D&D 5E Which is a better bladesinger?

[auburn2]

In the realm of Theorycraftia perhaps. Most D&D characters inhabit other worlds, however. And in the worlds of D&D there are mysterious gods known as DMs who carefully follow the adventures of heroes, twisting their fates and testing their mettles. DMs consider their righteous work to look upon both the strengths and the weaknesses of heroes and test both, weighing the battles they will face upon their divine scales and adjusting them accordingly. If a hero were to have a mighty ability to avoid being hit, for example, this would be a tremendous boon in some battles, but all that ensure that in others the foes they face would have exceptional abilities to overcome this. If they were, in the eye of a DM, to too often rely on the art of illusion to bolster their defenses than they will surely meet more foes who can see through these arts. The DMs consider it their righteous and cosmically ordained duty to put heroes to such tests. And indeed, they are praised for it.

There are surely some delusional D&D characters who go into battle expecting to not be damaged, but Bladesingers have too high an intelligence for that.

I did not say will not get damaged, I said won't get damaged by a weapon attack. And the DM I played with did eventually ensure exactly this. The party started seening "easy" enemies with save cantrips instead of or in addition to low-damage weapon attacks. The kind of enemies designed to not be a major challange but whittle down the players started always having some save attack options instead of just hit roll attacks. Every guard post has a shaman or low level cleric or mage of some sort with them that could attack with a save cantrip instead of a weapon. We also started facing a lot of AOE save for half damage spells.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

He takes a lot more hits ... on the order of 20 times as much. Maybe 15 times as much when you consider disengage will prevent a few.

No. Actual play experience debunks that.

A Swashbuckler or a rogue with Mobile won’t even have to use their bonus action to avoid many of those attacks, and if you aren’t going for the BB tactic, Bonus Action Hide prevents a lot more attacks than Blur does. All the enemy has to do to negate blur is gain advantage. They have to spend an action or physically effect the battlefield to find a hidden rogue, generally. A rogue/Bladesinger that is taking noticeably more hits than the Bladesinger is playing poorly. Full stop.

And the R/W doesn’t even have to use Shadowblade to have solid damage, it’s just one more die of damage. Crossbow expert and rapier/hand crossbow with repeating hand crossbow (rarely met a DM that won’t let you get one in 5e) dishes out wonderful damage, without getting locked down, and drops the second attack for proactive defense when needed.