Dungeons and Dragons 5E: Warlock Guide

What are your opinons on Xanathar's Hexblade Warlock? What builds have you guys done with the Hexblade Warlock?

What program are you useing to build the character sheet?

Where did you put your 12 from the 15,14,13,12,10,8 array?

Shield is a great spell if you have another class that gives you spell slots...

Hexblade starts to break at level 5. You probably want to drop Agonizing Blast at level 5 for Thirsting Blade. You can pick it up again later if you really like it, but Improved Pact Weapon, Thirsting Blade, and Eldritch Smite are all essential.


If you take War Caster as a lvl 4 feat (or lvl 1 as a variant human), you can hold your improved pact weapon and a shield, and will have met both material and somatic requirements for most spells. It also gives you advantage on your concentration saves from damage, and you get to cast a spell in place of making an opportunity attack. Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade are excellent there, as by fifth level they each give you an additional damage roll (see below). If you use a pact weapon with Reach, those opportunity attacks extend to a 10 ft radius -- technically Booming and Green-Flame have a range of just 5 ft, but you can negate this problem with Spell Sniper (or your DM may just allow it, ask first).


When you get Eldritch Smite at fifth level, your spell slots are level 3. It gives 1d8 damage base, along with an additional 1d8 for each spell slot level expended. That equates to 4d8 to start with, and unlike the paladin's Divine Smite, there's no maximum spell slot that can be fed to it -- a Hexblade 5, Sorcerer/Wizard/Bard/Druid/Cleric 15 could potentially expend their level 8 spell slot, and on a critical hit, Eldritch Smite would roll 18d8, an average of 81 Force damage on top of anything else that attack would produce. Not always the wisest use of a level 8 spell, but it's nice to have the ability to nova something down in a pinch.



Keep in mind that Hexblade's Curse triggers additional proficiency bonus damage whenever a damage roll is made on that target. The smite spells, Eldritch Smite, melee attack cantrips, base weapon damage, Elemental Weapon, poison on your weapon, Hex, Sneak Attack if you multi into rogue... these effects each call for a damage roll, so Hexblade's Curse adds that proficiency damage (+3 at level 5) for each effect. At a certain point, the base damage of your weapon type becomes (nearly) negligible.


All this leads up to the Hexwhip -- Warlock 5+ / Rogue X / Sorcerer X build. Whip is a reach weapon with finesse, allowing you to roll Sneak Attack dice, and giving easy access to proficiency with poisons. Sorcerer levels provide additional spell slots to burn for Eldritch Smites, utility spells, all the cantrips you need, metamagic, access to Haste, and the ability to burn sorcery points for even more spell slots -- because the glaring weakness of the pure hexblade is burning out those spell slots and being a sub-par fighter for the rest of the encounter. Each round you'll get your two attacks with Thirsting Blade, a third swing if Haste is active, and potentially a fourth attack if anything tries to move out of your 10 ft range. Add on the Sentinel feat so you can get this fourth attack anytime anyone but you is getting hit within that radius. With all the stacking extra rolls, the tiny 1d4 roll from the whip barely matters, particularly on a target with Hexblade's Curse.


And of course, save your highest level slots for Eldritch Smites when you land a crit.

Human Hexbade Warlock, Str-Chr 8-14-16-8-10-16 taking Pole-arm master. Pact of the blade, use a Glave, improved pact weapon Eldrich smite(at 5th)Thirsting blade(at 5th), Sentinel at 4th, Prodigy at 8th for expertise in athletics. Now you can Hex as a bonus action choosing Str, use your multi attack to push prone then grapple(pact weapon should be a quarter staff). Now you have advantage they have disadvantage and probably can’t beat your grapple check.

