Hexblade/Elven Accuracy Question(s)

[Smersh_23]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

What are some other ways I can make use of the elven accuracy? I cant do the shove prone thing because my STR is 8. I just picked up fairy fire so will test that out. Are they some other things I don't know about that can help?

FYI...My group doesn't power game or optimize, we mostly play for fun/style.

Thanks!

[Menji]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

What are some other ways I can make use of the elven accuracy? I cant do the shove prone thing because my STR is 8. I just picked up fairy fire so will test that out. Are they some other things I don't know about that can help?

FYI...My group doesn't power game or optimize, we mostly play for fun/style.

Thanks!

So...does it actually hurt them significantly, or are they just annoyed because they feel like it does? Because if it's actually hurting the party, it's usually because the DM and/or players don't know how darkness/heavy obscurement work. Usually it just gives advantage + disadvantage for everyone who can't see, which evens out. But it does make them unable to be targeted by a lot of special abilities and spells, which is nice. Also, you could put 2 more levels into Hexblade and pick up Shadow of Moil, which is a bit easier to use than Darkness.

In any case, yeah I'd use Faerie Fire and save Darkness for those battles in which enemies have abilities that require sight. If the people fussing are Fighter/Paladin/Ranger types, just have them swap their fighting style the next time they can to Blind-fighting, and then you'd both have advantage.

[MrStabby]

So...does it actually hurt them significantly, or are they just annoyed because they feel like it does? Because if it's actually hurting the party, it's usually because the DM and/or players don't know how darkness/heavy obscurement work. Usually it just gives advantage + disadvantage for everyone who can't see, which evens out. But it does make them unable to be targeted by a lot of special abilities and spells, which is nice. Also, you could put 2 more levels into Hexblade and pick up Shadow of Moil, which is a bit easier to use than Darkness.

In any case, yeah I'd use Faerie Fire and save Darkness for those battles in which enemies have abilities that require sight. If the people fussing are Fighter/Paladin/Ranger types, just have them swap their fighting style the next time they can to Blind-fighting, and then you'd both have advantage.

On the other hand, if you do have casters in the party, it can be a case of "you sit here and wait whilst I play the game". On the plus side, so many spells that this kind of caster could be using actually give you advantage so maybe your best bet is to let others give you advantage.

Also worth noting that the blind fighting option might not be available - firstly as an optional rule. Secondly it works a lot less well vs ranged attacks due to its short range.

[MrCharlie]

So...does it actually hurt them significantly, or are they just annoyed because they feel like it does? Because if it's actually hurting the party, it's usually because the DM and/or players don't know how darkness/heavy obscurement work. Usually it just gives advantage + disadvantage for everyone who can't see, which evens out. But it does make them unable to be targeted by a lot of special abilities and spells, which is nice. Also, you could put 2 more levels into Hexblade and pick up Shadow of Moil, which is a bit easier to use than Darkness.

In any case, yeah I'd use Faerie Fire and save Darkness for those battles in which enemies have abilities that require sight. If the people fussing are Fighter/Paladin/Ranger types, just have them swap their fighting style the next time they can to Blind-fighting, and then you'd both have advantage.
(Please don't let anyone start the darkness debate please don't let anyone start the darkness debate please don't let anyone start the darkness debate...)

If people aren't willing to change their fighting style, the fighting initiate feat exists and lets them add another one as long as they have a martial weapon. Fighting initiate for blindsight is actually quite good on a caster like a cleric, for precisely the vision problems that darkness brings up.

Aside from the aforementioned options there are numerous spells that allies can cast which can help, including greater invisibility, or disabling effects like web on enemies.

[kazaryu]

(Please don't let anyone start the darkness debate please don't let anyone start the darkness debate please don't let anyone start the darkness debate...)

If people aren't willing to change their fighting style, the fighting initiate feat exists and lets them add another one as long as they have a martial weapon. Fighting initiate for blindsight is actually quite good on a caster like a cleric, for precisely the vision problems that darkness brings up.

Aside from the aforementioned options there are numerous spells that allies can cast which can help, including greater invisibility, or disabling effects like web on enemies.

to be fair, forcing players to change *their* build because a single player is forcing a debuff on them isn't really very sporting. i know it wasn't you that suggested it. but seriously, if im going to build around a combo that actively debuffs my party for my own benefit, im going to consult them first. it just seems like its part of the whole 'working together thing'. like, as a player i don't really care what others play. even if they happen to play the same class as me, no worries. but if they just...out of nowhere...dropped a debuff on me, for the purpose of buffing themselves, then i'd be annoyed too.

and it is a fairly significant debuff, it largely nullifies rogues who can now no longer gain advantage. and it means the barbarians reckless attack feature is useless. indeed any build thats built around self generating advantage would get cucked by this. including some optimized builds like samurai and vengeance paladins. not to mention (because they already have been) casters that rely on sight. I agree that so long as you don't fall under the same categories as the builds i mentioned, the worst the combo does is make it so they can get neither advantage nor disadvantage. but even thats not great.

[Azuresun]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

A lot of forum optimisation stuff is a lot less useful in actual play. Forums tend to assume a white room DPS race where nobody ever works together or helps out their allies, and applying it to a real game can run into problems.

I'd suggest talking to the other players and DM about if this is annoying for them. Consider asking to change your character / build if the answer is yes (asking everyone else to change to play around your combo is...probably going to get a cooler reception).

[MrCharlie]

to be fair, forcing players to change *their* build because a single player is forcing a debuff on them isn't really very sporting. i know it wasn't you that suggested it. but seriously, if im going to build around a combo that actively debuffs my party for my own benefit, im going to consult them first. it just seems like its part of the whole 'working together thing'. like, as a player i don't really care what others play. even if they happen to play the same class as me, no worries. but if they just...out of nowhere...dropped a debuff on me, for the purpose of buffing themselves, then i'd be annoyed too.

and it is a fairly significant debuff, it largely nullifies rogues who can now no longer gain advantage. and it means the barbarians reckless attack feature is useless. indeed any build thats built around self generating advantage would get cucked by this. including some optimized builds like samurai and vengeance paladins. not to mention (because they already have been) casters that rely on sight. I agree that so long as you don't fall under the same categories as the builds i mentioned, the worst the combo does is make it so they can get neither advantage nor disadvantage. but even thats not great.
I absolutely agree that it's a bad debuff, simply because OP is saying it is. We don't know the context of his game, and we ought to just accept that this context is valid.

(Also, I agree with you, darkness is not a non-trivial debuff to activate on the party).

That said, blind fighting isn't a wasted feat in general-if enough of the party has darkness piercing abilities it actually negates a lot of trouble long term. It's just something that you ought to remind your party of, not demand they take so that your build works.

[Eldariel]

Honestly, it's mostly down to knowing how to mitigate Darkness. The big things to note are:

If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn't being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it.

So you can keep it with you. You can also abandon it at will. Further, since it's Concentration, you can end it as a nonaction at any point on any turn (Concentration (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Spells#toc_22): "You can end concentration at any time (no action required)".


Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness.

Cast it on an item in a pouch. Attack with elven advantage. Take your turnly free item interaction to close the pouch. No Darkness for allies. Next turn open it, full attack, move away; yes Darkness but allies can position so that it hampers them less than the enemies since you aren't covering the enemies (and no OAs since enemies are blind when you move away).


If any of this spell's area overlaps with an area of light created by a spell of 2nd Level or lower, the spell that created the light is dispelled.

Give allies level 3 Continual Flame items. This lets them turn your Darkness off at will for their own turn and then move away again returning the sphere.


