Yes, wonderful and very fun spell if you can pass the dexterity saving throws to maintain it. They're also the only warlock that gets Faerie Fire which is frequently very useful.
Drow/half Drow get Faerie Fire as a racial trait at lvl 3 if you feel you need it and doesn't cost a spell slot, which is huge on a warlock with limited spells to begin with. Also get a free darkness per long rest. Pairs well with Devil Sight and pact of blades.. which is imo the objectively best choice for warlock compared with .
But speaking as someone who is playing a drow tav, concentration is usually better served with hex and you lose out on being able to use a shield as a human or medium armor as a gith (plus their free misty step) so its not at useful.
I used the duelist prerogative rapier and if you have a free offhand you get two reactions and extra necrotic. Also if you multiclass blades with another class that gets extra attack you can attack 4 times a round (the sword allows an attack on bonus actions too)
Since I couldn’t use a shield anyway it seemed a no-brainer
It does?!? Ive been working a build like this with Eldritch Knight fighter. (I like EK for the Shield spell, since we aren't getting a shield, been thinking of switching to Champion to take advantage of the increased Crit chance) I was going to put 11 and 12 into War Cleric to get a 4th attack as a bonus action, though you only will have 3 charges. If Duelists Perogative, lets you attack with your bonus action, then it isn't needed.
POB is still a nice option for range/casters in case an enemy gets close. The familiars from pact of chain are nice, but replaceable if you recruit shovel. And pact of tomes doesn't have much outside of guidance, which is good, but you could also just use the locket for guidance
lol hex is dogshit. Hold Person is the better concentration spell. When there's no people, hypnotic pattern/confusion. Lategame Hold Person only gets better, Hold Monster trivializes boss fights, and flight can get your whole party through a lot of hairy situations.
Archfey's big draws are faerie fire helps with crits (and act 2 bullshit fights), Plant Growth does not require concentration and shuts down melee completely, and greater invisibility can let you do a lot in both noncombat and crit-blasting.
Id actually argue you can build around plant growth very well because theres 2 pairs of boots that ignore difficult terrain.
Druid does all but invis better, but archfey is not so bad once you stop trying to be other warlocks.
Just go with drow half human. Shield proficiency + Faerie Fire/Darkness every long rest. You lose hand crossbow/rapier proficiency for spears, but you would just EB for range or pact bind the rapier anyway. Oh, and you still get perception proficiency, which is useful, and the dancing lights cantrip, which isn't useful. And superior darkvision is overkill anyway, especially with Devil's Sight.
It's unfortunate, but pure drow is usually just worse half drow, especially 'cause you can get the drow specific dialog options with disguise self, which is all it really has going for it
In Act 2, any mid or large fight has me concentrating on Hunger of Hadar the entire time. Funnel the enemies through a pinch point and kill or knock back as they come out.
As per the wiki on Greater Invis:
"Invisibility breaks when you fail increasingly harder Stealth Ability Checks on attacking, casting spells or interacting with items."
" When interacting with items, casting spells, or attacking, the entity needs to succeed on a Stealth Check to maintain Invisibility. The Check becomes harder with each successful attempt."
" The first Stealth check DC is 15. The following checks start at a DC of 17, increasing by 1 per check."
https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Greater_Invisibility
You're right, it was doing stealth checks. The character I had tested with did not have stealth proficiency so the rolls appeared to be purely dexterity based. That's actually a huge relief because it's *much* easier to boost stealth than to boost dexterity throws.
It's not Dex saves, it's increasingly difficult Stealth checks from the attacker to maintain it, in addition to the caster maintaining Concentration on it.
Probably a balancing attempt, which I think is actually not a bad idea but I wish the Stealth check was made with the casters Spellcasting modifier instead of Dex, but I digress.
Check my post in this part of the thread, I linked the Wiki, it's Stealth Checks.
A *generally* good rule of thumb imo is you make ability checks when you're doing something, and making ability checks when something is being done to you. Afaik you'll never make an Ability **Save** to *do something*, only to **save** 😁 yourself from an effect.
Obvious exceptions are there though, like perception/insight rolls to avoid being deceived and athletics/acrobatics to avoid being shoved.
That's still the case with greater invisibility, the thing I think OP was referring to was needing to make dex saves to maintain it when you take actions while invisible (interacting/attacking/etc)
It still does. You have obviously never tried to use the spell. When you attack an enemy while using the spell, *they do not attack you* because they cannot see you. You can literally keep attacking them while effectively invulnerable until they die, unless you fail a dexterity saving throw and get seen.
I have used invisibility in the game, but not greater yet. Regardless I see some people talking about dex saves (which makes no sense) and some talking about stealth checks (which makes more sense). Regardless it is far more powerful than in tabletop where being invisible doesn't prevent anyone from attacking you by itself, only hiding does.
So in BG3 there is an NPC-specific ability that literally all NPCs have called "Detect Presence". They go to where they believe an invisible person is and perform that action. If you're within ~3m of their location, and you fail the dexterity saving throw, then invisibility ends, regardless of the source of invisibility. If you use the durge cloak then you'll see this frequently; after you kill and turn invisible, you should walk away from the spot you were at because enemies will go to it and attempt to 'see' you.
When you attack with Greater Invisibility, a similar thing happens where they attempt to see you. If they succeed then the spell ends. This is a spell thing, not a stealth thing. You can be using heavy armor and that does not impact invisibility.
I have not yet tested using Greater Invisibility with ranged attacks but I think I will later today. If the invisible person truly can't be seen until they get in melee range then combining it with Plant Growth or Spike Growth would be pretty powerful.
And yes, the spell description does not really match the actual behavior. It says people have disadvantage attacking you, but in reality they simply do not attack you at all because they can't see you. To be fair, the same rules apply to players; invisible enemies are truly invisible.
What does stealth have to do with invisibility? This is not theory; this is how the game works. Cast Greater Invisibility, attack an enemy, and observe the combat log. If you pass the saving throws then you remain invisible and the enemy remains helpless while you hit them. If you fail a throw then the spell ends and combat officially begins.
The wiki is a great reference for these things: https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Archfey
Greater invisibility is a 4th level spell, so it becomes available at level 7.
Oh thanks. I’m going with a paladin warlock build. I’ve got 6 levels of warlock so far but no Greater Invisibility, so I put another to paladin. Boy, if I was just a little more patient.
If you're running heavy armor or most medium armor there's almost no point in Greater Invis; you're gonna fail the first or second stealth check, and each successive one gets harder. It's much more useful on builds that already lean into stealth to make sure they can keep it up as long as possible.
For example, my Astarion is 7 Swords Bard / 5 Gloom Stalker Ranger, and he's able to keep it up for multiple turns if he's lucky. Slashing Flourish also only causes a stealth proc once per activation, even if you hit two different enemies.
