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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8283986" data-attributes="member: 7030563">Pretty awesome guide.  I love bladesingers and have played three of them, all of the single class characters were straight melee characters and after a few levels they were fearless in combat.  That said, I don't necessarily agree with everything in the guide.  I think at 1st level you should dump Constitution to 10 and invest in intelligence to 16 (or 17 if you plan an int half feat at 4th).  The AC bonus is worth more than the hp bonus you will get out of constitution and once you get song of defense you will have plenty of hps.  If you put your points in intelligence you won't get hit enough to worry much about concentration and if you are in bladesong you get an intelligence bonus to the concentration roll anyway, if you are really worried get warcaster early for the advantage.  Once you get to around 12th level you will be getting hit occasionally even in bladesong and AOE spells will start to really hurt even with absorb elements, but by that point you will have song of defense.In my experience bladesingers are at their best when they focus on defense and concentration spells like shadowblade and spirit shroud should not be go-to spells.  Not saying you should not take them or have them prepared or use them in the right circumstance, but that is not the best "base package" for most encounters IMO.  Those spells increase damage but they mean you can't use blur or protection from evil and good and these should be your go-to concentration spells to give enemies disadvantage on their attacks (certain enemies in the case of PEG).  The combination of very high AC and disadvantage is devastating.  Aside from making it very hard to hit it also reduces the chance of a crit from 1 in 20 to 1 in 400.  If you focus on dexterity and intelligence and then cast one of these spells early in tough battles you will very rarely get hit by any foe from 3rd to 12th level or so.  You will go entire levels without taking a hit in melee, even though you are in melee every single battle.  I think that being nearly unhittable beats the extra damage as a general rule (and beats the extra hps from buffing constitution).  I would say blur and PEG are both "mandatory".  Mirror image is ok at low levels (although inferior to blur and PEG), but at high levels it is a wasted action to cast it, as the images will not usually last a round in melee.On potential feats I would add fey touched and shadow touched, both because they are a half feat (boost to intelligence) and because they give you free prepared spells and free castings and the spells work well with this build.  I would also consider sentinel because one of the problems is when enemies can't hit you the DM will often try to have them go around you and hit someone else, sentinel prevents that for at least one enemy at a time.  All three of these, plus everything else you include on your list would be better than resilient constitution or tough IMO.</blockquote>

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