All of these mean that Darkness is almost pure upside though how much upside depends on how much effort you put into it. But it's really, really, strong, don't misunderstand. It doesn't take build resources from allies to play around it to at least "it's advantage on all attacks for a level 2 slot for 10 mins" level, which is already really, really good, especially if you have Elven Accuracy.

[Spiritchaser]

So, you can use darkness to aid the party in lots of ways. Your enemies probably won’t just attack from one direction… you can focus on one or two of them, or use darkness to separate some enemies from others or remove their powers from the equation for a round or two.

Sit down with your team and a piece of graph paper and think through how you can protect them with a no-see zone in woods, a village, open planes… with a few good simple plans you’ll be a lot stronger.

Now: if you spend most of your time in tight corridors where one or a few tightly packed enemies attack from one direction, and your party relies on line of sight… I can see how darkness might be much less useful, but if that’s the case, other abilities your party has are probably making many of those encounters pretty easy.

Also, it’s a little way off, but eventually you’ll get shadow of Moil.

[MrCharlie]

Honestly, it's mostly down to knowing how to mitigate Darkness. The big things to note are:


So you can keep it with you. You can also abandon it at will. Further, since it's Concentration, you can end it as a nonaction at any point on any turn (Concentration (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Spells#toc_22): "You can end concentration at any time (no action required)".



Cast it on an item in a pouch. Attack with elven advantage. Take your turnly free item interaction to close the pouch. No Darkness for allies. Next turn open it, full attack, move away; yes Darkness but allies can position so that it hampers them less than the enemies since you aren't covering the enemies (and no OAs since enemies are blind when you move away).



Give allies level 3 Continual Flame items. This lets them turn your Darkness off at will for their own turn and then move away again returning the sphere.


All of these mean that Darkness is almost pure upside though how much upside depends on how much effort you put into it. But it's really, really, strong, don't misunderstand. It doesn't take build resources from allies to play around it to at least "it's advantage on all attacks for a level 2 slot for 10 mins" level, which is already really, really good, especially if you have Elven Accuracy.
1. Nothing explicitly says you can end concentration off-turn.
2. Many DM's despise darkness pouch shenanigan's and will veto or directly countermand the attempt. As is their prerogative.
3. Sure, if people want to modify their own gameplay around his spell. This does not work for many characters, and others will simply refuse to play this game.
4. I trust OP that it's party disrupting.
5. This thread will get derailed if we continue down this path.

[Keltest]

1. Nothing explicitly says you can end concentration off-turn.
2. Many DM's despise darkness pouch shenanigan's and will veto or directly countermand the attempt. As is their prerogative.
3. Sure, if people want to modify their own gameplay around his spell. This does not work for many characters, and others will simply refuse to play this game.
4. I trust OP that it's party disrupting.
5. This thread will get derailed if we continue down this path.

1: "any time" means "any" time, including off turn. If they give you an open ended option and dont build an exception into it explicitly, the exception doesnt exist. If they had meant "any time on your turn" they would have said as much.

2: Thats true of anything and everything. Its completely valid by RAW and in fact is an intended interaction with the spell (as well at its illumination counterparts). Its perfectly valid advice.

3: This is a team game. There is inevitably going to be a balance between modifying your own character to not tick off your allies and your allies modifying their play to work around your character without telling you not to play at all.

4: "its party disrupting" doesnt mean that you unilaterally have to abandon it as a tactic, just work with the party to incorporate it to be less detrimental. This can, for example, mean "dont stand in fireball formation while fireballs are being thrown" just as an example.

[Eldariel]

3. Sure, if people want to modify their own gameplay around his spell. This does not work for many characters, and others will simply refuse to play this game.

4. I trust OP that it's party disrupting.

I trust them too, that's not the point. The point is that their experience is probably derived from an environment where they're probably not doing many of the things they could be doing to mitigate its disruptiveness at a fairly low cost. Hypnotic Pattern, Fireball, etc. are similarly party disruptive WRT positioning, AOE, etc. but it's rare enough to see players unwilling to play around the effects and the ones that refuse rarely complain about getting caught in friendly fire IMHE, since they're perfectly aware they're making it happen.

Besides, what else should we discuss in this thread? This is an "alternative" way to get advantage on attacks just the same, and most of the relevant ones have already been listed. I think the only potential productive outcome of this thread is to give optimally new ideas for how to make the spell less disruptive to the party with as little effort as possible, since basically everything else seems to be on the OP's radar already (short of help from allies, which doesn't seem forthcoming in this party).

[Gtdead]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

What are some other ways I can make use of the elven accuracy? I cant do the shove prone thing because my STR is 8. I just picked up fairy fire so will test that out. Are they some other things I don't know about that can help?

FYI...My group doesn't power game or optimize, we mostly play for fun/style.

Thanks!

Do you have to stay in melee? As an elf a single ASI spent on EA and Hex Warrior, you aren't tied into a particular weapon yet. You can play with Eldritch Blast or pick Improved Pact Weapon and use a ranged weapon. From range you have more options. Devil's Sight outranges the majority of common enemies at 120ft, since standard darkvision is 60 ft. Although tbh if you go ranged, you probably won't have any problems using Darkness.

I am curious by the way, what exactly is the problem with your party. Archers and Melee can still attack without disadvantage, since Darkness cancels out everything unless the enemy has blindsight/truesight/tremorsense. You can still target even if you are blind. The enemies need to use their action to hide in order to avoid being attacked.

Casters could be affected a bit more due to lots of spells requiring sight, but this can easily be fixed by positioning and it protects the party versus enemy spellcasters too. In fact, it's very popular to build casters that take advantage of obscurement effects. Can you explain how the party is affected by you casting darkness? Could be that your DM has misinterpreted a rule.

[Greywander]

Darkness/Devil's Sight can be a potent combo, but it can be a bit disruptive for the rest of your team. But there are ways to mitigate this, and you can even build the party around this combo (which can be even more potent!).

First thing is to understand how heavy obscurement works. If you can't see the person you're attacking, you have disadvantage. But if the person you're attacking can't see you, then you have advantage. If both are true, then they cancel out and you roll normally. This can actually be a great tool to normalize rolls, e.g. if the enemy is somehow getting advantage against you or your party members already have disadvantage from somewhere. As you can see, for anyone using attack rolls, this doesn't actually affect them that much, unless they were already getting advantage from elsewhere. However, this is a completely different story for mages. Many spells require you to see the target, meaning that heavy obscurement makes it impossible to use most of your spells. This can be a good thing if you're facing an enemy caster (and works well against beholders, too), but obviously any mages on your team aren't going to be too happy.

Second is how Darkness works. I know there's some debate over whether the darkness is opaque or not. I'm inclined to believe the darkness isn't opaque, as otherwise it's just an alternate Fog Cloud with a different aesthetic. If your DM runs Darkness as not being opaque, then that means that anyone can see out of the darkness just fine. Only the creatures within the darkness are obscured, so targeting enemies outside the darkness shouldn't be a problem. In fact, your enemies still can't see you and your team, but you can see them, so your whole team would get advantage on their attacks, and your casters would be able to see to cast their spells. You don't need blindsight or Devil's Sight for this to work, you only need your enemies to be outside of the Darkness effect. Which, honestly, isn't going to happen that often, but sometimes you'll be able to take advantage of this.

