D&D 5E Blade Pact Warlocks and Conventional Wisdom

[Giltonio_Santos]

Do enemies "know" who has more hit points?

No, but other tanking classes have actual abilities that punish enemies for choosing to attack someone else. I'd say this is the basic principle of tanking: if you cannot punish enemies for attacking someone else, then you're not tanking, you just have high chances of surviving.

Is being struck with a hexed greatsword twice not good damage?

Irda's build uses a longsword, which is a fine weapon for a tank build (which, as I've stated before, has other ways to force enemies to choose it as a target). If it chooses to drop the shield in favor of a greatsword, then it's just another damage build, one that is strictly inferior to the battlemaster fighter (in melee) and the eldritch blast warlock. It's just as good as the str-based champion high elf (I mean, good enough to play, worse than your typical non-maximized character choice).

Are we sure this is the nova round for the fighter? If not, I don't know that the target would be avoided and or disregarded.

All fighter tanks have easily available options to force opponents to attack them or suffer, this warlock has none. In fact, it would have to trust other characters to not deal more damage than it does (not a lot of hope, since even Irda's build could be doing more damage by eldritch blasting), or to manage to stay out of range from their opponents. When we arrive at a point where you need goodwill from the other players to make your build work, "good" is not exactly how I would describe it.

Additionally, do the squishy targets do more or less than this character? And that is disregarding spell use or other abilities on he part of the warlock

They do more. For starts, one hex cast and bladelock is already 50% into its spell slots. The list of damage dealers doing more than that at 5th level encompasses almost all character options that actually care about dealing damage (also, good luck concentrating on that hex, if you end up being hit). You can cast darkness to get more reliable attacks and avoid opponents, but then it's no armor of agathys for you, and you're also making your fellow adventurers less effective, unless you're in an all-warlock party.

That's the weirdest thing about the bladelock: it's also a "mana-hungry" build, and most people speak about its advantages without taking into account that it will spend the most relevant half of its career casting two spells per encounter (if the DM is nice enough to allow short rests after every encounter...). If you're relying on hex and agathys to make you a decent combatant, it means you're not casting anything else until 11th level.

While you struggle, fellow wizard cycles through magic missiles, scorching rays and fireballs, and still has 2d10 fire damage to boot, if anything else fails. If I was an evil monster, you'd have to show me more than hit points in order to make me pick you instead of that friend.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I've really enjoyed this exercise because I hadn't looked too closely at Blade-locks before, and I can see how they work now. I still think they're deficient as a class, but not as badly as before. I'd say my main beefs are-

1. Seriously Bad MAD. Blade lock is clearly a melee build, so you need good CON for HP and making Concentration checks, good DEX or STR for making your pact weapon attacks worthwhile, and good CHR for spellcasting.

2. Awful AC. I realize that some abilities (like Hellish Rebuke and Armor of Agathys) trigger off of being hit, but lets be real. Anyone who gets hit too often is going to die and before that suck down a lot of the party's healing resources. And you get Light armor only. This can only be fixed by being a Mountain Dwarf or by using rules that are supposed to be optional (Feats and Multiclassing).

3. No one has mentioned this before, but being non-proficient in shields and only being able to summon one pact weapon at a time means there's only one fighting style that's least-bad: two-handed weapons. No sword and board, no TWF. That's sort of limiting and it's REALLY limiting if you wanted a DEX build.

I would fix this all with a change to the Pact of the Blade and adding one Invocation.

Pact of the Blade
1. You can summon one weapon, two weapons, or one weapon and shield into your free hands. If you drop or throw them they disappear at the end of your turn. You're proficient in their use.
2. Use CHR for to-hit and damage modifier.

Invocation: Vambrace of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade
Your patron has taught you how to fashion a vambrace from shadow material. As part of your action that summons your pact weapons you can also cause the vambrace to flow over your entire body to fashion armor. Each time you use this ability you choose the form of the armor from the following choices:
Shadow Shirt, AC 12 + DEX
Shadow Breastplate, AC 14 + DEX (Max 2)
Shadow Mail AC 17, Disadvantage
Additionally with a 1 hour ritual you can store a normal or magical suit of armor in an extra dimensional space and summon it as your action instead of the shadow armor. You are considered proficient with any armor summoned by the vambrace.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I thought of that, and not really. Yes it's keyed to Charisma which is nice but damage dice is capped at d8 and you cannot take the Blade Pact Invocations like Thirsty Blade or Lifedrinker. Shillelagh really isn't a great choice for Warlocks because without Blade Pact you can't get the Invocations that make being in melee worthwhile.

