My daolockis lost in the shuffle. Please help.

[Squash63]

I’m running into issues with my level 3 daolock in a play-by-post Out of the Abyss campaign. I really enjoy the character as I put a lot of effort into his backstory and personality, but I feel almost useless. I do alright in combat with EB and the occasional Mind Spike. Out of combat is a different issue. My skills tend to lean more on social aspect of the game, but so far it hasn’t come up at all. I’ve tried to take more utility spells and picked up Pact of the Tome with Book of Ancient Secrets to give myself some options since PBP tends to be less combat heavy. Aside from one or two clever uses of Bottled Respite, I don’t seem to have much to contribute. The current party is a Alchemist Artificer, Forge Cleric, a Ranger (don’t remember subclass), and Path of Giant Barbarian. I don’t know if I should just stick it out, multiclass, or scrap the character. It could just be an issue with how I’m looking at everything as well. Any advise on becoming a useful member of the party would be greatly appreciated.

Reborn Daolock

Str 8 Dex 13 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 17

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Mending, Message, Mold Earth, Prestidigitation

Rituals: Purify Food and Drink, Tenser’s Floating Disk

Spells: Armor of Agathys, Fog Cloud, Invisibility, Mind Spike

[Amnestic]

First off: If you're pulling your weight in a fight you are being useful. I get it might not feel like it but it's still the case.

Tenser's and Purify are both good ritual choices - from my own (partial) experiences with OotA there's a lot of junk you can grab to fence, and every little bit helps.

We saw a few social encounters but not a great deal from what little we've got through so far, but I'm not sure how much of that was part of the module and how much was the DM adding/improvising stuff. It's definitely not the focus though, and I expect social to take a mostly backseat to 'survival' skills (eg. survival, nature, athletics, athletics, acrobatics, stealth).

I'm not sure if you've been using Mold Earth much at all so far but since you're around a lot of dirt and stone it should probably see a decent amount of use to create cover or hide your sleeping spots.

You've not specified your invocations, but just make sure you've got Agonising Blast for the damage boost and it's hard for you not to be useful.

[KorvinStarmast]

I’m running into issues with my level 3 daolock ...I don’t know if I should just stick it out, multiclass, or scrap the character. It could just be an issue with how I’m looking at everything as well. You are still in Tier 1. Have a little patience, OotA goes into Tier 3.
Pact of the Tome: great choice, based on my own warlock experiences.

Any advise on becoming a useful member of the party would be greatly appreciated.
You already are one.

Reborn Daolock

Str 8 Dex 13 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 17

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Mending, Message, Mold Earth, Prestidigitation

Rituals: Purify Food and Drink, Tenser’s Floating Disk

Spells: Armor of Agathys, Fog Cloud, Invisibility, Mind Spike Good spells, all of them.
Which invocations do you have besides the Book of Ancient Secrets? I have personally found Repelling Blast to be as useful as Agonizing blast since DPR isn't the end all and be all for me. But if you want to make sure your damage is better by all means to with Agonizing.

I expect social to take a mostly backseat to 'survival' skills (eg. survival, nature, athletics, athletics, acrobatics, stealth). I agree with this feedback as well.

Also: which skill proficiencies do you have?

[Squash63]

My other invocation right now is Devil’s Sight so I don’t have constant disadvantage. I figured I would pick up Agonizing Blast again for my next invocation. Right now Genie’s Wrath is assisting with keeping my damage output at a decent level.

Proficiencies are Deception, Intimidation, Investigation, Persuasion, Slight of Hand, and Stealth.

[J-H]

Instead of "numbers go up" I second the suggestion for either the repelling or attracting blast, depending on what works better with the party. That way, instead of bigger numbers, you're also either keeping enemies away or yoinking them into range for a beatdown every time you Eldritch Blast.

