Image credits (left to right): Art by Yusuke Nakano, Zoltan Boros, unknown

The Preamble

Unearthed Arcana is the system that the Dungeons & Dragons developers use to showcase and source playtesting for upcoming content for D&D. After a designated “playtest period,” players will have a chance to submit feedback via surveys on dndbeyond.com. In this post, I’ll cover the most recent Unearthed Arcana article, published on January 15th, 2026: Mystic Subclasses. Specifically, I will be looking at the Vestige Patron Warlock.

Note: This post assumes you have read (or at least skimmed) the content covered in the Unearthed Arcana article linked above. If you have not read it, you may find it useful to have it open in a separate tab.

Vestige Patron (Warlock)

The concept here really works for me. Your patron is a dying god, a long-forgotten entity that wishes to be restored to its former glory. It’s especially nice to see considering none of the other subclasses spoke to me from a flavor perspective. I can also see a couple of alternative routes you could take this; maybe instead of restoring your patron to their former power, you could instead help them complete one final task before their spirit disperses into the ether.

Level 3: Vestige Companion & Vestige Spells

Vestige Companion gives you a subclass pet, like the Battle Smith Artificer’s Steel Defender or the Beast Master Ranger’s Primal Companion (although I’m sure a dying god wouldn’t appreciate being called a “pet”).

There’s a lot of info here, so let’s get into it.

The Vestige is a Celestial, Fiend, or Undead (you choose each time you finish a Long Rest); which option you choose determines certain abilities in its stat block, such as what damage resistances it has and what damage type it deals with its Vestige’s Strike action. More importantly, the chosen creature type also gives the Vestige access to a special, once per day Bonus Action called Divine Power. An Undead Vestige can curse enemies, a Fiendish Vestige can teleport and swap places with you, and a Celestial Vestige can effectively cast a combined Cure Wounds + Lesser Restoration on any creature other than itself.

It’s cool that you have all three of these options, and even though there’s already a Celestial Patron, Fiend Patron, and Undead Patron for Warlocks, the flavor here is different enough that I don’t think it’s stepping on the toes of any of those subclasses. However, I don’t like that you get to change your choice whenever you finish a Long Rest. This may have been done for the sake of playtesting, so players would be able to experiment with different Vestiges and test all of them out more easily, but if that stays, it’ll feel more like you’re sworn to a harem of multiple weakened gods than a single dying god who needs your help to survive. I think it should be a choice you make when you get the subclass, and you don’t get to change it later unless you have a conversation with the DM.

Moving on, the vestige acts during your turn in combat, but the only Action it takes is the Dodge action unless you use your Bonus Action to command it to do something else. You can also replace one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command it to attack with its action. If you are incapacitated, the vestige can take any actions on your turn, not just Dodge. This is all pretty standard stuff for this kind of subclass. It is a little unclear to me how commanding the Vestige to take the Divine Power Bonus Action works, since the text here doesn’t mention the Vestige’s Bonus Actions; I think some additional clarification could be useful.

Whenever your Vestige drops to 0 Hit Points, it can be resummoned with a 1-minute ritual. This means that you can get it up to full HP between each combat encounter. Granted, it doesn’t have a lot of hit points, but it does kind of suck for other pet classes, like the Battle Smith and Beast Master, that need to expend other resources to bring back their pets. In a weird way, this also incentivizes you to beat up your Vestige after every encounter if they don’t go down. It costs resources to heal it, but it costs nothing to kill and then resummon it. If there’s not a resource cost to resummon it, you should just be able to heal it back to full HP with the same ritual.

Next, let’s talk about Vestige’s Strike. The amount of damage here could end up being a problem: 1d6 + 3 + your Charisma modifier (likely +3 at this level). That’s the same average damage as a Greataxe, every turn as a Bonus Action, with a 60 foot range. Not to mention that the Vestige can fly, so you can just have it rain down fire on melee enemies and they can’t do a thing about it. To be fair, the Beast Master’s Beast of the Land does the same amount of damage on average with its Beast’s Strike, but that’s a melee-only attack, and it’s also on a class that is more reliant on its Bonus Action than Warlock (unless you use my revised Ranger, but that’s getting off topic). Personally, I think this should be scaled back at least a little bit; maybe to a simple 1d8 or even 1d10 + your Charisma modifier.

With that taken care of, we can finally talk about Vestige Spells. This is a pretty cool feature, and I think it actually supports what I said earlier about how you should have to choose a creature type for your Vestige when you get the subclass and stick with it. Regardless, I think War Domain has the best spell list for a Warlock thanks to Spirit Guardians and Steel Wind Strike, but the Life Domain and Light Domain also have nice options. I think the least appealing is unfortunately Trickery Domain, since none of their spells work super well with the Warlock’s Pact Magic.

