Hi! I'm building a Tielfing Hexblade/Oath of Vengeance mutliclass for an upcoming CoS campaign, and I'll be the "tank." Looking for some advice for building the class.
My DM is starting us off with a Feat, and at level 3. So, I was thinking of taking the Warcaster Feat.
Stats are:
15, 9, 15, 9, 10, 17
Leveling Thoughts
Level 3 (2 paladin, 1 Warlock)
Options:
Go to level 2 Warlock for invocations (eldritch blast), and level 3/4/5 Paladin for oath of vengeance for bane, hunter’s mark, frighten, and adv. Versus target, ASI, and extra attack?
(path – Warlock at 4, paladin at 5, 6, 7)
Go to level 3 Warlock for invocations (devils sight to see in darkness, and thirsting blade for extra pact weapon attack, which means I don't need it from paladin?), gain pact of blade, gain 2 level spell of Darkness to pair with devil’s sight. Go paladin for Oath and ASI.
Hi! I'm building a Tielfing Hexblade/Oath of Vengeance mutliclass for an upcoming CoS campaign, and I'll be the "tank." Looking for some advice for building the class.
My DM is starting us off with a Feat, and at level 3. So, I was thinking of taking the Warcaster Feat.
Stats are:
15, 9, 15, 9, 10, 17
Leveling Thoughts
Level 3 (2 paladin, 1 Warlock)
Options:
Go to level 2 Warlock for invocations (eldritch blast), and level 3/4/5 Paladin for oath of vengeance for bane, hunter’s mark, frighten, and adv. Versus target, ASI, and extra attack?
(path – Warlock at 4, paladin at 5, 6, 7)
Go to level 3 Warlock for invocations (devils sight to see in darkness, and thirsting blade for extra pact weapon attack, which means I don't need it from paladin?), gain pact of blade, gain 2 level spell of Darkness to pair with devil’s sight. Go paladin for Oath and ASI.
(Path – Warlock at 4, 5, Paladin at 6, 7)
Or: Warlock 4, Paladin 5, 6, Warlock 7
Or: Warlock 4, Paladin 5, Warlock 6, Paladin 7
I'd appreciate any help our thoughts!
If your job is to tank, why are you building for melee DPR? And what's the actual purpose of you taking Paladin levels? There are broadly speaking only two uses you have for them: Smite at level 2 and The Aura at level 6. All other benefits are ancillary compared to those two. Meanwhile, your Warlock levels only do genuinely interesting things up to level 3 - after that it's just a matter of scaling; worse, Warlock 6 has particularly little to offer you, as a Hexblade. But also, why take 2 levels of Paladin? By the time you reach Hexblade 5 you can have, as your invocations, Eldritch Smite (which is largely better than Paladin Smite), Thirsting Blade to keep up with the Paladin, and your choice of Devil's Sight or Eldritch Mind. The two classes can 100% be mixed, but answering you about how to do it requires knowing what your real goals are. You're also a Tiefling, so Elven Advantage is off the table, despite this being a build optimized for Elven Advantage, so that's worth explicitly pointing out. Are you a winged tiefling? Should we be shoehorning you into medium armor?
Assuming your real goal is melee DPR and the free feat you're getting can't be an ASI:
Your statline is subpar - you have the stats of someone using point buy who decided to throw some stats away - but you have a feat coming in which I assume can't be an ASI, so you should be looking at half-feats that increase Charisma or Constitution, since you'll be slapping that second 15 on Strength and ignoring it forever. The low-hanging fruits are Resilient Constitution and Fey Touched Charisma/Silvery Barbs - probably the latter, especially if you reach Paladin 6.
If you ever reach Paladin 7 you're going to want the Sentinel feat like Thor wants approval, due to your Vengeance Aura.
Your DM is self-evidently a fan of homebrew - does that mean they're allowing Booming Blade to work with War Caster, despite the spell targeting the caster? The answer is a total game-changer for the build.
