DnD 5e Warlock Pact Boons Breakdown – RPGBOT (2025)

Introduction

In addition to your Otherwordly Patron (the Warlock’s subclass), warlocksalso select Pact Boons at 3rd level, offering a second major decision pointfor the character. Like your subclass, your choice of Pact Boon is hugelyimpactful for how you play your character, and choosing a pact which suitsyour play style can do a lot to determine how effective your character is.

Several Eldritch Invocations are limited to warlocks who select a certainPact Boon. Those invocations are referenced below, but I still recommendreading myEldritch Invocations Breakdownfor advice on selecting and using individual invocations.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Pact Boons
  • Pact of the Blade(PHB)
  • Pact of the Chain(PHB)
    • New Familiar Options
  • Pact of the Talisman(TCoE) (Optional)
  • Pact of the Tome(PHB)

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options whichare extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful optionsthat only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essentialto the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the 2014 DnD 5e Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Pact Boons

Pact of the Blade^(PHB)

The Blade Warlock faces several problems. It attempts to shoehorn weaponusage into a class with little business using weapons. Since you’re stuck inlight armor you almost certainly need to rely on a finesse weapon like arapier or fight at range, and even then you’re adding a frustrating amount ofMAD to a class which otherwise works just fine on one ability score.

Compared to a conventional Warlock who would depend on Eldritch Blast fordamage, the Blade Warlock will typically deal less damage. A Warlock withEldritch Blast deals 1d10 damage, as much as many two-handed weapons.Agonizing Blast allows you to add Charisma to damage, at least matching aweapon’s damage bonus from Strength/Dexterity for the cost of one cantrip andone invocation. Compared to the 2 to 3 invocations needed to keep Pact of theBlade relevant, Agonizing Blast looks very appealing.

To elaborate on the math: You get two Eldritch Blast attacks at level 5, andcan get a second attack with your pact weapon thanks to Thirsting Blade, sofrom levels 3 through 10 the options are roughly comparable in terms of damageoutput, especially if you’re putting Ability Score Increases into Dexterityinstead of Charisma for some reason.

At 11th level Eldritch Blast gets a third ray, adding another 1d10+5 damage at no cost, while the Blade Warlock must spend another Invocation on Lifedrinker, giving the bladelock a damage boost totalling up to +10 per attack, provided that you can get both Dexterity and Charisma to 20. At this point the bladelock has spent an additional invocation slot for slightly less damage (3d10+15 avg. 31.5 compared to something like 2d8+20 avg. 29).

The math gets worse for the Bladelock when Eldritch Blast adds a 4th ray at 17th level, and that doesn’t include Improve Pact Weapon, which is yet another invocation tax on the bladelock. The additional of the spell Hex puts Eldritch Blast further ahead of the bladelock, widening the gap for each additional ray that Eldritch Blast provides beyond the two attacks available to most bladelocks.

Fortunately, Hexblade fixes these issues. Medium armor and shieldsdramatically reduce your need for Dexterity defensively, and using yourCharisma for attacks and damage means that you don’t need to sacrificespellcasting to be effective with weapons. However, without using Hexblade’sCurse your weapon damage will still be slightly behind EldritchBlast+Agonizing Blast, so without that buff you’re trading some of EldritchBlast’s damage for additional durability and the ability to use a weaponeffectively.

Combining Pact of the Blade with Crossbow Expert or Polearm Master is apopular and highly-effective build. You get three attacks, and with the damagebonus from Thirsting Blade at 11th level you can easily outpace EldritchBlast+Agonizing Blast’s damage output. These builds are expensive, requiringyour Pact Boon, three Eldritch Invocations, and a Feat, but they’re veryeffective.

Pact of the Chain^(PHB)

Pact of the Chain gets you a better familiar than is normally available toother spellcasters, but the improved familiar options are not the only reasonthat Pact of the Chain is interesting: Pact of the Chain has some verypowerful invocation options, including Chains of Carceri and Investment of theChain Master.

The biggest problem with Pact of the Chain is that you’re heavily invested inyour familiar, and your familiar has at most 10 hit points (the Imp has 10hp), so your familiar is likely to die frequently. You get no special means tosummon your familiar again, so expect to spend 70 minutes and 10 gp to castFind Familiar several times a day while adventuring.

To succeed with Pact of the Chain, you need to master how familiars work. Remember that familiars act independently of you and act on their own initiative. They’ll take commands from you which you’ll usually issue verbally unless you can use telepathy or something. You can make your familiar attack using their Reaction by trading one of your attacks during the Attack action, but this attack is made on your turn rather than on your familar’s turn, so if your familiar isn’t in range to attack, you may be out of luck.

Investment of the Chain Master allows you to command your familiar to take the Attack action on its turn, but that consumes your familiar’s Action, which they might otherwise spend to do something like turning invisible, so there’s a major opportunity cost to doing so.

Your familiar’s attacks are heavily limited by their poor attack bonus, ranging from +4 to +6. As you advance, your familiar will be increasingly reliant on Advantage to have any chance to hit reliably. This makes invisibility especially crucial.

You also need to figure out how to keep your familiar alive, so having them turn invisible or Dodge on their turn is often your best bet in combat. Ideally, you want your familiar’s turn to occur immediately after yours so that they can break invisibility by attacking using their Reaction, then immediately turn invisible again before anything can kill them. Unfortunately, you’ll rarely get that lucky. The Ready action may help, but remember that it also consumes your familiar’s Reaction, so you may need to sacrifice an opportunity for your familiar to attack in order to keep your familiar invisible.

If you’re fortunate enough to have access to long-duration buff spells like Mage Armor and Aid, they’re great ways to improve your familiar’s durability at a low cost. However, those options can be hard for the Warlock to find, so you may need to rely on other spellcasters in the party. You may also be able to hide them inside the area of a Darkness spell during combat, though that won’t protect them from area damage.

