- I'm absolutely adoring the Winter Ranger subclass, it has so much amazing theme and flavour, and I can't wait to use it later on (praying it makes the cut). In future I'd like to see other Ranger subclasses go down this flavour route. An ocean ranger or a volcano ranger could both offer unique themes. - I like the idea of a genie or elemental paladin, but this one feels like it's all over the place when it comes to flavour. As the player can pick to be any genie theme any turn they want, it lacks any focus at all. If you want to play an elemental paladin, this doesn't really offer anything beyond picking genasi as your species. - Bladesinger using Int for attacks... I wish they'd stop doing this, but instead they're doubling down on it with everything. It's making the actual stats feel completely meaningless, instead they're just turning into 'arbitary attack stat 1, 2, or 3'. - Purple dragon knight....... yikes. They've removed everything the Banneret is meant to be as a subclass, and then completely stolen everything the Drakenwarden is meant to be and glued it on fighter.
Disappointed that they still haven't figured out that if you want to make a full spellcaster that is a gish, you need to give them a way to use their spell slots in melee. The biggest issue with the old (and now the new) Bladesinger is that their magic quickly overpowers their melee performance, and at higher levels you are actively hurting the party by choosing to melee instead of using your (much better) spells.
A true gish should not have a full arsenal of spells. Neither should it be able to keep up with a martial in melee without expending resources. It should have a way to combine magic and melee to do something that a regular fighter or wizard cannot. Just let me channel a lightning bolt into a melee strike already!
“Actively hurting” is an exaggeration- you’re performing sub-optimally, not doing things that reduce the party’s HP. There is a significant fall-off in comparative DPR though; I think the issue is they’re trying to keep Smites from going too wide. Now, with Steel Wind Strike being in the ‘24 PHB, there is one midrange option that combines spell damage with the feel of using a melee weapon.
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
Honestly, the first step has to be "make bladesinger not a wizard subclass", because as long as it's a wizard subclass, it's a full caster, and you simply can't add melee that's competitive with full spellcasting to a full spellcaster without being broken.
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
Honestly, the first step has to be "make bladesinger not a wizard subclass", because as long as it's a wizard subclass, it's a full caster, and you simply can't add melee that's competitive with full spellcasting to a full spellcaster without being broken.
Which is why I pointed out the spell that decently emulates a blended melee/spell attack and suggested they make a change that keeps the weapon active to some degree at most tiers.
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
Honestly, the first step has to be "make bladesinger not a wizard subclass", because as long as it's a wizard subclass, it's a full caster, and you simply can't add melee that's competitive with full spellcasting to a full spellcaster without being broken.
This is the issue with 5th edition in general, they refuse to actively add more classes, I heard Jeremy felt their were too many classes as is.
The problem here being if you look at 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition there were a ton of playstyles invented, and some of us love those other ways to play ie Spellsword now more commonly called gish.
Sure Paladin and Warlock do this, and well, but both classes really bring a lot of thematic baggage with them, which is understandable, paladins being Fighter/Clerics in 1st, and Warlocks in 2nd were a Wizard kit called Witch which was made into the Eldritch Blaster we love in 3.5, the Hexblade Gish play is more recent.
But yeah we need an official Gish class, but not in 5.5 so maybe in 10 years when 6th happens.
Honestly, the easy fix to bladesinger is to just recognize that it isn't even thematically a wizard, it's a charisma-based class, and then just note "hey look, bladelocks exist".
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
They did. It just doesn't kick in until level 14
LEVEL 14: SONG OF VICTORY After you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action, you can make one attack with a weapon as a Bonus Action
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
They did. It just doesn't kick in until level 14
LEVEL 14: SONG OF VICTORY After you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action, you can make one attack with a weapon as a Bonus Action
So attack, True Strike, Bonus Action attack?
Or Warlock Dip for Attack, Eldritch Blast, Bonus Action Attack? Throw in Minor Elementals for good messure
Disappointed that they still haven't figured out that if you want to make a full spellcaster that is a gish, you need to give them a way to use their spell slots in melee. The biggest issue with the old (and now the new) Bladesinger is that their magic quickly overpowers their melee performance, and at higher levels you are actively hurting the party by choosing to melee instead of using your (much better) spells.
