Dark pacts and twisted bargains, in Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (D&D 5E…. or just 5E), the Warlock is one of the more interesting character classes. While not a necessarily evil character class, often they make deals with powerful entities of very dark origin to gain their powers. Sometimes the entity may be oblivious or ambivalent toward the Warlock, and other times they may be that dark voice in the back of their mind, always tempting and prodding them toward a certain course of action that aligns with the beings goals. This can indeed become a coordination nightmare for a player and his DM, but if done well, can lead to some amazing stories and experiences.
Regardless of which patron a Warlock chooses their core mechanics are based upon debilitating the opponents and dealing damaged to them in their vulnerable state. This is accomplished by many debuffs, some area effect battlefield control spells, corrosive and life draining effects, and all other manner of nastiness. But one of the very defining features of most Warlocks is the ability to Hex their enemies. Cursing someone with the evil eye, the Warlock marks their victim with foul death magics. Yeah, even if your patron is a good being, and you are a Warlock who heals, you still might be dishing out death magic and cursing your enemies to be clumsy buffoons. Some Warlocks may never take the 1st level Hex spell, while others will take that and more, and even gain pact boon abilities based on cursing and hexing. It is a neat mechanic.
Until we start playing in Fantasy Grounds.
First and foremost, you are likely here because you already play in Fantasy Grounds. If you don’t, well welcome! You really should use it. It is an amazing piece of software that really takes a lot of the book keeping out of your games and lets you just play the character. It also automates so much stuff for the DM (More for 5E than just about any other ruleset), that the DM can focus on what the NPCs do instead of how they actually do it. Even if you aren’t in an online group, the DM running Fantasy Grounds as your mapping tool and combat tracker at the table can be an amazing setup also. I can’t praise Fantasy Grounds (FG from now on) enough.
At the time of this writing, FG is currently running a Kickstarter for Fantasy Grounds Unity, a newer version of the software utilizing the Unity engine for game development. So an already amazing product is getting a face lift to make it even better. All your books and purchased items will carry over, but line of sight mapping, expanded graphics options for maps, much improved memory handling, cloud based accounts and easy game connections, all the things folks have been clamoring for are being added. But again, you likely already know this. If you didn’t however, get your ass over to their Kickstarter page and sign up. There are great bundle deals available also with rule sets and core game books for many systems. If you are reading this after the Kickstarter campaign has closed, well I guess you missed out.
Fantasy Grounds Unity Kickstarter
So if FG is so amazing, why do I suggest things are great until we start using hexes? To be honest, the first level Hex spell for the Warlock is one of the more obtuse creations I have seen in the game. It works perfectly as designed, it is just that the design is incredibly awkward. Before we go on, let’s discuss what the Hex spell does. Since we can’t post actual details for the spell (copyright and all that), we can talk about it.
When you cast Hex you cast it as a bonus action, you pick a target, and pick an attribute. The target is now marked with your hex. Further, the target will now roll at disadvantage on all ability checks for the ability you chose. If you choose dexterity, then all dexterity checks (not saves) will be at disadvantage as long as the hex is on that target. If you hex charisma, all those social interactions based on charisma are now at disadvantage. This lasts as long as your hex is up, and it requires concentration. This duration scales with level however, and can be as long as a full day eventually. This type use is often overlooked due to the other component of our hex however.
The other function of hex is to increase damage done to your target. If you attack the target you have hexed with ANYTHING, you do an extra 1d6 necrotic damage. This damage doesn’t scale, but it is on every single hit. Firing multiple Eldritch Blasts? Each one gets the bonus. That certainly can add up.
Once the target of your hex drops to zero hit points your hex doesn’t go away. As long as you still have remaining duration on your spell, and haven’t broken concentration, at any point in the future you can use another bonus action to move your hex to another target. Now, you have to select which ability is going to be at disadvantage when you cast it, and that can’t change. But you can keep moving that hex from target to target for the duration. That’s pretty cool.
So with all that said, why is it bad or confusing in Fantasy Grounds? Here is how the original spell is created in FG.
Let’s break down the text on that.
DMG: 1d6 necrotic; (C)
So this effect, if you just click the spells effect icon, will put this on you, the caster. It will cause you to do an extra 1d6 of necrotic damage on every attack you do until it’s duration is up, or until your concentration is broken. The DMG function sets that damage and its type, and that added (C) at the end sets up the concentration effect. But doing 1d6 to everyone and everything is certainly not what we want. You also see a one hour duration, but an expend on next roll flag. What the hell does that even mean?
Now the way it was designed, you don’t actually click the icon and set this on yourself. The way it is designed, you actually drag the effect icon to your target, and it sets the effect on them. What? How does that make sense? Well, it doesn’t. You don’t want to grant them the extra damage, you want it for yourself, but only if you hit THAT target. So the way it finally works is you have to hold Control while dragging the effect to your target. Now they effect is ON them, but the control key makes it a recursive target, and the function only works for you, but only when you hit that target. Clear as mud, right?
