Bladelocks Too are Sky Blue: A guide to the CurseBringer Warlock (WIP)

[Vespa]

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[Vespa]

SO WHY BLADELOCK?
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Pros:
Many passive benefits in invocations
Unless you build terribly wrong you’ll always have a decent ranged option in eldritch blast
Great at will range and melee damage
Spells like armor of agathys, hellish rebuke, etc are great additions to a melee caster that you won't get on any other class
Spell slots recharging on short rests synergizes well with full casters and other fighter classes - you either recharge all your resources on a short rest or have your warlock slots to fall back on when your long rest slots are gone.
Though you don’t have many, your spells hit hard and help your strikes hit harder.
Slightly more health than a bladesinger or stone sorcerer.
Probably the highest burst damage of any spellblade.


Neutral:
Obviously not as tanky health wise as a regular martial gish, but this goes for any spellblade.


Cons:
Very low spell slot count. You have to go out of your way to take short rests or else you’ll fall behind with resources.
Low documentation. Finding good information on warlocks, especially on the ua stuff, is really hard. It’s why I made this guide :p
You won’t be casting spells as much as other spellblades. Your spells are meant to supplement your attacks. If you want the sort of spellblade that slings a fireball one turn and slices the next, you probably want a bladesinger or stone sorcerer.
Somewhat MAD. Especially cursebringer. You’re not going to have much room for Feats, because you’re going to need a lot of ASIs. Invocations do make up for this a little.

[Vespa]

Let’s go over the basics:

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Hit dice: D8

Better than most spellblades, but still not as good as the paladin’s d10. You won’t be a tank until 10 warlock, but you definitely won’t be too vulnerable staying in the front lines for a round or two once in awhile.

Proficiencies:

Armor: Light

For a hexblade things are a bit different, since we get medium armor/shield proficiency or heavy if we start as another class. We’ll touch on this more later, but generally this means we won't need much dex.

Weapons: Simple

If you’re taking pact of the blade, obviously this doesn’t apply. If you aren’t taking pact of the blade then uh...You’re reading the wrong guide.

SPELLS AND SPELL SLOTS:

So, let's talk about spell slots for a second, because there seems to be a lot of confusion about warlocks. Let's put it as simple as possible: Unlike a wizard, a warlock does not have multiple levels of spell slots, just one, and they cast all their spells at that level. For example, a 10th level warlock casts all their spells at level 5, and has 2 spell slots. If they cast armor of agathys, they cast it as if it was a 5th level spell and use 1 spell slot. Simple, right?

So, what spells do they get, exactly? Well, let's go over them!
But first, a disclaimer: Warlock spell choices are vastly different than that of any other spellcaster. With only 2 spell slots, some choices that would be insta-picks for most casters are just terrible for warlocks. Let's get into it.


Booming blade: If you have the warcaster feat this hits really hard. You do a melee attack and then add thunder damage, and then the target takes additional damage if they move. When you get extra attack this gets outshined but with warcaster this is great. This is even better for tanky sword and board blade.

Greenflame Blade: Similar to booming blade: You do a melee attack and it does extra fire damage, and then more fire damage to another target. Good cleave damage but not often better than multi attack.

Blade Ward: Use an action to give yourself advantage against non magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Not really great because it uses an action. I wouldn't bother taking it, it will rarely be useful.

Chill touch: A ranged spell attack to deal 1d8 necrotic damage and stop regeneration of hit points until the start of your next turn. This can really mess up something that depends on health regen like a vampire or someone who's getting pocketed by a cleric. It might just be more useful to outdamage the regen though.

Eldritch Blast: What warlock doesn't have this? It's a great damage cantrip. 1d10 force per beam, ranged spell attack. A damage type that almost nothing resists that does consistent damage. This isn't your bread and butter like it is for a sorlock, but it gives you a good ranged alternative.

Friends: Gain advantage on charisma checks against the target for a minute, but after that they know what you did and become violent towards you. For when you really need to pass a charisma check temporarily, but don't care about them being pissed at you. Depends on your character too.

Mage hand: So many uses for this. It's pretty much limited by your imagination. Always a good choice.

Minor illusion: The king of creativity cantrips. A lot of people claim this to be the most useful cantrip, but again it really depends on what you do with it. It's really fun.

Poison Spray: There's not much point in taking this - eldritch blast is gonna start out damaging it pretty quickly. This is good to take if you're concerned about disadvantage, though.

Prestidigitation: A lot of utility in one cantrip. I especially like making keys with the nonmagical trinket ability. I always take this one, it has infinite uses without much brain power needed.

True Strike: You gain advantage on your first attack roll as an action. I mean, you might as well just attack this turn and then also the next. Don't take it.
Armor of Agathys: This one scales really great. 5 temp health per spell level, and when a creature hits you they take 5 cold damage per spell level. That's 25 damage with a 5th level slot just for getting hit, and if they don't do the full 25 they'll have to take it again. Adds a good amount of survivability.

Arms of hadar: A 10ft radius strength saving throw or 2d6 +1d6 per spell level necrotic damage and no reactions until the target's next turn on a failure. I suppose this is a good way to hit everything around you and then run from them, but as a cursebringer you have a lot of teleportation options.
Charm person: Always fun. Wisdom saving throw or the target is charmed by you and regards you as a friendly acquaintance. If you want to pull cons for money this helps a lot. Good for getting the truth out of people, too. It's hour duration will serve you well. Worth the warlock spell slot though? H̶a̶r̶d̶l̶y̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶.̶ As user Laserlight has pointed out you are hardly ever going to use Charm person in a dangerous place, so it's likely you'll get a short rest before you go out adventuring again. That makes this a bit more worth it.

Comprehend languages: Situational and not really worth the spell slot. Name of the spell kind of tells you what it does. There are better choices.

Expeditious retreat: You can dash as a bonus action. Good if you need to bolt, but you'll have options later on that are better for running.

Hellish rebuke: 2d10 + 1d10 fire per spell level above 1st on a dex saving throw as a reaction to taking damage from something within 60ft. Nice. A good amount of damage that deters things from hitting you.

Hex: A very good spell that only warlock get. Everytime you do damage to a creature affected by this you can add another 1d6 necrotic to it. you also get to give them disadvantage on one type of ability check. I usually choose strength in case someone wants to grapple or dexterity if we ware in dangerous terrain. The damage piles up.

Illusory script: Won't ever be worth the slot. Use a pen and paper.

Protection from evil and good: Protection against one type of creature, giving them disadvantage against whoever you cast this on and giving them immunity to charm, fright, or being possessed by them. Situational, but good when it comes up.

Unseen servant: Fun, but again not worth the slot. It's like a slightly better mage hand.

Witch bolt: it's a cool spell and does decent damage at low level but unfortunately the sustained damage doesn't scale with slot level, making it fall off in damage very quickly.

Cloud of daggers: Cruddy damage in a very small area. Not worth the slot.

Crown of Madness: On a failed wis save you can force a creature to make a melee attack against a creature close to them that you choose on their turn. unfortunately, you cant make them move and if they don't make an attack then the spell ends.

Darkness: Combined with devil's sight this spell is monstrous. Vanilla it's just a cloud of darkness 30ft wide. With devil's sight you can see inside it but no one else can, giving you advantage on attacks against them. they also have disadvantage on attacks against you. Makes you very tanky and you hit much more often, but remember that your teammates won't be able to see. As long as you position yourself correctly you should be A-OK, and by A-OK I mean a huge boon to your team, keeping a lot of heat off of them. Combine this with booming blade and enemies will have a really hard time dealing with you.

Earthbind: Strength saving throw or lose flying speed. You won;t get enough uses out of this to justify learning it. Most flying creatures have good strength anyways, this will never work on a dragon.

Enthrall: Target has disadvantage on perception against anyone except for you. Might as well just hex the target for wisdom checks. Not worth the slot.

Hold person: This scales incredibly well with your slots, allowing you to paralyze up to 4 humanoids. On a failed wis save they are paralyzed, meaning you have advantage on melee attacks and if you hit you auto-crit. This is devastating - you'll annihilate anything you hit that is affected by this.

Invisibility: Never bad. Has a lot of utility even outside of stealth.

Mirror image: Makes you uninhabitable once you get armor of shadows. Basically gives you 3 clones that can each take a hit for you. Best part: No concentration. Edit: Yeah, the clone things have terrible AC, and they'll likely get popped on misses. I usually use this more against really tough enemies that I know have ridiculous + to hit, because they just eat all the damage. Example: I used my padlock in a battle royale and used this to eat about 200+ damage from the rouge/fighter I was fighting. All four of their attacks hit my AC, and it would have downed me for sure, but because my mirror images ate it and the rest was absorbed by armor of hexes I took nothing from it. Don't use this in a mob battle, it won't be worth it.

Misty step: 30ft teleport as a bonus action. It's only a verbal component, so you can teleport out of some pretty sticky situations. Helps your mobility a bit too. Just don't use it too often, it doesn't do much for a spell slot.

Ray of enfeeblement: Ranged spell attack to make the target do half damage on strength based melee attacks. They get to do a con save every turn to shake the effect off. Unfortunately most creatures that have good strength also have good con, but it really cripples them while it's up.

