Undead patron warlock

[Morrison]

So I just saw the Undead warlock patron in Unearthed Arcana and now I want to make one, but I can't find any builds or advice for it online. Just people arguing over the Undying patron and whether it's completely useless or only mostly useless.

Undead looks a little tankier than most warlocks, but doesn't have the obvious melee edge the Hexblade does with its armour proficiencies and use of Charisma on attack and damage rolls.

So I have to ask: what is the Undead warlock good at?

[Jerrykhor]

Theres two things that stand out as overtuned in the Undead warlock UA, which is the level 1 Frighten spam and double damage Eldritch Blast beams. Other than that, its a good upgrade to a very poor subclass, which is not hard to do.

[Morrison]

Theres two things that stand out as overtuned in the Undead warlock UA, which is the level 1 Frighten spam and double damage Eldritch Blast beams. Other than that, its a good upgrade to a very poor subclass, which is not hard to do.

So it would probably be best as another Eldritch Blast-reliant ranged attacker? I feel like that wastes a lot of its abilities, although being a little bit less squishy isn't that bad a thing. I guess that's kind of cool.

[Jerrykhor]

So it would probably be best as another Eldritch Blast-reliant ranged attacker? I feel like that wastes a lot of its abilities, although being a little bit less squishy isn't that bad a thing. I guess that's kind of cool.

Well, you could take Pact of the Blade and use a Greataxe and do 2d12 necrotic damage, but without Hexblades goodies, you'd be a rather weak melee fighter, not to mention its very MAD.

[Morrison]

Well, you could take Pact of the Blade and use a Greataxe and do 2d12 necrotic damage, but without Hexblades goodies, you'd be a rather weak melee fighter, not to mention its very MAD.

Yeah, I feel like if I'm going Pact of the Blade there seems to be no reason to ever not go Hexblade. Undead seems like it might make a decent ranged DPS though.

[Vogie]

You can do the typical melee 'lock thing, of starting with a single level of fighter for the martial and armor proficiencies.

If you want to go melee, ideally you'd want 7 levels of Conquest paladin, turning your free frightens into a grapple aura.

If you wanted to be an archery-focused 'lock, and avoid the Madness by having minimal charisma, and then mixing it with 6 levels of Kensei monk to essentially keep tacking on additional dice. That way a typical longbow shot in the form of dread will be 2d8 + d6 + d4 + Dex + 1 , plus the occasional Eldritch Smite.

[cutlery]

The bonus damage die (note, so an additional 1d10, not double charisma bonus from agonizing blast) from Form of the dead/grave touched is roughly comparable to hexblade's curse (+ 5.5 damage instead of +3.5 and wider crit range), the big weirdness is that you can use the form up to proficiency bonus per long rest; Hexblade's curse is once per short rest.

I think it's not that bad, given how often warlocks are dependent on short rests.

The temp hp isn't that exciting (especially compared to the fiend's dripfeed of temp hp). The healing with necrotic damage later is, though - especially if you take horrid wilting as your level 8 arcanum - dropping that and healing for half of 12d8 if something fails its safe (or 1/4 of 12d8 if nothing fails) is pretty neat. Horrid wilting is on the warlock list in the Class Feature Variants UA.

Mortal husk is amusing, but doesn't mesh well with spirit projection.


I'd probably build a blaster much like I'd build a fiend warlock. Tome, BoAS for shillelagh, and GFB/BB for when melee is unavoidable, but much like the fiend warlock you aren't really a damage sponge, just a bit more of a damage sponge than, say, a sorcerer.

[Morrison]

The bonus damage die (note, so an additional 1d10, not double charisma bonus from agonizing blast) from Form of the dead/grave touched is roughly comparable to hexblade's curse (+ 5.5 damage instead of +3.5 and wider crit range), the big weirdness is that you can use the form up to proficiency bonus per long rest; Hexblade's curse is once per short rest.

I think it's not that bad, given how often warlocks are dependent on short rests.

The temp hp isn't that exciting (especially compared to the fiend's dripfeed of temp hp). The healing with necrotic damage later is, though - especially if you take horrid wilting as your level 8 arcanum - dropping that and healing for half of 12d8 if something fails its safe (or 1/4 of 12d8 if nothing fails) is pretty neat. Horrid wilting is on the warlock list in the Class Feature Variants UA.

Mortal husk is amusing, but doesn't mesh well with spirit projection.


