Just because I had a few minutes to waste I tried to put together a well rounded Hexblade. He's an older man, but still hale, and has spent his life mastering his weapons.
A variant human, of course, starting with the polearm master feat, then taking greatweapon master, sharpshooter, and fighter initiate for the archery fighting style, as well as maximizing charisma.
With his standard +1 pact weapons he's +12 to hit with his glaive, and +14 with his longbow. HP is rather low at 123, so he's definitely not tanking.
600 foot range, and the ability to throw eldritch smite through a bow.
Also to do 1d8+21 damage at +9 to hit per shot by taking the sharpshooter penalty along with lifedrinker.
2 x 1d8+21 = 2d8+42, average 51.
4 x d10+5 = 4d10+20, average 42.
And the glaive does:
2 x (1d10+21) + 1 x (d4+21) = 2d10+1d4+63 for an average of 76.
The longbow is +9 to hit with the sharpshooter penalty, eldritch blast always +11 to hit, and the glaive +7 to hit with the great weapon mastery penalty. Obviously if you need to hit something with high AC you're not going to take the penalty unless you have some way to get advantage.
Fair enough, though if I may make a suggestion to try and improve your build, I would drop Fighting Initiate and instead take Metamagic Adept grabbing Extended Spell and whatever else you fancy then dropping True Polymorph for Foresight. Extended Spell with Foresight makes it last 16 hrs which should last the whole adventuring day and I feel it is just more useful than True Polymorph both offensively and defensively on a combat focused character like the Hexblade.
I don't know that I like sharp shooter on this build, strictly because EB is a thing.
Suppose you're fighting a dragon at first, and you're attacking with melee using your glaive. Then the dragon flies up. Next turn, if you want to put your build to good use, you would need to spend an entire action to summon your longbow pact weapon. And since you're lacking the archery fighting style, your likelyhood of hitting is going to make the math favor EB over a bow. And even if the math favored the bow equally, the mere fact you're using your action to summon the bow means you're now a full turn behind EB blasting. To make the DPR worth it, you would need 6 whole turns before you beat out EB, and even then it's just ever so slightly. Then what about if the dragon comes back into melee? Are you going to switch yet again, or just live with subpar DPR when you could've been attacking with PAM/GWM? Again, it's just more DPR losses when you could've just kept your glaive out the whole time while you made ranged attacks with EB.
Honestly, even if you accounted for archery fighting style, EB by itself keeps up in damage when you account for average hit rate and SS's -5 penalty, with ~1 point of difference in DPR favoring SS. However, I notice your hexblade's proficient in arcana. They can spend 25 gp to write a spell scroll of hex. You add hex into the mix, and you definitely surprass the damage SS could do with its two attacks.
Instead, you might do better replacing the invocation beguiling influence with eldritch spear. Or, if you want to keep beguiling influence, you could replace improved pact weapon since I'd recommend against using a bow, but only if you don't have a +1 glaive by then, and you wouldn't need the arcane focus property since you would always have a free hand. There, 300 ft of range with eldritch spear. If that's still not enough, you could drop sharp shooter all together and take spell sniper instead, and now you have a ranged option that goes out 600 ft, and it still ignores everything but total cover like SS does. There's also the consideration of how long something takes to come online, if you were to start this build at lvl 1.EB will always scale and be online. This SS stuff? Might never see it in a real campaign save for a one-shot at lvl 20
To me, the important thing in a gish build is the ability to seamlessly switch between close range and far range, and this hexblade build just doesn't cut it for me in that regard. They're in close? Attack with the glaive. They get far? attack with EB. You don't miss a beat.Oh, and since metamagic adept gives you two meta magic points and options, you could take quicken spell as well, and every once in a while you could EB, then quicken EB again for a nice burst in damage.
