Rolling Hexblade features into Pact of the Blade

[Ellisthion]

As a DM, I want Pact of the Blade to work. Hexblade basically fixes it. But, for my world, Fey/Fiend/GOO work better as patrons. So... if I was house-ruling it, how much of the Hexblade would I need to roll into Pact of the Blade for it to be viable with a PHB patron?

Is it just enough to give Hex Warrior? Hex Warrior and Curse? Invocations? How critical are the Hexblade's spells? Etc.

How much is enough / how much is too much?

Assume no multiclassing, to remove that as an issue.

[miburo]

I suppose it depends on if you plan to allow the Hexblade archetype at all. If you move stuff into Blade Pact but keep the Hexblade archetype, then it becomes a much less useful choice for players, so I wouldn't do it.

If you don't plan to allow the Hexblade archetype, you would probably move Hex Warrior over, except for the part where if you have Blade Pact you use Cha for all types of weapons. That's a bit too powerful. I would probably move that bit over to the "Improved Pact Weapon" invocation to make it more useful.

So Blade Pact gets martial weapons, medium armor + shields, and Cha to attack/damage with one-handed weapons. Improved Pact Weapon now gets Cha to attack/damage with all weapons, +1 magic bonus, and using your pact weapon as an arcane focus.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Hex Warrior is the biggest thing. The spells are second, but the Warlock has fine options there already in things like Hex and AoA and Eldritch Smite.

For that matter, I think it's mostly the armor proficiency that they really need; the Cha-based combat is kinda gratuitous. A gish SHOULD have less casting power than a normal caster, after all, in exchange for greater toughness and endurance.

[mephnick]

For that matter, I think it's mostly the armor proficiency that they really need

This is what drives me crazy. All Blade Pact needed was a way to be granted armour proficiency. I did it in my games like 2 years ago and have had 3 very effective single classed Bladelocks since then.

We just made "Thirsting Blade" part of the pact at level 5 and replaced that invocation with an armoured one. Boom, subclass fixed completely. The Hexblade is just ridiculous.

[rbstr]

If you substantially power up the 3rd-level blade pact you better do it for the base chain and tome pacts as well. Neither of those options is a massive single-level gift of power either. Taking the Blade Pact is not an archetype choice, it shouldn't come with a whole host of benefits or give more at higher levels.

If you have to do something add some buffs to the invocations: Let Armor of Shadows give them a shield too or even let them go to a medium armor equivalent. Let Improved Pact weapon scale to +2 at higher levels. That is way more in line with the balance of the other pact choices and other full-caster + extra attack types out there.

More than any of that, I'd think about what buffs to give the non-Hexblade patrons at level one regardless of pact choice. Hexblade massively powercreeped all of them. Maybe flat out given them all medium armor and shield proficiency.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The problem with the bladelock verses the blastlock is primarily one of investment. A blastlock only needs to spend one invocation to have consistently great damage; a bladelock needs AT LEAST two (Thirsting and Lifedrinker) to keep up, plus a bonus action attack of some sort, if I remember the math correctly. And in exchange for all that, they get to be MAD and more vulnerable to getting hit in the face.

Hexblade was clearly intended to help with that-- it fixes the vulnerability and MADness-- but still leaves you needing the blow invocations to keep your damage up.

If you want to make Thirsting Blade part of Blade Pact, I'd give more thematic options to the other two. Tome can get Book of Ancient Secrets at 5, and Chain can get Voice of the Chain Master or something. That should keep things balanced and make Pacts a little more important.

[Ellisthion]

All Blade Pact needed was a way to be granted armour proficiency. I did it in my games like 2 years ago and have had 3 very effective single classed Bladelocks since then.

Medium + Shields? It does seem a much more straightforward fix yeah. Your approach doesn't change the number of invocations, some people say the number of invocations is a problem. Do you think it's a problem?


If you want to make Thirsting Blade part of Blade Pact, [...] Tome can get Book of Ancient Secrets at 5, and Chain can get Voice of the Chain Master

Yeah that makes sense.


the Cha-based combat is kinda gratuitous. A gish SHOULD have less casting power than a normal caster

Hmm yeah that's true. I kept thinking of it from a char op perspective but I think you're right. I've got a bladesinger with massive MAD problems but that's just the price you pay.


it depends on if you plan to allow the Hexblade archetype at all.

I was figuring if it was feasible / sensible to roll things into the Pact of the Blade, then I'd do that and remove Hexblade. The interesting question would be: is Hexblade itself value / fun enough that it's actually better to keep things as is? Personally, I think "no" because I see it as a means to an end for bladelocks, but maybe that's shortsighted, idk.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Hmm yeah that's true. I kept thinking of it from a char op perspective but I think you're right. I've got a bladesinger with massive MAD problems but that's just the price you pay.
Instead of Cha > Dex, you do Str or Dex > Cha. You're a little better off than Bladesinger (which is equally lacking as a gish subclass, in my mind, but that's me-- I think something like the Swords Bard is a better example. Or Stone Sorcerer, minus the broken bits)


I was figuring if it was feasible / sensible to roll things into the Pact of the Blade, then I'd do that and remove Hexblade. The interesting question would be: is Hexblade itself value / fun enough that it's actually better to keep things as is? Personally, I think "no" because I see it as a means to an end for bladelocks, but maybe that's shortsighted, idk.
Hex Warrior and most of the spell list are very gish-focused, but the rest has fine thematics and power. For spells, maybe something like...

Spell Level Spells
1st Bane, Dissonant Whispers.
2nd Blindness/Deafness, Phantasmal Force
3rd Bestow Curse, Slow
4th Confusion, Phantasmal Killer
5th Cone of Cold, Contagion

For a more curse-centric list.

[Easy_Lee]

Regarding CHA to attacks, two things:

Mearls specifically mentioned the idea of a physically weak character who draws all of his combat prowess from a magical weapon. Since you can't base archetypes off of magical weapons that the players won't have, making it a warlock patron made the most sense. The character draws combat prowess from some sort of Hexblade being who represents powerful enchanted weapons. CHA to attack and damage rolls perfectly mirrors that and, frankly, I'm surprised they didn't get CHA to unarmored AC.

Hexblades are now the only gish that can do this, which isn't fair. However, if there were no other classes in the game and we only considered warlocks, it would be fine for this to be part of blade pact.

I agree that rolling Hex Warrior and Thirsting Blade into Blade Pact makes the most sense. It's what they should have done to start, and dipping three levels for CHA to attack is a lot less beneficial than only dipping one level for that plus spells plus Hexblade's curse.

[rbstr]

Medium + Shields? It does seem a much more straightforward fix yeah. Your approach doesn't change the number of invocations, some people say the number of invocations is a problem. Do you think it's a problem?

You should just give this as to all patrons level 1 if you feel like bladelocks deserve it for free with the level 3 pick.
If you tag it onto the Blade Pact it simply makes the blade the best pact choice for all combat-focused Warlocks. It's a huge AC boost for a Blast-lock.

Giving it to everyone would move the baseline of Warlock power up to the hexblade level. The hexblade's 1st-level feature would only be cha-melee and the curse. It'd put all the patrons way more inline.

[clash]

The problem here is and always has been that warlock should have been made with the pact boons as archetypes and the patron features as invocations.