"HOW DID HE EXTRA ATTACK?" "HE CAN"T USE CHA FOR 2H WEAPONS" "PROFICIENCY TO DAMAGE??" Your questions, ANSWERED! FAQ POST BELOW --- I kinda wanna make a video about what I'd adjust to Hexblade / warlocks in general / my gripes with the subclass. ANYWAY! I got some new merch! Go check it out here: crowdmade.com/collections/zedrin And if you're interested in the tablet, you can grab a link to it from the description! FAQ: Q: Hex warrior doesn't work with 2h weapons? A: "If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type." This means you don't even need to imbue the weapon with this property--it just has it, regardless of type. (Fun aside: the wording in particular means if you want to wield two weapons as a hexblade, you can make your pact weapon a sword and still use hex warrior with a second sword, and both will have Cha to damage.) Q: You don't add proficiency to damage! A: Hexblade's curse: "The target is cursed for 1 minute. The curse ends early if the target dies, you die, or you are incapacitated. Until the curse ends, you gain the following benefits: You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus. ..." Q: Crits only double weapon damage, not all damage. A: In 3.5/PF, yes. In 5e, however, page 196 of the PHB: "When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal.... ...If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue's Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well." Q: Yeah but paladins are stronger A: Warlock spell levels scale faster than paladins. At this level, it's only a 1d8 difference, but this gap will increase over time. If you wanna get REALLY crazy, multiclassing the two allows you to, by the wording, use both smites on one attack. Also, hexblade's curse increases the crit range, which allows you to crit fish easier. With 2 short rests a day, by the dice a warlock is dealing out more smite damage as a paladin, especially on crits (which will happen more often). Paladins have a little bit more consistency throughout the day since they don't need short rests, and have much more flexibility on spells and better defense. Q: How did he extra attack? A: He's level 6. Thirsting blade grants bladelocks and extra attack. He also has polearm master that lets him attack as a bonus action after an attack, if it's available. (Not used in the example.) Worth noting: the more you can attack, the more you can crit. Q: [Combination] is still scarier! A: Cool story, bro. Also, you did see that Edgar literally bound the victim's soul to his service after popping him, right? This vid isn't solely about being mechanically scary, it's also thematically scary. Q: That's nothing, my level 12 character can do more damage / I can do more damage if I can set things up a turn before. A: I would hope a level 12 character is stronger than a level 6, or that you can do more damage with additional turns to setup. Q: That's nothing, [here's a story about how something with no mechanical basis happened in my power fantasy game]! A: K. Q: [Something about GWM, variant human, etc] A: DM didn't allow variant human cause a bonus feat's wildly strong. The player more wanted consistency / control as well--hence, polearm master (and later sentinel.) We all know the damage numbers could go even higher with things like GWM. But also, that boost in power really doesn't demonstrate any power from the *warlock.* The vid is on hexblades, not feats. Q: People always get the hexblade's patron wrong, it's actually-- A: shut up nerd Q: That's not OP / Hexblades are fine A: This video was more on how he's scary, not necessarily OP. It's not quite Hexblades I have an issue with--it's WotC. Hexblades do demonstrate issues with power creep. They are so insanely front loaded that a single level of warlock can suddenly make another class significantly stronger, probably more than any other class. The curse feature gives a crit-expansion feature at level 1. The fact that the bonus damage scales with proficiency makes it scale incredibly well on say a level 19 paladin level 1 hexblade. Without multiclassing, they're more fine, but they're incredibly front-loaded still. The real issue however, Hexblade was written as a way to relieve the pain and MAD issues with making a bladelock in the base game. They did this instead of implementing features that just made it easier to play a non hexblade bladelock (which would've been super easy to do with invocations). I'm fine with hexblade as a concept, but I do not like this idea of WotC making subclasses to "fix" weaker or underperforming classes. It's largely a means to sell more books, but it also leaves the vanilla options dull or weaker (and with the PHB+1 rule for AL, really eats into your options. Wanna play a lizardfolk ranger? You're limited to beastmaster and hunter.) If there's an issue with a class that's so glaring, the class itself should be errata'd and improved, it shouldn't be fixed with a subclass. Rangers especially know this problem. This is what resulted in the multiclass problem in the first place. Q: Where's Hiro 3? A: Small stop asking
I would love to see that. I'm the kind of homebrewer that find the problems in the system and tries to tweak it so that certian things feel more up to par. How would you go about fixing base Warlock? I can think of things for sorcerer, but i'm stuck for Warlock. Even a quick reply here would do wonders.
Zedrin Thank you for the video, oh powerful art warlock. Your patrons must be quite proud of you. No, but really. Nice vid. And thanks to you, I now have it in my head that we’re patrons for warlocks, and all we do is make the warlocks make content for us. lol
fun fact if you have the elven accuracy feat for super advantage you have a roughly 27% chance to roll a 19 and a roughly 14% chance to roll a 20 which means you could get the hex blade who crits once every other round of combat which is just insane
I very much like the roleplay of a character who doesn't know that they've been minmaxed. "Oh God, oh God! Why did he explode?! I wasn't trying to kill him!"
A little while ago, i was playing a life domain cleric who actively avoided killing anyone. I casted inflict wounds at 2nd level on a generic bandit and rolled max damage sooo.... yeah...
I made a Sorlock joining a game a bit later and shot two eldritch blasts and one second level chromatic orb dealing fire damage at an orc making a hole in his chest and he burned dying instantly in one turn. my character Percy was freaking out slightly as he did not mean to completely destroy someone.
I'm the player behind Edgar and I gotta say it was a lot of fun seeing this video. Edgar was my first foray into the world of 5e (pathfinder player) and he was honestly a treat to play as
It's just nice to finally see a Hexblade using their blade for once. All the Hexblades I know are just eldritch blast turrets, which is cool and all but not exactly what I expect when I hear, Hexblade.
@@Gibbons3457 Which makes sense... hexblades are scary and basically every hexblade feature doesn't require you to be a melee combatant to work. You get to be scary AT RANGE. Plus, it doesn't matter if your STR and DEX are poopie, now you get CHA-based opportunity attacks. I think hexblade makes for incredible chainlocks and tomelocks... and unfortunately the most viable damage option those playstyles get is still eldritch blast.
how did you make the halberd legal? i might be a ruleslawyer here, but it sais you cant have a two-handed weapon as a pact weapon (at least in dnd beyond) im only asking because i wanna try it out really bad now ofc xD
@@Zedrinbot wait til next level, when on top of cursing everything and everyone, they can bind every fiend, fey and elemental, and get those sweet free crits...
I play a warforged hexblade warlock. He was a suit of armor brought to life by a king who made a deal with the god of the forge to protect his kingdom. His hexblade was that he had the ability to summon a sword or whatever weapon out of his arm. His backstory was actually a collection of stories he gained from people he knew in his past. He would keep the party entertained with these stories while also wanting to know about them which could give them all a reason to talk about themselves as much as they wanted. He visits the graves of those he knew in the past when he can and believes that as long as he remembers people’s stories and passes them on to others then they never really die. He is currently 400 years old.
Can I say I love the idea of a naive young man trying to be an adventurer proving himself in the world and who just unintentionally pops people like liquid filled balloons by swinging his special spear with all his might and who is slightly traumatized by it.
I'm planning on playing a Gloomstalker Ranger Hexblade Warlock in Tomb of Annihilation. He's a half drow, former mercernary who had his whole band killed by a demon making it out after also losing an eye.
@@Zedrinbot This, this is why I'm reluctant to allow multi-classing in my games. It's hard enough getting my players to get me info on what feats or ASI they are talking. Add in the broken level of lvl 1 dips, and don't tell me 'well they're losing out on their capstones' cause most games don't go that long and a bunch of classes have really lame capstones. I'm looking at you sorcerer.
@@Cpruett On top of how most games don't make it to 20, most capstones honestly kind of suck. Paladin's the only one with fun ones, cause they're archetype based. Warlock: "Once per day... you can get... your 4 spell slots back... as an action!" (edit: no, wait, after 1 minute.) Ranger: "You deal... extra damage... to your favored enemy! Which you honestly should've been doing since level 1 but you weren't." Rogue: "Once per short rest... you can turn... a miss... into a hit!" And then so many of them are like monk: "When you start combat... if you have no ki... you get *4 KI POINTS!*" Like none of them are actually interesting actions you can do.
@@Cpruett Granted, as a DM, you can do a half-and-half for allowing/disallowing multiclassing by saying it has to make sense for the characters to multiclass at that point in the story. Suddenly getting a point in Warlock can only make sense if you've had some sort of contact with your patron ingame; you can only multiclass Bard if you spend considerable time at a Bard college, etc. It allows the DM to have some control over what players can do without outright saying no, which is how I want to model how I DM sessions.
The entire party: NOO, you cant just do +50 damage per turn and have double crit chance and just kill overkill everything in your way Warlock Hexblade: Haha Hexblade touch bandit goes POP
Paladins tend to have the same mess, and a whole lot more in the way of slots to dump into smites, and spells that can make it even worse. Hexblades tend to be the glass cannon version of the Paladin there. My crown paladin almost one shotted a fire giant at level 5 with a crit when encountering them while playing through Storm King's thunder...Protector Assimaar Crown Paladin, all things going with a lance. Base for the attack was 1d12+1 (Lance) +4 (19 Strength...Gauntlets of Ogre Power) +5 (Racial aura)+3d8 (2nd level spell slot smite)+2d6 (Branding Smite), the crit made it into a 2d12+6d8+4d6+10, almost max damage there for it...ended up with a bit over 150 damage...
@@Athalwolf13 Excellent question! They stack. The smites have the same trigger but different names, so they stack. Combo that with Assassinate, Action Surge and Grave Cleric Channel and you have the largest single target burst in the game.
@@TrueAohaku so for this build you would need LVL 8 HexBlade Warlock, LVL 3 Rouge Assassin, LVL 2 Fighter, LVL 2 Grave Cleric, LVL 5 Paladin to get the most out of your lvls so say you have a Greatsword+3 and 20 Charisma you would deal 2d6+5d8+3d8+2d6+2d6+14 on a normal hit if you used 3 smites and sneak attack (1 from Hexblade 1 from Paladian and then cast Branding smite as a bonus action) now if you get the jump on somebody you crit so you now deal 4d6+10d8+6d8+4d6+4d6+14, then if you had put the PATH TO THE GRAVE channel divinity on beforehand you now deal all of that doubled Acctually if you want max DPS on 1 attack you would drop the Fighter levels and cleric levels and put 11th level HexBlade 9th Level Paldain and get a teammate to use Path of the grave you can now deal 2d6+6d8+4d8+3d8+14 and just roll a crit thanks to hexblades curse to now deal 4d6+12d8+8d8+6d8+14 and then double that averaging around 340 Damage with the max being 492 damage
if you want big damage nova, I would suggest going lvl 3 paladin, lvl 6 fighter, 9 levels sorcerer, 2 level grave cleric You can net 144d8+25 = 679 damage however it requires 2 turns of set up and two consecutive failed wisdom save from your target. you don't even need a teammate.
I think the main difference is that hexblade can use the curse to make crit fishing easier (19+20 instead of just 20), get bonus damage out of it (and a little bit of healing when you kill them), always use max power smites, and get all of their stuff back on a short rest, instead of a long rest, so they can be much more "spendy" with their resources if they want. They can also use their smites with RANGED WEAPONS, which paladins can't (paladin smite is on melee weapon hit, hexblade is simply on pact weapon hit, and you can have ranged pact weapons). The downsides is warlock a little less bulky: it only has 1D8 hit dice instead of 1D10, and they can't use heavy armor by default.
Kedolan Well you can take 3 levels in fighter to get a 19-20 crit range on every weapon sprinkle in some Ranger then go the rest of the way as a rogue. That can net you some pretty equivalent ranged damage
3 levels in fighter is valid, and the benefit is it applies to ALL attacks, no resources, but it's still 3 levels in fighter, rather than just 1 of hexblade. (Thank god the crit range is part of the curse instead of hex warrior). That'll definitely slow your caster progression if a spellcaster. Not a bad option though for a rogue.
