A weakling turned into a warrior through magic. (Honestly they are a better ranger than a ranger!)
In other words, Elric. (it's like people don't even read the classics anymore)
Which is a fine class, it just not fit on the class with tome, chain and talisman all of which are just casters at heart. If you build the class taking blade into account you invariable are dumping the other 2/3(3/4) of the pacts styles in the gutter, if you don't blade is dumped in the gutter, if you try to find some balance they all end up like crap.
Except they aren't they are Arcane Rangers at heart, relying on EB + EB-Invocations for 90% of their turn in combat. Chain is your beastmaster, Tome is your exploration/utility centric version - the explorer of Eldritch mysteries, and Talisman is your support Artificer-type. Each of them should get invocations that build on their theme that don't suck as well. An there is so much real-estate now available in the Invocation system since half the current invocations could (and should) be straight up removed and replaced with something new.
Except none of that is accurate.
Chain. tome, and talisman don't really change the warlocks play style much at all. It is still just played mostly as a spell caster. Sure eldritch blast is used a lot But it will likely be upgraded for battlefield control effects similar to found in low level spells. But they would cast a solid concentration spell, use eldritch blast and if needed drop another large spell in a fight. That is not a arcane ranger.
The one version plays like a crappy ranger with blade, with pact they play like a crappy wizard with a good familiar but that is no where near like a pet class or something, and tome plays like a crappy mage with a couple lame rituals. Being able to change them daily sounds cool until you look and see there are only 12 and 1/2 of them are things you will likely never use.
A weakling turned into a warrior through magic. (Honestly they are a better ranger than a ranger!)
In other words, Elric. (it's like people don't even read the classics anymore)
Which is a fine class, it just not fit on the class with tome, chain and talisman all of which are just casters at heart. If you build the class taking blade into account you invariable are dumping the other 2/3(3/4) of the pacts styles in the gutter, if you don't blade is dumped in the gutter, if you try to find some balance they all end up like crap.
wizards is not likely at all to drop support for the "coolest" leg of their wobbly stool. they could make pact of the blade a lvl1 anybody-feat tomorrow and they'd still support it with warlock class invocations and such.
and why not? invocations for melee survivability don't have to throw off the power balance of caster locks. something around stealing health, renewing temp hp, or cursing their target's damage rolls shouldn't throw back line casters out of whack.
The coolest leg was only used for dips and likely still will be.
A weakling turned into a warrior through magic. (Honestly they are a better ranger than a ranger!)
In other words, Elric. (it's like people don't even read the classics anymore)
Which is a fine class, it just not fit on the class with tome, chain and talisman all of which are just casters at heart. If you build the class taking blade into account you invariable are dumping the other 2/3(3/4) of the pacts styles in the gutter, if you don't blade is dumped in the gutter, if you try to find some balance they all end up like crap.
Except they aren't they are Arcane Rangers at heart, relying on EB + EB-Invocations for 90% of their turn in combat. Chain is your beastmaster, Tome is your exploration/utility centric version - the explorer of Eldritch mysteries, and Talisman is your support Artificer-type. Each of them should get invocations that build on their theme that don't suck as well. An there is so much real-estate now available in the Invocation system since half the current invocations could (and should) be straight up removed and replaced with something new.
Except none of that is accurate.
Chain. tome, and talisman don't really change the warlocks play style much at all. It is still just played mostly as a spell caster. Sure eldritch blast is used a lot But it will likely be upgraded for battlefield control effects similar to found in low level spells. But they would cast a solid concentration spell, use eldritch blast and if needed drop another large spell in a fight. That is not a arcane ranger.
shooting a[n invisible] longbow nearly every round makes them an archer. access to a damage boost kick-me sign, battlefield control spells, and some barrage/volley spells upgrades the comparison to ranger. granted, the hording of pact slots was a 5E thing leading to the archer playstyle so this might be different in the UA. are we still talking about the UA?