Third is how to exploit this as a team. Melee party members can pick up Blind Fighting as their fighting style, which has the additional benefit that it works in a lot more than just darkness. Ranged party members can pick up Eldritch Adept and take Devil's Sight that way without needing to dip into warlock. Not everyone might be interested in building around Darkness, but if they are then this can become a powerful team tactic. As long as you or someone else in your party has Darkness up, your entire party gets advantage on their attacks and (with Devil's Sight) can cast spells out to 120 feet, while your enemies will have disadvantage on their attacks and can't cast spells that require sight. This won't work against enemies with blindsight, tremorsense, or Devil's Sight, but it still works on a pretty huge swathe of enemies. Blindsight can be defeated by staying out of its range, tremorsense can be defeated with the Fly spell, and Devil's Sight can be defeated by using Fog Cloud and relying on the Blind Fighting style. So you do have options for dealing with those as well.

Now, if your team isn't interested in building around this tactic (which is fair) then it's on you to minimize the inconvenience you cause them, or to abandon this tactic entirely and find a different way to get advantage. It's generally a lot easier to get a party member to give you advantage somehow, so maybe work with the rest of your team to see what works for them. A fellow caster could toss out something like Faerie Fire, or a more martial ally could grapple an enemy and shove them prone for you. There's a lot of other ways to get advantage, so look into what your party members have to offer.

[Reynaert]

Do you have to stay in melee? As an elf a single ASI spent on EA and Hex Warrior, you aren't tied into a particular weapon yet. You can play with Eldritch Blast or pick Improved Pact Weapon and use a ranged weapon. From range you have more options. Devil's Sight outranges the majority of common enemies at 120ft, since standard darkvision is 60 ft. Although tbh if you go ranged, you probably won't have any problems using Darkness.

Indeed, and darkness is only a 15-ft radius, so you can easily stay away from the rest of your party.

In a pinch you can run up 15 ft, hit an enemy, back away 15 ft (or more if you're a wood elf). No opportunity attack because it requires seeing you, and technically the enemy you hit should be just outside the darkness after your move because you started 5ft away from them (or 10 ft if you pick a whip as your pact weapon).

[Smersh_23]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

My gaming group is all family members, we play for fun and are not optimizers. The table feels like I do about cheese tactics, like putting darkness on an object and taking it in and out of the pouch. We avoid that stuff and try to play within what we feel is the spirit of the game. Our current campaign is in Ravenloft run by my daughter (lots of undead and wolf fights sofar. Oh and some crazy evil druids). We have an artificer BM/sharpshooter, necromancer, paladin and me (hexblade/bard).

I don't like the idea of asking or having another player change their character to fit my character tactics, doesn't seem fair to me. I do not want to start any debates on the validity of the darkness/devil sight combo, that isn't my intent. Its a good combo. I was just wondering if there was some other ways to gain advantage to make better use of my elven accuracy feat (Also, with out limiting my team mates).

Most of the battles we have had are indoors with limited movement. Popping darkness on the front line directly effects the other three players, especially our archer who does the most damage. Maybe we are not using the obscurement rules correctly. I thought that if you could not see your target you get disadvantage. And my wife is a notorious low roller with the dice and disadvantage would cripple her :). I know you can still target them for ranged/melee attacks just not for spells or abilities that require sight. My party also uses a lot of spells that require vision; fear, hypnotic pattern etc...

Looking at my spell list, I could only see fairy fire being my best bet on gaining advantage but was hoping i was missing something :)

[Eldariel]

Basically with Darkness and no way to see through it:
- You get disadvantage for not seeing your target.
- You get advantage for enemy not seeing you.

This cancels out meaning in Darkness, attacks are done without bonuses or penalties unless you can somehow see through it. Honestly, that party looks like it doesn't really mind the Darkness. Sharpshooter works just fine in Darkness as well as outside it (though it can't generate advantage), Necromancer's minions and such work just fine as do AOE spells (e.g. Fireball, Web, etc.) and Necromancer can even have a bat familiar if they want to lean in onto the "[be aware of the location of] the unseen" (it's a solid familiar), Paladin really doesn't care; they can Smite just the same and self-buff and ally-buff, which is basically all they do.

In short, I don't really see types that would be greatly hampered by Darkness. That said, few spells mentioned like Web, Hold Person, Blindness, Faerie Fire, etc. of course give you advantage to hit if the enemy fails a save so that's a fine plan B.

[Greywander]

What's the rest of your party? D&D is a team game, so maybe your party members can help you get advantage another way. Also, if they're mostly melee martials, then Darkness shouldn't actually affect them much, due to advantage and disadvantage canceling out. You could also try switching to a ranged build, both EB or a ranged pact weapon should work. You'll have to get within 30 feet to use Hexblade's Curse, but you could back off after that, and anyway 30 feet should be enough to keep the Darkness away from the front line. In fact, if you position yourself just right, you can get your allies inside the darkness (meaning the enemy can't see them) while the enemies are outside (meaning your allies can see them).

[Smersh_23]

We have not been using obsurement rules properly it seems. I do not think we have been cancelling out the advantage and disadvantage for those that cannot see each other. I should reread that section of the the rules again. I guess the only real big negative then is spells that need to see their target and my team mates that have other means of generating advantage for themselves don't get to use their ability for that.

I forgot to mention to that one of our adventures were against plant/tree monsters that all had blind sight :( totally ruined my darkness spell.

[Khrysaes]

If you are willing to use a ranged weapon you can use Misty Visions to cast Silent Image imitating a fog cloud. Anyone outside can't see in, but anyone inside knows its an illusion thus doesn't have disadvantage.

[Salmon343]

I feel like the party shouldn't have to build around it, unless that's a collaborative effort made in character building - I'd recommend switching tack.

As part Bard you could grab Silvery Barbs (or you could grab it with Fey Touched, the bonus here being that you get a free casting of it 1/long rest).

This level 1 spell lets you force an enemy to reroll a passed attack roll/save/ability check, then lets you grant advantage to any ally - including yourself. So it plays double duty as an enemy debuff, and a debuff for yourself. Sadly it doesn't scale well, so you'd only get it a few times per day unless you start burning your much more powerful warlock slots - but those few times per day would be pretty clutch, especially if you have a crit oriented build as a Hexblade.

Sadly Warlock Hexblades don't get Greater Invisibility. Stuff like Hold Person and Hold Monster (the former scaling very nicely for Warlocks) can help give you advantage in a party friendly way, and there's Foresight at the upper tier of the game.

I'd recommend using Hold Person in tandem with Silvery Barbs as clutch for now (maybe for rerolling those passed saves..! And guaranteeing the advantage), and switching to Hold Monster when you hit Warlock 9. Given that you'd have triple advantage and crit on a 19, with Eldritch Smite and your bonus damage for cursed enemies, you could have quite the nova build - you'd only need a few rounds.

[LudicSavant]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much

Usually when I've seen this complaint come up on the forums, the problem turns out to be a result of either A) the players missing one or more of the rules for obscurement (such as forgetting that Advantage and Disadvantage cancel out), or B) making a tactical error in the way they're using Darkness. There are occasional cases of C) picking an ability that doesn't fit your specific party (like "I knock people prone all the time... in a party full of archers and eldritch blasters")... but all too often cases assumed to be C are actually A or B.

Used properly, the Darkness combo is an excellent tool to put in your utility belt for many party compositions... but that said, it should still only be one of those tools. You want to have other options for generating Advantage too. For example, knocking people prone with Eldritch Smite. Additionally, it helps to have some advantage generators in your party, too -- after all, it's a team game, and every class has ways to create Advantage. A Warlock could also do with some tools that don't rely on attack rolls at all (like Synaptic Static or what-have-you).

