Mostly for fun, I've been building a High-Elf Eldritch Knight at about level 6. He wears half-plate and wields a rapier with a ruby of the war mage on it. I have everything basically figured out, except for the 6th level ASI. I rolled stats just 'cause, and ended up starting with the follow stats: 13/18/14/18/14/14. For the 4th level ASI, I gave him War Caster (mostly for use with booming blade). So, to my question: should I, for the 6th level ASI, improve his DEX to 20, or take a feat? Specifically, I have in mind Elven Accuracy, Piercer, Sentinel, and Shield Master as possibilities. What do you all think would be best, mechanically speaking?
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Elven Accuracy is great, but I am not sure how useful it will be for this build unless you are planning to take a bunch of spells that rely on you making a spell attack. Even then, its only really helpful if you already have advantage.
I feel like Sentinel works against what you are going for with the Booming Blade/War Caster combo, since it would end a creature's movement before triggering the secondary effect of the cantrip.
Piercer works pretty well for your primary weapon, but wont do much for your spellcasting.
Shield Master is nice since it gives you a way to use your B.A. consistently, plus you are already set on being able to cast spells while your hands are full. That being said, your B.A will also be eaten up if you are consistently using War Magic for a b.a weapon attack
Personally, out of these I would say either take the +2 Dex or Shield Master. I would also consider Shadow Touched / Fey Touched. Both of these give a +1 that you can bump with a later ASI, but more importantly they give you access to more spells which you can cast 1/day for free as well as with your spell slots. This could help expand your spell list since the number of spells you know is fairly limited AND grant access to spells you normally couldnt use as an EK (like Hex).
Elven Accuracy is great, but I am not sure how useful it will be for this build unless you are planning to take a bunch of spells that rely on you making a spell attack. Even then, its only really helpful if you already have advantage.
Elven Accuracy would also work with the dex based weapon attacks. Getting advantage is an issue, and would have to be addressed. Piercer could be used as the second half feat to push dex to 20 if Elven Accuracy bumped dex, and would give a payoff with the higher number of crits from Elven Accuracy feeding the extra damage die from piercer.
Considering that EKs usually don't attack with spells that often, it wouldn't be as big of a change to go that route, but having your higher intelligence score does give an option for making those attack spells.
Otherwise, I agree with a lot of the rest of what was said.
If your DM uses the Flanking rule I would say take Elven Accuracy, but if not it's kind of hard to get Advantage as a Fighter. Could help at the start of combat when you can use your High Dex to sneak in and start with advantage, but unless you've got some means of getting Advantage for yourself on a regular basis you'll mostly just be left wishing you got the opportunity to use that ability.
Ironically, Elven Accuracy would pair great if you had Shield Master already... with Shield Master you could use your Bonus Action to knock an enemy prone then just stab them into oblivion with triple-advantage melee attacks. On its own, I think it doesn't pair great with your class because it clashes with War Magic. It's nice that it also gives you additional defenses for DEX saves, but I think it might be worth waiting to pick up later... once you hit 12th level, you'll have 3 attacks per turn and your attack action will be more reliable than using your War Magic, so you'll on average be better off with the shove and attack combo.
Piercer is a nice, safe bet... probably the easiest to take advantage of, since it doesn't cost any resources to reroll any low rolls, and the bonus to crits is always helpful.
That all said, you've rolled some really solid stats, to the point that you can basically just take feats the whole time. If your DM allows flanking, then take Elven Accuracy at 6, Piercer at 8, and Shield Master at 12... you don't have great Strength, so your shove will need the help of having higher Athletics Proficiency bonus to really take advantage of it. So you're basically walking around, shoving enemies prone then just stabbing them to oblivion. If your DM doesn't allow flanking I'd take Piercer at 6 and Elven Accuracy at 8 instead, since you'll be able to use Piercer more consistently. Whichever order you take them in, Piercer and EA combine to top off your DEX, so you'll still be hitting that 20 in DEX relatively soon in your build. You may find you don't even need Shield Master at that point and can do something else by your next ASI, but this is the build I would plan for in your situation.