Shatter: Decent damage in a decent radius. Destroys constructs. At low levels this is a decent choice. High up you might as well cast cone of cold/destructive wave.

Spider climb: Climb on walls. Fun, but not worth the concentration or the slot.

Suggestion: A creature has to follow a reasonable course of action that you designate on a failed wisdom save. Can be encounter changing if you word it right, but some dm's are really harsh on wording with this one. I love it.



Counterspell: As a reaction you can essentially nullify a spell of 3rd level or lower or have a chance to nullify a higher level one. It's a great spell but unfortunately using a whole warlock spell slot is just too costly for this. I usually learn it for when my party really need its, like if we are all on low health and a fireball gets thrown in the middle of us. It'll save you but only use it if absolutely necessary.

Dispel magic: Counterspell for magic effects that are already set. Same idea but used as an action. the advantage this has is that you can get rid of effects already cast before the battle that you couldn't see. I prefer counterspell as it usually see more use.

Fear: Making enemies have disadvantage on you? Great! Making them run away from you? Not as great! I wouldn't take this.

Fly: The utility that comes from having a fly speed is great. You wont use this spell often, but when you do it will be very useful. it's good to have.

Gaseous form: You gain resistance to nonmagical weapon attacks and advantage on a few saving throws, but you are much slower. A good panic button, but I think I'd rather just teleport away with dimension door next spell level. Decent for now.

Hunger of hadar: Targets inside it's radius are blinded, it's difficult terrain, and they take a good deal of damage while inside. If you put this in a room of unsuspecting targets it'll take them a long while to find their way out, which could result in a lot of damage. If you have the means to shove them back inside it gets even better.

Hypnotic pattern: All creatures within a 30ft cube need to make a wisdom save or be incapacitated and have their speed reduced to 0. The great part of this spell is that there's no save afterwards, they have to either take damage or be woken up, which means another creature would have to waste their turn. Worth the spell slot, because this can affect a LOT of enemies.

Magic circle: Very situational and very hard to use with it's 1 minute casting time. It's benefits are great but you'll find it hard to justify the slot usage.

Major image: Pretty real looking 20ft cube illusion. Limited by your creativity and how dumb your dm makes the npcs. Can be either useless or encounter changing.

Remove curse: Here's a secret: If you want to really mess up a hexblade as a dm throw this at them. As a player, though, it doesn't come in handy too often, unless your dm really likes throwing crazy items at you. Which they might, considering you are a warlock.

Tongues: Speaking the same language as someone else isn't often super encounter changing, and if it is you don't really need to be the one in the group to have the skill. Let your bard do the talking, you can do the cursing when it doesn't go right :P

Vampiric touch: This is a good spell economy wise as you can repeat the action every round. It's not very much damage but the heal can keep you going if you really need it. It might be better just to kill with cursebringer/hexcurse for the heals though.


Banishment: When you really need to weaken an encounter this is how you do it. The target needs to succeed on a charisma saving throw or be sent to another plane for a minute or until you lose concentration. Also, if the target is native to another plane this is basically a save or die - they get sent back permanently. This can be a really good spell.

Blight: 8d8 damage, more effective against plants. Unless you are playing a very plant heavy game, you already have high damage in your smites, so you don't really need this.

Dimension Door: This is a really good spell. It hurts to use the spell slot for it but it fixes a lot of your range problems. It's a 500ft teleport, and you can bring one willing creature of the same size with you. It's a great panic button and the enemy spellcaster will **** their pants when you bamf right beside them.

Elemental Bane: It's a semi-decent spell but I'm not sure if I'd want to use such a high level slot to cast it. It basically removes resistance of an elemental damage type and does an extra 2d6 damage of the type. I can't see a situation in which this would help you though. A phoenix sorcerer? Maybe.

Hallucinatory Terrain: Being spooky with illusions isn't really your thing. This particular illusion isn't very good, anyways.

Contact Other Plane: If you really wanna talk to your patron, sure?? DM's usually just let you talk to them when you want to or during a short rest. I don't really know what other use you'd have for this spell that isn't super specific.

Dream: You could use this to drive someone a little insane. This is a grim spell. It does very little damage and you'd have to us a slot every night to make it effective, which I guess is pretty easy with spell slots on short rests. I don't know how actually useful this can be, and I think you'd need an evil alignment to back up it's use.

Hold monster: Now we're talking. Hold person but on anyone. Now no one is safe. Unfortunately, this only works on one enemy and doesn't scale like hold person, which affects 4 people at this level.

Scrying: This is a really good recon spell, and you get the benefit of using it often because of your spell slot regeneration. You can keep tabs on a lot of people with this. This can save you a lot of time trying to get a hold of people, take it.


This is where things get different. Past level 5, Warlocks cannot "learn" anything higher than 5th level spells. Instead, they get "mystic arcanums" which give them one cast of a higher level spell without expending a spell slot. But after that, no more 6th level spells. It's a weird system but at least it doesn't use your spell slots. You need to be very, very careful though. you only get one pick for level, and if you pick poorly you are stuck until you can swap it next level.


Arcane Gate: This has obvious uses, I just don't know what they are? It's just unlimited dimension doors for ten minutes. It's sort of like a portal gun, but they have to be facing each other, be off the ground, and be perpendicular. If you happen to start a furniture moving business in your campaign then this is THE spell for you.

Circle of death: At first you think this is a bad spell, because it does less damage than a fireball of it's level. And then you see the radius. 60ft RADIUS?! Unfortunately it's ridiculous size is a pro and a con. When is this going to be applicable? Maybe if you play in a large scale war based campaign? It's gonna be overkill most of the time, and the damage isn't super great.

Conjure Fey: Good, until you lose concentration and it turns on you and now you have to fight that red dragon AND a unicorn. This is often not going to be beneficial to you.

Create undead: This costs a lot of money but having three ghouls can be devastating if your enemies have low con. If a ghoul hits the target has to do a dc 10 con save or they are paralyzed. That is really, really good for you. Make sure you kill the ghouls if you can't recast the spell, though, or they'll turn on you. DM's also hate conjured npcs a lot of the time so you might not have much luck with this. The gouls also have very low hp so they won't long. Basically, good benefit, but very hard to use effectively.

Eyebite: A couple cool effects that trigger on a wisdom save. you can make a target sleep, frightened, or give them disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. It's ok.

Flesh to stone: A SCARY SPELL. On a failed con save you begin to petrify someone. It takes a long time to set in, but this is really a triple save or die spell. Can be used to great effect outside of combat. This is a great interrogation tool. But...It won't often do anything that another spell couldn't, and it does it a lot slower too.

Investiture of flame: Immunity to fire damage, resistance to cold damage, anything within 5ft of you takes 1d10 fire damage and you get a low damage agnazzar's scorcher as an action. Good spell slot economy, but the effects aren't super crazy. One day that immunity to fire damage will let you wreck an encounter, though.

Investiture of Ice: Similiar to the last one. Immune to cold, res. to fire. Difficult terrain made by ice or snow doesn't cost you extra movement. Ground around you in a 10ft radius is difficult terrain, moving with you. And you get a 4d6 cone of cold damage, halving it's speed on a failed save.

Investiture of Stone: Resistance to nonmagical melee, knock enemies prone in a 15ft radius with a dex save, move through earth/stone terrain without using extra movement, and the ability to move through solid earth and stone as if it was air, as long as you don't end your turn in it. Some good bonuses, but most important enemies will have magic weapons at this point. If you could stay in stone this would be amazing.

Investiture of Wind: Fly speed of 60ft, ranged attacks have disadvantage against you, you can create a 15ft cube of air that deals 2d10 bludg. damage and knocks a target 10ft away on a failed con save. Nice bonuses, but the damage is bad and flying doesn't help your build very much.

Mass suggestion: Suggestion, but it affects a lot of creatures. This can turn a peaceful protest into an uprising. This is a very powerful spell if you get creative.

True seeing: Gain truesight. Helps you see through illusions and invisibility, and it's not concentration.


Etherealness: Great recon ability. You can just walk into someone's room and listen to their conversations. No combat application, though.

Finger of death: A good chunk of damage on a failed save and the possibility of a cool zombie that is under your command forever. How good this spell is depends on your DM's interpretation of zombie. Are they just a regular old zombie, or do they keep some of their abilities? Probably the former, but you never know.

Forcecage: Amazing spell. No save, you just put an area in a box for a while, and it isn't concentration either. Costs a lot though. You can only really teleport out, so a fighter is just kinda stuck. This is a good choice.

Plane shift: The other really good choice. If you watch critical role you know this is a team saving spell. The ultimate panic button, and great for travelling long distances. It's also a save or die spell that targets an uncommon save: charisma. If they fail they are whisked away to another plane and have to find their way back on their own.


Demiplane: You create your own tiny mini plane that pretty much only you can enter with a casting of this spell. A nice way of protecting your stuff. Or sealing someone who wronged you away forever. This spell has some uses, but you have to be creative to find a lot of them.

