Baldur's Gate 3 - Striker/Face Warlock - Class Guide

hello and welcome everyone my name is balko and we are doing another quick start guide this time looking at the Warlock right off the bat I just want to say thank you so much for the support as uh recording this video I'm just shy of 1 000 Subs on the channel and that has been amazing so if you like this feel free to thumbs up comment or sub and that will help me out a lot I am aiming for that 1000 sub goal and I'm almost there thanks to your support so without any further Ado let's talk about the Warlock so right away I'm going to frame this discussion as all my class discussions around what role this class can fill in a party so right off the bat the Warlock is probably most famously known as a striker so this is a type of character that will do single Target damage and eliminate Targets in combat and mostly this comes from the signature ability Eldritch blast this is an incredibly powerful can trip and it scales very well with character level not just class level which also makes warlocks a very popular multi-classing dip but at the level 2 you do get access to an invocation called agonizing blast which lets it scale with your charisma in terms of damage so this gives warlock a pretty standard damage progression so Striker is obviously a clear role they can fulfill and with their spells and other invocations they actually have quite a bit of Versatility outside of combat and even in combat they can take options to be a bit more of a controller they can take options to be a bit of a blaster they make decent skirmishers and front lines and outside of combat they absolutely can play that sort of scout and face roll so they still have quite a bit of utility outside of combat and there are tons of fun invocations to play around with and larian has done a great job of putting so many little details in the game and warlock is a fantastic class to play around with if you're interested in seeing some of those little sneaky bits so right away I'm just going to talk about a build that I would recommend and some of the choices I would make and then let you make your own choices with your warlock so with that out of the way let's get into the backgrounds I'm picking a background that has a Proficiency in Persuasion specifically because as a charisma-based class it's important to well I want to be the party face also because it's the the Tav character um I want a character that's going to be leading conversations that's sort of my character and so I I tend to pick or tend to lean towards backgrounds that are going to give me that bonus in Persuasion so there's a couple of options you can take Artisan or Noble to get this one is going to give you history the other one is going to give you Insight Insight is probably also going to be a little bit more useful within those conversations despite our low wisdom score so I'm still gonna grab that and then based on the class skills I can pick up deception and intimidation which gives me the entire Suite of face skills which is going to be really useful in terms of the race for this build obviously you have to go with a drought I mean come launch when we can play around with any particular ability scores we want chiefling is absolutely fantastic as well very flavorful and there's plenty of fantastic race combinations and there's some very interesting uh combinations that you can come up with as well but for me flavorfully I I think a drow warlock seems cool and in the Early Access client they do give me the ability scores that I want in order for starting out my abilities so before we get into anything else let's talk about those abilities this is very similar to what you probably have seen if you've seen my Bard video this is a sort of standard array I like to build around with so two 16s a 14 two tens and an eight with dexterity and charisma getting the 16s I also have people tell me that uh and have reminded me that you can bump up your starting career meant to something like a 17 because you could take a half a feet which is something that you can take at level four instead of a ability score increase so there's a few Feats available that'll give you a plus one to Charisma and then a few other bonuses and things like that so if you are planning ahead and you want to take a half feet absolutely that's something you can do without any spoilers larion also has various items within the game that can mix and match ability scores around a little bit so don't feel too too much like you've made a mistake by you know taking certain ability scores the main takeaway you want to have whenever you're making any character is you want at least that plus three at level one and you want a plan for getting to plus four by level four for most classes in terms of like maintaining Peak efficiency with your attack rolls and damage rolls so looking at whatever the main stat your character is going to have and for a warlock we're going to be using our Charisma for both our casting and so far damage and for our skill checks in terms of being a party face obviously dexterity as I've mentioned many times is the king stat of Baldur Skate 3 so our initiative checks and armor class are all going to be affected by this really great this also lets us be a bit of a scout even without proficiency insulative hands um you still are going to do just fine and you know you have options as well if you want you could take away take a background that's going to give you that slate of hands and stealth proficiency instead but once again I'll leave that up to you depending on which roles you want to fill and I'm going to focus on being the best face I can be right now in addition to being a powerful Blaster so in terms of the actual class abilities for warlock you have can trips