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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Esker" data-source="post: 7971747" data-attributes="member: 6966824">Re: not having needed War Caster, keep in mind that you don't have Spirit Guardians yet, and when you get it, keeping up your concentration is going to do more damage most of the time than any attacking you do. Elven Accuracy does also boost your DC and give you another spell preparation, but on a "save for half" spell, the effect of a higher DC is basically halved. Even if you are in dim-light and using shadow blade at a 3rd level slot, it should be doing about 14-15 damage a round to one target without elven accuracy, vs 16-17 damage with elven accuracy. On the other hand, spirit guardians isn't dependent on dim light for its damage, it does damage to multiple targets, and also has a control effect attached. So I disagree with Frog Reaver that Shadow Blade + Elven Accuracy is better for single target damage than Spirit Guardians + War Caster. Math: SG adds about 10-11 damage per target per round on top of whatever else you're doing with your action --- even just a basic dagger attack without advantage plus spirit guardians against just one target is about as much damage as you do with your concentration and action from a 3rd level shadow blade attack, comparing the least favorable circumstances for SG to the most favorable circumstances for SB. War Caster gives you about a 22% bump to your chance of passing a concentration save, so the first time you get hit it's essentially doing 2-3 damage from that feature alone, and it compounds: for example, if you get hit three times, the cumulative chance of losing concentration somewhere in there goes down by about 40 percentage points with war caster. And of course, should you decide to use shadow blade in a particular situation, War Caster helps it also, since you also have to concentrate on it. In dim light, losing concentration on shadow blade takes you from 3d8+4 with advantage (about 14-15 damage) to a 2d12 cantrip which averages about 7-8 damage. Much bigger difference than the 2ish DPR bump you get from elven accuracy.As far as taking a level of an arcane caster class, Wizard 1 offers you the most, with 3 more spells known, including access to a Familiar, at the cost of a cantrip. Divine Soul Sorcerer is also worth considering, though, because their Favored by the Gods feature is really good. And yeah, I'd definitely wait at least until after 5th, if not until after 7th to multiclass, because polymorph is at its best right at 7th and gets gradually worse from there.</blockquote>

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