Level 5 Dilemma

[Nicklance]

Hey guys.

Currently in a non-AL campaign where we just reached level 5. At this stage of the plot the DM allowed us to switch around characters and build concepts but he insists that at level 5 we create a permanent character that we can only change when he/she dies.

Standard point buy.

I've chosen Half-Elf.

I'm just agonizing over these build possibilities:

Hexblade 5
- Gets thirsting blade, eldritch smite, improved pact weapon
- This build could dump Dex in favor of Str so that I can transition the next 3 levels into Vengeance Paladin for that sweet Vow of Emnity.
- Level 4 ASI I have taken Elven Accuracy, which means by level 8 I can fish for crits with Vow of Emnity. But till then, Elven Accuracy only procs when an enemy goes prone from Eldritch Smite.
- No Heavy Armor proficiency (if that is even important)

Vengeance Paladin 3 / Hexblade 2
- I get the Vow of Emnity, and Hexblade 2 lets me use Charisma for attack and damage.
- Could fish for crits, but only 1 attack per round due to multiclassing.
- Stuck to Sword and Broad, which means Fighting Style is either Protection, Dueling or Defence.
- No ASI
- Have Heavy armor proficiency

Vengeance Paladin 2 / Hexblade 3
- I can get Pact Weapon, Improved Pact Weapon for a free +1 weapon
- I can still smite as a paladin
- 1 attack per round
- Could choose Great Weapon Fighting as a fighting style
- No ASI
- Have Heavy armor proficiency

Vengeance Paladin 4 / Hexblade 1
- Kinda dumb stopping at Paladin 4 just for the ASI
- Can still smite using paladin and hexblade slots
- Have Vow of Emnity
- Have Heavy armor proficiency

There's good and bad in the choices, I want to hear you guys out.

Advise please?

[Kane0]

Don't MC until after you get Extra Attack.

[Jerrykhor]

You can't smite if you can't hit, so get your multi-attack asap. Its not even a discussion.

[dgnslyr]

Honestly, my personal preference is to take as few levels of Paladin as possible, since Smites scale off spellcasting from any source, and every level of paladin is a delay on your "real" spellcasting class, so any choice with exactly 2 levels of Paladin gets my vote.

The rest kind of depends what you want to do. Pal 2/War 3 seems a pretty good split, especially if you want to use a two-hander. A two-hander also makes War Caster less important, since you'll have a free hand for spellcasting. Otherwise, if your hands are full trying to Sword and Board, you'll need to invest your next ASI into War Caster.

Another choice in a slightly different direction is to go for Pal 2/Sor 3, which lets you do silly things like Quicken Hold Person into a guaranteed Crit-Smite, but this build is slower to take off and requires a little more resource management throughout the day.

[Nicklance]

Don't MC until after you get Extra Attack.

So Hexblade 5 first?

[Nicklance]

Honestly, my personal preference is to take as few levels of Paladin as possible, since Smites scale off spellcasting from any source, and every level of paladin is a delay on your "real" spellcasting class, so any choice with exactly 2 levels of Paladin gets my vote.

The rest kind of depends what you want to do. Pal 2/War 3 seems a pretty good split, especially if you want to use a two-hander. A two-hander also makes War Caster less important, since you'll have a free hand for spellcasting. Otherwise, if your hands are full trying to Sword and Board, you'll need to invest your next ASI into War Caster.

Another choice in a slightly different direction is to go for Pal 2/Sor 3, which lets you do silly things like Quicken Hold Person into a guaranteed Crit-Smite, but this build is slower to take off and requires a little more resource management throughout the day.

I intend to get only Paladin 3 for the Vow. The rest will be go back to Hexblade.

[KOLE]

Heavy armor will take you further than medium ever will, and warlock only gives you two spell slots to smite with until much higher level. I say go 5 pally for extra spells to smite with, get your extra attack, use your strength for attacks, the go all hexblade from there. Having extra attack isnt redundant here since youve just freed an invocation slot for whatever else you want.

Just my opinion. But anytime I multiclass with a primarily martial build, I always go for extra attack ASAP. Being stuck with one attack is just too costly. It sucks waiting so long for multi shenanigans, but it’s Optimized, and it’s funner because nothing is less fun at the table than skipping your turn because you missed your one attack.

But, of course, as always, do what you think is the funnest option. If you really want to keep your pally level at 3, the go 5 hexblade first, but you need minimum 13 strength to multiclass anyway, so I say get some mileage out of that stat, take the heavy armor, get the extra attack + extra pally spells for smite, and leave yourself an extra invocation that yoy don’t need for thirsting blade. By level 6, you’re one bad mutha in combat.

[Nicklance]

Heavy armor will take you further than medium ever will, and warlock only gives you two spell slots to smite with until much higher level. I say go 5 pally for extra spells to smite with, get your extra attack, use your strength for attacks, the go all hexblade from there. Having extra attack isnt redundant here since youve just freed an invocation slot for whatever else you want.

Just my opinion. But anytime I multiclass with a primarily martial build, I always go for extra attack ASAP. Being stuck with one attack is just too costly. It sucks waiting so long for multi shenanigans, but it’s Optimized, and it’s funner because nothing is less fun at the table than skipping your turn because you missed your one attack.

