D&D 5E Blade Ward-Shifter-Upper Levels

[trentonjoe]

Ok, I made kinuva a quirky character who I am hell bent on making Blade Ward be effective. My current strategy is (one per rest) use my longtooth shifter ability:

Shifting Feature_APT
While shifted, you can use your fangs to make an unarmed strike as a bonus action. If you hit, you can deal 1d6 + 2 piercing damage, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
Longtooth Shifting Strike: 1 Bonus Action

so I can bonus action attack

and

cast BLADE WARD as my standard action every round to halve all weapon damage.

It works kind of well in the right circumstances.

Here's my mechanical dilemma, we just hit 5th level so now my damage output is roughly half (as opposed to 80%) of an average melee character. Some of my other attacks an average of 11dpr but the bite is stuck at 5.

I don't care about being super captain DPR but I can't justify being not helpful.

Is there a way (via spell or other means) to improve the damage from an unarmed strike?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Did you say what your class is?
Whist the ability to combine a bonus action attack with the "cast a spell" action is a useful quirk, it sure aint worth giving up "extra attack" for. It's most useful on a primary spellcaster who likes to get in melee range - e.g. a cleric.

The best way to increase DPS is to cast an offensive spell rather than a defensive spell.

 

[TwoSix]

Not in the core rules, no. You'd need a fair amount of homebrew to make it workable.

If I wanted to leverage Blade Ward, I'd see if the DM would let me get Tunnel Fighting style from UA, and get Sentinel so I could use my reactions as much as possible.