The Return of the Padlock: A post Xanathar Hexblade/Paladin Optimization Guide.

[Vespa]

THE PADLOCK
A guide to the Paladin/Warlock multiclass

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Long ago - well, not that long ago - the good Lord Vespa wrote a Cursebringer Hexblade guide. The legends say much hard work was put into his craft, and after day after day of double checking UA articles and Sage Advices he crafted something beautiful: A mediocre bladelock guide. But... Not long after, it is said that this Lord's advisor told Vespa of a solemn truth. He spoke these words upon the lord: "Cursebringer isn't a thing anymore dude lol". Broken by the realization that all of his hard work had been for nothing, it is said he rescinded into the shadow and was never seen again thereafter, his master work rendered useless and his power having waned.

And then. November 2017. A beautiful ray of light shone into that darkness and embraced the lost Lord, pulling him from his shame slumber. It was Xanathar, bringing gifts of new invocations and a new, semi-improved hexblade! The Lord saw that not all was lost, afterall. So it is said that he will return to his lands to once again craft a mediocre guide to assist the masses in playing his favourite class combination - a union of two charisma based gishes - the marrying of the paladin and the warlock - THE PADLOCK.

With the advent of Xanathar's Guide to Everything, the versatility of not only the Hexblade but of Warlocks in general has improved twofold. The invocations are hot. The new abilities? Spicy. Okay, well some have been nerfed, but we'll talk about that later. Let's get to the heart of things: Why play a hexblade in the first place? Why not just soak in the familiar simple glory of the paladin?

Here's are some reasons why: Hexblade gives you the spell versatility that Paladins don't get. Sure, Paladins get some great spells. Take a look at Bless, Aid, find steed, Death ward. These are all fantastic spells, but at the end of the day Paladin spells are almost entirely based on enhancing melee damage or healing, at least until much higher levels. A touch of Hexblade gives you a powerful ranged option in Eldritch Blast - In fact, with Hexblade's curse and agonizing blast the Hexblade becomes one of the most potent ranged fighters in 5E.

Not only that but you get the rechargeable spell slots of a Warlock, giving you some crazy smite fuel. Eldritch Smite, one of the new invocations, is essentially Divine Smite - But with a less resisted damage type, no damage cap, and the great secondary effect of knocking an enemy prone. Oh, and did I mention you can use both Divine Smite and Eldritch Smite on one attack? The sort of Nova damage this provides is beyond ridiculous.

Going even further, with the right balance of levels you end up being ridiculously tanky without having to expend any resources. Aura of protection gives you some ridiculous saving throw bonuses, and Armor of Hexes allows you to have a chance to completely negate an entire attack as a reaction.

And then, of course, invocations. The utility and combat prowess they provide is always great, and incredibly flavorful. Ever wanted to play a changeling, but your DM doesn't allow those sort of outlandish races? Hello Mask of Many faces! Have you ever wanted to eat a finger of death like it's nothing? Tomb of Levistus. The possibilities are many.

And that's just a brief overview! So, without further ado, let's get started.

Why hello there. I'm writing this over a year after I made this guide. Truth be told, while a lot of this guide is still true, times have-a changed, and I've had a lot more experience with this multi-class as well as DND in general. I'm gonna make some changes. I'm not sure anyone reads this guide anymore? But I still feel responsible for it, so here goes. All changes to previous material will be written in pink.

COLOR SCHEME
Gold: Take it Take it Take it. You NEED this, or you’re going to be far worse off without it.
Sky blue: This is a very good choice. Whatever it does, it does it well.
Blue: Good at what it does. Not phenomenal, but not bad.
Black: Average. It will be useful, but it probably won’t ever do anything spectacular.
Red: Bad. this will very rarely be useful or worth the resource it uses.
Purple: Either very situational or very flavorful but because of how specific it is won’t be useful very often.

Phew! Moving all of that over was a lot of work. I'll start adding the new Xanathar's spells/ invocations after lunch ;^^ you can also expect a more in depth sword/board section and a few other new things. Thanks for reading!

[Vespa]

SO WHY HEXBLADE?

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Let's go over the pros and cons once again and really peg them down.

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 most other classes
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. Always try to use your warlock slots first
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. A lot more if you take a lot of paladin levels.
Probably Almost certainly the highest burst damage of any spellblade.
Very 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. I highly suggest you look for stat boosting magic items as soon as possible. I totally forgot to change this from the first guide I made - Padlocks are SAD, not MAD. You need charisma, and con... but really thats it. You'll need at least 14/15 dex/str depending on your desired armor, but you can let your other scores suffer a little, because after 6 levels of paladin all your saves will be crazy.


Neutral:

Obviously not as tanky health wise as a fighter or barb, but hey, it's a spellblade. AC wise though? You're almost competing with the bladesinger if you go S&B


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. Or just be really thrifty with your spell slots.
Low documentation. Finding good information on warlocks, especially on the ua stuff, is really hard. It’s why I made this guide :p Theres not a ton of padlocks, but on hexblades in general? You'll have no trouble finding good material.
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.
You are very single target focused. You get very little AOE. You're a boss killer, let the wizard clean up the rabble.

[Vespa]

Let's go over the basics:



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Hit dice: D10's from Pally and D8's from Warlock.

This is better than the other spellblades (Most others get d6's and not much else without multiclassing). This is actually very good considering that you are not a health based tank.

Proficiencies:

Armor: Light, Medium, Heavy, Shield.

With this build, you ALWAYS take Paladin first. Which means you're going to get all the benefits of full plate. This means we don't really need much dex, even though it's great to have.

Weapons: Simple, Martial.

This means you have access to many different types of weapon builds. Not only that, you'll be going pact of the blade, so you essentially have proficiency in any weapon you summon.

SPELLS AND SPELL SLOTS (Warlock):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.

(I'm still in the process of adding Xanathar content! Check back later for those spells.)
Booming blade: If you have the warcaster feat this hits really hard on an opportunity attack. Really, really hard. You do a melee attack and then add thunder damage, and then the target takes additional damage if they move. This is a great control spell. Take it.

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. A lot better if you happen to take enough levels in sorcerer to have quicken spell.

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. And using your action just to cast this is real, real boring.

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. If you take agonizing blast, this +Hexblade's curse makes you an incredibly potent ranged force... which means you'll be a menace no matter where you are on the field.

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. Becomes much more useful if you have mask of many faces.

Mage hand: So many uses for this. It's pretty much limited by your imagination. Always a good choice. Especially if your campaign is trap heavy.

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. Take it.

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.

Toll the Dead: This is the one cantrip in the game that is actually competitve with Eldritch blast. It does a lot of damage, but the key to eldritch blast, especially a hexblade, is that it hit multiple times. This, however, is a saving throw cantrip, so A) So get all or nothing in terms of damage, but B) You don't have to worry about disadvantage. A good damage cantrip overall.

Thunderclap, Magic Stone: Out damaged by EB. You don't need that many damage cantrips.

Infestation: Cool secondary effect but random and you already have a damage cantrip.

Create Bonfire: Decent control cantrip but you won't find it being very useful.


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: It does as advertised! This spell's value really depends on the campaign you're playing in. Hurts to spend a spell slot on it, though.

Expeditious retreat: You can dash as a bonus action. Great if you need to bolt. Gets even better atop a find steed. If you want an option to be incredibly fast, take it.

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. How did I ever rate this just black before?! Now, with shadow of moil, you can WRECK something without it even being your turn. It targets a common save but damage as a reaction is a great way to really pile on the damage.

Hex: A very good spell that only warlocks 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 really piles up, especially on a crit. And chances are, you're a crit fisher.

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 so, so good when it comes up. The big drawback of this spell is that it can't be upcasted to effect multiple creatures. The big upside is, well... what's the scariest thing to fight in dungeons and dragons? It's not an ancient dragon, it isn't the tarrasque... its the ****in 8 int, 8 wis pile of muscles and steel that is your party fighter or barb, but has been charmed or possessed to fight you. Casting this beforehand saves your party.

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.

Cause Fear: I prefer wrathful smite from a paladin slot for single target fear. Frighten is a great condition if you don't want to get hit, though.

Mind Spike: Good for tracking, especially now that shadow hound isn't a thing. When would this specifically be useful, though? If you wanted to track someone covertly then the damage would ruin it, and if someone's running away you have powerful ranged options to make sure they don't get away.

Shadow Blade: Really cool spell, especially if your DM pays close attention to light. If you up cast it it does a lot of damage, too. Useless if you use a greatsword, possibly cool if you use a longsword. Once you get magic weapons, though, this isn't as great.

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, especially if you smite. My opinion of hold person has declined steadily over the past year. Yes, it is absolutely debilitating if an enemy is hit with this... until they save. A lot of creatures have decent enough wis to pass, and this only affects humanoids, and they get so many saves from it. All or nothing spells tend to either destroy an encounter or destroy well...nothing. So it's good, but it won't always stick. use it with caution (or better yet, let your wizard or cleric use it with caution.)

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

Mirror image: The big misprint of 5e. Makes you unhittable 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 100+ damage from the rouge/fighter I was against. 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 (You can use pally slots for this one).

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. It should be noted, however, that depending on how your DM rules damage against objects this could be very useful. Some DMs would say a fireball can blast a hole in the side of a ship, and some disagree. If that's the case then this is a bit better if you get creative.

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

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.

Enemies Abound: MUCH BETTER THAN CROWN OF MADNESS. Used right this could do a lot of damage, and it targets an uncommon save. I like it.

Thunder Step: A bit of damage and a lower range dimension door. It's not a bad choice if you need to get outta dodge and want to bring the pain at the same time. I'd probably switch the slot out for dimension door later, though. The damage isn;t anything to brag about.

Summon Lesser Demons: Like Conjure animals, except for much more chaotic. The demons act of their own accord and can attack you. The DM chooses these creatures, so it's a real gamble. I can only imagine how fun it is to unleash eight demons on an unsuspecting enemy, but there's too many variables here to make it reliable.

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 needs it, 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 sees 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

Charm Monster: Eh. Most people worth charming are humanoids. If you had charm person before there's no reason not to swap it to this when you level. Because it's a straight upgrade I'll keep it blue.

Shadow of Moil: Now this is a spell! It costs a bit, but enemies have disadvantage attacking you, you have advantage against them. Because the spell specifies heavily obscured to others I'm assuming that this means you can see perfectly fine? If not this is even better than darkness for devil's sight. Not only that, but if a creature within 10ft of you attacks you it takes 2d8 necrotic damage, no save. Hilarious to combine with hellish rebuke.

Sickening Radiance: Borderline broken? Keeping a creature in the spell long enough would outright kill them at 6 levels of exhaustion, though it would require some intense planning. Even before that they suffer a plethora of bad effects for staying in and failing the con save. It's good.

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.

Danse Macabre: Insta-Army! This is a really fun spell and it actually does a lot of damage. 1d6 + 2 + Cha damage per skeleton X 5, and you can upcast it for more undead. That's a considerable amount of damage! Not to mention there's a lot of uses for undead aside from combat.

Enervation: Ehhhh. The problem is that you have to keep using your action. The great part is once it hits there's no save and it automatically deals damage and heals you. Having to use your action every turn really limits your combat ability though.

Far Step: Concentration misty step you can repeat every turn. Great for a chase and avoiding opportunity attacks. It isn't thaaaat great, but it does it's job well. Probably not worth the concentration though. Might as well just dimension door.

Infernal Calling: I'm pretty sure you could just summon it and do a contest to ask it for it's true name? Otherwise I feel like this is a real big gamble. Do you really want a CR6 creature set loose on you in a combat situation? And what would you need a devil for otherwise? It suffers the same problem as conjure fey or elemental. If you have the devil's talisman, though, it's a whole different story.

Negative Energy Flood: This could be good for healing your little specter pet, but do you really need to do that? Probably not. The damage isn't great so...this probably won't help you much as a hexblade and less you are going hard into necromancy.

Synaptic Static: Targets an uncommon saving throw, non concentration, and on a failed save the target is under the effect of a sort of greater bane, though they do get a save. This is a great spell, hands down.

Wall of Light: This might be sort of hard to use because of how big it is but it has a lot of benefits. It blocks sight, it blinds, it does damage, and you can cause it to do additional damage with an action. A decent control spell overall.

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. And you'll probably just end up going insane anyways so...

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.

Mental Prison: Phantasmal Force on steroids. The target is restrained, takes 5d10 damage, and if someone tries to help the, there goes another 10d10 damage. This is a lot of damage for a 6th level spell and has many uses, and even on a failed save it still does the full 5d10 (Not halved!) Take it.

Scatter: You're a melee character. Moving things away from you isn't really that useful for you, unless you really need to focus on one thing.

Soul Cage: This is my #1 candidate for this mystic arcanum. It does so many things. It can heal as a bonus action, answer questions that would otherwise take the party sessions to figure out, Give you advantage, and use it for limited scrying (In a place you might not have been!) And if carrying around the soul of the BBEG isn't the coolest thing ever, I don't know what is. I strongly urge you to take this.

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. Blue if you just like the idea of having a gaggle of undead follow you around.

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. However, knocking enemies prone gives you a real nice source of advantage...until they get up.

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. A bit more useless if you take the Witch Sight invocation.

Crown of Stars: Non concentration? Goddamn. This is straight up just 4d12 radiant damage as a bonus action, ranged. If you want damage, this is it.

Power word pain: Cripples a creature below 100 hp. If it's below 100hp, it's already dead. Potent, but still a waste of a known spell.

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.

