Is there an optimal warlock patron for pact of the chain?

[Klorox]

I have never liked the idea of a pet before. I mean, I’ve had wizards with familiars but they never really did much.

The idea is growing on me. I really like the idea of an imp pet who can turn invisible and really spy for me, or even do some other crazier things.

Is there a patron that works best with this idea? If not, which patrao. Would you Warlock players recommend, and why?

Thanks!

[MrBig]

Well, the good news is that there isn’t any wrong answer here.

There is no ‘optimal’ combination here.
They all work.

You want to smash faces? hexblade
You want to melt faces from far, far away? Fiend

All good

[Lonely Tylenol]

I like Raven Queen, because the Charisma bonus to your Perception score makes sharing senses with your familiar a much more capable scouting tool. Additionally, you can share senses with two creatures instead of one (likely not simultaneously, but it still doubles your coverage), and, without knowing the RAW off the top of my head, might be able to share senses with your familiar while merged with your raven (meaning you can make yourself safe and remote while seeing through your familiar, or have two mobile, sensitive scouting tools that can move together).

Runner-up for me is GOO, because telepathy allows you to communicate discreetly with your party in addition to your telepathic bond wirh your familiar, though technically I suppose the Celestial Warlock can also super-heal itself with the familiar invocation. I think telepathy > healing interaction, though.

[Naanomi]

Nothing *really* stands out, but XGtE has an Invocation that lets you be healed better when you are near your familiar so... Celestial Patron Warlocks with that Invocation can self-heal much more efficiently.

[Klorox]

Thanks everybody.

Tylenol: where do I find the Raven Queen patron?

[Anderlith]

Warlock UA. Can't remember which one

[Dudewithknives]

Thanks everybody.

Tylenol: where do I find the Raven Queen patron?

It is in the wizard and warlock unearthed arcana.

It is pretty solid. Good utility, free sort of familiar at level 1 with unique abilities. Later gets free amazing scouting ability, and a free extra finger of death spell per day.

It makes a good any pact but you could go chain and have 2 pet ravens, and play a Kenku

An Unkindness of Ravens

[LeonBH]

It is in the wizard and warlock unearthed arcana.

It is pretty solid. Good utility, free sort of familiar at level 1 with unique abilities. Later gets free amazing scouting ability, and a free extra finger of death spell per day.

It makes a good any pact but you could go chain and have 2 pet ravens, and play a Kenku

An Unkindness of Ravens

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.
5. ???
6. Profit.

[Caelic]

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.
5. ???
6. Profit.

Nah. Stick to two ravens and wear an eyepatch. Call yourself Wednesday.

[rbstr]

Really depends on what else you want to do.

All Warlocks can do competent Eldritch-Blast damage so you have at-will damage taken care of. Every patron has some defensive and some offensive features of it's own. Chain pact works well with any of them, though I guess the new chain invocation works particularly well with Celestial.

It kind of boils down to:
Fiend if you want to Fireball stuff
Fey if you want to sneak and charm
GOO to disable/manipulate
Celestial for healing utility
Hexblade to cheese. (er...improve your eldritch blast more and get medium armor)

[Naanomi]

Really depends on what else you want to do.

All Warlocks can do competent Eldritch-Blast damage so you have at-will damage taken care of. Every patron has some defensive and some offensive features of it's own.

It kind of boils down to:
Fiend if you want to Fireball stuff
Fey if you want to sneak and charm
GOO to disable/manipulate
Celestial for healing utility
Hexblade to cheese. (er...improve your eldritch blast more and get medium armor)

Undying if you... like the flavor above mechanical considerations?

[Harrysonford]

There isn’t a huge edge on patrons. Stock up on touch spells if you want to get mileage out of it.
Celestial can help a lot since you get some touch spells on the expanded list. Plus casting cure wounds at range through your familiar is very helpful in a pinch.

[foobar1969]

Well, the good news is that there isn’t any wrong answer here.

There is no ‘optimal’ combination here.

And the bad news is that there isn't any right answer either.
There is no optimal chain-lock, because the familiar doesn't scale and loses effectiveness as the game progresses.

[rbstr]

While that might be true of the familiar itself doesn't scale it will remain moderately useful.
And the Chain Pact does open up the one-a-day free Hold Monster invocation. Also the really good scaling of the new Gift of the Ever-Living ones maximized healing dice.

[Dudewithknives]

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.5
5. ???
6. Profit.

I played that exact build, and we had a moon druid in the group, at level 8, he would disguise as another raven and confuse people.

[LeonBH]

I played that exact build, and we had a moon druid in the group, at level 8, he would disguise as another raven and confuse people.

Hehe. It's funny to think about, but actually, you have some serious scouting coverage this way.

[Dudewithknives]

Hehe. It's funny to think about, but actually, you have some serious scouting coverage this way.

There was a lot of long distance traveling in that campaign, nobody knew teleport or anything.

