How would you go about building a hexblade

[kamap]

Hi I've just been reading trough Xanathar's guide to everything and the hexblade seems fun, so I'm wondering how you guys and girls would build one.

Using the core books, sword coast adventurer's guide and Xanathar's guide to everything.

Multiclassing is an option, anything from the mentioned books can be used to build this character, except for magic items and items that would be possible for a lvl 1 character to have.

I expect the character to go to lvl 8-10 ish so the build should come online around lvl 5 ish.


I was thinking a half elf for the charisma and 2 other stats, have medium armor, a shield and 14 dex for an ac of 18.
16 for both con and charisma and then divide the rest of my points into wisdom and intelligence and dump strength.

Cantrips would be prestidigitation (so I can easily clean all the blood of my blade and armor / clothes) and eldritch blast to have a ranged attack.
Armor of Agathys and Hex for lvl 1 spells.
I don't know yet what other spells I'd take so feel free to make suggestions.

For the invocations I was thinking: Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite and Thirsting Blade
I can't really decide which other to take, invocations for eldritch blast have all something going for them.
You do more dmg with EB, push creatures away, reel creatures in or make them slower, the reeling in and making them slower seem to be good ones to go with the build cause you want to get to your enemies faster.
The reeling in is for the moment the one I'm leaning towards cause it has some control aspect to it and I can stride into battle shoot an EB at someone, pull that one closer while doing some dmg.

Any thought, advice and constructive comments are welcomed.

[borg286]

If you're into sorlock, the metamagic and spells it offers greatly enhances your melee potential. Namely twinning Booming Blade, quickening darkness to frontload damage, quickened Hold Person for auto-crit nova.
Shadow sorcerer has a nice "get out of jail free" card when about to die and frees up an invocation on devil's eye to be something else.

When you look at damage in terms of how efficiently resources are spent we have on one end the fighter which has a minor dropoff in DPR after the first few rounds and has huge damage for spending the action he gets every round. The wizard is on the other end, where his low level spells often sit around waiting for circumstances to change where they'll be useful but most of his guns are powered by encounter changing high level spells.
The ranged sorlock is closer to the wizard but can spend all his resources in the day, he just needs to know how to ration his actions, spell points, spells, and team HP (unfriendly AOE and using more efficient but slower spells incurring longer combats leading to more damage the team takes vs. less efficient but more damaging high level spells leading to shorter combats and less overall damage taken).
The gish/hexblade is closer to the fighter where he relies on the base melee attack, and spends his spell points and spell point fuel (spell slots) to deal more damage at the risk of running out of fuel and turning into daring swordsman elan (cool that you can use charisma for attacks, but not that effective).
The primary draw by the hexblade gish is that you are just as good as the sorlock when resources have ran out, but you'll runout much later while still feeling like you're doing your job.

[LeonBH]

There is no better hexblade than the elven one with Elven Accuracy. Being an eldritch blaster hexblade is actually viable since Hexblade's Curse stacks with Hex. Your turns would go:

1: Hex, EB
2: Curse, EB
3+: EB

If you wanted to be a multiclassed gish though, Sorc 5/Lock 5 is solid. Unfortunately, it comes online as a gish at level 8, and becomes really scary at level 10.

[Mikal]

Are you wanting to Sword and Board, GWF, TWF, or ranged?
Do you want to Gish it up, be weapon focused, or be spell focused?

[clash]

Take 1-2 levels in hexblade and the rest in Paladin.

2 levels makes a sad paladin with excellent ranged damage, 2 spells back on short rest, and gets virtually all the paladin goodies. You dont have to worry about being behind on extra attack either as you can blast with EB until extra attack comes online at level 7.

[prototype00]

Just starting to play one in AL right now, straight Hexblade melee-er, this is how I'm building him:

vHuman

Feat: Polearm Master with a quarterstaff and shield

1st: Just cast Hex the moment you get into combat, and start hitting things with your quarterstaff, or blasting it from range with your Eldritch Blast.

2nd: Same as 1st - but I took the invocations Agonizing Blast and Fiendish Vigor for more ranged damage and survivability respectively

3rd: Pact Blade and Darkness, time to go greatsword and devil's sight... no, not really. You'll see why when you get to 4th. In the meantime, just take Mirror Image if you want a defensive option, and switch out Agonizing Blast for Improved Pact Blade. You're going to be wading into melee slightly more often, but its going to really hurt them. Just keep hexing everything.

4th: Pick up Great Weapon Master as a Feat and Switch out Fiendish Vigor for Devil's Sight. Now you have the proper ingredients for a great time. Advantage didn't manufacture you extra damage before, but now it does! This is where the low level blossoms for the Hexblade, cast darkness every combat, rush in and maul things with a GWM glaive, and attack twice with it thanks to PAM!

