D&D 5E Single class Hexblade - missing something?

[Ancalagon]

The thing to realize about hexblade is that warlock is a full caster class and is balanced that way.

I strongly disagree with the notion that a warlock is a "full caster". The cleric, druid, bard, wizard and sorcerers are full casters.

The warlock is... someone who couldn't cut it and made a pact with some mysterious power and got the semblance of being a full caster. You know one spell per level level 6-9, and you can cast it once. The magical resources the full casters can bring to bear are far greater. It's a fun class, and a useful one, but it's not really a full caster.

It shouldn't be as good as a tank as a paladin, barbarian, etc that are melee classes. It should be in the same category as college of valor or swords bard, or bladesinger wizard. That's its target level of melee competence.

As I said above, a hexblade uses almost all their resources to be a 2nd rate melee fighter. The bard or wizard have much more magical resources at their disposal.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The issue seems more an issue with short rests than with warlock. The only thing really wrong with hexblade is that its curse ability works just as well with eldritch blast, which means at epic tier it's better. Nerfing that feature so that the first couple bullet points only work with weapons is actually a way to make the class play more how it's supposed to, and it's my solution (despite my normal dislike of nerf-fixes).

The hexblade is not supposed to be locked into a melee playstyle. Tome and Chain hexblades are intended to be just as valid choices as Blade hexblades.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I strongly disagree with the notion that a warlock is a "full caster". The cleric, druid, bard, wizard and sorcerers are full casters.

The warlock is... someone who couldn't cut it and made a pact with some mysterious power and got the semblance of being a full caster. You know one spell per level level 6-9, and you can cast it once. The magical resources the full casters can bring to bear are far greater. It's a fun class, and a useful one, but it's not really a full caster.

Here's a comparison I did a while ago of the wizard and a warlock built to be a caster (Pact of the Tome, etc).

As you can see, the total number of spell levels they can access in a day, assuming the standard 2 short rests, is on par for a full caster. Wizard only ever gets 2 spells each of 6th and 7th level. Warlocks can get a ton of cantrips, rituals, at-will invocation spells, etc. You can also see some of the differences in the classes here. It is easy to build a warlock as a full caster, I'm pretty sure that's intentional, as it's the "baseline" warlock experience. (Pact of the Tome is the one in the SRD.) As I said, the class is highly customizable and you can do things with it that cut into those resources to make them do other things instead of focusing on a being a caster, but the chassis is there.

The hexblade is not supposed to be locked into a melee playstyle. Tome and Chain hexblades are intended to be just as valid choices as Blade hexblades.

I actually don't know what design intent was on that, so you're guess is as good as mine. I will say that as it is I think an eldritch blast hexblade is better than a melee hexblade, and I don't think that was intended.

 

[TwoSix]

As you can see, the total number of spell levels they can access in a day, assuming the standard 2 short rests, is on par for a full caster. Wizard only ever gets 2 spells each of 6th and 7th level. Warlocks can get a ton of cantrips, rituals, at-will invocation spells, etc. You can also see some of the differences in the classes here. It is easy to build a warlock as a full caster, I'm pretty sure that's intentional, as it's the "baseline" warlock experience. (Pact of the Tome is the one in the SRD.) As I said, the class is highly customizable and you can do things with it that cut into those resources to make them do other things instead of focusing on a being a caster, but the chassis is there.

I agree with you that quantitatively the warlock matches up with the general full caster progression in terms of spell levels they can leverage (assuming 2 SRs, of course). But, I would say that qualitatively the experience of playing a full caster who can leverage low level slots and has no problem using up 5-6 spells in a harder fight is a very different experience. Having access to the bulk of your resources right now, as opposed to having them parceled out during the adventuring day, is a major tactical advantage. (Which can certainly be squandered by bad luck/bad play, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an advantage.)

 

[Ancalagon]

@Sword of Spirit

It's a nice analysis, but 2 things

First, minor quibbles - I think it's not fair to include the subclass for one and not the other. I also note that the warlock only really catches up once they get 3 slots per short rest.

(I do like how you set aside 2 evocations. for the hexblade, this tends to be even higher. also good catch on arcane recovery)

Second, I completely agree with @TwoSix comment. Having all of it accessible at once is huge.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

#1 I have rare played past level 10 and that is common based on statistics from wizards of the coast and D&D Beyond. That means no Mystic Arcanum and rarely more than 2 spell slots.

#2 It may be on the "full caster" list but it has about as much magic as a barbarian with the magic initiate feat on average (I am exaggerating but not by a lot). If your using a level 5 pact slot to cast hex is basically a level one spell even if your level 5 and its a level 3 spell slot.

In a standard adventuring day, a 5th level warlock will have 6 spell slots usable. This is the same number of spells as a Paladin or Artificer. However the half-caster classes only have two 2nd level spells, and the rest are 1st level. - All of the Warlock's spells are 3rd level, and 3rd level spells are considerably more powerful than 1st or 2nd spells.
I still think that the warlock does have the magic that a paladin does.

