Hexblade Class Conversion for Pathfinder

From D&D 3.5's Complete Warrior, WotC.

The D&D 3.5 revision brought the hexblade base class in the Complete Warrior splatbook. The unique theme of the class and its curse ability was intriguing and original. As a martial caster class, it was more than just a fighter + wizard. However, mechanically, the class was underpowered (and therefore underplayed). Wizards of the Coast's Mike Mearls posted:

"The hexblade suffers a little because he came on the scene relatively early in 3.5's life. As R&D pushes the boundaries of the game, we learn that some things we thought were risky or potentially broken aren't. Other times, we learn things that look fine don't actually work in play. Armored mages fall into the first category. They seem really powerful, but in the long run they aren't. Spells and magic items allow an unarmored mage to build great defenses. The spell mage armor is as good as medium armor, and its duration allows most mages to keep it active at all times. If you compare the hexblade to the duskblade from PH2, you can see how the thinking has changed."

Along with his comments, Mearls posted some commonsense unofficial-official fixes to the hexblade. Mearls has not been alone. The internet reveals numerous homebrew attempts to fix or rebuild the hexblade. For the D&D 3.5 rules, two favorites are Charlie's Hombrew Compendium hexblade (unfortunately no longer online) and Lord Gareth's revised hexblade. Lord Gareth did an especially good job both with class ability names (e.g., black dog's blessing, mark of the black cat) and class ability crunch (e.g., bane blade, forge cursed item). The PFRPG rules has two "witchblade" rebuilds...the witchblade by Master Arminus and the witchblade by Elghinn Lightbringer of multiclass archetype fame. More recently, there are some third party base classes that seem to be spiritual descendants of the hexblade: malefactor and direlock.

With Paizo's Advanced Class Guide release came hybrid classes. Building on those hybrid class ideas, I bring to you the hexblade as a fighter-witch hybrid class (coming next post!). Key ideas from the D&D 3.5 original I wanted to retain: this is a full BAB class, and the hexblade's curse ability is the signature feature of the class.