The one version plays like a crappy ranger with blade, with pact they play like a crappy wizard with a good familiar but that is no where near like a pet class or something, and tome plays like a crappy mage with a couple lame rituals. Being able to change them daily sounds cool until you look and see there are only 12 and 1/2 of them are things you will likely never use.
what if they leaned in on the melee aspect with some potent touch-spells around level 3 or so? call them hexes, treat them like diseased smites. include a hexer Disengage invocation (or some other way to blunt counter attacks and attacks of opportunity against the one wimp in melee (without accidentally providing amazing group synergy)). now you've given blade and chain a reason to exist. give tome an ability to use a touch-spell at range in exchange for concentrating on their handwriting for a round (and releasing as a free action at the beginning of their next turn). locket locks can watch everyone else have fun.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
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But they would cast a solid concentration spell, use eldritch blast and if needed drop another large spell in a fight. That is not a arcane ranger.
So they would cast a spell like Hunter's Mark/Hex, Spike Growth/Hunger of Hadar, Conjure Animals/Summon Greater Demon, and then attack 2-3x per round with a ranged attack while keeping at a distance away from the enemies. Yeah that's not like a Ranger at all (sarcasm).
What's this obsession with making the Pact of the Tome... Slow? Is it just because rituals are slower than normal spells? You can't be wasting turns in combat. That's not gonna ever be worth it.
---
The Blade Pact could get the Eldritch Blast invocation treatment, the way it did in 3.5e: "When you cast Eldritch Blast, you can change the range of one or more of the blasts to 5ft. This is called a Wacky Pact Smack Attack Hack (WPSAH). Wacky Pact Smack Attack Hacks are melee spell attacks, instead of ranged spell attacks, but otherwise continue to follow the rules of the Eldritch Blast spell. Also, on your turn, you can form magical energy around your spell focus for 1 minute, allowing you to use your WPSAH to make attacks of opportunity during that time." Look, now the damage scaling stays the same as regular EB, no shenanigans required. Extra attacks at the exact same rate, damage is exactly the same, and the other EB invocations can now be used in different ways.
You'd never want to use it, though, because melee inherently sucks in this game. You have to add special benefits to melee combat, like Divine Smite, in order for anyone to even consider it. So let's pretend opportunity attacks and not having close-quarters disadvantage is good enough for the entry-level invocation (debatable, but let's roll with it): later ones can give you the special stuff like smites, disengage tools, or numerical bonuses.
Is this good? Does anyone like this? Cuz it feels kinda stupid to me.
---
As an aside, if you look at the old monster designs, you'll see a trend where their ranged attacks are usually weaker than their melee ones. Modern monsters don't follow this trend so much. And I think it's the same with PC options, but I'm not certain. It's less pronounced, at least.
What's this obsession with making the Pact of the Tome... Slow? Is it just because rituals are slower than normal spells? You can't be wasting turns in combat. That's not gonna ever be worth it.
...
i'm assuming melee range spells would be trading the safety of long range for some other strong qualities (like control or increased damage). so, then adding range back in (for the tomer) would require kicking out some other benefit. the alternative to making it 'slow' would be giving it a number of casts per short restencounterdaybathroom break long rest but tracking so many little once-a-whatever is boring. and worse, uncreative!
edit: "...give tome an ability to use a touch-spell at range in exchange for concentrating on their handwriting for a round..."
also, it just occurred to me that i didn't/don't see my suggestion as a slow action (😞) but rather a fast ritual (😊). i thought it sounded like a boost in combat utility. shrug.
Here's the conflict that I see in the Warlock design. They're supposed to be able to use a weapon if you want to make your Warlock that way. But they can't be as good at it as a dedicated weapon user because, well, they have magic. It'd be too much. So you hold back some aspect of weapon use. Right now they don't get the best armor or HP, and they don't get the third attack, and they don't get the special abilities of the weapons. But Blade Warlock players will always say, "this is bogus, how can you say you're letting me use a weapon when I can't even do X," and it'll keep getting the green light. Until pretty soon they're just as good at weapons as the weapon users, plus they get magic. Either that, or the Blade players will just not get what they want, and they'll be upset, and the Pact of the Blade is garbage in the eyes of the players.
Get the Blade Pact out of here and you solve a lot of the Warlock's problems. Leave the cursed or sentient swords to, y'know, the actual cursed or sentient swords that already exist in the game. Leave the Charisma-based weapon attack multiclass cheese in the dumpster where it belongs and stop crippling the class to make up for it. Make the Warlock a damn caster already.
