Hello, I'd love some help on deciding how to do this or if this is even possible.
I want to have a fighter with a great sword (because two handed is just cooler to me) be able to do some fighting up front while mixing in blasty spells like fireball and firebolt.
Do I just use eldritch knight or is there a better or more fun way to do this?
Honestly, I would just make a fighter with high strength and intelligence, multiclass into wizard for those sweet damaging spells, and take the feat "war caster", which means you can cast spells without the use of your hands. So now you have a fighter wielding a great sword and casting spells without ever laying down his weapon. Pretty cool.
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Coffee is a must, sleep is a must, and DND is a must, in that order.
Generally your type of build becomes a jack of all trades master of none, and in commbat it is better to do one thing well than lots of things quite poorly.
Generally the most effective characters are either single class or have light dips of up to 3 levels in a second class. A fighter with a level or two of wizard will have a lot more versatility as a spellcaster than an eldritch knight but will be getting fighter levels later using either approach you could get firebolt as a ranged option instead of a javelin or bow. Fireball on a fighter isn't going to work at least until the sort of levels most campaigns end. An Eldritch Knight gets 3rd level spells at character level 13. If you took 5 levels in full caster your fighter levels would be well down the power curve.
You also need to consider being dependent on too many ability scores (MAD). A fighter in melee combat and a grat sword needs to prrioritise strength for their weapon attacks and constitution for their hit points. If you are not in heavy armor you would also need 14 dex and even in heavy armor dex is good to have for initiative and the fact that it is an important save. A fighter also probably doesn't want to dump wisdom as perception is often required to spot threats (and another important save). If you are also attacking with spells you spellcasting modifier becomes extremely important. A gish character (one that uses both a weapon and spellcasting) usually operates in one of two ways:
A weapon user that uses (low level) spells to enhance their melee prowess or to buff the group (spells like shield or bless)
A spellcaster than can use magic you enable them to be reasonably effective with a weapon
Another problem you have is a lot of the most effective gish builds prevent the use of two hnded weapons
Now the good news
Here are a couple of single class ideas I wont go into multiclass there are a lot of options but many that look good on paper will either not work or turn out poor. For example a clasic multiclass is paladin with 1 level of warlock so you can concentrate of charisma but as you are using a great sword you will need to take 3 levels of warlock so you would be well behind on the paladin curve:
Eldritch knight is good, it is straight forward, you will always be a martial charachter with a bit of spellcasting
Hexblade warlock: One of the great things about hexblade is you can use charisma for both your weapon and spell attacks, so you are not as MAD. You can only do this with a two handed weapon by taking pact of the blade at level 3 so before hen you will iether have to fight one handed or using strength which is likely to be a lower stat, you will only have access to medium armor but you will be a full caster able to cast the most powerfull spells (you can cast a lot less spell most full casters but they are all at the highest level possible for your level)
Paladin: A haf caster so in spellcasting power more than an eldritch knoignt but less than a warlock. No problem in using a greatsword or wearing heavy armor. You can use spell slots either to cast spells or smite your enemies for a load of extra damage on your weapon attacks.
Cleric: Only a couple of cleric subclasses get access to a greatsword war is decent and twilight that is powerful to the point of possibly being too powerful, it has multiple features that can overshadow other characters features and make it very hard for an inexperanced DM to create challenging encounters. If you want another subclass there is an optional rule that most games seem to use that allows you to swap a martial weapon proficiency or armor proficiency you get from a race such a dwarf for great sword.Their martial weapon damage wont keep up with single class fighters but again they are full casters wielding great magical power.
Tempest cleric, or some of the other cleric subclasses can work, too. Martial weapons and heavy armor. No fireball, but tempest gives you things like shatter and call lightning to blow stuff up.
I realised that most gish really aren't allowed two handed weapons but cool factor is what I want so thanks for the help finding the exceptions. hexblade definitely looks really fun, if I'm desperate for fireballs I think I'll try and find a magic item to fill that gap for me. thanks again for your help and time :)
Tempest cleric, or some of the other cleric subclasses can work, too. Martial weapons and heavy armor. No fireball, but tempest gives you things like shatter and call lightning to blow stuff up.
