I was just wondering, if you're playing an eldritch knight, can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Much thanks for your help:)
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Yes for spells with verbal component, no for spells with material or somatic component.
Some DM may be ok with dropping your weapon, cast the SM spell and pick it up after. Otherwise you will need more time to do so, sheating the weapon when casting, and drawing it back on your next turn if you want to attack with it.
Or you pick the Warcaster feat as soon as you can.
I was just wondering, if you're playing an eldritch knight, can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Just to be explicitly clear, this means the answer to your question is no. An EK doing what you're asking about would need the sword or shield to qualify as a focus and for the spell to require an M component satisfied by that focus.
Eldritch Knights don't have any ability to use foci, but all spellcasters can use a ruby of the war mage they're attuned to attached to a weapon as a focus, which will fix the problem for all spells with an M component that doesn't cost money.
Fighters get extra ASIs. The War Caster feat explicitly fixes this problem for spells with no M component.
In the general case none of this actually matters, although you raised the more difficult scenario in terms of loadout:
An Eldritch Knight (or anyone else) wielding a two-handed weapon can simply cast, as letting go of the weapon with their casting hand isn't any sort of action economy interacting issue. Readying the weapon again has to wait until your turn, where it will consume your free item interaction, which means if you enter your turn with your weapon unreadied, ready it, attack, and then cast (presumably as a bonus action), your weapon won't be readied off-turn and you won't be able to make OAs with it. This is extremely rare to come up as an issue, and utterly irrelevant if your Eldritch Knight is an archer anyway.
If you're sword-and-boarding, as you asked about, everything above applies, with the extra headache that most races don't have a third limb to hold onto the unreadied weapon with, so you have to drop the weapon, which can cause (very rare) headaches involving moving about as you do things and/or something happening to the object when you drop it (e.g. if you're spider climbing on the ceiling when this happens). You can tether yourself to your weapon with some rope (basically a jerry-rigged weapon sling like all modern militaries use on their firearms), but as soon as you start exploring that, you're well into homebrew territory in terms of what your DM will and won't allow.
3.2 above is for Eldritch Knights, as that's what you asked about; it also covers Arcane Tricksters. Divine foci (Clerics and Paladins) can be shield-mounted, while a Quarterstaff qualifies as an Arcane Focus and a Druidic Focus. Artificers are a wildly special case, and actually have the rules Eldritch Knights don't that fixes the problem for them in practice: they add an M component to all of their spells that is satisfied by any of their infusions, generally meaning they can ignore S/M concerns unless the M component costs money (in which case they'll have to touch it, just like anyone else).
I was just wondering, if you're playing an eldritch knight, can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Much thanks for your help:)
By default, no. You'd need both ruby of the war mage (for M spells) and the war caster feat (for S spells without M) before you didn't have to worry about it anymore.
can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Nope.
General rules: Spell has M component -> Need a hand free. Spell has S component -> Need a hand free. Spell has both M and S component -> Need a hand free (just one hand, not two).
There are exceptions. For exmaple, the blade spells where the M & S components are "flourish a weapon and attack someone with it", so you can cast those with sword and shield.
I was just wondering, if you're playing an eldritch knight, can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Much thanks for your help:)
The short answer is that Eldritch Knights have to follow the same spellcasting rules about material and somatic components as everyone else. If being an EK gave you an exception to those rules, it would say so in the subclass description.
At the time of casting the spell you need a hand free, but that is plenty easy to accomplish while using a sword and shield. Hand off the sword to your shield hand for a brief second, ez. Drop the sword, cast and then pick up the sword, cake. This is less helpful for spells that don't take place on your turn, eg shield is going to be difficult to cast since you don't have a free hand for the somatic, unless your DM lets you drop your sword as part of the reaction...but then you don't have a free interact to pick it up so you've successfully disarmed yourself now.
Anywho, there are ways to muddle through the difficult task of casting spells while trying to fight with sword and board, but you really get a lot of mileage out of taking the war caster feat to save the headache and literal juggling needed.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
The short answer is that Eldritch Knights have to follow the same spellcasting rules about material and somatic components as everyone else. If being an EK gave you an exception to those rules, it would say so in the subclass description.
It sort of does, just in a very roundabout way; thanks to Weapon Bond you can simply drop a bonded weapon whenever you need a free hand, then summon it back into your hand as a bonus action.
But yeah, it doesn't override the general casting components rules, you just sort of work around them instead.
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I think the general solution to this is to just go with a two-handed weapon. Then you go with the Defensive fighting style and you're only down 1AC from sword & board.
No. But honestly, War Caster should kinda have been baked into EK subclass imo. It makes no thematic sense to me that an EK is limited in this way.
If war caster should be baked into EK, should it also be handed to clerics, paladins, sword bards, hexblades.......