Putting aside that the bolded part is clear slippery slope fallacy, have we even seen anyone asking for Bladelocks to get weapon masteries baseline? Sure they might bake that into the new Hexblade in some way or even make an invocation that lets Bladelocks interact with the mastery system, but (a) there's no sign of either yet, and (b) even if they do it, that would be a considerable opportunity cost for the class if it locks them into specific invocations or a specific subclass.
If you want to, as you put it, "get the Blade Pact out of here" then you're free to ban it at your table; leave my books alone.
But Blade Warlock players will always say, "this is bogus, how can you say you're letting me use a weapon when I can't even do X," and it'll keep getting the green light. Until pretty soon they're just as good at weapons as the weapon users, plus they get magic. Either that, or the Blade players will just not get what they want, and they'll be upset, and the Pact of the Blade is garbage in the eyes of the players.
Putting aside that the bolded part is clear slippery slope fallacy,
Fair. Let's come back to this when the next Warlock UA releases, though. My argument will still be a fallacy, but I'll seem really smart.
have we even seen anyone asking for Bladelocks to get weapon masteries baseline?
There's hardly a need: At level 4, they can pick up the Weapon Master feat and unlock it for whichever weapon they prefer.
If you want to, as you put it, "get the Blade Pact out of here" then you're free to ban it at your table; leave my books alone.
Luckily for you, I'm not on the One D&D design team. I'd make a lot more drastic changes than just that, let me tell ya. Still, I think there's some logic in what I said. SAD-blading will never not invite multiclass cheese, and SAD-blading will never make internal sense. Its only saving graces are 1) some people LIKE cheese, and 2) magic swords are cool.
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
The way people are playing the game now, everybody has too many spell slots. These resources are designed to be influential enough that it's okay that you only have X of them during a long adventuring day -- but people aren't doing long adventuring days. They're taking those X resources which were meant to last, say, 6 encounters, and using them all in just one or two encounters on a regular basis. The way people are playing the game now, casters are overpowered as hell.
Wizards has been trying to push the "multiple small fights over the course of a day consuming your resources" model since at least 3e (AD&D didn't really have encounter guidelines), and people have been failing to play that way for just as long (and while they're at it... adventures aren't written that way either). At a certain point, they should really just give up and balance for how people actually play, not for some model of how people are supposed to play.
This is pretty much spot on. They need to write material for the players they have, not the ones they want. At the end of the day, the way things I see run are, no matter what the DM tries to do, eventually the wizard plops down and says "nope not without a long rest" and everyone else gets in line.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
But Blade Warlock players will always say, "this is bogus, how can you say you're letting me use a weapon when I can't even do X," and it'll keep getting the green light. Until pretty soon they're just as good at weapons as the weapon users, plus they get magic. Either that, or the Blade players will just not get what they want, and they'll be upset, and the Pact of the Blade is garbage in the eyes of the players.
Putting aside that the bolded part is clear slippery slope fallacy,
Fair. Let's come back to this when the next Warlock UA releases, though. My argument will still be a fallacy, but I'll seem really smart.
have we even seen anyone asking for Bladelocks to get weapon masteries baseline?
There's hardly a need: At level 4, they can pick up the Weapon Master feat and unlock it for whichever weapon they prefer.
If you want to, as you put it, "get the Blade Pact out of here" then you're free to ban it at your table; leave my books alone.
Luckily for you, I'm not on the One D&D design team. I'd make a lot more drastic changes than just that, let me tell ya. Still, I think there's some logic in what I said. SAD-blading will never not invite multiclass cheese, and SAD-blading will never make internal sense. Its only saving graces are 1) some people LIKE cheese, and 2) magic swords are cool.
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
But what if it did?
Honestly, min-maxxers crying about MADness is a major problem in the game in general. There was nothing wrong with the dwarf wizard who had to sacrifice a WHOLE +1 to get medium armor out of the box, but they cried until Wizards caved and just let people assign their stats wherever they wanted. In that respect, the old blade lock was not broken. They worked quite nicely by just pumping dex and using a rapier or a bow. Bladelocks worked JUST FINE with a low caster stat. They weren't supposed to be nukers anyways, but they cried "muh majicks" and we got the hexblade. Which in itself was fine, except it enabled SAD gishes with paladin, bard and sorcerer which had no business using cha for their melee stat.
