At levels 7-8 I make too many spell switches (one is allowed per level of warlock). I would get rid of hex and shatter first, and pick up Fireball, Fly, Hypnotic Pattern and Fear. The other switches can be made later on.
I think keeping hex is honestly fine as you still have 1st level spells to cast it with and when you aren't concentrating on anything else. It's really useful as just a holdover between battles or if you can receiver your spell slots quickly in another way such as having a daolock in your party (single class campaign with warlocks anyone - summoning is really the only field you are missing you can do Hexblade, Fiend, Dao, the new undead [I forget the name] and celestial as a fairly effective party I think]) hex is just a great way to use warlock spells for that as well.
@@moto2442 The thing is you have bless, which is going to be better use of 1st level slot almost every time. Unless you know you're going to be doing an endurance crawl and starved for short rests, hex isn't doing much compared to bless or your better 3rd and 4th level warlock spells. If it's an easier battle I'd with a L1 bless, and if it's tough one I'd start with hypnotic pattern, fireball, fear, or sickening radiance ect.
@@B45710N For me a lot of the value in these vids is seeing what to switch on every level. Does D&DB have a feature to see those changes or does it just display the final build?
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet or not, but because Dark Ones Luck allows you to roll it on an “ability check”, it also lets you use that d10 on a roll for counterspell.
Yes, even if you roll like a 10 on your Cha check to counterspell a 6th lv spell or higher, blow that Dark Ones Own Luck out to make that counterspell meaningful
Treatmonk: "If in doubt, choose thunder. Thunder damage is the least-commonly resisted of all these damage types." Fiendlock: "Anyway, here's thunder wall."
I like the idea of having an ambitious minor lord of hell as a patron, who is only interested in growing their influence and disrupting their rivals in hell rather than bringing evil to the material plane. That way you have really evil-seeming powers but can do whatever you want with them, including (perhaps especially) killing fiends.
That's pretty much how my DM and I came up with my Fiendlock's patron. The patron was an ambitious devil who wanted to climb the ranks of Dispater's court by eliminating everyone else above him, and the bargain he struck with my character was basically, "I'll give you power, and in exchange, you kill my boss so I can take his place. Oh, and I'll be taking ownership of your soul as collateral; you can have it back when you fulfil your end of the bargain." It was basically a win-win situation for my Fiendlock's patron. My character would either succeed and the patron gets a promotion, or my character would fail and the patron gets a soul.
One of my favorite things I've seen to do with Hurl Through Hell is to pick up Mental Prison as your Mystic Arcanum. If the creature fails the save, they take 5d10 psychic, then you EB them and Hurl Through Hell for 10d10 psychic, and because Hurl Through Hell physically removes them from the space Mental Prison does an additional 10d10 psychic.
Sadly I don't believe this works RAW as hurl through hell states 'when you hit a creature with an attack' and mental prison makes them make a saving throw.
@@chrism6315 It takes two rounds unless you have another caster with Mental Prison. Turn 1: Mental Prison, they fail the save, take 5d10 Psychic and are restrained by the spell. Turn 2: Eldritch Blast, on hit Hurl Through Hell for 10d10 Psychic, Mental Prison does an additional 10d10 Psychic, Plus EB damage. You could also take Metamagic Adept for Quicken Spell to do it in one turn.
They are almost never mentioned, but I really like hexbloods for warlocks (I like them for quite a few classes, but anyway). They have an inbuilt message spell, a sort of scrying and once per day hex and disguise self that you can also use with spell slots. That means you’ll not use a pact slot the first time you use hex in a day and you will always have it prepared. Yes, at later levels, you probably don’t want to use your concentration on it, but sometimes you will (additional damage and disadvantage on ability checks could be crippling). Disguise self is also quite useful on someone with good charisma already. I think it is rare you’d need to use it more than once per day (and you could use a pact slot on it if you are desperate).
I agree it's a cool thematic (and mechanically decent) race for a warlock. I actually don't like disguise self on it, but only because one of my favourite invocations is mask of the many faces. Being able to continually change your appearance is so much fun.
The hexblade and warlock base class are poorly designed with one another especially given the fact that the hexblade practically overwrites the base features of the base class (which is why warlocks are only ever hexlock dips). It's also stupid given how untouched Pact of the Blade is. Yes it has good abilities but it's dumb as a 'class'
I love that fiendlock is actually good. It has to be one of my favorite rp classes in the game. It’d be even better if Pact of the Blade granted Charisma on weapon strikes as well. It also gives you a reason to play warlocks other than Hexblade
Oh I agree. Honestly as much of a tax is should give you either medium armor for free or the Unearth Arcana invocation where if you touch an armor you gain proficiency in it for free.
Honestly not getting Resilient (Wisdom) and instead taking Metamagic Adept is an interesting alternative imo. You'll have 5 maximum Sorcerery Points so you can perfectly sacrifice one of your Warlocks for a full top up, in addition you'd make access to Subtle and Heightened spells.
Sickening Radiance is possibly my favorite area effect "damage" spell ... especially if you can (eventually) combine it with Forcecage. That is an encounter-ending combination, no matter how tough the monster is or how many legendary saves it has. Why? Because most DMs, faced with the prospect of making a hundred CON saves for every creature captured within the spell and knowing that out of those hundred, they're basically guaranteed to miss six of them, will simply sigh and give the players the win. ;-)
It is such a degenerate thing to do. I did a LV 20 pvp game as a bard and used it to kill a pure totem barbarian. I had enough spells to continue to the next fight without a rest, of which we were allowed only one of each type, and hadn't even been hurt. This gave me a massive advantage through the rest of the tournament.
Its true but it helps if you know the creatures you're fighting well. DnD beyond shows 24 pages of creatures immune to Exhaustion. But ya if you're sure they aren't immune to Exhaustion its a killer spell
One note in favor of the fighter multiclass; once you pick up Gift of the Ever Living Ones, your Second Wind is automatically a max roll, so your 1 level fighter multiclass, in addition to all the armor and the fighting style, gives you 11 extra HP per short rest. Not a bad bargain.
Perfect timing on this video!! I just hit level 10 on Warlock and we’re taking a break from the campaign. DM’s letting us do some character build swap arounds, so I appreciate all the incredibly helpful advice!
I prefer Pact of the Tome. I would take Find Familiar as a sorcerer spell and change one of the invocations to Book of Ancient Secrets at 3rd level. The world of ritual spells lays at your feet! One of the biggest problems warlocks have is with limited spell availability and castings per short rest; this helps a lot. You should make every effort to add ritual spells to your book.
As mentioned in your Dao Lock video and because you take your builds to 20 I will repost here as well. I can't help but notice that this build is missing the Warcaster feat and am uncertain if anyone else mentioned this or if I missed this in the video but: Under Components - Somatic in PHB: "If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures." Under Components - Materials in PHB: "A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell's material components - or to hold a spellcasting focus - but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components." So while picking up the Moderately Armored feat is nice and all so we can wear medium armor and equip a shield, it cripples the build at higher levels (and possibly earlier) unless you don't ever plan on wielding a staff or rod of the pact keeper (should be fairly common and very helpful for warlockw) while equipped with a shield. Let's say our warlock equips a shield and a rod of the pact keeper or any other spell casting focus in the other hand, you are now unable to cast the following unless you get rid of one or the other: (Spells below were the spells chosen for the build, I'm sure there are other spells but here are the key ones that run into this issue.) - Eldritch Blast (warlock signature spell) - Mage Hand - Prestidigitation - Counter Spell - Dispel Magic - Sickening Radiance - Synaptic Static - Mass Suggestion TL;DR: Unless you never intend to use a spell casting focus while you have a shield equipped you will be unable to cast spells that have a Somatic component as it requires a free hand or Warcaster. (Strangely enough if the spell requires Material and Somatic then you are all good).
Taking Metamagic Adept at Warlock 16 allows for twinning of all pact magic slots at level 20 (with Sorcerer 3.) Illusionist's Bracers are an amazing magic item that makes this better, or makes it unnecessary.