You should have find familiar as one of your spells. An owl gets flyby so you can instruct it to do a flyby aid other action which will give you a lot of opportunity for getting advantage, and makes elven accuracy far more inviting to pick.
Thank you all for your suggestions and advice. After reading those, here’s my thought process:
Sentinel: Definitive no. Interestingly, though, if you think about it, a Sentinel opportunity attack with booming blade is actually better than without it once you’re past Tier 1. The extra damage improves it, though it’s not worth spending a feat just to get an extra d8 thunder. This is definitely the worst feat of the ones I had thought about.
Elven Accuracy: Tied with Piercer for first priority. I will have find familiar as one of my spells, so advantage would be relatively easy to come by. The bump to Dex would be nice but not a major factor in my effectiveness, at least until I got to level 8.
Piercer: Tied with Elven Accuracy for first priority. The better damage would be welcome, though not the most important thing to this build. The bump to Dex would be nice but not very important until I could bump it again.
Shield Master: I think I probably won’t go with this. Like was mentioned, I don’t have a great Strength score, so Shoves would be somewhat difficult to justify using (especially once I get War Magic). One thing I think would help with that is, again, find familiar. Thinking about it more, that actually sounds pretty good. Advantage to knock someone prone with my BA, then attack or cast booming blade with my action. Hmm… it’s such a good feat, I really don’t know what to do! The other parts of the feat are also nice, but with my Dex, they’re not as important. I think this wins out over a regular ASI, but not necessarily over EA and Piercer. It also doesn’t fit the theme of the build perfectly.
So, in conclusion, I’ve narrowed it down to (probably) either Elven Accuracy or Piercer. With find familiar, and therefore fairly easy advantage, which would be better?
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Actually, I do like Kaboom979’s suggestion about Fey/Shadow Touched pretty well, too. I would have given those more serious consideration if it wasn’t almost completely useless to up my Int by one. Free misty step and hex would be really nice, though…. If I did one of those, it would be Fey Touched, as Shadow Touched fits with neither the theme nor role of this build.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Actually, I do like Kaboom979’s suggestion about Fey/Shadow Touched pretty well, too. I would have given those more serious consideration if it wasn’t almost completely useless to up my Int by one. Free misty step and hex would be really nice, though…. If I did one of those, it would be Fey Touched, as Shadow Touched fits with neither the theme nor role of this build.
If you want fey touched, follow up with Telekinetic or Telepathic. Telekinetic gives you mage hand and a bonus action shove that can be used against enemies or to push friends out of OA range. Telepathic for silent communication.
Another thought on Shield Master, go Skill Expert: Athletics. The ability up bumps your strength to 14 giving you a +2 and expertise will make up for the rest of your relative lack of strength.
If you've got a Familiar to help give you Advantage over and over again, I think Elven Accuracy should be prioritized over Piercer. Just make sure to stock up on plenty of the 10gp incense you'll need to summon it, because your DM is going to be really going out of their way to kill your Familiar every combat.
Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
Also a common pick among Clerics, Paladins, and arcane casters with access to the cleric spell list. If any of those casters are in the party and frequently using Bless or there aren't enough people making attack rolls, it loses some luster. However, it's an excellent recommendation for the OP to consider in the context of their party composition. Warcaster and Con save proficiency makes concentration less of a concern, which may make the spell more impactful coming from the OPs EK than another party member if the DM makes it a point to challenge the concentration of the caster of Bless on a regular basis, especially since the EK will likely have more HP to weather the challenges. Come to think of it, a Life Cleric using their concentration on Spirit Guardians and having cast Warding Bond on the EK would be a nasty defensive front. The EK could be making use of the increased to hit (the increase to saves would also help with concentration), and could help two other attackers (priority to characters who don't regularly get advantage, and especially to melee characters that may be targeted by AOE effects on the regular). Gives an interesting Paladin light feel to the EK.
Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
Also a common pick among Clerics, Paladins, and arcane casters with access to the cleric spell list. If any of those casters are in the party and frequently using Bless or there aren't enough people making attack rolls, it loses some luster. However, it's an excellent recommendation for the OP to consider in the context of their party composition. Warcaster and Con save proficiency makes concentration less of a concern, which may make the spell more impactful coming from the OPs EK than another party member if the DM makes it a point to challenge the concentration of the caster of Bless on a regular basis, especially since the EK will likely have more HP to weather the challenges. Come to think of it, a Life Cleric using their concentration on Spirit Guardians and having cast Warding Bond on the EK would be a nasty defensive front. The EK could be making use of the increased to hit (the increase to saves would also help with concentration), and could help two other attackers (priority to characters who don't regularly get advantage, and especially to melee characters that may be targeted by AOE effects on the regular). Gives an interesting Paladin light feel to the EK.
Exactly that. EKs don’t have good concentration spells available, so usually they are investing their slots in Absorb Elements or Shield. Clerics should concentrate on Spirit Guardians, Paladins should save spell slots for Divine Smite and Divine Souls Sorcerers should be controlling the battlefield with Web, Slow or Hypnotic Pattern.
CON save prof, Warcaster and top-tier AC ensure an ironclad concentration.
So I changed the ability scores slightly, such that I would start with a 19 Dex and 17 Int, and then at level 6 I grabbed Fey Touched (with bless) to bump my Int to 18, then at level 8 I’ll take Elven Accuracy to get my Dex to 20. I’m quite pleased with this character. Thanks for your advice!
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
I don't want to argue against you, because honestly you're not wrong, but I wanted to get into something important about spells like Hex or Shadow Blade that are important, in particular for an Eldritch Knight...
They're Bonus Action spells. No matter what spells an Eldritch Knight takes, they're still a full-fledged Fighter. A round spent casting Bless is a Round not attacking, and where odds are decent you won't have a different bonus action to use in that same round. For a Cleric, a round spent casting a powerful buff spell is often the absolute most useful thing they could do in a round, but for a fighter taking a round to cast a buff spell exclusively might mean they're missing an opportunity to completely eliminate one threat on the board. It's also concentration, which puts you at risk, as a frontline fighter, of getting dogpiled by enemies and losing concentration before you or anyone else can benefit from the spell. With a bonus action spell, you can, at the very least, cast it at the start of your turn and keep the benefits for one full round of attacks.
Anyway, I didn't want to discourage taking Bless... it's a great spell, and if used intelligently it will have a much greater impact on combat than a spell like Hex. I just wanted to mostly retort against the idea of calling these other spells "crap". They're not as potent as Bless in many ways, but the up side is that they can more easily be combined with the skills you already have as a melee fighter.
Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
I don't want to argue against you, because honestly you're not wrong, but I wanted to get into something important about spells like Hex or Shadow Blade that are important, in particular for an Eldritch Knight...
They're Bonus Action spells. No matter what spells an Eldritch Knight takes, they're still a full-fledged Fighter. A round spent casting Bless is a Round not attacking, and where odds are decent you won't have a different bonus action to use in that same round. For a Cleric, a round spent casting a powerful buff spell is often the absolute most useful thing they could do in a round, but for a fighter taking a round to cast a buff spell exclusively might mean they're missing an opportunity to completely eliminate one threat on the board. It's also concentration, which puts you at risk, as a frontline fighter, of getting dogpiled by enemies and losing concentration before you or anyone else can benefit from the spell. With a bonus action spell, you can, at the very least, cast it at the start of your turn and keep the benefits for one full round of attacks.
Anyway, I didn't want to discourage taking Bless... it's a great spell, and if used intelligently it will have a much greater impact on combat than a spell like Hex. I just wanted to mostly retort against the idea of calling these other spells "crap". They're not as potent as Bless in many ways, but the up side is that they can more easily be combined with the skills you already have as a melee fighter.
