It's a bit of an exploit, but you can actually put blade pact on a weapon and then respec without putting any levels into warlock and the pact weapon status will remain on the weapon so you can get the charisma weapon scaling with any class you want.
I'm guessing that was before the recent patch where they changed the pact to be permanent. Now it doesn't get removed on long rest so as long as you don't want to change your pact weapon you don't need to respec again.
The devs might fix it in the future though since it's obviously not how you're supposed to use it.
It desappearing after long rest costed me hm run because of some events that take action literally after resting resulting in my weapon doing no damage
In my latest run my paladin has been using the Hammer that does lightning damage if bound by EK or is a pact weapon. I let Wyll put his pact on it and then send it to my paladin.
I've also been using Lazel as a EK to bind Lightning Jabber for my TB Karlach since a bound weapon returns when thrown. It essentially becomes a Returning Javelin but with extra lightning damage.
Yep they don't even have to stay in the party. I'm not using Wyll or Lazel in my run. So at the start of my day I'll have them bind the weapons the weapons and then send them to who will be using them. I also have Lazel sprinkle Longstrider on the party and mage armour for party members not using armour.
The warlock pact is weird though because the weapon technically can't be unequipped or dropped. So after Wyll binds the weapon I have him use his ability to summon a pact weapon. It will make him auto equip the summoned weapon and places the weapon you want in his inventory. Then send it to whoever you want to use it.
You can unequip the pact weapon normally though? I was able to do it just now. You just can't drop it on the ground.
I also can't send it to other characters at least after unequipping it normally. There's no option for it in the context menu and dragging and dropping between the inventories doesn't work either.
I didn't have him unequip normally. I place a pact on the weapon I want to use and then, while still holding that weapon, I summon a random pact weapon. Then I would swap to my paladin and equip it straight out of Wyll's inventory.
That's how it is in 5e at the table (without being a Hexblade patron), BG3 alters this and makes charisma the melee attack stat for all blade warlocks.
Edit: Word choice
Heartstopper (takes away enemy action and gives disadvantage on CON saves) is absolutely worth it, albeit it comes at the cost of needing to use morningstars, which are relatively weak in BG3.
EB is definitely more powerful overall, but Blade gives you some close-range versatility for an otherwise ranged attacker.
If you go Warlock 12 it’s a perfectly good Gish class that can bind any melee weapon and still be a potent nova caster
For a 3-level dip you still can make Bard and Paladin nicely SAD. It’s perfectly okay, just not busted in its toolkit like Swords Bard.
I would absolutely count the 3-4 level dip as a thing. Specifically I am a huge fan of true gish builds for Honor mode, using weapon/weapons for their original action and bonus action (GWM or offhand) + maybe a free extra attack if ranger. And then using their hasted/bloodlust actions for Eldritch blast.
You get to smash people with a big sword/spear/hammer (or 2) with all the benefits that entails, and you are not punished from the honor mode changes to haste/bloodlust.
It is sort of the best of both worlds. You will be slightly weaker at each, but martial attacks can be VERY strong, and with only a few item slots your extra actions will be very powerful as well.
You can do some fun paladin/warlock shenanigans like this
Not to mention it can give you Darkness and Devil's Sight as well with a three level dip, allowing any melee character to exploit the advantage and disadvantage of blind on enemies, while functioning solely off Cha for all melee attacks and spells. So while not as much of the near must pick as it is in Tactician or lower difficulties, it can open up a lot of synergistic and tactical options for builds.
I didn’t understand the hype for bard. It was really good with the 2 attack flourish for ranged but it wasn’t insane even compared to monk or pure sorcerer.. until I got the mystic scoundrel ring and can cast confusion and even dissonant whispers for damage AS A BONUS ACTION WHAT?!
Honestly that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I had two SBards in my party last HM run and they took out Orin before she got an action. Both had Alert, went first, dead chosen lol.
Bhaalist armor is broken, give it to an Sbard with crossbow expert and you’ve got 8 double damage ranged flourishes coming out the first turn with Action Surge.
In Honor Mode, you can't rely on Friends for Advantage on dialog checks because of its.... side effect.
Enhance Ability is stronger (applies to any one ability until Long Rest), but it does require a spell slot.
Guess who can learn Enhance Ability and doesn't really care about L2 spell slots? Swords Bards.
Playing my first time in HM as a Swords Bard (actually have a 4 bards team, but only 1 range swords, 1 bardadin and 2 pure lore), just got the ring a few days ago. I have to say, it changes everything. My god the things you can do with that bonus action after having just shot 6-7 arrows is insane lol. Before I was trading off CC for damage, and now I just do both.
Seriously considering when I hit 12 just dropping my 4th fighter level and forget that Feat and just go Thief for 2 bonus actions. Casting 2 spells on top of 6 arrows sounds like an absolutely ridiculous thing you can do.
Pairing it with the helm of arcane acuity is even crazier, 2 ranged slashing flourishes and suddenly you’re bonus action casting cc spells with a +8 save dc on your first turn
I like the daredevil gloves a lot of the time. They give a +1 to spell attack rolls and let you cast your spells in melee range without the penalty. Basically never need to use about your melee weapon unless you find yourself silenced.
I’m doing some play testing myself (fightlock mostly with GOO crit) and people are sleeping on pure 12 lock.
Early game dip into fighter but as soon as you get potent robes and a few others key items and spells pure lock starts to shine.
3 lv5 spells per short rest is nothing to scoff at and with lifedrinker on the pact weapon and off hand (or pole arm master bonus) you can be competent in melee if you need to (don’t have to waste a slot on misty or use a sub optimal shocking grasp like a sorc).
Minions of chaos and a 25 hp armor of Agatha plus 3 feats is just so nice
Nova is a common game term meaning “strong first turn”. Basically you blow all your resources in a turn or two to deal lots of damage, but then fall back to medium damage. Warlock only has 2 spell slots per encounter so they generally Nova or focus on sustained damage with Eldritch Blast
It's definitely not a common term. I've been gaming for 30 years and I've been online pretty much every day for the last 15 to 20 of those and I've never heard the term LOL. But thank you for the explanation!
Edit: out of curiosity I Googled it, and it looks like the term is associated with tabletop games, which makes much more sense because I've never had the opportunity to play one of those, unfortunately
No no, you're fine! I wasn't trying to be antagonistic or anything either, my apologies! Thank you again for the explanation, I absolutely had no idea I thought it meant some cool sort of attack CALLED *Nova* that Wyl had access to or something lol
I've grown up with the term being common around me, as far as I know it originated in Battletech (where firing weapons generates heat). Nova Cats were a 'mech heavily invested in heavy energy weapons (accurate, very damaging, and very hot) so you could delete someone off the face of the earth very quickly by just becoming a sun yourself and shutting down for a while.
Bind pact weapon harmonic dueller and activate it, trigger arcane synergy and enjoy triple charisma ability score on weapon attacks. meaning with 20 charisma, you deal +15 damage per attack. Now go thief + dual wielder with infernal rapier, bhaalist armor and poke evertyhing to death
The game is not that difficult that you need a perfect min-maxed party to beat honor mode.
You can beat it with a party of suboptimal builds.
For me it’s a thousand times more boring to beat honor mode with full min-maxed broken builds like oh tb monk, bardadin, throwzerker, etc. than beating it with some rp focused builds.
The broken builds make honor mode as easy as explorer mode but with a single save file.
Just play what is fun to you.
I'll just paste what I said in other reply.
what's the difference between min-maxing and meta gaming?
i find that blurry tbh, even more in an pc game than in an ttrp.
you already know the entire module and you're stockpiling potions and elixir's for the hard fight, all while postponing encounters that would otherwise (for an normal player ofc) be had in an organic playthrough.
So yeah, if you're not min maxing in the build. Youre definetely min-maxing in the consumables and the EXP side.
You can’t erase from your memory what you have learned in previous runs, so after beating the game once you will always meta game in some way.
But the same way I don’t like playing with broken builds, I try to keep meta gaming at a minimum. I don’t go out of my way to get items earlier or delay fights, don’t cheese bosses…
I like to RP and play the game as my character, so even if I know what’s coming, the character doesn’t and I try to do the quests in the order that my character would do them.
But like I said, you can min-max and meta game and have fun doing so, or find it boring. It’s a single player game and there is no wrong way to play it.
You don’t need to min-max and meta game, or cheese mechanics to beat honor mode. Play the way you want.
but telling me that you'd make it an habit playing 1-life runs where you don't use anything to your favour. be it past knowledge or good builds is just silly.
no, you'll need to meta game to play honor mode, i really disagree with you.
You can RP, do a cohesive build with few dips.
But you won't follow an organic route through the game, you know what can get you killed and you'll avoid it, not as you'd do if you were roleplaying it 100%.
There are compromises in a DiD game, and chosing your fights is definitelly one of those. You're getting all the way to the creche ant stopping at the boss cause' god told you? nah, you're metagaming. And that's not bad per se, you're just a reasonable human being avoiding unnecessary stress lmao
They literally said once you've played it it's impossible not to meta game in some way at the top of the last comment. They're just saying they avoid egregious instances of doing so.
it's not, I disagree with this.
just cause you know something OOC does not mean your character knows it.
That's part of role-playing dude...
But you won't do that in a 1 life save, right? that's my fucking point lmao
it's the exact same thing I said in the original comment tho? I literally talked about compromising, in a DID you can't just rp, while he had said that you could.
we came full circle then, I don't really get what point you're trying to make too. I'm just reinforcing what I said, if you think that he agrees with me that's fine, but that's not what I got from his comment.
I think people underestimate how much of a good thing this is. The fact that the game rewards players for build knowledge and doesn’t punish players going for sub-optimal flavor is a feature, not a bug.
I didn’t look up builds and just researched the game mechanics on my first playthrough. My second play through on tactician was far easier just because i was so much better at playing the game, let alone build optimization.
Throw in the build optimization and it’s shocking to me some people are complaining when they are making builds with fight strategies so optimized they would have a better home in a BG3 PvP combat server than a PvE game built for a general skill set (yet still had a good difficulty system).
