"DMs; don't give your bladesinger a Cloak of Displacement." Imma need you to really keep it down, my DM literally just gave my Bladesinger a Cloak of Displacement...
Honestly I'm kinda surprised there isn't gish sorcerer subclass. I think being born into magic and having the power innately just fits so well into using both spell and sword together.
Right! Sorcerer seems like the perfect fit for a gish character, but WotC just keeps shipping them farther down the squishy line. With every other class getting martial and magic subclasses I honestly don't get why sorcerer has been ignored in this aspect
Right? At the very least why not make them some kind of martial buff class like the magus in pathfinder, burning spell slots to increase weapon attack and damage rolls? The closest I've gotten was getting my dm to allow my eldritch knight to use charisma and I played him as a sorcerer hiding among the knights who just subtle casted certain spells. It turned out pretty fun because eldritch knight with shadow blade is actually pretty fun.
My bard is BY FAR the highest damage dealing character in our party. Animate objects with 10 small silver knives. Spiritual weapon (magical secrets) Find greater steed (griffin) (magical secrets) Dissonant whispers for my go-to leveled attack Eldritch blast for my cantrip damage (picked up with spell sniper feat)
I've been messing around with the gift for the last 2 years since this video came out. I find that multiclassing the blade singer always outpaces the hexblade. Certainly there are great combinations of hexblade, paladin and or sorcerer. Obviously giving your spell casting and hitting ability the same stat (charisma) has a lot of advantages. If you want to focus more on being a tank, maxing your stats or spell casting you can pick paldin, warlock or sorcerer respectively as your first choice and then gain the armor class, stat boost or spell casting advantages that come with those classes. Then dip into whatever other thing you're trying to do. For example, paladin goes warlock becomes an oath-breaker now they can hit and spell cast with hex and then go crazy on sorcery. Pumping charisma and Constitution the whole time. Certainly you'd be a great charter. But you'll never be as powerful as a lead singer who took four levels of fighter (for the extra feat or ability) and gained action surge. Because that guy can dump two fireballs in a turn. You'll never be as sneaky as a wizard who took a few levels of rogue and gained all the extra bonus actions and lock picking and sneak attack skills. Create a Shadow blade, and cast darkness, turn invisible and sneak up on your enemies and the whole time having a plethora of bonus actions to disengage after double hitting and booming blading someone. That last one is something like 5 d8. That's like making five attacks. But you're doing it at level 6 or 8. Start off with two levels of fighter and then dumped the rest into bladesinger. Now you can be a charging great sword wielding full spell casting armor wearing shield casting beast. You won't get much use out of blade song that way. But you could always carry a longsword instead and that would be pretty equivalent. You could also go sword and bored and be relatively unhittable and take shield master so you can sit on the front line and support your allies while also being able to blast enemies into oblivion. Just simply put the advantages of mixing the wizard with one of the other two great fighting classes make for an instant s tier. You can also mix ek with the wizard... That gives you a bunch of advantages. Like being able to use your special extra attack make a regular attack and then use your bonus action to make another attack. Your spell casting is now memorized and so you don't need your spell book anymore. If you go EK first you gain all your heavy armor benefits and weapon proficiency. really plays into the Gish roll nicely. And you still gain some spell casting levels and spell slots on the levels you spend on fighter.
I have two characters I want to play in the near future, both of them multiclass: - A drow Hexblade//Swords Bard - A high-elf Bladesinger/Rune Knight I want to play the former to see what's the best I can make out of a Hexblade and a Bard put together and always search for ways on how to improve that combo. For the later, I just want to play it for story's sake, because I've liked the concept of an elf who was raised by giants and develops the best of two completely different worlds.
Level 11 Divination Wizard. (or lower level if you can get your hands on a Lvl 6 spell scroll of Magic Jar). Use the Magic Jar spell to take your soul out of your body. Possess a powerful Martial stat block (outside of legendary resistances, they auto fail the check due to portent dice). Now you have great physical stats, multiattack, and you still have all your Wizard class features. Your Achilles' heel is someone casting Dispel Magic on you, so use Nistul's Magic Aura to hide the spell. If your body dies, you can use Portent dice to cheat the save vs death, though I recommend a high Charisma score and the Resilient (CHA) feat to make this even more foolproof.
I play different classes all the time, but i think basically all of my favorite characters could be described as a strength based gish. I love using melee combat with a few ogmenting spells or alternative options for combat and then having endless spells for social/exploration situations.
My favorite is a multiclass Bladesinger Wizard/Pact of the Blade Warlock/Battlemaster fighter. Using Bladesong, Hex, Hexblades curse, and Action Surge creates the ability to attack 11 times in one round. I can attack with my action doing 1d8 slashing plus 1 due to improved pact weapon invocation, plus 2 due to Dueling fighting style, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my Extra attack feature from Bladesinger I will cast the eldritch blast cantrip. Since I’m over 11 levels I get 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my level two Fighter ability of action surge I get another action which will allow me to attack with my action doing 1d8 slashing plus 1 due to improved pact weapon invocation, plus 2 due to Dueling fighting style, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my Extra attack feature from Bladesinger I will cast the eldritch blast cantrip. Since I’m over 11 levels I get 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. I will then use the Metamagic adept Feat to spend two sorcery points for metamagic Quickened Spell allowing me to cast Eldritch blast as a Bonus action for 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. That is 11 attacks per round equaling - 2d8 plus 14 plus 2d6 and 9d10 plus 36 plus 9d6. That’s anywhere from 72 - 222 points of damage per round if they all hit.
Funny thing is you can easily make a hybrid of the swords bard AND the hexblade. When you do that they compliment and amplify one another filling in all of the other ones short comings.
@@larstollefsen1236 Yes. Obscurement stops almost every save or suck spell. It ignores fairy fire. Give my character advance to hit and disadvantage to be hit. Do a quick scan of all the spell that require you to see your opponent. My character is still susceptible to area effect spells but as he is in the middle of the bad guys which makes using area effect spells very challenging. Oh and I can move around the battlefield without worry of attacks of opportunity.
@@bryankia I admit it does make you nearly immune to crowd control. However there are a number of pretty savage damage spells that can still hit you like Sunbeam or upcast Vampiric Touch. It looks like a Death Knight would still ruin you with Hellfire Orb and Destructive Wave. You are incorrect about Faerie Fire however, it eliminates your disadvantage to be hit (advantage and disadvantage cancel) and that 2d6 recoil only works inside of 10 feet. I assume you are running a published module, otherwise your DM just needs better creature choice like how a Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity says he isn't AFFECTED by your spells so he can just ignore your Shadow of Moil and shut you down with Dominate Person as he can see you through Moil as if you didn't have it. If that sounds too crazy, True Sight also ignores Shadow of Moil so any high CR dragon or creature with the True Seeing spell is going to be unaffected.
@@larstollefsen1236 First off I love the back and forth. Vampiric Touch still requires a hit roll. AC 19 at disadvantage is not reliable. Sunbeam: This is a great spell unless my character is in the middle of lots of opponents then it will be a hard target. Shadow of Moil also provides resistance to radiant damage :) Death Knight: For sure unless is more to much friendly fire… then again why would a death knight care. A death knight is a CR 17 creature which is quite a challenge for a 9th level character… Faerie Fire: My new friend I am not mistaken… They cannot see my character as he is obscured not invisible “Any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it, and the affected creature or object can't benefit from being invisible.” We are not using a module and I assume we will start seeing more to the bad buys you are talking about. True sight, tremor sense, and stuff like that will become much more common. The Rakashasa is an absolute beast and if I were the GM one would be showing up :) I did not mean to say that shadow is broken. Just that it “can” be game changing agains some opponents. I think as the character gets to higher levels there will be more opponents that will be able to get around it. Be Well,
Maybe I missed it, but was Armor of Hexes even mentioned? A lot was said about the bladesinger's ability to buff their AC, but what about Hexblade's ability to just no-sell any attack that does manage to hit you half the time from your cursed enemy? Not as effective against multiple opponents at once of course, but it also doesn't take spell slots like casting shield would. It's also one of the few things that can negate a natural 20 attack roll, as those are guaranteed to hit regardless of modifiers or AC, but the AoH feature specifically says "regardless of its roll".
One of my favorite multiclasses for magic and melee is 6 levels Kensei Monk and 14 Levels College of Swords Bard. Yeah, there's no 8th or 9th level spells, but it's still good.
I played a Divine Soul Sorcerer with 2 levels of paladin... And boy was that gishy- heavy armor/shield, fighting style, divine smite with spiritual weapon. Enemies treated me like a paladin and I didn't quite have the hp to back that up but I could twinspell guiding bolt, invisibility and haste so...
I asure you, nothing is more satisfying that criting a boss with Lv5 Eldritch Smite + Banishing Smite, with happens more often than you think if you have elvhen accuracy and polearm master. Also, your damage is more consistent since you can use GWM and the invocation that adds you charisma again to your damage, thats at least 1d10+20 to your normal attacks with a halberd, 1d4+20 on a bonus action. A ring of spell storing with shield and absorb elements, plus Tomb of Levistus invocation, and you are really hard to kill. Eldritch Blast is also way better than any other attack cantrip, and you also double as the party face.
While you usually avoid talking about multi-classes, I think that's a mistake when talking about Gish, which traditionally were pretty much always multi-class characters. Based on you previous videos, how exactly a Hexadin measures up to the modified Bladesinger would be interesting to see. Tasha's in general has a lot of problems with power creep, so I can't say I am surprised that as a pure single class a Tasha's Gish would beat out everything previous. But I think even given that, the Hexadin is likely a slightly better Gish by the numbers.
Also weird request but can we get a video on the “pacts of the warlock” in addition to warlock subclasses. I just feel like the pacts; tome, blade, chain, and talisman; are like a sub-subclass
@@yooooo8600 my exact thoughts I wish they would fix them. Like remove hex warrior and improve the hexblade curse. Like maybe they are allow to move the curse to different enemies = to their proficiency(or charisma mod). At 14 level they can move the curse as much as they like, they get to use the ability = to half their proficiency rounded down per short rest; and they get 3 hit points back each time they move it after they kill someone. And that original hit points warlock level plus charisma when they dismiss/ kill the last enemy with the curse Give pact of the blade Hex Warrior at level 3 for free.
@@yooooo8600 Talisman has some pretty good invocations associated with it, like Rebuke of the Talisman, gives Warlocks an okay reaction, which is something warlocks (especially e-blast locks) don't get to use too frequently. But just the plain talisman is something that is useful in itself, the d4 can be useful, but its just the meta game info you get from the DM about rolls they are trying to be sneaky on. If they are the type of DM to ever ask you to make a perception or insight check, and then try to act coy about whether or not you failed or passed the check you can just tell them: 'I need to know whether or not I failed so I know whether I can use my talisman or not' and then they have to give you a straight forward answer of 'yes or no' according to RAW. Of course they can always overrule this as the DM. There is the 'Protection of the Talisman' invocation; which lets the wearer add a d4 to a saving throws, which also allows you to gain meta game info, if you were ever in a situation where the DM asked for saving throws, and then they get everyone's rolls and then doesn't tell everyone what is going on (most likely do to a secret curse or poison). Then you have players wondering who failed and saved, this can give you a sort of guideline to at least know the general save DC so you get a good idea of who failed or saved. (IE you know that at least whatever you rolled is higher or lower than the DC) And the very last one essentially lets the Warlock and wearer teleport to each other as long as they're on the same plane, which is admittedly the most useless feature of this pact; unless you're splitting the party. Though there may be a very slim chance you may need to get to an NPC, so you can give them the talisman and tp to them later as a sort of waypoint, and if you ever need it you can just resummon it to you on a short rest, though this is a level 12 invocation, so your party wizard would have Teleportation Circle, and they would be very close to the teleport spell.
@@charliescheirmann2926 i'll be honest I haven't looked at all of the talisman invocations in a while, I just remember seeing them initially and thinking they're not as good as chain or tome
I feel like while Bladesinger may scale better mechanically, the Hexblade scales into its role as a Gish build as the game progresses, while the Bladesinger becomes less of a Gish and more of a caster as it levels.
