Build: Warlock 25/Blackguard 5/Shifter (PnP) 10 (Rake)

[ebonfowl]

I noticed there aren't many places to find epic level build ideas for the updated incarnations of the PRC.  I love building epic characters in NWN and I keep my designs in a spreadsheet so I figured I would share them here for anyone else who wants ideas.  Here is my first one.  I also believe this is the best high-level NWN build I have ever played.

What this build gives you: full warlock invoking by level 25, 16 pre-epic BAB for 4 attacks/round; charisma bonus to saves and an additional charisma bonus to one save of your choice; access to shifter forms starting at mid-to-high levels for massive AC, physical stats, and immunities; the ability to infinitely heal yourself (undead shape and utterdark eltritch doom); doubled eldritch blasts (eldritch sculptor, quadrupled with haste); doubled eldritch essences (lord of all essences); damage, attack and save bonus that stacks with each kill (lolth's meat); devastating critical with either falchion or scimitar (your choice, falchion is best but is not in the vanilla game); good scaling spell resistance; and CHILLING TENTACLES!

Weak points: invocations only have a caster level of 25; invocation save DCs are not super high; slows down a bit killing constructs, undead, and other critical-immune monsters.  It may be worth working in extra invocation somewhere to get vitriolic blast to deal with spell resistance and the critical-immune stuff, but lolth's meat generally boosts the damage enough for me.  You could also replace Flee the Scene after level 11 with vitriolic blast, but I would read the notes at the end before doing that - it will essentially force you to primarily use smaller Shifter forms until level 35.

Build Name: Rake (Malazan fans will get the name)

Race: Drow

Alignment: Any evil                        
                        
STR 18         
DEX 10            
CON 10         
WIS 13         
INT 10            
CHA 15         
                           
Lvl   Class
1   Warlock 1: Power Attack, Eldritch Blast, Sickening Blast, Hide 2   
2   WL 2: Eldritch Spear      
3   WL 3: Cleave, DR 1/Cold Iron, Hide 3   
4   WL 4: Deceive Item, Dark One's Own Luck, 19 STR   
5   WL 5: Hide 4   
6   WL 6: Lolth's Meat, Eldritch Chain      
7   WL 7: DR 2/Cold Iron, Hide 5   
8   WL 8: Fiendish Resilience 1, Beshadowed Blast, 20 STR   
9   WL 9: Great Cleave         
10   WL 10: Elemental Resistance 5, Flee the Scene      
11   WL 11: DR 3/Cold Iron, Chilling Tentacles      
12   Blackguard 1: Improved Critical (Falchion/Scimitar), Use Poison, 21 STR   
13   BG 2: Smite Good, Dark Blessing      
14   WL 12: Imbue Item      
15   WL 13: Alertness, Fiendish Resilience 2, Noxious Blast      
16   WL 14: 22 STR   
17   BG 3: Turn Undead, Create Undead      
18   BG 4: Sneak Attack +1d6      
19   WL 15: DR 4/Cold Iron, Eldritch Cone      
20   WL 16: Eldritch Doom, 23 STR   
21   WL 17: Eldritch Sculptor         
22   WL 18: Fiendish Resilience 5, Utterdark Blast      
23   BG 5: Summon Fiend      
24   WL 19: Lord of all Essences, DR 4/Cold Iron, 24 STR   
25   WL 20: Elemental Reistance 10, Mask of Flesh      
26   Shifter (PnP) 1: Greater Wild Shape, Creature Weapon Proficiency      
27   Shifter 2: Overwhelming Critical (Falchion/Scimitar), Animal/Monstrous Humanoid Shape
28   Shifter 3: Large/Tiny/Beast Shape, Greater Wildshape 3/day, 25 STR
29   Shifter 4: Giant/Vermin Shape
30   Shifter 5: Devastating Critical (Falchion/Scimitar), Magical Beast Shape, Greater Wildshape 5/day
31   Shifter 6: Abberation/Ooze Shape
32   Shifter 7: Huge/Dragon Shape, Greater Wildshape 7/day, 16 CHA
33   Shifter 8: Daylight Adaptation, Undead/Construct Shape      
34   Shifter 9: Elemental/Outsider Shape, Greater Wildshape 9/day
35   Shifter 10: Evershifting Form      
36   WL 21: Epic Eldritch Blast, 17 CHA   
37   WL 22                        
38   WL 23: B: Epic Eldritch Blast, DR 5/Cold Iron, Fiendish Resilience 7
39   WL 24: Epic Eldritch Blast         
40   WL 25: 18 CHA

