The Ultimate Guide to Warlocks in D&D 5e: Pacts and Eldritch Invocations

Aspect of the Moon. Great way to have your Warlock be the one to stay up all night & keep watch

I always grab fiendish vigor at level 2. Up to level 5 those extra temporary hitpoints will mater a lot (and usually replace it with tomb of levistus at 5 for the oh shit moments).

I would argue that agonizing blast and repelling blast are better for Warlock builds but others are better for dips.

Can a warlock use 2 invocations on the same spell. Can I use agonizing blast and repelling blast on the same Aldridge blast.

Is Mask of Many Faces any good from an optimisation perspective?

Haha "or even uuhhh roleplaying..."

Pact of the Tome is my favorite. I love playing utility based warlocks and love having a cantrip prepared for every situation. You can get pretty creative with your use of cantrips.

Hey Kobold, I don't know if you heard but in the Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter, there is a stretch goal that got unlocked that will include a linguistic guide to speaking the Draconic language. They are going to hire a linguist to create the language. If it's available to you when it's created, will you do a "How to Speak Draconic" video? I think it would be great. Thanks.

One thing you didn’t cover in the video is the optimization aspect of the invocations that give per long rest spells. I specifically want to know if things like Mire the Mind, Bewitching Whispers, Dreadful Word, or Minions of Chaos are worth it. Love your vids.

This came at the perfect time, currently building my first Warlock for a one shot

I recently had a homebrew idea where Warlocks get 1 free casting of each of their Patrons spells once per long rest. I might change it if we start playing and it feels too unbalanced

ok so... warlock 5 (doesnt matter the type, though maybe hexblade cuz charisma will be one of your two focus stats), swarmkeeper ranger 3, arcane archer 11.

for the warlock take pact of the blade with improved pact, eldritch smite, and agonizing blast.
for the ranger fighting style take archery
for the warrior fighting style take Superior Technique (get a battle manuver).

take the Martial Adept feat (two more battle manuvers)
grab crossbow expert, sharpshooter, spell sniper, and warcaster when available.

focus on dex and charisma (though you'll need a 13 wis).

enjoy?

The wide range of eldrich invocations is why I really love the UA warlock as it gives you the choice to go for a even more invocation stacking to make warlocks closer to the monsters they made a pact with! Your free to combine more powerful always on invocations vs a single use higher level spell to build your warlock into something really unique vs the typical eldrich cannon or hexblade. Your walock could have always on truesight, devil sight, eyes of the rune keeper, witch sight and at will alter self, speak with dead, false life, disguise self, levitate, invisibility, arcane eye....and your pact! Sure you might not have as many higher level spells but when you can combine this with feats like eldrich adapt, alert, actor, telepathic and telekenetic plus ritual casting and medium armor your no longer a spellcaster - you're a BBEG!

Additional boon with investment of the chain master say you get a magic item that has a set dc that's lower than your spell save dc it would get upgraded to your dc if your familiar uses it

My personal favorite warlock combo is pact of the chain and flock of familiars to get a swarm of say imps to deal so good damage that can debuff as well

I love Warlocks so much, they're an amazing class to play in full, and an amazing class to multi class with

A reminder to anyone reading this: Warlock 2 Sorcerer 3 is an amazing base to build either a warlock or sorcerer off of as it gives you access to, for example, EB + quickened EB. That both classes scale off CHA just sweetens the deal. It also allows sorcerers to get partial benefit from rod of the pact keeper.

Edited because I dyslexia’d the two numbers.

Thirsting Blade should just straight up be Extra Attack, so that it works with Shadow Blade.

I played a warlock who used silent image to summon a rotating banana

Pact of the Tome: an often overlooked Cantrip to grab is Primal Savagery. It only has somatic components, so you can cast it inside a silence bubble

Pact tactics

Edit: dammit. You already thought of it

kobold what happened to pathfinder :( I was looking forward to it

Awww no talk about Eyes of the Runekeeper :(

Thank you for your information video

Yes. Gator Land!

now we all are ager to see the video of building Gatorland . . .

