Archfey Patron Warlock: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Play the ultimate trickster with this teleporting warlock subclass, drawing powers from powerful fey beings.

Tricksters and deceivers, archfey patron warlocks make frustrating opponents. They disappear and reappear across the battlefield, dropping spells, attacks and enchantments with reckless abandon. These warlocks are difficult to pin down. At the slightest whiff of danger, they’re able to quickly teleport away.

Warlocks with an archfey patron have made a pact with a powerful fey being. This might be someone like the prince of frost, the ruler of the gloaming court, Titania of the summer court or an ancient hag. Whoever they are, they grant powerful fey magic and abilities to their warlock.

The archfey warlock gets some major changes in D&D 2024, becoming more effective and with a greater fey flavour.

Below I’ve explained how you can build and play a highly effective archfey warlock.

At a glance

Highly adaptable class that can fill many party roles depending on your build
Use spells for attacks and powerful effects
Teleport in and out of danger and easily escape your attackers
Disappear from sight or taunt your enemies to infuriate them

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

A lot! Archfey warlocks are now built around the very fey ability to teleport, disappear and taunt. This allows them to both preserve themselves and infuriate enemies. Specifically, archfey patron warlocks get the following changes:

You get misty step as a prepared spell, not just a reaction feature.
Steps of the fey grants you free uses of misty step with enhancements like taunting foes and gaining temporary hit points.
Misty escape now can be used more often and gives the option of causing damage instead of turning invisible.
Beguiling defense now protects against damage and sends some back to your attacker instead of relying on being charmed, which was too rare.
Bewitching magic will let you teleport when you cast enchantment or illusion spells.

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Archfey patron features

Archfey spells – Lv3

How it works

You gain the following as prepared spells at the indicated levels:

Warlock level	Spells
3	Calm emotions, faerie fire, misty step, phantasmal force, sleep
5	Blink, plant growth
7	Dominate beast, greater invisibility
9	Dominate person, seeming

Tactics

You get some solid spells in here. Misty step is great and you’ll want to be using it a lot to combine with some subsequent features (more on that later).
Faerie fire is a low level foil to invisibility, sleep is a decent save or suck spell for low levels, greater invisibility is a great safety feature while the dominate spells are solid save or suck spells for mid levels.

Steps of the fey – Lv3

How it works

Gain a few free castings of misty step per day. You can also choose to enhance your misty step by either granting 1d10 temporary hit points or taunting nearby creatures.

Tactics

Plenty of uses of misty step is really handy for a fragile caster class that can get stuck into melee.
Use misty step tactically and in tandem with allies by taunting enemies then misty stepping beyond ally martials, either forcing enemies to come at you and incur opportunity attacks or attack with disadvantage.
A fairly free pool of temporary hit points is more useful if fighting ranged combatants or if you can’t manoeuvre well for taunting. Use it to keep yourself or martial allies topped up with temporary hit points.

Misty escape – Lv6

How it works

You can now use misty step as a reaction to taking damage. You also have a couple of extra options for steps of the fey including turning invisible for a turn or damaging nearby enemies.

Tactics

You’ll likely find that warlocks that enjoy getting close and personal with enemies using hit and run tactics work best with these features.
You can avoid taking too much of a beating by using misty step as a reaction. If you want to play it safe, turn invisible as you do so. If you feel sure that you’re safe enough with the distance covered, go with the damage instead.
Remember that reaction spells don’t count against the types of spells you can use on your turn (only 1 levelled spell per turn, but reactions normally don’t occur on your own turn) so you don’t need to feel restricted by this.

Beguiling defenses – Lv10

How it works

Once per long rest, you can use your reaction to half the damage from an attack and send it back on the attacker. You’re also immune to being charmed.

Tactics

You have 2 reactions to choose from here. This one is one use only so you want to save it for when you get hit by big damage to increase the impact and reduce your damage. Chances are, this will be best against spells effects. Using your misty step reaction is best saved for when you expect to be hit multiple times, especially from melee attacks.

Bewitching magic – Lv14

How it works

Casting an enchantment or illusion spell will also let you immediately use misty step for free as well.

