Ultimate Warlock Class Guide | Baldur's Gate 3

to what lengths would you go in the pursuit of power what sacrifices are you willing to make in your search for greater knowledge would you sell out your family and friends your own soul even you're not using it right if you are the kind of player who would go to any lengths for a source of greater power the Warlock class is right for you welcome back Travelers I'm glad to see you made it I'm Colo and today we're going to be taking a deep dive look into the Warlock class in balers Gate 3 we're going to go over all the stuff that you'll get as a generic warlock leveling up and then after that I'm going to cover each of the subclasses individually so that you'll know which one you want to choose with all that nonsense being said let's get started shall we warlocks are spellcasters just like Wizards are just like clerics are Sorcerers but there's a few key differences between warlocks and the other casters the main one notably at least lorewise is that warlocks don't have any of their own actual magical ability the only powers that they have they're granted by their Patron which is a powerful entity that they've made a deal with to get power in exchange for their service and as a warlock your subclass choices are actually going to be based on which Patron you're deciding to make this deal with so that they can give you their power the fact that warlocks don't have their own innate magical ability in game translates to your warlock not getting regular spell slots like the other spellcasters do instead warlocks get access to what is called packed slots which function similarly to spell slots but there's a few differences there as well first of all pack slots will replenish on short rest and long rest unlike the other spell slots that only replenish on Long rest but as a tradeoff the Warlock has far fewer packed slots than every other Caster has spell slots so you get to cast far fewer spells per combat as a warlock but but if you do all your short rests every day you'll end up getting to cast quite a few spells per day another key difference between normal spell slots and these packed slots is that as your warlock levels up the spell slot level of the packed slots will increase with your warlocks level instead of how it works with the other spellcasters where they will get level one spell slots level two spell slots level three spell slots and they'll keep the the lower level ones that they have throughout the whole game and gain more and more spell slots your warlock keeps the same two packed slots for a long time but they get more and more powerful as you level up so for instance if you go to cast a I'm going to use Fireball as an example Fireball is a level three spell if you go to cast Fireball when your warlock is fifth level it'll cast as a level three spell because that's when you learn your level three spells if you go to cast a fireball after you learn your level four spells it will cast as a level four Fireball it's going going to upcast it every time as a warlock basically your Patron gives you more of their power your warlock gets more powerful and they just put all that power into every blast that they do there's a few more differences between warlocks and the other spellcasters that we're going to cover in this video but I just wanted to get these out of the way right up front because these things might alter somebody's decision about whether or not they even want to make a warlock so I wanted to get that out there but if you've made your decision and you want to make a warlock let's talk about creating one upon first choosing the Warlock class you will be granted the simple weapons and light armor proficiencies you're going to get access to your level one can trips and spells you're going to get to choose a couple of spells and you're going to get one packed slot to start with so starting as a warlock in this game you only get one spell cast per combat and then you have to resort to can trips after that you can short rest afterwards and get it back but you only get one spell per combat at the beginning the warlocks three main stats to watch out for under normal circumstances there's going to be somebody who's done a crazy build that trust me I want to hear about it but it's going to be some off-the-wall nonsense where it's some intelligence warlock or something that I just don't know about but the three main normal stats are Charisma which is your spell casting ability this increases the amount of damage your spells are going to do as well as uh helps you in dialogue checks and everything like that Charisma is a really good stat to have dexterity is going to help out with your armor class and your damage depending on what kind of weapon you're using as well as initiative roles help you take your turn earlier in combat potentially and Constitution will determine how much HP your character has as well as how hard it is for enemies to interrupt their concentration when they're concentrating on a spell though all three of these are good for different reasons it's all going to depend on what kind of warlock You're Building there are a few races in the game that you can choose that have very powerful racial bonuses that may benefit your warlock in some way there's a couple of races that have worthless bonuses that might not do anything for you what I like to say in this section of my videos is that there is no race class combination in this game that can't beat the game none you you won't convince me that there's a race class combo that just can't beat balers Gate 3 so if you want to look through the races and see what racial bonuses they have and minmax your character I totally understand I've done it before we've all done it I get it but if you just like the looks of something and you want to play that feel free build whatever you want if if you want to play a halfling warlock if you want to play a half orc warlock it doesn't matter you're going to be perfectly fine either way play whatever you want warlocks are also one of the classes in the game that immediately chooses their subclass when you pick the class and this makes sense for warlocks because like we said their subass is actually tied to which kind of entity they've sworn a Packa with without that Packa your warlock is not a warlock your warlock is just a power hungry fool looking for somebody to give them some power once they sign the packed and got the power that's what made him a warlock so you have to have the packed first the three options you have to choose from here are the Fiend The Great old one and the arch Fay the fiend represents your character basically selling their soul to a demon or the devil in exchange for more direct damage kind of abilities from the hells so you'll get fireball from going down this path wall of fire there's a couple Fire based things con of cold is actually thrown in there too strangely but we'll cover all that in the subass section alternatively the great old one rather than being more straightforward damage fiery Hells related stuff this is your character going on an HP Lovecraft binge and deciding that they fell in love with cthulu and want to make a deal with him for some power so you're talking crazy mind control stuff reality bending stuff weird old God things and then the third one the arch Fay this is your character swearing a pack with a lord or Lady of the Fay round FMS who are known for being tricksters and messing with people's emotions and distracting them with Illusions and stuff like that so that's the kind of powers that you're going to get if your Patron is the arch fake kind of you know Charming people frightening them messing with their emotions things of that nature those were just the 10,000 foot overviews of those sub classes we're going to cover them much more in depth in the actual subass section I just wanted to kind of give you the overview so you knew what kind of lore we were looking at for each one of the three so you created your warlock Act is forged contracts are signed and your soul is under new ownership so what was all of this for what do you get out of this deal let's talk about it at second level all warlocks are going to gain access to two eldrich invocations these