Hey, I'm designing a drow elf Hexblade at level 1, and I was wondering, what is the overall best weapon to use as a Hexblade? I know that you can't use any weapons with the two-handed property unless you have Pact of the Blade, so for those responding, you can put both a non-two-handed and two-handed response. Thank you so much for your input!
There isn't one "best" weapon, all weapons have their pros and cons. Look at the damage types, Reach or lack thereof, etc and pick what you think fits your character best. And keep in mind that Warlocks start with Simple weapons, if you want something like a Longsword or Battleaxe before Pact Of The Blade, you'll have to obtain one somehow.
The hexblade is not like other warlocks though and is proficient with martial weapons. At level one and two you are limited to one-handed weapons though. Once you have pact of the blade this limitation no longer applies though. You could then just use any polearm if you want to use the polearm master feat.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
at level 1, the longsword's your best bet. d8 damage is about the best you can hope for on a one-handed weapon, and the other option's a rapier, but rapiers are lame compared to longswords!
but once you get your pact weapon, I'd toss in my bet for the maul being the best one. Skeletons are a common enemy in my experience, and guess what? they've got vulnerability to bludgeoning damage! it's Hammer time!
The hexblade is not like other warlocks though and is proficient with martial weapons. At level one and two you are limited to one-handed weapons though. Once you have pact of the blade this limitation no longer applies though. You could then just use any polearm if you want to use the polearm master feat.
You can still use the long polearm before you get Pact of the Blade, you just don't gain the benefit of Hex Warrior which really only means you can't use your Charisma to attack with it, so you need a decent Strength score to last you until then; a +2 Strength modifier should be plenty for 1st- and 2nd-level.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
If you take gold to start with instead of starting equipment (or sell starting equipment to get better equipment) the "best" weapon is the battleaxe. It has the same d8/d10 versatile profile as a longsword, but costs five gold less.
Hexblade should also start with a shield and the best medium armour you can afford (usually scale mail). That gives you AC18 and puts you on par with most starting Clerics.
A strength of the Hexblade is that using charisma for melee, ranged, and magic means that you can switch between fighting styles on the fly without really harming the other two.
Grab Branding Smite at level 3 and then Banishing Smite when hitting level 9 and you can use a bonus action to provide a decent damage boost to an attack, regardless of whether you use melee or ranged.
At level 12, with Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite, Thirsting Blade, and Lifedrinker, and assuming you've maximized your charisma (which you have had three ASIs to do, so you should have), you'll have +10 to hit with your pact weapons, and +9 with Eldritch Blast, adding +11 to the damage you roll with weapons, and +5 with Agonizing Blast on Eldritch Blast.
The only problem I have with Hexblade is that up to level 12 you only get two invocations that aren't needed to boost your pact weapon damage, and of those two you'll probably want to take Agonizing Blast anyway. I use Mask of Many Faces, just because on demand Disguise Self is so handy for the kind of charismatic social butterfly I like to play but it could be anything that people thinks fits their character.
At level 12, with a summoned longbow, your Hexblade archer is +10 to hit, doing d8 + 11 damage, and by dumping two spells slots to get Banishing Smite and Eldritch Smite off you can add 5d10 and 6d8 force damage to one of your shots. If the enemy drops below 50 hit points they're banished for up to a minute (or permanently if they're extra-planar).
If you use a greatsword in melee it's basically the same, except you're rolling 2d6 instead of 1d8.
You have two attacks, at +10 to hit, at up to 150 foot range with a longbow (longer if you can compensate for the disadvantage at long range). That's a low risk of a counterattack.
Sure, if you lose concentration they're back, but they're under 50 hit points and you have had maybe a turn or two to concentrate on taking down their companions before they reappear.
But the main reason to use Banishing Smite is the 5d10 force damage. Combined with Eldritch Smite that gives a potential spike of 117 damage (or a whiff of 23) and force damage is (as we often note) one of the least resisted damage types in the game. Also, if you don't want to bother with banishing the enemy, just choose to drop concentration after the shot.
I've been following the Critical Role season 2, and the Mighty Nein are approaching the end, having just killed off most of the Tomb Takers in what was a pretty well planned ambush. However Jester wasted her attacks on the undamaged Lucian, and Fjord chose to posture, when if both of them had attacked the heavily wounded Kree they'd likely have reduced Lucian to fighting by himself.