Some shape suggestions for Shifter if you can find them:

27: Asabi Chieftan, Dire Tiger
28: Brown Bear Companion, Bulette
29: Hill/Mountain Giant
30: Androsphinx
31: Battle Devourer
32: Old Red Dragon, Fire Giant
33: Demilich
34: Ancient Red Dragon
37: Dracolich (Best all-around form IMHO)
38: Mithral Golem
40: Prismatic Dragon, Adamantine Golem

Note, this is a great candidate for an undead template like necropolitan for the infinite utterdark eldritch doom healing mentioned above.  Make sure to buy off the drow level adjustment with XP as soon as you can (level 6 and 9).

Note on Flee the Scene: this invocation allows the warlock to teleport a short distance.  This invocation is great for convenience and kiting, but has a special use in this build.  One issue with shifter is that many of the best forms are too large to fit through doors and before Shifter 10 this means you usually have to end your Greater Wildshape whenever you encounter a door.  Flee the Scene allows you to walk up to a door and teleport through, thereby stretching out your daily uses of Greater Wildshape.  Long, narrow passages and bridges will be the only things that will make you return to your normal shape.

[ThE LoSt BoY]

First. Welcome to the PRC (and specifically the build boards).

You may consider the following.

Path of Shadow. Unlimited insta-heal. Also, if you max out UMD at L40 as a WL, you can cast almost any scroll in the game, so that's a massive bonus. At one point, Natural Spell was supposed to allow spell casting in shifted form. IDK if invokes were treated the same. Wall of Perilous Flame was nice against the non-SR crowd. Chill Tent would root them in place, Wall of PF would fry crowds nicely. Devour Magic was the Dispel Magic equivalent, but I never used it.

I tried Eldritch Doom & split ray feats, but it didn't work. I don't recall ED working as an AoE either. Wep Focus ray was supposed to work for EBlast. I think Dex is the primary stat for the touch attack, so you may miss a fair amount with a dump stat there.

Practiced Invoker WL gives +4 Caster Level.

Since BG gives Turning, Div Might / Shield can really add damage + AC.

IIRC, Extend spell was supposed to work on invokes, so Extend Spell would be something to get for Chilling Tent & similar. Don't recall if the Spell Pen stacks boosted invoker level or not.

[ebonfowl]

First. Welcome to the PRC (and specifically the build boards).

You may consider the following.

Path of Shadow. Unlimited insta-heal. Also, if you max out UMD at L40 as a WL, you can cast almost any scroll in the game, so that's a massive bonus. At one point, Natural Spell was supposed to allow spell casting in shifted form. IDK if invokes were treated the same. Wall of Perilous Flame was nice against the non-SR crowd. Chill Tent would root them in place, Wall of PF would fry crowds nicely. Devour Magic was the Dispel Magic equivalent, but I never used it.

I tried Eldritch Doom & split ray feats, but it didn't work. I don't recall ED working as an AoE either. Wep Focus ray was supposed to work for EBlast. I think Dex is the primary stat for the touch attack, so you may miss a fair amount with a dump stat there.

Practiced Invoker WL gives +4 Caster Level.

Since BG gives Turning, Div Might / Shield can really add damage + AC.

IIRC, Extend spell was supposed to work on invokes, so Extend Spell would be something to get for Chilling Tent & similar. Don't recall if the Spell Pen stacks boosted invoker level or not.

I use Path of Shadow in almost every warlock build, you just don't really need it in this one with utterdark doom healing. It is incredibly good (and SUPER convenient) though! I found out not too long ago you can cast it, heal your whole party, but not choose to teleport... Cheese, but incredible.  Also, the Chilling Tentacles script was bugged, so I fixed it and it is now in the alpha.  Tentacles are so good now after the update, best single invocation/spell/SLA/etc in the game now IMO.

UMD is one of the greatest benefits of the Warlock class.  So versatile for spells and equips.  And with Imbue Item, it is a cheese engine.

