Question About Warlock Build for Curse of Strahd

[NecessaryWeevil]

I'm considering a Tomelock heavily focused on deception and social manipulation (Fey Patron, all three social skills, Friends, Suggestion, Mask of Many Faces, etc.), secondary focus on buff/debuff via Guidance, Vicious Mockery etc. for our upcoming Curse of Strahd campaign. Are there many NPCs and situations where this will be useful or will I be a dead weight?

Thanks!

[SharkForce]

presuming you grab eldritch blast with agonizing blast by level 5 or so, you're always going to have a fairly useful baseline in battle against anything that doesn't start with 'h' and end with 'elmed horror' that i'm aware of :P

additionally, you don't appear to have earmarked that many resources specfically to your chosen task. you should have room for other things as well.

i might suggest that a 3-level dip (anything more is optional) in sorcerer at some point. with your build, subtle spell should be super valuable, and enhance ability (charisma) will give you some useful options even if you don't want to sneak in a suggestion in social situations :P i'd normally recommend twin as your second metamagic, except warlock scaling spell slots kinda ruin that unless you go at least 5 levels in sorcerer, which i think will delay you from being a warlock. you could grab heighten (for emergencies only).

also, depending on whether your DM likes the sage advice ruling or not, careful spell might be very valuable for you for sustained AoE save spells, like web, which you can also pick up with 3 levels of sorcerer. however, i must stress, there *is* a sage advice ruling that says the intent of the metamagic is not to work beyond the first turn. note that the books don't actually say that anywhere, and they have not issued formal errata that it has changed, the sage advice tweet only states intent, but... if your DM follows the intent, then careful spell is something i would suggest *only* because it costs 1 SP and you're not going to have a ton of sorcerer points to spend. frankly, it looks so weak with the sage advice clarification that extend might even be better (which is normally not the case except for clerics with a sorcerer dip), not because it's great, but because it is cheap and it might have at least some value. still, if you want subtle but really hate extend, careful can have some value if you ever find yourself absolutely needing to drop a hypnotic pattern on your allies. but seriously, get an answer from your DM first, and be up-front about it, because you don't want to get stuck with nerfed careful spell.

[Cespenar]

The way our DM played it, there were several towns and many NPCs to interact with, and most of the time the interactions were somewhat on the unfriendly side, as the townsfolk could be very obstinate/old fashioned. So I guess some social skills/abilities could be helpful, though I wouldn't make that my only focus of my character, since there are (as you expect) a lot of fights with undead and beasts.

[Specter]

There are situations that call for a face, but don't expect them too often. Also watch out for a-hole DMs, they are a face's greatest enemy.

[the_brazenburn]

It's a good build at first. RPing will be fairly common (i.e. potentially the entire first session) early on, unless you have a jerk DM who overuses the random encounter tables. Later, though, you'll need a little more combat than face.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Thanks all for the responses. SharkForce, I like your idea about subtle spell with enchantments, but two questions:

A) Being 3 levels behind in spellcasting sounds really painful, especially since Warlocks gain no spell slot advancement from MCing, unlike other classes. Do you think subtle spell is sufficiently powerful?
B) Given that they know they were charmed regardless, I tend to be nervous about taking/casting charm spells. Do you think this (subtle spell) changes anything in that regard?

Thanks!

[Hyde]

Thanks all for the responses. SharkForce, I like your idea about subtle spell with enchantments, but two questions:

A) Being 3 levels behind in spellcasting sounds really painful, especially since Warlocks gain no spell slot advancement from MCing, unlike other classes. Do you think subtle spell is sufficiently powerful?
B) Given that they know they were charmed regardless, I tend to be nervous about taking/casting charm spells. Do you think this (subtle spell) changes anything in that regard?

Thanks!

As someone who really, really likes his sorc/lock, let me provide some tips. In the interests of full disclosure, I play primarily a sorcerer with a three level lock dip, but with XGtE dropping, who knows.

Subtle spell on it's own is probably not "worth" it, as such (but it will be really cool when you pull it off). But especially at low levels, what it does do is massively open up your spell pool, especially if you pick up the new divine soul sorcerer, which adds cleric spells to your list. You power pool becomes more "wide" than deep.

The real trick with the sorcerer is the sorcery point conversion. You can turn spell slots into sorcery points, and back again. This is useful because when the party decides to take a short rest, you can convert any unused warlock slots into sorcery points (up to your maximum total. No infinite sorcery points, I'm afraid). This lets you get more flexible with your casting- likely, you'll just turn them back into the spell slots that they were. But you could also use them to fuel more metamagic, which opens up a few more viable choices, imo.

And, honestly, it's just fun.

Subtle spell will not stop them from knowing that they were charmed. I prefer suggestion, in any event (and hold person to that, though your mileage with that might vary in Strahd).

[SharkForce]

Thanks all for the responses. SharkForce, I like your idea about subtle spell with enchantments, but two questions:

A) Being 3 levels behind in spellcasting sounds really painful, especially since Warlocks gain no spell slot advancement from MCing, unlike other classes. Do you think subtle spell is sufficiently powerful?
B) Given that they know they were charmed regardless, I tend to be nervous about taking/casting charm spells. Do you think this (subtle spell) changes anything in that regard?

Thanks!

A) should be rather less painful as a warlock, since as i've mentioned a large chunk of your combat power comes from eldritch blast anyways. in terms of utility, it is a small boost as well as a... whatever the opposite of boost is. warlock isn't that huge in terms of out of combat utility, partly from limited spells known, partly from spell slots. sorcerer gives you some low level spell slots, which means you don't have to feel quite as bad about using low level spells. there definitely is a cost, no question of that, but if social manipulator is where you're headed, there's nothing else nearly as good. so it mostly boils down to what you want most; if you just want to be the best in social situations, subtle spell opens up the world to you. but you are absolutely correct to consider the cost.
B) you don't take or cast charm spells, per se. you cast suggestion (or later mass suggestion), which gets you what you want, and they never find out by default as they do with friends or charm person. or you read their mind. or you use enhance ability, guidance, hex an opponent's opposing attribute, etc (just because it isn't harmful doesn't mean that guards won't react poorly to you casting a spell in general, they're not going to wait and see what the spell does before they interfere). you can also use it with illusions, as a means of providing "props" so to speak, or to otherwise manipulate the environment in favourable ways during social scenarios. of course, it also has other uses (if you're ever stuck in prison, you'll be very glad to know this spell, or if you're ever stuck in an area of silence or underwater or you need both hands to hold on to something), but in your case, the main thing is that it gives you the ability to use more of your abilities in social situations.

[Puh Laden]

There's a warlock (Raven Queen) with Mask of Many Faces and the Actor feat in the campaign I'm playing in, and the combo has probably made him MVP in our campaign. The only way to be a better face would be to multiclass sorcerer with subtle and detect thoughts. Of course, it depends on the DM.