As soon as there’s another caster in the party, the Eldritch Knight often gets simply outperformed
While the fighter is dealing low damage with Burning Hands, the Wizard is dishing out Fireball
While the fighter tries to get lucky and Restrain with a low DC Web spell, the Wizard is Paralyzing easily with Hold Monster
In general it’s better to leave the AOE damage and Saving throw control to the classes with high level spells and spell casting modifier as first priority
Other spells do work for both classes or may be even better for the Fighter
Spells like Shield and Absorb Elements are useful no matter the class but Haste or Conjure Minor Elemental tend to shine when used by the Eldritch Knight
Eldritch Knights are only allowed 13 spells and I want to use the ones that are best for them
Anyone else find any spells that work particularly well with our Slash and Cast subclass?
Frankly, I’d stick with the AoE spells, along with a few defensive ones. You’re never going to compete with full casters or half casters for spell damage output, but fortunately this is a tabletop RPG not a high end MMO raid, so that doesn’t particularly matter. What you want to do is compare your AoE output to what you could get from weapon attacks. For instance, Burning Hands is 3d6 damage- that’s roughly even with a nonmagic greatsword, so if you’re hitting 3 targets when you get two attacks per turn, you’re almost certainly doing more damage with it than you would by attacking, regardless of saves.
At level 7 Eldritch Knight gets the ability to cast a cantrip in place of an attack, so could be something like booming blade or green-flame blade to do a more powerful attack.It's more sustainable than manoeuvrers for Battle Master after all, so it's pretty decent, more so at later levels with cantrip scaling, hitting a creature for +3d8 damage and then not allowing it to walk or take another 4d8 or instead hit it's ally for 3d8+INT damage, is pretty powerful on top of having another 2/3 attacks, and with action surge potentially another 3/4. Toss on a greatsword with great weapon master, it's a very high damage build.
Then at level 10, when you hit a creature with an attack, you give it disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes against a spell cast by you until the end of your next turn. That can allow getting off a more difficult spell to actually land, that makes the ability to cast an actual spell with a saving throw potentially doing full damage for it's slot. Overall, an Eldritch Knight isn't a full caster, or even a half caster, so their spell casting is mostly there too enhance their main class characteristics, getting out a lot of attacks and substituting some for more powerful attacks. Your never going to compete with a Wizard in spell casting because you're not a wizard, you're a fighter with limited access to the wizard class.
Make use of bonus action/reaction spells.They preserve your action for making attacks and can augment your martial prowess.The War Magic and Improved War Magic features limit the spells cast to being wizard spells, but Eldritch Strike does not.
Theres a lot of ways the available features can play off of each other.
Magic initiate, fey touched, shadow touched, and species options can also further expand spell availability and spell uses with additional castings.
Crafting magical weapons with low level spells can help out with casting too since they so cheap to make. Seems to go with war bond very well too.
On an unrelated note, an eldritch knight seems to be set up pretty well to make use of poisons with poison kit availability, nature proficiency, and great sword graze working with injury poisons well.
All your attacks use int, your spell Dc is just as good as the wizards.
Shillelagh would make this work and I did think of this too but went against it since as a Fighter, Great Weapon Master is too great a feat to be passing up and neither Club nor Quarterstaff are heavy weapons but this does have that benefit of being able to pick=up a shield so for a more defensive fighter, this can be quiet a good choice. Of course you can still pickup PAM for a few extra attacks too with a quarterstaff.
I also forgot 3rd level Wizard gets Spirit Shroud, so... that's a great spell considering the number of attacks a fighter makes, it is however concentration...
Yeah its more of a defensive melee build. But your one handed weapon doing d10 by level 5 is kind of nice, and your spells being resisted with a full casters stat progression is pretty sweet as well. And the dueling fighting style gets you +2 to damage every hit, not heavy weapon mastery good as it stays at +2 but it does help close the gap a bit. Though i'd likely lean into defense from having a shield and take protection.
I just wish they hadn't killed ritual caster so hard as the 2014 version could have added some nice depth to them past their spells. Level 1 rituals just aint it though even if they add a stat bonus and fast ritual, and too bad shield mastery feels so weak.
As an aside you can be really annoying at level 10 if you take both sentinel and pole arm master. They enter your range you hit them, shove them back 10 feet and drop their speed to 0. f you have crusher you can shove 5', drop speed to 0 and topple them on your reaction attack of opportunity when they enter your reach. For the route I am taking I am going more magic focused and at 4 taking war caster, 6 fey touched, 8 telekinetic. Its not optimized but I think it will be fun, If our next campaign makes it to 14 I can still round it out with sentinel and pole arm master.
As an aside you can be really annoying at level 10 if you take both sentinel and pole arm master. They enter your range you hit them, shove them back 10 feet and drop their speed to 0. f you have crusher you can shove 5', drop speed to 0 and topple them on your reaction attack of opportunity when they enter your reach. For the route I am taking I am going more magic focused and at 4 taking war caster, 6 fey touched, 8 telekinetic. Its not optimized but I think it will be fun, If our next campaign makes it to 14 I can still round it out with sentinel and pole arm master.