are very very powerful potentially gameplay defining passive Buffs that you pick up that have effects ranging from being able to cast speak with animals without spending any spell slots to granting your eldrich blast the ability to knock enemies away from you which is very powerful repositioning enemies like that but one that I specifically wanted to bring up in this video to have you guys keep your eyes on is the devil's sight eldrich invocation this one's unique it grants you an ability that you can only get from two or three other places in the game and those things are mid to late game items that there's a decent chance you're going to miss them anyway so other than that being a warlock is really the only other way to get this magical dark vision that you get from devil site now why is magical dark vision so special I'll tell you since you get access to the darkness spell being able to cast Darkness on top of your character and use it as a area denial basically huge force field ability that enemies can't shoot range attacks into it's very powerful there is a definite argument to be made for your entire character build being based around the darkness spell and the fact that your warlock can see in the darkness but nobody else can so definitely don't sleep on this look into it being able to cast your spells through this Darkness while your enemies are basically just sitting ducks and they can't reach you it's incredible this has gotten me through a bunch of tough fights for sure second level is also when you receive your second packed slot so you started the game with one spell cast per combat immediately upon leveling up now you have two so it doubles the amount of spells per combat and per day that your warlock has this is one of the single biggest power boosts that your warlock is going to get you also will not be getting another one of these packed slots for a very long time so you're going to be stuck with two for the vast majority of the game you are also going to get to choose a new spell from the spell list and just like every time your warlock levels up if you want to swap out a spell that you already know for another one that you don't know unlearn the one you know and learn the one you don't know you can do that with one spell per level up and this is the only place that Warlock blocks get to do this does that mean that you're stuck with what spells you choose if you mess up no you can go talk to Withers and Respec pay him some gold and he'll reset all your stats and abilities and stuff and you can basically build your character from scratch without losing anything and then if you want to get your gold back you can just pickpocket Withers and he doesn't care he's not going to turn hostile on you or anything at third level your warlock is going to get to choose another spell from the warlock spell list and this time this list includes your level two warlock spell and because of this because of the fact that you're unlocking level two spells your packed slots also upgrade to level two at this level which means every spell you cast will be a level two spell from now on so that's all well and good but there's another huge gameplay defining bonus that you get at third level again so there seems to be a lot of that going around with warlocks doesn't there but not that I'm complaining I'll take all the bonuses they want to give me anyway because your warlock has been such a faithful servant to their Patron the patron has decided to give you a little bit of extra power power at this level up so you're going to get to choose from one of three pacts that you're going to swear the Packa of the chain packed of the blade and packed of the Tome choosing the packed of the chain will grant you the find familiar ability which is going to summon a small pet for your warlock to Aid them on their Adventures each one of the familiars that you can summon which can range from a imp to a quasit to just normal animals each one of them has their own unique ability ities and strengths and weaknesses some of them have crowd control effects some of them have debuffs that they can cast on opponents so you'll have to look at each and decide for each situation which one is going to fit best but it's cool because you have the option whenever you want pretty much entering into the pack of the blade will grant your Warlock the ability to summon a packed weapon which is basically a weapon made out of magic that you summon and you're going to have proficiency with it no matter what type you decide to summon and your character is going to be be able to use it just fine or alternatively if you don't want to summon one of these weapons if you have a weapon already that you want to use you can bind it to yourself as your packed weapon this is going to channel some of your warlock's magical ability into the weapon making it magical and allowing it to use your warlock spell casting ability to determine the weapon's damage rather than strength or dexterity so this allows you to build your Caster stat Charisma make your spells do more damage and also you're making your melee attacks do more damage if you're packed to the blade because you're kind of a Spell blade kind of character here binding weapons as a packed weapon is also very useful because your warlock always has proficiency with whatever weapon is bound as their packed weapon so even if it's a weapon type you don't have proficiency with if you equip it and then bind it as your packed weapon now you do so if you find an upgrade of any kind of weapon your warlock can use it as long as you're able to bind it as your packed weapon and finally the packed of the toome is essentially your Patron giving your warlock a book of cantrips that they're not supposed to know some forbidden cantrips you get guidance which is the single best spell in the game hands down I won't hear any arguments about it that's a little bit of an exaggeration but it's not much of one this spell is absolutely ridiculous and I think every party in balers Gate 3 should have guidance on at least one character in the group this thing basically adds a 1 D4 to any ability check that you have to do if you're in a conversation and you're trying to intimidate somebody or to a deception roll guidance helps with all that stuff and it doesn't cost you anything as long as one of your characters has guidance and they're standing next to the person that's about to do the conversation you can cast it on them right in the middle of the conversation and it benefits him vicious mockery is the second C trip you're going to get from pack of the tone this one's a little bit different it deals a small amount of damage psychic damage and also impose disadvantage on the targets next attack if they succeed a saving throw when you cast this on them the entire effect will be negated they won't take take any damage they won't have disadvantage so this one can be okay being able to impose disadvantage on your opponent's attack roles is always good but you're trading out a turn worth of casting eldrich blast at somebody that's tough to justify sometimes cuz eldrich blast is so ridiculously good I think of the three cantrips you get from pack to the Tome vicious mockery is probably the worst and saying that let's get into the third one Thorn whip you will lash out with a thorny Bine it'll wrap around somebody and you're going to try to yank them towards you you can use use this to displace your enemies pull them into dangerous stuff that's on the ground pull them out of helpful things that they're standing in whatever it is being able to reposition your enemies in a game with strategic combat like this is always powerful at fourth level the Warlock is going to receive their choice of another cantrip and another spell from their spell list as well as their first feat so as is tradition in these videos when I get to the feat section I'm going to say something like this look through the Feats and see if you find anything that looks interesting to you I'm going to give you an example of a build that I've made here in just a minute is it optimized absolutely not but it's pretty cool and I think you'll have a fun time messing around with it but anyway look through these Feats if you see anything