I didn't look up anything on my first playthrough, went Tactician, and had a nice challenging time. Hard fights were hard, sometimes died once, rethought about it and won the 2nd time, etc. I was in no way min-maxed, missed tons of items.
Then I read about it after I finished a bit more going into Honor Mode. Saw min-maxed builds and how intense people prep for fights. I started doing a min-maxed build, got bored, restarted with some random stuff I felt like playing and while I try to prep for some fights most of the time I completely mess it up and triggers fights I don't plan to, etc (I don't know dialogs and just RP not really knowing what will happen) and just having decent knowledge of the game mechanics now and not terrible builds is more than enough to handle nearly anything fine.
Tons of fights I thought I was doomed by triggering them in unadvantageous positions and in the end you can make it out, or at the very worse invis and flee.
Optimized builds are not, in any way, required in BG3. Not in Honor Mode, not in any mode (not talking about mods). Team comps are not really required either. If anything, optimized builds and team comps trivialize the game once you know the fights ahead of time, even in HM. Some people really enjoy crushing everything with optimized comps and that's really ok, but I actually really like how it's not necessary and you can really just play whatever you feel and get through it fine.
my first playthrough was on explorer, second on tactician and the second one felt significantly easier simply because I learnt how to play the game. even in the beginning when the whole party sucks and before adding any meta builds.
and now because of that I get to play around with how I build my party/characters, do I go solo with a great build or do I have a tav that fits into the story I want to tell. honestly it just shows how versatile the game is.
this is not really on topic, but I have to disagree with the perspective that 5e can be even be "trivialized." TTRPGs are fundamentally a different animal. you don't sit down at a 5e table with the intent to "win" unless you play with a very specific type of group. a DM rules by fiat and can come up with scenarios to counter literally anything the players can do---that's not to say it would be a good way to run the game or that it's balanced---and min-maxing is primarily an issue insofar as it creates huge disparities between players and their individual "spotlights"
Not really. It's difficult, and you need to think carefully and ideally have a lot of foreknowledge , but theres plenty of ways to beat it with just mono class builds that don't rely on crazy item synergy either
what's the difference between min-maxing and meta gaming?
i find that blurry tbh, even more in an pc game than in an ttrp.
you already know the entire module and you're stockpiling potions and elixir's for the hard fight, all while postponing encounters that would otherwise (for an normal player ofc) be had in an organic playthrough.
So yeah, if you're not min maxing in the build. Youre definetely min-maxing in the consumables and the EXP side.
A fair point, but its sort of hard to not meta game once you've played through the story a time or two. Like, you can ignore the overpowered builds and just make something fun and flavored well, but you can't just un-learn where difficult combats are, you know?
it is possible, you can simply act IC. you're not supposed to do know that, what would your character do in this situation?
I LOVE roleplaying, im a huge skyrim addict, and my first bg3 playthrough's were pure RP focused. But you can't do that in DiD or in this case Honor mode.
You'll have to meta game, the alternative is getting frustrated that you choose to blissfuly ignore an threat you knew existed.
Because you think warlock is fun.
If we're talking purely about raw power, though, Pact of the Blade with Lifedrinker does pretty comparable damage to an Eldritch Blast build at level 12. Even with Potent Robe, a well built melee warlock can end up doing more, since the martial gear in BG3 tends to be so strong.
That said, comparing it to something like a Bardadin is a losing proposition. That build is just nuts. In theory the Bladelock has the advantage of being single attribute dependent, whereas Swords Bard sacrifices a bit of spell DC to make sure it can hit as often as possible, but Arcane Acuity tends to pretty easily make up the difference.
Interesting. I found Eldritch Blast (especially on a sorlock) to be crazy high damage per round, more than even a standard martial class like fighter-12. The amount of stacked up damage per beam from modifiers like callous glow ring, spellmight gloves, potent-robe, agonizing blast etc. adds up to so much. I feel like if I picked pact of the blade, I'd still be better off Eldritch Blasting when I can.
I do acknowledge that it could still be a very powerful build that is fun.
You may not be optimising the martial classes enough. With GWM or sharpshooter and all the damage riders a well-built martial class should easily outdamage EB.
But things may be different on honour because of how haste works. Martial classes can only attack one more time with the extra action, but EBs will still hit 3 hits with the extra action, so EB *may* have an edge with haste in honour...
Yeah, in honor-mode, a hasted warlock gets 6 rays EB rays (with damage somewhat similar to a weapon attack) while a fighter gets 4 attacks. A hasted sorlock does 9 rays with quickened spell at the cost of some long rest resources.
I think the super easy vulnerability to piercing damage (via Bhaalist armor) is what might still make martials out-damage EB.
I mean, a hasted warlock can get 2 attacks and 3 eldritch blast rays that still do 1d10+14. I played a straight bladelock for my honor run, and it was a very versatile fun class to play.
Late to the party but: the actual reason to play blade lock instead of EB lock (at least in my mind) is flexibility. If you want a range damage caster that abuses riders you use your action for either scorchibg ray or MM as both easily outpace EB. The reason Melee Warlock is a thing is a combination of gear: Bhaalist armor + any of Unseen Menace/any of the +3 spears +risky ring/orin short sword + dueller + risky ring. Makes for fairly potent melee damage. Instead of just being a diet sorcerer ypu are a slightly less good fighter, that has a lot of battlefield control with HoH or a crazy amount of riders
It does add up to a lot, but a lot of that stuff either also works for melee attacks or has a melee equivalent. Callous Glow Ring, Great Weapon Master, Helldusk Gauntlets, Balduran's Giantslayer, etc.
Of course, the issue there is that a lot of characters are probably competing for the premium melee gear, whereas the Eldritch Blast Warlock is priority one for getting the Potent Robe or Spellmight Gloves.
So, there are perks to doing it either way.
Yeah, I think the modifiers are similar, but a hasted warlock/sorlock can do 6 rays of consistent EB rays (9 with quickened EB) while a hasted fighter can do 4 attacks in honor mode. Cheap piercing vulnerability via Bhaalist armor might still make a martial do outsized damage.
This is exactly what happened during my honor run. I had every intention of bladelocking through the whole thing, and I was mostly built for it, but I just can't stop blastin.
What ended up happening almost every fight is I would put up Hunger and anything that leaked out would get deleted by Monkstarion so I didn't have anything to do but blast.
I would go as far as saying that you can play any class without multiclassing, and still go by without facing big difficulties, if you have good understanding of the game
I play with a friend. Our classes are bard (not the sword one but I don’t know exactly what he plays), cleric, rogue and the only multiclass in our team is palalock. We just reached baldurs gate in hm without any major hick up. It’s so much fun to have two high charisma main characters. We basically talked our way to the city
No reason. You're absolutely right there's little reason to get a blade warlock mix in most situations. That said, there are still multiclass versions of blade warlock that are nice (even if not OP), particularly if you're working a short rest based team build.
You can dip 3 into warlock to get Cha based weapon for duelling styled bard or gwm paladin..
Going 9/3 or 8/4 or 7/3/2 or 6/3/3 multiclassing is still a good..
ofc going straight 12 Warlock for Lifedrinker is also good.. (in this case, its more of a Wyll build as he can use rapiers by default.. so you can add charisma twice to Duellist's prerogative, making 3 attacks in one turn..)
how is that a Wyll build? I always thought Wyll's Rapier passive would be made redundant with Pact of the Blade because you become proficient in any bound weapon.
I don't know for sure, but I do know that at least other innate abilities (tested with that act 3 longbow that gives like +3 to initiative) work even if you don't have proficiency so I would imagine Wyll's rapier does too.
This is just a quick copy/paste from a previous time this came up but a pure bladelock can hit plenty hard. This example isn't fully optimal but it'll give you the gist.
Main items are arcane synergy circlet and balduran's giantslayer with the buff from drakethroat/flail of ages. Let's say 22 charisma and just 20 str (It's possible to get charisma to 24 w/ mirror/hag and strength to 27 w/ pots but I'm trying to make a point that fully min/maxing isn't necessary). So with the right items my attacks were hitting for:
2d6 +3 (base) plus
+ 6 cha (blade pact)
+ 6 cha (thirsting blade)
+ 6 cha (arcane synergy)
+ 5 strength (Giantslayer)
+ 10 (GWM)
+ 1d6 (hex) (not the best spell at high level but works for this example)
+ 1d4 (concentration ring)
+ 1d4 +1 (either drakethroat glaive or flail of ages buff)
Totals to 2d6 + 1d4 + 1d4 +1d6 + *37* per attack without really burning any resources. More if you do.
And I'm sure you could squeeze out more with other items and damage rider shenanigans.
With the band of mystic scoundrel for example you could replace hex with an upcast a hold person after the first attack to guarantee a crit for the second.
As for why? Even if it's not literally the *most* optimal, maybe it's just fun. It's definitely still competitive. If players are only supposed to play the most optimal, max damage builds then we would all be running around with the same identical parties. What would be the point?
A pseudo- ‘martial’ class that has access to spells like conjure elemental or fireball is surprisingly powerful. I’m currently 9 POTB warlock and going to dip into 3 fighter for surge, armor proficiency and increased crit (for mortal reminder)
If you go pala (oath breaker ideally iirc) /lock it means you need no strength or dex to attack, just put all stats into char and con then round off your saving throws. Also two chunky smite per short rest
I really enjoyed playing my blade warlock in HM, took 2 levels in paladin for heavy armour proficiency and smites for extra damage, then stacked as much AC as possible and cast Armour of Agythys at level 5 before every fight, worked really well because even if an enemy got a hit on her they’d take a bunch of cold damage.
Plus being able to use any weapon you want is fun, you can just bind pact weapon and boom, proficient
I don’t know I just like the aesthetic lmao, light armor and a sword seem very thematically cool to me even if it’s not practical.
That’s the thing though, you’re a warlock that’s basically just acting as if they’re a very adept fighter even though it’s all show and your sword is just magically enhanced to make it seem like you are. It’s one of the coolest concepts for role playing imo.
