloistered Cleric.
5) Cloistered Cleric.
6) Eldritch Disciple. Feat: Divine Metamagic (Persistent Spell).
7) Eldritch Disciple.
8) Eldritch Disciple.
9) Mindbender. Feat: Mindsight.
10) Eldritch Disciple.
11) Eldritch Disciple
12) Hellfire Warlock. Feat: Flyby Attack.
13) Hellfire Warlock.
14) Hellfire Warlock.

By taking Cloistered Cleric at 1 instead of Warlock, you'll get 6+int skill points x4 instead of 2+int skill points x4. Your Knowledge Domain can be traded for Knowledge Devotion to make use of those knowledge skills for additional attack and damage. The Planning domain nets you Extend Spell as a bonus feat - normally, we'd go with the Undeath domain as the second, but instead we're picking up Charm so we can meet the prerequisites for Mindbender later, to give you Mindsight at level 9 without wasting an invocation on Charm - although perhaps, wasting a domain on it may be worse. We use the additional feat to pick up Extra Turning - alternately, if we want to make sure those knowledge skills always stay up to par, we pick up Able Learner, thus making them class skills for all classes. Of course, if you take 2 flaws, you can get both of these feats.

By level 6 you can DMM persist spells, and you'll have a few decent ones to do it with but no Divine Power for a while. At 9 you pick up Mindbender (advancing warlock invocations) and pick up the Mindsight feat which means you're almost immune to ambush except for nonintelligent creatures (or enemies teleporting in on your head). It's too good an ability not to take in any build that can possibly make room for it. This means we're going to delay Hellfire Warlock in order to get level 4 cleric casting and gain access to that Divine Power. Alternately, we could go ahead and take the three levels of Hellfire Warlock first, and pick up Divine Power at 14 instead of 11.

Either way, after finishing out Hellfire Warlock and getting Divine Power, there's a decision to be made: increase Hellfire Warlock damage, or increase cleric casting? For general capability, continuing to put levels into Eldritch Disciple is better, since cleric casting will help you more overall. But if you want to do more direct damage, boosting that Hellfire ability is better. So you can either throw in 5 more levels of Eldritch Disciple to get you to 12th level cleric casting, or you throw in 5 levels of Legacy Champion, which increases your hellfire blast by 8d6, but doesn't advance cleric casting at all (and loses you one more level of warlock invocation advancement).

Important note on the Ur-Priest build suggestion (which is also a nice build really, and nets you higher level divine casting so in the long run is likely stronger). Your DM may very well rule it doesn't qualify for Eldritch Disciple because ED specifically requires you to worship a deity, while Ur-Priest is kind of antithetical to that. Although it doesn't specifically say you can't worship a deity - in fact, you could worship a dead deity as mentioned in the adaptation section for the class. If he does allow it, though, don't spend a feat on Iron Will if you can avoid it: gain it through the Otyugh Hole, that way you can take a different feat.

[kardar233]

On the highly unlikely but theoretically possible chance that you might have not seen it, here's Shinken's Guide to Melee Warlocks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159708).

[Steveburger]

Alot of really good info there, Mnem! It's a lot to look at. After talking with the DM briefly (I'm joining the game tomorrow), There are some things I just won't be allowed to do. It is a more optimized game, but I really don't want to show up with massive cheese. I'm new to the group, first impressions and all that.

I won't be able to progress Hellfire Warlock past its 3 levels. The test-based entry from UA is being used so I also wont be able to just take any PrC willy nilly. I got approved for Hellfire Warlock, ED, Divine Metamagic cheese within reason, and I'm allowed to take 2 flaws if I like. Its a 32 point build as well.

I would need to ask about taking the Soulmeld feat just to make sure, but after you brought to my attention that, while against an enemies ability damage attacks, Naberius pulls ahead, with Strongheart Vest I am more free to use Hellfire to its full potential.

I explained the character idea to the DM and we agreed CN was the most fitting alignment for my character, but I don't want him to drift into the Evil alignment so I plan to stay away from the Ur-Priest. Though I do now see it has some good potential if the RP side of the character didn't clash with it.

