Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Wizards & Warlocks -- Hexblades, Raven Queens, and Lore Mastery!

MechaTarrasque said:

It seems a pretty minor thing for your pact weapon to be a great sword, and then when you active the claw of acamar, it turns into a flail for that round. The necrotic damage from the claw should far compensate for the loss of damage from the weapon change. And let's face it, the warlock is not drowning in extra spell slots, so most of the time your weapon is going to be the great sword anyway.

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Except that you have to create your pact weapon in these forms. Which means that it's locked to that form. You could switch it in battle, but that takes an action which means that you pretty much lose a round to switch the weapon.

vincegetorix said:

I'd also like a Pact of the Curse, for those like me who would like to play the evil eye/witch angle. 4e add a paragon for any Patron called Hexer, focusing on spreading the warlock's curse feature.

Pact of the Curse:
You learn the Hex spell and can cast it as a ritual requiring 10 minutes and a personal item of the target. If cast as ritual, the Hex does not require concentration and has a duration of 8 hours. Once the target dies, you cannot switch to another creature.

Invocations:
Contagious Hex (requires Pact of the Curse): When a creature under the effet of Hex dies, every enemy within 10' must make a Charisma saving throw or be affected by the Hex.

Damning Hex (requires Pact of the Curse): Target under you Hex have disavantage on one saving throw of your choice.

Delban's deadly attention (requires Pact of the Curse, GOO Patron): As a reaction, when an enemy targets you, he must make a charisma save or becomes frightened. 1/Short Rest.

Evil Eye's Unluck (requires Pact of the Curse, Fey Patron): As a bonus action, you bestow the evil eye on 1 target. This enemy must reroll every roll he makes before the end of his next turn. 1/Short Rest.

Glacial Flame of Cania (requires Pact of the Curse, Fiend Patron): Targets under your Hex gain Cold and Fire vulnerability.

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Ooh. I like that idea. I was also thinking of a few others inspired by others.

Pact of the Blood - grow closer to your patron and gain bonuses to your ability scores and physical features depending on the pact. Perhaps an invocation to gain wings or claws, etc.

Pact of the Vessel - Your patron gifts you with a lesser spirit to serve you and is with you like a possession only they're subservient. Gain some supernatural abilities. Toss in a few invocations that are patron specific.



I just thought of an invocation idea.
Consuming Hex. When you hit an opponent under the affects of your Hex spell you may spend a bonus action to do 1d8 per spell level points negative energy to the target. This effect cancels your concentration.

Echoing Hex. When you hit an opponent under the affects of your Hex spell you may spend a bonus action to do 1d8 per spell level points negative energy to the target. This effect cancels your concentration.

Echoing Hex. When you hit an opponent under the affects of your Hex spell you may spend a bonus action to cause the damage effect of your spell to occur again.

Greater Hex. When your hex spell does damage, add your Cha modifier to that damage.

I like the Pact of the Vessel idea. I had a similar idea for a psionic pact, where an psychic entity channels it's otherworldly powers through you.

As much as I hate to say it, the one-handed Hexblade is actually pretty bad. It's not weak, but rather bad in terms of design.

A one-handed hexblade will *always* do more damage with eldritch blast, unless it spends invocations to get a +1 pact weapon. Even then, it will fall behind until level 9. The Hound feature at level six is far more useful for Eldritch Blast than melee. The Hex feature you get at level 1 works with Eldritch blast.

I'm not against a charisma based melee build, but in its current form one-handed Hexblade is better as a dip for a bard or paladin, and bad as a solo option.

I think the best way to handle this would be to make a separate invocation available at level 2, which allows the Hexblade to make Charisma attacks with its pact weapon, but only if its one-handed. Add an additional rider to it so it can "smite" like the other blade pact invocations, or give it some additional effect so that it won't be perpetually inferior to Eldritch Blast.

Make it so the level 6 feature also makes charisma-based weapon attacks attacks deal an additional 2 damage to the target(like the Duelist fighting style).

On that note, the Hexblade spell list is just awful. It should focus less on weapon buffs(which almost never stack and work poorly with existing features), and focus far more on debuffs and control effects, that make it feel like a master of curses. I'd like to see it gain Bestow Curse, Blindness/Deafness, Heat Metal, and a few other choice gems that make it good at screwing with its enemies.

Mercule said:

Yes and no. There is certainly a line that can't get crossed. In this case, though, I don't see an issue with reskinning it to be a long sword shaped like a snake that strikes foes at a distance. The difference in damage is minimal and the pact weapon can already assume whatever form the Warlock desires.

But, to be clear, if the "flavor" of the weapon is a greatsword, it does 1d12 damage. If it's a long sword, it does 1d8 damage, etc. If that bothers someone's min-max aesthetic, it sucks to be them. I don't have much tolerance for someone who gets their panties in a bunch over that.

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Is this still directed toward me?

phantomK9 said:

Thanks, I knew about these. I just thought that from the description, that there were MORE powerful weapons out there.
I guess my complaint would be that the Hexblade as presented really just doesn't make much sense to me. As others have stated, if the weapons are this powerful how are they still just weapons.

The description of the weapons, literally states that some were forged by the Raven Queen herself, and then the very next patron is the Raven Queen. Storywise how does it make sense that you could make a pact with the thing that someone else's patron created. Let's see do I make a pact with the creator or the creator's tool?

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Is it really a pact with the tool, though? It is a similar set of magic, in that you draw magical power from the "patron", but I definitely wouldn't try to understand it as the same sort of "pact" as the others. It's a sentient artifact from which you draw power.

I kind of like the fixed forms of the various Hexblade Invocations. There's almost no mechanical impact, it's just fluff, and colorful fluff at that.

Then again, I tend to prefer RPG design that requires you to work within constraints (e.g. Lawful Good Paladins) rather than a la carte "pick and choose from among every single option".

Ahrimon said:

Except that you have to create your pact weapon in these forms. Which means that it's locked to that form. You could switch it in battle, but that takes an action which means that you pretty much lose a round to switch the weapon.

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The warlock has a number of bonus action spells (hex being a particularly good one, and magic stone is a cantrip). You can use those the same round you change weapons.

Hitdice said:

It does seem a bit single pact-ey. I really can't see anyone coming to the table with Hexblade patron, but book or tome pact, just to mix things up. Not that I mind some sort of Bound Object patron, but Hexblade feels overly combat corner case-ey.

That made sense, right?

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Nah, I'm def gonna play a Tome-Hex-lock soon, and I'd love to play a chain-hex-lock at some point.

MechaTarrasque said:

The warlock has a number of bonus action spells (hex being a particularly good one, and magic stone is a cantrip). You can use those the same round you change weapons.

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Taking an action to change your weapon does not actually provide you a unique opportunity to use your bonus action spells. That same warlock could have used those exact same bonus-action spells while beating people with his pact weapon.

This argument of yours is just simply bad.