Tempest as with all Clerics is primarily a caster. You don't get Extra Attack and you can deal bonus lightning damage once per turn with a melee weapon. While you would be a good front line caster, I don't know that this fits the OPs request.
Good points, I was going with fighting up front while mixing in blasty spells. Clerics would focus more on blasty spells while fighting up front, I suppose.
Tempest cleric, or some of the other cleric subclasses can work, too. Martial weapons and heavy armor. No fireball, but tempest gives you things like shatter and call lightning to blow stuff up.
Tempest as with all Clerics is primarily a caster. You don't get Extra Attack and you can deal bonus lightning damage once per turn with a melee weapon. While you would be a good front line caster, I don't know that this fits the OPs request.
A lot of this depends on the level and the number of encounters per day you have.
The most powerful things a cleric can do uses a limited resource (such as a spell slot or a channel divinity) a high level character with 1 or 2 encounters in a day might be able to do that ever turn a low level character facing multiple encounters per day might only be able to do that once per battle on average. If you don't use a limited resource your options are cantrips or spells.
At levels 1 to 4 clerics typically do more damage with a weapon attack than a cantrip, all the more so if you are using a 2 handed weapon (as the cost of AC). At level 5 cantrip damage doubles and probably gets above even 2 handed weapon damage but at level 8 the extra 1d8 damage will probably put you ahead again (whether it does or not depends on the enemies AC compared to there dex or wis saves and how close your strength remains to your wisdom).
While a cleric should be aiming ot use most of their limited resources each adventuring day it is perfectly viable to spend every other turn attacking with a weapon sometimes you will be able to do both (if you cast healing word or cast or attack with spiritual weapon you can still use your greatsword) If you have a long adventuring day that could be most of your turns in combat.
There is a thread in the Sorcerer forum on melee sorcerers where you might find ideas that would work for you. My own favourite is a Mountain Dwarf Clockwork Sorcerer. You get medium armour and battleaxe/warhammer proficiency (which you could trade for Greatsword with optional origins) from Mountain Dwarf. Focus on STR and take Heavily Armored at 4th to get +1 STR and heavy armour proficiency. You'll have 18 STR and 18 AC (with Plate) or 23 with the Shield spell, at fourth. Use Clockwork to trade Alarm or Aid for Armor of Agathys which will vastly improve your survivability and melee effectiveness, especially if you upcast it. Convert spell slots to sorcery points and Quicken Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade to get two attacks per round with your Greatsword. You will need to manage spell slots and sorcery points carefully. Since you are not using a shield, you don't need to worry about having a hand free for somatic components.
If you can be sure of getting an Amulet of Health at some point you don't need to worry so much about your CON and a Bloodwell Vial will help keep your sorcery points pool replenished. Alternatively Gauntlets of Ogre Power would allow you to de-emphasize your STR, although Plate requires a 15 STR, so you'd better find them soon.
You'll never be as good a fighter as a martial class, nor as good as spell caster as one that doesn't devote resources to melee effectiveness, but it might give you the flavour you are looking for. Here's an example build.
I am a personal fan of the Eldritch Knight and if the game goes long enough, MC into Wizard to expand the casting abilities. I have a character, 11 EK 5 Bladesinger and he is a force to be reckoned with, though not using the 2 hander like you want. He uses a Rapier (Dex build) and has +2 Studded Leather for a great base AC, which jumps by 5 when Bladesinging. He's hard to hit, gets 3 attacks per round with the rapier or can poke once and cast a cantrip with the BS skill, or just cast a spell (yes, he has Fireball) as needed.