Now, with this rework we're adding clerics to that list. It's a mistake for them to add the ability to use your casting stat for melee attacks at level 1 of warlock. While I like the idea of bladelock, the 1 level dip for SAD gishes should die screaming.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
But Blade Warlock players will always say, "this is bogus, how can you say you're letting me use a weapon when I can't even do X," and it'll keep getting the green light. Until pretty soon they're just as good at weapons as the weapon users, plus they get magic. Either that, or the Blade players will just not get what they want, and they'll be upset, and the Pact of the Blade is garbage in the eyes of the players.
Putting aside that the bolded part is clear slippery slope fallacy,
Fair. Let's come back to this when the next Warlock UA releases, though. My argument will still be a fallacy, but I'll seem really smart.
have we even seen anyone asking for Bladelocks to get weapon masteries baseline?
There's hardly a need: At level 4, they can pick up the Weapon Master feat and unlock it for whichever weapon they prefer.
If you want to, as you put it, "get the Blade Pact out of here" then you're free to ban it at your table; leave my books alone.
Luckily for you, I'm not on the One D&D design team. I'd make a lot more drastic changes than just that, let me tell ya. Still, I think there's some logic in what I said. SAD-blading will never not invite multiclass cheese, and SAD-blading will never make internal sense. Its only saving graces are 1) some people LIKE cheese, and 2) magic swords are cool.
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
But what if it did?
5e doesn't advertise your own magic sword for your character unless you're a warlock. a lesson for all of us: ask more questions. how many times have you walked (or ran!) away from an interaction with a spooky NPC... when you could have been bartering? reading between the lines, seems like every non-warlock could have been tromping around with mist-blades and floating skull pets if only they'd bothered to make minor pacts. pacts, deals, bargains, contracts that a warlock surely doesn't have a monopoly over, yes? and perhaps every warlock-warlock could have been sparing badguys and binding them to their service or else ransoming them away for additional power. so wasteful! so much for reduce, reuse, reward for transfer of fealty of lesser foes.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
Or Artificer. You can make your own magic sword if you're an Artificer.
Oh, it's an option for Forge Clerics, too: making +1 weapons or armor.
And, unlike a Warlock's magic sword, the above two can be used by someone other than the creator/weapon-enchanter.
And ... technically, so can a Creation Bard (turning a mundane weapon into a Dancing Item, which can make magical melee attack, comparable in result to a Dancing Sword).
Or if you read the rules. There's rules for making your own magic items (incl. swords), some vague (in the DMG I think it was) and some more concrete (in Tasha's Cauldron). Though, this requires downtime, which might not fit into some campaigns.
Though, admittedly, nothing as concrete or fiddly as what was in 3e.... but that's not necessarily a bad thing. (I miss the very concrete nature of the 3e rules for it, but I wouldn't want 5e to become the bloated fiddly mess than 3e was ... and became worse about as time went on).
Luckily for you, I'm not on the One D&D design team. I'd make a lot more drastic changes than just that, let me tell ya. Still, I think there's some logic in what I said. SAD-blading will never not invite multiclass cheese, and SAD-blading will never make internal sense. Its only saving graces are 1) some people LIKE cheese, and 2) magic swords are cool.
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
But what if it did?
Lucky me 😜
I'm not sure why SAD-blading doesn't make internal sense, 5e has it all over the place. Battlesmith, Bladesinger, Hex Warrior, Shillelagh... seems a bit odd to consider it nonsensical now.
Multiclassing, even dipping, for this capability is not cheese on its own, in fact we have a whole separate thread around the evils of such a dip where I articulated previously why the capability itself wasn't the problem - the problem was Hexblade specifically, as a particularly egregious example of that.
If we're including Shillelagh, SAD-blading is also somewhat built in to spells like Flame Blade and Shadowblade. (more so shadowblade than flame blade, but they're very similar spells)
And, to an extent (but more abstractly), you can include Mordenkainen's Sword in that category as well. Especially the 3e edition: so the idea of making a "melee weapon" attack with your spell stat is older than 5e.
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Except none of that is accurate.