But, of course, as always, do what you think is the funnest option. If you really want to keep your pally level at 3, the go 5 hexblade first, but you need minimum 13 strength to multiclass anyway, so I say get some mileage out of that stat, take the heavy armor, get the extra attack + extra pally spells for smite, and leave yourself an extra invocation that yoy don’t need for thirsting blade. By level 6, you’re one bad mutha in combat.

You make very good points. And I like it that Hexblade 1 at level 6 would make me a bad mofo right off the bat, with 6 slots for smiting from paladin alone.

Thanks man, my eyes are open.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I’m going to throw my hat into the lot and say if you’re going with 5 levels of Paladin, 6 is a sensible break point as well (though you don’t need to get it at level 6). Charisma aura to your saves is great when you’ve got total dependency on just Charisma, because between that and heavy armor, you end up with a well-rounded defense that only sacrifices a little bit of offense But Charisma to your friends’ saves? An absolute life-saver. But, you can go Paladin 5/Hexblade X/Paladin +1/Hexblade +Y and just pick up the aura of protection when you feel the saves start becoming a matter of team survival.

[Angelalex242]

I'd recommend Pal 5->Pal 6->Warlock levels to taste.

Just enjoy the pure Paladin ride in the early game and sell your soul later.

[Guy Lombard-O]

Well, I can see that this is a pretty contrarian viewpoint, but I took my (only) 2 hexblade levels earlier on (levels 2 & 3) for more role-play reasons. And it's true that delaying my extra attack and 6th level paladin Aura by two levels is sucking.

But you can still contribute to combats and make the mechanics work while you wait. For levels 5 & 6, you can just hang back more, cast something useful like Bless, and spam 2 Agonizing EBs like a warlock (so, still two attacks, sort of). It's not super exciting, but it works for a couple of levels. You can still do the rest of your paladin/high CHA character stuff, and it really accelerates your SAD character build from level 2 on.

[Keravath]

It depends what you want the character to do ...

I recently made level 5 in a similar AL character.

Variant human - polearm expert
Fighter 1/Hexblade 4 - take great weapon master - has devil's sight and improved pact weapon for the +1 for now

Character "summons the shadows" .. casts Darkness when he engages in combat. Moves in on his turn with a 10' reach attacks with advantage from darkness with devil's sight using great weapon master then moves back so that others can see the target if the party is using focus fire. At level 6 the character gets thirsting blade for another attack. At some point they will take agonizing blast for ranged.

The one level of fighter is to prioritize con saves and for +1 AC due to defensive fighting style. I tried the build out at level 4 with a pure hexblade and it seemed to work pretty well.

I probably won't even bother with Eldritch Smite (if at all) until after level 12 when the hexblade gets an extra spell slot. With only 2 spell slots, I think casting darkness or shadows of moil for always on advantage combined with GWM on three attacks a round is worth more than one critical eldritch smite for 10d8 / short rest ... 10d8 is 45 damage on average ... while landing three GWM hits every round because I have advantage on every attack is potentially +30 for every round. Based on that, I'd personally not bother using a spell slot for eldritch smite.

Also, elven advantage is great if you can reliably get advantage in combat ... as a warlock this is achievable with the right spells and invocations ... but if you are using your spells to set up advantage they won't be usable for smiting.

---------------

Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I wanted to go vengeance paladin/hexblade or another option. The paladin level 6 aura is really good and it is probably the one thing I would miss the most. However, I was looking to try a high melee damage build for a change and going paladin made the character a bit more mad even with hexblade (since strength 13 is required to multiclass into or out of paladin) and strength 15 is needed for the heavier armor.

If you are going to go half-elf, I would be tempted to go straight paladin to 6 and then switch to hexblade. Either boost charisma at 4 or take a feat.
Something like 16 10 14 10 10 16 for starting stats. Take either GWM or CHA+2 at level 4 (probably GWM). You will get extra attack at fifth level and strength at 16 means you can wear all the heavy armor and use strength for attack rolls until charisma comes online later. You can also use heavy two handed weapons. However, you won't be able to use charisma for attack with a two handed weapon until level 9 when you take W3 with pact of the blade. Level 10 nets a second ASI which is probably used for CHA .. to get +1 to hit and +1 to all saves. You can also start using darkness+devils sight for advantage.

The other approach is the 2 paladin/3 warlock you suggested. You will have the invocations, blade pact and option for darkness+devil's sight. However, you will only have one attack until level 8 and you won't get your first ASI/feat until level 7. Working through levels 5,6,7 you are likely going to feel like an under contributor unless you go to using eldritch blast with hex ... which will significantly outperform the melee damage you will be able to do at these levels. You could pick up pole arm master at 7 to give you an option for a bonus action attack. Also, your enhanced saving throws won't come online until level 9.

Your other option of 4 paladin/1hexblade is also a common choice since it causes the least delay in extra attack and the aura while still picking up the basic elements of hexblade. However, hex warrior only applies to one handed weapons so you won't be able to use charisma to hit with a heavy weapon until you have warlock 3 and pact of the blade at level 9. At this point you would probably go sword and board depending on how your strength and charisma compare.

Overall, I'd think that the paladin to 6 followed by hexblade would be the better choice.

However, if you want lots of spells for smiting, you could consider vengeance paladin 6/shadow sorcerer X. They can use sorcery points to cast darkness that they can see through ... however, you'll have to wait until 7th level sorcerer and 4th level spells for greater invisibility. You will ultimately have more spell slots for smiting (you can also cycle the sorcery points into spell slots rather than use them for meta magic if you want even more smiting available).