I thought you're going for sword and board, and if that's the case, you won't have anything better than d8. Regardless, the booming blade cantrip alone is more worthwhile than anything the bladelock has to offer in invocations, if you intend to tank. As Lanliss correctly pointed, your build has no other way to force opponents to stay at that level.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The goal stated in the build post was "Build a good blade-lock without multiclassing". The build looks plenty good, and booming blade makes it slightly better. The fact that other things can do it does not affect the stated goal, or whether or not that goal was met. From a light-optimizer point of view, the build looks perfectly fine. It won't be winning any awards for "best X" (Unles X is Competent Bladelock-without-multiclassing), but it certainly hits the stated goal of "Good".

That's good enough for me, honestly. Our party has the str-based champion high elf and the player is having a lot of fun with it. I believe this is one of the selling points of 5e, really. Still, I wouldn't expect Irda's build to accomplish a lot out of the white room scenario. In our own table, no matter the build, bladelock has only created frustration and rebuilds that go for eldritch blast. Now, when someone wants to play the "warrior with some magic" character, we just suggest an eldritch knight.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I thought you're going for sword and board, and if that's the case, you won't have anything better than d8. Regardless, the booming blade cantrip alone is more worthwhile than anything the bladelock has to offer in invocations, if you intend to tank. As Lanliss correctly pointed, your build has no other way to force opponents to stay at that level.

Yeah, Booming Blade is a good choice, although it's frustrating that SCAG is also supposed to be optional rules. Just another example of how the Core warlock is not up to snuff.

 

[Irda Ranger]

In our own table, no matter the build, bladelock has only created frustration and rebuilds that go for eldritch blast. Now, when someone wants to play the "warrior with some magic" character, we just suggest an eldritch knight.

Since you have more direct experience, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the minimum changes needed to make blade-lock viable and non-frustrating.

 

[Warpiglet]

No, but other tanking classes have actual abilities that punish enemies for choosing to attack someone else. I'd say this is the basic principle of tanking: if you cannot punish enemies for attacking someone else, then you're not tanking, you just have high chances of surviving.



Irda's build uses a longsword, which is a fine weapon for a tank build (which, as I've stated before, has other ways to force enemies to choose it as a target). If it chooses to drop the shield in favor of a greatsword, then it's just another damage build, one that is strictly inferior to the battlemaster fighter (in melee) and the eldritch blast warlock. It's just as good as the str-based champion high elf (I mean, good enough to play, worse than your typical non-maximized character choice).



All fighter tanks have easily available options to force opponents to attack them or suffer, this warlock has none. In fact, it would have to trust other characters to not deal more damage than it does (not a lot of hope, since even Irda's build could be doing more damage by eldritch blasting), or to manage to stay out of range from their opponents. When we arrive at a point where you need goodwill from the other players to make your build work, "good" is not exactly how I would describe it.



They do more. For starts, one hex cast and bladelock is already 50% into its spell slots. The list of damage dealers doing more than that at 5th level encompasses almost all character options that actually care about dealing damage (also, good luck concentrating on that hex, if you end up being hit). You can cast darkness to get more reliable attacks and avoid opponents, but then it's no armor of agathys for you, and you're also making your fellow adventurers less effective, unless you're in an all-warlock party.

That's the weirdest thing about the bladelock: it's also a "mana-hungry" build, and most people speak about its advantages without taking into account that it will spend the most relevant half of its career casting two spells per encounter (if the DM is nice enough to allow short rests after every encounter...). If you're relying on hex and agathys to make you a decent combatant, it means you're not casting anything else until 11th level.

While you struggle, fellow wizard cycles through magic missiles, scorching rays and fireballs, and still has 2d10 fire damage to boot, if anything else fails. If I was an evil monster, you'd have to show me more than hit points in order to make me pick you instead of that friend.

