LF Shadar-kai Hexblade assistance!

[WeaselGuy]

I'm going to be starting in a new 5e campaign (Dragon Heist, I think he said) in the near future, and I'm wanting some advice and some help, if possible. The plan is to play a Shadar-kai Hexblade Warlock, following Pact of the Blade. He's going to be LN, with kind of an "ends justify the means" mentality. Very cold and calculating. I've read a couple of the handbooks on here ("Selling your Soul at a Premium (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?485736-Selling-your-Soul-at-a-Premium-The-Warlock-s-Guide-to-Power)" and "Pact-Making 101 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?377591-Pact-making-101-A-guide-to-the-5th-edition-Warlock)"), but neither of them, from what I could find, had much to say about Shadar-kai, and only one talked about Hexblade (although that one was quite informative, and really confirmed my thoughts on going this route). Also, finding information on Backgrounds is proving complex for me, probably due to content restrictions on my work computer. I was considering going with either Inquisitor, from Plane Shift: Innistrad, or Mercenary Veteran, from SCAG, but I'm open to suggestions.

So yeah. If anybody has any experience playing a Shadar-kai Hexblade from level 1, or has any insight on cool/helpful backgrounds to use, or really just wants to tell me I'm crazy, I'm all ears. Build stubs and progression outlines greatly appreciated!

[ciarannihill]

Any and all advice will only be as useful as it can be applied to the rest of your party, but one thing I want to make sure is said:

Even though Hexblade's a naturally better in a melee scrape than normal Warlocks and most other casters, you still aren't a Barbarian. Don't charge into the fray gung-ho without a plan, try to avoid being surrounded and take advantage of the mechanic most other skirmishers don't have access to that you do, at will ranged attack in Eldritch Blast. I'd start with Sword and Board for early game survivability personally as well.

These are kind of just general tips, but I think they're important to keep in mind even if they're somewhat basic.

As for your background, I'd grab proficiency in Perception if you can make it make sense for your character.

[Millface]

Hexblade and Shadar-Kai are easily married from their lore. Both make pacts with the Raven Queen, after all, so looking up some stuff on her would be strongly encouraged. If you're both of those things, and both make pacts to her, you'd want to follow those tenants pretty closely.

Inquisitor is a good background. I like to come up with an actual short background story first, though, and then try to find something that matches that. I'm actually playing a Hexblade right now, whose patron is the Raven Queen and whose deity is Kelemvor. I did the hermit background, but inquisitor or Acolyte would work just as well. I was raised in the church of Kelemvor and groomed to be a sort of "hand of fate" who killed those who the god and goddess of death had marked, so my social skills are pretty lacking, as you might imagine.

What's your basic idea on how your Shadar-Kai ended up here? How closely do you keep up with your patroness? Do you have character goals yet at all?

[Spiritchaser]

I don’t own dragon heist, but it’s been my impression that it is less combat intensive than many adventures.

That being said, there are a number of different ways to play a hexblade, melee is only one.

If you do go that option, learn when to use darkness and when not to (whenever you possibly can without messing up the rest of the party, or at least, whenever you’ll mess up the enemy as much or more than you mess up your party)

Until you get shadow of Moil, this is likely your go-to concentration spell. For advantage hitting? A bit, but also to keep yourself alive. Additionally you can use it to provide concealment for your party in some situations, though again it can become a curse.

With disadvantage to hit you, you will often be as survivable, or more survivable than the 16 Con d10 or 12 HD heavies, but if your darkness goes down, you are not a wall of HP. I’ve seen hexblades take light damage for a while then go down FAST when their concentration drops.

[WeaselGuy]

Fantastic tips so far y'all, thanks so much! Talking it over with my DM, I've actually decided to go with Strojanow Prisoner as my background (I know, completely different direction), because it's just going to mesh so perfectly with the vision I have for this character.

As an escaped convict, it also gives me a pretty good incentive to be in Waterdeep, as far away from the Moonsea as I can be!

If I can obtain the resources, my plan is to start with the best armor I can afford (scale?), along with a rapier and a shield.

[WeaselGuy]

Update: I've found out the party composition! We've got a:

LN Shadar-kai Warlock, Hexblade (Pact of Blade), Stojanow Prisoner
CG High Elf Druid, Circle of Land, Hermit
Lightfoot Halfling Sorcerer, Wild Magic, Guild Artisan
Half-Orc Cleric (did not indicate alignment, background, or specialization, but said he was a tanky damage dealer, not a healer)

[Ganymede]

I like to imagine the Shadar Kai as the D&D version of the mortal denizens of Silent Hill, the titular town of the Konami horror franchise.

[WeaselGuy]

I like to imagine the Shadar Kai as the D&D version of the mortal denizens of Silent Hill, the titular town of the Konami horror franchise.