Some of those classes get the ability to use their shield or sword as a focus and a case could be made for eldritch knights. That would still mean RAW like other casters they could not cast a spell with somantic but not material components if both their hand are full which is an issue for all casters and EKs should be treated the same. Many tables house rule that you can use a hand holding a focus for the somantic even if the spell does not have a material component and I think this is a good house rule as it speeds things up as players do not have to continually check what components their spells have or describe how they use object interaction and dropping on their turns.
I do not think however that EKs need advantage on saves for concentration or the ability to cast spells as an opportunity attack without taking the feat.
No. But honestly, War Caster should kinda have been baked into EK subclass imo. It makes no thematic sense to me that an EK is limited in this way.
Fighters already get two extra Ability Score Increases which are basically free feats.
It's also not required on an Eldritch Knight; you can just as easily limit yourself only to spells that you can cast with both hands occupied, such as spells with only a vocal component, or whose somatic component involves a held weapon (such as green-flame blade), or spells that you can use out of combat.
Their Weapon Bond also means that they do not actually need to keep a free hand for casting anyway, as they can simply drop their weapon and use a bonus action to summon it back in the same turn; it's a little clunky (so War Caster is still an improvement if you do take it) but it's perfectly functional if you take spells that require it.
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You also don't have to have both hands occupied to play an Eldritch Knight, y'all. Dueling is a Fighter fighting style for a reason. And using a two handed weapon doesn't interfere with your ability to cast spells. It's just specifically the shield + weapon setup that's difficult -- and it's not even impossible, it just limits the spells you can cast.
Nobody's out here complaining that Battle Masters need to be able to grapple without a free hand. But they can take Grappling Strike, and they won't be able to use it with a sword and board setup! The game is bugged out! Somebody fix it!
All this talk of how the EK is getting unfairly nerfed or whatever, it just sounds like entitlement to me. Oh no, I can't do everything with every loadout! I can cast Shield while using a shield, but I have to use cantrips instead of a weapon, woe is me!
No. But honestly, War Caster should kinda have been baked into EK subclass imo. It makes no thematic sense to me that an EK is limited in this way.
Fighters already two extra Ability Score Increases which are basically free feats.
It's also not required on an Eldritch Knight; you can just as easily limit yourself only to spells that you can cast with both hands occupied, such as spells with only a vocal component, or whose somatic component involves a held weapon (such as green-flame blade), or spells that you can use out of combat.
Their Weapon Bond also means that they do not actually need to keep a free hand for casting anyway, as they can simply drop their weapon and use a bonus action to summon it back in the same turn; it's a little clunky (so War Caster is still an improvement if you do take it) but it's perfectly functional if you take spells that require it.
You know... I never once considered that an EK's Weapon Bond was a workaround for spellcasting... I always just thought of it as a ribbon feature that gave them something nifty and magical to do.
All classes can cast V spells with both hands full.
RAW, no class can cast a V,S or S spell with both hands full. They need warcaster in order to be able to perform the somatic components with both hands full.
V,S,M or S,M or M spells can be cast if one of the items being held is also a spell focus (since the hand holding the material component can also perform any required S component). There are some class abilities (not EK) that allow the weapon to be a spell focus (warlock- improved pact weapon). There is also the Ruby of the War Mage, as mentioned above, that can be attached to a weapon to allow it to be considered a spell focus. Without one of the items being held being a spell focus, a character can't cast V,S,M spells.
In general, an EK can't cast a spell with S or M components both hands full. This is particularly problematic because the Shield spell, a classic abjuration spell for an EK who specializes in abjuration and evocation magic is a V,S spell - so an EK can't cast it with both hands full without also taking the warcaster feat.
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I was just wondering, if you're playing an eldritch knight, can you use a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and still do the somatic gestures for spells and use the required material components?
Much thanks for your help:)
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Need the Warcaster Feat I believe.
Depends on the spell, but any spell that requires M or S components has specific requirements for hands which need to be fulfilled somehow.
Yes for spells with verbal component, no for spells with material or somatic component.
Some DM may be ok with dropping your weapon, cast the SM spell and pick it up after. Otherwise you will need more time to do so, sheating the weapon when casting, and drawing it back on your next turn if you want to attack with it.
Or you pick the Warcaster feat as soon as you can.
If a spell has a material component, you need to handle that component when you cast the spell. The same rule applies if you’re using a spellcasting focus as the material component. If a spell has a somatic component, you can use the hand that performs the somatic component to also handle the material component.
By default, no. You'd need both ruby of the war mage (for M spells) and the war caster feat (for S spells without M) before you didn't have to worry about it anymore.
Nope.
General rules:
Spell has M component -> Need a hand free.
Spell has S component -> Need a hand free.
