Revising the Fiend Patron

[Segev]

I've been looking at the Fiend and Archfey in the PHB, and realizing that, compared to the other Patrons, they feel...lackluster. Even if they're not mechanically weak (which is debatable), they're kind-of boring. I was bouncing some ideas around with Valmark and it occurred to me that what the Fiend is going for is trying to be "the straightforward option" and being "the bruiser option" for Warlocks. It...kind-of succeeds at the first, but doesn't so much at the second. It's trying ot be a tank without the chassis to support that, and doesn't really help you do much.

It also hit me that the Hexblade - which I hate thematically - kind-of has the "evil warrior" vibe that I think Fiend was dancing around the edges of, but seems unfocused with some of its features (the shade, in particular). So what if I swap out some of the more boring features of the Fiend for things that excite people from the Hexblade?

Not sure if this winds up too powerful, but here's an hour or two's thought and effort in putting this together.


Revised Fiend
This essentially combines level one of Hexblade with the Fiend Patron in an effort to make the Fiend more thematic and remove the Hexblade's rather forced fluff.

Expanded Spell List

1st: burning hands, shield (replaces command)
2nd: blindness/deafness, scorching ray
3rd: fireball, stinking cloud
4th: fire shield, wall of fire
5th: flame strike, hallow

Dark One's Curse
Your Patron's first gift is the ability to place a malign curse on someone. As a bonus action, choose one creature you can see within 30 feet of you. The target is cursed for 1 minute. The curse ends early if the target dies, you die, or you are incapacitated. Until the curse ends, you gain the following benefits:

• You add your proficiency bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target.
• Any attack roll you make against the cursed target is a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20 on the d20.
• If the cursed target dies, you regain hit points equal to your warlock level + your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1 hit point).

You can't use this feature again until you finish a short or long rest.

Dark One's Blessing
Choose either Dark Panopoly or Dark Magic.

Dark Panopoly: If you choose Dark Panopoly, your Patron provides you the knowledge and skill to effectively arm yourself for battle. You gain proficiency with medium armor, shields, and martial weapons.

The influence of your patron also allows you to wield a single weapon with the pure force of your dark will. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch one weapon that you are proficient with and that lacks the two-handed property. When you attack with that weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls. This benefit lasts until you finish a long rest. If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type.

Dark Magic: If you choose Dark Magic, your Patron fills your mind with magics designed to inflict agony and woe. You learn the eldritch blast cantrip. If you already know it, choose another Warlock cantrip to learn instead. You may choose to have it deal fire damage instead of force damage when you cast it, and may even mix the types between multiple beams in the same casting. You also learn one Invocation of your choice that has eldritch blast as a prerequisite.

[b]Dark One's Own Luck[b]
Starting at 6th level, you can cheat fate. When you make an ability check or a saving throw, you can call upon your Patron to alter probability in your favor, allowing you to add a d10 to your roll. You can do so after seeing the initial roll but before any of the roll's effects occur.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest, unless you expend a Pact Magic spell slot to do so.

Little changes here, save the additional ability to spend pact magic spell slots to use this feature more than once per short rest.

Fiendish Resilience
This one is unchanged: a movable resistance to a damage type.

Unto the Seventh Generation
Starting at 14th level, you can spread your Dark One's Curse from a slain creature to another creature. When the creature cursed by your Dark One's Curse dies, you can cause its corpse to vanish in a suitably hellish fashion (the ground opens a maw to swallow it whole, it burns to nothing in a flare of hellfire, or something similar), and you can apply the curse to a different creature you can see within 30 feet of you, provided you aren't incapacitated. When you apply the curse in this way, you don't regain hit points from the death of the previously cursed creature.

[Greywander]

This looks fine to me, but I don't think the Fiend patron is supposed to be a tank (thought if you build them right they can be pretty tanky). Fiend always struck me as the blasting subclass for warlocks. The thing is, Fiend actually gets very little that supports their role as a blaster, apart from their expanded spell list.

One of the tricky things about the Fiend patron is that it could be either a devil or a demon, or some other kind of fiend like a yugoloth. That's... a lot of variety, and it's difficult to capture all of those in a single subclass. I think a subclass built specifically for a devil patron, say, could be more interesting, because then you can get into things like making contracts with character to force them to do things, and other types of subversive shenanigans.

I also think that Hex Warrior should just be moved to Pact of the Blade. If you want to be a bladelock, you shouldn't need to be a Hexblade, and I don't think the proper solution is to transfer Hexblade features to other patrons. Just make it part of the pact boon.

[Segev]

This looks fine to me, but I don't think the Fiend patron is supposed to be a tank (thought if you build them right they can be pretty tanky). Fiend always struck me as the blasting subclass for warlocks. The thing is, Fiend actually gets very little that supports their role as a blaster, apart from their expanded spell list.

One of the tricky things about the Fiend patron is that it could be either a devil or a demon, or some other kind of fiend like a yugoloth. That's... a lot of variety, and it's difficult to capture all of those in a single subclass. I think a subclass built specifically for a devil patron, say, could be more interesting, because then you can get into things like making contracts with character to force them to do things, and other types of subversive shenanigans.