A true gish should not have a full arsenal of spells. Neither should it be able to keep up with a martial in melee without expending resources. It should have a way to combine magic and melee to do something that a regular fighter or wizard cannot. Just let me channel a lightning bolt into a melee strike already!
Like good old Duskblade. "Hey you are a gish, that wants to be in melee and has strong spells. Cool here, this ability lets you cast spells through your melee attacks! So you can stab, slice and bludgeon and still get off the sweet sweet spell. Downside it will ONLY effect the creature you hit."
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"Not getting cut into bloody littles slices, That's the key to a sound plan."
Unhappy that the market got rid of individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters? provide feedback here!
1) The Moonshae bard seems to work mechanically and fits the lore of the Moonshae's fairly well. decent job.
2) The knowledge cleric - don't play clerics normally so no comment
3) The Purple Dragon knight - Ummmm WHY? as others have said A) you got the lore all wrong for no reason, B) would WotC please stop taking ranger subclasses and reworking them for other classes, C) mechanically its not too bad just all wrong for the name and there is no real group of dragonriders in Faerun (that I know of) this would have made sense coming in a Dragonlance book with a different title.
4) The winter ranger - this I like, but the best part of it isn't the subclass actually but the design - lots of ways to homebrew this into a bunch of better ranger subclasses.
5) the evil rogue - like most others I'm not happy about what is really an evil themed subclass but we already have the Gloomstalker, the Assassin and all the homebrew ninja subclasses so that fight is already gone. What I do have problems with is the lore and the inclusion of Bane. As I read the lore Bane isn't going to be happy with a PC that is sometimes following him and other times following other gods - at least they didn't make Cyric one of the three.
6) The Bladesinger - overall I think it's a bit better than the old version but it's still not really on target. getting more uses is always good and getting to use intelligence for the attack and damage with your weapon is good. However, there are things that really have to be built in to a wizard based Gish. First and formost they have to be able to cast in melee without disadvntage. that should be a subclass feature from Level 3 on. second, they should get light armor proficiency at L3 as well - not that it will help that much. By 5th-6th level fighters, rangers, etc are pushing past AC 18 in many cases, Bladesingers need to be in that ballpark at least. If anything the squishy bladesinger needs an even better AC than the fighter. that 2 extra AC for wearing studded leather goes a long way to helping the bladesinger survive. Third, especially now that a weapon can be your focus, the rules need to be specific about two weapon fighting (a light weapon in each hand) vs a single two handed weapon. Even there, one of the biggest traditions of bladesingers were Ellistraeean drow mages and her weapon of choice was a greatsword (two handed). So a good start but not all the way to what it should be.
As for the other subclasses that I missed - can't remember them a couple of hours after reading the UA and seeing the video - which pretty well sums up my take on them.
Is the disadvantage on ranged spell attack rolls really an issue for Bladesinger? There's only 14 spells I'm seeing with the search feature that are both Wizard spells and use ranged attack rolls. It's not exactly what I'd call a debilitating restriction.
I think the AC's fine- by the time you're at 6th level you've got 10 spell slots- spending a single 1st level slot for Mage Armor puts you in that ballpark without costing much.
Honestly, if Bladesinger really still needs anything as a fix, it's a passive rider to melee weapon damage that comes online at 10th to bump that up a bit.
Though let's also crunch some numbers on melee damage. For some parity, let's look at 11th level with a Fighter using a rapier with the Dueling fighting style. Basic weapon since there's nothing there that can't carry over to either build. 3 weapon attacks with a d8+5 from DEX+2 from Dueling, 4+5+4 using the quick and dirty average dice calc, gives us 13+15+6 for 34 damage. Using the new True Strike with Bladesinger with the Song up and another rapier plus a regular attack is 2 attacks with a d8+5 INT+2d6 from True Strike, 4+5 and 3+4 dice rolls, 9+10+7 for 26 damage total. If we use Green Flame Blade instead that's 2d8 extra on the weapon, plus another 2d8+INT to a second creature, so for the quickie total that's 4+5+4+5 for 18 between those two sets, giving us 9+10+18 for 37, or 29 if there's no second target.
