Thoughts on Eldritch Knight Polearm Build

[Dausuul]

What you are wanting to do will work, but it is inferior to the normal option.

The focus of the combo is opportunity attacks, though. Stacking booming blade with Spell Sniper, War Caster, and Polearm Master means you can make an OA with booming blade any time an enemy comes within 10 feet of you. So you're already doing bonus damage on the OA, and then you add more bonus damage if the enemy closes to melee. (And if they came within 10 feet, they probably wanted to be in melee, so you're either dealing the extra damage or denying them their preferred strategy.)

Then on your own turn, you attack like normal.

It's a neat little interaction. Polearm Masters make a lot of OAs, so if you have the feats to burn, this makes them significantly better. And the best part is that you don't need all three pieces to get value out of the combo. Polearm Master, of course, is an excellent feat on its own. War Caster gives you advantage on saves to maintain your concentration buffs, and you can take advantage of Polearm Master OAs to cast offensive spells without wasting a whole action. So you aren't sacrificing effectiveness at lower levels before the full combo comes online.

If it were me, I'd go variant human (if allowed) with Polearm Master; pump Strength until level 6; War Caster at level 8; Spell Sniper at level 12. If you were really determined, you could get the combo as early as level 6, but then you're sacrificing Strength boosts, which is probably not worth it.

 

[neogod22]

The focus of the combo is opportunity attacks, though. Stacking booming blade with Spell Sniper, War Caster, and Polearm Master means you can make an OA with booming blade any time an enemy comes within 10 feet of you. So you're already doing bonus damage on the OA, and then you add more bonus damage if the enemy closes to melee. (And if they came within 10 feet, they probably wanted to be in melee, so you're either dealing the extra damage or denying them their preferred strategy.)

Then on your own turn, you attack like normal.

It's a neat little interaction. Polearm Masters make a lot of OAs, so if you have the feats to burn, this makes them significantly better. And the best part is that you don't need all three pieces to get value out of the combo. Polearm Master, of course, is an excellent feat on its own. War Caster gives you advantage on saves to maintain your concentration buffs, and you can take advantage of Polearm Master OAs to cast offensive spells without wasting a whole action. So you aren't sacrificing effectiveness at lower levels before the full combo comes online.

If it were me, I'd go variant human (if allowed) with Polearm Master; pump Strength until level 6; War Caster at level 8; Spell Sniper at level 12. If you were really determined, you could get the combo as early as level 6, but then you're sacrificing Strength boosts, which is probably not worth it.

The major flaw in this? By the time this combo comes into fruition, you've played your character his whole career without it. Now it's, "Hey, I finally have a use for this cantrip I built my whole character around for the last 6 levels I'm probably won't even reach." LMAO

 

[mikal768]

i think this is true, but it is somewhat offset at level 7+ by War Magic.

Somewhat yes, but the two biggest draws of Polearms are
1) Reach and Sentinel/Polearm Master reaction attacks and/or (if using a quarterstaff)
2) The extra Bonus Action attack, either for similar damage as the quarterstaff, or another attempt to add lots of secondary damage from sources like GWM

The blade cantrips unfortunately forgo all of those unless you invest in both War Caster and Spell Sniper, which gives you your reaction attack back as a cantrip, in addition to needing Sentinel and Polearm Master, and in addition to potentially wanting Great Weapon Mastery. Even as a V-Human pure EK you won't get all that until level 12, and that's if you don't need to use the ASIs for Str, Con, or Int.

The cost is just too high to make it viable IMO. The cantrips work better if you're using the other heavy weapons like a Greatsword and the like, or if you're going say.. Arcane Trickster (which combined with Bladesinger and these cantrips and an owl familiar is just nasty...), but it's singularly unsuited for nearly any reach polearm weapons build, including Eldritch Knight. In my opinion, that is.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

If it were me, I'd go variant human (if allowed) with Polearm Master; pump Strength until level 6; War Caster at level 8; Spell Sniper at level 12. If you were really determined, you could get the combo as early as level 6, but then you're sacrificing Strength boosts, which is probably not worth it.

This was the path that I had in mind (or picking up spell sniper even later if not going variant human). I had already accepted that I would be just using polearm master attack routine for the majority of the character's career.