Uhh...just a thought: human for extra feat, magic initiate cleric guided bolt. Lv2 the teleport to hexed nmy invocation, wis is secondary stat.
Hex bonus action and guided bolt 4d8 and advantage for everyone until end of next turn to attack, reaction you have shield saved up. Next round teleport behind the fucker so no dodge and flanking, murder stroke the fucker in the back with advantage and bonus from charisma and proficiency. After that if you're a higher level, the same time you can use branding smite for a nifty extra 2d8 radiant and with your invocations and pact also necrotic damage and the target can't go invisible. If you're on this level you can also cast blink if you really want to to further mess with your enemies.
Burst damage? Hell yeah. 4d8+weapon+prof+cha+1d8wrathful smite+cha(necrotic) with advantage and flank in two rounds @ lv2

Going with a longsword and +3cha mod on average: 6d8+2+3+3 ~= 32 damage mixed between physical radiant and necrotic.
With a +4 guided bolt on LV 2 nmy AC to start off that's good. Medium armor. You should already have a half-plate unless you're playing in a very restricted environment and a silvered longsword to mitigate nmy resistance from non-magic.
The only feature as a hexblade I'm gonna miss is hurl through hell.

Half elfs get 2 skills, and a plus 2 charisma and plus one to two stats also allow you to get elven accurancy feat, which with the darkness devil sight combo makes its very unlikely to miss, of course then youre 1v1ing creaturesmwhich isnt good. Though i think hexblade get an ability later that gives advantage if not you have ghost man where you can make a sandwhich. Yuan Tis give a plus 1 int i think as well as magic resistance, which the resistsnce is pretty good but int is kinda eh. Of course you can play what race you want but you stated that Yuan Ti was more optimal, which i dont think is true.

I would definitely suggest you take the Thirsting Blade invocation at 5th level. This gives you two attacks when you attack with your pact weapon.

My current build(AL Lvl5) is a variant human Sentinel/master combo using pact of the blade(glave). Improved pact weapon, thirsting blade, Edrich Smite. And oh man, he kicks butt.

AL legal is PHB + 1- so making a hexblade is awesome, but you won't be able to run the Yuan-ti :(
That is if you're playing D&D Adventurers League. Great video though!

You cant have elemental weapon at lvl 3 it's a lvl 3rd spell slot. Need minimum lvl 5

Question: Do Hexblade's get their additional spells from their Patron as well (ie Fiend Patron: Burning Hands & Command) at first level?

In Xanathar's Guide it reads: (pg. Otherworldy Patrons: At 1st level, a warlock gains the Otherworldy Patron feature. The following options are available to a warlock in addition to those offered in the Player's Handbook: the Celestial and the Hexblade)

The wording at the end if throwing me of a little..

oh boy. I found 2 things that i want to tell you.

1. Elemental weapon and improvised pact weapon.
As far as i understood it, it will give together only a +1 to attack rolls as the improvised pact weapon invocation gives +1 to the attack/dmg rolls UNLESS it is a magic weapon and in the spell Elemental weapon it is written. "A nonmagical weapon you touch becomes a magic weapon". In my mind it means you lose the +1 from the invocation but gains the +1 from the spell. It probably comes down to how the DM understands it as i didn't find any officiel rules about it.

2. Armor of Hexes and lucky.
Don't know where this idea comes from but i can say with 100% certainity that it is wrong.
The lucky feat says: "Whenever you make an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can spend one luck point to roll an additional d20." and "You can also spend one luck point when an attack roll is made against you."
The d6 roll of the armor of Hexes is neither a attack roll, a ability check nor a saving throw or in other words it Armor of Hexes and lucky doesn't work with each others.

Except these 2 i didn't find any wrongness in this Hexblade guide that.
If i am wrong with anything written here, please correct me as i don't want to tell any wrongs.

Best video I've seen. All the others waffle on. You're keeping to the subject. My pact of tome fiend patron warlock has lost contact with his patron and I am looking at going hexblade pact of the blade.

This has helped knowing that I'd get +11 to attacks with the blade curse. Cha +5 prof +3 curse + 3