Hello I am a beginner at dnd and I really want to create a mage samurai build, Can someone give me some advice on how to create my mage warrior.
The first order of business is ensuring you understand that "mage samurai" doesn't need to mean wizard or fighter (samurai). The concept you have in your head and the mechanical labels on your character sheet have no reason to need to match each other.
In mechanical terms, 5E will punish you severely for trying to make an actual, literal samurai wizard. The way you get around this is by using other class and subclass combinations to accomplish the same goal from a flavor perspective with rewarding mechanics instead of punishing ones.
Yeah, building what you want it to do mechanically and just calling it a samurai wizard is probably the way to go.
If you want a kind of anime style sword master who does amazing, mystical things with their blade, there are a few options:
Hexblade warock (especially with improved pact weapon, which lets you use your weapon to do magic)
Paladin
Draconic Sorceror (dex)- probably go with elf weapon training to get a short sword proficiency
Rune Knight Fighter
Arcane trickster rogue
Any Rogue with 3 levels of barbarian for a "focused cold blooded warrior" kind of rage
I think the top two can be multiclassed with sorceror as a main class for a very neat gish kind of character. Only 2-3 levels of Paladin or Hexblade warlock with a sorceror class gives you a ton of magical options.
Perhaps a Blade Singer? Choose Half Elf as a race, use Tasha's to customize your origin to move your +2 CHR to +2 Dex, take the Courtier background for Insight and Persuasion, Half Elf skill versatility for Perception and Acrobatics, History and Arcana as Wizard proficiencies, and Performance comes from Blade Singing. You are a cultured, educated liege warrior of a powerful noble.
Not really, the vanilla Warlock spell list does not include many elemental spells, and choosing Hexblade as your Patron gives only one, Elemental Weapon. Other Patrons add elemental spells, the Fiend and Genies do, but then you don't get medium armor and shield proficiencies that come with Hexblade, nor are you able to use CHR as your weapon modifier stat. Trying to do a melee oriented Warlock without Hexblade is possible, but is trickier. If you are looking for advice on that, you would be better off posting in the Warlock sub-forum.
Perhaps a Blade Singer? Choose Half Elf as a race, use Tasha's to customize your origin to move your +2 CHR to +2 Dex, take the Courtier background for Insight and Persuasion, Half Elf skill versatility for Perception and Acrobatics, History and Arcana as Wizard proficiencies, and Performance comes from Blade Singing. You are a cultured, educated liege warrior of a powerful noble.
I would have suggested blade singer, but there aren't really many mechanics in it for doing things with a sword offensively. The extra attack is neat, but a Wizard's real offensive ability comes from spells. I suppose a player could flavor all of their spells as things they do using the sword though. Just not immediately fun mechanics like smite.
I'm partial to 10 fighter (echo knight)/10 wizard (abjurer). Start with fighter, add resilient intelligence, and progress in whichever class you feel grants the most benefit.
Although I agree it’s easier to do with a Samurai Fighter/Warlock, it’s not terrible to go Samurai/Mage particularly if you go with a DEX-based Fighter build. In that case, you’d probably put your highest stat in DEX and your second highest in INT. Third should be STR because you need 13 to multiclass. Start Fighter.
Your Elegant Courtier feature synergizes better with Warlock’s high CHR (although it’s WIS based), but that’s the only subclass feature for Samurai that’s really hurt with a Mage multiclass.
I think you should consider War Magic over Bladesinger. Arcane Deflection is great if you aren’t casting spells every turn, although you could still use Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade after using Arcane Deflection. For a melee-oriented build, it can be an effective multiclass with just two levels, and you don’t have resource limits on the number of uses, just you reaction. At higher tiers, the +4 to a saving throw every round could be more valuable than the +2 to AC.
As an alternative, Genie Warlocks give you elemental spells and elemental damage added to one attack. If you want a Samurai wielding a flaming blade that can toss a Fireball, that could work for you. Your genie patron could even be your daimyo/lord, particularly if you are a matching genasi. It’s not a mage, but it has elemental spells and Eldritch Blast. That could be a pretty impressive magic-wielding Samurai.
Although I agree it’s easier to do with a Samurai Fighter/Warlock, it’s not terrible to go Samurai/Mage particularly if you go with a DEX-based Fighter build. In that case, you’d probably put your highest stat in DEX and your second highest in INT. Third should be STR because you need 13 to multiclass. Start Fighter.