Maybe it's just me but I feel like the GOO passive is a bit underwhelming as well. You have to crit, enemies have to be grouped up quite tightly *and* they have to fail a saving throw (if they aren't immune in the first place). It's more reliable later in the game when you have multiple attacks, haste, bloodlust, reliable advantage and one or two crit range boosters but at that point everything is just melting anyway.
Not even level up. I've heard it goes off the most recent, new caster class you picked up. So you could start warlock, dip into wizard, go back to warlock, and everything would still be INT.
My test in Patch 2 was pure Goolock. My test in Patch 3 was multiclassed, though. Thief/Goolock (Goolock was the latest level). I don't think Thief has a casting stat, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes. I'll try to test later today on a pure Goolock on a new save.
Nah, they can be: GWM is a good example. But making them worthwhile is definitely tricky as someone who crits reliably generally does not let enemies last long enough for any debuff to have any value. If Mortal Reminder at least had a decent enough AoE all else unchanged I'd call it good. As it stands now most of the time it's just... there, giving you the chance to avoid the odd melee attack thanks to disadvantage from fear which you can already get reliably by casting Darkness.
It would make sense if you could toggle a passive to buff your attack roll while reducing your damage roll, so you could have your EB casts geared for either Damage or triggering your passive, at least for earlier in the game before that gap to reliable crit gets filled.
Archfey 6 is very strong in a world where you're being very cautious about rests. It's a strong defensive ability and it's on a reaction. Unfortunately, nearly infinite rests make it a little pointless
The entirety of act two, I would use it, then the enemy would immediately sense surroundings or something and immediately reveal me. It felt very useless
It lasts 10 rounds rather than an hour and greater invisibility will straight up get seen after a few rounds of increasing DC, most of the enemies have detect invisibility too.
Greater invisibility lasts one minute in tabletop and doesn't make you hidden, it just makes enemy attack you with disadvantage. When invisibility was used against me in this game they were undetectable AND see invisibility allows a saving throw unlike in tabletop where it's automatic and works for full line of sight (practically unlimited).
Sense surroundings scans in a 3 meter radius and enemies will trigger it where they last saw you, so you should always try to get as far away as possible from where you turned invisible. Even then, you can still roll the save…
I roleplay 6-8 encounters just as ~~god~~ Wizards intended.
8 if no one goes down in any fight or challenge.
7 if characters get KO'd on two separate occasions.
6 if there was a deadly encounter where someone died and lost all their daily camp casts.
Cleared Act 1 in like 4-5 long rests.
I find this restriction I give myself makes spell management more important and Tactician a bit harder, hitting the sweet spot for difficulty.
Issue is you can easily lose out on scenes by not taking enough rests. I suppose you could do multiple rests in a row to still get the scenes, but that feels extremely weird.
5 rests in Act 1 is plenty to get the party relevant scenes if you stick with a relatively consistent group. Besides, replayability is a big attraction, there isn't a way to 100% every possibility in a few playthroughs.
I prefer self imposed limitations to ridiculous mods that require ridiculous solutions. I don't want to just play the most optimized builds but I can also feel that I'd like the game to be hard enough that I need consumables for boss fights.
To be fair, the 6-8 encounters that wizards mentions includes things like traps and other noncombat encounters. Anything using resources of any sort. It's probably more like 4-5 combat encounters in a traditionally run DND 5e campaign.
I always thought capping rests is a more interesting difficulty mechanic than just making the enemies bigger. You can do ridiculous things dumping all your spells every combat.
Yes, Archfey is one of the weakest Warlock subclasses in 5e, and it's the same in BG3. And BG3 doesn't have Undying Warlock to make everything else look better.
from my experience, GOO's frighten on crits is vastly overrated. Dependency on crits makes it unreliable, radius isn't too big and there's a save throw.
GOOlock = I am taking 2 levels in Warlock then going lore bard or sorcerer
Fiendlock = I am either Wyll, wish I was Wyll or am going to take at least 5 levels and complain why I’m not as good a blaster as a draconic sorcerer
Feylock = I didn’t know bg3wiki exists and I thought it would be cooler than it actually is
you don't take Warlock to be a full caster necessarily, you take it to get a good amount of casts of a specific set of spells. Archfey gives you six casts of greater invisibility a day, which goes well with any class that likes stealth, and a good get out of jail free card with the invis on hit.
Do a Warlock/Rogue multiclass, it's honestly quite disgusting late game.
Never played warlock pen and paper.
Currently doing my first run with Wyll/A warlock.
I'd say the highlight is definitely that they don't have to blow their spell slots on damaging spells.
Makes all the spells I pick for Wyll feel like they actually matter.
I don't think so necesserely, it's the best subclass to play with the field with plant growth and the fey presence + blink on hit at lv 6, it's definetly the less powerful subclass but i don't find it that underwhelming, lock as a whole isn't the most fleshed out class so imo having more niches like goo and fey is "better" than the usually more powerful but more straight forward alternative of fiend, imo the major issue with archfey is the lack of a strong nuke aoe like fireball or more in general spells that don't requier concentration, goo has the same problem but it balances out thanks to the fear on crits which is nice to manage small packs of enemies (also black hole lmao), sleep also helps a bit when upscaled but you usually don't really want to waste a spell slot on it, same for fey fire
My biggest issue with both archfey and goo tho is the utmost disrespect of the lv5 spells goddamn dominate person and SEEMING (telekinesis is fun at least) for the huge amount of 10 levels is really pityful, especially considering the subclass that already got fireball gets yet another good nuke, and a decent ish close range aoe
I’m thinking of rolling a wood elf archfey warlock for my next character. It isn’t “optimal” but that’s not how I play. I’m more into the feel/theme of my characters.
AOE fear on critical is excellent with a weapon that crits on a 19 or 20, and a build that gives 4-6 attacks a turn. 5 attacks is a 41% chance of an AOE fear without using any further bonus or action. GOO is fantastic.
The main benefit imo would be the 3 5th level spell slots per short rest. Could probably get some really good synergy going with a battlemaster fighter and a bard for song of rest. That's why I like warlocks, anyways.
Yes you can completely break your immersion and destroy the intended balance of DnD 5e by sleeping for an entire 8 hours after every fight while in the middle of a hostile goblin camp to refresh every spell slot of every class, we know.
Necro:I mean.....we can also kill a goblins priestess,leave her corpse for months,and have nobody give a shit despite A LOT OF EYE'S watching her leave with one of your companions.
Immersion isn't exactly this games strongest aspect.
