Help DM modifying XGtE's Hexblade

[fikoantunes]

Now that I own XGtW, I need to convert some characters from my group's 3.5 campaign. The player's don't go deep on the rules, so they trusted me as the DM to make those conversions.

I found this particular level 16th character shadow-gish-typo, how wields a two-handed defender sword, particular hard to convert. He clearly fits the XGtE's Hexblade, however the player despises Warlock or anything clearly caster for his characters. I need to make his character more melee-oriented, with few flashy magical tricks.

Besides re-fluffing the Hexblade class features, I've considered the following:
- Remove all cantrips except eldritch blast (refluffed to fit the character's theme)
- Reduce 3-4 his max spell know (instead of knowing 12 spells it would be 8 for instance)
- Remove Accursed Specter class feature (doesen't fit character theme and he plays very straightforward - doesn't care for utility abilities)
- Add 1 more use of Hexblade's curse (so it's 2 uses per short rest)
- Add 1 more spell slot (so he gets 4 instead of 3 spell slots)
- Only give him refluffed, melee-oriented spells (smites) and the darkness-related ones (to match his Devil's Sight).

What do you think of this changes? Are they balanced enough?

[baticeer]

Might be easier to give advice if you can go into more detail on his 3.5 build and what the player sees as the most crucial aspects of his character/playstyle. Like if the two handed sword is not the biggest thing and he doesn't mind using other weapons, would a refluffed Shadow Monk work?

[rbstr]

Maybe an Ancients (...or any Oath, really) Paladin with a couple warlock levels? You could fiddle with the Channel Divinity and fluff.
That'd tilt the character more heavily toward melee.

Your changes are giving a lot of power to a warlock in adding an extra spell slot. If you're doing the suggested amount of rests an extra slot would let a warlock put out more spell-points worth of spells than any other caster handily.
Losing then non-EB cantrips and spells known doesn't really change that dynamic. All those smite spells can still be upcasted. (Also you doing about Mystic Arcana?)
An extra use of curse is just gravy on top.

[Aett_Thorn]

Conquest or Vengeance Paladin might be a good fir for this character as well, depending on how you can refluff him/her.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Um. If he doesn't want to be a caster, why start with a caster class? As baticeer suggests, I'd think Shadow Monk would be a better base-- that gets you Minor Illusion, Darkvision, Darkness, Pass Without Trace, Silence, and at-will shadow-teleport and invisibility-in-the-dark. For the greatsword, you can use a refluffed spear (d6/d8 versatile slashing weapon wouldn't cause any issues) or a custom magic item that counts as a Monk weapon.

Or-- if he also uses armor-- Strength-Monk builds are a thing. Armor only turns off Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense, so all of your Ki stuff still works. Start with Fighter 1 for heavy armor (and a fighting style!), invest in Str instead of Dex, and you're basically good to go. You don't get a free bonus action attack and your Flurry stinks unless you take Tavern Brawler or a race with natural weapons, but you're still getting Extra Attack, Stunning Strike, Patient Defense, Deflect Missiles, Evasion, all your subclass stuff...

(Sidenote: Are they a Shadow Hand focused Swordsage, by any chance?)

[fikoantunes]

Might be easier to give advice if you can go into more detail on his 3.5 build and what the player sees as the most crucial aspects of his character/playstyle. Like if the two handed sword is not the biggest thing and he doesn't mind using other weapons, would a refluffed Shadow Monk work?

Back in 3.5 the character was a Fighter 11 / Shadowblade 5. "Shadowblade" was a prestige class from Tome of Magic. Like the player, it was not an optimized PrC, but he was happy as it suited his char's theme (shadowy-gish with very few casting abilities; more like a fighter with shadow magic melee tricks). His defender sword is called "The Shadowblade", so you can see how attached the player was to this theme.

He likes a lot his melee-two-handed-style, so I can't change that, only re-ffluf it. As many suggested, maybe Shadow Monk would work... However I miss the thematic connection with the character's weapon, like my player has (and the Hexblade delivers that).

Some of you suggested a paladin oath... That can be interesting; I'd have to reread the paladins options.

