So, I've been searching and reading a lot lately about all the pacts, invocation and combinations to play a Hexblade that could be the tank of the group.
We dont have any tank (actually we have a Cleric with high enough HP but very low AC, and he usually just stands in the backline) and my current character is a lvl 12 Duergar Fighter(Yes, I'm the tank for now), but my buddy is getting to the end of his history, so I'm already building a new one, and always wanted to play a Hexblade.
The thing that I'm trying to do is Build a pure Hexblade (No Multiclass) that uses a longsword and shield, has a high enough AC and HP and is capable of applying some debuffs on enemys and/or buffs to allies(including myself).
My character is a Verdan, and has a backstory that makes him always want to help and protect people, even if it costs his life(Already lost an arm because of that). Verdans have a bonus of +2 to CHA and +1 to CON, so I made the following point buy selection: STR 08, DEX 14, CON 14, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 15 (+ Racial Bonus = STR 08, DEX 14, CON 15, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 17)
I was thinking about the well known combo of Pact of the Blade + Thirsting blade + Lifedrinker + Eldritch smite + Improved pact weapon, but I dont want to be the guy that does a lot of damage and anything else. Considering that I dont trust much in my party's CC capabilitys (because in our 4-man party, 2 of them just like everything damage-only related, besides our druid) I was thinking in actually taking Pact of the Chain + Investment of the Chain master + Quasit/Pseudodragon/Sprite to be able to maintain our foes poisoned, make some of them unconcious, use the help action more often in attacks and just be more versatile with spells, CC and etc.
Im not focusing in dealing a lot of damage, so my main damage source would be Green-flame blade/Booming blade + Hexblade's Curse (+ Hex Spell maybe). Also, my ASIs may be Resilient (+1 CON, lvl 4), Fey Touched(+1 CHA, lvl 8) and Warcaster(because of shield and extensive use of concentration spells, lvl 12). These are the invocation I was thinking to pick up: Gift of the ever-living ones, Devil's Sight, Sculptor of flesh, Whispers of the grave, Ghostly gaze.(at lvl 12 STR 08, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 18, 96 HP)
All of that said, I want help to let me see if my build is bad or not, if there are better options to do what I want(even if its using pact of blade or tome) and what are your ideas in that matter.
Edit: Also, forgot to say that Survivability is one of my goals too, so Im taking spells like Vampiric Touch, Shield, Shadow Of Moil, Blur, etc.
A couple of things you need to watch out for, while Warcaster does help with the sword and board style spellcaster, you need to be careful with spells that require a Material component as you do not have Improved Pact of the Blade as a spell focus so if you want to do a mid battle Polymorph or something similar then you will need to put your weapon away first.
A good defensive invocation is Tomb of Levistus. While it does cost you 1 turn, the safety net it offers is almost unmatched and is always a nice trick to have up your sleeve.
A couple of things you need to watch out for, while Warcaster does help with the sword and board style spellcaster, you need to be careful with spells that require a Material component as you do not have Improved Pact of the Blade as a spell focus so if you want to do a mid battle Polymorph or something similar then you will need to put your weapon away first.
A good defensive invocation is Tomb of Levistus. While it does cost you 1 turn, the safety net it offers is almost unmatched and is always a nice trick to have up your sleeve.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I will start with a Ruby of the War Mage already, so no worries about material components
I'm also taking the component pouch to store those with cost.
Best build I know of for Warlock tanking doesn't use Hexblade. Hexblades are built for murder, not tanking, really.
Here's the original, but you can make it work with other choices - in particular it uses a race not available in most settings.
Mark of Healing Halfling Life Cleric 1 / Celestial Chainlock 19 Starting Stats: 17 Cha / 14 Con / 14 Dex / 13 Wis / 9 Str / 8 Int --You can juggle the odd numbers around depending on what half-feats you plan on taking; the Str9 is just a way to spend the last ability point, feel free to drop to Str8. Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, Devil’s Sight, Eldritch Mind, Grasp of Hadar, Lance of Lethargy, Witch Sight
The real point here is that Life Cleric + Celestial + Chain = all of the hit points forever.
It's alright. The Warlock isn't really designed to be a tanking class, and won't be optimized as much as a Fighter, Barbaian, or Paladin could be, but if you're cool with that, go for it.