My recommendation is as follows:
Free Feat: Fey Touched/Charisma/Silvery Barbs; Charisma 18 / Con 15 / Str 15, wearing the heaviest armor you can get. You'll be sword and boarding for now.
Hexblade 1 / Paladin 2 (this means you should assume you can't maintain concentration on anything, as you haven't had the chance to get Eldritch Mind yet).
Paladin Fighting Style: Defense.
Cantrips: Booming Blade, Green-flame Blade
Warlock spells known: Shield, Hellish Rebuke (you could take Armor of Agathys instead but I am assuming you want your slots available for opportunistic Smiting; Wrathful Smite is excellent, but you can't Concentrate worth a damn yet).
Paladin Spells Prepared: Command, Bless (Bless is Concentration, but we're allowing it because it helps you Concentrate on it, and it's easily one of the best spells in the game).
Next step: Warlock 2; Invocations: Eldritch Mind, Fiendish Vigor (unless seeing in Darkness has been coming up a lot - otherwise, you can't cast Darkness yet, so don't bother with Devil's Sight yet); Spells: You can now prepare Concentration Paladin spells freely without obsessing about your ability to maintain Concentration, so Wrathful Smite and Shield of Faith are on the table in spades. For Warlock, take Hex; if you like, you can drop Hellish Rebuke to learn Wrathful Smite and free up one of your Paladin preparations.
Next step: Warlock 3; Pact of the Blade (you should now switch to a Maul or Glaive); drop Fiendish Vigor for Devil's Sight; learn Darkness; drop whichever you know of Wrathful Smite or Hellish Rebuke and learn whichever fits your campaign best of Invisibility (unlikely, since you can rely on Darkness), Spider Climb, or Suggestion. With very high probability, this will be Suggestion.
Next steps: straight Paladin until further notice, although you can grab Warlock 4 if you start feeling the ASI pinch (which you shouldn't - you can be Cha 20 by level 7 if you want to be, which is a level ahead of par) and Warlock 5 if you feel the need for L3 short rest slots and a third Invocation which we all know is going to be Eldritch Smite.
- You can get cons advantage with Eldritch Mind. - With improved pact weapon, your pact weapon is your arcane focus. So you can do the somatic components with your weapon hand. - OA with a cantrip is cool, but you already hit well with your weapon. With cantrips you have many options to do better, but it's not worth spending a feat.
If you were an elf I would tell you to take Elven Accuracy. Critting at 19-20, and rolling 3 dice when you have an advantage, is insane. But since you're a tiefling, you don't have that option. If you want warcaster for concentration, I'd go for resilience(cons) instead. It scales better than Warcaster and you have a +1 to cons. Also constitution saves are pretty common and warcaster doesn't protect you from that.
Being a Hexblade I wouldn't spend my Eldritch Invocations on the Eldritch Blast. If you're going to be a blaster, there are other much better Warlock subclasses. And if you're not going to be a blaster, you don't need to invest your resources to improve your eldritch blast.
Warcaster is still the better feat to take starting off. See, while it's true you can cast somatic components with your weapon hand, that only holds true for spells that require a material component. RAW, if a spell lacks a material component, such as eldritch blast, you need warcaster to cast that spell if you're holding a sword and shield. Besides, taking warcaster means you don't have to take eldritch mind.
As far as being a blaster goes, hexblade is arguably one of the better subclasses for doing so thanks to hexblade's curse. Concentrationless, stronger version of hex? Yeah, that's going to make your eldritch blast pretty potent. But even if it wasn't one of the better ones, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the fact a warlock utilizing EB +agonizing blast is a good thing to have around. You won't always be in melee, you won't always want to be, so it's nice to have as a secondary option and is well worth the investment for it by using up a single invocation.
Well, that depends a lot on how you want to play it. For example, I think hexblade works better with GWM. In that case, the somatic components can be done with one of the hands. As someone else commented, I also don't think it's a good idea to spend your EI on upgrading your Eldritch Blast. Being a hexblade, what you want is to be on the frontline. Especially if you intend to tank as the OP says (although, in my opinion, the Hexblade is not a good tank). Improving something that you are going to use situationally does not seem very optimal to me. On the other hand, I would avoid the darkness + Devil Sight combo for the hexblade. Don't get me wrong, it's a very powerful combo. However it is difficult to use in melee without disturbing your teammates. I think it's better to use shadow of moil as soon as you have lvl4 spells.
