Warlock Spells

[Pex]

It seems like the only warlock spells that matter in this forum is Hex for offense and Armor of Agathys for defense with an honorable mention to Darkness to combine with Devil's Sight. Level 1 Warlock, cast Hex. Level 10 Warlock, cast Hex. Level 20 warlock, cast Hex. 4d10 + 20 + 4d6 damage for the win! Yippee! Sounds boring. Hex is a good spell, but it's not like that's all I'll ever want to cast. If I go through a combat and cast my spells slots for non-Hex spells, I'm not doing anything wrong just because my Eldritch Blast only does 1d10 + CHA modifier damage per bolt.

[BootStrapTommy]

Because the warlock spell list blows any way. Guess if you are a Fiendish warlock you could Fireball. But other than that, not that great of a spell portfolio. I realize you can get it it through an invocation, but why isn't Bestow Curse just on the spell list?

[Falling Icicle]

There are plenty of other great spells to use.

Hold person/monster not only prevents an enemy from doing anything, it also gives you and your allies advantage and automatic crits if you hit.

Hypnotic pattern can disable several creatures and they don't get further saving throws to break free. You can then pick them off one by one.

Banishment can completely remove 1-2 monsters from the fight, and they can't escape for the duration.

GOO pact warlocks get Evard's black tentacles, which is one of my all-time favorite spells. You not only restrain creatures in a 20 foot cube, you also do 3d6 damage per round to them. It's also a lot of fun to use with repelling blast. If an enemy escapes, push them back into the tentacles.

And then there's all of the great utility spells, from invisibility to fly. The warlock spell list may be a bit small, but it includes some of the best spells in the game.

[SharkForce]

as noted, their spell list isn't the greatest.

i wouldn't say that those are the only spells. but they are definitely some real stand-outs. situationally, i could certainly see a desire to use other spells. but for general purpose, hex offers the best DPR (which is really the primary reason to be a warlock instead of any other type of caster in the first place, mechanically speaking) for blastlocks, and armour of agathys adds much-needed toughness while also adding reactive offense for a bladelock on a class that has crap for armour options (unless you want to include legendary items, in which case there's the robe of the archmagi or i suppose +3 studded leather, neither of which they're likely to have the dexterity to get the best use out of, at least from the perspective of AC) and generally a strong focus on using two-handed weapons which precludes both dexterity-focused builds and shields.

it's like bless for a cleric. sure, there are other buff spells they could use... but bless stands out so much that it's going to be a strong use for a spell slot even at level 10, or even at level 20.

[dev6500]

My main problem with the warlock spell list is there are too many competing concentration spells on the list. I wish the list had more non-concentration options.

For the early game, I personally like Hex or Expeditious retreat/fly as your background concentration spell and then hellish rebuke as your nova damage spell when a boss hits you.

I had a badass round on a boss recently where I hexed him on a previous round and hit him with an Eldritch blast for d10 + d6 + 4 before walking up to him and using a bonus action polearm master strike at him for d4+d6 + 2 and then when he hit me, I hellish rebuked him for 3d10.
I missed with the polearm strike since my dex is lower than my charisma but I still dealt over 40 damage to a boss character in a single round at lvl 3.

[Strill]

I had a badass round on a boss recently where I hexed him on a previous round and hit him with an Eldritch blast for d10 + d6 + 4 before walking up to him and using a bonus action polearm master strike at him for d4+d6 + 2 and then when he hit me, I hellish rebuked him for 3d10.
Doesn't work. You only get the d4 attack if you took the attack action to attack with your polearm. You can't use a cantrip and then get the bonus action attack.

Furthermore, none of the listed weapons for Polearm Master are Finesse weapons - you can't use DEX for your attack rolls.

[dev6500]

Doesn't work. You only get the d4 attack if you took the attack action to attack with your polearm. You can't use a cantrip and then get the bonus action attack.

Furthermore, none of the listed weapons for Polearm Master are Finesse weapons - you can't use DEX for your attack rolls.

Yeah, the dexterity mention was a brain fart. I meant strength. Looks like I misused the bonus action attack in that session as well.