Ironically, these spell lists are also pretty agnostic when it comes to what kind of Vestige you have. You could easily use the Light Domain spells list for a Celestial or Fiendish Vestige, the Trickery Domain spells list for a Fiendish or Undead Vestige, and the War Domain for any of the three options. Admittedly, the Life Domain spells list probably only makes sense if you have a Celestial Vestige, but maybe your Fiendish or Undead Vestige prides itself on being unconventional.

Level 6: Vestige Recovery

Vestige Recovery sounds kind of boring at first, but it’s not terrible. Your Vestige now regains its Divine Power ability whenever you finish a Short or Long Rest, or when you use your Magical Cunning feature. My biggest problem with this is that none of these are that overpowered, so using any of them more than once in a single combat doesn’t feel broken to me. I’d rather it gave you a number of uses per day equal to your Charisma modifier, and you still only regained them on a Long Rest. As is, the amount of value you get out of this largely depends on how many Short Rests you’re taking, and even though you’re a Warlock, you’re probably not getting more than two extra uses out of this feature per day.

Level 10: Aura of Power

Aura of Power lets you imbue your Vestige with a magical aura that surrounds it in a 30-foot Emanation. This aura lasts for a number of hours equal to your Charisma modifier (great duration), and it gives you and your allies within the aura Resistance to Fire, Necrotic, and Radiant damage. Creatures of your choice in the aura are also immune to the Charmed and Frightened conditions. Moreover, if you fall to 0 Hit Points in the aura, but don’t die outright, you can dismiss the Vestige to regain a number of Hit Points equal to your Warlock level + your Charisma modifier.

Let’s discuss. To get the most use out of this feature, your Vestige has to be in the fray with everyone else, and the granted Resistances/Immunities have to be relevant. However, in those cases, you are painting a huge target on its spectral floating head, and the Vestige only has 44 Hit Points at this level. That means that enemies at this level can probably take it out in a round or two. That does mean those enemies are wasting valuable actions to attack the Vestige, but also keep in mind that if your Vestige goes down, you can’t use the second half of this feature to resist dropping to 0 HP.

That being said, there is a strategy here that I think could work okay if you’re willing to give up the Vestige’s damage. Instead of commanding it to attack with your Bonus Action, have it hover over the battlefield and command it to Ready the Dash action, set to trigger whenever the Aura of Power would be useful; for example, when an ally is about to take Fire damage or be Charmed. This way, you can wait until after the target(s) have been chosen to move the Vestige into the mix, hopefully keeping it alive longer.

Unfortunately, even with this strategy, I think this feature still misses the mark for me. This is your Level 10 subclass feature, and you’re probably only getting value out of it in one, maybe two rounds of combat per day. That would be fine if it was a great single-use ability, but the intention is clearly for it to be a persistent ability. If we get another look at this subclass in playtesting, I think I’d like them to take a crack at an entirely different feature for this level instead of giving us a rework of this.

Level 14: Semblance of Life

Semblance of Life lets you transform your Vestige into a more powerful form. With this feature, you can cast one of the following spells without a spell slot or material components (determined by your Vestige’s creature type): Summon Celestial, Summon Fiend, or Summon Undead. When you cast the spell in this way, your Vestige’s stat block is replaced with the stat block of the summoned creature for the duration, which becomes 1 minute. Also, when you cast the spell in this way, the spell’s level is half your Warlock level (Round Down), up to a maximum of 9th level. I like this feature, but I’ve been talking about this subclass for long enough, so let’s skip ahead to the questions I have.

The text here says that the stat block of the Vestige is replaced by the stat block of the summoned creature, but nothing of any other rules that have to do with the Vestige. This is important because there are conflicts between the rules for commanding the Vestige and the rules for commanding a creature summoned by one of these spells, and I’m not entirely sure which take precedence. Let’s say you cast Summon Celestial with this feature. Since your Vestige is now the Celestial Spirit summoned by that spell, can you issue commands to it without spending a Bonus Action as specified in the spell’s description? Or, because the Celestial Spirit is also your Vestige, do you have to issue commands to it with a Bonus Action as specified in the Vestige Companion feature? I’m pretty sure the intention is for you to to command it with the normal rules of the spell, but I think there’s a case for the other interpretation too.

Final Thoughts

I’ll do my best to speed through some final thoughts. I am looking forward to seeing this subclass in its final form, but I hope that’s not exactly what’s presented here. I like the flavor a lot, and I think this is pretty unique as far as official Warlock Patrons go. This is also a great subclass if you’re ever in a solo campaign, especially because your Vestige has proficiency in every skill, and unlike other pets, it can actually speak.

Two small things I want to point out: 1. The Vestige’s Passive Perception seems to be calculated wrong; it has a Wisdom modifier of +2, so its Passive Perception should be 12. Very minor, but easy to miss. And, 2. I’ve seen it pointed out that in a campaign that uses Bastions, this subclass cannot establish certain facilities that would be relevant for helping a dead god return to power, such as Reliquary or a Sanctum, since it can’t use a Holy Symbol as a spellcasting focus. Might be worth mentioning in the survey if you have space.