In an important fight, that could be a good use of an action Surge, especially if you are fulfilling more of a tanking role and/or have fewer attacks. After 17th level it's less critical since you get an extra Action Surge, and then Improved War Magic kicks in on 18th level allowing you to cast the spell and get an attack in with the bonus action.
11th level is probably where the opportunity cost to cast Bless starts to run into problems, and to a lesser extent 7th level. 3 attacks can generate a bit of damage, especially if you've got a kicker like Hex available. Shadow Blade also gets stronger with more attacks. 3 attacks with a 20 dex of 1d8 (rapier)+2 (dueling fighting style)+5 (dex mod)+1d6 (hex, cast as a bonus action) on round one is 45 average damage without factoring hit, and your to hit will be +9 without a magic weapon (Shadow blade would be an extra 3 points in lieu of hex. This means that hitting an 18 AC creature will happen on a 9 or greater or 60% of the time. That's an expected 27 points of damage round 1 and each additional round, plus whatever bonus action you might have. If you cast bless round 1, you'll lose that 27 points of damage. Your 3 hit damage drops to 34.5 and your expected damage with the new 11.5 to hit (72.5% hit on 18 AC) is 25.0125. This means that the two party members that you are affecting need to make up 13.5 expected damage with their increased rate on round 1 and about a point each there out. The 13.5 would require that the 2 allies have the same +9 to hit and deal an average 54 points between them before factoring for hit, which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but isn't fully necessary either. Assuming a 3 round fight, they just need a total increase of 31 points to balance against your damage since it's only about 4 points difference in rounds 2 & 3 combined. This lowers the necessary average damage before hit from your allies to only 41.34. This also isn't factoring in the damage that is sustained from having higher saves to prevent your loss of concentration on the spell or preventing your allies from being crowd controlled or taking enough damage from Save effects to put them down.
Of course, having enemies with lower ACs devalues Bless and having enemies with higher ACs increases the value of Bless. An AC of 13 is the lowest AC that Bless will really affect on average since 1s will still be misses. AC 22 and above, bless is actually better for you round over round after the first round.
Having shadow Blade will be better for the party with a lot of low AC lower HP (greater than 11.5, but not much higher than 16) as it will allow you to kill more of those types than your normal attack and hex won't transfer. This is assuming that you or someone else doesn't have Fireball or something similar that they would prefer to unload on them (and being dependent on the number).
War Magic with Booming Blade has more value than just 2 attacks, generating enough damage to get close to having 3 attacks. Again, the higher the AC, the better that Bless will help out, especially since having the higher damage on the Booming Blade attack means those misses hurt more.
Finally, Bless is less valuable for party members who can reliably generate advantage for themselves from the hit perspective. A barbarian using Reckless attacks will appreciate that average 2.5 increase to hit less than the rogue who is relying on spacing instead of advantage to land sneak attack. (Incidentally, a basic rogue with no other damage bonus through feats, other class features, multiclass, etc, would have a ranged attack maximum of 7d6+5 or a melee attack maximum of 1d8+6d6+5 at 11th level for 29.5 or 30.5 damage. This means that the other person that you buff would have to be in the 50s to average out to the 41.34.)
The thing is, I can’t take shadow blade with Elven Accuracy. It’s a 2nd level spell.
Anyway, would bane be better than bless in the possibility of a party of casters who target saves? Bless won’t be much help (damage wise) to a Wizard casting fireball. I’m thinking bless is probably better, but I was wondering how it would compare.
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Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
The thing is, I can’t take shadow blade with Elven Accuracy. It’s a 2nd level spell.
Anyway, would bane be better than bless in the possibility of a party of casters who target saves? Bless won’t be much help (damage wise) to a Wizard casting fireball. I’m thinking bless is probably better, but I was wondering how it would compare.
