Celestial Patron Warlock: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Use divine powers to bestow healing and boons upon your allies as this heavenly warlock subclass

Not all warlocks make pacts with nefarious beings. Divine powers course through celestial warlocks as they draw upon the magic of Mount Celestia and the upper planes. Warlocks with a celestial patron are those that have made pacts with heavenly beings. They operate for the interests of celestial creatures and in turn, have access to their powers.

Celestial warlocks use radiant powers and those that heal and bless. They can operate as damage dealers as well as healers, much like a cleric can, but with the versatility and eldritch abilities that come from being a warlock.

The 2024 celestial warlock doesn’t get huge changes from its 2014 counterpart, but it does become even more celestial leaning with more healing spells and abilities.

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

At a glance

Highly adaptable class that can fill many party roles depending on your build
Use spells for attacks and powerful effects
Heal and aid allies with divine powers
Enhance spell attacks with radiant power

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

This is more of a tweaked subclass than a complete overhaul. You’ve got a few more prepared spells, searing vengeance can be applied to allies as well as yourself and you get a decent number of temporary hit points for the whole party when you take a rest or use magical cunning.

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Celestial patron features

Celestial spells – Lv3

How it works

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

Warlock level	Spells
3	Aid, cure wounds, guiding bolt, lesser restoration, light, sacred flame
5	Daylight, revivify
7	Guardian of faith, wall of fire
9	Greater restoration, summon celestial

Tactics

You get quite a few ways to heal wounds and conditions allowing you to take on the role of party healer, though you’ll need to be wary of spell slots. You may find that healing light is a better option for healing so you can preserve spell slots and use these on long term concentration spells instead, like summon celestials.

Healing light – Lv3

How it works

Gain a pool of healing dice that you can use to heal yourself and allies.

Tactics

I’d favour using this for healing allies over using precious spell slots.
Save at least a few dice for reviving allies which will be the most important way you can use this feature.
If you do want to help HP before an ally hits 0HP, try to heal as much as possible in one go to preserve your action economy.

Radiant soul – Lv6

How it works

Gain resistance to radiant damage and add your charisma modifier to the damage of a radiant or fire spell once per turn to one target.

Tactics

The restrictions on how much and who can be damaged make the power of this feature fairly small, limiting you to an extra 5 damage per turn. It’s alright but just be aware that even AoE spells won’t deal more damage.
You can use this with things like sacred flame, guiding bolt, guardian of faith and wall of fire. However, with limited spell slots, sacred flame is the only spell you’re likely to use this with often. The problem you’ve got is that combining the agonising blast eldritch invocation with eldritch blast (which causes force damage) will quickly equal or outperform the effects of this making it hard to justify using radiant or fire spells over the ones you’d ordinarily take. Essentially, don’t be tempted into using this over what you’d normally cast as the power levels aren’t that great.

Celestial resilience – Lv10

How it works

Bestow a load of temporary hit points on yourself and allies every time you rest or use magical cunning.

Tactics

Save yourself the bother of taking inspiring leader or any other temporary hit points bestowing ability in the party, this should give everyone more temporary hit points than most other sources can provide. Just make sure you use it each rest.

Searing vengeance – Lv14

How it works

Revive an ally taking death saving throws to half their hit points maximum and cause damage and blinded for a turn to nearby enemies.

Tactics

You’ve got multiple ways to revive an ally that’s hit 0HP including healing spells and your healing light. Those are best used on allies that aren’t in immediate danger or aren’t surrounded by enemies. Searing vengeance will have the greatest benefit when used on an ally surrounded by enemies (often a martial) who will likely take a beating as soon as they recover.
If you can, aim to use this at times when you can harm the most enemies.
However, the most important part of the spell is getting an ally back in the fight. Don’t hold back just because you’ll only affect 1 or 2 enemies.

Building a celestial warlock

Celestial warlocks tend to be geared more around healing and spell damage than melee attacks. You can create a solid celestial warlock around melee, but typically, you want your healers outlasting your allies. And with little in the way of options for hit and run tactics on such a vulnerable class, I’d steer clear of a melee build.

Below I’ve geared my recommendations for building a celestial warlock around this approach.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Charisma: Your most important ability. You’ll need it for spells, to improve healing and to grant more temporary hit points. 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 usually be using cantrips or spells for most attacks you make.
Constitution: Warlocks aren’t that durable and while you’ll typically be avoiding danger, more durability is still important.

Options to avoid

Strength: Not needed, you should rarely be making weapon attacks, and when you do, you should already have a good dexterity so use finesse or ranged weapons.
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 a celestial 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

Aasimar (2024): Use flight for your celestial revelation options (the others rely on getting into danger). Some spare healing can be handy and while you already get radiant resistance, necrotic resistance is the more useful one anyway.
Elves (2024): Options for quite a few extra spells to cast. Misty step is really useful from the High Elf. A drow’s darkness combined with the devil’s sight eldritch invocation can be very effective too.
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.

Options to avoid

Orc (2024): You already get more temporary hit points than adrenaline rush can provide and rarely have a reason to dash. You shouldn’t be in the line of danger too often so relentless endurance will rarely be of use.

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 a celestial 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 a celestial 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.

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.
Fey-touched – Misty step plus another 1st level spell enhances your repertoire nicely. Misty step is a great safety spell and you get a couple of free castings which expands your spell slots nicely.
Lightly armored – You’re here for the shield proficiency. Grab this if you want some more protection.
Mage slayer – Best against mages, but having what is practically legendary resistance is also great.
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.
Warcaster – With so few spells slots, you’ll likely want to use them on concentration spells for sustained effects. War caster will help you maintain this so spell slots aren’t wasted.

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. However, there are better subclasses for melee warlocks.

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 (for some extra protection).

Alternatively, you could 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 spell so you can cast it on allies too.

Eldritch invocations

All warlocks get access to a large number of eldritch invocations. Celestial warlocks work best as spellcasters so my recommendations lean into enhancing this area, but other builds are viable.

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 handy.
Eldritch mind – Maintain concentration more easily so you’re not wasting spell slots.
Gaze of two minds – Cast spells through an ally to keep yourself out of danger. AoE spells centred on self can be great for this. Alternatively, cast through your familiar. You can also use your familiar’s special senses too like blindsight from bats or darkvision and seeing through magical darkness like with imps.
Investment of the chain master – Enhance your familiar in some substantial ways.
Pact of the chain – Gain access to better familiars and extra familiar perks.
Repelling blast – Useful if your primary damage is going to come from cantrips.