and you have spells and you also have a subclass so in the Early Access we only have access to the great old one or the fiend and what's not necessarily listed here is warlocks get different access to different spells or like bonus Spells at certain levels based on their subclass so for example at level one the fiend will get something like burning hands where if I go to the great old one I can't take burning hands but I can take dissonant Whispers And I can take Tasha's hideous laughter so I can take different abilities depending on or different spells depending on which subclass you pick now there's also some interesting flavor here that I think is really important to the Warlock and it sort of what kind of warlock you want to be and this doesn't necessarily just impact your your actual mechanics but I think it's fun to think about like which crazy entity did you swear allegiance to so um the fiend is the very classic selling your soul to the devil sort of idea and you're gonna get a lot of fire spells as additional bonuses and as you get progressed eventually you get some cool spells like scorching Rey and Fireball lots of big blastery things whereas if you're going with the great old one or the arch Faye which is not currently available on Early Access you're going to have a little bit more control and um uh yeah crowd control and debuffs and that kind of thing so let's take a look for level one though what you're gonna take now in terms of can traps you pretty well are taking Eldritch blast this it it's been argued many times that Wizards should have literally just made this a class ability at level one because if you don't take Eldritch blast it's kind of like being a barbarian and not taking rage like this is the class feature you should take it um and then in terms of your other option you do have some options so blade ward has been I mentioned a few times in some of my other videos is pretty good in Baldur's Gate 3 compared to the tabletop version it's it's a lot better now there's also some utility uh true strike is kind of a trap and then any of these attack can trips I would argue are not really worth it so poison spray or Chill Touch are generally not going to be as effective as Eldritch blast so typically you'd avoid those but you can take friends as well especially if you want to be that party face this gives you some options to give you Advantage during dialogue uh checks so if you want to be the party face you could take that there's also minor illusion and magehand some utility there but I would personally towards bladeward just to be a little bit tankier or friends if you want to focus more on dialogue options so for now I'm just going to grab bladeward now at uh your first level spell slots arms of Hadar I don't love necessarily um it's it is a strength saving throw which things in melee are going to be pretty good against resisting so I'm not gonna grab that I do like armor of agathis so this lasts until a long rest and it just gives you a nice amount of temporary hit points and you automatically reflect damage when creatures hit you in melee which is a pretty useful ability and the main thing is that it lasts onto a long rest you just use your first spell slot on this and then away you go there's obviously some other cool options hex is sort of a bread and butter spell this gives you the ability to automatically hex a Target there's no saving throw it's a bonus action you give them disadvantage on any ability checks with an ability of your choosing which can make it so things like entangle lands better because you do make strength checks against that it's not a saving throw um with the spell and tangle so there are some situations where this will make spells actually land better and then it makes it so every time you hit the target you're doing an additional 1d6 necrotic damage and you obviously the the default combo is you cast this as a bonus action and then you hit them with algae blast and you do some bonus damage and this does scale kind of nicely in the sense that once you're hit level five and you get two Eldridge blasts you can have a chance to do this twice per turn and the nice thing about Eldritch blast it functions similarly to Hunter's Mark and that when the enemy dies as long as you're maintaining concentration you can throw it on a new Target so think of it as just like a mark you throw on the Target that signifies like this is the one I'm going to be attacking and then you're going to blast it with Aldridge blast and do some extra damage it um it has that little bit of scaling like I mentioned but because you have so few spell slots sometimes it feels like when you do the math of just like casting one hex versus casting a fireball the number of you know additional D6 damage is just not worth it but there are going to be situations where you know being able to keep this maintained over several combats thanks to maintaining your concentration is is going to be worth it so we'll take that at level one because it's none of these other ones are especially necessary I find there are some fun options um but I'm also going to click on the great old one because in terms of your subclass feature uh let's talk about this for the fiend for level one whenever you reduce an hostile creature to zero hit points you get four temporary hit points and and so this is going to be a little a little buff that you get whenever you kill something and you're gonna kill things quite a bit get the last hit frequently as a warlock because you do a lot of single Target damage so you're pretty well always gonna have a few temporary hit points but they're the temporary hit points don't stack with other effects and if I'm going to take a spell like armor of agathis um this is gonna have less impact whereas the great old