New to the warlock

[sam vimes]

So after geting bored playing as a kobold (suicide by giant :) ) wizard that the DM gave me parts of a VERY broken combo, he suggested I play as a Warlock and I like the idea I've played as a ranger three times so far, wizard twice this is my sixth character.

He's coming in at lvl8 so I've got five feats to choose by this sunday can you lot give me five easy to use feats in builds? Still new to this to some degree lol the blast lock type I saw in a thread here I think it was seems the easiest to use for me I do prefer playing as a ranger type, blame Skyrim lol spent a lot of time in master worked leather armour using sneak, hunters bow blade and block tactics.

And thank you

[Thorvaldr]

There's always the Extra Invocation feat, which allows you one additional invocation of one level lower than your highest level known. (So if you know a lesser, you can get a least.)

You can also get _____ Spell Like Ability, such as Quicken Spell Like Ability. Or Maximize SLA. This will basically allow you to add those metamagic feats to your Eldritch Blast 3x a day.

I believe Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot also works for your blasts.

[Red Fel]

Here is a useful handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?252715-The-New-Warlock-Handbook-3-5-WIP) full of juicy Warlock options and strategies. Scroll down to "Feats for the Warlock" for feat suggestions.

[sam vimes]

thanks for the swift replies and heres the back story I wrote for him lol and that hand book was on here ty for the link, and according to my DM I'm not in jail.

Ok Warlock back story and yes I know I got carried away lol but it was fun.
Name:Marduk (pronounced Mar dook, although Mar duck makes me laugh still 20 minutes later)
Age:20
Was born in Tyrant hold (the evil city were near) as a normal human was a ranger/bounty hunter served as a guide and body guard for a warlock that wished to visit a site of massacre of innocents to further enhance his power by sealing a pact with a daemon known as the Warmonger.

The warlock succeed in summoning the Warmonger but the warmonger in a cruel twist of fate decided to turn the tables on Varl when he tried to sacrifice Marduk to him, the Warmonger took Varls soul instead and as gift granted Marduk the boons of magic he sealed the pact written in Varls blood, with parchment made from his skin (daemons are nothing if not blessed with a twisted sense of humor) and revealed that he was unhappy with Marduk as a mere human, as a final gift he gave him the power of the dragons.

Summoning a great Silver Dragon that had sealed a pact with the Warmonger millenia ago for even dragons are not immune to the temptations of greater power, he told the dragons spirit that its pact with him had come to an end taking a portion of the dragons power he put it into Marduk turning him to the linieage of the silver brows humans that have the blood of dragons in their veins, the dragon freed from its pact was returned to full form, with a nod to the Warmonger the great wyrm took to the skies once more a roar of release and triumph coming from it.

Watching the dragon fly away the Warmonger turned to Marduk and pressed a card into his hand, seeing a sundered tower, he said Marduk was now that tower a symbol for chaos, upheaval and change for good or ill it was up to Marduk to choose, he summoned a few skeletons for Marduk to test his new powers on, blasting them to fragments Marduk grinned at his new power.

The Warmonger departed with a last message for Marduk telling him to keep the card it may prove useful to him one day and to entertain the Warmonger by making better use of Varls powers than he ever did, with that Marduk turned from the Cloth Of Blood the site were four thousand soldiers were massacred and made his way to High Hold (that is the city were in right?) were he was promptly arrested for geting drunk and deciding that no really eldritch blasting rats is so in fashion these days.

He currently languishes in a cell were a group of adventurers have also just been brought in a gnome Cleric, crusader and a paladin and some kind of ****ed up dwarf.

[sam vimes]

Chose these five feats thoughts?

Able Learner

infernal adept

obtain familiar

improved familiar

mortal bane

[Kurald Galain]

Invocations are the main reason for playing a warlock, and many of them are stronger than feats. So take the extra invocation feat as often as you can get away with.

[sam vimes]

What should I drop for it then? I'm going for a dip in chameleon hence the silver brow link.

[Thorvaldr]

What do you hope to do with the familiar? You're throwing 2 feats at it. And as was said before getting more invocations is very powerful. You can have a familiar, or you can have a +6 to bluff, intimidate and diplomacy. Or cast shatter all day long. Or have a 20% chance that ranged attacks miss you. Or have dark vision and invisibility. Or climb up and down walls and ceilings all day.

Warlocks don't get very many invocations, but getting infinite uses of them is very​ powerful.

[NoACWarrior]

What should I drop for it then? I'm going for a dip in chameleon hence the silver brow link.

