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The description for Hexblade's Curse states the following:

You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target. The bonus equals your proficiency bonus.

Say that a Hexblade Warlock uses this ability, then commands a creature via any of the several Summon Aberration/Undead/Shadowspawn options available to them. If the summoned creature hits the target of the Hexblade's Curse, does its attack gain the bonuses to damage?

An alternate way of framing this question is "do the damage rolls for the summoned creature count as its summoner's own damage rolls?"

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Generally no

Emphasis mine:

You gain a bonus to damage rolls against the cursed target.

Most summoned creatures are going to be making their own damage rolls. Only if they possess a feature which somehow makes their damage 'yours' would you be able to apply the bonus from the Curse.

One example of such a feature can be found in find familiar (emphases mine):

when you cast a spell with a range of touch, your familiar can deliver the spell as if it had cast the spell. Your familiar must be within 100 feet of you, and it must use its reaction to deliver the spell when you cast it. If the spell requires an attack roll, you use your attack modifier for the roll.

Here, you are casting the spell, you are making the attack roll, and you are doing the damage, so the bonus from the Curse would apply.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Are there any summons that use the spell caster's damage rolls or ability modifiers? \$\endgroup\$
    – nonymous
    Mar 23 at 19:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ @nonymous Lots of them use the caster's ability modifiers (cf. Summon aberration). None that I know of besides find familiar specify that it is the caster's damage, though - hence my answer. I haven't gone through every possible summoning spell (c. 24?), but I do stand by my statement that if a summoned creature did use the caster's damage rolls, it would have to explicitly say so. \$\endgroup\$
    – Kirt
    Mar 23 at 20:27

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