ones ability has Mortal reminder in addition to some different spells which I like and this is whenever you land a critical hit that creature and nearby enemies are frightened which is a really useful debuff it kind of just automatically bakes in some more control to your warlock it doesn't trigger very often obviously a five percent chance every time you Eldritch blast but eventually you're going to be doing two Eldritch blasts per turn so that you know that counts for something and then spells like Tasha's hideous laughter and dissonant whispers are actually pretty useful especially as you get to higher levels something like Tasha's hideous laughter while it is no hypnotic pattern uh with using like a third level or fourth level spell slot and you're taking potentially three or four creatures out of combat that's pretty well as good as a hypnotic pattern in a lot of cases anyways and you know you get to upcast things for free as a warlock with your pack slots and that's a big Advantage so we're gonna take uh hex and armor of agathis at level one and then we'll talk about level two so at level 2 warlocks gain an additional warlock spell slot and I didn't mention packed magic at level one but we can talk about it now so this is going to be the cap for the number of spell slots you get on your warlock in balder's K3 because we only get up to level 12 and that's how many spell slots warlocks get at level 12 is two so you don't get any more than this we've we've met our cap but they do increase in level and power for each warlock level you take to a certain extent and the way the spell slot progression Works in fifth edition is every odd level of a full Caster you get an additional level of spell slot so at level one you have first level spells and then at level three you'll get second level Spells at level five you'll get third level spells Etc and a lot of spells obviously require it like the leveled spell slot for that level of spell so once again Fireball the classic example is a third level spell if you have a third level spell slot you can cast a fire ball but in addition to that many spells will have increased effect or increased number of targets when you upcast them so spells like command or Tasha's hideous laughter for example they don't have any more effects they're just a crowd control spell however when you upcast them they get an additional Target for each level you upcast them so when you're fifth level you could Target three targets with that level one crowd control spell and all of a sudden it's looking pretty good still so the advantage with packed magic is that it comes back on a short rest instead of a long rest which means typically the way it's going to play out in Baldur's Gate 3 is almost every encounter you're going to burn through both your spell slots and then afterwards you're going to short rest and you'll always have those two spell slots per encounter which means you get really powerful high impact spells at the start of every fight but you do run out of them quickly so this is sort of the trade-off with the Warlock is in a really prolonged prolonged encounter you are going to run out of resources but fortunately you have an infinite resource in terms of your invocations and Eldritch blast so Eldritch blast is good because of agonizing blast agonizing blast lets you add your charisma modifier to the damage dealt by Eldritch blast so this is what makes it worthwhile and this is the key invocation that you want to take no matter what but fortunately you get two now the other invocation you get there are so many Fantastic options and there's a lot of things to think about so you have the opportunity to take armor of Shadows which lets you just have Mage Armor for free as a free spell you get Mage Armor and you can cast it when you're not wearing armor and it gives you a bonus so with this particular character I'd already be at 16 AC completely naked which is not too bad B speech lets you just have speak with animals at will without expending a slow spell slot so as a party face this is a fantastic spell lots of opportunities to talk to beasts and it uses an invocation it's not necessarily using Apple spell slot which is nice beguiling influence you get um perspect you get proficiency and deception and persuasion so this could be an opportunity if you didn't take a background or those skills at level one you could then gain that proficiency which is nice Devil's sight lets you see perfectly fine in both normal and um non-magical magical and non-magical darkness there is a classic combination where you take the second level spell darkness which is magical and you just cast it on yourself and then you stand in the ball of Darkness with Devil's sight and you have permanent Advantage attacking enemies and they have permanent disadvantage against you that's a popular combo for while it's very fun um and then the tabletop version of the game your DM might get annoyed at you though and I'm I might be speaking from experience uh fiendish Vigor is interesting it lets you cast false life on yourself at level one it says it grants you five temporary hit points but it actually scales so you'll get five plus I believe it's your warlock level so at level two you'll get seven hit points um when you cast this and you can just always cast it once again they don't stack but it essentially play out in that you start combat with an extra like you know handful of hit points and that's pretty good but it should be noted if you are a fiend door lock it won't stack with those and if you like armor of agathis it won't start stack with that either so um this is an opportunity warlocks have lots of places where they can get temporary hit points you only want one because they don't stack so think about that mask of many faces