that sounds cool and you want to try it out go ahead and take it if something sounds like it's going to be good for your character build it probably will if you take something and hate it and it's not good for your character build go talk to Withers pay him some gold respect your character switch it out and then Rob him and get your gold back just like I said before no big deal with with all that being said if you look through the Feats and nothing stands out to you nothing sounds like you want to take it at that moment you can't think of anything ability Improvement is always always a viable choice in this game this is basically you buffing your character's main stats and in a Dungeons and Dragons base game like this buffing your main stats is massive it's a huge huge upgrade fifth level is a massive power boost for most classes and the the Warlock is no exception you are going to have Buffs and bonuses coming out of your ears at this level let's take a look at them see if any of these things are worth having firstly you're going to be able to choose a new spell at this level as well as replacing one like normal and you unlock your level three spells you're going to get access to some really powerful Spells at this time and from now on a lot of the Spells you're going to get are going to be pretty powerful since you're unlocking your level three spells you guessed it your packed slots have upgraded to level three and all spells you cast from now on will be cast at level three on top of that your canant trips also get a bonus at this level they will all essentially get an extra damage die added to their damage but eldrich blast is an exception to this rule because instead of just getting a second damage like all the rest of the hand trips are going to get eldrich blast gets to shoot another blast so you can Target one with both shots or you can shoot two Targets with eldrich blast now which is very powerful considering some of those eldrich invocations we talked about earlier because of those this can trip can be very very powerful and now you can shoot multiple people with it which is great and speaking of eldrich invocations you also get to pick your next one at this level the list has been expanded there's two new choices here like I said before look through them all pick whatever abilities you want from this list this is going to be up to you and finally last but certainly not least fifth level will see your warlock get the deepened packed passive this is basically your Patron being even more pleased with your service so they're granting you even more power the power that you're going to get this time is going to be based on which pack you chose at third level if you chose pack of the chain your familiar is going to get extra attack at this level so now for each action they can attack twice this is really powerful because like we said before some of them have debuffs that they're putting on people some of them have crowd control effects and now you can spread that to more people by attacking more or if you put both hits into one person like we said with eldrich blast you're just focusing more damage into one place which is always good if you went with packed to the blade you get extra attack at this level just like the Marshall classes do in the game and I will say after having tested this right before shooting this video at the time of recording this is this still works if you level a warlock to fifth level pack of the blade and get this version of extra attack this will currently stack with other versions of extra attack so say you also take five levels of fighter and get extra attack from being a fighter you get three attacks per action if you do both of those things and you're seeing some of that happened on the screen behind me right now I messed around I took pole arm master I took Sentinel so I was doing extra pole arm strikes whenever people came into range I got to do an opportunity attack this extra strike I could trigger a Smite off of it which you can actually use your warlock spell slots to Smite if you go warlock Paladin loadin however you want to refer to it and it was really nice I I was getting four or five attacks per turn without even taking haste or speed potions into account so I mean you're talking about a ridiculous amount of damage you can put out is my build optimal no way absolutely not but could I beat the game with it yeah I guarantee it and I guarantee you could too I try to impress this upon you guys if there is something that you think is cool in this game and you want to try it out just do it Withers is right there in Camp a 100 gold is what it costs you and then you can take it right back from him so you can fix your problems for free if you don't feel like respecing I get it I understand you want to play a pure run without respecing gotcha Act of the Tome morlocks at fifth level receive three more forbidden spells and as you can probably guess the three spells you get at this level are awesome you get animate dead which allows the Caster to Target a corpse and raise an undead minion to help them in combat this spell is basically exactly what you're imagining it is if you've ever seen a necromancer in any any kind of media raising a skeleton or a zombie from a dead body that's what this is Anime dead also know that people in town don't take very kindly to you walking up to them with a zombie right behind you for some reason they get nervous can't put my finger on it I don't know why they would for this next spell on the list I'm going to skip out of order and you'll see why here in a second all lightning is another spell that you get for the Steep impact this one's pretty cool it allows you to Target a circular area on the ground it's not very big but you get the target an area and basically a lightning bolt strikes down on that area if you can get multiple people inside of the targeting area you'll hit them all with this lightning bolt and then your warlock is going to maintain concentration and then from that point forward for up to 10 turns they can cast call lightning again as a can trip without having to spend another pack slot to cast it which is really strong because of the fact that warlocks don't have almost any spell slots to cast with when whenever you find something like this where you can get multiple casts out of a single instance of casting a spell it's really really powerful I also forgot to mention earlier the three spells that we're talking about at fifth level for pack to the Tome none of them costs a spell slot to cast but they can only be cast once per long rest so that's important to note this last one is the reason why we skipped out of order the moment we've all been waiting for here haste is the last spell you get from this level I made a joke earlier about how guidance was the best spell in the game hands down and about how everybody needs it and like I said at that time that wasn't really an exaggeration guidance is a super super powerful spell but an argument can definitely be made for haste possibly actually being the strongest spell in the entire game there's a couple spells that I would put up here guidance haste Sanctuary Misty step oh my goodness anyway let's talk about haste haste is a single Target buff that you'll cast on one of your allies you have to maintain concentration to keep that Ally buffed and as long as you do up to 10 turns turns the effectiveness of that Ally is essentially doubled let's see what they get plus two to armor class an advantage on dexterity saving throws what does this mean this means that your character is harder to hit because they're moving faster they're harder to hit by pretty much every source of damage so that's good their movement speed is doubled which is in itself a huge buff as we talked about before when you're playing something with tactical combat like this the ability to move twice as far is ridiculous and they are going to G gain an additional action per turn and don't forget that this is fifth level so this is when all the Marshall classes get extra attack this is when your blade warlock gets extra attack so having two actions means four attacks now instead of two attacks per turn you're doing up to four attacks per turn just think