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Sometimes, desperate people will go to dark places, standing at the edge of the proverbial abyss. In the world of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, sometimes the abyss answers. The Fiend Warlock has made a pact with one of the ♓many devils and demons in the lower planes like the Nine Hel🐻ls or the Abyss.

RELATED: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons: Beꦕꩵst Warlock Invocations

Possessing an arsenal of fire-based magic, a Fiend Warlock may join a party or an adventuring band in a desperate bid to rid themselves of their devilish patro𝓀n. Whatever the reason, this is a class that relies on charismatic ✨will and combines it with both offensive and defensive abilities.

Patrons

Dungeons and Dragons Fiend Summoned By Mage In A Church
Tasha's Cauldron of Everything art via Wizards of the Coast

A warlock pact is made between your character and an otherworldly being. Typically, a warlock will find themselves carrying out their patron's will on the plane in which they reside.

After all, there cannot be a warlock without a sponsor supplying them with magic, often funneling abilities for their obscure purposes. In the case of the Fiend Pact, your patron may be a devil, demon, demon lord, or archdevil.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and you may have to work with your Dungeon Master to come up with a patron that suits your needs and aligns with the fiendish traits you want your🍌 character to engage with. Here are a few higher-powered patroꦕns to help you build your warlock:

Asmodeus

The King of the Nine Hells. Known to be soft-spoken and a gifted orator, Asmodeus uses his charisma for his evil ends, intent on conquering 🀅as much of the multiverse as h🍷e can.

Zariel

Obsessed with fury and martial prowess, Zarie🍃l is the Lord of the First Circle. She believes in her righteous anger and despises the order💝 of governance.

Glasya

Lord of the Sixth Circle and Princess of Hell, Glasya is beautiful and manipulative. She thrives off of her hate for her father and enjoys political machination.

Graz'zt

Known as the Demon Prince of Pleasure and Decadence, he believes himself to be the most clever and cunning creature in the Abyss, even going as far as infiltrating clergy with his followers.

Fraz Urb'luu

This demon lord is known as the Prince of Deception and delights in driving his subjects to madness. He is the center of one of the most ancient cults of demonic worship in the realms.

Lorcan

Lorcan is a cambion who enjoys collecting warlocks as he sees fit. One of his more famous warlocks is Farideh, a tiefling warlock.

Fiend Warlock Features Overview

Title Cover Artwork Two shadowy figues in grey Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
Tasha's Cauldron Of Everything Cover Art by Wylie Beckert

The Fiend Warlock gains several features as they level. At the first level, you gain Dark One's Blessing, a relativ🌃ely strong abi✨lity for a first-level character:

  • Dark One's Blessing

  • This feature relies on you killing hostile foes, gaining temporary hit points as you take enemies off the field. This bolsters your health, which many spellcasters desperately need, as their hit di༺ce are not nearly as large as more martial classes🎃.

At the sixth level, your character receives a feature called Dark One's Own Luck, a feature that entails calling on your patron to alter the outcome of your situation. You know the outcome of the roll you're altering, but the effects of the roll cannot have gone into effect before using this feature.

  • Dark One's Own Luck

    • Your warlock can add a d10 to a roll, greatly increasing the success of an ability check.
    • If you were to roll, say, a ten, then you could potentially receive upward of a fifteen on that roll by invoking this feature. Conversely, you may receive an eleven, but the positive aspect of this feature is that you will always receive a higher result than the one you started with. This is extraordinarily powerful, and as such, you can't use it again until you complete a short or long rest.

The Fiend Warlock puts a lot of stock into the durability of the character, and nothing exemplifies this better than Fiendish Resilience at the tenth level.

  • Fiendish Resilience

  • Determined to keep you up, this feature allows you to choose one damage type to be resistant to, barring silvered or magical weapons. You can choose a different damage type with this feature as well, which lets you rotate resistance every couple of hours.

Some common damage types within the Dungeons and Dragons settings are fire, poison, cold, and necrotic. Choosing resistance to piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning is also useful if you know you're going to be facing off against a martial enemy.

At the fourteenth level, you get an ability called Hurl Through Hell, in which your warlock... hurls someone through hell. The creature disappears and shoots through the hellish landscape of the lower planes, returning to the battlefield harrowed and much more haunted before you collect on your Dark One's Blessing.

  • Hurl Through Hell

  • You hit a target with an attack and invoke this feature. It instantly sends the creature to hell, no save required, and by the end of your next turn, the target has returned to the battlefield. As long as your target isn't a fiend or originally from the Nine Hells, it'll take 10d10 psychic damage. One long rest, and you can do this again.

There is some debate about whether your enemy can take actions while their turn is spent in the lower plane. Because the book doesn't specify, you may have to consult with your Dungeon Master to figure out how to make this feature work best. Does it function as a Banishment spell, in which the target is incapacitated? Can the creature Planeshift back? Does the very act of 'hurtling through hell' mean that the character is too busy being propelled to do anything? This feature, while powerful, may need those answers when you gain it to avoid player disappointment or frustration.

Best Species For Fiend Warlocks

The Pit Fiend, a powerful monster from Dungeons & Dragons
Pit Fiend via Wizards Of The Coast

While you can choose whatever species you like for your Fiend Warlock, some species lend particularly well to the subclass. Because Fiend Warlock doesn't rely on any invocation to make it effective the way a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hexblade build might, the species of your character in conjunction with an invocation could make all the di🍷fference.