Actually doing what'll be a Fiend Warlock heavy build using a 3 level dip in Zealot Barbarian for added durability and decent melee output. Decided to go Loxodon for the race because that Natural Armor lets me avoid heavy investment in Dexterity while the Trunk lets me grapple while keeping my hands free. Plus, Serenity can come in handy against Fear and Charm
Only issue I see here is how hard it could be to frequently make use of the metamagics with only 3 max sorc points and no slots to spare for making more due to warlock being warlock, but hey, this and the dao build is probably as close as we're getting to making a warlock comparable to a sorc w 2 lvls in warlock witch while sad is something
You might have an extra pact magic slot to convert before/during a short rest, or just get some more 1st level slots back for shield/bless/absorb elements they are running out.
At that level you have 4 pacts slots, and several mystic Arcanum. Say you have 3 fights between short rests, one you win through mass suggestion, one you spend a pact slot for wall of fire, and then use eldritch blast. One you spend 2 pact slots on. That still leaves you with 1 pact slot that can regain your sorcery points before your short rest. Seems pretty realistic to me, that you would be able produce more sorcery points before most short rests. With 3 combats between short rests, that gives you 1 sorcerey point per combat. Also 4 first level and 2 second level sorcerer slots is not nothing. You might want to save some for shield, but you can probably still get another 4-5 points out of that, so you can actually get 1-2 sorcery points per combat. Transmuted spell is probably relevant once per combat for your wall of fire. And the subtle spell is probably also just once per combat, to force 1 good spell through, but there won't be counterspellers in every combat. So 1-2 points per combat, exactly what we get. I know I made a lot of assumptions about short rests and resource expenditure, but at least in some games it won't be a problem.
@@peterrasmussen4428 bro ur using a 5th lvl slot for 3 sorc points... Just no Also ur lucky in most campaigns if you get two short rest IN THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN
@@mirkofraccastoro7573 You are using a 5th level slot you get back on a short rest, just before your short rest. If you spend all of your slots, sometimes you can also get away 2 short rests in a row. If you don't use short rests, yes the build that includes 17 levels of warlock is going to suffer. That being said if you are doing like 2-3 encounters with no short rests, you still have around 2 sorcery points per encounter with your second level spells slots from sorcerer, which should be enough. 2 uncounterable spells at level 20 is huge, these are cheap metamagics, I doubt you will have problems applying them to your important spells.
@@peterrasmussen4428 Good points - and if you really want to focus more on that, you can adapt the build pretty easily in order to grab the metamagic adept feat and/or take your sorc levels beyond 1 earlier. Obviously there are downsides to doing that, but it isn’t a bad idea, just depends on what you want.
I hadn't considered how Eldritch Mind does not have to worry about not taking damage to still have advantage on Saving Throws. I just thought it was similar to War Caster and let it stand there. That's some pretty good stuff.
I know a lot of people think of combat very directly, and a spell like True Polymorph looks like a buff. When I look at it, though, I see an army of allies. I'd be casting TP every single day on whatever objects were at hand, building an army. The list of desirable CR9 and lower creatures is pretty nice. Personally, I think a whole squad of War Priests sounds fun. But there are so many other great options too. Because of this sort of cumulative effect, I'd take it over Foresight 8 days per week.
While not optimal I’ve been working on a Bugbear Bear Totem/Fiend Blade build. I’m thinking 3 lvls Totem and the rest Fiend so in theory I could still get 9th lvl mystic arcanum. Dark One’s blessing would go far on a barbarian and when rages runout I could always revert to darkness/devil’s sight. Dark One’s luck could come in handy for wisdom saves. Meanwhile Fiendish Resiliency could cover Totem’s weakness to psychic damage. And finally the image of a raging Bugbear hitting something so hard that it’s Hurled Through Hell is just awesome.
Starting with Divine Soul is one of very best choices for any full caster, as long as you have another plan to get your AC up. If no other way for AC, I think you need to consider starting Artificer. I like these kind of multiclass starts even better for oneshots or creating a higher level character to start with, where you already have 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th level spells; The 7th and 8th level spells can be very much not worth it for some classes.
I don't recall if it was mentioned when discussing Investment of the Chain Master. Another perk to it is while using the psuedodragon and imp. The saving throw against their poison increases to match your spell save DC.
Scatter can also be used to teleport enemies into lava, other hazards, or just up 120ft into the air for 12d6 fall damage. If you want to really abuse it you can teleport the enemies 120ft above your wall of fire or other aoe concentration so they take fall damage and the spell damage. Warding bond for Sorc lv 3, for a Fiend lock getting temp hp on kills, with a selectable resistance, and getting max hp from heals is pretty amazing. And its castable out of combat and you could take twin spell to double up on healing word you and your warding target.
Fey Touched is best when you use it to get a spell you can't already get. Fiend pact already has access to Command, so wouldn't it be better to use Fey Touched to take something like Gift of Alacrity, Bless/Bane, or maybe even Dissonant Whispers instead?
Gift of alacrity is a great spell and definitely one I would always consider, however if your DM does not want to use the spells found in that book then it’s not an option to you, to be honest I’m not 100% sure how many groups allow things from the wildmount group outside of that campaign setting
I think he may be specifically avoiding Gift of Alacrity because it is not from a core book, so can't be guaranteed on many tables, even those that are more or less fully RAW. Dissonant whispers would be a good choice though, but upcasts much worse than command.
This inspired me to make my first Fiendlock, but I'm definitely going to start as a fighter. I'd go dawrf so I could wear heavy armor even with a low strength score. I'm thinking about playing a fighter who accidentally killed a loved one, so he swore to never carry a weapon again and made a pact with the devil
@@DerexWolfheart You can. The only penalty for not meeting the strength requirement is that you lose 10 feet of movement. But dwarves aren't affected by this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wall of fire isn't see through for the caster, is it? So you couldn't target someone on the other side of it with a grasp of hadar eldritch blast to pull them through it. Pretty sure a 20 foot tall wall gives total cover.
The wall projects fire damage for 10 feet on one side (casters choice) of the wall. I'm assuming Treantmonk meant to push and pull enemies into and out of this area of the spell for the damage effect.
That's the funny thing about Eldritch Blast: it doesn't specify "A creature you can see within range" like Toll The Dead or other cantrips, it specifies "A creature within range". It's even more like an arcane arrow/gunshot than it first seems, because it works like you were shooting an arrow at the target instead of having the usual limitations on magic of requiring you to see the target.
@@jonghyeonlee5877 You are right that they don't have to be able to see the target, but that's not actually the issue I'm referring to. The cover rules specifically states that a target completely concealed has total cover and cannot be directly targeted by attacks or spells. Unless a spell specifically says you can attack something behind cover, which eldritch blast doesn't, it won't override the basic rule. Being unable to see them, like if they are invisible, won't stop you from attacking, it will just make you attack with disadvantage.
@@russellscout4957 Unfortunately, that damage only applies if the creature ends it's turn in that 10 foot area, not if it is moved through it. Treantmonk was specifically describing pulling someone through the wall from the far side. Honestly, I only caught it because he offered this as an option after specifically calling out that if you push someone through the wall they will have to come back through it to target you.
@@1217BC Hmm, I forgot about that. Though I personally think that the opaque wall of Wall of Fire is more like the heavy concealment offered by a Fog Cloud than the total cover provided by a Wall of Stone - as in, it's not actually cover, because things can pass through it, but concealment.
Thinking of the playtest version of the warlock... perhaps have a class feature to allow any spell prepared to be upcast to the highest slot allowable to a full caster, once per short rest.
you cant cheese glyphs of warding with demiplane like that. When you cast this spell, you inscribe a glyph that *harms other creatures*, either upon a surface (such as a table or a section of floor or wall) or within an object that can be closed (such as a book, a scroll, or a treasure chest) to conceal the glyph.
I have a question, how did you get Blindness/Deafness, Shatter, and Mirror Image at Level 3? Wouldn't you have only been able to get 2 of them at that point because you would have been able to swap Burning Hands for Shatter, and gotten either Blindness/Deafness or Mirror Image? In either case, I'm using this as a base for my own fiendlock that I am playing now.
Or any Tiefling, since they get extra spells based on charisma. EDIT: Actually, if you don't mind using the Tasha's stat switch thing, both of the Gith are strong. I think Githyanki are a bit better since they get medium armor and misty step, but the githzerai get shield. I'll say, too, that medium armor without a shield is OKAY, but not great. It basically just makes it where you only have to go 14 in dex instead of higher, but then your dex saves suffer.
@@theeye8276 Hill dwarf is also kinda cool for the hit points + armor, but overall I like half-elf as the alternate race option ... you might not start out with an 18 CHA, but you CAN start out with 16 DEX and CON, which is quite tasty ...