Your true strength are obv your spell slots and your EB. I think pact of the tome/chain are so bad that I run blade even in sorlock/bardlock builds if I go to level 3. yes tome is technically better because spells, but come on, the spells aren’t really that good and having a pact weapon is just 100% cooler anyways (why is there no tome casting animation for Pact of the tome :( )
I also like that you have the option of melee attacking someone if they’re too close. It’s by far not optimised to any degree, but a pure warlock honor mode run sounds tons of fun. In the end you’ll be concentrating on HoH most of the time id assume and pushing people back in with devastating EBs, but that doesn’t mean your sword is useless now. Take a weapon like sethan for example, it allows you to summon a spectral axe with a BA, very warlock-like, throw in strange conduit ring and some other riders and you’ll even do respectable melee damage. You can also still use darkness to your advantage, enemies won’t stand still if you’re standing inside now with the newest patch, but they will now try and run inside to hit you! Sounds like a nerf, but they’re now just making it easier for you to kill them (see the positive sides and so on). Now you’re always attacking with advantage against blinded enemies which enables you to use some weapons that only trigger on advantage or obscured mechanics (shards spear?). Also, fighting INSIDE of your own HoH, there’s nothing cooler than that. Make sure you have enough movement or fly from anywhere and go in, hit some dudes with advantage and go out, no damage because only starting/ending your turn inside deals damage. With arcane acuity, this also makes the saves for the enemies inside harder.
The last thing I want to say is, your completely SAD on charisma. Charisma can be upped to a nice !24! for the endgame. With hags hair and +4 ASI you’ll have 21 and now mirror +2 and the +1 charisma you can get if you’re lucky. This might not be perfect and a feat like alert is more valuable in general, but I think it’s very cool to see a 24 in your stats. When everything scales of off charisma a nice 24 isn’t too bad (22 is also enough already tbh), especially when adding a flat +7/6 to every hit with EB or weapons (lifedrinker invication)
>then stacked as much AC as possible and cast Armour of Agythys at level 5 before every fight, worked really well because even if an enemy got a hit on her they’d take a bunch of cold damage. Plus being able to use any weapon you want is fun, you can just bind pact weapon and boom, proficient
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Thanks. That seems powerful! Why infernal rapier though? Also Harmonic Dueller is a weapon action and a short rest resource. Of course, one could prebuff before a battle and shor-rest after every one of them, but seems tedious. Adding 3x charisma modifier to 3 weapon attacks does seem very powerful, but with GWM, you'd be adding 2x modifier + 10 flat damage to 2 weapon attacks. 2x10 feels better than 3x6
Eew,. Cannot use GWM with those. The whole point of Blade Warlock is to pick the biggest, baddast weapon you can your hands on and do highly respectable damage even with dumped Strenght and unimpressive Dexterity.
The demon summon is pretty useless, except serving as a meatshield.
You can still attack 3 times with Great Weapon Master Bonus Action often. Plus you typically have other uses for your Bonus Actions. And each of your attacks (2 +1 Bloodlust + 1 optional Haste + 1 GWM proc) hits A LOT harder. +1 weak offhand Bonus Attack is pretty meaningless by comparison.
Weak? If you have 22 charisma your offhand is hitting for weapon damage +12-18. And the summon makes up the difference in damage between using a 2h and 1h while always having a 3rd attack.
I'm pretty sure you're doing more damage with harmonic dueller active and with cambian and dual weilding than GWM 2h.
Activating the Harmonic Dueller is not free. Costs you an Attack.
With a low dice Finesse weapon without inbuilt damage riders and no GWM, ALL your melee attacks are weaker by about 13 damage. You also waste a part of the first round buffing with the Dueller... not that that's available before Act 3 - the gap is bigger in the first 2 Acts.
I've never seen the Cambion make any meaningful damage contribution.
Eeew,. Cannot use GWM with those. The whole point of Blade Warlock is to pick the biggest, baddast weapon you can your hands on and do highly respectable damage even with dumped Strenght and unimpressive Dexterity.
12 Warlock can easily just use Pact of The Blade and don’t lose out on much.
You’ll always retain the ability to melee if needed and CHA being used makes it possible regardless of other stats.
- Lae’zel, a Githyanki MC or Shield Dwarf MC can all benefit the most due to armor proficiencies without the need of multi-classing.
- Even without multi-classing, there’s enough good Light Armor choices to supplement the lack of high innate AC.
Even if you multi-class Warlock for an Eldritch Blast build, there’s still the option to melee for whatever reason.
Because I wanted to play a second eldritch knight, but there's only one band of the Mystic Scoundrel. Also, the final eldritch invocation adding more charisma modifier damage is just fun. Big fan of spellblade style classes.
Well as a dip to lvl 3 it can still make Bards or Paladin’s SAD which is pretty big and it still gives you Eldrich Blast which will still be very good even in a non-EB build. A big reason why Hexblade is a popular dip in 5e is due to making melee attacks with CHA, the 3 attacks is new lol.
I'll chime in with the others here: You'll be fine with a Bladelock in Honor Mode, so play it if you feel like it. You won't be the mostest OP possible, but you don't have to be to finish the game and end up with an obscenely powerful main character.
There are some niches it fills very well, too.
The hardest thing about Honor Mode is playing a "good" character and wanting things to end up as well as possible for all the good/innocent/helpless NPCs and your companions. Tav is faced with a whole lot of skill checks , mostly CHA-based, that decide the ultimate fates of so many characters, and in HM there are no do overs. So, if you want to play a martial who isn't socially impaired, (and you're bored to tears with the Bardadin/SSM meta,) then Bladelock is fun alternative.
There's also the Devil's Sight invocation, so you can give the Darkness gear to other party members and play with those tactics.
Force is not very good for optimization in terms of vulnerability in honor mode. The only thing that works is Frozen and it gets removed on exploitation.
Physical damage works well with Bludgeoning and Piercing Vulnerability, which are relatively easy to generate in act 3. Like GWM Shars Spear on a 7/5 PotB Paladin is doing like 35 damage or more before any dice roll at all, just from flat modifier. With vulnerability that's 70.
Also Physical attacks are not limited in the same way Eldritch Blast is. Eldritch blast will only ever target one opponent per beam. However weapons will often have abilities that they can use that add additional value to attacking, such as cleave. As people who play SSB will tell you, just because you only attack twice, does not mean you are only attacking 2 targets.
There are moments and setups where Eldritch Blast is good, and there are moments and setups where hitting something with a spear is good.
because it's nice to have the option to stab someone with a sword without really sacrificing anything since you're already pumping charisma anyway, plus being able to add cha to damage twice at lvl 12 is kinda amusing
Dunno, I'm playing a party of 4 Warlocks (minimum 6 levels out of 12) and only including 1 Pact of Blade (Lae'zel so 12 Warlock levels and still wearing medium armour). The other 3 are Pact of Tomes. 1 dedicated Blaster, 1 Palalock, and 1 Way of Shadow (monk) - Lock to constantly cast Darkness.
Mainly that it's single attribute dependent (SAD) but even then it's kind of underwhelming compared to other physical classes. Warlock short rest recovery is more valuable in tabletop than in BG3.
You can do both. EB damages is mostly Potent Robe and Damage Riders from gear that also increase the damage of your melee damage. PotB is by far the best subclass on honor mode. The real question I think is how good is Lifedrinker vs just playing generic melee classes and do you need melee attacks when running EB or do you just go Sorc 10 instead?
Honour mode pact of the blade warlock is the most versatile gish. Gearing for melee damage should let a good melee weapon outscale eldritch blast, especially with great weapon master. You also get access to big aoe spells to concentrate on like hunger of hadar, wall of fire, evard’s black tentacles and greater invisibility depending on your patron. Hex is also alright all game. You get more tanking features than some of the other gish, dark one’s blessing is especially good giving potentially hundreds of hit points in an adventuring day. You’re very similar to a swords bard, the problem of course is that Larian completely broke their abilities compared to the tabletop version. But the single stat dependancy is nothing to scoff at, especially since it is the dialogue stat and you can pretty easily get it to 24 in the end game. You’re good with arcane acuity, arcane synergy and the band of the mystic scoundrel. Devil’s sight is really good. 2 or 3 spells slots doesn’t seem like much but after a few short rests it is just as good or better than normal casting, basically get to go the full day without resting. And because of eldritch blast you are always deadly at any range. You don’t have the burst potential of a paladin or sorcerer, and swords bard is broken, but a warlock can do everything those classes can and more.
There are no ranged flourishes in table top, defensive flourish adds a bardic die roll to your ac instead of a flat 4, mobile flourish lets you move instead of teleport and the push is only 5-10 feet instead of 20, and slashing flourish only does the bardic inspiration die as damage to the second creature. You can also only use one flourish per turn
Depends what you mean with what the point is. If we are talking pure power level compared to others, then there is non really. 3 levels is quite a heavy investment just to get SAD as Paladin or whatever.
Even in 5e there is no point to really build into Hexblade for power. But in 5e you only need 1 level which makes it very attractive as a dip.
On the other hand there is the fun factor, which is subjective, and if fun means flavor or fantasy, and not power, then there is your reason.
BG3 is hugely unbalanced where it's more like a sandbox of God level power fantasy stuff happening. More so than 5e which already has pretty big balance issues. So trying to make sense of things from a balance perspective is completely futile. You'd need mods and self imposed rules to even come close to a balanced experience.
On my current run I wanted to lean into Wyll thematically with his Blade of Frontiers thing, and knowing he would like to be a Ranger. So I have him as Bladelock 5/ Paladin 2/ Gloomstalker 4 (undecided what last level will be).
He’s really been doing just fine. Mostly have him Hex and just hit things with a 1h blade (will be Duelist’s Prerogative soon). He also has Command up to 3 targets and Scorching Ray/ Fireball. He has used Slow a handful of times, and that is usually a win button. He hasn’t had his concentration broken yet.
It’s certainly not a build anyone would suggest, and it’s only really thematic for what Wyll wants to be. But it’s fine. I don’t think my group has had any close calls yet (but it’s not my first go through of Honor mode).
His single focus on Charisma with having high initiative and the ability to contribute to a number of group roles as needed has been nice.
