D&D (2024) Not a fan of the new Eldritch Knight

Nah.
It's easier to say yes, I will allow it.
than say no, I ban that one specific thing.

Makes the DM a hero instead of villain.

Right, but if you don't want the Eldritch Blast cantrip allowing the EK to make seven attacks, then you either ban all of it, or have a discussion about how that one specific interaction is problematic.

If you don't care about that interaction it is fine to allow, obviously.
 

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I'm not sure what you mean. Outside of feats and class features, generally for multiclassing

Each spell you prepare is associated with one of your classes, and you use the spellcasting ability of that class when you cast the spell.​
Which also means you can end up with copies of the same spell cast at different attack / DCs.

And your Barbarian could wield a shard of glass as their primary combat weapon for twenty levels.

You presented you example of why someone would take the same spell twice as using a feat to get a free casting of a spell they received from a subclass list. My point is that the only reason they are getting that spell twice is 1) Because you cannot retrain a subclass spell list, 2) they decided it was worth it to get the Free casting and the ability to cast it for a single sorcerer point on that specific spell.

But even in that situation, you are taking the spell as a charisma spell, because of course you are. There is no reason not to.

And yes, sometimes technically as a multi-class character you can get different spells with different spell casting abilities and DCs. But you would pretty much never be a Cleric/Wizard and take Toll of the Dead with a DC 12 and Toll of the Dead with a DC 14... because there is no value in doing so. You are literally taking a spell option you have, and choosing a literally worse version of the exact same thing.

I'm not saying that you cannot do that. You can. Just like the Barbarian could use a shard of glass, or a beer mug as their primary weapon from levels 1 to 20. The rules allow it, but the rules allow it because no one ever thought they needed to disallow it. Not because the designers found some value in allowing it.
 

WotC already banned it by saying "Wizard" cantrips.

And by taking that option, which I don't think is the reason they wrote "Wizard cantrips" They also banned Thorn whip, Spare the Dying, Sacred Flame, Starry Wisp, Vicious Mockery, ect

Which brings us immediately back to the top of this page where you said
If someone asks me to use EK with spare the dying I would allow it. (Though I would also suggest they might want to play a paladin).

Pretty much any cantrip but Eldritch Blast, I would allow.

But it would be very awkward if the rules said "cast a cantrip except Eldritch Blast".

And if you wanted 4d10 to a single target, you have firebolt. And you dip 3 levels into evocation wizard and deal half on a miss, which is quite nice.

Where I agreed with you that Eldritch Blast is the only problem, and that it would be an awkward rule to write to ban just that cantrip. That actually this is a case where the DM talking to the player in question and setting that limit at the table level is a better move.

So I'm not sure where you are going with this any more, because this is a circle.
 

And by taking that option, which I don't think is the reason they wrote "Wizard cantrips" They also banned Thorn whip, Spare the Dying, Sacred Flame, Starry Wisp, Vicious Mockery, ect
That's not going to affect many people. It's Eldritch Blast that people are complaining about being (appropriately) nerfed.

Wizard cantrips has plenty of other options to choose from.

And in the rare case someone wants to do something outside the rules, I almost always allow it if it's not unbalanced.
So I'm not sure where you are going with this any more, because this is a circle.
This thread has been going in circles for a while.
 

The rules allow it, but the rules allow it because no one ever thought they needed to disallow it. Not because the designers found some value in allowing it.
Hmm, well as to speculation about designer motives, I take the "value" in this case to be found in the properties of the whole system. As a designer, given

A. I want to allow characters to multiclass including choosing multiple spellcasting classes​
B. I want spellcasting characters to have preferred access to subsets of all spells (e.g. a class spell list)​
C. I want to offer feats to characters that give limited access to subsets of spells​
D. I want to offer class and sub-class features that modify or act upon subsets of spells​
Contemplating design goals like that, it seems obvious that a clean approach would be to separate spell lists out from classes and simply state what list a class or feat was to draw from. Unfortunately that provoked backlash, so they reverted to the more traditional approach.

Either way, unless one engineered in a clunky extra rule to forbid it (limiting without removing multiclassing) or did something even clunkier like counting spells as appearing on different lists for specific purposes (like multiclassing) duplicated-spells are just an emergent feature of the whole system. An elegant approach would be simply don't support anything like A. and C.