@@shawnpeterson2523 Medium armor without *"A"* shield may not be great, but it beats the stuffing out of light armor. And medium armor with the Shield *spell* is really, really good.
I would love to see you do a video on targeting different saving throws. Are there general rules of thumb for knowing which saving throw to target? If you know which saving throw to target because of perusing the monster manual, is that meta gaming and bad?
I mean, general rules of thumb go like Con: Only good for targeting humanoid casters Wisdom: Blanket passable against most targets, but honestly pretty inconsistent to memorize. Creatures randomly having bonkers wisdom scores isn't as uncommon as you might think. Dexterity: Tends to do better at high levels, since big chonky boss monsters tend to be fatties with basement dexterity. Very unreliable for the bulk of play, though. Str: Awful against most beasts, great against enemy casters and some humanoids, and excels at dealing with some of the more "odd" monsters in the game. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to leverage it. Int: Very very reliable for most encounters, most monsters have abysmal intelligence. Does worse against humanoids, and has a sharp falloff endgame where suddenly everything is packing astronomical intelligence scores. Can be unreliable in the nitty gritty of their own details, though, where really low int creatures may exempt themselves from certain kinds of consequences for failure. Cha: Very inconsistent and hard to evaluate, kinda like Wisdom. Usually better than Wisdom though, which is already pretty good, except like strength, tends to be used more exclusively for control effects. Generally: getting one of Intelligence or Dexterity, and one of Constitution or Wisdom/Cha tends to be a good idea. Intelligence/Con in particular is a very good combo, since very few things have high value in both stats until much much later in levels, like dragons and such. Adding dex as you go up in level rounds it off nicely. Wisdom is generally the most generally reliable and leverage able of the other three, so long as you can and do mentally keep track of which random animals are packing 16+ wisdom for some reason.
The thing that always fucks me up, why the 4 improved familiars are scaling and not all balanced? I'd like to have a sprite that can take more than one hit...
The Quasit is one example where I can see potentially keeping Investment. It raises Scare's DC, you get the fly speed, and it inflicts the poisoned condition with a decent save DC, still invisible most of the time. The only problem is it still dies the moment something even looks at it funny.
It says on Wall of Fire you can cast it on a surface in range- how do you feel about casting it flat on the floor to make a “Floor of Fire?” The wording on the spell of “60ft LONG” and “20ft HIGH” are my only hang ups but then again, in geometry those labels are all entirely subjective..?
Ah, now I see how this multiclass warlock build works in contrast to the full warlock build. I had considered the low attack bonus of familiars, but never fully weighed it. With a pseudodragon or imp it isn't unimaginable that a storyteller might allow you to "milk" them for poison doses, keeping the DC scaling invocation relevant until later levels. Otherwise, I actually had not considered swapping "Investment of the Chain Master" out.
Fighter dip would be much better if pactblade didn't have to wait at later levels to get their most transformative invocations. Action surge is huge for a warlock since getting second and action surge all back on a short rest is baller good when you always want to short rest. Even if it's just to cast a cantrip, action surging twice with eldritch blast isn't a horrible use for early a 3rd warlock and 2nd fighter. Fighting style, invocations second wind, 4 bolts or two second level spells in a turn would be spicy. My pactblade wishes though you didn't have to wait till level seven for extra attack though,
I just made a similar build, but I went with a Lightfoot halfling and pact of the tome. There’s a paladin in the crew that hates fiends but my character is actually lawful good. when he gets scared the fiend takes over combat. I flavour the Eldritch/agonizing/repellent blast that I step through the paladin- blast and I get repelled back through her legs. The direction on the spell selection is much appreciated, I was really struggling with that. One question: would up casting spider climb at levels 6-7 instead of fly so you can bring an ally with you?
Hmm, I would be curious to see your take on a full hexblade build. Or at least 17+ hexblade. So many people just abuse it for the dip capability but I'd love to dig more into how it does at high levels.
It's really potent at damage dealing and defense. It's not as defensive as the current bladesinger builds can be, but it's way up there, and has consistent damage that competes with fighters while having burst that competes with paladins, which is wild, and of course it can benefit from small dips of those
My opinion is the warlock spell slots don't scale well enough. My dm said it's too much but I'd want a warlock to start with 2 spell slots and gain another slot at 6th, 11th, and 16th levels. With this I feel the slot progression is more balanced. I would still keep the slot level progression and only having 2 slots from level 2 to 9 is a way too long.
Depending on whether your DM lets you know spells your racially start with if they are on your spell list... some of the Mordenkainen's Tiefling alternates are pretty tempting. I think Glasya (?) gives you Ray of Frost, Armor of Agathys, and Darkness as racial spells. That is 2 spells from the warlock list expanding your known spells, especially at early levels. And its pretty thematic. If you wanted to be very defensive, tiefling gives you fire resistance to start, and you can take fiendish resilience as a feat for 2 more resistances and a poison condition resistance if I remember correctly? 4 damage resistances and a common condition resistance, that's pretty cool defensively.
I mean, it won’t be a go-to in serious combat, but taking dragon’s breath at Sorc 3 so your imp can fry some minions would be pretty hilarious, and it does upcast well. (Technically by strict RAW it doesn’t break the imp’s invisibility either, though your DM might reasonably rule that it does.) Perhaps less fun and flashy, but I would assume the strongest play at lvl 20 would be to re-take mirror image now that you have 2nd level slots for it thru Sorcerer?
I just realized you could do a Pacifist build with Warlock / Sprite or Psuedodragon / Investment. Just have your sprite needle them and try to knock opponents out. Works for everything that's not immune to poison. Might actually be a good 'Bounty Hunter' type build. Edit: Just realized, too, that running Bless with this means IotCM remains viable longer. And PotC and IotM means you can let your familiar attack twice, if I'm not wrong.
@@NoNamesLeft0102 True there is that but it isn't focused enough on the fiends. It just gives you the same benefits that any other alignment does for the divine soul except fot giving you a spell based off alignment.
Hi Treantmonk! Great work as always, I love your guides. I have a question not directly related to the build: after a while from your initial writing, almost a year and half later, do you stand by your version of Revised Feats? Would you update them with newer content, or allow them in a game together with newer feats from the base system? I'm very interested in building a character based on the Single Handed Weapon Specialist and Tactician feats, that's why I'm asking! Thanks for all your hard work!
You've been talking about forced movement a lot. How about a video clarifying the rules about wich spells/effects will or won't interact with forced movement? JCrawford talks a little about that in the sage advice, and I think spells like Sickening Radiance would not be activated by forced movement. I guess the diference is on the meaning of "when the creature enter's the spell" and "when the creature moves into the spells area", but i'm not sure. How about it, Treantmonk?
Question: If I wanted to play a Tiefling without Custom Lineage, would it be more worthwhile to take Armor or Fey Touched at the first ASI? Fey Touched seems almost mandatory because it gets you free spells and bumps the primary modifier to +4, but being locked at 14AC isn't very good as the game goes on.
For the final few spells - how about Spider Climb and the other low level buff spells? They probably hold up better at high levels than anything that would be resisted by an opponent.
Watching these after watching Treatmonk's homebrew rules for a better game is a mixed bag. "It's boring and against the theme that every character has Shield and that every damn spellcaster runs around in medium armour and wears a shield, so I ban this in my games." "Okay, to optimize the Warlock you take a level of Sorcerer so you can get Shield and by level 4 you should take the Moderately Armoured Feat so you can wear medium armour and use shields." Definitely sending mixed messages here.
Another solid video. You mentioned once in a previous video as an off-hand comment that Circle of Dreams druid would make the best healer. Think you'll explore that? I never see any builds for that subclass.
I hoped to see a non-Hexblade Bladelock. And Fiend is probably one of the best here. Almost all its features add to survivability. Fighter dip for heavy armor. What do you think?
You can't dip for heavy armor after 1st level then you are almost forced to take another level for action surge. At that point you have lost the build and your strength isn't high enough.
@@jameswise8396 Why would 2 levels of fighter make you "lose the build"? And Str should be a priority here, with Cha being secondary, I can't see why you wouldn't have enough of it.