[solidork]

If you want out of combat utility, invocations can do a lot of heavy lifting:

- Eldritch Sight was extremely useful from Tier 2-4 on my Warlock. I used it multiple times in almost every session; see something weird? Find out if its magical. Detect illusions. Find treasure. You might think that the rest of the party can cover this, but the difference between a 10 minute ritual and at will cannot be overstated. This might not be as useful in a wilderness campaign.
- Beast Speech. I'm playing a Bard that makes extensive use of Speak With Animals and it's proved to be both useful and fun. Not sure how many animals you encounter though, and you could be stepping on the Ranger's toes and it depends on how much your GM is into making it useful.
- Far Scribe. If you meet people that it's useful to talk to regularly this can be a big deal.

[Corran]

My other invocation right now is Devil’s Sight so I don’t have constant disadvantage. I figured I would pick up Agonizing Blast again for my next invocation. Right now Genie’s Wrath is assisting with keeping my damage output at a decent level.

Proficiencies are Deception, Intimidation, Investigation, Persuasion, Slight of Hand, and Stealth.
One too many social skills IMO. Especially if the campaign is not too focused on social as people have said. I'd drop one or even two of them (alternatively one along with slight of hand) and I'd pick up perception and one of athletics/acrobatics. Just saying what I would consider more useful, not necessarily more fun. Though do reevaluate your skill proficiencies now that you have a better picture of the campaign, because having stuff that you dont end up using is certainly not fun.

Check with your DM to see how often you can get advantage on your attacks, whenever fighting something with a darkvision range of less than 120'. It's the Underdark, but you never know. At least with a darkvision range of 120' and a good perception roll, it can be relatively often that you spot threats and warn your party as to avoid any ambushes. Bottom line, a line of sight of 120' without disadvantage on perception checks, is a good trait both offensively and defensively. It would be one of the first things I would look at having my character be useful at in such a camaign. That said, if your DM does not play too much emphasis on visibility and surprise, it will be beneficial to the party not to change things, as a party of PCs will be at a disadvantageous spot when dealing with Underdark threats at their natural terrain due to this. But if the DM does, then have devil sight do this important work and ideally also look to boost your perception (skill expertise/ observant).

The absense of agonizing blast can be felt in the first few levels a bit, but dont worry too much if your damage is not top stuff right now. Because it will increase once you do get agonizing blast along with more EB "beams" and higher level slots (eg because hex duration increases at 5th allowing you to conserve slots which you will use with stuff like AoE's and the like). You are a fullcaster (and one with significant at will damage at that, which is rare), things get better for fullcasters as they increase in levels, dont worry.

Repelling blast and the like can be extremelly useful. Just try to think with what you could combine them. Abilities of allies, abilities of your own. And of course, terrain. It's theater of the mind, and you are in the Underdark. Dont expect your DM to describe all the details of your battlefield. Make them up on the fly by asking the DM. One of my most common questions to my DM during combat, is if there is anything I can latch my grappling hook on. And sure enough, enough of the time the DM will come up with something on the spot to allow my character to perform their silly tricks.

One seperate mention to mold earth. This spell can be AMAZING. Even without the added potential from your movement invocations, it can still be amazing. To make the best of it, you have to rely on two things. Firstly, terrain. Look for (obvious) opportunities. Best use I ever made of it, was, how to describe it, well, it was some kind of enchanted forrest, the geography of which exceeded the laws of physics at places. For example, there was a whole patch of earth extending above the air, as if it once was a cliffside, but you dug all the dirt beneath it and left only the surface ground at the very top. Anyway, terrain is important for to make the best you can out of mold earth, whether that will be instant death (eg by falling hundreds of feet) or a fall followed by damage and a few rounds out of combat for the enemy. Secondly, make the preperations prior to combat. This usually means having the enemy come at you. Which in turn it usually means just baiting them to chase you for some distance. It's doable (not always; and in the Underdark it might be even riskier), but it requires party buy in (intrigue them to create their own role in this scenario, whether that is being the bait, or making an elaborate trap, or finding a good hiding spot from where to jump on the advaning enemies when in position, or etc etc etc).
Edit: Oh, illuson spells can help with mold earth too. Especially hallucinatory terrain, but earlier on the likes of minor illusion, silent image (and major image, although better with the 5th lvl slot) can also help.

[animorte]

I have personally found Repelling Blast to be as useful as Agonizing blast since DPR isn't the end all and be all for me.