@@kedolan4992 the problem to me is that they really aren't more spendy - a paladin has so many more slots to handle other important spells or smite constantly, and if you mc Paladin with a full caster like Bard it's insane. I really want to love hexblade, but with only one real smite slot (need one for shadow of moil or other concentration spell), paladin seems just sooo much better :-(
Our DM's fiance at the time (now married) was new to D&D, and we decided to jump into Curse of Straud, which as many of you know, doesn't fuck around in its difficulty. One of our players went through 6 characters in total. We were expecting her to die, but it seems she was kept in the safe cocoon that is the hexblade warlock. In the very beginning of the campaign (the death house), there was a bit of tension in our party, as the player with eventually 6 dead characters was RPing what he figured a 17 year old girl would do in a cultist haunted mansion; freak out and try to kill anything that moved. Well, she destroyed the ghost girl's dollhouse and her remains, and pissed off the whole party. But our hexblade warlock wasn't having any of her shit, and point blank fired off an eldrich blast into her head... what nat 20'd. The poor bard girl's skull integrity didn't stand a chance, and to this day, we call eldrich blast "The Maeve Buster."
Edgar sounds like my Samurai Crossbow Fighter I retired due to the exact reason of popping enemies left and right. The most brought up moment was when our party was beset by two owlbears during a night attack. We were level 5 at the time and I was a variant human samurai who relied on a heavy crossbow and had the feats "sharpshooter" and "crossbow expert". When my time came to shine, i told the GM, "I pop action surge with fighting spirit and fire 4 sharpshooter shots at the uninjured owlbear" For context: Sharpshooters shots would give me +3 to hit (all modifiers minus the 5 penalty) but would give me +13 damage modifier if I hit. So my one action entailed me to fire 4 attacks with advantage on one turn. I score 4 hits, 2 which were a critical so I had to roll 6d10 + 52. I ended up totally 85 damage and popped the owlbear like a a balloon in which i proceeded to tell the GM, "my work here is done, i'm going back to bed". Needless to say, even after retiring my character, my GM still takes pot shots at me whenever possible for the torment i put him through as quoted, "You can have the best laid encounters possible, and then a lvl.5 samurai come around and does a casual 85 damage"
@@Hawwwlucha it would be ironic if the enemy was a rakshasha, since they're weak to magic crossbow bolts, i forget the exact details but it's why they hide their identity etc cuz all it takes is 1 blessed bolt and they're back in hell
@@Hawwwlucha My DM already has even before I retired my character. Ironically right up to the point I retired my character, my samurai never got any magic weapons and mostly magic tools (cloak of elvenkind, grey magic bag of tricks) so those encounters were somewhat a kick in the nuts, but I tend to roll with the punches as they come and we still manage to make it out.
It's far far older than that. My earliest knowledge of it was from a cheesy "don't do drugs" advertisement in the late 80's. that may be the 'original origin', I don't know.
Personally I don’t like hexblades purely because everything they get is something that, reasonably, all warlocks should have access to. But no. This one subclass gets all of it. So they get to be good while every other warlock cries.
Aiden Knapp it’s to the point that, when I make a hex blade, I usually treat it as a super melee or blaster subclass and just make up whatever patron I want.
Celestial Warlocks can get pretty infuriating for the DM as well. These two subclasses have almost too much power, even compared to other classes. It's kinda hilarious to see all of the rest of the party struggling to stay alive while you kill the nearest young dragon. By yourself. At level 6
Features used in this video to explain why hexblades are so powerful: 1. Recover spell slots on short rest. Accessible by every warlock. 2. Polearm master. Accessible by every character. 3. 2 attacks per attack action. Accessible by every martial class and Pact of the Blade Warlocks. 4. Eldritch Smite damage. Accessible by Pact of the Blade Warlocks. 5. Crit on a 19-20. Accessible by Champion fighters and Hexblade (I'm sure theres another class but can't think of it right now). So in summary... Literally only one of these abilities applies to Hexblades.
@@asherandai1000 fair, but Hexblades also get Hex Warrior, which is something else only they get. And that gets rid of the MAD nature of being a spell sword.
I love Hexblades. One additional thing about Eldritch Smite: You can apply it to ANY weapon attack. Which means you can smite with a ranged weapon. I have a Hexblade Crossbow Expert with Sharpshooter. He is indeed scary especially with later invocations like Lifedrinker which adds necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
roleplaying a min maxed character that doesn't realize how poweful they are at first reminds me of my assassin droid character in a star wars edge of the empire game, he has probably the most min maxed stats in the party but is also ironically the most moral in a group of organics. all the others generally have no problem being murder hobos to some extend while he only kills if he has to to put this in perspective in the EoTE system if you roll above a 151 on a crit the target just instantly dies regardless of how much damage or health, and my character has a +60 crit base and his weapon bonus brings that to a +100 (meaning I only have to roll a 51 on a d100 to instantly kill anything) but the character is also the most likely to try to negotiate or knock out instead of kill this doesnt even touch on how soak (damage reduction instead of AC) works and how he has a 12 soak while normal weapons only go up to 10 damage, basically making him a friendly terminator
heh, I'm reminded of the time someone I knew played a gangster R3 unit named "mr. stubbs" who wanted to reunite his gang of droids to go after the one who sold them out.
Man, one PF game I'm in, in one encounter enemy reinforcedments showed up. Literally spawned within 15 feet of our bard, 5 of em, all wielding scyhtes. They're at the top of the turn order, one walks up, immediately crits the bard, drops him from almost full HP to 0 in one attack at level 9. Kinda was a bit BS with how it was run, since nobody got any chance to react to the new mobs entering the room for the fight. Wish we saw them come in before they had their turn instead of just *pop* "sup"
Hexblades aren’t too strong since you can argue that every class/subclass is strong. DnD 5e makes it so each class is op in its own way. The only thing about hex blades is that they are kinda string with multiclassing. For example, rogue’s sneak attack is op with a crit and they have expertise, paladin’s divine smite is op with a crit, wizard is op since it gets tons of spells and infinite rituals, warlocks have spells that recover on short rest and let rich blast and invocations, artificers get free magic items, clerics get spiritual weapons, spiritual guardians, and divine intervention, bards can get any spell/cantrip in the game and have expertise and Jack of all trades, barbarians get halved damage on the most common damage types when raging and a d1w hit die, fighters can attack 8 times a round with action surge, and sorcerers can do crazy stuff with Metamagic, and rangers... they have gloomstalker? (Jokes aside, Swift quiver is actually really strong and rangers can be good). Also druids are immortal at level 20, and get amazing spells/cantrips, like goodberry (no more need for food ever).
Don't. If they abuse it, then throw the same stuff back at them and see how they like a nova of 60+ damage coming at them. I've had to do that at times when I ran across characters that were trying to break the system, throw a little of the power game back at them and let them get the hint.
@@mitchelltyner5670 sounds like a bad dm to me, you play with your players not against them.. just talking about it is an option you know.. also he isnt alone in the party, so throwing something just to spite him ruins it for the rest
I was gonna make a hexblade with a sword, but this convinced me to use some kind of polearm instead. It's not entirely because of the feat, though; it also has something to do with the patron.
Now that the Piercer Feat exists, this just got THAT much stronger "You crit on a 19. Crits with piercing damage give you an extra damage die now. Also you can reroll one of the damage dice you weren't happy with. Have fun :)"
Couple this eith the fact that some weapons talk, and the sword says "AWW, H*LL YEAH!!" When a commoner pops like a grotesque human-sized blood zit, plus the warlock's affinity for charisma, and you have a recipe for 1-kill encounters.
I do love the idea of characters reacting believably to a pc’s power level, especially a warlock. When the source of your power is a pact with (in this case) an entity of the shadowfell, people would rightly be scared of you!
"Oh, Hazirawn is a sentient weapon. I can't make it by pact weapon." "Eh, go ahead. What's the worst that could happen?" *two levels later* "How the FUCK did you ONE SHOT a DRAGON!!!??
The "No short rest" problem. I feel your pain, brother. The party is (often rightfully so) terrified of getting jumped while stopping to eat a sandwich, or is unwilling to take a snack break every few rooms. "It's only been an hour" they say. I truly believe that the spell Hex should have just been a level 1 warlock feature. Something like "You can place a hex on a creature a number of times equal to your charisma modifier" and then the rest of its abilities. Maybe drop concentration but also remove the "can move from target to target" part. That extra built-in damage would solve a lot of problems, especially since Hex is one of the two spells Warlocks are required to take by law. The other is obviously Eldritch Blast.
I like the idea that anyone can become a warlock. Along your adventures you could come across a cursed weapon or item, or you could sell your soul at random and then boom you're a warlock.
Most drawing tablets are smooth which is a little bit of a change when transitioning from good ol' pen and paper, and will take some adjusting to get used to.
Yeah min maxing can be used to make some really fun characters roleplay wise. I wanted to recreate a "Draginrider" from 3e so I min maxed a fighter (part of which was giving him the dragon scholar background trait from RoT/HDQ) and later multiclassed into hexblade tying him to a specific draconic artifact I knew about. Combine that with some well placed magic items (such as the sword of sharpness, the white dragon mask and some boots of the winterlands) and you're right on track to taming the easiest to tame adult dragon.
I once played a Hexblade warlock. This was back when TCoE wasn't published but it was shortly before that. My DM allowed the use of Unearthed Arcana, which did make a druid I made very powerful but when we started this campaign we were pretty low level so nothing crazy yet. Fast forward a couple sessions and we hit level 5 which made me very happy because of the combination of 3rd level spell slots AND 2 attacks per action. I had been using a combination of hex and hexblade's curse to do some good damage but my damage output was actually fairly low and that with the combination of having scale mail on made hiding for a surprise round difficult. Checking what spells I could prepare now I saw the yet to be balanced spell 'Spirit Shroud' and decided to check it out. What I saw made me very interested: Bonus action to cast, 1d8 extra damage per hit (essentially doubling my damage with my longsword), lowers movement, and cancels healing. I took it and combined with my 2 attacks it suddenly made me the fighter of the group but it still wasn't necessarily broken, I actually died that session but was revived via revify. A couple of sessions later my DM decided that the campaign wasn't going well and that we could just essentially skip to the final dungeon and level up a couple times. I thought nothing of it until I checked spirit shroud again and saw that it scaled 1D8 PER SPELL LEVEL. So we level up to 9th level, I get 5th level spell slots, a feat (or ASI) and an increase to proficiency bonus. So fast forward to a fight with a lamia and some goons. I go straight for the lamia (it takes me a couple rounds so I could activate both Hexblade's curse and spirit shroud.) The artificer, who sees me going for the boss casts haste on me. So I unleash a torrent of blows: 2 hits and 1 crit for a total of 16d8 + 21. Needless to say it didn't survive all that many more rounds. And last but not least the final boss was a skull lord, we had leveled up to level 10 and I had obtained some magic items (the dungeon was HUGE) so my AC was 22 and none of his skeletal army hit me and I could go straight for him. He ran away (which was fairly easy because I was a halfling) but once I caught up the artificer casts haste on me again. My last attack was a crit that killed him, dealing 51 POINTS OF DAMAGE.
Ally: *watches you make a bandit explode* Ally: I think we can go the rest of the way on our own, thank you for what you did though. *begins sprinting into the sunset*
Thankfully, Warlocks have an inherent narrative gimp of needing to appease their dark masters. Otherwise, the DM might decide "oh, you try to cast that spell, but you still haven't gotten ZORBOOL THE UNCRUSTABLE that smoothie he asked for, so he's not super into helping you right now." Sorcerers may be comparatively weak, but at least their magic is unconditional.