@@antongrigoryev6381 what does strength get you? Heavy armor by putting your eldritch blast 3 levels behind? Spell casting 3 levels behind? He went 15 in 3 stats that matter. Your dex save and initiative will both be negative to maybe get plus one to your AC. Not a good trade by any metric. In my opinion of course.
@@jameswise8396 First of all, Strength gives you the ability to use heavy weapons. As a Bladelock, you need some decent weapons, d8 Rapiers aren't good enough. Also, warlock, especially Bladelock, cares the least about their spellcasting imo. The amount of slots is much more important than the level, and you get the max amount at warlock lvl 2 up until warlock lvl 11 which will likely be at the very end of your campaign. Nevermind that with a build like this you're supposed to focus on spells that aren't dependant on Cha, and those usually aren't very dependant on scaling. And EB isn't delayed at all since it scales off your total level, though you won't be increasing Cha and it won't be fully effective. Would it be a great build? No. But I think it can be done well enough and I'm curious what an experienced optimizer like Treantmonk would think of it.
Be me. Be interested in straight single-class builds. Jump straight to this one after hearing it mentioned in the DaoLock video (just prefers fiends over Jinn for flavor purposes) The Video: "Okay, first thing you wanna do is multi-class." ffs....
I’m confused as to why you take command with fey touched and not as a warlock fiend spell? It’s on there extended spell list. Am I forgetting something?
I notice you always talk about synaptic static over fireball, since psychic damage is more consistent than fire damage. But you're forgetting one of the massive trade offs, which is the >2 Int requirement to effect creatures. Right off the bat this spell has no effect on: Basilisks, Purple Worm, Ankheg, Animated Armor, Giant Spider
It might just be me but i thought you can't cast shield using a shield and an arcane focus without warcaster. In that case that character can't take advantage of the shield spell after 5th level.
Currently trying to go full Feypact Warlock. To try it out. Getting lots of milage out of Sleep. Going with a blade pact for a odd build. Do imps do the backstroke when they swim? These are the real questions lol
Great build and content as always keep it up. Ik it a long shot and might not happen but would you ever build a warlock spell sniper type build thats can hit high and hard ass hell damage and from farther away in sometime in future
This is a solid build that stands up years later. I am also going to try and get this hurl through hell feature before it's switched out in D&D 2024. We'll see how that goes. I like how while the fighter route wasn't taken on the build it was discussed and that let me think that this is how I fix the 13 AC I would normally start with. With Half Plate and a Shield and a defensive fighting style the AC moves to 20. I think that's probably what I'm going to do. Good show. If you ever run out of ideas for character builds I think you could easily take a level 20 character for most classes and do a video. They're useful whenever I need to find them :)
im wondering, how do you generally rule the multiple beams of eldritch blast? I think there are 2 ways that make sense. 1- Simultaneous beams, targets picked before the beams are thrown. Less flexibility, possibility of overkill, but benefits all beams from advantage from being stealth. 2- Separate sequential beams, more flexible, better with forced movement, but if casted from stealth, only the first beam gets advantage.
The same way any sequential attacks from one action would. They're separate attack rolls. You choose a target when you make an attack. They're not Magic Missile which says that they strike simultaneously.
I don't understand why you place so much emphasis on medium armor proficiency. Given your stats, mage armor is just 1 AC less than half plate and anything that's gonna hit you will hit you anyway (but that's what the shield spell is for). Sure you can use a shield but as you eluded to at the end you might want to use a wand or staff. With both hands full you cannot cast a lot of spells without warcaster (which you do not have) including eldritch blast as that's verbal and somatic only.
The moderatly armored feat also gets you shield proficiency. So its +3 and you don't need mage armor, very good deal. It's expensive but playing a spellcaster that can be where they want to be and not stress the support (so they can focus on buffing and supporting the tank and damage dealers), is very useful. If you ever play a cleric the feel of it is so different from other casters starting out, you are just so able to tank with full spellslots, better than many martals until higher levels. Medium armor is a heck of a drug, and combining it with the dodge action wile concentrating on something damaging can be cruel to your oponents.
Some day, I will get to play... Some day, I will not be the DM x) and then! I will finally be able to play a warlock that out legalese's his devilish patron xD
If you're referring to when he was talking about Fighter, he's talking about starting as one. A "dip" can be your starting class, not just a later multiclass.
A very nice build. I am trying to build a Barbarian Warlock right now, which is focused more on the melee combat side of things. I do not know how valuable it its, but the temporary hp as well as the free resistance and non concentration spells like Fire Shield, Armor of Agathys as well as non spell abilites like Eldtrich Smite seem to fit a Barbarian pretty well. I would just cast Armor of Agathys or later on Fire Shield in my first combat round and then walk around as a damage reflecting tank that Eldtrich Smites on crits. For Flavour I would probably go for the Storm Herald Barbarian, Dragonborn as my race and grab the Invoation Cloak of Flies and maybe reflavour it. This Way I would get a Barbarian that is also able to deal with crowds through auras and his breath weapon. Also I could make a completely elemental themed Barbarian (Fire or Ice) with some more options to it this way. The other subclass I am thinking about, which might be much more effective, is Ancestral Guardian for the soft taunt, I would probably start Barbarian till lvl 5 or 6 depending on what I value more and then go straight Warlock.
without doing much math, it looks ok? Rage resist + armor of agathys should give you enough survivability, but the combo would need a lot of levels. Would depend on your table I guess
I made a similar build in a game I played mine was, divine soul sorcerer 1/peace cleric 1/ fiend warlock X, emboldening bond + bless + favored by the gods + dark one's own luck = never fail any saves, I also loved the RP of this character that harnesses the power of both the lower and upper planes.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
At levels 7-8 I make too many spell switches (one is allowed per level of warlock). I would get rid of hex and shatter first, and pick up Fireball, Fly, Hypnotic Pattern and Fear. The other switches can be made later on.
Could you put a link to the build on DnDBeyond please? i like to look at those as a tldr kinda thing.
I think keeping hex is honestly fine as you still have 1st level spells to cast it with and when you aren't concentrating on anything else. It's really useful as just a holdover between battles or if you can receiver your spell slots quickly in another way such as having a daolock in your party (single class campaign with warlocks anyone - summoning is really the only field you are missing you can do Hexblade, Fiend, Dao, the new undead [I forget the name] and celestial as a fairly effective party I think]) hex is just a great way to use warlock spells for that as well.
@@moto2442 The thing is you have bless, which is going to be better use of 1st level slot almost every time. Unless you know you're going to be doing an endurance crawl and starved for short rests, hex isn't doing much compared to bless or your better 3rd and 4th level warlock spells. If it's an easier battle I'd with a L1 bless, and if it's tough one I'd start with hypnotic pattern, fireball, fear, or sickening radiance ect.
@@B45710N For me a lot of the value in these vids is seeing what to switch on every level. Does D&DB have a feature to see those changes or does it just display the final build?
@@VinceOfAllTrades it doesn't show the choices per level but you can get a pretty good idea of how he got there by looking at it
Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet or not, but because Dark Ones Luck allows you to roll it on an “ability check”, it also lets you use that d10 on a roll for counterspell.
Yes, even if you roll like a 10 on your Cha check to counterspell a 6th lv spell or higher, blow that Dark Ones Own Luck out to make that counterspell meaningful
And initiative
Treatmonk: "If in doubt, choose thunder. Thunder damage is the least-commonly resisted of all these damage types."
Fiendlock: "Anyway, here's thunder wall."
Maybe, it's gonna be the one the maims me.
@@Jacob-Day Today is gunna be the day where my spell slots are level two
@@Dinodudematt By now, you shoulda somehow realized that I'll Blast you too
I like the idea of having an ambitious minor lord of hell as a patron, who is only interested in growing their influence and disrupting their rivals in hell rather than bringing evil to the material plane. That way you have really evil-seeming powers but can do whatever you want with them, including (perhaps especially) killing fiends.
That's pretty much how my DM and I came up with my Fiendlock's patron. The patron was an ambitious devil who wanted to climb the ranks of Dispater's court by eliminating everyone else above him, and the bargain he struck with my character was basically, "I'll give you power, and in exchange, you kill my boss so I can take his place. Oh, and I'll be taking ownership of your soul as collateral; you can have it back when you fulfil your end of the bargain."
It was basically a win-win situation for my Fiendlock's patron. My character would either succeed and the patron gets a promotion, or my character would fail and the patron gets a soul.
