The Defiler Patron (Warlock)
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Spells: Toxic Breath, Venom Lash, Noxious Geyser
Art Credit: https://www.artofmtg.com/art/willowdusk-essence-seer/
Of the many themes classically associated with witches and warlocks, poison and disease rank among the most popular, whether they’re distributing poisoned apples, using venomous beasts as familiars, spreading plagues and famines, or corrupting the very lands they lurk in. Now we have a warlock subclass that dives deep into those themes, one that works for hags, oozes, and any other kind of corrupting, poisonous, acidic, or disease-spreading entity: the Defiler patron!
Mechanically, the Defiler warlock is highly focused around debuffs, poisoning enemies, and the acid, poison, and necrotic damage types. A warlock using this subclass can choose to cast only spells of a particular damage type or they can choose a variety of afflicting spells instead, depending on what kind of thematic flavor they’re looking for in their patron and warlock. But no matter which spells they choose to cast, the subclass grants them class features that impose the poisoned condition on enemies or benefit when enemies are poisoned. The feature at 6th-level encourages the warlock to combine their spells for extra damage, but it doesn’t offer so much damage it makes other cantrips better than eldritch blast, meaning that optimizers don’t have to worry about being forced to constantly keep enemies poisoned for maximum damage output at all times. After all, some enemies can’t be poisoned at all! While the feature at level 14 allows the warlock the unique ability to poison even those foes, they still have advantage on saving throws against such effects. Thankfully, the Defiler warlock doesn’t always need to poison its enemies to be effective. It can rely on spells that deal damage over time, spells that impose exhaustion or cause blindness or deafness, and all the regular warlock spells as well!
If you lack access to Xanathar’s Guide to Everything or Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the new compendium will also provide a list of replacements for spells from those books which you can use in spell lists that reference them. For the Defiler Patron’s expanded spell list, you can use detect poison and disease in place of Tasha’s caustic brew, and you can use the new envenomed weapon spell instead of vitriolic sphere.
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Spells: Toxic Breath, Venom Lash, Noxious Geyser