Maddening Darkness: A really large area of darkness with a decent amount of damage tacked on. Doesn't really work well with devil's sight, as being inside it would do damage to you. Even then this is sort of like a huge upgrade to hunger of hadar. This could decimate a room.

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, and it cripples spellcasters completely, though they are more likely to make the save.

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 it's got less then 150 hp you can jut kill it at this level.

Psychic Scream: Weirdly only needs a somatic component? Uncommon save, high damage, and the creature is stunned if it fails the save. And it can hit up to ten creatures. Stunning ten creatures is intense, the stun only ends on a save, and if they die their head explodes. Those enemies won't be coming back. I'd still rather have foresight, though.

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.


You won't get to 9th level spells with most build, or anywhere close, but for the sake of being thorough there you go :).




My favourite character I've ever made is named Aestra Emberfell, and whenever I tell new players her concept I get the same question - how in the world do you explain a warlock paladin, backstory and RP wise? Let's go over that here.

So there's a few ways to go about it. One, you can simply make a pact with the same being as you have made your oath to, or make a pact with that being's underling. So lets say I go with a devotion pally hexblade - maybe I worship Pelor, and have made a pact with an angel that serves pelor as a way to enhance my power in order to serve better.

Another way to look at it is that you aren't holy at all. Paladins do not need to worship a deity in 5e, they are warriors driven by their own belief in their oath. You might be a warlock who was tricked into a pact, and now you have sworn an oath of vengeance against your patron, who delights in giving you power just to see you waste away your whole life trying to seek revenge.

Option three is the opposite of option 1; Evil paladins can absolutely worship a god and make a pact with their lessers. Evil characters are fun; just make sure you can mesh them with the party.

Option four - there are two beings warring over your soul, or you are cursed by one being and worship the other to counteract that curse.

These are just a few options. There's a lot of ways to play it - remember, a patron doesn't always have to be evil. A lot of people get concerned that this multiclass warrants a really complex backstory. That's not always a bad thing, just make sure it doesn't feel forced.

If an example would help... My Padlock's (Human - Revnant (Custom and a lot less immortal), vengeance pally / hexblade) mother was another hexblade I played in a one shot. I play her daughter in the same setting in a campaign. She was trained at an early age to be a paladin so that she could overcome her family's curse - a curse that bound each generation's soul to a weapon if they were to make a pact with the weapon's owner. She was taught to be very careful making deals - so much so that the patron had to orchestrate a situation in which her parents and her would die unless she made the pact to pass on the curse. Now she too is bound to the sword - which keeps her alive as long as the sword remains unbroken - and has taken an oath of vengeance against her patron to bring her family back, release their souls... or die trying. Why her patron gives her this power, and to what end, is a mystery.

She worships a god of hunting - seeing her revenge as a grand, life long hunt. She is stoic and composed - to her, vengeance is not something to relish in. Take lives swiftly - do not hesitate and do not relish in a kill - and remember all you take, for you will be the last thing they remember. There should be no glory in a kill. She has a wild streak that comes from her worship to her god - a half hearted attempt at experiencing her lost childhood while enforcing her god's will. She is not a holy warrior - she is a force of nature that cuts through injustice as she does through enemies, and anyone who stands in the way will face the same fate.

It's a pretty standard tale for a vengeance pally, just with some hexblade mixed in. She's a blast to play (I love playing evil characters, the party dynamic is so fun if you do it right), and mechanically amazing. Extremely bonus action hungry, but powers up over the course of many turns to become a mechanical monster. Even with just hex and GWM, I'm dealing about 30~ damage per attack with a flametoungue...at level 10.

[Vespa]

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.

(I'm only going over the ones that work with pact of the blade)

Cloak of Flies(5th Level): Bonus action for a CHA poison damage aura and advantage on intimidation but disadvantage on all other charisma checks. Hurts your friends too though. This is pretty strong, you just need to be careful with friends.

Ghostly Gaze (7th Level): Use an action to see through solid objects to a range of 30ft. You also gain darkvision in that range. It lasts a minute. Unfortunately it requires concentration, which can suck if you use hex a lot with it's long duration. If this could be used at will with a higher level requirement it would be so much cooler, but it's once per short/long rest.

Gift of the Depths(5th Level): You can breath underwater and get a swimming speed = to your walking speed. Also you can cast water breathing once without a spell slot per short rest. It's situational.

Grasp of Hadar: Repelling Blast but you can move things towards you and it only works once per turn. Not as good as repelling.

Lance of Lethargy: When you hit with EB you can reduce a creatures speed by 10 once per turn. Could be interesting if combined with Grasp of Hadar.

Maddening Hex(5th Level): When a target is cursed by you you can use a bonus action to do an AOE of psychic damage equal to your charisma centered on the target, hitting any target within 5ft of them. You have to be within 30ft of them. It's a bonus action to do ensured damage. It's certainly useful.

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.

Trickster's Escape: Become slippery! Freedom of movement without using a spell slot once per short rest. Not worth a slot IMO but does it's job well if you are in a campaign where the DM really likes difficult terrain.

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.

Eldritch Smite: From cursebringer's ashes rise Eldritch Smite. It functions identically to divine smite but instead deals force damage, doesn't have the 5d8 cap, and knocks anything huge or smaller prone. However, you can only use it once a turn. It's your bread and butter as the hexblade, but some people would say it's overkill when combined with divine smite. Consider it.

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.

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 Pact Weapon (5th Level): You can use your pact weapon as a spellcasting focus, if your pact weapon isn;t already +1 it becomes +1 (Non stacking), and you can conjure ranged weapons. Ranged smites, anyone?

Lifedrinker(12th): When you hit a creature with your pact weapon you deal an extra bit of necrotic damage equal to your cha modifier. At 20 Charisma that's +10 to damage. if you get to 12 Warlock there's no reason not to take this.

Relentless hex(7th level): You can teleport to a target affected by hexblade’s curse or hex 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. Gets even better with master of hexes.

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.

[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
WOW did I read that class feature wrong! Let's try that again. Thank you so much to Mikal for clearing this up for me.

As a pact of the blade hexblade (Which is what you should definitely be) you can use your charisma for attack rolls and damage with any pact weapon, bound or summoned. Additionally, you can choose another weapon that you are proficient with after a long rest to gain this benefit until your next long rest. This means you greatsword hexblades no longer need strength! Not only that, but you can freely switch back and fourth between sword and board/greatsword.

Additionally, if you didn't start paladin you gain proficiency in medium armor, martial weapons, and shields.

Hexblade’s curse:
Sky blue. This makes you a martial apocalypse. +proficiency to damage, 19/20 crits, and you heal when you kill anything affected by this. Unfortunately it only affects one creature until level 14 in this class. If you have that class feature, it's gold.

Accursed Specter(6th Level):
A free action to raise the soul of a humanoid you just killed! You get a specter with temporary hitpoints equal to half your Warlock level. They get their own turns and they obey your verbal commands. It also gains a bonus to attack rolls equal to your charisma modifier. You get it until your next long rest, which means you have a fun servant till then.

The main attractive features of the spectre are that they can move through walls, are immune and resistant to a lot of conditions and damage types, and of course their life drain. Unfortunately, even with your charisma bonus they have a low + to hit and life drain only has a dc of 10. Also, it's strength is incredibly low. This is more a flavor ability than anything, it's not gonna be super useful in combat. But...when you raise the BBEG as a servant for today, it'll be worth it.

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. It's changed in Xanathar's, though. You have to use your reaction to use it. This makes it competitive with spells like shield, but this is still a strong ability. 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):
You can move your hex when you kill a target affected by it. A lot less powerful then the old Master of Hexes, but still very good. Let's you rule that one really important counter of the day.


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:

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 :)

Blur: Not quite as good as mirror image or blink. Still does it's job well.

Branding: Extra damage on next melee hit and they cannot go invisible. It’s not really worth the spell slot.

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.

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.

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.

Banishing Smite: Banish but on a smite. Pretty solid choice, but you might as well just prepare it Via paladin.

[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 eldritch smite 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 eldritch smite and deal 6D8 extra damage to your attack, and all dice added to an attack roll are doubled.

Combine this with the 2d6 from the greatsword, your charisma 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 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. Thanks to the Hex Warrior class feature it's charisma all the way for melee. Additionally, we want to have high CON and DEX for health and AC from our medium armor, or a higher strength if we want full plate.

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 CHA 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 CHA 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. Not to mention...in the darkness lurks the key to making this build even more gross. Elven accuracy is a very, very strong feat for this build.


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. problem is you'll be starting with less than 16 Cha.

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. Raises your main stat by 2 and the spellcasting helps your spell slot economy a little and darkness synergizes well with darkness sight if you grab it.


For this example, let's build a few different characters. 27 Point buy.

VHUMAN(Medium Armor):
Feat: Warcaster/GWM
STR: 13
DEX: 14(+1)
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 9
CHA: 16 (+1)

VHUMAN(Medium Armor):
Feat: Resilient(CON)
STR: 13
DEX: 14(+1)
CON: 14 (+1 from Resilient)
INT: 9
WIS: 10
CHA: 16 (+1)

VHUMAN(Heavy Armor):
Feat: Warcaster/GWM
STR: 15 (+1)
DEX: 10
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 10
CHA: 16 (+1)

VHUMAN(Heavy Armor):
Feat: Resilient(CON)
STR: 15 (+1)
DEX: 10
CON: 14 (+1 Resilient)
INT: 8
WIS: 10
CHA: 16 (+1)

HALF - ELF(Medium Armor)
STR: 13(+1)
DEX: 14(+1)
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 10
CHA: 17 (+2)

HALF - ELF(Heavy Armor)
STR: 15(+1)
DEX: 12
CON: 14 (+1)
INT: 8
WIS: 10
CHA: 17 (+2)

Now that Hex Warrior works on greatswords no build has to worry about MADness. All you really need is charisma for spellcasting / melee. The rest goes into CON and DEX. If you want to use full plate, You'll be going for 15 strength instead of 13. Otherwise you'll be using half-plate. It's a small difference in AC for a better initiative/dex saving throws/etc.

While we're at it, let's talk about feats and ASIs. Once you max your charisma at 20 you're free to take all the Feats you want!

+2 CHA: Your most important stat and the only one you really need to improve. It improves your melee capabilities and your spellcasting. Get this to 20 as soon as possible.

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

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 regularly get 20+ 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. These classes are built around crits, so this is great for you. Absolutely necessary for greatsword builds.

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.

Resilient (CON): Arguably better than Warcaster for greatsword builds. Sage Advice says that you can cast while holding a two handed weapon, so this works better in that case. Do keep in mind that since you can have two weapons benefiting from Hex Warrior you can swap freely between sword/shield and greatsword, so Warcaster might be a better choice if that's your plan.


So, why Paladin? Well, it doesn't only potentially fix our ac problem but also fulfills our other needs as well. Paladin relies on Charisma just like the hexblade, and their abilities jive well with Hex warrior, making it a great match.

Paladin lets 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. 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.

So, let's go a bit further into paladin now.

[Vespa]

THE PADLOCK


https://i.giphy.com/media/y0svTH0QA5haU/giphy.webp

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 it only works once per short rest.

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 eldritch smite is hardly ever worth it. It just uses too many spell slots in one turn. It’s better to save the slot for another ES 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.



Ceremony: A lot of very specific bonuses that apply to very specific character events. Purple, but the flavour is 10/10.

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. You'll be using this one a lot, especially if you're a vengeance paladin.

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: You gave divine sense. This does have the 10 minute duration but I hardly see it being useful.

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. Regardless, it does it's job.

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. Divine favour could be useful for shutting down enemies with undead fortitude or fighting other types of enemies that have their regeneration halted by radiant damage. It's situational, but it kicks ass when you need it.

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. Good for things with frightful presence. Take it early, ignore it later.

Protection from evil and good: The concentration makes this spell less appealing. There are several monsters that this could be very useful against, but they are mostly mob creatures and as a result you probably won't be able to prepare this for it in anticipation.

Purify food an- no. Unless you are running a very specific food based 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 smite effects 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. Concentration still hurts, though.

Thunderous smite: This one is much better than searing. The initial damage is of a better type and the knockback opens up options for environmental damage and control . 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 great secondary effect.

(V)Bane: Anti bless against 3 enemies, and it can be upcast for more targets. My opinion on this one has really changed, mostly because I realized there's no save after the initial. -1d4 on attack rolls and saving throws can be really rough for some monsters.

(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. Now that shadow hound doesn't exist I'm moving this up a little. You could also take mind spike but if you're a V paladin you will always have this prepared, which is great.

(D) Sanctuary: This spell wrecks barbarians or other non-intelligent humanoids/monsters, and since you're only dependent on charisma your DC will be higher than most Paladins. Cast it at the end of your turn and you're good to go. You can cast it on friends to protect them, too. As a Padlock you have a lot of bonus action things to do, so you might not always get a chance to use this.


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. And as a Padlock you can pull off shenanigans like casting expeditious retreat on yourself, having it effect your steed, and having an incredible move speed.

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. Devotion gets it for free!

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

Magic weapon: A non magical weapon becomes magical and a +1 weapon. You could use this on your Hex Warrior (Non pact) weapon if it isn't magic already, but otherwise this spell kind of sucks.

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. Devotion gets it for free!

(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. And if you use a warlock slot you can grab a lot of people to smack down on.

(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. Avoid opportunity attacks and get out of grapples. Even better is that this spell is only verbal, so you cast it while your hands are bound. Don't use it too much, though, you’ll wreck your spell slots.



