Warlock and War Wizard

[SociopathFriend]

A match made in War Heaven?

Is War Wizard extremely handy to dip into as a Warlock?

Context-

So I've been playing an Undead Patron Warlock in the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign. (5e)

Generally-speaking I have been playing him as sort of a gritty gunslinger. He can take a lickin' but keep on hittin.

We theoretically have a party of 5:
Undead Patron Warlock (me)
Hunter Ranger (newer player)
Lore Bard
The Druid that gets better Shapechange + Barbarian
Some manner of Goblin Rogue

But the Druid and Rogue have missed more sessions than they've attended by now. We had only three lvl5 characters available to fight that one-eyed water git, his ghouls, and the guards.

It was a NASTY fight where one or two bad rolls could've resulted in a TPK at any time. The Bard spent a majority of the fight paralyzed.

The DM wasn't pulling punches either- though he definitely didn't realize how drastically lvl5 augmented our damage.

Which led me to wonder about Wizard subclasses that I could dip into help keep myself alive. (Higher Int than Wis) And then I saw the War Wizard.

What's not to love?

As a Reaction, without a resource, you can bump your AC +2 or a Saving Throw by +4.

The only catch is you're stuck with Cantrips till the end of your next turn but- so what? You're a Warlock so most of your combat potential is gonna revolve around Eldritch Blast or your Pact Weapon. I'm Pact of the Chain myself so Eldritch Blast is my voodoo- and I do do it so very well.

Even if your Intelligence blows- you can just grab spells that don't use your score. Identify doesn't care what your score is. Neither does Absorb Elements, Longstrider, or Comprehend Languages.

Am I missing something? Or is the subclass exactly as nice for a Warlock as it looks?

[MrStabby]

Well I think its OK...

So the thing is, War Wizard does offer some good stuff... but does it offer enough?

So there are great things to a wizard - some great spells, some great ritual casting... but ritual casting you can get from the Warlock anyway if you are using eldritch blasts picking up pact of the tome is probably simple enough so the utility of this is diminished.

You get some low level spell slots with a dip and access to the wizard spell list. So what are you acually going to want from the wizard list? Maybe shield or silvery barbs? Good, but on the other hand... you could get access to these with a single level in sorcerer which is aligned to your stats better and can get you proficiency in wisdom saves. And you get most of the spell slots from a single level.

So really, it feels like its coming down to the archetype abilities. The save bonus is good - the AC is good... but a level of sorcerer dip could get either (draconic can help armour and divine sould can help with saves) and access to feats can also be used to boost armour and saves as well.

So yeah, I think its good as a dip - but I think it isn't outstanding.

[Leon]

If the MC you like the look of works for you nothing is bad about doing it.
I'm certainly considering it on my Artificer for the INT to Initiative and Reaction options plus it gives me a few more thematic spell casting options to match my flavor ive been working on.

[Sherlockpwns]

I’ll also say it’s ok. I think the big war wiz trap to be careful of isn’t the cantrip part, but that your reaction is only for one instance. And don’t get me wrong having a reaction for basically every eventuality is great; but you’ll constantly be weighing the pros and cons. Do you add to your save now or wait and use it on your concentration check. And ironically in doing so you make yourself a more or less appealing target to the dm.

Bonus to initiative is a nice cherry on top, but it all comes at the cost of delaying an entire spell level and undead has nice, though not game changing benefits from staying warlock. I’d say it’s a dice roll. The kinda most on brand spell for an undead warlock to me is the undead spirit. The difference between being able to cast that at 3rd vs 4th level is huge. I wouldn’t delay it to get a war wizard toolset.

However, I’d possibly consider it at 8-9 or 9-10 depending on your need for the asi. Not sure if I would want it at 5.

Flat bonuses to saves are pretty hard to come by, so I certainly understand the appeal. In the end it’s going to be mostly gaining durability in exchange for significantly less or delayed potency / flexibility (from invocations). That said I kinda was never in love with most of the warlock spells beyond 4; so I’m confident you’ll feel like you made the right choice either way.

[Selion]

I think it works just fine, if you like that kind of character.
My only suggestion with multiclassing is: try figuring out how your character is level by level in respect to their corresponding single class option. Usually multiclass characters complement well weaknesses of single classes, the price is delaying spells and class features, it all depends on what you want to build

[follacchioso]

War Wizard works well on Marital Characters, such as fighters and barbarians, as it provides a good reaction to improve saves and AC for little opportunity cost.

