D&D Warlock 5e Guide

D&D 5e Warlock Overview

Playstyle

Warlocks get their powers by dedicating themselves to an eldritch being. These beings tend to be on the dark side, so your character might have a tough time getting along with a party’s lawful good paladin or religious cleric. This devotion to an eldritch being comes with a fair share of issues, so you may find yourself in tough situations where your party is wanting to do one thing but your Eldritch Patron wants another.

Warlocks are not area of effect blasters like the evoker wizard or a sorcerer. Instead, they have a few major defining aspects – Eldritch Blast, curses, and mind control.

Strengths

The Warlock is a half-caster class, meaning they only learn up to 5th level spells, with the exception of their Mystic Arcanum. Unlike the other half caster classes, they are built entirely around casting spells and have a couple of quirks about their spell caster that makes them a very unique caster.

First of all, warlocks are CHA-based casters. Secondly, they have a very reduced number of spell slots and can only ever cast spells at their highest level. This means that all of your spells are going to pack one hell of a punch with the caveat that you will run out of spells slots quite easily.

One good thing to note about this is that warlocks regain all of their spells slots with a short rest, so with as little as one hour of downtime warlocks can be back at full offensive strength.

Warlocks also have a number of passive abilities called Eldritch Invocations. A staple invocation called Agonizing Blast allows warlocks to add the CHA modifier to their best damage cantrip, eldritch blast. These invocations make warlocks one of the most customizable classes out there and provide a number of different playstyles.

Weaknesses

A warlock’s spell slots are its biggest weakness. Up until 10th-level they only have two spell slots per short rest, and only ever get up to four spell slots at the 20th-level. This means that warlocks can wind up without any spells very quickly if your party runs into trouble.

This, combined with the fact that warlocks don’t get a ton of other combat-focused abilities (outside of the Hexblade subclass), means that a warlock’s resources can get used up pretty quick and they become very reliant on cantrips.

Best Races for Warlocks

Making sure you’re choosing a race that synergizes with the warlock’s eldrtich abilities is important. For help selecting the race for your warlock out of the plethora of options, check out our Guide to Warlock Races.

If you’re looking to make a quick choice and using playing with the Basic Rules or Player’s Handbook, tieflings stand out as a strong option. With a +1 bonus to INT and +2 to CHA, tieflings align well with the warlock’s reliance on Charisma for spellcasting. Additionally, their Infernal Legacy trait provides them with access to the Thaumaturgy cantrip and spells like Hellish Rebuke, enhancing their spellcasting arsenal.

Other noteworthy race options for warlocks, if not bound by restrictions, include:

1. Fallen Aasimar: Embracing the darker aspects of their celestial heritage, fallen aasimar possess a natural affinity for the powers often sought by warlocks. Their ability score increases to CHA and STR or DEX, coupled with their Necrotic Shroud feature, can augment a warlock’s offensive capabilities.
2. Yuan-ti Pureblood: The innate defenses granted by their Magic Resistance trait, coupled with their ability score increases to CHA and INT, make yuan-ti purebloods formidable warlocks. Their proficiency in saving throws against magic, poison immunity, and poison resistance are a great foundation for a caster with the warlock’s abilities.

If you want a more uniquely customized warlock, see the aforementioned guide, which covers how effective each playable race will be for warlocks.

Best Backgrounds for Warlocks

• Charlatan: Deception to go with the great CHA and sleight of hand can always be useful
• Criminal: Deception and one of the most important skills in 5e, Stealth.
• Guild Artisan: Insight is always great, even if you have a low WIS. Persuasion is a super useful skill here.
• Sailor: Perception is the most important skill in the game, taking this background can help balance out the low WIS modifier
• Urchin: If you don’t have a rogue, grabbing proficiencies in Sleight of Hand and Stealth can help your party’s chance of staying sneaky.

Ability Scores

Ability Score Increases (ASI) at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level.

Warlocks need CHA and nothing else is critically important.

STR: Just, no.

DEX: Warlocks get proficiency in light armor so pumping DEX is the best way to increase AC.

CON: More hit points and better CON saves make the warlock less squishy.

INT: Dump this stat for sure.

WIS: Can help with WIS saves and Perception.

CHA: This is the most important stat for the warlock, pump this as high as you can.

Warlock Class Progression

1st Level

Hit Points: A d8 hit dice, lack of healing spells, and low AC make the warlock’s survivability something to be desired.

Saves: CHA saves are only really present at higher levels. A proficiency in WIS saves helps mitigate the fact that WIS is a dump stat for most Warlock builds.

Weapon/Armour Proficiencies: Light armor and simple weapons is likely good enough for your warlock. Pact of the Blade gives you automatic proficiency with the weapon you conjure and the Hexblade Patron gives you medium armor and shields.

Skills: Unfortunately the warlock only gets to pick two skills from their not-so-good Skill pool:

• Arcana (INT): You will probably be leaving this up to other party members. If you have no other casters in your party it might be worth a take but dumping INT will make this tough.
• Deception (CHA): Probably the best Skill in your pool and plays nice with the warlock’s propensity to stack CHA.
• History (INT): Same as the other INT skills.
• Intimidation (CHA): Honestly, Deception is way better.
• Investigation (INT): Again, hopefully somebody else is stacking INT.
• Nature (INT): Same as the other INT skills.
• Religion (INT): Same as the other INT skills.

