In retrospect, I should have probably grouped the Undying with Xanathar's and then done Tasha's with the Undead patron out of Van Richten's, as Warlocks have a nicely divisible-by-three number of subclasses, but hindsight is 20/20.
It's here that I'll touch on the Hexblade and the Celestial Warlocks. As I said before, I suspect that the Hexblade is overpowered, or perhaps that the other subclasses are underpowered. There are some subclasses that I feel I see almost everyone picking up, and while there's nothing wrong with playing the thing you want to play, I sort of give bonus points to players who go with a different option. But we'll cover the power of the Hexblade when we get to it.
We're going to start, instead, with the Celestial.
Celestials patrons are the perfect flipside to the traditional fiendish patron. Celestials are definitionally good (though perhaps to allow them as monsters for us to fight, we see corrupted celestials far more often than redeemed fiends, which raises interesting questions about why, for example, Zariel is a fiend, despite being a former angel, while an evil Empyrean still counts as a celestial.) Anyway, having an unmistakably good patron that nevertheless has made a transactional exchange to grant a character power is really interesting to me.
Your expanded spell list is a selection of mostly Cleric spells - you get cure wounds, guiding bolt, flaming sphere, lesser restoration, daylight, revivify, guardian of faith, wall of fire, flame strike, and greater restoration. Having cure wounds on a short rest recharge is pretty great - kind of like how a fighter can Second Wind right before a rest to get some quick cheap healing. Also, Guiding Bolt is a pretty powerful spell at lower levels. These are broadly good to play a bit more of a support role.
At level 1, you get two bonus cantrips - sacred flame and light, which don't count against your max. Some on-demand radiant damage is pretty good, and light is great if you don't have darkvision.
You also get Healing Light. You have a pool of d6s equal to 1 plus your warlock level, which you can spend a number of equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) at a time as a bonus aciton to heal a creature for the amount rolled, and you regain the dice at the end of a long rest. Having a very large number of essentially healing words (21 by level 20) is very good, and great for saving a character who has gone unconscious.
At level 6, you get Radiant Soul. You have resistance to radiant damage, and when you cast a spell that deals radiant or fire damage, you get to add your Charisma modifier to one of the rolls for that spell against a single target. Monsters I think generally do less radiant damage than players, but getting a little extra juice on your Sacred Flame is not bad.
At level 10, you get Celestial Resilience. When you finish a long or short rest, you get temp hit points equal to your warlock level plus your Charisma modifier. Plus, up to five creatures you can see when you finish the rest get temp hit points equal to half your Warlock level plus your Charisma modifier. That translates to a lot of prevented damage, which is pretty great.
Finally, at level 14, you get Searing Vengeance. If you have to make a death save, you can instead just spring to your feet and regain half your max HP (and stand up) and then, each creature of your choice within 30 feet takes 2d8 plus your Charisma modifier's worth of radiant damage and is blinded until the end of your current turn - with no save against it. This can only go off once per long rest. While, as usual, you generally want to avoid going unconscious at those higher levels, this can absolutely save you, and as long as the monsters aren't double-tapping (depending on how mean the DM is, though at 14 they can afford to be mean,) you can get a truly amazing amount of healing from this, and the auto-blind can really turn the tide in a fight.
Coming off the older patrons, things have stepped up a big notch. Now, let's look at the Hexblade.
Hexblades have some of the weirdest lore surrounding them - your patron is a sentient weapon that is connected to the Shadowfell. It's not some famous being from the Shadowfell like the Raven Queen, and it's not just any sentient weapon. It's some weird mix of the two of them. And I think it's for that reason that I don't think I've ever seen anyone other than myself actually roleplay the Hexblade as actually following the established lore. It's strong enough mechanically that people want to (love to) play them, but the lore behind it is weird enough that people often refer to the Warlock themselves as the Hexblade (as if they're defined by their fighting style or something,) which I think subverts the entire concept of a Warlock in the first place. But, to get off my soapbox, I get why people like it - you get such amazing things at level 1 that it's hard to pass up. Let's go over those.
First off, your expanded spell list includes shield, wrathful smite, blur, banishing smite, blink, elemental weapon, phantasmal killer, staggering smite, banishing smite, and cone of cold. Naturally, about half of these really encourage you to play a weapon-based "Bladelock," though I can speak from experience and say that you can also very much play this as a Blastlock anyway.
