Yeah, we're doing another Warlock one.
The Hexblade. It's a ubiquitous subclass in 5E. I've played one in Descent into Avernus, but I also did so making the perhaps insane choice to not go Pact of the Blade. Still, mechanically, it's still plenty powerful.
But the flavor is... lacking.
The premise of Hexblade is that you've made a pact with a sentient weapon. But there's also an implication that you're also drawing on the power of the Shadowfell. Ultimately, what I tend to find is that a lot of players just kind of pick any idea for a patron and just use the quite nice and powerful mechanics. My Hexblade Warlock had an actual Hexblade as his patron (though in the backstory I came up with, the blade was sort of a focus for a long-dead knight that was called "The Blade of the Silent City" within the Shadowfell, whose soul resided in the blade that hovered in front of her throne, where her motionless, desiccated corpse lay).
The thing is, people take this subclass, or often dip into this subclass, because it gives you a few amazing things at level 1 - the ability to use Charisma instead of Strength or Dexterity for your weapon attacks, medium armor, shields, and Hexblade's Curse.
And I have said for a long time that, at the very least, the functionality of getting to use Charisma as your weapon ability should be baked into Pact of the Blade, allowing other subclasses to be able to play a Bladelock without being at a sever disadvantage compared to Hexblades.
And WotC has delivered! The form has shifted in the last two playtests involving Warlocks, but let's look at how it works in playtest 7.
Pact Boons are now Eldritch Invocations, but there's a kind of "suggested path" to take either Pact of the Blade or Pact of the Tome at 1st level. We might cover Tome later, but I think it has a less direct impact on your gameplay even if it's still quite good.
The idea of Pact of the Blade is to allow your Warlock to be a melee combatant. Let's see how well it achieves that.
Before we begin, though, we need to address a change from playtest 5. In 5, Warlocks got Medium Armor training across the board. This has been rescinded. Now, especially given that Warlocks are unlikely to invest heavily in Dexterity (especially with the change to Pact of the Blade,) I think taking Moderately Armored as a level 1 feat is a good call (actually, I just looked back to the Expert Classes UA, and realized that Lightly Armored now gives you Light, Medium and Shield training. So Moderately Armored is gone, but you get its functionality with this. Honestly, this might be a good call for Wizards and Sorcerers as well). Getting an easy 18 AC (with Scale Mail and a Shield and a modest investment of +2 to Dexterity) is probably worth your 1st level feat, and with Warlocks, you can even get more relatively easily with Lessons of the First One.
AC is good for everyone, but especially if you want to build a character who goes into melee. With a +2 to Dexterity, you'll nearly keep pace with heavy-armor wearers, only losing out when they upgrade to Plate.
Without further ado: what is the new Pact of the Blade?
Pact of the Blade is now an Eldritch Invocation that has no prerequisites. Warlocks now get an EI at level 1, and get two more at level 2, and then the progression is similar to the old version, except that we ultimately cap out at 10 total. Essentially, we get front-loaded a bit and then settle into an "every three levels" thing.
As a Bonus Action, you can conjure a pact weapon in your hand, which is a Simple or Martial melee weapon of your choice. You can also create a bond with a magic weapon that you touch. Until the bond ends, you have proficiency with the weapon, and you can use its Mastery property, and you can use it as a spellcasting focus.
When you attack with the bonded weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier for attack and damage rolls, instead of using Strength of Dexterity. You can also cause the weapon's damage to deal Necrotic, Psychic, or Radiant damage, or use its regular damage type.
The bond ends if you use the feature's bonus action again, or if the weapon is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more, or if you die. And a conjured weapon disappears if the bond ends.
So:
The biggest thing is that the "Charisma for your weapon" thing is now part of Pact of the Blade. Bladelocks also get to play with the Mastery system, which is fun. The new damage types are further allowing them to dispense with the distinction between magical and nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. However, I think it's notable that we're not choosing when we make the bond, but actually on every attack. Radiant is probably the most reliable damage type of these three, but they're all pretty good, even if Force might make more sense.
As before, this lets you use weapons you wouldn't normally be able to use as a Warlock.
However, I think it's important to point out that Heavy Weapons now impose disadvantage if you have less than a 13 in the appropriate ability score for them. If you want to wield a Greatsword as a Bladelock, you will need to have at least 13 Strength to avoid getting disadvantage.
Ok, so that's the whole invocation. I think it does what you'd want it to, but compared with the version in playtest 5, we're missing a few features. Those are now their own invocations, so let's take a look.
