D&D 5E Half Caster Arcane Warrior?

[cbwjm]

I could have sworn we've see about 5000 different Gish attempts here on the boards over the last 10 years by all the folks for whom the Eldritch Knight and Bladesinger didn't work for them. Anyone who really wanted to play a Gish (and a Warlord for that matter) has had innumerable versions made available to purchase or use by 3PPs, and countless threads of folks here working together to try and jerry-rig their own preferred versions.

I certainly hope no one's been sitting on their hands for the past decade just wishing for WotC to produce something that they would want to play, rather than actually finding or making what they wanted and been using it this entire time.

I've made a few by this point, tinkering with earlier versions, but haven't had the chance to really try them out. If I (re)join a game run by my friend, maybe I'll see if I can give my latest attempt a go.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Between Hexblades and sorlocks (and regular paladins) and slightly tweaked artificers and a few other options, there's dozens of back-door options for gishes in 5e that work pretty well. Not to mention 3pp options.

I do still think there should be a dedicated non-divine half-caster warrior class, because I think you would get better, more on-flavor, more balanced results than multiclassing offers - but it's not like 5e doesn't have gishy options. They're just all kinda clunky and most official-RAW option are either over- or under-powered for various reasons.

 

[Tony Vargas]

.Subclasses would be:

a Shadow Hand who animates their own shadow to fight beside them and can animate enemy shadows to debuff enemies, and step into a shadow they’ve animated and out of another.

A lightning themed vanguard type who can do things like turn into a lightning bolt, expanded lightning lure, etc.

OK, those sound very cool.

A telekenetic warrior
Related to above, a “totally not a Jedi”

Not too shabby, either

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OK, those sound very cool.

Not too shabby, either

Thanks! It's one of my favorite class archetypes to play around with.

 

[CreamCloud0]

as i came into the hobby in 5e any previous DnD incarnations of the swordmage are largely unknown to me, conceptually to me what i imagine when i hear 'swordmage' what i think it should be is this combination of martial ability enhanced by elemental weapon damage and effects, if you gathered all the concepts between the bladetrips, elemental weapon, zephyr/steel wind strike, lightning/flame arrow, the smites and similar, mixed it all up and made a whole class out of them, the ranger kind of plays at it but leans into other thematic areas more than it does this.

 

[TwoSix]

Personal favorites are Kibblestasty's Spellblade and Laserllama's Magus, but it's definitely an extremely popular homebrew topic. Everybody likes gishes, it seems.

 

[Kobold Stew]

EK and AT should be 1/2 caster subclasses.
There needs to be made room in class resources for that.

1/3rd caster gets spells too little too late.
when 9th level spells hit the market, you are still on 3rd level spells.

I think this would be fine -- It's not that they need access to more spells at high levels, but level 3 spells need to come online before character level 13 (=8 levels after a full caster, at which point full casters have level 7 spells).

The halfcaster progression would give level 2 spells at EK/AT 5, and level 3 spells at AT/EK 9. That would reallyhelp incentivize staying with the third-casters beyond level 7 (which is otherwise hard to justify).

Giving them features that let them cast spells and make weapon attacks completely nullifies this complaint, IMO. The AT doesn't so much need to, but still could use the ability to cast some sort of things as Bonus Actions eventually. They mostly want to use Shadowblade in combat, and use most of their spells out of combat IME.

EK in the UA can cast leveled spells and attack eventually. They're fine.

They're fine until level 7. Improving the casting progression would help make it so that they are about more than Shadow Blade, which as it is comes to dominate play from levels 7-13 (=the end game for most campaigns). I'd like to hae the option to cast Major Image, or Hypnotic Pattern, every now and again, while they are still meaningful against opponents (which I'd says they stop being once other party members are casting Force Cage, Plane Shift, and Simulacrum...)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

They're fine until level 7. Improving the casting progression would help make it so that they are about more than Shadow Blade, which as it is comes to dominate play from levels 7-13 (=the end game for most campaigns). I'd like to hae the option to cast Major Image, or Hypnotic Pattern, every now and again, while they are still meaningful against opponents (which I'd says they stop being once other party members are casting Force Cage, Plane Shift, and Simulacrum...)

Yeah I just fundamentally disagree with the last part. The main thing that causes it to be hard to mix “very good at A” with “basically competent but no expert at B” is action economy. The fighter is effective in a fight without spells, the EK just needs to be able to also lock down a couple enemies with hypnotic pattern or hold person, or deceive their reinforcements with major image, etc, in addition to still doing at least half of the killing stuff that they’re built to be experts in.

I’m all for ditching variable spell progression rates and having all classes learn spells at the same set of levels but have different spell level caps and number of slots. I’m just saying I don’t think that’s a good argument for it.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Yeah I just fundamentally disagree with the last part. The main thing that causes it to be hard to mix “very good at A” with “basically competent but no expert at B” is action economy. The fighter is effective in a fight without spells, the EK just needs to be able to also lock down a couple enemies with hypnotic pattern or hold person, or deceive their reinforcements with major image, etc, in addition to still doing at least half of the killing stuff that they’re built to be experts in.

I think it's a difference of perception. I see this as supporting my case: the EK should have the option to forego killing stuff to cast a spell that will be effective, form time to time. There's just no incentive to do so with the third-caster progression.

 

[jmartkdr2]

as i came into the hobby in 5e any previous DnD incarnations of the swordmage are largely unknown to me, conceptually to me what i imagine when i hear 'swordmage' what i think it should be is this combination of martial ability enhanced by elemental weapon damage and effects, if you gathered all the concepts between the bladetrips, elemental weapon, zephyr/steel wind strike, lightning/flame arrow, the smites and similar, mixed it all up and made a whole class out of them, the ranger kind of plays at it but leans into other thematic areas more than it does this.

You're pretty close right there. If some version of elemental weapon was available to EKs at 3rd level we wouldn't have these threads.