The original Hexblade is one of the weirdest subclasses in D&D, because I think it really transforms the Warlock class, enabling it to fully commit as a weapon-focused martial class. Personally, I've always had an issue with it because players seem to think the "Hexblade" describes the Warlock themselves, rather than the patron, and so the flavor of the subclass is ignored in favor of just mechanical benefits. Maybe that's fine - it's always ok to re-skin aspects of a class to suit your character.
But one of its huge advantages was that the old Pact of the Blade only allowed you to summon a weapon (which could be a martial one that you'd have proficiency with,) meaning that you'd have to split your focus between different stats. The Hexblade let you attack using Charisma. On top of this, by giving you proficiency (what is now called training) in Medium Armor and Shields, it made your Warlock much more capable of mixing it up in melee, normally a risky proposition for a class that only gets Light armor proficiency and doesn't focus on Dexterity (though I guess if you also needed to boost a physical stat for your weapon, you might push Dex in order to wield a rapier or something like that).
On my first reading, I think the Hexblade still seems built for a Pact of the Blade route, but it's not quite as focused on that, which might count as a major nerf depending on what you're looking for from the subclass.
Hexblade Patron Spells:
1st: Hex, Shield, Wrathful Smite
2nd: Arcane Vigor, Magic Weapon
3rd: Conjure Barrage, Dispel Magic
4th: Freedom of Movement, Staggering Smite
5th: Animate Objects, Steel Wind Strike
There are quite a lot of changes from the old Expanded Spell List - in fact, other than Shield, Wrathful Smite, and Staggering Smite, I think everything else is different. Of course, Patron Spells are now granted automatically, rather than just adding these spells to the options for you to take as Warlock spells, so almost by definition it's a buff.
3rd level:
Hexblade Manifest has two sub-features, one of which has its own sub-aspects.
Hexblade's Curse lets you cast Hex without expending a spell slot a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest.
Naturally, this is a big change from the old Hexblade's Curse, which was a separate effect that worked differently (adding your PB to your damage and letting you crit on a 19 or 20). While you could argue that Hexblade's Curse was better than the Hex spell, this does kind of reign in the thematic redundancy a bit.
Hexblade's Maneuvers lets you add an effect once per turn when you hit a target affected by your Hex with an attack roll:
Draining Slash forces the target to make a Con save. On a failure, the target can't make opportunity attacks and their speed is halved until the start of your next turn.
Harrowing Blade forces the target to make a Wisdom save, and on a failure, the next attack the target makes against a creature other htan you before the start of their next turn, they take Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
Stymying Mark gives the target Disadvantage on the next saving throw they make before the start of your next turn.
So: this is all very different. As we've seen with other subclasses, they're really pushing Warlocks to use Hex even as they might "graduate" out of it, a design decision I'm not really happy with (having Hex be good isn't a bad thing, but when Warlocks have so many cool concentration spells, I don't think it's good design to make parts of their subclass have no function when they're not using Hex - though to be fair, the name of the subclass is Hexblade). Still, these effects are fine, though Stymying Mark isn't going to help the Warlock very much unless they get it on an opportunity attack. Still could be good to set up an ally, in which case it could be very helpful.
Notably here, there's no Hex Warrior equivalent - which means that Hexblades don't get Medium Armor, Shields, or Martial Weapon proficiency. The latter is kind of irrelevant if they have Pact of the Blade, but the former means that, without multiclassing, your AC is going to be crap, most likely.
That said, having played a Hexblade Blast-lock in Descent into Avernus (this was before the Undead Patron, so it was the closest I could get to a Shadowfell-themed Warlock,) these features do just so happen to work perfectly well with an Eldritch Blast-focused character.
Level 6:
Life Stealer has two sub-features:
Hungering Hex lets you regain 1d8 + Cha hit points when a Hexed target drops to 0 HP.
Inevitable Blade allows you, once per turn, when you make an attack roll against a Hexed target and you miss, to deal Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
So, the latter here effectively gives you the Graze property, albeit limited to one attack per turn, which is good, but not as good as if it worked on all attacks. It also replicates, a little later, one of the benefits of Hexblade's Curse, with that healing.
Notably, again, we don't have the Accursed Specter.
Now, Accursed Specter was a weird ability that was hard to use - very flavorful, but also very dependent on fighting humanoid enemies, and gave you a creature that didn't scale up.
Level 10:
Armor of Hexes lets you, when you take damage from a Hexed target, use your reaction to reduce the damage you take by 2d8 + Cha, which you can use a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier per long rest.
The old version of this essentially gave enemies with Hexblade's Curse on them a coin flip to see if they actually hit you. While it also used your reaction, it was unlimited in use. This version is more reliable, but A: it might not actually fully negate a hit if you're getting hit very hard and B: you can run out of uses (uses that are already sort of limited by how many Hexes you can cast). It's less swingy, but also less good, I think.
Level 14:
Masterful Hex has three sub-features:
Accursed Critical lets you crit on a 19 or 20 on a Hexed target.
Ok, there it is - thirteen levels later than the old versioin.
Infectious Hex allows you, when you use one of your Hexblade's Maneuvers, to target an additional creature within 30 feet of the cursed target and deal 1d6 Necrotic damage.
1d6 extra damage at level 14. Wow, incredible.
Resilient Hex prevents you from losing concentration on Hex.
Honestly, this is very useful, and I think probably needs to come earlier.
So, overall, what are my thoughts?
Well, if the goal of this redesign was to get people to stop taking Hexblade, I think it might do the trick.
And genuinely, I think that intention might be a good one - the Hexblade from Xanathar's was so mechanically powerful that it pushed a lot of other Warlocks out of the picture.
But I think that the 100% reliance for every single subclass feature on the Hex spell is a big mistake. Why do we have Animated Objects on our spell list here, if our subclass just vanishes when we don't use Hex?
Whatever the opposite of a glow-up is, this UA version feels like that. It's fine, though, because a far more flavorful and interesting Warlock patron is up next, which will close out our exploration of the new UA: the Undead Patron.
No comments:
Post a Comment