D&D 5E Suggestions for "fixing" the hexblade?

[Kyvin]

So I have a player who is interested in the hexblade. But, if he uses cursebringer then does it make sense to lose the Cha bonus to attacks and damage? Also the shadow hound ability makes no sense to me. And it seems the smite is too powerful. I am looking for suggestions for ways to modify it so it works.

As I see it, there are some possible changes:
The Cha bonus stays at first level and works on two handed weapons but only works for melee attacks

OR cursebringer becomes a longsword?

And The smite ability moves off of cursebringer and replaces shadow hound as a 6th level ability, maybe without the O movement rider.

Thoughts?

 

[jgsugden]

My suggestion is to try it before you judge it. It looks fine to me.

 

[Lanliss]

I am thinking of changing it up, and making Hexblade be a third-caster fighter subclass, or maybe a Paladin subclass (Oath of the Patron?). Heck, thinking about it, I want to do both now. I will cut out the "smite" invocations, giving that to the Paladin Oath, give Cha to hit/damage to fighter, and let them both pick Patrons, for which they will have different features from the Warlock.

EDIT:I misspoke before, I meant 1/3rd caster fighter, not half.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The design for the Hexblade is five days old. There just won't be the real play experience with it for an informed opinion yet. Why don't you let your player try it and see what he or she thinks?

It seems to me that you are trying to get the benefits of what are intended as two separate builds:
a) a Charisma-based build with a one-handed weapon and an extra invocation (which can include Fire Hex, Chill hex, or something else), and
b) a Strength-based build with a greatsword able to apply the curse to multiple opponents over one minute, who spends his spell slots doing incredible damage.

Frankly, I love that there's a real choice in this design, and I wouldn't want to collapse this. Strength does lots of damage, but requires investing in two non-Dex skills. I suspect they will play very different.

As for the Shadow Hound, I think this sounds really fun -- I don't like the dogginess of it, but that's just fluff -- it could be a doppelganger, a shadow-self, an almost-incarnation of the patron, your true self struggling to break free... Really, there's so much good roleplaying opportunities there, it makes me want to try it just for that.

 

[pukunui]

Jeremy Crawford mentioned on Twitter that it's deliberate that Cursebringer doesn't let you use Cha as the attack stat.

 

[Blue]

Jeremy Crawford mentioned on Twitter that it's deliberate that Cursebringer doesn't let you use Cha as the attack stat.

I was going to mention exactly that. I guess having CHR to hit, a heavy weapon for GWM, spend spell slots for massive (compared to divine smite) guaranteed damage on a hit, curse for more crits (which multiply the spell slot damage as well as allow a bonus action attack with GWM) were considered too much to put all together.

It's so good it would become the default and only-valid hexblade build. But now there are many ways to go about it, with one-handed weapons based off CHR or with the invocation weapon based off Stormbringer.

 

[Leatherhead]

Jeremy Crawford mentioned on Twitter that it's deliberate that Cursebringer doesn't let you use Cha as the attack stat.

Deliberate in the sense that they crafted the divide specifically to get you to [-]complain[/-] give feedback about it.

For the record, I don't like it because it over-penalizes the small races (There is no option to become a greatsword swinging strong-gnome, leaving them in the dust) and because it comes in the form of yet another "invocation tax" for the str based bladelocks, who already have several of them.