Hexblade showcase

[Raz]

So it would seem Hexblade get Extra Attack WITHOUT needing Pact of the Blade therefore you can go Hexblade + Tome or Chains. I am wondering if Chains enhanced the Accursed Spector which is pretty cool looking and dishes out a lot of damage on its turn.

https://youtu.be/4zN3ut0drvs?si=LZvvF_aF3sPkwnIx

[Angel]

I can't wait to play it

[Chaosolous]

Nice.

Looking forward to it.

I basically built a full melee pact of the blade warlock for my last evil run. Would have done much much more damage with this subclass.

[Balekai]

That Booming Blade cantrip is great and OP. A cantrip that's a melee hit, that can be used per melee attack available. Since it's a cantrip it will get the Potent Robe bonus to dmg. I'm guessing it will also benefit from Reverberation set gear with that thunder damage on moving.

Speaking of Reverberation, that Elemental Weapon concentration spell with electrical or thunder damage, will synergize with Reverb + Radiant Orb gear too, to do tons of Reverb thunder damage cycling via those conditions, plus prone, daze, and ability drain from Illithid powers just chain applying.

Something like Moonlight Glaive (which would need Pact of the Blade to benefit from Hexblade stuff I believe), and you're in pretty good shape damage wise. Thinking of Sorrow for bonus action cantrip pull even though the weapon is only +1. :p

That Spectre looks awesome too.

I guess I'm going to finally play a Dark Urge character with Hexblade Warlock lol. It seems to fit the Origin quite well. Durge made a Dark Pact with a Shadowfell entity to become the ultimate murder hobo with their chosen weapons.

[Raz]

I am guessing you all missed that Shadow Blade showed as a Long Rest spell with no Concentration when the guy moused over it for a hot second.

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Raz:

I am guessing you all missed that Shadow Blade showed as a Long Rest spell with no Concentration when the guy moused over it for a hot second.

That will be hard to pass up in patch 8 since it's now available without having to get to Act 2 Arabella quest for the Shadow Blade Ring.

Advantage on dim and darkness effected enemies for 2-16 base psychic damage. Pretty good especially early Act 1 for Warlock. Note the damage can be upcasted it seems to 3d8 at level 3/4 spell level and 4d8 at spell level 5/6. :P

[Chaosolous]

Originally posted by Raz:

I am guessing you all missed that Shadow Blade showed as a Long Rest spell with no Concentration when the guy moused over it for a hot second.

I did miss the no-concentration part. Neat.

I don't know if it'd be better than an actual weapon though.

[Raz]

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Originally posted by Raz:

I am guessing you all missed that Shadow Blade showed as a Long Rest spell with no Concentration when the guy moused over it for a hot second.

I did miss the no-concentration part. Neat.

I don't know if it'd be better than an actual weapon though.

Of course it would be better than an actual weapon.

1) Its an upcast scale weapon that adds another 1d8 per upcast if memory serves to a Finesse Shortsword.

2) It can Sneak Attack and I do believe the spell version of Shadow Blade also has the Advantage when targets are Obscured bit to it, just like the version from the ring.

3) Its all Psychic damage. Only constructs and a few one off enemies are immune to Psychic damage. Everything else gets screwed over by it.

4) Act 2 gives you an item you can carry around to make everything in range of you weak to Psychic damage. Now that 2d8 Psychic blade just turned into a 4d8 without upcasting. Without critical hitting. Without Sneak Attack.

An Assassin is gonna love the absolute hell out of this spell, or the Ring.

Slashing and Piercing is the most resisted of the physical damage types a melee user runs into.

[Chaosolous]

Huh, neat. I didn't know any of that.

I think my Warlock build would be a lot better if it was Hexblade since I could tap into more damage on hits, but I'm unsure if the shadowblade would be better than what I currently have it set up as.

This is a picture of my warlock build. Normally there would be arcane acuity in there too, but I couldn't get it to trigger for this photo at that save location. You can just pretend though, so it's actually a bit more than what's displayed here;

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417278572

Keep in mind that the bonus damage from Hex and Arcane Acuity wouldn't be in the tooltip anyway, you'd have to add them in yourself, for the sake of this picture at least.

[Raz]

The Blade starts off as a 2d8 off rip. Before any damage riders or your proficiency bonuses. It would automatically do more damage than what you've shown in that image as you're just adding all those modifiers to a 2d8 vs your maces 1d6. Assuming it's the Handmaidens Mace so it has a 1d6 in poison, still weaker than a 2d8. A 2d8 weapon that can be upcast to have a higher die roll.

[Chaosolous]

Originally posted by Raz:

The Blade starts off as a 2d8 off rip. Before any damage riders or your proficiency bonuses. It would automatically do more damage than what you've shown in that image as you're just adding all those modifiers to a 2d8 vs your maces 1d6. Assuming it's the Handmaidens Mace so it has a 1d6 in poison, still weaker than a 2d8. A 2d8 weapon that can be upcast to have a higher die roll.