One of my favorite things I've seen to do with Hurl Through Hell is to pick up Mental Prison as your Mystic Arcanum. If the creature fails the save, they take 5d10 psychic, then you EB them and Hurl Through Hell for 10d10 psychic, and because Hurl Through Hell physically removes them from the space Mental Prison does an additional 10d10 psychic.
Sadly I don't believe this works RAW as hurl through hell states 'when you hit a creature with an attack' and mental prison makes them make a saving throw.
@@chrism6315 It takes two rounds unless you have another caster with Mental Prison.
Turn 1: Mental Prison, they fail the save, take 5d10 Psychic and are restrained by the spell.
Turn 2: Eldritch Blast, on hit Hurl Through Hell for 10d10 Psychic, Mental Prison does an additional 10d10 Psychic, Plus EB damage.
You could also take Metamagic Adept for Quicken Spell to do it in one turn.
@@PiroMunkie ahhh, gotcha. My bad
@@PiroMunkienow you can take meta magic adept for quicken spell and do it all in one round if you're lucky
I understand your reasoning for Command over Bless with Fey Touched. But the irony of casting Bless with a Fiend Warlock would just be so delicious.
Another type of Dark One's Blessing?
I feel like if you get bless from a fiendish source, you should call it “corrupt” or “defile” or “desecrate.”
@@Adurnis I like "Enflame"
They are almost never mentioned, but I really like hexbloods for warlocks (I like them for quite a few classes, but anyway). They have an inbuilt message spell, a sort of scrying and once per day hex and disguise self that you can also use with spell slots. That means you’ll not use a pact slot the first time you use hex in a day and you will always have it prepared. Yes, at later levels, you probably don’t want to use your concentration on it, but sometimes you will (additional damage and disadvantage on ability checks could be crippling). Disguise self is also quite useful on someone with good charisma already. I think it is rare you’d need to use it more than once per day (and you could use a pact slot on it if you are desperate).
I agree it's a cool thematic (and mechanically decent) race for a warlock. I actually don't like disguise self on it, but only because one of my favourite invocations is mask of the many faces. Being able to continually change your appearance is so much fun.
The hexblade and warlock base class are poorly designed with one another especially given the fact that the hexblade practically overwrites the base features of the base class (which is why warlocks are only ever hexlock dips). It's also stupid given how untouched Pact of the Blade is.
Yes it has good abilities but it's dumb as a 'class'
I love that fiendlock is actually good. It has to be one of my favorite rp classes in the game.
It’d be even better if Pact of the Blade granted Charisma on weapon strikes as well.
It also gives you a reason to play warlocks other than Hexblade
Oh I agree. Honestly as much of a tax is should give you either medium armor for free or the Unearth Arcana invocation where if you touch an armor you gain proficiency in it for free.
So does genie!!!!
pact of the blade does grant charisma on weapon strikes...
Honestly not getting Resilient (Wisdom) and instead taking Metamagic Adept is an interesting alternative imo. You'll have 5 maximum Sorcerery Points so you can perfectly sacrifice one of your Warlocks for a full top up, in addition you'd make access to Subtle and Heightened spells.
100% pictured a CSI: Miami-style shades removal and heard a background YEEEEAAAAGGGHHHH after "I guess the devil is in the details"
Sickening Radiance is possibly my favorite area effect "damage" spell ... especially if you can (eventually) combine it with Forcecage. That is an encounter-ending combination, no matter how tough the monster is or how many legendary saves it has. Why? Because most DMs, faced with the prospect of making a hundred CON saves for every creature captured within the spell and knowing that out of those hundred, they're basically guaranteed to miss six of them, will simply sigh and give the players the win. ;-)
It is such a degenerate thing to do.
I did a LV 20 pvp game as a bard and used it to kill a pure totem barbarian.
I had enough spells to continue to the next fight without a rest, of which we were allowed only one of each type, and hadn't even been hurt. This gave me a massive advantage through the rest of the tournament.
Its true but it helps if you know the creatures you're fighting well. DnD beyond shows 24 pages of creatures immune to Exhaustion. But ya if you're sure they aren't immune to Exhaustion its a killer spell
One note in favor of the fighter multiclass; once you pick up Gift of the Ever Living Ones, your Second Wind is automatically a max roll, so your 1 level fighter multiclass, in addition to all the armor and the fighting style, gives you 11 extra HP per short rest. Not a bad bargain.
you forgo getting a free refill of spell slots per day. your spells per day essentially drops from 16 to 12
You have no idea how much I wanted to see this now to find out the thoughts of Fiend warlock I'm playing as.
Perfect timing on this video!! I just hit level 10 on Warlock and we’re taking a break from the campaign. DM’s letting us do some character build swap arounds, so I appreciate all the incredibly helpful advice!
I prefer Pact of the Tome. I would take Find Familiar as a sorcerer spell and change one of the invocations to Book of Ancient Secrets at 3rd level. The world of ritual spells lays at your feet! One of the biggest problems warlocks have is with limited spell availability and castings per short rest; this helps a lot. You should make every effort to add ritual spells to your book.
As mentioned in your Dao Lock video and because you take your builds to 20 I will repost here as well.
I can't help but notice that this build is missing the Warcaster feat and am uncertain if anyone else mentioned this or if I missed this in the video but:
Under Components - Somatic in PHB:
"If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures."
Under Components - Materials in PHB:
"A spellcaster must have a hand free to access a spell's material components - or to hold a spellcasting focus - but it can be the same hand that he or she uses to perform somatic components."
So while picking up the Moderately Armored feat is nice and all so we can wear medium armor and equip a shield, it cripples the build at higher levels (and possibly earlier) unless you don't ever plan on wielding a staff or rod of the pact keeper (should be fairly common and very helpful for warlockw) while equipped with a shield.
Let's say our warlock equips a shield and a rod of the pact keeper or any other spell casting focus in the other hand, you are now unable to cast the following unless you get rid of one or the other:
(Spells below were the spells chosen for the build, I'm sure there are other spells but here are the key ones that run into this issue.)
- Eldritch Blast (warlock signature spell)
- Mage Hand
- Prestidigitation
- Counter Spell
- Dispel Magic
- Sickening Radiance
- Synaptic Static
- Mass Suggestion
TL;DR: Unless you never intend to use a spell casting focus while you have a shield equipped you will be unable to cast spells that have a Somatic component as it requires a free hand or Warcaster. (Strangely enough if the spell requires Material and Somatic then you are all good).
In most cases, you're only ever casting one spell per turn, so nothing really stops you from drawing or stowing your focus as needed.
Taking Metamagic Adept at Warlock 16 allows for twinning of all pact magic slots at level 20 (with Sorcerer 3.) Illusionist's Bracers are an amazing magic item that makes this better, or makes it unnecessary.
I'm really enjoying this content. I'd love to see more warlock builds if you get any more ideas.
As someone who only plays Warlock, I second this comment.
Actually doing what'll be a Fiend Warlock heavy build using a 3 level dip in Zealot Barbarian for added durability and decent melee output. Decided to go Loxodon for the race because that Natural Armor lets me avoid heavy investment in Dexterity while the Trunk lets me grapple while keeping my hands free. Plus, Serenity can come in handy against Fear and Charm
Only issue I see here is how hard it could be to frequently make use of the metamagics with only 3 max sorc points and no slots to spare for making more due to warlock being warlock, but hey, this and the dao build is probably as close as we're getting to making a warlock comparable to a sorc w 2 lvls in warlock witch while sad is something
You might have an extra pact magic slot to convert before/during a short rest, or just get some more 1st level slots back for shield/bless/absorb elements they are running out.
At that level you have 4 pacts slots, and several mystic Arcanum. Say you have 3 fights between short rests, one you win through mass suggestion, one you spend a pact slot for wall of fire, and then use eldritch blast. One you spend 2 pact slots on. That still leaves you with 1 pact slot that can regain your sorcery points before your short rest. Seems pretty realistic to me, that you would be able produce more sorcery points before most short rests. With 3 combats between short rests, that gives you 1 sorcerey point per combat. Also 4 first level and 2 second level sorcerer slots is not nothing. You might want to save some for shield, but you can probably still get another 4-5 points out of that, so you can actually get 1-2 sorcery points per combat.
Transmuted spell is probably relevant once per combat for your wall of fire. And the subtle spell is probably also just once per combat, to force 1 good spell through, but there won't be counterspellers in every combat. So 1-2 points per combat, exactly what we get.
