Ghostlance: Echo Knight Warlock Build Guide
- Race: Variant Human
- Class: Warlock
- Ability Scores
- Background: Custom
- Equipment
- Level 2: Fighter (Warlock 1/Fighter 1)
- Level 3: Warlock (Warlock 2/Fighter 1)
- Level 4: Fighter (Warlock 2/Fighter 2)
- Level 5: Fighter (Warlock 2/Fighter 3)
- Level 6: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 1)
- Level 7: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 2)
- Level 8: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 3)
- Level 9: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 4)
- Level 10: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 5)
- Level 11: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 6)
- Level 12: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 7)
- Level 13: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 8)
- Level 14: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 9)
- Level 15: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 10)
- Level 16: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 11)
- Level 17: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 12)
- Level 18: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 13)
- Level 19: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 14)
- Level 20: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 15)
- Bonus Content: Completed Ghostlance Character Sheets
Author: Lilith
Do you want a break from the classic dichotomy between performing spellcasting or making the same kind of weapon attacks? Do you find your ideas that combine different class features take too long to come online? Then perhaps our latest creation, the Ghostlance, might spice up your D&D game.
An arcane sniper with a spotter drone, a puppet master with a marionette that marks enemies for death, a monster from the mist that lurks in the dark to devour those who fell for its illusory bait, an elusive trickster who can manipulate their own timeline, a shipwrecked captain that fights alongside their ghostly crewmates, that one fighting game puppet character you always wanted to play but were never good enough to pilot (Zato-1 says hi), or some weird Jojo stand. The concepts that the Ghostlance can represent are numerous. Of course, if you want more ideas on how to flavor it tastefully, you can check out this post.
The central concept of the Ghostlance is using the Manifest Echo feature of the Echo Knight Fighter to trigger opportunity attacks from a creature moving away from your echo, which allows you to cast eldritch blast on it with the War Caster feat. The build plays out like a half, or third caster, depending on your leveling choices.
Disclaimer: It’s recommended that you go through the mechanics with your DM in Session 0 to get to a consensus on how things work, as interactions that involve Echo Knight are not necessarily intuitive and apparent.
Manifest Echo is one of the most dynamic abilities in the game and definitely one of the neatest martial abilities. However, it can easily throw you off with its mechanical interactions if you hold a misleading mental image of how it works.
- The echo is not a creature; it is “a magical, translucent, gray image of you”, and the designers later confirmed that it is meant to function as an object. Thus, it is immune to poison and psychic damage and ignores effects that only apply to creatures, such as triggering opportunity attacks or the cone of cold spell, and can still be targeted by attacks.
- The echo occupies space, can move in any direction, and does not follow restrictions for creatures—it can move unimpeded even in the air, but not through terrain. It can also body block.
- The echo is destroyed if it is 30 feet away from you at the end of your turn. You can still move it further away and use its abilities before your turn ends, and there’s no limit to the distance you can teleport with it.
- The echo does not do anything other than its movement or perform any Action; it is purely an anchor, a reference point for your abilities. For all intents and purposes, you are still performing all your actions and attacks even when attacking through its space.
The core package of Ghostlance utilizes the following interactions:
When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves at least 5 feet away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo’s space.Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (p. 183)
Prerequisite: The ability to cast at least one spell
When a hostile creature’s movement provokes an opportunity attack from you, you can use your reaction to cast a spell at the creature, rather than making an opportunity attack. The spell must have a casting time of 1 action and must target only that creature.Player's Handbook (p. 170)
But wait, wouldn’t you instead attack from the echo’s space?
No, the clause “as if you were in the echo’s space” applies specifically to the opportunity attack, which we are replacing entirely with something different—casting a spell. It is why you cannot cast booming blade with an echo far away because nothing is allowing you to cast the spell as if you’re in the echo’s space.
And now, when we combine it with eldritch blast, powered by Agonizing Blast and Repelling Blast, we are not only doing damage to the target, but also pushing them a hefty amount away during their own turn, likely disrupting their game plan.
The core package only needs a single feat—War Caster, two levels of Warlock, and three levels of Fighter (Echo Knight). You don’t require any significant upkeep or synergy to keep your main strategy relevant as you progress, and you don’t have to catch up with full casting progression either, so there is a great amount of flexibility in your build options.
We dub this the “Ghostlance” in reference to its predecessor, the Forcelance.
Ok just show me the build already!
Race: Variant Human
Ability Score Increases – +1 Con, +1 Cha.
Skill – Acrobatics.
Languages – Common, Undercommon. Our choice of bonus language isn’t critical, and if you have any information about what languages you might encounter in your campaign then let that guide you.
Feat – War Caster. A requirement for this build. One of the biggest appeals of the Ghostlance is its ability to come fully online right from 5th level. A race with a starting Feat enables that.
Picking another race that doesn’t start with a Feat would delay the core package. Without a starting feat, you can complete Ghostlance earliest at 6th level with the additional Feat option from Fighter, or at 7th level with the Feat from Warlock.
For games with a free starting Feat, a race with innate spellcasting fulfills the requirement of War Caster and allows you to start Fighter for the benefit of Constitution save proficiency and the marginal upgrade from Medium to Heavy Armor.
War Caster also improves concentration saving throws and bypasses the free hand for somatic casting requirement, something any character with spellcasting would welcome.
Class: Warlock
Skills – Deception, Intimidation.
Otherworldly Patron – The Undead. Any Warlock patron can work, but subclasses with strong 1st level core features are preferable. This build features The Undead, as its Form of Dread plays well into its gameplan of keeping enemies away, and the feature scales on its own without requiring further investment. An alternative approach is choosing The Hexblade subclass to enable a more “gish” style, letting you utilize the echo to make weapon attacks, letting you utilize its Unleash Incarnation feature, and having access to shield spell early on.
Expanded Spell List (Undead feature) – Of the early options, there’s only bane that stands out. Remember that these are not automatically added to your list of known spells.
Form of Dread (Undead feature) – This is excellent; frightened is a potent condition to inflict, and when using Form of Dread, you can do it every turn.
Pact Magic – Since low level Warlock spells can be rather underwhelming, you can opt to focus more on the situational spells with big payoff, or utility spells, instead of being reliant on them as your main combat option.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, minor illusion.
1st Level: armor of Agathys, expeditious retreat.
