Celestial Warlock

Celestial Warlock Overview

If you’re interested in serving as a healer for your party, but want something different from your typical Life Domain Cleric, the Celestial Warlock is an intriguing choice. Especially strong in the early levels, this subclass is one of the most overlooked healing builds in DnD 5e, first introduced in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

When choosing this subclass, you pledge yourself to a Celestial patron, some divine or angelic being that imbues you with the holy powers of the Upper Planes. From a flavour perspective, this is very different from your typical Warlock and forces you to play a more Good-aligned character in social settings.

Strengths

The Celestial Warlock offers a ton of flexibility in playstyle. It’s a great subclass option for secondary healers with solid early-game healing in Healing Light, supplemented with some additional spells like Cure Wounds. Your build also packs decent damage if you are strategic about picking radiant or fire spells that synergize with Radiant Soul.

Weaknesses

While the Celestial Warlock’s basic healing is good, your limited spell slots means you won’t be able to pump out extra healing or damage as consistently as other classes. Stuck as a hybrid healer-damage dealer, this subclass can be accused of being ‘good, but not great’. Parties playing with a Celestial Warlock may benefit from a second character with some healing abilities.

Subclass Guide Rating Scheme

This guide is meant as a deep dive into the Celestial warlock subclass. For a full overview of the Warlock class, check out our Warlock 5e Guide.

For our class guides, we use the following color rating scheme:

• Red isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all.
• Orange Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise.
• Green is a good option.
• Blue is a great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character.
• Sky Blue is an amazing option. If you do not take this option, your character would not be optimized.

Celestial Warlock Spells (Pact Magic)

The pact struck with your Celestial patron gives you access to the power of the Upper Planes, offering divine healing energy and spells with radiant or fire damage.

• Cantrip
  • Light: Useful, but there are plenty of ways around having to pick up this spell. As long as your not underwater, simple torch could save you a slot for another cantrip.
  • Sacred Flame: Good ranged damage option early on but not as good as eldritch blast. Scales well as a source of radiant damage and works with Radiant Soul.

• 1st level
  • Cure Wounds: A staple healing spell that is very unusual for Warlocks to possess. Unfortunately, it’s touch and costs a full action. Scales well with levels.
  • Guiding Bolt: Fantastic damage early on, and if the creature doesn’t die the next attack against it gets advantage which should do the trick.

• 2nd level
  • Flaming Sphere: Not the best damage, but AoE and the ability to move the sphere and continually cause damage as a bonus action makes this a good use of resources. Especially so if you are up against a horde of weak enemies. Damage scales well with warlock spell levels.
  • Lesser Restoration: Diseases and conditions do come up from time to time, so you’ll be happy to have this when they do.

• 3rd level
  • Daylight: The light cantrip on steroids. The biggest downside of this spell is the misleading name which causes people to think that this spell actually produces daylight, which can be helpful when fighting creatures with Sunlight Sensitivity. Dispelling darkness could be situationally useful.
  • Revivify: Every party needs a party member with revivify. The nature of D&D is such that PC deaths happen fairly easily, so your friends will be looking to you to save them from that fate. Because each round of combat is 6 seconds, a party member that dies during combat can typically be revived within 1 minute. Make sure you’ve got diamonds worth 300 gp on you if you’re planning on stocking this spell.

• 4th level
  • Guardian of Faith: A decent way to get some extra damage in if you know that a fight will take place in a specific location. Guardian of Faith can also be used as a sort of alarm when taking a long rest in a dangerous place. Doesn’t scale with Warlock spell levels.
  • Wall of Fire: Amazing battlefield control option to divide enemies and deal massive damage.

• 5th level
  • Flame Strike: Not particularly exciting when you compare it with fireball but seeing as the Celestial warlock doesn’t get fireball this is as good as your AoE will get.
  • Greater Restoration: Great spell to have that can get you or party members out of very tricky situations.

Celestial Warlock Subclass Features

The subclass features for DnD 5e Celestial Warlocks offer healing abilities and amplify the subclass’ natural preference for dealing radiant and fire damage. These features help with the survivability of your party, while also amplifying the strength of your subclass spells.

1st Level

Healing Light

At 1st level, you gain the ability to channel celestial energy to heal wounds. You have a pool of d6s that you spend to fuel this healing. The number of dice in the pool equals 1 + your warlock level.

As a bonus action, you can heal one creature you can see within 60 feet of you, spending dice from the pool. The maximum number of dice you can spend at once equals your Charisma modifier (minimum of one die). Roll the dice you spend, add them together, and restore a number of hit points equal to the total.