I know I made a lot of assumptions about short rests and resource expenditure, but at least in some games it won't be a problem.
@@peterrasmussen4428 bro ur using a 5th lvl slot for 3 sorc points...
Just no
Also ur lucky in most campaigns if you get two short rest IN THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN
@@mirkofraccastoro7573 You are using a 5th level slot you get back on a short rest, just before your short rest. If you spend all of your slots, sometimes you can also get away 2 short rests in a row.
If you don't use short rests, yes the build that includes 17 levels of warlock is going to suffer.
That being said if you are doing like 2-3 encounters with no short rests, you still have around 2 sorcery points per encounter with your second level spells slots from sorcerer, which should be enough. 2 uncounterable spells at level 20 is huge, these are cheap metamagics, I doubt you will have problems applying them to your important spells.
@@peterrasmussen4428 Good points - and if you really want to focus more on that, you can adapt the build pretty easily in order to grab the metamagic adept feat and/or take your sorc levels beyond 1 earlier.
Obviously there are downsides to doing that, but it isn’t a bad idea, just depends on what you want.
I like the build, just reminded of my issue with the Fiend Pact spell list. Why did the designers include both fire ball and flame strike?
I hadn't considered how Eldritch Mind does not have to worry about not taking damage to still have advantage on Saving Throws.
I just thought it was similar to War Caster and let it stand there.
That's some pretty good stuff.
I know a lot of people think of combat very directly, and a spell like True Polymorph looks like a buff.
When I look at it, though, I see an army of allies. I'd be casting TP every single day on whatever objects were at hand, building an army. The list of desirable CR9 and lower creatures is pretty nice. Personally, I think a whole squad of War Priests sounds fun. But there are so many other great options too.
Because of this sort of cumulative effect, I'd take it over Foresight 8 days per week.
While not optimal I’ve been working on a Bugbear Bear Totem/Fiend Blade build. I’m thinking 3 lvls Totem and the rest Fiend so in theory I could still get 9th lvl mystic arcanum.
Dark One’s blessing would go far on a barbarian and when rages runout I could always revert to darkness/devil’s sight.
Dark One’s luck could come in handy for wisdom saves. Meanwhile Fiendish Resiliency could cover Totem’s weakness to psychic damage. And finally the image of a raging Bugbear hitting something so hard that it’s Hurled Through Hell is just awesome.
I typically dip warlock to 3 to pick up pact boon and increase pact slots to 2nd level.
Starting with Divine Soul is one of very best choices for any full caster, as long as you have another plan to get your AC up. If no other way for AC, I think you need to consider starting Artificer. I like these kind of multiclass starts even better for oneshots or creating a higher level character to start with, where you already have 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th level spells; The 7th and 8th level spells can be very much not worth it for some classes.
I don't recall if it was mentioned when discussing Investment of the Chain Master. Another perk to it is while using the psuedodragon and imp. The saving throw against their poison increases to match your spell save DC.
Scatter can also be used to teleport enemies into lava, other hazards, or just up 120ft into the air for 12d6 fall damage. If you want to really abuse it you can teleport the enemies 120ft above your wall of fire or other aoe concentration so they take fall damage and the spell damage.
Warding bond for Sorc lv 3, for a Fiend lock getting temp hp on kills, with a selectable resistance, and getting max hp from heals is pretty amazing. And its castable out of combat and you could take twin spell to double up on healing word you and your warding target.
you can only teleport the creatures on a space on the ground but lava should be doable
I love this video. I started with a human Fiend Warlock (L3 now) and am hesitant to dip for a Sorcerer level now. Wish I'd have started there!
Fey Touched is best when you use it to get a spell you can't already get. Fiend pact already has access to Command, so wouldn't it be better to use Fey Touched to take something like Gift of Alacrity, Bless/Bane, or maybe even Dissonant Whispers instead?
Yes, youre right.
He chose it because you can cast it for free once per day.
Gift of alacrity is a great spell and definitely one I would always consider, however if your DM does not want to use the spells found in that book then it’s not an option to you, to be honest I’m not 100% sure how many groups allow things from the wildmount group outside of that campaign setting
I think he may be specifically avoiding Gift of Alacrity because it is not from a core book, so can't be guaranteed on many tables, even those that are more or less fully RAW.
Dissonant whispers would be a good choice though, but upcasts much worse than command.
Also Gift of Alacrity is fantastic for Rest Tricking since it lasts 8 hours
This inspired me to make my first Fiendlock, but I'm definitely going to start as a fighter. I'd go dawrf so I could wear heavy armor even with a low strength score. I'm thinking about playing a fighter who accidentally killed a loved one, so he swore to never carry a weapon again and made a pact with the devil
you cant wear heavy armor with a low strength score... chainmail requires 13 str and splint and plate requires 15
@@DerexWolfheart You can. The only penalty for not meeting the strength requirement is that you lose 10 feet of movement. But dwarves aren't affected by this.
Never doubt the Help action while invisible or perhaps delivering a potent touch spell.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wall of fire isn't see through for the caster, is it? So you couldn't target someone on the other side of it with a grasp of hadar eldritch blast to pull them through it. Pretty sure a 20 foot tall wall gives total cover.
The wall projects fire damage for 10 feet on one side (casters choice) of the wall. I'm assuming Treantmonk meant to push and pull enemies into and out of this area of the spell for the damage effect.
That's the funny thing about Eldritch Blast: it doesn't specify "A creature you can see within range" like Toll The Dead or other cantrips, it specifies "A creature within range". It's even more like an arcane arrow/gunshot than it first seems, because it works like you were shooting an arrow at the target instead of having the usual limitations on magic of requiring you to see the target.
@@jonghyeonlee5877 You are right that they don't have to be able to see the target, but that's not actually the issue I'm referring to. The cover rules specifically states that a target completely concealed has total cover and cannot be directly targeted by attacks or spells. Unless a spell specifically says you can attack something behind cover, which eldritch blast doesn't, it won't override the basic rule. Being unable to see them, like if they are invisible, won't stop you from attacking, it will just make you attack with disadvantage.
@@russellscout4957 Unfortunately, that damage only applies if the creature ends it's turn in that 10 foot area, not if it is moved through it. Treantmonk was specifically describing pulling someone through the wall from the far side. Honestly, I only caught it because he offered this as an option after specifically calling out that if you push someone through the wall they will have to come back through it to target you.
@@1217BC Hmm, I forgot about that. Though I personally think that the opaque wall of Wall of Fire is more like the heavy concealment offered by a Fog Cloud than the total cover provided by a Wall of Stone - as in, it's not actually cover, because things can pass through it, but concealment.
Thinking of the playtest version of the warlock... perhaps have a class feature to allow any spell prepared to be upcast to the highest slot allowable to a full caster, once per short rest.
you cant cheese glyphs of warding with demiplane like that.
When you cast this spell, you inscribe a glyph that *harms other creatures*, either upon a surface (such as a table or a section of floor or wall) or within an object that can be closed (such as a book, a scroll, or a treasure chest) to conceal the glyph.
What are your thoughts on being able to hit creatures inside or on the other side of a wall of fire, sice the description says it's an opaque wall?
If that is the case then grasp of Hadar wouldn't be so easy to use for pulling enemies in the wall of fire
If it’s not too similar i would love to see a fathomless build!
I made a grung fathomless guy. He’s pretty funny~ i like frogs :)
I have a question, how did you get Blindness/Deafness, Shatter, and Mirror Image at Level 3? Wouldn't you have only been able to get 2 of them at that point because you would have been able to swap Burning Hands for Shatter, and gotten either Blindness/Deafness or Mirror Image? In either case, I'm using this as a base for my own fiendlock that I am playing now.
Would you consider given some alternate race recommendations for those who dont want to use vhuman/CL every build?
half elf for the extra points, mountain dwarf for the extra points and armor, and tortle for the natural armor are all really good.
Or any Tiefling, since they get extra spells based on charisma.
EDIT: Actually, if you don't mind using the Tasha's stat switch thing, both of the Gith are strong. I think Githyanki are a bit better since they get medium armor and misty step, but the githzerai get shield. I'll say, too, that medium armor without a shield is OKAY, but not great. It basically just makes it where you only have to go 14 in dex instead of higher, but then your dex saves suffer.