Instead of "numbers go up" I second the suggestion for either the repelling or attracting blast, depending on what works better with the party.

My other invocation right now is Devil’s Sight so I don’t have constant disadvantage. I figured I would pick up Agonizing Blast again for my next invocation. Right now Genie’s Wrath is assisting with keeping my damage output at a decent level.
Adding another vote to Repelling Blast. This invocation is unbelievably useful, I value it far more than a couple extra points of damage (most of the time). I have played a couple GenieLocks, and every Warlock subclass at least once.

I can't express enough how much I love building a Warlock around the invocation options with how many different ways you can approach them. You've still got some time to really go in-depth, as others have said. Tome is definitely the easiest way to expand your options though.

A couple other thoughts: As always when someone discusses a build, I like to request what the rest of their party looks like to have a better idea of what roles you're trying to fill and the best routes to do so. Since it means something to you, maybe have a conversation with the DM about what kind of social encounters to expect, if any? There's currently a thread up about the success rate of play-by-post so I'm not sure what that all really entails.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I’m running into issues with my level 3 daolock in a play-by-post Out of the Abyss campaign. I really enjoy the character as I put a lot of effort into his backstory and personality, but I feel almost useless. I do alright in combat with EB and the occasional Mind Spike. Out of combat is a different issue. My skills tend to lean more on social aspect of the game, but so far it hasn’t come up at all. I’ve tried to take more utility spells and picked up Pact of the Tome with Book of Ancient Secrets to give myself some options since PBP tends to be less combat heavy. Aside from one or two clever uses of Bottled Respite, I don’t seem to have much to contribute. The current party is a Alchemist Artificer, Forge Cleric, a Ranger (don’t remember subclass), and Path of Giant Barbarian. I don’t know if I should just stick it out, multiclass, or scrap the character. It could just be an issue with how I’m looking at everything as well. Any advise on becoming a useful member of the party would be greatly appreciated.

Reborn Daolock

Str 8 Dex 13 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 17

Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Mending, Message, Mold Earth, Prestidigitation

Rituals: Purify Food and Drink, Tenser’s Floating Disk

Spells: Armor of Agathys, Fog Cloud, Invisibility, Mind Spike

Seems like a good character in the context of the remainder of the group; you're likely the only one who's even thinking about being the face of the party. As another poster mentioned, it's a long campaign. Without going to far into spoilers, I'd expect that your journey to go places where social skills are needed. Maybe have a word with your DM about the lack of opportunity to use these skills; the social pillar is supposed to be core to DnD.

[follacchioso]

I played a similar character, a reborn Genie warlock, although she was Pact of the Chain.

It was fun to play her - she was an undead elderly woman, who talked to her invisible granddaughter and mistook the party members for her own lost children. She never slept, closed her eyes, nor ate.

She talked nonsense most of the time, but sometimes she provided very useful information about distant events or things that she could not possibly know, which in reality came from the familiar or her Speak with Animals invocation. "Look how many orcs are coming this way, I wonder if they have lost something"; "little Lucille (the familiar) has found the key to that door, it was at the bottom of the well"; "we should respect the animals in this area, the Beast is watching us".

I'd consider asking your DM to switch to Pact of the Chain, because it has more out-of-combat utility, especially in terms of exploring and scouting ahead.

In combat, you will be reliably effective once you unlock at least Agonizing Blast. Once you hit lv5 you will be consistently more effective than the other cantrip users, thanks to the bonus damage to each of your eldritch blast rays. I also recommend you to get one of the Tasha summons spells, which will improve both defence and offence.

[Burley]

Might I suggest that, at 4th level, you take the Crusher feat? I know you're already doing fine damage in combat, but this feet adds forced movement and grants your party a buff when you crit, plus a bonus to Con (because you're not gonna take the Str bonus, obviously).
I think that feat is more valuable than Agonizing Blast. A couple extra points of damage, since you're already adding +[Proficiency} bludgeoning damage, isn't as big of a deal as moving an enemy away from an ally so they can move without disengaging, or moving an enemy into difficult terrain, traps, on-going spell effects, etc.