I'm going to do things out of order a bit and talk about Hex Warrior. This is the feature that is so powerful that I think it's hard to pass up ever if you want to go with Pact of the Blade, but even if you're not, it's still really powerful. You get proficiency in martial weapons, medium armor, and shields.
That's not all, but let me just focus in on this: Warlocks by default only get Light Armor. That means that, before we talk magical armor, they're going to get, at max, studded leather, which gives you an AC of 12 + Dex. In order to have decent AC, you'll need to invest heavily in Dexterity, which is tough given that your first priority should probably be to get high Charisma. However, with Medium armor, you need only a Dex of 14 to maximize your armor class. A Hexblade who starts off with a set of scale mail and a shield has an AC of 18, when a similarly-statted Celestial Warlock would only get 13 with the leather armor they start with. (Even if you're forced to start with cheap Hide Armor, a Hexblade could be at 16 with a shield and the armor and +2 Dex.)
So, already, that's a big deal. But we're not even done with the first of two level-1 features. The other element of Hex Warrior is that you can designate a one-handed weapon that lacks the two-handed property and designate it as your Hex Weapon. You then get to use Charisma in place of Strength or Dexterity for its attack and damage rolls. Thus, you never have to choose between your spellcasting ability and your attack one. Plus, if you take Pact of the Blade, the benefit extends to any pact weapon you conjure with the feature, which could include two-handed weapons.
Again, this is so good that it feels like going with any other patron and wanting to go Pact of the Blade would be just the wrong choice. And while I don't think this means that the Hexblade shouldn't work like this, I think instead that maybe Pact of the Blade in general should.
We're not done though. At level 1 you also get Hexblade's Curse. Once per short rest, you can use a bonus action to curse a target within 30 feet of you. It lasts until you die, the target dies, your you become incapacitated. While cursed, you get a bonus to damage rolls against the target equal to your proficiency bonus. Also, you crit the target on a 19 or a 20. And finally, if the target dies, you regain hit points equal to your warlock level plus your Charisma modifier. This ability I think is a bit more balanced - it's very powerful, but unlike the Hex spell (though you can stack both of them if you wait two turns,) it's non-transferrable (well, until much later,) and still only lasts the single minute (whereas Hex can keep going for a long time, especially by level 9.) But just like Agonizing Blast, this scales great with the extra beams of Eldritch Blast, or with extra attacks if you pick up Thirsting Blade.
The level one features are also amazing for single-level dips. Hexblade's Curse is amazing for any attack-based character, and there's a really strong Paladin build you can do where you grab as much Charisma as possible and then use this so that you can use it for your weapon attacks as well (not to mention smites on a short rest.)
Finally, we move on to level 6. At this level, when you kill a humanoid, you can have its spirit rise as a specter, gaining temp hit points equal to half your warlock level and then fighting for you - it also gets a bonus to its attack rolls equal to your Charisma modifier. It sticks with you until the end of your next long rest, and you can only use it once per long rest. This is pretty freaking cool (and shockingly doesn't actually use your reaction). Now, my personal experience of this was a bit underwhelming, as I was playing in a game in which we barely ever ran into humanoid enemies (it was Descent into Avernus,) and the one time I tried to use it, the humanoid in question had some kind of plot armor and the DM said he had no soul to be raised. (I think I got to use it on a memory near the very end of the campaign, in this interesting sort of memory/dream sequence.) But in most campaigns, this will probably be more useful.
At 10, you get Armor of Hexes. If the target of your Hexblade's Curse attacks you, you can use a reaction and roll a d6, and if you roll 4 or higher, the attack automatically misses. Giving your main target a 50% chance once per round to automatically miss you is definitely not bad.
Finally, at 14, you get Master of Hexes. This finally lets you transfer the Hexblade's Curse to other targets when the original target dies to another creature within 30 feet of you. You don't regain hit points if you do this (and can't if you're incapacitated,) but being able to bounce that around in a fight is definitely very good (and it doesn't take your reaction or bonus action to reapply, so no worries if the thing you transfer it to gets killed before you can attack it.)
The Hexblade is obviously very powerful. I think the only issue is that it makes the other subclasses seem so underpowered in comparison. While I think you can definitely skip it if you're going to be a more traditional blastlock, I honestly don't see any bladelock having a great time without going with this patron, which is too bad.
So, next post, we'll explore the newest patrons - the Genie, Fathomless, and Undead, which I really like. Can they stand up to the Hexblade? We'll find out!
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