I suppose it is also heavily campaign dependent to take spell sniper. If at that level you aren't facing a lot of melee oriented, non-reach foes then it's not worth it. In that case it would be much better to pick up GWM or damage or boost Con for defense. Heck, even if you are facing those types of enemies GWM or +Con are probably better choices than spell sniper if you want to maximize effectiveness.

 

[Dausuul]

This was the path that I had in mind (or picking up spell sniper even later if not going variant human). I had already accepted that I would be just using polearm master attack routine for the majority of the character's career.

I suppose it is also heavily campaign dependent to take spell sniper. If at that level you aren't facing a lot of melee oriented, non-reach foes then it's not worth it. In that case it would be much better to pick up GWM or damage or boost Con for defense. Heck, even if you are facing those types of enemies GWM or +Con are probably better choices than spell sniper if you want to maximize effectiveness.

Hmm... if you're facing a lot of enemies that have to be next to you to hit you, then Spell Sniper gives you 5d8 damage on any round that an enemy closes to melee. That's pretty sweet. Even if they don't close to melee, you're still getting an extra 2d8 on every opportunity attack.

Fortunately, you don't have to decide until you actually hit level 12. You can assess the type of fights you end up in, and make the call when the time comes.

 

[hejtmane]

I was thinking over possible build options for the Eldritch Knight and since I like halberds I was wondering how it would do with Polearm Master. At first I thought it would be fun to combine reach weapons with Booming Blade until I realized that BB has a reach of 5 feet and the enemy must be within that range. No matter, I thought to myself as the bonus attack from Polearm Master requires taking the attack action anyway. But I recently saw a discussion elsewhere where someone pointed out the missing piece of the puzzle: Spell Sniper. This doubles the range of cantrips that have an attack roll. So that will allow one to Booming Blade from 10 ft away which goes a long way in helping to ensure that they move if they have no reach themselves. The icing on top of all of this is War Caster which will allow you to cast booming blade on opportunity attacks, which you can make when someone approaches you with Polearm Master.


Now that's a lot of feats. But, the fighter does get a number of extra ASIs to use. And even without the interactions Polearm Master and War Caster are just good feats to have on an Eldritch Knight so the build performs pretty well before it goes online. I'm aware that it's probably not optimal dps, but if I cared for such things I could just go Dex with Sharpshooter. I find this build appealing because I've always liked gishes and halberds and mechanically I find this interaction pretty neat. I haven't seen discussion of this on these forums so what do you think about it?

still can take spell sniper doubles the range and you can use booming blade and greenflame blade at 10'

 

[jaelis]

That will cover you until lvl 10. But at 11 when you have 3 attacks plus the bonus, you're going to stop using the cantrip again.

Actually, that isn't so obvious. Say you're at level 11 with a glaive. You could take 4 attacks total, for
3x 1d10 + 1d4 + 4xStr
damage. Assuming 20 Str, that averages to 39 if everything hits.

Or you use Booming Blade with War Magic, and assume the target moves to trigger the extra damage. That gives two glaive attacks plus the BB damage (5d8 total):
2x 1d10 + 2xStr + 5d8
which averages to 43.5.

So in principle you're better off using the spell, assuming that the target has to move to do anything effective.

 

[FrogReaver]

Can you use spell sniper and a great sword to get extra range with it?

 

[jaelis]

Can you use spell sniper and a great sword to get extra range with it?

Not unless you have some other method to attack at 10 ft with a greatsword. (Lunging Attack maneuver, for instance.)

 

[neogod22]

Actually, that isn't so obvious. Say you're at level 11 with a glaive. You could take 4 attacks total, for
3x 1d10 + 1d4 + 4xStr
damage. Assuming 20 Str, that averages to 39 if everything hits.

Or you use Booming Blade with War Magic, and assume the target moves to trigger the extra damage. That gives two glaive attacks plus the BB damage (5d8 total):
2x 1d10 + 2xStr + 5d8
which averages to 43.5.

So in principle you're better off using the spell, assuming that the target has to move to do anything effective.

But that assumes the target moves every time. But the more likely scenario would be the target moves 1 time, if it doesn't die, gets smart to the situation and stops moving assuming this is an intelligent creature. Or if it does die, its allies get smart to the situation and knows not to move. Then your average goes down.