If you're looking for more things to do outside of combat, take the invocation that gives you Detect Magic at will and then never not being willing to cast it. If you're built to be social and you're not being given opportunities to be social with NPCs, be social with PCs. Of course, it'd be great if your group works on consensus, but I doubt that's the case. Your character wouldn't turn off their practiced ability to manipulate people when they're talking to their allies, would they? If you want more time to shine outside of combat, start grabbing the reins and creating your own limelight. Convince your allies to use their abilities to your own ends. Rangers are always going to be looking for excuses to make Nature checks to justify their existence, so, why shouldn't you be looking for every opportunity to put your skills to effect to justify your own? I posit that your skill of persuasion is more impactful than knowing the nature of some herbs or what owlbears eat.
Yes, it is manipulative. But, you're a warlock with proficiencies in manipulation skills. You and a genie have decided to manipulate each other in exchange for power. Go get yours.



I'm also going to note that you're 3rd level. None of your party are actually doing anything that powerful or useful. The bar is just set low at the moment. You can currently cast Shatter over thirty times a day (admittedly with back-to-back short rests), so don't let yourself think that you're not powerful or skilled. You're just waiting to be utilized to your potential.

And, if you're not able to shift your perspective or your playstyle, talk to the DM about it. Ask if those skills will ever be relevant. They may not be currently, but that will certainly let your DM know your discontent with ability to interact with the non-combat world.

[Keravath]

A few comments :)

If you aren't enjoying playing the character then I'd suggest switching up to something you want to play.

However, I think warlocks are great and from what you have said, your character IS contributing.

In Out of the Abyss, the party may visit quite a number of different settlements and most are not combat encounters, at least initially. The social skills may prove very useful then. That said, I would not take all three social skills since most situations can be resolved with one or at most two of them. Typically, I pick Persuasion followed by Deception. Often, depending on what you say, Persuasion can substitute for Intimidation.

If your DM is ok with it, I'd add the Perception skill and drop Intimidation. I'd also consider replacing Sleight of Hand if the DM allows it since it isn't that useful in most games. Opening locks or disarming traps is usually a thieves tools check not Sleight of Hand - Sleight of Hand mostly comes into play picking pockets or trying to hide something using sleight of hand :) ... which hasn't come up that often in my experience.

Perception is one of the most commonly used skills. In addition, Devil's sight is the only way to avoid disadvantage on perception checks in the darkness of the underdark. Every other creature using darkvision has disadvantage on perception checks relying on sight if they don't have a light source. There is a reason why underdark settlements are usually at least dimly lit. Devils sight is a significant advantage in spotting hidden hazards.

As far as invocations - there are far too many useful ones :). Personally, I go with agonizing blast first most of the time though it is somewhat dependent on how much damage the rest of the party does. Repelling blast can be fun and it is situationally useful. However, much of the time, the party is trying to eliminate opponents as quickly as possible. A creature that is alive will have all of its attacks, a creature that is dead does nothing.

Focused fire is the easiest way to achieve this, so much of the time you will likely be attacking the same target as your cleric, barbarian and ranger. In this case, you won't want to be using the repelling blast option to push them 10' away with each hit (you'd likely push them out of the area of spirit guardians for example). Repelling blast shines when you can use it to push a target away from your non-melee party members saving them from having to disengage for example. It can also be especially useful if there are ledges/catwalks/crevasses where a 10' push will send them off the edge. There are a few locations in the underdark that may provide that opportunity but they are relatively limited and the DM may not use them as written if repelling blast would trivialize them (personally, I would them since it would be very cool to let the player ability shine in that circumstance but not all DMs would run it the same).

That said, both Repelling blast and Agonizing blast are good options and repelling blast is certainly more fun when the opportunities to make good use of it come along.

I'd also second the vote for the Eldritch Sight invocation. Casting detect magic at will is extremely useful. Others may be able to ritually cast it but usually they will need to use a slot to prepare it - and they may have better spells to prepare. Also, some DMs are amenable to allowing Eldritch Sight as being always on. Some folks justify this as spending 6 seconds every 10 minutes to recast it but personally, I just house rule it that Eldritch Sight just works unless the warlock is concentrating on something else.

