Hexblade Discussion

[Zadi]

Hi. I want to open a discussion about hexblade, not necessarily focused about the current balance state it is in, but rather how, in my opinion, it is somewhat of a let down when it comes to fulfilling its class fantasy (as i understand it). I want to preface that i am in no way an expert on either arelith or hexblade meta.

TLDR: It has a niche spot between martial and caster, that it shares with some other classes like SS, but doesn’t really fill it well imo. Curse weapon is great both mechanically and thematically, hexes are great mechancially but feel disconnected form the idea of a dark cursed warrior in its current state. I wish to hear the communities thought about how they find playing hexblade and if they agree with my sentiment of hex not living up to its class fantasy.

This is the description shown when selecting hex as a class:

«Souls are such a fickle thing and manipulating them, a vile deed. The hexblade is the master of this sinister practice. Hexblades through these manipulations of the soul have earned a fearsome reputation for both their martial prowess and their eldritch powers. By wielding cursed objects forged by nefarious Dark Powers, Hexblades utilize their eldritch powers to devestating effect. While those that take up these blades may think they are in control, their souls are corrupted with each passing moment.»

This sounds pretty cool. I’ll include the wiki description too, as they differ.

«There are few powers darker than manipulation of the soul. Whether you use it to make a pact with a foul creature - demon, devil, or something else -, collect the souls of others to draw strength from, or twist your own soul into a corrupted mockery of the life it represented, it can be agreed that horrid powers are at play. The Hexblade is both an expert warrior and a practiced spellcaster, but their true power comes from the Hexes and Curses they use to both physically and mentally assail their opponents.»

So, from this what would you think a hexblade is about?

Soul manipulation, deals with dark powers, a melee caster, and the utilization of curses for combat would be my extrapolation from the two descriptions.

Does the current hexblade fulfill the descriptions it has though? Not entirely, and i will try to tackle the problems i have with the class:

At its core, it is a martial spellcaster, but it is an important distinction that the spellcasting is secondary to the martial aspect, compared to say spellsword, where spellcasting is more core to the identity of the class. Most of your available spells are buff or debuff oriented, you don’t have access to cantrips and you are limited to fourth level spells. You don’t get any spells till level 4, and even then you are stuck with first level spells till level 8, making you more or less just as reliant on consumables as a mundane. This puts you at a sizable disadvantage, even more so when you realize a wide variety of spells are missing from your spell list, that other melee casters get which can be quite helpful. However, the class as mentioned is more of a secondary (or even tertiary) spell caster, which makes this less of a problem identity wise at least.

From the martial side of hexblade you get full BaB, you get dark blessing, which are great for a martial. You also get uncanny dodge 1. Now because of the spellcasting trade off, that’s where your bonuses end directly as a martial. The bonus feats you get are tied to your hexes and curses (which i will get to next), giving you very little wiggle room to pick up other feats.
Lastly we have the hexes and curses which is the distinctive flavour part that makes hexblade a hexblade. Curse weapon is perfect thematically. It makes you feel like you’re summoning dark evil powers into your weapon and emphasises the dark cursed warrior. Mechanically it is pretty good. The extra damage from the curses can’t be mitigated, which is nice. Curse weapon is one of the only sources of a +6 enchantment bonus too!

Curse of Hypocrisy: The only real must have damage curse. It adds +2 of both negative and positive damage, giving you a flat 4 damage increase (which can’t be mitigated by essence or immunities). All the other elemental curses are +2 only, making this a two for one bargain.

Curse of Life: The non blade curse, instead being more of a self curse, being permanent once taken, giving you a whopping 18% physical damage immunity at level 30. This is also really good.

Then there’s the elemental curses, curse of sacrifice and curse of blood.

Curse of blood gives you innate +6 vampiric regen which when combined with curse of sacrifice nullifes the regen but you gain an extra 12 damage which cannot be mitigated. These curse of sacrifice isn’t commonly taken however as far as i know, as you either have to drop hypocrisy or life, or drop a hex. Blood you get for free at lvl 6 luckily.

Elemental curses should not be taken over any of the other mentioned, and because of hex you won’t have the feats to take any of them. It is worth noting that curse weapon does not use up the temporary slot.

With all of this said, curse weapon is a really great tool, which also feels good to use (though would be nice if you didn’t have to reapply it all the time)

This brings me to hexes, which is where most of my problems lie with the class. If you isolate hexes they are an insanely probably broken tool, giving you an instant, saveless, ranged debuff, stripping away up to 5 of the targets AC at level 30, which can be further improved by taking hex feats. My main problem with hexes are when you combine it with hexblade. Hexes are undeniably very strong, but they feel pretty disconnected for a melee. The instant pick a target in your los feels terrible in my opinion and is something i’d expect more to find on a full caster, than on a martial. And with how good some of the hexes are, you can’t give them up for more curses really. -5 to Saves, -5 to skills especially is hard to pass up. I’d like if hexes lost their ranged function, and instead were applied on-hit, solidifying the idea of a cursed blade, draining their target. Now this is obviously a pretty significant nerf, as you can’t target whomever you want, and you need to be able to hit them, which gets harder when you can’t apply a negative -5 to AC as soon as you see them. But that opens up for the power taken away from hexes, to be moved somewhere else, or to reinforce the now melee bound hex, for example making it a stacking hex, or making some of the hexes free at certain levels. Or shift it into curse weapon or something entirely new.

