D&D 5E (2024) Thoughts on New Bladesinger?

[FrogReaver]

You would usually have Warcaster and even without it you can stow your main weapon after you make your second attack with it. This is only going to be an issue if you use 3 different weapons for your 3 attacks.

That’s an every other turn solution, right? You draw the weapon on turn 1. So you can’t stow it after the attack. Then next turn after the attack you can’t stow stow it. Repeat the process. Or am I mistaken on how weapon drawing/stowing works?

 

[FrogReaver]

Which is fine, if you're just touching a material component and waving somatic components. If you need to juggle multiple material components, and/or focus, it can become a problem. And it definitely doesn't work well with two-weapon fighting or one-handed weapon + shield, unless you're using a smaller hand-free shield (e.g., buckler).

Browsing through D&D 2024 spells, almost all of those with an action casting time have only one material component. So that makes it easier ahead of time, providing you don't need to be opening and closing a bad of material components to select which one, while holding your two-handed weapon one-handed in the middle of combat with an opponent.

In general, I think the D&D 2014 and 2024 rules on spell focii and material component handling are excessively complicated. Just allow spell casters to cast their spells, and don't disallow different weapon/shield options, require special focii (Ruby of the Warmage), etc.

I don’t think the rules require more than a single free hand for every material component and the same free hand for somatic components. Am I mistaken?

 

[FrogReaver]

You are really gimped if you do this because you can only use Intelligence while in Bladesong, this makes Dexterity a better choice than Intelligence if you are playing a melee-focused character. If you want magic initiate and Con then Guide is the way to go, giving you Con, Dex and Shillelagh.

Int and con is a lot better than Dex and con for a bladesinger. Like that’s really your recommendation???

If we are going to assume Sage Background we should do it for both and that would mean the Fighter would start with a lower strength.

I don’t agree. If there was a magic initiate background that could take strength without dex or con I’d have happily chosen it.

But since that doesn’t exist I take a background that gives strength.

I assumed it to zero-base the characters. Regardless of how many it is and what they are used for, the Bladesinger can cast the same 6 spells as the Eldritch Knight (whatever those spells are) and then has more spell slots on top of that for another 50 or so temporary hit points available from other slots after both of them have used those first 6 spells.

But that ignores 2 critical aspects - action economy and buffs really matters.

1. Giving up actions during combat to cast false life isn’t good solution. I’m confident saying any EK actually attacking is vastly superior to the Bkadesinger that uses combat actions for false life.

2. Extending the adventuring day causes other offensive problems for the bladesinger as he has limited slots to keep his strong buff spells going.

Essentially to do as you suggest you end up tanking your dpr for more survivability. That’s just not a good tradeoff.

You only have 1 slot for it and CME is highly situational.

As I said, I structured the adventuring day to be in the bladesingers favor. Things only get worse for him if we extend it.

I was just pointing out if you do use it that it is a lot more damage. Regardless of how you slice the onion though, the Bladesinger has many more spell slots and more spell slots means more hit points. There is no way an EK is keeping up with a Bladesinger in terms of hit points at level 7.

To justify using them you need to make assumptions that hurt him in the comparison even worse.

Like if your proposal is the bladesinger stops attacking and casts false life a bunch, we can say he’s 50% more survivable (or whatever the number comes out to) but the EK does 400% more damage or whatever the number comes out to.

There’s just no way to maintain the originally calculated damage I gave with any assumptions that allow the extra slots to be used for false life.

You would usually have Warcaster and even without it you can stow your main weapon after you make your second attack with it. This is only going to be an issue if you use 3 different weapons for your 3 attacks.

Sure. I think it’s fair to assume he has warcaster.