The Form Dread Takes: A Spooky Undead Warlock Build for 5e
The night holds many terrors, so why not become one of them yourself? This is a build meant to literally strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, all while dealing great damage and keeping ourselves and our allies safe. The frightened condition is a strong one. If you want a full breakdown of it, check out our guide to it on this site. We will be making use of two subclasses who focus on imposing this condition, the Undead Warlock and the Fey Wanderer Ranger. We will be taking quite a few Ranger levels, but make no mistake, this plays much more like a Warlock. Let’s dive in.
Race: Reborn
This is honestly more of a thematic choice, as you can play just about any race with this build as we aren’t very feat hungry. We do get some very relevant abilities though, including poison damage resistance, 4 hour long rests, two skill proficiencies, and a d6 to any skill check proficiency times per day. We will actually end up being very good at certain skills, so this will push us even further in that direction all while fitting in perfectly to our theme. Not needing to breathe also has situational uses.
Ability Scores:
8/14/13/8/14/17 (+1 to Con, +2 to Charisma from Race)
Dump strength, 14 Dex for multiclassing and filling out medium armor, 13 Con, dump intelligence, 14 Wisdom for multiclassing and a few other things, and 17 Charisma as it is our main stat.
Skills:
Arcana and Perception (from background), Persuasion and Intimidation (from class)
Arcana is for scribing scrolls, perception is the best skill in the game, and the two charisma skills we choose because this character is going to be very charismatic.
Level 1-2: Undead Warlock
Spells:
Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Minor Illusion
We take the two best Warlock cantrips, and we will be making heavy use of Eldritch Blast as our main form of attacking. The 1st level spell options for Warlocks are quite lacking, and these selections can certainly be swapped for others if you choose. I went with Cause Fear for thematic purposes, Protection from Evil and Good as a situational buff to an ally, and Bane as it can be very powerful against a group of enemies that will reliably fail a Charisma save and will be sufficiently effected by a d4 subtracted from each attack.
Eldritch Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast
These both enhance our Eldritch Blast, increasing the damage and adding a 10ft push to each beam.
The big advantage of the Undead patron is Form of Dread. This is a Rage-like bonus action transformation that gives us temporary hit points, immunity to the Frightened condition, and the ability to force a saving throw on anything we hit with an attack, imposing the frightened condition if they fail a wisdom saving throw. Combine this with Repelling Blast to push enemies away and keep them away, heavily restricting their movement.
As long as your party members aren’t idiots and don’t run up to the creature that cannot run up to them, that creature is now basically out of the fight until they drop the condition. Sure, they can make ranged attacks, but 60% of monsters have only melee attacks, and even more would much prefer to make melee strikes than ranged ones, as their ranged attacks deal less damage or even allow them to make less attacks each round. Spellcasters are the only counter to this, though thankfully they are rare, especially at low levels, and we will have other ways to deal with them when they become more prominent.
Level 3-9: Undead Warlock 2, Fey Wanderer Ranger 7
These Ranger levels give us a lot. Medium armor and shield proficiency and the Defense Fighting Style to boost our AC by a ton, the Ranger spell list is amazing at low levels, and a ton of cool abilities. We will of course be using the Tasha’s optional abilities for the ranger, as they are basically universally better than the PHB versions.
Abilities:
Favored Foe (easy free damage if we aren’t concentrating on anything)
Canny (use this on Persuasion, trust me)
Roving (level 6, boosts our speed, give a swimming and climbing speed)
Fighting Style: Defense (Druidic Warrior could also be cool, but I prefer the higher AC)
Primal Awareness (we will take enough levels to grab Speak with Animals and Beast Sense)
Subclass: Fey Wanderer
At level 3, we get Dreadful Strikes which we can’t really make use of as we aren’t attacking with a weapon. We do get Charm Person and Misty Step as spells from our subclass, both great additions. The only big boost at level 3 ranger is actually to our skills, as we can now add our Wisdom mod to Charisma skill checks. This stacks with our existing Charisma bonus, giving us a +2 to all Charisma checks.
We also pick up proficiency in Deception here. The real reason we go into this subclass though is the 7th level feature. That’s a long wait, I know, but it has a stellar payoff. Beguiling Twist allows us to force a new save against another creature whenever we see a creature succeed a save versus charm or frighten. Combining this with Form of Dread, and we can be doing this every turn if needed. We force the save, they pass it, and we force their friend to make the save, essentially doubling our chance of success.
Spells:
1st : Charm Person (subclass), Speak With Animals (class), Absorb Elements, Goodberry, Entangle
2nd: Misty Step (subclass), Beast Sense (class), Aid, Pass Without Trace, Spike Growth, Silence
Absorb Elements is a great defensive reaction that scales into the late game wonderfully, and Entangle is great for locking down a low difficulty fight or single enemies when larger control effects are unnecessary. Goodberry with Pact Magic is insane.
