Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The warlock kinda sucks

Some races get weapon proficiencies, I guess Baldurian nobles get rapier.

Wyll does get an extra proficiency in Rapier, yes.

Regarding repelling blast, it doesn't always knock the target back. I believe there is a saving throw of some sort.

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To touch on the imp, yes, I think that's the best part of the warlock. But I guess I want my character to be better than my character's familiar.

Anyway, when it comes to hex, other classes can get their hands on it and do as much, if not more, with the spell.

I also need to mention that a hexblade dip is probably the single best dip in all of 5e. Free martial weapons, shields, and medium armor proficiency, CHA to attack and damage, and hexblade's curse (prof to damage and improved critical against a single target per long rest) is absolutely incredible for just a single level.

Yes. Fiend Warlocks only have light armor and simple weapon proficiency. Also IIRC RAW you can't get weapon proficiencies from customizing a background, only tool and skill proficiencies. That being said I'm pretty sure most DMs would be fine with letting a player get a proficiency for a single weapon type from their background.

That's correct (mostly. The enemy should make an opposed Athletics or Acrobatics skill check, not a saving throw), but your word "presuming" is doing a lot of work in that parenthetical! You should have a similar chance to hit with EB as a martial character has with Shove, but everyone gets BA Shove for free while Warlocks still have to take an invocation to get Repelling Blast. BA Shove doesn't completely invalidate warlocks' Repelling Blast, but it does majorly intrude on an area that warlocks can possible excel at, making them a relatively less powerful class.

The benefit to Repelling Blast is that if you hit you'll do damage AND shove. In that way, it's most comparable to Fighter's Pushing Attack or Monk's Open Hand Technique (2 other things which BA Shove steps on the toes of).

If you hit with Eldritch Blast, and you have Repelling Blast, you auto-shove. No save.

And yes. Wyll shouldn't have Rapier proficiency. I honestly thought he was Pact of the Blade because of his rapier. With that pact, the warlock has a blade that resembles whatever; something like a rapier would be a natural fit for someone with high Dex. The pact means he's proficient with it, and it's magical when determining resistance and such.

And, he's supposed to be the Blade of Frontiers, so it would make sense that he'd have that pact. At level 5, gain Thirsting Blade and get an extra attack with his summoned rapier.

But, instead, they give him Rapier proficiency. Weird to me.

I can't speak for what it's supposed to be, but I'm certain that I've used it a lot where the enemy didn't budge.

And yes, I'm positive it was toggled on.

In BG3, the game determines first if a target 'can' be shoved in the direction intended - if you use the shove skill it'll give you a trajectory and if the trajectory is red then you know the enemy will not move, even if you shove successfully.

This is the case for Eldritch blast as well, except that you can't see the trajectory to check it.

The Warlock is a weird class thats kinda all over the place and has some glaring design inconsistencies. I woulds not be overtly surprised that when 6th Edition rolls around in 2 years he will be one of the classes that has had the most work put into it.


One thing that has always weirded me out was how your Warlock Patron has no impact on the Pact Boon you take. I hope they change that in the future.

Am I misremembering or isn't shove strength dependent? I suppose it may be over-effective in a strength heavy party--but it seems to me that going mostly strength is going to cost the group in other ways.

I don't know exactly how it works NOW in BG3 - they changed it to some weird abomination of counting the Strength VS the Weight of a creature or something.

In proper Tabletop 5E D&D you make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, and if you win you can shove it 5 feet. The target also has to be only 1 size category larger than you.


Repelling Blast shoves a creature 10 feet, so for shoving it's twice as effective as the Shove action itself. But it triggers PER HIT, and Eldritch Blast gets additional attacks passively as your character levels up, so at level 5 for example you can shove a creature 20 feet, or shove 2 creatures 10 feet each. ALSO RAW Repelling Blast has no size limitation, so you can shove a 100 foot tall Titan off a mountain cliff and watch it go splat.


But here we are forced to watch characters go super-saiyajin for every shove and jump and for people to fly off screen like they are hit by Bruce Lee's One-Inch Punch.

That is the worst part for myself ...

I dont want to turn this topic to combat log, but if we really dont know how something is calculated or decided, then whole "log" is useless. :-/
That is its main and basicaly only purpose for someone sake! :-/

I would say the Warlock is pretty good, Wyll as a Warlock, not so good.

Wyll's stats do not support blade pact warlock. He is okay as chain/tome, but that doesn't really fit his back story.

