Some advice on Oathbreaker-Hexblade-Whispers Bard

[John Bravo1]

I'm playing OotA and our DM has greenlighted anything that has been published, starting at 2nd level. So far I have Fallen Aasimar (1)Paladin (1)Hexblade.

My stats are:
Strength 10 (9+1 racial)
Dexterity 13
Constitution 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 11
Charisma 17 (15+2 racial)

So far my character plan is Oathbreaker (10) Hexblade (6) Whispers Bard (4).

Noble background

Skill Proficiency in

History(Noble)
Insight (Paladin)
Intimidation (Paladin)
Persuasion(Noble)



Defensive Duelist- First feat
War Caster- Second Feat
Actor or Inspiring Leader- Third Feat
2 Charisma Stat bump.

Invocations that I've considered are
Devil sight
Eldritch Smite
Mask of many faces

What do you guys think? Is there anything you would change or add?

 

[Blue]

Welcome to ENWorld! Have some XP.

Out of the Abyss rarely gets higher than 15th, so plan accordingly. Also, if your character doesn't come together until level 8, that's already half of yoru total playing time, so make sure it works at the intermediate levels. Single class PCs get a big power bump at 5th, you do want to reach 5th in one of your classes not too far behind, a level or two at most.

ASIs/feats - You're starting with a +3 CHR which works well. Your only feat that gives you an ability score bump is Actor for +1 CHR, which could even it out. Alternately and ASI of +1 CHR/+1 DEX will increase the mod of both which has a hot of payout.

Inspiring Leader is a great feat for exactly one person to have. It's got better payout at low levels, I'd prioritize it before Defensive Duelist.

War Caster is important for concentration, and casting with your hands full. With Paladin / Hexblade I'm assuming weapon and shield which if a great combination but unfortunately the least casting friendly without it. The one good thing is that with paladin you can decorate your shield with you holy symbol and use that as your divine focus (suggested in the PHB equipment section), which would let you cast V and V, M and V, S, M spells, but not V, S spells without warcaster. Yeah, handy rules are bit of a pain. But between that and using slots for smites (both the spells an the Divine Smite feature) you can coer a lot of yoru low level combat casting and may want to hold off on Warcaster.

BTW, are your ability scores set in stone? If not and you're using point buy, if you drop your CHR by 1 (same modifier) and raise your DEX by 1 (1 higher mod, and max for medium armor). Just makes it nicer until you have time to spend an ASI. This is important because with multiclassing you are going to be delaying your ASI/feats a lot.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi, It is far more important to be good or very good at all levels than to be awesome at the end of your career. This means that the full list of goodies poached from all three classes really don't matter much. The incremental features at each level matter a great deal. The kind of multiclass you are proposing leverages Charisma in an extreme way. It therefore behooves you to max Charisma first, which applies to your weapon attacks, your spells, your aura... I think you are spreading your character thin. The guiding question is "what does my character do" rather than "what will my character do in some far-flung future." This question deserves repeating at every level, since you are always thinking about your multiclass balance. You might be better off starting with Blade Bard 1 and then Hexblade 1, probably advancing BB most of the time. There are partial builds for this online. Not as many goodies, but everything comes online faster, providing skills and combat with lots of Cha leveraging. Up to you, really. But I don't think you want to delay your second attack for very long, and 3rd level spells are also pretty nice. Of course, if you are going paladin for heavy armor, be aware of your low Str. There are other good combos, but these too need to be considered level by level. If Oathbreaker is the core of what you plan to do, then maybe cut out Bard instead. Your stats are pretty poor, so leveraging Cha is a good call. What you do at level 3 or level 6 is far more important than what you do at level 14! So it's important to get good at something quickly, and remain good. Anyway, Ken

 

[John Bravo1]

Thank you. Long time reader first time poster. I was going to use a rapier for flavor hence defensive duelist. My holy symbol is a Crimson Beherit, I'm kind of modeling this character after Griffith from Berserk.

 

[Blue]

If you can use SCAG (Sword Coast Adventure's Guide), one thing you can do to help mitigate the delay of Extra Attack is as a warlock take the Green-Flame Blade and/or Booming Blade cantrips. It's a cantrip that allows a single melee attack with extra riders, and the riders scale with character level so they will go up at 5th even without a 2nd attack. Once you get your 2nd attack they overlap in usefulness, so if you're only delaying a level or maybe two you may want other cantrips instead. And they still are only a single attack so you're not leveraging your hexblade curse or the Hex spell - it's a filler with occasional rider use later, not a replacement.