Here's my thoughts on Bane vs. Bless... When you cast Bane, you target a group of enemies that, if you're playing well, you'll be cutting the numbers of gradually over the course of combat. Every time you fell a Baned enemy, the overall impact of Bane is reduced. However, when you Bless your allies, the more enemies that fall, the more focused your damage becomes. At the end of a big fight, you'll be facing 1 big monster with bane on it... it'll have lowered chance of success on attacks or saving throws... but if you cast bless on your allies and keep up concentration the whole time, then now this one creature is facing off against a group of characters able to more effectively punch through its armor and resist its AOE attacks.
Bane is better for Fireball, Toll the dead, and other save spells and effects against it's targets. It also reduces their to hit, effectively increasing the AC of their targets. It's not as strong offensively as Bless, in that it only affects the number of targets of the spell and once they're dead, they're dead. Additionally, they have to fail a save for it to work. It's still a good spell, just not as reliable.
Okay, that’s basically what I was thinking. So, in conclusion to that discussion: Fey Touched (Intelligence) with bless is a very good option. Not necessarily the best, but very good.
For theoretical planning purposes, would Piercer or Elven Accuracy be better at 8th? And then what should I do at 12th? I’m thinking maybe something defensive (+2 Con, Tough, Medium Armor Master, etc.). How would each of those compare to each other, primarily defensively?
Edit: here’s my line of thinking with each of those options:
+2 Con: more HP is great, but this would also improve my Con saves, which is always good.
Tough: this is basically trading that +1 to Don saves from a regular ASI for an additional hit point per level, which is just different and seems like it’s not necessarily better or worse than the regular ASI.
Medium Armor Master: the main thing is it’ll give me a +1 AC by letting me add more of my Dex mod to my armor’s AC bonus. No disadvantage on Stealth is nice but not the focus of taking the feat.
I would still prioritize Elven Accuracy over Piercer. With your Familiar to provide Help you'll get a ton of use out of it. And keep in mind... Elven Accuracy applies to spells as well. Not that you'll likely be doing a lot of spell-attacks, but it's nice to know that you have the option just in case it comes up.
Also, at 12th... I'd just go for the +2 CON. Helps with CON saves to keep up concentration, and at level 12 that means you get 12 additional max HP on top of whatever you roll for HP at level up.
Mostly for fun, I've been building a High-Elf Eldritch Knight at about level 6. He wears half-plate and wields a rapier with a ruby of the war mage on it. I have everything basically figured out, except for the 6th level ASI. I rolled stats just 'cause, and ended up starting with the follow stats: 13/18/14/18/14/14. For the 4th level ASI, I gave him War Caster (mostly for use with booming blade). So, to my question: should I, for the 6th level ASI, improve his DEX to 20, or take a feat? Specifically, I have in mind Elven Accuracy, Piercer, Sentinel, and Shield Master as possibilities. What do you all think would be best, mechanically speaking?
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Elven Accuracy is great, but I am not sure how useful it will be for this build unless you are planning to take a bunch of spells that rely on you making a spell attack. Even then, its only really helpful if you already have advantage.
I feel like Sentinel works against what you are going for with the Booming Blade/War Caster combo, since it would end a creature's movement before triggering the secondary effect of the cantrip.
Piercer works pretty well for your primary weapon, but wont do much for your spellcasting.
Shield Master is nice since it gives you a way to use your B.A. consistently, plus you are already set on being able to cast spells while your hands are full. That being said, your B.A will also be eaten up if you are consistently using War Magic for a b.a weapon attack
Personally, out of these I would say either take the +2 Dex or Shield Master. I would also consider Shadow Touched / Fey Touched. Both of these give a +1 that you can bump with a later ASI, but more importantly they give you access to more spells which you can cast 1/day for free as well as with your spell slots. This could help expand your spell list since the number of spells you know is fairly limited AND grant access to spells you normally couldnt use as an EK (like Hex).
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Elven Accuracy would also work with the dex based weapon attacks. Getting advantage is an issue, and would have to be addressed. Piercer could be used as the second half feat to push dex to 20 if Elven Accuracy bumped dex, and would give a payoff with the higher number of crits from Elven Accuracy feeding the extra damage die from piercer.