Aura of Vitality: This is a lot of HP for a third level slot. Takes a tiny bit of time, but 12d6 is nothing to scoff at. And the heal is a bonus action.

Blinding Smite: Blinding a creature is pretty good. People forget that most spells require some sort of sight to cast, so it can cripple spellcasters. However, you do have to hit and then have them fail the Con save, and then they can just save later. It's ok.

Create food and water: If you need it, you'll prepare it. You'll almost never need it. HOWEVER if you are in a poor town or something like that you can help a lot of people with this.

Crusader's Mantle: Okay, so for those of you who chose to go oathbreaker or have a minionmancer in your party this is sort of crazy. Think about it this way: If you have five people in the aura, and they all have multiattack, and they all hit, you've just dealt 10d4 damage.

Daylight: Alternate name: How to wreck any encounter with a monster that has sunlight sensitivity. Aside from that specific use though...ehhhh. It's strong when you need it.

Dispel Magic: I usually don't suggest using this if you already have counterspell, or if someone else in your party has it. Dispel magic can come in handy if you have prepared slots open but I usually try to shove this off onto the party's full caster.

Elemental Weapon: Better than magic weapon. If you use a 5th level slot and have a build that gets three attacks (Polearm master/ Crossbow Expert) this adds a considerable amount of damage. Butttt that means your weapon has to be nonmagical and you'd be very dependent on this spell.

Magic Circle: Copy pastad from warlock spells: 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.

Remove curse: Another one you might regret having one day. It's still sort of situational but when your party comes across a berserker axe you'll be happy you've got this. I'm leaving it black because of that.

Revivify: Absolutely take this. You should always have a diamond on you just in case.

(V) Haste: LOL. Okay so this is actually a trap choice possibly. The benefits are hilariously good, but you're likely going to be casting this on yourself and so losing concentration is very dangerous. HOWEVER, at this point you have aura of protection and possibly warcaster/resilient (CON) so maintaining concentration is a lot easier for you. So in summary, if you have the means to maintain concentration it's ridiculously good and worth the concentration, but without it it'll screw you over.

(V) Protection from Energy: Hhhhhh concentration. Okay so hear me out. If you wanted to prepare this because you were off to go fight a dragon, why wouldn't you just smack down a few hundred gold and buy a resistance potion, freeing up your concentration? I don't see the point.

(D) Beacon of Hope: Advantage on wisdom/death saving throws and max hit points from healing to ANY NUMBER of creatures in a 30ft range. If you have a cleric with you, this is incredibly good. Unfortunately, all of your dice based healing isn't great, so without a cleric or druid this is less great.



I'm looking into a conquest 15+ / X hexblade build. Once I look more into that I'll be adding the rest of the spells for paladin.




LEVEL PROGRESSION


Let's also take a look at level progression. Here are the things we need to really consider:


Starting armor proficiency in regards to type of build.
Our stats for melee and Hex Warrior
When we get extra attack.
Spell Progression


These are the main four things we have to consider. I've highlighted them with corresponding colours to show you how important each one is, gold being the most important. Let's go from least important to most important.

Least important is spell progression, which might seem silly to most people who play full casters, but first and foremost we are a melee character. Our spells enhance our melee, not the other way around. That being said, the more spell slots we have the more often we smite, and the higher spell slots the better the spells.

Second least is extra attack. This would be second most, but I'll explain why the others overtake it in a second. As anyone who's played a martial class with extra attack knows, racing to level 5 is very important. Luckily, both of our classes can get extra attack, either through a class feature or invocation, so we can go either route.

Starting armor proficiency is important because it determines entirely what class we'll be starting as. If you're going to be using medium armor there's really no reason not to go hexblade first. You'll get hex warrior right off the bat so you'll already have medium armor proficiency and you can use your charisma right off the bat. For heavy armor, it's harder. You'll need to start paladin, which means at level 1 you are going to be a bit uh....terrible. In that case I'd probably go 1 paladin -> 1 Hexblade -> 6 paladin and then the rest hexblade.

I kind of already covered hex warrior but the reason why we have to consider it the most is because our strength in both builds is sub-par, and we want to start using charisma for weapon attacks ASAP. So again, we either want to start hexblade if we're going medium armor or multiclass right out the gate to hexblade at second level, after paladin.

So, let's go through a few options you have for each armor build.

Medium path: Start hexblade. Level to 5 Hexblade for extra attack. THEN start levelling paladin. You can choose to alternate between paladin/hexblade as needed past this point, but I'd suggest gunning for 5/6 paladin as it gives you extra attack (Freeing up an invocation slot) and then aura of protection after that. Then I would suggest continuing with hexblade for the rest of your levels, unless you have a build that goes past 6 hexblade. ALTERNATIVELY you can start hexblade and level to 5 paladin if you want more paladin levels early on, but keep in mind this pushes ASI/Extra attack (Thirsting blade) back a level.

Heavy path: Start Paladin. Immediately take your next level in hexblade for Hex Warrior. Then you can choose to go 5 Hexblade or 5 Paladin. I'd suggest going 6 paladin for aura of protection and then X hexblade, but you can mix it up in between. The most important thing is to get extra attack as soon as possible and make sure your spell slots are doing okay.

For further reference on something a bit different, here is the level progression I plan on taking for my current character Aestra, a Hexblade/Vengeance paladin/Phoenix sorcerer. It's quite a bit different with the levels in sorcerer, but it's been an undeniably fun build and is very strong, combining aspect of Padlock and Sorcadin. (Ignore the multisub stuff, it's campaign specific lol)


https://i.imgur.com/6giCFRu.png
Just thought it might interest people. If enough people show interest I could make another section in the guide for this specific build and why it works so well.

Well, it's not my cup of tea, but there are other options for sure. Keep in mind that you need to pick your oath carefully. For example, a vengeance paladin really has no reason to go past 6 - IMO the 7th level ability isn't worth the level and paladin class features in general aren't great past 6 (Or at least pale in comparison to aura of protection). But an oath of ancients paladin has a fantastic level 7 feature - resistance to damage from spells is BIG. Oath of conquest is also a good candidate for going past 6, aura of conquest adds a large damage aura to your character and even scornful rebuke might be worth it (It would destroy on Aestra).

So, in summary, really think about if your subclass is worth bringing past level 6, because the actual paladin abilities largely aren't worth it.

There is one other option. 1 level of hexblade gives you hex warrior and eldritch blast. Being able to focus less on strength is a huge bonus for a paladin, because most end up with subpar spell DCs. This way, you could focus entirely on charisma. If your paladin's 20th level ability isn't great, then it's well worth considering the dip.

So, as a hexblade, your god stat is Charisma. With that in mind you don't need to rely heavily on stat boosting attunement items anymore! Find yourself a strong +x weapon to bind and then attunement is up to you. I outline a few magic items here, but what I'd honestly suggest is that you pick up a wand of the pact keeper ASAP. You probaby don't have a lot of saving throw based spells but having a + to them is NEVER bad, and the extra warlock slot is invaluable. Although if you find yourself short resting often then it's not a big deal. And find that tome of leadership ASAP!

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, even if you don't always have it attuned. Get it as soon as possible. It boosts your spells, 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. Worth the attunement though? That's up to you.

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. Probably not worth att

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: Raise your charisma even more. You Monster. Useless if you're at 20 already.

Manual of Leadership: Lol. With this and aura of protection your DM might just ask you to stop rolling for saves. 22 Charisma save at level 20 would be like, what, +18? This will benefit you and your team more on you then it will on most other charisma based peeps, so fight for it.




In the end, you are going to have a character with terrifying offense and unbreakable defense. You're going to be looking at minimum 18 AC in plate, up to 21 with a shield and defense before even factoring in magic armor and possible access to the shield spell. +5 to every saving throw - Even the ones you are already proficient in (Say goodbye to wisdom based spells, enemy spellcasters). Eventually, one attack with a greatsword and GWM will deal, on average with lifedrinker, 2d6 + 20 damage. Let's add in hexblades curse and smites - 2d6 + 26 + 5d8 + 5d8. Not to mention, with agonizing blast you are dealing 4d10 + 20 at range in force damage at level 20. You're basically a delete button, piloting a heavily armored tank. Not to mention you have great charisma and can act as the party face, and you can heal and have a few party buff spells. The only thing you can't really do is crowd control, and there's definitely some magic items that can help you fix that. All in all, you are both an unstoppable force and an immovable object... and a great foil to your cousin, the sorcadin.

[noob]

Does this class combo gets the spell protection against gifs?
Because the sorcerer/paladin did not get the protection against gifs spell.

[Caelic]

Where do you stand on the issue of whether Eldritch Smite is restricted to Warlock spells only? The general rule is that spell slots are interchangeable, of course, but specific trumps general, and the invocation does specify "Warlock spell slot."

It seems to me like it drastically impacts the power of the ability, one way or the other.

[Vespa]

Where do you stand on the issue of whether Eldritch Smite is restricted to Warlock spells only? The general rule is that spell slots are interchangeable, of course, but specific trumps general, and the invocation does specify "Warlock spell slot."

It seems to me like it drastically impacts the power of the ability, one way or the other.

Yeah, the invocation does specify warlock spell slot. If I was dming I'd probably rule that it's warlock spell slot specific. Otherwise I'm 100% sure they would have put a damage limiter on it like they did with divine smite. Otherwise you end up with sorlocks choosing to do 10d8 extra damage on a crit... It's a bit hard to believe that they intended for it to be that way. Guess we'll have to wait for a sage advice on it for clarification.

[Vespa]

Does this class combo gets the spell protection against gifs?
Because the sorcerer/paladin did not get the protection against gifs spell.

Oh no, the spell is failing! Best we can do is embrace the gifs... Hm, but I wonder, can you make a pact with a gif?

[Innocent_bystan]

No love for the level 4 spell, Shadows of the Moil? It's your very own darkness/devil's sight combo rolled into one.

[Vespa]

No love for the level 4 spell, Shadows of the Moil? It's your very own darkness/devil's sight combo rolled into one.

I haven't added Xanathar stuff yet! I just moved the guide and I'm working on adding stuff still. Check back later and it'll definitely be there (It's my favourite xanathar spell for warlocks, after all!)

[Mikal]

I really think you should consider dropping heavy armor and str to 13.
As a hexblade you're really wasting the charisma SADness Hex Warrior provides if you're making strength that high, and you can still get all the other paladin benefits by keeping strength at a low enough level to just MC into and out of Paladin with.

With Pact of the Blade, you can literally use Charisma for attack, melee damage (twice if you get to lifedrinker! three times at level 19 with Oathbreaker Paladin!!), EB damage, saves, and other Paladin effects, and all you lose out on is 1 or 2 AC by going medium armor over heavy. PLUS as a half-elf you qualify for Elven Advantage with any weapon since you use Charisma for them at level 3 with Pact of the Blade..

As such I'd probably have my stats go as follows

V Human
Str 13
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 8
Cha 16

Half Elf
Str 13 (+1 choice)
Dex 14 (+1 choice)
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 10
Cha 17

[Vespa]

I really think you should consider dropping heavy armor and str to 13.
As a hexblade you're really wasting the charisma SADness Hex Warrior provides if you're making strength that high, and you can still get all the other paladin benefits by keeping strength at a low enough level to just MC into and out of Paladin with.

With Pact of the Blade, you can literally use Charisma for attack, melee damage (twice if you get to lifedrinker! three times at level 19 with Oathbreaker Paladin!!), EB damage, saves, and other Paladin effects, and all you lose out on is 1 or 2 AC by going medium armor over heavy. PLUS as a half-elf you qualify for Elven Advantage with any weapon since you use Charisma for them at level 3 with Pact of the Blade..

As such I'd probably have my stats go as follows

V Human
Str 13
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 8
Cha 16

Half Elf
Str 13 (+1 choice)
Dex 14 (+1 choice)
Con 14
Int 8
Wis 10
Cha 17

I'm used to playing a greatsword padlock with a bound sword rather than a summoned one, which is why I had the strength. You raise a very good point. I'll change some stuff around accordingly!

[Mikal]

I'm used to playing a greatsword padlock with a bound sword rather than a summoned one, which is why I had the strength. You raise a very good point. I'll change some stuff around accordingly!

You can still use a bound sword, no need to create one. Bladepact and Hex Warrior work on any pact weapon, so you can use that Greatsword you find elsewhere. Until then of course, you always can go improved pact weapon for a free +1 blade.

[Vespa]

You can still use a bound sword, no need to create one. Bladepact and Hex Warrior work on any pact weapon, so you can use that Greatsword you find elsewhere. Until then of course, you always can go improved pact weapon for a free +1 blade.

Hm. Okay, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. The way Hex Warrior is worded in Xanathar's I thought that only summoned greatswords (Created via pact weapon, not bound) were usable with Hex Warrior. The way it's worded is that any weapon you conjure can benefit from Hex Warrior regardless of type, but I thought that a bound greatsword (Let's say a flame tounge) wouldn't count as conjured. Is that wrong? Because in that case that changes a LOT.

[Mikal]

Hm. Okay, sorry, I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. The way Hex Warrior is worded in Xanathar's I thought that only summoned greatswords (Created via pact weapon, not bound) were usable with Hex Warrior. The way it's worded is that any weapon you conjure can benefit from Hex Warrior regardless of type, but I thought that a bound greatsword (Let's say a flame tounge) wouldn't count as conjured. Is that wrong? Because in that case that changes a LOT.