Edit:
Here's an old post I made suggesting some ways to use the Darkness spell more effectively:


Darkness
Darkness is a good spell that sometimes gets a bad rap because some people misuse it in a way that's detrimental to their party. But that's not the spell's fault, it's the player's. If you blame the plane for the pilot error, you'll never learn to fly. So here are a few tips on how to fly!

- Understand why people cast spells like Fog Cloud even if they can't see through it. Then realize that Darkness is way easier to avoid hindering your allies with than Fog Cloud -- it's a higher level spell for good reason! You (and any ally) can conceal or reveal it with an object interaction, you (and any ally) can move it around, you (and any ally) can illuminate it with a permanent Continual Flame item (as long as it was created with a level 3 or higher spell slot), and of course, you can see through it with a wider range of abilities (most famously Devil's Sight, but that's definitely not the only one -- in fact, as of Tasha's, every class can access ways to see through it).

- For people who don't have relevant special abilities, Darkness basically causes all sources of Advantage and Disadvantage to cancel out. The attacker gets Advantage for being unseen, but Disadvantage for not seeing their target, so everyone just attacks normally. So what's the point? Well, the point is that you can use Darkness to neutralize any sources of Advantage or Disadvantage that benefit the enemy. For example, if they use Blur or Greater Invisibility, and then you get them in your area of Darkness, all of your allies will attack without Disadvantage!

Want your allies to attack with a source of Advantage when their turn comes up? No problem! Just have you (or an ally) use an object interaction to cover it, or move it, or take out an upcast Continual Flame object.

- An awful lot of enemy abilities require "a target you can see," and Darkness is an excellent defense against them. For example, a beholder just can't shoot you at all with Darkness. Even if they turn on the antimagic field, they block their own eye rays with it, and only suppress the Darkness rather than dispel it.

If you need to use your own party's "a target you can see" abilities, just have you (or an ally) use an object interaction to cover it, or move it, or take out an upcast Continual Flame object. There are also an awful lot of great spells that do not require seeing the target. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24894989&postcount=877)

- Opportunity attacks trigger off of "a target you can see" leaving threat range, and thus you can just ignore them. Or help allies disengage, too. It also means you have a lot of control over positioning so that you can determine exactly who you want seen or unseen.

- Counterspells are another important thing that require "a target you can see," which means you can cover your mage allies from counterspellers. This is often much more efficient than getting into a "I counterspell your counterspell to his counterspell" war. You can cast Darkness from outside of line of sight, move the object into the correct position, and bam, no counterspells for that important thing your mage wants to cast.

- Darkness synergizes extra well with anyone that has Alert, Blind-Fighting, Devil's Sight, Blindsight, truesight, bonus action Hiding, or just abilities that don't depend on sight much (like most AoEs, Wall of Force, etc). As of Tasha's, there's more ways to synergize with Darkness than ever. Let your allies know about this! Or, alternatively, consider taking Darkness when you know your allies already have these sorts of things.

- Keep in mind that both you and allies can cover or uncover your Darkness as a free object interaction if you need to temporarily turn it off for some reason. Likewise, your allies can have fairly cheap Continual Flame items (upcast to L3 or higher) so that they can illuminate magical Darkness as an object interaction if they really need to. You can also drop Concentration at any time (even when it's not your turn).

- Darkness is one of those things that can be a huge asset for your party, or can actually impede it if it's misused. Kind of like how knocking enemies Prone can be fantastic for melee allies or non-attack-based kiters, but detrimental for allies dependent on long ranged attack rolls. That doesn't mean that shoving is bad -- quite the opposite -- it just means that it's not for literally all party compositions. And it doesn't need to be. Just as you wouldn't play a character who focused on shoving in a team of archers, you shouldn't play a character who makes heavy use of Darkness in a team of characters who are unusually anti-synergistic with it.

That said, there are a lot of ways to make obscurement a major asset for your teammates, or to minimize interference (like the aforementioned object interactions or Monk hit and run tactics). Often more than people think -- I've seen a huge number of things get blamed on anti-synergy that are really just a result of people not knowing how to take full advantage of the spell.

For example, if an allied Barbarian decides to Reckless Attack, you can follow that up by switching on or moving your Darkness over them negate the enemy's Advantage. And if they want to get Reckless Advantage again when their turn comes up? They can use a free object interaction to switch Darkness off temporarily.

As an aside, I've never seen people complain on forums about Fog Cloud, even though it's harder to avoid hindering your party with Fog Cloud than it is with Darkness. Why is that? My theory is that it's because when someone puts Fog Cloud on their sheet, they're thinking about vision control. They looked over the rules for obscurement, and identified some way that could benefit them or their party. But when someone puts Darkness/Devil's Sight on their sheet, they might only be thinking "gimme that advantage" and skip that crucial step of learning about how to best utilize vision control for their party's benefit, and thus ends up getting misused.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

What are some other ways I can make use of the elven accuracy? I cant do the shove prone thing because my STR is 8. I just picked up fairy fire so will test that out. Are they some other things I don't know about that can help?

FYI...My group doesn't power game or optimize, we mostly play for fun/style.

Thanks!

Yeah Elvish Accuracy can be a bit of a trap and I always recommend avoiding the darkness/devilsight combo because it's so disruptive and frankly, not very good. The other problem with Elvish Accuracy is that it's clearly meant for crit fishing but hexblades do most of their DPR with agonizing eldritch blast, which doesn't have the good rider options you need for big crit damage. I had to have two legendary magic items, be an actual PC vampire, and be level 16 before Elvish Accuracy felt like it was a big material contributor to my combat style. Even then it was just fun and it was more effective to cast leveled spells about 90% of the time.

Fairy Fire can help boost it, but honestly the feat never really starting paying off in my campaign until I got a cloak of invisibility.

Fortunately once you get find greater steed you can either fly your steed up high, out of the problem area and then start blasting and not interfere. Or just have the steed take the help action or grapple/fly up/drop whatever.

[kazaryu]

Give allies level 3 Continual Flame items. This lets them turn your Darkness off at will for their own turn and then move away again returning the sphere. the spell says the darkness is dispelled, not suspended (the language used by the antimagic field spell). i won't argue that this is the only valid interpretation, but it definitely seems to me that the intent is that a light spell would actually completely dispel the spell, not just push back the darkness temporarily.



All of these mean that Darkness is almost pure upside though how much upside depends on how much effort you put into it. But it's really, really, strong, don't misunderstand. It doesn't take build resources from allies to play around it to at least "it's advantage on all attacks for a level 2 slot for 10 mins" level, which is already really, really good, especially if you have Elven Accuracy.
with that being said, i do agree with your overall point that its possible to us the D/DS combo in such a way that the only impact it has on your party is during your turn meaning your party can't suport you with reactions (things like cutting words or war gods blessing).

I absolutely agree that it's a bad debuff, simply because OP is saying it is. We don't know the context of his game, and we ought to just accept that this context is valid.

(Also, I agree with you, darkness is not a non-trivial debuff to activate on the party).

That said, blind fighting isn't a wasted feat in general-if enough of the party has darkness piercing abilities it actually negates a lot of trouble long term. It's just something that you ought to remind your party of, not demand they take so that your build works.

oh absolutely, i agree that blindfighting isn't a bad fighting style. and in general i don't have a problem with parties building aaround a central tactic. i was replying to someone defending 'just have your party take...' as though your party should be expected to adapt to you when you debuff them.

[LudicSavant]

the spell says the darkness is dispelled, not suspended

That is not what the spell says. You're thinking of what Darkness does to magical lights of 2nd level or lower, not what magical lights of 3rd level or higher do to Darkness.