I would not suggest Quicken Spell at all, if I were to build this character I would take Polearm Master with the bonus feat then the level 4, 8 and 12 ASIs will be used to grab Great Weapon Master and maxing CHA. That means you get Metamagic Adept at level 16. But by level 17 you will always use 1 sorcery point to Extend Foresight so you probably want an option that only uses 1 sorcery point as your other pick like Careful Spell or Distant Spell.
While I am not totally on board with Sharpshooter there is some merit in using a bow instead of Eldritch Blasts in that you can Eldritch Smite something out of the sky with a bow. Personally I would go with Tough or Lucky instead of Sharpshooter.
I replaced Gift of the Depths with Eldritch Spear for the 300 foot range, and replaced Sharpshooter with Tough. He's now 183HP.
Another thing you may wish to consider is the Medium Armor Master feat. Since you went with 16 DEX and took proficiency in stealth Medium Armor Master would increase your AC by 1 and remove the disadvantage to your stealth checks.
I was trying to theorycraft a level 20 Warlock, though it's likely I'd never use this particular one. I just like Elves too much. Maybe I'll make him into an NPC.
Yeah Half Elf in particular is very solid due to the +stats and option to take Elven Accuracy. However I feel that for the Hexblade going Half Elf is too slow. You need to be level 16 before you have both Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master and maxing your CHA. If I were to play in a high level one-shot then Half Elf is definitely the way to go. But if I were to play a Hexblade from level 1 I would actually go Custom Lineage.
Stats will be as follows STR 8 DEX 14 CON 14 INT 8 WIS 12 CHA 15 putting the bonus +2 into CHA and taking a CHA half feat like Fey Touched to start off with 18 CHA. At level 3 I would summon a Double Bladed Scimitar as my Pact Weapon, level 4 lets me max CHA and level 5 the build is complete with the addition of Thirsting Blade.
That is a ridiculously powerful level 5 character, you get 3 attacks with max CHA with a +1 weapon (Improved Pact Weapon) that can be further boosted by Hex and Hexblade's Curse (at the cost of the bonus attack for the rounds you cast/activate them). All this while still having access to Eldritch Blast boosted by Agonizing Blast with again max CHA.
Then I would just take Polearm Master at level 8 and Great Weapon Master at 12 and provided the game is still going Metamagic Adept at 16 and Tough or Lucky at 19.
I think a half-elf is a very viable race choice even without the extra feat or capped CHA, because elven accuracy is just that strong, and because it would be able to start with three stats at +3 modifier, as opposed to a lopsided two +2s and one +4 at first level. I would start with 17 CHA, take EA at 4, then GWM at 8, and PAM at 12. By the time you reach 7th lvl, you'll have access to shadow of moil which is a very good way of generating advantage for yourself, so 18 CHA is going to be more than enough with EA to account for.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but medium armor master doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Here's the way I see it, you can have 18 AC with 143 HP with medium armor master...
or,
You could have 203 HP with 17 AC, by swapping the 14 con and 16 dex around, and by picking tough instead of medium armor master. Honestly, at that level, things are going to hit you and AC will make little difference in that. 18 AC vs 17 AC literally makes no difference to an ancient red dragon, for example. But 60 HP will make a difference.
I think a half-elf is a very viable race choice even without the extra feat or capped CHA, because elven accuracy is just that strong, and because it would be able to start with three stats at +3 modifier, as opposed to a lopsided two +2s and one +4 at first level. I would start with 17 CHA, take EA at 4, then GWM at 8, and PAM at 12. By the time you reach 7th lvl, you'll have access to shadow of moil which is a very good way of generating advantage for yourself, so 18 CHA is going to be more than enough with EA to account for.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but medium armor master doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Here's the way I see it, you can have 18 AC with 143 HP with medium armor master...
or,
You could have 203 HP with 17 AC, by swapping the 14 con and 16 dex around, and by picking tough instead of medium armor master. Honestly, at that level, things are going to hit you and AC will make little difference in that. 18 AC vs 17 AC literally makes no difference to an ancient red dragon, for example. But 60 HP will make a difference.