Dominate monster: This spell can be very powerful. Wisdom saving throw or the creature is charmed. You can tell the creature what you want it to do vaguely as a free action or give it a precise command as a full action. Each time it takes damage, though it gets to retry the save. This can really turn the tides of battle, even if you only get to charm a target for one turn. Imagine making a red dragon nuke it's worshipper army and completely wiping it. Or dominating a powerful politician and making him say something scandalous.

Feeblemind: You gotta be evil to use this, or at least be using it against someone evil, because this spell is all kinds of messed up. The target immediately takes 4d6 psychic damage and must make an int saving throw. If they fail, their int and charisma become 1. They basically can't do anything. This lasts a month, and even then they have to make the save again or else they have to suffer another month. This could really ruin someones life.

Glibness: Just gonna copypasta from the wiki since it's so simple: Until the spell ends, when you make a Charisma check, you can replace the number you roll with a 15. Additionally, no matter what you say, magic that would determine if you are telling the truth indicates that you are being truthful. With your decent charisma that's pretty cool, but a passed charisma check doesn't often do anything crazy. Not great for an 8th level spell.

Power Word Stun: If the creature has 150HP or less they are stunned. At the end of each of it's turns it needs to make a con save or continue to be stunned. At this level a stun at below 150 health basically means death. And no concentration. Just hope your DM gives you a good idea when something is low on health, cause if your dm is sneaky this gets a lot harder to use.


Astral Projection: This is a really weird spell?? It's kind of like plane shift but way more expensive? I mean it;s way cooler but bringing your whole party to the astral plane doesn't have a ton of uses. Leaving your physical body vulnerable is also bad.

Foresight: Hell yes. Advantage on practically EVERYTHING, everything has disadvantage attacking you, and you can't be surprised. Just remember that it has a 1 minute casting time. I forgot in my own campaign and felt pretty bad about it later on.

Imprisonment: A damn expensive spell, and for good reason. This is a save or seal spell in most cases. It's just an assortment of effects that make the target go away for good, or until you need them to come back. You won't really need this more than once.

Power word kill: If something has less than 100 health you just kill it. Y'know, when you first start DND this is like the first spell you learn that sounds OP, but in reality it just does less than a 100 damage. This also depends on if your DM gives you hints on enemy hp.

True Polymorph: There are a lot of uses for this spell, especially for a devil's sight warlock. Conjure a chair into a Glabrezu, make it cast darkness, run into it as both of you nuke down your enemies. Use it on yourself and become a planetar and suddenly you are the party healer. Turn a tree into a young green dragon to fly into battle on. So many options here.



...Welp, I just realized you probably won't go all the way to level 17 as a warlock and don;t really need these spell ratings, but hey, here they are.

[Vespa]

CLASS FEATURES:
Invocations
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So, I already mentioned those fancy invocations. Let’s start with those!

Invocations are like passive abilities that are meant to make up for the lack of spell slots a warlock has. Some of these give at will abilities, others give the ability to cast certain spells using a spell slot. As a melee warlock, a lot of these invocations are going to be used to augment your weapon attacks. There’s a hell of a lot, so I’ll just go over the ones you might be interested in.

(Note: As of UA 06/05/17 a lot of prerequisites for invocations have been changed to make them less restricted to subclass. Make sure your dm is working with those rules or else some of these might not be available to you)


Agonizing blast: Gold for regular warlocks, sky blue for you. +CHA to each beam of eldritch blast. If you want to have strong at will range damage on top of your melee, this is for you. Here’s the thing though - as a melee warlock your charisma might not be as high as a blaster, so less damage on hit and less likelihood to hit. That makes this invocation not quite as good, but it’s still great to begin with.

Beguiling influence: Gain proficiency in deception and persuasion. With your high charisma you could potentially function as a party face. I don’t think this slot is really worth it, but it’s not the worst choice.

Burning hex: Fire CHA mod to a target plagued by hexblade’s curse as a bonus action. It’s almost no damage, but it’s unavoidable unless the target has immunity to fire. I feel like this could be built to do something cool.

Chilling hex: A bit more practical than burning hex. Bonus action to do CHA mod cold damage to all enemies within 5ft of a target with hex curse on them. Can do a tiny bit of chip damage to a bunch of enemies. Meh.

Curse Bringer: Your bread and butter. This thing makes you a monster. First of all, it gives you a greatsword that your invocations can boost and you can resummon, meaning you can never lose it. Greatsword builds are already great, so that’s a fantastic bonus by itself, but your invocations can boost your sustained damage even further than a regular great weapon master build, which I’d highly suggest here. Additionally, if you reduce a target affected by hexblade’s curse to 0 hp, you can immediately move it as a free action to a new target. This potentially gives you a better version your 14th level hexblade class feature at level 3. Now here comes the kicker.

“When you hit a creature with this weapon you can expend a spell slot to deal an additional 2d8 [magical] slashing damage to the target per spell level, and you can reduce the creature’s speed to 0 feet until the end of your next turn.”

Not only do you get a smite - You get a smite that scales better than the paladin’s. As the wording states, you can choose to use this feature after you hit - meaning you can wait for that juicy crit to get the biggest bang for your buck. Not only that - whatever you nuke has their speed reduced to 0 until the end of your next turn. This ability is devastating at high levels. At warlock level 9 this does 10d8 damage, doubled on a crit, and that’s without the actual weapon attack and any additional modifiers. Not only that - because of hexblade’s curse you crit way more often, giving the optimal conditions to use this ability much more often than you’d think. I’m tempted to make a rating above gold just for this ability. We’ll definitely touch more on this one.

Devil’s sight: Probably the most iconic/infamous warlock thing. Superior darkvision which lets you see 120ft in magical and non magical darkness. This is sky blue because of the good old devil’s sight + darkness cheese, where you can cast darkness on yourself and run into battle to get advantage on attacks while your enemies have disadvantage as they cannot see. I’d honestly advise against using this. Is it really good? Yeah, of course, for you. For your party, though...They have to sit around and do nothing as they are stuck staring at a black cloud, listening to you steal their fun. Be considerate of your fellow players, folks.

Eldritch smite: 1d8 force + 1d8 per spell level and knocks the target prone if they take the damage. Combine this with curse bringer and you become busted. Combine this and cursebringer with a couple levels of paladin and you’ll probably get a stern talking from your dm (20d8 doubled on a crit...not much can live that) combine that with a few levels of rogue and… you get the idea. In all seriousness if you aren’t planning on taking cursebringer you’ll want this, otherwise you really don’t need both, it’s overkill.

Fiendish Vigor: False life at will. You can basically just recast until you get the full 8 hp bonus. This is mostly just for lower levels where you don’t have your tank abilities yet.

Improved(5th level), Superior(9th), and ultimate pact weapon(15th): +1, 2, and 3 to your pact weapon respectively. Consider this an invocation tax if you aren’t going to bind a magic item, especially for cursebringers.

Lifedrinker(12th): When you hit a creature with your pact weapon you deal an extra bit of necrotic damage equal to your cha modifier. Very nice if you can get your CHA past 16 or get a magic item that can. Doesn’t seem like a lot of damage, but consider how this will add up during the course of one longer fight.

Relentless hex(5th level): You can teleport to a target affected by hexblade’s curse if you are within 30ft (line of sight) of them as a bonus action. You just zip around the battlefield. This gives you so much more mobility and makes it a lot harder for things to run away from you. Kill something as a cursebringer, move your curse, teleport, kill again. You’ll hardly ever have to worry about opportunity attacks.

Repelling blast: 10ft forced movement away from you on a hit with eldritch blast. You aren’t a blaster but this one is fun and can lead to a lot of combos an environmental shenanigans. Always fun.

Sculptor of flesh(7th level): The one spell slot invocation I think is sometimes worth it. Polymorph is a spell with a lot of applications, so I think it’s worth the slot. You sort of have one extra invocation slot left after all the ones I consider mandatory, so this could fill it with this if you wanted. I think there are better choices, but this is still a good one.

Shroud of shadow(15th level): Invisibility at will! You could just get a ring of invisibility, but this is still great!

Thirsting blade: Second attack with pact weapon. Mandatory before multiclassing or if you don’t plan on it, but once you reach level 5 with paladin or fighter it’s useless as multi attacks don't stack. You have to keep in mind that this isn’t like extra attack. You can only attack twice, you can’t take actions like grapple or shove, unfortunately making this worse than the standard extra attack.

Tomb of levistus(5th level): Kind of like Mei from overwatch’s ice block. As a reaction triggered by you taking damage you can give yourself 10 * warlock level temp hp, which takes as much of the triggering damage as possible. You do gain vulnerability to fire damage, however, and you are incapacitated with a speed of 0. All of these effects end at the end of your next turn - Which means you will be vulnerable for a round. You can only use it once before having to take a short or long rest. The key to this is that it’s a reaction when you take damage, so if something rolls a nat20 against you you can absorb it this round and live to the next.

