Warlock Class Guide: Best Builds and Subclasses

The Warlock is one of the 12 available main classes in Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3). Check out our guide for an overview of the Warlock class, including its related subclasses, class features, best races to use, and best builds.

Warlock Class Overview

Warlock Basic Information

Class Overview
	Warlock Bound by a pact to an all-powerful patron, warlocks trade their loyalty for supernatural abilities and unique magic.
Hit Die	d8
Primary Ability	Charisma
Saving Throw Proficiencies	Wisdom and Charisma
Starting Class Features
・Warlock Spell Slots ・Light Armor Proficiency ・Simple Weapon Proficiency ・Access to Subclasses during Character Creation

The Warlock is a spellcasting class whose powers originate from a pact made with an Otherworldly Patron of the Realms (demonic or otherwise). However, unlike traditional spellcasters, Warlocks can cast very powerful spells with relative ease, albeit at the cost of having very little spell slots compared to their peers.

Warlock Skills with Proficiency

As a Warlock, your character can choose 2 out of the 7 skills below to be Proficient in. When you are Proficient with a skill, you get a bonus to any Checks tied to that skill. Proficiency bonuses increase as you gain levels for your chosen class.

What is a Proficiency Bonus?

All Warlock Subclasses

Warlocks in Baldur's Gate 3 will have access to their Subclass choice during character creation. When creating your Warlock you will have to choose one of the 3 available Otherworldly Patrons (subclasses): the Archfey, the Fiend, or the Great Old One.

Subclass	Subclass Description
The Fiend	Warlocks in service to fiends work towards corrupting, destructive ends - intentionally or otherwise - and receive hellish blessings in return. Subclass Starting Features: ・Grants the Dark One's Blessing Passive
The Great Old One	Warlocks bound to eldritch beings in the Far Realms work towards inscrutable goals, gaining strange powers over entropy and the mind. Subclass Starting Features: ・Grants the Mortal Reminder Passive
The Archfey	Graced by a lady or lord of the fey, you are imbued with all the sumptuous and scary qualities of your patron's extraordinary realm. Subclass Starting Features: ・Grants the Fey Presence Class Action ・Grants the Faerie Fire Spell ・Grants the Sleep Spell

All Warlock Features

Subclasses Revolve Around Your Otherworldly Patron

Since Warlocks receive their powers by forming contracts with supernatural beings, their subclasses will revolve around your chosen Otherworldly Patron. In Baldur's Gate 3, Warlocks will be able to choose one of the following subclasses during character creation: the Archfey, the Fiend, and the Great Old One.

Each of these patrons will offer your Warlock unique benefits and bonuses. However, do remember that these often come at a cost as explored by the story of one of the origin characters - Wyll, the Blade of the Frontiers.

Pact Magic Simplifies Spellcasting

Unlike most of the spellcasting classes in the game, the Warlock's Pact Magic feature simplifies spellcasting across the board. Upcasting and spell slot management are non-existent since your Pact Magic does this for you. Unlike regular spellcasting, Pact Magic does the following to make it easier for Warlocks to use magic:

• Pact Magic offers more powerful spells but at the cost of less Spell Slots compared to regular caster classes. At Level 12, you will have a max of 3 Spell Slots.
• However, unlike other spellcasting classes, Warlocks can fully replenish their Spell Slots after a Short or Long Rest.
• All of your Spell Slots share the same level. All of them will level up uniformly as your character levels up.
• Upcasting is not a feature when you're a Warlock. Instead, your Pact Magic automatically casts the strongest possible level of the spell for you.

As a Warlock, your spellcasting ability is Charisma. Everything from the damage of your spells down to your spell save will be dictated by Charisma. Make sure to prioritize this ability when distributing ability points during your playthrough.

Warlock Known Cantrips and Known Spells Per Level

Eldritch Invocations Offer Buffs and Spell Modifiers

Once your Warlock reaches Level 2, you will gain access to Eldritch Invocations. Think of them as passives that can grant you different buffs such as Eldritch Blast modifiers, free spell casts, and even traits like limited Darkvision.

As you level up, you will gain access to more and more Eldritch Invocations. Once you hit the max level of 12, your Warlock will be able to learn up to 6 different Eldritch Invocations.

All Eldritch Invocations for the Warlock

Stay tuned as we update this table further with more Eldtrich Invocations

Pact Boons Grant Extra Spells from Your Patron

Upon hitting Level 3, your Warlock will gain a Pact Boon from their chosen patron. This feature grants your Warlock different bonuses depending on the chosen pact, ranging from summoning familiars to obtaining grimoires that grant access to additional cantrips.