Hexblade becomes a better and better duelist over time with invocations for power and mobility like eldritch smite and relentless hex and otherworldly leap
Arcane Trickster with different classes of magic would be cool too; I've been looking at creating a subclass with access to Transformation spells to create a parkour specialist.
Totally agree. The limitation of the schools of magic & 1/3 spellcasting really bring down the potential. I'd really like to see a GISH that uses CON for their casting ability. It would really help out their ability focuses.
@@ReallyRobEgan I'm not a fan of CON as a casting stat, mainly because literally every character wants CON already. It essentially reduces the number of stats they need to less than most other classes. For example, a typical Wizard wants INT for spells, CON for HP, and DEX for AC. A theoretical CON based gish would have CON for spells AND HP, and then either STR or DEX for AC. Fighters and Rouges are the only classes that only need 2 stats, but they arguably also have the least versatility. Fighters generally just hit things really hard, while Rouges tend to situationally do good damage, while being a bit of a skill monkey.
Having DMed for a bladesinger, I can assure it is completely unbalanced, OP, and outclasses both regular fighters and regualar wizard subclasses (maybe except divination with portent in certain situations)
@@davidlindsay5905 It's basically a wizard who's hard to hit, with a respectable melee option. Cantrips really help spell slot economy with all the casters, so mainly it's about the being hard to hit. It gets a lot of sweet bonuses at lvl 2 and 6, pretty good at 10 too, so it comes on strong early (pretty OP for a while there), but it's not too OP at high level (compared to many other options). There's a lot of D&D play which occurs at those low to middle levels though.
I was looking at an Eldritch Knight with a 3 level dip in Battle Smith to be able to go all INT on attack ability and spell ability as a gish. This could also benefit the Bladesinger.
You can't really dump Str and Dex if you need to wait until level 6(!) for your character to work (and by that time you don't have Extra Attack or 2nd level spells). Also this character doesn't reach 2nd level spells until level 10 and 3rd level spells until level 16!
starting Artificer 1 and going the rest of the way in Bladesinger Wizard is the best bang for your buck. Getting Con/Int save proficiencies and a small bit of extra health is soooo good for wizard
That, and a multiclass mix of 6 Bard 14 Sorceror yields some dope spells to upcast, metamagic and another set of subclass features to suit your tastes. Even light on feats, it's strong and fun.
I just had a great time as a swords bard. I was just evil to the DM's in adventure league and at level 10 I took counter spell and from there mostly just used my spell slots to negate any enemy Spellcaster's existence. It broke so many encounters.
College of Swords Bard with a 1-level Hexblade dip is just lethal. Gaining the ability to attack with CHA, use a shield and the Shield Spell along with Hexblade's Curse is a whole lot for just a 1-level dip. Add War Caster and Resilient CON feats down the line and you can truly do it all on the battlefield.
I don't think that the Eldritch Knight gets enough spell slots to feel like a Gish. Bard is a decent contender, as is Warlock, but the spell selection and martial abilities are a bit lacking.
@@xaviervega468 EKs don't even get Fireball until 13th level. Until then, EKs best spells are basically Shield and Fog Cloud. So a defense specialist with a smoke bomb.
@@greycat5383, so I've been playing a fire genasi EK with 2 levels of war mage wizard, and he had access to about 19 spells at level 7, between cantrips, 1st-level spells, and ritual casting. He is hilariously versatile. I got a ring of spell storing for him, and he has more than enough spell slots by carrying over spells from slow days and the two levels of wizard. He's basically the utility caster of the party. The rogue and I have a ton of fun together. So for the benefits of an EK over other fighters, here's what I've got to say. The defensive capabilities of shield, absorb elements, and protection from Evil and Good is pretty nuts. They almost never fail Concentration checks to keep minor buffs going. I can scout with find familiar (the bat is my favorite). They can blast crowds with AoE bursts (burning hands, thunderwave, dragon breath on a familiar, etc.). They have some pretty nifty control spells, between fog cloud, grease, levitate. He can travels pretty dang well, between jump, featherfall, and expeditious retreat. He scratches that magical itch that I would otherwise be unable to get with a martial character.
I honestly feel like the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight should have been 1/2 casters, rather than 1/3 casters. Make them at least like a Paladin, Artificer, or Ranger and maybe add bonus Schools for each. Like maybe Conjuration for Eldritch Knights and Divination for Arcane Tricksters. Then people would want to play them more lol. I actually Hombrewed my own Class with Subclasses for one of my players that wanted to play one of these, but, you know, better.
I have never had so much fun with a character as my bladesinger (maxed dex and int, dumped con) my party has proclaimed me a "glass tank" and it is glorious. Until I get scratched, I'm invincible, and the healer takes care of me when I do. It took until level 8 for my hp to catch up to my AC. Plus just being a wizard is the best super power you can want. And by being a wizard that stays alive, you negate the wizard's one weakness. Throw in False Life and/or Warding Bond and I'm good to go.
I was in a AL campaign and we had a bladesinger and I had a cleric/warlock and the difference was huge when were played side by side. * I had AC 18 to start and 20 by 3rd-level. He struggled to get that even at 6th or so. * He had to waste time with buffs just to get his AC up. Meanwhile, I'd be getting hex up. He really hurt if caught unaware. * His stats were more of an issue. I could dumb more and could use ASI's for feats. * I was more flexible. Better ranged damage with EB, better melee damage with polearm mastery + hex. And I have better AC and hit points, plus better defensive abilities armor of agathys. I even had ritual caster feat (so a ton of ritual spells), plus all the cleric rituals and healing. * I always had the darkness + devil's sight thing, plus misty step as a get out of jail or low-level encounter ender. * By 7th+ levels, neither of us were great in melee. Hill giants could blow through either of us pretty quickly. Unless we were tossing off high level spells (such as greater invisibility). It was often better for either of use to stay back. If I had to tank, it was trickery... fight defensively and use PAM to get reaction attacks when folks closed. We had a lot of fun together. Often buffing each other was one of us with enter melee. However, he especially had more issues going into melee and have way better options just staying out of melee and casting spells offensively. I did slightly more damage in melee than EBing, but as soon as there was a martial in the party, EBing and spells were often easier as you didn't need to run from foe to foe or risk taking a crit. I think the idea of the gish rarely lives up to the reality of them under the rules.
@@lovelessissimo Not sure I would with my cleric/warlock. He did mention that he'd probably not play that class again. I was a lot older and experienced, so my character was build more around flexibility and roleplaying, so she could more naturally adapt to different parties (stay staying back an EBing, or heal, or greater invisibility on the rogue rather than provide him a flanking buddy, etc.) or the frontline issues at higher levels (I'd often just polymorph vs. both trying to fight in melee) She also had ritual casting and outdoor skills she useful out of combat. Some of these might help his bladesinger, and there were lots of AL games (we often had three tables running) where we could divide up such that his character was more useful. However, reality for his was his character was disappointing. Fighters, barbarians, and paladins were always better tanks -- at low levels and certainly by 7th+. I was a better tank at lower levels and at higher had better other things to do when tanking didn't work. So, I can see with him (and others) where you have this idea in your head and suddenly you have someone next to you wish it generally better at most things which you want to be good in. It's happen to me with other characters. Maybe if we went back in time, I could add something to the bladesinger which would help, different spells, and such, but honestly... it seemed like a lot of work to make it even match mine while I built mine without a lot of optimization.
Sorcadin also shares the advantage of being PHB. Hexblade and non-Elf Bladesinger are Johnnies-come-lately to 5e, especially if your DM didn't allow UA.
Bladesingers are the best gish hands down. It’s a wizard with all of their spells without MC. Mine can put out over 300damage a round using spirit shroud and twf
@@havoc8600 You are still countered by saves (specially con saves) have a very low hp and are extremely reaction dependent (if you use shield then cant absorb elements or use lvl 10 feature).
I personally think that you get the best "gish" out of multiclassing. Hexblade alone is ok, but it really shines in multiclassing. Hexblade + sorcerer or paladin, and sorcerer + paladin are imo the best gish.
I like hexblade 3 (pact of the blade)/sword college 17 (half-elf for elven accuracy?). Uses a longbow (pact)/longsword (hexblade)/shield w/hex and hexblade curse. Comes in @ level 9 - 14 sweet spot.
If you roll some god stats then you can multiclass bladesinger into 2 levels of paladin which is a very powerful build. In high level campaigns though paladin 6 sorcerer 14 is king, specially an oath of the watcher and clockwork sorcerer, you can have a high ac (not as high as bladesinger), advantage on wisdom, charisma and intelligence saves, add your charisma to all saves, and the clockwork lvl 14 feature where you cannot roll below a 10 for 1 minute and enemies cannot gain advantage on you. Tashas transformation turns this class into a killing machine.
A fiend pact of the blade multiclass with fighter and a gauntlet of ogre strength. And maybe another multiclass into paladin or sorcerer at higher levels
We just wrapped a 1-20 through the starter box icespire peak, frostmaiden, and avernus. Our bladesinger was nigh invincible, could potentially get a 32 AC and rarely failed saves. We wouldn't have made it through without him. His arc was amazing, going from a cold high level Zhentarim enforcer to the doting, gentle, father of an adopted refugee, to a wounded papa wolf looking for his cub/revenge, to am immortal, redeemed and honorable celestial arbiter of justice was incredible to watch.
@@armorfrogentertainment but it’s a bard… magical secrets… not to mention that a lot of those spells are aggressive… you don’t need EVERY spell to be aggressive. Just the few that you’ll use in combat… again. You are doing the same thing they are doing. Only having a cursory thought about bard instead of actually going in depth about their options. Faerie fire, hold person (natural crits with every attack), mirror image/misty step, greater invisibility, etc… not counting magical secrets… literally every spell in the game. Didn’t even talk about the fact that charisma bards can 1 level dip in hexblade and out hexblade the hexblade…
@@armorfrogentertainment it doesn’t matter that the spell list is optimized for support… as a bard you’ll only have 2 or 3 spells per level anyway. You CAN build support but if you choose the 2 or 3 aggressive spells per level then spells like steel wind strike and destructive blast and haste then you have an entirely strong aggressive spell list. You guys just have to think. Just like it doesn’t matter what spells are on the wizard and warlock list bc you’re only gonna pick those good for gish
My favorite gish ive ever played was a paladin for 2 levels and then sorcerer. Quickening a fireball into a GFB powered by divine smite always feels amazing. Bonus points if hasted
Sorcadins are always good, but I would argue in favor of taking the paladin to level 6 to get both the two attacks per turn and that sweet, sweet, saving throw bonus. The extra HP are always nice, too.
you forgot about the Battlesmith. My favorite Gish class in 5th edition. No full spellcasting, but better than Eldritch Knight and and to hit/dmg by Int, no(t)MAD like Bladesinger or bards. It's the arcane paladin after all :)
Back in the 90s, a lot of the "D&D is stupid" hate came from the restrictions of classes. Game based on Tolkien won't let my caster use a sword? Lame. Coming back to P'inder and 5e to find that D&D was nowhere near as needlessly restrictive as it used to be was a treat.
If you want a weapon there are many good races for proficiency, such as hobgoblins and high elfs, hobgoblins are great because you can pick the weapons and get light armour proficiency too, and high elves get a free cantrip and proficiency in perception Both can also use weapons they are proficient with, at no penalty
@@NoBrakes23 IKR ? Back in the eighties, when we didn't have as much inspiration material, Gandalf and Merlin were the wizard role models and both were wielding a sword... Given how squishy mages were in melee in the first editions of DnD, the point was not about power but more about flavor, so it was often turned over by house ruling at our tables...
Eldritch Knights are not the best Gish. However Eldritch Knights are INCREDIBLY tanky, particularly when going sword and board. Their AC is consistently somewhere between excellent and exceptional and Absorb Elements ups their survivability in ways that other fighters can only dream of. Add in a Familiar for attack consistency and you are also looking at consistent good damage.
@@caseyr2520 Don't get me wrong, it's fun but isn't the best and the subclass is giving you something that competes with your attacks, when the Fighter attack action is one of the main reasons to choose a Fighter.
@@caseyr2520 No worries, just as bladesinger is a kickass wizard without a song, you can be a formidable fighter not having the heavier hitting magic. I saw EK at play and its terryfiyngly tanky.