Considering that EKs usually don't attack with spells that often, it wouldn't be as big of a change to go that route, but having your higher intelligence score does give an option for making those attack spells.
Otherwise, I agree with a lot of the rest of what was said.
If your DM uses the Flanking rule I would say take Elven Accuracy, but if not it's kind of hard to get Advantage as a Fighter. Could help at the start of combat when you can use your High Dex to sneak in and start with advantage, but unless you've got some means of getting Advantage for yourself on a regular basis you'll mostly just be left wishing you got the opportunity to use that ability.
Ironically, Elven Accuracy would pair great if you had Shield Master already... with Shield Master you could use your Bonus Action to knock an enemy prone then just stab them into oblivion with triple-advantage melee attacks. On its own, I think it doesn't pair great with your class because it clashes with War Magic. It's nice that it also gives you additional defenses for DEX saves, but I think it might be worth waiting to pick up later... once you hit 12th level, you'll have 3 attacks per turn and your attack action will be more reliable than using your War Magic, so you'll on average be better off with the shove and attack combo.
Piercer is a nice, safe bet... probably the easiest to take advantage of, since it doesn't cost any resources to reroll any low rolls, and the bonus to crits is always helpful.
That all said, you've rolled some really solid stats, to the point that you can basically just take feats the whole time. If your DM allows flanking, then take Elven Accuracy at 6, Piercer at 8, and Shield Master at 12... you don't have great Strength, so your shove will need the help of having higher Athletics Proficiency bonus to really take advantage of it. So you're basically walking around, shoving enemies prone then just stabbing them to oblivion. If your DM doesn't allow flanking I'd take Piercer at 6 and Elven Accuracy at 8 instead, since you'll be able to use Piercer more consistently. Whichever order you take them in, Piercer and EA combine to top off your DEX, so you'll still be hitting that 20 in DEX relatively soon in your build. You may find you don't even need Shield Master at that point and can do something else by your next ASI, but this is the build I would plan for in your situation.
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You should have find familiar as one of your spells. An owl gets flyby so you can instruct it to do a flyby aid other action which will give you a lot of opportunity for getting advantage, and makes elven accuracy far more inviting to pick.
Thank you all for your suggestions and advice. After reading those, here’s my thought process:
The other parts of the feat are also nice, but with my Dex, they’re not as important. I think this wins out over a regular ASI, but not necessarily over EA and Piercer. It also doesn’t fit the theme of the build perfectly.
So, in conclusion, I’ve narrowed it down to (probably) either Elven Accuracy or Piercer. With find familiar, and therefore fairly easy advantage, which would be better?
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Actually, I do like Kaboom979’s suggestion about Fey/Shadow Touched pretty well, too. I would have given those more serious consideration if it wasn’t almost completely useless to up my Int by one. Free misty step and hex would be really nice, though…. If I did one of those, it would be Fey Touched, as Shadow Touched fits with neither the theme nor role of this build.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
If you want fey touched, follow up with Telekinetic or Telepathic. Telekinetic gives you mage hand and a bonus action shove that can be used against enemies or to push friends out of OA range. Telepathic for silent communication.
Another thought on Shield Master, go Skill Expert: Athletics. The ability up bumps your strength to 14 giving you a +2 and expertise will make up for the rest of your relative lack of strength.
If you've got a Familiar to help give you Advantage over and over again, I think Elven Accuracy should be prioritized over Piercer. Just make sure to stock up on plenty of the 10gp incense you'll need to summon it, because your DM is going to be really going out of their way to kill your Familiar every combat.
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Fey Touched to get Bless would increase to hit & saving throws by avg 2.5 for you and two party members. Much better than Hex, Shadow Blade or any other crap spell people usually are in love. Definitely more impactful and easy to deploy than Elven Accuracy.