Armor of Agathys – This might be situationally good to precast, as it provides extra survivability for the early tiers, but loses value later on. Swap this out for anything else you’d rather have. If your table regularly features single beefy enemies, hex is a fine pick up.
Expeditious retreat – Extra mobility or the ability to smoothly retreat in the early levels can be handy when the situation calls for it.
Eldritch blast – The reason we’re here, the core of our strategy.
Minor illusion – Great utility, especially in its ability to produce any sound.
Ability Scores
8 Str, 14 Dex, 15+1 Con, 8 Int, 10 Wis, 15+1 Cha
Background: Custom
Skills – Stealth, Persuasion.
Tool Proficiencies – Carpenter’s tools, thieves’ tools.
Feature – Feature: Heart of Darkness. This feature comes from the Haunted One background. You’ve got a special trick to get your way. If you have another background feature you would prefer, choose it.
Creator’s Note – Making a custom background is RAW, the PHB on page 125 states, “The sample backgrounds in this chapter provide both concrete benefits (features, proficiencies, and languages) and roleplaying suggestions. To customize a background, you can replace one feature with any other one, choose any two skills, and choose a total of two tool proficiencies or languages from the sample backgrounds.” Using this, we are making a custom background and using the Heart of Darkness feature.
Equipment
Warlock Starting Equipment
- A light crossbow and 20 bolts
- A component pouch
- A dungeoneer’s pack
- Leather armor, backup light crossbow, and two daggers
Haunted One Background Starting Equipment
- Monster hunter’s pack
- A set of common clothes
- One trinket of special significance (choose one or roll on the Horror Trinkets table)
- 1 sp
Purchasing Goals
- Half plate armor
- A shield
- Potions of healing
- Material components for spells
Level 1 Strategy
For now, we have eldritch blast, Form of Dread, and a spell slot. Not a lot, but Form of Dread is very impactful right from the start for survivability and control.
Level 2: Fighter (Warlock 1/Fighter 1)
Additional Proficiencies – Medium armor, shields, martial weapons.
Fighting Style – Defense. There’s not much else you can use from the Fighting Styles, and a +1 bonus to Armor Class is always worthwhile. Blind Fighting might have utility in enabling more uses of War Caster, but the 10-feet range means its value is rather limited.
Second Wind – Free healing, neat.
Level 2 Strategy
Our tactics are still simple, but our AC is higher. If you don’t have to worry about defense, or there’s no possibility of an armor upgrade at this level, picking up the second level of Warlock at this point is a consideration.
Level 3: Warlock (Warlock 2/Fighter 1)
Eldritch Invocations – Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast.
Agonizing Blast – An automatic invocation pick. A reliable damage boost for our game plan.
Repelling Blast – An automatic invocation pick. Any build that wants to do damage has no issue outclassing what one does with Agonizing Blast, but a no-save, stacking push on top of that is what makes this cantrip truly shine.
Spell Changes: +protection from evil and good.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, minor illusion.
1st Level: armor of Agathys, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good.
Protection from evil and good – Can generate good value when you come prepared against these common enemy types.
Level 4: Fighter (Warlock 2/Fighter 2)
Action Surge – A great ability with wide application, letting you do what you do, but more. Note that the limit on spellcasting in a turn only applies if you cast a bonus action spell, so you can still use Action Surge to cast two leveled spells with your Actions.
Level 5: Fighter (Warlock 2/Fighter 3)
Martial Archetype – Echo Knight.
Manifest Echo (Echo Knight feature) – The star of this show. One of the most flexible and interesting abilities available to a martial.
Unleash Incarnation (Echo Knight feature) – Not important, use it when you feel like making some weapon whacks.
Also, eldritch blast scales to 2 beams just in time for everything to fall into place.
Level 5 Strategy
Ghostlancing! On your turn, you eldritch blast like a regular Warlock, doing consistent damage and pushing enemies into less favorable positions, such as pushing off terrain, into hazardous areas of effects like a web or sickening radiance spell, away from allies, breaking grapples, or just far back enough that melee enemies have to waste their action to Dash.
End your turn with the echo within 5 feet of an enemy. It could be blocking their adjacent space or hovering above them, to quarantine them within the squares near the echo. If they ever leave its 5 feet coverage, they would provoke an opportunity attack from you as part of the echo’s ability, which you then replace with War Caster to cast a spell from your own space, and fire the eldritch blasts at them, pushing them even further back. You can also use the echo to ward off an area your enemies want to go through. Take note of where they can go and the angle from which you can push them if they trigger your attack. If your allies are planning to cast command or dissonant whispers, capitalize on that.
Even if you are within 5 feet of a hostile enemy, giving you disadvantage on your ranged spell attack rolls, you are still firing multiple beams. If one hit lands and pushes the enemy away, subsequent attacks no longer have disadvantage. If you’re concerned that being in melee happens often, picking up Crossbow Expert or Gunner is an option.
For Undead Warlock, the Form of Dread ability allows you to control multiple enemies at once. Tag an enemy with the frightened condition while pushing them back and making them unable to move closer to you, then lock down another with your echo threatening to “Ghostlance” them.
Enemies are put in a lose/lose situation where they either risk eating a full eldritch blast barrage if they want to move or waste their attacks to destroy the echo, which is also moderately sturdy and does not die to most generic area damage as they often only affect creatures. Still, you will likely be using your bonus action regularly to reposition the echo or manifest it again when destroyed.
Bonus tip: you can apply the restrained condition to an enemy with a Net through the echo. If they’re prone and the echo is within 5 feet, the advantage and disadvantage cancel out.
Echo movement! The echo makes you a slippery character, having access to an at-will teleport that requires minor setup, does not rely on sight, and can bypass obstructions. You should always have it up for a quick 30+ feet teleport when needed. Do note that you need 15 feet of movement to make the swap, so being grappled or restrained can limit this.
If you end your turn more than 30 feet away from the echo, you have to summon the echo again next turn, and since your Ghostlance technique relies on the echo staying to lock down an area, do plan your movement in advance. Here are some ways to mix up your movement.
- Move 30 feet, summon your echo 15 feet away, have it move 30 feet further. 75-feet coverage, up to 45-feet reach in the air, this lets you perform melee maneuvers, but the echo gets “popped.”
- Move your echo 30 feet in any direction, up to 60 feet away from you, swap places by spending 15 feet, up to 75 feet traveled, including up to 60 feet of verticality, but the echo gets “popped.”
