Dex-based Blade-Lock

[SparksMcGee]

Hello, folks.

I'm playing a half-elf Dex-based Blade Pact Warlock (criminal background, fiend patron). I'm having a blast with the concept, but I worry that at higher levels my damage will fall behind. I'm currently using scimitar + dagger and I think I might need multiclassing to get this build working as I picture it.

My first thought is sticking to dual wield. Right now, since I only get one normal attack, off-hand attacks are my only chance of getting extra Hex damage. However, a d4 is not exactly impressive. I need the TWF style and better weapon proficiencies to change this. My options, therefore, are Fighter or Ranger.

Strider Ranger from Unearthed Arcana seems better for a dip than standard Ranger (pact magic does not interact with normal spell slots as far as I understand; please correct me if I'm wrong). A 2-level dip gets me the fighting style, combat superiority (which recovers in a short rest, just like pact magic), martial proficiencies, a skill (probably Survival), medium armor proficiencies (not very useful, I'm Dex-based) and shield proficiency (not very useful, I dual wield). Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer are just... there. I don't really care about them. The 3rd level gets me Horde Breaker, which sounds very interesting if combined with Hex (and eventually Lifedrinker - however, I don't think I'll play this character that long).

Fighter 2 gets me the fighting style, armor and shield proficiencies, weapon proficiencies and Action Surge, which is an awesome ability. An extra level gets me combat superiority as well. I don't get a skill, though I get heavy armor proficiency... which I won't use.

Strider Ranger 3 looks very interesting. I'm almost sold on it. However, Action Surge is so good. I had so much fun with it on my Rogue/Fighter.

A distant thought is ditching the dagger, getting a rapier for my pact weapon and going for dueling style, but that sounds incredibly inefficient (look at all the Hex potential I'd be wasting).

Oh, I plan to multiclass at Warlock 5 and only for 2-3 levels.
What should I do guys? Help!

[Jamesps]

We have a level 5 blade lock in our party, and honestly I wouldn't worry too much about keeping up with damage. He does just fine, albeit maybe not in the way you were thinking.

Usually he opens with a fireball that does dozens of d6s in damage spread out over the enemies, and then mops up with his rapier. He does the highest damage in the party without comparison, even without Hex. I imagine this will hold pretty steady for a long time to come.

[MrStabby]

There are a couple of things you can do to help the combat side.

I like 1 level of Monk and a level of Fighter on a bladelock.

Monk lets you use dex for your staff and can give a nice AC bonus. Fighter gets you the fighting style.

You can then use things like feats for polearm mastery or other things to help with your Staff Fighting.


Alternatively Paladin can be good. The overlap on Charisma is solid and smites are always good news. You get a fighting style as well - problem is that you may not have the strength.

I wouldn't go with two weapon style for a warlock as you will only be able to have one of them as your pact weapon.

[TheOOB]

A one level monk dip means you'll spend half your career a spell level behind, which is probably a bigger deal their your monk abilities.

[Easy_Lee]

The dueling fighting style will serve you well. Compared to dual wield, dueling makes one less attack. The lost hex damage is only 1d6, or 3.5 damage. You're also losing the dagger attack, while I'll assume is a d6 + 5 for the sake of debate, or 8.5 damage. Using a rapier and dueling, you gain 3 damage per hit (d8 over d6 + 2 from dueling). So dueling is an additional six damage per round, while dual wield with the fighting style and ideal weapons would be 12 counting hex.

So dual wield adds 6 damage per round over dueling, assuming you get your full attack and Hex off vs. the same target. Dueling retains your bonus action, which as a blade pact warlock you should have plenty of uses for from your spells. Furthermore, if you did get horde breaker from ranger or action surge from fighter, your dueling fighting style do more damage for those additional attacks. The advantage of dueling is that, in addition to keeping your bonus action and opening up your offhand, you do more damage with any additional attacks (such as reaction or horde breaker attacks).

So I'd stick with a rapier and the dueling style, personally. If you can convince your DM to let you make two weapons, or twinned weapons, your pact weapons then dual wield would be better for the sake of your level 12 ability. Otherwise, I'd say dueling is the overall better way to go.

[Person_Man]

I think you'd be just fine as a strait Warlock.