Can always take satyrs and yuan ti i guess
@@theeye8276 Hill dwarf is also kinda cool for the hit points + armor, but overall I like half-elf as the alternate race option ... you might not start out with an 18 CHA, but you CAN start out with 16 DEX and CON, which is quite tasty ...
@@shawnpeterson2523 Medium armor without *"A"* shield may not be great, but it beats the stuffing out of light armor. And medium armor with the Shield *spell* is really, really good.
I would love to see you do a video on targeting different saving throws. Are there general rules of thumb for knowing which saving throw to target? If you know which saving throw to target because of perusing the monster manual, is that meta gaming and bad?
I mean, general rules of thumb go like
Con: Only good for targeting humanoid casters
Wisdom: Blanket passable against most targets, but honestly pretty inconsistent to memorize. Creatures randomly having bonkers wisdom scores isn't as uncommon as you might think.
Dexterity: Tends to do better at high levels, since big chonky boss monsters tend to be fatties with basement dexterity. Very unreliable for the bulk of play, though.
Str: Awful against most beasts, great against enemy casters and some humanoids, and excels at dealing with some of the more "odd" monsters in the game. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to leverage it.
Int: Very very reliable for most encounters, most monsters have abysmal intelligence. Does worse against humanoids, and has a sharp falloff endgame where suddenly everything is packing astronomical intelligence scores. Can be unreliable in the nitty gritty of their own details, though, where really low int creatures may exempt themselves from certain kinds of consequences for failure.
Cha: Very inconsistent and hard to evaluate, kinda like Wisdom. Usually better than Wisdom though, which is already pretty good, except like strength, tends to be used more exclusively for control effects.
Generally: getting one of Intelligence or Dexterity, and one of Constitution or Wisdom/Cha tends to be a good idea.
Intelligence/Con in particular is a very good combo, since very few things have high value in both stats until much much later in levels, like dragons and such. Adding dex as you go up in level rounds it off nicely.
Wisdom is generally the most generally reliable and leverage able of the other three, so long as you can and do mentally keep track of which random animals are packing 16+ wisdom for some reason.
The thing that always fucks me up, why the 4 improved familiars are scaling and not all balanced?
I'd like to have a sprite that can take more than one hit...
The Quasit is one example where I can see potentially keeping Investment. It raises Scare's DC, you get the fly speed, and it inflicts the poisoned condition with a decent save DC, still invisible most of the time. The only problem is it still dies the moment something even looks at it funny.
It says on Wall of Fire you can cast it on a surface in range- how do you feel about casting it flat on the floor to make a “Floor of Fire?” The wording on the spell of “60ft LONG” and “20ft HIGH” are my only hang ups but then again, in geometry those labels are all entirely subjective..?
Of course it is up to your DM but that’s an extremely dubious reading of the spell and I would never expect or plan around that being allowed.
So excited for this one 😆
Ah, now I see how this multiclass warlock build works in contrast to the full warlock build. I had considered the low attack bonus of familiars, but never fully weighed it. With a pseudodragon or imp it isn't unimaginable that a storyteller might allow you to "milk" them for poison doses, keeping the DC scaling invocation relevant until later levels. Otherwise, I actually had not considered swapping "Investment of the Chain Master" out.
no.
Fighter dip would be much better if pactblade didn't have to wait at later levels to get their most transformative invocations. Action surge is huge for a warlock since getting second and action surge all back on a short rest is baller good when you always want to short rest.
Even if it's just to cast a cantrip, action surging twice with eldritch blast isn't a horrible use for early a 3rd warlock and 2nd fighter. Fighting style, invocations second wind, 4 bolts or two second level spells in a turn would be spicy. My pactblade wishes though you didn't have to wait till level seven for extra attack though,
I just made a similar build, but I went with a Lightfoot halfling and pact of the tome.
There’s a paladin in the crew that hates fiends but my character is actually lawful good. when he gets scared the fiend takes over combat. I flavour the Eldritch/agonizing/repellent blast that I step through the paladin- blast and I get repelled back through her legs.
The direction on the spell selection is much appreciated, I was really struggling with that.
One question: would up casting spider climb at levels 6-7 instead of fly so you can bring an ally with you?
Such glorious pun names!
I really love the concepts in this build. I can't find the link to the character sheet, did that get removed?
Curious why you switched to screenshots from the screen capture of dndbeyond
Hmm, I would be curious to see your take on a full hexblade build. Or at least 17+ hexblade. So many people just abuse it for the dip capability but I'd love to dig more into how it does at high levels.
It's really potent at damage dealing and defense. It's not as defensive as the current bladesinger builds can be, but it's way up there, and has consistent damage that competes with fighters while having burst that competes with paladins, which is wild, and of course it can benefit from small dips of those
My opinion is the warlock spell slots don't scale well enough. My dm said it's too much but I'd want a warlock to start with 2 spell slots and gain another slot at 6th, 11th, and 16th levels. With this I feel the slot progression is more balanced. I would still keep the slot level progression and only having 2 slots from level 2 to 9 is a way too long.
Depending on whether your DM lets you know spells your racially start with if they are on your spell list... some of the Mordenkainen's Tiefling alternates are pretty tempting. I think Glasya (?) gives you Ray of Frost, Armor of Agathys, and Darkness as racial spells. That is 2 spells from the warlock list expanding your known spells, especially at early levels. And its pretty thematic.
If you wanted to be very defensive, tiefling gives you fire resistance to start, and you can take fiendish resilience as a feat for 2 more resistances and a poison condition resistance if I remember correctly? 4 damage resistances and a common condition resistance, that's pretty cool defensively.
where do you get 4 from, fiendish resilience only lets you add 1 more?
I mean, it won’t be a go-to in serious combat, but taking dragon’s breath at Sorc 3 so your imp can fry some minions would be pretty hilarious, and it does upcast well. (Technically by strict RAW it doesn’t break the imp’s invisibility either, though your DM might reasonably rule that it does.)
Perhaps less fun and flashy, but I would assume the strongest play at lvl 20 would be to re-take mirror image now that you have 2nd level slots for it thru Sorcerer?
There is no link to the build on D&D Beyond.
What would you suggest Treantmonk if you were to use pact of the tome? I see very little guides on that one.
I just realized you could do a Pacifist build with Warlock / Sprite or Psuedodragon / Investment. Just have your sprite needle them and try to knock opponents out. Works for everything that's not immune to poison. Might actually be a good 'Bounty Hunter' type build.
Edit: Just realized, too, that running Bless with this means IotCM remains viable longer. And PotC and IotM means you can let your familiar attack twice, if I'm not wrong.
I don't get how your level 1 sorcerer has a DC 16. How does that work? at 12:01
Hurl through hell: hit someone so hard they go to another dimension.
Unrelated but I wish there were Fiendish Sorcerer bloodlines.
Evil aligned divine soul. Your ancestor was a fiend
@@NoNamesLeft0102 True there is that but it isn't focused enough on the fiends. It just gives you the same benefits that any other alignment does for the divine soul except fot giving you a spell based off alignment.
Hi Treantmonk! Great work as always, I love your guides. I have a question not directly related to the build: after a while from your initial writing, almost a year and half later, do you stand by your version of Revised Feats? Would you update them with newer content, or allow them in a game together with newer feats from the base system? I'm very interested in building a character based on the Single Handed Weapon Specialist and Tactician feats, that's why I'm asking! Thanks for all your hard work!
I like the revised feats, well pondered. Be interesting to see what the 2024 updates do.
@@samuelbroad11 I also like them quite a lot, but I'd probably be mixing them with newer feat options and I was wondering if they were compatible
I think you might have forgotten to link the build in the description.
This build is very...
Just, clean, you know
You've been talking about forced movement a lot. How about a video clarifying the rules about wich spells/effects will or won't interact with forced movement?
JCrawford talks a little about that in the sage advice, and I think spells like Sickening Radiance would not be activated by forced movement. I guess the diference is on the meaning of "when the creature enter's the spell" and "when the creature moves into the spells area", but i'm not sure. How about it, Treantmonk?
Question: If I wanted to play a Tiefling without Custom Lineage, would it be more worthwhile to take Armor or Fey Touched at the first ASI? Fey Touched seems almost mandatory because it gets you free spells and bumps the primary modifier to +4, but being locked at 14AC isn't very good as the game goes on.