This is a good panic button if you are about to take a really high amount of damage or really need to avoid going unconscious for a round. Be very wary, though. If your temp hp wears off turn 1 you are still “stunned” and open to an unblocked attack. I like this invocation because it lets you tank high level abilities from other spellcasters or boss monsters at high levels and laugh from the other side of your ice wall as they cry over their lost nth level spell slot. At level 10 that’s 100 temp hp, which is definitely nothing to scoff at, and it only gets higher from there

Witch sight(15th level): Discount true sight. I usually don't take this until I get past level 17ish and I have invocations piling up. It’s definitely useful but there are other more necessary invocations to take first.

Here’s an example of what I would grab for invocations at level 20.

W/ Extra attack from multiclass(6 levels paladin/fighter, 14 warlock)

Lifedrinker, Cursebringer, Relentless hex, Superior pact weapon, Tomb of levistus

W/O Extra attack (20 Warlock)

Lifedrinker, Cursebringer, Relentless hex, Ultimate pact weapon, Tomb of levistus, Thirsting blade, eldritch smite, devil’s sight

[Vespa]

CLASS FEATURES:
Hexblade Features and Spells

That’s enough about invocations. Let’s move on to the hexblade class features. The subclass features are kind of scattered to be honest - as a cursebringer some are completely useless to you, some are situational, and some are completely vital to your function.


Hex warrior:
A fantastic class feature which unfortunately won’t help you much as cursebringer, especially if you multiclass. You get to use CHA for one handed melee weapon to hit/damage. You use a greatsword and your strength is likely going to be higher than your charisma so this doesn’t help you. Additionally, you get proficiency in shields and medium armor, which is good if you don’t multiclass, but otherwise you already get all this + heavy armor.

Hexblade’s curse:
Skyblue at its base, gold with cursebringer because of not only the synergy but the additional uses you get from the invocation. Expanded crit range(19,20), extra damage (+prof) and a heal (warlock level + CHA) makes this an amazing ability, synergizing very well with the huge dice damage you deal with smites and making you just a tiny bit tankier. With cursebringer you can move it with a free action. It’s amazing.

Shadow hound(6th level):
I moved this from purple to black because, though it is situational, it is extremely good at what it does if you are creative with it. This is basically a tracking device that you can plant on someone within 60ft as a bonus action. The important part is A) That they don’t know it’s on them, they just have a vague feeling of dread, and B) It doesn’t have a duration or turn off range, aside from the target having to be on the same plane. You can leave this on for days to keep a track of the big bad. It definitely has its uses. Ignoring cover doesn’t really help you unless you have a few EB invocations, but any buff to your ranged attacks are welcome.

Armor of shadows(10th level):
Targets affected by hexblade’s curse don’t hit you with attack rolls if you roll higher than a 4 on a d6. This one is pretty insane. This makes you a 1v1 monster. This is where you get tanky, especially if you chose to multiclass to paladin and took enough levels for aura of protection(+CHA mod on all saving throws and 50% chance for an attack roll to miss on top of your 19 ac. You could even add one level of sorc for shield and you’ll live forever).

Master of hexes(level 14):
A̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶e̶x̶b̶l̶a̶d̶e̶’̶s̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶t̶.̶ UNLIMITED USES OF CURSE PER SHORT REST. A lot better than I thought, sorry! As a cursebringer this isn't as great for you since you can move your curse, but this does fix the frustrating problem of when something with curse on it runs away and you can't kill it. For non cursebringers this is gold, as it makes you incredibly more tanky with armor of shadows and it's benefits are always fantastic.

You also get a few spells you can choose to learn, let’s go over those. Most of them aren’t very good until you get to the last two, which add some great aoe damage to your arsenal. Here they are:


1st level:

Shield: +5 AC as a reaction in response to being hit. On any other character shield is a gold spell, but for you a warlock spell slot is just too costly. If you multiclassed to paladin, though, you can cast it in one of your paladin slots, making this much better, but you still don’t have a lot of slots there either. Be stingy with using this or you’ll drain yourself dry very quickly.

Wrathful smite: Use a bonus action to add damage to your next melee hit and fear them. I went into detail with this spell in the paladin section. It’s the best bonus action smite but it’s not worth a warlock spell slot. If you want to know more look further down in the guide :)
2nd:

Branding: Extra damage on next melee hit and they cannot go invisible. It’s not really worth the spell slot.
Magic weapon: Your weapon becomes a +1 or +2 etc if upcast. Not worth it since you probably have the invocation for +X pact weapons.

3rd:

Blink:.̶.̶.̶M̶i̶r̶r̶o̶r̶ ̶i̶m̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶s̶.̶ ̶T̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶.̶ ̶ I'm dumb and can't read! Blink is non concentration, so this is quite a bit better. Thanks to Zalabim for pointing this out. Do keep in mind that this usually just means you are putting more pressure onto your teammates though, as you dissapear and now there are less things for the enemies to hit. Suddenly the wizard in the back row looks a bit more tasty.

Elemental weapon: See magic weapon. Same idea with a little extra damage. Not really worth it.

4th:

Phantasmal killer: Bad damage for a 4th level slot and single target frighten isn’t great. Not worth it.

Staggering smite: Bonus action to add damage and give disadvantage on attack rolls/ability checks and the target can't take reactions. Nice, but still not worth the slot and concentration.

5th:

Cone of cold: Con save 8d8 cold damage in a 60ft cone. In a sea of bad choices, a diamond in the rough. I shed a single tear. Cone of cold is basically the cousin of the fireball you miss out on from not being a fiend patron warlock. It does great AOE damage and it’s range is hilariously large in play. This will clear a room of mobs. Take it, or take...

Destructive wave: 30ft radius of you, con save or 5d6 radiant or necrotic + 5d6 thunder damage and you can choose who takes it. The other diamond in the rough. You either want cone of cold or this. Destructive wave does more damage on average, does a less commonly resisted damage type, and knocks targets prone, which gives your teammates advantage on melee attacks. The best part is that you choose who you hit, so you don't have to be scared of hitting your teammates. The downside of this over cone of cold is that it has a smaller range and is centered on yourself, so you have to position yourself more carefully to make it effective.

[Vespa]

RACE, STATS, AND YOUR ROLE


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So, lets go over what a hexblade does once more in greater detail. A hexblade does devastating burst damage because of not just cursebringer but because of how their damage works in general.There are so many dice added to one attack that a crit turns just one hit into a beyond encounter turning blow. With hexblade’s curse you crit on 19’s and 20’s, meaning that with advantage you have a bit below a 20% chance to crit on an attack. Then, after you crit, you can choose to use cursebringer’s smite and deal 10d8 extra damage to your attack, and all dice added to an attack roll are doubled.

Combine this with the 2d6 from the greatsword, your strength mod, the invocation lifedrinker which adds your charisma mod (necrotic) to the damage, Hexblade’s curse which adds your proficiency to the damage, possibly having hex up which deals an additional 1d8 necrotic damage, and great weapon master (+10) and you’re looking at some absolutely ridiculous damage, and that’s just the first hit. This is comparable to a legendary level rogue, and while we don’t get to do it nearly as often, we do it get it much, much earlier.

But again, I’m getting ahead of myself. What do all these things mean, and what do they do? Well, let’s tackle them one at a time.

RACE AND STATS

First off, what makes a good hexblade at their base? Well, let’s see. We want a front line fighter who can dodge hits and take the ones they don’t dodge, and hit back twice as hard. Not only that - we only get a few spells per short rest, so we want to make sure our save dcs are high enough to make those spells count. That considered, we can see what stats we’re going to need. Warlocks use Charisma to cast spells, so we’re going to need a good deal of that. Strength is what we need to use to hit with our greatsword. In my opinion, a hexblade is much, much more focused on melee, so I think it’s much more important to max strength first. As a result we will aim for the highest strength possible at level 1. Additionally, we want to have high CON and DEX for health and AC from our medium armor.

The two races that compliment this well are half elf and variant human.

Variant human: The +1 to two stats means that we can start with 16 in CHA and STR. Additionally, the starting feat lets us take something like blade mastery, which is a great feat giving us a +6 to hit in total at level 1. It lets us take GWM later on without much regret because we already have the equivalent of +18 strength aside from damage at level 1. Alternatively, you can take GWM at level 1, but I find it's not as useful (You are never going to hit with the -5 to hit early on), but it does get it out of the way and let you pump strength sooner. The extra proficiency is a nice little bonus too.
Half elf: Half elf gives a +2 to CHA and two other stats (probably CON and STR) which helps with our MAD greatly. Missing the level 1 feat hurts, but it is made up for by all the benefits that come with being an elf, (Dark vision, fey ancestry, etc etc) as well as the extra proficiencies and such. Always a good choice.

In my opinion if you take any other race you are at a disadvantage, but I will still outline the notable ones here:

Half - Orc: +2 to strength, + 1 to CON. Raises two of your important stats, gives you more survivability with Relentless endurance, makes your crits hit slightly harder, and gives some nice little additional bonuses.

Goliath: +2 STR +1 CON. Reduce damage once per short rest as a reaction. It competes with shield, but it's nice. The rest of the race is mostly flavor.

Dragonborn: +2 STR, +1 CHA. Resistance to one damage type is nice, the breath attack doesn't scale great but who doesn't want to breath fire.

Tiefling: +2 CHA, +1INT. Stunts you stat wise but the spellcasting helps your spell slot economy a little and darkness synergizes well with darkness sight if you grab it.