Your at-will damage will be in the same ballpark as everyone else.

And you have auto-scaling Pact Magic blasty spells when you need burst damage, which can be better then Action Surge or Smite or whatever in some circumstances. Anything that takes away from that will probably nerf you in the long term.

And multiclassing can also nerf your ability score/Feat progression, which you could use to buff your damage output other ways.

[Easy_Lee]

I agree with Person_man. It's hard to justify a multiclass out of blade-warlock when you aren't getting extra pact weapon attacks out of it.

[Submortimer]

I agree with Person_man. It's hard to justify a multiclass out of blade-warlock when you aren't getting extra pact weapon attacks out of it.

Question: Has there been any ruling about making your Unarmed Strike your Pact weapon? I'm sure it probably doesn't work, but that would make a stupidly strong argument for 1 level dip into monk.

[Easy_Lee]

Question: Has there been any ruling about making your Unarmed Strike your Pact weapon? I'm sure it probably doesn't work, but that would make a stupidly strong argument for 1 level dip into monk.

So far as I know, there has been no ruling. That said, it's on the weapons table. It counts as a sentient weapon I'm sure, meaning that you can't whisk it away (no getting yourself stuck in pocket dimensions, sadly). However, absolutely nothing in the text would prevent this from working. Ask your DM.

If going down this route, I recommend 8 levels of monk and the armor of shadows invocation. I'd probably do it 2 warlock / 8 monk / 10 warlock.

[Person_Man]

Question: Has there been any ruling about making your Unarmed Strike your Pact weapon? I'm sure it probably doesn't work, but that would make a stupidly strong argument for 1 level dip into monk.

Assuming that Unarmed Strike could be a Pact weapon, why would Monk/Warlock be a good thing? The damage increase seems marginal, and could be replicated with Feats and/or spells.

[D-naras]

I am also playing a Dex Blade-lock atm and I have found that my damage needs no help whatsoever. Keep in mind that I don't even use Hex. Prior to level 5, my only go to combat spell was armor of agathys and when I needed the burst, hellish rebuke. Since we are a party of 3 characters (champion fighter, ancients paladin and me) I always get in the thick of things so I didn't even bother with concentration spells. A neat trick I use when we are outnumbered by small enemies is to cast armor of agathys and spam blade ward while moving around them. I take half weapon damage until next turn, those that attack me take 5 cold damage per spell slot level and I also provoke opportunity attacks to trigger this while I move away where I can blast.

[Easy_Lee]

Assuming that Unarmed Strike could be a Pact weapon, why would Monk/Warlock be a good thing? The damage increase seems marginal, and could be replicated with Feats and/or spells.

There are a few reasons why it's appealing:

Blade pact warlocks can normally only make two attacks with their pact weapon. A monk multi could make three or flurry for four.
Both monk and warlock have lackluster capstones, while this build would have a great one (CHA to attacks)
Both use short rest resources, making this character very focused on short rest resources, as opposed to a full warlock who gains some jarring long-rest spell slots that don't even function like spell slots and which many criticize
One of the warlock's biggest problems is a lack of good defensive options. Monk helps with this.
One of the monk's biggest problems is a lack of ranged attacks or means of dealing with situations where stunning a target, running fast, or hitting things won't solve the problem. Warlock fixes this.
If one spends all but one ASI on ability scores, a 14 in WIS and 20 in DEX and CHA should be possible.
It's a cool dark magic monk sort of character. Very unique.

Obviously this character misses out on some invocations and warlock features and also misses some monk features. That said, one can go shadow monk, which is the least ki-dependent of the monk paths, and won't need the extra attack invocation due to being a monk. One could technically skip armor of shadows too, if one was okay with 17AC or was able to get a higher WIS score.

There are also plenty of opportunities for unique tricks. For example, one can combine ascendant step with the jump spell for some really long jumps, and slow fall lets you survive them. Hex goes well with flurry of blows to produce a lot of damage against one target. Etc.

I'm not saying it's better than a pure, just that it's an interesting and effective option.

[MrStabby]

I agree with Person_man. It's hard to justify a multiclass out of blade-warlock when you aren't getting extra pact weapon attacks out of it.