Yeah, the problem is I've had a DM who literally made no effort to integrate or do anything with my Patron when I was playing my warlock (which, restraints would've just hurt more as I wasn't a hexblade, but I would've liked more integration into the plot). The class shouldn't have to rely on an external factor like that.
Wrong. Warlocks can get their powers from their masters for various reasons, or even relatively no reason at all. A Patron RAW cannot take back powers, but they can stop a Warlock's power by just not allowing to level up as a Warlock.
Nero It’s all flavor text anyways. Which Jeremy Crawford said that you can ignore anyways. Warlocks don’t need a pact, just like how paladins don’t need an oath. Flavor text is not a rule, and using RAW is not a justification since it’s flavor text, so the other commenter’s statement/argument is flawed.
Yeah, as the DM that's how i'd rule it when they try to power game into a Paladin/Warlock combo. AKA your patron, who gives you your powers as a warlock, does not like the idea of you being a paladin. Leave it up to them if they want their warlock powers turned off. Simple.
AH, I remember my Hexblade, Hektor. He was a Scourge Aasimar, had a radiant flametongue greatsword for his pact weapon, and had an item that let him cast Tenser's Transformation on himself 1/day. Yeah... At level 8 he ended up annihilating an adult blue dracolich (that we weren't supposed to fight) almost singlehandedly thanks to 2 rounds of prep time, stacking buffs, and 2 crits in a row. Fun times, a shame the campaign ended with Covid, I would have loved to play as him again.
Hah, this was me. Half-elven hexblade specialized into novas. Activate all my available buffs as able (Hexblade's Curse, any activated magical items) . Cast my strongest smiting spell (Banishing Smite once available) . Then attack, with double advantage if I could get it (Elven Accuracy) and pop an Eldritch Smite while using a greatsword. 4d6+5d8+5d10+10+proficiencyX2, before factoring in magical items, Lifedrinker, crits or external buffs. And as almost all of that was on one of two hits, God forbid you pair me with a Grave Domain cleric.
0:28 This is a mood I have had, particularly with fighter and warlock. Hexblade set a very particular precedent with its introduction, though, and I wish we’d gotten something much different between hexblades and, get this, TCoE. I think if you entirely removed Hex Warrior from hexblade, and made them a pure shadowfell themed warlock, it would be a much better subclass. Maybe give all warlocks medium armor from the get go, not shields though, and make it so pact of the blade itself lets you use charisma for your pact weapons only. But that’s also just ONE fix idea I’ve had for the warlock. If anyone’s interested, imma post my personal warlock fixes I made in GM Binder in the reply to this comment.
Thats some really funny stuff. Nice job, and i think the subclass in warlock makes sense since the lore is "You were basically worthless until your patron gave you the power". Still if they boosted the subclasses that are slightly worse, that should solve the problem in my opinion.
It would be hilarious to put this in hero the dense,at least a reference,for example while hero closes the door leaving a shack the hex blade accidentally falls and the dude says oh fu-the escene cuts to other shot outside-
@@thibaultnguyen9035 Even better you can use both of your warlock slots for both smites. Paladin requires you to burn a spell slot and warlock ones count too.
@@maliivan1993 The only down side i can see it that you can not use Hexblade's Curse and Wrathful Smite on the same turn as they are both bonus actions. I guess it would be a pact weapon and hex curse first round followed by smites until is dies.
Rather than the smite, I like to build what I call "on hit" hexblade where I try to stack as many bonuses on each hit as possible rather than one giant kaboom. So that requires aasimar for the transformation ability, the use of the hex spell, the curse obviously, life drinker and improved pact weapon invocations, usually maddening hex as well just for a little extra free damage every bonus action. Then you also take warcaster and the booming blade cantrip and whenever someone provokes an opportunity attack (preferably your cursed target) you use booming blade for both the primary and secondary damage as they are moving away from you along with all your other on hit abilities. Is this a love of gross combo? Ya but like it's also fun as all hell lol
This was my first exposure to you as a creator and I must I am not disappointed about how deep the rabbit hole went. No that's not a comment about the rabbit loop.
One thing I would love to do is a Hexblade Warlock whose Pact of the Blade allows him to summon and use a Greataxe, despite his physically frail form (thin executioner style), but the low spell slots kind of puts a damper on doing the really cool scary stuff en masse, and using the Darkness-Devil’s Sight combo often screws with your other party members due to its high radius. Thoughts?
I would like to point out that the only thing that's more unrealistic than an adventurer working for exposure bucks is a merchant group not continuing with the man popping wonder. He's essentially not being paid and is so pants-shittingly terrifying that: 1) no encounter will last longer than the man popping, and 2) nobody who's witnessed the mansplosion will ever attack that group ever. So essentially for the cost they'd pay anyway, they can guarantee short, safe encounters that only happen once per bandit organization.
You’re forgetting that this pants-shittingly terrifying warrior working for free doesn’t seem to fully understand or control his abilities, since there’s no warning and he seems just as surprised as anyone else when someone gets turned inside out. I’m not gonna hang out with someone who could turn me into a fresh coat of paint with a good high five.
I mean, i havn't played a warlock, but to me it feels like a lot of the warlock went into invocations and cantrips and roleplay potential and that's it. Still better than Sorcerer though, who's going to take the same metamagics every time because they can't be traded out and you only get 4 by level 17 and most don't even get additional spells.
I knwo right? I realky wish Wizards would deal with that. They did kinda help with it due to the class features UA, but not by much. And then there's Clerics. I love them, but they are good at everything. More than Bards are.
everyone says invocations are what make it but thats honestly not very true at least if you want to have a character who is useful or somewhat strong because although there are a lot of invocation almost always you need to pick specific ones to be good leaving only a little room for free choices on invocations.
Like our Doctor & Bard who crit’d with Inflict Wounds cast at 4th level. 59 necrotic damage utterly destroying the cambion demon. We all flinched back in horror. Great stuff! Love it.
Here's an idea for a Hexblade character: the PC's family sold their souls to a devil, and the blade (actually one of the devil's servants polymorphed into a weapon) offers to free the souls of his/her family in exchange for the souls of whomever is killed by the blade. The character then kills 'bad guys only', and the resulting specter is the soul of one of his/her family members. Only, these aren't nice people, and after the specter is dismissed it gains the power to possess a living host and waits for the next unwary traveler to pass through. Eventually his family 'reborn' form a new church to their devil master and begin the cycle all over again - raising one child away from the church to be their lawful-stupid patsy.
I remember when my dm gave my warlock a magic spear that crit on a 14-20. this is because the creature that had it crit roughly 7 times in the total span of 9 rounds though it only attacked once per turn. it wasn't magic before but the dm gave it that after the combat as a consolation since one of us died. I think I can say that it was an interesting choice on the dm's part
And THAT is why I chose Hexblade Warlock for multiclassing when I made a Bard that whacked people with his trumpet instead of playing it. +12 to attack with a technically improvised weapon, at level 10. Fun.
Its the subclass that gives you a paladin ability but worse... kind of like whisper bard with psychic blade. Its honestly not that bad unless you pair it with other broken stuff and the smite is not really that good unless you take a bunch of short rests. Otherwise at max u can smite like 4 guys a combat which at higher levels will do nothing because by then a DM should be throwing nothing less than a horde at you. Yes it's very good early on, but again unless paired with other abilities it's not game breaking. My fav "broken" multiclass pairing is gloomstalker ranger and assassin rogue. You get multiple attacks and paired with the initiative boosting feat you attack twice and then instakill 6 enemies before they even see youre there (:
Except the eldritchs smites scale way faster (you still essentially have full caster progression) and automatically knock a target prone, no save, and it's for force damage, which is the least resisted in game. By level 9, your eldritch smites will be dealing 6d8 damage, while a paladin's max at this level is 4d8. Paladin does get more smites and more damage on undead, but not a huge amount more when you factor in a typical number of short rests (typical expected is 2 per long rest, but this can vary wildly, which puts the hex at 6 slots total (all level 5) and the paladin at 7 total), and very few max power ones. A paladin shouldn't be smiting every target they see, while a hexblade has a bit more freedom with that cause they get their resources back quick. Oh, and for hordes vs single target, the warlock still has flexibility in grabbing AOE spells, which the paladin lacks. Hunger of Hadar is p great. Also, let's not forget that damage that scales with proficiency, meaning even a level 1 dip into hexblade can add both potentially +6 damage per hit and an increased crit range (with hexblade being the only class that can expand the crit range with 1 level). If you REALLY wanna get broken try the combo someone else suggested: hexblade + paladin + sorcerer. You can use sorc points to hold person as a bonus action, and by RAW eldritch smite and divine smite can both be used simultaneously, which will auto crit on a helpless, paralyzed target. And when not using hold person, you still have hexblade's curse for a lot of raw damage and the expanded crit range. OH ALSO: Don't forget the hexblade can raise a specter out of a slain humanoid :v Which is a scary ability (thematically and mechanically)
@@Zedrinbot "Recovering your resources quickly" becomes irrelevant if you're in a party that would rather be taking long rests, which is most parties that have one or fewer warlock. Plus, as I mentioned before, as a melee character, getting your health back is valuable, and you can only spend so many hit dice on short rests before you run out. Paladins get Magic Circle, Destructive Wave, and Circle of Power. Granted, those are fairly high-level spells for a Paladin, (Magic Circle is 3rd level and the other two are 5th) but Paladins also get various Auras that grant them and their party benefits in an area such as Oath of Ancients Aura of Warding, which grants magic resistance to the paladin and their allies (incredible), as well as some of the auras harming or hindering enemies in various ways, such as Oath of Conquest's Aura of Conquest, which is great for shutting down large groups. Also, Hunger of Hadar is really only great if you're using it at a distance, since it damages both the caster and their allies. If you really want a good AoE spell as a melee hexblade, Shadows of Moil is a much better example.
My favorite multiclass to break the game is 2 levels in hexblade warlock and the rest in sorcerer, double cast (with quicken) Eldritch blast with agonizing blast, hex and hexblades curse. At level 10 you end up doing something along the lines of 4d10+4d6+32 damage each turn after the third. Not to mention you can eat your warlock spell slots for sorcerer points, then turn those sorcerer points into sorcerer spell slots. Edit: that's not even accounting for the expanded crit range
@@Zedrinbot For a level 20 one shot we were advised to be brokenly powerful with the option of one item of each rarity(excluding artifact, and not capping the common). I asked how much prep time we were allowed. He said that the plot to destroy the pirate island we were invading had been in the works for about a year and our characters could have gotten in on the plan at any point during that. So I made a Warforged Sorcerer Paladin Warlock multiclass who was designed to sit in storage until such a time that he was needed, charging 5th level spell slots through pact magic and flexible casting while never taking a long rest. When he was called upon he would effectively have an unlimited number of spell slots for smites. In which case he would come unleash the fury of a thousand suns with Booming blade (Which calls for an attack with a weapon not a melee spell attack), and 5th level smite, and eldritch smite on each attack, with the illusionist bracers so he could cast the cantrip again as a bonus action and do it again. At level 20, it did a total of is 1d10(glaive)+6(char mod)+3(plus 3 weapon)+3d8, then smite +6d8 Eldritch Smite+5d8 Divine Smite. Didn't ever use my hexblades curse because we ended up fighting a horde encounter with only two enemies that were worth it, but the Kraken got banished, and the DemiGorgan with fighter levels got Nova'd by the fighter with action surge and a belt of storm giant strength and one of the others whose build I don't remember. none of that compared though to the druid who took down 3 ships at once with a storm of vengeance. It killed all the minions that were running oars and stuff like that so the ships couldn't move out of the ambush position, meaning the ships and the minibosses on them were stuck in its radius for the full duration. Every class in DnD is scary if you break it hard enough
You do realise this is how you piss off less skilled DMs right. I mean if you want to offer the sword before the olive branch be my guest. But even the Romans weren't stupid enough to do that and those fuckers thought parsley would stop you getting drunk and having a hangover.