One thing you need to take into account is that at level 17+ you will probably have at least +2 armor or something equivalent not to mention possibly a Ring or Cloak of Protection. Throw in disadvantage to said ancient red dragon from Foresight and that +1 AC from Medium Armor Master does not look half bad at all.
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Just because I had a few minutes to waste I tried to put together a well rounded Hexblade. He's an older man, but still hale, and has spent his life mastering his weapons.
A variant human, of course, starting with the polearm master feat, then taking greatweapon master, sharpshooter, and fighter initiate for the archery fighting style, as well as maximizing charisma.
With his standard +1 pact weapons he's +12 to hit with his glaive, and +14 with his longbow. HP is rather low at 123, so he's definitely not tanking.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Freman_Bloodglaive/characters/57703389
Why the longbow though? You have Eldritch Blast.
600 foot range, and the ability to throw eldritch smite through a bow.
Also to do 1d8+21 damage at +9 to hit per shot by taking the sharpshooter penalty along with lifedrinker.
2 x 1d8+21 = 2d8+42, average 51.
4 x d10+5 = 4d10+20, average 42.
And the glaive does:
2 x (1d10+21) + 1 x (d4+21) = 2d10+1d4+63 for an average of 76.
The longbow is +9 to hit with the sharpshooter penalty, eldritch blast always +11 to hit, and the glaive +7 to hit with the great weapon mastery penalty. Obviously if you need to hit something with high AC you're not going to take the penalty unless you have some way to get advantage.
Hero Forge does make it easy to model characters.
Fair enough, though if I may make a suggestion to try and improve your build, I would drop Fighting Initiate and instead take Metamagic Adept grabbing Extended Spell and whatever else you fancy then dropping True Polymorph for Foresight. Extended Spell with Foresight makes it last 16 hrs which should last the whole adventuring day and I feel it is just more useful than True Polymorph both offensively and defensively on a combat focused character like the Hexblade.
Thanks, that was a good idea. Having advantage on everything is an improvement large enough to compensate for the +2 from the archery style.
I don't know that I like sharp shooter on this build, strictly because EB is a thing.
Suppose you're fighting a dragon at first, and you're attacking with melee using your glaive. Then the dragon flies up. Next turn, if you want to put your build to good use, you would need to spend an entire action to summon your longbow pact weapon. And since you're lacking the archery fighting style, your likelyhood of hitting is going to make the math favor EB over a bow. And even if the math favored the bow equally, the mere fact you're using your action to summon the bow means you're now a full turn behind EB blasting. To make the DPR worth it, you would need 6 whole turns before you beat out EB, and even then it's just ever so slightly. Then what about if the dragon comes back into melee? Are you going to switch yet again, or just live with subpar DPR when you could've been attacking with PAM/GWM? Again, it's just more DPR losses when you could've just kept your glaive out the whole time while you made ranged attacks with EB.
Honestly, even if you accounted for archery fighting style, EB by itself keeps up in damage when you account for average hit rate and SS's -5 penalty, with ~1 point of difference in DPR favoring SS. However, I notice your hexblade's proficient in arcana. They can spend 25 gp to write a spell scroll of hex. You add hex into the mix, and you definitely surprass the damage SS could do with its two attacks.
Instead, you might do better replacing the invocation beguiling influence with eldritch spear. Or, if you want to keep beguiling influence, you could replace improved pact weapon since I'd recommend against using a bow, but only if you don't have a +1 glaive by then, and you wouldn't need the arcane focus property since you would always have a free hand. There, 300 ft of range with eldritch spear. If that's still not enough, you could drop sharp shooter all together and take spell sniper instead, and now you have a ranged option that goes out 600 ft, and it still ignores everything but total cover like SS does. There's also the consideration of how long something takes to come online, if you were to start this build at lvl 1.EB will always scale and be online. This SS stuff? Might never see it in a real campaign save for a one-shot at lvl 20
To me, the important thing in a gish build is the ability to seamlessly switch between close range and far range, and this hexblade build just doesn't cut it for me in that regard. They're in close? Attack with the glaive. They get far? attack with EB. You don't miss a beat.Oh, and since metamagic adept gives you two meta magic points and options, you could take quicken spell as well, and every once in a while you could EB, then quicken EB again for a nice burst in damage.