@@caseyr2520 hey, as long as you're playing what you want to play and you're having fun nothing else matters. Eldritch Knights can be fun and you can customize it quite extensively with feats of your dm let's you trade in those ASI's.
@@grzegorzlewandowski3859 They are incredibly tanky and its honestly terrifying how tanky they are. Considering they can compete and sometimes surpass the Barbarian in tankiness (even the Totem Warrior using Bear Totem in some cases). Just one Absorb Elements or Shield can really bump up their tankiness.
I like how the actual gish were most often deployed as assassins and spies, but the melee bards are dismissed here as too rogue-like to be the best gish. That's why I prefer terms like spellsword or arcane warrior to the generic/ahistoric use of gish
This was literally build for "best gish" in my last campaign. Between shadow blade+ quickened booming blade (pre errata) for early extra attacks, smite, shield, and armor of agthys it was quite versatile and a lot to handle
@@2Cool2Geek thankfully my DM is giving me some allowances and leeway with my spells. Atm I'm only level 6 sorc, but I'm already showing my gish abilities. I use flame blade and green flame blade (he's allowing Flame Blade to be treated as a weapon for Smite and blade cantrips due to a special backstory item I started with) and we're using pre Errata blade cantrips since none of us liked the change. We have a stats page in our discord and I'm at 2nd highest damage in a single turn with the highest going to our other hell knight, a fallen aasimar hexblade vengeance paladin.
i actually disagree strongly with being a full caster for a spellblade... If you have access to 9th level spells, essentially at no point is it more beneficial to use your blade instead of casting spells, in which case youre just a mage.
I agree. Imo a gish wants to fight more than anything and use magic to gain the upper hand against other full melee combatants, and cold steel against the squish. Thus I currently think EKs of myriad varieties fit the Gish archetype best in my view. SL9 is for nerds...4 attacks an action is for beasts!
A gish I really like is Eldtritch Knight multiclassed with War Wizard. Makes for a great tanky gish. War Wizard alone is not the best, but put those abilities with a fighter and it's awesome. Arcane Deflection limiting you to a cantrip isn't an issue on a fighter. I'll be playing this multiclass soon and I'm excited for it. I love EK but I also want more spellcasting. Making a strength build for plate armor so no bladesinger.
I just gave Twilight Domain, Nature Domain, and War Domain Clerics Extra Attack at Level 6, and made them use Wisdom instead of Strength or Dexterity for Attack/Damage Rolls. Couple that with the damage buff that Twilight and Nature Clerics get with weapon attacks, and at 14th Level, you're basically using a Level 1 Smite twice a turn, every turn, for free.
Being a Bladesinger makes you feel so great because you're a full spellcaster that can deal with melee combat without any problems. I always imagine a big monster trying to target you because the "Wizard is squishy" only to realize it made the worst mistake of its life. It's like getting the best grades at school and then being the captain of a sports team too
We have three gish characters in my Out of the Abyss campaign I'm in. I'm playing a bladesinger wizard (lvl 6), another player is playing a hexblade warlock (lvl 1) eloquence bard (lvl 5) multiclass, and another is playing a swashbuckler rogue (lvl 4) wild magic sorcerer (lvl 2) multiclass. We all play three entirely unique gish characters with different playstyles, and all find great success with playing differently. It's absolutely nuts how much versatility each of us have, and we're all around the same power level currently.
@@8x8johan depends on the build your going for, flaming sphere is ok, but i prefer a "dragons breath" on my familiar to use my concentration on at low to mid level
My vhuman takes mobile at lvl1 then EK at 3 and enjoys the melee CC and insane burst he can bring on short rests with surge. Bonus d8 at lvl5 offsets extra attack until war magic ay lvl7 then you're cooking with fire (or thunder as it were)
Congratulations on the huge success of the Drakkenheim kickstarter, I am looking forward to getting my copy. Could you do an episode on how to design villain / antagonist NPCs, which sub-classes work well and how to supplement role play with abilities?
We've been having these discussions since the mid 70's. Nowadays you don't need to homebrew to have great choices. Bard or Divine Soul Sorcerer would be my choices for a player today, I am, however, the forever dm. Not said in regret.
One of the best melee spellcasters is a clockwork or aberrant sorcerer. Buffing HP with false life or armor of Agathys (both of which scale with spell levels well), using melee cantrips and meta magic to boost those, plus spells like vampiric touch or others… add in mage armor, mirror image, blur, and maybe a shield proficiency via 1 level dip in another class… it becomes seriously powerful without having to split ability scores too much. Other than that though, my favorite multiclass gish concept has been Pali/Bard. A fantastic support class, and a massive damage dealer with smites.
@@seaperson5704 Hex 1 is less of an investment, gives better Cha cantrips, Cha to attack with weapons (like booming and greenflame blades), and a level 1 spell slot that grows back on SRs and is perfect for getting away with a free shield/absorb elements.
Hexblade warlocks, if you read hex warrior, you can actually notice that your pact weapon already gets the benefits of hex warrior. “If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefits extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon’s type.” This said, you can also dial wield as a hexblade. Sometimes not as potent as glaivelock, but still a really neat idea.
Extra attack isn't necessary for a good gish. Sorcadin can reliably hit and dump massive amounts of damage with a single swing, and depending which subclasses you get, can make that one hit more likely to land. Booming blade + smite = big helpings. The same multiclass could benefit from multiattacks, sure, but would exhaust resources faster as well and wouldn't get to use booming blade which scales very nicely. Multiattack, for some gish builds, can be somewhat of a waste. Not always, but it definitely isn't 100% necessary.
@@wafl7212 True and a good point if you want to take more levels in paladin than a full caster, but I want those 9th level spells and metamagic for sure. Plus, with Hold Monster or Hold Person + Quicken Spell, you can guarantee crits and have the spell slots to do so regularly. Hits will be more likely with Vengeance or Conquest Pally.
Premises I question from this thought experiment: 1) A gish needs to have 2 attacks per round. There are extremely effective Sorcadin combos that only take 2 levels of Paladin for smite. There are Wizard (Usually Abjurer or War Wizard) dips into 1 Artificer or 3 Fighter for additional weapon and armor proficiences, con saving throw proficiencies, and just overall enhanced survivability that isn't limited to a number of proficiency bonus uses per day. 2) A gish needs to be a single class/subclass. As noted above, Sorcadins and Fighter/Wizard combos can make effective gish builds that still get access to 9th level spells. Additionally, while Eldritch Knights are limited in casting, there are effective combos that get to level 7 for War Magic, then finish in War Wizard, greatly enhancing their spellcasting potential. Based on the bounds of the discussion, the Bladesinger will be more powerful/useful at level 20 because Wizard. But I would recommend the Hexblade to newer players who will have less things to keep track up while learning the game, all while being extremely effective in their initials forays into the game.
Very true! Multiclassing allows not just sorcadins, but bladesinger battlesmith. 16/4 bladesinger/battlesmith nets you 9th level spells and lets you use your INT for your melee attacks. Plus, artificer spell list nets you cure wounds and other util the wizard can't get. Sorcadin is also just busted fun lol
One of my favorite characters I've ever played was a HexBard. Crazy versatility in terms of skills and spell selection, and the bard's spell slots work well with Warlock spellcasting to spam Shield or Absorb Elements. Depending on how you want to lean, can choose Sword Bard to focus on melee, or Lore bard to lean more into buff/control/other fun spells with magical secrets.
The biggest problem with gish builds is that you can never truly balance attacking and casting. If you choose one then you're leaving out the other. You could argue that some classes allow for cantrips and attacks to be mixed, but cantrips are just a small subset of what you could be doing. The best classes that get around this are ones that have a lot of spells that use bonus actions. If you can cast it as a bonus action or control it as a bonus action, that leaves your action open for attacking. Plain and simple, the paladin, ranger, and sorcerer are the 3 best classes for accomplishing this. Most especially, mixing sorcerer and paladin is the best mix of all. Paladin 2/ divine soul sorcerer X gives you just short of full casting, access to most every close combat spell you could dream of, the ability to quicken cast any spell (allowing for more melee), access to great armor and Con saves, and the ability to smite with your SCAGtrip attacks. It's easily the ultimate gish. No questions asked. All of the flavor with minimal sacrifice. Make it a hill dwarf, and you've mitigated the HP issue of a sorcerer.
Great Video! I would add that any Pact of the Blade Warlock, regardless of Patron could make an excellent Gish, though not as potent as the Hexblade. Also, any Mountain Dwarf caster can be a bit of a Gish, with proficiency in Medium Armor and some Martial Weapons. Elf casters can also work like this with a +2 to DEX and some martial weapon proficiencies, although you probably won't get extra attack either of these ways. Lastly, you can get some cheesy "battle mage" builds by taking one or two levels in fighter or cleric to get weapon and armor proficiencies, and multi classing into a full caster for the rest of your levels.
I think the fact that Eldritch Knight isn't a class on its own is a huge waste. If it would've been a half caster with access to the entire wizard spell list then it could truly be a viable gish meant for the frontline and an option for those who do not want to play a paladin.
I'm enjoying my Fighter/Warlock, but there's no way it is the most efficient or optimized gish. Battlemaster does appreciate the Warlock's high CHA, though.
Swashbuckler/hexblade rocks even at low levels, and rules in long campaigns (I feel weird there is not one campaign I have dm'd that has been lower than level 15. Most go all the way to level 20.
@@zero11010 It was my first 5e character, and I was not getting solid info from the other players about what they were going to play. I knew I wanted to multiclass, and Warlock looked interesting. Beyond that it fit the backstory parameters that the DM set forward. Started Fighter 1, then Warlock 1. Wasn't sure how it was going to go from there. Party members were caster heavy, (though we've had a slight rotation of players,) and Fighter made more sense. Currently Fighter 7 Warlock 2, and thought it was going to stay a 2 level dip, but we now have a Bard that's getting sturdier, a Bladesinger, and a Ranger. So at least two more levels of Warlock might give some good utility.
Yall sleeping on Swords Bard. They brought up multiclass but didn't mention that 1 level dip from bard to hexblade make swords bard better than Hexblade in every way... There's plenty spells in there to increase your attack damage or make you more accurate as a swords bard... Faerie Fire works with both spells and attacks... Hold person... auto crits?? You aren't using every spell in the bard list... just the ones that you need to make you Gish. Then with a HB dip they get armor of agathys, hex, shield, hellish rebuke, etc... . Bard is D8, has Dueling and Two-Weapons fighting style (unlike bladesinger or hexblade), Flourish is an actual feature that increases damage and adds a melee feature and can increase your AC by a LOT, and has access to great Gish spells through Ranger and Paladin magical secrets (steel wind strike, destructive wave, smites, aoe attacks..)... Yall sleeping. The only thing Bladesinger has over Swords Bard is the new extra attack feature (but with a one level dip in hexblade that is mostly mitigated).
The best Gish I’ve ever personally witnessed was a very seldom used combo that my buddy used. He was all the way at level 20, and just took two levels of fighter and the rest was necromancy wizard. It was super broken and toxic, not helped by the fact that he was lawful evil. But yeah, it’s crazy what a big difference it makes just getting martial weapons, shields, heavy armor, second wind, and ESPECIALLY action surge. Action surge alone opens up so many ridiculous combos.
@@funny8781 2 levels of fighter means action surge, which means 3 spells in one turn (action, bonus action, and action surge), which can be DEVASTATING if you pick the right spells. Think about doing Finger of Death and Disintegrate in the same round, or something similar.
I think a better combo is fighter dip then blade singer the rest of the way that’ll give you duelist fighting style and make you pretty competent in melee you also get second attack and get to keep 9th level spells
As long as we are talking FF and not Thay lol. The clockwork sorcadin, the artificer dipped wizard (of your favourite school), the palabard, a high level arcana cleric, bring the mixture of "white" and "black" magic. If you add the Ravnica backgrounds and the dragonmarked races (specially the healing halfling) you can make a really all rounded character
I’m surprised the Battlesmith Artificer wasn’t mentioned, it may not be a full caster or get necessarily “arcane” spells, but using your int stat to attack with magic weapons and getting armor proficiencies, higher hit dice, and all that allow for some more beefy giths. Plus you could say your steel defender looks like a drake, play a small race, and ride them into battle like the OG giths
I really feel like you didn't take the Warlock getting spells back on a short rest into true context, and there are insane things that can be done with Invocations. Devil's Sight grants advantage to the warlock and disadvantage to those attacking him, and the extra fishing for crits really ties in with smite. Things like Relentless Hex, Tomb of Levistus, and Trickster's Escape can be game breaking
Devil's sight only gives the advantage you are talking about if you use a spell slot on Darkness. Another slot on hex and then no more magic for that combat.