I played a Warlock, including rebuilding them from Pact of the Blade to Pact of the Tome. I was new and by level 5-6 I figured out melee sucked. lol I didn't have Tasha's or Xanathar's, so no Hexblade meant I was MAD with Str/Char/Con. I learned a LOT. Fortunately, DM let me switch. Ritual Casting and a magic staff with daily charges really saved my play experience and sold me on D&D. Suddenly, I had a shield and between at-will spells, rituals and cantrips, I always had things to do. Charisma let me become a face outside of combat, Find Familiar let me start scouting safely and being the party's only source of Identify and Rary's Telepathic Bond meant I was constantly ritual casting, solving problems, speaking for the group and still held up in combat with the Eldritch Blast baseline. That said, if your party already has a Wizard covering ritual casting or even moderately optimized strikers, you're going to start feeling weak pretty fast, especially if you struggle to get short rests. Warlock really is about picking them for the right party and right table, and customizing them to fit that situation. I don't think they're a one-size-fits-all class like Wizard, Cleric or Paladin. But in the right situation, they can really shine.

I love warlocks. I wanna try that space control variant.

Warlocks go BRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Investment of the Chain master is insane for milking a Pseudodragon goddamn. DC 11? Pretty whatever, most enemies are going to shrug that away. Your Save DC? Pretty damn reliable

I think warlock should be a wizard subclass.

-Go Pact of the Chain
-Take Voices of the Chain Master
-Take the Actor feat
-Have your Imp familiar go invisible and listen in on someone important (Guard captain, noble, etc)
-Mimic the persons voice while speaking through your invisible imp
-Confuse everyone around you

I'd also recommend some of the new pact of the tome Invocations. One gives you at will Sending spell via your book. Another allows you to give your whole team a feature like the half orcs relentless endurance. They both help the tome to feel more central to your characters powers.

I think that Tomb of Levistus is bad mostly because it'll only save you from one attack, on top of skipping your turn, so if an enemy can shove or knock you prone during it, you'll be prone on said enemy's next turn. It depends on what your party composition though.

You get better ritual casting than any other class because you're not limited by class list for rituals.

Fiendish vigor is super underrated lvl2-4. Its better than repelling blast at those levels and combines very well with hexblade or martial warlocks. Better than barbarian hitpoints at lvl2

Speaking of the Magic Weapon workaround, I recently discovered that this should, by all rights, work with a Dhampir's Bite attack. Since your teeth are counted as a weapon, cast Magic Weapon on them and immediately start your ritual as part of a short rest. Once complete, dismiss your teeth into an extradimensional space, and summon them back to cause them to gain the benefit of Improved Pact Weapon. You now have +1 magic teeth and can cast spells out of them.

Familiars of the chain are very usefull if you equip them wtih magic items. With invest of the chain master, an imp can throw magic missiles with a wand by using your bonus action (Or even without it if your dm rules the use of magic items as "Us an item" action and not an "attack" action). If you get a righ of spell storing your familiar can become a caster, be it with 1-2 of your high level spells, or with spells from your team. Any type of magic item that works regardles of if the user is a caster or not is a great adition to the chain familiar.
If for some stupid reason your DM gives you multiple wands of magic missile your familiar becomes a turret.

Yeah tell me about them invocations

Any build which relies on DM interpretation is worthle...Oh wait you have *pizza*? All good then!

Gator land !

I'm playing a Warlock without Eldritch Blast just to prove that it's not necessary to be effective.

So far I am proving correct.

Can the bag pipes be turned down?

Pretty sure that both the pact weapon and the fists are Turned off by anti magic field via similar issues to the as if u were concentrating on a spell thing reason why barbs can't use favored foe raw.

kobold no, youre dooming the warlock again!!

i really don't like that some many invocations are there only to make things viable
if you don't take them (and there are a lot of them) you will be almost useless,
imagine a pact of the blade warlock without thirsting blade

the one dnd warlock takes away so much of the cool and unique things of warlock, they can be a very odd specialist but the new one is a lesser version of other classes

Since this video has been released wizard will now update the warlock.

I might have missed it, but i didnt hear far-scribe. Unlimited sending as long as you have the recipient's signature.