On level 1 feat choices:
I like the build you have laid out, using the cloistered cleric for the first level, netting 4 crucial feats right out of the gate. I don't think I'm going to push the envelope by requesting yet another book to pull feats from, so I'll leave the knowledge domain alone and just take 2 flaws at level 1 netting 4 feats total: Knowledge Devotion, Travel Devotion, Extra Turning, and Shape Soulmeld: Strongheart Vest. I was struggling over which feats to take at first level but I like the setup you've suggested. It gives some mobility and Combat prowess prior to persistent spells come into the picture.
On Magic Vestment, Battle Caster feat, and Full Plate vs. Breastplate:
If I end up with 12 effective levels of cleric, that would only make Magic Vestment give me a +2. Unless I was able to boost my caster level somehow, that still allows me to get more armor overall, earlier, with Battle Caster. The difference is moot at level 20 (5 armor/3 dex/2 magic vestment VS 8 armor/ 2 dex) but I can always still use Magic Vestment on the Mithril Full plate, netting me a higher total bonus at higher levels while still allowing mithril full plate early on for the AC insurance. That's just what I'm seeing from my perspective. Assuming I can afford the feat cost, I would go with Battle Caster. If I cant afford the feat at all, or I cant get it until later in the build, then Battle Caster seems moot like you pointed out.
On Cloistered Cleric variant and House Rule applications:
I like the Cloistered Cleric, and since we are already pulling Variant rules from the UA, I don't think it would be far fetched to snag a variant for the cleric from the same book. I had to look it up to see all what it gave, but I think it would work well with Knowledge Devotion as we get a bonus 16 skill points at level 1 and +4 every level (House Rule). Considering I am human and gain another +1 per level, I could really pump up the knowledge skills (I like this because it has both RP and Combat function).
On the Mindbender and Melee Warlock guides:
As a Side note, the Mindbender is in a FR book while the Campaign setting is in Eberron. I'm trying to stay out of the FR setting books as much as possible to keep my feet on the Kosher side of optimization. Also, I have read through several guides for Melee warlocks, which is how I was able to figure out most of my original build. Many of the guides don't tell you how the builds they provide work, or when to take what. Also, many of the builds and examples used are assuming you are level 20. They are good for general information, and to give ideas. The input from you guys (the community) help me further grasp specific ideas and concepts in a detailed manner.

EDIT: Mindbender isn't in FR content, its in Tome and Blood and I'm an idiot. BUT Tome and Blood is 3.0 content so it would be off limits.

[Doc Roc]

How optimized is optimized, for your groups?
Mindbender is updated in Complete Arcane.

[docnessuno]

Gorfnab's build (or any proper build using ur-priest) is really superior.
The only valid crunch-wise reasons not to take that PRC in divine gishes/dual casters are alignment restrictions and to avoid pushing the cheese-o-meter up. If those are not an issue for you, take it.

To compare builds:
Your original build has 14th level warlock progression and 7th level divine spells
Gorfnab's has 17th level warlock progression and 9th level divine spells (16th and 9th if you take mindbender)
Assuming Mnemnosyne's build ends with Eldritch Disciple 6-10 Warlock 1, his build has 15th level warlock progression and 6th level divine spells

[Mnemnosyne]

Yeah, Mindbender is in Complete Arcane, Mindsight is in Lords of Madness. I cannot recommend that enough, if you can get it, because there is (almost) no counter to Mindsight. Anything with an intelligence score will ping when it gets within 100 feet of you, with nearly no exceptions, and regardless of any intervening walls, obstacles, etc.

The other problem I see with battle caster is that most of the good medium armors tend to be pretty damned expensive - you're not really going to be getting a lot of benefit out of them at low levels. Nonmagical mithril full plate is 10500 GP. Note that if you take Cloistered Cleric, you don't get the medium armor proficiency either. If you really want to wear mithril full plate though, you can still do it even without Battle Caster and with no ASF. You just need to pay more. Remember, never buy with a feat what you can buy with GP. +1 Twilight Mithril Feycraft Githcraft Full Plate of Nimbleness with a Thistledown Suit has an Arcane Spell Failure of 0%, max dex of +4 and an armor check penalty of -3. It's going to cost 20,600 GP and it will still apply its armor check penalty, but it won't hinder your casting. Still...don't really think it's worth it to be honest, and that's even counting the cool factor of being a warlock in full plate.

Caster level boosting as a cleric is easy by the way. Use a feat on Practiced Spellcaster instead of Battle Caster. Snag a Bead of Karma for a +4 to caster level for a short time each day (long enough to get your long-duration buffs up) then add an orange ioun stone for +1, visit the shieldstone cavern every year for another +1, get an eternal wand or a minor schema of create magic tattoo at CL 11 for another +1, cast Adept Spirit for another +1. That's +8 caster levels, plus practiced spellcaster covers 4 levels where you didn't advance cleric casting, giving you a total CL of 24 at level 20, giving you 24 hours of +5 magic vestment. Extend it for 48 hours. You don't even need to use DMM persist. And that's all without touching consumptive field/greater consumptive field, which can boost caster level to ridiculous degrees. Of course, it won't be quite this good at lower levels, but it'll be better than with no boosters.