Tbf they did specifically mention devils sight and darkness. I love hexblades ...but relentless hex is just basically 1 free Misty Step that only works after you've hexed/cursed your target, and since all 3 are bonus actions you can't do it until round 2.
At higher tiers of play Wizards become so powerful that staying on the frontline and hitting things with a sword just seems beneath them. Bladesingers are great gishes but high level wizards don't need to be a gish, and some of the other wizard subclasses offer better benefits in the long term.
This is exactly what I was thinking. The Hexblade will maintain a gish play style throughout a campaign, but the Bladesinger will end up benefitting more from just being a wizard. Which, to me, makes it less of a gish at higher tiers. It's still badass though.
I feel like it's less "magic is super powerful and op lol" and more "the bladesinger will be outscaled in damage and fucking die on the front lines past level 14" personally. Like, don't get me wrong, they're tough *for a wizard.* But they still have the lowest HD, they're still MAD so likely low con, and every single spell you cast for the sake of protecting yourself is a spell you aren't casting for the sake of helping the team.
I am going to be honest, I am loving playing a Bladesinger and most of the cons aren't to bad for me. Sure its a risk to get knocked our but frankly I don't want my characters to be invulnerable. Having lots of fun with my Tabaxi BladeSinger.
I'm only at 6:42. This feels like you wanted to make a video to devote more time to your (odd) love of the hexblade subclass. I don't think I agree with your requirements. According to what you've got an Eldritch Knight isn't a gish because they cannot cast 9th level spells. Even though, they can do an action with 8 greatsword attacks one round and cast polymorph the next round (and have access to fireball and counter spell as you mentioned in your intro). I also don't agree that they need to be an arcane caster to be a gish. Any melee focused cleric and all paladins should be considered a gish. Rangers should be considered gish characters and even some druid builds that focus more on melee combat. The true goal is to blend powerful magic and effective melee capabilities. If you're going to discount a character that never gets level 5 spells, I think you should also have limitations on what counts as meaningful melee combat. 9th level spells put a character in line with the best level 20 offensive casters in the game. So, the melee capabilities should be equal to a level 20 barbarian or fighter? I mean, you don't value the spell casting ability of someone who maxs out with equivalent of 7th level spells, but you're on board with someone who maxes out in melee with a 5th level ability?
@@DungeonDudes spoilers! I haven't gotten there yet! (kidding) Still watching. I got to the list of requirements and I felt like you were discounting a lot of character types that do fill the combination role. You called them out as honorable mentions (and then discounted them). I do not think a Hexblade with a 5% extra crit chance, and a minor bonus to damage on ONE target ... three times per day is going to be anywhere near the output of a fighter or barbarian at the same level. If you don't follow page 84 of the DMG and don't do anywhere near the 6-8 medium-hard encounters per day with 2 short rests to break that up you've wildly changed the balance of anything that recharges on a short rest. Dramatically changing the intended balance of the player classes does run the risk of making the Hexblade more powerful than intended. But, I can't make guesses about what ways you play the game that aren't presented in the core rules.
@@zero11010 We needed to narrow the field, otherwise this video was going to be 2 hours long since there are so many ways to make a "gish" type character in D&D 5e, and the definition of what is and is not a "gish" is subject to debate. We wanted to acknowledge that and get to the meat of our comparison. Hexblades have *considerably* more happening to influence their damage output than Hexblade's Curse. The complete package of spells, invocations, feats, and class features does indeed rival the round-over-round output of a Fighter or Barbarian even across an adventuring day. You don't have to make guesses about the way we play the game at all! You can watch our campaigns here on RUclips :)
@@DungeonDudes I loved the self promotion! That was great. I would like to watch you guys play. I've been subscribed for a long time to your channel and I'm curious about how your games go! I think the real test is how well the gish performs with only one part of their abilities and how they compare with others who are 100% that thing. I did some quick napkin math (I've previously written a complex algorithm to determine average effectiveness to do comparisons and I did not use it for this). I only compared level 10 eldritch knight and level 10 hexblade. then level 20 of each. The effectiveness of things like feats tend to even out with an edge going to the fighter who just gets more feat options as they level. At level 10 the melee output of both is roughly the same. The big issue is that the curse won't amount for much until level 14 (most campaigns don't get that high). So, it's basically two people with the same main attribute swinging the same weapon the same number of times. The Hexblade has the curse (kinda) and the fighter has the action surge (which is big on burst damage). As far as spells go the Hexblade has roughly one spell to use in every other fight. Booming blade is about the same as not using booming blade and attacking twice. The fighter is able to use one spell in all 6-8 encounters in a day with 7 spell slots. The defenses are roughly the same with the fighter able to wear heavy armor and having a slight advantage but the hexblade able to negate 33% of attacks from one enemy in every other encounter for a boost in fights with big bads and almost nothing meaningful in mundane fights. At level 10 it's roughly a draw without either clearly being ahead. Offensively they're about equal. Defensively the fighter will take less bursty damage with a slightly higher AC, and the Hexblade able to tank bosses more effectively. At level 20 the two are still very close. Booming blade for this hexblade does about double what attacking twice does. The level 20 fighter, however, does slightly more with their four attacks than the booming blade does, and this fighter also has one round in each fight of the day where they double that with action surge now possible twice per short rest with 2 fights per short rest). This also means that if for some reason the Hexblade cannot cast spells the Eldritch Knight is able to double the Hexblade melee output on most turns and quadruple it on a surge. I'm not saying the Eldritch Knight is better than your precious Hexblade. I'm saying it's worth leaving on your list and not dismissing outright. I think the Hexblade suffers from power creep and it does about as much damage as the Eldritch Knight in melee (not as much as a champion, or paladin, or barbarian). I think the spell casting capabilities of the Hexblade are situationally better than what the Eldritch Knight can do, but that isn't the only thing that matters in a gish and what the Eldritch Knight can do without magic is much better than what the Hexblade can do without magic. When you combine it all together the two are about equal with each having areas where they excel.
Anyone want to champion the hexblade? Any feats the hexblade can take the eldritch knight can also take (and the knight has two more feats they can take). Most of the spells the hexblade can cast do not have ongoing benefits. Elemental weapon is minor. Wall of light has great potential, but better with eldritch blast push/pull. It’s hard for those things to compete with haste potential giving the knight 8 attacks every round and 12 with a surge. Or bestow curse on a single target increasing damage by up to 8D8 in a round with a sustained damage increase of about 4D8 on top of regular melee attacks. The ability to reduce the number of times you’re hit by one opponent at a time is huge for a hexblade. They won’t have as high of an armor class. So, they will get hit more. But, some percentage of the time that will get undone (starting at level 6 and massively picking up at level 14). With (at most) two spell slots to use per battle it will be harder for the hexblade to use defensive and reactive magic. At lower level the hexblade has one spell slot to use per fight and spending that on a shield would be pretty painful. It seems easier for the knight to just use one first level slot for that or absorb elements which the hexblade doesn’t get an option for. Both get counterspell which is good. I don’t think the eldritch knight is that great. I see it to be about equal as the hexblade. I don’t understand why these guys love it so much. Would love if someone could help me see something I’m missing.
That's the worst MAD you can get in a character. If that's your plan your better off with Paladin2/College of Swords 18. Just remember you need intelligent spell choice and Bard has many of the most savage control spells in the game.
@@larstollefsen1236 already played sword Bard paladin with 3 lvls of assassin upcasting shadow blade. It's another charcater concept i don't think it as a pure GISH cuz Bard has more support oriented spells. U might think of lvl paladin at high levels Just as a cherry on the cake
@@Andre_Situation First, you already screwed the build when you took Rogue. Second, have you _read_ the bard spell list? It has some of the most savage control spells in the game. You can easily shut down entire encounters and clean up with your weapon. Yes it has really good Buff options on it but Debuff is there in force too. Sure Shadow Blade will deliver good DPR but a Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Confusion, or many of the other control spells allows you to finish encounters with either little or no damage taken. Making your enemies helpless is far more powerful then just some damage.
Clearly my next character needs to be a Bladesinger/hexblade.. I'll call it a 'Hexsinger'! 🤘 Also I now know what my heavy metal band name will be if I ever start one! 😂
While referring to the Bladesinger: "At the end of the day, you're still a Wizard." - Monty The real debate in this video: When you hear the phrase, "a Wizard", do you hear it in Gandalf's voice.. Or Hagrid's?
@@tiagopedrosa6746 According to the rules of bladesinging, as long as you don't use 2 hands on a weapon, you can have staff in one hand, sword in the other. Bladesinger delivers a Gandalf with 9th level spells.
@@thegoblin3629 They can, but Paladin, specifically Sorcadins can do it better... and also Gandalf is a serve of the Valar, a paladin one could say. Fits more in Lore and Powerplay
just a random note my hexblade/paladin multiclass dealt my most insane single hit damage ever {with some help} in a game saving tpk situation of 437. he was warlock 11 paladin 3 with a crit on a GWM glaive strike powered up by banishing smite and 2 level 5 smites which was all doubled by a grave cleric. the kill was on Demogorgon after a party member summoned him {accidently of course} who was a round from killing off the last members of the party
My Celestial Bladelock is pretty broken. I personally like it better than the hexblade because I think it has objectively better class features. I’m planning on taking 17 levels in warlock (lvl 10 rn) and then 3 levels of Devotion Paladin for dueling and their channel divinity. At level 20 you have a +14 to hit and assuming spirit shroud is up and both attacks hitting you deal 2d8(rapier)+10(Dex)+10(Life Drinker)+10(Oath of Devotion)+5(Radiant Soul)+6(Ultimate Pact Weapon, UA)+4(Dueling)+4d8(spirit shroud) Which comes out to 1 round of damage dealing 6d8+45 with damage types being piercing, necrotic, and radiant. Plus you’ll have 18d6 you can use to heal on a bonus action (5d6 at a time), 22 temp hp per short rest (your party gets 14 too), and Searing Vengeance which lets you revive at half health when you hit 0hp while dealing 2d8 against enemies within 30 feet and blinding all of said enemies should you need to make an escape. It’s my favorite possible build in the game :)
I have been waiting forever you guys to talk on this topic! So I am playing in a campaign that I wanted to play a Gish character. I was very close to using a Bladesinger. Ultimately what I decided on is a multi class character that pairs a Kensei Monk and an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. I will get extra attack at 5th level with the monk as well as the ability to use two hands on a longsword (Kensei only) for a d10 weapon attack at 3rd. Not to mention unarmored defense right out the gate. And the A.M. Sorcerer I will get metamagic and a ton of extra spells. I also took the telekinetic feat. My character, Atticus Greywood, has been extremely effective thus far and I am only at level 3 so not much has come online yet. I play him very much like a Jedi. His catch phrase is,”the Weave gives me strength.” Lol. He is an amazing multi class option for the Gish category. Thank you both so much! I listen to every episode!! Congrats on the successful launch!
The smaller hit die is just glossed over and ignored. What good is a high AC when you get oneshotted by a nat 20 to hit? Most wizards don't get over 100 hit points by level 15. Caleb Widowgast being a prime example of this. Being squishy for a martial feature sucks. And assuming they aren't a race that has inherently a Higher AC like a Tortuga they will have to be at the mercy of a DMs gift of magic items for armor class. Shield can only do so much. And if your DM doesn't ask "Does a *Insert number* hit" or roll in front of the players, it's a reaction that can be wasted and subsequently a spell slot. Blade song is cool but I can't stress enough that wizards are squishier than Warlocks.
