Matheusz
2016-04-28, 08:22 AM
Warlock - dark multiclass concepts
This is my first attempt to write a guide for D&D. Some of the described choices i have actually picked and played in games, some are based on long reads through the players handbook. As English is not my native language there might be a lot of spelling errors. Im happy about critique, corrections and comments!
Below i am going to describe two concepts of my favourite multiclassing class: the Warlock
For several reasons i consider him as the strongest multiclass in D&D 5e.
- A small dip already unlocks very much potential: In many multiclass descriptions i read "if you get your class X to level 10 and your class Y to level 8 your have everything you need." However this means playing 18 levels suboptimal and half finished character to have 2 levels of synergies after. Already 2-3 warlock levels unock the following features:
The most powerfull cantrip in the game Eldritch blast + its Eldritch invocations if you want (Agonizing blast!)
Access to the whole Eldritch invocations list
The Pacts at lvl3 give you either ritual casting, a familiar or a pact weapon
2 fast refreshing lvl2 spellslots in addition what the other class might have
- A good scaling without further class level increase: The damage of Eldritch blast and the level requirements of the Eldritch invocations look at your character level and not at your warlock class level, so feel free to multiclasslevel up those other classes!
Before we start
Generally every class that shares its main casting attribute with the warlock is a good fit (Bard, Sorcerer, Paladin), however i will describe two character concepts for the Sorcerer and the Paladin in this post. In contrast to other guides i wont mention every possible choice that can be made, but the important cornerstones and interesing picks. Accordingly there is no rating system from good to bad. I will just genereally highlight choices and features. The concepts can be altered at choice and leave room for own ideas. Lets begin with:
Sorcerer Warlock:
This build wants 2-3 levels of warlock and 17-18 levels of draconic sorcerer. Story whise the character grew up as an merely accepted orphan in a small village. (Mother could have had an affair with a dragon in human form and died/gave away the child after birth) In your youth you discover your natural magic abilitys, which you can`t control. Other children make fun of you because of your social status and the dragon scales that you have at your elbows and your cheeks. Everytime your are under strong emotions or pressure magic uncontrollably flows out of your body. (fire/ice/thunder/poison depending on your draconic bloodline) At a bad day this ultimately leads to you getting beaten and chased out of the village, after you destroyed some major buildings.
With a broken leg you flee into the woods and get unconcious after wandering around aimlessly for a day. Close to death you wake up facing your future parton, who offers you to save your life and give you control over your magic abilitys in exchange for accepting him/her as your master. From here on you are a Sorcerer/Warlock and begin your journey.
Character choices
The character does not need any feats to be great. What you want to have is a high CHA to hit your spells and to increase the damage, DEX to have a higher armor class and to dodge spells and AOE attacks and finally CON to keep your concentraton up in combat and to resist some nasty effects. My choices here are quite min/max oriented. Its probably better to also invest a bit into WIS to get better svaing throws.
I took the Human Variant race with the Resilient Feat for +DEX. As a result you are proficient with Dex, Con and Cha saving throws, which is pretty good.
STR = 8
DEX = 14 + 1 + 1 = 16
CON = 14
INT = 8
WIS = 8
CHA = 17 + 1 = 18
Of course this is only one of many possibilities. As Gastronomie pointed out, Half-elf is also a very good fit for this character design.
Warlock choices
Eldritch blast: In my oppinion the strongest cantrip and the biggest reason to go warlock. Together with the Agonizing blast and Repelling blast invocations you can do a lot of damage and pushbacks. For example at character lvl11 with the quicken spell ability form the sorcerer you will be able to do up to 6 * (1d10 + 5 (=Cha Mod)) damage plus feet 60 pushback distributed on various creatures. If you established difficult terrain before, it will be pretty hard for your enemies to come back.
Hex: Guess which lvl 1 warlock spell i forgott to put into my calculation? Right, Hex!
This debuff only needs to be cast once per encounter as it jumps from one foe to the next after the first one died.
6 * (1d6 + 1d10 + 5(=Cha mod )) from now on!
Faerie Fire: lvl 1 spell that you have access to if you have chosen the Archfey as your patron. A very strong debuff thats already availible at low levels!
If you go up to the third warlock level you get 2 fast recharging lvl 2 spellslots and Pact of the tome for ritual casting or Pact of the chain to have a familiar with you.
