Welcome to the next installment of Gish Optimized. Man, are you guys in for some fun! Because we have an awesome new build for you! It’s one of my favs for a number reasons. Greatsword attacks without strength, some serious heat coming from our spells, a tough character that can take a lot of physical punishment, and beaucoup tactical options on the battlefield. So put on your Dungeons and Dragons, spell flinging, sword swinging, gishy character optimization hats and get ready!
In our first post, we explored a special build for the optimized Dexterity-based Paladin — aka the Dexadin. This build was primarily melee-focused relying on superior mobility, smites and buffs to deliver heavy hits in combat. A serious stab and smite kind of gish. Now it’s time for a bit of a switch. One with a dash of darkness, a helping of noir artistic flare, and well more than a dalliance with death…
The Spank and Flank Chex-Fighter
For this episode, we’re going to shift gears to a Charisma-based, great weapon wielding hexblade-fighter or Chex-Fighter. But unlike our Dexadin, this character is going to have some serious magical heat under the hood in the form of various buffs, buddies, and blasts. We summed up our Dexadin as a stab and smite kind of gish. Well, the Chex-Fighter is, instead, a gish of the spank and flank variety. Spank because she’s gonna hit real damn hard with her great weapon. Flank because she’ll employ her warlock spells to conjure buddies or buffs to grant her combat advantage. You’ll find out more as we progress! So let’s get into it!
Level 1 — Charisma, Constitution, Half-Elf, Prismari, Fighter
Jumping right in at first level, let’s start out with stats. Remember, we’re a Chex-Fighter and the C in Chex stands for Charisma. So we’ll allocate major pointage here — throwing a full nine at the stat pre-racial bonuses. That gives us a 15 starting out. Solid.
Moving on to our secondary stat, we find that C also stands for Constitution because we’re dropping another full nine points into the tough stat. Why so heavy on Con? Well, we’re mostly a front-liner with our greatsword. Sure, we’ll be able to throw down some ranged heat. But we’re going to want to mix it up in melee big-time. And we really want both high HP and high Con saves. A lot of our melee spells need high rolls for concentration checks too. So we drop those nine points and start out with a 15 in Con as well.
Our third most important stat is Dexterity. We’re not a Dexadin. But we still want decent initiative rolls for our character. We’ve also decided to go the medium armor route and dump strength. Why? Well, what’s more cool than going full anime and having our badass Raven Queen’s Herald artistically wielding a large but nimble greatsword with nothing more than the ample force of her personality to power her strikes? For all these reasons, and because we are indeed a shiny dancer, we drop 5 points into Dexterity for a starting score of 13.
After spending like a drunken sailor on these three stats, we have 4 points left over for Strength, Wisdom, and Intelligence. I’m gonna dump Str to 8 and go with 10 in Wis and 10 in Int. This seems right to me for our Ravenqueen Herald’s mojo. If you want something else — go for it!
So we’ve got our base stats. Now let’s look at race. Ah! There are so many options! And I must say I’ve used both Elf and Human for this build. I love each for different reasons. Human lets us get a feat right off the bat. Elf gives us so many juicy options. And one of them we really, really want. But we also want some beautiful stat bumps. They’re actually pretty key. So we’re going to go for fancy this time, split the difference, and take Half Elf. Holy racial stat bonuses Batman! We get a +2 in one stat and +1 in two others. This is amazing!