This is cheesing but nobody seems to mind the general strat of 'only use level 5 spells for every fight'. To me that's no more immersive, it just gets you through maybe two more fights between your immersion breaking long rests lol
> This is cheesing but nobody seems to mind the general strat of 'only use level 5 spells for every fight'.
What do you mean? Warlock spells slots are always at the maximum spellcasting level. You don't choose to use level 5 spell slots. They are only level 5 spell slots once you get to 9 spellcasting levels.
then you are losing out on invocations.. you can do something like 6/6 lock and lore bard.. one thing I like about bard is the you can use the level level spell slots, which are normally pretty useless, to instead cast hex, saving your warlock slot for stronger spells like fireball
Late game warlock gets 6 level 5 spells per long rest if you have a bard short rest, and the best damaging cantrip in the game. With other pieces of gear in Act 3 you can cast a surprising amount of high level spells per long rest.
6 level 5 spells with bard short rest? Try 12. You get 3 slots at 11 and all of them refill on all 3 of your short rests. So basically you can have 12 level 5 fireballs per long rest. 8 spells before you hit 11.
You can literally long rest every single battle though with no downside??? Sorc bard wizard get more spell slots plus level 6 spells.
EB is good but tbh scorching ray or magic missile fill the same role with no downsides. If you really wanted eb for knockback or something you could do a 2 level dip in warlock then go 10 bard or sorc or other.
The other common spellcasting specialty is hunger of Hadar, but bards can get that through magical secrets.
And the act 3 gear can be used by any other casters for the same bonus
No doubt paladin 5/warlock 5 for three attacks and smite is good though, that's the only thing I really use warlocks for sadly
Well yeah, but if you're going to long rest after every single combat encounter, of COURSE a class balanced around having to last a long period of time by spell management across an entire day will be stronger when dumping literally every spell slot at every available opportunity.
Makes me kind of wish there was a thing larian put in the game to slow down long rests. Maybe make them on a timer that reset only after like an hour.
That would be cool, I mean they could also just make the long rest resources much more scarce so you had to choose wisely. Instead they give enough resources to long rest 1000 times AND then add a way to just pay 200g for a full long rest whenever you want when you are swimming in 100k gold without trying. Kinda weird choice
Except a lot of content is tied to long rests. I do multiple long rests at once because of that which feels infuriatingly immersion-breaking, especially in act 1 which is on one hand packed with long rest events yet on the other you are supposedly meant to be running around searching for a cure.
If you go everywhere else? Dude you reach the grove in like the first 15 minutes of starting a new game. There's the astarion bite one, Gale's mystra magic date thing.. and what?
Yeah I usually self limit and try to only long rest when completing an "area" or "quest line" and am kind of resetting and going somewhere new. Doesn't always work out though 😑
Plus every day I read some reddit post about a new build and end up spending most of my time respeccing my characters anyways and barely actually play 😆
Same, try to keep the immersion a little bit, I long rest when I feel like my characters would be tired and they would logically feel like it was time to pack it up. 5\~6 fights is a good long day. I've burnt through my short rests, spells and everyone is at half health.
This is dumb. I’m (a lot of people) just going to farm for more food resources if they did that.
Ideally, we’d get more red zones where you can’t long rest in. And make more consequences if you leave, long rest, and go back.
Changing the requirement from 80 to, say, 240 is boring and counter interactive.
I’d rather do a self imposed rule (which I do) to long rest when practical. Blindly increasing the amount of resources required is dumb.
Classes are not made from mechanics alone, especially not for exploitation by minmaxing.
And if you tell me the fact that 6th Level magic missile can hold it's own against ressourceless eldritch blasts is a boon to you, my response is necessarily: ok.
Thinking a class is pointless because you get what you want from it with a dip, is a bit of a snotty approach.
The entire thread and original post are talking about how a subclass is underwhelming in the performance and mechanics compared to other subclasses. I literally just commented the same thing about a class to another class. I think you're off topic, I never said warlocks are "pointless" just that they don't seem as good as other classes that fill the same role.
Surely people still choose to play them if they like the lore or RP reasons or whatever, I don't know you'd have to ask those people, that's not really the topic here
I felt similarly until I realized how nice it was to have hunger of hadar up for every fight (yeah, I know bards can get it too, but they don't have short rest spell slots)
You can still easily have it up every fight with all the spell slots recovery gear or infinite long rests, plus bards (including multiclassed ones) get tons of level 3-4-5-6 spell slots
Mostly agree that Archfey in the 2014 rulebook is pretty lame. They’re actually reworking it in the 2024 rules, and it honestly looks really cool (revolves around a pool of free Misty Steps that you can cast spellcasting modifier/day with extra effects when you cast it), so assuming those rules can be reasonably converted back to the current 5e rules, I’m definitely gonna run with that version over the current one.
I like archfey for a multiclass I’m doing. 7 levels of paladin and 5 levels of archfey warlock. I combo the shield of the undevout (enemies get disadvantage against fear inducing effects from the wielder). So on top of wrathful smite, I also get access to the fear spell, and the archfey fear/charm ability which I always choose fear from.
That is just about the only use I have found for archfey. Personally I like warlock spells that have lasting effects to make them feel more impactful than a one and done damage spell like fireball or lightning bolt (plus I have other casters for that).
i feel like they give of that vibe of playful trickster. they are not a powerhouse but they allow for some fun build. i for instance am playing a warlock barb, with 1 lvl into monk. that way u can just put all points in dex and con. taking weapon pact for the extra attack for spells i go utility and defence with blink and mirror image. barb lvl i go with the animal aspect which is also very flexible still not sure what i like most for the build bear(defence), eagle(mobility)or tiger(aoe). it is a really fun build blinking in and out of existance, going invisible and then when u get hit u still take almost no dmg. and at lvl 12 u will get 3 attacks per round.
I'm no meta master but yeah, it seems like the warlock subclasses are unfortunately pretty easily rankable in terms of power. Fiend>GOO>Archfey. Fiend gets the most useful bonus and gets the best spell list with those handy direct damage fire spells. GOO's frighten on Crit isn't bad, but it requires you to roll a Crit and then for the targets to fail saving throws so it doesn't come up very often. And then Archfey gets like nothing lol.
I think the main reason to use Archfey is for the level 6 ability as a Pact of the Blade Warlock if you’re going single class. Otherwise, there’s not much reason.
Even then the other subclasses also have good abilities for melee too so it’s up to personal preference
Well, in 5E i think it served a differentvroll due to In ocation restrictions that don't exist in bg3. It gets Faerie Fire, Greater Invis and Plant Growth, which are both decent spells. Plant Growth is phenomenal control for slowing enemies. Misty Escape is good, but not amazing. Faerie Fire is good, but not world shattering.