Your Elegant Courtier feature synergizes better with Warlock’s high CHR (although it’s WIS based), but that’s the only subclass feature for Samurai that’s really hurt with a Mage multiclass.
I think you should consider War Magic over Bladesinger. Arcane Deflection is great if you aren’t casting spells every turn, although you could still use Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade after using Arcane Deflection. For a melee-oriented build, it can be an effective multiclass with just two levels, and you don’t have resource limits on the number of uses, just you reaction. At higher tiers, the +4 to a saving throw every round could be more valuable than the +2 to AC.
As an alternative, Genie Warlocks give you elemental spells and elemental damage added to one attack. If you want a Samurai wielding a flaming blade that can toss a Fireball, that could work for you. Your genie patron could even be your daimyo/lord, particularly if you are a matching genasi. It’s not a mage, but it has elemental spells and Eldritch Blast. That could be a pretty impressive magic-wielding Samurai.
You only need a 13 in dex or strength to multiclass fighter, not both.
It’s even easier if you can dump STR to be a Samurai War Mage. There aren’t great synergies other than low opportunity costs from using Arcane Deflection, but it’s not too MAD or suffering from conflicting features. There’s even a bit of elegant conceptual overlap between Fighting Spirit and Arcane Deflection, though nothing mechanically better.
As with most multiclass situations, you’re probably better off with only a few levels in one or the other class. It depends which way you want the character to go as to whether you go mostly Samurai (my suggestion) or mostly mage (in which case you should do a three level dip only).
A College of Swords bard could make a great caster samurai.
You get full spell progression, medium armor proficiency, dual weilding or dueling fighting style and any melee weapon you are proficient with can be a focus for your spells.
Your bardic inspiration dice can fuel cool offensive/defensive flourishes that can act like samurai manoeuvres.
The bard has access to some but not many elemental themed spells: earth tremor, thunderwave, heat metal, another spell that might be flavourful is kinetic jaunt. Magical secrets at level 10 will give you access to many elemental spells but also the ranger spell Steel Wind Strike that they typically only get at level 17. Going with a half-elf with mark of the storm will give you access to more elemental themed spells
A single hexblade warlock dip will make you single attribute dependent (charisma), proficiency in ALL martial weapons plus shields and early access to the shield spell. Between medium armor, defensive flourish and the shield spell you can have great AC.
A spear wielding samurai could take advantage of the dueling fighting style, the pole arm master feat and pack a shield for extra bonus action attacks and more defense.
You could choose the class of magical warrior that best suits what you want, and instead of calling him a mage/samurai or a samurai/mage, you could just call him a rōnin.
This way you could give your character a renegade and unorthodox samurai background, who also likes to play with magic and is not subject to any strict code that prevents him from using it...
A rōnin, a free samurai.
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Hello I am a beginner at dnd and I really want to create a mage samurai build, Can someone give me some advice on how to create my mage warrior.
Start with the Bladesinger Wizard...
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1048-wizard-101-bladesinging-from-tashas-cauldron-of
Or, maybe Hexblade Warlock is a bit more of a "front-line" fighter, with less spell usage.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/warlock#TheHexblade
The first order of business is ensuring you understand that "mage samurai" doesn't need to mean wizard or fighter (samurai). The concept you have in your head and the mechanical labels on your character sheet have no reason to need to match each other.
In mechanical terms, 5E will punish you severely for trying to make an actual, literal samurai wizard. The way you get around this is by using other class and subclass combinations to accomplish the same goal from a flavor perspective with rewarding mechanics instead of punishing ones.
What do you actually have in mind?
Yeah, building what you want it to do mechanically and just calling it a samurai wizard is probably the way to go.
If you want a kind of anime style sword master who does amazing, mystical things with their blade, there are a few options:
Hexblade warock (especially with improved pact weapon, which lets you use your weapon to do magic)
Paladin
Draconic Sorceror (dex)- probably go with elf weapon training to get a short sword proficiency
Rune Knight Fighter
Arcane trickster rogue
Any Rogue with 3 levels of barbarian for a "focused cold blooded warrior" kind of rage
I think the top two can be multiclassed with sorceror as a main class for a very neat gish kind of character. Only 2-3 levels of Paladin or Hexblade warlock with a sorceror class gives you a ton of magical options.
