D&D 5E Pact of the Blade / Bladelock, looking for thoughts

[Mephista]

Look at it this way: the Ranger has both a fighting style and hunter's mark (which is equivalent to hex). He gets the benefit of both, while the Warlock only gets one.

Furthermore, the Ranger is only a partial caster; he doesn't have a lot of other concentration spells in his repertoire competing with Hunter's mark, so as he goes up in level he gets a lot more use out of it than a typical BladeLock will get to use Hex. Darkness or Hex? Greater Invisibility or Hex? The Ranger doesn't have these problems.

The fact that the Ranger is a partial caster and the warlock is, well, they get up to 9-level magic implies to me that the Blade relies more on spells like Hex, Armor of Aggy, Hellish Rebuke, etc for damage mid battle than the Ranger does. Further, the Ranger is designed to work with TWF, Archery, or sword-shield. The Blade is designed to work with just single handed finesse weapon - there's no heavy weapons, no shields, no archery, no armor variation. The only FS you could go with is Duelist.

And I never said it was even footing, I was saying it was likely a design consideration. This and that are separate issues. I'm trying to parse not only the reasoning behind class design, but if its thematic or appropriate. The only reason I brought up Ranger was as proof that spells like Hex and Marks are designed as a necessary part of a class's power curve. Nothing more.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

The fact that the Ranger is a partial caster and the warlock is, well, they get up to 9-level magic implies to me that the Blade relies more on spells like Hex, Armor of Aggy, Hellish Rebuke, etc for damage mid battle than the Ranger does. Further, the Ranger is designed to work with TWF, Archery, or sword-shield. The Blade is designed to work with just single handed finesse weapon - there's no heavy weapons, no shields, no archery, no armor variation. The only FS you could go with is Duelist.

And I never said it was even footing, I was saying it was likely a design consideration. This and that are separate issues. I'm trying to parse not only the reasoning behind class design, but if its thematic or appropriate. The only reason I brought up Ranger was as proof that spells like Hex and Marks are designed as a necessary part of a class's power curve. Nothing more.

I'm aware from your posts on other threads that you play a finesse-based BladeLock, Mephista. (So do I.) But not all BladeLocks are the same, and several of the other fighting styles you dismissed are actually useful for some of them.

Let's take a look. (Note that I'm looking at the hypothetical case of "what if we gave Bladelocks a fighting style" here, not talking about MC-ing into Fighter.)

Archery: Not useful. Eldritch Blast is better than a ranged weapon in almost every way.

Defense: Warocks start with Light Armor only. Adding +1 AC brings their Light Armor up to par with Armor of Shadows, which frees up an Invocation slot. Not bad.

Dueling: Excellent choice for DEX BladeLocks.

Great Weapon Fighting: The Polearm Master build is popular for BladeLocks, and this fighting style helps make the most of it.

Protection: Warlocks don't have Shield proficiency, so no.

Two Weapon Fighting: Hex damage gets added to all attacks. Therefore, this is good.


Archery and Protection are the only styles for which I see no benefit. The rest are useful on some level. TWF and GWF (via Polearm Master) both have excellent synergy with Hex, the Warlock's bread and butter damage augment. So I wouldn't say Duellist is the only choice.

 

[Mephista]

I'm aware from your posts on other threads that you play a finesse-based BladeLock, Mephista. (So do I.) But not all BladeLocks are the same, and several of the other fighting styles you dismissed are actually useful for some of them.

I didn't say that not everyone plays the same. I said designed.

I did forget about Defense and the new Mariner one (the latter is really just an upgrade of the former for light armor, and flat out better for a light-armor-only class build).

That said.... Polearm Blade'lock is not viable without heavy armor, making great weapon fighting non-viable for base class. Two Weapon Fighting isn't very good, because 1) your pact blade doesn't work with two weapons, and 2) TWF and Hex both take your bonus action and you can't cast magic without Warcaster or a free hand, making it not a good option for a lot of cases. TWF just doesn't work well for the pure 'lock.

So, that's still just two options here. Either Duelist or Defense/Mariner without multiclassing or feats, both of which we can't assume when talking about fixes for the base class. And that's the point I'm working from here - the default Pact Blade is meant to be DEX-heavy with support for using a single weapon. Simply tacking on FS that "may work for some builds with appropriate feats or MCing" is not going to fix the issues.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

I didn't say that not everyone plays the same. I said designed.

I did forget about Defense and the new Mariner one (the latter is really just an upgrade of the former for light armor, and flat out better for a light-armor-only class build).

That said.... Polearm Blade'lock is not viable without heavy armor, making great weapon fighting non-viable for base class. Two Weapon Fighting isn't very good, because 1) your pact blade doesn't work with two weapons, and 2) TWF and Hex both take your bonus action and you can't cast magic without Warcaster or a free hand, making it not a good option for a lot of cases. TWF just doesn't work well for the pure 'lock.

So, that's still just two options here. Either Duelist or Defense/Mariner without multiclassing or feats, both of which we can't assume when talking about fixes for the base class. And that's the point I'm working from here - the default Pact Blade is meant to be DEX-heavy with support for using a single weapon. Simply tacking on FS that "may work for some builds with appropriate feats or MCing" is not going to fix the issues.

Hex requires a bonus action to cast, but after that, it only requires concentration, leaving your bonus action free for attacks, so I'd disagree that it's not compatible with fighting styles that use bonus action attacks.

As for Two Weapon Fighting, so what if the Pact Blade doesn't work with two weapons? It's not like a BladeLock can't carry a dagger in his off-hand. You don't even need War Caster to make this work.

Cast Hex as your bonus action; use expendable components, not an arcane focus.

Draw the dagger as your "free object interaction" for the round; this is why you didn't use an arcane focus earlier.

Move into melee range.

Attack with your Pact Blade on your action; you already had your Pact Blade ready, didn't you?

Then you're ready to use both weapons with the Hex bonus on round 2.

The Thirsting Blade Invocation works fine with this: you get your two attacks with the Pact Blade, and the off-hand attack gets its one attack on your bonus action as usual. Two Weapon Fighting does not play well with Lifedrinker; the extra damage bonus won't apply to your off-hand weapon. (Polearm Master doesn't have this problem, btw.)

The Dual Wielder feat is worth looking at here: +1 AC and improved action economy via drawing two weapons at once. It also allows non-light weapons to be dual-wielded, but finesse BladeLocks don't care about that. Defensive Duelist is interesting for the conditional AC benefit; every missed against you is one less Concentration check, and TWF BladeLock relies on Hex more than most.

I wouldn't hesitate to play this, really.