[Hael]

Yeah Elvish Accuracy can be a bit of a trap and I always recommend avoiding the darkness/devilsight combo because it's so disruptive and frankly, not very good. The other problem with Elvish Accuracy is that it's clearly meant for crit fishing but hexblades do most of their DPR with agonizing eldritch blast, which doesn't have the good rider options you need for big crit damage. I had to have two legendary magic items, be an actual PC vampire, and be level 16 before Elvish Accuracy felt like it was a big material contributor to my combat style. Even then it was just fun and it was more effective to cast leveled spells about 90% of the time.
.

Hexblades don't do most of their damage with eldritch blast. They do it with darkness/Shadow of Moil and with GWM/SS. EA stacks on top of that and makes for a big damage increase.

I must have fought dozens of battles with darkness/fog cloud/SoM in our party, and I think it was a problem in exactly one fight we ever fought (a high int wizard used a legendary reaction to teleport into the darkness thus preventing us from counterspelling him). In every other circumstance it was a huge, class defining win, and extremely fun to play I might add.

Faerie fire is a good low lvl spell, but its going to be completely outclassed by a darkness bubble (which has enormous defensive benefits, for both yourself and your party), and later by SoM.

[MrStabby]

oh absolutely, i agree that blindfighting isn't a bad fighting style. and in general i don't have a problem with parties building aaround a central tactic. i was replying to someone defending 'just have your party take...' as though your party should be expected to adapt to you when you debuff them.

Yeah, I agree. There is something a little wrong wth an attitude of "oh, well I am screwing my team-mates. I guess its their job to just adapt" - as if they didn't have something better to do with an ASI/Feat or a fighting style than to cater to your style of play.

I mean, there should be a bit of give and take on both sides, but if your actions are stopping a team-mate from using a spell or ability they really want to, you might want to reconsider what you are doing.

[Greywander]

Hexblades don't do most of their damage with eldritch blast. They do it with darkness/Shadow of Moil and with GWM/SS. EA stacks on top of that and makes for a big damage increase.
It's not quite that straightforward. A bladelock has the potential for higher damage, but requires a pretty significant investment to achieve that. It's worth considering what you're giving up to get there. But first I'll just say that if you're not concerned with optimization, then either one is fine.

First, let's compare a generic bladelock with a generic EB warlock. Right off the bat, the EB warlock needs to get Agonizing Blast to be competitive with the bladelock. Once they hit tier 2, the EB lock gets a second beam, and the bladelock has to pick up Thirsting Blade to stay competitive. In tier 3 the EB lock gets their third beam, and again the bladelock has to pick up Lifedrinker to remain competitive. Finally, in tier 4 the EB lock gets a fourth beam, pulling ahead of the bladelock, despite the bladelock requiring two invocations to the EB lock's one. But as we can see they actually stay fairly competitive with one another for most of the game.

Now let's make both warlock Hexblades, with access to Hexblade's Curse. Right off the bat, EB pulls way ahead (starting in tier 3) by simple virtue of getting more attacks. Hexblade's Curse applies every time the target is hit, so more hits = more damage. With only two attacks, the bladelock is only adding up to 12 extra damage, while the EB lock is adding 24. More attacks also means more opportunities to crit; both warlocks are still only rolling one damage die per attack, and thus both get the same benefit on a crit. It's true that in tiers 1 and 2 both are fairly competitive, so if you aren't expecting to reach tier 3 this may not matter.

Now let's consider how things change with some deeper investment. The bladelock can pick up GWM or SS, though do note that this immediately means you're not using a shield, which the EB lock can still benefit from. You also might need Improved Pact Weapon if you want to use a ranged weapon, which we'll assume you are to make it a fair comparison with EB. Now, the bonus damage from GWM/SS will make the bladelock roughly comparable to the EB lock in tier 4, canceling out both the bonus from Hexblade's Curse as well as the fourth EB beam. However, this comes at the cost of accuracy. Things like Elven Accuracy can offset this, but your odds of hitting are still decreased, even if only slightly, and that means a reduction in DPR. This is also coming at the cost of a feat. If you like, you can get pretty bonkers by also picking up PAM or CBE to get that BA attack, and then stacking Eldritch Smite on top of that. It's a solid build with a high damage output, it just requires a pretty significant investment. If you can find a good magic weapon, it gets even better.

For the EB lock, on the other hand, they're still only down one invocation, and they're not shoehorned into the Pact of the Blade, which is generally regarded as the weakest of the three pact boons. There's not a lot more you can do to boost the damage of EB, so EB will always fall behind a fully optimized bladelock. But, you still have actually pretty decent damage, and you have a lot more options to choose from. You'll have a few more feats and invocations to spend, and you pick any pact boon you like, all of which are really nice. Deeper investment into EB is less about raw damage and more about adding control to what was previously nothing but damage. Repelling Blast, Grasp of Hadar, and Lance of Lethargy all add some control to EB that can allow you to get a lot more tactical. The utility of these will depend a lot on the environment you're fighting, which in turn depends on your DM giving you interesting places to fight and not just plain, featureless battlefields.

TL;DR, baseline bladelock is roughly comparable to EB lock. The bladelock requires slightly higher investment, and eventually gets surpassed by the EB lock in tier 4. A fully optimized bladelock can achieve much higher damage, but at a significant investment. On the other hand, there aren't many options for increasing the damage of EB, but you can add some control to it. Conclusion: bladelocks can have higher raw damage, while EB locks are more flexible and combine control with their damage.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

Hexblades don't do most of their damage with eldritch blast. They do it with darkness/Shadow of Moil and with GWM/SS.

I was really referring to hexbards, but I did accidentally say hexblade in that instance. A hexbard is likely going to be holding Spirit Guardians (3D8 To anyone in the radius, regardless of if they damage you, for one spell slot lower than SOM) and doing 4x6+5 per EW Beam, compared to what, 2x7+5 and 1×3+5 for GWM as yours is built. Not counting the significant damage your griffin can inflict. I'm pretty sure the GWM Build loses to a straight AB+EB blaster hexblade in DPR as well, but it definitely gets dunked on by a 2Hex+BardX build no question.

Also I guess you have no rogues or other casters in your party because for anyone other other fighters, rangers, and paladins, Darkness completely sucks. Maybe you have some fringe case party or fight on giant wide open football fields but in a regular dungeon crawl with a regular party comp, darkness is a huge liability for the rest of the party

[Valmark]

I was really referring to hexbards, but I did accidentally say hexblade in that instance. A hexbard is likely going to be holding Spirit Guardians (3D8 To anyone in the radius, regardless of if they damage you, for one spell slot lower than SOM) and doing 4x6+5 per EW Beam, compared to what, 2x7+5 and 1×3+5 for GWM as yours is built. Not counting the significant damage your griffin can inflict. I'm pretty sure the GWM Build loses to a straight AB+EB blaster hexblade in DPR as well, but it definitely gets dunked on by a 2Hex+BardX build no question.

Also I guess you have no rogues or other casters in your party because for anyone other other fighters, rangers, and paladins, Darkness completely sucks. Maybe you have some fringe case party or fight on giant wide open football fields but in a regular dungeon crawl with a regular party comp, darkness is a huge liability for the rest of the party

You forgot the +10 that is the whole point of GWM- it's 2x7+15 and 1x3+15.

And it's a 'huge liability' only if you don't follow the tactics mentioned upthread, really. Most of those work in small spaces which I assume you meant with regular dungeon crawl.