By the way, before someone comments on it. I already know that ranged hexblade with sharpshotter is relatively popular. In that case you don't want to go to melee. However, you're not going to want Eldritch Blast either, since you're going to be going with your ranged weapon. But for that matter, in my opinion you're going to do much better with the Eldritch blast. I didn't like that build very much. The base warlock itself is the best blaster in the game. Why make it worse with a ranged weapon?
SOOO I’m trying to make a decision and it will affect my build substantially. I can either take warcaster feat (whatever it’s called that lets me cash somatic with both hands full, use spells as a reaction, and have advantage on concentration saves). This build is do long sword and shield.
Pros: 2AC, and I get to free up my invocations.
Cons: less damage and control, more static
BUT everyone I’m talking to and listened to has recommended either polarm master and eventually sentinel, OR great weapon fighting + polarm master/sentinel
Pros: Wider reach and protection of others, way more damage.
Cons: I have to take eldritch mind for concentration help, and bless. I won’t get bonus asi until level 9 probably, which means I’ll be stuck at 17 for charisma, and 15 con until then.
If i do the second, I’d probably do a glaive and shield, and in situations where I really need the bonus ac, I pull out the shield and another weapon (though it wouldn’t be my pact weapon).
Level 3 warlock though (level 5) I can summon any weapon as my pact weapon, so it’d be less of an issue.
Thoughts? Do I need to worry about being tanky and the bonus’s asi?
I’m also planning on taking shield spell, defense fighting style, and fiendish vigor
Now, I made the recommendation for warcaster purely because I assumed you wanted to be "the tank," and presumably you'd want a shield for that. If you want to do big damage melee damage, I definitely recommend great weapon master instead. I actually would not recommend polearm master on a damage hexadin build, if only because you already have soooo many bonus action options that take higher priority. You'll want your bonus action to use Vow of Enmity, or Hexblade's Curse, or Misty Step, or you might even use your bonus action on GWM, since it allows one on kills or crits.
In my opinion, the sentinel/PAM combo is nice, but it's not amazing. The biggest reason why is I'm a player who values getting the most out of my action economy. I could spend my reaction on shutting down one enemy from getting within 5t of me, or possibly my companions, OR I could spend my reaction on the shield spell to avoid taking a substantial amount of damage. Keep in mind, going down the PAM/sentinel combo ultimately means you'll be using a reach polearm like a halberd or glaive, and this ultimately means you're lacking the AC bonus of a shield... and you won't be able to cast the shield spell because you used your reaction to shut one enemy down for that turn. If there are multiple enemies, they're probably gonna be looking at you with hungry eyes at that point. Also keep in mind that if an enemy is large and has reach, the combo is kinda worthless. This feat combo is much better on a fighter, who normally lacks significant uses for their reaction AND gets more feats earlier on.
So, let me cut to the chase and tell you what build I'd use exactly for tank or for damage.
sword-n-board tank:
start paladin 2, warlock 1 and warcaster feat
take booming blade and EB as your cantrips
pick up dueling fighting style
rush to paladin 6
pick up either fey touched and get the hex spell as part of the feat when you get to paladin 4.
then go back to warlock after 6, take your desired invocations or w/e
damage hexadin
start paladin 2, warlock 1and Fey touched feat, take the hex spell as part of the feat
dueling fighting style at first
Rush to paladin 5 this time
along the way, pick up GWM and switch dueling for defense fighting style
then go back to warlock for another 2 levels, pact of the blade
then back to paladin for another level for your aura of protection
This damage build doesn't waste invocations, and comes fully online by lvl 8 or 9 depending on how you view things. You could also start as paladin for one level, then rush the next 5 levels of warlock, but it's definitely not as support-y with the lack of aura, but would allow you to come fully online much sooner, lvl 6 if you want but does make you waste an invocation as you'll pretty much go back to paladin for extra attack, making thirsting blade a bit of a loss (unless your DM's a total homie and lets you switch it out even if you've not gained levels ifn warlock). The tank build, however, is always online pretty much, with only one "dead" level being the 5th. Even then, your blade cantrip is a nice cushion to mitigate that level.