But anyway after all that post failure, the point I was trying to make was Hellish rebuke is a great early to mid game nova spell when you are already using a concentration spell for something else and don't want to end it to use a different concentration spell.

I think d10 + d6 + 5 (18 charisma and a Rod of Pact Keeper +1) and another 3d10 +d6(if you make your concentration check after they hit you) is pretty sweet 1 round damage at lvl 3. If both hit, thats 4d10 + 2d6 + 5 in 1 round.

[ChubbyRain]

There are plenty of other great spells to use.

Hold person/monster not only prevents an enemy from doing anything, it also gives you and your allies advantage and automatic crits if you hit.

Hypnotic pattern can disable several creatures and they don't get further saving throws to break free. You can then pick them off one by one.

Banishment can completely remove 1-2 monsters from the fight, and they can't escape for the duration.

GOO pact warlocks get Evard's black tentacles, which is one of my all-time favorite spells. You not only restrain creatures in a 20 foot cube, you also do 3d6 damage per round to them. It's also a lot of fun to use with repelling blast. If an enemy escapes, push them back into the tentacles.

And then there's all of the great utility spells, from invisibility to fly. The warlock spell list may be a bit small, but it includes some of the best spells in the game.

What people forget is that Warlocks are Striker/Controllers. They have one great option for striking (EB) and a couple other good options. The rest of their spells are primarily about controlling the battle field. Battlefield control isn't always the sexiest option, but it sure is fun and useful.

One way of looking at it... And this comes from the 3e mindset mind you...

The warlock is what they call a GOD caster. Using the warlock spell list is all about tactics and control, most people just think about big numbers and killing things. But not you. Sure you can imitate a big stupid fighter (with eldritch blast and agonizing blast) but you don't have to, where as most of your allies do. The warlock is about debilitating your enemy so that the others (your pions, your followers, your flunkies) can feel useful when they get that kill... All the while you sit back and smirk as it was because of you that the victory was so easy.

[SharkForce]

for most of those concentration spells, you're not going to get as much out of them as you will out of hex for the majority of your career. level 20, when you've got DC 19 saves and you run across something really annoying with weak wisdom saves, sure, you can do some work. most of the time, you're looking at poor reliability out of your CC, and frankly you don't really do CC better than any other caster (and worse than several of them, in fact, due to a limited selection of spells and a lack of class features to improve the ones that you have).

you can still use your spells for burst damage without losing concentration, so you keep your access to the resource, and as i noted... the one thing a warlock brings to a party that other casters don't do better is consistent at-will damage. you can ignore that in favour of the other tricks you can do, and sometimes, it's great to have those tricks... don't get me wrong, if you find an encounter where you can expect hypnotic pattern to land on 3/4 of the enemy, and nobody else can cover that need in the party, you go right ahead and do it... but if you're looking to bring control as your major contribution, i'd suggest finding a class that has lots of options in terms of what save you can target, and what status effects you can inflict. the most important thing you can do, especially as you gain levels, is find the weak save your enemies have, and hit it as hard as you can.

depending on your DM, intelligence and knowledge skills may help greatly in determining precisely what your enemy's weakness is.

unless you find a really strong pact rod or something like that, and nobody else has anything to boost their DC. that can be a real game-changer. if your DM is fool enough to let you get your hands on something that boosts your DC off of the d20 for nonproficient saves, i'd say at that point you probably should look for more opportunities to use your limited CC options.

[dev6500]

unless you find a really strong pact rod or something like that, and nobody else has anything to boost their DC. that can be a real game-changer. if your DM is fool enough to let you get your hands on something that boosts your DC off of the d20 for nonproficient saves, i'd say at that point you probably should look for more opportunities to use your limited CC options.

Step 1. quietly take war caster feat.
Step 2. quietly wait for your DM to give you a Rod of the pact keeper and another caster in your party a wand of the war mage.
Step 3. Convince the player to give you the wand of the war mage and have +6 (if they're both +3) on spell hit chance and spell save DCs. At level 20, your save dc's will be 25.