Hopefully your DM/party likes giving you nap time after every combat, or your character is going to suck. I mean, yeah, you will occasionally get those 50+ damage crits, but most of the time, you are going to be casting Eldritch Blast or doing a normal attack, because your party probably won't be too keen on losing a hour after every fight just so you can have another 10% chance at a big hit. This is all assuming the big bruiser monster doesn't accidentally mistake you for the tank and 2 shot you before you can do anything. ...Or that you don't find a better use for your 2 spell slots before combat happens. By all means, have fun with it, but have realistic expectations too.
Doesn't hexblade get extra attack feature? He couldn't use PM extra attack anyway because he used bonus action to cast hexblade's curse. P.S. Turns out hexblade does not have Extra attack feature, but there is an thirsting blade invocation which is basically an extra attack feature. My bad.
The bonus action haft attack is 1d4 bludgeoning. Since he put the Hexblade Curse on the target with a bonus action, he must have had the Thirsting Blade invocation for Extra Attack.
I like the fact that in this story, the DM actually showed the effects of normal people seeing and reacting to critical damage. Grievous bodily harm is no joke, and yes people would become frightened of you.
Warlock: *casts Dimension Door to teleport themself behind the enemy* Warlock: "Omae wa mou shindeiru..." *Proceeds to roll nat 20 and max dice rolls on damage.*
I had this actually happen a few months ago... Dark Knight tiefflin( Vengeance Pal/Hexblade), Cursed target + Vow of Enmity...(So 19-20 crit range and ADV for a min on the target)... dude tries to run away. Dude was just about too far for me to get him, he gets cocky,...Misty step behind him... Makes 2 attacks, 4 Dices... 2 Crits... DM looks at me and my grotesquely huge Evil Grin..., 7 lvls of Warlock..., so the Pact Slots are at lvl 4... The Target turns out to be a Vampire..., Divine Smite deals an Extra D8 Vs Fiends/Undeads... So 6D8's...X 2..., +1 Pact Greatsword... so 4D6... And we Use the Enhanced Crits rules...meaning that you use the Maximum value of the dices and then Roll the Crit dices... So 48 dmg allready from the Smite+6D8's +12+2D6+5(20CHA)+1(Improved Pact weapon)+4 Curse. And a second later we had an Evaporated Vampire... We din't even need to resolve the second attack...
or just use Relentless Hex for the bonus action lol. Dimension door is an action so you cannot action again without Fighter 2. it also uses a spell slot. Relentless Hex? If you have Hexblade's Curse, or Hex, or Bestow Curse, or Bane, on a creature... You can use a bonus action within 30 ft to literally teleports behind you nothing personnel kiddo.
It's even funnier now that my character, Xorn, just got a vorpal weapon. And just before that he did over 200 damage in a single turn after a double crit... At *lvl 7* haha funny omegacrit go brr
Your hexblade popping various villains reminds me of a Homebrew rule a friend of mine introduced while he was a DM. He called it the splatter token rule. Since this was a 3.5 campaign, and you died at -10 points, he decided I'm going to add something if you do more than that. So his rule was that if you were to drop someone to -20, they become a splatter token. A splatter token counts as difficult Terrain. I've since used this rule in my own campaigns with my own twist.
@@Raoul9753 at book only elr smite have limit and that limit is once per turn use soooo... yeah i guess? (im not expert but) (well i mean its not bonus action,action or reaction... its at will)
@@clothar23 padlocks never made sense to me. Given, I haven't played D&D for very long, but if you as a paladin are a servant of your deity or whatever, why would you make a pact with something else and still call yourself a paladin? Also, it's kind of redundant to make a pact with a god you already serve for more power. I just don't dig it.
@@nothingpersonal3331 paladins dont have to serve a god, clerics do, and even that is optional if serving a big enough "concept" like love or beauty. Pallys get their power from their oaths in 5e, and could be atheistic or even antitheist depending on the character Reminder, im speaking of 5e, previous editions did have much more stringent requirements for paladins
I love the hexblade, I chose to focus on greatswords with pact of the blade in my first build of one, so I had great weapon master. I personally haven’t tried polearm master, but now I’m tempted.
@@Cloud_Seeker Wrong, look at the last part of the Hex Warrior feature: “This benefit lasts until you finish a long rest. If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type.”
I don't know if this was the videos intent, but this is an excellent illustration of how a DM can use flavor and description to hype up a character concept regardless of mechanical efficiency. I mean, Edgar's build is so freaking honest and yet a bit of flavorful description has an entire party convinced it's broken. That's beautiful dming.
While I can respect the position of this video that Hexblades are probably just just a little better than other Warlock subclasses, this video really doesn't address why that is. Most of the focus of this video pointing to Hexblades being scary are features available to either all Warlocks or Pact of the Blade Warlocks. Eldritch Smite for example, where the video places a lot of emphasis is something any Pact of the Blade Warlock can pick up at 5th level or higher, same for Thirsting Blade that granted that extra attack, Improved Pact Weapon doesn't even have that limit. Polearm Master has no prerequisites, you can build all of these features into a Warlock of any Pact. What makes this build work (whatever you make of the argument it works too well) is that Hexblades use Charisma to drive their melee/ranged attacks as well as their spells. Combined with the medium armor proficiency it lets Hexblades obtain a decent AC while having really good offensive punch. A warlock of any other pact would have to either wield a lighter weapon like a Rapier and use Dex to maintain a decent AC and attack (and that opens up defensive duellist which is great) or sacrifice AC for the Strength to decently wield the Polearm. TL; DR: The Hexblade has some great features, this video really doesn't talk about them instead opting to focus on a bunch of things that can make any Warlock scary in melee.
From Jeremy Crawford (which this makes more sense, and the DM *should* use short rests more sparingly, it sounds like): "After a short rest, the DM decides how much time must elapse or how much activity must occur before another short rest can start. Maybe 0 minutes, 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour. The key is that rests aren't meant to be a button you press. They're a narrative pause." That's on your DM, that said, nice video. Reminds me a lot of TalesOfMereExistence.
There's people who can turn into bears, creeps who stitch a dead guy back together by begging their friend or something, guys that refuse to bleed out because they're too busy having a temper tantrum, people who can melt a whole group of bandits into a pile of steaming lard and ashes, but make one guy explode into bits with a spear and everyone loses their shit.
As a Hexblade Warlock myself..... yeah, he right. Combine that with my EXTREMELY broken homebrew bow that my DM gave me and I am awesomely op. I don't even really need to use any hexblade powers (so I don't) thanks to my weapon doing a crit on 16-20!!!! AND that I can expend a charge (I have ten and they recharge every sunrise) to do an extra effect; auto hit's my favorite, but there's also double dice which I sometimes used. If my DM ever reads this, love you man and thanks for the awesome bow.
I stumbled across the idea of a Polearm Hexblade build a little while ago, and it's been the character I've had the most fun playing so far in 5e, since, you know, you can pop people like meat balloons with it.
I LIKE the pact magic being a short rest mechanic, it's super unique and is a very interesting element narratively. The problem was more that short rests are too disruptive. I feel like if they were just a minute or 10 minutes instead of a full hour, people would use them more.
This was actually pretty helpful because I always wanted to play a hexadin with a glaive and I never knew how to do it because always thought two-handed weapons are out the window with hexblades, thank you
"HOW DID HE EXTRA ATTACK?" "HE CAN"T USE CHA FOR 2H WEAPONS" "PROFICIENCY TO DAMAGE??" Your questions, ANSWERED! FAQ POST BELOW
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I kinda wanna make a video about what I'd adjust to Hexblade / warlocks in general / my gripes with the subclass.
ANYWAY! I got some new merch! Go check it out here: crowdmade.com/collections/zedrin
And if you're interested in the tablet, you can grab a link to it from the description!
FAQ:
Q: Hex warrior doesn't work with 2h weapons?
A: "If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type." This means you don't even need to imbue the weapon with this property--it just has it, regardless of type. (Fun aside: the wording in particular means if you want to wield two weapons as a hexblade, you can make your pact weapon a sword and still use hex warrior with a second sword, and both will have Cha to damage.)
Q: You don't add proficiency to damage!
A: Hexblade's curse: "The target is cursed for 1 minute. The curse ends early if the target dies, you die, or you are incapacitated. Until the curse ends, you gain the following benefits:
You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus. ..."
Q: Crits only double weapon damage, not all damage.
A: In 3.5/PF, yes. In 5e, however, page 196 of the PHB:
"When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack's damage against the target. Roll all of the attack's damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal....
...If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from the rogue's Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well."
Q: Yeah but paladins are stronger
A: Warlock spell levels scale faster than paladins. At this level, it's only a 1d8 difference, but this gap will increase over time. If you wanna get REALLY crazy, multiclassing the two allows you to, by the wording, use both smites on one attack.
Also, hexblade's curse increases the crit range, which allows you to crit fish easier. With 2 short rests a day, by the dice a warlock is dealing out more smite damage as a paladin, especially on crits (which will happen more often). Paladins have a little bit more consistency throughout the day since they don't need short rests, and have much more flexibility on spells and better defense.
Q: How did he extra attack?
A: He's level 6. Thirsting blade grants bladelocks and extra attack. He also has polearm master that lets him attack as a bonus action after an attack, if it's available. (Not used in the example.) Worth noting: the more you can attack, the more you can crit.
Q: [Combination] is still scarier!
A: Cool story, bro. Also, you did see that Edgar literally bound the victim's soul to his service after popping him, right? This vid isn't solely about being mechanically scary, it's also thematically scary.
Q: That's nothing, my level 12 character can do more damage / I can do more damage if I can set things up a turn before.
A: I would hope a level 12 character is stronger than a level 6, or that you can do more damage with additional turns to setup.
Q: That's nothing, [here's a story about how something with no mechanical basis happened in my power fantasy game]!
A: K.
Q: [Something about GWM, variant human, etc]
A: DM didn't allow variant human cause a bonus feat's wildly strong. The player more wanted consistency / control as well--hence, polearm master (and later sentinel.) We all know the damage numbers could go even higher with things like GWM. But also, that boost in power really doesn't demonstrate any power from the *warlock.* The vid is on hexblades, not feats.
Q: People always get the hexblade's patron wrong, it's actually--
A: shut up nerd
Q: That's not OP
/ Hexblades are fine
A: This video was more on how he's scary, not necessarily OP. It's not quite Hexblades I have an issue with--it's WotC.
Hexblades do demonstrate issues with power creep. They are so insanely front loaded that a single level of warlock can suddenly make another class significantly stronger, probably more than any other class. The curse feature gives a crit-expansion feature at level 1. The fact that the bonus damage scales with proficiency makes it scale incredibly well on say a level 19 paladin level 1 hexblade.
Without multiclassing, they're more fine, but they're incredibly front-loaded still.
The real issue however, Hexblade was written as a way to relieve the pain and MAD issues with making a bladelock in the base game. They did this instead of implementing features that just made it easier to play a non hexblade bladelock (which would've been super easy to do with invocations). I'm fine with hexblade as a concept, but I do not like this idea of WotC making subclasses to "fix" weaker or underperforming classes. It's largely a means to sell more books, but it also leaves the vanilla options dull or weaker (and with the PHB+1 rule for AL, really eats into your options. Wanna play a lizardfolk ranger? You're limited to beastmaster and hunter.)
If there's an issue with a class that's so glaring, the class itself should be errata'd and improved, it shouldn't be fixed with a subclass. Rangers especially know this problem. This is what resulted in the multiclass problem in the first place.
Q: Where's Hiro 3?
A: Small stop asking
Good vid, fun to watch! Can't wait until Saturday live!
I would love to see that. I'm the kind of homebrewer that find the problems in the system and tries to tweak it so that certian things feel more up to par. How would you go about fixing base Warlock? I can think of things for sorcerer, but i'm stuck for Warlock. Even a quick reply here would do wonders.
