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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ancalagon" data-source="post: 7360797" data-attributes="member: 23">Hello So I’ve been thinking a lot about the character concept of the “gish” – the “fighter-mage” type.  There are many ways of executing this concept in 5e, but the recent introduction of the Hexblade has made me wonder if I really understand the concept.So a gish is a character who can fight (usually melee but not a must) and use magic.  Clearly, she can’t be as good a warrior as a fighting-specialized class, or as good a caster as a casting-specialized class, that would be unbalanced.  So she’s a second-rate warrior *and* a second rate caster… not great. So what does she do then to be useful? 1:  She uses her magic to enhance her fighting 2:  She uses her fighting to enhance her magic 3:  There is no interaction between the two (jack of all trades) # 3 will result in a versatile character, but one that is rather underwhelming – the fighters and barbarians will always be better at the actual fighting, and the pure casters will have much more firepower/utility magic than her.   #2 I don’t know how that works… I guess you could say that the sturdier frame of the gish (vs, say, a wizard) means that less spells have to be devoted to defence (no need to cast mage armor for example) and she can therefore focus solely on offensive and utility magic?  You can’t sword a better fireball.  #1 is the classic gish – use magic to make yourself a better warrior.  This is usually with spells that enhance mobility, survivability (defense spells) and offensive potential (things like haste, not magic missile).  A gish therefore requires access to such spells. I think that clearly, #1 is the way to go, although probably most people will also add a little bit of utility and offensive/control magic to the mix for variety/versatility.   So with that said… how does a single-class Hexblade fit in all this? … I’m not sure.  The warlock has the advantage of being a sort-off full spellcaster, as in they have access to high level spells, but at the same time the number of slots is limited, so not really.   Clearly she has access to spells that can boost her defenses (shield I’m looking at you) but her spell slot pool is very shallow – those spells will run out very fast, and it’s a shame to waste one of these few (potentially high level slots) on shield.   Ok then, she could *not* use her spell slots, relying on her armor and cha-enhanced swordfighting for combat damage (reserving the spell slots for utility or a “big” spell like hunger of hadar or fear).  But then her performance is kinda meh – the curse does help, but… wouldn’t she simply be better off blasting away with eldritch blast from range? Instead, the “best” use of the Hexblade becomes a dip, to give the curse, access to the shield spell and eldritch blast, shield and armor and especially that sweet cha-bonus to fighting, to *another class* (paladin and bard college of sword in particular).   And that really bothers me :/It's also worth noting that the hex blade will have to sink a lot of her invocations into "fighting " ones, losing a lot of the tricks and versatility of the class... Am I wrong here? Did I miss mid-high level features of the hexblade that really make a difference? Is there an easy solution to fix the Hexblade?   Ancalagon</blockquote>

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