[Sigreid]

So, you could consider celestial as the optimal chain warlock from the higher level feature that lets you grant temporary hit points after a short rest. Combined with the imp's resistances that could be a significant increase in survival for the little monster.

[Arkhios]

Thanks everybody.

Tylenol: where do I find the Raven Queen patron?

Warlock UA. Can't remember which one

That'd be this one: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/d...UAv2_i48nf.pdf

However, since Xanathar's out already, it seems they felt Raven Queen wasn't exactly ready to be a patron (or should we say Matron, since Queen refers to a she? Unless we're talking about Freddie )

Although, they did meld Raven Queen flavor into the final iteration of Hexblade, so there's that.

[KorvinStarmast]

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.
5. ???
6. Profit.

Three Ravens requires a song before profit.

A warlock I played, half elf, was pact of the chain with the Patron: Archfey. I had a sprite. It was great.

[Dudewithknives]

I like Celestial the best for chain.

Being able to self heal for max rolls is nice, also having a healing spell you can cast as a touch through your familiar is nice. However, considering how few slots warlocks get it had better be a dire situation.

Also consider that if you go IMP, your familiar can be invisible flying around and delivering your touch spells, so it could fly over and heal a fallen ally or fake casting on someone else.

ex. Cast the spell invisibility at whatever level you have and touch your chest, but however deliver the touch spell to a an ally across the room with the familiar.

Chain has tons of nifty ways to make it awesome if you get creative.

[ImproperJustice]

Slightly off topic from above, but thought I would add a cool Chainlock trick I read in another post:

Take the feat “Keen Mind” and the minor illusion cantrip.

Send your familiar on a scouting run and then create perfect 3d images of what it sees, or perfect audio for the benefit of the party.

I also agree with others that just about any patron works great with an invisible super scout.

[Nifft]

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.
5. ???
6. Profit.

That's So Raven.

[MrBig]

Slightly off topic from above, but thought I would add a cool Chainlock trick I read in another post:

Take the feat “Keen Mind” and the minor illusion cantrip.

Send your familiar on a scouting run and then create perfect 3d images of what it sees, or perfect audio for the benefit of the party.

I also agree with others that just about any patron works great with an invisible super scout.

Neat idea, but I don’t think that really works, by RAW. Minor illusion allows you to make an image of an ‘object’, but not creatures.

You create a sound or an image of an object within range that lasts for the duration

Silent Image (1st level spell) says :

You create the image of an object, a creature, or some other visible phenomenon that is no larger than a 15-foot cube

So, Silent Image can do creatures, Minor Illusion cannot.

[Mortis_Elrod]

Neat idea, but I don’t think that really works, by RAW. Minor illusion allows you to make an image of an ‘object’, but not creatures.



Silent Image (1st level spell) says :



So, Silent Image can do creatures, Minor Illusion cannot.

so grab the silent image invocation and minor illusion. Cast both, or have someone cast minor illusion while you go GOO for the telepathy effectively transferring the sounds you hear through the familiar to them so they can make the sounds flawlessly and you the image.

[foobar1969]

Neat idea, but I don’t think that really works, by RAW. Minor illusion allows you to make an image of an ‘object’, but not creatures.

Minor illusion could make a diorama of scale-model figurines. A 5' battlemat simulator, like in Erfworld.

[Temperjoke]

Nah. Stick to two ravens and wear an eyepatch. Call yourself Wednesday.

Nobody said anything, but I see what you did there. xD

[Citan]

While that might be true of the familiar itself doesn't scale it will remain moderately useful.
And the Chain Pact does open up the one-a-day free Hold Monster invocation. Also the really good scaling of the new Gift of the Ever-Living ones maximized healing dice.

Hophophop ;)
Just wanted to make a quick comment in this thread for a not-so-small correction.

Free Hold Monster invocation is not "once per day".
It's once ON EVERY COMPATIBLE CREATURE per long rest.

Making it possibly in the top 5 features of last tier gameplay.
Especially if you multiclass into a class that can alter enemy rolls, or have an ally that can.

Encounter with 10 creatures? Hold Monster one, everybody gangs up on it. Rinse and repeat. Profit.

[foobar1969]

Free Hold Monster invocation is not "once per day".
It's once ON EVERY COMPATIBLE CREATURE per long rest.
Making it possibly in the top 5 features of last tier gameplay.

If your campaign focuses on extraplanar baddies. Whereas if you mainly fight undead, dragons, or other creature types, then it's one of the worst options.

[Vogie]

1. Get Pact of the Chain, Imp familiar. Make the imp shapechange into a raven.
2. Take Raven Queen patron to get a second raven familiar.
3. Take Polymorph at level 7 (Sculptor of Flesh invocation) and transform into a raven.
4. Now there's three ravens.
5. ???
6. Profit.

I am pretty sure you can do this at level 6 with out getting the sculpture of Flesh because of the level 6 Raven Queen ability... but you'd only get 2 ravens, lol.

You can also just choose a raven familiar with pact of the chain.