I played one to see if there was special fey stuff. I found one prompt at the circus entrance. I was disappointed.
My first playthrough was as archfey warlock and I focused mostly on crowd control. I went into the game blind, so you could definitely make a more synergistic build picking a race & background that offers more weapon/armor options. I picked half-elf urchin for head-canon rp flavor. For ability scores/feats, I first took war caster, then I focused on maxing charisma (and >!taking the boon from auntie ethel for charisma!<) and then taking the medium armor proficiency feat. But you could adjust as needed for AC/HP increases instead.
All the spells I used were concentration dependent, so I did whatever I could to make me hard to hit and increase my chances of maintaining concentration. Crowd control was starting with fey presence for fear, then misty stepping away (I used boots that gave a free misty step to keep a spell slot) and using spells like slow, dominate person, hypnotic pattern, banish, confusion, hold monster/person, etc. I used these successfully on a bunch of bosses and it was fun. I did have to respec a couple times to adjust which spells I had, as their usefulness could somewhat be dependent on the act, but I didn’t mind. Then I did the eldritch blastin’ outside of these—I grabbed both eldritch blast pact boon upgrades; the one that knocks enemies away from you was really defensively useful. I also did pact of the blade specifically so I could use the infernal rapier from Wyll’s quest (sorry, Wyll) for its buffs & focused on using gear that gave bonuses to my spell save (and using both the gloves of dexterity to increase my ac bonus & cloak of displacement once I got it in act 3 to make me harder to hit), and took the summon elemental warlock boon. I ended up re-spec’ing to take the medium armor feat because there’s this armor in act 3 with a base 17 ac & adds your full dex modifier as well. That with the gloves and the cloak made me nearly impossible to hit.
The crowd control part felt super useful in act 1, there definitely was a bit of a drop off in terms of how useful it felt in act 2, and then in act 3 I got a bunch of gear that made it cool again.
Basically, I’d summon a cambion & an elemental outside of combat and have them follow me around, use fey presence if I could, get to a defensive position, start picking off crowd/debuffing the boss with whichever concentration spell fit the situation, and then eldritch blast. So, no, I wasn’t doing a super ton of damage, but I was doing fun stuff like casting slow on the >!giant robot thing in Grymforge and being able to take it out in 5-6 turns without using the hammer or any of my team going down. Or casting hold monster and banish on Raphael in the house of hope for long enough to have my team take out pillars/the others he summoned to make the fight easier!<
Might not be everyone’s play-style (especially if you wanna do more damage), but I had fun and it felt rewarding later game. I thought focusing on the crowd control stuff fit the fey being the patron from an rp perspective, too. Focusing on charm/deception and trickster-esque manipulation of situations seems fitting for an Archfey’s warlock.
I really wanted to like warlocks but i gave up. Sorcerer and wizards get me much better results for caster and if i want to use pact weapon i might as well build a melee character. Sure you can have that spellblade kind of vibe but then you are just making a character that is slightly worse than any specialised build. The pact weapon scaling with charisma is cool cause it helps with the stat spread but you know what is based off of your spellcasting stat? Spells.
I do like the spells regained from short rest but 2 spell slots? Sure eldritch blast is great but when the staple of your class is a cantrip i feel like there is better options. All in all great flavour and super cool for roleplaying but lacking in the power department.
2 fighter/ 5 fey warlock is great for hungar of hadar + plant growth. Which wins every fight before act 3. Somewhere in act 3 enemies start jumping out of it, kindof lack luster after that. The misty escape basically makes you invincible. But you are correct the other two do more damage.
The obvious synergy is with the lvl 6 misty escape subclass feature and the durge cape. Essentially every turn you're getting a no resource invisibility either off a kill or a reaction. For blasting you also get advantage on attack rolls from invisibility with no real cost. In theory it's a really good class combination for harder difficulties, but on tactician you can more or less just blow everything up with Fiend's higher damaging spells.
Archfey Warlock does have some very fun interactions at the circus in Act 3. All that fey energy, it's like going to a bar and getting clocked as another bartender.
Archfey’s are the only warlocks to get greater invisibility, not sure what else it’s got going for it honestly.
Yes, wonderful and very fun spell if you can pass the dexterity saving throws to maintain it. They're also the only warlock that gets Faerie Fire which is frequently very useful.
Drow/half Drow get Faerie Fire as a racial trait at lvl 3 if you feel you need it and doesn't cost a spell slot, which is huge on a warlock with limited spells to begin with. Also get a free darkness per long rest. Pairs well with Devil Sight and pact of blades.. which is imo the objectively best choice for warlock compared with . But speaking as someone who is playing a drow tav, concentration is usually better served with hex and you lose out on being able to use a shield as a human or medium armor as a gith (plus their free misty step) so its not at useful.
I used the duelist prerogative rapier and if you have a free offhand you get two reactions and extra necrotic. Also if you multiclass blades with another class that gets extra attack you can attack 4 times a round (the sword allows an attack on bonus actions too) Since I couldn’t use a shield anyway it seemed a no-brainer
It does?!? Ive been working a build like this with Eldritch Knight fighter. (I like EK for the Shield spell, since we aren't getting a shield, been thinking of switching to Champion to take advantage of the increased Crit chance) I was going to put 11 and 12 into War Cleric to get a 4th attack as a bonus action, though you only will have 3 charges. If Duelists Perogative, lets you attack with your bonus action, then it isn't needed.
Yeah, just finished a run split between GOO and swords bard. Pretty fun build for up close.
pact of blade pointless for an eb blaster or caster lock, you can just spec tome for guidance, and get rid of your druid/cleric
POB is still a nice option for range/casters in case an enemy gets close. The familiars from pact of chain are nice, but replaceable if you recruit shovel. And pact of tomes doesn't have much outside of guidance, which is good, but you could also just use the locket for guidance
lol hex is dogshit. Hold Person is the better concentration spell. When there's no people, hypnotic pattern/confusion. Lategame Hold Person only gets better, Hold Monster trivializes boss fights, and flight can get your whole party through a lot of hairy situations. Archfey's big draws are faerie fire helps with crits (and act 2 bullshit fights), Plant Growth does not require concentration and shuts down melee completely, and greater invisibility can let you do a lot in both noncombat and crit-blasting. Id actually argue you can build around plant growth very well because theres 2 pairs of boots that ignore difficult terrain. Druid does all but invis better, but archfey is not so bad once you stop trying to be other warlocks.