As a final note, the party isn't the min-max type; they are happy by having their characters fitting the themes they love. I was counting on that by restricting his spell options but throwing in an extra spell slot/ hexblade curse use. I'll keep researching and listening to your advices ;)

[Callin]

Take Shadow Monk and work it into the Eldritch Knight Subclass of Fighter? Give him a Shadow (ki) Pool instead of Spells. Half his Level. So max of 10 at lvl 20

Lvl 3 Let him Bond to his Shadowblade and give him Shadow Points to Create Darkness, or Darkvision at 2 points each.

Lvl 7 Give him the Shadow Step ability

Lvl 10 It gets Cloak of Shadows

Lvl 15 Increase its Shadow Spell Selection to Shadows of Moil for 4 Points

Lvl 18 Give it Opprotunist


Or something along those lines. I am sure this thought can be expanded upon

[Kane0]

Shadow type Gish eh? If you're not afraid of homebrewing we can organise something pretty easily.

Fighter 16 gives Fighting Style (Great Weapon), Second Wind, Action Surge, Indomitable, three attacks per round and 5 ASIs. That's a pretty strong starting point.

We have archetype features at 3, 7, 10, 15 and 18. Starting with Eldritch Knight works well, all we have to do is swap out a few abilities to downplay the magic and focus on shadow stuff. Fortunatey Xanathar's gives us the marvellous Shadow Blade spell to work with.

Level 3: instead of bonded weapon give the ability to cast Shadow Blade as a 2nd level spell once per short rest. You may want to consider adding the benefit of not needing to concentrate on it or adding in the ability to pick an existing weapon as your shadow blade like EK or Warlock Pact Weapon/Bonded Weapon.
Level 3 cantrips and spellcasting can be whatever casting stat and spell list works best for the character
Level 7 War Magic could perhaps be swapped to something similar to Paladin or Warlock Smite, eg 'Once per turn when you hit with your Shadow Blade you can expend one spell slot to deal an extra 1d8 +1d8 per slot level Force damage and knock the target Pprone if they fail a Strength saving throw against your Spell DC
Level 10 Eldritch Strike could be exchanged for the ability to cast Shadow Blade an extra time per rest, as a 3rd level spell
Level 15 Arcane Charge can be swapped for something like the Shadow Monk Bonus action teleport between shadows or the Warlock invisibility when in shadow invocation
Level 18 War Magic could be exchanged for the ability to cast Shadow Blade an extra time per rest (so three times between rests), as a 5th level spell

Good feats are Great Weapon Master, Resilient, Tough, Lucky and perhaps Heavy Armor Mastery otherwise good Str (or Dex) and Con are important, as is casting stat unless he is going to be smiting with all his slots or using spells like magic missile, shield, absorb elements, mirror image and haste

[Rebonack]

Looks to me like a custom Fighter subclass is in order. Take the features he likes most from shadow blade and make those the new subclass perks.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Shadow Monk + custom magic item still seems like the best bet to me... something like a Sunblade, but shadowy-- a greatsword with the finesse property that any Way of Shadow Monk can treat as a Monk weapon, with perhaps a +1 bonus to attack, damage, and AC, along with the ability to reduce the light level to dim within 15ft. But if you want a Fighter subclass, how 'bout...

Shadowblade
3rd: Unseen Weapon: As Weapon Bond, but you may only have one bonded weapon at a time. The weapon trails shadows when summoned, and allows you to ignore penalties due to low lighting when attacking with it.

3rd: Shadow Arts: You can create illusions from the shadows. This functions as the Minor Illusion cantrip with no material component, but you can only create visual illusions. In addition, three times per Short Rest you may manipulate the shadows to emulate one of the following spells: Darkness, Darkvision, Pass Without Trace, or Silence.

7th: Shadow Step: As the Shadow Monk feature

10th: Cloak of Shadows: As the Shadow Monk feature

15th: Umbral Strike: As an action, you may attack an adjacent opponent's shadow. They must make a Wisdom save or take damage as though they'd been struck by your weapon, plus an additional 1d6 necrotic damage per three Fighter levels.

18th: Opportunist: As the Shadow Monk feature

[baticeer]

Having looked up the shadowblade prestige class, it seems to be a gish in fluff terms only... it does things like, you wreath your blade in shadow magic, but does not actually cast any spells or magical effects, it has powers like "ignore miss chance from concealment" and "extra damage" that you can choose to apply to your attacks. It also makes you better at stealth.