Your pool regains all expended dice when you finish a long rest.

The Celestial Warlock’s basic feature is one of the best healing abilities in the game. This feature is similar to other powerful, early-game healing sources like Life Cleric’s Preserve Life or Paladin’s Lay on Hands, although less consistent as it relies on d6 rolls to determine effectiveness.

The biggest upside of this feature is that it can be done as bonus action, instead of a standard action, and offers an improved range of 60 feet to reach distant allies. One drawback is that this feature only resets on a long rest, unlike most Warlock features.

6th Level

Radiant Soul

Starting at 6th level, your link to the Celestial allows you to serve as a conduit for radiant energy. You have resistance to radiant damage, and when you cast a spell that deals radiant or fire damage, you can add your Charisma modifier to one radiant or fire damage roll of that spell against one of its targets.

Your 6th level feature as a Celestial Warlock offers damage amplification for your expanded subclass spells, all of which deal either radiant or fire damage.

While this is a fun flavour ability, it offers limited utility due to the Warlock class’s low number of spell slots. The single-target damage amplification is weak against larger mobs and best used in boss fight scenarios, although it does have the advantage of unlimited uses.

The real drawback of Radiant Soul is that most Warlock builds use Eldritch Blast with the Agonizing Blast invocation to pump out damage at early levels. To match the damage of this core Warlock build path, you have to choose Pact of the Tome to gain access to Fire Bolt, which will allow you to deal the same damage from 6th level onward, although only single-target.

Eldritch Blast = 1d10 + Charisma Mod (Agonizing Blast)

Fire Bolt = 1d10 + Charisma Mod (Radiant Soul)

10th Level

Celestial Resilience

Starting at 10th level, you gain temporary hit points whenever you finish a short or long rest. These temporary hit points equal your warlock level + your Charisma modifier. Additionally, choose up to five creatures you can see at the end of the rest. Those creatures each gain temporary hit points equal to half your warlock level + your Charisma modifier.

The Celestial Warlock’s 10th Level feature is a powerful party-wide buff that strongly incentivizes short or long rests before challenging encounters. Since Charisma is a Warlock’s main stat, this usually equates to a 12-14 hit point boost for players at 10th Level. It even targets NPC allies, which is an added bonus. This is definitely one of the subclass’ most powerful features.

14th Level

Searing Vengeance

Starting at 14th level, the radiant energy you channel allows you to resist death. When you have to make a death saving throw at the start of your turn, you can instead spring back to your feet with a burst of radiant energy. You regain hit points equal to half your hit point maximum, and then you stand up if you so choose. Each creature of your choice that is within 30 feet of you takes radiant damage equal to 2d8 + your Charisma modifier, and it is blinded until the end of the current turn.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.

Your final feature is an instant, auto-cast resurrection on yourself, combined with a half-health heal and an AoE nuke, which is an incredibly powerful late-game effect. The fact that you can choose when to use it also allows you to pop back up at strategic times (although you will probably want to use it immediately in most cases).

Searing Vengeance is an incredibly badass feature, but it does have drawbacks. As a healer, you are usually one of the last players to get targeted in a fight, so you may not get much use out of it unless you are caught out of position. To get full value from your ultimate feature, you will probably need to adjust your playstyle and put yourself in harm’s way more often.

In addition, the ability only works on you, not an ally, and requires a long rest to reset. Overall, a very cool ultimate, but one that can be useless unless you are creative about leveraging it.

How to Play Celestial Warlock

The Celestial Warlock subclass will play quite differently to most other Warlock subclasses, so it does require an adjustment. As mentioned above, you’ll be able to fill a lot of different roles in the party and it is important to figure out how to balance these.

Social Leadership

Due to their typically high Charisma scores, Warlocks are often useful outside of combat as the face of the party in social interactions.

While Celestial Warlocks are no different in this regard, their interactions will play out differently than most other Warlocks. A Celestial will tend to lean Good-aligned instead of Evil-aligned. Relying on skills like Deception and Intimidation can be at odds with a Good alignment character, so players will need to bear this in mind for their roleplay and backstory.

Depending on the world of your campaign, there are many ways to get creative with your subterfuge or choose a background that will provide additional skill options. Regardless of what you decide, there are many creative story-building options for Celestial Warlock players.

Technically a Healer

The biggest difference between playing a Celestial Warlock and a regular Warlock will be in combat situations. When piloting this subclass, it’s important to remember that you are technically a healer for the party.

