Half drow Hexblade warlock bow or reach weapon (spear for example)

[LionHeadVillain]

Hello,

I am newish to D&D and want to try playing the new Xanathar's Hexblade warlock, we will be starting at 3rd level and will be running the curse of Strahd campaign.

I want to be more of a mid range character.
My group has a Goliath Barbarian, Orc storm cleric, Human bard, aarakocra rogue and a homebrew mousefolk witchdoctor.
I am leaning more towards pact of the blade and will be using improved pact weapon if i use a bow.

The reason I am posting this is that I need some help with optimizing it to be at least a bit decent in combat.
(my DM will most likely be trying hard to kill us).
The build doesn't need to be fully meta gamed, at the base of it I only need to know it it can work.

Any input will be much appreciated and I am happy to take any suggestions.

Summary:
Half Drow
Hexblade warlock
Pact of the blade?
Bow or pole-arm of some kind
I can take feats and can multi class
Point buy system

[Consensus]

Hey for a 5e thread you should head over to the 5e subforum. But since I'm responding anyways
Half-drows is a great choice for this with all the regular half elf greatness+drow magic, so that all checks out.
You seem like you want to be able to do close and long range combat, and the warlock class is perfect for long range attacking, with eldritch blast as well as agonizing blast.
Some example pointbuy stats that work well for a hexblade are:
STR: 10
DEX: 14
CON: 16
INT: 8
WIS: 12
CHA: 16
You attack with CHA for ranged and melee and with medium armor all you need is a 14 dex to get the most out of it.
A polearm is a very good weapon choice, but keep in mind that spears don't actually have reach in 5e so when I say polearm, I mean glaive/halberd.
So you can fill your invocations with Agonizing blast, to empower eldritch blast for a great ranged attack and Devil's Sight to be able to see through darkness. That's important because you can cast the darkness spell on yourself to have advantage all the time with devils sight which will help both melee and ranged. On that note hex is a good damage buffing spell as well.

[Consensus]

To answer the summary at the end of your post:
Half-Drow is a great idea
Pact of the blade yes, because it lets you use a two handed weapon with CHA and gets extra attack
A bow is very strictly inferior to eldritch blast, and a polearm is a good idea, so just have EB and a polearm
Feats: Polearm mastery, Great weapon master, both of those will help melee. Multiclassing, look at starting with a level in fighter for heavy armor, but if that's the case make sure you have a higher strength score so you don't get a movement penalty (or not if you dont care about that)

[LionHeadVillain]

Thank you for the information.
I didnt know how to delete/move a thread so I created one over on the 5e side as well.

As for the build information i am happy you provided some help as I didn't really know where I was going with this build.
I will likely do as you say and run with a polearm of some kind.

If i remember rightly hexblade makes it so i can use CHA for my damage so do I still need STR or is the increase needed for using heavy weapons?

[Consensus]

Hexblade at level one allows you to use CHA for one handed weapons. If you take pact of the blade and hexblade this expands to two handed weapons, so you can use CHA with polearms at third level, so you don't need STR