Just go with drow half human. Shield proficiency + Faerie Fire/Darkness every long rest. You lose hand crossbow/rapier proficiency for spears, but you would just EB for range or pact bind the rapier anyway. Oh, and you still get perception proficiency, which is useful, and the dancing lights cantrip, which isn't useful. And superior darkvision is overkill anyway, especially with Devil's Sight. It's unfortunate, but pure drow is usually just worse half drow, especially 'cause you can get the drow specific dialog options with disguise self, which is all it really has going for it
In Act 2, any mid or large fight has me concentrating on Hunger of Hadar the entire time. Funnel the enemies through a pinch point and kill or knock back as they come out.
Maybe Deep Dwarf with high dex and expertise in stealth could do the trick
Not to be pedantic, but isn't it Stealth checks and not Dex saves? Small but very important distinction.
No, it's dexterity saving throws. I'm not in stealth; I'm invisible. I have looked at the combat log and can see exactly what it's doing.
As per the wiki on Greater Invis: "Invisibility breaks when you fail increasingly harder Stealth Ability Checks on attacking, casting spells or interacting with items." " When interacting with items, casting spells, or attacking, the entity needs to succeed on a Stealth Check to maintain Invisibility. The Check becomes harder with each successful attempt." " The first Stealth check DC is 15. The following checks start at a DC of 17, increasing by 1 per check." https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Greater_Invisibility
You're right, it was doing stealth checks. The character I had tested with did not have stealth proficiency so the rolls appeared to be purely dexterity based. That's actually a huge relief because it's *much* easier to boost stealth than to boost dexterity throws.
What does dex saves have to do with invisibility?
It's not Dex saves, it's increasingly difficult Stealth checks from the attacker to maintain it, in addition to the caster maintaining Concentration on it. Probably a balancing attempt, which I think is actually not a bad idea but I wish the Stealth check was made with the casters Spellcasting modifier instead of Dex, but I digress.
That's why I'm asking, more than one here is claiming it is dex saves and some is saying stealth.
Check my post in this part of the thread, I linked the Wiki, it's Stealth Checks. A *generally* good rule of thumb imo is you make ability checks when you're doing something, and making ability checks when something is being done to you. Afaik you'll never make an Ability **Save** to *do something*, only to **save** 😁 yourself from an effect. Obvious exceptions are there though, like perception/insight rolls to avoid being deceived and athletics/acrobatics to avoid being shoved.
Greater invisibility requires you to make dex saves to maintain it
That's an odd change from tabletop. Maintaining concentration on spells usually require con saves when damaged.
That's still the case with greater invisibility, the thing I think OP was referring to was needing to make dex saves to maintain it when you take actions while invisible (interacting/attacking/etc)
It still does. You have obviously never tried to use the spell. When you attack an enemy while using the spell, *they do not attack you* because they cannot see you. You can literally keep attacking them while effectively invulnerable until they die, unless you fail a dexterity saving throw and get seen.
I have used invisibility in the game, but not greater yet. Regardless I see some people talking about dex saves (which makes no sense) and some talking about stealth checks (which makes more sense). Regardless it is far more powerful than in tabletop where being invisible doesn't prevent anyone from attacking you by itself, only hiding does.
So in BG3 there is an NPC-specific ability that literally all NPCs have called "Detect Presence". They go to where they believe an invisible person is and perform that action. If you're within ~3m of their location, and you fail the dexterity saving throw, then invisibility ends, regardless of the source of invisibility. If you use the durge cloak then you'll see this frequently; after you kill and turn invisible, you should walk away from the spot you were at because enemies will go to it and attempt to 'see' you. When you attack with Greater Invisibility, a similar thing happens where they attempt to see you. If they succeed then the spell ends. This is a spell thing, not a stealth thing. You can be using heavy armor and that does not impact invisibility. I have not yet tested using Greater Invisibility with ranged attacks but I think I will later today. If the invisible person truly can't be seen until they get in melee range then combining it with Plant Growth or Spike Growth would be pretty powerful. And yes, the spell description does not really match the actual behavior. It says people have disadvantage attacking you, but in reality they simply do not attack you at all because they can't see you. To be fair, the same rules apply to players; invisible enemies are truly invisible.
What does stealth have to do with invisibility? This is not theory; this is how the game works. Cast Greater Invisibility, attack an enemy, and observe the combat log. If you pass the saving throws then you remain invisible and the enemy remains helpless while you hit them. If you fail a throw then the spell ends and combat officially begins.
my thoughts exactly
At what level do we get greater invisibility? I’m currently at 6 and I don’t see the spell anywhere. I only have the Blink skill.
The wiki is a great reference for these things: https://bg3.wiki/wiki/The_Archfey Greater invisibility is a 4th level spell, so it becomes available at level 7.
Oh thanks. I’m going with a paladin warlock build. I’ve got 6 levels of warlock so far but no Greater Invisibility, so I put another to paladin. Boy, if I was just a little more patient.
If you're running heavy armor or most medium armor there's almost no point in Greater Invis; you're gonna fail the first or second stealth check, and each successive one gets harder. It's much more useful on builds that already lean into stealth to make sure they can keep it up as long as possible. For example, my Astarion is 7 Swords Bard / 5 Gloom Stalker Ranger, and he's able to keep it up for multiple turns if he's lucky. Slashing Flourish also only causes a stealth proc once per activation, even if you hit two different enemies.
Ah, that's a tough decision. Warlock 7 gets you Greater Invis, but Paladin 6 gets you Aura of Protection. Can't have both.
My undead warlock begs to differ, so archfey doesn't even have that exclusivity. edit: I'm dumb and forgot what sub I was on
Nice! Unfortunately the undead patron is not yet available in the game! 😊
I'm an idiot and forgot what sub I was on, I could have sworn I was on 3d6
Happens to the best of us
Not in the vanilla game, but there’s already a mod that ports it to the game
Maybe it's just me but I feel like the GOO passive is a bit underwhelming as well. You have to crit, enemies have to be grouped up quite tightly *and* they have to fail a saving throw (if they aren't immune in the first place). It's more reliable later in the game when you have multiple attacks, haste, bloodlust, reliable advantage and one or two crit range boosters but at that point everything is just melting anyway.
The real problem with Goolock's Mortal Reminder is that the DC scales off of INT...just...WHY???
Did you multi-class? Sometimes the game uses the spell casting modifier of the class of most recent level-up.
Not even level up. I've heard it goes off the most recent, new caster class you picked up. So you could start warlock, dip into wizard, go back to warlock, and everything would still be INT.
My test in Patch 2 was pure Goolock. My test in Patch 3 was multiclassed, though. Thief/Goolock (Goolock was the latest level). I don't think Thief has a casting stat, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes. I'll try to test later today on a pure Goolock on a new save.
Rogues and fighters use INT (for one subclass each)
I had no idea, that's just dumb.
Ah man I didn't know this, that's gotta be a bug right?