[Gtdead]

Also I guess you have no rogues or other casters in your party because for anyone other other fighters, rangers, and paladins, Darkness completely sucks. Maybe you have some fringe case party or fight on giant wide open football fields but in a regular dungeon crawl with a regular party comp, darkness is a huge liability for the rest of the party

Why is it such a huge liability? If the class isn't tied to advantage, then there is absolutely no problem. It's like darkness doesn't exist for them.

Barbarian, Gloomstalker, Samurai and Vengeance get affected, although I don't think the effect is crippling. Other subclasses don't care since they don't have advantage generation. Rogue doesn't care since he can still SA enemies adjacent to his allies and steady aim anyone that is outside the darkness.

Blasters, summoners and defensive support (walls, buffs, difficult terrain) don't care about obscurement. Controllers are affected conditionally. It depends on initiative, spell used, and being able to hide inside the cloud is valuable when you have controlled the enemies and want to protect your concentration. Plus a lot of casters pick alert, which makes darkness amazing for them. Maybe Clerics get affected a bit more because they can't dodge while concentrating on SG.

[MrStabby]

Why is it such a huge liability? If the class isn't tied to advantage, then there is absolutely no problem. It's like darkness doesn't exist for them.

Barbarian, Gloomstalker, Samurai and Vengeance get affected, although I don't think the effect is crippling. Other subclasses don't care since they don't have advantage generation. Rogue doesn't care since he can still SA enemies adjacent to his allies and steady aim anyone that is outside the darkness.

Blasters, summoners and defensive support (walls, buffs, difficult terrain) don't care about obscurement. Controllers are affected conditionally. It depends on initiative, spell used, and being able to hide inside the cloud is valuable when you have controlled the enemies and want to protect your concentration. Plus a lot of casters pick alert, which makes darkness amazing for them. Maybe Clerics get affected a bit more because they can't dodge while concentrating on SG.

There is a lot of stuff here that is problematic. Your spells that affect the enemy, like hold person or hold monster. Your spells that buff allies like bless. Your spells that you can cast on yourself but are now worthless like improved invisibility. Your spells you can cast but darkness makes enemies immune to, like hypnotic pattern. Sometimes this is a pain but OK - you can drop Fear instead and its just a worse spell without line of sight. At other times it may mean needing to spend spells of higher level or lower power than you want.

The cost to shifting is pretty steep.

The cost to shifting isn't just mechanical either. your team-mate that rolled up an enchantment wizard might have done so because they want to play an enchanter rather than a blaster; switching to fireball or scorching ray means not playing the character they chose to.

Even martial characters can suffer more than you might think. Your PAM sentinal Paladin is limited when they cannot make opportunity attacks, your Rune Knight abilities are much more limited and so on.

And yes, clerics can't concentrate on SG and just dodge... which might be to the benefit of the hypothetical holder of darkness, given that the cleric couldn't exclude them from the spell as they couldn't see them.

[Gtdead]

There is a lot of stuff here that is problematic. Your spells that affect the enemy, like hold person or hold monster. Your spells that buff allies like bless. Your spells that you can cast on yourself but are now worthless like improved invisibility. Your spells you can cast but darkness makes enemies immune to, like hypnotic pattern. Sometimes this is a pain but OK - you can drop Fear instead and its just a worse spell without line of sight. At other times it may mean needing to spend spells of higher level or lower power than you want.


Bless doesn't seem to require sight, but all the other spells you mentioned can be affected. It doesn't mean that they 100% will. Wizards tend to have better initiatives than Warlocks or similar at the very least. Hold person/monster are 60 ft range, hp 120 ft. If the Wizard goes first he won't have any problem using his spells. If not, then it depends on the distance between the party and the enemies. It also depends on the positioning, battleground and how spread out the enemies are. If the warlock always goes first and actively tries to obstruct the wizard then sure that's a problem but I doubt that will ever be the case.



The cost to shifting is pretty steep.

It can be, but darkness comes online at level 3, it's not something that invalidates high level choices.



The cost to shifting isn't just mechanical either. your team-mate that rolled up an enchantment wizard might have done so because they want to play an enchanter rather than a blaster; switching to fireball or scorching ray means not playing the character they chose to.

I think this argument has a very obvious problem. The player wants to play a 100% enchanter (disregarding the fact that there are environments who cripple the build by default), but the party has an autonomous frontliner with offensive and defensive advantage that can't be easily ignored and the enemies like staying inside the darkness, trying to kill it. This is the best possible scenario. The enemies attack the worst possible target and the wizard gets to reserve spell slots.

That's like wanting to play a healer and being annoyed because no one takes any damage. If the enemies ignore the warlock and leave darkness then the wizard can cast spells. If the warlock bites more than he can chew, that's on his head and he should be smarter with his darkness next time, allowing the wizard to cast before he charges in melee.



Even martial characters can suffer more than you might think. Your PAM sentinal Paladin is limited when they cannot make opportunity attacks, your Rune Knight abilities are much more limited and so on.

Agreed about Rune Knight, PAM/Sentinel Paladin is easily fixable with Blindfighting style (fixable is an understatement in this situation). In a broader sense, losing feat functionality sucks, but a sentinel build is supposed to protect the backline. If the enemies stick around and attack the bruisers then the few points of damage lost aren't important, especially when the difference gets covered by the warlock's advantage.



And yes, clerics can't concentrate on SG and just dodge... which might be to the benefit of the hypothetical holder of darkness, given that the cleric couldn't exclude them from the spell as they couldn't see them.

This is a funny interaction that I hadn't thought of, although it seems easily solvable since darkness can be toggled.

[Smersh_23]

Snip for brevity, the summary is below :)

TL;DR, baseline bladelock is roughly comparable to EB lock. The bladelock requires slightly higher investment, and eventually gets surpassed by the EB lock in tier 4. A fully optimized bladelock can achieve much higher damage, but at a significant investment. On the other hand, there aren't many options for increasing the damage of EB, but you can add some control to it. Conclusion: bladelocks can have higher raw damage, while EB locks are more flexible and combine control with their damage.


Thanks for this write up, was very usefull :)

[Greywander]

Thanks for this write up, was very usefull :)
You're welcome, glad you found it helpful. I didn't fully realize how bonkers a bladelock could get until I looked into it while writing up that post, so I learned something, too.

I'm not sure if you're interested in playing a ranged character instead of staying on the front line, but that could solve your Darkness issue. If your DM allows it, you could switch to a different pact boon and move some of your invocations around; if you're rebuilding your character to accommodate your party, I'd hope the DM would see that as reasonable. If your party is mostly melee then this could also give your party some ranged support. If you position yourself just right, you can even include your allies in the Darkness while keeping the enemies outside, meaning that your allies can't be seen but the enemies can be seen, but achieving this positioning may be tricky or even impossible in some fights.

Otherwise, if you want to stay in melee and can't find a good way to generate advantage, then consider swapping out Elven Accuracy for, say, PAM. Especially with things like Lifedrinker and Hexblade's Curse, simply getting more attacks is a huge boost to damage.

[Smersh_23]

You're welcome, glad you found it helpful. I didn't fully realize how bonkers a bladelock could get until I looked into it while writing up that post, so I learned something, too.

I'm not sure if you're interested in playing a ranged character instead of staying on the front line, but that could solve your Darkness issue. If your DM allows it, you could switch to a different pact boon and move some of your invocations around; if you're rebuilding your character to accommodate your party, I'd hope the DM would see that as reasonable. If your party is mostly melee then this could also give your party some ranged support. If you position yourself just right, you can even include your allies in the Darkness while keeping the enemies outside, meaning that your allies can't be seen but the enemies can be seen, but achieving this positioning may be tricky or even impossible in some fights.