Good to see they finally admitted that they were sleeping on Swords bard. My comment from 8 months ago before April 5ths Swords bard video. "Yall sleeping on Swords Bard. They brought up multiclass but didn't mention that 1 level dip from bard to hexblade make swords bard better than Hexblade in every way... There's plenty spells in there to increase your attack damage or make you more accurate as a swords bard... Faerie Fire works with both spells and attacks... Hold person... auto crits?? You aren't using every spell in the bard list... just the ones that you need to make you Gish. Then with a HB dip they get armor of agathys, hex, shield, hellish rebuke, etc... . Bard is D8, has Dueling and Two-Weapons fighting style (unlike bladesinger or hexblade), Flourish is an actual feature that increases damage and adds a melee feature and can increase your AC by a LOT, and has access to great Gish spells through Ranger and Paladin magical secrets (steel wind strike, destructive wave, smites, aoe attacks..)... Yall sleeping. The only thing Bladesinger has over Swords Bard is the new extra attack feature (but with a one level dip in hexblade that is mostly mitigated)."
The more I look into this the less I like your list logic. You're considering the Bladesinger one of the best gish characters in the game and you've discounted the eldritch knight entirely. You (intentionally) discounted the eldritch knight because of the spells levels they don't get, without taking the incredible combat ability they have as a fighter ... somehow. I just built out a gish using a design from a power gamer channel talking about how awesome the Bladesinger is (great content on their channel). I'm comparing it and a hexblade and an eldritch knight at level 5 and at level 12. The level 12 Eldritch Knight has 50% more hit points than the level 12 Bladesinger (standard array for attributes on both 74HP with 16AC vs 112HP with 18AC). That is a HUGE difference for anyone who is on the front lines. The Bladesinger is walking around 10% easier to hit than the Eldritch Knight and with 38 additional hit points. The bladesong helps immensely, without a doubt. But, you've got 6-8 encounters each day (page 84 DMG) and you have 4 uses of bladesong. That means for 2-4 fights per day you'll have the lower AC. You can use spell slots to enhance that ... that's what the spells are for. The Bladesinger will have roughly 15 spell slots available (give or take what exactly you do with arcane recovery). So, they will have roughly two spell slots to use in each encounter. Shield is outstanding and it lasts for a 1 round. Mirror image is the clear winner for the defensive benefit without using concentration, but even that won't always be an option. You can assume combat lasts about 5 rounds in each encounter. That's 30-40 rounds of combat each day. And, if you use one of your two spell slots on shield you're back to the low resting armor class for the other 4 rounds of combat in that fight. In fights without bladesong you may be forced use use a powerhouse defensive spell that requires concentration which will destroy the class' ability to deal damage. I'm NOT saying the Bladesinger is bad. I'm NOT saying the Eldritch Knight is better overall. Factually, the Eldritch Knight is better defensively. What makes a gish separate from a pure spellcaster is their ability to avoid hits and take hits and also dish out some pain with weapons. You guys seem to not be thinking about the defensive part very much. What I think you should have done is build out each at a couple different levels. I'd suggest 5, 12 and 20 (I hate level 20 stuff because games don't get there ... but children will want to hear about it). Then simulate a 7 combat encounter day at each level. Assume there are other player characters (so selfish tricks like darkness and devil's sight are usable in every encounter because in the real world there are other players too). Assume the key class has to deal damage to kill 2-5 opponents in each of those 7 encounters. Assume the key class has to receive attacks in each round which may hit and may break the key character's concentration. How many rounds does it take for the key class to complete all 7 encounters? When you look at things over the course of a whole day suddenly ... I can do "a bajillion damage in one action" matters a lot less because that's one enemy ... there are more ... and you have lots of encounters to get through. Burning all your resources for one nova action doesn't always make for the best solution to a problem. Additionally steady reliable damage, and steady reliable defensive capacity starts to really shine as you're looking at a full day of adventuring rather than a theoretical nova round of offensive and some general thoughts about the spells outside of combat.
I put 6 levels into college of swords bard before putting in warlock levels. This gives access to some of the really good combat spells and invocations with a healthy reserve of lower level spell slots to use for utility. Being able to drop an eldritch smite without sacrificing too much casting ability is really nice.
You're way overstating the importance of 9th level spellcasting. And in reality, someone that has to train martial skills and magic knowledge is NEVER going to be an expert of both. Paladins might only get 5th level spells but they have endurance that your bladesinger wizard or swords bard will never have!! Higher AC potential, More HP, Self Healing, Magic and Deadly Melee. And you dismiss them out of hand!
"DMs; don't give your bladesinger a Cloak of Displacement."
Imma need you to really keep it down, my DM literally just gave my Bladesinger a Cloak of Displacement...
My dm gave my bladesinger one by session 5.
Oddly... I don't think I would want a cloak of displacement. spellsingers are pretty solid without
Got to choose 1 rare and 3 uncommon magic items for an evil campaign. >:)
Honestly I'm kinda surprised there isn't gish sorcerer subclass. I think being born into magic and having the power innately just fits so well into using both spell and sword together.
Right! Sorcerer seems like the perfect fit for a gish character, but WotC just keeps shipping them farther down the squishy line. With every other class getting martial and magic subclasses I honestly don't get why sorcerer has been ignored in this aspect
Lemme tell you about divine soul Dwarves...
Very true. Just innately "knowing" magic frees up a lot of time to learn martial weapons the old fashioned way.
There would be a good argument to your DM if using an Eldridge Knight that they could be charisma based caster; if you thought along those lines
Right? At the very least why not make them some kind of martial buff class like the magus in pathfinder, burning spell slots to increase weapon attack and damage rolls?
The closest I've gotten was getting my dm to allow my eldritch knight to use charisma and I played him as a sorcerer hiding among the knights who just subtle casted certain spells. It turned out pretty fun because eldritch knight with shadow blade is actually pretty fun.
My bard is BY FAR the highest damage dealing character in our party.
Animate objects with 10 small silver knives.
Spiritual weapon (magical secrets)
Find greater steed (griffin) (magical secrets)
Dissonant whispers for my go-to leveled attack
Eldritch blast for my cantrip damage (picked up with spell sniper feat)
I've been messing around with the gift for the last 2 years since this video came out. I find that multiclassing the blade singer always outpaces the hexblade. Certainly there are great combinations of hexblade, paladin and or sorcerer. Obviously giving your spell casting and hitting ability the same stat (charisma) has a lot of advantages. If you want to focus more on being a tank, maxing your stats or spell casting you can pick paldin, warlock or sorcerer respectively as your first choice and then gain the armor class, stat boost or spell casting advantages that come with those classes. Then dip into whatever other thing you're trying to do. For example, paladin goes warlock becomes an oath-breaker now they can hit and spell cast with hex and then go crazy on sorcery. Pumping charisma and Constitution the whole time. Certainly you'd be a great charter. But you'll never be as powerful as a lead singer who took four levels of fighter (for the extra feat or ability) and gained action surge. Because that guy can dump two fireballs in a turn. You'll never be as sneaky as a wizard who took a few levels of rogue and gained all the extra bonus actions and lock picking and sneak attack skills. Create a Shadow blade, and cast darkness, turn invisible and sneak up on your enemies and the whole time having a plethora of bonus actions to disengage after double hitting and booming blading someone. That last one is something like 5 d8. That's like making five attacks. But you're doing it at level 6 or 8. Start off with two levels of fighter and then dumped the rest into bladesinger. Now you can be a charging great sword wielding full spell casting armor wearing shield casting beast. You won't get much use out of blade song that way. But you could always carry a longsword instead and that would be pretty equivalent. You could also go sword and bored and be relatively unhittable and take shield master so you can sit on the front line and support your allies while also being able to blast enemies into oblivion. Just simply put the advantages of mixing the wizard with one of the other two great fighting classes make for an instant s tier. You can also mix ek with the wizard... That gives you a bunch of advantages. Like being able to use your special extra attack make a regular attack and then use your bonus action to make another attack. Your spell casting is now memorized and so you don't need your spell book anymore. If you go EK first you gain all your heavy armor benefits and weapon proficiency. really plays into the Gish roll nicely. And you still gain some spell casting levels and spell slots on the levels you spend on fighter.
I have two characters I want to play in the near future, both of them multiclass:
- A drow Hexblade//Swords Bard
- A high-elf Bladesinger/Rune Knight
I want to play the former to see what's the best I can make out of a Hexblade and a Bard put together and always search for ways on how to improve that combo. For the later, I just want to play it for story's sake, because I've liked the concept of an elf who was raised by giants and develops the best of two completely different worlds.
Level 11 Divination Wizard. (or lower level if you can get your hands on a Lvl 6 spell scroll of Magic Jar).
Use the Magic Jar spell to take your soul out of your body. Possess a powerful Martial stat block (outside of legendary resistances, they auto fail the check due to portent dice).
Now you have great physical stats, multiattack, and you still have all your Wizard class features.
Your Achilles' heel is someone casting Dispel Magic on you, so use Nistul's Magic Aura to hide the spell.
If your body dies, you can use Portent dice to cheat the save vs death, though I recommend a high Charisma score and the Resilient (CHA) feat to make this even more foolproof.
I play different classes all the time, but i think basically all of my favorite characters could be described as a strength based gish. I love using melee combat with a few ogmenting spells or alternative options for combat and then having endless spells for social/exploration situations.
My favorite is a multiclass Bladesinger Wizard/Pact of the Blade Warlock/Battlemaster fighter. Using Bladesong, Hex, Hexblades curse, and Action Surge creates the ability to attack 11 times in one round. I can attack with my action doing 1d8 slashing plus 1 due to improved pact weapon invocation, plus 2 due to Dueling fighting style, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my Extra attack feature from Bladesinger I will cast the eldritch blast cantrip. Since I’m over 11 levels I get 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my level two Fighter ability of action surge I get another action which will allow me to attack with my action doing 1d8 slashing plus 1 due to improved pact weapon invocation, plus 2 due to Dueling fighting style, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. Using my Extra attack feature from Bladesinger I will cast the eldritch blast cantrip. Since I’m over 11 levels I get 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse. I will then use the Metamagic adept Feat to spend two sorcery points for metamagic Quickened Spell allowing me to cast Eldritch blast as a Bonus action for 3 blasts each at 1d10 plus my charisma modifier, plus 1d6 necrotic from Hex, and plus my Proficiency bonus (plus 4 at 12th level) from hex blades curse.
That is 11 attacks per round equaling - 2d8 plus 14 plus 2d6 and 9d10 plus 36 plus 9d6. That’s anywhere from 72 - 222 points of damage per round if they all hit.
Funny thing is you can easily make a hybrid of the swords bard AND the hexblade. When you do that they compliment and amplify one another filling in all of the other ones short comings.
For gish warlock spells, you guys forgot armor of agathys and shadow of moil, I am very disappointed
My warlock with Shadow of Moil is wrecking my GM’s game. I have offered to stop using it as it is so game altering.
@@bryankia Truly? Moil is just obscurement and Thorns.
@@larstollefsen1236 Yes. Obscurement stops almost every save or suck spell. It ignores fairy fire. Give my character advance to hit and disadvantage to be hit. Do a quick scan of all the spell that require you to see your opponent. My character is still susceptible to area effect spells but as he is in the middle of the bad guys which makes using area effect spells very challenging. Oh and I can move around the battlefield without worry of attacks of opportunity.
@@bryankia I admit it does make you nearly immune to crowd control. However there are a number of pretty savage damage spells that can still hit you like Sunbeam or upcast Vampiric Touch. It looks like a Death Knight would still ruin you with Hellfire Orb and Destructive Wave. You are incorrect about Faerie Fire however, it eliminates your disadvantage to be hit (advantage and disadvantage cancel) and that 2d6 recoil only works inside of 10 feet.
I assume you are running a published module, otherwise your DM just needs better creature choice like how a Rakshasa's Limited Magic Immunity says he isn't AFFECTED by your spells so he can just ignore your Shadow of Moil and shut you down with Dominate Person as he can see you through Moil as if you didn't have it.
If that sounds too crazy, True Sight also ignores Shadow of Moil so any high CR dragon or creature with the True Seeing spell is going to be unaffected.
@@larstollefsen1236 First off I love the back and forth.
Vampiric Touch still requires a hit roll. AC 19 at disadvantage is not reliable.