What do you mean? You get the bonus feat in chameleon at lvl 2 - this feat changes daily so you can basically alter your choice every day based on what you want to do. This is arguably one of the best reasons to dip chameleon with warlock.

If you are looking for most blasting - which I wouldn't recommend but is still available to you, you could go the wand route.

You'll have the BAB to do dual wand wielding / activation, and can take a few other feats to improve wands so that you can spend less money on each wand. It will allow you to double nuking everything in a spread for 20d6, or 1 target for 30d6. While this is suboptimal compared to a mailman build, and it will cost at least 100 gold or more every time you use this ability, you can do very interesting things which are not combat related such as resurgence or snakes swiftness mass as a very good utility option.

Since wands are pretty hard to come by in a normal magic campaign, I'd strongly recommend against it. If you like the flavor of being a beefed up double wand harry potter, then go for it.

[sam vimes]

Ok I'm going for a warlock that can do some measure of scouting as were one player down as he's moved out of the house were we play so I can bet he won't be traveling up as he's one lazy sod, our cleric is currrently on a quest for redemption as he peed off his god the lady knight and can't regen spells, the paladin is pathfinder inspired so refuses to die and give one hell of a smack as well :smallsmile: the dwarf thing is a new class for our ex elf druid, yes he died horribly after the DM told him it wouldn't work.

The player who moved out he was using the crusader a the both the DM and the group were geting a bit annoyed at him killing off characters like flies, this crusader was his eigth or ninth one across that many adventures no I'm not joking he was.. dim

So I'm trying to pump out good ranged damage whilst also going for invocations that allow other uses as theres a quest line were we need to disguise some one using magic and as the morraly flexiable one of the group me and my warlock seem best suited for it I was looking at later invocations and saw flesh changing ones and got thinking.

[Malroth]

For a Blaster I reccomend either Elan Half giant or Xeph taking psionic shot/psionic meditation/greater psionic shot/mortalbane or the Strongheart vest or Binder dip plus Hellfire warlock although if you're taking improved familliar anyway you can get away with giving your familliar a wand of lesser restoration as an alternate means of CON restoration.

[Troacctid]

What do you hope to do with the familiar? You're throwing 2 feats at it. And as was said before getting more invocations is very powerful. You can have a familiar, or you can have a +6 to bluff, intimidate and diplomacy. Or cast shatter all day long. Or have a 20% chance that ranged attacks miss you. Or have dark vision and invisibility. Or climb up and down walls and ceilings all day.

Warlocks don't get very many invocations, but getting infinite uses of them is very​ powerful.

In fairness, you get infinite uses out of a familiar too, and they can do as much as most least invocations, if not more. Especially once you consider that they share all your skill ranks and you have Use Magic Device. Breaking the action economy is powerful too.

Also, Obtain Familiar can be taken at 3rd level and Extra Invocation can't be taken until 6th, so there's that too.

[Socratov]

what do you want to get out of Silver Brow Human? I mean, the race is fine, don't get me wrong, but what does it give you specifically that regular humand doesn't? I mean, regular human helps with giving you an extra skill point per level (4 at lvl 1), which is never bad imo. The feather fall 1+1/5HD and the draconic subtype isn't worth it. (disguise as a class skill is nice, but Warlock has that anyway, as does chameleon, besides you want to take chameleon and thus able learner anyway so).

Now you seem to have chosen to go the chameleon, floating feat crafterlock. Which is great. Awesome even. This means you don't exactly have the means to optimally make use of your resources to be a melee warlock (clawlock/glaivelock). You already picked up on mortal bane, which is great because sometimes you really need some damage. But now the question is the following: do you want to be an annoying Iron Man, or do you want to be the Green Lantern? Don't worry, The Chameleon part makes sure you can be a Batman Light through Crafting.

Package Iron Man: Take the better eldritch shapes and essences. Focus less on regular invocations, except for Fell Flight and Flee the Scene. The first is needed to get places. Besides, if you fight ground enemies, it's better to be someplace they can't reach you and you can reach them. Take the feat Flyby Attack. EB is a std. action anyway, so might as well make use of the move action. Flee The Scene is because you will annoy enemies with lasers. They will hate you. They will find you, and kill you (yes, every enemy will be Liam Neeson). so you need a good GTFO button. Enter Flee the Scene. It teleports you away and leaves behind a Major Image. One caveat, to mitigate it's awesomeness a bit: invocations use somatic components so you can't use it while grappled. Be gone before they get you (make sure you prepare the Benny Hill theme). For the rest take empower, not maximise and be wary of Quicken: read the description carefully since it's not as usable as it seems, and make sure your DM knows of the errata.