So, if we stick to the new PHB only, a Bladesinger can do a bit less with a weapon than a Fighter, but we're talking "not an optimized build" rather than "absolutely awful". If we include Tasha's/SCAG it veers between "closes the gap a bit" and "pulls ahead" when you can proc GFB. So, in terms of performing in line with other weapon users before we bring in limited resource stuff like Smites, Rage, and the myriad Fighter subclass options, Bladesinger is maybe one tier below. Which is fair, since in addition to this they've got the full Wizard kit of blowing stuff up and/or turning things into frogs. And if we went with my thought for adding a bonus weapon damage rider, then it can fairly quickly close the gap- 2d6 gives us another 7 average rolled damage, which pretty much evens out the damage. Assuming we want Bladesinger to be a step behind Fighter in weapon damage so they're at least not stomping toes with big ol' boots, I'd say the rider should be dialed back to 1d6 or 8, but at that point it's probably gonna look unimpressive for when it comes online.
Bladesinger is not a great subclass if you're into optimizing or just like seeing big numbers. It's not a great class if you're going to be comparing whose sword's bigger during combat with other players in melee. It's a great subclass if you want the characterization/roleplay of being a swordfighting Wizard and won't be put out by the inherent limitations to implementing that concept in 5e.
Honestly, the cleanest way to solve bladesinger would be to make bladesong a subclass-unique spell. At that point you can make the melee capabilities strong enough to actually be useful at any tier of play, without just turning the result absurdly overpowered.
As I just iterated, assuming you take the most basic of steps to build for it your melee chops remain "useful" into tier 3. Not optimal, but just running off the PHB and the subclass keeps you near Fighter DPR with the same weapon and the supporting fighting style; use Tasha's and it gets a bump. Can't really get around the d6 HP, but Mage Armor is effectively a +1 studded leather armor and by 5th level it's not exactly breaking the spell slot bank to use, particularly with Arcane Recovery. At the end of the day, we've already got one class with direct "burn spell slots for extra damage when I hit someone in the face" as a core feature, and it's a customization option for another. I don't think they want to just make yet another "convert spell slots into direct damage on melee hit" option. And it's not even like there isn't an option for something close to that with Wizards, Steel Wind Strike is literally using a spell to make a bunch of attacks with a weapon.
I don't think they want to just make yet another "convert spell slots into direct damage on melee hit" option.
Which is not what 'turn bladesong into a spell' would mean. A reasonable equivalent is something like
Bladesong
Level: 2. Casting Time: 1 bonus action. Target: self. Components: V, S, M (a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp). Duration: 1 minute (C).
You endow yourself with martial prowess. Until the spell ends, you gain the following benefits
You gain 10 temporary hit points. While you have temporary hit points from this spell, your concentration cannot be broken by damage.
You may use your Intelligence for any weapon you are proficient with, instead of Strength or Dexterity.
Your AC cannot be less than 13 + your Dexterity modifier.
At higher levels: if cast with a level 3 or higher spell slot, gain +5 temporary hit points per level above 2, gain extra attacks equal to 1/3 of the spell level, add 1/3 of the spell level to AC, and when you take the attack action on your turn, you may replace one attack with a cantrip with a casting time of one action
Maybe, but even with the temp HP bit I feel like it'd be too fragile once you're into late tier 2. You've got monsters who can hit 20 damage per round on their average damage dice at CR 8, and that's going to scale faster than 5 per spell level. And, alternatively, if you bump the numbers so it can soak major damage, you run the risk of it becoming overpowered purely as a shield.
Yeah but what we all really want is the 1e elven fighter mage dual class - full on fighter in plate and full on mage as well. Of course it was limited to like L15 in both classes but what the heeey
Honestly, the cleanest way to solve bladesinger would be to make bladesong a subclass-unique spell.
That doesn't seem clean to me at all. It causes way more problems than it would solve, starting with the fact that you couldn't then cast another leveled spell on the same turn you activate it
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I am currently playing level 13 Bladesinger - old version and you can never go to melee even as I have 23AC with bladesong and 28 with shield. Its basically still too dangerous. Especially if enemy is not targeting your AC. You just die too quickly. 10th level Song of Defense is very limited for usage. I actually never used it since level 10. As wizard you need your reaction on tons of other spells so it is useful only in situation where you would go unconscious.
