D&D 5E Bellator Arcana - The Eldritch Knight Guide

Cognomen's Cassowary · Nov 30, 2017

EzekielRaiden said:
The guide seems solid to me. My biggest problem is the name--my Latin training makes me twitch at the conflicting declensions.

("Bellator" is nominative masculine singular, "arcana" is either nominative feminine singular, or nominative neuter plural. The "proper" title would be Bellator Arcanus, or possibly Bellatores Arcani.)

Okay, way late to respond here, but I only just saw this comment.

There is one possibility you have overlooked. "Arcana" could be a substantive adjective in the ablative, LightningArrow utilizing the ablative of means. Thus the title translates as "Warrior by Way of a Secret Woman." Now all that remains to us is to determine who this mysterious woman is who is granting powers to all these eldritch knights. . . .

EzekielRaiden · Nov 30, 2017

Cognomen's Cassowary said:
Okay, way late to respond here, but I only just saw this comment.

There is one possibility you have overlooked. "Arcana" could be a substantive adjective in the ablative, LightningArrow utilizing the ablative of means. Thus the title translates as "Warrior by Way of a Secret Woman." Now all that remains to us is to determine who this mysterious woman is who is granting powers to all these eldritch knights. . . .

From what little I can find on the subject, this would be an *extremely* unusual but not precisely wrong usage. Especially since the ablative here would IIRC technically be an ablative absolute (as it is syntactically unmoored to Bellator). So...an interesting interpretation, but a huge long shot. It does lead to perhaps-superior corrections though, like Bellator Arcanis (one who fights via secrets).

Cognomen's Cassowary · Dec 1, 2017

EzekielRaiden said:
From what little I can find on the subject, this would be an *extremely* unusual but not precisely wrong usage. Especially since the ablative here would IIRC technically be an ablative absolute (as it is syntactically unmoored to Bellator). So...an interesting interpretation, but a huge long shot. It does lead to perhaps-superior corrections though, like Bellator Arcanis (one who fights via secrets).

I think you are misremembering as regards the ablative absolute, though my experience of it is limited. As far as I am aware, ablative absolutes are phrasal, opposed to single words, and they require both a noun and a participle (or, occasionally, a second noun in place of the participle).

I wasn't sure about "arcanus -a -um" being used as a noun in Latin--hence my taking is at substantive adjective implying a woman--but now I find one dictionary saying that it can be and pointing to the phrase arcana imperii "the secrets of the empire." Thus "bellator arcana" could be read as "warrior by means of the esoteric" or "fighter by way of the mysterious." Except you would really expect it to be neuter instead of feminine. I guess if we were being generous we could read it as a substantive adjective with "res" as the implied noun. Thus "warrior by way of a secret thing" or "warrior by means of a mysterious matter."

Anyway, I thought it was a fun exercise to try to rescue the guide from its bad language, but I do agree with you that Bellator Arcanus "occult warrior" or Bellator Arcanis "warrior via secrets" would make more sense.

Arthil · Dec 14, 2017

I got really inspired to make an EK after reading this, though I'm going a different route for flavor and some low level shenanigans. I've gone with a Feral Tiefling for race, however I chose Devil's Tongue to get Vicious Mockery/Charm Person/Enthrall. He's gonna be a pretty beefy tanky EK, so I was wondering what change you might make given the differences in Ability Scores and not getting a Feat at Level 1?

For comparison, his stats after spreading them around via Point-Buy are: STR15, DEX10, CON14, INT15, WIS10, CHA10 with the Feral Tiefling points obviously padding out DX and INT. The main reason I bumped Charisma up to 10 is because the Devil's Tongue spells work off of it, and I wasn't sure whether that remained the case after getting Eldritch Knight or not.