The Warlock doesn't have much in the ability to draw agro, so you'll have to get creative to convince the enemies that they should be attacking you instead of the squishy, high-damage-dealing spellcasters behind you. You can do some of this with roleplay if the DM is up for it, but you don't have any mechanical abilities that penalize the enemy for attacking your allies. But one major way of making the enemy deal with you is being a big damage dealer... If you were impossible to hurt, but didn't deal out much damage, they'd just ignore you, but if they think they can take you down, and you prove yourself to be a major threat on the battlefield, they're more likely to target you. And Booming Blade is good for penalizing them for moving away from you, in addition to the opportunity attack.
Your hit die is a d8, so you're not going to have a mind-blowing number of hit points, and your best way of making those last is AC, but I don't see where you addressed AC in your build. And since you only have a +2 in Dexterity, that means you'll need to be wearing Medium Armor, preferably a Breastplate, which will give you AC18 with your shield.
Going Chainmaster for the sprite that uses your save DC to knock out enemies as a bonus action is perfect if you take the Investment of the Chain Master as one of your invocations. And if you take the Gift of the Ever Living Ones, your Cleric's healing on you is always maximized, which should significantly improve your survivability.
The warlock is a strange class that a lot of people do not understand. Earlier D&D can be split into Spells, Fighting, and Abilities. Spells had daily limits that shared a common resource (spell slots), Fighting was unlimited but easy to understand, Abilities were either unlimited or had a separate limit not linking all of them together. This means there were no people that had always on magical abilities.
By this very nature, spell users could NOT be front liners. The kind of limit they used meant all spells had to be powerful, and that they would eventually run out of them. Spell casters could not be constantly surrounded by something similar to Platemail, nor could they have a single magical attack that they used the way fighters used swords. They could not be Tanks or really Damage Dealers, because that would make them too powerful given the spell slot system. They had to be utility rather than offense (DPR) or defense (tank).
Enter the Warlock. Here they reduced the # of spells tremendously. Now the spells they used become the rare event. Instead they were given invocations and pacts. These things could be x/day, OR they could be always on, allowing for someone to use magic the way a fighter uses swords and armor - something always on, capable of dishing out damage.
I think with Eldritch Blast (with invocations) and Pact of the Blade (with a good Patron) they made a very good DPR, but they never really made a very good Tank. They tried with a few Warlock only defensive spells, but that is again limited. Should have made a good invocation or Pact focused on defense.
Personally, I would make a new Pact designed to help more with Defense. Does not have to be straight Armor, could be something like Arcane Ward of the Abjurer. It should interact with invocations to make it better as you level up.
Have you considered Genielock? Dao Genielocks get bludgeoning resistance and can cast Wall of Stone for control purposes. You do a little extra bludgeoning damage in combat too. If you prefer other resistance types, there are other options.
Starting at level 12 means you are only two levels from limited wish. Conjure up any CC spell or defensive buff under 6th level with that, once every few days. It’s not going to be useful every short rest, but for a boss fight you can drop Stoneskin or Globe of Invulnerability on yourself without material components.
His main goal is tank, genielock does not have any tanking abilities besides the Bludgening resistance, which is not good enough. He choose Hexblade in part because of the Medium Armor + shields. Doing so requires him to take a race that grants Medium Armor at the very minimum.
For a Tank Warlock you have 3 choices, none of which are ideal:
Take something that grants at least Medium Armor - race, subclass or multiclass
Take The Undead patron that grants Form of Undead, getting a ton of Temp Hitpoints
Try to make a Dex based Tank, usually via multi-classing and using up a lot more of your other resources (i.e. feats, spell choices, etc.)
I don't think this concept quite works as a "Tank", but it does work as a frontline fighter who will do well with a group of clever players. I'd say your Chainmaster idea probably won't pay off as well for this concept as your Pact of the Blade concept... Investment of the Chainmaster does give your familiar a bit more survivability, but one AOE spell and they're gonna be out of the fight.
I think, instead of Warcaster, you could just take the Eldritch Mind Invocation, freeing you up to take a different feat to improve your survivability. There are a few options that come to mind...
Medium Armor master is a quick way to just get that extra point of AC, but you'll have to shift around your stats a bit to get to 16 DEX to get the most out of it. But on the plus side, you can wear half-plate without messing with your stealth attempts.
Tough will help you pretty bluntly by just giving you a bunch of extra HP with no extra investment of time or energy... you're just harder to kill.
However, what I think would actually be the most useful for this build is Inspiring Leader. As a Warlock, you're going to want to short rest regularly anyway, so why not give out an additional 16 temp HP to yourself and all your allies as part of that short rest? Now everyone's a little harder to kill, helping not just yourself, but your whole party. Now you just need to think of what kind of speech your character would make... it can be something that either gets handwaved or could lead to some really fun roleplay moments.