- If your echo is already 30 feet away, it can move up to 15 feet further, you swap places, and it moves 15 feet back to not get “popped.” This is both a hefty, 45-feet disengage and can double as a setup for Ghostlance.
At any point during your progression, a level in Sorcerer provides the premium defensive options of shield and absorb elements that can be used frequently with Warlock pact slots.
At any point after Ghostlance is online, another level in Fighter can fetch you an ASI, or in Warlock for pact boon options and 2nd level slots. This is a notable consideration if the campaign is ending soon and you’d like to cash out on features, or if you use a race without a starting Feat.
If for some reason you want to engage in melee yourself anyways, picking up Crossbow Expert or Gunner to remove the ranged attack disadvantage is a consideration.
Warlock x / Fighter 3 (★★★★★)
You’ve already invested in Warlock levels, and have the Ghostlance technique to make up for the spell progression delay. Going further into Warlock is an appealing choice, especially for subclasses that offer impactful spell choices and features later on such as the Genie or Fathomless. You’d also be able to afford invocations that further improve your movement control game with Grasp of Hadar or Lance of Lethargy.
Alternatively, if your inner gish is calling out, you can take the slightly less potent, hybrid approach with Hexblade 5 for a mix of melee attacks and Ghostlancing, and make more use of your standard echo abilities.
Warlock 2 / Fighter 3 / Sorcerer x (★★★★★)
A single level of Sorcerer would drastically shore up your defense with the addition of shield and absorb elements without locking you to the highest level slot when going Warlock. Sorcerers also gain subclass abilities right from their first level, giving you even more options for features to combine to make up for the delayed spell progression.
Warlock 2 / Fighter 3 / Bard x (★★★★☆)
Bard offers a handy package of its own, and features evergreen spells early on like dissonant whispers, Tasha’s hideous laughter, and unseen servant. The standard Bardic Inspiration might need to be used more proactively to avoid bonus action clog in-combat.
Warlock 2 / Fighter 3 / Ranger 3-5 (Gloomstalker) / Cleric 1 (Peace) (★★★★☆)
Perhaps you’d like to go full ghost and have already made concessions for the 13 Wisdom multiclass requirement, and pick up Gloomstalker 3 for its Umbral Sight ability. The only thing the enemies see is your echo image, but suddenly, repelling beams blast at them from the dark. Going up to Ranger 5 lets you access pass without trace to bring your whole team into your ghost mode, granting your party easy surprise against your enemies. You might also add a level of Peace Cleric on top for another impactful ability that scales on its own.
Warlock 2 / Fighter 6 (★★★☆☆)
Perhaps the campaign is ending soon, and the only thing you ever wanted to do was Ghostlancing. Grabbing the last three levels in Fighter lets you have enough ASIs to boost Charisma to 20 or grab a handy Feat. Extra Attack would go unused unless you picked Hexblade, in which case, consider picking up Warlock 3 for Pact of the Blade.
Level 6: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 1)
Sorcerous Origin – Divine Soul. While each of the good subclasses has its own merit, we are featuring Divine Soul for its abundance of goodies: amazing additions to our spell list, a way to shore up our defenses and occasionally offenses through Favored by the Gods, and an additional spell to our small list of known spells.
Divine Magic (Divine Soul feature) – Lawful. Bless is the best option out of all the spells, and is still very relevant at this level. For any other affinity, you can swap its spell into bless next level.
Favored by the Gods (Divine Soul feature) – A reliable insurance to help you pass a dangerous saving throw.
Spell Changes: +absorb elements, +bless, +shield, +guidance, +mage hand, +mind sliver, +mold earth.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
Absorb elements – Despite the competition for our reaction, this spell is essential for covering our defensive bases.
Bless – Via Divine Magic. A potent spell that generates high value over a fight, and will stay that way, as its value is derived from the player characters you cast it on.
Shield – Again, while many things are vying for our reaction, a +5 bonus to AC is too great of a defensive boon to pass up.
Guidance – Automatic pick.
Mage hand – Another decent utility cantrip, but you could pick something else.
Mind sliver – Set up the spells of allies.
Mold earth – More utility, swap it if you prefer.
Level 7: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 2)
Font of Magic – Converting sorcery points into spell slots for high impact spells is actually fairly valuable when you don’t have as many priority targets for metamagic.
Flexible Casting – This will be useful in recycling unused pact slots into sorcery points before taking a short rest.
Spell Changes: +healing word.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, healing word, protection from evil and good, shield.
Healing word – Solely used for emergencies to pick up an unconscious ally from 0 hit points.
Level 8: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 3)
Metamagic – Quickened Spell and Twinned Spell. Spending 2 sorcery points for a quickened eldritch blast is typically an expensive and inefficient drain of resources. However, since we don’t have valuable spells to use sorcery points on, and can even burn unspent Warlock slots into more points, Quickened Spell looks relatively more appealing. Combined with Repelling Blast and our ability to keep enemies at such a distance via Ghostlancing, using Quickened Spell on eldritch blast becomes a force that can simply remove enemies from combat. Twinned spell and Subtle spell both have their merits, but they are less impactful for a character who forgoes standard spell progression.
Spell Changes: +web, +command, –healing word.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat,
2nd Level: web.
Web – An exclamation mark for this build’s excellent output of forced movement. Web is an extremely potent crowd-control spell. It targets Dexterity saves, which don’t scale well on monsters, creates difficult terrain to make it more costly to escape, requires an entire Action to make an ability check to break out, and restrained is a rarely resisted condition. With smart positioning, you can use Repelling Blast to force creatures back into a web repeatedly. This spell is amazing at denying and invalidating the numerous melee-dependent monsters in the game while debilitating the others. Paired with Repelling Blast and Ghostlancing, we can make it nearly impossible to escape from our web of death.
Command – With more abundant slots, we can afford some new toys. Command is another excellent tool to take enemies out of combat and deny turns, while also forcing a Ghostlance trigger. The Flee command is especially effective, as it can potentially deny two turns if the target fails its saving throw. Furthermore, this spell is a great twinnable option.
Level 8 Strategy
Now we can cast web during round 1, and set ourselves and the echo accordingly to push approaching/escaping enemies into the spell’s area. In particularly challenging encounters, we can make use of Quickened Spell (or Action Surge if our bonus action is already being used on Form of Dread) to follow up this casting of web with a series of eldritch blasts, pushing those near the web into its area for immediate value and increasing the effective area of the spell.