Also a common pick among Clerics, Paladins, and arcane casters with access to the cleric spell list. If any of those casters are in the party and frequently using Bless or there aren't enough people making attack rolls, it loses some luster. However, it's an excellent recommendation for the OP to consider in the context of their party composition. Warcaster and Con save proficiency makes concentration less of a concern, which may make the spell more impactful coming from the OPs EK than another party member if the DM makes it a point to challenge the concentration of the caster of Bless on a regular basis, especially since the EK will likely have more HP to weather the challenges. Come to think of it, a Life Cleric using their concentration on Spirit Guardians and having cast Warding Bond on the EK would be a nasty defensive front. The EK could be making use of the increased to hit (the increase to saves would also help with concentration), and could help two other attackers (priority to characters who don't regularly get advantage, and especially to melee characters that may be targeted by AOE effects on the regular). Gives an interesting Paladin light feel to the EK.
Exactly that. EKs don’t have good concentration spells available, so usually they are investing their slots in Absorb Elements or Shield. Clerics should concentrate on Spirit Guardians, Paladins should save spell slots for Divine Smite and Divine Souls Sorcerers should be controlling the battlefield with Web, Slow or Hypnotic Pattern.
CON save prof, Warcaster and top-tier AC ensure an ironclad concentration.
So I changed the ability scores slightly, such that I would start with a 19 Dex and 17 Int, and then at level 6 I grabbed Fey Touched (with bless) to bump my Int to 18, then at level 8 I’ll take Elven Accuracy to get my Dex to 20. I’m quite pleased with this character. Thanks for your advice!
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I don't want to argue against you, because honestly you're not wrong, but I wanted to get into something important about spells like Hex or Shadow Blade that are important, in particular for an Eldritch Knight...
They're Bonus Action spells. No matter what spells an Eldritch Knight takes, they're still a full-fledged Fighter. A round spent casting Bless is a Round not attacking, and where odds are decent you won't have a different bonus action to use in that same round. For a Cleric, a round spent casting a powerful buff spell is often the absolute most useful thing they could do in a round, but for a fighter taking a round to cast a buff spell exclusively might mean they're missing an opportunity to completely eliminate one threat on the board. It's also concentration, which puts you at risk, as a frontline fighter, of getting dogpiled by enemies and losing concentration before you or anyone else can benefit from the spell. With a bonus action spell, you can, at the very least, cast it at the start of your turn and keep the benefits for one full round of attacks.
Anyway, I didn't want to discourage taking Bless... it's a great spell, and if used intelligently it will have a much greater impact on combat than a spell like Hex. I just wanted to mostly retort against the idea of calling these other spells "crap". They're not as potent as Bless in many ways, but the up side is that they can more easily be combined with the skills you already have as a melee fighter.
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In an important fight, that could be a good use of an action Surge, especially if you are fulfilling more of a tanking role and/or have fewer attacks. After 17th level it's less critical since you get an extra Action Surge, and then Improved War Magic kicks in on 18th level allowing you to cast the spell and get an attack in with the bonus action.
11th level is probably where the opportunity cost to cast Bless starts to run into problems, and to a lesser extent 7th level. 3 attacks can generate a bit of damage, especially if you've got a kicker like Hex available. Shadow Blade also gets stronger with more attacks. 3 attacks with a 20 dex of 1d8 (rapier)+2 (dueling fighting style)+5 (dex mod)+1d6 (hex, cast as a bonus action) on round one is 45 average damage without factoring hit, and your to hit will be +9 without a magic weapon (Shadow blade would be an extra 3 points in lieu of hex. This means that hitting an 18 AC creature will happen on a 9 or greater or 60% of the time. That's an expected 27 points of damage round 1 and each additional round, plus whatever bonus action you might have. If you cast bless round 1, you'll lose that 27 points of damage. Your 3 hit damage drops to 34.5 and your expected damage with the new 11.5 to hit (72.5% hit on 18 AC) is 25.0125. This means that the two party members that you are affecting need to make up 13.5 expected damage with their increased rate on round 1 and about a point each there out. The 13.5 would require that the 2 allies have the same +9 to hit and deal an average 54 points between them before factoring for hit, which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but isn't fully necessary either. Assuming a 3 round fight, they just need a total increase of 31 points to balance against your damage since it's only about 4 points difference in rounds 2 & 3 combined. This lowers the necessary average damage before hit from your allies to only 41.34. This also isn't factoring in the damage that is sustained from having higher saves to prevent your loss of concentration on the spell or preventing your allies from being crowd controlled or taking enough damage from Save effects to put them down.
