I had an idea for a battle smith geared around taking the enemies' focus off of the other party members and making it hard for them to really hit anyone, and I figured it would be worth sharing.
The build is pretty simple, really. Pick variant human with the sentinel feat (or pick any other race and take sentinel at level 4), and take create bonfire as one of your cantrips and sanctuary as one of your 1st level spells.
As far as strategy goes, run up to an enemy and cast create bonfire in their space, keeping your steel defender near you. From there, you can make it a living hell for them to get at your party members while drawing the ire of other enemies as well. At this point the enemy you're roasting will have disadvantage on attacks against anyone they target, and you've made it painful to stay where they are and even more painful to try to move away. If they stay and attack you, they have to make another save against create bonfire. If they try to leave the fire, you can shut down their movement with a sentinel opportunity attack and they have to make another save anyway.
If you need to get around the battlefield safely to heal or buff your allies, you can cast sanctuary on yourself so that all those nearby enemies are forced to make a wisdom save or choose another target instead - probably your steel defender, which will potentially be at disadvantage.
What do you guys think of this? Overall it seems pretty solid in my opinion, but perhaps there are other angles and perspectives that I'm missing.
Edit 1: Removed fighting initiate (protection) from the build, as it's a layer of redundancy that probably isn't worth a feat. Rather than imposing disadvantage, attack the offending enemy and really punish them for attacking someone else.
Edit 2: Replaced lightning lure with create bonfire. Locking an enemy down and forcing them to take repeated damage seemed far better than simply pulling them close.
I had an idea for a battle smith geared around taking the enemies' focus off of the other party members and making it hard for them to really hit anyone, and I figured it would be worth sharing.
The build is pretty simple, really. Pick variant human with the sentinel feat (or pick any other race and take sentinel at level 4), and take create bonfire as one of your cantrips and sanctuary as one of your 1st level spells.
As far as strategy goes, run up to an enemy and cast create bonfire in their space, keeping your steel defender near you. From there, you can make it a living hell for them to get at your party members while drawing the ire of other enemies as well. At this point the enemy you're roasting will have disadvantage on attacks against anyone they target, and you've made it painful to stay where they are and even more painful to try to move away. If they stay and attack you, they have to make another save against create bonfire. If they try to leave the fire, you can shut down their movement with a sentinel opportunity attack and they have to make another save anyway.
If you need to get around the battlefield safely to heal or buff your allies, you can cast sanctuary on yourself so that all those nearby enemies are forced to make a wisdom save or choose another target instead - probably your steel defender, which will potentially be at disadvantage.
What do you guys think of this? Overall it seems pretty solid in my opinion, but perhaps there are other angles and perspectives that I'm missing.
Edit 1: Removed fighting initiate (protection) from the build, as it's a layer of redundancy that probably isn't worth a feat. Rather than imposing disadvantage, attack the offending enemy and really punish them for attacking someone else.
Edit 2: Replaced lightning lure with create bonfire. Locking an enemy down and forcing them to take repeated damage seemed far better than simply pulling them close.