Essentially any pact weapon gains Hexwarrior benefits, in addition to a touched weapon every long rest that isn't two handed, either conjured or bound. It's not the conjured/bound that matters, it's the fact that it's your pact weapon, and both types are your de facto pact weapon. Technically speaking, when you bind a magical weapon it becomes your conjured weapon, so the wording fits, since you can dismiss/return it (unless it's sentient). Especially as the term 'conjure' doesn't appear in the PHB description for pact weapons.

This means the following items are all valid and legal for Hex Warrior once you become blade pact.

1) Any Pact Weapon- Conjured or Bound existing magic weapon. This includes ranged weapons if the bound weapon is ranged or you have improved pact weapon and choose to create it as a ranged weapon

2) Any non two-handed weapon. This is the long rest choice you make and refresh every long rest.

This means you actually have up to two weapons which benefit- your pact weapon and your non-pact.
This allows you to say... touch a longsword and summon/create a ranged weapon, allows you to use TWF with a pact weapon and touched weapon, or allow you to go both GWF and sword and board with your Pact Weapon as a Greatsword and your touched weapon as a longsword with shield.

[Vespa]

Essentially any pact weapon gains Hexwarrior benefits, in addition to a touched weapon every long rest that isn't two handed, either conjured or bound. It's not the conjured/bound that matters, it's the fact that it's your pact weapon, and both types are your de facto pact weapon. Technically speaking, when you bind a magical weapon it becomes your conjured weapon, so the wording fits, since you can dismiss/return it (unless it's sentient). Especially as the term 'conjure' doesn't appear in the PHB description for pact weapons.

This means the following items are all valid and legal for Hex Warrior once you become blade pact.

1) Any Pact Weapon- Conjured or Bound existing magic weapon. This includes ranged weapons if the bound weapon is ranged or you have improved pact weapon and choose to create it as a ranged weapon

2) Any non two-handed weapon. This is the long rest choice you make and refresh every long rest.

This means you actually have up to two weapons which benefit- your pact weapon and your non-pact.
This allows you to say... touch a longsword and summon/create a ranged weapon, allows you to use TWF with a pact weapon and touched weapon, or allow you to go both GWF and sword and board with your Pact Weapon as a Greatsword and your touched weapon as a longsword with shield.

Oh wow, that's great! Thank you so much for the explanation. That makes me cry a little cause my current character has unnecessary points in strength. I will definitely change the guide to reflect this, thank you.

[Mikal]

Oh wow, that's great! Thank you so much for the explanation. That makes me cry a little cause my current character has unnecessary points in strength. I will definitely change the guide to reflect this, thank you.

Very welcome!

[Sception]

I'm very excited to see this guide expanded. Padlock is my favorite class combination as well, and I'm hoping with Xanthars additions it might not be as overshadowed by the sorcadin. Though hex(1)/sorcadin(19) will still probably shake out on top for paladin gishes.

I'm especially looking forward to breakpoint advice on playing this character from level one. Do you stick to one class for however many levels then jump over? Go back and forth?

As for heavy armor vs. medium - I personally still prefer starting with paladin and going heavy armor, aiming for 15 strength to comfortably wear plate. This way you can tank dex. Granted, tanking dex isn't that great in general, but 15 str, 8 dex is considerably less greedy in point buy than 13 str (to multiclass paladin), 14 dex. If you've rolled and have stats to spear, or are taking a dex-boosting race, or want to start as a warlock and jump to paladin later, medium armor could work. Your con will probably suffer for it, though.


Much as I love human for 1st level feats and aasimar for spectacular fluff and ability synergy (fallen aasimar hexbreaker, anyone?), Half elf probably wins on best race for hexadin what with elven accuracy granting triple advantage from oath of emnity or darkness to crit fish off the hexblade's 19-20 crit range vs. your one cursed target per rest, popping smites for big numbers against your most dangerous foes.

That's pretty feat intensive, though. Elven accuracy, thankfully, can come with a 1 point cha boost, so half elves can jump from 17 to 18 off of it, but you'll still likely want great weapon mastery & either warcaster or resilient to shore up your concentration saves, and depending on how the multiclass goes, you'll be running close to end game off of just those three feats. Then again, maybe you can skip the concentration feat, since your relying on smites more than buffs for spell slot damage boosts.


Speaking of smites, do you really think eldritch smite is worth bothering with? I mean, autoprone is great, don't get me wrong, but it's warlock slots only, and you're going to have paladin smites anyway for near about the same damage.


Another thing I'm looking forward to is discussion of different paladin oaths. Oathbreaker has big damage boosts if you take it at least to 7th level, and there's a case to be made to go all the way to 11th, stacking more an more all-the-time damage bonuses to your attacks, which solves the problem of what to do when you run out of slots to smite with or don't get to rest right away after burning your hexblade's curse. Big synergy with a party necromancer, too.

Tyranny has amazing control, at least vs. anything that isn't outright immune to fear, making them probably the best at tanking mobs. Maybe go dragonborn for some non-concentration fear, leaving your concentration open to trap the now immobile foes in darkness. Darkness/devils sight is great for blaster locks, but EDIT: I was completely wrong, the zone of Darkness is totally mobile, but it still has synergy with this ability since the enemies won't be able to walk out of the zone on their turn to make unpenalized attacks against things they can see. Still have to deal with it being non-party-friendly, but I don't imagine a tyrantblade is a very friendly guy regardless.

Emnity bypasses the problems of relying on darkness to provide advantage vs. your cursed target, making it probably the best choice for the half elf crit fisher.

Those I think are best for the hexadin, but I could see some value in ancients (if taking paladin to level 7) and devotion as well.

[Kileonhardt]

This allows you to say... touch a longsword and summon/create a ranged weapon, allows you to use TWF with a pact weapon and touched weapon, or allow you to go both GWF and sword and board with your Pact Weapon as a Greatsword and your touched weapon as a longsword with shield.

I think the TWF is something that most people have been overlooking a lot. TWF style (although you'd need an extra dip for this but can easily drop it as losing that +cha isn't that big of a deal) + extra attack + all of your extra CHA to damage be it through lifedrinker or curse and the extra crit fishing on the OH attack per turn just seem like a perfect mix.

[Sception]

You still won't get all of your bonus damage when dual wielding, as some of the warlock's bonus damage is specific to the pact blade alone and not to any other weapon you happen to be using at the same time (eldritch smite, lifedrinker). Paladin bonus damage (oathbreaker aura, divine smite, improved divine smite) and hexblade bonus damage (curse damage & improved crit range) will happily play with both, though.

[Kileonhardt]

You still won't get all of your bonus damage when dual wielding, as some of the warlock's bonus damage is specific to the pact blade alone and not to any other weapon you happen to be using at the same time (eldritch smite, lifedrinker). Paladin bonus damage (oathbreaker aura, divine smite, improved divine smite) and hexblade bonus damage (curse damage & improved crit range) will happily play with both, though.

You are quite correct. After re-reading the invocations and Hex Warrior I'm now on the fence about TWF. It's still great for crit fishing and I'd probably not keep eldritch smite post divine smite anyway since it's limited to once a turn so all you're really losing is lifedrinker damage and warlock 12 is usually a late grab with this combo anyway.

[Sception]

I think you can to TWF now, if you want to for style points, without shooting yourself in the foot. But it's still not going to be the optimal route from a purely mechanical perspective.

Pretty much the same as it is for regular single classed paladins. You can go TWF. There's enough synergy there to be worthwhile, and the always-available bonus action attack without having to burn a feat is nice - though admittedly slightly less nice for a hexadin than a regular paladin, due to your additional options for bonus actions, between warlock spells & hexblade's curse.

And the style points are huge. I once played a dex heavy half-Valanar ancients paladin dual wielding scimitars while using acrobatics to fight while dancing around bareback on his summoned paladin steed, and it was a heck of a blast. I could imagine the same sort of thematic thing working just as well or better for a hexadin. Or maybe a slow, ponderous, heavily armored type with two broad-bladed shortswords. Or maybe a god-of-war type of situation. Whatever.

It won't suck, is what I'm saying, but you will be burning some build resources for stylistic rather than mechanical returns.

[Mikal]

Yeah I think the more important thing to remember about the hexblade is that it just opens up options that simply werent viable anymore such as TWF.

On the other hand TWF actually works well if you go hexblade 3/oathbreaker 7.

Take the TWF feat and TWF style and you're still doing cha to hit and cha*2 to damage in three attacks (using your bonus action) with longswords or other 1d8 weapons, which IMO is comparable to PAM and it's bonus attack- losing out of course on great weapon mastery +10 damage. Still, I think that this actually helps makes TWF more viable than ever before previously.

Regardless I personally think any breakpoint on the padlock (and almost any hexblade multiclass) is no later than 12.

The level 14 ability was better before xanathars because it allowed unlimited curse use. Now it's always one time per short rest, and personally I'd rather use levels 13 and 14 elsewhere for more ASI/feats and class abilities.

Level 12 for life drinker and feat/asi just seems the strongest break point if you're going to stick with it long term imo. I recommend however getting second attack ASAP though so you can swap out thirsting blade. This may mean going warlock 3-4 and then your paladin levels to 5 and then back to warlock, relying on booming blade or gfb for damage instead of even taking thirsting blade in the first place.

[Sception]

Unfortunately, by RAW paladins don't have access to the two weapon fighting style. Many DMs will allow it anyway, ime, but it isn't there by default. And if you're burning a feat on it, then you really have to start looking at what you're giving up by not burning that same feat on Polearm Master instead. Even from the stylistic perspective, there's a lot to be said for a halberd or glaive on a big, scary, dark-knight sort of character.

Furthermore, tempting as it is for class features, hexblade 3 / oathbraker 7 can be a very painful level progression regardless of whether you're going TWF, S&B, Greatsword, or Halberd, given that you're waiting as many as 7 whole levels for your first ASI,
and even then you're spending it on a feat if you aren't playing variant human.

Level progression through the first 10 levels will require significant consideration.

[Mikal]

Yeah, if you go hexblade 4 before paladin you'll delay second attack longer but you'll likely want the feat/asi instead, if you go oathbreaker.

it might be better to do it that way then.
Say warlock 4/paladin 8/warlock the rest of the way.
Gives you regular asi/feat progression, though it does delay warlock spells a bit. Only bring that up cause shadow of moil is awesome.

[Sception]

Alternatively, you might start paladin. Maybe Pal 1 (for heavy armor), War 1 (for hex warrior, hexblade's curse, and one recharging spell slot for bless, smite, or shield), Pal + 5 or 6 (smite, oath, ASI, extra attack, aura of protection, oath aura if its good), then come back to hexblade for either the rest of your career or for just two more levels before spending the rest of your life as a paladin. Or don't continue either and just take sorcerer levels from that point on.

This basically plays as a paladin at early levels, but delays progression by one level from level 2 on in exchange for:

Hex Warrior with a one handed weapon. Solves the paladin's MADness issues, so your auras and divinities will be stronger without sacrificing melee ability.

Eldritch Blast. Even without invocation support, the cantrip is still a fantastic fallback option for a paladin stuck at range.

Hexblade's Curse. A 1/short rest damage boost that scales with character level plus increased crit range, which is spectacular with divine smite.

One first level spell slot that refreshes on short rests, usable with smite, or shield (a nice spell for a paladin to know regardless), or bless.


Given how much of the paladin is on daily timers, picking up even just a couple short rest abilities really can do wonders for your longevity.

The main drawbacks are that first level will hurt a bit, since you'll be rolling to hit and damage off of a 15 strength, and limitations on your weapon choice.

You can go sword & board, but until you pick up the warcaster feat that can be a real drag on your casting ability. It's usually not too bad - bless can be cast before you draw your weapon on the first round of combat, and smite doesn't require a free hand. You won't be getting much use out of the otherwise spectacular shield spell until you can get warcaster, though.

Alternatively, you can fight with a versatile weapon held in two hands. Keeps a hand open for casting, and transitions naturally enough into greatsword fighting once you pick up your third level of warlock so you don't feel like you're completely shifting gears mid progression (they way you would transitioning from, say, this to halberd). The main point of greatsword is great weapon master, though, and you won't be able to use that until you have both the feat and the third warlock level.

[numerek]

For this example, let's build a few different characters. 27 Point buy.
Example Builds
VHUMAN:
Feat: Warcaster/Resilient (CON)/ Warcaster
STR: 13
DEX: 14(+1)
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 9
CHA: 16 (+1)

HALF - ELF
STR: 13(+1)
DEX: 14(+1)
CON: 14
INT: 8
WIS: 8
CHA: 17 (+2)

your VHUMAN has resilient (CON) sandwiched between Warcaster which would save you 2 points

So with those extra points you can get wis up to 10 or str to 14

your HALF - ELF stats add up to 4 + 5 + 7 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 25

And if you moved the +1 to con instead of str 5 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 24

So with those extra points same as above.

[samcifer]

Don't forget to fill in the Paladin Spell Choices entry. :)

[Vespa]

Don't forget to fill in the Paladin Spell Choices entry. :)

Added! I'll add the rest after I talk with Mikal about his ideas for conquest.

[Mikal]

Added! I'll add the rest after I talk with Mikal about his ideas for conquest.

Shoot me a PM!

[Zanthy1]

A request: A section detailing ideal times to multiclass, like how many paladin levels you should take before going hexblade preferably with various options detailed. (like pally 6, hex 3, pally 11 or Pally 1, hex 14, pally 5). Something like that

[samcifer]

A request: A section detailing ideal times to multiclass, like how many paladin levels you should take before going hexblade preferably with various options detailed. (like pally 6, hex 3, pally 11 or Pally 1, hex 14, pally 5). Something like that

This, please.