Let’s look at a scenario.
You’re facing a band of spooky warriors with its spooky leader commanding two chunky mutant misunderstood crocodiles.
You move back, eldritch blast the big croc away, and then use Quickened Spell to drop a web (purple area) on the group, catching four instead of three.
But wait, there’s more!
Since the mutant misunderstood crocodiles are the hardest hitters in this fight, you place your echo right behind it to threaten a Ghostlance barrage if it succeeds on its save and tries to leave. If the croc fails, you can even threaten the spooky leader. However, if you’re worried that the leader might reach the echo to destroy it, you can also place your echo 10 feet up in the air to only be adjacent to the croc.
Other spooky warriors don’t have enough movement to reach you without dashing, and the next turn you can even push more of them into the web. If they end up overwhelming you, you can move your echo to the left and swap with it to have a better angle of attack, or possibly even move your echo to the other side before swapping and create the same situation that forces melee dashes again. Factor in your allies occupying the enemies and putting in their own control effects, and you can easily control the flow of the fight as you weave between offensive and defensive use of the echo.
Level 9: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 4)
Ability Score Improvement – +2 Cha. Upping our casting stat to an 18, since we rely on landing spell attacks a lot more than the average caster.
Spell Changes: +phantasmal force, +prestidigitation.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: phantasmal force, web.
Phantasmal force – Another twinnable option that can be very effective. It targets the generally weakest saving throw of monsters, Intelligence, and doesn’t allow repeated saving throws. Instead, the affected creature must waste an entire Action to make an ability check that it almost definitely is not proficient in. The creature would even rationalize the illusion to be real to the best of its ability. A standard, foolproof use is to create any kind of visual obscurement blocking the target’s sight. For games with fewer encounters, Tasha’s mind whip is a useful alternative.
Prestidigitation – Utility.
Level 10: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 5)
Magical Guidance (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Optional feature) – A handy optional Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything feature for boosting the ability checks for counterspell and dispel magic. This is useful because these are the spells that are always valuable even with your delayed spell progression.
Spell Changes: +counterspell, +spirit guardians, -phantasmal force.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level:
3rd Level: counterspell, spirit guardians.
Counterspell – Premier defensive option and your greatest tool against the scariest enemies in the game: casters. Plus, you’re quite good at counterspelling due to Magical Guidance. Your reaction is more clogged, but counterspell is situational enough where it should not take up your reaction often.
Spirit guardians – A well-known damage spell that absolutely shreds. This build will also be taking advantage of its slowing effect within its radius. We’ve covered this spell in depth in our Top 5 Spells That Deal Damage article.
Level 10 Strategy
Spirit guardians’ movement reduction effect applies to total speed instead of costing additional movement, making it a lot harder to enter than to exit. If approaching a caster with spirit guardians is difficult, you can make it nigh impossible for an enemy to enter if you wish. You can place the echo to prevent an enemy in spirit guardians from reaching within 5 feet of you without being blasted all the way out on their turn. Its 10-minute duration also helps us stretch our limited 3rd level slots to impact multiple encounters.
Let’s look at another scenario.
After some adventures, the mutant misunderstood crocodile is now your friend, and you face the spooky army again. This time, two spooky soldiers are being roasted by spirit guardians’ aura while your croc friend bullies them, and the two soldiers outside can enter spirit guardians if they’re willing to take damage, but still cannot reach you. The spooky leader is being roasted and can only move within your echo’s red area. If it tries to engage with you, you can play Uno reverse card and Ghostlance it all the way back.
Level 11: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 6)
While not reflected within the class features, the greatest power spike at this level is the scaling of eldritch blast to 3 beams. Now, in addition to what we do with our action, every time an enemy provokes an opportunity attack by moving away from the echo, we can launch them up to 30 feet back. We’re simply even better at Ghostlancing.
Empowered Healing (Divine Soul feature) – Under most, if not all circumstances, this is a trap option that wants to gobble up your precious sorcery points. Rerolling dice provides a minuscule increase in healing, and the best healing spells (i.e. goodberry, heal, aid) don’t involve rolling dice at all.
Spell Changes: +hypnotic pattern.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, hypnotic pattern, spirit guardians.
Hypnotic pattern – A spellcaster’s classic staple as it can completely remove enemies who fail the save from the fight, or waste multiple turns from them. As long as there are foes who are not immune to the charmed condition, this spell won’t fall off easily.
Level 12: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 7)
Spell Changes: +wall of fire.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, hypnotic pattern, spirit guardians.
4th Level: wall of fire.
Wall of fire – The classic “push people into things” spell with great flexibility. While it allows for a save to take half damage when the wall appears, after this the wall does not allow any. You are guaranteed 5d8 fire damage whenever another creature enters the wall, or ends its turn within 10 feet of the side you designated to emit heat. Deny a large area, push enemies into it, set your echo up to push whoever tries to cross into it as well. Also, because your echo is an object, it is not affected by the wall, so you don’t have to avoid the heat zone when positioning it.
Although the spell says nothing about the wall having to be a straight line (normally walls aren’t restricted as such), which would in fact allow us to bend our wall of fire, Jeremy Crawford seems to think otherwise. There is some ambiguity here, so check with your DM.
Level 13: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 8)
Ability Score Improvement – +2 Cha.
Spell Changes: +fireball.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, command, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, spirit guardians.
4th Level: wall of fire.
Fireball – Since we now have a variety of options for our concentration, this spell can add a nice burst of damage when we need to invest more in a fight. In a game where you don’t find yourself using up your slots often and rest casting is available, death ward would also be a handy pick up.
Level 14: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 9)
Spell Changes: +synaptic static, +sleet storm, -command.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless,
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm, spirit guardians.
4th Level: wall of fire.
5th Level: synaptic static.
Synaptic static – Fireball‘s area of effect and damage, while targeting a weaker save with a less-resisted damage type, is a nice package on its own. But what really makes this spell worth its 5th level slot is its non-concentration debuff on those that survived the blast that almost never falls off in value.
Sleet storm – Have you seen the radius of this thing? It’s insane! Split up a fight with difficult terrain and heavy obscurement, make it harder for enemies to approach, and you don’t even care if they make their saves. Similar to web, you can camp your echo near the spell’s border to make escaping it more difficult.
Level 15: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 10)
Metamagic – Subtle Spell. Subtle wins counterspell wars, with some occasionally useful out-of-combat utility benefits. Spell Changes: +dimension door, +mending.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm, spirit guardians.
