D&D 5E Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards 5e

[Nagol]

Twice per short rest for a maximum of one minute each, after you use a bonus action to start the effect. It may be the majority of the battles, but it is definitely situational. Dungeon-delving will probably see it used in less than the majority of battles since it is likely good for a single encounter, perhaps two at most.

 

[Nagol]

Not at level 5. There his damage goes up.
Do you think I can´t read? Of course he can´t mix both. Best design decision? Maybe no. But greenflame blade is better than firebolt damagewise at level 5. Also if you are going bladesinger and want to melee, you shoukd consider raising dex first. But that is just my opinion.
But please, think for yourself before telling me the obvious.
Oh, and from a wizard´s standpoint, the bladesinger does not specialize, but diversify.

Damage goes up by a few points (basically 1d8 + Int mod + Dex mod - 2) if and only if there is a second opponent within 5 feet of the first and then the damage is split which generally reduces the value of that extra damage. If you do not have a secondary target the damage falls (and you'd be better off using a firebolt cantrip).

The bladesinger is specialising. Any wizard can do the same melee attack should they bother with that cantrip. Nothing about the bladesinger class is necessary to accomplish that form of assault. The bladesinger increases survivability in combat situations whether in melee or no, but does nothing to become more diverse in terms of what actions are tactically valuable.

 

[LightningArrow]

Great work, Treantmonk. I've followed your wizard guides since 3.5.

One thing I think you haven't realized about Otto's Irresistible Dance is that it takes an ACTION for the target to stop dancing, not a free save like Tasha's. So this spell could be used effectively to stall a boss. It gets a bit better if other party members have access to spells that require a Dexterity saving throw and coordinate their attacks, since Otto's gives disadvantage to them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Damage goes up by a few points (basically 1d8 + Int mod + Dex mod - 2) if and only if there is a second opponent within 5 feet of the first and then the damage is split which generally reduces the value of that extra damage. If you do not have a secondary target the damage falls (and you'd be better off using a firebolt cantrip).

The bladesinger is specialising. Any wizard can do the same melee attack should they bother with that cantrip. Nothing about the bladesinger class is necessary to accomplish that form of assault. The bladesinger increases survivability in combat situations whether in melee or no, but does nothing to become more diverse in terms of what actions are tactically valuable.

The standard wizard should not be in melee, without bladesinger defenses. Maybe the abjurer, noone else.
The Bladesinger makes combat a viable alternative to his normal spellcasting, which is nearly as powerful as every other wizard school´s ability.
He is a little worse at casting spells, he is a little better at melee and ranged wepon combat. Especially when casting spells does not work at all.
He may get a magic weapon that he can use.
If someone gives up a little bit of his best ability for a little improvement of his worst, it is definitely not specializing more, it´s the oppsosite.
If you can´t imagine situations where you can employ the bladesinger´s abilities, its your probem, not one of the class.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

It's more damage. You do full normal weapon damage, plus int.

1d8+dex+int (10.5) > 1d10 firebolt (5.5) *assuming 3 int/dex
3d8+dex+int (20.5) > 2d10 firebolt (11) *assuming 4 int/3 dex
5d8+dex+int (30.5)> 3d10 firebolt (16.5) *assuming 4 int/4 dex
7d8+dex+int (40.5) > 4d10 firebolt (22) *assuming 5 int/4 dex.

That's close to double the damage for being in melee. Though the damage is spread out and more MAD, so call it 50% more.

That's enough.

Multi-attack on the blade singer is basically a throw away feature. Only useful if you end up in a silence.

issues I have with this comparison:
1) It assumes the secondary effect is always triggered (my biggest issue)
2) It does not take "to hit" into account (the effect of MAD is seen here right from 4th level)
3) This is a very small one, but technically the FB benefits more from crits, which also increases its damage

I suspect if all those were taken into account, GFB would still do more damage, but the difference would be a lot smaller. It still might be 50% at some levels, I didn't do the # crunching.

Primarily I would question whether GFB doing more damage than Flame Bolt makes melee and effective primary option for Wizards. I would be more interested to match a Wizard using GFB up against another class using GFB, or using their standard melee attacks. Then how does it compare?

Let's look at a Rogue. Take a rogue (race unimportant, subclass unimportant). push him up to 17th level, will certainly have 20 dex by then. Zero other optimizations. Give him a rapier in main hand and a short sword in off hand:
Main hand rapier base damage (9.5 x .6) + off hand shorstword damage (3.5 x .6) + sneak attack damage with improved chance of connecting (35 x (1 -(0.4x0.4)) + shortsword crit chance added damage (3.5 x 0.05) + rapier crit chance added damage (4.5 x 0.05) + sneak attack potential crit damage modified for extra crit chance (35 x (1-(0.95 x 0.95)) = 5.7 + 2.1 + 29.4 + 0.175 + 0.225 + 3.1425 = 40.7425

Now lets assume the Bladesinger is 17th level as indicated above. Let's modify damage by "to hit" and crit potential. We will assume the secondary effect is triggered:
7d8+dex+int (40.5 x 0.55)+(18.0 x 0.05)=23.175

We of course know that there are ways to boost both these damages, and we both know that neither of these builds are particularly damage-intensive (a Fighter with two handed weapon for example will wipe the floor with either of these two), but a rogue at least can contribute effectively in melee, even if they aren't particularly good at it. The Wizard using GFB, not so hot. If your Wizard is a Bladesinger, I should note you should add another 3 (26.175) because of damage bonus gained at level 14. Still, really not good by comparison.

Flame Bolt is really just something a Wizard does when they have nothing better to do. Melee attacks is exactly what a Bladesinger is supposed to be doing, and they just aren't very good at it.