I've been seeing them as similar to the Drukhari/Dark Eldar, from Warhammer 40k.

[Sception]

5e Shadar-Kai, compared to their previous incarnations, are not terribly well defined. The race description is very unclear on both how they work physically and what their typical behavior and disposition towards others is like, and if you look to the monster entries for clarification the impression is pretty, well, monsterous. Less the human characters of the silent hill games and more the monsters that accost them.

Some examples of pretty significant ambiguities:

Shadar-Kai immortality/reincarnation. When regular elves die in 5e, their souls return to Corellon in their primal, fey state, and from that state they are eventually reincarnated as newborn elves. The new elves have fleeting impressions of their past lives while they trance, but are for the most part entirely new people. Shadar-Kai work differently, their souls returning to the Raven Queen when they die to be reborn, but it's not clear how that works. There's no mention or description of Shadar-Kai children, and some have read the SK entry to mean that the soul gets a new body, but is otherwise exactly the same person, memories and all intact. And if that is the interpretation your DM goes with, that obviously DOES NOT WORK for a PC character, because it would mean that by the 'modern' time every single Shadar-Kai is both functionally immortal and has tens of thousands of years of lived experience. Such a character would not be starting any campaign as a first level anything.

There are a couple obvious alternative interpretations that do support PC shadar-kai, either the shadark-kai soul is reincarnated as a new child like any other elves so they lead finite discrete lifespans like any other elf, or else the same shadar-kai is given a new, adult body by the raven queen, but in the process she takes and keeps all or most of their experiences and memories for her collection, leaving the shadar-kai essentially a blank slate/new individual even though they are never actually a child. However, neither of these interpretations has any direct support in the actual text, making them essentially fanfiction/homebrew patches. I do recommend some sort of homebrew patch, but check with your DM.

Shadar-Kai Raids (and this ties in somewhat with shadar-kai culture & societal alignment in general): Like Drow, Shadar-Kai's primary interactions with other races are through raids, But unlike Drow these raids don't aim to take tangible resources but rather aim to claim trinkets and tokens of sentimental value for the Raven Queen's collection. While the target of the raids is relatively clear, the nature of them is highly ambiguous. From the elf chapter write up, you might get the impression that the trinkets are all they take, slipping in and out unseen, but the monster entries strongly imply that Shadar-kai actions are exclusively murderous and violent, that they stalk people of other races, drive them into misfortune, and murder them all as standard operating procedure, and only sift through their possessions for odd trinkets and tokens after their targets are already very dead. If you accept that as the standard operating procedure, then the shadar-kai and raven queen aren't just creepy and weird, they're utterly evil and monstrous.

There are a few ways this could go for your character. If your DM does go with near-universally monstrous shadar-kai, then the only real option for a PC shadar-kai is the same as the default option for PC drow - your character grew a conscience out of nowhere and is now an exile from their home community, self-imposed or otherwise. This is somewhat complicated by being a Hexblade warlock and thus, at least indirectly, bound to the raven queen twice over, but there are plenty of examples warlocks who try to escape from their patron's influence, or turn their patron's power against itself after making the pact. That's like the default characterization of fiend warlocks after all. The downside of that is it makes you kind of an inherent enemy of the Raven Queen and other Shadar-Kai rather than part of their society.

Because the SK writeup is ambiguous, your DM could of course have other interpretations. After all, the Shadar-Kai are described as interacting peaceably with those who come to the Raven Queen for aid, helping prepare them for her tests and trials. That isn't necessarily at odds with the more monsterous interpretation - Drow likewise might refrain from murdering on sight a diplomantic envoy specifically invited into their city by its matriarch after all, but the shadar-kai monster descriptions don't really sound like creatures that would be capable of showing that sort of discretion. Regardless, that, along with the notable lack of murderous intent in their description in elf races chapter, might lead a DM to interpret the monstrous shadar-kai as outliers, or perhaps might conclude that there are various conflicting factions of Shadar-kai who interpret the cryptic instructions of their queen in wildly different ways.

And honestly, if the monster descriptions are what all shadar-kai are like, how would they even survive? It's hard to imagine such creatures as farmers, or bankers, or masons, or in any other role that a society might need to function, especially considering that their raids don't steal food or gold or other items of practical material value, so it's not like they can actually be living off of raiding like orcs or goblins or drow might. Again, though, absolutely nothing about the monster descriptions supports the notion that they are outliers, and nothing anywhere supports the idea of multiple factions of shadar-kai with differing attitudes towards outsiders, so... yeah, other, more functional interpretations of typical shadar-kai disposition and society that would render the monster descriptions atypical are inherently of the fanfictiony/homebrewy variety.