I like to start with Blade mastery, so let’s try a 27 point buy Vhuman to start, as an example.

V HUMAN:
FEAT: BLADE MASTERY
STR: 16
DEX: 13
CON: 12
INT: 8
WIS: 8
CHA: 16

...And, as you see, herein lies the problem with bladelock. They are hard as hell to get good stats for. This is why, as I mentioned earlier, multiclassing might be your best bet. You could take half elf and be a bit better off stat wise, but it’s still a bit too low for my comfort.

So, Vespa, you ask, what would I even multiclass to? Well, to answer that why don’t we look at the cons I listed earlier. Obviously we need to be mindful that we don’t want to make the MAD problem worse, so we need a class that focuses on charisma or strength. Additionally, fixing our spell slot deficiency by either making our character stronger without spell slots or giving them a few more could be nice. And finally, if we picked a class that got heavy armor we could worry less about our DEX stat and allocate our points elsewhere. So what class should we multiclass to, you ask again?

Warlock!

Stay with me here. You’re actually going to want to start as either a Paladin or a Fighter. By doing this, you allow your character to start with proficiency in heavy armor, immediately fulfilling our first need of helping us ignore our dex a little. Then, after level 1, you can start taking warlock levels. So what does our stat block look like now?

VHUMAN:
Feat: Blade mastery
STR: 16
DEX: 10
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 8
CHA: 16

HALF ELF:
STR: 16
DEX: 10
CON: 16
INT: 8
WIS: 8
CHA: 16

Does 10 dex hurt? Boy, it sure does, but keep in mind if you take the fighter levels you’ll have better health dice to eat up some fireballs and if you take enough levels in paladin you will have +3 on all saves anyways. It’s worth the extra health. It’s too bad you gotta be dumb though.

Blade mastery isn't the only feat to take, though. In fact, it's far from the best, I just prefer it for my own reasons. So, that being said, here's a list of feats you might want to consider taking. Make sure to pump your STR and CHA first, though!


Alert: +5 to initiative. As I've seen said in many other guides, the rest is gravy. This helps with your terrible initiative a little, but I'm not sure it's worth the ASI unless it really bothers you.

Blade mastery: I've already sort of went over this one, but let me go into greater detail. +1 to hit with bladed weapons, +1 ac as a reaction, and advantage on opportunity attacks with those weapons. This to me is like what the archery fighting style is to sharpshooter builds - it helps just a little to offset the -5 from great weapon master. Advantage on opportunity attacks mean more likelihood to crit with cursebringer, too. The ac will likely never be used but hey, it's there.

Elven accuracy: If you pick half elf this could really make a padlock cursebringer crazy. Super advantage on all advantage and +1 dex. So with hexcurse up you crit on 19/20, you can give yourself advantage with vow of enmity, and you have "double advantage". You will crit really, really often.

Great Weapon Master: Adds some incredible damage to your attacks. You take a -5 penalty to hit and deal +10 damage. At low levels this will be useless, as you'll never hit, but at high levels when you regular get 30 to hit this can be a huge bonus.The other great bonus this gives is when you crit or get a kill you can make another melee attack as a bonus action. CB is built around crits, so this is great for you.

Heavy armor master: STR + 1 and damage from non magical melee is reduced by 3 while you are wearing heavy armor. Thew damage you negate with this really piles up. At higher levels when most damage is magic this falls off a little, but it will still be really useful and add to your tankiness.

Lucky: Basically three uses of inspiration per day, but even better because it turns disadvantage into super advantage. This is good on every build.

Mage slayer: You're already great at avoiding spells if you choose padlock. With this, you can really lock down other casters. The enemy disadvantage on concentration saving throws is great because you can hit them with an eldritch blast and destroy their concentration.

Resilient(CON): This one is great because it helps you keep concentration on spells and proficiency in con saving throws is never bad. The +1 to con is icing on the cake. If you're taking this at level 1 with Vhuman you should probably mess your stats around so you get 16 con at creation.

Warcaster: Advantage on keeping concentration. Sage advice has already stated you can cast spells with a great sword so the second part doesn't matter as much, but for a sword and board build you pretty much need this feat. The spell on opportunity attack part is great - if you take this feat definitely take booming blade. You'll fry anything that tries to run from you.


So, why these two classes? Well, they don't only fix our ac problem but also fulfill our other needs as well. Fighter and Paladin both rely on strength, and paladin relies on Charisma also, making them great matches to the hexblade, and both either improve our martial or spell slinging ability, or both! Let’s go over some similarities to each class, and then we’ll break off and I’ll explain the benefits to each path.

Both paladin and fighter let you pick a fighting style! Ooh, sky blue? Well yeah! The defense fighting style is straight up a +1 to ac, even further helping with our ac problem, bringing us to a healthy 19 ac in full plate, 21 if you carry around a shield in your off time. Not bad! The great weapon fighting style is also good, or completely BROKEN depending on how your dm rules it. If it rerolls just the greatsword damage, it’s ok. If it rerolls all damage dice on an attack, you NEED IT. The other fighting styles are great too, including close quarters shooter which gives you a +1 to ranged attacks rolls, which improves your accuracy with eldritch blast! These are all great bonuses and you get them almost right off the bat.

Now we’ll split off with the two multiclass options. If you want higher NOVA/BURST damage, you’ll want to read up on the paladin path. Otherwise, if you want more sustained damage and utility in your attacks, go for fighter.

[Vespa]

THE PADLOCK

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I’ll be honest. I’m biased here. Paladin/Hexblade is my all time favourite class combination. As a paladin/warlock, or as I like to call it the Padlock, You’ll crit, do unholy amounts of damage, do all the calculations at the table, and when it’s all done the other players will be in disbelief that you have another attack, which you can still smite with.

Because this is a warlock guide, after all, I’ll try to keep the non warlock parts short. The best paladin oath to compliment a hexblade is the Oath of Vengeance, because....

CHANNEL DIVINITY: Vow of enmity
Bonus action and channel divinity to get advantage on one creature for a minute. WOW. Combine this with great weapon master and your increased crit range and it’s just… it’s so good. This makes you even better at taking down the big targets, though it does compete with your many bonus action spells and class features. Save this for real big targets, because you can’t move it like your hexblade’s curse or hex.

Another good choice is the Oath of Devotion. This gives you Sacred Weapon, which allows you to add your charisma modifier to your to-hit for a minute. This greatly offsets the -5 from great weapon master. I personally prefer vengeance, because advantage might not be as reliable but gives you a much higher chance to crit and use your smites efficiently. If you want more reliable sustained damage, pick Devotion. If you want to be able to crit-smite more often, choose vengeance.

You know what else you get? Divine smite! (2d8 + spell level above 1 up to a max of 5d8 radiant damage). Now, I did use divine smite in the huge damage example earlier, but the truth is the combination of divine smite and cursebringer is hardly ever worth it. It just uses too many spell slots in one turn. It’s better to save the slot for another curse bringer unless you really, really need something dead in one turn. However, this is radiant damage, so in some cases this can be more useful, and it does do one extra d8 damage against fiends and undead.

You also get extra attack at level 5, which frees you up an invocation since you won’t be needing thirsting blade anymore! Always useful.

At 2nd level you get spells, and a lot of them are damn good for their low levels. I really only suggest going to 6 paladin as a hexblade for aura of protection, which gives you and people within ten feet of you a bonus equal to your charisma modifier on saving throws. Yeah, all saving throws. It’s ridiculous. This gives you some incredible tankyness. Any levels past 6 aren’t really worth it if you wanna stay hexblade centric unless you are taking oath of the ancients. As a result, I’m only going to go over spells you could get within those 6 levels. If you want to go further there’s a lot of good paladin guides out there.

Level 1:

Bless: Platinum if you can get someone else to cast it on you. If you roll decent this practically negates the -5 penalty from GWM, meaning you get an easy +10 to damage if you hit. It helps a few allies too, which is always great. You don’t concentrate on a lot of spells, but missing hex makes me sad. This + Vow of enmity + GWM = dead boss.

Command: This one is hard to rate because it’s usefulness depends on how far your dm lets you go with it and how creative you get. If they are lenient then this is basically a free “miss a turn” card to use on an enemy in a lot of cases, and it doesn't even break concentration! People tend to really underestimate this spell’s use out of combat. Just remember you don’t have a ton of spell slots.

Compelled Duel: I don’t really know how to feel about this one, to be honest. The concentration is what brings it down from blue for me. The thing that makes this decent for you is armor of shadows. Your target is likely going to be forced to attack you and have a 50% chance of missing you unless it uses something with a saving throw, and then you have your aura of protection to back you up. It’s a good panic button if you really need to get the heat off a teammate, but honestly if you just do really high damage you’ll probably draw it’s attention anyways. I wouldn’t bother with this one.

Cure wounds: Hey man, it’s healing. Can’t go wrong, but you won’t have high spell slots to heal with, and you won’t want to use your warlock ones for this. If you need to get a teammate up just use lay on hands.

Detect evil and good: Could reveal a traitor in the group. Or it couldn’t. You’re probably only going to prepare this if you need it, so only take it when you need it.