Hexblade is a striker not a tank. A tank has a decent ac (but not too decent), does enough damage to be a threat in battle, has a way to make the enemy focus on themselves and not the rest of their party, and most importantly has the survivability to take hit after hit over and over without dropping.
The primary is a v human / custom lineage / bugbear Barbarian Ancestral Guardian. Feats are polearm master, sentinel, and great weapon master. An AC of 18-20 means that they are hitable so that enemy combatants don’t just simply ignore them. 15ft reach with sentinel and polearm master means owning the battlefield and doing good damage. The D12 hitdice combined with rage means that they don‘t go down easily. Downside is the amount of time it takes to come fully on line (level 8 or 12).
Runeknight fighter is a good secondary, comes on line by level 6 at the latest, but less hit points. Or a Paladin. Both make decent tanks.
The hexblade hits hard for sure, can have a decent AC too, but a D8 hitdice makes them a glass cannon. It only takes a few hits and they are down. They also have no mechanic to lure enemies to attack them instead of the squishies.
The thing that I'm trying to do is Build a pure Hexblade (No Multiclass) that uses a longsword and shield, has a high enough AC and HP and is capable of applying some debuffs on enemys and/or buffs to allies(including myself).
My character is a Verdan, and has a backstory that makes him always want to help and protect people, even if it costs his life(Already lost an arm because of that).
Im not focusing in dealing a lot of damage, so my main damage source would be Green-flame blade/Booming blade + Hexblade's Curse (+ Hex Spell maybe). .
So there are several issues here;
1. With only 1 arm you can’t use a two handed weapon, or two weapons, or a sword and shield. Really surprised nobody has mentioned that.
2. With medium armour and a 14 dex you have a max ac of 17 in half plate without magic items. This is on the low side of decent. You would need to use spells like haste, darkness, shadow of moil, mirror image, etc in every fight to even give you a chance.
3. Your Con is decent at 16 but D8 means an average of 8hp per level. As a tank thats low. You need to aim for at least 100 by level 10. You also have no way to reliably mitigate the damage such as from rage.
4. Your damage output is decent but you have no way to make them focus on you. In all likelihood you will get 1 or 2 fighting you and the rest will simply ignore you and go for the other characters. With such a poor strength and a borderline dex one of them will just grapple you and you’re doing nothing meaningful for the rest of the fight.
So, yes your character is playable, but you are likely to be very disappointed in its performance as a tank.
If the OP is willing to change to a mountain dwarf, then the build can get medium armor without Hexblade. That will allow a Genielock or Undeadlock build that might be a little more tank-y.
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So, I've been searching and reading a lot lately about all the pacts, invocation and combinations to play a Hexblade that could be the tank of the group.
We dont have any tank (actually we have a Cleric with high enough HP but very low AC, and he usually just stands in the backline) and my current character is a lvl 12 Duergar Fighter(Yes, I'm the tank for now), but my buddy is getting to the end of his history, so I'm already building a new one, and always wanted to play a Hexblade.
The thing that I'm trying to do is Build a pure Hexblade (No Multiclass) that uses a longsword and shield, has a high enough AC and HP and is capable of applying some debuffs on enemys and/or buffs to allies(including myself).
My character is a Verdan, and has a backstory that makes him always want to help and protect people, even if it costs his life(Already lost an arm because of that). Verdans have a bonus of +2 to CHA and +1 to CON, so I made the following point buy selection: STR 08, DEX 14, CON 14, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 15 (+ Racial Bonus = STR 08, DEX 14, CON 15, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 17)
I was thinking about the well known combo of Pact of the Blade + Thirsting blade + Lifedrinker + Eldritch smite + Improved pact weapon, but I dont want to be the guy that does a lot of damage and anything else. Considering that I dont trust much in my party's CC capabilitys (because in our 4-man party, 2 of them just like everything damage-only related, besides our druid) I was thinking in actually taking Pact of the Chain + Investment of the Chain master + Quasit/Pseudodragon/Sprite to be able to maintain our foes poisoned, make some of them unconcious, use the help action more often in attacks and just be more versatile with spells, CC and etc.