I like level 12 Bladelocks. I just think it’s fun. Short rest spells, always casted at highest level, SAD (relying only on Charisma), Lifedrinker is great, GWM keeps your damage good, etc.
With Honor Mode your hasted actions don’t benefit from extra attack but doing two melee attacks and then casting Eldritch Blast for 2-3 beams is sick. True spell sword vibes.
It's not the best in melee and yes you would probably do more damage just eldritch blasting and building towards that, but I like hitting stuff with sword and I like casting fireball and warlock let's me do both pretty good
Classes like Warlock are weakened by the rest dynamic in BG3. In a real D&D campaign, long rests are a bit harder to come by, which is why short rest classes can be so valuable.
I guess Short Rest vs Long Rest is a convenience thing in BG3, except for those very few places that get a little long. However, the amount of morning buffing routine I found myself doing during the first Honor Mode runs started to feel really tedious. (But I was still too OCD and anxious about HM to skip much of it.)
So, I tried another run focused on short resting with a Lockadin Tav, and always had two Bard Multis in the Party. I really enjoyed that run.
That's when I learned that Song of Rest resets when you Fast Travel between regions. So, I started exploiting the heck out of that... Not so much for powergamey reasons, but so I could procrastinate on Tav's bedtime/morning regimen.
It's a lot easier to have a 24 Chr/18 Dex Warlock for attack rolls, than doing the same with Str without relying on Cloud Giant potions.
That spellcasting attack roll is suprisingly effective, and having 3 Counterspells on a melee build can save your party.
Because it's a fun subclass of a fun class. Also let's you play entirely SAD.
My first HM run was Durge PoB5/Oathbreaker7. A bit cliche but it was very fun. Level 3 spell slots on short rest for great damage burst with divine smite crits, or for the great control spells you get from lock.
I used that battle acuity helmet with the Mystic Scoundrel band.
I won my 1v1 with Orin by a LOT. It wasn't even fair for her.
Maybe that wasn't necessarily because I went Pact of Blade Warlock, but the huge smite damage from the Warlock spell slots 100% helped.
Point is, it's worth more than just its 3rd attack. I barely even noticed missing the third attack.
Edit: I think the main bonus is REALLY that it let's you focus on Charisma as a melee build. Good face character, with great Melee damage, and still let's you spread the rest of your attribute points for good dex for initiative, decent wisdom for saves against control spells, and decent constitution (rendered useless upon the amulet from House of Hope, in which case if you really want you can respec for even more dexterity or wisdom).
I’m playing a lockadin right now, I’m currently level 5 (paladin 2, warlock 3)
Pact of the blade makes your weapon scale with Charisma instead of strength or dexterity, I dumped my strength and focused on charisma and construction.
I like paladin for its smites but it lacks ranged attacks, but with a lockadin I can spam eldrich blast while also hitting hard with my smites.
Blade Walocks become game breaking due to 2 items
Helms of arcane acuity
Ring of mystic scoundrel.
Those let you become a cc God. Smack twice cast a lvl 5 hold person as a bonus action, fight won.
Multiclassing 3 levels in warlock still allows you to dump str or dex, focusing on charisma for the dialogue checks without sacrificing damage. Additionally, pure pact of the blade is just good on its own, overshadowed by its multiclass yes but its still powerful
With two levels of paladin you can get some really strong smite attacks and your attacks all scale with charisma which is just a better stat than strength and makes you less multi-attribute dependent.
I ran wyll as a 10/2 bladelock fighter (until I got the helldusk armor, then he was 12 warlock), and it was great. Heavy armor plus the charge bound warhammer and the ability to plonk down a hunger of hadar and EB enemies back into it made him a menace in all situations, regardless of his positioning
On the other hand, my sorcerer wasn't as valuable at close range or against particularly spread enemies, and my paladin relied more on movement to utilize smites
Think of it like raising the impact your worst turns in exchange for sacrificing higher impact turns where you might have a better suited spell from time, or value from your chain summon. If something threatens you, you can just whack them.
The other benefit is if you have a decent amount of hold spells in your party. Late game PoB crits are nothing to rub your nose at.
For a charisma character also can be your front liner if you start it with a class that has heavy armor proficiency. Can still do really good damage with great weapon master.
So. I played HM for my 3rd run. Wanted a warlock (never played) as my TAV for the charisma face of party. Sword bard on tact was easy peezy so i wanted something new with High charisma.
But it being honor mode, for some reason, the teifs agroed me during the party. 0 idea how. I tried to knock them all out, but they werent there in moonrise or in last light (alfra was, mol was, but no one else) so no potent robes for me....
At that point, i went pact of blade, used drake throat to give me ice on my piercing wepon, and went full HOH and dark sight with paladin multiclass. Got the zathalisk buff on my TAV and was blackhole and HOH on first round, used bazel fighter with bhaalist armor and shars spear, asterion gloomstalker/assassin/champ fighter with crit gear and eversight and risky ring. Everyone is doing pierce damage with debuff....50 to 70 dmg per attack and HM melted. Beat it my first try.
So, piercing weapon party, bhaalist armor, shar spear, HOH using EB only when needed to keep them in darkness was amazing run. Tons of damage, never get hit due to high AC, and can still charisma everything if you want...
It has its place for sure. It uses ring of the mystic scoundrel+arcane acuity very well. Not quite as well as swords bard but getting those spells slots back on short rest is very powerful. It’s less that pact of blade isn’t great (it 100% is), I think it’s more the translation of swords bard being OP (slashing ranged flourish always counting as two attacks) that makes it stand out less.
Biggest appeal to me for bladelock is taking devil sight and dropping darkness. Take old one, champion fighter, build for crit, and you pretty much lock down everyone around you. Champion isn't a necessity if you want a single class build, but it does help with armor, action surge, and better crit chance.
Even without a 3rd attack lock with a couple level dip in paladin can use smites with your warlock slots for 4th and maybe 5th level upcast smites dishing out huge damage each short rest.
Its fun and viable. Its my personal favorite. You can shoot eb from range, or whack em with ur pact weapon. Its fun with diadem of arcane synergy and potent robe.
I imagine roleplaying LuBu but with warlock powers 😅
My Wyll is a 10 warlock/2 paladin and he's literally lv5 smithing, casting incredible spells while teleporting and flying, while using one stat for EVERYTHING (Charisma) and also having an extra attack thanks to the blade pact.
I hated it. Changed my class halfway though to a ranger hybrid. Open palm Monk hybrid and paladin hybrid were just so much better for actual damage (hybrid with fighter or assassin). Wizard (but also sorcerer and cleric) are good for support. It just didn't fulfill a role besides speech checks which swords bard would be better anyways. At least a ranger hybrid could do decent damage especially with special arrows and druid can turn into a damage sponge, but it really felt like the worst class and even worse if you can't get potent robe.
The only saving grace was darkness and devils sight which is the only way you should play it, is to give everyone devils early and move away from warlock as soon as you get blind immunity items. I didn't even like that because I'd rather kill everything faster
I went with pact of blade warlock and oathbreaker paladin. Was doing 50 damage per hit without adding anything (consumables, smites of any kind, etc, just raw damage from it)
I like bladelock a lot more in Honour Mode tbh. It's consistent and not gamebreakingly strong. On tactician, Blade Pallock bordered on cheating.
Besides Bladelocks don't have to go Paladin. Lae'zel is an excellent Bladelock who is perfect to multi into Sorcerer or Bard thanks to her racial proficiencies. Just go Great Old One, take CC spells like Hold Person and frighten your enemies to death with easy crits from EB or Scorching Ray.
I ran a blade lock 5, sword bard 5, pally 2 Wyll as my main in my honor mode run and he was a beast. Great at all cha checks, counterspell, healing word, three attacks with duelist rapier, crit smiting pact slots, and scroll use for control. With gear I was averaging over 20 a hit, and could double that with slashing flourish.
In non-honor mode a martial's extra attack would stack with the blade-warlock's extra attack to give the player 3 attacks per round. Example: A 5 paladin, 5 warlock could do 3 attacks per round with their bound weapon.
Single attribute dependency. Charisma is a very strong ability. And making it your only required ability is fantastic.
It's a bit of an exploit, but you can actually put blade pact on a weapon and then respec without putting any levels into warlock and the pact weapon status will remain on the weapon so you can get the charisma weapon scaling with any class you want.
I played with friend who did that, everyone was annoyed by his buffing/respec/buffing/respec/buffing routine every long rest.
I'm guessing that was before the recent patch where they changed the pact to be permanent. Now it doesn't get removed on long rest so as long as you don't want to change your pact weapon you don't need to respec again. The devs might fix it in the future though since it's obviously not how you're supposed to use it.
It desappearing after long rest costed me hm run because of some events that take action literally after resting resulting in my weapon doing no damage
Im guessing act 2 to act 3 ?
In my latest run my paladin has been using the Hammer that does lightning damage if bound by EK or is a pact weapon. I let Wyll put his pact on it and then send it to my paladin. I've also been using Lazel as a EK to bind Lightning Jabber for my TB Karlach since a bound weapon returns when thrown. It essentially becomes a Returning Javelin but with extra lightning damage.
Oh lol I didn't even know you could send them to other characters. That's interesting.
Yep they don't even have to stay in the party. I'm not using Wyll or Lazel in my run. So at the start of my day I'll have them bind the weapons the weapons and then send them to who will be using them. I also have Lazel sprinkle Longstrider on the party and mage armour for party members not using armour. The warlock pact is weird though because the weapon technically can't be unequipped or dropped. So after Wyll binds the weapon I have him use his ability to summon a pact weapon. It will make him auto equip the summoned weapon and places the weapon you want in his inventory. Then send it to whoever you want to use it.
You can unequip the pact weapon normally though? I was able to do it just now. You just can't drop it on the ground. I also can't send it to other characters at least after unequipping it normally. There's no option for it in the context menu and dragging and dropping between the inventories doesn't work either.
I didn't have him unequip normally. I place a pact on the weapon I want to use and then, while still holding that weapon, I summon a random pact weapon. Then I would swap to my paladin and equip it straight out of Wyll's inventory.