4th Level: dimension door, wall of fire.
5th Level: synaptic static.
Dimension door – A versatile spell that you can also incorporate some echo maneuvers with. Your extended movement allows you to reach allies or objects further away to bring with you using this spell. Alternatively, if someone else desperately needs to be teleported far away but you want to stay in the fight, or you want to get in then get out quickly, you can dimension door away with them then swap back to your echo, potentially moving back and forth a distance of over 1000 feet.
Mending – Utility.
Level 16: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 11)
Spell Changes: +scatter.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm, spirit guardians.
4th Level: dimension door, wall of fire.
5th Level: synaptic static.
6th Level: scatter.
Scatter – 6th level spells can be underwhelming but this is one of the better options. It also plays into our theme of movement control and can be used on both allies and enemies on the field for more advantageous positioning. Its range also becomes more flexible with echo maneuvers.
Level 17: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 12)
Ability Score Improvement (Feat) – Alert. The impactful control spells are kicking in, and winning initiative becomes more valuable. You also gain an edge when dancing around obscurement, causing attacks against you to be at disadvantage instead of straight rolls if neither you nor your attacker can see one another.
Spell Changes: +wall of stone, –spirit guardians.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm.
4th Level: dimension door, wall of fire.
5th Level: synaptic static, wall of stone.
6th Level: scatter.
Wall of stone – This is another multi-purpose spell that can manipulate the battlefield. You can trap enemies inside it and have them waste turns trying to get out. Even if enemies have Legendary Resistance or have very high Dexterity saves, you can still trap them if you catch them without their reaction, or even use this spell just to burn multiple reactions. Defensively, this spell can create cover for when you and your party have access to none, and you can even hop in and out of your makeshift bunker with your echo.
Level 18: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 13)
Spell Changes: +divine word.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm.
4th Level: dimension door, wall of fire.
5th Level: synaptic static, wall of stone.
6th Level: scatter.
7th Level: divine word.
Divine word – All of the power of this spell is in the last sentence. The hit point-gated status effects are pretty underwhelming, since at this level of play, by the time an enemy has hit points that low, they can likely be killed with at-will attacks or much lower level area-of-effect spells. But in a situation where you’re facing celestials, elementals, fey, or fiends, a bonus action, multi-target banishment that doesn’t require concentration is well worth the spell slot.
Level 19: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 14)
Otherworldly Wings (Divine Soul feature) – At-will flight is always sweet, even if it comes late at this level. This also means that you don’t need to land the echo before swapping anymore if you haven’t had other means of flight already.
Spell Changes: +heroes’ feast, –wall of fire.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm.
4th Level: dimension door.
5th Level: synaptic static, wall of stone.
6th Level: heroes’ feast, scatter.
7th Level: divine word.
Heroes’ feast – Should you have a spare slot at the end of the day, this spell is a hefty boost for your party. Gold shouldn’t be an issue for your party at this point, considering they’re practically demigods, but do keep the component in mind.
Level 20: Sorcerer (Warlock 2/Fighter 3/Sorcerer 15)
Spell Changes: +antimagic field.
Cantrips: eldritch blast, guidance, mage hand, mending, mind sliver, minor illusion, mold earth, prestidigitation.
1st Level: absorb elements, armor of Agathys, bless, expeditious retreat, protection from evil and good, shield.
2nd Level: web.
3rd Level: counterspell, fireball, hypnotic pattern, sleet storm.
4th Level: dimension door.
5th Level: synaptic static, wall of stone.
6th Level: heroes’ feast, scatter.
7th Level: divine word.
8th Level: antimagic field.
Antimagic field – The biggest threats at high levels are often magical in one way or another, and this can nullify them, provided you can reach your target. Of course, it also nullifies your party’s ability to affect the area with magic, including magic weapons, so you’ll need to carefully weigh the costs and benefits. One option you might have when facing a powerful enemy who depends on magic is to Ready your movement to affect the enemy only during their turn, playing to your initiative order. That way your allies can still target your enemies with magic when they are not in the field, but they are hampered on their turns. While your echo counts as magical, the antimagic field only explicitly prevents spellcasting through it and suppresses magical effects within its area. You can still use most of its abilities if the echo is outside the field.
We hope you liked the build!
So fun fact! You have unintentionally stumbled across the other half the the Opportunity Attack rules, the provoking creature, and discovered the Echo Knight Paradox. Normally, when an OA occurs there is two creatures involved. The first is the creature reacting by making the Opportunity Attack. The second is the creature being attacked, that has taken some action to provoke the Opportunity Attack. This is described in the rules of Opportunity Attacks in the PHB.
> To make the opportunity Attack, you use your Reaction to make one melee Attack against the provoking creature. The Attack occurs right before the creature leaves your reach.
> You can avoid provoking an opportunity Attack by taking the Disengage action. You also don’t provoke an opportunity Attack when you Teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your Movement, action, or Reaction. For example, you don’t provoke an opportunity Attack if an explosion hurls you out of a foe’s reach or if gravity causes you to fall past an enemy.
This is also further mentioned in a number of features in regards to Opportunity Attacks.
Polearm Master:
> While you are wielding a glaive, halberd, pike, quarterstaff, or spear, other creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they enter the reach you have with that weapon.
Cavalier Level 10
> Creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they move 5 feet or more while within your reach, and if you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the target’s speed is reduced to 0 until the end of the current turn.
Sentinel
> Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you even if they take the Disengage action before leaving your reach.
Notice how in each of these features, it specifically describe “creatures provoke(!) an opportunity attack when X occurs.”
Now when we look at War Caster, we see this further emphasized.
> When a hostile creature’s movement provokes an opportunity attack from you, you can use your reaction to cast a spell at the creature, rather than making an opportunity attack. The spell must have a casting time of 1 action and must target only that creature.
Note how its conditional is tied to “when a hostile creature provokes(!)” and not when you make an opportunity attack against that creature.
And thats important, because Echo Knight doesn’t actually say the creature is provoking, it just says you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against the creature. This makes it the only feature in the game that lets you make an Opportunity Attack without having a creature provoke, and breaks a couple of things.
> When a creature that you can see within 5 feet of your echo moves at least 5 feet away from it, you can use your reaction to make an opportunity attack against that creature as if you were in the echo’s space.
Notable things it breaks.