Actually that raises a question. If a character casts Banishing Smite, and fires it from a magical bow, does the anti-magic cone of a Beholder negate the extra damage on the arrow? The Smite spells are cast on yourself, not the arrow specifically. If the character is outside the cone, but the arrow interacts with it, how does that work?
At this point you summon a great sword as a pact weapon (along the way you will have gotten an improved Weapon Pact and Thirsting Blade). With shadow of moil you will attack with advantage, with GWM you will do +10 damage. The -5, rolling 3 dice for elven accuracy doesn't matter. And with a crit, in addition to having one more attack with your bonus action, you will double the 2d6 of the great sword which is always better than doubling 1d12.
The term "best" can be confusing. I will spell out a few options based strictly on the numbers:
A. 1-handed:
Unmounted: Warhammer. There are 3 versatile weapons that do 1d10 damage - Warhammer, battleaxe and longsword. Of these Warhammer is mechanically the best because more enemies are vulnerable to crushing damage than to slashing damage. This makes Warhammer better than Longword or Battleaxe.
Mounted: Lance does 1d12 if you are mounted lance does the most damage with 1 hand and has a 10 foot reach. This is king of 1-handed weapons (although situational).
B. 2-handed: This is a little more nebulus because of a bunch of rules and what you value
1. small race -
Great Club: If you are a small race the best weapon with the 2-handed property is a Great Club All the other 2-handed melee weapons are heavy which means the cause disadvantage if you are small. Great Club is not heavy, so it is the best 2-handed weapon for halflings, gnomes etc. Note despite being 2-handed the great club is inferior to versatile weapons and I would not recommend it over a warhammer.
Lance: Lance is used with 1 hand while mounted, but 2 hands while not mounted. Technically this does not have the 2-handed property although you nneed to use 2 hands to wield it when not mounted. It does 1d12 damage and it is the highest damage melee weapon of any type that a small race can use without disadvantage. Note even when wielding with 2 hands you still have disadvantage attacking people within 5 feet, so you might have to take opportunity attacks to use it effectively.
2. medium race -
Maul: If you are medium size in terms of damage Maul is the best. Maul does 2d6 and edges out Greatsword because the damage is bludgeoning. However that does not necessarily make it the "best" 2-handed weapon.
Glaive and Halberd: These are also in the running, they do less damage but have the reach property allowing you to attack from 10 feet away.
Lance: Like Glaive an Halberd, you can use a lance from 10 feet away and it does more damage (1d12). You have disadvantage if you attack someone within 5 feet with it though.
Spirit Shroud can be used to increase damage over a longer battle. At fifth level it's adding 2d8 radiant damage to every hit you make, which works very well with Polearm Master.
I prefer to play Dark Elf Hexblade for the Drow High Magic feat, giving Detect Magic on demand, and Levitate and Dispel Magic as once per long rest spells.
With Tasha's revisions my builds now start with Str 8, Dex 14, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 17. The odd stats allow me to add half feats to Con and Cha as the character levels up.
My preferred background is Urban Bounty Hunter, and with a combination of Elf, Warlock, and UBH I start with proficiencies in Perception, Investigation, Insight, Persuasion, and Deception. It fits what I think of as a character who's a good social character, with reasonable investigative skills, but isn't particularly magically focused. I take Thieves Tools proficiency, but trade the instrument/gaming set proficiency for the Undercommon language, because he is a Dark Elf after all.
At level 4 I take Drow High Magic, but for the aforementioned character reasons, not because it's the most effective. If I were playing purely for melee efficiency I would take Polearm Master. That weaponizes my bonus action attack, and I create a Glaive as my pact weapon. If your DM allows it you can summon a Double-Bladed Scimitar which weaponizes the bonus attack without needing a feat. Polearm Master pairs with the usual magical bonus damage that Warlock gets from Hex adding a potential 3d6 damage per turn.
At level 5, where you have access to Thirsting Blade and if you've taken Improved Pact Weapon, you will have two attacks, rolling at +6 to hit, doing d10 + 3 damage, and one attack at +6 to hit, doing d4 + 3 damage. At level 8 take Elven Accuracy, bringing Charisma to 18, and at level 12 take Great Weapon Master, allowing you to take a -5 to hit penalty in order to get the +10 to damage. With Shadow of Moil you can generate your own advantage, gaining the re-roll from Elven Accuracy, and reducing the penalty from Great Weapon Master.