For the final few spells - how about Spider Climb and the other low level buff spells? They probably hold up better at high levels than anything that would be resisted by an opponent.
Watching these after watching Treatmonk's homebrew rules for a better game is a mixed bag.
"It's boring and against the theme that every character has Shield and that every damn spellcaster runs around in medium armour and wears a shield, so I ban this in my games."
"Okay, to optimize the Warlock you take a level of Sorcerer so you can get Shield and by level 4 you should take the Moderately Armoured Feat so you can wear medium armour and use shields."
Definitely sending mixed messages here.
Isn't Spell Sniper feat any good? Never seen anyone adding to a build
Another solid video. You mentioned once in a previous video as an off-hand comment that Circle of Dreams druid would make the best healer. Think you'll explore that? I never see any builds for that subclass.
Love your videos!
Just realized the build isn't in the video description lol.
I hoped to see a non-Hexblade Bladelock. And Fiend is probably one of the best here. Almost all its features add to survivability. Fighter dip for heavy armor. What do you think?
You can't dip for heavy armor after 1st level then you are almost forced to take another level for action surge. At that point you have lost the build and your strength isn't high enough.
Do tortle and make up for being a mad warlock by dumbing dex.
@@jameswise8396 Why would 2 levels of fighter make you "lose the build"? And Str should be a priority here, with Cha being secondary, I can't see why you wouldn't have enough of it.
@@antongrigoryev6381 what does strength get you? Heavy armor by putting your eldritch blast 3 levels behind? Spell casting 3 levels behind? He went 15 in 3 stats that matter. Your dex save and initiative will both be negative to maybe get plus one to your AC. Not a good trade by any metric. In my opinion of course.
@@jameswise8396 First of all, Strength gives you the ability to use heavy weapons. As a Bladelock, you need some decent weapons, d8 Rapiers aren't good enough. Also, warlock, especially Bladelock, cares the least about their spellcasting imo. The amount of slots is much more important than the level, and you get the max amount at warlock lvl 2 up until warlock lvl 11 which will likely be at the very end of your campaign. Nevermind that with a build like this you're supposed to focus on spells that aren't dependant on Cha, and those usually aren't very dependant on scaling. And EB isn't delayed at all since it scales off your total level, though you won't be increasing Cha and it won't be fully effective.
Would it be a great build? No. But I think it can be done well enough and I'm curious what an experienced optimizer like Treantmonk would think of it.
Be me.
Be interested in straight single-class builds.
Jump straight to this one after hearing it mentioned in the DaoLock video (just prefers fiends over Jinn for flavor purposes)
The Video: "Okay, first thing you wanna do is multi-class."
ffs....
I’m confused as to why you take command with fey touched and not as a warlock fiend spell? It’s on there extended spell list. Am I forgetting something?
Hey, any chances you’d make a optimized celestial warlock build? New to the channel.
I wonder if there is a point where to take sorcerer 2 or 3 before level 18?
Would 1 level Divine Soul still be an optimal choice if one wanted to go Celestial Warlock all the way after?
Curious why you never use Half Drow for a Warlock Build. Is it because of the feats at earlier levels?
Heck yeah
I notice you always talk about synaptic static over fireball, since psychic damage is more consistent than fire damage.
But you're forgetting one of the massive trade offs, which is the >2 Int requirement to effect creatures.
Right off the bat this spell has no effect on:
Basilisks, Purple Worm, Ankheg, Animated Armor, Giant Spider
favored by the gods is clutch in multiple situations
It might just be me but i thought you can't cast shield using a shield and an arcane focus without warcaster. In that case that character can't take advantage of the shield spell after 5th level.
Currently trying to go full Feypact Warlock. To try it out. Getting lots of milage out of Sleep. Going with a blade pact for a odd build.
Do imps do the backstroke when they swim? These are the real questions lol
Great build and content as always keep it up. Ik it a long shot and might not happen but would you ever build a warlock spell sniper type build thats can hit high and hard ass hell damage and from farther away in sometime in future
This is a solid build that stands up years later. I am also going to try and get this hurl through hell feature before it's switched out in D&D 2024. We'll see how that goes. I like how while the fighter route wasn't taken on the build it was discussed and that let me think that this is how I fix the 13 AC I would normally start with. With Half Plate and a Shield and a defensive fighting style the AC moves to 20. I think that's probably what I'm going to do. Good show. If you ever run out of ideas for character builds I think you could easily take a level 20 character for most classes and do a video. They're useful whenever I need to find them :)
Is it only me who can't find the link to the fiendlock on dndbeyond?
im wondering, how do you generally rule the multiple beams of eldritch blast? I think there are 2 ways that make sense. 1- Simultaneous beams, targets picked before the beams are thrown. Less flexibility, possibility of overkill, but benefits all beams from advantage from being stealth. 2- Separate sequential beams, more flexible, better with forced movement, but if casted from stealth, only the first beam gets advantage.
The same way any sequential attacks from one action would. They're separate attack rolls. You choose a target when you make an attack. They're not Magic Missile which says that they strike simultaneously.
I don't understand why you place so much emphasis on medium armor proficiency. Given your stats, mage armor is just 1 AC less than half plate and anything that's gonna hit you will hit you anyway (but that's what the shield spell is for). Sure you can use a shield but as you eluded to at the end you might want to use a wand or staff. With both hands full you cannot cast a lot of spells without warcaster (which you do not have) including eldritch blast as that's verbal and somatic only.
The moderatly armored feat also gets you shield proficiency. So its +3 and you don't need mage armor, very good deal. It's expensive but playing a spellcaster that can be where they want to be and not stress the support (so they can focus on buffing and supporting the tank and damage dealers), is very useful. If you ever play a cleric the feel of it is so different from other casters starting out, you are just so able to tank with full spellslots, better than many martals until higher levels. Medium armor is a heck of a drug, and combining it with the dodge action wile concentrating on something damaging can be cruel to your oponents.
you have 4 slots until like 14th level, you do not want to use them on mage armor, having armor that is active all of the time is essential
I got goosebumps when you said "I guess the devil is in the details"
Have you considered making the worst build you think possible? (Other than straight class monk)
Worst seems like it would be really hard to define.
Was there supposed to be a link to this specific character in the video description? My eyes aren't catching it.
main reason to go straight warlock... you're playing a module like LMoP and it only goes to level 4
Some day, I will get to play... Some day, I will not be the DM x) and then! I will finally be able to play a warlock that out legalese's his devilish patron xD
If you could make an optimized GooLock build that would make me just the happiest little lunatic.
He has done one on his channel already 😎
Just search for his name and the great old one in youtube 👍
I agree with a lot but there are some things i would do differently
My understanding is that you don’t get new saving throw proficiencies with multiclassing.
If you're referring to when he was talking about Fighter, he's talking about starting as one. A "dip" can be your starting class, not just a later multiclass.
@@AnaseSkyrider been long enough that I forgot, honestly.
A very nice build.
I am trying to build a Barbarian Warlock right now, which is focused more on the melee combat side of things. I do not know how valuable it its, but the temporary hp as well as the free resistance and non concentration spells like Fire Shield, Armor of Agathys as well as non spell abilites like Eldtrich Smite seem to fit a Barbarian pretty well. I would just cast Armor of Agathys or later on Fire Shield in my first combat round and then walk around as a damage reflecting tank that Eldtrich Smites on crits.
For Flavour I would probably go for the Storm Herald Barbarian, Dragonborn as my race and grab the Invoation Cloak of Flies and maybe reflavour it. This Way I would get a Barbarian that is also able to deal with crowds through auras and his breath weapon. Also I could make a completely elemental themed Barbarian (Fire or Ice) with some more options to it this way. The other subclass I am thinking about, which might be much more effective, is Ancestral Guardian for the soft taunt, I would probably start Barbarian till lvl 5 or 6 depending on what I value more and then go straight Warlock.
without doing much math, it looks ok? Rage resist + armor of agathys should give you enough survivability, but the combo would need a lot of levels. Would depend on your table I guess
Devil in the details hehe
Well what if I take two lvls of Paladin as a half orc?😳
I made a similar build in a game I played mine was, divine soul sorcerer 1/peace cleric 1/ fiend warlock X, emboldening bond + bless + favored by the gods + dark one's own luck = never fail any saves, I also loved the RP of this character that harnesses the power of both the lower and upper planes.