* You can’t disengage away from the echo, as it doesn’t care about you provoking OA’s and only cares about the fact that you are moving from within 5ft of it to outside 5ft of it.
Disengage: If you take the Disengage action, your Movement doesn’t provoke(!) Opportunity Attacks for the rest of the turn.
* You can use forced movement to proc the reaction attack. A crusher echo knight could stand next to an enemy, knock them back 5ft and outside of 5ft from the echo, and then use their reaction to make an attack through the echo. This is following the same logic as spike growth forced movement, as the echo doesn’t care how the movement occurs, just that it does.
Spike Growth: When a creature moves(!) into or within the area, it takes 2d4 piercing damage for every 5 feet it travels.
Of course, this is a purely RAW interpretation of the rules, but the use of Provoke is certainly a repeated pattern that is worth considering. Funnily enough Echo Knight is breaking the game either way. Either its able to make OA’s with a provoking creature, allowing it to do it off forced movement and ignore disengage, or it does count as provoking a creature (despite not saying so anywhere) and you get Ghost Lancing as a result.
I suspect the only reason its an actual Opportunity attack is either its a rather severe wording oversight and they forgot to put the Provoking wording in there, or it was made to be specifically an OA for the pupose of Sentinel but not any of the other features that care about a creature provoking (like warcaster).
It’s a good observation! We were actually debating a lot on whether to include that point in the explanation, but in the end opted not to. Your conundrum is correct – if “provoke” is a definite keyword, Manifest Echo’s opp attack would ignore Disengage and might even trigger on forced movement.
On the other hand, “provoke” has never been used as a keyword. There is no defined “provoke” event that leads to an opp attack, it’s always been used as a natural language shorthand (to stimulate or incite something). In many of their sage advice compendiums, WotC didn’t even use the word provoke when talking about opportunity attacks at all.
In the end, for the purpose of table ruling, it’s still a simple yes/no that you can agree on with the group to see if this build’s played. Getting into arguments about whether provoke is an actual keyword does get rather pedantic, hence the opting out.
I really like both the Undead Warlock and the Echo Knight so this was a blast to read. One of the things that appeals to me is the always-on nature of the combination. With Form of Dread usage tied to proficiency and the fear save once per turn, Eldritch Blast being a cantrip and the chosen invocations for it always being applied, the unlimited use of the Echo, and even the fighter skills (action surge and second wind) being renewed on a short rest, so much of this combination can be made use of in a majority of combats.
Two potential interactions/questions come to mind: Am I right to think that you could chain 3 uses of Eldritch Blast (for however many attacks each time) in one turn due to the echo’s unique OA trigger? Tell me if I’m wrong but I’m thinking one set of Eldritch Blasts including a repel that pushes the target out of the 5 feet around the echo triggering the war caster reaction on your own turn for another set of Eldritch Blasts before Action Surging for a final set of Eldritch Blasts. That feels wrong but I don’t know…
Also, and this might be a DM question, but if your Form of Dread makes you take on a ghostly appearance, making you, let’s say, a “translucent, gray” version of yourself, might the echo then also qualify as the “source of fear” a frightened target might be inhibited by? Flavor is free, right?
The opportunity attack from Echo Knight can indeed be read as triggering on any movement, including movement from repelling blast. It was initially omitted to avoid unnecessary contention, but will be included in a tech box in due time.
As for the “source of fear”, the text outlines this as the user, not the echo. “Flavor is free”, but for all intents and purposes, reflavoring is changing how something appears, which is distinctly different to changing how things work mechanically, which is something to discuss at your table instead.
I wonder if there is a way to make this work with other casters like cleric or wizard, or is it the most optimal to go for charisma based casters?
While you could use the War Caster + Echo to trigger a whole number of spells across many classes, none of the at-will single target options really hold a candle to eldritch blast with Repelling Blast.
As a late follow up of Jober’s excellent comment concerning this dilemma, the 5e combat systems and rulesets do not function on a Keyword basis (sadly), and to highlight its “existence” in the 5e system is utterly and completely meaningless, so making a RAW ruling can very much rely on the included and excluded terminologies depending on the scrutinized texts of descriptions of certain features, as well as established precedents based on that wording, very much similar to actual systems in a court of law. In this case, evidently, “Provoke” is missing from the Manifest Echo’s description for its unique Opportunity Attack.
The reason why WotC doesn’t include “provoke” in a huge portion of the answers within their Sage Advice compendium is often due to the fact that they are often addressing questions regarding forced movement’s interaction with Opportunity Attacks (for some of the poor fellas who are still confused about things like Dissonant Whispers and Plant Growth), which becomes a more simple yes/no. Even then, within the 119 SA Compendium tweets that regard Opportunity Attacks, 51 instances of the word “Provoke” or “Provoking” are used.
Based on the fact that the terminology “Provoke” is present in all relevant features that involve Opportunity Attacks that originates from the creature’s reach from their original locations, such as Sentinel, Cav10, and PAM, whereas it isn’t present within the OA portion of Echoes, leaves its only purpose to deliver an Opportunity Attack “as if you were in the Echo’s space” when a creature moves X amount of feet away from it.
Now, by technicality, you could very well fulfill the provocation conditions by having the triggering instance of the “Provoke” be satisfied, which means that the creature is mechanically there momentarily in the Echo’s space when the creature leaves the Echo’s reach. (Which would make sense in a coding perspective to make this action function.) This however will cause your spells to be cast from the Echo’s location as it is irrelevant whether you are actually making an OA or delivering a spell via War Caster, as you need to be in that space when the creature leaves that space’s “reach” to fulfill the conditions of “provoke” in the first place.
an interesting addition to ghostlance could be a bladesinging metalic dragon born from FToD. as far as i can tell, this would work raw but it is definitely up to your dm
as bladesinger wizard’s 6th level ability reads :
Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your cantrips in place of one of those attacks.
this means that you can use the features of eldritch blast as part of your attack action,
then follow it up with :
dragon breath for aoe damage replacing an attack
Dragon Fear for aoe fear from the feat (if allowed, there is some deliberation if the feat works with new dragon born)
then as “Unleash Incarnation” from echo knight triggers when you take the attack action,
it allows you to make and additional attack, and since breath weapons can replace attacks, you can then additionally use Metallic Breath Weapon to either incapacitate or prone opponents as well.
to effectively use wizard spells offensively this build gets incredibly mad, however if you focus on buffs, reaction spells and utility spells you dont need intelligence for this to work.
blade singing doesnt see much use with this, but as an escape option it allows you to have some incredible movement speed when combined with long strider and/or dashing.