Flyby attack, by the way, I may have erred in recommending since you'll mostly be a glaivelock and you'll need a full-round action to use eldritch glaive. That prevents being able to swoop in with part of your move action, attack, and swoop back out, unless you burn a turning attempt on travel devotion. So you could use that feat slot for Practiced Spellcaster instead.

[Steveburger]

don't get me wrong, the stuff you guys are posting is definitely helping me understand more about what can be done with the build. Its all good info, honestly. The only issue with what has been mentioned (through no fault of anyone providing advice) is that the game has a "core" set of books that it allows players to use. Any other source is ok as long as the DM oks it. I don't know what level of optimization the other players in the game have gone to, so I don't want to show up with the ultimate cheese platter, assuming the DM gives the thumbs up on everything.

Ur Priest is out due to alignment, not due to power. Its a good option if this was a more evil aligned campaign. I would have to ask about Mindbender and mindsight, because they aren't in the core list of books. Something I should have posted up earlier was the list of books that I don't have to ask to use.

PHB, DMG, ECS, MM, and Expanded Psionics are the books I can pull from that dont require me to ask for use of content. As you can see, most of the stuff I want to use or have been suggested to use require me to run it by the DM. He's been relaxed about what I can use thus far, but I don't want to go overboard. I'm still waiting to hear back from him about Strongheart Vest, but I have been approved to use Hellfire Warlock, Eldritch Disciple, and Binder for the vestige. If I can use Cloistered (I asked just so there were no curve-balls when I show up to the game) then I'll definitely be using that instead of straight cleric. I asked about Planning and Undead domain since they provide really good granted abilities for the build but are from SC so... yeah gotta run it by.

As far as how much cheese is "too much cheese", I think Mindbender with Mindsight is too much cheese at the moment, but since I'll be starting at level 4, If the other PCs are doing crazy stuff, It will be the first thing I ask to include into my build. Although it does seem like a rather limited list of books, I think the point is to exclude massive cheese without his knowledge of it.



So what I'm looking at right now for the character build is:

1) Cloistered Cleric Planning/Undeath/Knowledge domains. Shape Soulmeld, Knowledge Devotion, Travel Devotion, Able Learner.
2) Warlock
3) Warlock - Persistent Spell
4) Cloistered Cleric
5) Cloistered Cleric
6) Eldritch Disciple - DMM: Persistent Spell
7) Eldritch Disciple
8) Eldritch Disciple
9) Eldritch Disciple
10) Eldritch Disciple
11) Eldritch Disciple
12) Hellfire Warlock
13) Hellfire Warlock
14) Hellfire Warlock

From here I would finish off the Eldritch Disciple PrC, putting me at level 18, and I would grab 2 levels of Warlock after that to fill out invocations. In my prior build, I believe I had lvl 16 Warlock progression, not 14th. Cleric 3 and Binder 1 were the only things interrupting it. Also how does Gorfnab's build get 9th lvl divine spells with 4 levels of warlock and 1 binder?

I'm not trying to sound snippy, because I highly doubt I know better than you guys hehe. It's really frustrating looking at all these rules trying to make the character more effective, only to find out I've overlooked one thing that changes everything else.

Again, thank you guys for all the info you are giving me.

[docnessuno]

I think you didn't realize that Ur-priest gives you 9th level divine spells in 10 class levels.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Uea, UrPriest gives you 9th level spells over 10 levels, which makes it a definite improvement over any kind of cleric entry, and can still do Divine Metacheese.

However, if you're not wanting to be a tier 1 class who also has some glaivelock tacked on, there's another, albeit less powerful overall, option:

Warlock/Binder/Mindbender/HFW/Legacy Champion

Basically, Legacy Champion isn't your typical prestige class that advances spellcasting, it advances class features, which can include advancing spellcasting. So we use it to advance Hellfire Warlock beyond the normal three levels. Which means instead of +6d6 from HFW, we're now getting something like +22d6, plus advancing spellcasting, for something close to 30d6 eldritch blast.

By the way, point of reference: Divine Power can be put into a Wand. Warlocks get UMD and can Take 10 on the check. You don't need cleric casting to get Divine Power.

Sure, you don't get Divine Metacheese piled on top of everything else Cleric does. But being able to dish out a couple hundred d6's of damage in a round is... at least very satisfying when you get to roll them all out.

I mean, when you're 1-rounding the Tarrasque, not to mention 99.9% of everything else you might possibly encounter, damage suddenly isn't so weak anymore, since it turns itself into a no-save-just-die that isn't a death effect.