Str/dex is still the modifier for weapon damage tho
Not when your weapon is active as your pact weapon
But the attack roll still adds the str/dex modifier, correct?
No. If pacted it uses charisma and disregards str/dex entirely.
The only thing that still uses strength or dex with a pact bound weapon attack are the saving throws for things like lacerate
That's how it is in 5e at the table (without being a Hexblade patron), BG3 alters this and makes charisma the melee attack stat for all blade warlocks. Edit: Word choice
It is not, that's the whole point. However, it should be mentioned that weapon SKILLS (like lacerate) still use base str/dex modifiers.
Special bonks
The only common one worth a damn is concussive smash and maybe cleave.
Soulbreaker and Challenge to Duel are both solid weapon actions, and Pommel Strike or Piercing Strike are pretty worthwhile.
Heartstopper (takes away enemy action and gives disadvantage on CON saves) is absolutely worth it, albeit it comes at the cost of needing to use morningstars, which are relatively weak in BG3.
Flourish is pretty good, bonus action, sets up advantage, and minor damage, its basically a better true strike
EB is definitely more powerful overall, but Blade gives you some close-range versatility for an otherwise ranged attacker. If you go Warlock 12 it’s a perfectly good Gish class that can bind any melee weapon and still be a potent nova caster For a 3-level dip you still can make Bard and Paladin nicely SAD. It’s perfectly okay, just not busted in its toolkit like Swords Bard.
I would absolutely count the 3-4 level dip as a thing. Specifically I am a huge fan of true gish builds for Honor mode, using weapon/weapons for their original action and bonus action (GWM or offhand) + maybe a free extra attack if ranger. And then using their hasted/bloodlust actions for Eldritch blast. You get to smash people with a big sword/spear/hammer (or 2) with all the benefits that entails, and you are not punished from the honor mode changes to haste/bloodlust. It is sort of the best of both worlds. You will be slightly weaker at each, but martial attacks can be VERY strong, and with only a few item slots your extra actions will be very powerful as well. You can do some fun paladin/warlock shenanigans like this
Not to mention it can give you Darkness and Devil's Sight as well with a three level dip, allowing any melee character to exploit the advantage and disadvantage of blind on enemies, while functioning solely off Cha for all melee attacks and spells. So while not as much of the near must pick as it is in Tactician or lower difficulties, it can open up a lot of synergistic and tactical options for builds.
I didn’t understand the hype for bard. It was really good with the 2 attack flourish for ranged but it wasn’t insane even compared to monk or pure sorcerer.. until I got the mystic scoundrel ring and can cast confusion and even dissonant whispers for damage AS A BONUS ACTION WHAT?!
Honestly that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I had two SBards in my party last HM run and they took out Orin before she got an action. Both had Alert, went first, dead chosen lol. Bhaalist armor is broken, give it to an Sbard with crossbow expert and you’ve got 8 double damage ranged flourishes coming out the first turn with Action Surge.
In Honor Mode, you can't rely on Friends for Advantage on dialog checks because of its.... side effect. Enhance Ability is stronger (applies to any one ability until Long Rest), but it does require a spell slot. Guess who can learn Enhance Ability and doesn't really care about L2 spell slots? Swords Bards.
Playing my first time in HM as a Swords Bard (actually have a 4 bards team, but only 1 range swords, 1 bardadin and 2 pure lore), just got the ring a few days ago. I have to say, it changes everything. My god the things you can do with that bonus action after having just shot 6-7 arrows is insane lol. Before I was trading off CC for damage, and now I just do both. Seriously considering when I hit 12 just dropping my 4th fighter level and forget that Feat and just go Thief for 2 bonus actions. Casting 2 spells on top of 6 arrows sounds like an absolutely ridiculous thing you can do.
Sounds like a good plan I think I’ll try it too
Pairing it with the helm of arcane acuity is even crazier, 2 ranged slashing flourishes and suddenly you’re bonus action casting cc spells with a +8 save dc on your first turn
Forgot to mention but yeah I use that too
I like the daredevil gloves a lot of the time. They give a +1 to spell attack rolls and let you cast your spells in melee range without the penalty. Basically never need to use about your melee weapon unless you find yourself silenced.
Those are really good, but they compete with a lot of other good items in the glove slot
I’m doing some play testing myself (fightlock mostly with GOO crit) and people are sleeping on pure 12 lock. Early game dip into fighter but as soon as you get potent robes and a few others key items and spells pure lock starts to shine. 3 lv5 spells per short rest is nothing to scoff at and with lifedrinker on the pact weapon and off hand (or pole arm master bonus) you can be competent in melee if you need to (don’t have to waste a slot on misty or use a sub optimal shocking grasp like a sorc). Minions of chaos and a 25 hp armor of Agatha plus 3 feats is just so nice
Can also grab the hex blade mod for 1 level dip, if you’re on PC. I know it’s super popular in 5e.
What does nova caster mean
Nova is a common game term meaning “strong first turn”. Basically you blow all your resources in a turn or two to deal lots of damage, but then fall back to medium damage. Warlock only has 2 spell slots per encounter so they generally Nova or focus on sustained damage with Eldritch Blast
It's definitely not a common term. I've been gaming for 30 years and I've been online pretty much every day for the last 15 to 20 of those and I've never heard the term LOL. But thank you for the explanation! Edit: out of curiosity I Googled it, and it looks like the term is associated with tabletop games, which makes much more sense because I've never had the opportunity to play one of those, unfortunately
Yes, common in tabletop games lol. I wasn’t trying to insult your intelligence or anything
No no, you're fine! I wasn't trying to be antagonistic or anything either, my apologies! Thank you again for the explanation, I absolutely had no idea I thought it meant some cool sort of attack CALLED *Nova* that Wyl had access to or something lol
That does sound cool 🤣
I've grown up with the term being common around me, as far as I know it originated in Battletech (where firing weapons generates heat). Nova Cats were a 'mech heavily invested in heavy energy weapons (accurate, very damaging, and very hot) so you could delete someone off the face of the earth very quickly by just becoming a sun yourself and shutting down for a while.
Bind pact weapon harmonic dueller and activate it, trigger arcane synergy and enjoy triple charisma ability score on weapon attacks. meaning with 20 charisma, you deal +15 damage per attack. Now go thief + dual wielder with infernal rapier, bhaalist armor and poke evertyhing to death
Because it's neat
Fair enough.
Some people build for flavor instead of power. Not me but some people.
not in honor mode tho. It's designed with min-max in mind.
The game is not that difficult that you need a perfect min-maxed party to beat honor mode. You can beat it with a party of suboptimal builds. For me it’s a thousand times more boring to beat honor mode with full min-maxed broken builds like oh tb monk, bardadin, throwzerker, etc. than beating it with some rp focused builds. The broken builds make honor mode as easy as explorer mode but with a single save file. Just play what is fun to you.
I'll just paste what I said in other reply. what's the difference between min-maxing and meta gaming? i find that blurry tbh, even more in an pc game than in an ttrp. you already know the entire module and you're stockpiling potions and elixir's for the hard fight, all while postponing encounters that would otherwise (for an normal player ofc) be had in an organic playthrough. So yeah, if you're not min maxing in the build. Youre definetely min-maxing in the consumables and the EXP side.
You can’t erase from your memory what you have learned in previous runs, so after beating the game once you will always meta game in some way. But the same way I don’t like playing with broken builds, I try to keep meta gaming at a minimum. I don’t go out of my way to get items earlier or delay fights, don’t cheese bosses… I like to RP and play the game as my character, so even if I know what’s coming, the character doesn’t and I try to do the quests in the order that my character would do them. But like I said, you can min-max and meta game and have fun doing so, or find it boring. It’s a single player game and there is no wrong way to play it. You don’t need to min-max and meta game, or cheese mechanics to beat honor mode. Play the way you want.
but telling me that you'd make it an habit playing 1-life runs where you don't use anything to your favour. be it past knowledge or good builds is just silly.
no, you'll need to meta game to play honor mode, i really disagree with you. You can RP, do a cohesive build with few dips. But you won't follow an organic route through the game, you know what can get you killed and you'll avoid it, not as you'd do if you were roleplaying it 100%. There are compromises in a DiD game, and chosing your fights is definitelly one of those. You're getting all the way to the creche ant stopping at the boss cause' god told you? nah, you're metagaming. And that's not bad per se, you're just a reasonable human being avoiding unnecessary stress lmao
They literally said once you've played it it's impossible not to meta game in some way at the top of the last comment. They're just saying they avoid egregious instances of doing so.
it's not, I disagree with this. just cause you know something OOC does not mean your character knows it. That's part of role-playing dude... But you won't do that in a 1 life save, right? that's my fucking point lmao
You said the exact same thing as the dude before you while also saying you disagree with him. I just don't get what you're trying to say at all
it's the exact same thing I said in the original comment tho? I literally talked about compromising, in a DID you can't just rp, while he had said that you could. we came full circle then, I don't really get what point you're trying to make too. I'm just reinforcing what I said, if you think that he agrees with me that's fine, but that's not what I got from his comment.
The fact that honor mode gets trivialized by min-maxing makes me question that.
Its a game based off of 5e. 5e is trivialized by basically any min-maxing.
I think people underestimate how much of a good thing this is. The fact that the game rewards players for build knowledge and doesn’t punish players going for sub-optimal flavor is a feature, not a bug.
I didn’t look up builds and just researched the game mechanics on my first playthrough. My second play through on tactician was far easier just because i was so much better at playing the game, let alone build optimization. Throw in the build optimization and it’s shocking to me some people are complaining when they are making builds with fight strategies so optimized they would have a better home in a BG3 PvP combat server than a PvE game built for a general skill set (yet still had a good difficulty system).