I think it was supposed to be "the bruiser," yes. But what it gets is a tanking feature at level 1 that isn't a very GOOD tanking feature because you have to kill something before you get the durability, and that means it's more of a "win more" feature than an actual help with something the Warlock truly is behind on. Dark One's Own Luck was decent, but limited.

Fathomless gets what is situational but REALLY GOOD when its situation comes up. Great Old One's is fun and generally useful unless the DM absolutely does not use languages and it's never useful to silently signal anybody. Hexblade's is arguably overpowered and always useful in battle. Etc.

My thought here was to lean into being the brutalist, the bruiser, and lean back from the tanking a little, hence rolling Hexblade into it and giving it a second option to be a blaster.

I also think that Hex Warrior should just be moved to Pact of the Blade. If you want to be a bladelock, you shouldn't need to be a Hexblade, and I don't think the proper solution is to transfer Hexblade features to other patrons. Just make it part of the pact boon.

I generally agree, but that's not what we have, and I didn't want to also be rewriting a Pact here. Even so, the cha-to-combat thing waiting until level 3 would still make for a very awkward build. I have a more extensive rewrite of Hexblade as invocations and spells in another thread in this forum somewhere that tries to remedy that.

For this one, thanks for the feedback; I tried to beef it up a bit and take the elements of Hexblade and Fiend that worked together to make a cheating monster that will come at you hard as a warrior or a blaster out of it.

[Amechra]

This is... I'm not a fan.

The first level features are straight-up better than what the Hexblade gets at first level (because of the extra flexibility), and the Hexblade is already one of the most front-loaded subclasses in the game. On top of that, I'm not seeing how "a better version of Hex" and "a bunch of proficiencies" is more mechanically interesting or thematic than rewarding you for killing things. It's way more powerful, sure, but more interesting? Eh.

Also... Warlock subclasses don't really correspond to a specific playstyle, since they're designed theme-first. So don't look at the Fiend as a blaster/tank/etc - it makes you demon/devil themed, and that's about it. Your actual party role is generally supposed to come from your Pact Boon. And Shield is pretty bad as a Warlock spell, since you don't have low-level spell slots to throw away — you have to multiclass to get the best use out of it.

If you do want to revise the Fiend Patron, I'd make it parallel the Celestial Patron instead of just mashing it together with the design mistake that is the Hexblade.

[Segev]

This is... I'm not a fan.

Okay.

The first level features are straight-up better than what the Hexblade gets at first level (because of the extra flexibility), and the Hexblade is already one of the most front-loaded subclasses in the game. On top of that, I'm not seeing how "a better version of Hex" and "a bunch of proficiencies" is more mechanically interesting or thematic than rewarding you for killing things. It's way more powerful, sure, but more interesting? Eh.

I...think you're reading the extra flexibility as increasing power in play when...it doesn't. You are either doing what Hexblades already do, or you're giving up the armor proficiency and cha-to-weapon-attack for a freebie Eldritch Blast and Invocation.

I'm not seeing how this is "a better hex." It's exactly the Hexblade's feature.

As for why it's more interesting, it's because it gives you something active to do with it. Like the Hexblade it's cribbing from, it transforms the play style of the class to being an aggressive one by supporting that aggression, rather than encouraging aggression but not actually enabling it and giving you a meh boost to survivability if you can manage to kill something before something else kills you.

"Lay a curse on somebody to hit them harder" is always going to be more interesting than "gain some temp hp if you meet a condition."

Also... Warlock subclasses don't really correspond to a specific playstyle, since they're designed theme-first.

The Hexblade definitely is counter to this assertion, but since I'll happily agree it's a bad example of a Patron for precisely this reason, I will not hold it against the assertion. (It also is a bit incoherent in mechanics; the shade feels like it was shoved on based on theme, yes, but only sort-of fits even that, and doesn't really work with the mechanics.)

I will say that "Theme First" is fine, but it should be cohesive and coherent. The Fiend...isn't. The Fey is mostly about control and awe, with a touch of untouchability. The GoO is about mental prowess. The Fathomless is about tentacles and swimming. The Celestial is about light and healing. The fiend as written is about...uh...bonus hit points for killing things, being better at things once in a while, resistance to damage depending on the side of your bed you wake up on, and a once/day time skip with high damage.

There isn't a coherent theme, there. Even with the flavor text, it's weakly tied.

So don't look at the Fiend as a blaster/tank/etc - it makes you demon/devil themed, and that's about it. Your actual party role is generally supposed to come from your Pact Boon. And Shield is pretty bad as a Warlock spell, since you don't have low-level spell slots to throw away — you have to multiclass to get the best use out of it.

If you do want to revise the Fiend Patron, I'd make it parallel the Celestial Patron instead of just mashing it together with the design mistake that is the Hexblade.

Sounds mostly like your objection is that you dislike the Hexblade's mechanics as much as I dislike the Hexblade's fluff. Is that fair to say?