Detect magic: Definitely useful to see traps and the nature of certain items. It’s saved me from touching several very dangerous artifacts, for sure. At low levels I’d be wary of using the slot. Let your wizard take this one.

Detect poison and disease: ...You’re immune to disease, and even then this is so situational. You’ll probably never prepare this.

Divine Favour: This isn’t very good. You might as well use hex or hunter’s mark. I don't see any situation in which this would be better.

Heroism: I̶ ̶g̶u̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶g̶h̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶b̶i̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶f̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶f̶u̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶p̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶?̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶m̶p̶ ̶h̶p̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶a̶c̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶n̶e̶g̶l̶i̶g̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶x̶b̶l̶a̶d̶e̶’̶s̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶m̶p̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶,̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶b̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶e̶m̶p̶ ̶h̶p̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶m̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶l̶i̶g̶h̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶c̶a̶r̶i̶e̶r̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶g̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶u̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶l̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶s̶t̶.̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶w̶o̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶l̶e̶v̶e̶l̶s̶.̶ ̶

Immunity to fear and +5 temp health at the beginning of your turn. I’m reconsidering this one, just a little. Past level 5 the temp hp is still really low, but the fact that it regens every turn is nice. The immunity to fear is pretty nice for a first level spell, but it’s still pretty situational. Take it early, ignore it later.

Protection from evil and good: You know what, I was going to rank this red but if you think about it, as a paladin and a warlock you are pretty likely to run into fiends and/or celestials. It might come in handy.

Purify food an- no. Unless you are running a very specific campaign don’t bother.

Searing smite: If you know you’re going up against something like a troll with regeneration abilities this could help negate it a little, but honestly it’s probably better to just use hex to out damage it and get the utility from hex too. It’s such a shame that all of the smites are concentration.

Shield of Faith: A good one! This is only if you REALLY need to not get hit by something though. +2 ac for concentration as a bonus action. Definitely comes in handy.

Thunderous smite: This one is much better than searing. The initial damage is better and the knockback opens up options for environmental damage. The knock prone is great, too, because it means your second attack will have advantage, which is very much what you want. You have to decide if the spell slot and concentration is worth it pretty much. Past level 5 you won’t be casting this for damage, you’ll be casting it for the other abilities, and those get old eventually too when you get other sources of advantage.

Wrathful smite: So this one is interesting, and it really depends on if you have a DM that leans towards RAW or RAI. The wording of this spell specifies that the creature must make a wisdom check to end the frightened effect on them, but because they are frightened they would have disadvantage on that check. I think that this was unintentional so your DM might argue it’s supposed to be a wisdom save. Either way, it’s a decent secondary effect, but only the better version is really worth your concentration.

(V) Bane: Anti-bless, does the complete opposite thing. You probably aren’t going to have a lot of spells that use saving throws and aren't concentration, so this spell doesn't help you much. You could set up some combos with your friends, but you aren't exactly the team debuffer.

(V) Hunter’s mark: Not bad but redundant cause hex does the same damage and has a better secondary effect. If you want to track someone just use shadow hound.

Level 2

Aid: NO CONCENTRATION. Whoo! If you want a ton of extra hp for some reason you could use a warlock slot to upcast this for 25 extra max hp and then also cast armor of agathys for another 25 temp hp. Pretty nice, and it applies to a few friends!

Branding smite: Situational, the damage is bad, and it’s concentration. Pass.

Find steed: Much like find familiar, it’s more like a class feature than a spell. Definitely one of the most iconic paladin spells. It’s fun, flavourful, and it gives you a LOT of mobility and utility, nevermind the fluff and rp opportunities. The steed doesn't usually have a ton of hp, but you likely won't be riding this thing into battle much with this build.

Lesser restoration: You’ll regret someone in your party not having this one day, but if you have a cleric the person having this probably shouldn’t be you.

Locate object: Can be useful. More of a pre-prepared specific spell. Good for cons, but paladins usually aren't the type. But warlocks certainly are ;)

Magic weapon: A non magical weapon becomes magical and a +1 weapon. You should already have the invocation that does this! It doesn’t work on pact weapons anyways, as they are considered magical and this spell only works on non magical weapons. Not worth concentration anyways.

Protection from poison: Great if you’re getting ready to fight something like a green dragon for poison resistance/advantage on saving throws. You probably won't be carrying this around otherwise, though.

Zone of truth: CHA save or tell the truth in a radius. This can save you so much social work and interrogation. Even with your high charisma sometimes you just gotta cheat.

(V) Hold person: Everything a gish could want in a spell. Paralyzed is a beautiful condition. It’s save or suck, but if it hits you are probably going to absolutely annihilate whatever you hit as you have advantage on the target and if you hit you auto-crit. One turn of autocrits from you is pretty much instadeath for your target.

(V) Misty step: Can definitely get you out of a sticky situation, and it’s just a bonus action. Any teleport is a good spell. Don't use it too much, though, you’ll wreck your spell slots.


(I'll work on Warlock / Fighter soon! I've only played it for a one shot, so I'm not 100% confident with it yet.)

[Vespa]

Magic items


As a frontline fighter a cursebringer is in a weird place magic items wise. They don’t need an attunement slot for a weapon so you get another attunement slot over other melee based characters. Keep in mind that the value of a magic item differs greatly with playstyle, and a magic item that I find useful might be completely useless to you. For that reason I’m not going to rate these ones colour-wise, I’m simply going to point out the ones I think you might find useful.

Not gonna touch on legendaries, it’s unlikely you’re gonna find most of them. They’re all going to be pretty good if you do.

Necklace of Prayer beads(ATT): This is a real good one. I’d recommend buying them in bulk if your DM lets you. You want the blessing beads. Blessing is pretty much THE spell you want to cast with your concentration to offset the GWM to hit penalty. Being able to cast it not only without a spell slot but as a bonus action is amazing. It means you get more time to hit stuff and less time standing around praying. Not as useful if someone in your group tends to cast bless on you a lot.

Cape of the Mountebank: An interesting one. You have access to dimension door already but using a spell slot for it really hurts. This fixes one of your biggest issues: Your range. Though you have eldritch blast a ranged enemy will usually out damage you without invocations, and hexblade’s curse/relentless hex have a rather small range. Rogues will just double dash and ruin ya life. This helps with that a bit. Then, afterwards, you still have all your warlock spell slots left.

Boots of speed(ATT): Helps you with catching up to people. More speed is always nice. Fights for your att slot though.

Helm of teleportation: Being able to teleport long distances has uncountable benefits, and in battle you can use it to be sticky and catch up to people.

Cloak of displacement(ATT): At low levels this makes you very hard to hit. At high levels it doesn’t help as much but it cancels out advantage which can be the difference between getting hit and getting hit by a nat 20. It’ll save your life quite a few times. There might be better things for your attunement later on, but early to mid this is great.

Rod of the pact keeper(+1,2,3)(ATT): Required. Get it as soon as possible. This makes up for your lower save DC, boosts your eldritch blast, and most importantly it gives you 1 warlock spell slot back per day. This is an extremely good item, and the +1 version is only uncommon.

Armor +1, +2, +3: Never bad. If you manage to get 22+ ac you’re ridiculously hard to hit, especially because anything that hits you might just get nullified by armor of shadows.

Ring of Spell Storing(ATT): The ring can hold a warlock spell or two, which helps a little with resource management. The problem is that you can’t store a cursebringer smite in it. Oh well.

Wand of thunderbolt/fireball(ATT): Adds some pretty devastating options to better your range capabilities. You don’t get high level spells slots, so the option to cast one of these spells at 7th level is pretty nice, though potentially costly.

Weapon of Warning(ATT): You don’t need to wield this to gain its benefits, it just needs to be on your person. Advantage on initiative helps you out a little with your +0 to initiative.

Anything that raises your strength to a set amount(Gauntlets of ogre power, belts of giant strength, etc)(ATT): You want these, especially if they give you strength over 20. Increasing your to-hit is your #1 priority.

Mantle of spell resistance(ATT): Advantage on saving throws against spells. With aura of protection and this you’ll probably never take full damage from a spell again.

Ioun stone of Leadership/Strength/Fortitude: Raising any of your main stats is pretty beneficial. Especially charisma, which gives you +1 to all saves except for charisma, which gets a even better + 2, and raises your spell save + life drinker bonus amongst other things.

Manual of X: If it’s for strength I’d probably fight to the death for this. A +15 to hit at level 17 (+6 strength, +6 proficiency, +2 Invocation, +1 Blade mastery) before bless is too good to pass up. The Cha/Con ones are okay but if other people in your party want it they probably need it more.


Here is what I would usually take.
Slot 1(Offense): Necklace of prayer beads(blessing) / Wand of Fireballs(Better range/aoe)/ Wand of the pact keeper

Slot 2(Stat Buff): Belt of X Giant Strength (Fire giant or higher, if I couldn’t get the manual of gainful exercise) or Ioun stone of leadership

Slot 3(Defense): Cloak of Displacement(Consider it a sort of bonus to AC) / Mantle of spell resistance (Consider it a sort of bonus to spell saves)

Unattuned: Cape of the mountebank (My DM lets me wear two cloaks, good luck trying to get yours to accept that), Armor +x, Tome of Gainful exercise.