Once you’ve overcome these frustrations,

New Familiar Options

Imp

Flight, the highest hp of any familiar choice at 10 hp, a laundry list ofresistances and immunities, improved Darkvision, Devil’s Sight, shapeshifting,and invisibility for free. The Imp is an absolutely incomparable scout.

The poison attack may be effective when you first get the imp, but the DCnever scales so it won’t be effective for long unless you take Investment ofthe Chain Master. You may also struggle to have the Imp attack on your turnsince its poison sting is a melee attack and familiars act on their owninitiative, potentially creating a lot of time where enemies could move awayfrom your Familiar before you can command it to attack. It’s a bit of a pain,but consider cast Magic Stone to give your imp a temporary ranged attack.

Imps also have human-like hands, if the art is to be believed, which offerssome opportunities like turning door nobs and using tools.

If you’re concerned about bringing your imp into places where an imp isn’twelcome, it can turn into a raven which increases its flight speed by 20 ft.and doesn’t remove its ability to deal poison damage or turn invisible oranything. In fact, you may just want to keep your imp as a ravenperpetually.

The Imp is the most durable familiar option, and if you plan to send them offon their own to scout, the Imp is hard to match. They also work well if youenjoy using magical darkness, and doing so can create an easy way for yourfamiliar to fight in combat without needling to juggle invisibility.

Pseudodragon

Excellent flight speed, Keen Senses, Darkvision, and Blindsight. ThePseudodragon’s tail sting imposes the Poisoned condition for a full hour andmay even knock the target Unconscious. When combined with Investment of theChain Master, the Pseudodragon’s sting a powerful debuff which you can applyonce, then send your familiar off to hide for the rest of the encounter,allowing it to be extremely impactful while taking minimal risk to its ownsafety.

The Pseudodragon can’t quite match the Imp’s capabilities as a Scout, butwith Blindsight and Keen Senses it’s very effective to keep your Pseudodragonnearby to look for hidden things and invisible enemies. Blindsight also allowsyour Pseudodragon to overcome magical darkness, making it easier for you touse your familiar in combat, which is especially crucial since thePseudodragon can’t make itself invisible.

Quasit

Very similar to the Imp, except that it can’t fly in its natural form, so expect your quasit to spend most of its time as a bat. The Quasit trades some of the Imp’s capabilities as a scout (namely Devil’s Sight) and some of its poison damage to add the Poisoned condition to its attacks. That seems like a pretty good trade, especially with Investment of the Chain Master to raise the DC, but the Quasit still faces the challenges of using melee attacks without the tactical option to abuse magical darkness since it can’t see in magical darkness.

You’ll need to settle for juggling invisibility, and at that point why not use a sprite since they can attack at range?

Sprite

Flight, invisibility, and human-like hands. On its own, that’s pitifulcompared to the Imp. But add Investment of the Chain, and the Sprite’s bowattack suddenly becomes an easy vehicle for the Poisoned condition, making iteasy to debuff enemies for the duration of a fight and massively hinderingmartial enemies while putting your familiar at minimal risk.

The Sprite’s arrows can knock creatures unconscious, but their Constitutionsave result needs to be 5 or lower (rather than merely failing by 5 or more)for that to happen, and since Constititon saves tend to be high that will beunlikely throughout most of your career.

The Sprite is very much a glass cannon. While they have the highest AC of anyfamiliar at 15, they have just two hit points so if they get hit they’realmost guaranteed to die immediately. Fortunately, they can attack at range somany enemies are simply unable to reach them. Against enemies which can attackat range you’ll want to keep your sprite invisible as much as possible.

The Sprite also lacks anything beyond flight and Stealth which makes them aneffective scout. No Darkvision or anything. If you need to send your familiarto scout, expect to give them a light source, have them turn invisible, andhope nothing notices that light is emanating from mid-air with no visiblesource

Pact of the Talisman^(TCoE) (Optional)

Note that Pact of the Talisman is an Optional Class Feature, and thereforemay not be available in your game. If you want to use Pact of the Talisman,discuss it with your Dungeon Master and refer to the Optional Class Featuressection of myWarlock Handbookfor guidance on how to include it in your game.

Pact of the Talisman is the simplest Pact Boon, requiring no actions on thepart of the warlock and requiring little further investment to make thetalisman useful. If you want to focus on other parts of the Warlock and PactBoon holds little appeal for you, Pact of the Talisman is a great choice. Italso has the unique benefit of allowing you to share the talisman with anothercreature, turning it into an interesting support option, and if you’re nervousabout the complexity of playing a warlock, sharing your talisman can be agreat way to offload some of that complexity to someone else in the party.

The unique invocations for Pact of the Talisman add additional benefits tothe Talisman, all of which are defensive in nature. They’ll work well to helpkeep you alive, but you may find that the Talisman is more effective if youlend it to an ally who will be drawing a lot of attacks, especially once youlearn Rebuke of the Talisman.

Pact of the Tome^(PHB)

Pact of the Tome leans into the Warlock’s capabilities as a spellcaster,giving them more spellcasting options, plus the option of ritual casting withthe Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. Access to ritual casting is a massiveasset, providing a ton of utility which the Warlock typically can’t providedue to their limited pool of spell slots.

Warlocks get one fewer cantrip than most dedicated spellcasters, and adding three more when you get Pact of the Tome can give you a lot of useful options. You probably won’t need offensive options since Eldritch Blast is so effective with so little investment, but don’t feel limited to Eldritch Blast. Remember that the cantrips can come from any spell list, so options like Shillelagh and Vicious Mockery may be worth a try.

For help with ritual casting, see our Practical Guide to Ritual Caster, which digs into available rituals and how to best use them.