Spell has both M and S component -> Need a hand free (just one hand, not two).
There are exceptions. For exmaple, the blade spells where the M & S components are "flourish a weapon and attack someone with it", so you can cast those with sword and shield.
The short answer is that Eldritch Knights have to follow the same spellcasting rules about material and somatic components as everyone else. If being an EK gave you an exception to those rules, it would say so in the subclass description.
At the time of casting the spell you need a hand free, but that is plenty easy to accomplish while using a sword and shield. Hand off the sword to your shield hand for a brief second, ez. Drop the sword, cast and then pick up the sword, cake. This is less helpful for spells that don't take place on your turn, eg shield is going to be difficult to cast since you don't have a free hand for the somatic, unless your DM lets you drop your sword as part of the reaction...but then you don't have a free interact to pick it up so you've successfully disarmed yourself now.
Anywho, there are ways to muddle through the difficult task of casting spells while trying to fight with sword and board, but you really get a lot of mileage out of taking the war caster feat to save the headache and literal juggling needed.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
It sort of does, just in a very roundabout way; thanks to Weapon Bond you can simply drop a bonded weapon whenever you need a free hand, then summon it back into your hand as a bonus action.
But yeah, it doesn't override the general casting components rules, you just sort of work around them instead.
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I think the general solution to this is to just go with a two-handed weapon. Then you go with the Defensive fighting style and you're only down 1AC from sword & board.
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EK is an Intelligence caster, pick your spells to fit your loadout like a smart boy. ;)
One advantage over other Fighters is the ability to attack at range while still using a shield. I hadn't really thought about this before.
No. But honestly, War Caster should kinda have been baked into EK subclass imo. It makes no thematic sense to me that an EK is limited in this way.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
If war caster should be baked into EK, should it also be handed to clerics, paladins, sword bards, hexblades.......
Some of those classes get the ability to use their shield or sword as a focus and a case could be made for eldritch knights. That would still mean RAW like other casters they could not cast a spell with somantic but not material components if both their hand are full which is an issue for all casters and EKs should be treated the same. Many tables house rule that you can use a hand holding a focus for the somantic even if the spell does not have a material component and I think this is a good house rule as it speeds things up as players do not have to continually check what components their spells have or describe how they use object interaction and dropping on their turns.
I do not think however that EKs need advantage on saves for concentration or the ability to cast spells as an opportunity attack without taking the feat.
Fighters already get two extra Ability Score Increases which are basically free feats.
It's also not required on an Eldritch Knight; you can just as easily limit yourself only to spells that you can cast with both hands occupied, such as spells with only a vocal component, or whose somatic component involves a held weapon (such as green-flame blade), or spells that you can use out of combat.
Their Weapon Bond also means that they do not actually need to keep a free hand for casting anyway, as they can simply drop their weapon and use a bonus action to summon it back in the same turn; it's a little clunky (so War Caster is still an improvement if you do take it) but it's perfectly functional if you take spells that require it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
You also don't have to have both hands occupied to play an Eldritch Knight, y'all. Dueling is a Fighter fighting style for a reason. And using a two handed weapon doesn't interfere with your ability to cast spells. It's just specifically the shield + weapon setup that's difficult -- and it's not even impossible, it just limits the spells you can cast.
Nobody's out here complaining that Battle Masters need to be able to grapple without a free hand. But they can take Grappling Strike, and they won't be able to use it with a sword and board setup! The game is bugged out! Somebody fix it!
All this talk of how the EK is getting unfairly nerfed or whatever, it just sounds like entitlement to me. Oh no, I can't do everything with every loadout! I can cast Shield while using a shield, but I have to use cantrips instead of a weapon, woe is me!
You know... I never once considered that an EK's Weapon Bond was a workaround for spellcasting... I always just thought of it as a ribbon feature that gave them something nifty and magical to do.
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they can... with the feat or ruby stated earlier. To say no would mean that they wouldn't be able to cast spells even if they had either of those.
All classes can cast V spells with both hands full.
RAW, no class can cast a V,S or S spell with both hands full. They need warcaster in order to be able to perform the somatic components with both hands full.
V,S,M or S,M or M spells can be cast if one of the items being held is also a spell focus (since the hand holding the material component can also perform any required S component). There are some class abilities (not EK) that allow the weapon to be a spell focus (warlock- improved pact weapon). There is also the Ruby of the War Mage, as mentioned above, that can be attached to a weapon to allow it to be considered a spell focus. Without one of the items being held being a spell focus, a character can't cast V,S,M spells.
In general, an EK can't cast a spell with S or M components both hands full. This is particularly problematic because the Shield spell, a classic abjuration spell for an EK who specializes in abjuration and evocation magic is a V,S spell - so an EK can't cast it with both hands full without also taking the warcaster feat.