Yes, it was very late coming into the sweet spot, but going EK for the first long run meant he's a solid front liner and once he was beefy enough to spare the hit dice, switched to learning stronger magic. Just the base Fighter abilities make a solid front line character, while you wait for your special perks and WOW abilities to come up.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I haven't seen anyone else mention this yet, but the Fiend patron adds Fireball to the warlock's spell list, along with other blasty spells like Scorching Ray and Burning Hands.
If you want to be a fighter that casts some spells, I’m going to assume you’d like to be able to make effective use of the attack action, cast some spells, and probably make use of action surge.
my advice is to focus on bonus action or reaction spells as much as you can. This is fairly limited if you stick with a vanilla Eldritch knight due to their limited slots, limited spells known, and limited schools to learn spells in the first place.
I’m of the opinion that a strength based great weapon wielding Eldritch knight isn’t as affective as a dexterity based Eldritch knight that can effectively melee and ranged. That being said a using a two handed weapon isn’t horrible since it still allows you to be an awesome fighter character that can cast, due to the sword and board styles putting a hamper on casting with hands full.
Shield and absorb elements are standout choices do to their efficiency enhancing the already respectable defense an armored fighter possesses. They’re also abjuration so no problems there.
that leaves a difficult choice for your 3rd “free” spell that isn’t restricted by school. I see find familiar get picked slot because your familiar can do quite a few things for you if the DM doesn’t kill them off, and the familiar lasts until it’s killed so it stretch’s the use of the knights very limited slots.
after playing some games with similar builds, I can say that expeditious retreat can be a wonderful spell for an Eldritch knight, especially a melee based one. Bonus action spell to dash the round you cast it and dash as a bonus action every round concentration is kept can be incredible. It just feels really bad to be melee and not quite get to the enemy, or see an enemy get away that you could have chased down.
Featherfall can be a niche choice to cover yourself and your party. Might not be used very often but it will probably come in handy eventually and no one else will have to prepare it.
Shadowblade is actually incredible though it takes up a free school choice and is only available starting at level 7. Though the Eldritch knights slots are limited in level and slot number the damage scale of shadowblade combined with the fighters extra attacks, action surge, build in advantage, and fighting styles makes this spell actually rival sharpshooter/greatweapon master feat builds.
some racial choices can be picked to further expand on the fighters magical ability. Earth genasi has become quite a strong defensive choice. Hexblood with the hex spell and its versatile token features are nice. Several different elves come with teleport features or access to feats for other spellcasting. Fey touched is great as a feat since misty step is so powerful and while it is available to you it would take up a valuable free school known spell. Hex, hunters mark, and bless can be great 1st level spell choices for fey touched. Bless takes an action but it’s wildly effective and it’s very worth casting if no one else can, or if you have a cleric that’s changed over to spirit guardians for concentration. In fact depending on the encounter your casting bless on the party might be more effective than you attacking, especially if you can’t reach the enemy yet.
none of those recommendations actually require intelligence stat investment either. They just work.
I would recommend investing in utility cantrips though, you’ll likely have your damage covered quite well with your weapons so maybe you’ll find yourself being able to contribute out of combat more reliably with some nice cantrips that others haven’t already chosen. Finding a way to get some ritual casting might not be a bad idea either.
Personally I would start fighter 1, then wizard 1(maybe 2 for one more spell slot and arcane tradition) then rest fighter and go Eldritch knight. You can use that greatsword and armor, have a little more versatility with a couple spells, have firebolt so you won’t need a ranged weapon, and not be too far behind in ASI’s. You won’t get fireball, unless you get it much later with Eldritch Knight, but you can get spells like shield, find familiar, absorb elements, etc early on.
The suggestions above are good as well, but from what you are describing I think this could work out fine. You could take the 2nd level or more of wizard after you get extra attack or fighter 6 for the ASI/Feat if you felt like you needed more magic. It kind of depends on how far your campaign is planning on going or if everyone is playing highly optimized characters then maybe there could be some issues.