[Vespa]

A request: A section detailing ideal times to multiclass, like how many paladin levels you should take before going hexblade preferably with various options detailed. (like pally 6, hex 3, pally 11 or Pally 1, hex 14, pally 5). Something like that

Added! I will go more in depth, but I need to actually build the characters that aren't 14/6 to make sure it's really worth it. Until then, I've provided a general overview of what you should expect.

[Zanthy1]

Added! I will go more in depth, but I need to actually build the characters that aren't 14/6 to make sure it's really worth it. Until then, I've provided a general overview of what you should expect.

Excellent! I look forward to it!

[Arkhios]

I fail to see what this:
https://dnwgit7zg7mqr.cloudfront.net/images/141020-UK/250/38266.jpg
Has anything to do with these:
https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/6/365/420/618/636272701937419552.pnghttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/nwn2-realms-of-trinity/images/c/ca/Hexblade.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140710224006
:biggrin:

[Sception]

There's another thing to consider with level progression: ASIs. Palladin/Warlocks very much want their feats asap. Sword & board needs that warcaster feat yesterday, greatsword's gotta have GWM, Halberd needs that and PAM, and if you're a half elf you really really want elven accuracy as soon as you can get it. If you're starting life in your teens, it probably doesn't matter, but if you're playing from level one having to wait until as long as level 7 to pick up your /first/ feat will be pretty agonizing. IMO, this is the one thing that stops variant human from being strictly worse than half-elf, provided you're playing from level one.

Granted, this kind of lines up with extra attack, since you already want to nab that as soon as possible and you'll already get your first feat on the way there, regardless of which class you grab it from. But the scag cantrips help smooth over that delay for extra attack, and there's nothing like that to smooth over the wait for your first critical feats.

The other thing I'd say about what you have down for that section is that you repeatedly recommend paladin 5 or 6, but paladin 7 is also worth considering depending on your oath. Tyranny, Oathbreaker, and Ancients in particular offer very tempting level 7 auras. You'll miss out on your Master of Hexes from level 14 hexblade, which is otherwise a nice and thematic capstone, but 10+ levels with any of those three auras could be worth the trade.

The other thing to consider is skew builds, paladins or warlocks that only dip into the other rather than extended mixes. Hexblade gets a lot out of even just two to three levels of paladin. Just two levels gets you heavy armor (if taken at level one), smite without an invocation slot, and two shields per day. A third level gets you channel divinities, several of which are quite nice, immune to disease, and a third shield per day.

For a sword & board paladin, just one level of hexblade fixes MAD issues, grants the shield spell, one first level slot for shield or smite that recharges on short rests (short rest resources being something the paladin painfully lacks), and hexblade's curse (which scales on character level, not class level), and a solid ranged option in eldritch blast. As good as paladin capstones are, I can hardly imagine any single classed paladin that wouldn't be better off with a single level of hexblade. One more level gets you a second short rest spell slot and two invocations, and you still get your expanded aura range as a capstone. A third level bumps those refresh slots to 3rd and gets you a pact boon, all three of which are tempting even for an otherwise mostly single classed paladin. Blade obviously lets you fight with greatweapon or halberd, and if you're happy with sword and board a divine servant/companion from pact of the chain is a great utility & thematic choice, and the book has a lot of utility for extra cantrips & rituals, plus its own thematic quality. Think how many cool anime & video game spellswords wade through combat with a blade in one hand and spellbook in the other.

You might not consider multiclasses that take three or less levels on one or the other side to be 'padlocks' so much as just paladins or warlocks with a dip, but they're definitely progressions worth considering. For instance, what does the Pal6/hexblade14 really pick up that a Pal3/Hexblade17 doesn't? Aura of protection is nice, sure, but if you're fighting in darkness all the time your party won't benefit so much, and while it's still nice on yourself, the 3/17 guy gets a 9th level spell, which is a heck of a capstone to pass up.

[MothKiller]

Great guide. Could you possibly weigh in on polearm master in your guide? I'm torn between using a greatsword and a glaive

[Kevin187z]

There's another thing to consider with level progression: ASIs. Palladin/Warlocks very much want their feats asap. Sword & board needs that warcaster feat yesterday, greatsword's gotta have GWM, Halberd needs that and PAM, and if you're a half elf you really really want elven accuracy as soon as you can get it. If you're starting life in your teens, it probably doesn't matter, but if you're playing from level one having to wait until as long as level 7 to pick up your /first/ feat will be pretty agonizing. IMO, this is the one thing that stops variant human from being strictly worse than half-elf, provided you're playing from level one.

Granted, this kind of lines up with extra attack, since you already want to nab that as soon as possible and you'll already get your first feat on the way there, regardless of which class you grab it from. But the scag cantrips help smooth over that delay for extra attack, and there's nothing like that to smooth over the wait for your first critical feats.

The other thing I'd say about what you have down for that section is that you repeatedly recommend paladin 5 or 6, but paladin 7 is also worth considering depending on your oath. Tyranny, Oathbreaker, and Ancients in particular offer very tempting level 7 auras. You'll miss out on your Master of Hexes from level 14 hexblade, which is otherwise a nice and thematic capstone, but 10+ levels with any of those three auras could be worth the trade.

The other thing to consider is skew builds, paladins or warlocks that only dip into the other rather than extended mixes. Hexblade gets a lot out of even just two to three levels of paladin. Just two levels gets you heavy armor (if taken at level one), smite without an invocation slot, and two shields per day. A third level gets you channel divinities, several of which are quite nice, immune to disease, and a third shield per day.

For a sword & board paladin, just one level of hexblade fixes MAD issues, grants the shield spell, one first level slot for shield or smite that recharges on short rests (short rest resources being something the paladin painfully lacks), and hexblade's curse (which scales on character level, not class level), and a solid ranged option in eldritch blast. As good as paladin capstones are, I can hardly imagine any single classed paladin that wouldn't be better off with a single level of hexblade. One more level gets you a second short rest spell slot and two invocations, and you still get your expanded aura range as a capstone. A third level bumps those refresh slots to 3rd and gets you a pact boon, all three of which are tempting even for an otherwise mostly single classed paladin. Blade obviously lets you fight with greatweapon or halberd, and if you're happy with sword and board a divine servant/companion from pact of the chain is a great utility & thematic choice, and the book has a lot of utility for extra cantrips & rituals, plus its own thematic quality. Think how many cool anime & video game spellswords wade through combat with a blade in one hand and spellbook in the other.

You might not consider multiclasses that take three or less levels on one or the other side to be 'padlocks' so much as just paladins or warlocks with a dip, but they're definitely progressions worth considering. For instance, what does the Pal6/hexblade14 really pick up that a Pal3/Hexblade17 doesn't? Aura of protection is nice, sure, but if you're fighting in darkness all the time your party won't benefit so much, and while it's still nice on yourself, the 3/17 guy gets a 9th level spell, which is a heck of a capstone to pass up.

OB 15 / Hex 5 for Supernatural Resist, or OB 11 / Hex 9 for the 5th level slots? Assuming playing from 1 (Half Elf/Drow variant started Hex)

[Naanomi]

Having spent an entire winter break playing Zelda... Paladin/Hexblade is a great model for Link and his Master Sword

[tickingClock201]

Thanks for this guide. I had an idea for a sort of Elric via Michael Moorcock style warlock over New Year's. It seems like there's a lot of room here to play around.

I'm trying on the 1 Warlock/1 Paladin to start Tomb of Annihilation. I'll report back about how I find myself smeared on the jungle top soil.

[Epyon1201]

(v)Drow Half-elf seems to trump (v)Human in everyway unless you are playing in one of those groups that only allow 2 books.

[TheShalafi]

I've really enjoyed this guide and thread.

I'm playing 5e for the first, I played 3/3.5e many years ago, but I'm getting back into.

I was looking for a front line fighter/melee/caster and the padlock makes perfect sense given we have a party of 4.

The others in the part will be

rogue/swashbuckler/warlock
blade singer
moon druid
bard (may not play all the time)

I was debating between the sorcadin and though this would be more fun, especially since we start at level 1.

For attributes, we did a 4d6 drop 1 followed by a draft, I have the following attribute sets to pick from

18,14,12,11,9,6 - 70 total points
17,14,12,11,10,8 -72
16,15,12,12,10,8 - 73
15,15,13,12,11,9 - 75

I was thinking of going with the top 1 / half elf so that I could start off level 1 with cha 20. I'd use the 14 dex, and then add +1 to str (paladin MC 13) and +1con (12). It's weak on con, but I think that tradeoff make sense to start with cha 20.

I want to be more tankish, however it seem impossible to get the 15 str and I think getting plate may take a while anyways since we are starting level 1. I think the dex / reflect saves will be more useful for now.

With that said, I plan to start first 5 levels into warlock, then next 6 paladin to get aura of protection.

Question: 1 - I am i overestimating the value of Cha and understimating wis / other stats? For example, Would start at CHA at 19 be better to get more int/wis? I'm thinking I'll have decent saves once I get paladin 6 but that won't be until level 11.
Question: 2 - I don't see much mention of PAM in this guide, is there any reason to avoid it? I want to combine it with tunnel fighter (DM ok'd it) + elven accuracy (lvl 9) + sentinel/GWM (lvl 13) to really have a clock of protection around my homeboys. Us warlock could use the eldritch back invocation to push away oncoming enemies out of range, just to provoke unlimited attacks of opportunity with my polearm when they run back in.
Question: 3 - There was some mention of multiclasses into Sorcerer. I wonder why this isn't discussed more, because the build is weak on spell slots and a level 9 sorcerer would give a ton plus many useful spells like haste? Or is lifedrinker that valuable?
Question: 4 - If I go into sorc - how does this impact the level progression of the build? Is level 3 only advised? Would I want to use quickened/twin spell BB/GFB instead of the extra attack lvl 5 invocation?
Question: 5 - I'm thinking of going Paladin Vengeance Oath, but reading oathbreaker and aura of hate and my 20 cha, isn't that amazing for the group? Doesn't that make much more sense that the vow of enmity? I may get enough advantage to trigger the half elf accuracy anyways.

Greatly appreciated

[raelik]

your VHUMAN has resilient (CON) sandwiched between Warcaster which would save you 2 points

So with those extra points you can get wis up to 10 or str to 14

your HALF - ELF stats add up to 4 + 5 + 7 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 25

And if you moved the +1 to con instead of str 5 + 5 + 5 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 24

So with those extra points same as above.

What do you mean "sandwiched between Warcaster"? Warcaster and what?

[sarrownight]

Added! I'll add the rest after I talk with Mikal about his ideas for conquest.

could you do a step by step for a oath of conquer, and hex with a few different split schemes? ex. 11 pal 9 war, 9 pal 11 war...
with primary and secondary spell choices please and thank you

[jdolch]

But the scag cantrips help smooth over that delay for extra attack, and there's nothing like that to smooth over the wait for your first critical feats.

Keep in mind that the SCAG Cantrips only really start to shine at level 5 themselves.

[Sception]

Keep in mind that the SCAG Cantrips only really start to shine at level 5 themselves.

They're better than just attacking from level one, if only just. And they feel gishy in a way that's super satisfying. And they start to shine at character level 5, not class level 5, so they effectively smooth over any delay you incur to extra attack by multiclassing, and can even replace it entirely in builds that switch to sorcerer before picking extra attack up to begin with, though admittedly that's really another build altogether.

Booming blade in particular retains significant utility even after you get extra attack, especially if you take warcaster (something sword & board padlocks probably want anyway) and not sentinel (something padlocks in general can have trouble fitting into their progressions).

I dont think the scag cantrips are at all obligatory. Hexblade/paladins are still great without them, and something with more utility, especially out of combat, would definitely help round out a chatacter that will be doing melee just fine regardless. But i personally really like their gishy feel.

[bartbartholomew]

Overall, this guide is really good. The content is excellent. Beyond just making suggestions, you gave the reasoning behind all your choices. This is really good at it allows the reader to decide if they agree with you and make their own, now informed, opinion. I also didn't notice any editing errors.

I have a few complaints though; ordering, incomplete feats, incomplete class recommendations.

The ordering and grouping is terrible. You have spells all over the place, class features are also scattered in no determinable pattern, and race options are near the bottom.

I recommend reordering so the reader can follow along as they build their own character. A hit on why PadLocks are awesome. Follow with a chapter talking about races, and at least a blurb on each of them. You might add a section on the pros/cons of going different levels of warlock vs paladin. Then a section on the different packs, although the non-blade ones could be light. Follow with a section on evocations. Then give spells their own section. Order them by spell level, then class, then subclass. Yes, we are going to get all the paladin spells.

I really like the layout in "Unlimited-Blade-Works-The-Guide-to-the-Ultimate-Paladin-Sorcerer-Multiclass" on this site if you would rather have an example.

The feat list would be much better if it was complete. As a melee caster, every feat is at least slightly valid and deserving of analysis. I'm personally taking Polearm Master, and would be really interested to know your feelings on that feat.

The race section would be better filled out. You think anything but V-Human or Half-Elf is stupid. That's fine, but I'd like to know why you don't think the Ork's Savage Attack isn't useful on a crit fisher. More relevant to myself, why do you think Aasimar's +2 Cha and super paladin abilities are not worth considering?

Don't let any of my critique discourage you. I'm working on a level 17 Paladin Hexlock, and I chose that over a Paladin Sorcerer because of your guide. It's just frustrating to be bouncing back and forth looking for relevant parts of the guide as I level my Paladin up.