Thirsting Blade requires you have 5 levels of Warlock or more and also that you've taken Pact of the Blade. We can pick this up at level 5, as we get a new invocation at this level (though we can also swap invocations when we level up).
Thirsting Blade now officially gives you the Extra Attack feature when using your Pact Weapon only. You can attack twice, instead of once, when you make the Attack action. Additionally, when you hit level 11, your Extra Attack now confers two additional attacks instead of one (for a total of 3).
And that's interesting: basically, you'll be keeping up with Fighters in terms of number of attacks, but also you'll be keeping up with Eldritch Blast. And this has always been the challenge of Pact of the Blade - when is it going to be better than Eldritch Blast? Depending on the weapon, it can now keep up at least until tier 4, when EB becomes four separate attacks. I will also note that if you get a +1 weapon, your damage with a d8 weapon will keep pace with an Agonizing Blast-enhanced Eldritch Blast, and with higher bonuses, you'll do more. With the same number of attacks, therefore, you'll start doing more damage per round (at least until level 17). While a Blastlock can keep pace with a Bladelock in terms of attack bonuses thanks to things like Wand of the War Mage or Rod of the Pact Keeper, the damage bonus of Agonizing Blast doesn't scale up with magic items.
Eldritch Smite is an invocation that requires 5th level or higher in Warlock and Pact of the Blade.
Once per turn, if you hit a creature with your pact weapon, you can expend a Warlock spell slot to deal an extra 1d8 Force damage to the target, plus 1d8 per level of the spell slot. If the creature you hit is Huge or smaller, you can knock it Prone.
So, this is unchanged. I might pick up Thirsting Blade before this just because it's more reliable damage. But I think it's also worth noting that technically this scales up higher than a Paladin's Divine Smite, which maxes out its damage as a 4th level spell. And, of course, Warlocks will get 5th level spells far sooner than Paladins.
If you need a big burst of damage, especially after you crit, this is probably pretty good. But again, even if Warlock spells are somewhat limited, I have to point out the Summon spells here. A max-level Eldritch Smite will do 6d8, or about 27 damage (54 on a crit). A 5th level Summon Undead with the Skeleton option will, when it hits, deal 26 damage per round for the same spell slot investment. (Yes, it's not quite as much because it has a chance to miss - but if we only give it a 50% chance to hit and ignore the chance to crit, that's still going to nearly match a crit Eldritch Smite after four rounds - for a spell that can last an hour.)
Lifedrinker is an invocation that requires level 9 or higher in Warlock and Pact of the Blade.
When you hit a creature with your pact weapon, the creature takes 1d6 extra necrotic, psychic, or radiant damage (your choice) and you can expend one of your Hit Dice, roll it, add your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1) and heal for that amount.
Now, this is probably a nerf from the old version, which let you add necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1) to the damage of your pact weapon, but situationally this could be better - on a crit, for instance. Or if you're fighting ghosts. The healing is potentially useful in a clutch moment, but it is of course expending a resource you'd normally use for healing.
But compared to not having this - a weapon that gets extra dice of damage is generally going to be very good. Thirsting Blade I would consider mandatory for a Bladelock build, but this one is also probably close to that level of priority. If we have a Longsword, for example, wielded one-handed (assuming we got Lightly Armored for medium armor and a shield,) by level 11 we're making three attacks around for 1d8+1d6+5 (before accounting for magical weapons,) so about 39 damage if we hit with all of them. And hey, if we've Hexed them, we're doing 49.5, compared with the "damage baseline" optimizers seem to use, which is EB+Hex, for 1d10+1d6+5 three times, or 42 damage per round. (Though you should use a Summon spell instead of Hex in most cases).
Ok, so I think the new Pact of the Blade allows you to pretty reasonably build a character who is capable of attacking well in melee. Now, what other stuff would you want to support it?
We talked about picking up Lightly Armored, which I still think is a good call (and even if you're not taking Pact of the Blade it's a pretty good idea).
The Archfey, which in playtest 7 has the ability to use Misty Step a massive number of times and gets various bonuses to that spell, makes a lot of sense as a melee combatant. Run in, attack with your pact weapon, and then Misty Step away.
Armor of Agathys has always been a strong choice for melee Warlocks. Especially when it gets upcast, not only is it doing more damage, but it's also likely surviving long enough to deal that damage a couple of times. Cast at 5th level, it's making up for the lower hit die than the one Fighters and Paladins get.
A Great Old One Warlock who goes Bladelock will now basically never have to worry about the range on Awakened Mind to get their Clairvoyant Combatant bonus.
So yeah, I think that this makes for a reasonably viable playstyle - as long as you figure out a way to get a decent AC.
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