Otherwise, if you want to stay in melee and can't find a good way to generate advantage, then consider swapping out Elven Accuracy for, say, PAM. Especially with things like Lifedrinker and Hexblade's Curse, simply getting more attacks is a huge boost to damage.


The idea of the character was to be a melee caster with big weapons (anime style). The build wasn't about doing the most damage possible, I know there are better builds for that. I do want to be effective at what I do which is why I asked the initial question...how to get advantage more reliably for elven accuracy...to make my build more effective until I can get GWM at level 9 (5 hex/4bard). Then go for PAM at lvl 13. I thought starting with elven accuracy would be the best since GMW gives you a -5 to hit until I found a good weapon. Which I just did in the last session (+3 glaive).

A lot of the posts responding are about that darkness/devil sight combo which I found very interesting. I learned a few things in reading them all. Although, that wasn't the question I was asking or the reason for the post. But after reading those posts I decided not to give up on the combo as many have pointed out that it also has a lot of other benefits and its not as debilitating as I initially thought it was for my team members.

Thanks to everyone for posting their thoughts, I enjoy reading your posts and find them very helpful. My group has been playing 5E for less then a year and none of us are experts at it. I myself haven't played DnD since 3.5 and this is very very different version.

[Hael]

It's not quite that straightforward. A bladelock has the potential for higher damage, but requires a pretty significant investment to achieve that. It's worth considering what you're giving up to get there. But first I'll just say that if you're not concerned with optimization, then either one is fine.


Completely agreed. Still, you are going to do about ~40-50% more dpr than a blastlock after all the feat/invocation investment and the character loses out on a lot of utility/defense. To really optimize a blastlock for damage, you eventually need to go the Sorlock route, or upcast spiritshroud at 10 feet with high lvl slots (which feels bad).



I'm pretty sure the GWM Build loses to a straight AB+EB blaster hexblade in DPR as well, but it definitely gets dunked on by a 2Hex+BardX build no question.


So the blastlock as mentioned won't be close. At lvl 12 compare (1d10+5 * 3 + 3d8 hex or sg) to a pamlock hitting with advantage (-4) (1d10 + 21) *2 +1d4 + 21 as well as with a 2d8 damage shield. Now, spirit guardians is a complicated story, b/c of the nature of AOE and how many potential victims it catches, so it depends on the scenario. You likely will lose in single target dpr, and win in multitarget.

Secretly, all of these builds lose out in dpr to the top combo, which is to drop summon greater demon into a horde of enemies, and SS/CBE or EB/AB the rest.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

You forgot the +10 that is the whole point of GWM- it's 2x7+15 and 1x3+15.

And it's a 'huge liability' only if you don't follow the tactics mentioned upthread, really. Most of those work in small spaces which I assume you meant with regular dungeon crawl.

Sorry I thought you were referring to PAM, I misread you. If you aren't, and only using GWM then where are you getting the extra D4? Above it was broken down how a pact of blade is almost always inferior to a hex blaster which maybe you can parse better than I.

What tactics? The darkness pouch thing? Not sure if that's what you mean or something g else.. Okay. Turn one: free action get the marble, action cast darkness. No damage, your Rogue can't sleep attack, your barbarian can't wreckless attack and any caster on your side is screwed and cannot cast virtually any cantrips or leveled spells because of your darkness bubble. That sucks.

Turn 2
I'm guessing you're trying to proc a bonus action attack with dual weapon fighting? Or PAM? One of the two, I'm not clear. If dual weapon fighting, that's already pretty sketchy interaction RAW with GWM but in any case requires you to use your free action every turn to draw or sheath your second weapon, and you can only make a dual weapon attack every other turn since you are manipulating the second weapon back and forth to use the two hand bonus for GWM. Either way, you can't play find the marble with your free action, so again all your rogues, barbarians and casters are put on the bench so you can play around in the darkness bubble. You get damage for 2 GWM attacks, and that's it unless I am missing something.
OR You invested 2 feats, 2 invocations, your pact choice, and 5 levels of warlock and a 2nd level spell to edge out what a regular hex blaster can do with a 2 level dip, no feats, one invocation, and a cantrip, so you have PAM also. Go ahead and go wild with that PAM bonus attack and debuff your party again to leave the darkness pouch open, or be a warlock on the frontline with no shield, at best 17 AC and eat every attack that comes your way. Hmm

Compare that to a hexbard (what OP is actually building) who at tier 3 is going to do something like
Turn 1- Action, cast Spirit Guardians, 3d8 radiant to everything in the radius, cutting their speed in half, then bonus action hexblades curse, or give bardic inspiration/unsettling words to support the party instead of making half the player characters useless, then fly on the griffin, have it multiattack an enemy or grapple an caster, whatever so probably 9-12D8 damage from the spell (unless it's a single target, where you would use something else, assuming a mob) and the 2d8 griffin attacks, already dunking on the GWM PAM build before it even gets going.
Turn 2, another 9-12D8 which could be even higher if the other PCs or their mounts/pets/summons shove bad guys in and out of the bubble, and if you retreated to your line after the first cast, it's fairly easy to double up on guardian damage for double that, but not assured, so I won't count it. So 9-12D8 then 3x10+9 on a single cursed target, then 2d6 griffin attacks, then another round of BI buffs or debuffs, or a bonus action spell like healing word or whatever if needed.

Bottom line is that unless you deliberately want to gimp damage and utility and healing and control to be a worse fighter while making the party unable to use any class feature requiring sight (IE most class features) there is no reason to take more than 2 levels of hexblade on a hexbard build. I could see a fringe case for going to Hex 3 to get the book of secrets if you don't have a wizard in the party but in any other case it's better to do hex2bard18 with AB and Mask of Many Faces.

[Valmark]

Sorry I thought you were referring to PAM, I misread you. If you aren't, and only using GWM then where are you getting the extra D4? Above it was broken down how a pact of blade is almost always inferior to a hex blaster which maybe you can parse better than I.

What tactics? The darkness pouch thing? Not sure if that's what you mean or something g else.. Okay.

It's not PAM or GWM, it's PAM and GWM. That's what you were talking about (since you mentioned using GWM and the polearm attack) and what Hael was/is talking about.

And above it was explained how an hexblaster deals less damage, not more- at least against single enemies.

And yeah, the darkness pouch is one mentioned tactic.

The rest I glossed over since the misunderstandings at the start are determinant- I'll only say that the OP has a Hexblade 5/Bard 2, so all that part about an Hexblade 2/Bard X is kinda irrelevant.
Oh and that there's no reason you wouldn't have whatever you're gonna cast Darkness on already ready to stow away if needed from turn 1.

EDIT: And since it lasts 10 minutes you can also pre-cast it.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

It's not PAM or GWM, it's PAM and GWM. That's what you were talking about (since you mentioned using GWM and the polearm attack) and what Hael was/is talking about.

And above it was explained how an hexblaster deals less damage, not more- at least against single enemies.

And yeah, the darkness pouch is one mentioned tactic.

The rest I glossed over since the misunderstandings at the start are determinant- I'll only say that the OP has a Hexblade 5/Bard 2, so all that part about an Hexblade 2/Bard X is kinda irrelevant.
Oh and that there's no reason you wouldn't have whatever you're gonna cast Darkness on already ready to stow away if needed from turn 1.

EDIT: And since it lasts 10 minutes you can also pre-cast it.

