Is Swashbuckler Rogue a good dip for a Bladelock?

[Prince_Vorrel]

Been doing research for an interesting way to make a Bladelock and came across the swashbuckler in the SCAG and wondered if anyone else had tried it before/thoughts and opinions on it. You would of course go Dex for the maximum amount of AC and damage while using finesse weapons with okay charisma.

Something with a variant human like this.

Class: Rogue 3-5/Warlock X
Race: Human Variant (I want that Con profeciency bro)
Stats: str-8 dex-16 Con-16 Wisdom-10 int-10 Cha-14 (maybe switching around con and cha?)
Armor: light sadly but you'd max dex asap to help with that
Weapons: Dual-weilding for flavor and for extra procs of your Hex (helps with damage a LOT) and the synergy it has with Swashbuckler

And lastly you'd go for a more melee supportive Fiend patron (for those burst and sweet sweet temporary hp) bladelock on your spells. Your main one is of course Hex since it will ad an extra 1d6 to all of your attacks and at level 9 (3 rogue-5 lock) you get two attack actions to help proc sneak attack damage and boost sustain damage via hex AND your off-hand attack to add a bit more chip damage in with hex as well.

What do you guys think? Could this be a pretty good build? It doesn't really come online till level 5 but that seems a fair trade to me for a very intresting warlock character with plently of skills and nova/sustained damage.

[Specter]

Yep, it's good. Cunning Action in itself is good for any spellcaster.

As for armor, you can pick the Armor of Shadows invocation to get a better AC.

[Talionis]

It is. The Charisma focus of both classes. The ability to skirmish instead of tank. Rogue and Swashbuckler especially allow you to avoid opportunity attacks and disengage. It allows you to cherry pick the kills to activate your Fiendish temporary hit points.

Two weapon Dex focused fighting if not the best way is equally valid as any other melee Warlock can be.

Get Fireball, sometimes you need to soften a crowd and when that is useful it's worth one of your spell slots, and spells known. It won't be your plan A, but it's situationally so good you should have it.

Also take Booming Blade. Not your go to attack sequence, but you'll sometimes want to pin someone with the Booming Blade as a tactic.

Just remember you play like a Rogue or Swashbuckler, you aren't a tank. You may have occasions where Eldritch Blast is the way to to attack from a distance... EB I consider optional, but advised. If you take EB, you might forego Agonizing Blast and the other Invocations that augment EB. You are building a Skirmisher and while you might still be able to EB in a pinch maybe you didn't train or focus to learn to be as good with EB as the average Warlock who always takes EB. I'm running on to say, you can choose to invest in EB a lot, little or not at all and they are all viable and fun with this build.

[Prince_Vorrel]

snip

Id probably take devil sight and agonizing blast as my level two invocations. I like the idea of having a good ranged ability on a skirmisher. Especially with a rogues kiting abilities.

And of course i get fireball! Sometimes the situation simply calls for more explosions! :D

[JakOfAllTirades]

I thoroughly enjoyed playing a Bladelock Swashbuckler. The synergy is excellent for a dex-based Bladelock.

I wonder how well this would work for a Hexblade....

[Prince_Vorrel]

I wonder how well this would work for a Hexblade....

It'd be really REALLY good/efficient. You would use a shield as the hexblade curse eats up bonus actions pretty quickly and to keep up a decent AC and you only heal when you kill things instead of the far better temp HP but you get to put EVERYTHING into charisma which ups spell casting AND your to-hit/damage.

Overall I'd say a hexblade/Swashbuckler would be a more durable more frontline warrior instead of my more skirmisher higher dps build im currently going for. With less blasty spells too as your not a fiend patron.