Now we really want Charisma so we throw 2 points of our Half Elf bonuses into that for a starting stat of 17. Remember Con? Yeah. We’re putting 1 point into that for a 16. And last of all for Dex we get our final stat bonus. So finalizing our level 1 stats, we end up with S 8 C 16 D 14 I 10 W 10 Ch 17. Not bad at all! But it gets better…
… With our Background. Typically, I wouldn’t talk background for character optimization. But with the advent of Strixhaven, I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing mage college backgrounds. As a Raven Queen’s Herald, we are playing an artiste of the Queen of Death. Our paintbrush for spell and combat — a pact blade. In this artistry we’re enabled by a somewhat macabre twist on the Prismari background found in Strixhaven. Typical Prismari focus on mastering the arts and the elements. Our Raven Queen’s Herald will hone in on the dire and yet beautiful artistry of fate and death. By picking this background we also get two cantrips, access to some cool spell choices, and an extra first level spell. Since we’re mostly a warlock, this extra spell slot really helps us out. I’ll leave the cantrip choices up to you. But what I’m really here for is the fate-bending power of Silvery Barbs. Right out the gate our servant of death gains the ability to twist the threads of fate as a reaction in order to impose disadvantage on an attack roll, an ability check or a saving throw that previously succeeded. We get an extra slot from which to cast this spell AND we can add this spell to our list. Now, if your game doesn’t allow Strixhaven as a resource, just ignore all of the above and some of the below, then drive on with the core build. It’s already amazing. Strixhaven just provides some delicious gravy.
Our mage background also helps round our character out as we go into first level. Because for this build we are starting with fighter. Why? Well, for one, we really want to be trained in Constitution saving throws. We also get some survivability in the form of Second Wind. Our Defense Fighting Style option adds 1 to our AC — making us even tougher. Since we didn’t start out as Warlock, we’re going Dexterity for our level 1 fighting. So we pick rapier, shield, and scale mail. From Strixhaven mage we also pick up Chill Touch for our ranged attacks. Our starting HP is 13. Our AC is 19. This makes us both tough and versatile at lvl 1. Even though we are not a heavy hitter, we can take some serious heat, attack reliably both in melee and at range, and occasionally pull a clutch debuff with Silvery Barbs. That’s pretty badass. But it gets better.
One word to the wise on level delay — this optimization guide does delay key features by one level. So you’ll lag a bit behind straight-classed options in exchange for some really nice build options. This delay is not too terrible as our build really starts to hum at level 6 and even moreso at level 9. However, if you want to race to gain badass features at level 5 and forego some of the amazing tweaks, just pick Variant Human, take Resilient Constitution at level 1, and go straight Hexblade until 17 at which point you’ll take the final three levels as fighter. I’m doing just that in a campaign I’m playing this build in right now. So don’t feel bad if you want those powers sooner. We’re just showcasing the more idealized version of the build here.
Level 2 — First Level of Hexblade Warlock
Now that we’ve set up a strong chassis for our Ravenqueen’s Herald, we move into the core class of the build which is Hexblade Warlock. We’re taking Hexblade all the way to level 17. And it’s going to give us so many wonderful things.
At level two we initially gain two amazing features. The first is Hexblade Curse — letting us set up some serious focus fire on one opponent by using our bonus action to apply this curse to a target we can see within 30 feet. This curse expands our crit range to 19-20 and gives us a buff to our damage rolls against the target. The second feature from Hexblade is Hex Warrior — allowing us to use our Charisma with one melee weapon of our choice that lacks the two handed property. We pick a Longsword. Then we drop the shield and go two-handed with it because it’s versatile. We now do 1d10+3 damage or 1d10+5 damage with our Hexblade Curse. Our AC drops to 17. But we’re not here for the AC. We’re here for doing a dance of death with our large and nimble blade.
We are now a solid damage dealer for level 2. But we’re going to pick some spells up that help us even more. For Cantrips we take Eldritch Blast for our ranged option and never look back. We get another Cantrip which I’m leaving open — so have fun. For First Level Known Spells, we’re taking Hex and Armor of Agathys. Hex adds 1d6 on top of our already strong 1d10 damage with Eldritch Blast and Longsword. With proficiency in Constitution saves, it’s unlikely our Hex will be lost if we take a hit. Armor of Agathys gives us 5 Temporary Hit Points and deals damage if a foe hits us in melee. Since we have a 22 HP, those 5 THP stacked with Second Wind really makes us pretty darn tough while also giving us good reactive damage in close combat. These spells give us strong choices at level 2 for our spell slots.
