I was just playing around with the new 2024 character creation options for Warlocks. I love that all Warlocks can now choose to use weapons, and can use them effectively. I also appreciate that the spells you use are patron specific.
However, I find myself really missing some of the flavor that the Hexblade offered us in 2014. For those newer to D&D, 2014 stated this about the Hexblade "You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell – a force that manifests in sentient magic weapons carved from the stuff of shadow...Because the Raven Queen is known to have forged the first of these weapons, many sages speculate that she and the force are one and that the weapons, along with hexblade warlocks, are tools she uses to manipulate events on the Material Plane to her inscrutable ends."
Going forward, I'd love it if we had A) A Raven Queen subclass that included a shadow weapon feature and some Raven Queen themed spells, or B) a subclass or subclasses that would cover patrons that aren't specially thought of as fiends, celestials, fey, great old ones, etc. What say you? What would you like to see?
You can use the 2014 Hexblade subclass with 2024 Warlock. That was a core design element of 5.24 - nothing in 5.14 was rendered inoperable under the new rules. As such, there very much is a Raven Queen subclass available in 5.24--the Hexblade.
As for what I would like to see - one major patron category missing in both 5.14 and 5.24 is any old forest patron--powerful entities of the old growth (distinct from things like Fae, which also can be in the deep forest) are a pretty common mythological trope and one I would like to see receive an official subclass.
There's a certain degree of overlap between the Fey and nature stuff, to the point that classic "nature spirit" beings like dryads are classed as Fey. I suppose it's a question of how much they want to overlap with Druids thematically- even without the Nature Clerics getting brought forward yet there's the Ancients Paladin and they were at least toying with a Bard subclass that does a lot of Druid stuff, although that's only UA so far. So they might feel there's not enough room left in that niche for another subclass.
As for new patrons, might be interesting to see one that goes in for spiritualism type themes. I don't like to call it "voodoo", because that's an irl religion with very little to do with most things pop culture associates with it, but I like the idea of a Warlock subclass with features more based around channeling and deploying spirits for the subclass features- some controller type with some buff/debuff or other roll/action manipulation type effects.
Seem to recall there was a more specific Raven Queen patron UA a few years ago but it never got beyond that stage to become official. Might be worth trying to find if that’s the flavour you want and don’t mind homebrewing
As for what I’d like it always seems like a Dragon patron is a really glaring gap in the line up. Give me tough skin like the Dragon Sorcerer and a bunch of spells that allow me to choose damage types and I’d be happy
Seem to recall there was a more specific Raven Queen patron UA a few years ago but it never got beyond that stage to become official. Might be worth trying to find if that’s the flavour you want and don’t mind homebrewing
As for what I’d like it always seems like a Dragon patron is a really glaring gap in the line up. Give me tough skin like the Dragon Sorcerer and a bunch of spells that allow me to choose damage types and I’d be happy
Seem to recall there was a more specific Raven Queen patron UA a few years ago but it never got beyond that stage to become official. Might be worth trying to find if that’s the flavour you want and don’t mind homebrewing
As for what I’d like it always seems like a Dragon patron is a really glaring gap in the line up. Give me tough skin like the Dragon Sorcerer and a bunch of spells that allow me to choose damage types and I’d be happy
Imo dragons don't really fit the profile for Patrons; Patrons tend more towards the extra-planar/non-mortal side of things while dragons are long-lived but mortal and part of the Material Plane.
You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell — a force that manifests in sentient magic weapons carved from the stuff of shadow. The mighty sword Blackrazor is the most notable of these weapons, which have been spread across the multiverse over the ages. The shadowy force behind these weapons can offer power to warlocks who form pacts with it. Many hexblade warlocks create weapons that emulate those formed in the Shadowfell. Others forgo such arms, content to weave the dark magic of that plane into their spellcasting.
Because the Raven Queen is known to have forged the first of these weapons, many sages speculate that she and the force are one and that the weapons, along with hexblade warlocks, are tools she uses to manipulate events on the Material Plane to her inscrutable ends.
The opening lines are about Blackrazor a Classic D&D weapon found in BG2: Shadow of Amn, it was based on an older D&D weapon from GreyHawk, which was loosely based on Stormbringer in the Elric stories by Michael Moorcock.
The connection to the Raven queen was just fluff added to make her seem connected to the Subclass if you wanted to. But the reality is Hexblade is mostly inspired by Elric of Melniboné.
You can fluff any Sublaclass to be Raven queen themed, as you can roleplay how you want.
I would say Archfey Patron would make a great 5.5 subclass for the Raven Queen. The ability to misty step everywhere and having a taunt makes Archfey a tanky and hard to hit Warlock subclass, it also can be themed perfectly with Ravens, your misty steps could be you turn into a flock of ravens to teleport, your weapons and gear can have Revan skulls for theming, you could have an obsessive hatred of the undead... you could even play as a Shadar-Kai.
