Is Hexblade a good option with Chain or Tome warlocks?

[Klorox]

Or is it only really good with pact of the blade warlocks?

I don't have my book yet, but I have an idea for a chain pact warlock.

[Kobard]

Yes. But you will be trading a bit of DPR for utility. Here, I also assume that most hexblades will not be super optimizers going for GWM and PAM, etc.

You can probably put out respectable damage if you take Greenflame Blade and/or Booming Blade cantrips, and possibly also the new Shadow Blade spell. If you also grab War Caster, then you can throw out a Booming Blade when they provoke an OA. And if you ignore Pact of the Blade invocations, you can still grab Agonizing Blast so you can blast away with Eldritch Blast while being moderately armored, with your hexblade weapon being a backup when enemies close in. The Hexblade Curse also works with all attacks, including spell attacks like with EB.

The primary benefit of the Pact of the Blade as a Hexblade is that it expands what you can wield (heavy and two-handed) and gives you access to the Pact of the Blade invocations (i.e., Thirsting Blade, Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite, etc.).

[Foff]

shadow blade is a bit meh for hexblades though, you don't get to use Cha on it and you're probably better off using your concentration on other stuff (hex, darkness come to mind)
Meleeing with hexblade works, it deals respectable damage but you're probably gonna lag behind a typical Eldritch agonizing blast spammer
I feel the best iteration of a single class hexblade is tanking, you get all the goodies for it ( booming blade, shield, armor of agathys, darkness devilsight combo, blink) and you're not MAD meaning you could dump INT AND STR to keep decent HP, nice AC and still hit with CHA.

[Joe the Rat]

You're coming in with medium armor proficiency, a good weapons array, and between armor and Charisma-to-fight, the ability to keep Dex at 14 and Str at "enough to carry my stuff." Using purchased gear, you can easily be rocking an 18 AC like a cleric. That's useful for any warlock. You can run not-vhuman and not-mountain dwarf and come out with a decent AC. or run VHuman and snag a different starter Feat, like Warcaster. Or Heavily Armored to really get your Exdeath cosplay running.

Charisma-to-fight means Tomeys don't have to spend a cantrip to get shillelagh for cantrip-blade madness, unless they really need the magic part of the equation...
Which means a Chainlock-to-be can open Eldritch Blast and x Blade for cantrips, and cover most of the Tome-Melee approach. With the Grasp of Hadar invocation, you don't even need thorn whip.

Not taking Blade Pact also means there's no incentive to not focus on the new Hextastic Invocations. Be a tracker. Inflict area damage at whim.

You may not regularly capitalize on the attack benefit (going "normal" warlock build), and some of your features are terrifyingly short ranged, but it works quite nicely - and puts the emphasis on the "empowered by secret shadowy powers" angle rather than the "extreme artifact weapon fetishist" theme.

[8wGremlin]

Hexblade is a decent option for Tome and Chain locks.


you get medium armour proficiency
you get shield proficiency
you get martial weapon proficency
you get to use those weapons (well some of them) with CHA for attack and damage
you get access to shield spell (if you want)
you don't really need HEX spell (if you don't want it) as you have curse

If you are a tome you no longer need to take shillelagh for melee reasons, as your weapon can use CHA now.
Your AC has gone up a lot.

[Zene]

Absolutely. If there isn’t a specific patron spell or patron feature you need for your build, Hexblade is the best regardless of your pact. Significantly increased DPR (even on EB blaster builds), increased survivability, reduced need for out-of-class spell choices like shillelagh and reduced need for multiclassing in most cases.

[Sception]

Hexblade is a fully functional shadow patron for warlock with a clumbsy stealth errata to pact blade arbitrarily stacked on top. Which means hexblade works fine with any other pact boon, but you're left in a bad spot if you ever want to do a bladelock with any other patron.

If you're DMing a game and open to house rules, I'd recommend pulling the extra proficiencies and cha to melee attacks out of hexblade and rolling them into the level 3 features of the pact blade instead.