Level 3 — Invoking the Raven Queen
At level 3 (level 2 Warlock) we get two Eldritch Invocations. And it’s here that our build’s specialty really starts to come on line. We don’t get to benefit from our choices in a major way just yet. But our deathly artistry arising from our pact with a blade blessed by the Goddess of Death is starting to take shape. Our eyes begin to take on a red gleam as we take Devil’s Sight. This gives us 120 feet of darkvision in both normal and magical darkness. The coolness factor here is just to die for (quoth the Raven Queen). What this invocation gives us by level 6 is just beyond amazing. It yields benefits earlier. But the cherry on top is our big surprise coming at levels 6 and 9. We want something special with our other invocation at level 4. So we set it aside for now.
At level 3, we also get another spell choice for level 1. I’m partial to having a blast option, so I’d pick Arms of Hadar. I also like the cinematic flare of arms of darkness erupting from you to batter your foes. This isn’t key to the build, so if you want something else like Hellish Rebuke, go for it!
Level 4 — Forging a Pact With a Blade Blessed by Death in Darkness
By level 4 our mojo is really starting to shine. We forge a pact of with a blade blessed by the Raven Queen. For my character, I’ve picked a weapon possessed by the spirit of the good death. There are many shades of death so our options here are broad. For game purposes, our Pact of the Blade now allows us to summon a special magical sword that can be used as an arcane focus for our spells. We also now use our second invocation to empower this sword — taking Improved Pact of the Blade. Now we gain two more boons — our weapon is a Greatsword which we can use with our Charisma. It is also enchanted to +1. So our base damage jumps again — hitting 2d6+4, 2d6+6 if we’ve applied our Hexblade Curse, and a maximum of 3d6+6 if we’ve cast Hex. Pretty significant.
We also gain another spell and our Warlock slots jump to level 2. This means Armor of Agathys hits 10 THP. So our base 31 HP can be pushed to an effective 41 even as we are possibly doing 10 damage if something strikes us with a melee attack. With this bump in spell level comes another spell choice. We pick Darkness. Now you probably saw this coming when I chose Devil’s Sight. But I must emphasize that Darkness is not a core feature of the build. It instead represents a situationally powerful option that can also harmfully debuff your allies if you’re not careful. Walking around with 15 feet of darkness surrounding you blinds everyone, even your buddies (although, if you team up with a Gloomstalker Ranger, you’ve just thrown down a major party buff). Unless the party is optimized to fight in Darkness, the spell is a bit clunky to say the least. That said, if you are wise about when you cast it and you do something clever like casting Darkness on an object that’s easy to mask with a free action or an object interact action, then you’ll get more mileage out of it. Admittedly, the advantage you can gain and the disadvantage impacting your foes can be pivotal. Just think about your buddies before popping this out.
Level 5 — Great Weapon Master
At level 5 we are a level 4 warlock and we immediately throw our ASI into the Great Weapon Master feat without looking back. We already have access to Darkness, which allows us to apply advantage — making hits more likely when we choose to subtract 5 to hit to add 10 damage. But we are still in training mode here. Though a main feature has just come online, we’ve got much more to look forward to.
Even so, we’ve just unlocked some serious NOVA-crit potential. If we have Darkness active, pop Hexblade Curse, and attack our foes with advantage we can now strike for 2d6+17 damage. For a single hit, this results in a seriously beefy 24 average damage. But due to Hexblade Curse, we now also crit on a 19-20 and when we crit we make a second attack as a bonus action. Our NOVA-critical does 6d6+34 for a total average damage of 55. Not as brutal as our stab and smite Dexadin at level 5. But remember, we haven’t even picked up extra attack yet. So we are well on the way.
At level 5 we also get another spell to choose. I’m partial to Mirror Image, Shatter, or Misty Step. None are critical to our build. So have fun!
Level 6 — Flank and Spank!
Ahhh… Level 6… Beautiful, glorious level 6… This level is the level where our build finally comes on line. We’ve laid all the groundwork. We’ve made all the choices and now we can unlock our optimization to deliver some serious spanking and flanking against our foes.
