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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Oct 2020
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If they don't want to change pact of the blade for Wyll...then change Wyll. Astarion has a bite, karlach a internal rage etc..Wyll has passive to add rapier proficiency...just add in the ability to use cha for wpn attacks (just call it a special deal with Mizora). I liked the idea that was suggested abowe ... basicaly upgrading Pact of Blade into Hexblade by adding this ... People would still need to take some invocations to make it work properly, but Wyll would work well like Fiend Meele Warlock ... and that is the point, isnt it?
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings.  Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Aug 2020
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Not for me. My point is that I want to be able to have a cool blade from the shadowfel and all the reactivity that could come with it. I don't give a damn about Wyll's function as a warlock. Upgrade everything about pact of the blade, make it better, great, I have to think about it less and my archfey warlock gets improved too. I want the flavour and roleplay.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2022
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so have it given to him as a gift when he brings the head of Karlach to his Mizora?
or just delete Wyll from the game as no one is all that invested
Luke Skywalker: I don't, I don't believe it.
Yoda: That is why you failed.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Aug 2020
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Hey, I'm definitely invested in Wyll. I just don't care if he's the best possible pact of the blade warlock.
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: Oct 2020
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Not for me. My point is that I want to be able to have a cool blade from the shadowfel and all the reactivity that could come with it. I see ... Well, i will cross my fingers for you with DLC then. 
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jul 2022
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Agreed. Hexblade has such questionable lore and far too often ends up just as a multiclass dip. This solution is far more reasonable. Questionable lore? The concept of an evil possessed weapon is almost as old as the fantasy genre itself. And if you play on my table I will ask you what weapon you see your character using and it will stay the same all through the game as you keep awakening its capabilities gaining more powerful traits and buffs for it. But that's not how it works in 5e. You can switch the weapon by rebinding a new one (it can even be a cursed sentient magical weapon that you pick up later...) - so the weapon isn't actually the patron but again some odd undefined power in the background. Its obvious why they did it like this because its much easier for a DM and player to deal with it, but to me its a bad representation of the lore of A possessed weapon. To be fair though - it could also just be an artefact like in older versions and wouldn't need a warlock class bound to it - and yes, to some degree I would also accept it at my table as DM since I always let my players define what equipment they see as crucial part of their vision for their character (its up to me to balance it out). Hexblade in 5e is sadly more prominent as multiclass dip for powergaming than something that really helps bringing the fantasy of the intented lore to the table. To be fair, Paladins have the same problem. Starting with 2 levels gives you heavy armor, lay on hands, and divine smite. There's no reason for a martial Bard not to start with 2 pally levels since there's no alignment requirement for those classes anymore.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2020
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To be fair, Paladins have the same problem. Starting with 2 levels gives you heavy armor, lay on hands, and divine smite. There's no reason for a martial Bard not to start with 2 pally levels since there's no alignment requirement for those classes anymore. Yeah, you could also claim that getting rage with a single level for melee characters or some other combo is powerful, but the problem with Hexblade is that you can focus on a single attribute to control both casting and fighting and social interaction. Its a questionable build when it comes to balance. By itself its fine, but again, it suffers from a very poor lore translation into rules for what it's meant to do. I did a enemy NPC for my players - 8 oath of glory paladin, 1 hexblade and 3 swashbuckler rogue, ST14/ DX14/ Co 14 / IQ 8 / Ws 9/ CH 20... Initiative 7, +9 to attacks and +7 damage, saves st/dx/co +7, iq +4, ws +8 and ch +14 (+5 for all allys within aura), casting +9 to hit, dc 17 - all of that without taking any gear into account... movement 40, smites, sneak attack, cunning actions on top of heavy armor+shield and shield spell... the single level of hexblade is what pushes this build beyond because the charisma 20 affected so many things. You will rarely see a paladin at level 12 max out charisma and still dominate without that multiclass dip into hexblade.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2020
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Yup, the translation is correct. I won't judge the balancing decsion going into it because I've not tested it in game and we don't know all the details of the other classes, but it makes me cautious. The reason why the pack of the blade doesn't get multi attack and its charisma bonus on attacks is because its a caster and has the option of using edritch blasts which can be powered up independent of the choice of pact, so now you get Hexblade abilities on top of the actual subclass. It sounds a lot like other Larianism balancing decions... for them its a small change. Like turning shove into a bonus action...
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Nov 2022
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This seems quite stupid to me. Extra attack is already available to pact of the blade warlocks through the thirsting blade invocation. Just implement that...
