Zardnaar
Legend
The gish is an old stereotype in D&D going back to the TSR days and 1E where you could be a fighter/magic user or perhaps the basic part of BECMI. Multiclassing back then worked differently and the option worked because you levelled up in both classes at the same time the trade off was slower levelling and less hit points and you missed out on fighter weapon specialization. The concept struggles a bit in 3.x due to the changes made form 2E to 3E and various things were tried from the 3.0 Arcane Archer and Bladesinger to things like 3.5’s Hexblade, Duskblade, and prestige classes such as the Eldritch Knight, Abujurant Champion ans probably some others I have missed. 4E gave us the Swordmage which I am not that familiar with but it was a new class and not ye olde traditional fighter/mage variant.
Now 5E has rolled around and in theory you can be a gish. This is due to things such as being able to cast spells in armour and they even gave you several options in the PHB to help you along. Those options are the Bladelock, Valor Bard and Eldritch Knight. However they are all traps. One can make a gish but you need a bit of system mastery to do it well IMHO. And probably a lenient DM as well who allows Unearthed Arcana Options into the game. This is because of several fundamental problems in the RAW for 5E.
1. Most of the gish are not proficient with constitution saves which makes classic buff spells like haste, enhance ability or greater invisibility very risky to use. The Eldritch Knight is an exception here but it is generally the weakest fighter type until the highest levels of the game where it is the best fighter. You can use blasting spells but won’t be very good at it because you are not a Dragon Sorcerer or Invoker or you can try and find spells that do not require concentration. The Paladin is a better Gish than all of the arcane based ones at least in terms of a basic build.
2. You need a hand free to actually cast spells. This basically means you are giving up AC and damage when compared to a normal martial type. You can get around this with the warcaster feat which is basically a feat tax anyway for arcane gish. Even the eldritch knight who is proficient in con saves if he is using a two handed weapon or a weapon+ shield can’t even cast a shield spell RAW.
3. MAD or multiple ability dependency. If you want to be half decent at being a gish you need a decent ability score on you spell casting stat. Technically speaking you can put a 10 or something there but you will not be able to hit very well with your cantrips which is giving up your versatility. A Valor bard for example whop wants to use medium armor wants to have a 13 strength, 14 dex, a decent con score (12 or 14) and probably wants a decent charisma as well. They can go dex based but the Valor bard doesn’t get that many ability score increases and needs a high dex in order to have a half decent AC.
4. Armour. Most of the gish classes are not proficient in heavy armour which means light armor. See point 3 about MAD. This means that in order to be half efficient (and not even optimised) you need to wear heavy armour which means multiclassing out of a class proficient in heavy armor, multi classing into the cleric or blowing a feat on the ability to wear heavy armor. Multicasting generally means you are behind on feats/ASI (see point 3), extra attacks and you really need to know how to do it in order to not well suck. Or you can just play a Paladin. Medium armor is a trap without the medium armour master feat, light armour is a trap for most classes that are not a fighter or a rogue.
Note that rolling ability scores with a good roll make a lot of these problems go away. A valor bard with multiple scores (4+) over 14 or 16 starts to look a lot better. If one is patient I recommend the Eldritch Knight as it doesn’t actually punish you for a lot of these points and you can always blow a feat to pick up hex or hunters quarry as fighters get more feats than most classes. Picking up spells like that is also another way to deal decent damage as a dex based melee character as you are competing with feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or even shield master which are basically all better than most dex based feat options for melee PCs. If you are not playing an Eldritch Knight I recommend rolling your scores and praying. Note RAW the DM can’t stop you from rolling the dice it is his call to let you use point buy. This is not to power game the system but you are basically gimping your character compared to the Eldritch Knight who is both proficient in heavy armour and constitution saves. And the Paladin is also a very good class right out of the box and is semi proficient in con saves via being able to cast bless and the charisma bonus to saves thing.
This is what I meant as most of the gish builds are not that good unless you roll well or have a decent understanding of character optimization. I would go as far as using words like “it’s a trap” to quote Admiral Akbar. A few of these problems go away via multiclassing as well. In general 6 levels of Paladin or Eldritch Knight tend to help as they get a bonus feat at level 6 or charisma bonus to saves and six levels also give you 2 attacks and conveniently enough count as 2 caster levels for terms of multiclassing. The Warlock is also another great option as the invocations are not tied to actual levels in the warlock class and several spells the Warlock has are useful for gish such as hex and Armor of Agathys. I recommend the following options/ideas based on what I have tried myself or seen my players get up to.
Bladelock.