about that for a second your character is capable of attacking twice per action and they have two actions that's like a lot of attacks just just be super super careful about not breaking the spellcaster concentration when you're using haste because the affected Target will become lethargic which essentially just throws their next turn into the trash this can be devastating in combat if you hasten someone and then accidentally use another concentration spell like hex or something like that it instantly drops the haste off that person basically the second concentration spell fails because you were already concentrating on something else you lose Haste The hasted person becomes lethargic and misses their next turn and the person who cast Pace in the first place basically just threw their turn in the trash also as an added slap to the face the newly cast concentration spell will cost you a packed slot and it will do nothing don't screw yourself over by doing this Travelers don't be me be better than me don't don't do this that was an absolutely Mammoth amount of Buffs and bonuses to get from a single level but remember we still haven't even discussed the subass spells that you get at this level and like like I said before you get access to some strong ones so when we come back to fifth level with the sub classes you're going to see even more ridiculous stuff changes like this are why fifth level is considered to be the beginning of the end game for balers Gate 3 you're crossing over a threshold into all right we're getting into the the real stuff now where if you don't have two attacks per turn or these stronger spells you would be screwed in a fight the first five levels of this game are some of the hardest especially depending on what en you walk up to if you walk up to that one cave surrounded by nes and you're too low of a level you're done those nlls are no joke and they will destroy you if you are not ready to fight them when you show up now that we've been through that ridiculous absolute crazy pile of stuff that you just got at fifth level let's move on to sixth level this one is going to Grant your warlock a subclass specific skill that we will talk about here in the subass section but just know you're going to get something related to your Patron here you you also get to choose an additional level three spell from your list and then as always if you want to swap out a spell you can and for some of these now that you have access to your level three spells this is when swapping spells out can be useful because you can get some of these really really powerful ones by giving up some of the ones that you were using earlier in the game it's entirely up to you though whatever spells you want to use have trade-offs strengths and weaknesses for different situations you'll have to decide based on your party composition and your setup what you want to run all right let's move on seventh level at seventh level your warlock will gain access to their level four spells your packed slots will get upgraded to level four you'll get to choose another spell and your subass is going to have two spells added to the list as far as the ones you can choose and importantly you get to pick another eldrich invocation at seventh level so the list of those is also increased again take a look through the new ones look at the old on see what you want pick your invocations eighth level is quick and easy but it's not bad by any means you get to pick another spell from the list you can swap a spell if you want and then you get your second feat so like we said before if there's a feat that sounds interesting you want to try it out take it if you want to do ability Improvement and buff your stats also a perfectly viable option go for that at Ninth level warlocks get access to their level five spells your packed slots are going to increase to level five which is actually the highest that they're going to go and you also get to choose another eldrich invocation there's more on the list look through them blah blah you know the drill 10th level is a another great one you will get to pick another level five spell swap a spell if you want like always your can trips get another damage die added to them and then as you might imagine eldrich blast instead of that can shoot three targets now which is ridiculous and you're going to get a passive defensive buff based on which subass you've chosen at this level and as you might have guessed we're going to cover that when we go over the subass sections so we'll see all those here in just a second 11th level will grant your warlock another spell of your choice for from the list as well as a third and final packed slot with which to cast your spells this is a massive deal you haven't gotten one of these since second level at 11th level you finally get a third spell per combat it doesn't sound like much when you think about it as one more spell cast per combat but it's 50% more than you've been running with this is a huge massive increase just like it was at second level so definitely don't underestimate the power of 11th level if you're planning on multiclassing your warlock sometimes it isn't worth what you're giving up you really need to make sure if you're going to put at least two levels in something else that the two levels you're going to get are worth trading out your third packed slot for your warlock 11th level warlocks will also be granted a Mystic Arcanum spell of their choosing the available options are all level six spells making this the single level six spell your warlock will have access to unless you find gear pieces that grant them to you this Mystic Arcanum spell does not cost a pack slot to cast but can only be cast once per long rest there's some powerful choices here so you'll definitely be glad to have this and finally ladies and gentlemen that leaves us at 12th level the end game your warlock's final level is no slouch either you're going to get some pretty good stuff at this one you're going to get to choose another level five spell and swap spells for the last time so if you want to change out one more spell this is the last opportunity you have without going to talk to Withers you're going to get another feat so choose a feet or bump your stats again and then last lastly you will get another eldrich invocation and the list has one more option available on it now called life Drinker life Drinker is the only actual 12th level Choice as far as eldrich invocations goes but obviously you don't have to pick this one at 12 level you can choose one of the other ones instead if you want what does life Drinker do it allows you to add your charisma modifier to any damage that you cause with your melee weapons in the form of necrotic damage if you have your charisma somewhere between 8 18 and 20 points that is a plus4 or plus five necrotic damage to every strike that your character does with a melee weapon and that might not sound like a huge amount but that four or five necrotic damage will be a massive percent damage increase and it works on all melee strikes so if you do something like pommel strike where you're using a bonus action and just doing like a small hit to somebody that does 1 D4 or something something like that and then this one adds four or five damage to it that could be doubling the damage of that strike it's ridiculous how much extra damage this thing adds up to and it triggers passively it doesn't cost you anything after you choose this it Triggers passively on all melee strikes so yeah you'll be pumping out tons of freaking damage absolutely nuts and that sums up the entirety of the warlock's normal level up experience so what we're going to do now is go back in time back to first level when you were choosing subass and we're going to start with the fiend I'll see you there warlocks in service to fiends work toward corrupting destructive ends intentionally or otherwise and receive hellish blessings in return so you've gone and sold your soul to the devil huh well in this game that can actually be a really lucrative deal I just hope you uh knew well enough to read the fine print cuz there was some and uh that's how they get you before we start diving into the subass bonuses I want to reiterate and state better