In general I am more using this subclass as magical ranger - cast summoning spell(Shadow or Aberration or Undead) and then attack with multi-attack and cantrip + multi-attack of summon or use non concentration spells if needed usually AOE Damage. (I always imagine my baldesong more like gunsong with spells and bow, similar to gun kata in Equilibrium film ).
In regards of the new changes :
I like added proficiencies but really miss at least one weapon mastery option.
I like that attack and damage is now counted from INT.
I really don't like removal of light armor as this is influencing attunement slots , number of spell prepared and possibility to cast spells from armor as magic armor could have some. In current rules you can cast more spells on your turn if only one uses spellslot. There are as well nearly non of pre-created magic robes or something which provide AC as armor which quite a lot influence loot tables.
I like exclusion of baldesong as requirement for multi-attack. This means that bladesinger now can attack twice in anti-magic field.
I don't like Song of Defense at all , simple evasion if bladesong is active and you are not grappled or restrained would be probably better, may be even with added Adv. to dex saves.
Change at level 14 ability is nice but I think it comes little late but I like that it is no longer tied to melee as before.
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- I'm absolutely adoring the Winter Ranger subclass, it has so much amazing theme and flavour, and I can't wait to use it later on (praying it makes the cut). In future I'd like to see other Ranger subclasses go down this flavour route. An ocean ranger or a volcano ranger could both offer unique themes.
- I like the idea of a genie or elemental paladin, but this one feels like it's all over the place when it comes to flavour. As the player can pick to be any genie theme any turn they want, it lacks any focus at all. If you want to play an elemental paladin, this doesn't really offer anything beyond picking genasi as your species.
- Bladesinger using Int for attacks... I wish they'd stop doing this, but instead they're doubling down on it with everything. It's making the actual stats feel completely meaningless, instead they're just turning into 'arbitary attack stat 1, 2, or 3'.
- Purple dragon knight....... yikes. They've removed everything the Banneret is meant to be as a subclass, and then completely stolen everything the Drakenwarden is meant to be and glued it on fighter.
Disappointed that they still haven't figured out that if you want to make a full spellcaster that is a gish, you need to give them a way to use their spell slots in melee. The biggest issue with the old (and now the new) Bladesinger is that their magic quickly overpowers their melee performance, and at higher levels you are actively hurting the party by choosing to melee instead of using your (much better) spells.
A true gish should not have a full arsenal of spells. Neither should it be able to keep up with a martial in melee without expending resources. It should have a way to combine magic and melee to do something that a regular fighter or wizard cannot. Just let me channel a lightning bolt into a melee strike already!
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
-Looks at winter walker
-Lore says their power may come from a curse
-Checks spell list
-Remove curse
Winter Walker has nothing else thematically connecting it to the spell besides maybe the fallen city.
“Actively hurting” is an exaggeration- you’re performing sub-optimally, not doing things that reduce the party’s HP. There is a significant fall-off in comparative DPR though; I think the issue is they’re trying to keep Smites from going too wide. Now, with Steel Wind Strike being in the ‘24 PHB, there is one midrange option that combines spell damage with the feel of using a melee weapon.
Maybe they should consider something to spend a Bonus Action for a melee weapon attack after casting a leveled spell to help keep the weapon in rotation.
Honestly, the first step has to be "make bladesinger not a wizard subclass", because as long as it's a wizard subclass, it's a full caster, and you simply can't add melee that's competitive with full spellcasting to a full spellcaster without being broken.
Which is why I pointed out the spell that decently emulates a blended melee/spell attack and suggested they make a change that keeps the weapon active to some degree at most tiers.
This is the issue with 5th edition in general, they refuse to actively add more classes, I heard Jeremy felt their were too many classes as is.
The problem here being if you look at 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition there were a ton of playstyles invented, and some of us love those other ways to play ie Spellsword now more commonly called gish.
Sure Paladin and Warlock do this, and well, but both classes really bring a lot of thematic baggage with them, which is understandable, paladins being Fighter/Clerics in 1st, and Warlocks in 2nd were a Wizard kit called Witch which was made into the Eldritch Blaster we love in 3.5, the Hexblade Gish play is more recent.