If your player dislikes casters... what if you just refluff a battlemaster?

He makes his weapon shadowy (just let this happen) and the maneuvers are based on the shadow powers. Evasive Footwork = The shadows mask your steps as you run. Lunging Attack = Shadow extends from your sword to strike beyond your reach. Trip Attack = The shadows reach up from the ground and pull your opponent prone.

It seems like it would play similarly to the 3.5 build (choosing certain benefits to apply to your attacks). Make the character stealthy (maybe Skulker feat is a good option) and you are good to go without your player who hates spells, having to learn spells.

[thoroughlyS]

After doing some research and tooling with some concepts, I have some recommendations for your build.

I second baticeer in saying that battle master seems like the best base for the character. Reviewing the abilities of the shadowblade prestige class (Tome of Magic p.129), I notice that one of its major features has been left out of this discussion: sudden strike. In 3.5, sudden strike was basically a slightly worse sneak attack, so it would be most appropriate to incorporate some levels of rogue into the 5e conversion. This would also allow us to model "shadow and stealth" using the rogue's expertise. There is one niggling problem with trying to be as accurate as possible: "see in darkness", for which the only direct analogue is the devil's sight warlock invocation. Taking this into consideration, there are a few avenues you can follow:

Pros:

non-caster
multiclass only requires 13 Dexterity
attack action gives 3 attacks
3d6 sneak attack
uncanny dodge
4th ASI

Cons:

not inherently magical (excluding arcane trickster)
no "see in darkness"
no direct "ephemeral weapon" conversion
Pros:

attack action gives 3 attacks
4th ASI
wrathful smite for "ephemeral weapon" conversion
2 cantrips
hexblade's curse

Cons:

multiclass requires 13 Dexterity and 13 Charisma
no "see in darkness"
Pros:

attack action gives 3 attacks
devil's sight for "see in darkness"
2 spell slots per short rest
wrathful smite for "ephemeral weapon" conversion
2 cantrips
hexblade's curse
Cons:

multiclass requires 13 Dexterity and 13 Charisma
Pros:

4th ASI
devil's sight for "see in darkness"
2 spell slots per short rest
wrathful smite for "ephemeral weapon" conversion
2 cantrips
hexblade's curse
Cons:

multiclass requires 13 Dexterity and 13 Charisma
attack action only gives 2 attacks
Pros:

hexblade allows charisma to be primary stat
pact of the blade with defender sword
devil's sight for "see in darkness"
2 spell slots per short rest
wrathful smite for "ephemeral weapon" conversion
2 cantrips
hexblade's curse
Cons:

multiclass requires 13 Dexterity and 13 Charisma
attack action only gives 2 attacks

My personal pick would be Fighter 11/Rogue 3/Warlock 2 for the emphasis on martial abilities. Would it be possible for you to write up a more complete build so that we can get a better understanding of the character (e.g. 3.5 ability scores, feat selections, equipment)? Maybe also a brief background and character playstyle synopsis (i.e. what do they do in and out of combat)?

[Mongobear]

I'd take the base Paladin chassis, and home brew an "Oath of the Hexblade" subclass that gives him the stuff like Charisma to atk/dmg rolls, channel divinity for Hexblades Curse and Armor of Hexes. Maybe some key Warlock spells as Oath spells as well. Stuff that makes sense, or just give him the actual Hexblade bonus spells.

[fikoantunes]

Wow! Thanks a lot for all the input, guys.

I'm already toying with all your suggestions to see what better fits the concept I'm looking for. I have many weeks until my group's first adventure with their converted characters, so I will be happy testing all this until that day :smallsmile:

[Ganymede]

Yet again, sacrificing a bunch of stuff you don't want and wouldn't use in order to get stronger at the things you do all the time is a horrible idea and an excellent way to make something imbalanced.

[thoroughlyS]

sacrificing a bunch of stuff you don't want and wouldn't use in order to get stronger at the things you do all the time is a horrible idea and an excellent way to make something imbalanced.

Quoted for truth.

If you are still new to 5e, I seriously recommend going by the book for this conversion. Hexblade is already very strong for what it does, and what it does isn't what your player was. Fighter/Rogue is a better representation of the abilities of the character in 5e.