Later levels - when I solidify what concepts I want to do here, I'll be sure to post.

prototype00

[Hyde]

I'm going Sorlock, on a Tiefling chassis. Dragon Sorc would be ideal, but I'm doing Wild for shenanigans.

Haven't decided where I'm stopping Hexblade at, probably 3 or 5.

[kamap]

Are you wanting to Sword and Board, GWF, TWF, or ranged?
Do you want to Gish it up, be weapon focused, or be spell focused?

Sword and board prefered for the better AC it provides, some ranged for those ranged attackers you can't reach and to do some damage while I'm closing the gap.

Gish prefered, weapon and melee is more important then spells but I'd like some spells for utility and for burning them on smite / eldritch smite depending if I go paladin or something else.


Sorlock sounds interesting, so I'll probably go 5 lock and the rest sorcerer. I'll certainly check out the elven accuracy.
Now to figure out which invocations, spells and the like.

[Anderlith]

I would play a half elf noble hexblade. Once I get Pact weapon, I would use a greatsword. I like to picture the hexblade as a dark knight type. Not a cackling mad warrior like how mike mearls sees it. My curse would be fluffed as a knight's challenge. My blade being my Oath made manifest. I should probably start as a paladin but i feel like thats min maxing & hard to roleplay class switches in-game. Like starting out a normal paladin but then having to find an shadow thing to pact with during the course of the game.

[Laserlight]

4th: Pick up Great Weapon Master as a Feat and Switch out Fiendish Vigor for Devil's Sight. Now you have the proper ingredients for a great time. Advantage didn't manufacture you extra damage before, but now it does! This is where the low level blossoms for the Hexblade, cast darkness every combat, rush in and maul things with a GWM glaive, and attack twice with it thanks to PAM!
prototype00

One perhaps less-than-obvious downside is that your first action is spent casting Darkness rather than attacking the enemy; it may not be worthwhile in short fights. But in longer fights, particularly in open areas where you don't have to worry about your buddies having line of sight, it is absolutely a blast. Go crit fishing and smite-on-crit. "You see a cloud of darkness roll over the enemy captain; when the cloud moves on, you see the scattered bits of what's left of him."

[Mortis_Elrod]

i always like Hexbows personally and wouldn't automatically multiclass.

considering 10th level is cap i would do 8 hexblade / 2 paladin or 3 hexblade/ 7 paladin. or some 6/4 split.

or a 6/2/2 split .

[prototype00]

One perhaps less-than-obvious downside is that your first action is spent casting Darkness rather than attacking the enemy; it may not be worthwhile in short fights. But in longer fights, particularly in open areas where you don't have to worry about your buddies having line of sight, it is absolutely a blast. Go crit fishing and smite-on-crit. "You see a cloud of darkness roll over the enemy captain; when the cloud moves on, you see the scattered bits of what's left of him."

Yeah, your first round will probably be to hexblade’s Curse something (Bonus Action) and then to cast Darkness (Action) then position yourself so you don’t mess up the party.

On that subject, that’s why I favour the Glaivelock- the Glaive is compatible for both PAM and GWM, reach gives you more option in positioning (you can move up to 10ft from the enemy, strike and just move out again to reveal him to the rest of the party).

Since you are immune to opportunity attacks, you also are a great support class. Rush around willy-nilly around foes to stabilise comrades that have gone down with a cheap healer’s kit. I’m sure that will be much appreciated by everyone.

[MrBig]

If you get Find Familiar (Magic Initiate, Sorcerer dip, etc), the bat has blindsight.

So, cast Darkness on bat, and you can position it anywhere you want on the battlefield. Telepathically controlled darkness drone.

[Degwerks]

If you get Find Familiar (Magic Initiate, Sorcerer dip, etc), the bat has blindsight.

So, cast Darkness on bat, and you can position it anywhere you want on the battlefield. Telepathically controlled darkness drone.

Nice idea.

[Wheaton's Whelp]

I'll reference a character I made for a Hexblade bow-lock.

Valafar (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1376432)

Used standard set with Half-Elf race for: Str: 8 Dex: 16 Con: 12 Int: 14 Wis: 10 Cha: 16

Lvls 1-5: Hexblade Warlock
Invoctions: Devil's Sight, Thirsting Blades, Improved Pact Weapon (+1 Longbow)
@ Lvl 4 take the Sharpshooter Feat
Lvls 6-8: Arcane Archer Fighter
Get Action Surge/Archery Fighting Style
Action Surge/Arcane Archer shots return on short rest, works well with Warlock
Lvl 9-20: All Warlock, still get 6th/7th/8th/9th Mystic Arcaniums

At 8th level this build can do some really good burst damage. And my favorite aspect of this character is I've been playing the bow as the Moonbow (Inspired from the Warlock UA Invocation) which was provided by a member of the Fey.