Making a warlock not suck

[Cory Stafford 29]

I kind of like the flavor of the warlock archetype of vigilante, and I'm wanting to give it a try on a new PFS character. It seems a bit lacking mechanically. It's basically a magus but with mystic bolts instead of spell combat and spellstrike. What do I do to make this work? What race works best for this? Let's see some builds.

[Mighty Squash]

The guide from this page covers the Warlock. Not in great detail, but it sorts the bases well enough to give you a feel for it.

[Cory Stafford 29]

Mighty Squash wrote:

The guide from this page covers the Warlock. Not in great detail, but it sorts the bases well enough to give you a feel for it.

Thanks.

[Cory Stafford 29]

Cory Stafford 29 wrote:

Mighty Squash wrote:

The guide from this page covers the Warlock. Not in great detail, but it sorts the bases well enough to give you a feel for it.

Thanks.

What I really need is advice on feats, talents, and spells.

[Just a Mort]

Half Orc, or Human

Feats - point blank, precise, rapid shot, two weapon fighting, clustered shot, improved two weapon fighting, many shot

Talents - arcane striker/shadow sight(if you started as human), lethal grace

Spells - If enemies are at range, decimate them with multiple bolts(suggest acid or electricity damage type). If you need to melee, hit a mirror image and wade in twf style. Keep your elven chain/mage armor on all day. Pick spells like see invis, glitterdust(to outline for your allies), fly(you're an archer, it rocks on you), haste, dispel magic)

Social talents usually don't see much use in PFS. Also you'll be probably firing bolts too much to cast.

[Imbicatus]

If you are going to use the bolts in melee, weapon finesse is good. You'll also want to invest in a pair of deliquescent gloves as it's one of the few ways to add extra damage to the bolts.

[master_marshmallow]

Humans are really strong, elves can also work really well.

Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Two-Weapon Fighting are the feats you need by level 5 to make the build work. Precise Shot also helps. Humans can get an extra feat, elves effectively get one sine Elven Magic is so good, but they also have other racial options to get stuff like Spell Focus (if that's your thing) or Skill Focus. If you ever get to that level, clustered shots lets you get around some energy resistance.

Stats like a wizard, max DEX and INT.

Use a bow when you can't bolt. It'll work better at earlier levels, and is supplemented by PBS, Rapid, and Precise Shot.

Or you could go wild with it and go melee and use Weapon Finesse and a Conductive weapon. Make sure to take Arcane Striker.

3 attacks at 5th level against touch is really good. (3d6+12) is comparable damage to other big hitters, considering it's touch.

[Mighty Squash]

Remember, the "weapon" the warlock uses is not affected by size or strength.

So halflings for the dex and size bonus to hit, or wayang (if you are PFSing or in a game where they make sense) for all that and int, without loosing out on damage.
I'm not saying you should play either race, but this archetype is one of the better ways to be a small character without taking any real hit for it.

[N. Jolly]

From what I've seen, someone's working on a warlock guide. I don't know if they're up to making it public yet, as it's still in development, but I'll see if they're up to having it posted later.

[Wally the Wizard]

I haven't had a chance to fully stat it out but i think that a warlock/arcane trickster could be really interesting and fun.

The warlock suffers from needing to add damage to his arcane bolts, The trickster gives you a sneak attack progression to add serious numbers of die to your rolls. Since you are aiming at touch you don't have the accuracy problem the trickster normally faces and you can be at range. focus on feats to maximize your number of attacks like the TWF line and on setting up sneak attacks and you can do solid damage while still having a good number of feats and access to the best spell list in the game. With the feat that bumps up the SA damage you only lose 1 level of spell casting.