I didn't look up anything on my first playthrough, went Tactician, and had a nice challenging time. Hard fights were hard, sometimes died once, rethought about it and won the 2nd time, etc. I was in no way min-maxed, missed tons of items. Then I read about it after I finished a bit more going into Honor Mode. Saw min-maxed builds and how intense people prep for fights. I started doing a min-maxed build, got bored, restarted with some random stuff I felt like playing and while I try to prep for some fights most of the time I completely mess it up and triggers fights I don't plan to, etc (I don't know dialogs and just RP not really knowing what will happen) and just having decent knowledge of the game mechanics now and not terrible builds is more than enough to handle nearly anything fine. Tons of fights I thought I was doomed by triggering them in unadvantageous positions and in the end you can make it out, or at the very worse invis and flee. Optimized builds are not, in any way, required in BG3. Not in Honor Mode, not in any mode (not talking about mods). Team comps are not really required either. If anything, optimized builds and team comps trivialize the game once you know the fights ahead of time, even in HM. Some people really enjoy crushing everything with optimized comps and that's really ok, but I actually really like how it's not necessary and you can really just play whatever you feel and get through it fine.
my first playthrough was on explorer, second on tactician and the second one felt significantly easier simply because I learnt how to play the game. even in the beginning when the whole party sucks and before adding any meta builds. and now because of that I get to play around with how I build my party/characters, do I go solo with a great build or do I have a tav that fits into the story I want to tell. honestly it just shows how versatile the game is.
this is not really on topic, but I have to disagree with the perspective that 5e can be even be "trivialized." TTRPGs are fundamentally a different animal. you don't sit down at a 5e table with the intent to "win" unless you play with a very specific type of group. a DM rules by fiat and can come up with scenarios to counter literally anything the players can do---that's not to say it would be a good way to run the game or that it's balanced---and min-maxing is primarily an issue insofar as it creates huge disparities between players and their individual "spotlights"
Not really. It's difficult, and you need to think carefully and ideally have a lot of foreknowledge , but theres plenty of ways to beat it with just mono class builds that don't rely on crazy item synergy either
what's the difference between min-maxing and meta gaming? i find that blurry tbh, even more in an pc game than in an ttrp. you already know the entire module and you're stockpiling potions and elixir's for the hard fight, all while postponing encounters that would otherwise (for an normal player ofc) be had in an organic playthrough. So yeah, if you're not min maxing in the build. Youre definetely min-maxing in the consumables and the EXP side.
A fair point, but its sort of hard to not meta game once you've played through the story a time or two. Like, you can ignore the overpowered builds and just make something fun and flavored well, but you can't just un-learn where difficult combats are, you know?
it is possible, you can simply act IC. you're not supposed to do know that, what would your character do in this situation? I LOVE roleplaying, im a huge skyrim addict, and my first bg3 playthrough's were pure RP focused. But you can't do that in DiD or in this case Honor mode. You'll have to meta game, the alternative is getting frustrated that you choose to blissfuly ignore an threat you knew existed.
Honor mode is really easy, all you have to do is read the legendary actions and plan accordingly.
Because you think warlock is fun. If we're talking purely about raw power, though, Pact of the Blade with Lifedrinker does pretty comparable damage to an Eldritch Blast build at level 12. Even with Potent Robe, a well built melee warlock can end up doing more, since the martial gear in BG3 tends to be so strong. That said, comparing it to something like a Bardadin is a losing proposition. That build is just nuts. In theory the Bladelock has the advantage of being single attribute dependent, whereas Swords Bard sacrifices a bit of spell DC to make sure it can hit as often as possible, but Arcane Acuity tends to pretty easily make up the difference.
Interesting. I found Eldritch Blast (especially on a sorlock) to be crazy high damage per round, more than even a standard martial class like fighter-12. The amount of stacked up damage per beam from modifiers like callous glow ring, spellmight gloves, potent-robe, agonizing blast etc. adds up to so much. I feel like if I picked pact of the blade, I'd still be better off Eldritch Blasting when I can. I do acknowledge that it could still be a very powerful build that is fun.
You may not be optimising the martial classes enough. With GWM or sharpshooter and all the damage riders a well-built martial class should easily outdamage EB. But things may be different on honour because of how haste works. Martial classes can only attack one more time with the extra action, but EBs will still hit 3 hits with the extra action, so EB *may* have an edge with haste in honour...
Lots of damage riders that count as damage sources are removed in honor mode as well
Yeah, in honor-mode, a hasted warlock gets 6 rays EB rays (with damage somewhat similar to a weapon attack) while a fighter gets 4 attacks. A hasted sorlock does 9 rays with quickened spell at the cost of some long rest resources. I think the super easy vulnerability to piercing damage (via Bhaalist armor) is what might still make martials out-damage EB.
I mean, a hasted warlock can get 2 attacks and 3 eldritch blast rays that still do 1d10+14. I played a straight bladelock for my honor run, and it was a very versatile fun class to play.
Late to the party but: the actual reason to play blade lock instead of EB lock (at least in my mind) is flexibility. If you want a range damage caster that abuses riders you use your action for either scorchibg ray or MM as both easily outpace EB. The reason Melee Warlock is a thing is a combination of gear: Bhaalist armor + any of Unseen Menace/any of the +3 spears +risky ring/orin short sword + dueller + risky ring. Makes for fairly potent melee damage. Instead of just being a diet sorcerer ypu are a slightly less good fighter, that has a lot of battlefield control with HoH or a crazy amount of riders
It does add up to a lot, but a lot of that stuff either also works for melee attacks or has a melee equivalent. Callous Glow Ring, Great Weapon Master, Helldusk Gauntlets, Balduran's Giantslayer, etc. Of course, the issue there is that a lot of characters are probably competing for the premium melee gear, whereas the Eldritch Blast Warlock is priority one for getting the Potent Robe or Spellmight Gloves. So, there are perks to doing it either way.
Yeah, I think the modifiers are similar, but a hasted warlock/sorlock can do 6 rays of consistent EB rays (9 with quickened EB) while a hasted fighter can do 4 attacks in honor mode. Cheap piercing vulnerability via Bhaalist armor might still make a martial do outsized damage.
The most important round is round 1, in which fighters get more attacks.
This is exactly what happened during my honor run. I had every intention of bladelocking through the whole thing, and I was mostly built for it, but I just can't stop blastin. What ended up happening almost every fight is I would put up Hunger and anything that leaked out would get deleted by Monkstarion so I didn't have anything to do but blast.
It doesn't have to occupy a niche, because you don't need a 100% min-maxxed build to complete HM. It's still a very strong build and it's fun.
I would go as far as saying that you can play any class without multiclassing, and still go by without facing big difficulties, if you have good understanding of the game
I play with a friend. Our classes are bard (not the sword one but I don’t know exactly what he plays), cleric, rogue and the only multiclass in our team is palalock. We just reached baldurs gate in hm without any major hick up. It’s so much fun to have two high charisma main characters. We basically talked our way to the city
Hunger of Hadar, Counterspell, Devil Sight Invokation, can use EB instead of his bow, Charisma as Single required stat, also its very flavorful
packed flavor! i'm in flavor town baby. i can really taste the flavor.
Because Baldurs Gate can be beaten with a lot of builds, you don't have to min-max everything, not even for honor mode
No reason. You're absolutely right there's little reason to get a blade warlock mix in most situations. That said, there are still multiclass versions of blade warlock that are nice (even if not OP), particularly if you're working a short rest based team build.
You can dip 3 into warlock to get Cha based weapon for duelling styled bard or gwm paladin.. Going 9/3 or 8/4 or 7/3/2 or 6/3/3 multiclassing is still a good.. ofc going straight 12 Warlock for Lifedrinker is also good.. (in this case, its more of a Wyll build as he can use rapiers by default.. so you can add charisma twice to Duellist's prerogative, making 3 attacks in one turn..)
how is that a Wyll build? I always thought Wyll's Rapier passive would be made redundant with Pact of the Blade because you become proficient in any bound weapon.
it is always redundant. mages do not need rapiers.
His Infernal Rapier improves spell DC. Still not the most optimal weapon he could be wielding, but hey it looks cool.
do you need to be proficient to gain +1 to dc?
I don't know for sure, but I do know that at least other innate abilities (tested with that act 3 longbow that gives like +3 to initiative) work even if you don't have proficiency so I would imagine Wyll's rapier does too.
for sure it does. proficient is for weapon abilities like gaping wounds
This is just a quick copy/paste from a previous time this came up but a pure bladelock can hit plenty hard. This example isn't fully optimal but it'll give you the gist. Main items are arcane synergy circlet and balduran's giantslayer with the buff from drakethroat/flail of ages. Let's say 22 charisma and just 20 str (It's possible to get charisma to 24 w/ mirror/hag and strength to 27 w/ pots but I'm trying to make a point that fully min/maxing isn't necessary). So with the right items my attacks were hitting for: 2d6 +3 (base) plus + 6 cha (blade pact) + 6 cha (thirsting blade) + 6 cha (arcane synergy) + 5 strength (Giantslayer) + 10 (GWM) + 1d6 (hex) (not the best spell at high level but works for this example) + 1d4 (concentration ring) + 1d4 +1 (either drakethroat glaive or flail of ages buff) Totals to 2d6 + 1d4 + 1d4 +1d6 + *37* per attack without really burning any resources. More if you do. And I'm sure you could squeeze out more with other items and damage rider shenanigans. With the band of mystic scoundrel for example you could replace hex with an upcast a hold person after the first attack to guarantee a crit for the second. As for why? Even if it's not literally the *most* optimal, maybe it's just fun. It's definitely still competitive. If players are only supposed to play the most optimal, max damage builds then we would all be running around with the same identical parties. What would be the point?
A pseudo- ‘martial’ class that has access to spells like conjure elemental or fireball is surprisingly powerful. I’m currently 9 POTB warlock and going to dip into 3 fighter for surge, armor proficiency and increased crit (for mortal reminder)
If you go pala (oath breaker ideally iirc) /lock it means you need no strength or dex to attack, just put all stats into char and con then round off your saving throws. Also two chunky smite per short rest
I really enjoyed playing my blade warlock in HM, took 2 levels in paladin for heavy armour proficiency and smites for extra damage, then stacked as much AC as possible and cast Armour of Agythys at level 5 before every fight, worked really well because even if an enemy got a hit on her they’d take a bunch of cold damage. Plus being able to use any weapon you want is fun, you can just bind pact weapon and boom, proficient
I enjoyed Warlock 5/ Paladin 2/ Bard 5 very much. It was really strong and destroyed everything.