All Warlock Pact Boons

Mystic Arcanum Grants a Free Level 6 Spell Cast

Once your Warlock reaches Level 11, they will gain a considerable power spike in the form of a Mystic Arcanum. The Mystic Arcanum is a gift from your patron, allowing your Warlock to learn and cast 1 Level 6 Warlock Spell without having to expend a spell slot. However, do note that you will need to take a Long Rest before you can use this feature again.

Warlock Class Level Progression

Warlock Builds

Best Ability Scores

Charisma is our main priority as most of our damage will come from it. Eldritch Blast is our main source of DPS and we can further increase its damage from our Agonizing Blast Eldritch Invocation.

Dexterity and Constitution are our next two priorities to avoid turning our Warlock into a unit that can easily be killed. Dexterity and Consitution's values can be interchanged. If you're running a Githyanki, we highly recommend keeping Dexterity at 14 so we can maximize the value of Medium Armor. Otherwise, pump Dexterity to 16 and Constitution to 14.

Strength is better to be set to 10 so that we do not suffer from penalties in case we get approched by an enemy and are forced to resort into melee combat (which should not be a normal occurence)

Intelligence and Wisdom are our dump stats for the Warlock as we do not need any of these stats to increase our combat capability. However, if you have chosen proficiencies in one of these stats, Dexterity can be reduced to 13 to compensate and bump the low 8 value to 10.

Best Subclasses for Warlock

Pact of the Chain For Summoned Units

Pact of the Chain grants the Warlock a free summoned unit once per short rest. There are multiple summoned units that you can invoke and each has their own specialties and possible uses. Cats can Meow to lure enemies and attack them all via an AoE spell or item or you can just straight up summon an allied unit that can aid you in combat using their own attacks with debilitating effects!

Pact of the Blade for the Hexblade Experience

While Hexblade Subclass is not directly added to the game, Pact of the Blade is a close contender as it also allows you to use the Pact of the Blade. Pact of the Blade immediately grants you martial proficiency in your summoned weapon while also making the weapon scale with Charisma instead of the Strength/Dexterity.

Pact of the Blade also opens the option of multiclassing into a martial focused class. Running a multiclass into a Paladin can make the Warlock a Charisma based melee fighter that has access to a long range Eldritch Blast nuke while also being durable by having Heavy Armor from the Paladin class and other defensive buffs such as Fiendish Vigor.

Pact of Tomes is not Recommended

Pact of Tomes grants the Warlock a measly three unchangable Cantrip spells with limited effectiveness which are Thorn Rope, Guidance, and Vicious Mockery. These spells are lackluster compared to the benefits that Pact of the Blade and Pact of the Chain can give so we do not recommend Pact of Tomes as a subclass.

Best Warlock Multiclass Option

Warlock + Sorcerer for Sorlock

Sorcerer is another spellcaster that has their spells also scale with Charisma. This makes funneling your Ability Score into Charisma just much more effective! The Warlock also gains less benefits from further leveling after 3 which makes the Sorcerer a decent option for a second class due to a peculiar metamagic trait that we want.

Quickened Spell+ Eldritch Blast

Our target Metamagic from the Sorcerer class is Quickened Spell. Quickened Spell can allow us to cast spells that usually costs an action point a bonus action instead but this does not mean that we cannot cast them as normal spells anymore. Which means you can cast the same spell twice provided that you have the spell slots available.

The kicker is that Cantrips can also be used this way and Eldritch Blast being a cantrip that scales with Charisma should give you an idea of how the combo can work. With this setup, our Sorlock can cast Eldritch Blast twice per turn. This makes us a source of high consistent DPS that doesn't require any short nor long rests to function!

Best Races to Use As a Warlock

High Elf

High Elf allows you to have an additional 3 Cantrips of choice. Whiel seemingly minor, it does add more options to the Warlock'sDarkvision： small pool of spells. You also gain resistance to getting charmed and put to sleep which can easily be done due to the Warlock's low HP.

・Darkvision Allows you to forego the need to use any lightsource in dark areas which is always a handy tool to have for any character.
・Fey Ancestry provides resistance to sleep effects and charm effects.

High Elf Subrace Guide and Best Classes

Githyanki

A major change from Early Access is the removal of racial ability scores which no longers makes the Githyanki an exclusively better martial class race.

・Martial Prodigy grants medium armor proficiency. This allows a spell caster to still wield medium armor to boost their survivability.
・Githyanki Psionics: Mage Hand is an additional tool that you can use to commit “invicible crimes”.

Githyanki Race Guide and Best Classes

Baldur's Gate 3 Related Guides

Class Guide: All Classes and Subclasses

All Classes

All Class Guides
Barbarian	Bard	Cleric	Druid
Fighter	Monk	Paladin	Ranger
Rogue	Sorcerer	Warlock	Wizard