Sorcerer choices
I chose to go with the draconic bloodline and the Brass Dragon. Main benefits of being a draconic Sorcerer are:
Draconis Resilience: You have a permanent mage armor on you that gives you an armor class of 13 + DEX mod (=AC 16 at lvl1), thats not too bad!
Elemental affinity: From Sorcerer lvl6 on you can add your CHA mod to the damage you cause with every fire spell you cast. This incentivises you to focus on fire spells which some enemies will have resistances against. Don`t worry your main damage source,Eldritch blast , does Force damage which is hardly ever resisted!
From sorcerer lvl 14 on you are premanently able to fly!
Metamagic: I chose Quickened Spell and Twinned Spell at lvl 3. Quickened spell can effectively double the damage output of your Eldritch blast for two sorcery points. (Little hint: Before making a short rest transform unused spellslots from the warlock into sorcery points as they will refresh anyways!)
Spells i donīt want to miss:
Shield: (lvl1) +5 Bonus AC when you really need it! Puts you at a whooping 21 AC at lvl 1! Only requires your reaction!
Fog Cloud: (lvl1) Force ranged attackers out of their position, stop enemies that do something that requires a line of sight! (requires concentation)
Mirror Immage: (lvl2) Helps you to dodge several attacks and does not require contentration!
Suggestion: (lvl2) You got to be creative to get good use out of it, but your enemy has only one save to resist a potentially very long effect. (requires concentation)
Counterspell: (lvl3) stops a lot of nasty stuff! Especially good because we have weak INT and WIS saving throws and want to avoid them!
Fireball: (lvl3) has a good AOE and high base damage. Does not scale too well with higher spell slots but still quite good agains crowds cast at lvl 3 in the later stages.
Hypnotic Pattern: (lvl3) A very handy crowd control spell. Incapacitates with a big AoE. (requires concentation)
Errupting Earth: (lvl3)(Elemental Evil) Creates permanent difficult terrain! Has a rather unimpressive basedamage but a good scaling! Tons of fun making it hard for enemies to come to you and if they succeed blast them back into the spikes!
Greater Invisibility: (lvl4) You can do things while invisible! (requires concentation)
Polymorph: (lvl4) A lot of things to do here! Morph monsters into squirels, morph your tank into a beast, morph your squishy friend into a beast if they get focused. Save someone from dying. (requires concentation)
Insect plague: (lvl5) See Errupting Earth, large difficult terrain for blasting action with constant damage from insects, requires concentration this time!
Disintegrate: (lvl6) Because it deals tons of damage
Mass Suggestion: (lvl6) See suggestion. This time for 12 creatures and without concentration!
Reverse Gravity: (lvl7) Can do much more than you might think at the first second (requires concentation)
Thats it so far for the Sorcerer Warlock. Lets continue with the second Warlock multiclass!
Paladin Warlock:
This build wants at least 7 Levels of the Paladin Class and at least 3 levels of the Warlock class. Story wise you start your first three levels as regular Paladin and travel the world. Before your level up to lvl 4 a life changing tragedy happens. Neither you nor the ideals of your oaths help you to change or overcomme it. Out of anger and frustration you turn evil and break your oath. You swear loyalty to your patron in exchange for help to make the tragic event your had to witness undone.
Character choices
This character is an Oathbreaker Paladin multiclassed with a Pact of the Blade Warlock. I wont beat around the bush, the trick (or cheese as some might say) is that this heavy hitting guy will use the darkness spell to blind everybody around him and the devils sight invocation to see through it. As a result everybody who relies on his vision (including creatures with darkvison) will be blinded. Foes next to you get disadvantage on attacks and enemies further away can not target you as long as they dont use other senses to locate you.
You get an advantage on your attackroll which helps you to use the Great weapon master feat to deal +10 damage per hit!
As Race once again i chose Human Variant to use the benefit of an early feat ( Great weapon master), which lets you choose to increase your damage by 10 on a hit if you take a -5 Penalty on the attack roll. Furthermore the Oathbreaker as well as the Bladepact Warlock have an ability to permanently add their CHA modifier to the Attack. This character needs CHA and STR to be able to fight and cast spells.
STR = 15 + 1 = 16
DEX = 8
CON = 12
INT = 8
WIS = 9
CHA = 17 + 1 = 18
Work in progress!