Zedrin Thank you for the video, oh powerful art warlock. Your patrons must be quite proud of you.
No, but really. Nice vid. And thanks to you, I now have it in my head that we’re patrons for warlocks, and all we do is make the warlocks make content for us. lol
fun fact if you have the elven accuracy feat for super advantage you have a roughly 27% chance to roll a 19 and a roughly 14% chance to roll a 20 which means you could get the hex blade who crits once every other round of combat which is just insane
then they can use a longbow to so they can deal that damage from a distance
I very much like the roleplay of a character who doesn't know that they've been minmaxed. "Oh God, oh God! Why did he explode?! I wasn't trying to kill him!"
Low Int, Low Wis character who doesn't realize it's their fault people keep dying
A little while ago, i was playing a life domain cleric who actively avoided killing anyone.
I casted inflict wounds at 2nd level on a generic bandit and rolled max damage sooo.... yeah...
I made a Sorlock joining a game a bit later and shot two eldritch blasts and one second level chromatic orb dealing fire damage at an orc making a hole in his chest and he burned dying instantly in one turn. my character Percy was freaking out slightly as he did not mean to completely destroy someone.
I think you just described One Punch Man.
And meanwhile the weapon they made a pact with is just like "GOOD!!!! FEEEEEEED MEEEEE!!!"
I'm the player behind Edgar and I gotta say it was a lot of fun seeing this video. Edgar was my first foray into the world of 5e (pathfinder player) and he was honestly a treat to play as
Well... i know what i might do now
It's just nice to finally see a Hexblade using their blade for once. All the Hexblades I know are just eldritch blast turrets, which is cool and all but not exactly what I expect when I hear, Hexblade.
What is your opinion on the Kineticist class in Pathfinder?
@@Gibbons3457 Which makes sense... hexblades are scary and basically every hexblade feature doesn't require you to be a melee combatant to work. You get to be scary AT RANGE.
Plus, it doesn't matter if your STR and DEX are poopie, now you get CHA-based opportunity attacks.
I think hexblade makes for incredible chainlocks and tomelocks... and unfortunately the most viable damage option those playstyles get is still eldritch blast.
how did you make the halberd legal?
i might be a ruleslawyer here, but it sais you cant have a two-handed weapon as a pact weapon (at least in dnd beyond)
im only asking because i wanna try it out really bad now ofc xD
"He was happy to work for exposure, which is probably the most unrealistic aspect of this entire game." OH DAMN
DM: Ooo, the dragon crits you. That'll be (starts rolling dice)
12th level hexblade: (rolls a die). That misses.
also lucky feat
DM (laughs evil-like): What's your dex save again?
@@avichaid6021 its a +7.. What? You thought I would dump stat DEX?
Gearhand Gaming Paladin next to him: Hey, don't forget my +5
@@justnoob8141 Oh shoot! Yea! Thanks almost forgot! Soo... would a 28 succeed the save?
I love the fact that your character looks like she hasn't closed her eyes and rested for at least 250 years
Elves ammirite.
Considering she’s an elf, she probably hasn’t.
"She was able to intercept them as they were coming in"
*WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP*
IS THAT A JOJO REFERENCE?!?
I am just imagining her hitting them in the shins then the face while hiding behind a door in the dark
@@bautistamaurizio1295 *loads pistol*
"Always has been."
*Gmod collision noises intensify*
Hexblade: gets level 14
Every mid level monster/enemy: *Starts sweating*
are you referring to that +cha to dmg invocation, or the "Lets move the curse" thing?
YOU get a curse and YOU get a curse! Everyone gets a curse!
@@Zedrinbot wait til next level, when on top of cursing everything and everyone, they can bind every fiend, fey and elemental, and get those sweet free crits...
@ You can pick Dominate Monster instead if you're a Hexblade. Sounds different from what they described, but looks pretty good too!
I play a warforged hexblade warlock. He was a suit of armor brought to life by a king who made a deal with the god of the forge to protect his kingdom. His hexblade was that he had the ability to summon a sword or whatever weapon out of his arm.
His backstory was actually a collection of stories he gained from people he knew in his past. He would keep the party entertained with these stories while also wanting to know about them which could give them all a reason to talk about themselves as much as they wanted.
He visits the graves of those he knew in the past when he can and believes that as long as he remembers people’s stories and passes them on to others then they never really die.
He is currently 400 years old.
Rad af
tragic, but a wonderful character nonetheless. please tell me he had a cheery, metallic laugh.
That sounds really neat
I'm definitely using this concept for a character. That sounds so fun and wholesome i love it :)
Now that is some great role playing. Cool
I love how Edgar has blood all over his face in the last scene and just looks like "This is fine".
Can I say I love the idea of a naive young man trying to be an adventurer proving himself in the world and who just unintentionally pops people like liquid filled balloons by swinging his special spear with all his might and who is slightly traumatized by it.
So what your saying is use Hexblades in every D&D session got it
Specifically: multiclass into a hexblade if not going pure hex, because it's a stupid amount of good features at level 1.
I'm planning on playing a Gloomstalker Ranger Hexblade Warlock in Tomb of Annihilation.
He's a half drow, former mercernary who had his whole band killed by a demon making it out after also losing an eye.
@@Zedrinbot This, this is why I'm reluctant to allow multi-classing in my games. It's hard enough getting my players to get me info on what feats or ASI they are talking. Add in the broken level of lvl 1 dips, and don't tell me 'well they're losing out on their capstones' cause most games don't go that long and a bunch of classes have really lame capstones. I'm looking at you sorcerer.
@@Cpruett On top of how most games don't make it to 20, most capstones honestly kind of suck. Paladin's the only one with fun ones, cause they're archetype based.
Warlock: "Once per day... you can get... your 4 spell slots back... as an action!" (edit: no, wait, after 1 minute.)
Ranger: "You deal... extra damage... to your favored enemy! Which you honestly should've been doing since level 1 but you weren't."
Rogue: "Once per short rest... you can turn... a miss... into a hit!"
And then so many of them are like monk: "When you start combat... if you have no ki... you get *4 KI POINTS!*"
Like none of them are actually interesting actions you can do.
@@Cpruett Granted, as a DM, you can do a half-and-half for allowing/disallowing multiclassing by saying it has to make sense for the characters to multiclass at that point in the story. Suddenly getting a point in Warlock can only make sense if you've had some sort of contact with your patron ingame; you can only multiclass Bard if you spend considerable time at a Bard college, etc.
It allows the DM to have some control over what players can do without outright saying no, which is how I want to model how I DM sessions.
The entire party: NOO, you cant just do +50 damage per turn and have double crit chance and just kill overkill everything in your way
Warlock Hexblade: Haha Hexblade touch bandit goes POP
Paladins tend to have the same mess, and a whole lot more in the way of slots to dump into smites, and spells that can make it even worse. Hexblades tend to be the glass cannon version of the Paladin there.
My crown paladin almost one shotted a fire giant at level 5 with a crit when encountering them while playing through Storm King's thunder...Protector Assimaar Crown Paladin, all things going with a lance. Base for the attack was 1d12+1 (Lance) +4 (19 Strength...Gauntlets of Ogre Power) +5 (Racial aura)+3d8 (2nd level spell slot smite)+2d6 (Branding Smite), the crit made it into a 2d12+6d8+4d6+10, almost max damage there for it...ended up with a bit over 150 damage...
What would happen if you would multiclass into Paladin and Hexblade?
@@Athalwolf13 Excellent question! They stack. The smites have the same trigger but different names, so they stack. Combo that with Assassinate, Action Surge and Grave Cleric Channel and you have the largest single target burst in the game.
@@TrueAohaku so for this build you would need LVL 8 HexBlade Warlock, LVL 3 Rouge Assassin, LVL 2 Fighter, LVL 2 Grave Cleric, LVL 5 Paladin to get the most out of your lvls so say you have a Greatsword+3 and 20 Charisma you would deal 2d6+5d8+3d8+2d6+2d6+14 on a normal hit if you used 3 smites and sneak attack (1 from Hexblade 1 from Paladian and then cast Branding smite as a bonus action) now if you get the jump on somebody you crit so you now deal 4d6+10d8+6d8+4d6+4d6+14, then if you had put the PATH TO THE GRAVE
channel divinity on beforehand you now deal all of that doubled
Acctually if you want max DPS on 1 attack you would drop the Fighter levels and cleric levels and put 11th level HexBlade 9th Level Paldain and get a teammate to use Path of the grave you can now deal 2d6+6d8+4d8+3d8+14 and just roll a crit thanks to hexblades curse to now deal 4d6+12d8+8d8+6d8+14 and then double that averaging around 340 Damage with the max being 492 damage
if you want big damage nova, I would suggest going lvl 3 paladin, lvl 6 fighter, 9 levels sorcerer, 2 level grave cleric
You can net 144d8+25 = 679 damage however it requires 2 turns of set up and two consecutive failed wisdom save from your target. you don't even need a teammate.
You can actually do something pretty similar with a Paladin, or even a Rogue. Crit fishing is an extremely powerful thing in 5e.
*Cough* Half-Orc barbarian, champion fighter multiclass
I think the main difference is that hexblade can use the curse to make crit fishing easier (19+20 instead of just 20), get bonus damage out of it (and a little bit of healing when you kill them), always use max power smites, and get all of their stuff back on a short rest, instead of a long rest, so they can be much more "spendy" with their resources if they want. They can also use their smites with RANGED WEAPONS, which paladins can't (paladin smite is on melee weapon hit, hexblade is simply on pact weapon hit, and you can have ranged pact weapons). The downsides is warlock a little less bulky: it only has 1D8 hit dice instead of 1D10, and they can't use heavy armor by default.
Kedolan
Well you can take 3 levels in fighter to get a 19-20 crit range on every weapon sprinkle in some Ranger then go the rest of the way as a rogue. That can net you some pretty equivalent ranged damage
3 levels in fighter is valid, and the benefit is it applies to ALL attacks, no resources, but it's still 3 levels in fighter, rather than just 1 of hexblade. (Thank god the crit range is part of the curse instead of hex warrior). That'll definitely slow your caster progression if a spellcaster.
Not a bad option though for a rogue.
@@kedolan4992 the problem to me is that they really aren't more spendy - a paladin has so many more slots to handle other important spells or smite constantly, and if you mc Paladin with a full caster like Bard it's insane. I really want to love hexblade, but with only one real smite slot (need one for shadow of moil or other concentration spell), paladin seems just sooo much better :-(
Our DM's fiance at the time (now married) was new to D&D, and we decided to jump into Curse of Straud, which as many of you know, doesn't fuck around in its difficulty. One of our players went through 6 characters in total. We were expecting her to die, but it seems she was kept in the safe cocoon that is the hexblade warlock. In the very beginning of the campaign (the death house), there was a bit of tension in our party, as the player with eventually 6 dead characters was RPing what he figured a 17 year old girl would do in a cultist haunted mansion; freak out and try to kill anything that moved. Well, she destroyed the ghost girl's dollhouse and her remains, and pissed off the whole party. But our hexblade warlock wasn't having any of her shit, and point blank fired off an eldrich blast into her head... what nat 20'd. The poor bard girl's skull integrity didn't stand a chance, and to this day, we call eldrich blast "The Maeve Buster."
The little thudding noises of the party hitting things is literally killing me I can't stop laughing
Edgar sounds like my Samurai Crossbow Fighter I retired due to the exact reason of popping enemies left and right. The most brought up moment was when our party was beset by two owlbears during a night attack. We were level 5 at the time and I was a variant human samurai who relied on a heavy crossbow and had the feats "sharpshooter" and "crossbow expert". When my time came to shine, i told the GM, "I pop action surge with fighting spirit and fire 4 sharpshooter shots at the uninjured owlbear"
For context: Sharpshooters shots would give me +3 to hit (all modifiers minus the 5 penalty) but would give me +13 damage modifier if I hit.