Tactics

Note that this is limited to spells cast with spell slots. This means you can’t use spells like mind sliver (which is a cantrip) to get this benefit. Equally, you can’t cast misty step to get an extra use of misty step as the spell must be cast with an action. You also can’t use eldritch invocations that let you cast spells without using a spell slot (like silent image from misty visions) to use this as it doesn’t use a spell slot.
However, this does free up your bonus action for things other than misty step (like commanding a familiar to attack, if you have the right eldritch invocations, for instance) and gives you free uses of misty step.
You can also use steps of the wind with these misty step uses too.

Building an archfey warlock

The best way to play an archfey warlock is by popping in and out of danger with spells and attacks. You can then use your misty step to teleport away from danger. Below is how I’d approach building one of these warlocks.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Charisma: Your most important ability. You’ll need it for spells, and if you take the pact of the blade, for your attacks too. You’ll also have the bonus of being good at social encounters.
Dexterity: You’ll need this to get yourself a decent AC. You should rarely need this for weapon attacks though; you should either be using cantrips or pact of the blade will let you use your charisma instead.
Constitution: You might be dodging in and out of danger, but you’ll still likely find yourself regularly getting hit. Warlocks are not naturally durable so a decent constitution will help compensate a bit.

Options to avoid

Strength: I’d favour charisma for weapon attacks or dexterity in rare circumstances which you’ll need for your AC anyway.
Intelligence: Of no use to a warlock.
Wisdom: Not useful for much other than skills and saving throws.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	10
Dexterity	15	14
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	8	12
Charisma	15	15

Skills

Recommended options

Arcana: Decent enough knowledge skill.
Deception: Important face skill and recommended for someone that will likely be the party face.
History: Decent enough knowledge skill.
Intimidation: Decent face skill depending on your approach to social encounters.
Investigation: Useful skill for discovering things.
Religion: Reasonable enough knowledge skill, not important, but not bad either.

Options to avoid

Nature: Not needed all that often.

Species/race

There are a few things to consider when choosing a species for an archfey warlock:

Safety first: Warlocks aren’t very durable, so anything that keeps you safe or enhances your durability is going to be of value.
Innate spellcasting: Warlocks are not blessed with many spell slots or prepared spells, so the more you can get from your species, the better. You can also repeat cast these spells too.

Recommended options

Dragonborn (2024): The breath weapon is great if you’re going for the devouring and thirsting blade invocations as you only replace a single attack with it. It’s less useful if you’re going to be focusing on spellcasting though. Flight is good for keeping at a safe distance and a damage resistance is handy for some durability.
Dwarves (2024): If you want to get in danger more, Dwarves are very durable with things like extra HP and poison resistance.
Elves (2024): Options for quite a few extra spells to cast. Annoyingly, you already know faerie fire and misty step, but you could go for a quick, stealthy warlock as a wood elf. Darkness combined with the devil’s sight eldritch invocation can be very effective.
Human (2024): An extra origin feat will let you get something like skilled if you intend to play the party face or you can grab something else. A constant supply of heroic inspiration is always handy, as is another skill proficiency.
Tiefling (2024): An Infernal Tiefling is probably your best bet with hellish rebuke and darkness (which works well with the appropriately named devil’s sight). Fire resistance is also one of the better damage resistances.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Primarily, you want to focus on increasing key ability scores (charisma, dexterity and constitution for a warlock) with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for an archfey warlock:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Charlatan	Dexterity, constitution, charisma	Skilled	Deception, sleight of hand	Forgery kit
Entertainer	Strength, dexterity, charisma	Musician	Acrobatics, performance	One kind of musical instrument
Hermit	Constitution, wisdom, charisma	Healer	Medicine, religion	Herbalism kit
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Wayfarer	Dexterity, wisdom, charisma	Lucky	Insight, stealth	Thieves’ tools

Merchant is probably your best option with a top origin feat and persuasion for an important face skill you wouldn’t ordinarily get. Charlatan could also help you become more of a party face with deception and the skilled feat for more skills (including persuasion).