To build a better bladelock is very simple. You do not care about spell patterns or multiple attacks generally as you can take the bladethirst invocation at level 5 anyway. My recommendation is to take the 1st level in fighter and the next levels in Warlock. The fighter dip level gives you better saves (con+strength), heavy armour proficiency (reduces MAD), a weapon style and on occasion you might even use second wind when you are not using your bonus action to move hex around. This build by level 13 can also add cha bonus to damage so you are dealing weapon damage+str+cha+1d6(hex) to damage. You can also cast hex in higher level slots to make it last longer which means it will still be up after your warlock spells refresh on a short rest. You also have ranged versatility with ye olde eldritch blast which you can add cha bonus to damage so you do not get punished as much as most melee PCs. This build is really good in play and is the arcane equivalent of a Paladin IMHO and it doesn’t suffer at low levels except maybe at level 2.
Paladin/Sorcerer
This build takes 6 levels of Paladin and fills the rest up with Sorcerer. You have to make the trade off of being proficient in constitution saves or being proficient in heavy armor. However you do get metamagic which means you can use twin spell and quicken which helps in terms of action economy and casting haste (or whatever) on yourself. I would be tempted by the spell list of the light and tempest domains since you pick up a good chunk of the life domain spells you want off the 6 Paladin levels.
Abjurant Champion
Similar to the Paladin/Sorcerer but you are taking 6 levels of Eldritch Knight and then multi classing into the Abjurer. You miss out on the ability to quicken stuff but pick up the the Abjurer ability. You will have to hard cast the wizard spells so look for buff spells with a decent duration such as Fire Shield and Enhance Ability or spells you can cast as a reaction. All you really want to do is tank around anyway with bonus hit points.
Valor Bard.
A single classed Valor Bard is very MAD IMHO. If I had to play one again I would roll stats or just play a damn half elf and take the warcaster feat. With the default array I would do the fighter level splash to pick up heavy armor, proficiency in con saves and weapon style to offset your weak melee damage. Bards make great wrestlers and shield masters due to the ability to have expertise in athletics and the ability to cast enhance ability. Double proficiency bonus and advantage on rolls to push NPCs prone is very good and gets better if you have a great weapon master in the party. At Bard level 10 you can steal spells like hex and destructive wave so you gain an extra 1d6 damage on attacks and can impose disadvantage on their checks to resist being knocked over. And destructive wave is one of the best blast spells in the game and can knock them prone.
That’s roughly it and my thoughts on why I think being a gish is a bad idea for the most part unless you have a very good idea on what to do. If you really want to play a dex based single classed bladelock feel free to try it out but I do not recommend it. Gauntlets of Ogre Power are also really really good for all hybrid type classes that might consider using a strength based weapon. Spoiler alert you can find a set in Lost Minds of Phandelver.
Now 5E has rolled around and in theory you can be a gish. This is due to things such as being able to cast spells in armour and they even gave you several options in the PHB to help you along. Those options are the Bladelock, Valor Bard and Eldritch Knight. However they are all traps. One can make a gish but you need a bit of system mastery to do it well IMHO. And probably a lenient DM as well who allows Unearthed Arcana Options into the game. This is because of several fundamental problems in the RAW for 5E.
1. Most of the gish are not proficient with constitution saves which makes classic buff spells like haste, enhance ability or greater invisibility very risky to use. The Eldritch Knight is an exception here but it is generally the weakest fighter type until the highest levels of the game where it is the best fighter. You can use blasting spells but won’t be very good at it because you are not a Dragon Sorcerer or Invoker or you can try and find spells that do not require concentration. The Paladin is a better Gish than all of the arcane based ones at least in terms of a basic build.
2. You need a hand free to actually cast spells. This basically means you are giving up AC and damage when compared to a normal martial type. You can get around this with the warcaster feat which is basically a feat tax anyway for arcane gish. Even the eldritch knight who is proficient in con saves if he is using a two handed weapon or a weapon+ shield can’t even cast a shield spell RAW.
3. MAD or multiple ability dependency. If you want to be half decent at being a gish you need a decent ability score on you spell casting stat. Technically speaking you can put a 10 or something there but you will not be able to hit very well with your cantrips which is giving up your versatility. A Valor bard for example whop wants to use medium armor wants to have a 13 strength, 14 dex, a decent con score (12 or 14) and probably wants a decent charisma as well. They can go dex based but the Valor bard doesn’t get that many ability score increases and needs a high dex in order to have a half decent AC.