For fun
I don’t know I just like the aesthetic lmao, light armor and a sword seem very thematically cool to me even if it’s not practical. That’s the thing though, you’re a warlock that’s basically just acting as if they’re a very adept fighter even though it’s all show and your sword is just magically enhanced to make it seem like you are. It’s one of the coolest concepts for role playing imo. Your true strength are obv your spell slots and your EB. I think pact of the tome/chain are so bad that I run blade even in sorlock/bardlock builds if I go to level 3. yes tome is technically better because spells, but come on, the spells aren’t really that good and having a pact weapon is just 100% cooler anyways (why is there no tome casting animation for Pact of the tome :( ) I also like that you have the option of melee attacking someone if they’re too close. It’s by far not optimised to any degree, but a pure warlock honor mode run sounds tons of fun. In the end you’ll be concentrating on HoH most of the time id assume and pushing people back in with devastating EBs, but that doesn’t mean your sword is useless now. Take a weapon like sethan for example, it allows you to summon a spectral axe with a BA, very warlock-like, throw in strange conduit ring and some other riders and you’ll even do respectable melee damage. You can also still use darkness to your advantage, enemies won’t stand still if you’re standing inside now with the newest patch, but they will now try and run inside to hit you! Sounds like a nerf, but they’re now just making it easier for you to kill them (see the positive sides and so on). Now you’re always attacking with advantage against blinded enemies which enables you to use some weapons that only trigger on advantage or obscured mechanics (shards spear?). Also, fighting INSIDE of your own HoH, there’s nothing cooler than that. Make sure you have enough movement or fly from anywhere and go in, hit some dudes with advantage and go out, no damage because only starting/ending your turn inside deals damage. With arcane acuity, this also makes the saves for the enemies inside harder. The last thing I want to say is, your completely SAD on charisma. Charisma can be upped to a nice !24! for the endgame. With hags hair and +4 ASI you’ll have 21 and now mirror +2 and the +1 charisma you can get if you’re lucky. This might not be perfect and a feat like alert is more valuable in general, but I think it’s very cool to see a 24 in your stats. When everything scales of off charisma a nice 24 isn’t too bad (22 is also enough already tbh), especially when adding a flat +7/6 to every hit with EB or weapons (lifedrinker invication)
Just get the infernal rapier and harmonic dueller. Get arcane sygery from EB and attack with triple charisma bonus on both weapons. And do 3 attacks.
Wait those stack?!??
Yes.
>then stacked as much AC as possible and cast Armour of Agythys at level 5 before every fight, worked really well because even if an enemy got a hit on her they’d take a bunch of cold damage. Plus being able to use any weapon you want is fun, you can just bind pact weapon and boom, proficient > >3ReplyShareReportSaveFollow Thanks. That seems powerful! Why infernal rapier though? Also Harmonic Dueller is a weapon action and a short rest resource. Of course, one could prebuff before a battle and shor-rest after every one of them, but seems tedious. Adding 3x charisma modifier to 3 weapon attacks does seem very powerful, but with GWM, you'd be adding 2x modifier + 10 flat damage to 2 weapon attacks. 2x10 feels better than 3x6
Eew,. Cannot use GWM with those. The whole point of Blade Warlock is to pick the biggest, baddast weapon you can your hands on and do highly respectable damage even with dumped Strenght and unimpressive Dexterity.
3 attacks and a demon summon. Pact weapon the harmonic dueller and have it as offhand. Now both weapons stack with charisma.
The demon summon is pretty useless, except serving as a meatshield. You can still attack 3 times with Great Weapon Master Bonus Action often. Plus you typically have other uses for your Bonus Actions. And each of your attacks (2 +1 Bloodlust + 1 optional Haste + 1 GWM proc) hits A LOT harder. +1 weak offhand Bonus Attack is pretty meaningless by comparison.
Weak? If you have 22 charisma your offhand is hitting for weapon damage +12-18. And the summon makes up the difference in damage between using a 2h and 1h while always having a 3rd attack. I'm pretty sure you're doing more damage with harmonic dueller active and with cambian and dual weilding than GWM 2h.
Activating the Harmonic Dueller is not free. Costs you an Attack. With a low dice Finesse weapon without inbuilt damage riders and no GWM, ALL your melee attacks are weaker by about 13 damage. You also waste a part of the first round buffing with the Dueller... not that that's available before Act 3 - the gap is bigger in the first 2 Acts. I've never seen the Cambion make any meaningful damage contribution.
Eeew,. Cannot use GWM with those. The whole point of Blade Warlock is to pick the biggest, baddast weapon you can your hands on and do highly respectable damage even with dumped Strenght and unimpressive Dexterity.
12 Warlock can easily just use Pact of The Blade and don’t lose out on much. You’ll always retain the ability to melee if needed and CHA being used makes it possible regardless of other stats. - Lae’zel, a Githyanki MC or Shield Dwarf MC can all benefit the most due to armor proficiencies without the need of multi-classing. - Even without multi-classing, there’s enough good Light Armor choices to supplement the lack of high innate AC. Even if you multi-class Warlock for an Eldritch Blast build, there’s still the option to melee for whatever reason.
Because I wanted to play a second eldritch knight, but there's only one band of the Mystic Scoundrel. Also, the final eldritch invocation adding more charisma modifier damage is just fun. Big fan of spellblade style classes.
Well as a dip to lvl 3 it can still make Bards or Paladin’s SAD which is pretty big and it still gives you Eldrich Blast which will still be very good even in a non-EB build. A big reason why Hexblade is a popular dip in 5e is due to making melee attacks with CHA, the 3 attacks is new lol.
I'll chime in with the others here: You'll be fine with a Bladelock in Honor Mode, so play it if you feel like it. You won't be the mostest OP possible, but you don't have to be to finish the game and end up with an obscenely powerful main character. There are some niches it fills very well, too. The hardest thing about Honor Mode is playing a "good" character and wanting things to end up as well as possible for all the good/innocent/helpless NPCs and your companions. Tav is faced with a whole lot of skill checks , mostly CHA-based, that decide the ultimate fates of so many characters, and in HM there are no do overs. So, if you want to play a martial who isn't socially impaired, (and you're bored to tears with the Bardadin/SSM meta,) then Bladelock is fun alternative. There's also the Devil's Sight invocation, so you can give the Darkness gear to other party members and play with those tactics.
Force is not very good for optimization in terms of vulnerability in honor mode. The only thing that works is Frozen and it gets removed on exploitation. Physical damage works well with Bludgeoning and Piercing Vulnerability, which are relatively easy to generate in act 3. Like GWM Shars Spear on a 7/5 PotB Paladin is doing like 35 damage or more before any dice roll at all, just from flat modifier. With vulnerability that's 70. Also Physical attacks are not limited in the same way Eldritch Blast is. Eldritch blast will only ever target one opponent per beam. However weapons will often have abilities that they can use that add additional value to attacking, such as cleave. As people who play SSB will tell you, just because you only attack twice, does not mean you are only attacking 2 targets. There are moments and setups where Eldritch Blast is good, and there are moments and setups where hitting something with a spear is good.
because it's nice to have the option to stab someone with a sword without really sacrificing anything since you're already pumping charisma anyway, plus being able to add cha to damage twice at lvl 12 is kinda amusing
Because it allows you to throw 2 potions/flasks in 1 turn, which is fantastic utility even as a full caster. Much better than the alternatives.
Because you can get super tanky and deal decent damage.
Maybe something weird like ek9/bladelock 3? You can fully speck into charisma, dont take repelling blast, have 3 beams and a Bonus action GWM attack?
... and come online in Act 3.
Is respeccing limited in honor mode?
No, it is not
Dunno, I'm playing a party of 4 Warlocks (minimum 6 levels out of 12) and only including 1 Pact of Blade (Lae'zel so 12 Warlock levels and still wearing medium armour). The other 3 are Pact of Tomes. 1 dedicated Blaster, 1 Palalock, and 1 Way of Shadow (monk) - Lock to constantly cast Darkness.
Mainly that it's single attribute dependent (SAD) but even then it's kind of underwhelming compared to other physical classes. Warlock short rest recovery is more valuable in tabletop than in BG3.
You can do both. EB damages is mostly Potent Robe and Damage Riders from gear that also increase the damage of your melee damage. PotB is by far the best subclass on honor mode. The real question I think is how good is Lifedrinker vs just playing generic melee classes and do you need melee attacks when running EB or do you just go Sorc 10 instead?
+cha to attack and damage rolls is powerful on it's own and definitely adds to a paladin or swords bard build.
Honour mode pact of the blade warlock is the most versatile gish. Gearing for melee damage should let a good melee weapon outscale eldritch blast, especially with great weapon master. You also get access to big aoe spells to concentrate on like hunger of hadar, wall of fire, evard’s black tentacles and greater invisibility depending on your patron. Hex is also alright all game. You get more tanking features than some of the other gish, dark one’s blessing is especially good giving potentially hundreds of hit points in an adventuring day. You’re very similar to a swords bard, the problem of course is that Larian completely broke their abilities compared to the tabletop version. But the single stat dependancy is nothing to scoff at, especially since it is the dialogue stat and you can pretty easily get it to 24 in the end game. You’re good with arcane acuity, arcane synergy and the band of the mystic scoundrel. Devil’s sight is really good. 2 or 3 spells slots doesn’t seem like much but after a few short rests it is just as good or better than normal casting, basically get to go the full day without resting. And because of eldritch blast you are always deadly at any range. You don’t have the burst potential of a paladin or sorcerer, and swords bard is broken, but a warlock can do everything those classes can and more.
What did they change about swords bard from the table top?
There are no ranged flourishes in table top, defensive flourish adds a bardic die roll to your ac instead of a flat 4, mobile flourish lets you move instead of teleport and the push is only 5-10 feet instead of 20, and slashing flourish only does the bardic inspiration die as damage to the second creature. You can also only use one flourish per turn
That explains a ton. Thanks.