To give an example of the damage that a Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Elven Accuracy Hexblade can dish out at level 12.
Your damage bonuses, if you have Improved Pact Weapon, Lifedrinker (with Charisma 18 for +4), Hexblade's Curse (with proficiency +4), Spirit Shroud, and Great Weapon Master's bonus damage up, is adding 19+2d8 to your damage from each hit.
If you're attacking with a glaive that's a potential 2d10 +1d4 plus 57 + 6d8 damage, for a potential maximum of 129 damage in one round, or a minimum of (zero if you miss with everything) 66 if you hit with everything but roll 1s.
Variant Human can, of course, have you on 20 Charisma at level 12 by taking Polearm Master as its starting feat and using a Spear or Quarterstaff as your Hex weapon. However I prefer Elves to Humans, and a free feat doesn't change that.
as a drow I'd say hand crossbow. It fits your heritage and with the right feats(I'd avoid them for this build) is mechanically probably the best weapon in the game, when you hit level 3 assuming pact of the blade take the invocation that allows two handed and go with a pole arm.
So I was thinking about "best hexlade weapon" as something like range to just smiting and punishing for afar being able to put hex and curses from safe distance...
plus how cool could be a "Percy" alike warlock with daemonic gun :D yeah?
So I was thinking about "best hexlade weapon" as something like range to just smiting and punishing for afar being able to put hex and curses from safe distance...
plus how cool could be a "Percy" alike warlock with daemonic gun :D yeah?
At distance you will do more damage, and more consistently with the Eldritch Blast.
On the other hand, if you want to activate the smite you are going to spend one of your limited spell slots. That is, you will be able to do it twice for short rest during almost your entire career. And if you want to conjure hex on top, you'll only have one slot left for the smite.
If you want to build a hexblade with a ranged weapon, your best option is sharpshooter + elven accuracy feat. But still, I prefer eldritch blast if you're going to go ranged. With spells like Sickening Radiance + repelling blast, the damage you're going to do is much higher than what you'll do with one or two smites and/or shapshooter. And also you don't have to worry about ammunition, you control the battlefield, etc...
Hey, I'm designing a drow elf Hexblade at level 1, and I was wondering, what is the overall best weapon to use as a Hexblade? I know that you can't use any weapons with the two-handed property unless you have Pact of the Blade, so for those responding, you can put both a non-two-handed and two-handed response. Thank you so much for your input!
Ren
There isn't one "best" weapon, all weapons have their pros and cons. Look at the damage types, Reach or lack thereof, etc and pick what you think fits your character best. And keep in mind that Warlocks start with Simple weapons, if you want something like a Longsword or Battleaxe before Pact Of The Blade, you'll have to obtain one somehow.
The hexblade is not like other warlocks though and is proficient with martial weapons. At level one and two you are limited to one-handed weapons though. Once you have pact of the blade this limitation no longer applies though. You could then just use any polearm if you want to use the polearm master feat.
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
at level 1, the longsword's your best bet. d8 damage is about the best you can hope for on a one-handed weapon, and the other option's a rapier, but rapiers are lame compared to longswords!
but once you get your pact weapon, I'd toss in my bet for the maul being the best one. Skeletons are a common enemy in my experience, and guess what? they've got vulnerability to bludgeoning damage! it's Hammer time!
You can still use the long polearm before you get Pact of the Blade, you just don't gain the benefit of Hex Warrior which really only means you can't use your Charisma to attack with it, so you need a decent Strength score to last you until then; a +2 Strength modifier should be plenty for 1st- and 2nd-level.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
If you take gold to start with instead of starting equipment (or sell starting equipment to get better equipment) the "best" weapon is the battleaxe. It has the same d8/d10 versatile profile as a longsword, but costs five gold less.
Hexblade should also start with a shield and the best medium armour you can afford (usually scale mail). That gives you AC18 and puts you on par with most starting Clerics.
A strength of the Hexblade is that using charisma for melee, ranged, and magic means that you can switch between fighting styles on the fly without really harming the other two.
Grab Branding Smite at level 3 and then Banishing Smite when hitting level 9 and you can use a bonus action to provide a decent damage boost to an attack, regardless of whether you use melee or ranged.