4. Armour. Most of the gish classes are not proficient in heavy armour which means light armor. See point 3 about MAD. This means that in order to be half efficient (and not even optimised) you need to wear heavy armour which means multiclassing out of a class proficient in heavy armor, multi classing into the cleric or blowing a feat on the ability to wear heavy armor. Multicasting generally means you are behind on feats/ASI (see point 3), extra attacks and you really need to know how to do it in order to not well suck. Or you can just play a Paladin. Medium armor is a trap without the medium armour master feat, light armour is a trap for most classes that are not a fighter or a rogue.
Note that rolling ability scores with a good roll make a lot of these problems go away. A valor bard with multiple scores (4+) over 14 or 16 starts to look a lot better. If one is patient I recommend the Eldritch Knight as it doesn’t actually punish you for a lot of these points and you can always blow a feat to pick up hex or hunters quarry as fighters get more feats than most classes. Picking up spells like that is also another way to deal decent damage as a dex based melee character as you are competing with feats like Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master, or even shield master which are basically all better than most dex based feat options for melee PCs. If you are not playing an Eldritch Knight I recommend rolling your scores and praying. Note RAW the DM can’t stop you from rolling the dice it is his call to let you use point buy. This is not to power game the system but you are basically gimping your character compared to the Eldritch Knight who is both proficient in heavy armour and constitution saves. And the Paladin is also a very good class right out of the box and is semi proficient in con saves via being able to cast bless and the charisma bonus to saves thing.
This is what I meant as most of the gish builds are not that good unless you roll well or have a decent understanding of character optimization. I would go as far as using words like “it’s a trap” to quote Admiral Akbar. A few of these problems go away via multiclassing as well. In general 6 levels of Paladin or Eldritch Knight tend to help as they get a bonus feat at level 6 or charisma bonus to saves and six levels also give you 2 attacks and conveniently enough count as 2 caster levels for terms of multiclassing. The Warlock is also another great option as the invocations are not tied to actual levels in the warlock class and several spells the Warlock has are useful for gish such as hex and Armor of Agathys. I recommend the following options/ideas based on what I have tried myself or seen my players get up to.
Bladelock.
To build a better bladelock is very simple. You do not care about spell patterns or multiple attacks generally as you can take the bladethirst invocation at level 5 anyway. My recommendation is to take the 1st level in fighter and the next levels in Warlock. The fighter dip level gives you better saves (con+strength), heavy armour proficiency (reduces MAD), a weapon style and on occasion you might even use second wind when you are not using your bonus action to move hex around. This build by level 13 can also add cha bonus to damage so you are dealing weapon damage+str+cha+1d6(hex) to damage. You can also cast hex in higher level slots to make it last longer which means it will still be up after your warlock spells refresh on a short rest. You also have ranged versatility with ye olde eldritch blast which you can add cha bonus to damage so you do not get punished as much as most melee PCs. This build is really good in play and is the arcane equivalent of a Paladin IMHO and it doesn’t suffer at low levels except maybe at level 2.
Paladin/Sorcerer
This build takes 6 levels of Paladin and fills the rest up with Sorcerer. You have to make the trade off of being proficient in constitution saves or being proficient in heavy armor. However you do get metamagic which means you can use twin spell and quicken which helps in terms of action economy and casting haste (or whatever) on yourself. I would be tempted by the spell list of the light and tempest domains since you pick up a good chunk of the life domain spells you want off the 6 Paladin levels.
Abjurant Champion
Similar to the Paladin/Sorcerer but you are taking 6 levels of Eldritch Knight and then multi classing into the Abjurer. You miss out on the ability to quicken stuff but pick up the the Abjurer ability. You will have to hard cast the wizard spells so look for buff spells with a decent duration such as Fire Shield and Enhance Ability or spells you can cast as a reaction. All you really want to do is tank around anyway with bonus hit points.
Valor Bard.
A single classed Valor Bard is very MAD IMHO. If I had to play one again I would roll stats or just play a damn half elf and take the warcaster feat. With the default array I would do the fighter level splash to pick up heavy armor, proficiency in con saves and weapon style to offset your weak melee damage. Bards make great wrestlers and shield masters due to the ability to have expertise in athletics and the ability to cast enhance ability. Double proficiency bonus and advantage on rolls to push NPCs prone is very good and gets better if you have a great weapon master in the party. At Bard level 10 you can steal spells like hex and destructive wave so you gain an extra 1d6 damage on attacks and can impose disadvantage on their checks to resist being knocked over. And destructive wave is one of the best blast spells in the game and can knock them prone.
That’s roughly it and my thoughts on why I think being a gish is a bad idea for the most part unless you have a very good idea on what to do. If you really want to play a dex based single classed bladelock feel free to try it out but I do not recommend it. Gauntlets of Ogre Power are also really really good for all hybrid type classes that might consider using a strength based weapon. Spoiler alert you can find a set in Lost Minds of Phandelver.