So my one action entailed me to fire 4 attacks with advantage on one turn. I score 4 hits, 2 which were a critical so I had to roll 6d10 + 52. I ended up totally 85 damage and popped the owlbear like a a balloon in which i proceeded to tell the GM, "my work here is done, i'm going back to bed". Needless to say, even after retiring my character, my GM still takes pot shots at me whenever possible for the torment i put him through as quoted, "You can have the best laid encounters possible, and then a lvl.5 samurai come around and does a casual 85 damage"
Do you think that if you didn't retire your samurai, your DM would've introduced an enemy that needed magical weapons to take full damage?
@@Hawwwlucha it would be ironic if the enemy was a rakshasha, since they're weak to magic crossbow bolts, i forget the exact details but it's why they hide their identity etc cuz all it takes is 1 blessed bolt and they're back in hell
@@Hawwwlucha My DM already has even before I retired my character. Ironically right up to the point I retired my character, my samurai never got any magic weapons and mostly magic tools (cloak of elvenkind, grey magic bag of tricks) so those encounters were somewhat a kick in the nuts, but I tend to roll with the punches as they come and we still manage to make it out.
"Hey kid, wanna try some MAGIC?" If that's not a reference to Weber from Dokapon Kingdom, then I'm an idiot.
That’s exactly what I thought. TheRunawayGuys are to blame for that.
It's far far older than that.
My earliest knowledge of it was from a cheesy "don't do drugs" advertisement in the late 80's. that may be the 'original origin', I don't know.
Personally I don’t like hexblades purely because everything they get is something that, reasonably, all warlocks should have access to. But no. This one subclass gets all of it. So they get to be good while every other warlock cries.
Aiden Knapp it’s to the point that, when I make a hex blade, I usually treat it as a super melee or blaster subclass and just make up whatever patron I want.
Celestial Warlocks can get pretty infuriating for the DM as well. These two subclasses have almost too much power, even compared to other classes. It's kinda hilarious to see all of the rest of the party struggling to stay alive while you kill the nearest young dragon. By yourself. At level 6
Features used in this video to explain why hexblades are so powerful:
1. Recover spell slots on short rest. Accessible by every warlock.
2. Polearm master. Accessible by every character.
3. 2 attacks per attack action. Accessible by every martial class and Pact of the Blade Warlocks.
4. Eldritch Smite damage. Accessible by Pact of the Blade Warlocks.
5. Crit on a 19-20. Accessible by Champion fighters and Hexblade (I'm sure theres another class but can't think of it right now).
So in summary... Literally only one of these abilities applies to Hexblades.
@@asherandai1000 fair, but Hexblades also get Hex Warrior, which is something else only they get. And that gets rid of the MAD nature of being a spell sword.
You're forgetting the Curse. Hexblade only.
I love Hexblades. One additional thing about Eldritch Smite: You can apply it to ANY weapon attack. Which means you can smite with a ranged weapon. I have a Hexblade Crossbow Expert with Sharpshooter. He is indeed scary especially with later invocations like Lifedrinker which adds necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
Paladin: What are you supposed to be?
XBow Xpert Warlock: I'm you but better.
can we all agree that king arthur is a hexblade
No
Yes
I'm not sure. Author never cast spells himself
He could also summon his blade from any body of water.
@@zachcowley779 exactly he used it all on smites
roleplaying a min maxed character that doesn't realize how poweful they are at first reminds me of my assassin droid character in a star wars edge of the empire game, he has probably the most min maxed stats in the party but is also ironically the most moral in a group of organics. all the others generally have no problem being murder hobos to some extend while he only kills if he has to
to put this in perspective in the EoTE system if you roll above a 151 on a crit the target just instantly dies regardless of how much damage or health, and my character has a +60 crit base and his weapon bonus brings that to a +100 (meaning I only have to roll a 51 on a d100 to instantly kill anything)
but the character is also the most likely to try to negotiate or knock out instead of kill
this doesnt even touch on how soak (damage reduction instead of AC) works and how he has a 12 soak while normal weapons only go up to 10 damage, basically making him a friendly terminator
heh, I'm reminded of the time someone I knew played a gangster R3 unit named "mr. stubbs" who wanted to reunite his gang of droids to go after the one who sold them out.
Bro
His expression when he killed the bandit at the end tells me he enjoyed that just a little too much.
Wait till he multi classes into Paladin...
yessss, the dreaded hexblade Paladin.
@@tristankeech4070 combined with some Rouge for sneak attack damage. Give your DM a brain aneurism!
Hexadin! o/
Padlock.
That's why I refused to take Paladin for my warlock, I took fighter instead
I really like that the poleaxe is Soul Edge at the end of a stick.
I just love the innocent smile he has the whole time.
Reminds me of the old scythe based weapon masters, inflating crit-range and multiplier.
Every now and then something just 'pops...'
Man, one PF game I'm in, in one encounter enemy reinforcedments showed up. Literally spawned within 15 feet of our bard, 5 of em, all wielding scyhtes.
They're at the top of the turn order, one walks up, immediately crits the bard, drops him from almost full HP to 0 in one attack at level 9.
Kinda was a bit BS with how it was run, since nobody got any chance to react to the new mobs entering the room for the fight. Wish we saw them come in before they had their turn instead of just *pop* "sup"
I'm currently on my first D&D game, and one of the other players is an Hexblade Warlock.
I fear this.
dont fear it! embrace the bloodshed
Hexblades aren’t too strong since you can argue that every class/subclass is strong. DnD 5e makes it so each class is op in its own way. The only thing about hex blades is that they are kinda string with multiclassing.
For example, rogue’s sneak attack is op with a crit and they have expertise, paladin’s divine smite is op with a crit, wizard is op since it gets tons of spells and infinite rituals, warlocks have spells that recover on short rest and let rich blast and invocations, artificers get free magic items, clerics get spiritual weapons, spiritual guardians, and divine intervention, bards can get any spell/cantrip in the game and have expertise and Jack of all trades, barbarians get halved damage on the most common damage types when raging and a d1w hit die, fighters can attack 8 times a round with action surge, and sorcerers can do crazy stuff with Metamagic, and rangers... they have gloomstalker? (Jokes aside, Swift quiver is actually really strong and rangers can be good). Also druids are immortal at level 20, and get amazing spells/cantrips, like goodberry (no more need for food ever).
Don't. If they abuse it, then throw the same stuff back at them and see how they like a nova of 60+ damage coming at them. I've had to do that at times when I ran across characters that were trying to break the system, throw a little of the power game back at them and let them get the hint.
@@mitchelltyner5670 sounds like a bad dm to me, you play with your players not against them.. just talking about it is an option you know.. also he isnt alone in the party, so throwing something just to spite him ruins it for the rest
I was gonna make a hexblade with a sword, but this convinced me to use some kind of polearm instead. It's not entirely because of the feat, though; it also has something to do with the patron.
Now that the Piercer Feat exists, this just got THAT much stronger
"You crit on a 19. Crits with piercing damage give you an extra damage die now. Also you can reroll one of the damage dice you weren't happy with. Have fun :)"
Couple this eith the fact that some weapons talk, and the sword says "AWW, H*LL YEAH!!" When a commoner pops like a grotesque human-sized blood zit, plus the warlock's affinity for charisma, and you have a recipe for 1-kill encounters.
I do love the idea of characters reacting believably to a pc’s power level, especially a warlock. When the source of your power is a pact with (in this case) an entity of the shadowfell, people would rightly be scared of you!
"Oh, Hazirawn is a sentient weapon. I can't make it by pact weapon."
"Eh, go ahead. What's the worst that could happen?"
*two levels later*
"How the FUCK did you ONE SHOT a DRAGON!!!??
Just the fact that you used the TF2 sound effect for the crits just made the video all the more satisfying to watch. I bloody LOVE Hexblade Warlock.
The "No short rest" problem. I feel your pain, brother.
The party is (often rightfully so) terrified of getting jumped while stopping to eat a sandwich, or is unwilling to take a snack break every few rooms. "It's only been an hour" they say.
I truly believe that the spell Hex should have just been a level 1 warlock feature. Something like "You can place a hex on a creature a number of times equal to your charisma modifier" and then the rest of its abilities. Maybe drop concentration but also remove the "can move from target to target" part. That extra built-in damage would solve a lot of problems, especially since Hex is one of the two spells Warlocks are required to take by law. The other is obviously Eldritch Blast.
POP! goes the bandit.
Now I'm remembering a clip from Borderlands 2, featuring a psychologically damaged little girl blowing someone up.
“I’m a little teacup bloody and cut. Here is my handle, here is my butt.” -Tiny Tina
“Put a little bomb in a hot ass damsel to blow stuff up and make people die.” - Also Tiny Tina
"All around the sta-actus plant, the stalker chase the bandit. The stalker thought'twas all fun-
The band-zit?
I like the idea that anyone can become a warlock. Along your adventures you could come across a cursed weapon or item, or you could sell your soul at random and then boom you're a warlock.
I want to know if the tablet has the ability to emulate the feel of a drawing pad.
The texture on the tablet was pretty rough. There are rough drawing pads out there, but they're not my cup of tea personally.
Most drawing tablets are smooth which is a little bit of a change when transitioning from good ol' pen and paper, and will take some adjusting to get used to.
Just say: *"pop goes the weasel"* and that is a terror stun check for all enemies
Yeah min maxing can be used to make some really fun characters roleplay wise. I wanted to recreate a "Draginrider" from 3e so I min maxed a fighter (part of which was giving him the dragon scholar background trait from RoT/HDQ) and later multiclassed into hexblade tying him to a specific draconic artifact I knew about. Combine that with some well placed magic items (such as the sword of sharpness, the white dragon mask and some boots of the winterlands) and you're right on track to taming the easiest to tame adult dragon.
I once played a Hexblade warlock. This was back when TCoE wasn't published but it was shortly before that.
My DM allowed the use of Unearthed Arcana, which did make a druid I made very powerful but when we started this campaign we were pretty low level so nothing crazy yet.
Fast forward a couple sessions and we hit level 5 which made me very happy because of the combination of 3rd level spell slots AND 2 attacks per action.
I had been using a combination of hex and hexblade's curse to do some good damage but my damage output was actually fairly low and that with the combination of having scale mail on made hiding for a surprise round difficult.
Checking what spells I could prepare now I saw the yet to be balanced spell 'Spirit Shroud' and decided to check it out.
What I saw made me very interested: Bonus action to cast, 1d8 extra damage per hit (essentially doubling my damage with my longsword), lowers movement, and cancels healing.
I took it and combined with my 2 attacks it suddenly made me the fighter of the group but it still wasn't necessarily broken, I actually died that session but was revived via revify.
A couple of sessions later my DM decided that the campaign wasn't going well and that we could just essentially skip to the final dungeon and level up a couple times.
I thought nothing of it until I checked spirit shroud again and saw that it scaled 1D8 PER SPELL LEVEL. So we level up to 9th level, I get 5th level spell slots, a feat (or ASI) and an increase to proficiency bonus.
So fast forward to a fight with a lamia and some goons. I go straight for the lamia (it takes me a couple rounds so I could activate both Hexblade's curse and spirit shroud.)
The artificer, who sees me going for the boss casts haste on me. So I unleash a torrent of blows: 2 hits and 1 crit for a total of 16d8 + 21. Needless to say it didn't survive all that many more rounds.
And last but not least the final boss was a skull lord, we had leveled up to level 10 and I had obtained some magic items (the dungeon was HUGE) so my AC was 22 and none of his skeletal army hit me and I could go straight for him. He ran away (which was fairly easy because I was a halfling) but once I caught up the artificer casts haste on me again. My last attack was a crit that killed him, dealing 51 POINTS OF DAMAGE.
"if i underestimate this guy he's gonna kill my friends i gotta go all ou- why am i wearing a face mask?"