If it procs the on hits too then yeah. I figured it didn't for some reason.

Well neat.

[Raz]

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Originally posted by Raz:

The Blade starts off as a 2d8 off rip. Before any damage riders or your proficiency bonuses. It would automatically do more damage than what you've shown in that image as you're just adding all those modifiers to a 2d8 vs your maces 1d6. Assuming it's the Handmaidens Mace so it has a 1d6 in poison, still weaker than a 2d8. A 2d8 weapon that can be upcast to have a higher die roll.

If it procs the on hits too then yeah. I figured it didn't for some reason.

Well neat.

It procs on hits now. Don't see why that will change going into Patch 8. It can be dipped/coated currently as is. I suppose there is a space to argue it will get nerfed some with being dippable and taking coatings come Patch 8 since it won't need concentration but to deny it damage riders would be an interesting turn.

Still, the item in Act 2 to double it's psychic damage would still outpace damage riders when you turn a 4d8 blade into an 8d8 blade.

[Balekai]

Oh before I go to bed I just want to note that the Shadow Blade may still have a concentration on it, but the description wasn't expanded to show it in the video. Hopefully it doesn't. :D

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Huh, neat. I didn't know any of that.

I think my Warlock build would be a lot better if it was Hexblade since I could tap into more damage on hits, but I'm unsure if the shadowblade would be better than what I currently have it set up as.

This is a picture of my warlock build. Normally there would be arcane acuity in there too, but I couldn't get it to trigger for this photo at that save location. You can just pretend though, so it's actually a bit more than what's displayed here;

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417278572

Well by just upcasting Shadow Blade to a level 3 spell slot it does base 3-24 psychic damage (most enemies don't have any resist for this, but some enemies are immune to psychic damage). If you have access to level 5 spells then 4-32 damage. That's before counting a CHA proficiency bonus of +4 to +6/7 by mid/late game. So 8-36 to 11-39 base damage. Then add in all/most of those other damage bonuses on top of that.

You're looking at a weapon that nears or even surpasses your weapon's total damage before counting poison, necrotic and psychic dmg in screenshot.

Shadow Blade on wiki:

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Shadow_Blade

[[TG] zac]

Originally posted by Balekai:

That Booming Blade cantrip is great and OP. A cantrip that's a melee hit, that can be used per melee attack available. Since it's a cantrip it will get the Potent Robe bonus to dmg. I'm guessing it will also benefit from Reverberation set gear with that thunder damage on moving.

Speaking of Reverberation, that Elemental Weapon concentration spell with electrical or thunder damage, will synergize with Reverb + Radiant Orb gear too, to do tons of Reverb thunder damage cycling via those conditions, plus prone, daze, and ability drain from Illithid powers just chain applying.

Something like Moonlight Glaive (which would need Pact of the Blade to benefit from Hexblade stuff I believe), and you're in pretty good shape damage wise. Thinking of Sorrow for bonus action cantrip pull even though the weapon is only +1. :p

That Spectre looks awesome too.

I guess I'm going to finally play a Dark Urge character with Hexblade Warlock lol. It seems to fit the Origin quite well. Durge made a Dark Pact with a Shadowfell entity to become the ultimate murder hobo with their chosen weapons.

Honestly I doubt they will release it as is & if they do I wouldn't be surprised if it gets nerfed later.

In table top cantrips have the cast a spell action meaning you cannot do multiple of them per turn unless you are burning meta magic to quicken them hence why it is not per attack.
Leaving it as per attack would make it by far the strongest cantrip in game (likely even more so then eldritch blast after invocations buffing it), especially since it triggers again if the target moves (Would make it insane for anyone who knows how to abuse stealth/invisibility)

[Mander]

Nice! Thank you for sharing.
Very interesting, especially for the breakthrough melee side, that only as a fae warlock pact of the blade I managed to get close to (thanks to the overabundance of crowd control spells, not in damage, and the free misty step on level 6).
Looking forward to shadow sorcerer and the new wizard class too.

[Mike Garrison]

Originally posted by TG zac:

In table top cantrips have the cast a spell action meaning you cannot do multiple of them per turn unless you are burning meta magic to quicken them hence why it is not per attack.

Most spells require an action but some require a bonus action and some require a reaction. The 2024 RAW (that BG3 ignores) is that you can only use one spell slot per turn (reactions don't count because those happen in somebody else's turn). So that limit does not include cantrips or anything else that doesn't use spell slots.

Also, in the 2024 rules "quickened spell" does NOT allow you to cast two spells in a turn. It allows you to make a spell that costs an action usable with a bonus action. But you still can't cast two spell-slot spells in the same turn.

Now I'm not certain about this, but "booming blade" in 5e appears to cost an action. That implies that you should be able to use your action to make one strike with booming blade. Period. Meaning no extra attacks. So the tradeoff (once you get extra attacks) would be one attack with booming blade versus two attacks without it.