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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ECMO3" data-source="post: 8355935" data-attributes="member: 7030563">My bladesinger impression comes from playing and having others play it at my table.  The subclass options blend extremely well.  I will give you a summary, my experience and then some concrete specifics.Before Tasha's, The character has the best AC in the game when in bladesong (which it could do a lot), the ability to take more damage than a d10 fighter once SOD comes online and the ability to reduce elemental damage by half with absorb elements when hit with save for half spells.  In addition to having the best AC you have a ton of spell slots so you can use spells like PGE and blur near every battle in tier 2+ and not even stress your spell limits. In one of the tables I played before TCE, one of the other bladesingers went multiple levels without getting hit at all and was the main front line combatant in a 4-person party (I think it was level 4-7 not hit a single time in combat and went into melee every combat).  Most battles the enemy needed a crit to hit and was usually swinging with disadvantage due to blur or PGE.  Blink and mirror image as non-concentration just added icing on this cake.  Also being at the front makes it easy to use cone or line spells or spells that have short range (counterspell!). Before Tasha's if there was a weakness it was melee damage output.  Although the bladesinger was nearly unhittable and had a deep well of hps above level 10, they did not do a lot of damage without resorting to real spells.  Using shadowblade could up damage, but at the cost of a defensive concentration, so it was an option, but not an every battle one.  Tasha's made four significant changes - first they reduced the number of time you can do bladesong, this made the character a bit more hittable on long adventuring days if they ran out of bladesong, this is more of a concern at level 3-4 than later.  Unfortunatley this nerf was more than countered by the other changes.  TCE allows any race to use bladesinger and allows races to move their bonuses.  Now you can double down on these by taking a race like half orc for more combat bonuses or human for a feat or a yuan-ti for magic resistance and not lose any ability bonuses.  Finally you have the bladesinger extra attack which took bladesinger from being lower than baseline in damage output for a melee build to being higher than the baseline and increasing with level. This was not a fair trade and now you have a class that has the highest AC in the game, the most hps effectively on tap and top-tier melee damage. It is a character who on a whim, in the middle of combat, can switch from being one of the best melee characters (arguably the best) to being one the best casters, unleshing the most effective leveled spells the game has to offer.Specifics:1. On point buy at 3rd level you should have effective 24 in AC running mage armor+shield+dex+intel+bladesong.  At 8th level it is 26.  At 12th level it is 27.  Add a cloak of protection and bracers of defense and you are at 30.  Most enemies will also be swinging at you with disadvantage most of the time.  This is so powerful that most of the bladesingers we played did not worry about AOOs .  We would hit with booming balde and then back up and eat the AOO.  If the enemy was foolish enough to waste an AOO on us then that was one he did not have for another character and he had to move on his turn and take the extra booming-blade damage.2. With a 10 constitution you have a +3 concentration save in bladesong at level 3 and higher after that.  Pure melee build it would be +4 at 12th level.  If you are metagaming you would start with a higher constitution though (we never did at my table and we were still the most powerful character).3. On the rare occasion you get hit you use song of defense.  At 10th level a bladesinger can trade spell slots for damage at the cost of 5 per slot.  This is over 150 hps worth of damage you can absorb.  It is theoretically possible to bypass this with multiattack since it uses a reaction or with massive damage that overcomes your highest-level spell slot but in play that doesn't happen much because you almost never get hit more than once a round.  The thing is in a way these are better than hit points because you can cast the spells or trade them for damage whichever is needed.  They are flexible in that regard. I have not played it but looking at it I think it would be really good, probably A tier.  Strictly speaking it can't keep up with EK or bladesinger in melee damage alone, but then you have the steel defender and I think this will more than make that up the damage difference.  Being able to use intelligence for attack and defense is definitely a boon.The downsides are it does not get shield, although I would definitely take a feat (or a wizard dip) to fix that.  You are not a full caster and that is a ton of balance to the class compared to a bladesinger.   Being able to make magic items on a long rest is awesome and extra attunement will matter in some campaigns and in those campaigns it will be huge.  As I mentioned earlier on this thread Artificer is a huge boost for the party in a low magic campaign where your party gets more magic then they can use and is a huge boost in a high magic campaign where the party can't use all the great items they have.  In the middle this class ability is less of a big deal.Given those things overall I would say it is a good class.  I would put it at A probably if bladesinger and twilight are S.</blockquote>

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