At level 12, with Improved Pact Weapon, Eldritch Smite, Thirsting Blade, and Lifedrinker, and assuming you've maximized your charisma (which you have had three ASIs to do, so you should have), you'll have +10 to hit with your pact weapons, and +9 with Eldritch Blast, adding +11 to the damage you roll with weapons, and +5 with Agonizing Blast on Eldritch Blast.
The only problem I have with Hexblade is that up to level 12 you only get two invocations that aren't needed to boost your pact weapon damage, and of those two you'll probably want to take Agonizing Blast anyway. I use Mask of Many Faces, just because on demand Disguise Self is so handy for the kind of charismatic social butterfly I like to play but it could be anything that people thinks fits their character.
At level 12, with a summoned longbow, your Hexblade archer is +10 to hit, doing d8 + 11 damage, and by dumping two spells slots to get Banishing Smite and Eldritch Smite off you can add 5d10 and 6d8 force damage to one of your shots. If the enemy drops below 50 hit points they're banished for up to a minute (or permanently if they're extra-planar).
If you use a greatsword in melee it's basically the same, except you're rolling 2d6 instead of 1d8.
You have two attacks, at +10 to hit, at up to 150 foot range with a longbow (longer if you can compensate for the disadvantage at long range). That's a low risk of a counterattack.
Sure, if you lose concentration they're back, but they're under 50 hit points and you have had maybe a turn or two to concentrate on taking down their companions before they reappear.
But the main reason to use Banishing Smite is the 5d10 force damage. Combined with Eldritch Smite that gives a potential spike of 117 damage (or a whiff of 23) and force damage is (as we often note) one of the least resisted damage types in the game. Also, if you don't want to bother with banishing the enemy, just choose to drop concentration after the shot.
I've been following the Critical Role season 2, and the Mighty Nein are approaching the end, having just killed off most of the Tomb Takers in what was a pretty well planned ambush. However Jester wasted her attacks on the undamaged Lucian, and Fjord chose to posture, when if both of them had attacked the heavily wounded Kree they'd likely have reduced Lucian to fighting by himself.
Actually that raises a question. If a character casts Banishing Smite, and fires it from a magical bow, does the anti-magic cone of a Beholder negate the extra damage on the arrow? The Smite spells are cast on yourself, not the arrow specifically. If the character is outside the cone, but the arrow interacts with it, how does that work?
Okay, done.
at level 1, longsword.
at level 4, elven accuracy
a level 7, shadow of moil spell
at level 8, great weapon master
At this point you summon a great sword as a pact weapon (along the way you will have gotten an improved Weapon Pact and Thirsting Blade). With shadow of moil you will attack with advantage, with GWM you will do +10 damage. The -5, rolling 3 dice for elven accuracy doesn't matter. And with a crit, in addition to having one more attack with your bonus action, you will double the 2d6 of the great sword which is always better than doubling 1d12.
That's the best build for a singleclass hexblade.
The term "best" can be confusing. I will spell out a few options based strictly on the numbers:
A. 1-handed:
Unmounted: Warhammer. There are 3 versatile weapons that do 1d10 damage - Warhammer, battleaxe and longsword. Of these Warhammer is mechanically the best because more enemies are vulnerable to crushing damage than to slashing damage. This makes Warhammer better than Longword or Battleaxe.
Mounted: Lance does 1d12 if you are mounted lance does the most damage with 1 hand and has a 10 foot reach. This is king of 1-handed weapons (although situational).
B. 2-handed: This is a little more nebulus because of a bunch of rules and what you value
1. small race -
Great Club: If you are a small race the best weapon with the 2-handed property is a Great Club All the other 2-handed melee weapons are heavy which means the cause disadvantage if you are small. Great Club is not heavy, so it is the best 2-handed weapon for halflings, gnomes etc. Note despite being 2-handed the great club is inferior to versatile weapons and I would not recommend it over a warhammer.
Lance: Lance is used with 1 hand while mounted, but 2 hands while not mounted. Technically this does not have the 2-handed property although you nneed to use 2 hands to wield it when not mounted. It does 1d12 damage and it is the highest damage melee weapon of any type that a small race can use without disadvantage. Note even when wielding with 2 hands you still have disadvantage attacking people within 5 feet, so you might have to take opportunity attacks to use it effectively.