How would you rate this build compared to your flagship builds ? I suppose lower, but lower as in “would feel completely outshined or lower as in “would still bring something to the party ?
Great build and it’s nice that it’s online early. Only thing a little painful is the be so close to 9th level Sorc spells at the end.
Echo knight is one of the most fun subclasses to build around. Ive been working on that utilizes the new Metaverse Bugbear damage feature. SS / Xbow Expert package.
5 Gloom (ASI/Feat – 2nd attack)
1 Twilight (Initiative advantage – 300 ft range)
4 Echo (Echo – Unleashed Incarnation attacks – ASI/Feat)
3 Gloom (Free Res Wis feature with 7 levels in Gloom – ASI/Feat)
3 Assassin (Crit abuse – Expertise stealth – 2d6 Sneak attack)
4 Echo (2 more ASI/Feats – Echo 1000ft scout).
This doesn’t work. You overlooked a clear distinction that warcaster states the opportunity attack most be provoked from you. Not your echo. “When a hostile creature’s movement provokes an opportunity attack from you….” For your strategy to work, it would have to state “When a hostile creature’s movement provokes an opportunity attack”. In addition we know that the “as if you were in the echos space” means your are in fact in the echos space during the opportunity attack. It’s clearly defined in the rules for trickery cleric that they must concentrate on the feature “as of concentrating on a spell”. Therefore the spell would have to originate from the echos location as in order to qualify for the opportunity attack you are in the echos space during that brief moment and then you choose to do a spell. You can’t choose to be elsewhere.
The trigger for your reaction is when someone leaves the Echo’s space ( at least 5 feet away ).
Monster X walks through Echo’s space, moves 5 feet, triggers reaction OA from you “as if you were in the Echo’s space”, but you are not in the Echo’s space. The OA triggers at range, as if you were in melee, just like “as if you were concentrating on a spell” is not a spell but it’s still a concentration ( and so is the OA that gets triggered from 30 ft away from you ).
I recently decided to use this build for an upcoming campaign. I didn’t opt for a 3rd class so I’m going to go on as warlock. Because I chose to go on with warlock, I went with the Fiend. I like the genie, but I’m already playing one in another game. I chose Zuggtmoy as the patron and my dm is going to let me change the expanded spell list so it’s less fire based and more related. I haven’t worked through the spells yet, though. Character was a male Shadar Kai who, for reasons I haven’t yet determined, was captured by warlocks / cultist of Juiblex and taken to his realm, where he was tortured and eventually killed. Because Juiblex and Zuggtmoy are at war, Zuggtmoy had a circle of spores druid, loyal to her cast resurrection in exchange for providing powers to this character to aid in her war with Juiblex. Character came back as a human female (had to get that feat). Once I get the echo, though, it’s going to look, not like her, but like a ghostly version of the former male Shadar Kai. Other players won’t know any of this. Also, the haunted one background works perfectly, for obvious reasons. Still on the fence about pact of the chain or tome. I’d be character level 6 by then, so chain is starting to be less useful in combat by then. Also, due to echo knights and bonus actions probably wouldn’t ever be very useful in combat. But I like the for utility. So, it’s between utility spells out of combat or a cool utility invisible familiar.
Im gonna play this with 3echo – 17 genie warlock for my campaign (switching characters next session starting at lvl 7) and combining the forcelance with the spike growth shenanigans you can get with genie warlock
Little Kenku who has an imaginary friend (my familiar) that has now taken shape (the echo).
If you have the intelligence for it then a wizard dip for the last level is practically a direct improvement
you trade 1 sorcery point and a known sorcery spell for:
Arcane recovery, recover a lv1 spell slot after a short rest and convert into a sorcery point
At least 2 prepared wizard spells
and best of all access to the wizard spell list for those two+ spells spellsclone and demiplane are amazing during downtime
you’ll be able to use any wizard noncleric sorcerer scrolls you find
also 3 wizard cantrips.
I may or may not have made this before realising the build didn’t have the int to multiclass wizard oh well ive put too much effort into this now.
The lv1 wizard dip also gives access to conjure minor elementals, you can then stockpile chwinga charms until you have a bunch of recovery and vitality charms and then go coffeelock.
f a person can only have so many charms at a time then give commoners charms until there are enough with restoration charms to satisfy you, hell you might be able to get them to pay you for the honour if they get to keep the lesser restoration charge and any other charms they are granted.
can you imagine bandits invade later and this little village in the middle of nowhere conjures a hundred wolves in defence
How does Voice of the Chain Master, or Beast Sense, or Arcane Eye, or some such thing that lets you view remotely interact with Manifest Echo? Can you gain advantage by being around a corner, and then making attacks as an unseen attacker?
If you took the Polearm Mastery feat would your echo make opportunity attacks with a 10 foot reach?
They wouldn’t be able to no, you would only be able to make normal attacks with a 10ft reach
Stumbled across this meta by accident. Made a character joining a game at 7/8th level transition. I picked a genasi warlock with a genie patron and echo knight and a background of strixhaven prismari initiate, which gives a 4th level feature of strixvaven mascot, which allows you to cast find familiar for an elemental that you can also teleport exchange with. Giving you sort of an additional “echo”, with an unlimited nopop range and a 60ft teleport distance. I didn’t know this when I picked these things.. I found out about the ghost lance when watching YouTube about how to give flavour and play as an echo knight.
We have house ruled some options from grim hollow, causing my character to slowly transform into an elemental. And for flavour we are calling the echo an elemental echo.
It’s going to be fun watching this play out. Additionally the genie patron feature allows for a float lasting 10minutes. Plenty of overlapping possibilities.
TL:DR Backstory
I drop in sometimes with another group who plays on the same night at our local gaming store. Usually when my other game isn’t full enough to play a session and in between sessions sometimes by playing various npcs or monsters that either temporarily join the party or downright attack the party. The DM asks me to play one of his monster creations and the player group has lots of fun with this..