Bottom line is if you need 2 feats, 2 (3?) invocations, 5 levels minimum of multiclassing warlock (totally screwing over your spell progression) and a 2nd level spell to barely edge out what a 2 level dip, with no feats, and one invocation build can give you (while also providing +2 AC and not making half the party groan every time you manage to make it to a session) than the prior option you suggested is clearly inferior to virtually any other build focusing more on leveled spells and AB+EB instead of darkness.

It's also pretty shortsighted to assume that you won't begin facing large numbers of fiends, temorsense or echolocation or blindsight or truesight enemies as you level up. As bad as your build is to begin with (and it's bad) it gets even worse as you go along.

To address the OP directly and stop debating whether a warlock dominant multiclass with a full caster can ever be a good melee class (no) if you really want to leverage Elvish Accuracy, take spiritual weapon for your magical secrets to push you up two 5 "attacks" at tier 4, better than any other class. With advantage from farie fire (which you can ensure through an unsettling words + silvery barbs nuke on the saving throw), you will have something like a 39% crit chance per attack, so very high probability of one or more crits per round (3 dice, crit on 19+ with the curse) 3xd10+10, 1x2D10+10, and 1xD8+10 is a regular damage profile, with your mount chipping in around 10 damage also. Much better leverage on the Elvish Accuracy feat than a blade lock unless the blade lock had a magic item like a flame tongue and you went swords Bard and burned a flourish basically every chance you had. But Sword bards are C tier at best, you're much better off blasting from afar and casting big boy spells rather than trying to be a frontliner with D8 Hit die, no heavy armor, no shield, and a 2 swing multiattack, especially since you can't smite without dropping whatever is giving you advantage.

[Smersh_23]

Bottom line is if you need 2 feats, 2 (3?) invocations, 5 levels minimum of multiclassing warlock (totally screwing over your spell progression) and a 2nd level spell to barely edge out what a 2 level dip, with no feats, and one invocation build can give you (while also providing +2 AC and not making half the party groan every time you manage to make it to a session) than the prior option you suggested is clearly inferior to virtually any other build focusing more on leveled spells and AB+EB instead of darkness.

It's also pretty shortsighted to assume that you won't begin facing large numbers of fiends, temorsense or echolocation or blindsight or truesight enemies as you level up. As bad as your build is to begin with (and it's bad) it gets even worse as you go along.

To address the OP directly and stop debating whether a warlock dominant multiclass with a full caster can ever be a good melee class (no) if you really want to leverage Elvish Accuracy, take spiritual weapon for your magical secrets to push you up two 5 "attacks" at tier 4, better than any other class. With advantage from farie fire (which you can ensure through an unsettling words + silvery barbs nuke on the saving throw), you will have something like a 39% crit chance per attack, so very high probability of one or more crits per round (3 dice, crit on 19+ with the curse) 3xd10+10, 1x2D10+10, and 1xD8+10 is a regular damage profile, with your mount chipping in around 10 damage also. Much better leverage on the Elvish Accuracy feat than a blade lock unless the blade lock had a magic item like a flame tongue and you went swords Bard and burned a flourish basically every chance you had. But Sword bards are C tier at best, you're much better off blasting from afar and casting big boy spells rather than trying to be a frontliner with D8 Hit die, no heavy armor, no shield, and a 2 swing multiattack, especially since you can't smite without dropping whatever is giving you advantage.

This is a lot of strategy, going to take me a few to understand it..Im at work so Ill have to go home an look this stuff up. How does spiritual weapon get you up to 5 attacks? I was thinking of going whisper bard for the extra damage, but i think your bard in the above example is a swords bard? I've never played a bard before so I'm still learning how good they can be. Anyways I was planning on 5 Hexblade/Rest in Bard (don't know how far we will go, I doubt we will make it to T4)

[Valmark]

Bottom line is if you need 2 feats, 2 (3?) invocations, 5 levels minimum of multiclassing warlock (totally screwing over your spell progression) and a 2nd level spell to barely edge out what a 2 level dip, with no feats, and one invocation build can give you (while also providing +2 AC and not making half the party groan every time you manage to make it to a session) than the prior option you suggested is clearly inferior to virtually any other build focusing more on leveled spells and AB+EB instead of darkness.

It's also pretty shortsighted to assume that you won't begin facing large numbers of fiends, temorsense or echolocation or blindsight or truesight enemies as you level up. As bad as your build is to begin with (and it's bad) it gets even worse as you go along.


I mean... Around 45% more damage isn't 'barely edging out' (potentially more then 45%, potentially less based on the exact AC). You are investing more but also getting more in the field you're investing in.

And yes, it's fairly short-sighted- that is why, to borrow Ludic's words, Darkness should be a tool in your belt. Not your main stick.


This is a lot of strategy, going to take me a few to understand it..Im at work so Ill have to go home an look this stuff up. How does spiritual weapon get you up to 5 attacks? I was thinking of going whisper bard for the extra damage, but i think your bard in the above example is a swords bard? I've never played a bard before so I'm still learning how good they can be. Anyways I was planning on 5 Hexblade/Rest in Bard (don't know how far we will go, I doubt we will make it to T4)

5 attacks would be at level 17+, where you shoot four blasts with EB and use your bonus action for Spiritual Weapon.

The Sword Bard is how Kenny suggested to make the melee Hexblade/Bard- the ranged one in their suggestion hinges on the Eloquence one, who can use Unsettling Words to make an enemy more likely to fail a save combined with Silvery Barbs (reaction spell).

Something that needs to be said, with the ranged combo you'd need 3 rounds each combat to see it work- first round you can use Unsettling Words+Silvery Barbs+the spell you use for advantage, second round you Curse then start Blasting, third round you can cast Spiritual Weapon and your damage reaches the maximum potential. It takes a bit to get going (depending on the combats you're used to) and probably wastes a lot the +3 weapon you found, but it does give you more utility in exchange for quite a bit less damage (you'll be critting about once 3 rounds every 4 that you can do with the full combo going, as your crit rate is 27% for each attack, not 39%).

If you do want to try out the melee one that was proposed upthread (that it's a good deal more viable with a +3 weapon) you'll be getting almost half more damage and good defense (lots of good spells like Misty Step, Shield, Armor of Agathys) but less utility as you need to invest more. As far as bards colleges go, with Sword Bard you'll be saving on two invocations and can use Bardic Inspiration for even more defense/offense- I'm not sure which bard college would be best though. Lore's always a good choice, especially if you're getting your level 10 Magical Secrets late if not never.

[Miele]

Hello again,


I have a 5 hexblade/2 Bard. I took the elven accuracy feat and so far it has be nearly useless (because of me not that the feat is bad). I have only been able to use it in one battle because my main combo is the darkness/devil sight. This combo is terrible in actual game play since I'm the only one that can see in the darkness and it just hurts my party to much.

What are some other ways I can make use of the elven accuracy? I cant do the shove prone thing because my STR is 8. I just picked up fairy fire so will test that out. Are they some other things I don't know about that can help?

FYI...My group doesn't power game or optimize, we mostly play for fun/style.

Thanks!

One level of rogue solves every problem and you get an extra d6 per turn from sneak attack. You just havetoavoid solo attacking and assist one other team mate. EA is basically written withrogues in mind. I love it.

[JackPhoenix]

One level of rogue solves every problem and you get an extra d6 per turn from sneak attack. You just havetoavoid solo attacking and assist one other team mate. EA is basically written withrogues in mind. I love it.

Except you need THREE levels of rogue to generate advantage, it takes your bonus action (so no PAM bonus attack) AND prevents you from moving, and sneak attack doesn't work with polearms (so no PAM, period) or heavy weapons (so no GWM, either). And it required optional rule from Trasha. So it solves exactly nothing, and brings its own pile of problems.