Dealings with dark powers. While i guess this one could be completely up to rp, i like having my rp, not necessarily defining, but reinforced, by the class i am playing. It would be nice if we could get something similar to a pact system like what warlocks have, obviously not the same thing, but something that ties your powers to something. I.E You draw your powers from a fiend, whom whispers to you through your blade, and your powers would be reflected by what kind of evil dark power you have. This does make it a bit too similar like warlock in some ways which many might not be a fan off though, and like mentioned it’s something you could just leave to rp.

Thank you for giving this a read, i hope it doesn't come of as too ranty, i am very curious to hear what other players have to think about hexblade as a class.

Sidenote: Why is light even an option for a 1st level spell..

[Good Character]

It's a rough class that has a singular approach - kill or be killed. While every class certainly is that to some degree, hexblade really embodies this point due to its arguably low defenses yet heavy offensive capabilities.

Frankly, I don't think the Curses make for an interesting class feature. If you ignore the fluff surrounding it it's simply Epic Weapon Specialization that can't be ignored. The Curse Weapon itself is pretty good, and I think it's good for what I've written below.

I believe the Hexes are the most interesting bit of the class. Rather, if possible, take inspiration from the Death Knight class of WoW and its specializations.

Make it like Knight where you'll have to choose a specialization or make it similar to spellsword where your Curse Weapon choice decides which of these you can use:

A heal-sustaining specialization that favors DoT abilities (i.e. healed on Hexed target death, stronger DoT with each landed melee hit on Hexed target, DoT that spreads to other targets upon Hexed target death, instant action melee attack that immediately triggers all existing DoTs after you've landed so many hits on your Hexed target), or

A CC-oriented specialization (e.g. skills malus, slowed, lowered AB and AC, lowered APR, instant action melee attack that roots after so many hits on your Hexed target.), or

A eldritch-oriented specialization the favors multiplying damage and high kill pressure with limited defenses (e.g. increased damage versus entropy/psychic that allow increases your vulnerability to divine/positive, instant action melee attack with increased AB that is allowed after you've landed so many hits on your Hexed target, reduced healing).


Definitely would be an absolute pain to get together, but I'm excited thinking about how something like this would turn out.

[AstralUniverse]

It's mechanically unique.

It's not that complex.

It's quite balanced these days imo. It's very strong but if big burst window builds are a problem I'd nerf a few things before I nerf this.

I actually dont see any problem with this class?

I understand that it feels lacking or incomplete on a thematic level but not all classes need to be complete and complex. If it's not bugged, overpowered, severely underpowered and people do play it then I think it's fine.

[garrbear758]

Just popping in to point out that ranger or paladin is a much better metric of comparison than spellsword. I agree the class could use some tweaks, although I haven't been around for awhile so I'm a bit out of touch with the balance situation.

1. Rework the elemental curses. Flat damage is kind of boring. Give them something more attractive, as the best builds just take the 4 damage one and load up on hexes. Maybe instead of damage, something like cold does a 10% slow for a round on hit, acid lowers physical resist by 5%, etc. These effects should stack with each other but not themselves (repeated hits wouldnt increase the slow to 20% just refresh the duration). Just something to make them more valuable and fun.

2. Change hexes to be a "steal effect." Half debuff and half buff. Instead of -4 to opponent's ab, make it -2 to opponent and +2 to hexblade. This would make it less of a dunk on one person in a group fight concern.

3. This might be controversial, but when I made the class I intentionally didn't give hex a vfx on the caster. I was hoping to see some subtle uses such as cheating in tournaments from the crowd. I think the vfx on the target as well is still way too obvious. I would remove the vfx entirely (or even better, code it so only the heckblade and target see it) and instead give the target a big thematic message that they'd been hexed.

4. Add a toggle to curse of sacrifice.

[Sincra]

Valid points Garr, I'll bring them in team as per designers intent.

[Zadi]

I wholly agree that elemental curses should get reworked, and as i kind of pointed to it in my original post, they are never picked up due to them just being straight up worse than hipocrisy and then the feat tax having to go to hexes because of how strong those are. I do enjoy the direction suggested too, making them more utility based and curse like.

You could for example do something like this:

• Curse of hipocrisy you could make it instead do bonus damage/give bonus ab to alignments locked to your law and chaos axis? i.e you are LE, you get bonus vs LE, LN, LG. It's kind of niche but i think it kinda fits with the curse description?

• Curse of flames could be turned into 1d4/1d6/1d8/1d10 etc scaling damage and be the damage steroid option.