This is my first attempt to write a guide for D&D. Some of the described choices i have actually picked and played in games, some are based on long reads through the players handbook. As English is not my native language there might be a lot of spelling errors. Im happy about critique, corrections and comments!
Below i am going to describe two concepts of my favourite multiclassing class: the Warlock
For several reasons i consider him as the strongest multiclass in D&D 5e.
- A small dip already unlocks very much potential: In many multiclass descriptions i read "if you get your class X to level 10 and your class Y to level 8 your have everything you need." However this means playing 18 levels suboptimal and half finished character to have 2 levels of synergies after. Already 2-3 warlock levels unock the following features:
The most powerfull cantrip in the game Eldritch blast + its Eldritch invocations if you want (Agonizing blast!)
Access to the whole Eldritch invocations list
The Pacts at lvl3 give you either ritual casting, a familiar or a pact weapon
2 fast refreshing lvl2 spellslots in addition what the other class might have
- A good scaling without further class level increase: The damage of Eldritch blast and the level requirements of the Eldritch invocations look at your character level and not at your warlock class level, so feel free to multiclasslevel up those other classes!
Before we start
Generally every class that shares its main casting attribute with the warlock is a good fit (Bard, Sorcerer, Paladin), however i will describe two character concepts for the Sorcerer and the Paladin in this post. In contrast to other guides i wont mention every possible choice that can be made, but the important cornerstones and interesing picks. Accordingly there is no rating system from good to bad. I will just genereally highlight choices and features. The concepts can be altered at choice and leave room for own ideas. Lets begin with:
Sorcerer Warlock:
This build wants 2-3 levels of warlock and 17-18 levels of draconic sorcerer. Story whise the character grew up as an merely accepted orphan in a small village. (Mother could have had an affair with a dragon in human form and died/gave away the child after birth) In your youth you discover your natural magic abilitys, which you can`t control. Other children make fun of you because of your social status and the dragon scales that you have at your elbows and your cheeks. Everytime your are under strong emotions or pressure magic uncontrollably flows out of your body. (fire/ice/thunder/poison depending on your draconic bloodline) At a bad day this ultimately leads to you getting beaten and chased out of the village, after you destroyed some major buildings.
With a broken leg you flee into the woods and get unconcious after wandering around aimlessly for a day. Close to death you wake up facing your future parton, who offers you to save your life and give you control over your magic abilitys in exchange for accepting him/her as your master. From here on you are a Sorcerer/Warlock and begin your journey.
Character choices
The character does not need any feats to be great. What you want to have is a high CHA to hit your spells and to increase the damage, DEX to have a higher armor class and to dodge spells and AOE attacks and finally CON to keep your concentraton up in combat and to resist some nasty effects. My choices here are quite min/max oriented. Its probably better to also invest a bit into WIS to get better svaing throws.
I took the Human Variant race with the Resilient Feat for +DEX. As a result you are proficient with Dex, Con and Cha saving throws, which is pretty good.
STR = 8
DEX = 14 + 1 + 1 = 16
CON = 14
INT = 8
WIS = 8
CHA = 17 + 1 = 18
Of course this is only one of many possibilities. As Gastronomie pointed out, Half-elf is also a very good fit for this character design.
Warlock choices
Eldritch blast: In my oppinion the strongest cantrip and the biggest reason to go warlock. Together with the Agonizing blast and Repelling blast invocations you can do a lot of damage and pushbacks. For example at character lvl11 with the quicken spell ability form the sorcerer you will be able to do up to 6 * (1d10 + 5 (=Cha Mod)) damage plus feet 60 pushback distributed on various creatures. If you established difficult terrain before, it will be pretty hard for your enemies to come back.
Hex: Guess which lvl 1 warlock spell i forgott to put into my calculation? Right, Hex!
This debuff only needs to be cast once per encounter as it jumps from one foe to the next after the first one died.
6 * (1d6 + 1d10 + 5(=Cha mod )) from now on!
Faerie Fire: lvl 1 spell that you have access to if you have chosen the Archfey as your patron. A very strong debuff thats already availible at low levels!
If you go up to the third warlock level you get 2 fast recharging lvl 2 spellslots and Pact of the tome for ritual casting or Pact of the chain to have a familiar with you.