That’s the thing that always annoyed me about Hexblade. “You get your power from a magical sentient weapon” is a nice theme with a lot of potential but then they decided to drop the Raven Queen patron from the same UA and try to merge the two into a weird mishmash that doesn’t entirely make sense no matter which way you decide to go
That’s the thing that always annoyed me about Hexblade. “You get your power from a magical sentient weapon” is a nice theme with a lot of potential but then they decided to drop the Raven Queen patron from the same UA and try to merge the two into a weird mishmash that doesn’t entirely make sense no matter which way you decide to go
I have always kind of hated Hexblade. It never really felt like a Patron, and was more of a fix to Pact of the Blade with a few extra bits glued on that took up the place where a Patron should have been.
You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell — a force that manifests in sentient magic weapons carved from the stuff of shadow. The mighty sword Blackrazor is the most notable of these weapons, which have been spread across the multiverse over the ages. The shadowy force behind these weapons can offer power to warlocks who form pacts with it. Many hexblade warlocks create weapons that emulate those formed in the Shadowfell. Others forgo such arms, content to weave the dark magic of that plane into their spellcasting.
Because the Raven Queen is known to have forged the first of these weapons, many sages speculate that she and the force are one and that the weapons, along with hexblade warlocks, are tools she uses to manipulate events on the Material Plane to her inscrutable ends.
The opening lines are about Blackrazor a Classic D&D weapon found in BG2: Shadow of Amn, it was based on an older D&D weapon from GreyHawk, which was loosely based on Stormbringer in the Elric stories by Michael Moorcock.
The connection to the Raven queen was just fluff added to make her seem connected to the Subclass if you wanted to. But the reality is Hexblade is mostly inspired by Elric of Melniboné.
You can fluff any Sublaclass to be Raven queen themed, as you can roleplay how you want.
I would say Archfey Patron would make a great 5.5 subclass for the Raven Queen. The ability to misty step everywhere and having a taunt makes Archfey a tanky and hard to hit Warlock subclass, it also can be themed perfectly with Ravens, your misty steps could be you turn into a flock of ravens to teleport, your weapons and gear can have Revan skulls for theming, you could have an obsessive hatred of the undead... you could even play as a Shadar-Kai.
+1 to all of this. Archfey definitely fits with her as Winter is in her portfolio, so having her be a stand-in for either the Winter Queen or the Queen of Air and Darkness seems pretty fitting. Celestial actually works too - not all the divine servants you pact with have to be benevolent balls of light after all, her servants could include outsiders like psychopomps or rilmani. Basically, take a look at Pharasma over in Pathfinder and just about anything that would work for her could work for RQ.
That’s the thing that always annoyed me about Hexblade. “You get your power from a magical sentient weapon” is a nice theme with a lot of potential but then they decided to drop the Raven Queen patron from the same UA and try to merge the two into a weird mishmash that doesn’t entirely make sense no matter which way you decide to go
I have always kind of hated Hexblade. It never really felt like a Patron, and was more of a fix to Pact of the Blade with a few extra bits glued on that took up the place where a Patron should have been.
Yeah, it's weird and ill-defined, and it really was first and foremost a "fix blade pact" patron, so it may never get updated.
In my own campaign, it's warlocks who serve the Great Weapons, which are a number of incredibly powerful magic weapons of antiquity, many of which have been destroyed, so one thing they desire is that their warlocks take steps to allow new Great Weapons to be created.
(If somebody is wondering, no they aren't based on the Great Weapons of Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, but they're not not based on them.)
I have no clue why the hexblade was associated with the Raven Queen in the first case (I'd just go with Kas as the obvious patron). In the Dawn War (4e) pantheon she's a death goddess and probably wouldn't have warlocks to start with, she'd have Grave domain clerics. In 5e she seems to be associated with memories and madness, and probably fits the Great Old Ones the best, but Undead is also a decent match.
In my own campaign, it's warlocks who serve the Great Weapons, which are a number of incredibly powerful magic weapons of antiquity, many of which have been destroyed, so one thing they desire is that their warlocks take steps to allow new Great Weapons to be created.
(If somebody is wondering, no they aren't based on the Great Weapons of Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, but they're not not based on them.)
Interesting way of doing it.
As a DM I let my players choose their backgrounds and stories. But if asked what I think f Hexblade I usually hand them my well worn copy of "Stormbringer " by Michael Moorcock. As Elric really is an classic example of a Hex Blade warlock as intended.
For more modern takes I think the Manga " 転生したら剣でした (Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita)" or I Became the Sword by Transmigrating .
