moritheil said:
I will respectfully disagree with the assertion that EK is of moderate strength, and point out that amongst CharOp builders EK is the class you take when you can't take anything else. If you compare it to other classes it has two major flaws: first, it does nothing to allow you to cast in armor, and second, you lose one caster level.
No, 2 caster levels, in order to meet its prerequisite you'll need a level in something else too. Though I don't have the book Abjurant Champion is in, so I don't know if it can provide the all martial weapons prerequisite for EK without needing to take a level of Fighter or something first.
While it may be decent as a final class for some optimized fighter-mage fellow who's already taken Abjurant Champion and suchlike, but I don't think it's particularly good. I never said it's weak, but I still think a straight cleric (let alone a cleric with some prestige class tacked on) or druid is likely to be a superior combatant.
The point is, Eldritch Knight itself is not particularly worth it, unless you really want to play a warrior-mage regardless of the reduced effectiveness (I'm the sort that does that myself, because I care more about concept than about effectiveness, but I hardly think EK is what a char-op player would use unless it was to fill in the last few levels of their already-optimized-but-still-inferior-to-CoDzilla warrior-mage PC). I'm actually playing 2 Eldritch Knights at present, just because I've always liked warrior-mages in concept, even though both of my PCs are mediocre at best (I don't have Complete Arcane or Complete Mage, anyhow).
And I know full well that psionics, just like divine casters, is superior to any arcane attempt at a warrior with mystical mojo at their disposal. A psychic warrior alone will thrash a fighter/wizard/eldritch knight, without even bothering to take Slayer or War Mind levels. He might be fairly depleted afterward, but he'd certainly out-fight an Eldritch Knight, moreso if he did bother with either of those PrCs.
If all they are is clerics sans healing, what's broken about them? I found the duskblade to be significantly more powerful than a fighter, but still no match for a pure cleric or an optimized fighter/mage build at higher levels.
Better at short bursts of power, like a psionic fellow, but with a better BAB than a psychic warrior and tons of spell slots. I never said clerics or psychic warriors or whatnot weren't broken, just commenting that duskblades are rather obviously better than wizards or fighters, therefore broken compared to the core classes they're based on.
Sure, at the upper levels a wizard will slowly outmatch a duskblade if he can manage to cast enough spells in advance (or doing the whole scry-buff-teleport gig), but for most levels the duskblade is just outright better. Sure, he can't throw big fireballs so soon, but he can Swiftly cast some stuff to get up in an enemy's face and own them in melee, while surviving an enemy wizard's fireballs if he doesn't just Swiftly resist them with a spell instead. And duskblades have spell slots up the wazoo.
It's bad enough the poor wizard can only contribute a pittance to most efforts of the party at low levels, and only when he's prepared for just what the DM throws at them. Even a fighter is outclassed at 1st-level by the mighty Duskblade, who casts a truckload of spells instead of getting the fighter's bonus feat at 1st-level (though most are 0-level initially, he still gets as many 1st-levels as a specialist wizard, only spontaneous!). Sure, he has some minor disadvantages, but they're quickly overshadowed over the first few levels.