Lots of good builds so I won’t add to the confusion of choices. One magic item any Gish player should be asking their DM to include is the Ruby of the Warmage - it attaches to your weapon and allows you to use the weapon as a casting focus combined with warcaster this solves the problems of casting while armed - especially armed with a two handed weapon. I consider it one of the forgotten magical treasures.
Hm.. Greatsword + Fireball.... It depends on what you want to do, how quickly you want to do it and what you're willing to sacrifice. If you're willing to sacrifice Extra Attack then Fighter-2 + Sorcerer-X would work for you. Max out STR and combo Green Flame Blade + Quickened Fireball.
If you don't want to sacrifice Extra Attack take Fiend Warlock-5 : take Pact of the Blade, Improved Pact Weapon, and Thirsting Blade invocations for full use of your Greatsword, and you get 2 Fireballs per SR. You'll be extremely squishy at this point unless you get Medium armour proficiency from your race. But you can fix this with Fighter-2 (Heavy Armour, Defense FS, Action Surge) and / or Divine Sorcerer-3 (Shield, Shield of Faith, Absorb Elements, Quickened Spell)
Hello, I'd love some help on deciding how to do this or if this is even possible.
I want to have a fighter with a great sword (because two handed is just cooler to me) be able to do some fighting up front while mixing in blasty spells like fireball and firebolt.
Do I just use eldritch knight or is there a better or more fun way to do this?
Honestly, I would just make a fighter with high strength and intelligence, multiclass into wizard for those sweet damaging spells, and take the feat "war caster", which means you can cast spells without the use of your hands. So now you have a fighter wielding a great sword and casting spells without ever laying down his weapon. Pretty cool.
Coffee is a must, sleep is a must, and DND is a must, in that order.
First the Bad news
Generally your type of build becomes a jack of all trades master of none, and in commbat it is better to do one thing well than lots of things quite poorly.
Generally the most effective characters are either single class or have light dips of up to 3 levels in a second class. A fighter with a level or two of wizard will have a lot more versatility as a spellcaster than an eldritch knight but will be getting fighter levels later using either approach you could get firebolt as a ranged option instead of a javelin or bow. Fireball on a fighter isn't going to work at least until the sort of levels most campaigns end. An Eldritch Knight gets 3rd level spells at character level 13. If you took 5 levels in full caster your fighter levels would be well down the power curve.
You also need to consider being dependent on too many ability scores (MAD). A fighter in melee combat and a grat sword needs to prrioritise strength for their weapon attacks and constitution for their hit points. If you are not in heavy armor you would also need 14 dex and even in heavy armor dex is good to have for initiative and the fact that it is an important save. A fighter also probably doesn't want to dump wisdom as perception is often required to spot threats (and another important save). If you are also attacking with spells you spellcasting modifier becomes extremely important. A gish character (one that uses both a weapon and spellcasting) usually operates in one of two ways:
Another problem you have is a lot of the most effective gish builds prevent the use of two hnded weapons
Now the good news
Here are a couple of single class ideas I wont go into multiclass there are a lot of options but many that look good on paper will either not work or turn out poor. For example a clasic multiclass is paladin with 1 level of warlock so you can concentrate of charisma but as you are using a great sword you will need to take 3 levels of warlock so you would be well behind on the paladin curve:
Your best bet may be to stick with a class, and then work toward finding magic items like wands and the Necklace of Fireballs to handle your casting.
Tempest cleric, or some of the other cleric subclasses can work, too. Martial weapons and heavy armor. No fireball, but tempest gives you things like shatter and call lightning to blow stuff up.
Thanks so much for your detailed response!
I realised that most gish really aren't allowed two handed weapons but cool factor is what I want so thanks for the help finding the exceptions.
hexblade definitely looks really fun, if I'm desperate for fireballs I think I'll try and find a magic item to fill that gap for me. thanks again for your help and time :)
Good points, I was going with fighting up front while mixing in blasty spells. Clerics would focus more on blasty spells while fighting up front, I suppose.
A lot of this depends on the level and the number of encounters per day you have.