I love the idea of a sentient weapon being given to a player, but I also think there should be a way to level up the weapon. As Blackrazer and some of the other Legendary Sentient weapons are a bit too powerful to give to a level 1 or 3 warlock.
However, I think a cool role play would be a Sentient weapon controlling a mannequin, ie doing a Hexblade Warforged but the Warforged is just a puppet controlled by the sword.
In my own campaign, it's warlocks who serve the Great Weapons, which are a number of incredibly powerful magic weapons of antiquity, many of which have been destroyed, so one thing they desire is that their warlocks take steps to allow new Great Weapons to be created.
(If somebody is wondering, no they aren't based on the Great Weapons of Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, but they're not not based on them.)
Interesting way of doing it.
As a DM I let my players choose their backgrounds and stories. But if asked what I think f Hexblade I usually hand them my well worn copy of "Stormbringer " by Michael Moorcock. As Elric really is an classic example of a Hex Blade warlock as intended.
Yeah, it's clearly what they were going for, but the sensible desire to not automatically hand low-level characters a magic weapon of any kind makes it weird and messy. (It'd probably be more viable with 3rd-level subclasses, but handing a PC a weapon of legend , even one that scales in power, is still not going to be popular with a lot of DMs.)
As a DM I let my players choose their backgrounds and stories. But if asked what I think f Hexblade I usually hand them my well worn copy of "Stormbringer " by Michael Moorcock. As Elric really is an classic example of a Hex Blade warlock as intended.
Yeah, it's clearly what they were going for, but the sensible desire to not automatically hand low-level characters a magic weapon of any kind makes it weird and messy. (It'd probably be more viable with 3rd-level subclasses, but handing a PC a weapon of legend , even one that scales in power, is still not going to be popular with a lot of DMs.)
I think a good update would be to double down on the fact it's power from a sentient weapon and then make the subclass features upgrade the weapon as you level up. Start with a fairly bog standard weapon and then at level 3 give them the armour proficiences etc and maybe give the Pact of the Blade invocation for free with a bit of extra sauce added to it and then just keep throwing weapon upgrades at the player until your weapon has reached legendary level
Does this 5e version allow for intelligent weapons that also have an alignment? Nothing like a a weapon that takes over a character and creates a difficult morale/ethic choice for the party.
Usually happens when the player missed a session.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hello all,
I was just playing around with the new 2024 character creation options for Warlocks. I love that all Warlocks can now choose to use weapons, and can use them effectively. I also appreciate that the spells you use are patron specific.
However, I find myself really missing some of the flavor that the Hexblade offered us in 2014. For those newer to D&D, 2014 stated this about the Hexblade "You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell – a force that manifests in sentient magic weapons carved from the stuff of shadow...Because the Raven Queen is known to have forged the first of these weapons, many sages speculate that she and the force are one and that the weapons, along with hexblade warlocks, are tools she uses to manipulate events on the Material Plane to her inscrutable ends."
Going forward, I'd love it if we had A) A Raven Queen subclass that included a shadow weapon feature and some Raven Queen themed spells, or B) a subclass or subclasses that would cover patrons that aren't specially thought of as fiends, celestials, fey, great old ones, etc. What say you? What would you like to see?
You can use the 2014 Hexblade subclass with 2024 Warlock. That was a core design element of 5.24 - nothing in 5.14 was rendered inoperable under the new rules. As such, there very much is a Raven Queen subclass available in 5.24--the Hexblade.
As for what I would like to see - one major patron category missing in both 5.14 and 5.24 is any old forest patron--powerful entities of the old growth (distinct from things like Fae, which also can be in the deep forest) are a pretty common mythological trope and one I would like to see receive an official subclass.
There's a certain degree of overlap between the Fey and nature stuff, to the point that classic "nature spirit" beings like dryads are classed as Fey. I suppose it's a question of how much they want to overlap with Druids thematically- even without the Nature Clerics getting brought forward yet there's the Ancients Paladin and they were at least toying with a Bard subclass that does a lot of Druid stuff, although that's only UA so far. So they might feel there's not enough room left in that niche for another subclass.
As for new patrons, might be interesting to see one that goes in for spiritualism type themes. I don't like to call it "voodoo", because that's an irl religion with very little to do with most things pop culture associates with it, but I like the idea of a Warlock subclass with features more based around channeling and deploying spirits for the subclass features- some controller type with some buff/debuff or other roll/action manipulation type effects.
