BG3 Honor Build: The Fiend Warlock

Author: Majin Evelyn

This Fiendish Warlock uses a powerful combination of damage, control, and sturdiness to solve the challenges Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3 presents!

With (nearly) exclusive access to two extremely powerful control effects in hunger of Hadar and the Repelling Blast invocation, the Warlock provides critical value to any party. Baldur’s Gate 3 also has several items to increase the damage of your eldritch blast cantrip, and The Fiend subclass provides fireball to this build, ensuring reliable damage from the same character. Through a combination of Dark One’s Blessing from The Fiend for reliable temporary hit points, as well as Warding Flare and armor proficiencies from Light Domain Cleric 1, this build is very self sufficient and sturdy. The combination of straightforward power that these features provide makes it tempting to use this build twice in the same party! Dark One’s Own Luck even improves this build’s usefulness as the Avatar character, improving your ability checks in dialogue.

Races/Origins

There are various choices for your race/origin that fit in nicely for this build. Here are some race options which can optionally be combined with The Dark Urge Origin:

Drow – Gaining hand crossbow proficiency, Superior Darkvision, Perception proficiency and one free casting of darkness per day is very valuable for this build.

Wood Elf – Extra movement speed is always nice, and having both Stealth and Perception proficiency is valuable for any build.

Duergar – The invisibility available from level 5 is quite valuable. It’s usable every combat and out of combat, so you’ll almost always enter combat invisible, giving you a unimpeded opportunities to set up hunger of Hadar or cast eldritch blast at advantage.

Ability Scores

8 Str, 14 Dex, 14+2 Con, 8 Int, 12 Wis, 15+1 Cha

Charisma and Constitution are the most important ability scores for this build, and 14 Dex allows us to maximize the effectiveness of mundane medium armor. If your Warlock is a Drow, you can swap your Dex and Con scores to give your hand crossbows slightly higher performance in Act 1. If you later take the deal in Act 1 for a +1 bonus to Charisma (spoiler), respec this build to the following, so that your Charisma will be 18 after the bonus: 8 Str, 14 Dex, 15+1 Con, 8 Int, 10 Wis, 15+2 Cha

Skills

Skill proficiencies come from your Background, Class, and Race choices. Ultimately, for Honor Mode skill proficiencies are not important to plan for, especially if the character in question isn’t your Avatar (the one directly controlled and made by the player, who will usually be active in conversations and making ability checks). Origin characters will have their Background choices locked, but if you’re making a custom character, you have some freedom. By starting with Warlock, you can choose Deception and Intimidation proficiency, in combination with either the Guild Artisan or Noble backgrounds, which both grant Persuasion proficiency. These three proficiencies cover most skill checks in conversation, which is helpful because your primary ability score is Charisma anyway. For these reasons, the Warlock is a great choice for your Avatar character.

For characters not making ability checks in conversation (i.e. non-Avatar characters), the most common checks that occur are Perception and Survival. The Outlander and Folk Hero backgrounds can provide Survival proficiency, and any (non-Half) Elf has Perception proficiency. Neither Cleric nor Warlock can provide either of these proficiencies, but other builds in your party may have them.

Level Progression

Down below you can find a level progression that can be followed in your Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough. You may opt to respec less often or even more often to maximize your spell progression, however, the latter is not necessary for this build to be very strong.

Level 1: Warlock

Subclass – The Fiend

Level 2: Warlock

Invocations – Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast

Level 3: Cleric (Warlock 2/Cleric 1)

Subclass – Light Domain

Level 4: Warlock (Warlock 3/Cleric 1)

Pact Boon – Pact of the Chain

Level 5 Warlock (Warlock 4/Cleric 1)

Feat – Alert

Level 6: Warlock (Respec) (Warlock 5/Cleric 1)

Pact Boon – Pact of the Tome Pact of the Chain

Invocation – Devil’s Sight

Level 7: Warlock (Warlock 6/Cleric 1)

Level 8: Warlock (Warlock 7/Light 1)

Invocation – Armor of Shadows, Beast Speech, or Beguiling Influence (choose one, luxury)

Level 9: Warlock (Warlock 8/Cleric 1)

Feat – Charisma +2

Level 10: Warlock (Warlock 9/Cleric 1)

Invocation – Minions of Chaos

Level 11: Warlock (Warlock 10/Cleric 1)

Level 12: Warlock (Warlock 11/Cleric 1)

Key Spells

Cantrips: blade ward, guidance, eldritch blast
1. bless, command, sanctuary, shield of faith
2. darkness, cloud of daggers
3. call lightning, counterspell, hunger of Hadar, fireball
4. dimension door
5. cone of cold
6. create undead

Items

Your main spell, hunger of hadar, functions well on its own, but there are a few items that can boost the effectiveness of your eldritch blast cantrip. The most impactful items (which will often be optimally equipped for the rest of the game once you acquire them) will be underlined.

Helmets

Birthright (Act 3)
Mask of Soul Perception (Act 3)

Amulets

Amulet of Misty Step (Act 1) – Not a damage increase, but useful for mobility
Spineshudder Amulet (Act 1) – Each eldritch blast beam inflicts Reverberation, potentially causing Prone when it stacks high enough.
Fey Semblance Amulet (Act 3)

Armor

Luminous Armor (Act 1) – A Cleric in your party will make better use of this, but consider this item for your Warlock if you’ve chosen not to bring a Cleric to your party. Once you get access to the Callous Glow Ring in Act 2, this can be a good alternative to Potent Robe to apply Radiating Orb on each of your Eldritch Blasts.
Potent Robe (Act 2) – This adds Charisma damage to your eldritch blasts on top of Agonizing Blast, so if you find your Warlock to be safe enough without medium armor, feel free to equip this. Make sure to keep the Light Domain Cleric dip for its Warding Flare and shield proficiency, and cast mage armor on yourself from a friendly Wizard or a scroll you’ve purchased.
Dark Justiciar Half-Plate (Act 2) – If you have a Cleric in the party using Luminous Armor and didn’t meet the story requirements to obtain Potent Robe, this medium armor provides the effect of the War Caster feat to help maintain your concentration.