Sorcerer choices
I chose to go with the draconic bloodline and the Brass Dragon. Main benefits of being a draconic Sorcerer are:
Draconis Resilience: You have a permanent mage armor on you that gives you an armor class of 13 + DEX mod (=AC 16 at lvl1), thats not too bad!
Elemental affinity: From Sorcerer lvl6 on you can add your CHA mod to the damage you cause with every fire spell you cast. This incentivises you to focus on fire spells which some enemies will have resistances against. Don`t worry your main damage source,Eldritch blast , does Force damage which is hardly ever resisted!
From sorcerer lvl 14 on you are premanently able to fly!
Metamagic: I chose Quickened Spell and Twinned Spell at lvl 3. Quickened spell can effectively double the damage output of your Eldritch blast for two sorcery points. (Little hint: Before making a short rest transform unused spellslots from the warlock into sorcery points as they will refresh anyways!)
Spells i donīt want to miss:
Shield: (lvl1) +5 Bonus AC when you really need it! Puts you at a whooping 21 AC at lvl 1! Only requires your reaction!
Fog Cloud: (lvl1) Force ranged attackers out of their position, stop enemies that do something that requires a line of sight! (requires concentation)
Mirror Immage: (lvl2) Helps you to dodge several attacks and does not require contentration!
Suggestion: (lvl2) You got to be creative to get good use out of it, but your enemy has only one save to resist a potentially very long effect. (requires concentation)
Counterspell: (lvl3) stops a lot of nasty stuff! Especially good because we have weak INT and WIS saving throws and want to avoid them!
Fireball: (lvl3) has a good AOE and high base damage. Does not scale too well with higher spell slots but still quite good agains crowds cast at lvl 3 in the later stages.
Hypnotic Pattern: (lvl3) A very handy crowd control spell. Incapacitates with a big AoE. (requires concentation)
Errupting Earth: (lvl3)(Elemental Evil) Creates permanent difficult terrain! Has a rather unimpressive basedamage but a good scaling! Tons of fun making it hard for enemies to come to you and if they succeed blast them back into the spikes!
Greater Invisibility: (lvl4) You can do things while invisible! (requires concentation)
Polymorph: (lvl4) A lot of things to do here! Morph monsters into squirels, morph your tank into a beast, morph your squishy friend into a beast if they get focused. Save someone from dying. (requires concentation)
Insect plague: (lvl5) See Errupting Earth, large difficult terrain for blasting action with constant damage from insects, requires concentration this time!
Disintegrate: (lvl6) Because it deals tons of damage
Mass Suggestion: (lvl6) See suggestion. This time for 12 creatures and without concentration!
Reverse Gravity: (lvl7) Can do much more than you might think at the first second (requires concentation)
Thats it so far for the Sorcerer Warlock. Lets continue with the second Warlock multiclass!
Paladin Warlock:
This build wants at least 7 Levels of the Paladin Class and at least 3 levels of the Warlock class. Story wise you start your first three levels as regular Paladin and travel the world. Before your level up to lvl 4 a life changing tragedy happens. Neither you nor the ideals of your oaths help you to change or overcomme it. Out of anger and frustration you turn evil and break your oath. You swear loyalty to your patron in exchange for help to make the tragic event your had to witness undone.
Character choices
This character is an Oathbreaker Paladin multiclassed with a Pact of the Blade Warlock. I wont beat around the bush, the trick (or cheese as some might say) is that this heavy hitting guy will use the darkness spell to blind everybody around him and the devils sight invocation to see through it. As a result everybody who relies on his vision (including creatures with darkvison) will be blinded. Foes next to you get disadvantage on attacks and enemies further away can not target you as long as they dont use other senses to locate you.
You get an advantage on your attackroll which helps you to use the Great weapon master feat to deal +10 damage per hit!
As Race once again i chose Human Variant to use the benefit of an early feat ( Great weapon master), which lets you choose to increase your damage by 10 on a hit if you take a -5 Penalty on the attack roll. Furthermore the Oathbreaker as well as the Bladepact Warlock have an ability to permanently add their CHA modifier to the Attack. This character needs CHA and STR to be able to fight and cast spells.
STR = 15 + 1 = 16
DEX = 8
CON = 12
INT = 8
WIS = 9
CHA = 17 + 1 = 18
Work in progress!