And nowhere does it say anything at all about disadvantages on ability checks.
Now maybe this is all you needed. You just needed to know to hold control, and now all is good with the world and you can move on. If so, thanks for reading this far and have fun gaming. FG is amazing, and this spell isn’t ‘broken’ as some have suggested. I would however argue that it is certainly confusing, and definitely incomplete. So can we fix that? Of course we can.
We are going to be editing our spell/ability list, so in order to make any changes we need to be in edit mode. To do this, at the bottom right of your character sheet you will find a small round icon with a diagonal dash in it. Clicking here sets us into editing mode and allows us to add and delete items form our list manually.
The first thing we need to do is get rid of the primary effect of that stock Hex spell. We want the spell to be in our list, and we want the link to all its details on range and duration and such, but we don’t want that wonky control drag ability in there. To do this right click on the effect itself, not the title line of the spell that says Hex, and choose Remove Action.
After the delete you will also get a confirmation.
Now that it is gone, let’s add our own custom action/effect in there. To do this, we want to right click again within the area of that spell. Right clicking on the title, the word Hex, bring up the radial we need, and we want to click on the downward slanting arrow set right at 3 o’clock. That’s the Add Action button.
Once we are adding an action, now we have to tell it what type of action it is we want to add. In this case we are adding an Effect, so click the radial button set at the 6 o’clock position. It looks like a little outline of a humanoid.
Any time you want to expand something while working in FG, just click on the magnifying glass to the right of the item in question. In this case we want to click on the magnifying glass next to the new blank effect we just added, and we will get the box for the details of the effect to pop up.
This is the box where we need to create our new effect. The effect we are going to create here will be the nefarious damage ability of our Hex. This is an effect we want to put on our self, so where it says Targeting near the bottom of this effect box, click on that and make sure to change it to self. By default these boxes open with the Targeting set to Targets, which makes it an ability you place on others, specifically which ever target you currently have targeted in the Combat Tracker. That will become important to us later, but this one, set it to self. Now when you click the effect icon on this spell (when we are done with it) it will always apply the effect we create to you, the caster, and no one else.
With that done, now we have to actually tell it what the effect is. In plain English, we want an effect that says whenever I hit someone who has my hex on them, I want to do an extra 1d6 necrotic damage. That’s it, simple as that. That’s the only effect I need on myself for things to work. But I have to be able to tell if the target is indeed hexed, and specifically hexed by me. Especially if there ends up being multiple Warlocks and multiple hexes in a fight.
So the command that checks for a status effect on a target in FG is the IFT command. IFT is basically “If Target”. If the condition checked for on the target is true, do the effect. If the condition is not true, don’t do the effect. So we want to check if the target has MY hex on them. This brings us to another component of this command. The IFT can check for any condition built into the game. Blinded, stunned, good, evil, etc.. etc… But with the special CUSTOM() function, we can look for things that aren’t part of the game engines prebuilt list. We can look for whatever word we want. We will see later how to apply those words or conditions, but for now, we need to come up with something suitably evil to represent the dark forces coursing through us and marking our enemies for death.
We will use ‘Banana’.
Yeah, you can use anything at all. Just make sure what you use is unique to your Warlock. Then in a party of 4 Warlocks, each one can create their own unique curse word and this all triggers properly with no confusion. So if we have decided what we want our effect to do (add 1d6 necrotic), and when (if the target has condition ‘Banana’), our effect is formed like this.
IFT: CUSTOM(Banana); DMG: 1d6 necrotic
Pay attention to Colons and Semicolons. A colon comes after a function and defines that the next portion of text is for that function, while the semicolon separates the functions within a line. This effect we have created does exactly what we need, checks of the target is Banana, and if so, adds 1d6 necrotic damage whenever we damage it. Period. We don’t need concentration effects, we don’t need disadvantage on ability checks, we don’t need any special duration or anything. This effect can be a permanent fixture of our Warlock for all intents and purposes.
NOTE: Big thanks to Zacchaeus on the FG Message Boards for reminding me of this. Only spells that require attack rolls trigger this. If you have the Hex on a target and hit them with something requiring a save instead, you need to drop one effect or the other and then just re-apply it afterward. There is a way to trigger this effect to only work if a melee or ranged attack roll is made, but then you would have to apply something new for things like Eldritch Blast. Since it will be triggering the vast majority of the time, it is easier to turn one off when not needed.
** Edit: 3/24/2020: Thanks to some great feedback from Walkin Dude over on Fantasy Grounds College Discord server (Do yourself a favor, get involved over there), there may be another bit to add to this effect. If you are concerned about rolling Concentration saves when your Warlock takes damage, you have to remember to do this if the Hex we will build later isn’t currently applied to a target. But unlike the game itself, Fantasy Grounds WILL allow you to have multiple Concentration effects in place. So if you don’t want to forget, or your group uses automatic Concentration checks, just re-add the “;(C)” code to the end of this effect.
So now our string looks like…..