While you do have access to high damage spells as a Warlock, it’s not always a good idea to waste your limited spell slots on damage. If you end up being the primary healer, you will have to rely on cantrips for consistent damage and save up your spell slots for protecting your party — unless you want to wind up with just your Healing Light feature.

At later levels, you’ll also want to be diligent about using Celestial Resilience and the Inspiring Leader feat to buff up your party before big encounters. Then you might need to strategically put yourself in harm’s way to get usage out of ultimate features like Searing Vengeance. Overall, it’s a tricky playstyle to master.

Specialized Spellcaster

In addition to serving healing duties, Celestial Warlocks will often function as secondary damage dealers as well. Your Radiant Soul feature limits your choices of spells to options that deal radiant or fire damage. This can be a fun flavour for your character, if you’re willing to lean into it, but means you can’t choose just anything.

When playing a Celestial Warlock, an Eldritch Blast build with the Agonizing Blast invocation won’t synergize well with Radiant Soul. Not choosing the Eldritch Blast build weakens you in the early levels, but can be matched post-6th level (see above).

As with most Warlocks, the Celestial Warlock will never be a primary damage dealer. It serves more of a battlefield control role through spells like Flaming Sphere and Wall of Fire. This can be supplemented with a variety of utility options for both in and out of combat, including powerful options like Revivify and Greater Restoration.

Ability Scores for Celestial Warlock

Like with any other warlocks, Charisma is the most important ability score for Celestial Warlocks as it serves as the spellcasting modifier. Dexterity and Constitution will improve your overall durability and assist in ranged attack rolls, so both are valuable. Wisdom is helpful with saving throws and social interactions.

If you’re using point buy, a recommended starting stat distribution could be:

• Strength: 8 (-1)
• Dexterity: 14 (+2)
• Constitution: 14 (+2)
• Intelligence: 8 (-1)
• Wisdom: 12 (+1)
• Charisma: 15 (+2)

If using another ability score generation method, just follow the color coding above.

Celestial Warlock Races

Any race that makes a good warlock will make a good Celestial warlock. See our suggestion for warlock races here.

Celestial Warlock Feats

Any feat that works for a normal warlock will work for a Celestial warlock. See our suggestion for warlock feats here.

The Celestial 5e Build Example

This build example is designed to boost the natural strengths of the Celestial Warlock subclass by increasing access to synergistic radiant and fire spells and maxing utility.

Race

To start with, we’ll choose the Bloodline of Mephistopheles as our Infernal Descent, which unlocks access to two additional fire spells in Burning Hands and Flame Blade that will work with Radiant Soul. This Bloodline does give an ASI to Intelligence, which is not ideal, so there are other options you can choose with Bloodlines if you want. Check out our guide to best Warlock races for other ideas.

Background

There’s no clear-cut choice when it comes to choosing your background. For this build example, we picked Guild Artisan to give access to Insight and Persuasion. As a Warlock, your high Charisma means you will often be serving as the face of the party in social interactions and both these skills can be valuable here.

Pact Boon

At the 3rd level, we’ll choose Pact of the Tome as our Warlock pact. While Pact of the Chain is another appealing option for Celestial Warlocks, the immediate reason to choose Tome is that it unlocks the ‘Fire Bolt’ cantrip to match the damage output of Eldritch Blast and synergize with Radiant Soul.

As mentioned above, this choice can match the damage output of the Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast build. This strategy can allow you to select other invocations, but it lacks the multi-target utility of Eldritch Blast. The other cantrips you choose are fairly flexible.

Eldritch Invocations

Another reason to choose the Pact of the Tome is that it gives access to powerful late-game Eldritch Invocations like ‘Gift of the Protectors’ (9th level). This invocation allows one or more of your allies to write their names in your tome. If they are ever reduced to 0 hit points, but not outright killed, they will automatically drop to 1 hit point instead.

Another powerful Invocation option is ‘Minion of Chaos’ (9th level), which allows you to cast Conjure Elemental once per long rest. Depending on the generosity of your DM, summoning a fire elemental may work with Radiant Soul, while having a conjured ally will provide further targets for healing effects like Celestial Resilience.

For other suggestions on what Eldritch Invocations to take for this build example, you can check out the full table below.

Mystic Arcanum

When choosing your Mystic Arcanum spells, you generally just want to go for the most powerful late-game tools. Any synergy with Radiant Soul begins to fall off at this stage of the game, so there’s less value in picking spells around it. We recommend checking out our Warlock Spell Guide for more explanation on the best spell choices for your Mystic Arcanum.