D&D: Come Get Your Perfect Warlock – By The Numbers
Warlocks are the single most popular class in D&D right now. So we’re going to run the numbers and cook up the iconic Warlock.
Is perfection a dream? A mere ideal to be chased, fruitlessly while pondering if it is truly the destination or the journey that matters? Well, according to cold, hard math, no. Perfection is a real objective thing that we can arrive at by taking a look at the aggregate choices, figuring out what the most popular one is, and as we all know whatever the most people are choosing must obviously be what the most perfect choice is, otherwise, why would they be picking that.
With that in mind, we’re going to let the numbers do their terrible work, and from them finally get, as the song says, the perfect Warlock, her weapons and supplies.
Now that that’s stuck in our head for the next two or three days, let’s take a look at the numbers and see what exactly goes into the perfect warlock.
Correction, let’s look at what goes into the perfect Warlock and also Fighter, because apparently if you’re playing a Warlock, you’re also playing a Warlock/Fighter. Warlocks are even more multiclassed than Sorcerers, and the Fighter bit makes extra sense when you realize that the single most popular Warlock Subclass is the Hexblade.
This comes as a surprise to exactly no one. The Hexblade does literally everything. They’re powerful combatants who can fight decently well, they’re capable of pulling out some surprising spellcasting that makes them powerful enough for most encounters (especially on a short rest) and they have a suite of skills that makes them suited to interaction if they so choose. And they use a single stat, Charisma, to manage all three at once.
There’s little wonder that most people who try the “Make the Witcher but in D&D” route start off with a Hexblade. Except for the whole selling your soul to a magic sword (which is absolutely what the ‘hexblade patron’ is), they make a pretty good fighter/mage that has all of the progression wrapped up in a neat little package.
Adding in Fighter to the mix, probably for two or so levels (or maybe even 4) gives us a whole lot. We get a Fighting Style, most likely Duellist for that extra one-handed melee weapon damage to add even more power to our Hexblade strikes, we also get Second Wind for some extra stamina in a fight, and most importantly, Action Surge, which lets us maximize our effectiveness on a single turn with two actions–so we can make a full attack and cast a spell, or cast two spells, or whatever else we need. Plus we’ll be able to wear heavy armor, so we don’t need to worry too much about Dexterity. In fact, using the standard array, all we have to do is put our 16 in Charisma and we’re good to go. The rest is seasoned to taste.
All we really have to do now is pick out spells.
Looking at the list here we see that the single most popular cantrip by a long shot is Eldritch Blast, and no surprise there, it’s the single most damaging cantrip in the game, followed up with Mage Hand so we’ll take those. Assuming we are 4th level Warlock (with 2 in fighter), we’ll get one more, and Minor Illusion seems like a great followup. Now we can fight at range and in melee expertly. We know five spells, so let’s just take the first five on the list: Hellish Rebuke, Hex, Misty Step, Charm Person, and Burning Hands. Maybe we swap one of those out for Invisibility. But this gives us some nice area damage, a little mobility, and a whole lot of ways to squeeze more damage out of our hexblade strikes.
We’re basically already optimized. All we have to do is pick up Agonizing Blast as one of our invocations, and whatever else we want is gravy beyond that.
So there you have it folks, the Perfect Warlock. Play a Tiefling for maximum typicalness, and you’re good to go.
Happy Adventuring!