Hopefully, the DM will provide opportunities to pick up some decent ritual spells as you go along. I'm currently running OotA but we just started and I don't know what ritual spells are included in the module.

Finally, with 17 charisma and 13 dex, I would be very tempted to spend your first ASI to increase dex and cha. This will increase most of your skills, increase your spell DC, to hit with eldritch blast, and initiative among other things.

P.S. Good luck :) .. I think the character has lots of potential and lots of ways to contribute to the party. Tome pact in this case will be really useful to the party in the long run if you can find the rituals. (e.g. if you can find Leomund's tiny hut - you will be the only one who can cast it :) ). If the DM will let you swap a couple of skills, you may feel like you will contribute more and there should be opportunities for using those social skills later in the module depending on how the DM runs it.

[Joe the Rat]

Have you hit any of the "cities" yet? There are plenty of social / political opportunities, and a good savvy set of skills can stretch those trade-in resources. But that does depend on how the group is playing. If you've hit Gracklestugh or Blingdenstone with no significant interaction, or met the goblin brothers and kind of rolled on, then that is a sign of the play style of the group or DM.

Talk to the DM about this - see if there will be opportunities to leverage, or else see if you can retrain a proficiency to something more exploration friendly. Int fields - history, religion, and arcana in particular - might be worth loading, esp. if nobody else has it covered.

As an aside, I typically like to leave one of the Influence Trio out on face characters - have a style of interaction they aren't as good at. Be a (relatively) bad liar, bad heavy, or bad fast-talker. You're still sitting at a +3, so it's not like you'd be incompetent, just not as smooth.

[sambojin]

Next level you get another cantrip. Make sure it's something utilitarian like Mage Hand or Minor Illusion. I'd probably go for Mage Hand, but either is fine.

Get Find Familiar in your ritual book ASAP. Even ask if you can swap one of the two you have for it (probably Purify food & drink. You can grab Create Food & Water at 5th LVL if you really need it). Familiars give you a lot to do, both in combat with help actions, and outside of it. Since you've already got it, always ritual cast a Floating Disc into play near the end of every short rest, you may as well (it offers some options, just not great ones.). But yeah, fill that ritual book asap, but mostly for Find Familiar. I don't think you'd really miss either ritual that you've got in there currently. If you could swap both out, for Find Familiar and Detect Magic, I think you'd be far happier with your character.
(Once you've all got some money, and if your DM allows it, get your cleric (and your ranger if they ever learnt any) to scribe you scrolls containing their ritual spells during downtime. "Persuade" them to do it. With gold. That'll give you plenty to play with, and they'll never have to prepare/ learn one again. Essentially, once you get to a city, go on a low-level scroll hunt. Every spellcaster might be a resource for you).

Next level you get a feat. Go for Fey Touched. More spells known and a couple of spare daily slots never hurts, and it'll round out your charsima nicely. Gift of Alacrity or Bless are quite nice options for your lvl1 pick, and Bless frees up your cleric to do other things down the track (SG+SW). Misty Step is never bad as a gtfo spell, even if you usually want to use your slots for something better, being alive is always a good use of resources.
(You could go for Telekinetic if you wanted, and take Minor Illusion for your new cantrip, for a bit of both illusion/ hands-off and combat usage if you wanted to. It's plenty powerful as well. That'll be your bonus action if you're not doing other stuff).

Maybe pick up Spike growth at 4th? Repelling blast + Spike growth is pretty funny, although it is a bit niche. I'd probably just grab Hex though. More combat damage + great social uses + can help grapplers/ any contested check isn't bad. Pushes good charisma into "great" territory, and your Reborn +d6 pb/day for skills, pushes it into "amazing face". It's concentration, but it scales a fair bit too at 5th lvl, pseudo saving your very limited spell slots.

I think between these three/four things, what feels limiting at 3rd lvl, will feel fine as a character to play at 4th lvl.

What sort of Reborn are you? Did you get any cool skills or movement abilities?