Handwear

Daredevil Gloves (Act 1) Gloves of Belligerent Skies (Act 1) – Once you get the Callous Glow Ring to add Radiant damage to your eldritch blasts, these gloves will also make your blasts inflict Reverberation upon your target, potentially proning the target.
Luminous Gloves (Act 2) – As with the previous gloves, these will only be relevant when you get the Callous Glow Ring, but is a good option if you don’t have a Cleric to equip this item onto.
Gemini Gloves (Act 3) – This only adds one additional beam of eldritch blast despite the tooltip, but this is still a valuable addition.

Footwear

Boots of Stormy Clamour (Act 1) – When you are also using Spineshudder Amulet and/or Gloves of Belligerent Skies, this will further add to your eldritch blasts’ capacity to inflict Reverberation and therefore prone.
Disintegrating Night Walkers (Act 1) – Not a damage increase, but useful for mobility. There are a lot of other options for footwear that similarly have useful utility but do not increase damage.

Rings

Callous Glow Ring (Act 2) – There are many ways to ensure illumination on targets and guarantee the 2 extra Radiant damage per eldritch blast, such as the light cantrip or using it in combination with the Coruscation Ring.
Coruscation Ring (Act 2) – Another item likely better used by a Cleric, but this will make your eldritch blasts apply Radiating Orb, which also lights up the target.
Snowburst Ring (Act 2) – An exceptionally powerful effect, but you don’t have an at-will way to trigger it such as through the ray of frost spell. If you aren’t running a Wizard or Sorcerer in your party, this will be helpful to make your hunger of Hadar spell trigger its own ice surfaces.

Cloak

The Deathstalker Mantle (Act 1)
Cloak of Displacement (Act 3)

Ranged Weapons

Bow of Awareness (Act 1) – Just here for the +1 bonus to Initiative, not to attack with.
Hand Crossbow (Act 1) – Available very early, this and the below Hand Crossbows will provide you with a bonus action attack when dual wielded with another hand crossbow, without the need to attack with the main hand. Especially useful if your Warlock is a Drow, as they have innate hand crossbow proficiency. While this attack doesn’t do a lot of damage, it can be used to hit objects such as barrels and potions next to allies, essentially turning the option to throw a potion from an action into a bonus action (as placing items onto the ground costs no actions).
Hand Crossbow +1 (Act 1)
Hellfire Hand Crossbow (Act 2)
Hand Crossbow +2 (Act 3)
Hellrider Longbow (Act 3) – Upgrades the Bow of Awareness’ +1 bonus to Initiative to a +3.

Melee Weapons

Phalar Aluve (Act 1) – Once per short rest, this sword lets you activate a helpful (bless-like effect) or harmful aura. The helpful aura stacks with the bless spell for even more attack and saving throw bonus, making it very powerful for someone to have in the party.
Staff of Arcane Blessing (Act 1) – Makes your bless boost your to-hit for your eldritch blasts even further than normal. The description is a bit deceptive, but the extra 1d4 only applies to spell attacks for a total of 2d4.
The Spellsparkler (Act 1) – This will passively boost your to-hit and damage for your eldritch blast as you continue to cast it, through lightning charges.

Strategy

Your primary strategy for most of the game (starting at level 2) involves using Repelling Blast to push enemies away from your party and/or into friendly control effects. Level 3 grants you access to first level Cleric spells, as well as more sturdiness from armor proficiency and Warding Flare. Using your slots to shield of faith yourself for the entire long rest will further increase your survivability.

From levels 4 to 5, darkness can help your party stay safe from ranged enemies. It’s functionally mobile cover, not allowing ranged attacks in or out of the area. The following strategy will solve many combats: place the spell onto your party, have each party member on their turn walk out of the darkness, make a ranged attack, and then walk back into the darkness to end their turn.

Once you get access to it at level 6, hunger of Hadar will solve several problems for your party if you put it on top of a friendly sleet storm. Hunger of Hadar damages and blinds enemies, as well as making the area difficult terrain without interfering with surface effects beneath it. This greatly compounds the impact of sleet storm, limits enemy options, and therefore denies enemy actions. If your party doesn’t have access to sleet storm to combo with your hunger of Hadar, the Snowburst Ring will give you a smaller version of sleet storm’s ice surface effect. You can salvage some of this by also having an ally upcast create water, making a water surface which will get frozen by the Snowburst Ring once an enemy takes the cold damage from hunger of Hadar. Whatever your method of using hunger of Hadar, this will remain your staple spell from level 6 onward, and your Repelling Blast will make it even easier to capitalize on. Your pact slots will increase in slot level as you get more Warlock levels, and you will continue to want to cast this when you get to higher levels due to its powerful effect. The combination of Repelling Blast and hunger of Hadar is a simple, but very powerful combination in a competent party.

Level 6 also grants a free cast once per long rest of animate dead, call lightning, and haste through the upgrade of Pact of the Tome. Animate dead is a free summon, and call lightning may be used in combination with other allies using strategies revolving around the wet condition, which also benefits your hunger of Hadar and later cone of cold castings.

Dimension door can occasionally be very useful for certain combat encounters that require the mobility, which is wonderful to have on a short rest resource. At the final level of the game, selecting create undead for your Mystic Arcanum will give you some extra power without interfering with your action economy, but other choices won’t make a large difference, as your core gameplay has long been established.