[WickerNipple]

(and worse than several of them, in fact, due to a limited selection of spells and a lack of class features to improve the ones that you have).

Worse than all of the other casters, I'd say. Warlock just can't afford for spell slots to fail.

It might be boring, but consistency is the Warlock's biggest feature and damage is their job. That's why Hex is so oft repeated/assumed.

AoA is really only interesting for a melee Warlock, and those are pretty rare from what I've seen. I get why it's impressive for various multiclass builds, but I don't consider it much of a general warlock routine.

[rollingForInit]

Hex and EB is great for sustained DPS, as others have said.

But there are great situational utility spells for combats as well. Fly is awesome if you need to get the party away from enemies quickly, or if they don't have any archers with longbows. Dispel magic for spellcasters that buff/debuff. Banishment is a great disable. Mirror Image is awesome defense. From the pacts, there's Faerie Fire if your allies can make great use of advantage (e.g. rogues), Sleep is also good at early levels. Blink is a good defensive spell, Greater Invisibility is great for obvious reasons. A level 5 Command affects 5 creatures, that's huge CC. Fireball, Wall of Fire, Flamestrike are all good spells. Dissonant Whispers can work well, as can Evard's Black Tentacles.

Then there's a whole lot of out of combat utility. Detect Thoughts and Emotions can be great for social situations. Plant Growth is very flavourful and could be used to generate a loot of goodwill (help the village get a great harvest). Telekinesis is useful. Charm Person is also very useful in social situations. Unseen Servant is just flavour, but can be fun. Fly is also great out of combat for exploration, as is DImension Door. Remove Curse can be important if you don't have a Cleric, Paladin or Druid. Invisibility is obviously good for exploration and infiltration. Comprehend Languages and Tongues can be great if you play a lot around languages.

How good the other spells are depends a lot on what kind of game you're running and they're all situational, but many of them can be very useful. It's just that for pure DPS, Hex is usually the best concentration option.

[SharkForce]

Step 1. quietly take war caster feat.
Step 2. quietly wait for your DM to give you a Rod of the pact keeper and another caster in your party a wand of the war mage.
Step 3. Convince the player to give you the wand of the war mage and have +6 (if they're both +3) on spell hit chance and spell save DCs. At level 20, your save dc's will be 25.

wand of the war mage does not offer a DC boost. only better attack rolls. persuading the other caster to give it up may not even be very hard; it takes up an attuned slot, and if you've got +3 items, odds are good you have a variety of items that the other caster might want more.

besides which, even "just" a +3 pact rod is probably good enough to make a huge difference, at least on enemies that have no proficiency in the save you're targeting.

@rollingforinit: several of those spells (many of the best ones, in fact) do not require concentration, and thus do not compete with hex.

[silveralen]

I'd say it is about resource management. With two slots for a good portion of the class life span, you want spells that give returns across multiple combats. That's why those are the most popular. The other spells aren't bad, but you need to be careful with them unless your DM throws short tests at you.

So a lot of the focus is on spells that last multiple combats, ways to cleverly use invocations to conserve slots, or at least on spells likely to give reliable benefits preferable for an entire combat, or a decent portion of one.

[Yagyujubei]

I'd say it is about resource management. With two slots for a good portion of the class life span, you want spells that give returns across multiple combats. That's why those are the most popular. The other spells aren't bad, but you need to be careful with them unless your DM throws short tests at you.

So a lot of the focus is on spells that last multiple combats, ways to cleverly use invocations to conserve slots, or at least on spells likely to give reliable benefits preferable for an entire combat, or a decent portion of one.

this. when casting the spell takes up 1/3 of your total spells, you're gonna want it to last a long long time.

that said there are a handful of very useful spells aside from Hex, and invocations cover many utility type spells for you. Hold person, greater invisibility, blink, banishment, dominate person, and fly are all great uses of a slot.

[Person_Man]

I'm glad that low level spells see regular use at all 20 levels of play. I hated how you had to swap out 4E Powers for slightly better but extremely similar Powers at higher levels.

