FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
I think you'll find that in most combats as a melee character that you'll miss out on steady aim quite often. Probably 25%-50% of the time.With Steady Aim and Elven Accuracy I am more accurate than a Paladin generally I think. I can't use it all the time of course, but I can use it a lot, enough that overall accuracy will be better than a Paladin with +2 more on my ability I think.
Then there's also some overlap where you would have advantage due to some other effect like the enemy being prone. By the time you factor all this in, advantage due to steady aim is still good but it's not the same as going from never having advantage to having it all the time.
Alot depends there. Your character has alot of conditional damage buffs. Steady Aim, Sneak Attack, blade cantrip riders, (side note, college of whispers and soul knife rogue both have an ability called psychic blades - but the soul knife feature doesn't work with the blade trips).I don't think I am behind in DPR on average, but I would be at times.
Most common path for a sword and shield paladin in my experience is the dueling style, so 4d8+14. 22.4 dpr vs the 17 AC opponent. And your sneak attack damage isn't guaranteed either.If you look at DPR with a 20 dex and a d8 weapon a Paladin at 11th level is doing 4d8+10 with improved divine smite. Against 17 AC that is 19.8DPR and he will pretty much do that all day long.
With a 16 dex I would be doing 3d8+2d6+3 with sneak attack. That is 14.0 vs AC17 without considering Elven Accuracy-steady aim, psychic blades or secondary cantrip damage.
Your characters non-trivial worst case scenario is something like, Start encounter out of Whisper Bards Psychic Blades uses. Move to enemy (no steady aim). No ally nearby so no sneak attack either. No rider triggers. You do 3d8+3 damage and only hit 17 AC 55% of the time.
Next turn you likely would get sneak attack and steady aim+elven accuracy. (or at least are compensated with an OA if not). But as soon as this enemy dies you could easily be back to needing to move to an enemy not currently engaged with any ally.
Yea, when everything is 'on' it's quite a bit higher.If you consider Elven accuracy now you are looking at 35.3 and if you consider GFB secondary damage on top of that it would be 46.6
Agreed with most of your premises (though maybe not GWB). But that's only the stuff that favors your character in the comparison. Should we also consider favorable circumstances for the single classed Paladin?So to really compare you would need to know how often you will use psychic blades (most of the time you hit?), Elven Accuracy (fairly often?) and GFB secondary damage (occasionally?). If it is like I estimate in paranthesis, I think you average significantly more DPR than a single class Paladin.
I think you overrate shield spell on a character using a sword and shield and without the warcaster feat. Juggling the weapon so you have a free hand technically means you can only shield every other turn while also impacting your ability to make effective OA's.I will have plate armor, the shield spell and the ability to resist all damage for an entire round 4 times per day with blessing of the Raven queen at 11th level (albeit at the cost of steady aim) while still having a reaction for shield. That is pretty good defensively I think.
I don't think a Rogue is nearly as good defensively. Uncanny Dodge works on a single attack only and since it is a reaction you can't combine it with shield.
One side note, I'm not opposed to using plate with 13 str since you will have cunning action for bonus action dash when desired.