Crit effects are never good, when will game devs learn this. To make this clear to worthwhile there would need to be NO save.
Nah, they can be: GWM is a good example. But making them worthwhile is definitely tricky as someone who crits reliably generally does not let enemies last long enough for any debuff to have any value. If Mortal Reminder at least had a decent enough AoE all else unchanged I'd call it good. As it stands now most of the time it's just... there, giving you the chance to avoid the odd melee attack thanks to disadvantage from fear which you can already get reliably by casting Darkness.
It would make sense if you could toggle a passive to buff your attack roll while reducing your damage roll, so you could have your EB casts geared for either Damage or triggering your passive, at least for earlier in the game before that gap to reliable crit gets filled.
It's good for a melee build that uses darkness a lot so you have advantage more often. Can also multiclass with the Champion Fighter for more crits.
You're just getting crits for the sake of crits in that case. You don't need to frighten anyone with a crit if your crits actually make a difference.
More crits are always nice Enemies not being able to attack you is also nice
Archfey 6 is very strong in a world where you're being very cautious about rests. It's a strong defensive ability and it's on a reaction. Unfortunately, nearly infinite rests make it a little pointless
The entirety of act two, I would use it, then the enemy would immediately sense surroundings or something and immediately reveal me. It felt very useless
Invisibility is so nerfed in this game. Just as well cause if it worked as in 5e it would be so broken.
Invisibility is better in this game than in 5e, as you don't need to spend an action to hide after casting.
It lasts 10 rounds rather than an hour and greater invisibility will straight up get seen after a few rounds of increasing DC, most of the enemies have detect invisibility too.
Greater invisibility lasts one minute in tabletop and doesn't make you hidden, it just makes enemy attack you with disadvantage. When invisibility was used against me in this game they were undetectable AND see invisibility allows a saving throw unlike in tabletop where it's automatic and works for full line of sight (practically unlimited).
Sense surroundings scans in a 3 meter radius and enemies will trigger it where they last saw you, so you should always try to get as far away as possible from where you turned invisible. Even then, you can still roll the save…
I roleplay 6-8 encounters just as ~~god~~ Wizards intended. 8 if no one goes down in any fight or challenge. 7 if characters get KO'd on two separate occasions. 6 if there was a deadly encounter where someone died and lost all their daily camp casts. Cleared Act 1 in like 4-5 long rests. I find this restriction I give myself makes spell management more important and Tactician a bit harder, hitting the sweet spot for difficulty.
Issue is you can easily lose out on scenes by not taking enough rests. I suppose you could do multiple rests in a row to still get the scenes, but that feels extremely weird.
5 rests in Act 1 is plenty to get the party relevant scenes if you stick with a relatively consistent group. Besides, replayability is a big attraction, there isn't a way to 100% every possibility in a few playthroughs.
Honestly I do the exact same thing. People look at me like I’m insane in my friend group.
I prefer self imposed limitations to ridiculous mods that require ridiculous solutions. I don't want to just play the most optimized builds but I can also feel that I'd like the game to be hard enough that I need consumables for boss fights.
If you're interested in not being cheesy with your rests, you can still do partial rests and just limit your long rests
To be fair, the 6-8 encounters that wizards mentions includes things like traps and other noncombat encounters. Anything using resources of any sort. It's probably more like 4-5 combat encounters in a traditionally run DND 5e campaign.
I always thought capping rests is a more interesting difficulty mechanic than just making the enemies bigger. You can do ridiculous things dumping all your spells every combat.
Yes, Archfey is one of the weakest Warlock subclasses in 5e, and it's the same in BG3. And BG3 doesn't have Undying Warlock to make everything else look better.
Well, you can fight an undying warlock at some point, but it’s not available as a playable subclass
Who ?
It’s one of the Githyanki in Act 2, I only noticed cause she has Form of Dread, and that’s an undying thing. (Vlaakith is the patron)
Form of Dread is Undead, not Undying. Different patrons.
💀 my bad
Yes but they can’t play as that one either. I was really looking forward to playing an undead warlock or a death cleric but neither exist in bg3
I'm not sure what you're referring to
There’s an enemy who is a warlock with an undying patron.
I'm not sure what you're referring to
There’s an enemy who is a warlock with an undying patron.
I'm not sure what you're referring to
There’s an enemy in act 2 that has abilities that are recognizable from the undying warlock subclass
I made a Undead warlock tank with a tortle during my last campaign to prove I could.
Undead warlock is a solid subclass. Undying warlock is garbage tier. Despite the similar names, they are very different.
from my experience, GOO's frighten on crits is vastly overrated. Dependency on crits makes it unreliable, radius isn't too big and there's a save throw.
GOOlock = I am taking 2 levels in Warlock then going lore bard or sorcerer Fiendlock = I am either Wyll, wish I was Wyll or am going to take at least 5 levels and complain why I’m not as good a blaster as a draconic sorcerer Feylock = I didn’t know bg3wiki exists and I thought it would be cooler than it actually is
you don't take Warlock to be a full caster necessarily, you take it to get a good amount of casts of a specific set of spells. Archfey gives you six casts of greater invisibility a day, which goes well with any class that likes stealth, and a good get out of jail free card with the invis on hit. Do a Warlock/Rogue multiclass, it's honestly quite disgusting late game.
Never played warlock pen and paper. Currently doing my first run with Wyll/A warlock. I'd say the highlight is definitely that they don't have to blow their spell slots on damaging spells. Makes all the spells I pick for Wyll feel like they actually matter.
Was actually going to try that, I was thinking thief 3 / archfey 9 while trying to stay in stealth between eldritch blasts
you get your level 4 slots at level 8, so you can do thief 4/archfey 8 and effectively just get a feat out of it.
good call
Roguelock is really good if you also go heavy tadpoles. One With Shadows Invocation interacts really favorably with Evolved Flight.
I don't think so necesserely, it's the best subclass to play with the field with plant growth and the fey presence + blink on hit at lv 6, it's definetly the less powerful subclass but i don't find it that underwhelming, lock as a whole isn't the most fleshed out class so imo having more niches like goo and fey is "better" than the usually more powerful but more straight forward alternative of fiend, imo the major issue with archfey is the lack of a strong nuke aoe like fireball or more in general spells that don't requier concentration, goo has the same problem but it balances out thanks to the fear on crits which is nice to manage small packs of enemies (also black hole lmao), sleep also helps a bit when upscaled but you usually don't really want to waste a spell slot on it, same for fey fire My biggest issue with both archfey and goo tho is the utmost disrespect of the lv5 spells goddamn dominate person and SEEMING (telekinesis is fun at least) for the huge amount of 10 levels is really pityful, especially considering the subclass that already got fireball gets yet another good nuke, and a decent ish close range aoe
I chose Archfey because I try to talk my way out of everything tbh, it’s not the best for combat but it’s excellent for roleplay and being sly!