[Alucard89]

Thanks for Guide. I am making a PAM Paladin and I want to play with Hexblade in one way on another.

One of my ideas was also a Paladin 12 (for ASI and IDS) and Hexblade 8.

Reason for it is I can get IDS which will boost my attacks and PAM extra attack by 1d8 way faster than waiting for Lifedrinker even If I went 6/14 (18 level for lifedrinker) and I still get on level 19 2x 4th level slots giving me total of 3 x 5d8 smite slots vs Paladin level 19 5x 5d8 slots. But I can get 2 of them back on short rest and do on crit an Eldricht Smite + Divine Smite combo which counts as total of 4x 5d8 smites. And I still get Haste from Vengeance Paladin.

I still get Darkness, Devil Sight, Agonizing Blast etc.

I was thinking about Paladin 6/Hexblade 14 but that lost of IDS and Haste from Vengeance Paladin seems really big for me.

My grip is delayed progression in high level Smite lots.

For example a level 18 Paladin has 4/3/3/3/1

While Paladin 13/Hexblade 5 has 4/3/5 which is quite a difference.

On the other Hand I could go Paladin 11/9 Hexblade and have 2x 4th level slots at 18 giving me 4/3/3/2 as opposed to 4/3/3/3/1 which is 2 x 5k8 lost but Short rest. But I get IDS.

[Benny89]

Thanks for Guide. I am making a PAM Paladin and I want to play with Hexblade in one way on another.

One of my ideas was also a Paladin 12 (for ASI and IDS) and Hexblade 8.

Reason for it is I can get IDS which will boost my attacks and PAM extra attack by 1d8 way faster than waiting for Lifedrinker even If I went 6/14 (18 level for lifedrinker) and I still get on level 19 2x 4th level slots giving me total of 3 x 5d8 smite slots vs Paladin level 19 5x 5d8 slots. But I can get 2 of them back on short rest and do on crit an Eldricht Smite + Divine Smite combo which counts as total of 4x 5d8 smites. And I still get Haste from Vengeance Paladin.

I still get Darkness, Devil Sight, Agonizing Blast etc.

I was thinking about Paladin 6/Hexblade 14 but that lost of IDS and Haste from Vengeance Paladin seems really big for me.

My grip is delayed progression in high level Smite lots.

For example a level 18 Paladin has 4/3/3/3/1

While Paladin 13/Hexblade 5 has 4/3/5 which is quite a difference.

On the other Hand I could go Paladin 11/9 Hexblade and have 2x 4th level slots at 18 giving me 4/3/3/2 as opposed to 4/3/3/3/1 which is 2 x 5k8 lost but Short rest. But I get IDS.

If we talk about Vengeance I would definitelly want that Haste. Warlock does not have access to it and it's superb self buff that works great with VoE and smites. If you took Vengeance, not getting Haste is imo a bad decision. That extra attack +2 AC, extra speed, adv on Dex saves. Everything good in hardest fights. Warlock can't replicate that.

So I would either go 19/1, 18/2/ 17/3 or 11/9. Now what each gives:

19/1: Most Smite slots, but on long rest. Still SAD CHA, basic EB, BB and Curse. All good.
18/2: You lose one 5th level smite but you get Agonizing Blast and Devil Sight/Another invocation
17/3: Same smites as 18/2 but you also get 2x 2nd level slots (so 3k8 Smites per short rest) and you get Darkness + Devil Sight combo. Also you still have 1 5th level slot which gives you 25 HP Armor of Agathys, which is nice.
11/9: This is to get: Haste + Improved Divine Smites (which are better than Lifedrinker as you get them MUCH faster and benefit from them longer). This is to get 2x 4th slot Smites (2x 5k8 smites) at level 18. We could go 12/8 but then 4th level slots are 19 and if we go 13/7, we only get 4th level slots at 20. Imo getting to 18 is more likely than to 20 though it's still streching. But you also get 2x 3rd level slots (4k8) at 16 which is still good. You also get 4 invocations and Eldricht Smite for Nasty critical hits for 20k8 (with 3rd level slots) or 22k8 burst. Brutal.

In my opinion those are best options, which is my personal preference. I am not fan of 6/14 as I don't like having only 2x Smites till level 17 and while short rest slots are great, I think that more regular slots from Paladin is actually better, especially for Vengeance. Also I totally don't like to wait for Lifedrinker. Even if we went 2/18 we get Lifedrinker at level 14 without Aura. With 6/14 you get it at level 18! I much much more prefer to get IDS at level 12 with 1 level dip as extra 1k8 damage from level 12 to 18 is worth more than extra +5 damage from level 18-20.

So what I would do is either:

Paladin 1/Hexblade 1/Paladin to level 6 or Paladin 6/Hexblade 1. Then I would go to level 11 Paladin for IDS and decide there if I want more Warlock or Paladin stuff. Do you feel you lack some range burst in party, do you feel like you could use that Darkness + Devil Sight, do you feel like you have so many encounters per day that you want that 2x 4th level short rest slots? Do you crit so often that that E-Smite + D-Smite would blow your table?

This at least my take on it :). You will be OP anyway.

[Alucard89]

If we talk about Vengeance I would definitelly want that Haste. Warlock does not have access to it and it's superb self buff that works great with VoE and smites. If you took Vengeance, not getting Haste is imo a bad decision. That extra attack +2 AC, extra speed, adv on Dex saves. Everything good in hardest fights. Warlock can't replicate that.

So I would either go 19/1, 18/2/ 17/3 or 11/9. Now what each gives:

19/1: Most Smite slots, but on long rest. Still SAD CHA, basic EB, BB and Curse. All good.
18/2: You lose one 5th level smite but you get Agonizing Blast and Devil Sight/Another invocation
17/3: Same smites as 18/2 but you also get 2x 2nd level slots (so 3k8 Smites per short rest) and you get Darkness + Devil Sight combo. Also you still have 1 5th level slot which gives you 25 HP Armor of Agathys, which is nice.
11/9: This is to get: Haste + Improved Divine Smites (which are better than Lifedrinker as you get them MUCH faster and benefit from them longer). This is to get 2x 4th slot Smites (2x 5k8 smites) at level 18. We could go 12/8 but then 4th level slots are 19 and if we go 13/7, we only get 4th level slots at 20. Imo getting to 18 is more likely than to 20 though it's still streching. But you also get 2x 3rd level slots (4k8) at 16 which is still good. You also get 4 invocations and Eldricht Smite for Nasty critical hits for 20k8 (with 3rd level slots) or 22k8 burst. Brutal.

In my opinion those are best options, which is my personal preference. I am not fan of 6/14 as I don't like having only 2x Smites till level 17 and while short rest slots are great, I think that more regular slots from Paladin is actually better, especially for Vengeance. Also I totally don't like to wait for Lifedrinker. Even if we went 2/18 we get Lifedrinker at level 14 without Aura. With 6/14 you get it at level 18! I much much more prefer to get IDS at level 12 with 1 level dip as extra 1k8 damage from level 12 to 18 is worth more than extra +5 damage from level 18-20.

So what I would do is either:

Paladin 1/Hexblade 1/Paladin to level 6 or Paladin 6/Hexblade 1. Then I would go to level 11 Paladin for IDS and decide there if I want more Warlock or Paladin stuff. Do you feel you lack some range burst in party, do you feel like you could use that Darkness + Devil Sight, do you feel like you have so many encounters per day that you want that 2x 4th level short rest slots? Do you crit so often that that E-Smite + D-Smite would blow your table?

This at least my take on it :). You will be OP anyway.

Thank you very much for breakdown! I will do that.

What ability scores I should have?

I was thinking either: STR: 15, DEX: 8, CON 16, INT 8, WIS 8, CHA 16

or STR 15, DEX 10, CON 14, INT 8, WIS 10, CHA 16.

I don't know if one extra +1 to CON is worth -1 to two other saves even with Aura +5.

[Benny89]

Thank you very much for breakdown! I will do that.

What ability scores I should have?

I was thinking either: STR: 15, DEX: 8, CON 16, INT 8, WIS 8, CHA 16

or STR 15, DEX 10, CON 14, INT 8, WIS 10, CHA 16.

I don't know if one extra +1 to CON is worth -1 to two other saves even with Aura +5.

I would go: STR 15, DEX 10, CON 14, INT 8, WIS 10, CHA 16

Imo for Paladin it's never worth to trade 2x minus 1 saves for one +1 save. And while extra HP is good, successing in DEX/WIS save is usually better for HP. This way you will have +5 flat to all crucial saves minus INT.

Just make sure you grab 1 level Hexblade on 2nd level so you can start using that 16 CHA instead of 15 STR as soon as possible and spamming that GFB and BB on enemies.

[DownRightFierce]

Just wanted to say that I am using this build in a west march style campaign I'm in. Currently level 6, ended up crit nuking the big bad guy 3 times in the fight and slaying him. Thank you so much for making this guide.

[Talionis]

I think you should talk about Gift of the Ever Living Ones Invocation with the amount of healing a Paladin can do with spells like Aura of Vitality you can become a major damage sponge. Both Oath of Crown and Oath of Redemption allow paladins to take damage for nearby teammates and when you can heal twice as effectively as anyone else because of Gift of the Ever Living Ones it rewards you for being the damage sponge and saves the party resources. This also pairs well with Armor of Hexes making you an even better Tank or off Tank. If you have five levels of Warlock and 9 of Paladin Aura of Vitality can be cast out of your Warlock short rest slots.

Not to mention you don’t need Lifedrinker because you already have Extra Attacks from Paladin so you can really have some of the best saves in the game with your Aura combing with the Improved Familiar Aura granting advantage on saves.

Aid makes a great spell to cast every morning after a long rest and then recharge by taking a short rest before starting out. Adding even more to the have a lot of hit points to be the sponge.

I did a 9 Oath of Redemption/ 11 Hexblade Chain Warlock because it was adventure league legal but I’m not sure Oath of the Crown isn’t slightly better.

[Turkish323]

I just "rolled" up a Half-Drow Sword & Board Paladin of Vengeance with plans to MC heavily into Hexblade Warlock for Adventurer's League. Using the standard array [15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8], as required for League play, I came up with the following:

STR: 13 (12+1)
Dex: 8
Con: 15 (14+1)
Int: 13
Wis: 10
Cha: 17 (15+2)

And as for progressions, I was planning on the following order of class leveling:

1) Paladin 1 (Heavy armor)
2) Hexblade 1 (Hex Warrior)
3-6) Paladin 2 - 5 (Divine Smite, Channel Divinities, ASI/Feat, Multi-attack)
7&8) Hexblade 2-3 (Invocations & Pact of the Blade)
9) Paladin 6 (Aura of Protection)
10+) Hexblade 4-14 (All the things)

As for feats and ASIs, here is what I had in mind, in no particular order as gear availability will affect how soon I choose one of the ones below.

Elven Accuracy (+1 Cha & Triple advantage)
+2 Cha
+1 Str & +1 Con
Heavy Armor Master (+1 Str, -3 non-magical bludgeon, piercing, & slashing damage)

I haven't even begun to think about spells, particularly the Warlock spells yet, much less magic items.

Thanks OP for opening my eyes to the value of Paladin levels beyond 3rd level. I feel that this makes him much more tanky, while still being quite the nova blaster.

[Mitsu]

I just "rolled" up a Half-Drow Sword & Board Paladin of Vengeance with plans to MC heavily into Hexblade Warlock for Adventurer's League. Using the standard array [15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8], as required for League play, I came up with the following:

STR: 13 (12+1)
Dex: 8
Con: 15 (14+1)
Int: 13
Wis: 10
Cha: 17 (15+2)

And as for progressions, I was planning on the following order of class leveling:

1) Paladin 1 (Heavy armor)
2) Hexblade 1 (Hex Warrior)
3-6) Paladin 2 - 5 (Divine Smite, Channel Divinities, ASI/Feat, Multi-attack)
7&8) Hexblade 2-3 (Invocations & Pact of the Blade)
9) Paladin 6 (Aura of Protection)
10+) Hexblade 4-14 (All the things)

As for feats and ASIs, here is what I had in mind, in no particular order as gear availability will affect how soon I choose one of the ones below.

Elven Accuracy (+1 Cha & Triple advantage)
+2 Cha
+1 Str & +1 Con
Heavy Armor Master (+1 Str, -3 non-magical bludgeon, piercing, & slashing damage)

I haven't even begun to think about spells, particularly the Warlock spells yet, much less magic items.

Thanks OP for opening my eyes to the value of Paladin levels beyond 3rd level. I feel that this makes him much more tanky, while still being quite the nova blaster.

Why to push Aura to level 10? It doesn't make sense. If you already plan to get Paladin to 5, you should get 6 first. No invocations are worth Aura. Aura is one of the strongest (if not strongest) features in 5E. Pushing it level 10 doesn't make sense.

As for ASI. You first ASI will be on level 5. After that Your fastest ASI can be on level 8 or level 9. So +2 CHA. However you need War Caster to be able to cast spells with shield in second hand. With this build you push your War Caster to level 12-13. You won't be able to keep any Concenration spell effectively (Darkness, Bless, Shield of Faith etc.) without any support Concentration feat like War Caster or Resilence (CON). Heavy Armor master or +1 to two attributes ASI won't help you and you non stop fail concentration spells even with +5 from Aura.

What I suggest is to either take: Elven Accuracy at 5, then War Caster at level 9 (go Paladin to 6 first) and then +2 CHA at 13. This way you will have from level 7 +4 to saves which will help concentration and from 9 you will also have advantage which will help again, keeping it smooth.