because I didn't say it very well the first time but I'm going to be talking about subass specific spells that you're going to gain access to as you're leveling up know that when I say that once again I mean when you go to choose your spells these sub classes are going to put a couple of spells in the list that are available to choose you don't have to choose the subass related ones and if you don't you just won't get get them so if you're wanting the subass related stuff make sure you pick up these spells as you level up at first level the fiend warlock is going to gain access to burning hands and command both of these are decent burning hands is a frontal cleave that will shoot fire out of your fingertips in a cone area in front of your character and it'll cleave multiple characters if they're within the area with fire damage this is excellent especially if the enemies are standing right next to an explosive Barrel or standing on greas or standing in a plant growth where shooting this fire will also ignite something else and you get basically double return out of it aand on the other hand is a crowd control ability that you can use to attempt to force an enemy to do something whenever you go to cast a spell it brings up multiple options from forcing them to drop their weapons on the ground forcing them to lay down on the ground forcing them to skip their next turn or run away from you or come towards you so you can you hit somebody with this and it's successful you can disrupt them pretty badly with this spell this is a good one to have you will also receive the dark ones blessing passive which will grant your warlock some temporary hit points whenever they land a killing blow on an enemy this is very very good especially if your warlock is up there in melee range if you're running packed to the blade and you're standing up there toet to- Toe with the enemies every time you kill one of them you get a little bit of temporary hit points it makes you more survivable while you're standing in a group of enemies fighting excellent at third level you're going to have two more spells to choose from which will be blindness and scorching Ray blindness is a single Target Crow control ability that you can cast it's a debuff that makes the enemy blind this grants all attacks against them advantage and grants their attacks disadvantage and if you upcast the spell which you will be if you're playing a warlock it has the ability to affect multiple targets so this can be a good one there's nothing wrong with blinding targets and doesn't require concentration so once you get them blinded you set it and forget it there they're blind walking around until they get cured or something happens to fix it and until then you have advantage against them they have disadvantage against everybody it's nice and also it massively reduces the range of their ranged abilities and spells so you can mess somebody up pretty badly with this and uh scorching Ray is a multi- targetable spell kind of like how eldrich blast is now where you can Target one person with three shots or three different people with one shot each or however you want to split it up that's how scorching Ray is but it's a spell and it does fire damage is a good one to have and now we made it back to fifth level so you get that absolutely massive pile of Buffs and bonuses that we talked about before and the two subass specific spells that you have available as a fiend warlock are very very powerful you're going to get fireball and stinking Cloud Fireball is a spell that needs no introduction but I'm going to give it one anyway boom in all seriousness Fireball is unquestionably one of the strongest most useful damaging spells in the game hands down you are going to love this spell and I highly recommend at some point after fifth level I would recommend at fifth level you pick Fireball but at least at some point after fifth level you get fireball if you're playing a fiend Warlock the other ones aren't going to have access to this compared to Fireball stinking Cloud might sound kind of disappointing don't underestimate this spell this one can be really really powerful under the right circumstances what does it do it will summon a 20ft wide area of stink ass that has a chance to cause anyone inside of it to become so nauseated by the disgusting smell of this stinky fart cloud or whatever they're standing in that they just completely can't perform actions and sometimes you'll basically skip their whole turn it does require concentration to maintain the cloud sometimes this spell is going to be amazing sometimes it's going to be trash take it with you and try it out in a couple of different situations I don't think you're going to be upset that you took this one but I would recommend you take Fireball first a well-placed fireball can fix most any problem it's like the eldrich blast of spells we mentioned before that at six level you were going to get a subass specific ability to use and that's where we're at now so for the fiend Warlock the ability is called Dark one's own luck this will allow you once per short rest to add a 1D 10 to any ability check dice roll this is pretty awesome it's essentially the same thing as Bic inspiration or guidance but it's a 1 d10 that you're adding to that role which is absolutely ridiculous at seventh level the fiend warlock is going to have access to two more spells on the list to choose from which are wall of Fire and Fire Shield wall of fire is incredible and you will likely find a ton of opportunities to use the spell just remember that it requires concentration to maintain the Flames so be careful what you're doing there's nothing less fun than summoning a giant wall of Fire across the battlefield and scorching your enemies and then immediately doing something stupid and extinguishing your own firewall right away like I said before don't be me be better than me it won't take much fire Shield actually has a bit more Nuance to it when you first cast a spell you're going to be given a choice of two versions of it that you can pick you can either have the fire Shield be made of scorching hot flames that will reduce the cold damage You Take by half and deal fire damage in retaliation to anybody that strikes you or the Flames can be freezing cold and they will give you fire resistance and deal cold damage to anybody that strikes you so you can either have hot flames or cold Flames which I think is pretty awesome any kind of spell that gives you utility choices like that are really good plus being able to pick sources of resistance to damage types in this game is excellent so being able to choose one of these is great ninth level is another one where you're going to get access to two more of the subass Spells when you're choosing your spells this time it's flame strike and cone of cold cone of cold is a large frontal cone kind of like burning hands was at the beginning except instead of doing a small cone with burning hands it's a huge cone and it does frost damage this also will freeze any water puddles that are on the ground turning them into ice surfaces and potentially having your enemies slip on them flame strike is a ground targeted AOE ability with a relatively small casting area but that's for a good reason because this thing does huge damage you can cast it up to 60 ft away but it only has a 10t radius around where you're actually casting it it does half radiant damage half fire damage when someone is concentrating on a spell every time they take a hit they have to make a concentration saving throw this counts as two so they have to pass two saving throws because of this in order to maintain concentration and because it's split damage where it's half fire half radiant the odds of you finding an enemy that's immune to both of those types is very low and even finding somebody with resistance to both types of damage is very low you might find someone that's resistant to one or the other radiant or fire but finding someone that's resistant to both is more rare and lastly upon reaching 10th level the fiend warlock will be granted a very powerful passive defensive ability fish resilience this is going to allow you to choose a damage type once per short rest and gain resistance to that damage