Hexblade Patron

[WhiteDrag0n]

Hello! I am in need of some ideas because I am a little stumped.

I have a character that wants to take hexblade a little down the way. He is a member of a guild that views combat as a literal martial art, as in the sword is a brush and the battlefield is your canvas. This guild is in an Arabic themed country not unlike Zakhara.

The player would like his patron tied to his guild, but I'm coming up with blanks. Wouldn't a Genie have a warlock with the Genie patron and this guild doesn't really sound like the Raven queen. I thought that it might be tied to the god Selan, goddess of beauty, but patrons don't tend to be divine beings.

If you have any ideas I would love to hear them.

[Millstone85]

I am not usually one to say "Meh, just reflavor it" but the lore of the Hexblade is really poor. I mean, it manages to be simultaneously too vague (Is the Hexblade the Raven Queen? It might be, or not, really nobody knows) and too restrictive (There is supposedly only one Hexblade in the universe).

So if the guild is led by a genie with a deep reverence for swordmanship, I would say let the genie act as either a genie patron or a hexblade patron when forming a warlock.

[Beelzebub1111]

I would create an intelligent sword artifact as the secret true master of the guild. Have the highest ranks of the guild have their consciousnesses imprinted on to it in ritual sacrifice to preserve their techniques and innovations to become part of the gestalt conciousness. The Hexblades are the hidden order that protect the sword's secret and seek out those to sacrifice to increase its power and knowledge. When the player takes his warlock dip, he joins that secret order.

[Bobthewizard]

I am playing a hexblade where all of their class abilities come from a sword they inherited. The sword is imbued with the magic of all of his ancestors. He is just a mediocre soldier (medium armor, shield, and simple weapon proficiency) and everything else is an attribute of the magic sword.

Eldritch blast is a ray of light that shoots at the target while he swings the sword. Devil's sight is something the sword gives him. All of the spells are from the sword. As he continues, he unlocks more powers from the sword.

[Psyren]

I would actually broaden the possibility space of Hexblade patrons; any otherworldly being that has a thematic focus on the compatible weapons could be a Hexblade patron in my eyes, such as a Marilith or a Sword Archon or an Erinyes or some spear-wielding archfey. You don't have to have it be possessed swords as far as the eye can see.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Fjord was a Hexblade despite serving a patron that screamed Fathomless. It's all flavor and fluff.

What about a symbiotic relationship? You didn't bind a "Patron" who dwarfs you in power and teaches. You bound a spirit of war or a spirit of the blade and your energy gives it power and sentience, it's energy gives you your Hexblade magic? In theory if you grow strong enough it'll eventually manifest as a real blade like Blackrazor.

[herrhauptmann]

I would create an intelligent sword artifact as the secret true master of the guild. Have the highest ranks of the guild have their consciousnesses imprinted on

Relic from the 3.5 days where someone had the Item Familiar Feat then died with no resurrection, but their gear was recovered/discovered? Intelligent sword becomes the basis and symbol of a new sect where it's wielded by the "grandmaster." In reality, it's more like the hat from Sourcery, the item is in control, it just needs someone worthy to carry it.



Banes Blessing
Int: 10. Wis 12. Cha 12
Keen Dragoncraft (red dragon claw) longsword.
Intelligent: bless 3/day.
Nervewrack
On crit enemy gets: -2 to AC/attacks/damage/reflex. 1/2 movement. Casting requires concentration DC15 for 1d4 rounds
Subjugating.
If struck, make DC20 Will save or be shaken 5 rounds. If shaken, become frightened.

The sword prefers the name Soulcrusher, though its owner refers to it in conversation as Banes Blessing or Dark Blessing.
Banes Blessing is as proud as the dragon from which it was made. While not quite as eager for blood as some evil swords are; it is not one to suffer fools, and will urge his wielder to kill those relentless in their stupidity.


It will need to be updated to 5E rules, but something like that would be a very rare (whatever 5e calls it) item.

[TyGuy]

I would create an intelligent sword artifact as the secret true master of the guild.

This sounds like the coolest use of a sentient weapon I've heard of to date.

Combined with

a guild that views combat as a literal martial art, as in the sword is a brush and the battlefield is your canvas. This guild is in an Arabic themed country not unlike Zakhara.

Gosh. I can just picture a high ranking member finally getting the invitation to meet the master. Entering a room with a shadowy black curved blade prominently displayed opposite the entrance. They're told to kneel before the master. It's confusing, nobody else is here. They kneel and the sword starts telepathically communicating to their surprise.

