UA Hexblade 2025 Feedback

Quote from SmiteMakesRight_3_5 >>

Quote from Frachese >>

The 2024 druid has proficiency in light armor and shields. The swords bard from XGE has medium armor proficiency, but not shields. Those are the only examples that come to mind, though.

Swords bard is 2014 so I don't think is fair to include in a discussion of 2024 design patterns. Still, I missed that and the Druid. Maybe I was looking for classes that had Medium Armor proficiency without Shields and didn't check all of the subclasses. After researching it, I house ruled that Moderately Armored gives Shield Proficiency and didn't change Lightly Armored.

 

 That's how my group decided to run it as well - any armor proficiency feat grants shield proficiency if the character doesn't already have it.

Quote from Xukuri >>

Quote from Iteration152 >>

Quote from Xukuri >>

Make it Medium Armor and Shield training. They're not the same.

 Directed at who and in what context?

If aimed at my revised version of the UA Hexblade, I very much intended to only provide Medium Armor Training and not Shield Training.

 
Well, it's your build, so you can make it how you want.

But the 2014 Hexblade comes with Shield Training (proficiency), and I think it should be included.

(My obligatory rant about how weird it is that the 2024 feats for gaining training in Medium and Heavy Armor don't include Shield Training.)

 That's a fair opinion to have.

As for feats and Shield training, it is accessible with the Lightly Armored feat that grants training with Light Armor and Shields. I don't think this makes any sense, and I don't think there would be anything wrong with Moderately Armored and Heavily Armored to also provide Shield training, just in case you don't have it through your other means.

Another piece of rant to add about those feats is how seldom they are picked because they provide no additional benefit, and a feat that provides less than a part of a multiclassing level is really really pressed to be viable. However providing something additional would also mean that classes that got the proficiency through class, would feel like inferior users of that armor, or would have incentive to use a feat to acquire something they already have in order to gain the other parts of the feat (like if you would imagine the Heavily Armored feat and Heavy Armor Master feats were combined).

All in all, proficiencies like these probably deserves to be handled differently than feats, but in the name of simplicity, we don't. And 5e's popularity is in large part due to its attempt to become more simple.
(Still, here's to hoping that an eventual 6e will change things up between multiclassing, proficiencies, and feats - alas that's likely many many years from now and I probably wont be playing by then due to shifted priorities.)

As I've pointed out (ranted about) elsewhere, the way 2024 armor Feats are worded is just dumb. Characters with Training in Light Armor but but Shields have to burn the Lightly Armored Feat just to get Shield training, and then would have to wait another 4 levels to take Moderately Armored to get training in Medium armor.

Given that most campaigns don't go much beyond 10th or 12th level - which means all non-fighter characters will have, at most, three feats to choose, this means burning 30% of that on a Feat that gives you training in armor you're already trained in.

It's dumb.

I had my hand at a redesign in the warlock thread if anyone wants to check that out

They very much left the blade out of the Hexblade.

Quote from astajanov1917 >>

Sorry if I'm late to the party—or necroposting—but what an absolute HORROR of a subclass, indeed!

All Hex, no blade. I've never made an account on D&D Beyond before, but I feel a civic duty (okay, I'm exaggerating, but you'll get my point lol) to say this: as a dedicated Warlock player (9 out of 10 of my characters are different kinds of Warlocks), I'm not going to touch this Hex"blade", not even with a stick.

Just another "one-spell class". No shields, no medium armor, no Hexblade's Curse. Just full hex twists. Fun twists, tbh, but not for a "blade" Warlock. Almost all of these features are actually MUCH BETTER with Eldritch Blast than with any weapon. There's absolutely no reason to be a melee fighter—quite the opposite, in fact: staying as far away from the fight as possible is now a MUST, since you have to keep your concentration at all costs and all the features just require Hex. There's not even a reason to pick Pact of the Blade for this "all Hex, no blade" subclass.

There were so many interesting tweaks and improvements that could have been made to the original Hexblade that, instead, this new version feels like a total disaster compared to what the Hexblade concept originally stood for. I was really hoping it would get some proper updates in the 5.5 ruleset, but god, now I wish I'd never read about this complete identity overhaul of the class.

This "no-Hexblade" might be an interesting subclass on its own, but as far as a true Hexblade goes, I'm going to completely ignore this "update". I'm full on 2024 rules. I love the new changes to most of the classes, but this? OMG, no thanks. I'm still going to play the 2014 Hexblade. I don't care if it's not "updated" or is underpowered—it's the class that was intended to be a Hexblade. You know, the Warlock that actually fights with BLADES in melee.

 

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 To be honest, they need to just stop convincing themselves that there is a way to design a class or subclass around a 1rst level concentration spell with poor scaling that is both effective and fun to play.  There isn't.  The next try won't be where it finally works.  Stop doing it.

Quote from astajanov1917 >>

All Hex, no blade.

The Blade was moved into Pact of the Blade. I think in the update, their purpose was partially to create a 2024 class with the same name to lock out the 2014 version.

I don't know what they were doing with the defenses though. I am not really a fan of sub/classes that are expected to rely on temporary, instant or short duration, defense buffs.