Pact Magic: Pact Magic is a totally unique mechanic for warlocks. Essentially you have a very limited pool of spell slots and you can only cast spells at their highest level (For example, a 5th-level warlock has 2 Spell Slots and always casts them at 3rd level). The good news is that your very limited spell slots recharge on a short rest, the bad news is that if you don’t get short rests very often you will become reliant on cantrips.

Otherworldly Patron: Like clerics and sorcerers, warlocks get to choose their subclass at 1st-level.

Check out our Warlock Subclass 5e Guide for an in-depth look at all of the Warlock Patron options.

• The Archfey: The Archfey Warlock focuses on using the glamor and magic of the fey to ensnare the senses of enemies.
• The Celestial: Channel the power of an entity of the Upper Planes into divine healing energy.
• The Fathomless: Draw power from the crushing, dark cold of the deepest oceans.
• The Fiend: Summon the power of the Nine Hells to smite your enemies with fiery dark energy.
• The Genie: Make a deal with a genie to gain access to elemental abilities and the genie’s infamous wish-granting powers.
• The Great Old One: Draw upon the unfathomable power of eldritch beings to drive your enemies insane.
• The Hexblade: Channel your powers through a weapon summoned from the plane of shadows. Check out our Hexblade Warlock 5e Guide for build optimization tips.
• The Undead: Break free from the circle of life and death by channeling the power of a patron who exists beyond death’s veil.
• The Undying: Gain mastery over death with the help of an unnaturally immortal patron.

3rd Level

Pact Boon: The warlock’s Pact Boon is a versatile feature that allows you to choose a build-defining trait. This type of class feature, that allows choice between core class features, is quite unique to the warlock.

• Pact of the Chain: The imp is an absolutely amazing scout. It gets shape-shifting, flight, invisibility, and the poison attack can come in handy. Combine this with Voice of the Chain Master invocation and annoy your party and DM by ruining all surprises!
• Pact of the Blade: Blade warlock’s struggle a lot with Ability Scores and damage per round unless you are going to go with the Hexblade Patron.
• Pact of the Tome: Really solid seeing as you can pick up guidance, vicious mockery, and minor illusion. Three cantrips that don’t do a ton of damage (eldritch blast has you covered) but will massively increase your utility.
• Pact of the Talisman: Ability checks are a common occurrence in 5e but won’t be as dire as saving throws or attack rolls. Only being able to use the additional d4 on ability checks drastically limits the power of this feature.

4th Level

11th Level

Mystic Arcanum: Nice way to boost the spell slots your warlock has access to. Choose a spell that doesn’t scale with levels. See the Spells section to get suggestions on good Mystic Arcanum spells.

You get a 7th level spell at 13th Level, 8th level spell at 15th Level,  and 9th level spell at 17th Level.

20th Level

Eldritch Master: A minute is 10 rounds of combat so this isn’t useful if you’re in a fight. If you can find a minute between fights, you can usually find 60 minutes to do a short rest. This is a disappointing capstone ability.

Best Eldritch Invocations for Warlocks

Check out our guide to Eldritch Invocations.

Best Feats for Warlocks

Check out our guide to Warlock feats.

Best Spells for Warlocks

Check out our guide to Warlock spells

Best Multiclass Options for Warlocks

Multiclassing is always an opportunity cost, you have to determine if taking a level of another class is worth what you will lose from the original class. Many factors come into this decision, with the main factor being how long your campaign will run and, ultimately, what level you will be playing until. Warlocks are notoriously good options for multiclassing. They get their subclass features at 1st-level, get access to spell slots that recharge on a short rest, have a common spellcasting modifier, and their invocations and pact boon can be very helpful for a number of builds.

Paladin: The Bladelock is a notoriously broken multiclass option. If you dip 1 level into Warlock and put the rest into paladin you will be able to take the Hexblade subclass and attack using your CHA modifier. This means allows you to make your paladin a lot less Multi-Ability Dependant as you can take 13 in STR to get heavy armor, max your CHA, and put the rest into CON.

Sorcerer: A three-level dip into Ssrcerer gets you access to metamagic which will allow you to Quicken or Twin your eldritch blasts, which will net a ton of damage. Unfortunately, you can’t Twin your eldritch blasts beyond 5th level, but Quickening will allow you to cast a leveled spell and eldritch blast in one turn.

Bard: Three levels in bard will get you Bardic Inspiration, Jack of All Trades, and the starting features of a College of your choice. The best bard subclasses to choose would be Eloquence for better CHA-based ability checks and a buffed Bardic Inspiration, Lore for extra proficiencies and Cutting Words, and Valor for medium armor/shields and the ability to add Bardic Inspiration to weapon attack damage rolls.  Bards also have access to stellar early-level spells like vicious mockery and dissonant whispers.

Fighter: Getting access to all armor and shields will help with the warlock’s lackluster AC. The Fighting Style helps boost AC even further and Second Wind is decent healing. Most warlocks can stop there, but Hexblades can continue all the way to a three level dip to get access to Action Surge, and a Martial Archetype. Thematically and mechanically, the Echo Knight is the way to go, but the Battle Master, Psi Warrior, Samurai, and Rune Knight are all good choices.