Who better to understand and teach the philosophy of the sword as a brush?

[Hiro Quester]

your patron could be a archon, fiend, celestial or powerful being, who might serve an even more powerful being (deity?, archfey, War God, the mistress of blades, or any other deity, etc.) who sees martial prowess as a form of devotion, and finding elegant and impressive ways to dispose of one's enemies in combat is a form of devotional prayer.

Or it might be more low-level and personal. See what the player gives you as a backstory and find a hook.

Many hexblades might not fully know who they serve, at least initially. "I got this cool sword from a being that promised me powers in exchange for my service" might be enough to begin with. Many PCs who aspire to become adventurers would take that deal.

That gives the DM time to work out out who the patron is in-game, and find surprising ways to hook the patronage into the rest of the party members' stories and goals.

As an example, I told my DM that I wanted to play a Swords bard/Hexblade for my most recent PC. I gave DM a standard backstory that included a recently murdered friend. (The wake for the friend was the huge raucous grief-party that finally got him kicked out of the house to go off adventuring.)

DM used that as the hook. The friend's spirit came to me in a dream, and explained that the goddess of death had allowed him to remain connected to the mortal plane, in order to guide me in obtaining revenge for his murder.

My character, then a first level bard, woke from the dream to find the murdered friend's rapier at the end of his bed and found he had the powers of a bard1/hexblade 1.

Basically, my friend's spirit recruited me to serve his purpose of revenge in exchange for powers (which I was to use to exact revenge on his behalf). Initially I didn't even know much at all about the murderer. Some investigation was necessary.

And initially the murderer was too powerful for us second-level characters to do much about. So that set up part of our group's story-arc. My dead friend got a bit irritated if it seemed like other tasks I performed were deviating too far from the revenge mission.

And the DM decided that the person who murdered my friend was also involved as a minor player in the overall story-arc for the party's adventures. So eventually the party's goals and my revenge mission aligned.

Unfortunately this PC just died a tragic death, with the revenge mission only partly completed. But he had a lot of fun and adventures along the way (and was very fun to play). And that's another story.

[Kenny_Snoggins]

I played a Persian (zorostrian) themed swords bard hexblade guy recently. He was part of a religious minority in a a theocratic caliphate, banished 13th warrior style for screwing someone off limits. His patron was an Excalibur type weapon, the legendary sword of kings of his people that had been lost for thousands of years when they were defeated in the historical equivalent of the Arab conquests of Persia. Supposedly it was lost outside of the country when the last king was searching for a way to turn the tide of a losing war.

It was just called the Doom of Kalashtar since we were lazy and just made the minority group Kalashtars. The location, history, and even nature of the thing was unknown beyond the most general of terms until level 11 or so. Only the traditional name and history that it was lost with the last king was known. Why is it called that? Because it's a deadly weapon or the reason the civilization was destroyed? Is it even a weapon in the traditional sense? Lots of unknowns that were fun to discover. So my PCs quest was to recover the Doom and use it to overthrow the oppressive Theocracy and restore the old ways.

It turns out it's not a weapon, it's a demigod who can be trapped in that form if certain people of the right heritage wield it. We flavored it as the original purveyor of the Kalashtar's psionic abilities, which have been diminishing since it was lost. The demon weapon and the race of people were effectively symbiotes, but that alliance might not have been for the good of mankind and so as the PC discovered more and more about it, eventually reaching its resting place, there was plenty of drama about whether to actually pull the sword from the stone, to open pandoras box in the hope of saving his dying people, but possibly at the cost of having them overrun the world at the behest of this entity, the Doom of Kalashtar.

The way we planned it, the PC gets the weapon at around level 13 and it's a powerful magical weapon, but has to be empowered to reach its artifact status. So you can use it throughout a good part of the campaign but your understanding of its true nature increases in direct correlation to its power and your reliance on it. So it becomes an interesting ethical play on the Excalibur/ sword of charlemagne/ Flame of the West type legend.

[herrhauptmann]

I'm finishing up a paladin hexblade where the patron is Pelor the Burning Hate.

A bit of a joke, but I think it helps keep consistency of a character sworn to two different entities if they're just two aspects of the same. Or two methods of power from the same creature.

It would work better if the warlock patrons could include a few more deities, but oh well. Or a better matched paladin than Oathbreaker.