Seem to recall there was a more specific Raven Queen patron UA a few years ago but it never got beyond that stage to become official. Might be worth trying to find if that’s the flavour you want and don’t mind homebrewing
As for what I’d like it always seems like a Dragon patron is a really glaring gap in the line up. Give me tough skin like the Dragon Sorcerer and a bunch of spells that allow me to choose damage types and I’d be happy
I believe this is the Raven Queen patron UA that you were referring to: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/20170213_Wizrd_Wrlck_UAv2_i48nf.pdf
Thanks, glad it wasn’t my imagination
Imo dragons don't really fit the profile for Patrons; Patrons tend more towards the extra-planar/non-mortal side of things while dragons are long-lived but mortal and part of the Material Plane.
Your quote skipped an important piece of context.
The opening lines are about Blackrazor a Classic D&D weapon found in BG2: Shadow of Amn, it was based on an older D&D weapon from GreyHawk, which was loosely based on Stormbringer in the Elric stories by Michael Moorcock.
The connection to the Raven queen was just fluff added to make her seem connected to the Subclass if you wanted to. But the reality is Hexblade is mostly inspired by Elric of Melniboné.
You can fluff any Sublaclass to be Raven queen themed, as you can roleplay how you want.
I would say Archfey Patron would make a great 5.5 subclass for the Raven Queen. The ability to misty step everywhere and having a taunt makes Archfey a tanky and hard to hit Warlock subclass, it also can be themed perfectly with Ravens, your misty steps could be you turn into a flock of ravens to teleport, your weapons and gear can have Revan skulls for theming, you could have an obsessive hatred of the undead... you could even play as a Shadar-Kai.
That’s the thing that always annoyed me about Hexblade. “You get your power from a magical sentient weapon” is a nice theme with a lot of potential but then they decided to drop the Raven Queen patron from the same UA and try to merge the two into a weird mishmash that doesn’t entirely make sense no matter which way you decide to go
The OG UA is still easy to find.
https://dnd5e.*******.com/warlock:raven-queen-ua
https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/20170213_Wizrd_Wrlck_UAv2_i48nf.pdf
I have always kind of hated Hexblade. It never really felt like a Patron, and was more of a fix to Pact of the Blade with a few extra bits glued on that took up the place where a Patron should have been.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
+1 to all of this. Archfey definitely fits with her as Winter is in her portfolio, so having her be a stand-in for either the Winter Queen or the Queen of Air and Darkness seems pretty fitting. Celestial actually works too - not all the divine servants you pact with have to be benevolent balls of light after all, her servants could include outsiders like psychopomps or rilmani. Basically, take a look at Pharasma over in Pathfinder and just about anything that would work for her could work for RQ.
Yeah, it's weird and ill-defined, and it really was first and foremost a "fix blade pact" patron, so it may never get updated.
In my own campaign, it's warlocks who serve the Great Weapons, which are a number of incredibly powerful magic weapons of antiquity, many of which have been destroyed, so one thing they desire is that their warlocks take steps to allow new Great Weapons to be created.
(If somebody is wondering, no they aren't based on the Great Weapons of Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, but they're not not based on them.)
I have no clue why the hexblade was associated with the Raven Queen in the first case (I'd just go with Kas as the obvious patron). In the Dawn War (4e) pantheon she's a death goddess and probably wouldn't have warlocks to start with, she'd have Grave domain clerics. In 5e she seems to be associated with memories and madness, and probably fits the Great Old Ones the best, but Undead is also a decent match.
Interesting way of doing it.
As a DM I let my players choose their backgrounds and stories. But if asked what I think f Hexblade I usually hand them my well worn copy of "Stormbringer " by Michael Moorcock. As Elric really is an classic example of a Hex Blade warlock as intended.
For more modern takes I think the Manga " 転生したら剣でした (Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita)" or I Became the Sword by Transmigrating .
I love the idea of a sentient weapon being given to a player, but I also think there should be a way to level up the weapon. As Blackrazer and some of the other Legendary Sentient weapons are a bit too powerful to give to a level 1 or 3 warlock.
However, I think a cool role play would be a Sentient weapon controlling a mannequin, ie doing a Hexblade Warforged but the Warforged is just a puppet controlled by the sword.
Yeah, it's clearly what they were going for, but the sensible desire to not automatically hand low-level characters a magic weapon of any kind makes it weird and messy. (It'd probably be more viable with 3rd-level subclasses, but handing a PC a weapon of legend , even one that scales in power, is still not going to be popular with a lot of DMs.)
I think a good update would be to double down on the fact it's power from a sentient weapon and then make the subclass features upgrade the weapon as you level up. Start with a fairly bog standard weapon and then at level 3 give them the armour proficiences etc and maybe give the Pact of the Blade invocation for free with a bit of extra sauce added to it and then just keep throwing weapon upgrades at the player until your weapon has reached legendary level
Does this 5e version allow for intelligent weapons that also have an alignment? Nothing like a a weapon that takes over a character and creates a difficult morale/ethic choice for the party.
Usually happens when the player missed a session.