But yeah we need an official Gish class, but not in 5.5 so maybe in 10 years when 6th happens.
Honestly, the easy fix to bladesinger is to just recognize that it isn't even thematically a wizard, it's a charisma-based class, and then just note "hey look, bladelocks exist".
They did. It just doesn't kick in until level 14
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
So attack, True Strike, Bonus Action attack?
Or Warlock Dip for Attack, Eldritch Blast, Bonus Action Attack? Throw in Minor Elementals for good messure
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Like good old Duskblade. "Hey you are a gish, that wants to be in melee and has strong spells. Cool here, this ability lets you cast spells through your melee attacks! So you can stab, slice and bludgeon and still get off the sweet sweet spell. Downside it will ONLY effect the creature you hit."
"Not getting cut into bloody littles slices, That's the key to a sound plan."
Unhappy that the market got rid of individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters? provide feedback here!
Some thoughts from the peanut gallery:
1) The Moonshae bard seems to work mechanically and fits the lore of the Moonshae's fairly well. decent job.
2) The knowledge cleric - don't play clerics normally so no comment
3) The Purple Dragon knight - Ummmm WHY? as others have said A) you got the lore all wrong for no reason, B) would WotC please stop taking ranger subclasses and reworking them for other classes, C) mechanically its not too bad just all wrong for the name and there is no real group of dragonriders in Faerun (that I know of) this would have made sense coming in a Dragonlance book with a different title.
4) The winter ranger - this I like, but the best part of it isn't the subclass actually but the design - lots of ways to homebrew this into a bunch of better ranger subclasses.
5) the evil rogue - like most others I'm not happy about what is really an evil themed subclass but we already have the Gloomstalker, the Assassin and all the homebrew ninja subclasses so that fight is already gone. What I do have problems with is the lore and the inclusion of Bane. As I read the lore Bane isn't going to be happy with a PC that is sometimes following him and other times following other gods - at least they didn't make Cyric one of the three.
6) The Bladesinger - overall I think it's a bit better than the old version but it's still not really on target. getting more uses is always good and getting to use intelligence for the attack and damage with your weapon is good. However, there are things that really have to be built in to a wizard based Gish. First and formost they have to be able to cast in melee without disadvntage. that should be a subclass feature from Level 3 on. second, they should get light armor proficiency at L3 as well - not that it will help that much. By 5th-6th level fighters, rangers, etc are pushing past AC 18 in many cases, Bladesingers need to be in that ballpark at least. If anything the squishy bladesinger needs an even better AC than the fighter. that 2 extra AC for wearing studded leather goes a long way to helping the bladesinger survive. Third, especially now that a weapon can be your focus, the rules need to be specific about two weapon fighting (a light weapon in each hand) vs a single two handed weapon. Even there, one of the biggest traditions of bladesingers were Ellistraeean drow mages and her weapon of choice was a greatsword (two handed). So a good start but not all the way to what it should be.
As for the other subclasses that I missed - can't remember them a couple of hours after reading the UA and seeing the video - which pretty well sums up my take on them.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Is the disadvantage on ranged spell attack rolls really an issue for Bladesinger? There's only 14 spells I'm seeing with the search feature that are both Wizard spells and use ranged attack rolls. It's not exactly what I'd call a debilitating restriction.
I think the AC's fine- by the time you're at 6th level you've got 10 spell slots- spending a single 1st level slot for Mage Armor puts you in that ballpark without costing much.
Honestly, if Bladesinger really still needs anything as a fix, it's a passive rider to melee weapon damage that comes online at 10th to bump that up a bit.
Though let's also crunch some numbers on melee damage. For some parity, let's look at 11th level with a Fighter using a rapier with the Dueling fighting style. Basic weapon since there's nothing there that can't carry over to either build. 3 weapon attacks with a d8+5 from DEX+2 from Dueling, 4+5+4 using the quick and dirty average dice calc, gives us 13+15+6 for 34 damage. Using the new True Strike with Bladesinger with the Song up and another rapier plus a regular attack is 2 attacks with a d8+5 INT+2d6 from True Strike, 4+5 and 3+4 dice rolls, 9+10+7 for 26 damage total. If we use Green Flame Blade instead that's 2d8 extra on the weapon, plus another 2d8+INT to a second creature, so for the quickie total that's 4+5+4+5 for 18 between those two sets, giving us 9+10+18 for 37, or 29 if there's no second target.
