Solasta: Crown Of The Magistertakes the bones of fifth edition D&D and reassembles them into a familiar but different form. You’ll still be rolling d20s and encountering orcs, elves, and tieflings, but their roles are changed in Solasta’s new world setting.
Related:Solasta: Crown Of The Magister - Best Party Builds
The Inner Strength DLC introduces the warlock. Moreso than any other class, the warlock can leverage the differences between the tabletop rules and the adaptations made for a computer game. To make full use of the newly introduced class, you’ll want to plan ahead. Patrons are chosen at level one and will determine large parts of your build.
Best Ancestry For A Warlock
Unlike 5th edition D&D,there is no optional rule for substituting ability score improvements(although this is a commonly reintroduced feature in mods).
As a result, you’ll feel compelled topick a heritage that provides a bump to charisma, but this still offers you a few options.
Two charisma
One intelligence
Intelligence is useful for Solasta’s more pronounced crafting skills, Potion brewing and Enchanting.
Innate spellcasting and resistance to fireare both useful features. Hellish rebuke and darkness are both useful spells to gain an extra cast of.
Two dexterity
One charisma
Both ability scores help you, giving AC and spell casting power.
The lucky feature is deceptively powerful, and you can almost view it as a plus five percent chance to succeed on every roll and negating the consequences of a critical fumble.
Two other plus ones of choice
Two bonus skills are good to have.Warlocks struggle compared to classes more focused on proficiencies.
Sleep magic is a rarity in Solasta but advantage on saves against Charm will be helpful in some boss fights.
Two strength
Dragonborn get an extra damage resistance and a daily breath weapon. They’ll be of the same type, soyou’ll want to choose between having a common resistance or an uncommonly resisted breath.
The resistance is always activeso is typically the better priority. Fire and poison are common damage types in Solasta.
Darkvision is nice to have, butSolasta features lots of enemies that can weaponise dark environments,making the ability to conjure light much more important than seeing in the dark.
Best Patron For A Warlock
Of the four patrons available in Solasta, only one will be familiar to veterans of D&D. Each favours a different way of playing the warlock.
Fiend Warlock
Fiend Warlock is the most adaptable of the four patrons and has a lot of features geared towards survivability in long fights.Dark One’s Blessing gives you temporary HP whenever you land a killing blow, andfiendish resilience gives you a damage resistance that you can change on a short rest.
Your expanded spell list has a few standout options:Wall of Fire is a much stronger option in the video game formatwhere enemies will not try to avoid the massive circle of flames surrounding your party and instead walk through to their deaths.
Poison resistance will see the most use while traveling,but if you’re in an area called “the volcano forest of burning” its best switched to fire.
Hive Warlocks
These are thebest warlocks for combating and supporting other mages. At first level, they provide disadvantage on saves to set upstrong control spells, such as hold person cast by another spell caster.
At sixth level, they gain access to counterspell.The best use for this is to counterspell enemy counterspells,allowing your largest spells to connect without interruption.
The patron spells ofcloudkill and insect plague fill a similar role to Wall of Fire,but cannot be shaped as precisely and use more easily resisted damage types.
The digitalGM has no qualms about counterspelling a healing spelltargeting a PC who is about to bleed out. Plan accordingly.
Timekeeper Warlock
Timekeeper gains access to some of the best patron spells possible. Greater invisibility andhaste don’t benefit from the warlock’s limited spell slots and stronger scalingbut are powerful spells in their own right.
Magic missile is anunconditional damage dealing spell against enemies with high ACand saving throws.Spreading the missiles between as many targets as possibleis the best way of activating your primary feature, Curse Of Time.
The level 6 abilityTime Shift is one of the strongest defensive moves possible,completely negating an attack and banishing you to prevent follow-up attacks. It is unfortunately only available once per day.
Against spellcasters, sending only a single Magic Missile at them is normally enough totrick them into wasting a cast of Shield.
The other missiles can be directed at lower priority targets.
Against enemies without the Shield spell,magic missile is a great tool for breaking concentration. Target enemies concentrating on flight spells for a fun time.
Tree Warlocks
Tree Warlocks occupy a strange position of being the warlock that wants to be hit in melee but hasfew features to improve their survivability.
They reflect melee damage inflicted on them but willstill quickly die against stronger enemies.
Casting fog cloud on their own positionmakes melee attackers work a bit harder and provides cover against ranged attackers but doesn’t make use warlock’s spell scaling.
The conflict between this subclass and its overall class identity makethis the weakest of the four.Pair this subclass with a feat granting medium armour and the pact of the blade to lean in fully to the role of a melee warlock.
Related:Solasta: Crown Of The Magister: Complete Combat Guide
Best Invocations For A Warlock
Invocations are one of the main ways of customising a warlock. Similar to feats, they provide a powerful tool for increasing utility or adding more power to already strong abilities. Here are the three strongest for general purposes:
Best Feats For A Warlock
Feats have more to offer for martial classes in Solasta,giving elemental bonuses to weapon attacks and applying helpful debuffs and boons when using regular combat moves. Despite this, there are still plenty of options for a Warlock to choose from.
Don’t take so many feats that you’re unable to reach 20 charisma.Keep the level boundaries of the campaign in mindwhen planning your levels.
Best Teammates For A Warlock
One of the greatest advantages that Solasta offers iseasier coordination in team building.
Whether playing solo or with a friend, you havestrong incentives to play your builds togetherand create combos across multiple characters.
Uses
Life Cleric
Warlocks don’t have easy access to healing.A cleric can serve as both a ranged spellcaster to follow up on openings created by a hive warlock and damage taken by a tree warlock.
Proficiency in heavy armour allows the life cleric to interpose themselves between enemies trying to attackweaker backline members such as the warlocks.
Way Of Survival Monk
Monks gain the most out of short rests after warlocks. A party of monks and warlocks can leverage this tohave a full supply of ki and warlock spell slots at all times.
Way of Survival offers powerful defensive optionsthat this team otherwise would struggle with.
Fighter
Fighters don’t care as much about short rests but recharge some nice class features from it.
The main role of a fight supporting a warlock isbuying distance against melee enemies and rounding out the party’s skill proficienciesto include athletics and blacksmithing.
Bard of Heroism
Bardic inspiration recharges on short rests, and the bard has access to healing spells even if they can’t match a life cleric in raw numbers healed.
College of Heroism can make more use of their bardic inspiration,leveraging the more frequent rests to deal damage and support effectively.
Sorcerer
Sorcerers have a large pool of spells to follow up on warlocks:
Unfinished Business For A Warlock
Unfinished Business is the most popular modpack for Solasta,becoming big enough to receive an endorsement from the developers.
While the content in the modpack isunofficial and varies in balance due to the large pool of authors, there are some standout features that can improve a warlock build.
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