you get to cast disguise self at will which is fantastic lots of fun interactions there I've been told and it is larian has done a great job of making this really interesting and then repelling blast is for those tacticians out there lets you use your Eldritch blast to push creatures away from you and I believe this is a toggle so you can choose sometimes if you if it's advantageous to knock them away you can do it and sometimes you don't want to knock them out of your line of sight or something like that um and so you you don't push them back so there's there's a toggle for that which is cool um this is really useful um especially if like you're you're trying to get an ally um out of Engagement so they like you know you're one of your squishy characters has an enemy on them and you your warlock is gonna out repelling blast them away so that they can get some room to move out um obviously knocking people off cliffs is super fun and I've mentioned this before there's a ton of verticality in the uh the terrain in Baldur's Gate three so there's almost always going to be opportunities to knock people off cliffs which makes this really satisfying and then finally the thief of five Fates lets you cast um Bane using a warlock spell slot once prolonged rest this is a powerful debuff it gives you a few more options so it is really up to you what you want to take I'm gonna take repelling blast because I just want to be that all in on Eldritch blast Warlock and I think that's fun you get an additional spell and this is where I would probably take something like Tasha's hideous laughter I'm only level two and I'm probably not gonna use it right now but once I get second level spell slots and I can start using this on two Targets there might be some opportunities to get a little bit of control and once again this is available to me because I am a great old one uh warlock here and that is level two with the invocations available now let's talk about level three all right at level three right away we get improved warlock spells so this means our two pack slots are now second level spell slots and we can therefore take second level spells so there are a few options here that are really useful keep in mind though warlocks have very few spell slots so you want to take something that's going to be high impact if you took the ability to see in darkness with Devil's sight darkness is obviously a fantastic pickup if you want a little bit more blasting capability cloud of daggers or shatter is really useful I would say my I would lean towards cloud of daggers as sort of a high impact spell um there are some opportunities for Misty step it's a bonus action lets you teleport very far away and that'll get you into those positions where your repelling blast is going to be even more useful knocking people off cliffs on the right angle that sort of thing um I've had a lot of people in my previous video mention that there's some really fun interactions with silence so it could be worth considering hold person is one of the Premier crowd control spells so also worth considering um and then obviously spells like detect thoughts are going to be really useful outside of combat and there's going to be some fun options there but with the limited amount of spells I would I don't know if I'd pick detect thoughts on a uh Warlock um crown of Madness is also another crowd control spell it can be a little bit trickier to land but it is also very impactful when it does so that's the level two spells I'm definitely gonna pick something like cloud of daggers just to get a little bit more versatility in terms of single Target and AOE I already am a master of single Target with Eldritch blast and now I have some crowd control in terms of well I'm not crowd control but like ability to clear out crowds with death um yeah you also get your pack so there's packed of the chain packed of the Tome and packed of the blade I believe in come lunch packed as a chain is going to give you fine familiar so it gets you this fun little familiar but you also get alternates it's not the same as a regular find familiar you have an imp and you have a quasi I believe is how you pronounce that and these are definitely useful so the sting of the Imp actually does a little bit of damage and the Imp can go invisible which is going to definitely increase its ability to stay alive and when it's invisible it's going to have advantage on that first Sting Attack roll and this sting it actually does a D4 piercing and a D6 poison they still take half damage if if they uh if they make their save so it's always going to do a little bit there and it actually does really good damage considering this imp you summon it outside of combat and then it just acts on your turn or I think it has its own initiative even but it's going to be its own action economy is the main takeaway here meaning like you're not spending any bonus actions or anything directing it it's just another body on the battlefield it does reasonable damage likewise over here you have the ability to scare which is going to impose disadvantage on a on for two turns on Attack girls which is definitely um and ability to checks rather so this is definitely impactful when it comes to debuffing so a couple of little options with that then there's pack to the Tome which I'm not exactly sure how it's going to be implemented come launch but generally it gives you access to a whole bunch of different can trips which can be really useful outside of combat taking things that you otherwise wouldn't have access to as well as some additional there there's a bunch of little utility bits with pact of the Tome but I think the most popular or one of the most popular packs is going to be packed to the blade because larion has house ruled it while they didn't add