Of course, having enemies with lower ACs devalues Bless and having enemies with higher ACs increases the value of Bless. An AC of 13 is the lowest AC that Bless will really affect on average since 1s will still be misses. AC 22 and above, bless is actually better for you round over round after the first round.
Having shadow Blade will be better for the party with a lot of low AC lower HP (greater than 11.5, but not much higher than 16) as it will allow you to kill more of those types than your normal attack and hex won't transfer. This is assuming that you or someone else doesn't have Fireball or something similar that they would prefer to unload on them (and being dependent on the number).
War Magic with Booming Blade has more value than just 2 attacks, generating enough damage to get close to having 3 attacks. Again, the higher the AC, the better that Bless will help out, especially since having the higher damage on the Booming Blade attack means those misses hurt more.
Finally, Bless is less valuable for party members who can reliably generate advantage for themselves from the hit perspective. A barbarian using Reckless attacks will appreciate that average 2.5 increase to hit less than the rogue who is relying on spacing instead of advantage to land sneak attack. (Incidentally, a basic rogue with no other damage bonus through feats, other class features, multiclass, etc, would have a ranged attack maximum of 7d6+5 or a melee attack maximum of 1d8+6d6+5 at 11th level for 29.5 or 30.5 damage. This means that the other person that you buff would have to be in the 50s to average out to the 41.34.)
The thing is, I can’t take shadow blade with Elven Accuracy. It’s a 2nd level spell.
Anyway, would bane be better than bless in the possibility of a party of casters who target saves? Bless won’t be much help (damage wise) to a Wizard casting fireball. I’m thinking bless is probably better, but I was wondering how it would compare.
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
Here's my thoughts on Bane vs. Bless... When you cast Bane, you target a group of enemies that, if you're playing well, you'll be cutting the numbers of gradually over the course of combat. Every time you fell a Baned enemy, the overall impact of Bane is reduced. However, when you Bless your allies, the more enemies that fall, the more focused your damage becomes. At the end of a big fight, you'll be facing 1 big monster with bane on it... it'll have lowered chance of success on attacks or saving throws... but if you cast bless on your allies and keep up concentration the whole time, then now this one creature is facing off against a group of characters able to more effectively punch through its armor and resist its AOE attacks.
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Bane is better for Fireball, Toll the dead, and other save spells and effects against it's targets. It also reduces their to hit, effectively increasing the AC of their targets. It's not as strong offensively as Bless, in that it only affects the number of targets of the spell and once they're dead, they're dead. Additionally, they have to fail a save for it to work. It's still a good spell, just not as reliable.
Okay, that’s basically what I was thinking. So, in conclusion to that discussion: Fey Touched (Intelligence) with bless is a very good option. Not necessarily the best, but very good.
For theoretical planning purposes, would Piercer or Elven Accuracy be better at 8th? And then what should I do at 12th? I’m thinking maybe something defensive (+2 Con, Tough, Medium Armor Master, etc.). How would each of those compare to each other, primarily defensively?
Edit: here’s my line of thinking with each of those options:
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
I would still prioritize Elven Accuracy over Piercer. With your Familiar to provide Help you'll get a ton of use out of it. And keep in mind... Elven Accuracy applies to spells as well. Not that you'll likely be doing a lot of spell-attacks, but it's nice to know that you have the option just in case it comes up.
Also, at 12th... I'd just go for the +2 CON. Helps with CON saves to keep up concentration, and at level 12 that means you get 12 additional max HP on top of whatever you roll for HP at level up.
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