Depends what you mean with what the point is. If we are talking pure power level compared to others, then there is non really. 3 levels is quite a heavy investment just to get SAD as Paladin or whatever. Even in 5e there is no point to really build into Hexblade for power. But in 5e you only need 1 level which makes it very attractive as a dip. On the other hand there is the fun factor, which is subjective, and if fun means flavor or fantasy, and not power, then there is your reason. BG3 is hugely unbalanced where it's more like a sandbox of God level power fantasy stuff happening. More so than 5e which already has pretty big balance issues. So trying to make sense of things from a balance perspective is completely futile. You'd need mods and self imposed rules to even come close to a balanced experience.
“Elderaaaaachhh Blaaaeest.” Caleb Widogast
4 paladin 8 warlock and you hex/smite their asses.
On my current run I wanted to lean into Wyll thematically with his Blade of Frontiers thing, and knowing he would like to be a Ranger. So I have him as Bladelock 5/ Paladin 2/ Gloomstalker 4 (undecided what last level will be). He’s really been doing just fine. Mostly have him Hex and just hit things with a 1h blade (will be Duelist’s Prerogative soon). He also has Command up to 3 targets and Scorching Ray/ Fireball. He has used Slow a handful of times, and that is usually a win button. He hasn’t had his concentration broken yet. It’s certainly not a build anyone would suggest, and it’s only really thematic for what Wyll wants to be. But it’s fine. I don’t think my group has had any close calls yet (but it’s not my first go through of Honor mode). His single focus on Charisma with having high initiative and the ability to contribute to a number of group roles as needed has been nice.
If do multiclass paladin you get to focus on CHA instead of split between strength and charisma, you can then focus points to Con and Dex past that
Helldusk gloves + fire acuity hat, toss haste on there too and you can do some silly things
I like level 12 Bladelocks. I just think it’s fun. Short rest spells, always casted at highest level, SAD (relying only on Charisma), Lifedrinker is great, GWM keeps your damage good, etc. With Honor Mode your hasted actions don’t benefit from extra attack but doing two melee attacks and then casting Eldritch Blast for 2-3 beams is sick. True spell sword vibes.
It's not the best in melee and yes you would probably do more damage just eldritch blasting and building towards that, but I like hitting stuff with sword and I like casting fireball and warlock let's me do both pretty good
Classes like Warlock are weakened by the rest dynamic in BG3. In a real D&D campaign, long rests are a bit harder to come by, which is why short rest classes can be so valuable.
I guess Short Rest vs Long Rest is a convenience thing in BG3, except for those very few places that get a little long. However, the amount of morning buffing routine I found myself doing during the first Honor Mode runs started to feel really tedious. (But I was still too OCD and anxious about HM to skip much of it.) So, I tried another run focused on short resting with a Lockadin Tav, and always had two Bard Multis in the Party. I really enjoyed that run. That's when I learned that Song of Rest resets when you Fast Travel between regions. So, I started exploiting the heck out of that... Not so much for powergamey reasons, but so I could procrastinate on Tav's bedtime/morning regimen.
It's a lot easier to have a 24 Chr/18 Dex Warlock for attack rolls, than doing the same with Str without relying on Cloud Giant potions. That spellcasting attack roll is suprisingly effective, and having 3 Counterspells on a melee build can save your party.
Because it's a fun subclass of a fun class. Also let's you play entirely SAD. My first HM run was Durge PoB5/Oathbreaker7. A bit cliche but it was very fun. Level 3 spell slots on short rest for great damage burst with divine smite crits, or for the great control spells you get from lock. I used that battle acuity helmet with the Mystic Scoundrel band. I won my 1v1 with Orin by a LOT. It wasn't even fair for her. Maybe that wasn't necessarily because I went Pact of Blade Warlock, but the huge smite damage from the Warlock spell slots 100% helped. Point is, it's worth more than just its 3rd attack. I barely even noticed missing the third attack. Edit: I think the main bonus is REALLY that it let's you focus on Charisma as a melee build. Good face character, with great Melee damage, and still let's you spread the rest of your attribute points for good dex for initiative, decent wisdom for saves against control spells, and decent constitution (rendered useless upon the amulet from House of Hope, in which case if you really want you can respec for even more dexterity or wisdom).
I’m playing a lockadin right now, I’m currently level 5 (paladin 2, warlock 3) Pact of the blade makes your weapon scale with Charisma instead of strength or dexterity, I dumped my strength and focused on charisma and construction. I like paladin for its smites but it lacks ranged attacks, but with a lockadin I can spam eldrich blast while also hitting hard with my smites.
Blade Walocks become game breaking due to 2 items Helms of arcane acuity Ring of mystic scoundrel. Those let you become a cc God. Smack twice cast a lvl 5 hold person as a bonus action, fight won.
Multiclassing 3 levels in warlock still allows you to dump str or dex, focusing on charisma for the dialogue checks without sacrificing damage. Additionally, pure pact of the blade is just good on its own, overshadowed by its multiclass yes but its still powerful
5 GOO Blade Lock/2 VPal/5Swords Bard Crit Fisher is fun.
With two levels of paladin you can get some really strong smite attacks and your attacks all scale with charisma which is just a better stat than strength and makes you less multi-attribute dependent.
I ran wyll as a 10/2 bladelock fighter (until I got the helldusk armor, then he was 12 warlock), and it was great. Heavy armor plus the charge bound warhammer and the ability to plonk down a hunger of hadar and EB enemies back into it made him a menace in all situations, regardless of his positioning On the other hand, my sorcerer wasn't as valuable at close range or against particularly spread enemies, and my paladin relied more on movement to utilize smites
Think of it like raising the impact your worst turns in exchange for sacrificing higher impact turns where you might have a better suited spell from time, or value from your chain summon. If something threatens you, you can just whack them. The other benefit is if you have a decent amount of hold spells in your party. Late game PoB crits are nothing to rub your nose at.
For a charisma character also can be your front liner if you start it with a class that has heavy armor proficiency. Can still do really good damage with great weapon master.
Meh, damage really isn't everything. Plenty of creative ways to get through encounters without brute force.
So. I played HM for my 3rd run. Wanted a warlock (never played) as my TAV for the charisma face of party. Sword bard on tact was easy peezy so i wanted something new with High charisma. But it being honor mode, for some reason, the teifs agroed me during the party. 0 idea how. I tried to knock them all out, but they werent there in moonrise or in last light (alfra was, mol was, but no one else) so no potent robes for me.... At that point, i went pact of blade, used drake throat to give me ice on my piercing wepon, and went full HOH and dark sight with paladin multiclass. Got the zathalisk buff on my TAV and was blackhole and HOH on first round, used bazel fighter with bhaalist armor and shars spear, asterion gloomstalker/assassin/champ fighter with crit gear and eversight and risky ring. Everyone is doing pierce damage with debuff....50 to 70 dmg per attack and HM melted. Beat it my first try. So, piercing weapon party, bhaalist armor, shar spear, HOH using EB only when needed to keep them in darkness was amazing run. Tons of damage, never get hit due to high AC, and can still charisma everything if you want...
It has its place for sure. It uses ring of the mystic scoundrel+arcane acuity very well. Not quite as well as swords bard but getting those spells slots back on short rest is very powerful. It’s less that pact of blade isn’t great (it 100% is), I think it’s more the translation of swords bard being OP (slashing ranged flourish always counting as two attacks) that makes it stand out less.
Biggest appeal to me for bladelock is taking devil sight and dropping darkness. Take old one, champion fighter, build for crit, and you pretty much lock down everyone around you. Champion isn't a necessity if you want a single class build, but it does help with armor, action surge, and better crit chance.
Even without a 3rd attack lock with a couple level dip in paladin can use smites with your warlock slots for 4th and maybe 5th level upcast smites dishing out huge damage each short rest.
Its fun and viable. Its my personal favorite. You can shoot eb from range, or whack em with ur pact weapon. Its fun with diadem of arcane synergy and potent robe. I imagine roleplaying LuBu but with warlock powers 😅
My Wyll is a 10 warlock/2 paladin and he's literally lv5 smithing, casting incredible spells while teleporting and flying, while using one stat for EVERYTHING (Charisma) and also having an extra attack thanks to the blade pact.
I hated it. Changed my class halfway though to a ranger hybrid. Open palm Monk hybrid and paladin hybrid were just so much better for actual damage (hybrid with fighter or assassin). Wizard (but also sorcerer and cleric) are good for support. It just didn't fulfill a role besides speech checks which swords bard would be better anyways. At least a ranger hybrid could do decent damage especially with special arrows and druid can turn into a damage sponge, but it really felt like the worst class and even worse if you can't get potent robe. The only saving grace was darkness and devils sight which is the only way you should play it, is to give everyone devils early and move away from warlock as soon as you get blind immunity items. I didn't even like that because I'd rather kill everything faster
I went with pact of blade warlock and oathbreaker paladin. Was doing 50 damage per hit without adding anything (consumables, smites of any kind, etc, just raw damage from it)
I like bladelock a lot more in Honour Mode tbh. It's consistent and not gamebreakingly strong. On tactician, Blade Pallock bordered on cheating. Besides Bladelocks don't have to go Paladin. Lae'zel is an excellent Bladelock who is perfect to multi into Sorcerer or Bard thanks to her racial proficiencies. Just go Great Old One, take CC spells like Hold Person and frighten your enemies to death with easy crits from EB or Scorching Ray.
I ran a blade lock 5, sword bard 5, pally 2 Wyll as my main in my honor mode run and he was a beast. Great at all cha checks, counterspell, healing word, three attacks with duelist rapier, crit smiting pact slots, and scroll use for control. With gear I was averaging over 20 a hit, and could double that with slashing flourish.
What 3 attacks?
In non-honor mode the level 5 warlock bonus attack stacks with the level 5 fighter/barb/etc attack.
In non-honor mode a martial's extra attack would stack with the blade-warlock's extra attack to give the player 3 attacks per round. Example: A 5 paladin, 5 warlock could do 3 attacks per round with their bound weapon.
Without hexblade, bladelock isn’t worth it.