• Curse of frost could as suggested, reduce movement speed on hit

• Curse of acid would also make sense to tear through physical resistance as suggested.

• Curse of Lightning could maybe provide an additional haste apr, but maybe not stacking with haste

• Curse of Dissonance could maybe be an on hit, once per flurry, savable stun?

Alternatively something i think could maybe be a fun flavourful turn is instead of having a load of different curses you can mix, you pick one and let it be a core part of your hexblade identity. That way you could give more power to each individual curse. And as the class is evil, maybe turn these elemental curses into more evil elemental aspects
Here's some examples of what i imagine that could look like:

• Curse of Flames: You summon the very fires of baator, wreathing your weapon in it - Add 1d4/1d6/1d8/1d10/1d12/2d8 fire damage per 6 hexblade levels, and at 30 hexblade levels, add an additional 1d6 divine damage. This takes up your temporary essence slot

• Curse of Frost: You breathe deathly cold from the Winter's Hall onto your blade, any cut from your blade is instantly frozen over. - Add +1/+2/+3/+4/+5/+6 cold damage per 5 hexblade levels and every strike against a target reduces their movement speed by 10%. At 30 hexblade levels, this curse manifests fully, and every hit will attempt to freeze the target. (Onhit 1 round savable freeze, per flurry). This takes up your temporary essence slot

• Curse of Storm: You draw upon the winds and destruction from the Towers of Ruin, making the blade crackle and thunder. -Add +1/+2/+3/+4/+5/+6 electrical damage per 5 hexblade levels, and add one haste apr. At 30 hexblade levels, each strike has a chance to stun the target. (Onhit 1 round savable stun, per flurry). Takes up temp slot.

And then maybe using the respective weapon vfxs dependant on curse? So curse of flames is fire vfx etc.

As for hexes, a steal effect could be a really nice change and i don't think i have anything else to add to them. I also enjoy the idea of using hexes for other things other than combat you're directly in, even though i still think that kind of roleplay fits much better on something like a witch type character, i also think such a change could make it hard for group PvP to know who got cursed, maybe put a spellcraft check on it instead to simulate a sort of perception check?

Lastly a toggle for curse of sacrifice as it is would make it a much more attractive option and if that was to be the only change would probably just take the spot that curse of hipocrisy is in now. It's a good change but it'd require either a retuning of the curse or making the other alternatives more attractive.

[Baseili]

Some solid ideas, I do look forward to seeing what the team decides to take up. The choices presently are all mechanical over flavour, chasing the bigger numbers because the room for selection is quite limited, so I thoroughly look forward to more interesting choices.

That being said, with only 5 or 6 feat choices I believe the curses need to be equalled either all +2 or +4 with the level 23 hex choices applying or increasing any debuffs to the target.

Alternatively a warlock pact style path might be interesting though a little more free-form perhaps which would allow for different styles of play, like one that focuses on hexes could get a level 23 ability to make it AoE but only if its taken 2-3 hexes before hand. Another could focus on elemental damage and protection, provided its not taken curse of life that grants a lesser damage shield at 23. Similarly a physical one taking curse of life but no other curses may get an entropic bleed or regen on crit? A bit complicated perhaps but would certainly be different.

[Scylon]

Need to careful we don't just make another spell sword here. I'm in favour of garrs additions.

I would like to see the spell list tweaked a bit now we have these tasty blood spells.

Also some kind hex chance to regen spells

[Waldo52]

I agree with much of what's been said, lots of good ideas.

My own feedback is a little different: basically the class feels a bit like an evil arcane cousin to the ranger (4th level casting, high AB, some kind of companion, special melee abilities that go a bit farther than blade thirst) but lacks that class' compelling dexterity based options and skill economy. Hexblades have a shadowy feel and I'd love to play a hexblade that sneaks around.

I think the class is actually decently strong and a lot of fun, but more dex synergy and a better skill economy would open up a lot of fun builds and play styles. As much as we all poop on dex builds they're still a lot of fun.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I think Garbear has really good ideas/points without drastically changing the balance.

Currently if you take right curses/hexes 30 hex with high crit range weapon and shield can actually even go for viable ac against a 25/5.

with roughly 30 DI and hex of neglect removing the weaponmaster DI you can receiving 30% less physical damage so that your x2 crits are not a lot worse than their x3 crits. You can have the same crit range and you compete with ac/ab with your curse weapon, curses extra and arnt lacking in damage while having extended haste. Your curse can be greater restoration but that's ideally saved as a heal effect and not used right away.

Gar pointed out that this makes the elemental choices rather lackluster in comparison.

[Glaucozilla]

Something that came to my mind while i couldn't get sleep (?) was the idea of bulding more on warlock/hexblade synergy giving the hexblade access to pacts as well!

Thought about a choice when you get hexes and curses. If not 'baseline' making it crossclass, so you can only get greater and epic multiclassing into a lock