Sunbeam: This is a great spell unless my character is in the middle of lots of opponents then it will be a hard target. Shadow of Moil also provides resistance to radiant damage :)
Death Knight: For sure unless is more to much friendly fire… then again why would a death knight care. A death knight is a CR 17 creature which is quite a challenge for a 9th level character…
Faerie Fire: My new friend I am not mistaken… They cannot see my character as he is obscured not invisible “Any attack roll against an affected creature or object has advantage if the attacker can see it, and the affected creature or object can't benefit from being invisible.”
We are not using a module and I assume we will start seeing more to the bad buys you are talking about. True sight, tremor sense, and stuff like that will become much more common. The Rakashasa is an absolute beast and if I were the GM one would be showing up :)
I did not mean to say that shadow is broken. Just that it “can” be game changing agains some opponents. I think as the character gets to higher levels there will be more opponents that will be able to get around it.
Be Well,
Maybe I missed it, but was Armor of Hexes even mentioned? A lot was said about the bladesinger's ability to buff their AC, but what about Hexblade's ability to just no-sell any attack that does manage to hit you half the time from your cursed enemy? Not as effective against multiple opponents at once of course, but it also doesn't take spell slots like casting shield would. It's also one of the few things that can negate a natural 20 attack roll, as those are guaranteed to hit regardless of modifiers or AC, but the AoH feature specifically says "regardless of its roll".
One of my favorite multiclasses for magic and melee is 6 levels Kensei Monk and 14 Levels College of Swords Bard. Yeah, there's no 8th or 9th level spells, but it's still good.
Wizard 14 Bladesinger/ Fighter 2/Rogue 3 Swashbuckler. I picked up TWF and Duelwield Feat and never looked back.....
I played a Divine Soul Sorcerer with 2 levels of paladin... And boy was that gishy- heavy armor/shield, fighting style, divine smite with spiritual weapon.
Enemies treated me like a paladin and I didn't quite have the hp to back that up but I could twinspell guiding bolt, invisibility and haste so...
Counterpoint, put 3 levels of Hexblade on your Bladesinger.
I asure you, nothing is more satisfying that criting a boss with Lv5 Eldritch Smite + Banishing Smite, with happens more often than you think if you have elvhen accuracy and polearm master. Also, your damage is more consistent since you can use GWM and the invocation that adds you charisma again to your damage, thats at least 1d10+20 to your normal attacks with a halberd, 1d4+20 on a bonus action. A ring of spell storing with shield and absorb elements, plus Tomb of Levistus invocation, and you are really hard to kill. Eldritch Blast is also way better than any other attack cantrip, and you also double as the party face.
Awesome shirt Kelly
While you usually avoid talking about multi-classes, I think that's a mistake when talking about Gish, which traditionally were pretty much always multi-class characters. Based on you previous videos, how exactly a Hexadin measures up to the modified Bladesinger would be interesting to see. Tasha's in general has a lot of problems with power creep, so I can't say I am surprised that as a pure single class a Tasha's Gish would beat out everything previous. But I think even given that, the Hexadin is likely a slightly better Gish by the numbers.
Also weird request but can we get a video on the “pacts of the warlock” in addition to warlock subclasses. I just feel like the pacts; tome, blade, chain, and talisman; are like a sub-subclass
Talisman is ass, blade is only good for hexblade, chain is great with the invocations, tome is the best with the invocations
@@yooooo8600 my exact thoughts I wish they would fix them. Like remove hex warrior and improve the hexblade curse. Like maybe they are allow to move the curse to different enemies = to their proficiency(or charisma mod). At 14 level they can move the curse as much as they like, they get to use the ability = to half their proficiency rounded down per short rest; and they get 3 hit points back each time they move it after they kill someone. And that original hit points warlock level plus charisma when they dismiss/ kill the last enemy with the curse
Give pact of the blade Hex Warrior at level 3 for free.
@@yooooo8600 Talisman has some pretty good invocations associated with it, like Rebuke of the Talisman, gives Warlocks an okay reaction, which is something warlocks (especially e-blast locks) don't get to use too frequently.
But just the plain talisman is something that is useful in itself, the d4 can be useful, but its just the meta game info you get from the DM about rolls they are trying to be sneaky on. If they are the type of DM to ever ask you to make a perception or insight check, and then try to act coy about whether or not you failed or passed the check you can just tell them:
'I need to know whether or not I failed so I know whether I can use my talisman or not'
and then they have to give you a straight forward answer of 'yes or no' according to RAW. Of course they can always overrule this as the DM.
There is the 'Protection of the Talisman' invocation; which lets the wearer add a d4 to a saving throws, which also allows you to gain meta game info, if you were ever in a situation where the DM asked for saving throws, and then they get everyone's rolls and then doesn't tell everyone what is going on (most likely do to a secret curse or poison). Then you have players wondering who failed and saved, this can give you a sort of guideline to at least know the general save DC so you get a good idea of who failed or saved. (IE you know that at least whatever you rolled is higher or lower than the DC)
And the very last one essentially lets the Warlock and wearer teleport to each other as long as they're on the same plane, which is admittedly the most useless feature of this pact; unless you're splitting the party. Though there may be a very slim chance you may need to get to an NPC, so you can give them the talisman and tp to them later as a sort of waypoint, and if you ever need it you can just resummon it to you on a short rest, though this is a level 12 invocation, so your party wizard would have Teleportation Circle, and they would be very close to the teleport spell.
I would like to see this too.
@@charliescheirmann2926 i'll be honest I haven't looked at all of the talisman invocations in a while, I just remember seeing them initially and thinking they're not as good as chain or tome
I feel like while Bladesinger may scale better mechanically, the Hexblade scales into its role as a Gish build as the game progresses, while the Bladesinger becomes less of a Gish and more of a caster as it levels.
I am certain i can make a bladesinger far more dangerous while abusing just lv2 and 3 spells unless i need a high level screw you spell
Hexblade becomes a better and better duelist over time with invocations for power and mobility like eldritch smite and relentless hex and otherworldly leap
I’m gonna say it, but the Eldritch Knight should be it’s own class. With schools of magic as the subclasses. So much lost potential.
It has been a prestige class in the past.
Arcane Trickster with different classes of magic would be cool too; I've been looking at creating a subclass with access to Transformation spells to create a parkour specialist.
Agreed
Totally agree. The limitation of the schools of magic & 1/3 spellcasting really bring down the potential.
I'd really like to see a GISH that uses CON for their casting ability. It would really help out their ability focuses.
@@ReallyRobEgan I'm not a fan of CON as a casting stat, mainly because literally every character wants CON already. It essentially reduces the number of stats they need to less than most other classes.
For example, a typical Wizard wants INT for spells, CON for HP, and DEX for AC.
A theoretical CON based gish would have CON for spells AND HP, and then either STR or DEX for AC.
Fighters and Rouges are the only classes that only need 2 stats, but they arguably also have the least versatility. Fighters generally just hit things really hard, while Rouges tend to situationally do good damage, while being a bit of a skill monkey.
"What is the Best Gish?"
Monty: *has "Bladesinger" in his name*
Me: I feel like this is going to be biased...
It’s not biased if it’s right /j
He picks the "nickname" for each video based on the video's content.
It's different every time on these videos.
@@Floormat-ux4rw hexblade/swords bard multi disagrees
Having DMed for a bladesinger, I can assure it is completely unbalanced, OP, and outclasses both regular fighters and regualar wizard subclasses (maybe except divination with portent in certain situations)
@@davidlindsay5905 It's basically a wizard who's hard to hit, with a respectable melee option. Cantrips really help spell slot economy with all the casters, so mainly it's about the being hard to hit. It gets a lot of sweet bonuses at lvl 2 and 6, pretty good at 10 too, so it comes on strong early (pretty OP for a while there), but it's not too OP at high level (compared to many other options). There's a lot of D&D play which occurs at those low to middle levels though.
I was looking at an Eldritch Knight with a 3 level dip in Battle Smith to be able to go all INT on attack ability and spell ability as a gish. This could also benefit the Bladesinger.
My "ultimate adventurer" build is a battlesmith 3/bladesinger 17 with proficiency on trap removal skills, and probably dungeon delver.
Trading 9th level spells for MAD removal is worthwhile. I approve.
@@thegoblin3629 Wizard gets 9th level spells at level 17, so that build still gets them.
You can't really dump Str and Dex if you need to wait until level 6(!) for your character to work (and by that time you don't have Extra Attack or 2nd level spells). Also this character doesn't reach 2nd level spells until level 10 and 3rd level spells until level 16!
starting Artificer 1 and going the rest of the way in Bladesinger Wizard is the best bang for your buck. Getting Con/Int save proficiencies and a small bit of extra health is soooo good for wizard
Imagine like a 4 person party (maybe called the Gish Gang) of a Bladesinger, Hexblade Warlock, Swordsbard, and Vengence Paladin.
Boulder Parchment Shears for who gets to swing swords that fight.
The DM would have constant nightmares :)
up against a stack of halfling diviners in a greatcloak with the lucky feats...
What does gish mean?
@@angelganon8213 a fusion class made of warrior and arcane spellcaster.
I'm happy that College of Swords bard gets some love. It does provide great spellcaster/swordplay options especially when combined with few good feats
That, and a multiclass mix of 6 Bard 14 Sorceror yields some dope spells to upcast, metamagic and another set of subclass features to suit your tastes. Even light on feats, it's strong and fun.
I just had a great time as a swords bard. I was just evil to the DM's in adventure league and at level 10 I took counter spell and from there mostly just used my spell slots to negate any enemy Spellcaster's existence. It broke so many encounters.
College of Swords Bard with a 1-level Hexblade dip is just lethal. Gaining the ability to attack with CHA, use a shield and the Shield Spell along with Hexblade's Curse is a whole lot for just a 1-level dip. Add War Caster and Resilient CON feats down the line and you can truly do it all on the battlefield.
I love how versatile the Bard is in general. It's usually the class I recommend players that want to do a bit of everything.
Find Greater Stead and Haste as magical Secrets at lvl 10 to create a flying faster melee killer with some good cantrips
I don't think that the Eldritch Knight gets enough spell slots to feel like a Gish.
Bard is a decent contender, as is Warlock, but the spell selection and martial abilities are a bit lacking.
Gish is sword and sorcery. EK's definitely qualify, they just lean more heavily on the sword side of things.
@@xaviervega468 EKs don't even get Fireball until 13th level. Until then, EKs best spells are basically Shield and Fog Cloud. So a defense specialist with a smoke bomb.
@@greycat5383, so I've been playing a fire genasi EK with 2 levels of war mage wizard, and he had access to about 19 spells at level 7, between cantrips, 1st-level spells, and ritual casting. He is hilariously versatile. I got a ring of spell storing for him, and he has more than enough spell slots by carrying over spells from slow days and the two levels of wizard. He's basically the utility caster of the party. The rogue and I have a ton of fun together.
So for the benefits of an EK over other fighters, here's what I've got to say. The defensive capabilities of shield, absorb elements, and protection from Evil and Good is pretty nuts. They almost never fail Concentration checks to keep minor buffs going. I can scout with find familiar (the bat is my favorite). They can blast crowds with AoE bursts (burning hands, thunderwave, dragon breath on a familiar, etc.). They have some pretty nifty control spells, between fog cloud, grease, levitate. He can travels pretty dang well, between jump, featherfall, and expeditious retreat. He scratches that magical itch that I would otherwise be unable to get with a martial character.
I honestly feel like the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight should have been 1/2 casters, rather than 1/3 casters. Make them at least like a Paladin, Artificer, or Ranger and maybe add bonus Schools for each. Like maybe Conjuration for Eldritch Knights and Divination for Arcane Tricksters. Then people would want to play them more lol.
I actually Hombrewed my own Class with Subclasses for one of my players that wanted to play one of these, but, you know, better.
@@Zac_Frost yeah but aren't bladesingers basically 1/3 martials anyway?
I was always partial to the term "spellsword"
i am partial to spell blade
Sounds like someone is an old school Eldar Scrolls fan. 😉
For me it's always been "Redmage".
I always say sword mage
@@Dragonkindred caught me 😁 I also always liked the term "sellsword" for mercenaries and it's a nice twist on an already satisfying word.