Chain. tome, and talisman don't really change the warlocks play style much at all. It is still just played mostly as a spell caster. Sure eldritch blast is used a lot But it will likely be upgraded for battlefield control effects similar to found in low level spells. But they would cast a solid concentration spell, use eldritch blast and if needed drop another large spell in a fight. That is not a arcane ranger.
The one version plays like a crappy ranger with blade, with pact they play like a crappy wizard with a good familiar but that is no where near like a pet class or something, and tome plays like a crappy mage with a couple lame rituals. Being able to change them daily sounds cool until you look and see there are only 12 and 1/2 of them are things you will likely never use.
The coolest leg was only used for dips and likely still will be.
shooting a[n invisible] longbow nearly every round makes them an archer. access to a damage boost kick-me sign, battlefield control spells, and some barrage/volley spells upgrades the comparison to ranger. granted, the hording of pact slots was a 5E thing leading to the archer playstyle so this might be different in the UA. are we still talking about the UA?
what if they leaned in on the melee aspect with some potent touch-spells around level 3 or so? call them hexes, treat them like diseased smites. include a hexer Disengage invocation (or some other way to blunt counter attacks and attacks of opportunity against the one wimp in melee (without accidentally providing amazing group synergy)). now you've given blade and chain a reason to exist. give tome an ability to use a touch-spell at range in exchange for concentrating on their handwriting for a round (and releasing as a free action at the beginning of their next turn). locket locks can watch everyone else have fun.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
So they would cast a spell like Hunter's Mark/Hex, Spike Growth/Hunger of Hadar, Conjure Animals/Summon Greater Demon, and then attack 2-3x per round with a ranged attack while keeping at a distance away from the enemies. Yeah that's not like a Ranger at all (sarcasm).
What's this obsession with making the Pact of the Tome... Slow? Is it just because rituals are slower than normal spells? You can't be wasting turns in combat. That's not gonna ever be worth it.
---
The Blade Pact could get the Eldritch Blast invocation treatment, the way it did in 3.5e: "When you cast Eldritch Blast, you can change the range of one or more of the blasts to 5ft. This is called a Wacky Pact Smack Attack Hack (WPSAH). Wacky Pact Smack Attack Hacks are melee spell attacks, instead of ranged spell attacks, but otherwise continue to follow the rules of the Eldritch Blast spell. Also, on your turn, you can form magical energy around your spell focus for 1 minute, allowing you to use your WPSAH to make attacks of opportunity during that time." Look, now the damage scaling stays the same as regular EB, no shenanigans required. Extra attacks at the exact same rate, damage is exactly the same, and the other EB invocations can now be used in different ways.
You'd never want to use it, though, because melee inherently sucks in this game. You have to add special benefits to melee combat, like Divine Smite, in order for anyone to even consider it. So let's pretend opportunity attacks and not having close-quarters disadvantage is good enough for the entry-level invocation (debatable, but let's roll with it): later ones can give you the special stuff like smites, disengage tools, or numerical bonuses.
Is this good? Does anyone like this? Cuz it feels kinda stupid to me.
---
As an aside, if you look at the old monster designs, you'll see a trend where their ranged attacks are usually weaker than their melee ones. Modern monsters don't follow this trend so much. And I think it's the same with PC options, but I'm not certain. It's less pronounced, at least.
i'm assuming melee range spells would be trading the safety of long range for some other strong qualities (like control or increased damage). so, then adding range back in (for the tomer) would require kicking out some other benefit. the alternative to making it 'slow' would be giving it a number of casts per
short restencounterdaybathroom breaklong rest but tracking so many little once-a-whatever is boring. and worse, uncreative!edit: "...give tome an ability to use a touch-spell at range in exchange for concentrating on their handwriting for a round..."
also, it just occurred to me that i didn't/don't see my suggestion as a slow action (😞) but rather a fast ritual (😊). i thought it sounded like a boost in combat utility. shrug.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Putting aside that the bolded part is clear slippery slope fallacy, have we even seen anyone asking for Bladelocks to get weapon masteries baseline? Sure they might bake that into the new Hexblade in some way or even make an invocation that lets Bladelocks interact with the mastery system, but (a) there's no sign of either yet, and (b) even if they do it, that would be a considerable opportunity cost for the class if it locks them into specific invocations or a specific subclass.
If you want to, as you put it, "get the Blade Pact out of here" then you're free to ban it at your table; leave my books alone.