Hi! I'm building a Tielfing Hexblade/Oath of Vengeance mutliclass for an upcoming CoS campaign, and I'll be the "tank." Looking for some advice for building the class.
My DM is starting us off with a Feat, and at level 3. So, I was thinking of taking the Warcaster Feat.
Stats are:
15, 9, 15, 9, 10, 17
Leveling Thoughts
Level 3 (2 paladin, 1 Warlock)
Options:
I'd appreciate any help our thoughts!
If your job is to tank, why are you building for melee DPR? And what's the actual purpose of you taking Paladin levels? There are broadly speaking only two uses you have for them: Smite at level 2 and The Aura at level 6. All other benefits are ancillary compared to those two. Meanwhile, your Warlock levels only do genuinely interesting things up to level 3 - after that it's just a matter of scaling; worse, Warlock 6 has particularly little to offer you, as a Hexblade. But also, why take 2 levels of Paladin? By the time you reach Hexblade 5 you can have, as your invocations, Eldritch Smite (which is largely better than Paladin Smite), Thirsting Blade to keep up with the Paladin, and your choice of Devil's Sight or Eldritch Mind. The two classes can 100% be mixed, but answering you about how to do it requires knowing what your real goals are. You're also a Tiefling, so Elven Advantage is off the table, despite this being a build optimized for Elven Advantage, so that's worth explicitly pointing out. Are you a winged tiefling? Should we be shoehorning you into medium armor?
Assuming your real goal is melee DPR and the free feat you're getting can't be an ASI:
I wouldn't take warcaster as a feat.
- You can get cons advantage with Eldritch Mind.
- With improved pact weapon, your pact weapon is your arcane focus. So you can do the somatic components with your weapon hand.
- OA with a cantrip is cool, but you already hit well with your weapon. With cantrips you have many options to do better, but it's not worth spending a feat.
If you were an elf I would tell you to take Elven Accuracy. Critting at 19-20, and rolling 3 dice when you have an advantage, is insane.
But since you're a tiefling, you don't have that option. If you want warcaster for concentration, I'd go for resilience(cons) instead. It scales better than Warcaster and you have a +1 to cons. Also constitution saves are pretty common and warcaster doesn't protect you from that.
Being a Hexblade I wouldn't spend my Eldritch Invocations on the Eldritch Blast. If you're going to be a blaster, there are other much better Warlock subclasses. And if you're not going to be a blaster, you don't need to invest your resources to improve your eldritch blast.
Warcaster is still the better feat to take starting off. See, while it's true you can cast somatic components with your weapon hand, that only holds true for spells that require a material component. RAW, if a spell lacks a material component, such as eldritch blast, you need warcaster to cast that spell if you're holding a sword and shield. Besides, taking warcaster means you don't have to take eldritch mind.
As far as being a blaster goes, hexblade is arguably one of the better subclasses for doing so thanks to hexblade's curse. Concentrationless, stronger version of hex? Yeah, that's going to make your eldritch blast pretty potent. But even if it wasn't one of the better ones, that doesn't mean we should dismiss the fact a warlock utilizing EB +agonizing blast is a good thing to have around. You won't always be in melee, you won't always want to be, so it's nice to have as a secondary option and is well worth the investment for it by using up a single invocation.
Well, that depends a lot on how you want to play it.
For example, I think hexblade works better with GWM. In that case, the somatic components can be done with one of the hands.
As someone else commented, I also don't think it's a good idea to spend your EI on upgrading your Eldritch Blast. Being a hexblade, what you want is to be on the frontline. Especially if you intend to tank as the OP says (although, in my opinion, the Hexblade is not a good tank). Improving something that you are going to use situationally does not seem very optimal to me.