type this buff is going to last until you long rest or until you choose another damage type to get resistance to you can only have one chosen at a time so if you do a short rest and reset this ability and then cast another one it's going to get rid of the first one this is very powerful obviously we already talked about how strong it is to be able to give yourself resistance to certain damage types so now imagine this one you get to choose pretty much any damage type and get resistance to it this is very very strong especially if you know what's coming if you know what you're about to walk into and you can give yourself a superide ideal resistance for that situation you're going to be really really well off that's pretty much it for the fiend subass we covered all the Spells and abilities that you're going to get as you level up you can tell like I said before it's basically a bunch of uh direct damage abilities or a couple of self Buffs that you can give yourself mostly straightforward stuff you're here to do damage Fireball and Flame strike and K of cold and stuff like that all around I think this is an excellent subass the fact that will starts out as a fiend warlock is really good because I think this is probably the one that most people should play as especially firsttime players it's much easier to pick up and use than some of the tools you get from the other ones which are going to be while still useful and very viable it's not as easy to figure out where to use some kind of crowd control as it is to figure out where to throw a fireball so now that we covered all that let's go back to first level and talk about something much more confusing shall we the great old one warlocks bound to eldrich beings in the far Realms work toward inscrutable goals gaining strange Powers over entropy and the mind so the devil just wasn't quite insane enough for your taste huh so you went out looking and found this freaking thing and decided to strike up a deal with it right upon first choosing the great old one subass the two spells that you're going to gain access to when you're choosing spells are dissonant Whispers And Tasha's hideous laughter disant Whispers is a spell you'll cast on a Target within 60 ft of your Warlock and it will frighten them as well as doing a decent amount of psychic damage so as with any crowd control ability this has the potential to be incredibly strong if you use it in an opportune time and it saves one of your characters lives you're going to absolutely be glad that you had this so it's worth looking into if you think you're going to make use of this it's worth looking into Tasha's hideous laughter is a very very powerful crowd control spell your target will be struck with such an insane fit of laughter that it will force them the raffle m rafle m this is obviously very powerful especially in the early game which tends to be the hardest part of the game as we discussed before having access to crowd control spells in the early game is especially for some difficulties it's almost mandatory if you're trying to do an honor mode run you need to become real real familiar with your crowd control tools and your escape tools as well because running from fights is back on the menu kids larion wasn't messing around there's some fights where it's like holy F this was an easy fight on tactician and in honor mode it's like oh guess what H phase two sucker Tasha's hideous laughter does require concentration to maintain so you know the drill don't cast haste first and then use this you will also be granted your first passive ability from your unknowable eldrich Patron in the form form of mortal reminder when you land a Critical Strike against an enemy with your warlock you will frighten all nearby enemies until the end of their next turn unless they pass a wisdom saving throw so basically instead of stealing the life force from enemies that you're killing and getting temporary hit points you're causing such Panic with your critical hits that it's like shattering the opponent's minds and they can possibly become frightened and have to run away from you this is a passive source of area of effect crowd control at early game set it and forget it you get a critical hit you have a chance to fear everybody around you don't sleep on this one this can really really make a difference as you're leveling up especially in the early game like we were describing crowd control is much more important and much more powerful so thanks cthulu you're swell guy at third level the great old one will grant your Warlock the choice of two more spells detect thoughts and fantasmal force detect thoughts does exactly what it says it does but what this translates to in the game is basically a couple of uh dialogue options that you get when you're in a conversation you can read people's minds at Key moments and learn information that you're not supposed to learn that they're trying to keep from you this one any of these speak with animals speak with dead uh this one detect thoughts friends charm person any of these things that help you in in dialogue options can be insanely powerful be careful you're playing on the higher difficulties when you cast these spells on people you have the chance that they will realize that you did that to them and people do not like it they wake up from that and they're like hey guards this dude's casting spells on people in town and then the guards are going to come talk to you so just be careful not to get yourself killed doing that fantasmal force is strange the way it works in balers Gate 3 is that you essentially cast it on somebody and it's almost like a psychic nightmare that they're having where every turn they are going to take one D six damage starts with psychic damage but it will change to whatever the last type of damage they took was every time they take damage while it's on them so if you blast them with a fireball next turn one of your other characters or whatever then fantasmal force will hit them for fire damage instead if you guys have a good story about fantasmal force or really any of these psychic things I I haven't done anything really with psychic damage yet I've used the Spells a little bit but not extensively maybe I need to make me a psychic character and go down that route we are now back at fifth level so mountain of Buffs you know the drill you get everything in the world at this level your Patron is going to Grant you the bestow curse and slow spells as options when you're choosing your spell for this level both of these are targeted debuffs that require concentration to maintain bestow curse is going to allow you to get up in melee range Touch Somebody and give them a curse this is going to give them disadvantage on saving throws of whatever type you choose or cause them to skip their turns possibly or just a couple different things you can choose from not a bad spell but you have to get really close to use it slow on the other hand is incredibly powerful right out of the box this spell is probably one of the most underrated spells in the game if I had to take a guess especially since haste exists because haste is essentially the opposite of this but rather than targeting an ally with haste and doubling everything they do you can Target up the six enemies with slow and cut their effectiveness in half so if it works on all six people when you cast it my God that is a lot of Effectiveness all those people are going to have their armor class and dexterity saving throws reduced by two so they're easier to hit with every single kind of attack basically on their turn they're going to have to choose to perform a bonus action or a regular action they don't get to do both they have to pick they won't be able to perform more than one attack per turn regardless of what kind of Buffs they have if they have the ability to perform 37 attacks per turn it doesn't matter while you're slowed you get one their movement speed is cut in half which is ridiculous because if they're stuck in a bad situation and you cut their movement speed in half they might stay stuck in that bad situation they can't take reactions at all so no opportunity attacks if you cast slow on a bunch of people and it works you can just run right away from them