Due to some defined backstory I became a water genasi warlock with a fire genie patron. It’s a twin alternating character to a monster npc character I had been playing in drop in sessions that the party decided to bring to life. (An INT.gel-cube that had a genie vessel inside: a +3reefsplitter from koboldpress magic item book, being an underwater-created fire weapon, prompting the water/fire djinn mixing and using the weapon as a vessel prison for the genasi). The cube had been made intelligent and given telepathy by a wizard, and was following the party, sort of fanboy watching and wanting to be a hero itself, after ruining some plans the party had by showing up and scaring store clerks (wanting its own outfit but disintegrating the clothes it ‘tried to wear’ / the acid means it can only wear magic items.. and the party solved this problem with a hat of disguise now allowing the cube to appear not as a cube.) then the disguised cube still irked the party by accidentally consuming their giant mount becuz it just wanted a turn to ride, they decided to “let the cube be a real boy” cast polymorph with help action and rolled double 20 with a lucky feat used and a saved up wish/bargain from a deity.. so in an unplanned and funny situation the INT10 gelatinous cube was turned into a plasmoid, thereby separating magic weapon that had been seen inside the cube which turned out to be a vessel that housed a genasi npc. Now freed from his gelatinous cube prison.
(The glowing magic item in the cube was originally why the party left it alive to follow them, nervous the gm had a trick and was using the glowing magic item as bait / this GM is constantly subverting expectations with anything he can like sentient weapons changing character alignments and other things like diseases or spell effects not working when rolling 1 and things like players growing tails or chaning Color happens every few sessions)
The genasi and the plasmoid are suffering some repercussions of the wish/polymorph and separation so I’m alternating play between them in a sort of lycanthropy wild magic theme. Switching characters between level ups currently.
The new plasmoid is a moonDruid2/wild magic barbarian3/Lycian curse blood hunter3/wild magic sorcerer1
We homebrewed a new wild magic table and made it such that the triggering rage and wildshape did some funny and unpredictable things. Sometimes being a real pain for the party. But the group likes that kind of thing. It works well with the plasmoid already being able to shape self as a race feature as well as having acid resistance… maybe from once being a gel cube..hmm. So the lycanthropy for this plasmoid is it’s gelatinous cube form. In which it behaves strangely due to our custom wild magic tables.
Switching between the two characters involves the genasi back in its vessel, carried within the plasmoids ooze body like it was before or the plasmoid sort of being absorbed onto the genasi as a living armour type thing like venom is to Spider-Man. Which I think is also a mechanic somewhere in dnd I have yet to remember where. But for most purposes it’s just flavour, not taking advantage of much mechanics. We play story driven and don’t minmax our games much.
The genasi is also suffering but in a different way. When it uses its echo teleportation (and also after a long rest when the dm decideds) it switches affinities, either having the element of its genie patron change, or the element of its own genasi form change. This gives minor damage types and resistance changes and nothing too dramatic or game breaking. This is just like how the eladrin pc works in monsters of the multiverse So we’ve tried to ground our home brew in some game mechanics and avoid playing it in an overpowered way.
We specifically created a wild magic table to have plenty of restrictive choices such as not being able to decide the form changes, the wild shapes, when to rage, when the lycanthropy transformation happens and some mechanics for the echo maybe not always being friendly. Even the wildshape is required to be something that the gelatinous cube once consumed in its past, which only the GM knows
It’s going to be some chaos. And I only play with the group every other session, with lots of drop in and out players so it’s already a very mixed game. Everyone is excited to see what the DM does with this.
What is the advantage of undead warlock over taking the Dao genie lock and getting one more level in. Warlock after 5 so you have spike growth? Is just the ability to apply fear that strong?
Quick Question, if monster runs past your Echo, and triggers the OA, based on your interpretation, (as I’m currently understanding it), would allow for you to make an OA on the monster. You interpret the “as if you were in the echo’s space” line to refer to the spacing triggering the OA, but how about the origin of the attack? I understand this build interprets it originating from the main body, but how about a melee attack? Would you just swing into the air and miss?
Your *Opportunity Attack* (the melee attack) would originate from the echo, as you are making it as if you were in its space; so if you were to elect to hit them with a sword, you’d attack from the echo’s space and be able to hit with your sword even if your real body is 20ft away.
The *Spell*, however, will originate from your real body because the warcaster feat replaces the Opportunity Attack entirely. You *only* make the *Opportunity Attack* as if you’re in the echo’s space, but since you’re not making an Opportunity Attack at all anymore, you just cast a spell as normal – and normal spells originate from your real body.
I had a question on the back of my mind ever since I first read this (which is amazing, btw!) — what do you do with a half plate when your Str is 8?
Half-plate doesn’t have a strength requirement
Right, my bad.
I have one other interesting thought after you take the 2/3 levels in lock and warrior… What about adding in 6 levels of Order of Scribes Wiz so you get their level 6 Manifest Mind feature which will let you cast spells through your projected feature up to 300 feet away? You could do push/pull shenanigans even further away as well as ritual casting plus Shield/Absorb Elements.
I’m coming late to the party to this, and maybe I missed the reasoning, but quick question – is there a benefit to taking Warlock first, instead of Fighter? Aside from the opening skill proficiencies, it seems like Fighter would be beneficial for the Constitution Saving Throw Proficiency, and then if you wanted, you’d also get Heavy Armor Proficiency as well?
This can be useful if you are starting at a higher level. You do not meet the prerequisites for War Caster at level 1 without taking Warlock first, so you can’t “Ghostlance” until level 6 if you are willing to take a 4th Fighter level (not ideal), level 7 (with Fighter 3/Warlock 4), or level 9 (with Fighter 3/Warlock 2/Sorcerer 4).
Hi, i was thinking playing this in a campaign, but isn’t this build too much overpowered? I am scared to ruin the experience to other players. What do you suggest me? It is only very funny or overpowered?
It’s more funny than overpowered, though it can carry its weight in an optimizing group due to how it supports kiting.
Refer to our optimization levels article (or click the Mid-High Op banner at the top of the article to get there): The build is rated mid-high, meaning that it’ll play fine alongside people playing straight classes and picking proper feats and spells, like our Basic Builds series does.
This build is also special in that it relies on kiting, it loses a lot of its power if your allies grief the build by running into melee for no reason, which is extremely likely if you are playing with a group that *doesn’t* know how to pick good feats and spells on their straight classed characters, in which case this build probably gets knocked down to mid-optimization power anyway and again keeps pace as long as people are making *some* good choices.
Overall I wouldn’t expect this build to cause power trouble at most tables – it is far more likely people will lose their minds about the war caster + echo interaction on an emotional level even though it’s RAW, RAI, balanced, and plain fun.