Package Green Lantern: take utility invocations. That means at the least you take Baleful Utterance, The Dead Walk, Fell Flight, Chilling Tentacles (or spiked, forced, yadda-yadda, intrusion) and Dark Foresight. The rest to complement the party (knowledge boost/social boost/athletic boost/darkness/go dig and be happy) or round out your bag of tricks. Why the aforementioned ones? Simple: Baleful Utterance is shatter at will. Just be creative with it. The Dead Walk: :xykon: Sacrificing minions, is there a problem it can't solve? (nuff said). Fell Flight: if you don't see the value of this invocation you haven't been paying attention. Chilling Tentacles: the best battlefield control you have. Lay down a new patch every round and everything will be all fine and dandy. Dark Foresight will round out your party and make sure nobody is surprised and gives you teleportation with the full party. Congratulations you have now become the centre of the party.

[arkangel111]

Well, like others have said there is a ton of ways to "spec" your warlock. Going the chameleon route I have a hard time telling you to grab baleful utterance as you can grab shatter anyways with your chameleon slots, however you may not always be in "Arcane mode" plus having a 2nd level slot reserved for something else is nice too.

If your talking going the skill monkey route I would say use your chameleon ability to go arcane and use your spell slots for things mostly from the beguiler class. Then I would cover your invocations with the following (keeping in mind not every single one is needed just some suggestions):

Leasts
Baleful utterance: shatter - should work on most traps (talk to DM if you think it won't work) and all locks.
All seeing eyes: +6 to your key skills as the skill monkey.
See the unseen: darkvison and see invisible

and possibly
Eldritch spear - Longer range blasts - Only if your not gonna try to get sneak attack on your blast through some other means

Lessers
Eldritch chain: muti target your blast for higher dps
Fell flight: uhh fly is best movement in the game
Flee the scene: for those few times when you need an escape bad.
Walk unseen: at will invisibility (better than stealth) combine with the dead walk for the ultimate summoner combo but still good without it


and possibly
Mask of flesh: disguise self (limited) I would talk to the gm about letting it also just work as disguise self otherwise it might be passable
The dead walk: raise an army of minions, but this isn't quite the flavor your asking so i put it here.
Disembodied hand: umm floating hand. combine with crawling eye for lots of fun
Crawling eye: ultimate in care-free scouting but with invisibility its arguable if needed.
Voracious dispelling: to give you some more combat utility.

Greaters
Nightmares made real: Nightmare terrain. Could be used to acquire things but make them still appear they are undisturbed. Best thief utility ability ever!
Painful slumber of ages: sleep. Sneak in put a few to sleep and then engage the enemy freely, or just take a big brute out of the fight while your party focuses their attention elsewhere.
Retributive invisibility: greater invisibility at will need I say more?

as you can see there is a ton of the lower level ones that fit your "theme" and I didn't even cover all the other good ones you could pick up. This is why everyone is saying to grab extra invocation every chance you get. I figured I wouldn't cover the Dark's either since in most campaigns you'll only get 1 of them and by then you should know what you want.

[sam vimes]

Well guys and girls its nice to know my quick reading of the handbook on here and seeing the evocations and options, the ideas I got run close to your suggestions :smallsmile: and the silver brow human is for flavor and the build you can get out of it.

But we defiantly need to craft magical items easily as we were fighting a frost dragon last week -_- luckily and iirc I smacked it with the crusaders eight D8 attack of win as we call it, this is the fight were the druid got nommed, I like the idea of being useful to the party in more ways than killing crap, whats that orc barbarian need +4 on your strength here made this ring for you have fun, ok maybe not on a ring but you know what I mean, but the first person to pipe up with a wizard can craft better gets a elderitch blast lol :P

Was having fun as a that semi-broke kobold wizard build but when we'd fought five giants on the bounce and my spells were all gone, suddenly I remembered why I didn't like magic so much in this game.

Reading through the suggested invocations I really do like the Dead walk as given what were having thrown at us it appeals to me on so many levels, fell flight really? if someone needs this explaining to them the need a smack with a player hand book as to why it's so useful.

The familair is so we have an extra option for wand use and scouting as well were a player down (if he shows up regular I'll be shocked) so was thinking a raven or owl thoughts?

Dark fortitude well that just seems damn useful in so many ways, see the unseen assuming I can cast that on the party we won't have to worry too much about camping and watches, Retributive invisibility well get the paladin to take a level in rouge sneak attack and he'll be happy as he quite likes the rouge class always was one till this pathfinder paladin.

For now I'll drop infernal adept and take extra invocation can always take the adept later as damn it I want to breath fire on some poor sods lol