because they can't take reactions to hit you which is excellent because that gets distance between you and them makes them move to catch up to you if they're trying to come break your concentration and get out of slow so it's it's nice and if they cast spells while they're slowed there is a chance that whatever spell they cast will be delayed until next turn before it actually goes off like I said before it does require concentration but even if you only get two or three people with this thing it's big the ability that cthulu is going to Grant you at six level is entropic Ward this will allow you to impose disadvantage on an attack against your warlock once per short rest and as an added bonus if you impose disadvantage on the attack and it misses you will be granted advantage on your next attack against that person so it's a double whammy this is nice because it's a reaction ability and it grants you both offensive and defensive Boons at the same time which is rare usually you get one or the other so you're likely going to get quite a bit of value out of this throughout your playthrough you'll you'll enjoy having this one when you reach seventh level as a great old one warlock you will be granted the Dominate beast and avars black tentacles spells as options to choose dominate Beast will basically m control a beast type enemy to fight on your side for the duration every time they take damage they have a saving throw that they can make against it if they pass a saving throw it breaks the mind control but until then they fight on your side so not only does it take away one of the enemies it gives them to you as an ally to attack their own friends Until It Breaks which is great it's a double whammy aar's black tentacles will summon a 20ft radius circle of tentacle hentai which will grab and attack any creatures that are caught within the area make sure to keep your anime wuss out of this one or you know don't I don't judge whatever you want to do seriously though this thing is better than you're probably imagining it is a strong AOE crowd control option that will deal much more damage to targets than it initially seems while a creature is inside the area they will be taking bludgeoning damage from being slapped and smacked by writhing tentacles their movement speed will be reduced by half and they have a possibility of becoming smothered this will cause them to take further damage per turn while held as well as imposing disadvantage on their attack roles and saving throws any attacks made against the target while they're under this condition will also have Advantage so you see I mean Japan knows what they're talking about with this one this thing is freaking this is scary you stay away from this ninth level great old one warlocks will get the Dominate person and telekinesis spells as options dominate person pretty much works exactly this wow my eye dominate eyeball anyway dominate person works pretty much exactly the same way as dominate Beast except you guessed it it works on Persons instead of beasts same things I said about that spell apply here though it's a crowd control ability that takes an enemy off the field and gives you an ally on the field double whammy even if that dude only if he takes one attack from a teammate for you or causes a little bit of damage to his teammate this was an excellent option stuff like this can't be underestimated especially in the higher difficulties and if you've ever heard the word telekinesis then you likely know exactly what this spell does it allows you to kill a yak from 200 yard away with mind bullets no it obviously allows your warlock to move things with their mind this can include flinging enemies off cliffs or possibly more impressively I think more impressively but it was me that did it so I'm kind of biased I have actually grabbed my teammates out of an impending explosion and flung them out of it with telekinesis they take a little bit of damage from being flung by telekinesis but dealing two or three damage to them by flinging them across the room is much better than them taking 30 or 40 damage from a bomb exploding in their face though I actually was able to save their life with it casting the spell will put a concentration buff on you that requires concentration to maintain as long as you maintain concentration on that every turn after that for just the cost of an action you can use telekinesis again to move something else so this is another one of those things kind of like call lightning that we talked about before where it puts a concentration buff on you that lets you use the same spell again as a can trip next turn pretty much the same thing except with telekinesis and for your final subass benefit at 10th level the great old one will grant you passive resistance against psychic damage but also anytime you take psychic damage the person who dealt it to you takes the other half so this is basically just a giant psychic middle finger from your Patron middle finger middle tentacle that doesn't sound good so to sum up the great old one warlock you're a Flying Spaghetti Monster fan and you like messing with people's minds crushing them and bending their will to your own desires or just flinging them off a cliff with telekinesis whatever you want to do with that said we're going to head back to first level and cover our final subass the arch Fay rced by a lady or Lord of the Fay you are imbued with all the Sumptuous and scary qualities of your Patron's extraordinary realm so you didn't trust the devil and you didn't understand the great old one so instead you decided to seek out one of these tricksters and try to get your hands on some of their Untamed Magics when you first make this subass choice you will be granted the fairy fire and sleep spells as choices both of these are very good and you would definitely find uses for both of them throughout your playthrough fa fire will Target an area within 60 ft of your Warlock and summon a basically an area of magical light that anybody caught within fairy fire will have advantage on attacks against them and none of them can become invisible it reveals things inside there so if you cast fairy fire on top of somebody that's invisible it breaks their invisibility and they're revealed sleep is unique the way that you target the spell is by hit point amount you are allowed to put creatures to sleep with hit points totaling up to a certain number based on what level sleep you're casting that sounds confusing why in the world would they do that well first of all at the beginning of the game people have really low hit point amounts sleep is much more powerful at this the start of the game because you can just put people to sleep from full health one thing this uh spell tool tip doesn't explain very well is that it's not talking about maximum health it's talking about current health so if you're fighting someone that has 2 million health and sleep will put them to sleep if they have 22 health or less if you get them down to 21 Health it will guaranteed put that person to sleep doesn't matter that they had 2 million maximum health whatever number I said I can't even remember did I say a million or 2 million I can't remember whatever it was 10 gazillion Health doesn't matter because now they have 21 health and they're asleep if you get two enemies down to 10 Health each you could put them both to sleep if you get four enemies down to five Health each you could put all of them to sleep so it can be really really strong and it does work throughout the entirety of the game upcasting it increases the hit point amount that it'll put to sleep also and there's no saving throw against this if they are below the hit point amount they are getting put to sleep so that's very important to know while they're asleep it'll skip their turn it'll Grant attacks against them advantage and guarantee that their crits if they're made from within 5 ft of the sleeping person this thing it can save your team from a really really bad situation and it's an offensive thing where you can just pile a ton of damage on top of the sleeping person the first level packed ability that you receive from the arch Fay is Fay presence this will allow you to either charm or frighten all enemies within 10 ft