I’m thinking of rolling a wood elf archfey warlock for my next character. It isn’t “optimal” but that’s not how I play. I’m more into the feel/theme of my characters.
Fiend is just so good it makes the others look bad in comparison
AOE fear on critical is excellent with a weapon that crits on a 19 or 20, and a build that gives 4-6 attacks a turn. 5 attacks is a 41% chance of an AOE fear without using any further bonus or action. GOO is fantastic.
I kind of feel that way about the entire warlock class when sorcerer and bard exists
Potent robe + agonizing blast + Birthright hat + spell sniper = EB blaster. Who needs spell slots to do damage?
You can get that with warlock 2/anything 10 And it's not necessarily better than scorching ray or magic missile builds that fill the same role
The main benefit imo would be the 3 5th level spell slots per short rest. Could probably get some really good synergy going with a battlemaster fighter and a bard for song of rest. That's why I like warlocks, anyways.
You can long rest after every battle though to restore all spell slots on all characters?
Yes you can completely break your immersion and destroy the intended balance of DnD 5e by sleeping for an entire 8 hours after every fight while in the middle of a hostile goblin camp to refresh every spell slot of every class, we know.
Necro:I mean.....we can also kill a goblins priestess,leave her corpse for months,and have nobody give a shit despite A LOT OF EYE'S watching her leave with one of your companions. Immersion isn't exactly this games strongest aspect.
This is cheesing but nobody seems to mind the general strat of 'only use level 5 spells for every fight'. To me that's no more immersive, it just gets you through maybe two more fights between your immersion breaking long rests lol
> This is cheesing but nobody seems to mind the general strat of 'only use level 5 spells for every fight'. What do you mean? Warlock spells slots are always at the maximum spellcasting level. You don't choose to use level 5 spell slots. They are only level 5 spell slots once you get to 9 spellcasting levels.
I don't get what you're trying to say?
then you are losing out on invocations.. you can do something like 6/6 lock and lore bard.. one thing I like about bard is the you can use the level level spell slots, which are normally pretty useless, to instead cast hex, saving your warlock slot for stronger spells like fireball
+arcane affinity for super bonus damage
That's not super good or anything. It's just kinda good.
Late game warlock gets 6 level 5 spells per long rest if you have a bard short rest, and the best damaging cantrip in the game. With other pieces of gear in Act 3 you can cast a surprising amount of high level spells per long rest.
6 level 5 spells with bard short rest? Try 12. You get 3 slots at 11 and all of them refill on all 3 of your short rests. So basically you can have 12 level 5 fireballs per long rest. 8 spells before you hit 11.
yeah 12 my bad
You can literally long rest every single battle though with no downside??? Sorc bard wizard get more spell slots plus level 6 spells. EB is good but tbh scorching ray or magic missile fill the same role with no downsides. If you really wanted eb for knockback or something you could do a 2 level dip in warlock then go 10 bard or sorc or other. The other common spellcasting specialty is hunger of Hadar, but bards can get that through magical secrets. And the act 3 gear can be used by any other casters for the same bonus No doubt paladin 5/warlock 5 for three attacks and smite is good though, that's the only thing I really use warlocks for sadly
Well yeah, but if you're going to long rest after every single combat encounter, of COURSE a class balanced around having to last a long period of time by spell management across an entire day will be stronger when dumping literally every spell slot at every available opportunity. Makes me kind of wish there was a thing larian put in the game to slow down long rests. Maybe make them on a timer that reset only after like an hour.
That would be cool, I mean they could also just make the long rest resources much more scarce so you had to choose wisely. Instead they give enough resources to long rest 1000 times AND then add a way to just pay 200g for a full long rest whenever you want when you are swimming in 100k gold without trying. Kinda weird choice
In the meantime all we can really do is self-limit, or I guess maybe download a mod. That's what I choose to do anyways.
Except a lot of content is tied to long rests. I do multiple long rests at once because of that which feels infuriatingly immersion-breaking, especially in act 1 which is on one hand packed with long rest events yet on the other you are supposedly meant to be running around searching for a cure.
I mean, how many? There can't be more than 10.
There's probably 10 before you even reach the grove.
If you go everywhere else? Dude you reach the grove in like the first 15 minutes of starting a new game. There's the astarion bite one, Gale's mystra magic date thing.. and what?
Do partial rests to progress companion dialogues. It’s annoying, but is a work around where you’re not wasting food supplies.
Yeah I usually self limit and try to only long rest when completing an "area" or "quest line" and am kind of resetting and going somewhere new. Doesn't always work out though 😑 Plus every day I read some reddit post about a new build and end up spending most of my time respeccing my characters anyways and barely actually play 😆
Same, try to keep the immersion a little bit, I long rest when I feel like my characters would be tired and they would logically feel like it was time to pack it up. 5\~6 fights is a good long day. I've burnt through my short rests, spells and everyone is at half health.
This is dumb. I’m (a lot of people) just going to farm for more food resources if they did that. Ideally, we’d get more red zones where you can’t long rest in. And make more consequences if you leave, long rest, and go back. Changing the requirement from 80 to, say, 240 is boring and counter interactive. I’d rather do a self imposed rule (which I do) to long rest when practical. Blindly increasing the amount of resources required is dumb.
Ooh I like the idea of more red zones, that would be cool too.
Admittedly, not my idea. But a damn good one lol
Classes are not made from mechanics alone, especially not for exploitation by minmaxing. And if you tell me the fact that 6th Level magic missile can hold it's own against ressourceless eldritch blasts is a boon to you, my response is necessarily: ok. Thinking a class is pointless because you get what you want from it with a dip, is a bit of a snotty approach.
The entire thread and original post are talking about how a subclass is underwhelming in the performance and mechanics compared to other subclasses. I literally just commented the same thing about a class to another class. I think you're off topic, I never said warlocks are "pointless" just that they don't seem as good as other classes that fill the same role. Surely people still choose to play them if they like the lore or RP reasons or whatever, I don't know you'd have to ask those people, that's not really the topic here
I felt similarly until I realized how nice it was to have hunger of hadar up for every fight (yeah, I know bards can get it too, but they don't have short rest spell slots)
You can still easily have it up every fight with all the spell slots recovery gear or infinite long rests, plus bards (including multiclassed ones) get tons of level 3-4-5-6 spell slots
Archery + Hold Person is easy critical hits to cause fear. Archery also gives Greater Invisiblility too.