It is less useful on other caster classes, because multiclassing delays spell progression considerably, and you need two levels of wizard to get this subclass. The first wizard level will feel very weak as it doesn't give you much. As a warlock, shield and absorb elements are of limited utility because you only get a bunch of spell slots.

Another way to improve survivability is to get one of the summon spells from tasha, such as Summon Undead or Summon Aberration. These scale well with your warlock slots, they provide another target for the enemies, and can dish out a good amount of damage.

[RogueJK]

I think the big war wiz trap to be careful of isn’t the cantrip part, but that your reaction is only for one instance. And don’t get me wrong having a reaction for basically every eventuality is great; but you’ll constantly be weighing the pros and cons. Do you add to your save now or wait and use it on your concentration check.

This is key.

You're using your reaction for a small bonus to AC against one lone attack, or a slightly larger bonus against one lone save.

Folks tend to think of it as "Free Shield spells", but it's not that at all. It's actually best reserved for important saves, like trying to maintain Concentration on an important spell or avoid a really ugly save-or-suck effect.

Also, keep in mind that if you're dipping War Wizard specifically for War Magic, Shield, and Absorb Elements, you still only get one Reaction per round. So you'll have to pick one of those three for your lone Reaction, and if you use one of those three early on then you can't use it against the potentially worse attack/save/elemental damage that you find out is coming up next. (Well, Shield applies to all subsequent attacks for the entire round, but if you use your Reaction early to dodge some attacks you then can't use it to mitigate the later save-or-suck spell or the big elemental damage dump.)


War Wizard works well on Marital Characters, such as fighters and barbarians, as it provides a good reaction to improve saves and AC for little opportunity cost.

It is less useful on other caster classes, because multiclassing delays spell progression considerably, and you need two levels of wizard to get this subclass. The first wizard level will feel very weak as it doesn't give you much.

This is very true. A War Wizard 2 dip is best considered on INT-based partial-caster martials like an Eldritch Knight Fighter or a Battle Smith/Armorer Artificer, both of which are effectively martials with a few caster options but who focus primarily on weapon attacks (plus companion attacks) and cantrips.

Even then, it's not exactly a "must have" pick for every character like that, and if you do decide to dip it's best taken in late Tier 2/early Tier 3.


Another way to improve survivability is to get one of the summon spells from tasha, such as Summon Undead or Summon Aberration. These scale well with your warlock slots, they provide another target for the enemies, and can dish out a good amount of damage.

Excellent advice. Summoning is an easy way to bulk out smaller parties, or for use in sessions when party members are missing.

Summon Undead is not only thematically appropriate for an Undead Warlock, but is also arguably the best and most broadly useful of the mid-level Summon X spells, giving you Summon options that can be used for melee (Putrid or Ghostly) or ranged (Skeletal), or status effects (Ghostly - Frightened or Putrid - Poisoned/Paralyzed), or flying (Ghostly), or even exploration/infiltration (Ghostly). Warlock's auto-scaling and short-rest-regenerating spell slots make them fantastic users of the Summon X spells, and in turn, the 1 hour duration of the Summon X spells makes for efficient use of a Warlock's limited spell slots.

That's the real "match made in heaven" (well, the underworld) here...

[SociopathFriend]

This is key.

You're using your reaction for a small bonus to AC against one lone attack, or a slightly larger bonus against one lone save.

Folks tend to think of it as "Free Shield spells", but it's not that at all. It's actually best reserved for important saves, like trying to maintain Concentration on an important spell or avoid a really ugly save-or-suck effect.


To be clear- that's definitely where I'm sitting in the wake of 8 Ghouls all gunning for us. The AC buff is nice but the Save bonus is the prize I'm eyeing.

[diplomancer]

Another thing worth considering: if you go that route you probably will want to go to Wiz 3 at some point; you're doubling your Wizard slots (and more than doubling your Wizard spellcasting points), and getting a 2nd level spell with Arcane Recovery. Though I'd probably wait until after at least Warlock 11. That sweet 3rd Pact Magic slot is worth gold.

[MrStabby]

I’ll also say it’s ok. I think the big war wiz trap to be careful of isn’t the cantrip part, but that your reaction is only for one instance. And don’t get me wrong having a reaction for basically every eventuality is great; but you’ll constantly be weighing the pros and cons. Do you add to your save now or wait and use it on your concentration check. And ironically in doing so you make yourself a more or less appealing target to the dm.



Whilst this is true, I think that we also need to bear in mind the context. This is on a warlock that is looking to intensively use eldritch blast. It probably isn't on a melee character that is eatng a lot of attacks every round so that reaction to stop an occasional attack or to boost a concentration save should go quite a long way.