So, if we stick to the new PHB only, a Bladesinger can do a bit less with a weapon than a Fighter, but we're talking "not an optimized build" rather than "absolutely awful". If we include Tasha's/SCAG it veers between "closes the gap a bit" and "pulls ahead" when you can proc GFB. So, in terms of performing in line with other weapon users before we bring in limited resource stuff like Smites, Rage, and the myriad Fighter subclass options, Bladesinger is maybe one tier below. Which is fair, since in addition to this they've got the full Wizard kit of blowing stuff up and/or turning things into frogs. And if we went with my thought for adding a bonus weapon damage rider, then it can fairly quickly close the gap- 2d6 gives us another 7 average rolled damage, which pretty much evens out the damage. Assuming we want Bladesinger to be a step behind Fighter in weapon damage so they're at least not stomping toes with big ol' boots, I'd say the rider should be dialed back to 1d6 or 8, but at that point it's probably gonna look unimpressive for when it comes online.
Bladesinger is not a great subclass if you're into optimizing or just like seeing big numbers. It's not a great class if you're going to be comparing whose sword's bigger during combat with other players in melee. It's a great subclass if you want the characterization/roleplay of being a swordfighting Wizard and won't be put out by the inherent limitations to implementing that concept in 5e.
Honestly, the cleanest way to solve bladesinger would be to make bladesong a subclass-unique spell. At that point you can make the melee capabilities strong enough to actually be useful at any tier of play, without just turning the result absurdly overpowered.
As I just iterated, assuming you take the most basic of steps to build for it your melee chops remain "useful" into tier 3. Not optimal, but just running off the PHB and the subclass keeps you near Fighter DPR with the same weapon and the supporting fighting style; use Tasha's and it gets a bump. Can't really get around the d6 HP, but Mage Armor is effectively a +1 studded leather armor and by 5th level it's not exactly breaking the spell slot bank to use, particularly with Arcane Recovery. At the end of the day, we've already got one class with direct "burn spell slots for extra damage when I hit someone in the face" as a core feature, and it's a customization option for another. I don't think they want to just make yet another "convert spell slots into direct damage on melee hit" option. And it's not even like there isn't an option for something close to that with Wizards, Steel Wind Strike is literally using a spell to make a bunch of attacks with a weapon.
Which is not what 'turn bladesong into a spell' would mean. A reasonable equivalent is something like
Bladesong
Level: 2. Casting Time: 1 bonus action. Target: self. Components: V, S, M (a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp). Duration: 1 minute (C).
You endow yourself with martial prowess. Until the spell ends, you gain the following benefits
Tweak numbers until it's an interesting choice.
Maybe, but even with the temp HP bit I feel like it'd be too fragile once you're into late tier 2. You've got monsters who can hit 20 damage per round on their average damage dice at CR 8, and that's going to scale faster than 5 per spell level. And, alternatively, if you bump the numbers so it can soak major damage, you run the risk of it becoming overpowered purely as a shield.
Yeah but what we all really want is the 1e elven fighter mage dual class - full on fighter in plate and full on mage as well. Of course it was limited to like L15 in both classes but what the heeey
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
That doesn't seem clean to me at all. It causes way more problems than it would solve, starting with the fact that you couldn't then cast another leveled spell on the same turn you activate it
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I am currently playing level 13 Bladesinger - old version and you can never go to melee even as I have 23AC with bladesong and 28 with shield. Its basically still too dangerous. Especially if enemy is not targeting your AC. You just die too quickly. 10th level Song of Defense is very limited for usage. I actually never used it since level 10. As wizard you need your reaction on tons of other spells so it is useful only in situation where you would go unconscious.
In general I am more using this subclass as magical ranger - cast summoning spell(Shadow or Aberration or Undead) and then attack with multi-attack and cantrip + multi-attack of summon or use non concentration spells if needed usually AOE Damage. (I always imagine my baldesong more like gunsong with spells and bow, similar to gun kata in Equilibrium film ).
In regards of the new changes :