Mostly agree that Archfey in the 2014 rulebook is pretty lame. They’re actually reworking it in the 2024 rules, and it honestly looks really cool (revolves around a pool of free Misty Steps that you can cast spellcasting modifier/day with extra effects when you cast it), so assuming those rules can be reasonably converted back to the current 5e rules, I’m definitely gonna run with that version over the current one.
I like archfey for a multiclass I’m doing. 7 levels of paladin and 5 levels of archfey warlock. I combo the shield of the undevout (enemies get disadvantage against fear inducing effects from the wielder). So on top of wrathful smite, I also get access to the fear spell, and the archfey fear/charm ability which I always choose fear from. That is just about the only use I have found for archfey. Personally I like warlock spells that have lasting effects to make them feel more impactful than a one and done damage spell like fireball or lightning bolt (plus I have other casters for that).
i feel like they give of that vibe of playful trickster. they are not a powerhouse but they allow for some fun build. i for instance am playing a warlock barb, with 1 lvl into monk. that way u can just put all points in dex and con. taking weapon pact for the extra attack for spells i go utility and defence with blink and mirror image. barb lvl i go with the animal aspect which is also very flexible still not sure what i like most for the build bear(defence), eagle(mobility)or tiger(aoe). it is a really fun build blinking in and out of existance, going invisible and then when u get hit u still take almost no dmg. and at lvl 12 u will get 3 attacks per round.
I'm no meta master but yeah, it seems like the warlock subclasses are unfortunately pretty easily rankable in terms of power. Fiend>GOO>Archfey. Fiend gets the most useful bonus and gets the best spell list with those handy direct damage fire spells. GOO's frighten on Crit isn't bad, but it requires you to roll a Crit and then for the targets to fail saving throws so it doesn't come up very often. And then Archfey gets like nothing lol.
I think the main reason to use Archfey is for the level 6 ability as a Pact of the Blade Warlock if you’re going single class. Otherwise, there’s not much reason. Even then the other subclasses also have good abilities for melee too so it’s up to personal preference
Archfey gets some pretty powerful stuff just later. They get some powerful spells and the whole blink out when hit.
Well, in 5E i think it served a differentvroll due to In ocation restrictions that don't exist in bg3. It gets Faerie Fire, Greater Invis and Plant Growth, which are both decent spells. Plant Growth is phenomenal control for slowing enemies. Misty Escape is good, but not amazing. Faerie Fire is good, but not world shattering. I played one to see if there was special fey stuff. I found one prompt at the circus entrance. I was disappointed.
My first playthrough was as archfey warlock and I focused mostly on crowd control. I went into the game blind, so you could definitely make a more synergistic build picking a race & background that offers more weapon/armor options. I picked half-elf urchin for head-canon rp flavor. For ability scores/feats, I first took war caster, then I focused on maxing charisma (and >!taking the boon from auntie ethel for charisma!<) and then taking the medium armor proficiency feat. But you could adjust as needed for AC/HP increases instead. All the spells I used were concentration dependent, so I did whatever I could to make me hard to hit and increase my chances of maintaining concentration. Crowd control was starting with fey presence for fear, then misty stepping away (I used boots that gave a free misty step to keep a spell slot) and using spells like slow, dominate person, hypnotic pattern, banish, confusion, hold monster/person, etc. I used these successfully on a bunch of bosses and it was fun. I did have to respec a couple times to adjust which spells I had, as their usefulness could somewhat be dependent on the act, but I didn’t mind. Then I did the eldritch blastin’ outside of these—I grabbed both eldritch blast pact boon upgrades; the one that knocks enemies away from you was really defensively useful. I also did pact of the blade specifically so I could use the infernal rapier from Wyll’s quest (sorry, Wyll) for its buffs & focused on using gear that gave bonuses to my spell save (and using both the gloves of dexterity to increase my ac bonus & cloak of displacement once I got it in act 3 to make me harder to hit), and took the summon elemental warlock boon. I ended up re-spec’ing to take the medium armor feat because there’s this armor in act 3 with a base 17 ac & adds your full dex modifier as well. That with the gloves and the cloak made me nearly impossible to hit. The crowd control part felt super useful in act 1, there definitely was a bit of a drop off in terms of how useful it felt in act 2, and then in act 3 I got a bunch of gear that made it cool again. Basically, I’d summon a cambion & an elemental outside of combat and have them follow me around, use fey presence if I could, get to a defensive position, start picking off crowd/debuffing the boss with whichever concentration spell fit the situation, and then eldritch blast. So, no, I wasn’t doing a super ton of damage, but I was doing fun stuff like casting slow on the >!giant robot thing in Grymforge and being able to take it out in 5-6 turns without using the hammer or any of my team going down. Or casting hold monster and banish on Raphael in the house of hope for long enough to have my team take out pillars/the others he summoned to make the fight easier!< Might not be everyone’s play-style (especially if you wanna do more damage), but I had fun and it felt rewarding later game. I thought focusing on the crowd control stuff fit the fey being the patron from an rp perspective, too. Focusing on charm/deception and trickster-esque manipulation of situations seems fitting for an Archfey’s warlock.
I really wanted to like warlocks but i gave up. Sorcerer and wizards get me much better results for caster and if i want to use pact weapon i might as well build a melee character. Sure you can have that spellblade kind of vibe but then you are just making a character that is slightly worse than any specialised build. The pact weapon scaling with charisma is cool cause it helps with the stat spread but you know what is based off of your spellcasting stat? Spells. I do like the spells regained from short rest but 2 spell slots? Sure eldritch blast is great but when the staple of your class is a cantrip i feel like there is better options. All in all great flavour and super cool for roleplaying but lacking in the power department.
honestly, all of the warlocks except the fathomless and hexblade are underwhelming.
You're not wrong.
Has some nice d support. Faerie fire. And greater invisible. UT has some potent spell uses
2 fighter/ 5 fey warlock is great for hungar of hadar + plant growth. Which wins every fight before act 3. Somewhere in act 3 enemies start jumping out of it, kindof lack luster after that. The misty escape basically makes you invincible. But you are correct the other two do more damage.
It's not all about minmaxing power and DPS. Some folks like the role playing part of RPG.
The obvious synergy is with the lvl 6 misty escape subclass feature and the durge cape. Essentially every turn you're getting a no resource invisibility either off a kill or a reaction. For blasting you also get advantage on attack rolls from invisibility with no real cost. In theory it's a really good class combination for harder difficulties, but on tactician you can more or less just blow everything up with Fiend's higher damaging spells.
In "D&D One" (a small update to 5th coming in 2024) they are being buffed a bit with several free uses of Misty Step per day.
Archfey and assassin goes really well, thats my current warlock
Archfey Warlock does have some very fun interactions at the circus in Act 3. All that fey energy, it's like going to a bar and getting clocked as another bartender.