Invocations follow the same rules as spells in shifted form, but most of the great PnP Shifter forms don't need Natural Spell to cast spells, they can already do it.

Doom is definitely AoE, massive AoE with sculptor.  Weapon Focus (Ray) works with EB and DEX does help, but I have like 100 hours in this build or very close builds, and neither is really needed in my experience.  If you can't hit a baddie's AC with Chain, switch to Cone or Doom and don't worry about needing to hit - it is very rare that an enemy has both high AC and evasion.

Practiced Invoker went bye-bye.  It isn't a PnP feat so it got culled.

The turning feats are nice, but NOTHING compares to Lolth's Meat for adding divine damage.  On average, every single attack I make has about 20-30 extra divine damage from Lolth's Meat.  And it also boosts your saves and attack as well!

Spell penetration works with invocations but not extend.  As a melee warlock build, this one doesn't grab penetration.  If I need to EB something with SR, I switch to vitriolic and bypass it altogether.

[ThE LoSt BoY]

Spells in Shifted form without an extra feat? Nice. Probably how it was mean to work.

EDoom never worked for me  . .  ever. I preferred powers that didn't need rolls to hit.

My personal faves for no SR / no save / no roll to hit damage were Creeping Doom (Cleric Plant domain) & Psion Twin Extended Ecto-Shambler (a few psi points burned times 4 or 5 rounds in a row would dissolve an army of monks that would almost always dodge any attack). I have come to enjoy Storm of Vengeance of late, but monks invariably get the free pass on the Flex save.

Lolth's meat looks great for a regular race like drow. I usually went with an uber race (Nymph, Rak, Mind Flayer). If you killed an opponent every other round for 40 rounds, that adds up. Most of my stuff was dual wield, so I liked the DMight bit and not using a shield D-Shield was handy. I was using demi-lich builds, so AC was not an issue. Just didn't like the idea of getting hit that often.

No Extended Chill Tent really sux. Wall of PF could have used it, too.

There used to be a way to post .bic files so others could d-load the builds without taking the time to actually create them. Those were the days.

[ebonfowl]

That’s too bad we can’t do that anymore!

Speaking of warlocks and creeping doom, with the verminlord feat Warlock can cast creeping doom at-will. And it only requires two invocations as prereqs unlike the other epic feats that take 4. But tentacles and creeping doom is ridiculous. Plus, since creeping doom is at-will, I think you can even stack it…

[ThE LoSt BoY]

Creep Doom + Chill Tentacles FTW. Can reduce an army to nothing in no time flat. Especially in later rounds. Sux that Chill Tent is so short duration.

[ebonfowl]

I think at anything past level 21 (earliest point getting verminlord), creeping doom will hit the damage cap before the tentacles duration expires. And if not, casting more tentacles is never an issue for a warlock with their sweet, sweet at-will casting!

[ThE LoSt BoY]

For invoker 21, isn't that only ~ 10 rounds of C-Tent? For a 1k limit C-Doom, that is ~ 100 / round avg. Seems like a very high C-Doom damage rate.

[ebonfowl]

Yes, but that CD is only doing 35 damage by that 10th round per target, less if the enemy has any sort of DR.  Generally vitriolic blast with sculptor will get it done much faster.  I have been using the CD from Verminlord a lot recently and it works good as a trap: stack several castings in the same area, let them build to super high damage for a bit, drop a tentacles, then kite the enemies in.  That is a straight death sentence pretty much instantly for anything that enters the area.

Also, I recently posted a revision of Creeping Doom on the PRC Discord that makes it work as the BioWare description says.  It is MUCH more useful as a direct damage spell as it ramps much faster than the vanilla version that doesn't do what it says on the tin, but much less useful as a trap since it only starts ramping on an enemy when they enter the AOE.  If you are interested it is there.

[ThE LoSt BoY]

Tent + stacked CD is nice. CD is no SR / no save - so monks don't get their usual free pass on damage. Vit blast is no SR, but acid immunity stops the effect entirely. I would put Walls of PFlame all around the Chill Tent areas, just to see who had low saves & no fire immunity.

[ebonfowl]

Yeah Creeping Doom is a great “just in case” spell. If something is acid immune and I can’t hit them in melee, CD will definitely get the job done. I haven’t found that enemy yet, but I’m sure there is one out there!