 

[Huntsman57]

I'd be more concerned about reduced effectiveness in combat compared to acting more typically like a Wizard than comparing to a Fighter.

You accept more multiple attribute dependency since your default combat is now driven by Dex for melee attacks vs. Int for cantrips. Your default strategy requires entering melee range although are compensated somewhat by both light armour and adding Int bonus to AC while bladesong is active. The big disadvantage of the MAD is you can either improve your melee capability by raising Dex to affect to-hit and damage or you can raise Int to affect ranged combat and saving throws. Bladesong slightly reduces the dependency on Con while it is active (you get a boost to Concentration saves and AC but not to hp or Con saving throws) and substantially increases the value of Dex to the character.

Your default damage effectively stagnates compared to a base Wizard using cantrips despite focusing the character's activities on a more dangerous activity subset -- melee combat.

At 4th level, you can strike once in melee with a finesse weapon for 1d8 + Dex mod or cast firebolt at range for 1d10 -- pretty much a wash except your to-hit is based on Dex rather than Int.
At 5th level, you are comparing 1d8 + Dex mod melee to 2d10 damage ranged -- ouch.
At 6th level, at least it moves to 2 attacks of 1d8 + Dex mod vs. 2d10 firebolt damage -- back to being a wash.
At 11th level you are still 2x(1d8 + Dex mod) melee vs. 3d10 ranged -- if you are Dex 16 then you have dropped behind in damage and even you have raised Dex to 20 this is close to a wash. And if you have raised Dex preferentially over Int, your saving throws are suffering compared to a default Wizard.

As noted, a character's ability to augment melee capability with spellcasting is limited for wizards compared to the other melee spellcasters. So you end up acting like a dilettante -- playing at melee until you need to revert to more wizardly actions.

What I'm saying is that we're over-rating the value of damage output alone. You're not only capable of 2-4 attacks per round (depending on haste and if you are duel wielding) by 6th level (which compared to many classes is quite respectable), but you're now no longer a damage avoider but also a damage blocker/absorber compared to a squishy ranged wizard. This helps the party quite a bit. It's not all about offense, but also the ability to spread the damage.

Hitpoints aren't buffed til 10th level of course, but unless you're getting nailed with a great wyms's breath weapon you shouldn't have to worry about failing a concentration saving throw. You'll have 2 feats by 6th level so if we stick those into CON resilient and War Caster, you're looking at a 1 in 400 chance of a fail in most cases.

I'd probably do my SS's stats with point buy, with which I should start out at 1st level with an AC of 18 while singing. We'll be able to make many hits simply miss with the Shield spell alone, driving the AC temporarily to 23. By 3rd level we'll have blur. By 5th level we get haste if we prefer to lean on the offense a bit more, and we have improved invisibility at 7th level which makes us pretty much ridiculous to hurt unless the foe has true seeing or some such, so that's probably the play once hitpoints are starting to get low and you need to start to spread the damage away from you.

Again, with all this going for the SS, he is also a full caster. Amazing. I could use 5th-8th level spells for battlefield control, or just use those spell slots to get back a not insignificant amount of hitpoints. Following that, I get the ability to add a nice damage bonus to each of my 2-4 attacks, and the piece de resistance is Foresight at 17th level.

 

[mellored]

let's be a little more fair to the bladesinger and give him foresight and haste. spells are a pretty major feature after all.

(40.5 GFB + 1d8+dex haste) * ,8 = 39.2 damage.
not to mention almost unhittable, even without the shield spells.

also, fear + warcaster + booming blade is a nice combo.

all in all, i see bladesinger being on par with abjuration. and i'm strongly tempted to make an abjuration mountain dwarf wizard with medium armor and a maul.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

He is not proficient in the maul. But take a warhammer and it will be fine.
And with haste it is not totally clear that 3 attacks with 1d8+9 are not better. 27+3d8 averages 40.5 damage. If you have a nice magic weapon you benefit 3 times.Since I assumed warcaster or resilent con, you could also use 2 shortswords and go for 4d6+36 damage. You have your offhand occupied, but with a free object interaction and one interaction from haste its is not too difficult to juggle. Or in rhe case of warcasrer it is no problem at all.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

I'm going to start with a disclaimer, because the rest of my post is going to sound like I think the Bladesinger should be more powerful, but understand I am talking about offensive capability. They gave the Bladesinger lots of great abilities, my concern is not that they didn't give the bladesinger enough, my concern is that they skewed the abilities towards defensive abilities, and all but ignored providing offensive ones. IMO the bladesinger becomes not offensively potent enough and TOO defensively potent to properly represent the concept of a bladesinger.

*snip*

The divide in melee offensive capability should exist, I just think it's too wide a gap.

I was attempting to refer to baseline damage without expenditure of resources. Once you start throwing in the latter, you're going to have to start comparing Fighter attack abilities to fireballs, which the Bladesinger is still plenty capable of. If you want to argue that the Bladesinger as presented doesn't fit your personal image of what it has been previously, that's fine. One can't really argue with the subjective nature of opinions. HOWEVER, from a design standpoint, the Eldritch Knight already occupies the role of the melee combatant with a bit of arcane spell support. Whereas the Bladesinger approaches things from the other side - a spellcaster with a touch of melee support. As it remains primarily a caster, the Bladesinger's melee ability is a cantrip alternative, not a major offensive mode.

(PS: Haste is an unimpressive and risky melee buff when you're also the caster; might fare better with Greater Invisibility or Polymorph if that counts by level 10)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Haste is not too dangerous if your concentration and defense is good enough. Which may be questionable or not. I believe the bladesinger is fine with haste. Depends on the situation.
The only real concern is extra attack not mixing well with the new cantrips. But as a weapon user it may come in handy in different situations.