Perhaps a Blade Singer? Choose Half Elf as a race, use Tasha's to customize your origin to move your +2 CHR to +2 Dex, take the Courtier background for Insight and Persuasion, Half Elf skill versatility for Perception and Acrobatics, History and Arcana as Wizard proficiencies, and Performance comes from Blade Singing. You are a cultured, educated liege warrior of a powerful noble.
Can I do elemental magic as a hexblade
Not really, the vanilla Warlock spell list does not include many elemental spells, and choosing Hexblade as your Patron gives only one, Elemental Weapon. Other Patrons add elemental spells, the Fiend and Genies do, but then you don't get medium armor and shield proficiencies that come with Hexblade, nor are you able to use CHR as your weapon modifier stat. Trying to do a melee oriented Warlock without Hexblade is possible, but is trickier. If you are looking for advice on that, you would be better off posting in the Warlock sub-forum.
I would have suggested blade singer, but there aren't really many mechanics in it for doing things with a sword offensively. The extra attack is neat, but a Wizard's real offensive ability comes from spells. I suppose a player could flavor all of their spells as things they do using the sword though. Just not immediately fun mechanics like smite.
I'm partial to 10 fighter (echo knight)/10 wizard (abjurer). Start with fighter, add resilient intelligence, and progress in whichever class you feel grants the most benefit.
Although I agree it’s easier to do with a Samurai Fighter/Warlock, it’s not terrible to go Samurai/Mage particularly if you go with a DEX-based Fighter build. In that case, you’d probably put your highest stat in DEX and your second highest in INT. Third should be STR because you need 13 to multiclass. Start Fighter.
Your Elegant Courtier feature synergizes better with Warlock’s high CHR (although it’s WIS based), but that’s the only subclass feature for Samurai that’s really hurt with a Mage multiclass.
I think you should consider War Magic over Bladesinger. Arcane Deflection is great if you aren’t casting spells every turn, although you could still use Booming Blade or Green Flame Blade after using Arcane Deflection. For a melee-oriented build, it can be an effective multiclass with just two levels, and you don’t have resource limits on the number of uses, just you reaction. At higher tiers, the +4 to a saving throw every round could be more valuable than the +2 to AC.
As an alternative, Genie Warlocks give you elemental spells and elemental damage added to one attack. If you want a Samurai wielding a flaming blade that can toss a Fireball, that could work for you. Your genie patron could even be your daimyo/lord, particularly if you are a matching genasi. It’s not a mage, but it has elemental spells and Eldritch Blast. That could be a pretty impressive magic-wielding Samurai.
You only need a 13 in dex or strength to multiclass fighter, not both.
I keep forgetting that. Thanks Kronyzpants.
It’s even easier if you can dump STR to be a Samurai War Mage. There aren’t great synergies other than low opportunity costs from using Arcane Deflection, but it’s not too MAD or suffering from conflicting features. There’s even a bit of elegant conceptual overlap between Fighting Spirit and Arcane Deflection, though nothing mechanically better.
As with most multiclass situations, you’re probably better off with only a few levels in one or the other class. It depends which way you want the character to go as to whether you go mostly Samurai (my suggestion) or mostly mage (in which case you should do a three level dip only).
A College of Swords bard could make a great caster samurai.
You get full spell progression, medium armor proficiency, dual weilding or dueling fighting style and any melee weapon you are proficient with can be a focus for your spells.
Your bardic inspiration dice can fuel cool offensive/defensive flourishes that can act like samurai manoeuvres.
The bard has access to some but not many elemental themed spells: earth tremor, thunderwave, heat metal, another spell that might be flavourful is kinetic jaunt. Magical secrets at level 10 will give you access to many elemental spells but also the ranger spell Steel Wind Strike that they typically only get at level 17. Going with a half-elf with mark of the storm will give you access to more elemental themed spells
A single hexblade warlock dip will make you single attribute dependent (charisma), proficiency in ALL martial weapons plus shields and early access to the shield spell. Between medium armor, defensive flourish and the shield spell you can have great AC.
A spear wielding samurai could take advantage of the dueling fighting style, the pole arm master feat and pack a shield for extra bonus action attacks and more defense.
3 gloomstalker/X wizard. Bladesinger, war wizard, abjuration, and chronurgy seem like good contenders.
You could choose the class of magical warrior that best suits what you want, and instead of calling him a mage/samurai or a samurai/mage, you could just call him a rōnin.
This way you could give your character a renegade and unorthodox samurai background, who also likes to play with magic and is not subject to any strict code that prevents him from using it...
A rōnin, a free samurai.