I’m afraid the PAM/Sentinel interaction no longer works: the attack made using the “Reactive Strikes” feature of PAM no longer counts as an Opportunity Attack, so it doesn’t trigger the “Halt” feature of Sentinel.
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As soon as there’s another caster in the party, the Eldritch Knight often gets simply outperformed
While the fighter is dealing low damage with Burning Hands, the Wizard is dishing out Fireball
While the fighter tries to get lucky and Restrain with a low DC Web spell, the Wizard is Paralyzing easily with Hold Monster
In general it’s better to leave the AOE damage and Saving throw control to the classes with high level spells and spell casting modifier as first priority
Other spells do work for both classes or may be even better for the Fighter
Spells like Shield and Absorb Elements are useful no matter the class but Haste or Conjure Minor Elemental tend to shine when used by the Eldritch Knight
Eldritch Knights are only allowed 13 spells and I want to use the ones that are best for them
Anyone else find any spells that work particularly well with our Slash and Cast subclass?
Frankly, I’d stick with the AoE spells, along with a few defensive ones. You’re never going to compete with full casters or half casters for spell damage output, but fortunately this is a tabletop RPG not a high end MMO raid, so that doesn’t particularly matter. What you want to do is compare your AoE output to what you could get from weapon attacks. For instance, Burning Hands is 3d6 damage- that’s roughly even with a nonmagic greatsword, so if you’re hitting 3 targets when you get two attacks per turn, you’re almost certainly doing more damage with it than you would by attacking, regardless of saves.
At level 7 Eldritch Knight gets the ability to cast a cantrip in place of an attack, so could be something like booming blade or green-flame blade to do a more powerful attack.It's more sustainable than manoeuvrers for Battle Master after all, so it's pretty decent, more so at later levels with cantrip scaling, hitting a creature for +3d8 damage and then not allowing it to walk or take another 4d8 or instead hit it's ally for 3d8+INT damage, is pretty powerful on top of having another 2/3 attacks, and with action surge potentially another 3/4. Toss on a greatsword with great weapon master, it's a very high damage build.
Then at level 10, when you hit a creature with an attack, you give it disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes against a spell cast by you until the end of your next turn. That can allow getting off a more difficult spell to actually land, that makes the ability to cast an actual spell with a saving throw potentially doing full damage for it's slot. Overall, an Eldritch Knight isn't a full caster, or even a half caster, so their spell casting is mostly there too enhance their main class characteristics, getting out a lot of attacks and substituting some for more powerful attacks. Your never going to compete with a Wizard in spell casting because you're not a wizard, you're a fighter with limited access to the wizard class.
Make use of bonus action/reaction spells.They preserve your action for making attacks and can augment your martial prowess.The War Magic and Improved War Magic features limit the spells cast to being wizard spells, but Eldritch Strike does not.
Theres a lot of ways the available features can play off of each other.
Magic initiate, fey touched, shadow touched, and species options can also further expand spell availability and spell uses with additional castings.
Crafting magical weapons with low level spells can help out with casting too since they so cheap to make. Seems to go with war bond very well too.
On an unrelated note, an eldritch knight seems to be set up pretty well to make use of poisons with poison kit availability, nature proficiency, and great sword graze working with injury poisons well.
Take magic initiate druid.
Shillelagh, use int for it.
Quarterstaff and shield build.
Start with a 17 int, take 3 int feats.
All your attacks use int, your spell Dc is just as good as the wizards.
Shillelagh would make this work and I did think of this too but went against it since as a Fighter, Great Weapon Master is too great a feat to be passing up and neither Club nor Quarterstaff are heavy weapons but this does have that benefit of being able to pick=up a shield so for a more defensive fighter, this can be quiet a good choice. Of course you can still pickup PAM for a few extra attacks too with a quarterstaff.
I also forgot 3rd level Wizard gets Spirit Shroud, so... that's a great spell considering the number of attacks a fighter makes, it is however concentration...
Yeah its more of a defensive melee build. But your one handed weapon doing d10 by level 5 is kind of nice, and your spells being resisted with a full casters stat progression is pretty sweet as well. And the dueling fighting style gets you +2 to damage every hit, not heavy weapon mastery good as it stays at +2 but it does help close the gap a bit. Though i'd likely lean into defense from having a shield and take protection.
I just wish they hadn't killed ritual caster so hard as the 2014 version could have added some nice depth to them past their spells. Level 1 rituals just aint it though even if they add a stat bonus and fast ritual, and too bad shield mastery feels so weak.
As an aside you can be really annoying at level 10 if you take both sentinel and pole arm master. They enter your range you hit them, shove them back 10 feet and drop their speed to 0. f you have crusher you can shove 5', drop speed to 0 and topple them on your reaction attack of opportunity when they enter your reach. For the route I am taking I am going more magic focused and at 4 taking war caster, 6 fey touched, 8 telekinetic. Its not optimized but I think it will be fun, If our next campaign makes it to 14 I can still round it out with sentinel and pole arm master.
I’m afraid the PAM/Sentinel interaction no longer works: the attack made using the “Reactive Strikes” feature of PAM no longer counts as an Opportunity Attack, so it doesn’t trigger the “Halt” feature of Sentinel.