Eldrich Gatling Gun (5e Optimized Character Build)
The warlock gets in his fighting stance, ready to take on the minotaur in front of him. It growls and stomps on the ground with its foot. The warlock, his eyes steely, raises his shield and sword, ready for the attack. Suddenly, the minotaur charges directly at the warlock. The warlock's eyes narrow, and he glares at him. Suddenly, four bolts of crackling energy shoot from the warlock, blasting the minotaur backward against the wall, and it collapses.
This build is designed to shoot eldritch blasts like its nobody's business and deal maximum possible damage with them.
- The Concept
This build is a fun one, as you don't need to be high level to do a lot of damage with it, and it scales very well. The idea is to be an eldritch blaster, able to do lots of damage to individual targets very quickly without expending spell slots. It works best on individual targets, but it can work on groups as well.
- The Build
The build is very simple. All you need to do is take at least two levels of Hexblade Warlock and at least three levels of Sorcerer (the subclass doesn't matter). Take the Eldritch Blast cantrip, and when you get to 2nd level of Warlock, take the Agonizing Blast eldritch invocation. This allows you to add your Charisma modifier to your Eldritch Blast. Next, take three levels of sorcerer, which gets you Metamagic. Take the quickened spell option, which allows you to cast a spell as a bonus action. At this point, you are a 5th level caster total, so your Eldritch Blast goes up to two beams.
- The Combat
When you get into combat against a singular creature, use your Hexblade's Curse to curse a target as a bonus action, which allows you to add your proficiency bonus to damage rolls against the target and score a critical hit on a 19 or 20, and then just cast Eldritch Blast (two beams at 1d10+CHA modifier+proficiency bonus, which should at this point be at least 1d10+4+3 (if you took a race that got a bonus to your Charisma score and rolled for stats), so 1d10+7 damage for each blast). Next round, if your target is still alive, use Eldritch Blast and then Quickened Spell to cast it as a bonus action again, so you deal 4d10+28 damage in one round against one target.
When you get into combat against multiple, weaker creatures, don't bother with the Hexblade's Curse- it's just another bonus action you're missing out on. Instead, convert spell slots into more sorcery points, and then keep on blasting forever! Yee-haw!
- Add-ons
This build is based around the Sorlock build, which is Sorcerer+Warlock, one of the most versatile and powerful builds in the game. You can do several other Sorlock builds in addition to this, including the 1200ft spellsniper build, which is another optimized build on this website. I encourage you to go look at it. You can also do Coffeelock, another optimized build I will write. My point being, it's a very versatile build, and you can do a lot of other fun optimized builds in tandem to this one. Now, go make your DM mad at your awesomeness!
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