IFT: CUSTOM(Banana); DMG: 1d6 necrotic; (C)
But now we have to apply our hex to our target. This requires us to create a new effect to place onto our target. Also, by creating a discrete effect, we won’t need to do any control click drag shenanigans. We will be able to actually click a button on our spell/ability list and have it properly apply to whatever target we have currently in the combat tracker. Just like any other basic effect.
Further, we will want to create six different effects. Why six? Because we will create one for each ability, because these hexes will actually apply the disadvantage to ability checks that the hex produces to that target. When we cast, we can choose which of these six hex abilities to use, and by doing so, we set the appropriate ability score penalty we desire.
To add each hex, we want to look down at the bottom of our character sheet, down near where we enabled editing. Now we see some small blue icons don there. One of them is a Star. That star icon lets us add a power to our list. Click on it and a new power will be added, with no details listed. There are two boxes for text when we create these, and the second box becomes very useful for us. Now that we have this new power, click in the left box and type the name for your new power, we can start with Hex Strength. Adding the ability name to the hex name makes this very easy for us to use in the future. In that second box, the one on the right, type the word ‘Hexes’. You need to hit tab or click into some other item for this to set and update, but once you do, something pretty cool happens.
Now that we have an item with the category set to Hexes, this creates a whole new grouping in our power list. You will notice that all your spells have this grouping tag already. You can do the same with custom potions, rings, whatever. But now that we have a custom group for our hexes, repeat this process and create a new hex power for each ability score. When done, that list should look like this.
If you want a different order, you can add numbers to the names to make them align how you like. Lists are always alphabetical by default. We will leave ours as is. But now I have a list of six clearly named hexes, but no powers on them. Since it is faster to work in bulk, let’s add a new effect action to each of these hexes. Just like we did on our core Hex spell, right click and choose the add action, then the add effect. Make sure to specifically click on each title so you aren’t creating two effects under one hex. Once all are added, we should see something like this.
Now we have our hexes ready for their actual powers. We need them to do three specific things. First, we need to ensure each one turns our target into a banana. Not really, but we need each one to set the custom effect or tag on our target that says ‘Banana’. Spelling and capitalization is important on this. The word has to be the exact word we chose in the CUSTOM(Banana) function earlier. And how do we apply it to a target? Simple, just type the word. That’s it.
Adding to that, we need to set the proper ability score to be at disadvantage. The function for this is simply DISCHK. We follow that (after a colon of course) with the name of the ability we want to be at a disadvantage in lowercase. So for strength, it would be ‘DISCHK: strength’. We need to make sure this is separated from our first effect by our semicolon. We also need another semicolon because we have a third effect. That effect is to set up concentration for this ability. We set the concentration up here so that when it drops it will take the effect off the target, but the core ability on the Warlock will remain and never have to be refreshed. Concentration is set by adding the (C) effect. That is just a capital letter “C” in parenthesis. So in total it looks like this.
Banana; DISCHK: strength; (C)
That’s it. This will be the effect we place on our target. And now that we have this built, we can actually highlight that power line and hit Ctrl and C on our keyboard to copy it. This allows us to go to each hex power down the line and open the effect box to paste it right in on each one. Now it is just a matter of simply changing the text for each ability to match the name of the particular hex. When done, it will look like this.
After we have completed this, click on the same little circle at the very bottom right of the sheet to get out of editing mode.
Having all this build makes life as a Warlock much easier. Not only can we expand and collapse items on this list by clicking on the magnifying glasses, we can also change the way we view this sheet entirely by using the Mode and Display options at the bottom of the sheet. I like to be ready for combat, so the options I use most option are to set Mode to Combat and I set Display to Actions. This gives me a nice and concise list of buttons to click for each effect I might need. You can click the magnifying glass in the title of each section also, like our Hexes section, to collapse or expand those as desired. This helps when sorting through a large spell list also, as each spell level can be collapsed and expanded as needed also.
With this Mode and Display set, here is our final result.
Now we can just click the effect next to the Hex spell when we first cast and that sets the default ability on our Warlock. Next, with your opponent targeted in the combat tracker, just click the effect icon next to the specific hex you want to put on them based on what ability you want at disadvantage. In the combat tracker it will look like this.
Don’t worry if that seems unfamiliar, that is the DM view of the tracker, but that text under each combatant will show up in our version also just the same. Our enemy now has the attribute ‘Banana’. If you do damage to them, you get your buns, nice and easy. And all their rolls for the ability you selected are now automatically at disadvantage. Now if your Warlock takes damage and fails a concentration roll, this ability on the target will cease to exist, but the effect on your Warlock remains. When you cast again, just put a new hex on the target and you are good to go.
I know this was a long way to get here for one specific ability, but if you play a Warlock, and use Hex, this up front work totally streamlines your playing time. It also ensures one of the more interesting parts of this ability, the disadvantage, doesn’t get missed. You can use this same process for Hunters Mark for Rangers also. Hope this helps, and keep those curses flowing.