2. medium race -
Maul: If you are medium size in terms of damage Maul is the best. Maul does 2d6 and edges out Greatsword because the damage is bludgeoning. However that does not necessarily make it the "best" 2-handed weapon.
Glaive and Halberd: These are also in the running, they do less damage but have the reach property allowing you to attack from 10 feet away.
Lance: Like Glaive an Halberd, you can use a lance from 10 feet away and it does more damage (1d12). You have disadvantage if you attack someone within 5 feet with it though.
Shadow of Moil, is a good spell.
Spirit Shroud can be used to increase damage over a longer battle. At fifth level it's adding 2d8 radiant damage to every hit you make, which works very well with Polearm Master.
I prefer to play Dark Elf Hexblade for the Drow High Magic feat, giving Detect Magic on demand, and Levitate and Dispel Magic as once per long rest spells.
With Tasha's revisions my builds now start with Str 8, Dex 14, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 17. The odd stats allow me to add half feats to Con and Cha as the character levels up.
My preferred background is Urban Bounty Hunter, and with a combination of Elf, Warlock, and UBH I start with proficiencies in Perception, Investigation, Insight, Persuasion, and Deception. It fits what I think of as a character who's a good social character, with reasonable investigative skills, but isn't particularly magically focused. I take Thieves Tools proficiency, but trade the instrument/gaming set proficiency for the Undercommon language, because he is a Dark Elf after all.
At level 4 I take Drow High Magic, but for the aforementioned character reasons, not because it's the most effective. If I were playing purely for melee efficiency I would take Polearm Master. That weaponizes my bonus action attack, and I create a Glaive as my pact weapon. If your DM allows it you can summon a Double-Bladed Scimitar which weaponizes the bonus attack without needing a feat. Polearm Master pairs with the usual magical bonus damage that Warlock gets from Hex adding a potential 3d6 damage per turn.
At level 5, where you have access to Thirsting Blade and if you've taken Improved Pact Weapon, you will have two attacks, rolling at +6 to hit, doing d10 + 3 damage, and one attack at +6 to hit, doing d4 + 3 damage. At level 8 take Elven Accuracy, bringing Charisma to 18, and at level 12 take Great Weapon Master, allowing you to take a -5 to hit penalty in order to get the +10 to damage. With Shadow of Moil you can generate your own advantage, gaining the re-roll from Elven Accuracy, and reducing the penalty from Great Weapon Master.
To give an example of the damage that a Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Elven Accuracy Hexblade can dish out at level 12.
Your damage bonuses, if you have Improved Pact Weapon, Lifedrinker (with Charisma 18 for +4), Hexblade's Curse (with proficiency +4), Spirit Shroud, and Great Weapon Master's bonus damage up, is adding 19+2d8 to your damage from each hit.
If you're attacking with a glaive that's a potential 2d10 +1d4 plus 57 + 6d8 damage, for a potential maximum of 129 damage in one round, or a minimum of (zero if you miss with everything) 66 if you hit with everything but roll 1s.
Variant Human can, of course, have you on 20 Charisma at level 12 by taking Polearm Master as its starting feat and using a Spear or Quarterstaff as your Hex weapon. However I prefer Elves to Humans, and a free feat doesn't change that.
as a drow I'd say hand crossbow. It fits your heritage and with the right feats(I'd avoid them for this build) is mechanically probably the best weapon in the game, when you hit level 3 assuming pact of the blade take the invocation that allows two handed and go with a pole arm.
Am I wrong - but can warlock smiting with range weapon - if i can make range weapon my hex bound weapon (pact weapon)
So I was thinking about "best hexlade weapon" as something like range to just smiting and punishing for afar being able to put hex and curses from safe distance...
plus how cool could be a "Percy" alike warlock with daemonic gun :D yeah?
At distance you will do more damage, and more consistently with the Eldritch Blast.
On the other hand, if you want to activate the smite you are going to spend one of your limited spell slots. That is, you will be able to do it twice for short rest during almost your entire career. And if you want to conjure hex on top, you'll only have one slot left for the smite.
If you want to build a hexblade with a ranged weapon, your best option is sharpshooter + elven accuracy feat. But still, I prefer eldritch blast if you're going to go ranged. With spells like Sickening Radiance + repelling blast, the damage you're going to do is much higher than what you'll do with one or two smites and/or shapshooter. And also you don't have to worry about ammunition, you control the battlefield, etc...