That said, IF your DM homebrews a raven queen and shadar-kai that aren't inherently villainous/murderous/monstrous - if most raids are in fact bloodless and even invisible apart from the sentimental trinkets taken, then shadar-kai society is still creepy - and other elves in particular might find them, if anything, more monstrous than the the drow (see the sidebar in the book about general elf attitudes towards sentimental trinkets, valuing them higher than riches or even lives), but your character might still then be actively working for the Raven Queen, searching out sentimental trinkets on your adventures to collect and eventually send back to her. She is said to especially favor items tied to strong feelings of sorrow or regret, like a deceased child's favorite toy or a lost love's favor. Your character might even consider taking such items to be a kindness, encouraging your victims to let go of the past and move past their regrets, even as you collect the items tied to those memories for your patron.

But again, that only works if the DM is willing to homebrew a Raven Queen and Shadar-Kai who aren't just kill-crazy monsters to begin with.


There's a lot of other ambiguity with the 5e shadar-kai and raven queen, but those are the two main issues I would sit down and talk with your DM about before anything else.


1) Are Shadar-Kai literally immortal, their souls always coming back as the same person with all their memories intact - in which case they're probably not an acceptable PC choice to begin with (though if such an immortal were to have a dalliance with a human, perhaps a half-shadar-kai might make for a PC-acceptable alternative, though whether such a dalliance would be at all realistic in the first place depends heavily on how your DM answers the question below) - or are they in some way reincarnated as new/different people, and if they are reincarnated, are they born again as infants, the children of other shadar-kai parents, like with other elves, or are they just given a fresh new body with by the raven queen directly, with memories of their past life cleared away? Either of the latter interpretations could support 1st level PC shadar-kai, but the differences in the details likely has a strong impact on your character's disposition and backstory, as in one case your character was at one point a child and had shadar-kai parents who raised them, and in the other case neither of those things would really be true.


2) Are Shadar-Kai, and by extension the raven queen, monstrous, villainous killers by default, or are the monster descriptions in some way outliers. If the Shadar-Kai are evil creatures who normally kill all outsiders they encounter, then a shadar-kai character in most campaigns (even most evil campaigns, unless the other PCs are also shadar-kai) really only works as an outcast from and enemy of that society. If however the monster descriptions are outliers in your game, then Shadar-Kai and the Raven Queen might not be inherently evil and a shadar-kai PC would be able to adventure along with other heroic PC allies while still maintaining standing in SK society and actively working for the Raven Queen, rather than exclusively in opposition to her. A shadar-kai PC can work in either case, but the answer to this question has a dramatic impact in how you relate to your warlock patron who is, or at least was created to serve the interests of, the Raven Queen.

It's the difference between a fey or celestial warlock who might have a friendly relationship with a patron they might actively support (assuming one of the friendlier fey lords or ladies in this case), and a fiend or star warlocks who are generally assumed to have accidentally or foolishly bound themselves to something evil, and now attempt to use what power they're able to draw from that bond to actively oppose their patron's ambitions.

Again, both work as PCs in a heroic party, but the nature of your character's relationship with their patron will be utterly different depending on the answer.

[WeaselGuy]

-snip-
Damn. That was like, seriously more information than I thought I was going to get. Thank you. Like, seriously. Thanks. I have a lot to think about, with regards to role-playing this character, versus roll-playing. I'll let you know how it turns out!

[WeaselGuy]

Ok, so, here's what I've got so far. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be as much of a party face as we've got in our party, except for maybe the drunken halfling bard, but we'll see. Format is (A) for ASI's, (C) for Cantrips, (S) for Spells, (I) for Invocations, and (M) for Mystic Arcanums.



Eldritch Blast (C), Friends (C), Armor of Agathys (S), Hex (S)
Wrathful Smite (S), Agonizing Blast (I), Mask of Many Faces (I)
Blur (S)
Elven Accuracy (A), Booming Blade (C), Suggestion (S), Swap Agonizing Blast to Improved Pact Weapon (I)
Blink (S), Thirsting Blade (I)
Enemies Abound (S)
Phantasmal Killer (S), Maddening Hex (I)
Warcaster (A), Shadow of Moil (S)
Banishing Smite (S), Tomb of Levistus (I)
-nothing-
Cone of Cold (S), Investiture of Wind (M)
+2 CHA (A), Lifedrinker (I)
Synaptic Static (S), Crown of Stars (M)
-nothing-
Minor Illusion (C), Hold Monster (S), Witch Sight (I), Feeblemind (M)
+2 CHA (A)
Far Sight (S), Imprisonment (M)
Sculptor of Flesh (I)
Undetermined (A), Enervation (S)
-nothing-


I'm also considering swapping Warcaster to 4th, and delaying Elven Accuracy to 8th, and possible ditch Tomb of Levistus for something else, but haven't decided for sure yet.