Warlock Prestige Question

[Novea]

Greetings!

I have a lvl 4 gray elf warlock femme.  Stats:  Str: 10  Dex: 20  Con: 16  Int: 18  Wis: 14  Cha: 18  The explanation of the gray elf.  She started as a wizard, but we have a 3 game rule that you can change everything but race.  I'm to be the item creator per DM's request and we already have a sorcerer. 

What is a good prestige for warlocks that doesn't require you dipping into another class?  I know about Hellfire Warlock, but my DM is up in the air about using the strongheart vest to absorb / heal the hellfire damage.  If it's just a one lvl dip, I should be okay with it, but he doesn't want us overpowered until higher levels since we have a LOT of newbies in our group.

Hell, he looked up the warlock blast 2d6 every round to see what can combat it.

Any ideas?  First item she made?  Artificer's monocle

[Jackinthegreen]

First of all, if your DM is trying to shut down an average of 7 damage (which is what 2d6 is) then you're going to have problems.  The fact that he's looking up stuff to combat it implies he's a DM that thinks it's DM vs players, and that sort of style almost certainly won't end well.  I probably wouldn't even play with a DM who thought 2d6 was even worth working against.

Keep in mind you won't be able to make items until 12th level in warlock since that's when you get Imbue Item, unless you have some sort of house rules.  If you need to craft stuff before then, you'll either need to play a full caster like cleric, druid, or wizard, or you'll need to go into the Artificer class from Eberron Campaign Setting.

Strongheart Vest had an unofficial "official" clarification from the designer that it only lowers the ability damage from attacks against the character, which means it wouldn't negate the Con damage from Hellfire Warlock's Hellfire Blast.

If you took a level of Binder (Tome of Magic) you'd be able to bind Naberius (page 41) to heal the ability damage each round.

Take a look at the Warlock Information Compilation if you'd like to see what some of the options are.

[Novea]

The DM was having a bad time since all the creatures we fought had a loooooooow range touch ac at our lvl.  I have an artificer in the "good" campaign we are doing and this girl is the neutral.   Just checking into other options at the moment.  Thought about dipping into binder for the vestige that heals one ability point per round.

[Empirate]

For a dedicated crafter, why not play an Artificer in the first place? Seems rather strange to use the "second best, and only at high levels" option instead.
...right, you're playing an Artificer in another game. So why did you want to be an item crafter in this game, too, again?

That said, 2 levels of Chameleon is optimal for a crafting Warlock, since you can use the floating feat to pick whatever item creation feat you're going to be using that day, without spending an actual feat. You're a Gray Elf, however, so this won't work.

Seeing how you're not going to want to wait 8 levels for crafting your first piece, how about dipping some full caster, then going into one of the Theurge classes? Either Archivist or Cleric would work nicely for this.

Hellfire Warlock isn't all it's cracked up to be - too much wrangling (and DM intervention, in your case), too little payoff except in pure damage. Leave the damage dealing to others, and try to get some more useful schtick alongside item crafting.

[Novea]

Let me enunciate what's going on.  I have 3 D&D games going on in the same world with the same DM.  There are two of us in all 3 games to make sure we had enough people for everyone's schedules.  My artificer is my main character in the good game.  Our DM 'assigned' the two of us playing all three games what classes we could do to fill the voids in the last 2 games.  He asked me to be the item creator in all three games, so we could work closely together... the other rule was we couldn't play the same character class in any of the 3 games.  So for my Good character - Artificer... Neutral character - Started Wizard & turned Warlock... Evil character - Rogue turning into Assassin.

I'm thinking about Theurge for variety, so I will look into the Archivist to see what we need.  My DM's NPC is a cleric and he offered to help me with the con damage for the hellfire warlock, but don't know if I'm going to do that or not.  I may flip him out and go partial theurge and hellfire.

[Jackinthegreen]

You could also play a Binder and then bind Astaroth, who can be found here.  He grants the ability to make magic items, among other things, though you may not like some of the other stuff that comes along with that vestige.