Eldritch Knight, Effective or Defective?

[Aaron L]

The best WotC-only Gish-build possible, currently. .

Warmage8/fighter2/Eldritch Knight10 is far, far better. Take the Battlecaster feat and you can wear full plate and cast all your spells.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Warmage8/fighter2/Eldritch Knight10 is far, far better. Take the Battlecaster feat and you can wear full plate and cast all your spells.

Warmage/fighter/eldritch knight is not a gish build. It's a warmage who lost three caster levels and will never cast 9th level spells. They get almost nothing out of their warmage levels to make them better fighters--at least compared to a fighter/wizard or fighter/sorcerer who uses the Complete books.

 

[green slime]

I found EK's made excellent archer-builds. Just work to their strengths, Ftr 1/Wiz 6/EK X. Just stay away from melee.

 

[Peter Gibbons]

It never occurred to me to read "before adding the prestige class" as anything other than "before adding the prestige class"...

I just automatically read it like the rules on item creation that say "The creator must have the spell prepared." That is, I said to myself, "Oh, well they're just trying to make the rule comprehensible for people by assuming the most common situation--that of a single creator. Of course, what they really mean is that someone has to have the spell prepared, or use a spell completion or spell trigger device to provide the spell...but if they actually wrote all that out, it would be awkward and difficult to parse."

And thanks, FireLance, for your excellent response above. That confirms for me what I had assumed all along. <breathes sigh of relief>

 

[Voadam]

I'm playing a high stat 15th level rgr1/wiz5/harper mage 1/eldritch knight8 in a currently solo PC game.

Eldritch knight allows a mage to go alone and not get massacred immediately in combat by anything close enough to melee him.

Hit points are still low and the two level spellcasting hit hurts a lot when in a standard party, but for solo action it is great. With a cure light wounds wand and plenty of blastem, buff, utility, and defensive spells plus a good weapon an EK does just fine for himself.

Even though my character was stripped of all his equipment except his spellbook, he does really cool stuff with just spells and combat feats.

 

[frankthedm]

Not a bad idea indeed. But in case of sorcerers, casting a metamagiced version of a 1 action spell becomes a full-round action. It sometimes causes strategic disadvantages.

So true. It kills lines and cripples cones. Not to mention good old Line of Sight [line of effect].

A arcane 3rd level 'lightning bolt' of fire that has no somatic component, but a full round action casting time, would still be sub optimal.

Eldrich knights need to have and use combat expertice at every opportunity.