Prerequisite: 5th level, Hex spell or a warlock feature that curses
As a bonus action, you cause a psychic disturbance around the target cursed by your hex spell or by a warlock feature of yours, such as Hexblade's Curse and Sign of Ill Omen. When you do so, you deal psychic damage to the cursed target and each creature of your choice within 5 feet of it. The psychic damage equals your Charisma modifier (minimum of 1 damage). To use this invocation, you must be able to see the cursed target, and it must be within 30 feet of you.
Maddening Hex: I’m not Mad, Just Disappointed
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Hexblades, oh Hexblades. Wizards of the Coast’s apology for the atrocious Pact of the Blade feature. Maddening Hex comes in alongside it as an expandable way to embolden the “curse” based warlock fantasy. I love this conceptually; building on top of unremarkable features otherwise (like Sign of Ill Omen) can take pretty terrible invocations and breathe new life into them. Maddening Hex doesn’t quite hit that mark for me, though, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with madness or curses. It just deals a bunch of psychic damage.
That’s fine, granted, it's just not really exciting to me. On most characters, this is going to be bonus text for the Hex spell, as it's by far the easiest spell to justify continued casting with this feature. Sure, Bestow Curse and Bane both can enable Maddening Hex, but those don’t tend to fit cleanly or easily into a variety of warlock play patterns. If you’re not going Hexblade, chances are you’re going to want Hex to empower attack based damage from weapons with Thirsting Blade or Eldritch Blasts. Because Hex takes your bonus action to cast and move around, you’re often left with some wasted bonus actions while a creature stays alive with a Hex marked on them; this is a way to weaponize those “lost” bonus actions, should you have nothing else to do with them, in a way that is fairly low impact, but still contributes towards victory.
All of that is the good in the feature, and where most characters I think will end up when taking Maddening Hex. Blasters will find it’s a bit restrictive on their range, and probably would rather take Agonizing Blast if they don’t already have it, or some other utility option to expand their toolbox. Martial non-hexblades will probably find it fine, but it competes with off-hand attacks for their bonus action. Sure, you can sculpt out allies, as the damage is selective, but I’m not in love with a bonus 3-4 damage once a round to a handful of creatures at best, especially given it doesn’t really scale past that. You want a high Dex on martial warlocks first and foremost; Charisma will always be a close second. The 20 Charisma 5 aoe damage isn’t going to happen for a long while.
Looking at it specifically on Hexblades, Maddening Hex is… fine? It takes your signature single mark of death and gives you a way to consistently translate that into AOE damage very round. This upgrades the Hexblade’s Curse substantially, as unlike Hex, you can’t move the Curse around until 14th level, encouraging you to stick it on the healthiest enemy in the low tiers of play to get the most out of the once per short rest curse. This gives you a way to bring down hit points of groups of creatures at once while still prioritizing smacking one big baddy. Hexblades also don’t have the same problems other martial warlocks tend to have with them wanting to max their Dexterity as fast as possible because their hit and damage comes from Charisma instead. This helps scale Maddening Hex faster, which is a boon to the build.
I want to love Maddening Hex, it just is a bit too clunky for me to consider it. I want this to have an impact on the cursed creature outside of free damage. I want this to offer a save or be confused, unable to cast spells, SOMETHING more than just an aoe 3-5 psychic damage as a bonus action. 3-5 psychic damage in an area for a bonus action is perfectly fine at most tables, though, and if you’re finding you enjoy Hex/Hexblade’s Curse and want to empower its damage a bit more, this is a reasonable option.
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