The value (of allowing that emergence) is found in what the whole system affords, such as if I multiclass spellcasters I can cast spells from each of my lists up to the appropriate level for that list, applying whatever features I have that modify spells to that list. Were it not for duplicated-spells, multiclassing would allow for even stronger, less-balanced, characters than it currently does. Another aspect of "value" is the "designability" of the system: I can avoid increasing the playtest burden because I don't have to consider every possible spell when I design a feature that does-something-with-spells. I can constrain it to one list.

The value is in the overall design space afforded, not specifically (and really, as you point out) that players ought to be able to make what would amount to trap picks. While I see (and have played) a few cases where duplicated-spells turned out to be worthwhile (or at least, seemed so to me) that's not really what I wanted to argue. My analysis was more about seeing what the game system unavoidably contained (duplicated-spells) and what else that implied.
 
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that's not really what I wanted to argue. My analysis was more about seeing what the game system unavoidably contained (duplicated-spells) and what else that implied.

This is really the important part here. Because my goal was to show that duplicate spells were likely not an intentional consideration. I don't even think containing them was unavoidable, per se, I think it was just literally never a consideration. I do not think anyone on the design team ever gave a single thought to someone intentionally taking duplicate spells, and I think a lot of the feat and species design allowing retraining on a level up is in service of giving people the chance to avoid that exact thing, because when it happened before it was a problem caused by inflexible rules.
 

To follow up from some previous posts, I got to use EK this weekend. Started at 4th.

Dumped INT, boosted CHA. Human feat gave me Magical Initiate and took Shillelagh, Starry Wisp and fog Cloud keyed off of CHA

Took Fey touched with hex and Misty step.

All EK spells were support spells with no saves so the dumped INT was not an issue.

How it played:

Pretty awesome. With the boosted charisma and proficiency in lots of social skills, I was the main Face. Nobody was quite sure what class I was. I always had a good spell to help out the party.

I took Blind fighting, which offered 10 foot blindsight and, a couple of times, I dropped fog cloud on groups of enemies(as someone on the forum suggested I try) and, between hex and shillelagh, it was easy to mop the floor. Very versatile for a single class EK. I missed not having some INT skills but the wizard picked up most of the missing pieces.

I could have done the fog cloud Shillelagh trick with INT as easily as CHA but having the added social pillar covered was really nice. The party kept calling me a bard but the fighter abilities were so much nicer than you'd get from a straight bard. Getting to use second wind to add 1d10 to skill checks is a huge bonus - especially since we were doing a heist game.

Great build.
 

To follow up from some previous posts, I got to use EK this weekend. Started at 4th.

Dumped INT, boosted CHA. Human feat gave me Magical Initiate and took Shillelagh, Starry Wisp and fog Cloud keyed off of CHA

Took Fey touched with hex and Misty step.

All EK spells were support spells with no saves so the dumped INT was not an issue.

How it played:

Pretty awesome. With the boosted charisma and proficiency in lots of social skills, I was the main Face. Nobody was quite sure what class I was. I always had a good spell to help out the party.

I took Blind fighting, which offered 10 foot blindsight and, a couple of times, I dropped fog cloud on groups of enemies(as someone on the forum suggested I try) and, between hex and shillelagh, it was easy to mop the floor. Very versatile for a single class EK. I missed not having some INT skills but the wizard picked up most of the missing pieces.

I could have done the fog cloud Shillelagh trick with INT as easily as CHA but having the added social pillar covered was really nice. The party kept calling me a bard but the fighter abilities were so much nicer than you'd get from a straight bard. Getting to use second wind to add 1d10 to skill checks is a huge bonus - especially since we were doing a heist game.

Great build.

Nice very close to our theory craft build.

Treantmonks build checks the numbers idk if he used hex though.

We are thinking something similar using wisdom.

Appeal of intelligence is scorching ray+hex if you need a ranged attack badly enough. Otherwise intelligence is a dump stat.
 

Nice very close to our theory craft build.

Treantmonks build checks the numbers idk if he used hex though.

We are thinking something similar using wisdom.

Appeal of intelligence is scorching ray+hex if you need a ranged attack badly enough. Otherwise intelligence is a dump stat.
It does not have to be. You can always have high int and either high dex or str. You can easily live with lower dex or str and a bit lower constitution.
Starting out with double 16 or 17/15 is not terrible, depending on your plans for feats.

While cha and wis is nice to have, int is also quite nice. Knowledge skills are rolled a lot in our games.
 

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