[Yagyujubei]

I'm glad that low level spells see regular use at all 20 levels of play. I hated how you had to swap out 4E Powers for slightly better but extremely similar Powers at higher levels.

yeah that really annoyed me so much. and alot of times you had to get rid of situational but really useful stuff to make way for the "must have" abilities

[Person_Man]

yeah that really annoyed me so much. and alot of times you had to get rid of situational but really useful stuff to make way for the "must have" abilities

You are correct. Counter-intuitively, having a ton of similar Powers had the unintended side effect of locking players into a small set of repetitive tactics over and over again in most combats, because players couldn't change Powers between Rests and generally took the "must have" Powers when they leveled up.

You get much more flexibility if there are a moderate number of options that are all different from each other in a meaningful way that a player can change out when they Rest.

[ChubbyRain]

I'm glad that low level spells see regular use at all 20 levels of play. I hated how you had to swap out 4E Powers for slightly better but extremely similar Powers at higher levels.

One of my friends came up with a way to insert paragon and epic features into lower levels. So levels 1-3 was heroic, 4-6 was paragon, and 7-10 was epic. You gain features of each type from your class choices and stuff but not their powers.

So your barbarian primal powers came from the barbarian class 1-10 along with barbarian features. Then if I took bear warrior I wouldn't swap out anything, I gain the bear warrior features and those power choices replaces the ones from barbarian 4-6 or whatever. Then when I hit level 7+ I would take Primal Avatar and gain those features and the powers would replace my normal level X barbarian power.

We left the math the same for levels 1-10 and such, so all those power you got increased with levels but you didn't have to keep swapping them out and such.

Levels 1-3 had the same XP needed for advancement but levels 4+ took a lot longer.

I'm working on making this system (condensed 4e) be based around bounded accuracy. I'll post it on gianitp when I'm done, reports and stuff come first though.

[Chronos]

Darkness is certainly overrated, because at just one level higher, you get Hunger of Hadar, which is like darkness except harder to escape and it does some damage on its own.

[ChubbyRain]

Darkness is certainly overrated, because at just one level higher, you get Hunger of Hadar, which is like darkness except harder to escape and it does some damage on its own.

Hunger of Hadar is like if Evard's black tentacles were actually perverted and it used darkness to cover it's action.

From the spell "Any creature that ends its turn in the area must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6 acid damage as milky, otherworldly tentacles rub against it.

That's a messed up spell.

It is one of my favorites though. I got stuck in a room (20x10x30) with a super charged owlbear (it was on some weird steroids) dropped this in the room and levitated above the sphere.

In response the DM made us listen to a YouTube video of animal mating grunts... The owner of the gaming shop couldn't stop laughing.

We gave the child of the steroid owl bear and whatever the hell came from that spell to a king... The DM ended up moving over seas for work so we never finished that campaign.

[Pex]

Darkness is certainly overrated, because at just one level higher, you get Hunger of Hadar, which is like darkness except harder to escape and it does some damage on its own.

The idea with Darkness is to have Devil's Sight invocation as well so you can attack opponents with Advantage while they attack with Disadvantage because you can see them while they can't see you. It's great for Blade Warlocks but just blasting with Eldritch Blast is fine from 10-15 ft away within the area effect. They don't know where the attack is coming from to respond, and you still get Advantage. With Hunger of Hadar you can't be in the area due to the damage.

Edit: I'm also thinking, for Eldritch Blast, you don't necessarily have to stay in the area of effect due to still being able to see the area.

[Chronos]

Yeah, you're not in the area, but your enemies are, and that's just as good. Either way, the effect is that they can't see you, but you can see them.

It does make a difference with your allies: If the enemy is in darkness, then they can't see your allies, but your allies can't see them either. If you're the one in darkness, your allies and enemy can both see each other. Eh, I'd call that a wash, though, or maybe a slight advantage to endarkening your enemies, since you've clearly got those guys taken care of, so your allies can safely focus on someone else.

[Pex]

A warlock can take Darkness first and see how it goes. If with enough practice he finds he doesn't need to be in the spell's area nor do allies then he can take Hunger of Hadar when the time comes and swap out Darkness for something else.