D&D 5E Curse of Strahd: Hexblade, Paladin or Both?

[fredpag3]

Hi, a group of friends and I are about to start a Curse of Strahd campaign and I have been struggling to decide on my final class decision.

I am currently toying with 3 options all of which have a viable RP explanation. The basic concept is that my character's mother and village were slaughtered by the undead and he wants to get revenge.

Option 1: Straight Vengence Paladin (looking to use Glaive)
Option 2: Vengence Paladin with Lower Strenght but a 1 level dip into Hexblade (Longsword) Glaive not online until Warlock 3
Option 3: Straight Hexblade with Glaive

Currently, the party Composition is the following:
Teifling Cleric (light)
Sage Warforged Monk
Human Wizard (divination)
Then whatever I choose

I am worried that going full hexblade will leave us short on heals and without a Tank.

I will be playing a Half-Drow and my current stat layout is Stg: 14 Dex: 10 Cont: 16 Int: 8 Wis:10 Char:17 to support option 2.

We are doing point buy and those are not set yet.

 

[TwoSix]

Don't go 2. CoS doesn't last long enough to see a Hexblade 3/Paladin X build get to full strength. By the time it really gets rolling, you'll be done with the adventure.

Is the glaive mostly flavor, or are you planning on taking polearm master? Polearm master is good, but the bonus action attack can conflict with getting up hunter's mark (if paladin) or hex (if warlock). And this type of build is absolutely feat starved, assuming you want Great Weapon Master at some point.

I would suggest two different approaches, as both Hexblade and Paladin are very viable.

Hexblade: Swap the Strength and Dex. (14 Dex + Medium Armor gives a decent AC for low levels, and you can start off with a shield as well.) Take Elven Accuracy at 4 to boost Cha to 18, and then GWM at 8. You have a party that's strong at range and has a lot of movement potential, have Agonizing Blast so you can be a super useful switch hitter. Whenever you can get advantage (with a monk, prone enemies should be common, plus darkness + devil's sight or shadow of moil later on), swap to the glaive and go to town with triple advantage. I played a Hexblade through the latter half of CoS, and it was insanely useful.

Paladin: I'd probably drop Cha to 16, Dex to 8, and boost Strength to 16. You already need a high strength for heavy armor, the benefits of taking Hexblade just to swap to Charisma for attack aren't there. Better to boost strength. Tough choice between Polearm master and GWM at 4, I'd probably lean towards GWM (as cleaves plus casting hunter's mark will fill up a lot of bonus actions, but the bonus attack is really nice once hunter's mark is up, so really up to you). Fill the feat at 8 with +2 Str or the other feat you didn't take at 4, depending on how the campaign plays out.

For a paladin, I might consider swapping to VHuman for the extra feat and drop Cha to 14, especially since you won't be the only schlub in the party without darkvision (thanks, Wizard!). But that's ultimately a roleplay call, it's pretty much impossible to not be strong playing a paladin.

With your party composition, I'd lean hexblade. The monk should be pushing for short rests along with you, and they benefit the wizard as well with arcane recovery. More rests = more hit die spending = cleric can nuke more, which is good for a light cleric.

 

[fredpag3]

Thanks that is a very thorough and helpful answer. I think I will play the hexblade. Sounds like it will be more up my alley in terms of play style. Thanks for the help!

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

For tanking I'd start as paladin with high CON & CHA, switch to hexblade for 1 level, then back to paladin until level 6, for extra attack and CHA to saves.
Paladin with heavy armor + shield + dueling + one-handed pact weapon, damage boost with smites.

Edit: too slow, I support all that TwoSix wrote!
I don't know CoS and how long that goes.
Someone played a hexblade/battlemaster in ToA, now level 5/5, very effective! So basically multiclassing hexblade works well.

 

[lluewhyn]

Mild spoilers:
When I ran my party through this, they had a Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Monk (who died and left halfway through) and Sorcerer. The Druid healed once or twice, and I don't recall the Paladin ever healing. The fights either tended to be relatively easy or pretty hard for them, without a lot of in between. I think that the group that you have should be sufficient. Of course, how the adventure plays out can be very different from group to group* so YMMV.

*I think there are a lot more locations than the DM actually needs, so they can choose which ones to use for a particular group, say 8 out of 11 or whatever. I still wouldn't call the adventure replayable as far as the same group of players are concerned, but it's still variable enough to give different experiences to different groups.

 

[fredpag3]

Hexblade: Swap the Strength and Dex. (14 Dex + Medium Armor gives a decent AC for low levels, and you can start off with a shield as well.) Take Elven Accuracy at 4 to boost Cha to 18, and then GWM at 8. You have a party that's strong at range and has a lot of movement potential, have Agonizing Blast so you can be a super useful switch hitter. Whenever you can get advantage (with a monk, prone enemies should be common, plus darkness + devil's sight or shadow of moil later on), swap to the glaive and go to town with triple advantage. I played a Hexblade through the latter half of CoS, and it was insanely useful.

I'm curious as to what your weapon loadout would be in this situation. Since without warcaster I would be unable to was somatic spell while holding the shield.

What would your recommended starting equipment be?

Definitely agree with elven accuracy.

 

[fredpag3]

For tanking I'd start as paladin with high CON & CHA, switch to hexblade for 1 level, then back to paladin until level 6, for extra attack and CHA to saves.
Paladin with heavy armor + shield + dueling + one-handed pact weapon, damage boost with smites.

Edit: too slow, I support all that TwoSix wrote!
I don't know CoS and how long that goes.
Someone played a hexblade/battlemaster in ToA, now level 5/5, very effective! So basically multiclassing hexblade works well.

Agreed about it being too short. I was sent on the multi class until I found out I only had about 10 levels to play in with at best.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm curious as to what your weapon loadout would be in this situation. Since without warcaster I would be unable to was somatic spell while holding the shield.

What would your recommended starting equipment be?

Definitely agree with elven accuracy.

I'd grab the improved pact weapon invocation at level 3, since it lets your pact weapon act as a spellcasting focus, and the free +1 weapon is a pretty nice bonus at low levels.

For levels 1-2, you have to either prioritize melee attacks or ranged attacks, or use a quarterstaff as your special hexblade weapon (Crawford and Mearls have both stated that quarterstaves can be used as both weapons and spellcasting focuses).

Fortunately, my hexblade was a replacement character and started at level 7, so I missed the low-level pain of dealing with that stuff.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Make sure to find out if your DM is an "old-school" Ravenloft fan. Bad things happen to paladins if the DM starts trying to make the adventure feel more like the Ravenloft Boxed Sets.

 

[fredpag3]

Make sure to find out if your DM is an "old-school" Ravenloft fan. Bad things happen to paladins if the DM starts trying to make the adventure feel more like the Ravenloft Boxed Sets.

I don't think he is. But now I'm curious as to what those would be? I've decided to do a glaive hexblade