Fair. Let's come back to this when the next Warlock UA releases, though. My argument will still be a fallacy, but I'll seem really smart.
There's hardly a need: At level 4, they can pick up the Weapon Master feat and unlock it for whichever weapon they prefer.
Luckily for you, I'm not on the One D&D design team. I'd make a lot more drastic changes than just that, let me tell ya. Still, I think there's some logic in what I said. SAD-blading will never not invite multiclass cheese, and SAD-blading will never make internal sense. Its only saving graces are 1) some people LIKE cheese, and 2) magic swords are cool.
5e doesn't let you make up your own magic sword for your character unless you're a Warlock.
But what if it did?
This is pretty much spot on. They need to write material for the players they have, not the ones they want. At the end of the day, the way things I see run are, no matter what the DM tries to do, eventually the wizard plops down and says "nope not without a long rest" and everyone else gets in line.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Honestly, min-maxxers crying about MADness is a major problem in the game in general. There was nothing wrong with the dwarf wizard who had to sacrifice a WHOLE +1 to get medium armor out of the box, but they cried until Wizards caved and just let people assign their stats wherever they wanted. In that respect, the old blade lock was not broken. They worked quite nicely by just pumping dex and using a rapier or a bow. Bladelocks worked JUST FINE with a low caster stat. They weren't supposed to be nukers anyways, but they cried "muh majicks" and we got the hexblade. Which in itself was fine, except it enabled SAD gishes with paladin, bard and sorcerer which had no business using cha for their melee stat.
Now, with this rework we're adding clerics to that list. It's a mistake for them to add the ability to use your casting stat for melee attacks at level 1 of warlock. While I like the idea of bladelock, the 1 level dip for SAD gishes should die screaming.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
5e doesn't advertise your own magic sword for your character unless you're a warlock. a lesson for all of us: ask more questions. how many times have you walked (or ran!) away from an interaction with a spooky NPC... when you could have been bartering? reading between the lines, seems like every non-warlock could have been tromping around with mist-blades and floating skull pets if only they'd bothered to make minor pacts. pacts, deals, bargains, contracts that a warlock surely doesn't have a monopoly over, yes? and perhaps every warlock-warlock could have been sparing badguys and binding them to their service or else ransoming them away for additional power. so wasteful! so much for reduce, reuse, reward for transfer of fealty of lesser foes.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Or Artificer. You can make your own magic sword if you're an Artificer.
Oh, it's an option for Forge Clerics, too: making +1 weapons or armor.
And, unlike a Warlock's magic sword, the above two can be used by someone other than the creator/weapon-enchanter.
And ... technically, so can a Creation Bard (turning a mundane weapon into a Dancing Item, which can make magical melee attack, comparable in result to a Dancing Sword).
Or if you read the rules. There's rules for making your own magic items (incl. swords), some vague (in the DMG I think it was) and some more concrete (in Tasha's Cauldron). Though, this requires downtime, which might not fit into some campaigns.
Though, admittedly, nothing as concrete or fiddly as what was in 3e.... but that's not necessarily a bad thing. (I miss the very concrete nature of the 3e rules for it, but I wouldn't want 5e to become the bloated fiddly mess than 3e was ... and became worse about as time went on).
Someone somewhere on the entire internet will, sure! You can find someone to champion literally any cause under the sun.
Right, so it's a feat tax they have to pay that the martials don't, for a worse version of the same ability. ...What's the problem again?
Lucky me 😜
I'm not sure why SAD-blading doesn't make internal sense, 5e has it all over the place. Battlesmith, Bladesinger, Hex Warrior, Shillelagh... seems a bit odd to consider it nonsensical now.
Multiclassing, even dipping, for this capability is not cheese on its own, in fact we have a whole separate thread around the evils of such a dip where I articulated previously why the capability itself wasn't the problem - the problem was Hexblade specifically, as a particularly egregious example of that.
If we're including Shillelagh, SAD-blading is also somewhat built in to spells like Flame Blade and Shadowblade. (more so shadowblade than flame blade, but they're very similar spells)
And, to an extent (but more abstractly), you can include Mordenkainen's Sword in that category as well. Especially the 3e edition: so the idea of making a "melee weapon" attack with your spell stat is older than 5e.