I would say with a 1-shot splash of monk you would be getting extra attacks. The aim is to use dex with your staff. Naturally you take pole-arm-master as a feat (variant human start if you want). This gives you two warlock attacks (with thirsting blade), a bonus attack and potentially a reaction attack as well, all with the pact weapon.

I would expect your dex to hit 20, about 4 more damage per hit than your strength would give. That is better than dualist will give you. If you want you can add on great weapon mastery later. Add a fighting style if you start to top up with fighter or paladin.


Regarding unarmed strike being a pact weapon - I love the idea of having your forehead as your pact weapon and nutting people into oblivion.

[Wartex1]

Even if you can't make your hand a Pact Weapon, what about a prosthesis?

[Easy_Lee]

Even if you can't make your hand a Pact Weapon, what about a prosthesis?

I believe the text allows for any melee weapon, even a shield if it can be considered an improvised weapon. That said, it'd largely be up to your DM.

The great thing about unarmed strike, aka one's whole body, is that it's on the weapons table.

I do agree that dipping monk for DEX-quarterstaff would be a worthy one-level dip if one could afford the polearm mastery feat. If you've already started the character and have the attributes to dip, that may be the easiest way to increase damage.

The downsides are the lost capstone, delayed spell progression, and locking yourself into one single kind of weapon (quarterstaff). So it's not something to do without some planning ahead of time.

[Submortimer]

There are a few reasons why it's appealing:

Blade pact warlocks can normally only make two attacks with their pact weapon. A monk multi could make three or flurry for four.
Both monk and warlock have lackluster capstones, while this build would have a great one (CHA to attacks)
Both use short rest resources, making this character very focused on short rest resources, as opposed to a full warlock who gains some jarring long-rest spell slots that don't even function like spell slots and which many criticize
One of the warlock's biggest problems is a lack of good defensive options. Monk helps with this.
One of the monk's biggest problems is a lack of ranged attacks or means of dealing with situations where stunning a target, running fast, or hitting things won't solve the problem. Warlock fixes this.
If one spends all but one ASI on ability scores, a 14 in WIS and 20 in DEX and CHA should be possible.
It's a cool dark magic monk sort of character. Very unique.

Obviously this character misses out on some invocations and warlock features and also misses some monk features. That said, one can go shadow monk, which is the least ki-dependent of the monk paths, and won't need the extra attack invocation due to being a monk. One could technically skip armor of shadows too, if one was okay with 17AC or was able to get a higher WIS score.

There are also plenty of opportunities for unique tricks. For example, one can combine ascendant step with the jump spell for some really long jumps, and slow fall lets you survive them. Hex goes well with flurry of blows to produce a lot of damage against one target. Etc.

I'm not saying it's better than a pure, just that it's an interesting and effective option.

Even if you only take 1 level of monk, it's still a huge damage boost to the bladelock. Level 12 Bladelock with Martial arts Does 3d6+30 damage in a round, with the option to throw in another 1d6+10 damage when you need to burn a Ki point, Since lifedrinker now applies to ALL of his attacks.

Also, I like this idea because it means I can have a legit way to play Akuma in my next game.

[Easy_Lee]

Even if you only take 1 level of monk, it's still a huge damage boost to the bladelock. Level 12 Bladelock with Martial arts Does 3d6+30 damage in a round, with the option to throw in another 1d6+10 damage when you need to burn a Ki point, Since lifedrinker now applies to ALL of his attacks.

Also, I like this idea because it means I can have a legit way to play Akuma in my next game.

Minor correction: martial arts starts at 1d4.

[Dontdestroyme]

Even if you only take 1 level of monk, it's still a huge damage boost to the bladelock. Level 12 Bladelock with Martial arts Does 3d6+30 damage in a round, with the option to throw in another 1d6+10 damage when you need to burn a Ki point, Since lifedrinker now applies to ALL of his attacks.

Also, I like this idea because it means I can have a legit way to play Akuma in my next game.

Well hypothetically you can't have 20 charisma and dex with point buy by level 13 (12 lock 1 monk). You also don't get ki until monk 2.

I guess its up to the warlock in question if it's worth delaying your spell progression by 1 (or 2) levels to get that. Assuming your DM lets you use your body as a pact weapon which I don't know if that's really the intention.

Also you could be throwing in another 4d6 with hex which is not too shabby.