I would not suggest Quicken Spell at all, if I were to build this character I would take Polearm Master with the bonus feat then the level 4, 8 and 12 ASIs will be used to grab Great Weapon Master and maxing CHA. That means you get Metamagic Adept at level 16. But by level 17 you will always use 1 sorcery point to Extend Foresight so you probably want an option that only uses 1 sorcery point as your other pick like Careful Spell or Distant Spell.
While I am not totally on board with Sharpshooter there is some merit in using a bow instead of Eldritch Blasts in that you can Eldritch Smite something out of the sky with a bow. Personally I would go with Tough or Lucky instead of Sharpshooter.
Thanks. You both make good points.
I replaced Gift of the Depths with Eldritch Spear for the 300 foot range, and replaced Sharpshooter with Tough. He's now 183HP.
Another thing you may wish to consider is the Medium Armor Master feat. Since you went with 16 DEX and took proficiency in stealth Medium Armor Master would increase your AC by 1 and remove the disadvantage to your stealth checks.
That's true too.
I was trying to theorycraft a level 20 Warlock, though it's likely I'd never use this particular one. I just like Elves too much. Maybe I'll make him into an NPC.
Yeah Half Elf in particular is very solid due to the +stats and option to take Elven Accuracy. However I feel that for the Hexblade going Half Elf is too slow. You need to be level 16 before you have both Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master and maxing your CHA. If I were to play in a high level one-shot then Half Elf is definitely the way to go. But if I were to play a Hexblade from level 1 I would actually go Custom Lineage.
Stats will be as follows STR 8 DEX 14 CON 14 INT 8 WIS 12 CHA 15 putting the bonus +2 into CHA and taking a CHA half feat like Fey Touched to start off with 18 CHA. At level 3 I would summon a Double Bladed Scimitar as my Pact Weapon, level 4 lets me max CHA and level 5 the build is complete with the addition of Thirsting Blade.
That is a ridiculously powerful level 5 character, you get 3 attacks with max CHA with a +1 weapon (Improved Pact Weapon) that can be further boosted by Hex and Hexblade's Curse (at the cost of the bonus attack for the rounds you cast/activate them). All this while still having access to Eldritch Blast boosted by Agonizing Blast with again max CHA.
Then I would just take Polearm Master at level 8 and Great Weapon Master at 12 and provided the game is still going Metamagic Adept at 16 and Tough or Lucky at 19.
I think a half-elf is a very viable race choice even without the extra feat or capped CHA, because elven accuracy is just that strong, and because it would be able to start with three stats at +3 modifier, as opposed to a lopsided two +2s and one +4 at first level. I would start with 17 CHA, take EA at 4, then GWM at 8, and PAM at 12. By the time you reach 7th lvl, you'll have access to shadow of moil which is a very good way of generating advantage for yourself, so 18 CHA is going to be more than enough with EA to account for.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but medium armor master doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Here's the way I see it, you can have 18 AC with 143 HP with medium armor master...
or,
You could have 203 HP with 17 AC, by swapping the 14 con and 16 dex around, and by picking tough instead of medium armor master. Honestly, at that level, things are going to hit you and AC will make little difference in that. 18 AC vs 17 AC literally makes no difference to an ancient red dragon, for example. But 60 HP will make a difference.
One thing you need to take into account is that at level 17+ you will probably have at least +2 armor or something equivalent not to mention possibly a Ring or Cloak of Protection. Throw in disadvantage to said ancient red dragon from Foresight and that +1 AC from Medium Armor Master does not look half bad at all.