I have never had so much fun with a character as my bladesinger (maxed dex and int, dumped con) my party has proclaimed me a "glass tank" and it is glorious. Until I get scratched, I'm invincible, and the healer takes care of me when I do. It took until level 8 for my hp to catch up to my AC. Plus just being a wizard is the best super power you can want. And by being a wizard that stays alive, you negate the wizard's one weakness. Throw in False Life and/or Warding Bond and I'm good to go.
Never expected to see you here. Totally agree though!
Ooh, imma need to make a high level villian w this build.
I was in a AL campaign and we had a bladesinger and I had a cleric/warlock and the difference was huge when were played side by side.
* I had AC 18 to start and 20 by 3rd-level. He struggled to get that even at 6th or so.
* He had to waste time with buffs just to get his AC up. Meanwhile, I'd be getting hex up. He really hurt if caught unaware.
* His stats were more of an issue. I could dumb more and could use ASI's for feats.
* I was more flexible. Better ranged damage with EB, better melee damage with polearm mastery + hex. And I have better AC and hit points, plus better defensive abilities armor of agathys. I even had ritual caster feat (so a ton of ritual spells), plus all the cleric rituals and healing.
* I always had the darkness + devil's sight thing, plus misty step as a get out of jail or low-level encounter ender.
* By 7th+ levels, neither of us were great in melee. Hill giants could blow through either of us pretty quickly. Unless we were tossing off high level spells (such as greater invisibility). It was often better for either of use to stay back. If I had to tank, it was trickery... fight defensively and use PAM to get reaction attacks when folks closed.
We had a lot of fun together. Often buffing each other was one of us with enter melee. However, he especially had more issues going into melee and have way better options just staying out of melee and casting spells offensively. I did slightly more damage in melee than EBing, but as soon as there was a martial in the party, EBing and spells were often easier as you didn't need to run from foe to foe or risk taking a crit.
I think the idea of the gish rarely lives up to the reality of them under the rules.
@@BW022 so if you could go back and do it again, what would you do different?
@@lovelessissimo Not sure I would with my cleric/warlock. He did mention that he'd probably not play that class again. I was a lot older and experienced, so my character was build more around flexibility and roleplaying, so she could more naturally adapt to different parties (stay staying back an EBing, or heal, or greater invisibility on the rogue rather than provide him a flanking buddy, etc.) or the frontline issues at higher levels (I'd often just polymorph vs. both trying to fight in melee) She also had ritual casting and outdoor skills she useful out of combat.
Some of these might help his bladesinger, and there were lots of AL games (we often had three tables running) where we could divide up such that his character was more useful. However, reality for his was his character was disappointing. Fighters, barbarians, and paladins were always better tanks -- at low levels and certainly by 7th+. I was a better tank at lower levels and at higher had better other things to do when tanking didn't work.
So, I can see with him (and others) where you have this idea in your head and suddenly you have someone next to you wish it generally better at most things which you want to be good in. It's happen to me with other characters. Maybe if we went back in time, I could add something to the bladesinger which would help, different spells, and such, but honestly... it seemed like a lot of work to make it even match mine while I built mine without a lot of optimization.
Nice hair Kelly, 10/10
straight up, he's rocking it.
It’s the “No F’s Given COVID Grow-Out” look. I’m there too.
"Bladesinger is better!"
"No, hexblade is better!"
The sorcadin, looking down on both:
"Pathetic"
sorcadin hexblade "i am a god you dull creature"
Sorcadin also shares the advantage of being PHB. Hexblade and non-Elf Bladesinger are Johnnies-come-lately to 5e, especially if your DM didn't allow UA.
@@Faircrow Sounds like somebody didn't have the stats to bump Strength and Charisma. You SAD bro?
Bladesingers are the best gish hands down. It’s a wizard with all of their spells without MC. Mine can put out over 300damage a round using spirit shroud and twf
@@havoc8600 You are still countered by saves (specially con saves) have a very low hp and are extremely reaction dependent (if you use shield then cant absorb elements or use lvl 10 feature).
I personally think that you get the best "gish" out of multiclassing. Hexblade alone is ok, but it really shines in multiclassing. Hexblade + sorcerer or paladin, and sorcerer + paladin are imo the best gish.
Blade singer/ trickster rogue
I like hexblade 3 (pact of the blade)/sword college 17 (half-elf for elven accuracy?). Uses a longbow (pact)/longsword (hexblade)/shield w/hex and hexblade curse. Comes in @ level 9 - 14 sweet spot.
If you roll some god stats then you can multiclass bladesinger into 2 levels of paladin which is a very powerful build. In high level campaigns though paladin 6 sorcerer 14 is king, specially an oath of the watcher and clockwork sorcerer, you can have a high ac (not as high as bladesinger), advantage on wisdom, charisma and intelligence saves, add your charisma to all saves, and the clockwork lvl 14 feature where you cannot roll below a 10 for 1 minute and enemies cannot gain advantage on you. Tashas transformation turns this class into a killing machine.
A fiend pact of the blade multiclass with fighter and a gauntlet of ogre strength. And maybe another multiclass into paladin or sorcerer at higher levels
I would like to se a build with hexblade and the storm aura barbarian I think that would be a fine gish!
We just wrapped a 1-20 through the starter box icespire peak, frostmaiden, and avernus. Our bladesinger was nigh invincible, could potentially get a 32 AC and rarely failed saves. We wouldn't have made it through without him.
His arc was amazing, going from a cold high level Zhentarim enforcer to the doting, gentle, father of an adopted refugee, to a wounded papa wolf looking for his cub/revenge, to am immortal, redeemed and honorable celestial arbiter of justice was incredible to watch.
"Sorcandin" is and will forever be my favorite gish in 5e.
Yup especially if using clockwork.
Where are you getting that first N?
@@jeffdietz630 Divine soul is also nice. Getting the greatest hits off the cleric list. And Aberrant mind.
Hexadin is also really good though, lose absorb elements however now can just focus on Constitution and Charisma. Plus short rest slots.
Sorcadins are wonderful; 14 Divine Soul + 6 Vengeance or Ancient Paladin. Lotta smites, crits, personal reliability, and good all around.
Hexblade is nova, bladesinger is DPR, swords is support gish :D
Swords bard aren’t support… they are damage… and consistent damage.
@@silverjaiden2450 the Bard spell list is optimized for support.
@@armorfrogentertainment but it’s a bard… magical secrets… not to mention that a lot of those spells are aggressive… you don’t need EVERY spell to be aggressive. Just the few that you’ll use in combat… again. You are doing the same thing they are doing. Only having a cursory thought about bard instead of actually going in depth about their options. Faerie fire, hold person (natural crits with every attack), mirror image/misty step, greater invisibility, etc… not counting magical secrets… literally every spell in the game. Didn’t even talk about the fact that charisma bards can 1 level dip in hexblade and out hexblade the hexblade…
This is the correct take
@@armorfrogentertainment it doesn’t matter that the spell list is optimized for support… as a bard you’ll only have 2 or 3 spells per level anyway. You CAN build support but if you choose the 2 or 3 aggressive spells per level then spells like steel wind strike and destructive blast and haste then you have an entirely strong aggressive spell list. You guys just have to think. Just like it doesn’t matter what spells are on the wizard and warlock list bc you’re only gonna pick those good for gish
My favorite gish ive ever played was a paladin for 2 levels and then sorcerer. Quickening a fireball into a GFB powered by divine smite always feels amazing. Bonus points if hasted
Sorcadins are always good, but I would argue in favor of taking the paladin to level 6 to get both the two attacks per turn and that sweet, sweet, saving throw bonus. The extra HP are always nice, too.
@@AlbertaGeek yeah maybe up to level 7 if your paladin subclass has a really good aura ability
@@chrisvelo2595 Oath of the Ancients, yes.
Quickened hold person then two melee attacks with advantage that autocrit with your smites
I think I'm reading this wrong. You added smite damage to your fireball, you can't do that.
you forgot about the Battlesmith. My favorite Gish class in 5th edition. No full spellcasting, but better than Eldritch Knight and and to hit/dmg by Int, no(t)MAD like Bladesinger or bards. It's the arcane paladin after all :)
Before I found out about Bladesingers, my wizards would still carry swords in spite of the penalties :)
Back in the 90s, a lot of the "D&D is stupid" hate came from the restrictions of classes. Game based on Tolkien won't let my caster use a sword? Lame. Coming back to P'inder and 5e to find that D&D was nowhere near as needlessly restrictive as it used to be was a treat.
If you want a weapon there are many good races for proficiency, such as hobgoblins and high elfs,
hobgoblins are great because you can pick the weapons and get light armour proficiency too, and high elves get a free cantrip and proficiency in perception
Both can also use weapons they are proficient with, at no penalty
@@NoBrakes23 IKR ? Back in the eighties, when we didn't have as much inspiration material, Gandalf and Merlin were the wizard role models and both were wielding a sword... Given how squishy mages were in melee in the first editions of DnD, the point was not about power but more about flavor, so it was often turned over by house ruling at our tables...
Sword & Spell to me allways sounds like a fantasy version of a Jedi.
And using a combo of Monk and Warlock, you can play something that feels very close to a Jedi.
A Jedi is actually a bladesinger in a Science Fiction setting.
That's called a Psi Warrior
While the Githyanki were introduced in Feind Folio, the Gish were only 4th level Fighter/Magic Users, the red dragons and the rest came later
Yeah but for being lvl 8 they are super op.
Eldritch Knights are not the best Gish. However Eldritch Knights are INCREDIBLY tanky, particularly when going sword and board. Their AC is consistently somewhere between excellent and exceptional and Absorb Elements ups their survivability in ways that other fighters can only dream of. Add in a Familiar for attack consistency and you are also looking at consistent good damage.
Now that's a good question and it's definitely not the Eldritch Knight.
I am literally creating one today for a campaign that has been a long time in the making and this is disheartening :/
@@caseyr2520 Don't get me wrong, it's fun but isn't the best and the subclass is giving you something that competes with your attacks, when the Fighter attack action is one of the main reasons to choose a Fighter.
@@caseyr2520 No worries, just as bladesinger is a kickass wizard without a song, you can be a formidable fighter not having the heavier hitting magic. I saw EK at play and its terryfiyngly tanky.
@@caseyr2520 hey, as long as you're playing what you want to play and you're having fun nothing else matters. Eldritch Knights can be fun and you can customize it quite extensively with feats of your dm let's you trade in those ASI's.
@@grzegorzlewandowski3859 They are incredibly tanky and its honestly terrifying how tanky they are. Considering they can compete and sometimes surpass the Barbarian in tankiness (even the Totem Warrior using Bear Totem in some cases). Just one Absorb Elements or Shield can really bump up their tankiness.
I like how the actual gish were most often deployed as assassins and spies, but the melee bards are dismissed here as too rogue-like to be the best gish. That's why I prefer terms like spellsword or arcane warrior to the generic/ahistoric use of gish
Also they were op psionics as well.
Meanwhile I'm playing a Draconic Sorcerer with plans to dip conquest paladin for my hell knight themed gish.
This was literally build for "best gish" in my last campaign. Between shadow blade+ quickened booming blade (pre errata) for early extra attacks, smite, shield, and armor of agthys it was quite versatile and a lot to handle
@@2Cool2Geek thankfully my DM is giving me some allowances and leeway with my spells. Atm I'm only level 6 sorc, but I'm already showing my gish abilities. I use flame blade and green flame blade (he's allowing Flame Blade to be treated as a weapon for Smite and blade cantrips due to a special backstory item I started with) and we're using pre Errata blade cantrips since none of us liked the change.
We have a stats page in our discord and I'm at 2nd highest damage in a single turn with the highest going to our other hell knight, a fallen aasimar hexblade vengeance paladin.
i actually disagree strongly with being a full caster for a spellblade... If you have access to 9th level spells, essentially at no point is it more beneficial to use your blade instead of casting spells, in which case youre just a mage.
I agree. Imo a gish wants to fight more than anything and use magic to gain the upper hand against other full melee combatants, and cold steel against the squish. Thus I currently think EKs of myriad varieties fit the Gish archetype best in my view. SL9 is for nerds...4 attacks an action is for beasts!