And that's the end of the guide, folks! I hope I sold you on my favourite class in 5e. If you have any constructive criticism, concerns, or questions I'm happy to listen or help. Have fun!

[Matrix_Walker]

Looks like you did allot of hard work, Great Read!

[Degwerks]

Looks like you did allot of hard work, I can't wait to check it out in detail!




Some GMs are still using it, and it may require editing later when the published form hits the stands.

I hope you will humor my request and please delete your post from the middle of Vespa's guide.... repost it if you like, but it's kind of jarrng to have that in the middle of his guide posts.

I think I got it deleted

[Draco4472]

Great guide overall, even unfinished, made me rethink a Paladin/Hexblade I'm playing in a homebrew campaign.

Incidentally, I also thought of Berserk when looking at Cursebringer + Hexblade's Curse + Eldritch Smite..

Can't wait to see the finished one, though I recommend covering some of the combos Sorcerer/Hexblade or Bard/Hexblade can manage.

[Vespa]

Great guide overall, even unfinished, made me rethink a Paladin/Hexblade I'm playing in a homebrew campaign.

Incidentally, I also thought of Berserk when looking at Cursebringer + Hexblade's Curse + Eldritch Smite..

Can't wait to see the finished one, though I recommend covering some of the combos Sorcerer/Hexblade or Bard/Hexblade can manage.

Oh man, I'd never even thought of bard + hexblade! That could be really fun, I've gotta look into that. Happy you liked it!

[Sans.]

Padlock.

pfffft

Right now, I have an insatiable urge to hack your account and brutalise this guide by changing each and every spell/ability so that all the words in them are Capitalised like they should be. At first glance though, everything else looks well thought-out. Good job, keep it up.

Thoughts:
Why did you limit every mention of weapons to greatsword? I'd love to see an analysis of the difference between Str-based and Dex-based.
PWK is generally thought to be pretty bad, given that most things will have more than 100hp by level 18, you won't necessarily know how much hp the mobs have left, if you're looking for damage some of the other level 9 spells are generally far better for damage overall and 100 damage, generally, is usually a lot less than what your party could do in one turn.
Warlock/Bard: About the only thing going for it is SADness. The features are nice but don't really synergise apart from Extra Attack, the loss of spell slot progression will hurt and generally it's meh.

[Rebonack]

Padlock.

pfffft

Right now, I have an insatiable urge to hack your account and brutalise this guide by changing each and every spell/ability so that all the words in them are Capitalised like they should be. At first glance though, everything else looks well thought-out. Good job, keep it up.

Thoughts:
Why did you limit every mention of weapons to greatsword? I'd love to see an analysis of the difference between Str-based and Dex-based.
PWK is generally thought to be pretty bad, given that most things will have more than 100hp by level 18, you won't necessarily know how much hp the mobs have left, if you're looking for damage some of the other level 9 spells are generally far better for damage overall and 100 damage, generally, is usually a lot less than what your party could do in one turn.

The guide is based on the assumption that the Cursebringer Invocation is still a thing and it requires you to use a greatsword.

However, Cursebringer is no longer a thing, Eldritch Smite has been nerfed pretty hard by comparison(1d8+1d8 per spell level rather than 2d8 per spell level), and Hexblade is probably going to see a rewrite either in an upcoming UA or once Guide to Everything comes out.

[Ravinsild]

The guide is based on the assumption that the Cursebringer Invocation is still a thing and it requires you to use a greatsword.

However, Cursebringer is no longer a thing, Eldritch Smite has been nerfed pretty hard by comparison(1d8+1d8 per spell level rather than 2d8 per spell level), and Hexblade is probably going to see a rewrite either in an upcoming UA or once Guide to Everything comes out.

Source for any/all of this information?

[Zalabim]

I wrote down some notes while I read your guide. Hopefully some of it can help you.

Hex adds a 1d6 to the damage. Just like Hunter's Mark.

I don't like Mirror Image for a high AC character since the images will often just get popped by misses. I also don't like spending a high level warlock slot on it, though it's a good defense when the spell is freshly available.

Arcane Gate is actually two-way, it's just that each portal has an active side and an inactive side.

Master of Hexes is unlimited uses of the Hexblade's Curse. Just contrast the wording with the original limit.

Blink also doesn't require concentration. The typical downside is that when you blink out, someone else just gets attacked instead. As a Hexblade, you can be one of the more durable parts of the team.

Magic Weapon/Elemental Weapon can be cast on someone else's weapon if you don't need it for your own. Definitely party and DM dependent.

Blade Mastery is not a great feat. In a feat-starved build, I'd stick to just the vitals, like GWM or Heavily Armored if you're not multiclassing.

"Bless: Platinum if you can get someone else to cast it on you." Exactly my thoughts. If you'd have to spend an action that you could be using to kill things on Bless, it's a poor benefit. If you're getting a Bless'ing without spending your action it's priceless.

[RSP]

Why would Cursebringer (even if it weren't replaced) be better than sword and board? Using a 2-handed weapon nullifies he Hexblade's ability to use Chr as their attack stat. +2 AC, 1d8 damage and maxed melee attack stat and casting stat is better than 2d6 and being MAD.

Moreover, in addition to being a MAD build, you have less ASIs as you have to get GWM for it to be worthwhile using the great sword.

Also, in addition to better AC, better stats and more ASIs, the Hexblade/Pally combo benefits much more from maxing Chr and using it as your attack stat, as it also augments their level 6 aura (were you to take it that far).

A lot of work went into this but unfortunately, the invocations have changed. Perhaps they'll ultimately bring back Cirsebringer, but as of the revised Celestial UA, any Warlock can get smites with any weapon, further making a str build less appealing.

(Side note: I do like the work and product made, but not exactly fair to claim a class/subclass is "sky blue" in comparison to other classes if only going with unofficial material - designers have stated they intentionally will up the power of UA to see what abilities people are interested in using, which is probably why Cursebringer's smite rivaled the Paladins and was then changed to be weaker)

[RSP]

Source for any/all of this information?

When the updated Celestial revision UA (previously undying light I believe) came out they included updated invocations and added in a write up saying the new invocations replaced the ones from the Hexblade UA.

[Degwerks]

As others have mentioned the invocations are a bit off.

However I'm playing a maxed charisma Hexblade bladepact and was going to take 6 levels of paladin too. What I'm wondering is if I'll get more overall damage/use if I take Menacing Hex before Agonizing Hex. I've got Thirsting Blade, Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite right now and I'm mainly melee. I was wondering if I should increase my ranged damage abilty first or grab Menacing first. I'm level 7 and can pick 1 more invocation. After level 8 I'll grab 6 levels in paladin.

[Vespa]

Why would Cursebringer (even if it weren't replaced) be better than sword and board? Using a 2-handed weapon nullifies he Hexblade's ability to use Chr as their attack stat. +2 AC, 1d8 damage and maxed melee attack stat and casting stat is better than 2d6 and being MAD.

Moreover, in addition to being a MAD build, you have less ASIs as you have to get GWM for it to be worthwhile using the great sword.

Also, in addition to better AC, better stats and more ASIs, the Hexblade/Pally combo benefits much more from maxing Chr and using it as your attack stat, as it also augments their level 6 aura (were you to take it that far).

A lot of work went into this but unfortunately, the invocations have changed. Perhaps they'll ultimately bring back Cirsebringer, but as of the revised Celestial UA, any Warlock can get smites with any weapon, further making a str build less appealing.

(Side note: I do like the work and product made, but not exactly fair to claim a class/subclass is "sky blue" in comparison to other classes if only going with unofficial material - designers have stated they intentionally will up the power of UA to see what abilities people are interested in using, which is probably why Cursebringer's smite rivaled the Paladins and was then changed to be weaker)

I totally see your argument, I never meant to make it seem like I was saying cursebringer was better at all than sword and board. In fact they're both two completely different things. Sword and board is incredibly more tank oriented than cursebringer. Cursebringer is essentially the nuke version of this build. With GWM and then the additional 10d8 smite you are meant to go up to a boss and ruin it's day. Alternatively, as a sword and board hexblade, especially as a pally/hexblade, you are an incredible tank. You still do great damage but you have that 21 ac with armor of hexes and aura of protection. With this build I'd be using darkness + devil's sight way more, and I'd even consider taking oath of ancients for the level 7 ability to get resistance to spells, though you would lose 14 warlock for more curses.

The one thing that Cursebringer does have over sword and board though is the ability to move Hexcurse. Tbh it's unlikely you're going to be reaching level 20, so if you do plan on going 6 paladin asap you'll only have the tankiness from armor of shadows once per short rest. Which is still great, but you won't want to be taking relentless hex or anything like that. Aside from that darkness + devil's sight alone makes you ridiculously tanky, so you don't really need it all that bad.

I'm definitely going to start working on a separate section on this guide for sword and board soon. I'm starting to see I should have just made this a general bladelock guide from the start rather than so cursebringer oriented. Even further, less hexblade oriented.