Feats

At 1st level, you can grab an origin feat through your background and from level 4, you can pick up a general feat (or another origin feat if you want) instead of an ability score increase.

Below are some feats I’d recommend for an archfey warlock:

Origin feats

Lucky – More ways to be reliable at important rolls is universally beneficial.
Magic initiate – If you need a few more spells in your repertoire, or want some from another spell list, then this could be a good option.
Musician – A universally great feat for dishing out heroic inspiration. Great for altruistic warlocks. Plus you can ensure you have some heroic inspiration available too.
Skilled – If you want to play a party face, you don’t naturally have the skills required (like persuasion) or the number of skills available to make this work (2 isn’t enough). You can compensate for this with skilled.
Tough – More hit points is very useful for a relatively vulnerable class if you’re going to get into the thick of combat.

General feats

Actor – Important if you want to play an impersonator. Warlocks can make this work, but if you don’t plan on impersonating, don’t bother with this feat.
Inspiring leader – Grab the charisma increase and dish out loads of temporary hit points to allies each rest.
Lightly armored – You’re here for the shield proficiency. Grab this if you want some more protection in the thick of combat.
Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
Poisoner – Can be a little expensive, but if you’ve got money to burn, a good way of debilitating a powerful enemy if you’re playing a weapon-wielder.
Ritual caster – Grab it for some out of combat utility spells, you don’t have enough prepared spells to use on a lot of this so this will expand your repertoire nicely. These spells can also be cast for free so don’t eat into your precious spell slots. Normally you’ll want find familiar with this feat, but I’d grab that from pact of the chain If it’s something you want.
Skill expert – Get really good at a skill. Face skills like persuasion and deception are good for you.
Shadow-touched – Invisibility is great and a couple of free castings will expand the number of spells you can cast a fair bit. Plus illusion spells combine nicely with bewitching magic.
Warcaster – If you want to maintain concentration on something like hex, and you plan to be in the thick of combat, you may want this to avoid wasting spell slots.
Weapon master – A great option of you plan on using weapon attacks a lot.

Weapons

You’re proficient in simple weapons, but these will rarely outstrip your cantrips (especially eldritch blast) for damage, though you may find that before level 5, when cantrips get more powerful, that something like a light crossbow will do a little more damage due to the bonus from your dexterity modifier.

However, if you opt for weapon-focused eldritch invocations, then you may find weapons become important for you. If you take pact of the blade, you can be proficient in whatever melee weapon you want. What weapon you go for will largely depend on how you want to fight, what magic weapons are available and what feats you take.

Armor

Your primary form of armor comes from your light armor proficiency meaning studded leather is your best option.

You could grab the lightly armored feat for shield proficiency too. You could also grab the armor of shadows eldritch invocation allowing you to cast mage armor without expending spell slots. It’s one AC better than studded leather so could be worth maintaining. Plus, it’s not a concentration spells so you can cast it on allies too.

Eldritch invocations

All warlocks get access to a large number of eldritch invocations. Archfey warlocks can work well using weapons or spells depending on whether you use your steps of the fey aggressively or as a defence mechanism. As such, you can lean into invocations that suit either style of play. I’d suggest that the below are some of your best options for eldritch invocations:

Agonising blast – Supercharge your cantrips. Eldritch blast is best as each blast accumulates in more damage as they’re individual attack rolls, but it’s also effective for AoE spells like thunderclap.
Armor of shadows – +1 AC compared to studded leather, which is strong for a subclass that might throw itself into danger.
Devouring blade and thirsting blade – If you plan on playing a weapon-focused warlock, you’ll need the extra attacks from these to maintain power levels with your cantrips.
Eldritch mind – Maintain concentration more easily, especially if you plan to be in close combat a lot.
Eldritch smite – Strong option for weapon-wielding warlocks with extra damage and causing prone.
Lifedrinker – Good option for constant healing and extra damage if you’ve taken pact of the blade.
Pact of the blade – You’ll want this if you’re going for a weapon-wielder.
Repelling blast – Useful if you’re primary damage is going to come from cantrips.