UA Hexblade 2025 Feedback

I stated it was a problem was specific to the 5e warlock. When you got both medium armor and shields and a damage bonus from hexblade’s curse that was still effective on eldritch blast. It made you both the best melee build and the best range build. This version is designed to force you into melee range to benefit from most of your features, so a small static increase to armor should be fine. The small static increase to AC shouldn’t make you an objectively better Eldritch blaster like the larger increase and minimum loss of features at range did in 5e. Obviously you could still just stay back and Eldritch blast, but you would be giving up parts of the features offered at every level.

They dont get the same AC unless the creature attacking them is within 10ft. Any ranged enemy that attacks them wouldn’t active accursed shield even if they are engaged with another enemy. This design was intentional. If you want to be a high defense Eldritch blaster you need to go get shield training somewhere else, and most of ways to get shield training would are also giving you redundant armor training.

Also this version doesn’t offer any crit bonuses to Eldritch blast at range like 5e did. Both this and the UA version have weaker versions of hexblade’s curse than 5e. 

Point, but I think the degree it outperforms in melee staying power is still a concern. Medium armor alone runs high enough that at the max you’re effectively getting the full effect of Mage Armor with a +2 DEX mod without actually having to invest in DEX beyond 10. Add in the magic shield, and that’s 17 AC with no DEX mod in all melee at a stage where every other Warlock- working off class/subclass features and a typical non-random stat array- has to invest an Invocation and DEX of 14 to hit 15 AC. The dip in ranged AC is something, monsters seem to heavily favor melee attacks and quite a few ranged options are saves rather than rolls, so I’d still consider melee AC the baseline for comparison. Maybe just the +2 AC works, but practically speaking I think it and Medium Armor creates too much lead on constant staying power.

Quote from Ain_Undos >>

3rd Level Hexblade’s Curse

Your patron curses you with power that creates an accursed miasma around you. It is an invisible 10 ft emanation that empowers curses you cast and hinders your foes.

This is subtly strong. It's now an all day thing. I would change the Miasma to Charisma Modifier or Proficiency Bonus uses per day for a duration of 1 minute. This makes it a bit on par with Bladesong.

Quote from Ain_Undos >>

Accursed Shield. You gain +2 bonus to your AC against any attack that originates within your miasma as long as you aren't wielding a shield or wearing heavy armor. 

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Your patron grants you the training necessary to effectively arm yourself for battle and power over curses that make you more effective in close quarters. You gain proficiency with martial weapons and medium armor training.

Just to be explicit, with a 14 Dex, this is +5 AC over light armor and + 4 AC over Mage Armor against melee range attacks, but +3 AC/+2 AC in general. Not needing more than a 14 Dex allows for focusing on Con for HP and Concentration saves. 

Quote from Ain_Undos >>

Hex Weapon. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch one weapon that you are proficient with. If the weapon is heavy you ignore disadvantage caused by not having the required Strength or Dexterity score.  When you attack with that weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls. As a bonus action you may send the weapon to a pocket dimension or summon it to your hand from that pocket dimension. A weapon returns from the pocket dimension if you die. These benefits last until you finish a long rest. If you have/gain the Pact of the Blade invocation these benefits extend to your pact weapon whether you bond with or conjure it.

If you make this explicitly a melee weapon it pushes the subclass further into melee. Since it is a bit of a ribbon feature, I would consider allowing storing the weapon in the pocket dimension or retrieving it from there as part of any equip or unequip. Note that storing a Pact Weapon in a pocket dimension will end the bond for that weapon. That would allow the user to pull the weapon out of the Pocket Dimension and attack as part of the Attack action. It's not powerful, but it is cool.

Quote from Ain_Undos >> 

Accursed Critical. Any attack roll you make against a target cursed by you that is within your miasma scores a Critical Hit on a 19 or 20 on the d20.

Harrowing Hex. After you cast a level 1+ spell that has a casting time of an action, you can make one attack with a weapon as a bonus action.

Hindering Curse. When you hit a target cursed by you that is within your miasma with an attack roll, the target has disadvantage on its next saving throw before the start of your next turn. 

So Accursed Critical and Hindering Curse layer onto Hex, Bestow Curse, and such instead of solely on Hexblade's Curse (now an emanation)? Be aware, that because you can move the curse with Hex, that's potentially not that limited in use, just in range.

Harrowing Hex could be restricted to melee weapons or Hex/Pact weapons, but the benefits of using a Hex/Pact weapon will probably be sufficient. 

Quote from Ain_Undos >>

Inescapable Hex. If a creature cursed by you starts its turn within your miasma and ends its turn outside of your miasma, but still within 500ft you can teleport to an unoccupied space within 10ft of the creature.

This should cost a Reaction at the least. Some other options:

• creatures that start their turn in your miasma halves their speed until the end of their turn. Could be comboed with the reaction to move towards them.
• If you hit a creature with an opportunity attack with your Hex/Pact weapon while it is within your miasma reduces its speed to 0 until the start of your next turn. (Mini Sentinel)

Like Accursed Critical, Hindering Curse, and Armor of Hexes, it would probably be better for any of these effects to be restricted to a creature cursed by the Hexblade,

Some elements I think are too strong, but I like this a lot better than the UA version.

I wasn’t worried about it Hexblade’s cures being an always on effect because most of the features require you to have cursed the target. Considering warlocks have so few spell slots I was thinking no big deal, but hex extends its duration when cast at higher levels and can change targets, so that is overly useful. Targets will always be cursed. I need to scale that down. Also the pocket dimension had a sentence that read “the weapon stored there is considered 1ft away from you.”  This was an update of a previous attempt and I couldn’t remember why I wrote that sentence. I deleted it but it was important. 

I made changes to it, but not enough to repost it yet. 
Made the Hexblade curse accursed miasma last 1 minute. Limited it to Cha bonus times per long rest. That should fix 90% of the power use problem. Also it’s visible, so intelligent creatures can make observations and decisions about it. 

Dropped medium armor training, improved accursed shield so it provides a bonus equal to your pact magic slot level. So you have to stay warlock til 9th level to get the full +5 benefit. But remember the miasma is limited use now and this +5 does nothing against attacks originating outside of the 10ft emanation. That would include melee attacks from creatures with 15ft reach. 

Made Hex Weapon pocket dimension your inner world so weapons within it are considered in your possession or as physically close to you as possible.

Made Harrowing hex only give you a melee attack with a weapon as a bonus action.

Going to make inescapable hex work like the UA version for free, or teleport as a reaction. Also bring back the UA Hex restoration to allow more uses of Hexblade’s Curses miasma per day. 

Im thinking maybe it should cost a bonus action to create the miasma or I should follow the UA and say it happens when you cast a spell that curses a creature. Only Accused Shield functions when no creature is cursed, so maybe the balance is to make it only work when you cast a spell to curse a creature. I don’t know, open to all suggestions.