Im not focusing in dealing a lot of damage, so my main damage source would be Green-flame blade/Booming blade + Hexblade's Curse (+ Hex Spell maybe). Also, my ASIs may be Resilient (+1 CON, lvl 4), Fey Touched(+1 CHA, lvl 8) and Warcaster(because of shield and extensive use of concentration spells, lvl 12). These are the invocation I was thinking to pick up: Gift of the ever-living ones, Devil's Sight, Sculptor of flesh, Whispers of the grave, Ghostly gaze.(at lvl 12 STR 08, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 08 WIS 12 CHA 18, 96 HP)
All of that said, I want help to let me see if my build is bad or not, if there are better options to do what I want(even if its using pact of blade or tome) and what are your ideas in that matter.
Edit: Also, forgot to say that Survivability is one of my goals too, so Im taking spells like Vampiric Touch, Shield, Shadow Of Moil, Blur, etc.
A couple of things you need to watch out for, while Warcaster does help with the sword and board style spellcaster, you need to be careful with spells that require a Material component as you do not have Improved Pact of the Blade as a spell focus so if you want to do a mid battle Polymorph or something similar then you will need to put your weapon away first.
A good defensive invocation is Tomb of Levistus. While it does cost you 1 turn, the safety net it offers is almost unmatched and is always a nice trick to have up your sleeve.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I will start with a Ruby of the War Mage already, so no worries about material components
I'm also taking the component pouch to store those with cost.
Best build I know of for Warlock tanking doesn't use Hexblade. Hexblades are built for murder, not tanking, really.
Here's the original, but you can make it work with other choices - in particular it uses a race not available in most settings.
Mark of Healing Halfling Life Cleric 1 / Celestial Chainlock 19
Starting Stats: 17 Cha / 14 Con / 14 Dex / 13 Wis / 9 Str / 8 Int
--You can juggle the odd numbers around depending on what half-feats you plan on taking; the Str9 is just a way to spend the last ability point, feel free to drop to Str8.
Invocations: Agonizing Blast, Repelling Blast, Gift of the Ever-Living Ones, Devil’s Sight, Eldritch Mind, Grasp of Hadar, Lance of Lethargy, Witch Sight
The real point here is that Life Cleric + Celestial + Chain = all of the hit points forever.
It's alright. The Warlock isn't really designed to be a tanking class, and won't be optimized as much as a Fighter, Barbaian, or Paladin could be, but if you're cool with that, go for it.
The Warlock doesn't have much in the ability to draw agro, so you'll have to get creative to convince the enemies that they should be attacking you instead of the squishy, high-damage-dealing spellcasters behind you. You can do some of this with roleplay if the DM is up for it, but you don't have any mechanical abilities that penalize the enemy for attacking your allies. But one major way of making the enemy deal with you is being a big damage dealer... If you were impossible to hurt, but didn't deal out much damage, they'd just ignore you, but if they think they can take you down, and you prove yourself to be a major threat on the battlefield, they're more likely to target you. And Booming Blade is good for penalizing them for moving away from you, in addition to the opportunity attack.
Your hit die is a d8, so you're not going to have a mind-blowing number of hit points, and your best way of making those last is AC, but I don't see where you addressed AC in your build. And since you only have a +2 in Dexterity, that means you'll need to be wearing Medium Armor, preferably a Breastplate, which will give you AC18 with your shield.
Going Chainmaster for the sprite that uses your save DC to knock out enemies as a bonus action is perfect if you take the Investment of the Chain Master as one of your invocations. And if you take the Gift of the Ever Living Ones, your Cleric's healing on you is always maximized, which should significantly improve your survivability.
The warlock is a strange class that a lot of people do not understand. Earlier D&D can be split into Spells, Fighting, and Abilities. Spells had daily limits that shared a common resource (spell slots), Fighting was unlimited but easy to understand, Abilities were either unlimited or had a separate limit not linking all of them together. This means there were no people that had always on magical abilities.
By this very nature, spell users could NOT be front liners. The kind of limit they used meant all spells had to be powerful, and that they would eventually run out of them. Spell casters could not be constantly surrounded by something similar to Platemail, nor could they have a single magical attack that they used the way fighters used swords. They could not be Tanks or really Damage Dealers, because that would make them too powerful given the spell slot system. They had to be utility rather than offense (DPR) or defense (tank).
Enter the Warlock. Here they reduced the # of spells tremendously. Now the spells they used become the rare event. Instead they were given invocations and pacts. These things could be x/day, OR they could be always on, allowing for someone to use magic the way a fighter uses swords and armor - something always on, capable of dishing out damage.