once per short rest unless they pass a wisdom Save which will negate the effect entirely upon reaching third level the arch Fay will grant your Warlock the calm emotions and fantasmal force spells as choices fantasmal Force we already discussed this was the psychic nightmare that changes damage types based on what last damage type they took was like I said before it's not amazing it's not terrible if you guys know how to use it better than me then let me know because I'm I am interested in in hearing stories about that if you guys have good ones and calm emotions is a ground targeted AOE that will remove and make all Targets inside this immune to charm frighten and enrage effects that can be bad if one of those people is a barbarian and you're trying to use your rage ability because it'll kick you out of it fifth level the legend a veritable Cornucopia of spells and abilities and Buffs that you get all at once and also you get two more spells to choose from from the arch Fay just for good measure these two are blink and plank growth blink is an interesting spell which is also only available to use in combat what it does is that at the end of your character's turn you will roll a 20-sided die and if you roll an 11 or higher or higher disappear into the Ethereal plane which makes them immune to being targeted immune to taking damage of any kind they will be able to teleport up to 20 ft per turn while they're there but they can't move besides that teleport plant growth is another incredible AOE crowd control spell I think this one is very very underappreciated you're going to Target a circular area within 60 ft and it's going to grow a 20ft radius circle of thick plants that will massively slow any and everybody that's caught within it any creatures inside the plant growth area will have their movement speed cut down to one quar of what it normally is there's there's no saving throw against this either if they're in it their speed is reduced this spell can be combined with damaging area of effect spells to excellent effect also think of hunger of Hadar and then you're massively slowing them down so they start and end their turns inside of hunger of padar take the cold damage take the acid damage for starting and ending their turn in it it can really really get ugly quickly but just know as a forewarning for using plant growth the plant growth area is incredibly allergic to fire if fire touches this area at all the entire circle area of plants will bust into flames immediately and burn away at sixth level the arch Fay warlock will gain the Misty Escape ability this is a reaction that you can trigger upon taking any damage once per short rest using the ability will cause your warlock to become invisible and then on their next turn you will get to cast Misty step though it will break your invisibility so this is a small price to p if this gets you out of the fight entirely if you're in a really really bad situation and you need to get the heck out of there this is it right here you stealth move away as far as possible and then miss the step as far away as possible and try to escape and then you can just resurrect your other guys in town if you need to whatever you got to do but if you got to run get out of there don't let them wipe your team when you reach seventh level the arch Fay will grant you dominate beast and greater invisibility as choices dominate bees we covered before you mind control an animal it fights with You Until It Breaks free not amazing not terrible greater invisibility will turn a creature invisible it lasts for 10 turns grants their attack rolls Advantage imposes disadvantage on attack rolls against them and you can remain invisible with this one while you're performing certain actions but every time you do something like this you have to succeed another saving throw a stealth check and every time you succeed one of the stealth checks it gets harder and harder and harder until eventually you're guaranteed the spell one pretty much at Ninth level the arch Fay will grant you dominate person and seeming as spell options dominate person is the same as before same thing as dominate beast but for persons instead of beasts seeming is different this one is like the spell disguise self except it works on your entire group the main use for the spell is squeezing your party members through tight areas that only small characters can get through because most people don't play gnomes or halflings but it's useful to be that small and certain areas because there's certain areas where you just you can't squeeze through if you're too big seaming will allow you to change all your people into halflings real quick squeeze into a dungeon through that tiny little shortcut hole and then you can switch back to your regular race when you're inside if you want whatever you want to do and for the final sub classes final bonus we've arrived again at 10th level the arch Fay warlock will gain the beguiling defenses passive ability which passively and permanently makes your warlock immune to being Charmed passive crowd control or damage immunities should always always be celebrated so I'm going to celebrate this one woo in summary the arch Fay is kind of a crazy Patron to serve using their Magics to trick and manipulate their targets and speaking of crazy patrons if you've enjoyed yourself or learned anything consider supporting the channel by signing up for my patreon which I've Linked In the video description below any and all support is greatly appreciated you become my Patron and you grant me the Boon of your hard earn money and I'll serve you the best videos that money can buy I also can't wait to see what kind of presents you get me a fifth level if you can't become a patron or simply don't want to that is also perfectly fine like I said before just a a like on the video and the fact that you watched it is plenty I appreciate it all we did it we covered everything that warlocks get we covered sub classes hacked choices eldrich invocations subass spells that you get as you level you have a ton of choices when you're playing this class so you got your work cut out for you making a build on this one there's a lot of good ones to be had though for sure all in all the Warlock is an incredibly powerful class especially since there's tons of different various play Styles available to them you can play as a purely range Caster you can play as more of a melee uh Spell blade kind of situation it's up to you however you want to build it there's a ton of different options and I would honestly say that the Warlock is probably one of the easier to pick up classes for a beginner it's going to be hard to master obviously because you don't know what all the Spells do and everything when you're first starting out but the tools that warlocks get eldrich blast I mean you can count on that to be a go-to attack on most turns so even if you pick the wrong spells you still have eldr blast available now if you don't choose Elder blast then you delete your account I don't know what to tell you that's a freaking challenge mode run right there playing a warlock without using Eldridge blast Jesus Christ this is where I'm going to leave this one though Travelers I appreciate you guys watching it all the way through feel free to let me know in the comments if if you have any cool multiclass ideas I know about Sor loocks and loadin and sorlockadin and all different kinds of combinations that people have talked about Bard locks and stuff like that but let me know your cool combo because I love talking about the different class builds and everything and seeing all the cool stuff you guys have come up with also feel free to let me know if you have any cool stories from your tabletop games I like hearing those too because I don't see that side of it you guys play tabletop games and you get to bring those kind of experiences to the channel and I think that's excellent I love hearing stories like that but anyway as always I am glad you got to see me do your best to stay alive until next time see [Music] you oh

Channel: Panic Rolling

Views: 38,401

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Id: _KJm_wlZfhI

Length: 61min 55sec (3715 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023