If they wanted to add additional invocations, they should have added eldritch smite or improved pact weapon so you can use bows as a pact weapon
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jul 2022
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To be fair, Paladins have the same problem. Starting with 2 levels gives you heavy armor, lay on hands, and divine smite. There's no reason for a martial Bard not to start with 2 pally levels since there's no alignment requirement for those classes anymore. Yeah, you could also claim that getting rage with a single level for melee characters or some other combo is powerful, but the problem with Hexblade is that you can focus on a single attribute to control both casting and fighting and social interaction. Its a questionable build when it comes to balance. By itself its fine, but again, it suffers from a very poor lore translation into rules for what it's meant to do. I did a enemy NPC for my players - 8 oath of glory paladin, 1 hexblade and 3 swashbuckler rogue, ST14/ DX14/ Co 14 / IQ 8 / Ws 9/ CH 20... Initiative 7, +9 to attacks and +7 damage, saves st/dx/co +7, iq +4, ws +8 and ch +14 (+5 for all allys within aura), casting +9 to hit, dc 17 - all of that without taking any gear into account... movement 40, smites, sneak attack, cunning actions on top of heavy armor+shield and shield spell... the single level of hexblade is what pushes this build beyond because the charisma 20 affected so many things. You will rarely see a paladin at level 12 max out charisma and still dominate without that multiclass dip into hexblade. Even so, spellcasters in general use their casting stat for everything that matters. And if the concern is abusable mechanics, BG3 in EA already has plenty of those, and now the Coffeelock will now be possible to abuse in BG3. Saying that the Hexblade makes things unbalanced seems like missing the forest for the trees.
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addict
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addict
Joined: Oct 2020
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For me the bottom line is: Paladins are balanced by their need to have both Str (or Dex for the nutjobs out there) and Cha, thus splitting their focus. You are balancing your offense and support capabilities when picking up an ASI. A 1 level dip into Hexblade breaks that balance and turns Paladins from a really strong class into a broken class. A +5 to hit/damage and to all your (and your close friends) saving throws by level 9 is miles beyond what any other class can pull off at that stage in their adventures.
If it was just swords bards that were doing it, then whatever. It is a decent enough subclass, but it wouldn't push it into broken AF in the same way.
Back from timeout.
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jul 2022
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For me the bottom line is: Paladins are balanced by their need to have both Str (or Dex for the nutjobs out there) and Cha, thus splitting their focus. You are balancing your offense and support capabilities when picking up an ASI. A 1 level dip into Hexblade breaks that balance and turns Paladins from a really strong class into a broken class. A +5 to hit/damage and to all your (and your close friends) saving throws by level 9 is miles beyond what any other class can pull off at that stage in their adventures.
If it was just swords bards that were doing it, then whatever. It is a decent enough subclass, but it wouldn't push it into broken AF in the same way. You're forgetting one: Constitution. They go down fast without it. Paladins are almost as MAD as monks are, but at least monks can use Dex for attacks and AC. And Paladins don't get enough spell slots to make smite a consistent damage dealer, and they don't get as many weapon attacks as fighters. Having a hexblade dip doesn't exactly break them, especially when rogues are outright busted with their two bonus action shoves.
Last edited by Back_Stabbath; 11/07/23 12:25 PM.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2020
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For me the bottom line is: Paladins are balanced by their need to have both Str (or Dex for the nutjobs out there) and Cha, thus splitting their focus. You are balancing your offense and support capabilities when picking up an ASI. A 1 level dip into Hexblade breaks that balance and turns Paladins from a really strong class into a broken class. A +5 to hit/damage and to all your (and your close friends) saving throws by level 9 is miles beyond what any other class can pull off at that stage in their adventures.
If it was just swords bards that were doing it, then whatever. It is a decent enough subclass, but it wouldn't push it into broken AF in the same way. You're forgetting one: Constitution. They go down fast without it. Paladins are almost as MAD as monks are, but at least monks can use Dex for attacks and AC. And Paladins don't get enough spell slots to make smite a consistent damage dealer, and they don't get as many weapon attacks as fighters. Having a hexblade dip doesn't exactly break them, especially when rogues are outright busted with their two bonus action shoves. ...or you could start fixing the issue by making shove again a 5ft push on a skill challenge instead of an attack - not a 20ft autokill as a bonus action. Then roll back the crap of 2 bonus actions for rogue because you took exclusive abilities and passed them on to all classes. I don't see how broken unbalanced mechanics are an argument to introduce more broken unbalanced mechanics instead of fixing the actual issues. But that's my main problem with Larian. To me their by far and wide biggest issue is their game balancing and encounter designs as a result. They didn't improve on 5e with their homebrew, but introduced an incredible amount of new problems by 'slightly tweaking' core fundamentals thus breaking all mechanics build up on the base foundation of the game's mechanics. And no, paladins are not a weak or problematic class by any means. If you go with STR 16 and CHA while CON is 14 its still a viable build for a paladin up to level 12 since you can have heavy armor (and shields). If you go DX 14 and STR 10 so you can max out medium armor while pushing CHA to 18/20 and suddenly buff everyone around you with +4/5 on saves, while maxing out your attacks and spell DC just because you took 1 level of hexblade - that's bonkers. Paladin's have up to fighter level 11 the same amount of attacks as fighters - and I doubt anyone claims fighters are overpowered.
Last edited by biomag; 11/07/23 12:48 PM.
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journeyman
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OP
journeyman
Joined: Jul 2022
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...or you could start fixing the issue by making shove again a 5ft push on a skill challenge instead of an attack - not a 20ft autokill as a bonus action. Then roll back the crap of 2 bonus actions for rogue because you took exclusive abilities and passed them on to all classes. Knowing Larian, they aren't going to fix their OP environment-related abilities. Throwing boxes is and always will be the best strategy in Divinity, and it looks like shoving is here to stay. I'm just saying, as long as nonsense like that exists, worrying about some paladins being too strong thanks to a multiclass dip is a little silly. Especially in a single-player non-competitive game.
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