[Vespa]

I wrote down some notes while I read your guide. Hopefully some of it can help you.

Hex adds a 1d6 to the damage. Just like Hunter's Mark.

I don't like Mirror Image for a high AC character since the images will often just get popped by misses. I also don't like spending a high level warlock slot on it, though it's a good defense when the spell is freshly available.

Arcane Gate is actually two-way, it's just that each portal has an active side and an inactive side.

Master of Hexes is unlimited uses of the Hexblade's Curse. Just contrast the wording with the original limit.

Blink also doesn't require concentration. The typical downside is that when you blink out, someone else just gets attacked instead. As a Hexblade, you can be one of the more durable parts of the team.

Magic Weapon/Elemental Weapon can be cast on someone else's weapon if you don't need it for your own. Definitely party and DM dependent.

Blade Mastery is not a great feat. In a feat-starved build, I'd stick to just the vitals, like GWM or Heavily Armored if you're not multiclassing.

"Bless: Platinum if you can get someone else to cast it on you." Exactly my thoughts. If you'd have to spend an action that you could be using to kill things on Bless, it's a poor benefit. If you're getting a Bless'ing without spending your action it's priceless.

Thanks for all this, I'll update all the information to be more accurate!

Edit: I think I find blade mastery a good feat for me because it starts to get closer to the archery fighting style /sharpshooter in terms of countering the -5 from GWM. I think the thing that a cursebringer suffers from the most is that once they're spell slots are gone they feel useless. Having the extra GWM damage makes a GS bladelock still hit very hard when they're drained. I can definitely see why others would want a different feat like resilient(CON) or warcaster or the ones you mentioned. I'm gonna add a feats section right now.

[RSP]

I totally see your argument, I never meant to make it seem like I was saying cursebringer was better at all than sword and board. In fact they're both two completely different things. Sword and board is incredibly more tank oriented than cursebringer. Cursebringer is essentially the nuke version of this build. With GWM and then the additional 10d8 smite you are meant to go up to a boss and ruin it's day. Alternatively, as a sword and board hexblade, especially as a pally/hexblade, you are an incredible tank. You still do great damage but you have that 21 ac with armor of hexes and aura of protection. With this build I'd be using darkness + devil's sight way more, and I'd even consider taking oath of ancients for the level 7 ability to get resistance to spells, though you would lose 14 warlock for more curses.

The one thing that Cursebringer does have over sword and board though is the ability to move Hexcurse. Tbh it's unlikely you're going to be reaching level 20, so if you do plan on going 6 paladin asap you'll only have the tankiness from armor of shadows once per short rest. Which is still great, but you won't want to be taking relentless hex or anything like that. Aside from that darkness + devil's sight alone makes you ridiculously tanky, so you don't really need it all that bad.

I'm definitely going to start working on a separate section on this guide for sword and board soon. I'm starting to see I should have just made this a general bladelock guide from the start rather than so cursebringer oriented. Even further, less hexblade oriented.

I know this may be counterintuitive to melee builds, but it's worth noting that Hexblades are probably the best consistent ranged DPR in the game once they get level 14 (and pretty good before then), when using Hexblade's Curse and Hex (and the AB invocation). Other than picking up the AB invocation, melee builds have this just as much as blaster builds.

Granted, Hexblade's Curse may very well change to "melee" or "weapon" attacks only if Hexblade becomes official with XGtE, but as is, it's worth noting that your melee focused-PC becomes the best ranged damage dealer in the game at the cost of 1 invocation.

[Ravinsild]

Dang i just read the class revisions and a lot of invocations were cut sadly. I really liked the ice and fire damage effects on the Hexblade but I guess they're gone now.

[Draco4472]

Oh man, I'd never even thought of bard + hexblade! That could be really fun, I've gotta look into that. Happy you liked it!

Gets even better with Swashbuckler/Hexblade with Booming Blade

[Degwerks]

If you take 7 levels of Oath of Conquest paladin and the Cloak of Flies invocation, you can have a lot of fun with Wrathful Smite and Eldritch Smite. Bonus action cast Wrathful Smite then Eldritch Smite your enemy. He falls prone and is Frightened if he fails save against Wrathful smite, also his speed is ZERO while he's frightened and can't get up from prone. Plus he takes 1/2 your paladin level in psychic damage and your charisma modifier in poison damage each round he's there next to you.

[ruy343]

Just a thought:

I've recently been toying with the idea of a War Domain Cleric dip, granting, with one level, heavy armor proficiency, martial weapons proficiency, and a smattering of highly useful spells. Additionally, the ability to make extra attacks as a bonus action a number of times per day equal to your wisdom modifier could really help you at lower levels to lay on the damage. It's a bit MAD (You'd want to emphasize Str, Wis, and Cha), but because you're wearing heavy armor, you can "dump" dex (and int).

Overall, if I ever get the chance to be a player rather than a DM, it's certainly something I'd consider trying.

[Spiritchaser]

In the context of a fighter or Paladin cursebringer Hexblade, I'd advocate a discussion of the elven accuracy UA racial feat. On a strength build with darkness it is truly crazy against the cursed target. GWM penalty seems minor with three rolls. Yes your CHA maxes at 18, but that's managable.

[Vespa]

In the context of a fighter or Paladin cursebringer Hexblade, I'd advocate a discussion of the elven accuracy UA racial feat. On a strength build with darkness it is truly crazy against the cursed target. GWM penalty seems minor with three rolls. Yes your CHA maxes at 18, but that's managable.

Did you mean 18 str? I'd really like to do the math to see how often you can keep darkness or vow of emnity up and if the super advantage would outdo blade mastery/20 strength. It would certainly be more fun to play an unique. I'm gonna figure this out when I get home.

[Spiritchaser]

Halfelven F1 W19 maxes strength at a score of 20, albeit only later, since you need elven accuracy at 5 and GWM at 9 with final scores of

20
10
16
8
9
18

Or others if you prefer.

You're stuck at 18 STR until level 17, but with three rolls...

I have one of these at my table and he's somewhat tough-ish, and just rips faces right off.

Now: I give my players a racial or skill feat to start, so he'll eventually max both cha and STR (o r more likely, he'll take res wisdom)

[Vespa]

Halfelven F1 W19 maxes strength at a score of 20, albeit only later, since you need elven accuracy at 5 and GWM at 9 with final scores of

20
10
16
8
9
18

Or others if you prefer.

You're stuck at 18 STR until level 17, but with three rolls...

I have one of these at my table and he's somewhat tough-ish, and just rips faces right off.

Now: I give my players a racial or skill feat to start, so he'll eventually max both cha and STR (o r more likely, he'll take res wisdom)

WOW, I was so focused on how this synergized with curse bringer I didn't even think about how well this synergizes with GWM! What is that, like a 27~% chance to crit and get a bonus action attack? Holy ****! I think the super advantage far outweighs the -to hit as long as you have reliable ways of keeping advantage, which as a warlock you absolutely do. Not to mentioned that as a half elf you get less MAD and some better racial features than a V human, minus the feat. And depending on how you choose to balance your multiclass levels it doesn't even really set you back to many levels ASI wise. When i get back from work I'm gonna make some edits to elven accuracy for sure.

[Spiritchaser]

With two attacks and three rolls per attack on a cursed target with extended crit range, it works out to be 1-(0.9^6) or about a 47% chance of landing a crit, and thus getting a bonus attack from GWM. Add in the (actually rather frequent) kill shots, and he's into 3 attacks more often than not.

Now: sometimes he can't use darkness because the battlefield won't allow it. Generally the druid will be throwing out fariefire (if he isn't tormenting my brain with a wall of difficult to keep track of panthers) which still gives him advantage on some targets... But even if that doesn't happen, he is not weak, with decent ranged damage.

And on rounds where he lands a crit smite then extra attack...
Well if he lives to level 20 it'll make disintegrate look tame


In a party with a sorcadin, a bladesinger and a moon druid, This guy is right up there for overall utility and power, and that's pretty strong company.

[Ravinsild]

With two attacks and three rolls per attack on a cursed target with extended crit range, it works out to be 1-(0.9^6) or about a 47% chance of landing a crit, and thus getting a bonus attack from GWM. Add in the (actually rather frequent) kill shots, and he's into 3 attacks more often than not.

Now: sometimes he can't use darkness because the battlefield won't allow it. Generally the druid will be throwing out fariefire (if he isn't tormenting my brain with a wall of difficult to keep track of panthers) which still gives him advantage on some targets... But even if that doesn't happen, he is not weak, with decent ranged damage.

And on rounds where he lands a crit smite then extra attack...
Well if he lives to level 20 it'll make disintegrate look tame


In a party with a sorcadin, a bladesinger and a moon druid, This guy is right up there for overall utility and power, and that's pretty strong company.

So we can definitively say that Hexblade is sky blue? Because Sorcadin is around gold and I think Blade Singer and Moon Druid are generally sky blue too.

[Spiritchaser]

So we can definitively say that Hexblade is sky blue? Because Sorcadin is around gold and I think Blade Singer and Moon Druid are generally sky blue too.

I can only speak to a half elven Fighter/Warlock with elven accuracy, but in that case yes, I'd say yes.