To make him "work" as written they need to have his patron give him +cha to attack and damage with the rapier in addition to the rest of the fiend kit. That would fit the story nicely, as his "deal with the devil" would give him real fighting prowess well beyond his actual abilities.

Player could then still patch his awful AC with the moderately armored feat at level 4.

They changed Shadowhearts stats, they might do that with Wyll too. Right now, his stats are all over the place.

I think (hope) it's just a placeholder since Pact of the Blade isn't implemented yet.


Have Wyll's stats been customized by Larian yet? I think he's just using the default Warlock spread, which is Cha-focused. Shadowheart had a similar problem when she was originally str-specced with dex as her dumpt stat despite being a trickery cleric. If they made him a real pact of the blade presumably they'd swap his stats around (I'd go 16 dex, 15 cha, 14 con) to be melee-focused rather than relying so much on EB. Fiendlock is overshadowed by Hexblade (because Hexblade was something of an over-reaction), but they still make decently tanky fighters with a suite of tricks up their sleeves.

Hexblade does overshadow fiend pact for sure, but it is not a player handbook patron so it probably will not be added by larian.

Giving Wyll the hexblade feature, but restricted to his rapier, while keeping his current stat spread would actually work fairly well from a story standpoint.

Warlocks are fine. If used only as ranged striker (Hex + Eldricht Blast) their performance will be similar to most other options for those roles. They will perform better than ranged rogues most of the time and bit worse than fighters. It's boring, but it's rather a choice of a player than a fault of the class. You can do other stuff with your spell slots, Cloud of Daggers with Repelling Blast can be more fun etc.

Repelling blast is not made less powerful by BA Shove. Firstly most characters already have better uses for BA than shoving, especially since Larian added BA Use Object and BA Hide for everyone and Jump requires BA. While sometimes shove can kill a creature, it doesn't happen as often as people imply. Poisoning a weapon, getting advantage through hide, jumping to actually reach a target, offhand weapon attack, Pommel Strike, Flourish are all there, even if you don't have BA usage granted by your class. Secondly having more ways to move a target makes it generally more powerful. Single Shove from La'zel might not do much, but if she shares a turn with Wyll, they can move a target further, increasing likelihood of forced movement leading to something beneficial for the party.

Pact of the Chain is buffed compared to 5e, Imp adds decent chunk of damage and utility. I suspect that both Pact of the Blade and of the Tome will see some changes compared to 5e to balance the pacts accordingly. If introduced RAW they would be almost pointless considering the changes Larian made (abundance of magical weapons, no ritual casting) and the nature of video game format as well (combat focus, lack of more complex interactions). Fiend is a strong subclass, with really good blasting spells and great defensive features. Great Old One is probably still being worked on, but 1st level spell selection (which is great) might be reason enough to try it out.

As for short rest dependency, are people actually long resting for each fight? It's hard for me to believe that average player who tends hoards every potion and scroll however abundant they are, would suddenly feel differently about resting supplies. Resting before every fight is possible (as it is in most crpgs from BG1 to WOTR), but I never felt it's necessary or fun or encouraged to do so. 2 short rests per 1 long is actually decent for pact magic compared to usual spellcasting.

How is Pact of the Chain buffed compared to 5E? That you can control the Imp like another party member without commands? Thats the way it should have always been, and the main reason Beastmaster Ranger in TT 5E is considered one of the worst classes. But Larians implementation of controlling your summons raises questions regarding the implementation of the higher level summon spells Conjure Animals, Conjure Elements and Conjure Woodland Beings - are they really gonna enable us to summon multiple entities?

As for the short rest - Why would I NOT long rest after every fight if there are no negative consequences? That way my full casters get to actually USE their spell slots each fight. Having a Wizard/Sorcerer in the party (7 spell slots at lvl 4) VS a Warlock (2 spell slots at lvl 4) for each encounter .... yeah thats a no brainer for me.

As for the short rest - Why would I NOT long rest after every fight if there are no negative consequences? That way my full casters get to actually USE their spell slots each fight. Having a Wizard/Sorcerer in the party (7 spell slots at lvl 4) VS a Warlock (2 spell slots at lvl 4) for each encounter .... yeah thats a no brainer for me.

And this is why Warlock sucks in BG3. If you can long rest after every fight with no penalty or no legit incentive to short rest instead, the primary thing that makes Warlock a valid class is stripped from it.

My question was not should people LR before every rest, but if they actually do that. There's a difference.

As for Imp you answered it yourself.

And if you LR before every fight it's not only Warlock that sucks, it's almost the entire roster except Sorcerers.