Species like drow and tieflings work thematically, what with demons being tied to both through ancestry or official module. It also works mechanically, as drow and tieflings can cast Darkness inherently. Paired with Devil's Sight, you may find yourself comfortably casting your spells from fifteen feet away while your foe flounders in the dark enveloping you both.

Other species that may pair well would be Goliath or Yuan-Ti, whose resistances pair well with Fiendish Resilience, allowing you to be resistant to multiple forms of damage at once.

Best Ability Scores For Fiend Warlocks

Hexblade Warlock Tiefling with a sword and staff
Hexblade Warlock via Wizards of the Coast

Charisma

Charisma is going to be your most important ability score when building your warlock. Not only will it help you in social situations and let you act as your party's negotiator, but it helps your spellcasting, as Charisma is your spellcasting modifier. The higher your✤ Charisma, the more powerful a warlock is.

Constitution

Constitution helps improve your hit point maximum, and for a warlock, this is one of the most important scores you can improve due to their smaller hit dice.

As a Fiend Warlock, your subclass is designed to increase your offensive capabilities, so making sure you can stay up long enough to utilize your Eldritch Blast is essential.

Wisdom

As a warlock, you're proficient in Wisdom saving throws, many of which may take you out of the fight temporarily if you fail them. Because warlocks are so versatile, you may very well be the target over the wizard, who most will expect to succeed on a Wisdom saving throw anyway. Keeping your Wisdom moderately high will decrease the chances of ꦛthat happening.

Dexterity

Your proficiency with light armor makes Dexterity an appealing option to improve, and your armor class is going to become incredibly important if you choose the Pact of the Blade, one of the warlock's Pact Boons.

Armor class is gene✅rally a good thing to keep in mind, and Dexterity will also allow you to perform acts of stealth and subterfuge, which could be crucial in maintaining a relationship with your fiendish patron

You can more or less parse out the rest of your ability scores as you please among Intelligence and Strength. High scores in these aren't necessary to make an optimized build, and due to the warlock's vast customization, you have more flexibility in terms of where you put your leftover ability scores.

While this is a general suggestion for Fiend Warlocks, make sure you go over pact boons with your Dungeon Master to effectively decide on a build. Should you decide to not play a Pact of the Blade Fiend Warlock, for instance, you may prioritize Wisdom for Pact of the Tome or Pact of the Talisman.

You may choose Intelligence for investigating while playing Pact of the Chain, rather than supporting your Dexterity. It's all highly varied and highly changeable.

A humanoid with flame surrounding their head holding a skull in the hell
Descent To Avernus via Wizards of the Coast

As a Fiend Warlock, you'll get several spells by choosing the class. You can cast these as you level, and they provide some variation꧋ and unique features to the warlock subclass.

First Level

Burning Hands

Command

Second Level

Blindness/Deafness

Scorching Ray

Third Level

Fireball

Stinking Cloud

Fourth Level

Fire Shield

Wall of Fire

Fifth Level

Flame Strike

Hallow

Burning Hands is a great spell for a warlock to have in their expanded spell list due to the large amount of space the spell can cover, potentially taking out many enemies, and the same sentiment goes for Stinking Cloud and Fireball. Without access to many area-of-effect spells, most warlocks have to rely on picking off enemies one by one, but the Fiend Warlock negates this by giving you three by the time you're casting third-level spells.

Due to the warlock's small amount of spell slots, choosing spells to take becomes a bit of a challenge. Warlocks don't get the ability to switch out spells every long rest like druids and clerics, instead only gaining the capability to swap a spell every time they level.

This makes cantrips even more important than they are in other classes, as your few spell slots burn up fast.

Because your Fiend Warlock is concentrated on damage, you may want to continue having damage output or to round out your warlock with some utility cantrip like Minor Illusion or Prestidigitation, which the Fiend Warlock heavily lacks. However, and because you only get two cantrips at the first level, there's only one must-have cantrip, regardless of build:

  • Eldritch Blast

  • A warlock's bread and butter. Eldritch Blast can be amplified through Eldritch Invocations and is one of the best damage-based cantrips in the game. It levels well, providing you with plenty more damage. The Warlock is one of the few classes that have access to Eldritch Blast without feats, so taking Eldri♕tch Blast is an absolute must.

Hex
  • Being able to Hex a creature's saving throws and ability checks is extraordinarily effective at any level, so getting it as early as the warlock does is great. It synergizes well with a party that relies on enemies making saving throws and works with many of the Fiend Warlock's spells, like Command or, at higher levels, Blindness/Deafness. It requires some thought ahead of time, but all in all, is a fantastic spell.
  • The extra damage pairing with Eldritch Blast makes up for not being able to cast nearly as much, and the ability to move the Hex to another creature after defeating your current enemy (all the while invoking Dark One's Blessing) works nicely.
  • Each Scorching Ray stacks with Hex.

Protection from Evil and Good
  • You have a ton of damage-based spells from your expanded spell list. You may need some defensive casting to stay secure, and as long as you aren't using other concentration spells, Protection from Evil and Good is a great choice. The disadvantage it gives enemies could potentially leave you or your allies walking away from situations entirely or minimally harmed.
  • Thematically, should you encounter fiends who may be less than pleased with your cooperation or disobedience regarding your patron, this spell might come in handy.

Cause Fear
  • The feared condition wrecks foes and keeps you out of martial range. If a warlock must sacrifice a spell slot, having a spell with such an enduring effect is a reasonable decision.
  • Pairs well with Hex's imposed disadvantage to saving throws.

Charm Person
  • For when that Charisma isn't doing the work it should, or for when you need characters to be more pliant towards it.
  • Also pairs well with Hex's imposed disadvantage.

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