Because scary doesn’t mean incapable of social distancing 😂
Imagine that face of Edgar when he struck a bandit and hit it so hard it exploded. This in some random isekai anime setting(yes he can be the OP MC)
Moonlit Fantasy literally starts off with the protagonist doing this to a Cerberus. And he has pretty much the same reaction. 😂
sentinel on a high level fighter or as I call it
randy savage "OOOOOOOOO YOU AIN'T GOING NO WHERE"
I GOTCHA FOR THREE MINUTES!
Three minutes of play time!
Ally: *watches you make a bandit explode*
Ally: I think we can go the rest of the way on our own, thank you for what you did though. *begins sprinting into the sunset*
I'd run a hexblade and hit it with that Dr Orpheus level of rp from the venture bros.
I'd pay money to watch that unfold.
I would not enter that lavatory! I HAD TACO BELL FOR LUNCH!!!
THE HEART OF A FORSAKEN CHILD?!?!
I'll do it with a Dr.weird personality
GENTLEMEN BEHOLD
MY HEXBLADE
Enemies: *Exists*
Hexblade: So... You have chosen DeAtH.
Thankfully, Warlocks have an inherent narrative gimp of needing to appease their dark masters. Otherwise, the DM might decide "oh, you try to cast that spell, but you still haven't gotten ZORBOOL THE UNCRUSTABLE that smoothie he asked for, so he's not super into helping you right now." Sorcerers may be comparatively weak, but at least their magic is unconditional.
Yeah, the problem is I've had a DM who literally made no effort to integrate or do anything with my Patron when I was playing my warlock (which, restraints would've just hurt more as I wasn't a hexblade, but I would've liked more integration into the plot). The class shouldn't have to rely on an external factor like that.
Wrong. Warlocks can get their powers from their masters for various reasons, or even relatively no reason at all. A Patron RAW cannot take back powers, but they can stop a Warlock's power by just not allowing to level up as a Warlock.
@@hyperiorv1379 Who declared that? The DM decides if the patron gives or not fuk the rules if the DM says so.
Nero It’s all flavor text anyways. Which Jeremy Crawford said that you can ignore anyways. Warlocks don’t need a pact, just like how paladins don’t need an oath. Flavor text is not a rule, and using RAW is not a justification since it’s flavor text, so the other commenter’s statement/argument is flawed.
Yeah, as the DM that's how i'd rule it when they try to power game into a Paladin/Warlock combo. AKA your patron, who gives you your powers as a warlock, does not like the idea of you being a paladin. Leave it up to them if they want their warlock powers turned off. Simple.
AH, I remember my Hexblade, Hektor. He was a Scourge Aasimar, had a radiant flametongue greatsword for his pact weapon, and had an item that let him cast Tenser's Transformation on himself 1/day. Yeah... At level 8 he ended up annihilating an adult blue dracolich (that we weren't supposed to fight) almost singlehandedly thanks to 2 rounds of prep time, stacking buffs, and 2 crits in a row. Fun times, a shame the campaign ended with Covid, I would have loved to play as him again.
pizzaslicememe.jpg
4:09 - HAHAHAHAHA!!! I was laughing so hard at that bit of animation I had to pause and wipe the tears out of my eyes. Well done, sir! Well done!
Hah, this was me. Half-elven hexblade specialized into novas.
Activate all my available buffs as able (Hexblade's Curse, any activated magical items) . Cast my strongest smiting spell (Banishing Smite once available) . Then attack, with double advantage if I could get it (Elven Accuracy) and pop an Eldritch Smite while using a greatsword.
4d6+5d8+5d10+10+proficiencyX2, before factoring in magical items, Lifedrinker, crits or external buffs. And as almost all of that was on one of two hits, God forbid you pair me with a Grave Domain cleric.
The D&D equivalent of "my gun is lethal to HOW far???"
Now if you allowed him to be varient, he could've given himself great weapon master
0:28 This is a mood I have had, particularly with fighter and warlock. Hexblade set a very particular precedent with its introduction, though, and I wish we’d gotten something much different between hexblades and, get this, TCoE. I think if you entirely removed Hex Warrior from hexblade, and made them a pure shadowfell themed warlock, it would be a much better subclass. Maybe give all warlocks medium armor from the get go, not shields though, and make it so pact of the blade itself lets you use charisma for your pact weapons only.
But that’s also just ONE fix idea I’ve had for the warlock. If anyone’s interested, imma post my personal warlock fixes I made in GM Binder in the reply to this comment.
Thats some really funny stuff. Nice job, and i think the subclass in warlock makes sense since the lore is "You were basically worthless until your patron gave you the power". Still if they boosted the subclasses that are slightly worse, that should solve the problem in my opinion.
It would be hilarious to put this in hero the dense,at least a reference,for example while hero closes the door leaving a shack the hex blade accidentally falls and the dude says oh fu-the escene cuts to other shot outside-
Now imagine if someone also took paladin levels so they can both Divine and Eldritch Smite on the same crit.
But doesn't Divine Smite also eat up a spell slot ?
@@clothar23 yes but you can use both a warlock spell slot and a paladin spell slot to smite twice on 1 attack
@@thibaultnguyen9035 Even better you can use both of your warlock slots for both smites. Paladin requires you to burn a spell slot and warlock ones count too.
@@maliivan1993 i never thought of it ! that's great
@@maliivan1993 The only down side i can see it that you can not use Hexblade's Curse and Wrathful Smite on the same turn as they are both bonus actions. I guess it would be a pact weapon and hex curse first round followed by smites until is dies.
Rather than the smite, I like to build what I call "on hit" hexblade where I try to stack as many bonuses on each hit as possible rather than one giant kaboom. So that requires aasimar for the transformation ability, the use of the hex spell, the curse obviously, life drinker and improved pact weapon invocations, usually maddening hex as well just for a little extra free damage every bonus action. Then you also take warcaster and the booming blade cantrip and whenever someone provokes an opportunity attack (preferably your cursed target) you use booming blade for both the primary and secondary damage as they are moving away from you along with all your other on hit abilities. Is this a love of gross combo? Ya but like it's also fun as all hell lol
One of the best videos I've seen in weeks, the druid attacking the assassins and Edgar's face when he explodes someone made me cry with laughter
This was my first exposure to you as a creator and I must I am not disappointed about how deep the rabbit hole went.
No that's not a comment about the rabbit loop.
One thing I would love to do is a Hexblade Warlock whose Pact of the Blade allows him to summon and use a Greataxe, despite his physically frail form (thin executioner style), but the low spell slots kind of puts a damper on doing the really cool scary stuff en masse, and using the Darkness-Devil’s Sight combo often screws with your other party members due to its high radius.
Thoughts?
I would like to point out that the only thing that's more unrealistic than an adventurer working for exposure bucks is a merchant group not continuing with the man popping wonder. He's essentially not being paid and is so pants-shittingly terrifying that: 1) no encounter will last longer than the man popping, and 2) nobody who's witnessed the mansplosion will ever attack that group ever. So essentially for the cost they'd pay anyway, they can guarantee short, safe encounters that only happen once per bandit organization.
yes but fear shows reason the door
You’re forgetting that this pants-shittingly terrifying warrior working for free doesn’t seem to fully understand or control his abilities, since there’s no warning and he seems just as surprised as anyone else when someone gets turned inside out.
I’m not gonna hang out with someone who could turn me into a fresh coat of paint with a good high five.
I mean, i havn't played a warlock, but to me it feels like a lot of the warlock went into invocations and cantrips and roleplay potential and that's it. Still better than Sorcerer though, who's going to take the same metamagics every time because they can't be traded out and you only get 4 by level 17 and most don't even get additional spells.
I knwo right? I realky wish Wizards would deal with that. They did kinda help with it due to the class features UA, but not by much. And then there's Clerics. I love them, but they are good at everything. More than Bards are.
everyone says invocations are what make it but thats honestly not very true at least if you want to have a character who is useful or somewhat strong because although there are a lot of invocation almost always you need to pick specific ones to be good leaving only a little room for free choices on invocations.
Like our Doctor & Bard who crit’d with Inflict Wounds cast at 4th level. 59 necrotic damage utterly destroying the cambion demon. We all flinched back in horror. Great stuff! Love it.
those crits are more fun cause you can't plan for them at all, since the spell is cast before you attack.
"what are you still doing here? the video's over..."
Enjoying your outro music. I'd like to please ask what it is.
Here's an idea for a Hexblade character: the PC's family sold their souls to a devil, and the blade (actually one of the devil's servants polymorphed into a weapon) offers to free the souls of his/her family in exchange for the souls of whomever is killed by the blade. The character then kills 'bad guys only', and the resulting specter is the soul of one of his/her family members. Only, these aren't nice people, and after the specter is dismissed it gains the power to possess a living host and waits for the next unwary traveler to pass through. Eventually his family 'reborn' form a new church to their devil master and begin the cycle all over again - raising one child away from the church to be their lawful-stupid patsy.
Did you just mostly write out the story of Siegfried/Nightmare from Soul Calibur?
I remember when my dm gave my warlock a magic spear that crit on a 14-20. this is because the creature that had it crit roughly 7 times in the total span of 9 rounds though it only attacked once per turn. it wasn't magic before but the dm gave it that after the combat as a consolation since one of us died. I think I can say that it was an interesting choice on the dm's part
"Crit on a 14-20" literally what the fuck
The fact that he just makes these people explode is hilarious to me 😂
And THAT is why I chose Hexblade Warlock for multiclassing when I made a Bard that whacked people with his trumpet instead of playing it. +12 to attack with a technically improvised weapon, at level 10. Fun.
1:57 - how does he attack 3x per round at 4th level? Thirsting Blade - which grants the second Pact Weapon attack is a 5th level Eldritch Invocation.
He's 6th level in the video. How else would he use the 6th level feature to summon a specter?
Its the subclass that gives you a paladin ability but worse... kind of like whisper bard with psychic blade. Its honestly not that bad unless you pair it with other broken stuff and the smite is not really that good unless you take a bunch of short rests. Otherwise at max u can smite like 4 guys a combat which at higher levels will do nothing because by then a DM should be throwing nothing less than a horde at you. Yes it's very good early on, but again unless paired with other abilities it's not game breaking.
My fav "broken" multiclass pairing is gloomstalker ranger and assassin rogue. You get multiple attacks and paired with the initiative boosting feat you attack twice and then instakill 6 enemies before they even see youre there (:
Except the eldritchs smites scale way faster (you still essentially have full caster progression) and automatically knock a target prone, no save, and it's for force damage, which is the least resisted in game. By level 9, your eldritch smites will be dealing 6d8 damage, while a paladin's max at this level is 4d8. Paladin does get more smites and more damage on undead, but not a huge amount more when you factor in a typical number of short rests (typical expected is 2 per long rest, but this can vary wildly, which puts the hex at 6 slots total (all level 5) and the paladin at 7 total), and very few max power ones. A paladin shouldn't be smiting every target they see, while a hexblade has a bit more freedom with that cause they get their resources back quick.
Oh, and for hordes vs single target, the warlock still has flexibility in grabbing AOE spells, which the paladin lacks. Hunger of Hadar is p great.
Also, let's not forget that damage that scales with proficiency, meaning even a level 1 dip into hexblade can add both potentially +6 damage per hit and an increased crit range (with hexblade being the only class that can expand the crit range with 1 level).
If you REALLY wanna get broken try the combo someone else suggested: hexblade + paladin + sorcerer. You can use sorc points to hold person as a bonus action, and by RAW eldritch smite and divine smite can both be used simultaneously, which will auto crit on a helpless, paralyzed target. And when not using hold person, you still have hexblade's curse for a lot of raw damage and the expanded crit range.
OH ALSO: Don't forget the hexblade can raise a specter out of a slain humanoid :v Which is a scary ability (thematically and mechanically)
@@Zedrinbot Don't forget that unlike Divine Smite, Eldritch Smite can be used with a longbow.