The most powerful things a cleric can do uses a limited resource (such as a spell slot or a channel divinity) a high level character with 1 or 2 encounters in a day might be able to do that ever turn a low level character facing multiple encounters per day might only be able to do that once per battle on average. If you don't use a limited resource your options are cantrips or spells.
At levels 1 to 4 clerics typically do more damage with a weapon attack than a cantrip, all the more so if you are using a 2 handed weapon (as the cost of AC). At level 5 cantrip damage doubles and probably gets above even 2 handed weapon damage but at level 8 the extra 1d8 damage will probably put you ahead again (whether it does or not depends on the enemies AC compared to there dex or wis saves and how close your strength remains to your wisdom).
While a cleric should be aiming ot use most of their limited resources each adventuring day it is perfectly viable to spend every other turn attacking with a weapon sometimes you will be able to do both (if you cast healing word or cast or attack with spiritual weapon you can still use your greatsword) If you have a long adventuring day that could be most of your turns in combat.
There is a thread in the Sorcerer forum on melee sorcerers where you might find ideas that would work for you. My own favourite is a Mountain Dwarf Clockwork Sorcerer. You get medium armour and battleaxe/warhammer proficiency (which you could trade for Greatsword with optional origins) from Mountain Dwarf. Focus on STR and take Heavily Armored at 4th to get +1 STR and heavy armour proficiency. You'll have 18 STR and 18 AC (with Plate) or 23 with the Shield spell, at fourth. Use Clockwork to trade Alarm or Aid for Armor of Agathys which will vastly improve your survivability and melee effectiveness, especially if you upcast it. Convert spell slots to sorcery points and Quicken Green Flame Blade or Booming Blade to get two attacks per round with your Greatsword. You will need to manage spell slots and sorcery points carefully. Since you are not using a shield, you don't need to worry about having a hand free for somatic components.
If you can be sure of getting an Amulet of Health at some point you don't need to worry so much about your CON and a Bloodwell Vial will help keep your sorcery points pool replenished. Alternatively Gauntlets of Ogre Power would allow you to de-emphasize your STR, although Plate requires a 15 STR, so you'd better find them soon.
You'll never be as good a fighter as a martial class, nor as good as spell caster as one that doesn't devote resources to melee effectiveness, but it might give you the flavour you are looking for. Here's an example build.
I am a personal fan of the Eldritch Knight and if the game goes long enough, MC into Wizard to expand the casting abilities. I have a character, 11 EK 5 Bladesinger and he is a force to be reckoned with, though not using the 2 hander like you want. He uses a Rapier (Dex build) and has +2 Studded Leather for a great base AC, which jumps by 5 when Bladesinging. He's hard to hit, gets 3 attacks per round with the rapier or can poke once and cast a cantrip with the BS skill, or just cast a spell (yes, he has Fireball) as needed.
Yes, it was very late coming into the sweet spot, but going EK for the first long run meant he's a solid front liner and once he was beefy enough to spare the hit dice, switched to learning stronger magic. Just the base Fighter abilities make a solid front line character, while you wait for your special perks and WOW abilities to come up.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I haven't seen anyone else mention this yet, but the Fiend patron adds Fireball to the warlock's spell list, along with other blasty spells like Scorching Ray and Burning Hands.
If you want to be a fighter that casts some spells, I’m going to assume you’d like to be able to make effective use of the attack action, cast some spells, and probably make use of action surge.
my advice is to focus on bonus action or reaction spells as much as you can. This is fairly limited if you stick with a vanilla Eldritch knight due to their limited slots, limited spells known, and limited schools to learn spells in the first place.
I’m of the opinion that a strength based great weapon wielding Eldritch knight isn’t as affective as a dexterity based Eldritch knight that can effectively melee and ranged. That being said a using a two handed weapon isn’t horrible since it still allows you to be an awesome fighter character that can cast, due to the sword and board styles putting a hamper on casting with hands full.