#3 Its also very common to have one encounter days or multiple encounter days in dungeon where short rests are not possible and this has been true for me under every GM I have ever played under (only about 6 GMs but still). These are not "running seriously messed-up adventuring days", is an in and out mission in enemy territory. You pass your stealth checks to avoid patrols hit your target and get out. Your attacking the enemy strong hold the alarm is sound and the guards are looking for you... it doesn't make since to stop some where for an hour to rest for the warlock when its putting the rest of the party in damager. The long rest "actual" full casters running spells with duration are pushing to move to the next room before their level 3 spell slot runs out such as spiritual guardians to conserve their resources before the be boss fight. These are common and all driven outside of the players control. It makes since that players would want to mitigate this. I have very rarely been able to use short rests to help the team unless the GM specifically wrote some in for me. 1/3rd casters like the Eldritch Knight and Arcane trickster have more spell slots at level 4 than warlocks do at level 10.

You can't rely on a standard adventuring day all of the time. Sometimes you get more or less than 7ish encounters a day, sometimes you get more or less than 2 short rests between long rests.
However the game is balanced around those numbers as an average. If you're getting much shorter adventuring days with harder encounters, or fewer short rests on a regular basis, that is going to throw the balance out of whack for more classes than the Warlock: It is a massive boost to long-rest-based classes like the other full casters, and is seriously limiting the short-rest-based classes.
At that point, it is probably better to just triple all short-rest-based resources for those classes and make them refresh on a long rest instead. Any issues your are encountering with class effectiveness is an artefact of your DM's and the party's playstyle, and not with the class itself as designed.

This does not have a strength requirement for plate armor. Hexblades don't have a strength or dex requirement for their weapons to include two handed pact weapons. So you might have an AC16-20 pact of the Blade swinging a great sword pact weapon only using one invocation, with only constitution and charisma requirements. This means they can play with a third stat and/or relax survivability spells/invocations for equivalent fun as most other "gish" options.

The Eldritch Armour invocation gives you proficiency, but it does not remove the Strength requirement for the armour.

 

[Ancalagon]

There is also the problem about this new invocation that it's yet another invocation that the hexblade more or less has to take, thus limiting their bag of utility magical tricks.

 

[Kurotowa]

This does not have a strength requirement for plate armor. Hexblades don't have a strength or dex requirement for their weapons to include two handed pact weapons.

You have it a bit wrong. Eldritch Armor, at least in the UA version, lets you ignore the armor proficiency requirement that imposes disadvantage if you lack it. It doesn't do anything to remove the Strength requirement on Heavy Armor, although that only imposes a speed penalty.

So as I see it there's two paths being deliberately offered. You can go Hexblade, gain Medium Armor Prof, and be able to make melee attacks with Cha while ignoring Str. Or you can roll a Blade Pact Warlock that's Str primary and Cha secondary, take Eldritch Armor to equip Plate, and make your melee attacks with Str while picking spells that don't lose as much from a lower casting stat. The big feature of the latter being, of course, that you're free to have a patron that's not Hexblade. Like, say, that nifty looking new Undead Patron that has some good Blade Pact synergy.

 

[Ancalagon]

So I've been trying to think about how to express this disquiet I have towards the single-class hexblade - clearly I'm not getting my point accross to many. So let's compare it to the Eldritch Knight.

On a very surface scan, the EK is a better fighter and had less magic. The Hexblade has more magic and is less of a fighter. Balanced right? Yay!

The problem is that the hexblade's fighting is... quite limited, and has to be boosted by invocations and spell slots. If you don't well... you might as well be using Eldritch blast, and and that point, why play a hexblade at all?

 

[TwoSix]

So I've been trying to think about how to express this disquiet I have towards the single-class hexblade - clearly I'm not getting my point accross to many. So let's compare it to the Eldritch Knight.

On a very surface scan, the EK is a better fighter and had less magic. The Hexblade has more magic and is less of a fighter. Balanced right? Yay!

The problem is that the hexblade's fighting is... quite limited, and has to be boosted by invocations and spell slots. If you don't well... you might as well be using Eldritch blast, and and that point, why play a hexblade at all?

Simplistic answer: Why am I playing an EK at all, when I could be playing a Battle Master with Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert?

Slightly more complex answer: I think everyone has a certain level of optimization, and certain types of optimization, that they're not comfortable letting go of. You can see in the "racial bonuses" discussions that not everyone is comfortable leaving stat bonuses on the table simply to play a different race. You can see that in some early 5e discussions around using a greatsword versus a greataxe, and the minor damage discrepancy between 2 otherwise identical weapons.

Your optimization hangup, here, seems to be that it bothers you to play a particular subclass in a non-optimal manner. I sympathize; but I think hexblade is hardly alone in that concern. Ranged attacks' overall superiority to melee has been a major optimization theme/pain point since 5e's release.

I also think you're still laboring under the idea that hexblade somehow has some sort of at-will damage lag compared to other melee classes, I simply think that isn't true. 2 invocations (thirsting blade and lifedrinker) keep hexblade on-par with all non-fighter melee well into Tier 3, and none of those classes can both boost their attacks AND their spell/save DCs with the same ASIs, so any minor divergence between hexblade and the other classes is more than justified.