Thanks to our 4 hour long rest, we can take advantage of the additional 4 hours that the rest of our party is asleep by spending our 2 pact slots to make 20 berries, short resting, repeating 3 more times, and when our party awakes they find us with a bag of 80 Goodberries. Aid can function in much the same way, allowing us to add to our entire party’s maximum HP, then short resting to get back to full power. Pass Without Trace is the best 2nd level spell in the game so of course we take it here, allowing our entire party to stealth effectively, bypassing some encounters entirely and getting surprise rounds where we must fight.
Silence is our answer to spellcasters, and we can use our frighten effects to make sure they stay inside its area. Spike Growth is a Repelling Blaster’s best friend, as we can drag earthbound enemies through the spikes with each hit, adding 4d4 damage to each hit, not to mention what the rest of our party can contribute and the area shutdown that the spell provides.
Feat: Resilient (Constitution)
The fact that we wait until character level 6 before we get a feat should tell you that we really don’t need a ton of feats to make this build work. Resilient Con both boosts our concentration checks and rounds up our Constitution to a new modifier, granting us extra HP. We are a pretty fragile character if enemies can get past our 20 AC, so this is a nice defensive boost.
Level 10-14: Undead Warlock 6, Fey Wanderer Ranger 7
We go back to Warlock now as upgrading our pact slots and getting to higher level warlock spells will be a big and easy boost to our power.
Pact of the Tome
I’d like to go with the Tome pact here, as there are some cantrips I would love and a specific invocation that would be a big boost to our utility.
Spells:
Cantrips: Guidance, Mage Hand, Mold Earth
Guidance is the most important selection here, as we can use it to further boost our charisma checks. The other two options are just the best in my opinion, feel free to select other options.
Eldritch Invocation: Book of Ancient Secrets
This is basically the Ritual Caster feat as an invocation, and that’s amazing. Obvious choices for our free two rituals to put in the book are Find Familiar and Detect Magic, but don’t fret as you can add ritual spells that you either know or find in books or as scrolls. Combining this with our 4 hour long rest means that we can be ritual casting spells like Unseen Servant while our party is finishing their rest.
Keep in mind that you can inscribe rituals from any spell list, so any spells from the ranger list that you may have picked up through those levels can be stored in the book now and cast as rituals. Same for warlock spells, it might even be worth it to learn a spell for one level, put it in the book, then swap it with another spell on our next level.
Spells:
2nd: Invisibility, Suggestion
3rd: Fear, Fly, Counterspell, Hypnotic Pattern
We grab a line up of some of the best spells in the game, all of which work wonderfully with our Pact Magic. Invisibility scales well with spell level, and while Suggestion doesn’t, it’s still an amazing spell. Fear fits perfectly into the theme, and Hypnotic Pattern is there for when creatures are immune to Fear.
Fly has obvious utility, and you can never go wrong with having a Counterspell in your back pocket. Note that with the ability check associated with Counterspell, we get to add both our wisdom and charisma thanks to our levels in Fey Wanderer.
Subclass Feature: Grave Touched
This provides a damage bump to our Eldritch Blast.
Feat: Telekinetic
This gives us a +1 to Charisma, giving us a 18, along with a consistent use for our bonus action in a 5ft shove. This can be used in conjunction with the frightened condition to further limit where they can move on the map, along with the plethora of other uses for a 5ft shove like pushing enemies over cliffs or into spell effects from our friends.
Past level 14:
After this point, you can take the build in a few directions. One more ranger level gives us another ability score increase or feat, so if you’re hungry for a 20 charisma, that’s an easy way to do it. I wouldn’t go more than one level in ranger though, as you won’t see much benefit past that.
Two Fighter levels for Action Surge isn’t a bad idea, and another level to take Eldritch Knight for the Shield spell to ensure that your AC stays high even into the late game could be good too. You could also take a level in Sorcerer to get Shield and other great spells along with the subclass of your choice. Bard could also work to give us Inspiration and some spells and slots, though I think I’d go for Sorcerer before Bard myself.
Obviously, you can always just go the rest of the way in Warlock for higher level pact slots, more spells, and more invocations. There’s no real wrong answer here, so just pick whatever you think makes the most sense for your character.
In summary:
This build seeks to lock down enemies through repeated application of the frightened condition, all while providing exceptional utility and support both in and out of combat. We don’t deal the most damage, but it’s still respectable, and we can crank it up when necessary through spells like Spike Growth.
Weaknesses:
Immunity to the frightened condition does exist, though it only becomes semi-common at high level play or against certain creature types like Celestials, Constructs, Oozes, and to a lesser extent, Undead. If you’re playing in a campaign set to feature mostly those creature types, maybe select a different build. Otherwise, the best way to overcome this weakness is to diversify your strategy through other means of shutdown. Hypnotic Pattern is a great example of this, and there are plenty of other great spell options to help you when you run up on something that is too stupid to realize how scary you are.
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