Shield and absorb elements are standout choices do to their efficiency enhancing the already respectable defense an armored fighter possesses. They’re also abjuration so no problems there.
that leaves a difficult choice for your 3rd “free” spell that isn’t restricted by school. I see find familiar get picked slot because your familiar can do quite a few things for you if the DM doesn’t kill them off, and the familiar lasts until it’s killed so it stretch’s the use of the knights very limited slots.
after playing some games with similar builds, I can say that expeditious retreat can be a wonderful spell for an Eldritch knight, especially a melee based one. Bonus action spell to dash the round you cast it and dash as a bonus action every round concentration is kept can be incredible. It just feels really bad to be melee and not quite get to the enemy, or see an enemy get away that you could have chased down.
Featherfall can be a niche choice to cover yourself and your party. Might not be used very often but it will probably come in handy eventually and no one else will have to prepare it.
Shadowblade is actually incredible though it takes up a free school choice and is only available starting at level 7. Though the Eldritch knights slots are limited in level and slot number the damage scale of shadowblade combined with the fighters extra attacks, action surge, build in advantage, and fighting styles makes this spell actually rival sharpshooter/greatweapon master feat builds.
some racial choices can be picked to further expand on the fighters magical ability. Earth genasi has become quite a strong defensive choice. Hexblood with the hex spell and its versatile token features are nice. Several different elves come with teleport features or access to feats for other spellcasting. Fey touched is great as a feat since misty step is so powerful and while it is available to you it would take up a valuable free school known spell. Hex, hunters mark, and bless can be great 1st level spell choices for fey touched. Bless takes an action but it’s wildly effective and it’s very worth casting if no one else can, or if you have a cleric that’s changed over to spirit guardians for concentration. In fact depending on the encounter your casting bless on the party might be more effective than you attacking, especially if you can’t reach the enemy yet.
none of those recommendations actually require intelligence stat investment either. They just work.
I would recommend investing in utility cantrips though, you’ll likely have your damage covered quite well with your weapons so maybe you’ll find yourself being able to contribute out of combat more reliably with some nice cantrips that others haven’t already chosen. Finding a way to get some ritual casting might not be a bad idea either.
Personally I would start fighter 1, then wizard 1(maybe 2 for one more spell slot and arcane tradition) then rest fighter and go Eldritch knight. You can use that greatsword and armor, have a little more versatility with a couple spells, have firebolt so you won’t need a ranged weapon, and not be too far behind in ASI’s. You won’t get fireball, unless you get it much later with Eldritch Knight, but you can get spells like shield, find familiar, absorb elements, etc early on.
The suggestions above are good as well, but from what you are describing I think this could work out fine. You could take the 2nd level or more of wizard after you get extra attack or fighter 6 for the ASI/Feat if you felt like you needed more magic. It kind of depends on how far your campaign is planning on going or if everyone is playing highly optimized characters then maybe there could be some issues.
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Lots of good builds so I won’t add to the confusion of choices. One magic item any Gish player should be asking their DM to include is the Ruby of the Warmage - it attaches to your weapon and allows you to use the weapon as a casting focus combined with warcaster this solves the problems of casting while armed - especially armed with a two handed weapon. I consider it one of the forgotten magical treasures.
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Hm.. Greatsword + Fireball.... It depends on what you want to do, how quickly you want to do it and what you're willing to sacrifice. If you're willing to sacrifice Extra Attack then Fighter-2 + Sorcerer-X would work for you. Max out STR and combo Green Flame Blade + Quickened Fireball.
If you don't want to sacrifice Extra Attack take Fiend Warlock-5 : take Pact of the Blade, Improved Pact Weapon, and Thirsting Blade invocations for full use of your Greatsword, and you get 2 Fireballs per SR. You'll be extremely squishy at this point unless you get Medium armour proficiency from your race. But you can fix this with Fighter-2 (Heavy Armour, Defense FS, Action Surge) and / or Divine Sorcerer-3 (Shield, Shield of Faith, Absorb Elements, Quickened Spell)