Heavy Armor Master is not really that great, there are tons of better feats like RES (CON, Lucky, Sentinel, Mobile, Shield Master, PAM etc.

[Turkish323]

Why to push Aura to level 10? It doesn't make sense. If you already plan to get Paladin to 5, you should get 6 first. No invocations are worth Aura. Aura is one of the strongest (if not strongest) features in 5E. Pushing it level 10 doesn't make sense.

As for ASI. You first ASI will be on level 5. After that Your fastest ASI can be on level 8 or level 9. So +2 CHA. However you need War Caster to be able to cast spells with shield in second hand. With this build you push your War Caster to level 12-13. You won't be able to keep any Concenration spell effectively (Darkness, Bless, Shield of Faith etc.) without any support Concentration feat like War Caster or Resilence (CON). Heavy Armor master or +1 to two attributes ASI won't help you and you non stop fail concentration spells even with +5 from Aura.

What I suggest is to either take: Elven Accuracy at 5, then War Caster at level 9 (go Paladin to 6 first) and then +2 CHA at 13. This way you will have from level 7 +4 to saves which will help concentration and from 9 you will also have advantage which will help again, keeping it smooth.

Heavy Armor Master is not really that great, there are tons of better feats like RES (CON, Lucky, Sentinel, Mobile, Shield Master, PAM etc.

So, if I understood correctly, I should do this:

1) Paladin 1
2) Hexblade 1
3&4) Paladin 2 & 3
5) Paladin 4 - pick up Elven Accuracy
6&7) Paladin 5&6
8&9) Hexblade 2 & 3
10) Hexblade 4 - pick up War Caster
11-13) Hexblade 5-7
14) Hexblade 8 - pick up +2 Cha
15-17) Hexblade 9-11
18) Hexblade 12 - last feat / ASI
19&20) Hexblade 13&14

If I move some stats around, I can start with 14 STR which only needs to be boosted 1 point so I can wear full plate, and another point into CON nets me more hp, which is never bad. Chainmail +3 with a shield is 21 AC, Full plate +3 with shield is 23; I guess how important those extra 2 points of AC are worth is the real question here. Also, wouldn't DEX be a better save for this character to have advantage on, if I were to take the Resilient feat? I certainly overlooked War Caster and definitely appreciate your feedback!

[WasteOfSpades]

Why hello there. I'm writing this over a year after I made this guide. Truth be told, while a lot of this guide is still true, times have-a changed, and I've had a lot more experience with this multi-class as well as DND in general. I'm gonna make some changes. I'm not sure anyone reads this guide anymore? But I still feel responsible for it, so here goes. All changes to previous material will be written in pink.


I'm not sure if others still read this guide but I sure do! I found it a couple months ago and used it to build my current character. I had figured that the thread was dead but its awesome that you still check up on it. Thanks for putting this together it really helped me figure out how I wanted my guy to play.

[Mitsu]

So, if I understood correctly, I should do this:

1) Paladin 1
2) Hexblade 1
3&4) Paladin 2 & 3
5) Paladin 4 - pick up Elven Accuracy
6&7) Paladin 5&6
8&9) Hexblade 2 & 3
10) Hexblade 4 - pick up War Caster
11-13) Hexblade 5-7
14) Hexblade 8 - pick up +2 Cha
15-17) Hexblade 9-11
18) Hexblade 12 - last feat / ASI
19&20) Hexblade 13&14

If I move some stats around, I can start with 14 STR which only needs to be boosted 1 point so I can wear full plate, and another point into CON nets me more hp, which is never bad. Chainmail +3 with a shield is 21 AC, Full plate +3 with shield is 23; I guess how important those extra 2 points of AC are worth is the real question here. Also, wouldn't DEX be a better save for this character to have advantage on, if I were to take the Resilient feat? I certainly overlooked War Caster and definitely appreciate your feedback!

Paladin 1, Hexblade 1, Paladin 2-6, Hexblade 2-14. You get ASI at Paladin 4 (so level 5 total) and then at level 4 Hexblade (9 level total). So level 5- Elven Accuracy and Level 9- War Caster.

Let's take a look at your stats: 12, 8, 14, 13, 10, 15.

I would go like that:

STR: 15 (14+1), DEX: 14, CON: 14 (13 +1), INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 17 (15+2).

Reasons: 15 STR for Plate armor. CON 14 is enough for Paladin. INT 8 because dump stat. WIS 10 because you have proficiency and aura, your WIS saves will be fine. DEX 14 because you won't ever get proficiency here (waste on Paladin) but it's your weakest save among most common saves. Extra +2 will boost DEX save with +5 from Aura to +7 which is enough.

Then Elven Accuracy, War Caster and +2 CHA and on level 13 you will look like this: 15, 14, 14, 8, 10, 20.

You don't need Resilent (DEX). It's a waste. You need advantage on Concentration as many of your best spells you will use like: Darkness, Shadow of Moil, Shield of Faith, Bless etc. are all concentration. DEX only help to lower damage you receive from spells or AOE attacks but apart from that: WIS and CON saves are MUCH more important to you as both melee and gish character.

On level 17 I would take either: Inspiring Leader, Shield Master, PAM or Lucky. First one will be great party support, second will boost your DEX saves better than RES (DEX), PAM will allow you to have bonus attack with Spear + Shield or Staffs + Shields and Lucky is great overall.

War Caster is crucial if you want to use Shield + Weapon. Which is generally best for Half-Elf Paladins as they are short on feats so GWM feat tend to push your 20 CHA further and further.

But You can of course take GWM and use for example two-handed sword. You will have plenty of ways to get advantage from Hexblade (Darkness + Devil's Sight combo and Shadow of Moil). I would pair it with Devotion Paladin for +5 to hit from Sacred Weapon, which combos great with -5 to hit from GWM. If you want to play with Two-Handed weapons and GWM feat - consider taking Resilent (CON) instead of War Caster then.

If you want to play Sword and Shield Paladin I would consider: Vengeance from free advantage with VoE, Hold Person and Misty Step, Conquest for Spiritual Weapon for utilizing bonus action and Devotion as just safe pick because bonus to hit is always good though it get's a lot of dimishing return on higher levels.

[Glumrulf]

I went Human (variant) with the Spell Sniper feat and capped Paladin at 2, and took the Agonizong Blast, Eldrich Spear, Thirsting Blade, and Eldrich Smite by Warlock:7/Paladin:2. What are your thoughts?

[Glumrulf]

I went Human (variant) with the Spell Sniper feat and capped Paladin at 2, and took the Agonizing Blast, Eldrich Spear, Thirsting Blade, and Eldrich Smite by Warlock:7/Paladin:2. What are your thoughts? The range on Eldtich Blast is 600', between Eldrich Spear and Spell Sniper. Forgot to include that.

[Soilborn]

I stumbled upon this thread basically looking for the info provided within, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention something that nobody seems to have touched on yet. This explicitly addresses heavy armor and strength requirements.

Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron gave us the Warforged, and I'm pretty sure some of you know exactly where I'm going.

They get +1 to Con, which is nice, but if you go with the Envoy subrace you get +1 to two attributes of your choice. Pretty sure Con and Cha are going to be default. They also get a couple other neat racials. But the bread and butter here is their Integrated Protection feature.

Warforged can't benefit from worn armor, but that's okay. At the start of each day, they can choose to have AC (with required proficiency) of....
11 + Dex (none)
11 + Dex + Proficiency bonus (light)
13 + Dex + Proficiency bonus (medium)
16 + Dex + Proficiency bonus (heavy)

It's basically like wearing different types of armor, including the Dex max of +2 for medium and stealth disadvantage for heavy, but with two major differences.

1) Yes, you read that right. You add your proficiency bonus to your AC. Which makes each of these equivalent to a free leather armor, +1 studded leather, half plate, and full plate armor at first level, with scaling. A level 20 Warforged with Heavy Plating is walking around with 22 AC before anything else is applied.

2) Plate armor requires 15 strength. Not so for Warforged. All they need is proficiency with heavy armor and they can wake up with it. Once Hex Warrior comes into play to address melee attacks, strength suddenly becomes a dump stat, allowing the player to focus on just Cha and Con.

Are there any major downsides to this, or is this as ridiculously amazing as it sounds?

[bendking]

After some contemplation, I've come to believe S&B is the best way to play a Hexadin unless you're not going to be using any concentration spells.
Let's say you want to use a Greatsword as a crit-fisher, starting off as a Half-Elf for Elven Accuracy for a DPR build.

First off, feat-wise: you most definitely need either War Caster/Resilient (CON) for maintaining concentration on some of your most powerful spells.
Then, because you're using a two-handed weapon, you will most definitely want Great Weapon Master.
Now, and only now, will you get either Elven-Accuracy as a crit-fisher, or +2 CHA. However, this will only happen at level 14 (!) on most typical Hexadins (assuming Paladin 6/Warlock X).
This means you are sticking with +3 to CHA for most of your career, and only really coming online as GWM build at level 10, and as a crit-fisher at level 14. Ouch.
Not to mention you can't even use your Greatsword before taking level 3 in Warlock and taking Pact of the Blade! This will typically be at level 9!

What are the alternatives?
If you want to give up on Concentration spells, you could still build a Half-Elf, and simply not take Resillient (CON).
This doesn't seem like a very good strategy to me, since now your best buffs & control spells are off the table (and the signature spell Hex, too!).
The better option would be going V.Human for GWM at level 1 (which you won't be using for a while), and taking Resillience (CON) at level 4.
Now, we are giving up super advantage, but this can still do well, but we won't be getting the most out of our crits. Though there is still something to be said for GWM + Vow of Emnity, which is still quite powerful.
However, you are still stuck using Sword & Board until level 9, which kind of takes away from the fun of making a Greatsword build if you're only going to be using it that late.
Overall, I would say going for this build would be good if you are starting up at a high level, otherwise, it would be more efficient to simply forgo the Two-Handed strategy altogether and go for S&B.

What do we get with S&B? Well, everything becomes simpler.
Well, for one we don't have to go for V.Human, and Half-Elf is a viable race again (Elven Accuracy is still a good pick, even if we're not using GWM).
In addition, we get another +2 to AC, which is nothing to sneeze at, and we get more value from War Caster as opposed to a GWM build.
Now since we don't have the GWM feat tax, we can get Elven Accuracy at level 10, thus our crits come online much sooner.
But more importantly, our build comes online much sooner
It seems to me building for GWM in gish builds is just a sub-optimal. The healthier and simpler option is simply to stick to the trusty S&B.

[Aequilix]

So I'm starting a game at level 5 and want to do this build. I don't want to just be a 5th level Warlock so I've decided my split is probably going to be Paladin 2/Warlock 3 to at least have some semblance of the build active and online. Will continue to Warlock 5 for thirsting blade then Paladin to 5/6.

I can start this campaign off with my choice of a rare magic item or two uncommon magic items. UA Blade Mastery feat is allowed. V. Humans are allowed.

I'm really torn over whether I wanna go Sword and Board or Greatsword. Our campaigns tend to run a little on the shorter side. So maybe we get to level 10 or 12.

With Sword and Board I'd have better AC and potentially better concentration saving throws by picking up Warcaster at level 4 (or level 1 as V. Human).

Greatsword is obviously the better damage, but damage in the long run. GWM isn't good till a little later. I wouldn't need warcaster for this build to cast spells but i would still need it or resilient con if i want to have good concentration checks.

My personal magic items I'm eyeing:

- Flametongue GS/LS
- A +1 or +2 weapon
- Rod of the Pact Keeper +1/+2
- Ring of Spell Storing

Like I mentioned earlier, I can take two uncommons or one rare.

And as a side note, the campaign is most likely going to involve fiends. Maybe not the constant enemy. But definitely cultists, some fiends, etc.

[Guy Lombard-O]

So I'm starting a game at level 5 and want to do this build. I don't want to just be a 5th level Warlock so I've decided my split is probably going to be Paladin 2/Warlock 3 to at least have some semblance of the build active and online. Will continue to Warlock 5 for thirsting blade then Paladin to 5/6.

I can start this campaign off with my choice of a rare magic item or two uncommon magic items. UA Blade Mastery feat is allowed. V. Humans are allowed.

I'm really torn over whether I wanna go Sword and Board or Greatsword. Our campaigns tend to run a little on the shorter side. So maybe we get to level 10 or 12.

With Sword and Board I'd have better AC and potentially better concentration saving throws by picking up Warcaster at level 4 (or level 1 as V. Human).

Greatsword is obviously the better damage, but damage in the long run. GWM isn't good till a little later. I wouldn't need warcaster for this build to cast spells but i would still need it or resilient con if i want to have good concentration checks.

My personal magic items I'm eyeing:

- Flametongue GS/LS
- A +1 or +2 weapon
- Rod of the Pact Keeper +1/+2
- Ring of Spell Storing

Like I mentioned earlier, I can take two uncommons or one rare.

And as a side note, the campaign is most likely going to involve fiends. Maybe not the constant enemy. But definitely cultists, some fiends, etc.

I'm running a P1/hex2/P2-6 right now (character level 8). Vhuman started with Res Con feat, +2 Cha at P4. I took agonizing blast and devil's sight as invocations (devil's sight is a bit of a let down, since it's only functional in darkness, and does nothing in dim light).

I went with ancients paladin, which isn't going to pay off for me until character level 9. But the channel divinity might be better for you, since you're in a fiend-heavy campaign. The P7 aura might also be nice for you, if lots of those cultists turn out to be casters. Especially if anyone in your party spams Faerie Fire, or does Shield Master or Trip attack prones, the loss of the Vow of Emnity won't even hurt too much.

