Thoughts on Hexblade Warlocks (5e)
Of all the warlock pacts, this is the one my brain bounces off the most, because what are you making a pact with? The lore paragraph seems like the definition of teasing and false promises:
“You have made your pact with a mysterious entity from the Shadowfell—a force that manifests in sentient magic weapons carved from the stuff of shadow. The mighty sword Blackrazor is the most notable of these weapons, which have been spread across the multiverse over the ages. The shadowy force behind these weapons can offer power to warlocks who form pacts with it. Many hexblade warlocks create weapons that emulate those formed in the Shadowfell. Others forgo such arms, content to weave the dark magic of that plane into their spellcasting. Because the Raven Queen is known to have forged the first of these weapons, many sages speculate that she and the force are one and that the weapons, along with hexblade warlocks, are tools she uses to manipulate events on the Material Plane to her inscrutable ends.”
Which is … lovely and vague and completely non-specific. And curiously non-blade-like for a thing titled after blades. The first entity it mentions by name is a sentient weapon, Blackrazor, but as near as I can tell you are NOT actually making a pact with a sentient weapon. As in, you do not get a sentient weapon to make a pact with as part of the subclass. Not as written, anyway.
(Which makes sense so as not to be giving a character a powerful magic weapon from the word ‘go’, but leads to a certain amount of oddity about the whole concept)
What you are instead making a pact with is a shadowy force that wishes to manifest through whatever weapon you happen to have to hand. And not particularly strongly, either, since most of the actual abilities of the class are focused around the ‘hex’ part of ‘hexblade’, on cursing people to take more damage from you, or raising the souls of people you’ve slain as servants for a day. About the only thing the subclass does on its own to your weapon abilities is a) give you martial weapons, b) let you using your casting stat instead of a physical one for them, and c) give you a bunch of paladin spells on your spell list to augment weapon damage specifically, like smites and elemental weapon.
Which is not to say it isn’t a cool idea. It’s just very vaguely put and seems to promise things it doesn’t actually deliver on. It opens with sentient weapons, but you don’t actually get a sentient weapon. You don’t get to do anything permanent to your normal weapons to make them sentient either. You’re a hexblade in that you have a blade (presumably, if you bought one) and you cast hexes, and that’s about it. You get a bit more out of it if you add it to Pact of the Blade later, but not really much that Pact of the Blade didn’t do on its own, at least in terms of permanent effects on/with weapons.
And it still leaves the problem of what you’re making a pact with. When you talk to your patron, what are you talking with? The lore mentions the Raven Queen as a ‘maybe’, but that’s about it in terms of concrete named entities (and that sits a little oddly with the ‘Accursed Spectre’ ability – I thought the Raven Queen didn’t like making undead?)
What it does imply through the class abilities is that the patron is a force that wishes to channel itself through you into mostly damage, either through a physical weapon you wield or the augmented damage you do through hex/magic. Whatever it is, it likes to manifest in magic weapons, and the goal of the pact seems to be to turn the warlock into, essentially, a magic weapon for it to enact damage through.
It’s also a Shadowfell force, hence the focus on curses and spectres, and it or something like it has, in the past, made and manifested itself through various named sentient weapons like Blackrazor. This part I can see being edited on campaign-specific basis, though, because that’s a sweeping statement about world lore in general that might not fit all the time. (Does that mean that all sentient weapons are not their own individual things, but all manifestations of a single entity, for example?)
So. Going purely by that first paragraph. It’s a force that wants to (or only knows how to) manifest itself into damage, instinctively through weapons, and that has made a pact with the warlock to manifest itself in the world. With that in mind, some Hexblade patron ideas:
it is a sentient weapon, but one that has lain dormant or entombed for a very long time, and is psychically reaching out to anyone it can reach in an effort to fulfil its purpose or free itself or find a worthy bearer (so you might get a sentient weapon eventually if your DM didn’t want to give you one from the get-go)
the ghost of a destroyed sentient weapon, who has made a pact with you so it can ‘live again’ by possessing your weapon, and is constantly urging you to get better ones so it can have a ‘body’ worthy of the one it used to have
a curious eldritch (or just insane) weaponsmith who has made sentient weapons in the past, and wishes to try making one of flesh and bone, rather than metal and magic, this time
a lich or demilich who is secretly using you to harvest souls – this works great with the Accursed Spectre ability where you raise someone you’ve slain to serve you as a spectre for a day – anyone you kill using the abilities your patron grants you becomes fodder for the phylactery
leaning into the Shadowfell angle, it’s the Shadowfell itself, seeking to expand itself into other planes by spreading entropy and decay through your actions
a spirit of murder who seeks to slowly entice you into becoming like it by making it easier for you to kill up close and personal
on a less dark note, the soul of a lost warrior who still has a quest to fulfil, and offers you their companionship and martial prowess if you will accept the burden of their quest in their stead
(maybe the lost warrior is so ancient and long dead that they only have the loosest memory of what that quest was, but they know it was vital, and they’re desperate for someone to help them remember and fulfil it)
on a similar theme, the souls of a lost and damned mercenary company, who were sent where mortals should never be sent (the Shadowfell, the Hells, etc), who seek to return to the mortal world the only way they can, and who offer you the only thing they know how to: their skills and rage against your foes, if you will only let them share your warmth and vitality
(I like that one a lot – combine with an archaeologist, maybe, or sage, who found fragments of a legend of the lost company, maybe an artefact, and abruptly had the rage and despair of a whole company broadcast into their head, offering anything they had for someone to remember them)
So. There are options, and nice meaty ones too. Hexblade just … took me some parsing, and my brain bounced off it lore-wise for a long time. You’re not making a pact with a sentient weapon, or any named concrete entity, at least not as directly stated in the subclass, you’re just … getting possessed by the spirit of weaponness? It’s an odd one.
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