@@Zedrinbot "Recovering your resources quickly" becomes irrelevant if you're in a party that would rather be taking long rests, which is most parties that have one or fewer warlock. Plus, as I mentioned before, as a melee character, getting your health back is valuable, and you can only spend so many hit dice on short rests before you run out.
Paladins get Magic Circle, Destructive Wave, and Circle of Power. Granted, those are fairly high-level spells for a Paladin, (Magic Circle is 3rd level and the other two are 5th) but Paladins also get various Auras that grant them and their party benefits in an area such as Oath of Ancients Aura of Warding, which grants magic resistance to the paladin and their allies (incredible), as well as some of the auras harming or hindering enemies in various ways, such as Oath of Conquest's Aura of Conquest, which is great for shutting down large groups.
Also, Hunger of Hadar is really only great if you're using it at a distance, since it damages both the caster and their allies. If you really want a good AoE spell as a melee hexblade, Shadows of Moil is a much better example.
My favorite multiclass to break the game is 2 levels in hexblade warlock and the rest in sorcerer, double cast (with quicken) Eldritch blast with agonizing blast, hex and hexblades curse. At level 10 you end up doing something along the lines of 4d10+4d6+32 damage each turn after the third. Not to mention you can eat your warlock spell slots for sorcerer points, then turn those sorcerer points into sorcerer spell slots.
Edit: that's not even accounting for the expanded crit range
@@Zedrinbot For a level 20 one shot we were advised to be brokenly powerful with the option of one item of each rarity(excluding artifact, and not capping the common). I asked how much prep time we were allowed. He said that the plot to destroy the pirate island we were invading had been in the works for about a year and our characters could have gotten in on the plan at any point during that.
So I made a Warforged Sorcerer Paladin Warlock multiclass who was designed to sit in storage until such a time that he was needed, charging 5th level spell slots through pact magic and flexible casting while never taking a long rest. When he was called upon he would effectively have an unlimited number of spell slots for smites. In which case he would come unleash the fury of a thousand suns with Booming blade (Which calls for an attack with a weapon not a melee spell attack), and 5th level smite, and eldritch smite on each attack, with the illusionist bracers so he could cast the cantrip again as a bonus action and do it again.
At level 20, it did a total of is 1d10(glaive)+6(char mod)+3(plus 3 weapon)+3d8, then smite +6d8 Eldritch Smite+5d8 Divine Smite.
Didn't ever use my hexblades curse because we ended up fighting a horde encounter with only two enemies that were worth it, but the Kraken got banished, and the DemiGorgan with fighter levels got Nova'd by the fighter with action surge and a belt of storm giant strength and one of the others whose build I don't remember.
none of that compared though to the druid who took down 3 ships at once with a storm of vengeance. It killed all the minions that were running oars and stuff like that so the ships couldn't move out of the ambush position, meaning the ships and the minibosses on them were stuck in its radius for the full duration.
Every class in DnD is scary if you break it hard enough
Just startimg a campaign as a hexblade warlock for the first time,some nice info here,thank you😈
You do realise this is how you piss off less skilled DMs right. I mean if you want to offer the sword before the olive branch be my guest. But even the Romans weren't stupid enough to do that and those fuckers thought parsley would stop you getting drunk and having a hangover.
Hopefully your DM/party likes giving you nap time after every combat, or your character is going to suck.
I mean, yeah, you will occasionally get those 50+ damage crits, but most of the time, you are going to be casting Eldritch Blast or doing a normal attack, because your party probably won't be too keen on losing a hour after every fight just so you can have another 10% chance at a big hit.
This is all assuming the big bruiser monster doesn't accidentally mistake you for the tank and 2 shot you before you can do anything.
...Or that you don't find a better use for your 2 spell slots before combat happens.
By all means, have fun with it, but have realistic expectations too.
"And he popped like a zit." This is now my favorite description for one-hit kills.
0:13 "Is that a spear in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?" ;P
I've never played or played with a hexbladeso this run down and anecdote was really helpful! Thanks for putting this out!
I wonder if Megumin would be pleased with Edgar's explosions?
The first time I was this early is today
Have a fun experience watching the video ❄
Second hit from Polearm Master should have been 1d4 bludgeoning, not d10. Or am I missing something about the attack?
Doesn't hexblade get extra attack feature? He couldn't use PM extra attack anyway because he used bonus action to cast hexblade's curse.
P.S. Turns out hexblade does not have Extra attack feature, but there is an thirsting blade invocation which is basically an extra attack feature. My bad.
The bonus action haft attack is 1d4 bludgeoning. Since he put the Hexblade Curse on the target with a bonus action, he must have had the Thirsting Blade invocation for Extra Attack.
I like the fact that in this story, the DM actually showed the effects of normal people seeing and reacting to critical damage. Grievous bodily harm is no joke, and yes people would become frightened of you.
I love the elf smacking the guy nonstop for 8 seconds
Warlock: *casts Dimension Door to teleport themself behind the enemy*
Warlock: "Omae wa mou shindeiru..."
*Proceeds to roll nat 20 and max dice rolls on damage.*
I had this actually happen a few months ago...
Dark Knight tiefflin( Vengeance Pal/Hexblade), Cursed target + Vow of Enmity...(So 19-20 crit range and ADV for a min on the target)...
dude tries to run away.
Dude was just about too far for me to get him, he gets cocky,...Misty step behind him...
Makes 2 attacks, 4 Dices... 2 Crits...
DM looks at me and my grotesquely huge Evil Grin..., 7 lvls of Warlock..., so the Pact Slots are at lvl 4...
The Target turns out to be a Vampire..., Divine Smite deals an Extra D8 Vs Fiends/Undeads...
So 6D8's...X 2..., +1 Pact Greatsword... so 4D6...
And we Use the Enhanced Crits rules...meaning that you use the Maximum value of the dices and then Roll the Crit dices...
So 48 dmg allready from the Smite+6D8's +12+2D6+5(20CHA)+1(Improved Pact weapon)+4 Curse.
And a second later we had an Evaporated Vampire...
We din't even need to resolve the second attack...
or just use Relentless Hex for the bonus action lol. Dimension door is an action so you cannot action again without Fighter 2. it also uses a spell slot.
Relentless Hex? If you have Hexblade's Curse, or Hex, or Bestow Curse, or Bane, on a creature... You can use a bonus action within 30 ft to literally teleports behind you nothing personnel kiddo.
It's even funnier now that my character, Xorn, just got a vorpal weapon. And just before that he did over 200 damage in a single turn after a double crit... At *lvl 7*
haha funny omegacrit go brr
Build please.
The no one taking short rests bit actually hit kinda hard ngl
Your hexblade popping various villains reminds me of a Homebrew rule a friend of mine introduced while he was a DM. He called it the splatter token rule. Since this was a 3.5 campaign, and you died at -10 points, he decided I'm going to add something if you do more than that. So his rule was that if you were to drop someone to -20, they become a splatter token. A splatter token counts as difficult Terrain. I've since used this rule in my own campaigns with my own twist.
In a few days you will reach 300k.Congratulations!
Dude... More of this xD
I thought the title was "Hexblades are sexy"
it isn't wrong tho
@@ratbastard7224 true. But I thought it was.
So basically, hes like a paladin?
Cause that really just sounds like a paladin without heavy armor...
Here's the scary part I have seen Hexblade Paladin multiclass, think about that for a second.
@@clothar23 Can you use 2 smites on a crit?
@@Raoul9753 at book only elr smite have limit and that limit is once per turn use soooo... yeah i guess? (im not expert but) (well i mean its not bonus action,action or reaction... its at will)
@@clothar23 padlocks never made sense to me. Given, I haven't played D&D for very long, but if you as a paladin are a servant of your deity or whatever, why would you make a pact with something else and still call yourself a paladin? Also, it's kind of redundant to make a pact with a god you already serve for more power. I just don't dig it.
@@nothingpersonal3331 paladins dont have to serve a god, clerics do, and even that is optional if serving a big enough "concept" like love or beauty. Pallys get their power from their oaths in 5e, and could be atheistic or even antitheist depending on the character
Reminder, im speaking of 5e, previous editions did have much more stringent requirements for paladins
I love the hexblade, I chose to focus on greatswords with pact of the blade in my first build of one, so I had great weapon master.
I personally haven’t tried polearm master, but now I’m tempted.
@@Cloud_Seeker Wrong, look at the last part of the Hex Warrior feature: “This benefit lasts until you finish a long rest. If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefit extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon's type.”
I don't know if this was the videos intent, but this is an excellent illustration of how a DM can use flavor and description to hype up a character concept regardless of mechanical efficiency.
I mean, Edgar's build is so freaking honest and yet a bit of flavorful description has an entire party convinced it's broken. That's beautiful dming.
Spencer's probably one of the best DMs I've had. That campaign we were in wound up going all the way from level 1 to 20, divided into two parts.
While I can respect the position of this video that Hexblades are probably just just a little better than other Warlock subclasses, this video really doesn't address why that is. Most of the focus of this video pointing to Hexblades being scary are features available to either all Warlocks or Pact of the Blade Warlocks.
Eldritch Smite for example, where the video places a lot of emphasis is something any Pact of the Blade Warlock can pick up at 5th level or higher, same for Thirsting Blade that granted that extra attack, Improved Pact Weapon doesn't even have that limit. Polearm Master has no prerequisites, you can build all of these features into a Warlock of any Pact.
What makes this build work (whatever you make of the argument it works too well) is that Hexblades use Charisma to drive their melee/ranged attacks as well as their spells. Combined with the medium armor proficiency it lets Hexblades obtain a decent AC while having really good offensive punch. A warlock of any other pact would have to either wield a lighter weapon like a Rapier and use Dex to maintain a decent AC and attack (and that opens up defensive duellist which is great) or sacrifice AC for the Strength to decently wield the Polearm.
TL; DR: The Hexblade has some great features, this video really doesn't talk about them instead opting to focus on a bunch of things that can make any Warlock scary in melee.
I only clicked on this because of the jojo reference
From Jeremy Crawford (which this makes more sense, and the DM *should* use short rests more sparingly, it sounds like):
"After a short rest, the DM decides how much time must elapse or how much activity must occur before another short rest can start. Maybe 0 minutes, 1 minute, 10 minutes, or 1 hour. The key is that rests aren't meant to be a button you press. They're a narrative pause."
That's on your DM, that said, nice video. Reminds me a lot of TalesOfMereExistence.
There's people who can turn into bears, creeps who stitch a dead guy back together by begging their friend or something, guys that refuse to bleed out because they're too busy having a temper tantrum, people who can melt a whole group of bandits into a pile of steaming lard and ashes, but make one guy explode into bits with a spear and everyone loses their shit.
As a Hexblade Warlock myself..... yeah, he right. Combine that with my EXTREMELY broken homebrew bow that my DM gave me and I am awesomely op. I don't even really need to use any hexblade powers (so I don't) thanks to my weapon doing a crit on 16-20!!!! AND that I can expend a charge (I have ten and they recharge every sunrise) to do an extra effect; auto hit's my favorite, but there's also double dice which I sometimes used.
If my DM ever reads this, love you man and thanks for the awesome bow.
That is an awesome build. This is my first time watching a video on this channel and I enjoyed it a lot, definitely gonna check out some more
I stumbled across the idea of a Polearm Hexblade build a little while ago, and it's been the character I've had the most fun playing so far in 5e, since, you know, you can pop people like meat balloons with it.
2:37 That's why I really like the new warlock from one DnD because they can cast more spells, even if their progression is slower
I LIKE the pact magic being a short rest mechanic, it's super unique and is a very interesting element narratively.
The problem was more that short rests are too disruptive. I feel like if they were just a minute or 10 minutes instead of a full hour, people would use them more.
i like how you use the Tf2 crit sound there and also how he just explodes and everyone is terrified
This was actually pretty helpful because I always wanted to play a hexadin with a glaive and I never knew how to do it because always thought two-handed weapons are out the window with hexblades, thank you
Improved pact weapon my dude, it just makes soooo much cooler