The Hexblade is divisive. To me, it’s probably the single most exciting thing in 5e. To others, it’s the worst. I genuinely struggle to make characters that don’t have some hexblade dip, and I won’t even feel bad about it. I’ll even dip my hexblades longer than the guides say, because I want that 3rd level form a blade from nothing my pact of the blade gets me. It’s a fun class that does cool things differently than a lot of other options. That said, it’s also a single subclass for a single class. It doesn’t really vibe well with the rest of the warlock subclasses, and it makes an awesome dip for a ton of other classes. As such, if someone is dipping warlock, they are almost always grabbing hexblade, and not genie, undying, witherbloom, or whatever. If only some handsome genius had a rewrite that would make them more enticing.
Hexblade Revisited
The Hexblade subclass cannot be chosen.
Pact Boon: The Pact of the Blade is rewritten as follows.
Pact of the Hexblade
You can use your action to create a Hexblade in your empty hand. You can choose the form that this ranged, or melee weapon takes each time you create it, so long as you are proficient with it. This weapon counts as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage. Additionally, you can use your Charisma modifier instead of strength or damage for the attack and damage rolls.
Your Hexblade disappears if it is more than 5 feet away from you for 1 minute or more. It also disappears if you use this feature to summon more than two Hexblades, if you dismiss the weapon (no action required), or if you die.
And that’s it. There has never been a Hexblade Warlock who didn’t take pact of the blade, so now it’s the same choice. I’ve also never seen a Hexblade care about the specter power (I had to google it to see what it was) and the curse is neat, but certainly not integral to the essence of why you picked the Hexblade. You picked a Hexblade to play Psylocke or have a magic weapon you materialize out of nowhere. Furthermore, you can’t dip a single level in warlock and grab an awesome feature (Cha to hit/damage, paladins) before taking your real class. Lastly, you’ll see a lot more Genie Hexblades, Old Ones Hexblades, and Fathomless Hexblades. Increase diversity in warlocks, and dippers, without much change to the core.
The TTRPG Factory 