Storm of Zehir party ideas

Imbue Item lets you to simulate casting any spell needed to enchant stuff, potentially giving you access to powerful gear before you even meet Sand/Zhjaeve and saving your NPCs a bunch of feat points for not having to invest in Craft Wondrous Items/Craft Magical Arms and Armor (which you will be taking yourself). It's one of the very few ways a warlock can increase his AC in the campaigns along with Improved Combat Expertise.
The feat is not as impressive in SoZ unless your party lacks either divine/arcane casters.

The description may or may not be accurate, which is largely irrelevant since if you fail to craft the item then that simply means that your UMD skill is too low and so you wouldn't be able to craft/enchant the item anyway. There is no random dice roll, the game just checks your UMD skill vs the requirements and as far as I know the only way to increase UMD is through raising your CHA and spells like Heroism.
Finally, crafting/enchanting in the OC/MotB already comes with a generously high character level requirement so you should meet the UMD requirement once you reach the required level. I've never actually not maxed UMD on my warlocks so I've never found out what happens if you don't.

Warlock Eldritch Blast can carry very useful debuffs through Eldritch Essences and you can choose from a variety of blind/slow/confuse/etc effects that affect enemy reflex/fort/will saves depending on the essence.
As long as you use the appropriate essence (fortitude vs mages, reflex vs warriors, etc) warlocks can be very effective at shutting down enemy mobs and good DCs help with that. Some blast shapes also have a DC (Eldritch Doom, Eldritch Cone).

As far as the OC/MotB/SoZ are concerned, high DC (Cha) warlocks can be just as effective as blaster-type (Dex) warlocks.

 

Would you say it's worth it to spend 3 feats to increase the DC? I understand that there's little else that will achieve the same, and perhaps there is little else in the way of useful feats to choose, either.

I'm wondering, because I was thinking about creating a half-elf warlock instead of a human one. Well, a human warlock would probably be stronger, and I don't think the bonuses for a half-elf make up the bonuses from a human, but aesthetically I would like to make a half-elf build once. Though perhaps another build would be more suited to a half-elf, as the extra skill points are definitely useful to have for a warlock (especially if you want to add the hellfire warlock levels as well).

Is the AB on the eldritch blast actually affected by any stat? I see some builds that seem to favour DEX over CHA for a warlock. Quite a lot, actually. As CHA is a warlock's primary stat, I'd be inclined to increase it like you did in your warlock build, but apparently there's a different train of logic that instead increases the DEX.

Thanks for the clarification, I suppose it makes sense that way, if there's no dice roll. Though there are spells to increase your UMD, not the least of which is the Dark One's Own Luck (if I remember correctly).

Ah, so a high CHA warlock tends to use the invocations / shapes more, DEX based warlocks just use the normal blast?

 

Basically the normal Eldritch Blast is a ranged touch attack and so like any normal attack it can also crit. It is affected by the Weapon Focus and Improved Critical line of skills but not the ranged weapon feats like Point Blank Shot, etc. Curiously it is also affected by (Improved) Combat Expertise but you only get the AC bonus and not the AB penalty.
The default Eldritch Blast ignores SR once you gain 22 warlock levels or 10d6 damage, a bug that has become accepted as a game feature.

Eldritch Blast also acts like a spell template (ala MS Word document template) - you add an essence to it to change its damage type/introduce a status effect and a blast shape to give it an AoE (ala BG2 chain lightning, fireball or cone of cold). Doing so changes its property so that it behaves more like any other wizard/sorc spell and so your CHA becomes important.
The main exception is Eldritch Chain. This blast shape allows you to perform multiple ranged touch attacks with one cast, and each attack can crit. Think bouncing arrow.

All warlocks should use invocations - there are a few great defensive ones - and blast shapes/essences, but a high DEX "blaster" warlock indeed behaves more like the archer-ranger archetype. Ideally they should be spamming ranged attacks until the target dies.

CHA warlocks are more like traditional arcane casters. Since ranged touch attacks ignore deflection AC, CHA warlocks CAN still hit often enough with their Eldritch Blasts when they absolutely need to. If you cast the invocation Walk Unseen first you even get to ignore dodge/dex/tumble bonuses to AC unless the target can perceive you (this is also one reason why DEX warlocks are so nasty).

In the OC/MotB/SoZ mobs are balanced enough that both DEX/CHA warlocks work fine. The problem with several other settings is that the NWN2 system is incredibly flawed in certain respects, like how AC is basically superior to AB once you consider all the bonuses available to you.
In these settings DEX warlocks simply beat CHA warlocks damage/survivability-wise. I wouldn't worry about this though, the game becomes very different if you take NWN2 rules to the extreme. Would you still enjoy BG2 the same way if everything was running around with -20 AC?

 

A simple tank + utility + DPS party would probably do the trick:

1. Tank:
Dwarf sorc 2/pal 4/RDD 4/DD 10
- Very high defense
- damage reduction
- lots of hit points
- divine might or shield

2. Utility:
Tiefling rog 8/ranger 11/SD 1
- lots of skill points
- hide in plain sight
- greater two weapon fighting

3. DPS:
Many choices here so it is upto you.
You can go ranged with arcane archer, melee with frenzy berserker, or spell casting with wizard/sorc/druid/warlock.
Personally, I'd suggest wizard.
Human wiz 6/PM 1/ASoC 10/RW 3
- powerful necromancy spell
- second prohibited school avoided with pale master level
- above normal caster level