Anyhow, you might consider a ring or cloak of protection +1 for one uncommon item, and then take dueling FS for better at-will hits (especially if you pick up PAM instead of GWM, and take a +1 spear for your other uncommon item). That way, with Hex & hex curse, you're laying down a pretty nasty 2 attack/1 bonus attack damage, and even your spear butt hit can do 1d4 + 1d6 + 9 at 5th level. Not too shabby.

[Aequilix]

I'm running a P1/hex2/P2-6 right now (character level 8). Vhuman started with Res Con feat, +2 Cha at P4. I took agonizing blast and devil's sight as invocations (devil's sight is a bit of a let down, since it's only functional in darkness, and does nothing in dim light).

I went with ancients paladin, which isn't going to pay off for me until character level 9. But the channel divinity might be better for you, since you're in a fiend-heavy campaign. The P7 aura might also be nice for you, if lots of those cultists turn out to be casters. Especially if anyone in your party spams Faerie Fire, or does Shield Master or Trip attack prones, the loss of the Vow of Emnity won't even hurt too much.

Anyhow, you might consider a ring or cloak of protection +1 for one uncommon item, and then take dueling FS for better at-will hits (especially if you pick up PAM instead of GWM, and take a +1 spear for your other uncommon item). That way, with Hex & hex curse, you're laying down a pretty nasty 2 attack/1 bonus attack damage, and even your spear butt hit can do 1d4 + 1d6 + 9 at 5th level. Not too shabby.

Not bad suggestions but I'm honestly not too keen on spears/polearms builds for THIS specific character just because Warlocks have a lot of bonus action things such as hex, hexblades curse, maddening hex, the bonus attack from GWM, etc. I'm mainly trying to decide if I wanna run a S&B build or a Greatsword Build. And magic item options might influence me leaning toward one or the other.

[victeron]

Reasons: 15 STR for Plate armor. CON 14 is enough for Paladin. INT 8 because dump stat. WIS 10 because you have proficiency and aura, your WIS saves will be fine. DEX 14 because you won't ever get proficiency here (waste on Paladin) but it's your weakest save among most common saves. Extra +2 will boost DEX save with +5 from Aura to +7 which is enough.

You don't really need STR to use any armor whatsoever. Stick with 13 for Multiclassing purposes.

From the handbook:
If the Armor table shows “Str 13” or “Str 15” in the Strength column for an armor type, the armor reduces the wearer’s speed by 10 feet unless the wearer has a Strength score equal to or higher than the listed score.

Your mov. speed will be reduced, but that's it. Nothing critical.

[Turkish323]

Paladin 1, Hexblade 1, Paladin 2-6, Hexblade 2-14. You get ASI at Paladin 4 (so level 5 total) and then at level 4 Hexblade (9 level total). So level 5- Elven Accuracy and Level 9- War Caster.

Let's take a look at your stats: 12, 8, 14, 13, 10, 15.

I would go like that:

STR: 15 (14+1), DEX: 14, CON: 14 (13 +1), INT: 8, WIS: 10, CHA: 17 (15+2).

Reasons: 15 STR for Plate armor. CON 14 is enough for Paladin. INT 8 because dump stat. WIS 10 because you have proficiency and aura, your WIS saves will be fine. DEX 14 because you won't ever get proficiency here (waste on Paladin) but it's your weakest save among most common saves. Extra +2 will boost DEX save with +5 from Aura to +7 which is enough.

Then Elven Accuracy, War Caster and +2 CHA and on level 13 you will look like this: 15, 14, 14, 8, 10, 20.

You don't need Resilent (DEX). It's a waste. You need advantage on Concentration as many of your best spells you will use like: Darkness, Shadow of Moil, Shield of Faith, Bless etc. are all concentration. DEX only help to lower damage you receive from spells or AOE attacks but apart from that: WIS and CON saves are MUCH more important to you as both melee and gish character.

On level 17 I would take either: Inspiring Leader, Shield Master, PAM or Lucky. First one will be great party support, second will boost your DEX saves better than RES (DEX), PAM will allow you to have bonus attack with Spear + Shield or Staffs + Shields and Lucky is great overall.

War Caster is crucial if you want to use Shield + Weapon. Which is generally best for Half-Elf Paladins as they are short on feats so GWM feat tend to push your 20 CHA further and further.

But You can of course take GWM and use for example two-handed sword. You will have plenty of ways to get advantage from Hexblade (Darkness + Devil's Sight combo and Shadow of Moil). I would pair it with Devotion Paladin for +5 to hit from Sacred Weapon, which combos great with -5 to hit from GWM. If you want to play with Two-Handed weapons and GWM feat - consider taking Resilent (CON) instead of War Caster then.

If you want to play Sword and Shield Paladin I would consider: Vengeance from free advantage with VoE, Hold Person and Misty Step, Conquest for Spiritual Weapon for utilizing bonus action and Devotion as just safe pick because bonus to hit is always good though it get's a lot of dimishing return on higher levels.

I just hit level 2 and I had an idea for an alternative build. Two weapon fighting. Take Defense as my fighting style and the Two weapon fighting feat to dual wield warhammers. It gives me a viable bonus action every round that has the potential to provide another delivery of smite. Seems worth not adding the ability modifier to the offhand attack. But, I would like feedback on this alternative.

[Guy Lombard-O]

Not bad suggestions but I'm honestly not too keen on spears/polearms builds for THIS specific character just because Warlocks have a lot of bonus action things such as hex, hexblades curse, maddening hex, the bonus attack from GWM, etc. I'm mainly trying to decide if I wanna run a S&B build or a Greatsword Build. And magic item options might influence me leaning toward one or the other.

Completely understand. You do you.

For anyone else reading this, I'll just point out that for PAM build, when you're fighting hordes it's actually better to use Divine Favor in melee instead of Hex (I kinda wish I'd taken Absorb Elements instead of Hex, along with Shield, for warlock picks) to free up the bonus actions. It's only a 1d4 instead of 1d6, so 1 less average damage but 3 instead of 2 attacks when switching to new targets.

Edit for Turkish323: I and many other people dislike dual wielding. A PAM build w/spear lets you attack with your bonus action every turn, still use your Str (or Cha for hexblades) modifier on the attack, use a shield for the +2 to AC, and use the Duelist FS for +2 damage on all attacks. Either way, you're using up your FS and it needs one feat to work, but it's basically superior in every way (except the fact that it limits your ability to take advantage of loot drops of magical weapons as the campaign progresses). You even get to OppAttack creatures when they move into your reach to engage you in melee.

[paladinn]

Paladin 1, Hexblade 1, Paladin 2-6, Hexblade 2-14. You get ASI at Paladin 4 (so level 5 total) and then at level 4 Hexblade (9 level total). So level 5- Elven Accuracy and Level 9- War Caster.

I might suggest going Pal 1, HB 1, Pal 2, HB 2, then the rest. HB 2 gets you agonizing blast, which would be really valuable at lower levels. If you blast something, it would be good to maximize it.

HB 1 gets you CHA-SADness, Pal 2 gets you divine smite to maximize your melee. Might as well maximize your ranged too.

Just my $.02

[Turkish323]

Edit for Turkish323: I and many other people dislike dual wielding. A PAM build w/spear lets you attack with your bonus action every turn, still use your Str (or Cha for hexblades) modifier on the attack, use a shield for the +2 to AC, and use the Duelist FS for +2 damage on all attacks. Either way, you're using up your FS and it needs one feat to work, but it's basically superior in every way (except the fact that it limits your ability to take advantage of loot drops of magical weapons as the campaign progresses). You even get to OppAttack creatures when they move into your reach to engage you in melee.

This is exactly the feedback I was looking for. Now to figure out what sort of weapon I will reflavor the spear as....

Thank you!

[paladinn]

This is exactly the feedback I was looking for. Now to figure out what sort of weapon I will reflavor the spear as....

Thank you!

A short halberd? Spear and axe with a little less reach

[Chaosrex]

Perosnally i always go Pally Vengeance 3 and then full on Warlock.

But maybe i'll switch for Pally 5 and then 15 Hexblade?, ASI from Pal 4, Pal 5 extra attack, so that i can save my Eldritch Invocation on something else than thirsting blade( i mean i've always found it to be a waste or ressources, the extra attack should be build in either the PotB or the Hex Warrior feat...)

An interesting alternative to Pal/Warlock would be Blood Hunter/Warlock, but it would be a MAD build (WIS/CHA) and the only real reason to take BH levels would be for the Blood maledicts( wich i feel should have been an HEXblade mechanic, like different kind of Hexes that you can imbue your weapon with and strike..., think like Magus in PF)

[jdolch]

I haven't had much experience with Warlock. So ... Question:

Why would you go [Paladin 6/Hexblade 14] over either [Paladin 6/Hexblade 2/Sorcerer 12] for Agonizing Blast or [Paladin 6/Hexblade 1/Sorcerer 13] for 7th Level Spells? Warlock is so Front Loaded it seems like a waste to stick with it. At least on first glance.

[Skylivedk]

After some contemplation, I've come to believe S&B is the best way to play a Hexadin unless you're not going to be using any concentration spells.
Let's say you want to use a Greatsword as a crit-fisher, starting off as a Half-Elf for Elven Accuracy for a DPR build.

First off, feat-wise: you most definitely need either War Caster/Resilient (CON) for maintaining concentration on some of your most powerful spells.
Then, because you're using a two-handed weapon, you will most definitely want Great Weapon Master.
Now, and only now, will you get either Elven-Accuracy as a crit-fisher, or +2 CHA. However, this will only happen at level 14 (!) on most typical Hexadins (assuming Paladin 6/Warlock X).
This means you are sticking with +3 to CHA for most of your career, and only really coming online as GWM build at level 10, and as a crit-fisher at level 14. Ouch.
Not to mention you can't even use your Greatsword before taking level 3 in Warlock and taking Pact of the Blade! This will typically be at level 9!

What are the alternatives?
If you want to give up on Concentration spells, you could still build a Half-Elf, and simply not take Resillient (CON).
This doesn't seem like a very good strategy to me, since now your best buffs & control spells are off the table (and the signature spell Hex, too!).
The better option would be going V.Human for GWM at level 1 (which you won't be using for a while), and taking Resillience (CON) at level 4.
Now, we are giving up super advantage, but this can still do well, but we won't be getting the most out of our crits. Though there is still something to be said for GWM + Vow of Emnity, which is still quite powerful.
However, you are still stuck using Sword & Board until level 9, which kind of takes away from the fun of making a Greatsword build if you're only going to be using it that late.
Overall, I would say going for this build would be good if you are starting up at a high level, otherwise, it would be more efficient to simply forgo the Two-Handed strategy altogether and go for S&B.

What do we get with S&B? Well, everything becomes simpler.
Well, for one we don't have to go for V.Human, and Half-Elf is a viable race again (Elven Accuracy is still a good pick, even if we're not using GWM).
In addition, we get another +2 to AC, which is nothing to sneeze at, and we get more value from War Caster as opposed to a GWM build.
Now since we don't have the GWM feat tax, we can get Elven Accuracy at level 10, thus our crits come online much sooner.
But more importantly, our build comes online much sooner
It seems to me building for GWM in gish builds is just a sub-optimal. The healthier and simpler option is simply to stick to the trusty S&B.
I would definitely go my combat feat as my first one. Your attacks and concentration slot scale in opposite directions (more attacks and more DMG adds are more valuable earlier). Res: Con isn't worth much in the beginning, not even on an uneven Con score:
A) early level concentration spells are not as valuable
B) the proficiency bonus is too small pre level five
C) Hitpoint per character level isn't all that

On my pure half-drow Hexblade I went GWM, Elven Accuracy (Cha up to 18) and now I'm torn between Res Con/Warcaster, PAM and +2 CHA. It's not the same class, but close enough.


I haven't had much experience with Warlock. So ... Question:

Why would you go [Paladin 6/Hexblade 14] over either [Paladin 6/Hexblade 2/Sorcerer 12] for Agonizing Blast or [Paladin 6/Hexblade 1/Sorcerer 13] for 7th Level Spells? Warlock is so Front Loaded it seems like a waste to stick with it. At least on first glance.
Mainly to get recharging slots on short rest and a very strong Nova for when you double smite (extra fun on crits). The invocations also do quite a bit: give you easy darkness cheese, a great ranged attack with a potential of cc, a magic weapon in a low magic campaign. For long dungeons those sr slots really come in handy. I can see an argument for Pala 6-8, Hexblade min 12 (especially on PAM builds that lifedrinker is nifty). Moving your Hexblade's Curse later is pretty nifty. If you want Oath of Conquest or Ancients, you'd probably prefer the upgraded aura (and at that point it's at times hard to choose between ASI and level seven spells)

[sarrownight]

hi so i have use this guid to make my first pad lock which was fantastic fun. but i have recently joined a new game were i started at lvl 10 (came at the end of strahd) with only phb at the time. now that stradh is over the dm is going to open the flood gates and let us all source books, but since im already level 10 i found some other builds paladin 11/ warlock 9 or paladin 12/ warlock 8. i cant find whats better lvl 5 spells or and extra feat/asi any help would be appreciated. currently ancient paladin 10 (cha 20, con 18, str 15) feats prodigy, and resiliance con. i would like to get elven accuracy and either inspiring leader 2 con or both depending on what build. im very torn.sword and bored , plate

[Ventruenox]

Mödley Crüe: While Warlocks got access to Animate Dead with the last UA, that ability is not to be used on these threads.