On the other hand, I would avoid the darkness + Devil Sight combo for the hexblade. Don't get me wrong, it's a very powerful combo. However it is difficult to use in melee without disturbing your teammates. I think it's better to use shadow of moil as soon as you have lvl4 spells.
By the way, before someone comments on it. I already know that ranged hexblade with sharpshotter is relatively popular. In that case you don't want to go to melee. However, you're not going to want Eldritch Blast either, since you're going to be going with your ranged weapon. But for that matter, in my opinion you're going to do much better with the Eldritch blast. I didn't like that build very much. The base warlock itself is the best blaster in the game. Why make it worse with a ranged weapon?
SOOO I’m trying to make a decision and it will affect my build substantially. I can either take warcaster feat (whatever it’s called that lets me cash somatic with both hands full, use spells as a reaction, and have advantage on concentration saves). This build is do long sword and shield.
Pros: 2AC, and I get to free up my invocations.
Cons: less damage and control, more static
BUT everyone I’m talking to and listened to has recommended either polarm master and eventually sentinel, OR great weapon fighting + polarm master/sentinel
Pros: Wider reach and protection of others, way more damage.
Cons: I have to take eldritch mind for concentration help, and bless.
I won’t get bonus asi until level 9 probably, which means I’ll be stuck at 17 for charisma, and 15 con until then.
If i do the second, I’d probably do a glaive and shield, and in situations where I really need the bonus ac, I pull out the shield and another weapon (though it wouldn’t be my pact weapon).
Level 3 warlock though (level 5) I can summon any weapon as my pact weapon, so it’d be less of an issue.
Thoughts? Do I need to worry about being tanky and the bonus’s asi?
I’m also planning on taking shield spell, defense fighting style, and fiendish vigor
Now, I made the recommendation for warcaster purely because I assumed you wanted to be "the tank," and presumably you'd want a shield for that. If you want to do big damage melee damage, I definitely recommend great weapon master instead. I actually would not recommend polearm master on a damage hexadin build, if only because you already have soooo many bonus action options that take higher priority. You'll want your bonus action to use Vow of Enmity, or Hexblade's Curse, or Misty Step, or you might even use your bonus action on GWM, since it allows one on kills or crits.
In my opinion, the sentinel/PAM combo is nice, but it's not amazing. The biggest reason why is I'm a player who values getting the most out of my action economy. I could spend my reaction on shutting down one enemy from getting within 5t of me, or possibly my companions, OR I could spend my reaction on the shield spell to avoid taking a substantial amount of damage. Keep in mind, going down the PAM/sentinel combo ultimately means you'll be using a reach polearm like a halberd or glaive, and this ultimately means you're lacking the AC bonus of a shield... and you won't be able to cast the shield spell because you used your reaction to shut one enemy down for that turn. If there are multiple enemies, they're probably gonna be looking at you with hungry eyes at that point. Also keep in mind that if an enemy is large and has reach, the combo is kinda worthless. This feat combo is much better on a fighter, who normally lacks significant uses for their reaction AND gets more feats earlier on.
So, let me cut to the chase and tell you what build I'd use exactly for tank or for damage.
sword-n-board tank:
damage hexadin
This damage build doesn't waste invocations, and comes fully online by lvl 8 or 9 depending on how you view things. You could also start as paladin for one level, then rush the next 5 levels of warlock, but it's definitely not as support-y with the lack of aura, but would allow you to come fully online much sooner, lvl 6 if you want but does make you waste an invocation as you'll pretty much go back to paladin for extra attack, making thirsting blade a bit of a loss (unless your DM's a total homie and lets you switch it out even if you've not gained levels ifn warlock). The tank build, however, is always online pretty much, with only one "dead" level being the 5th. Even then, your blade cantrip is a nice cushion to mitigate that level.
“ If your job is to tank, why are you building for melee DPR?”
The best mitigation is a dead enemy.