I would not enjoy sword and board myself and do not "tank" etc. I just play a character. So as is often the case, discussion about bladelocks usually degenerates into trying to prove it is a match for a fighter which does not account for invocations or spells and is not a good comparison. Additionally, if you have the armor class of any great weapon warrior and are able to eldritch blast, I fail to see how being able to fight without disadvantage is problematic. I do not think the damage is weak with a greatsword or any other magic great weapon if you get one(or not). Paired with spells and likely eldritch blast to start, I still do not see a problem. The class is MAD and cannot beat a fighter in direct hand to hand which is true.

I stand by my original thesis as a whole (i.e. Which includes caveats). But we will see soon. I plan to put it to the test in play.

 

[Warpiglet]

And as an aside, hex gets used with eldritch blast too. To burn short rest slots always needs to be calculated bladelock or no.

 

[Lanliss]

I've really enjoyed this exercise because I hadn't looked too closely at Blade-locks before, and I can see how they work now. I still think they're deficient as a class, but not as badly as before. I'd say my main beefs are-

1. Seriously Bad MAD. Blade lock is clearly a melee build, so you need good CON for HP and making Concentration checks, good DEX or STR for making your pact weapon attacks worthwhile, and good CHR for spellcasting.

2. Awful AC. I realize that some abilities (like Hellish Rebuke and Armor of Agathys) trigger off of being hit, but lets be real. Anyone who gets hit too often is going to die and before that suck down a lot of the party's healing resources. And you get Light armor only. This can only be fixed by being a Mountain Dwarf or by using rules that are supposed to be optional (Feats and Multiclassing).

3. No one has mentioned this before, but being non-proficient in shields and only being able to summon one pact weapon at a time means there's only one fighting style that's least-bad: two-handed weapons. No sword and board, no TWF. That's sort of limiting and it's REALLY limiting if you wanted a DEX build.

I would fix this all with a change to the Pact of the Blade and adding one Invocation.

Pact of the Blade
1. You can summon one weapon, two weapons, or one weapon and shield into your free hands. If you drop or throw them they disappear at the end of your turn. You're proficient in their use.
2. Use CHR for to-hit and damage modifier.

Invocation: Vambrace of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade
Your patron has taught you how to fashion a vambrace from shadow material. As part of your action that summons your pact weapons you can also cause the vambrace to flow over your entire body to fashion armor. Each time you use this ability you choose the form of the armor from the following choices:
Shadow Shirt, AC 12 + DEX
Shadow Breastplate, AC 14 + DEX (Max 2)
Shadow Mail AC 17, Disadvantage
Additionally with a 1 hour ritual you can store a normal or magical suit of armor in an extra dimensional space and summon it as your action instead of the shadow armor. You are considered proficient with any armor summoned by the vambrace.

Just want to point out, a dex build will strictly want Armor of Shadows more, since it is 13+dex, giving a max of 18, rather than your invocations max of 17. Because it is At-will mage armor, it is generally assumed that it is just on 24/7. The Shadow mail is good for a STR build though, but I would not give it disadvantage on stealth. After all, how much noise can Shadows really make?

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Since you have more direct experience, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the minimum changes needed to make blade-lock viable and non-frustrating.

For that, we'd need to understand what it's trying to accomplish. Personally, I see the warlock as a damage dealer, because the only thing that the class can do reliably is casting eldritch blast (or attacking, in the case of the bladelock). In that sense, I think a very small adjustment that could go a long way into making the bladelock an equal to its eldritch blast-casting counterpart would be adding haste to their spell list. Casting haste improves defense, damage and mobility, three areas in which the bladelock is lacking, without making any structural change to the class. If I had a player willing to try it in my game, I'd certainly allow it. You could also add the following invocation:

One With the Sword
Prerequisite: 7th Level
You can choose one of the following fighting styles: Defense, Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, or Two-Weapon Fighting.

I believe this could be more dangerous than adding haste to their spell list (the system already has to deal with the possibility of someone else hasting your warlock), but appears to be harmless at first glance. Adding this invocation could help a lot with the MAD problem, adding 2 damage to a rapier-wielding bladelock or +Dex to a dual-wielding one (or somehow compensating the str build for the fact that it will probably have to go MAD).

These are just some ideas from the top of my head, though. I just believe the concept is fun and should get the options to stay on equal footing with the eldritch blasting warlock.