I think with Eldritch Blast (with invocations) and Pact of the Blade (with a good Patron) they made a very good DPR, but they never really made a very good Tank. They tried with a few Warlock only defensive spells, but that is again limited. Should have made a good invocation or Pact focused on defense.
Personally, I would make a new Pact designed to help more with Defense. Does not have to be straight Armor, could be something like Arcane Ward of the Abjurer. It should interact with invocations to make it better as you level up.
Have you considered Genielock? Dao Genielocks get bludgeoning resistance and can cast Wall of Stone for control purposes. You do a little extra bludgeoning damage in combat too. If you prefer other resistance types, there are other options.
Starting at level 12 means you are only two levels from limited wish. Conjure up any CC spell or defensive buff under 6th level with that, once every few days. It’s not going to be useful every short rest, but for a boss fight you can drop Stoneskin or Globe of Invulnerability on yourself without material components.
His main goal is tank, genielock does not have any tanking abilities besides the Bludgening resistance, which is not good enough. He choose Hexblade in part because of the Medium Armor + shields. Doing so requires him to take a race that grants Medium Armor at the very minimum.
For a Tank Warlock you have 3 choices, none of which are ideal:
I don't think this concept quite works as a "Tank", but it does work as a frontline fighter who will do well with a group of clever players. I'd say your Chainmaster idea probably won't pay off as well for this concept as your Pact of the Blade concept... Investment of the Chainmaster does give your familiar a bit more survivability, but one AOE spell and they're gonna be out of the fight.
I think, instead of Warcaster, you could just take the Eldritch Mind Invocation, freeing you up to take a different feat to improve your survivability. There are a few options that come to mind...
Medium Armor master is a quick way to just get that extra point of AC, but you'll have to shift around your stats a bit to get to 16 DEX to get the most out of it. But on the plus side, you can wear half-plate without messing with your stealth attempts.
Tough will help you pretty bluntly by just giving you a bunch of extra HP with no extra investment of time or energy... you're just harder to kill.
However, what I think would actually be the most useful for this build is Inspiring Leader. As a Warlock, you're going to want to short rest regularly anyway, so why not give out an additional 16 temp HP to yourself and all your allies as part of that short rest? Now everyone's a little harder to kill, helping not just yourself, but your whole party. Now you just need to think of what kind of speech your character would make... it can be something that either gets handwaved or could lead to some really fun roleplay moments.
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Hexblade is a striker not a tank. A tank has a decent ac (but not too decent), does enough damage to be a threat in battle, has a way to make the enemy focus on themselves and not the rest of their party, and most importantly has the survivability to take hit after hit over and over without dropping.
The primary is a v human / custom lineage / bugbear Barbarian Ancestral Guardian. Feats are polearm master, sentinel, and great weapon master. An AC of 18-20 means that they are hitable so that enemy combatants don’t just simply ignore them. 15ft reach with sentinel and polearm master means owning the battlefield and doing good damage. The D12 hitdice combined with rage means that they don‘t go down easily. Downside is the amount of time it takes to come fully on line (level 8 or 12).
Runeknight fighter is a good secondary, comes on line by level 6 at the latest, but less hit points. Or a Paladin. Both make decent tanks.
The hexblade hits hard for sure, can have a decent AC too, but a D8 hitdice makes them a glass cannon. It only takes a few hits and they are down. They also have no mechanic to lure enemies to attack them instead of the squishies.
So there are several issues here;
1. With only 1 arm you can’t use a two handed weapon, or two weapons, or a sword and shield. Really surprised nobody has mentioned that.
2. With medium armour and a 14 dex you have a max ac of 17 in half plate without magic items. This is on the low side of decent. You would need to use spells like haste, darkness, shadow of moil, mirror image, etc in every fight to even give you a chance.
3. Your Con is decent at 16 but D8 means an average of 8hp per level. As a tank thats low. You need to aim for at least 100 by level 10. You also have no way to reliably mitigate the damage such as from rage.
4. Your damage output is decent but you have no way to make them focus on you. In all likelihood you will get 1 or 2 fighting you and the rest will simply ignore you and go for the other characters. With such a poor strength and a borderline dex one of them will just grapple you and you’re doing nothing meaningful for the rest of the fight.
So, yes your character is playable, but you are likely to be very disappointed in its performance as a tank.
If the OP is willing to change to a mountain dwarf, then the build can get medium armor without Hexblade. That will allow a Genielock or Undeadlock build that might be a little more tank-y.