I'd probably build a blaster much like I'd build a fiend warlock. Tome, BoAS for shillelagh, and GFB/BB for when melee is unavoidable, but much like the fiend warlock you aren't really a damage sponge, just a bit more of a damage sponge than, say, a sorcerer.

I was really envisioning this character mostly as a melee guy. If I do maybe a one-level dip in Fighter, and then go Pact of the Tome and Book of Arcane Secrets, and then leaned heavily into Shillelagh and/or Booming Blade, stacking with my Grave-Touched/Form of Dread damage bonus, is there any way to make that an effective melee striker?
Shillelagh would let me add Charisma to attack and damage rolls, but would also limit me to the miserable damage dice of a club or quarterstaff. If I don't bother with Shillelagh, then I end up with a very MAD build. I don't see a way to make this work without just building a regular old Hexblade, which is thematically not too far off from Undead anyway.

[Morrison]

If you want to go melee, ideally you'd want 7 levels of Conquest paladin, turning your free frightens into a grapple aura.

I don't think we'll be high enough character level to make that feasible. Plus this character is actually not supposed to be evil, and I wasn't really envisioning him as a heavily-armoured tank, either.

[x3n0n]

I was really envisioning this character mostly as a melee guy. If I do maybe a one-level dip in Fighter, and then go Pact of the Tome and Book of Arcane Secrets, and then leaned heavily into Shillelagh and/or Booming Blade, stacking with my Grave-Touched/Form of Dread damage bonus, is there any way to make that an effective melee striker?
Shillelagh would let me add Charisma to attack and damage rolls, but would also limit me to the miserable damage dice of a club or quarterstaff. If I don't bother with Shillelagh, then I end up with a very MAD build. I don't see a way to make this work without just building a regular old Hexblade, which is thematically not too far off from Undead anyway.

FWIW, Shillelagh automatically changes your die to d8, regardless of club vs quarterstaff; that puts you squarely in rapier territory. You won't get Extra Attack or Thirsting Blade, but d8 + Booming Blade is close, and Book of Ancient Secrets gets you Find Familiar for frequent advantage (typically via owl flyby Help actions).

That said, if you don't dig the "magical club" vibe, then it wouldn't be fun. :)

[cutlery]

I was really envisioning this character mostly as a melee guy. If I do maybe a one-level dip in Fighter, and then go Pact of the Tome and Book of Arcane Secrets, and then leaned heavily into Shillelagh and/or Booming Blade, stacking with my Grave-Touched/Form of Dread damage bonus, is there any way to make that an effective melee striker?

No; your damage will be outpaced by eldritch blast (w/ agonizing blast) by tier 2. EB will also be more reliable, as two attack rolls mean you have a better chance of at least applying some damage. The gravetouched damage bonus is increased with EB, too, as each EB bolt is one more dose of that damage. GFB/BB don't add it - so it's just like hex and hexblade's curse in that regard.

Shillelagh and bb or gfb fall behind two attacks pretty quickly if you can't use the riders (and you can't, always). If you want to maximize melee damage with grave-touched/form, you need to take pact of the blade and get an extra attack; you'd also need to go polearm master to get a bonus action 1d4 attack with a quarterstaff (which will get the grave/form damage bonus as well as lifedrinker at 12).

You'll roughly keep pace with EB spam until level 17, and then lose out again by a few points. The difference isn't huge, but it takes two invocations, a pact, and a feat (as well as regular use of your bonus action) to keep up with EB.

I have a lock at 5 now with Shillelagh, BB/GFB, and a magic with bonus 1d6 damage. EB+AB beats it, especially if I apply hex.

Melee: 1d8+5+1d6 + 1d8 (BB) = 18.5
Eldritch Blast: 1d8+5 + 1d8+5 = 19

Melee gets one chance to deal hex damage (so +3.5), EB gets two ( +7). It's only even remotely close because I have a magic quarterstaff; and EB will outpace it quickly without additional attacks.

[Morrison]

Thought not. Okay, back to the drawing board.
What I'm really going for is a kind of sneaky, hard-hitting holy character along the lines of 4E's Avenger or Pathfinder's Inquisitor, ideally with some thematic connection to the undead and/or shadow plane. Hexblade seems like an obvious choice. I've also looked at the Oath of Vengeance Paladin, but that one seems to be built mostly for heavy armour and pole arms, which I'm not really seeing for this character.