But before we get into that, let’s just take a moment to celebrate because we’ve gained access to extra attack through our new Invocation — Thirsting Blade. When using our pact weapon which is an incarnation of the blade of the good death, we now get to attack twice when we take the attack action. Our melee rounds just got really brutal for the bad guys.
Still, it gets even worse for the bads because at level 5 we pick a really clutch spell in the form of Summon Fey. With this spell, we call forth a special flank buddy Fey Spirit. This guy or gal is a mean little bugger — packing quite a wallop in her diminutive 3 foot tall package. With one attack she unloads 2d6+6. Not too shabby. But the real feature for us comes from our Fey Spirit’s bonus action. Why? Because we want darkness. And when we want darkness we want it not to harm our allies. Enter our Tricksy Fey Spirit who can use a bonus action to cover one 5 foot square in darkness. A square our Chex Fighter is now standing in. Hello advantage! Hello let’s beat the tar out of the badguys with our greatsword! Hello to spank and flank!
With Summon Fey active, we now attack twice for 2d6+4 base damage and our ally attacks once for 2d6+6. Our Chex Fighter attacks with advantage if the Tricksey Fey has summoned darkness into our square. If all these attacks land, we average 35 damage. Not too shabby. But our maximum potential damage just went through the roof. On a NOVA-crit round after we applied Hexblade Curse, we now do 10d6+57 damage for a total average damage of 92. Woof! That’s some serious heat. And we’re not even action surging or smiting yet!
So nice!
Level 7 — Accursed Specter
Now that our spank and flank is fully online, we want more options for flank buddies. Our flank strategy will carry us on for a long time — through level 18. This strategy will afford us with multiple options for achieving advantage on attack rolls. At level 7, level 6 in Warlock, we gain another of these options — our Accursed Specter. When we slay a humanoid affected by our Hexblade Curse, we summon a special specter which we command. The specter has its own initiative and full set of turns. It can use these turns to deal another 3d6 necrotic damage — further buffing our DPR. Depending on its place in the initiative order our specter ally can also use the Help Action to give us advantage on attack rolls against a foe. This addition isn’t key to our build. But it does provide us with another helpful spank and flank option.
For spells we also gain another choice. I’m partial to Counterspell. When you need it, you really need it. But it can hurt to unload one of your only two spell slots on Counterspell when you could otherwise be Summoning Fey for multiple encounters and getting a juicy 15 THP from Armor of Agathys to buff your already beefy 67 HP at level 7.
Level 8 — Eldritch Smite
By now we’re starting to pick up quite a managerie of nasty critters and equally brutal powers. At level 7, we add a keystone in our NOVA Critical capability in the form of Eldritch Smite. It’s worth noting, though, since we’re a Warlock that we need to hold one of our two precious warlock slots in reserve to deliver this smite as part of an attack series. Ideally, we’ve got our Summon Fey up, we’re getting advantage from our buddy’s helpful square of darkness, and we’re holding our second 4th level spell slot in reserve for our smite.
This combo is a once per short rest spark of deathly glory. But when it goes off, it is just insanely good. So let’s get into some basic math. Our flank buddy Fey now attacks twice for 2d6+7 damage on each hit. Assuming he hits, that’s 28 damage. Oof. Our specter, if he hits does 10.5. We’ve applied our Hexblade Curse and we’re adding +10 from great weapon master even though our advantaged attacks still aren’t super-accurate. But we still have a good chance of landing hits due to that second roll. If we crit, land all three, and smite on the crit we do 10d8+8d6+51 for a total of 123 damage. Our flank buddies add 38.5 for a grand total of 161.5 damage at level 8. If we don’t risk the -5 to hit, we still do 131.5 average damage if all hits land. Absofrigginlutely brutal!
At this level, it’s worth noting that another spell can give us our cozy shroud of part-friendly darkness. That spell, Shadow of Moil, is a worthy addition to our arsenal as it obscures you for 1 minute while also doing 2d8 necrotic damage to any foe that does manage to hit you. So we add this buff to our arsenal.
Level 9 — Elven Accuracy!