hex blade to warlocks they are going to have the feature baked into pact of the blade which will let you use your charisma modifier while making attacks with your with your packed weapon so that's going to be a way for a warlock to entirely 100 invest in Charisma and then actually use their blade to uh you know great effect in melee combat and this opens up additional multi-classing options which we can talk about in just a little bit um because you're going to have less multi-atribute dependency you really just need charisma at that point then and if you have some other classes that you're going to start off with that give you Proficiency in something like heavy armor you don't nearly need decks as much either so there's some cool things that are happening with Pactiv the blade and there's going to be some fun some fun builds built around that um obviously I'm getting fairy fire for being a drought here which is fantastic I can replace my spells every level up which is cool and uh yeah that is level three for warlock so this is where you get to pick our pact and second level spells and with that let's talk about some of those really cool multi-class options so when it comes to multi-classing warlock there are a couple of standout options just because a warlock is the Charisma bass caster and Charisma is one of the most popular stats in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition so you have The Bard Paladin and sorcer which are going to share your casting stat and just because they are casters in a certain sense um you have some useful crossover there mostly Eldritch blast scales so well that warlock lends itself well to a at least two to three level dip depending on if you want to pick up something like pact of the blade or if you're happy with just the agonizing blast so if you want to start with like a level of Paladin or two you get your smites and you'll get a couple spell slots and then you'll get your heavy armor proficiency and all your Marshall weapons and then you can go for a few levels in Warlock up to pack to the blade and you can start using your charisma to make melee attacks and that would give you a sort of plate wearing Caster that has Eldritch blast as a sort of default as well as packed attacks that can use their Charisma modifier with you'll be able to get in there the thing that's going to kind of hold you back is you really only have your two pack slots and then two level one Paladin slots so in terms of your spell slots and resources you might drain yourself really quickly especially if you're trying to Smite a lot um you know within a single round if you're eventually making two attacks with your your weapon you're gonna go through your both your warlock slots if you're going deep into warlock those are going to be some pretty Mighty smites so that'll be potentially something to consider but you resources would would drain rather quickly um but it is absolutely a combination warlock Paladin is going to be good it's just thinking about do you want to go more warlock to get those really powerful pack slots and obviously more invocations and more powerful warlocks cells and then maybe using a bit more Eldritch blast with the option to Smite or do you want to go you know mostly Paladin with just the couple of warlock levels to get a few bonus low level smites as well as something like Eldritch blast if you need a ranged option to fall back on um Bard and sorcerer are both sort of similar where you know the sore lock combo is is fairly popular where you're mostly a sorcerer and then you take those two levels of warlock to pick up a really powerful cantrip in Eldritch blast with the invocation and Bard similarly you take a lot of levels in Bard and then a couple levels of warlock but if you are going deep into warlock um just know that you're gonna have really powerful spells but it's gonna be those two spells per encounter and then you're spent um and you're gonna spend most of your time probably Eldritch blasting but luckily this is a fantastic thing to be spending your action on so totally viable as well and that is the Warlock as well as a few multi-classes so hopefully that would get you started on your first few levels giving you something to think about when you're building out the class um a few takeaways just lots of ways to get temporary hit points so don't uh don't overlap too many of those things there's also a lot of cool things that get unlocked in the invocations and not all the invocations are unlocked at level two some of them have prerequisites and level requirements and other things so as you get further in the game there are going to be more options that come up and thankfully release will have that respecting ability so you can play around and I do encourage you to play around I think this is going to be a fantastic game to test all sorts of those things out and I will for sure be playing around with every single Class come launch and I have lots of ideas for different videos and Combos and I'll get into some more very specific things as we go and if you're still watching thanks again so much um I have no idea where my Subs will be but if the trend continues um I I may even be partnered by the time you're watching this and that is all because of you know the wonderful viewers from this community and I look forward to making and sharing my excitement um making videos and sharing how excited I am about Dungeons and Dragons and Baldur's Gate with all of you so yeah thanks for watching and I will catch you in the next one

Channel: BulkoTV

Views: 29,174

Keywords: baldur's gate 3, bg3, warlock, class guide, baldur's gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3, baldur's gate 3 class guide

Id: 9ECtxAktQvw

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023