But wait… It gets even better. At level 9, we’re a level 8 warlock and we get our second ASI. We choose to spend it on Elven Accuracy. A half feat, we use the point to bump our Charisma to 18. We are now +9 to hit with our magical greatsword. If our Fey buddy throws some nice shade over us, we now roll 3 times to hit when we have advantage. Yikes. Now we can feel a lot more confident about using great weapon master.
For spells, I’m kinda partial to the area denial option that is Sickening Radiance. Since we’re a Prismari Mage background, we might also take Wall of Fire or Freedom of Movement. Again, these diverge from our core options. But we might find situations when we’re glad we have them. We’re a gish after all!
Level 10 — Eldritch Pain
By level 10, we finally have space to enhance our ranged attacks by picking up the Eldritch Pain Invocation. Our eldritch blasts now do 1d10+4 on each shot, 1d10+8 if we apply Hexblade Curse. Pretty nasty. We also now have access to 5th level spells. It’s worth taking Cone of Cold for some extra blast damage in a pinch. If we took an ongoing AOE option last level, we’ve just built us a solid off-blasting secondary option. Although, we’ll primarily be working with our flank buddies over longer time periods vs throwing down quick and heavy blasts due to our limited spell slots.
Level 11-13 — Armor of Hexes, Circle of Death, and Lifedrinker
Coming up on level 11 we now attain Armor of Hexes which is a solid defensive buff against a single foe. Now, targets we lay down the focus fire on with Hexblade Curse are quite a bit less likely to hit us. We can use our reaction when a foe hits us to roll a d6. If we roll a 4 or higher, the attack misses. If our flank buddy is throwing shade on us, foes are also attacking us with disadvantage unless they can penetrate magical darkness. This kind of layered defense can be quite difficult to pierce — adding to our dueling capability. At level 11, we also have the ability to cast Armor of Agathys for 25 THP to add to our pretty beefy 103 base HP.
By level 12 we now have 3 fifth level spell slots and 1 first level slot for Silvery Barbs. This gives us more options. One we add to with our Mystic Arcanum which we use for the big AOE that is Circle of Death. If you prefer another lvl 6 spell, go for it. Circle of Death isn’t pivotal to our build. But I like the option for more backup AOE throw down.
Upon hitting level 13 we finally max out our Charisma at 20. We also pick up the Lifedrinker Invocation. Now our consistent damage gets a serious bump to 2d6+11 when we add in the extra 5 necrotic damage from Lifedrinker. Our Fey and Specter flank buddies are also starting to lag a little due to our warlock slots not continuing to accrue and the Specter not scaling. They’re probably still decent for most combats. But we’ll start relying on our solo abilities more and more from this point forward. So it’s nice to get a damage buff. Updating our NOVA-crit round and including Hexblade Curse, we’re doing 12d8+8d6+78 for 159 individually plus 10.5 from the Specter and 30 from the Fey for 199.5. Very substantial damage that we can potentially deliver on two consecutive rounds.
Level 14-17 Creature of Light and Maddening Darkness
At level 14, we get our second Mystic Arcanum. Now I’m partial to Crown of Stars. But this comes with a note — it sheds bright light which interferes with our darkness abilities. In my view, taking Crown of Stars gives us a good long lasting option when we want to hang back and deal extra ranged punishment. It’s not concentration. And it lasts for an hour. It also helps us fill a possible gap when flinging darkness might be less helpful or even hurt. Thematically, this makes us a creature of light and darkness, which is pretty amazingly cool. It also fills another one of our versatility gaps. Which from the gish standpoint is pretty darn cool.
At level 15 we pick up the amazing Master of Hexes ability. When a creature affected by our Hexblade Curse dies, we can then apply our curse to another creature as a bonus action. This effectively gives us continuous use of our Hexblade Curse so long as our cursed foes continue to fall. Presently, our curse adds 5 to our damage rolls for a total of 2d6+16 or 2d6+26 if we use our great weapon master feature. So the ability to fling this curse around more often is a major buff. Just be aware that your bonus action now has quite a lot of competition for its use. This is a good thing. But we’re going to need to manage it to eek out our highest level of effectiveness.
At level 16 we get our 8th level Mystic Arcanum. For it, we choose the devastating and huge Maddening Darkness. The utility of this massive area denial and enemy debuff spell is compounded by our Devil’s Sight which allows us to see the enemies who are now stumbling around in the psychically crushing darkness we’ve just conjured. Our quiver of darkness has thus been added to yet again — and this added arrow is seriously devastating if used at the right time. We also get another Eldritch Invocation which we use to shore up our already strong ability to concentrate on spells. To do that we take Eldritch Mind as our Raven Queen patroness fortifies our ability to focus.
At level 17, we gain another ASI. We take Constitution which now bumps us up to 18. We now have +10 on Constitution saves, advantage on concentration checks and +4 hit points per level. Pretty significant for a character that’s mostly a Warlock. For resiliency we’re sitting pretty at this point with 174 HP and the ability to conjure our Armor of Agathys for an extra 25 THP. We also hold onto our spells with a difficult to shake tenacity even when we take significant amounts of damage.
Level 18 — Foresight
Over the past 4-5 levels we’ve been steadily transitioning away from a flanker and into more of a spanker. We’ve still made good use of our flank buddies. But combats where they’re effective have become more and more limited. Meanwhile, our own individual abilities have begun to really shine. We have access to a combination of strong AOEs, ranged attacks, and area denial. Our core ability to rip bads apart with our greatsword has only gotten stronger. And our ability to stand strong through the fray is quite respectable.
At level 18 we complete our transition. We become a pure spanker who’s no longer reliant on flank buddies. We might still use them. But our core abilities have propelled us beyond that need. A key part of that transition is our gaining access to the Foresight spell for our Level 9 Mystic Arcanum. This amazing spell grants us advantage on attack rolls, saves, and ability checks for 8 hours. We can’t be surprised and attacks against us are at disadvantage. Because we are using a greatsword with Elfin Accuracy and using Charisma we roll 3 times to hit during those 8 hours. And when we apply our Hexblade Curse, we roll a critical hit on a 19-20. This makes our NOVA Critical strikes really brutal. But we’ll hold off on a full assessment of the damage for now…
Level 19 and 20 — Action Surge and Battlemaster
Moving on to levels 19 and 20 we achieve the keystone features of our build. By taking our last two levels in Fighter we gain the amazing action economy and NOVA buff that is action surge. We also go one better to get Battlemaster because we really want to be able to use the Riposte manuever up to 4 times per short rest. Why? Well, let’s do some basic math.
At level 20, our NOVA critical is now among the most devastating in the game. When we NOVA, we’ve set up our Hexblade Curse on our chosen target, we’ve cast Spirit Shroud (which I haven’t mentioned before, but which we’ve used our Eldritch versatility to switch out one of our 3rd level known spells for), and we are operating under Foresight. This takes about 2 rounds to set up. So maneuver yourself accordingly. When we unload, we action surge. And when we crit, we use our Eldritch Smite. This makes our NOVA-crit devastating at 24d8+12d6+135 for 285 average damage. But wait, it gets even better when we riposte and do a total of 74.5 addition damage with a second Eldritch Smite and the added riposte damage for a total of 359.5 damage on a NOVA-crit + riposte round. All this without magic weapon support, assuming a crit and that all hits land. This devastation is about 25 percent above that applied by our stab and smite Dexadin. However, our nimble Paladin may benefit more from some specific magic item support. So YMMV.
Final Notes — A Really Fun NOVA Build That Can Throw Down Powerful Spells
Overall, I really love what this build has to offer. It’s tough. It can throw down some AOEs, particularly at higher levels. And it really goes for those head shots with that greatsword. I would love to see this with a vorpal weapon. Although I’m sure a DM wouldn’t! Or maybe they would…
That concludes our Raven Queen’s Herald optimized gish build. I hope you enjoy it! If you do, please send us a little love by mentioning where you found her. Until next time — may the goddess of nat 20s smile upon you!
Check out the Stab and Smite Dexadin build here.
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robertscribbler
/ December 30, 2021Some edits to follow.
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