To really rp a gish when you hit 16 you get absorbed by your lich queen.
does a Barbarian that always yells "I CAST AXE" counts?
Asking for a friend
Yes, and no magic user is gonna be brave enough to argue.
I have a friend who does something similar.
Always plays some form of archer and he often yells "I cast pointed sticks!".
A gish I really like is Eldtritch Knight multiclassed with War Wizard. Makes for a great tanky gish. War Wizard alone is not the best, but put those abilities with a fighter and it's awesome. Arcane Deflection limiting you to a cantrip isn't an issue on a fighter.
I'll be playing this multiclass soon and I'm excited for it. I love EK but I also want more spellcasting. Making a strength build for plate armor so no bladesinger.
The "Divine Gish" makes me feel like a Holy Knight or Crusader when I play one. The role play definitely feels different than a traditional Gish.
I just gave Twilight Domain, Nature Domain, and War Domain Clerics Extra Attack at Level 6, and made them use Wisdom instead of Strength or Dexterity for Attack/Damage Rolls.
Couple that with the damage buff that Twilight and Nature Clerics get with weapon attacks, and at 14th Level, you're basically using a Level 1 Smite twice a turn, every turn, for free.
Being a Bladesinger makes you feel so great because you're a full spellcaster that can deal with melee combat without any problems.
I always imagine a big monster trying to target you because the "Wizard is squishy" only to realize it made the worst mistake of its life.
It's like getting the best grades at school and then being the captain of a sports team too
We have three gish characters in my Out of the Abyss campaign I'm in. I'm playing a bladesinger wizard (lvl 6), another player is playing a hexblade warlock (lvl 1) eloquence bard (lvl 5) multiclass, and another is playing a swashbuckler rogue (lvl 4) wild magic sorcerer (lvl 2) multiclass. We all play three entirely unique gish characters with different playstyles, and all find great success with playing differently. It's absolutely nuts how much versatility each of us have, and we're all around the same power level currently.
goblin bladesinger, booming blade + bonus action withdraw for the win
Or use that bonus action for flaming sphere to punish them for staying in the same place
@@8x8johan depends on the build your going for, flaming sphere is ok, but i prefer a "dragons breath" on my familiar to use my concentration on at low to mid level
A powerful swordsman you will be.
An untouchable hit and run Wizard, nice.
My vhuman takes mobile at lvl1 then EK at 3 and enjoys the melee CC and insane burst he can bring on short rests with surge. Bonus d8 at lvl5 offsets extra attack until war magic ay lvl7 then you're cooking with fire (or thunder as it were)
Having played none of those listed, I now have a top 3 list when I'm not (forever) DMing 😅
The pain is real, brother.
One day our campaigns end and we will succeed with our persuasion checks to have our friends run a game instead of us.
@@777wrath 😂 Now if my dice would only roll high 😉
@@DDCRExposed Charm Person via providing snacks lol
@@777wrath 🤔 Valid point, I can work with this 😁
Congratulations on the huge success of the Drakkenheim kickstarter, I am looking forward to getting my copy.
Could you do an episode on how to design villain / antagonist NPCs, which sub-classes work well and how to supplement role play with abilities?
Really happy to see swords bard getting some love!
SAAAAAAAAME
We've been having these discussions since the mid 70's. Nowadays you don't need to homebrew to have great choices. Bard or Divine Soul Sorcerer would be my choices for a player today, I am, however, the forever dm. Not said in regret.
I too am the forever dm, and ironically I always make better characters then my players(I am a min maxer)
@@oceanman6973 That's to be expected. You should know more than them.
One of the best melee spellcasters is a clockwork or aberrant sorcerer. Buffing HP with false life or armor of Agathys (both of which scale with spell levels well), using melee cantrips and meta magic to boost those, plus spells like vampiric touch or others… add in mage armor, mirror image, blur, and maybe a shield proficiency via 1 level dip in another class… it becomes seriously powerful without having to split ability scores too much.
Other than that though, my favorite multiclass gish concept has been Pali/Bard. A fantastic support class, and a massive damage dealer with smites.
Can you build that out at level 7 and link it? Assume you get any non magical armor and a +1 weapon.
Don't forget aid for clockwork. Stacks with Agathys, you can share with friends, and you can extend fronthe night before.
I have a Devotion Paladin 6/Clockwork X build I want so bad to try out in my home game. Hes my backup. It's such a strong build.
When you say "another class" paladin 2 or Hexblade 1 is a great idea
@@seaperson5704 Hex 1 is less of an investment, gives better Cha cantrips, Cha to attack with weapons (like booming and greenflame blades), and a level 1 spell slot that grows back on SRs and is perfect for getting away with a free shield/absorb elements.
Now consider: swords/hexblade. 🤯
So what we should do is multi-class hexblade/swords bard
Hexblade warlocks, if you read hex warrior, you can actually notice that your pact weapon already gets the benefits of hex warrior. “If you later gain the Pact of the Blade feature, this benefits extends to every pact weapon you conjure with that feature, no matter the weapon’s type.” This said, you can also dial wield as a hexblade. Sometimes not as potent as glaivelock, but still a really neat idea.
Extra attack isn't necessary for a good gish. Sorcadin can reliably hit and dump massive amounts of damage with a single swing, and depending which subclasses you get, can make that one hit more likely to land. Booming blade + smite = big helpings. The same multiclass could benefit from multiattacks, sure, but would exhaust resources faster as well and wouldn't get to use booming blade which scales very nicely. Multiattack, for some gish builds, can be somewhat of a waste. Not always, but it definitely isn't 100% necessary.
Good video though love you guys
Keep in mind that more attacks means more crits which is pretty important for paladins.
@@wafl7212 True and a good point if you want to take more levels in paladin than a full caster, but I want those 9th level spells and metamagic for sure. Plus, with Hold Monster or Hold Person + Quicken Spell, you can guarantee crits and have the spell slots to do so regularly. Hits will be more likely with Vengeance or Conquest Pally.
@@wafl7212 But again, if you DO want multi-attack and want more levels in paladin, may as well scoot into grabbing those auras too.
You can also pick the Divine Soul subclass and grab Spiritual Weapon for a bonus attack "extra attack".
Premises I question from this thought experiment:
1) A gish needs to have 2 attacks per round.
There are extremely effective Sorcadin combos that only take 2 levels of Paladin for smite. There are Wizard (Usually Abjurer or War Wizard) dips into 1 Artificer or 3 Fighter for additional weapon and armor proficiences, con saving throw proficiencies, and just overall enhanced survivability that isn't limited to a number of proficiency bonus uses per day.
2) A gish needs to be a single class/subclass.
As noted above, Sorcadins and Fighter/Wizard combos can make effective gish builds that still get access to 9th level spells. Additionally, while Eldritch Knights are limited in casting, there are effective combos that get to level 7 for War Magic, then finish in War Wizard, greatly enhancing their spellcasting potential.
Based on the bounds of the discussion, the Bladesinger will be more powerful/useful at level 20 because Wizard. But I would recommend the Hexblade to newer players who will have less things to keep track up while learning the game, all while being extremely effective in their initials forays into the game.
Very true! Multiclassing allows not just sorcadins, but bladesinger battlesmith. 16/4 bladesinger/battlesmith nets you 9th level spells and lets you use your INT for your melee attacks. Plus, artificer spell list nets you cure wounds and other util the wizard can't get.
Sorcadin is also just busted fun lol
One of my favorite characters I've ever played was a HexBard. Crazy versatility in terms of skills and spell selection, and the bard's spell slots work well with Warlock spellcasting to spam Shield or Absorb Elements. Depending on how you want to lean, can choose Sword Bard to focus on melee, or Lore bard to lean more into buff/control/other fun spells with magical secrets.
How did you divide up the levels?
@@rodquilitz7250 im guessin either 1 or 3 levels in hex, rest bard
Playing a padlock right now but this sounds fun.
The biggest problem with gish builds is that you can never truly balance attacking and casting. If you choose one then you're leaving out the other. You could argue that some classes allow for cantrips and attacks to be mixed, but cantrips are just a small subset of what you could be doing. The best classes that get around this are ones that have a lot of spells that use bonus actions. If you can cast it as a bonus action or control it as a bonus action, that leaves your action open for attacking. Plain and simple, the paladin, ranger, and sorcerer are the 3 best classes for accomplishing this. Most especially, mixing sorcerer and paladin is the best mix of all. Paladin 2/ divine soul sorcerer X gives you just short of full casting, access to most every close combat spell you could dream of, the ability to quicken cast any spell (allowing for more melee), access to great armor and Con saves, and the ability to smite with your SCAGtrip attacks. It's easily the ultimate gish. No questions asked. All of the flavor with minimal sacrifice. Make it a hill dwarf, and you've mitigated the HP issue of a sorcerer.
Great Video!
I would add that any Pact of the Blade Warlock, regardless of Patron could make an excellent Gish, though not as potent as the Hexblade.
Also, any Mountain Dwarf caster can be a bit of a Gish, with proficiency in Medium Armor and some Martial Weapons. Elf casters can also work like this with a +2 to DEX and some martial weapon proficiencies, although you probably won't get extra attack either of these ways.
Lastly, you can get some cheesy "battle mage" builds by taking one or two levels in fighter or cleric to get weapon and armor proficiencies, and multi classing into a full caster for the rest of your levels.
In Basic D&D, the elf was a class that was definitely a fighter/magic-user hybrid. (Races were classes in basic D&D)
I think the fact that Eldritch Knight isn't a class on its own is a huge waste. If it would've been a half caster with access to the entire wizard spell list then it could truly be a viable gish meant for the frontline and an option for those who do not want to play a paladin.
I'm enjoying my Fighter/Warlock, but there's no way it is the most efficient or optimized gish. Battlemaster does appreciate the Warlock's high CHA, though.
Mee too. I'm playing a Hexblade 7 / Echo Knight 3 now and really enjoy it. This is not a best pick on paper, but it is really fun. :)
Swashbuckler/hexblade rocks even at low levels, and rules in long campaigns (I feel weird there is not one campaign I have dm'd that has been lower than level 15. Most go all the way to level 20.
Why fighter/warlock over a pure eldritch knight or a pure hexblade?
I’m assuming you’re not 50/50. So, which did you dip into, and why?
I recommend 15 Fighter / 5 Sorcerer (Divine Soul in further recommendation; those Cleric spells are amazing) for that really good sword n’ magic vibe.
@@zero11010 It was my first 5e character, and I was not getting solid info from the other players about what they were going to play. I knew I wanted to multiclass, and Warlock looked interesting. Beyond that it fit the backstory parameters that the DM set forward. Started Fighter 1, then Warlock 1. Wasn't sure how it was going to go from there. Party members were caster heavy, (though we've had a slight rotation of players,) and Fighter made more sense. Currently Fighter 7 Warlock 2, and thought it was going to stay a 2 level dip, but we now have a Bard that's getting sturdier, a Bladesinger, and a Ranger. So at least two more levels of Warlock might give some good utility.
Yall sleeping on Swords Bard. They brought up multiclass but didn't mention that 1 level dip from bard to hexblade make swords bard better than Hexblade in every way... There's plenty spells in there to increase your attack damage or make you more accurate as a swords bard... Faerie Fire works with both spells and attacks... Hold person... auto crits?? You aren't using every spell in the bard list... just the ones that you need to make you Gish. Then with a HB dip they get armor of agathys, hex, shield, hellish rebuke, etc... .
Bard is D8, has Dueling and Two-Weapons fighting style (unlike bladesinger or hexblade), Flourish is an actual feature that increases damage and adds a melee feature and can increase your AC by a LOT, and has access to great Gish spells through Ranger and Paladin magical secrets (steel wind strike, destructive wave, smites, aoe attacks..)... Yall sleeping. The only thing Bladesinger has over Swords Bard is the new extra attack feature (but with a one level dip in hexblade that is mostly mitigated).
The best Gish I’ve ever personally witnessed was a very seldom used combo that my buddy used. He was all the way at level 20, and just took two levels of fighter and the rest was necromancy wizard. It was super broken and toxic, not helped by the fact that he was lawful evil. But yeah, it’s crazy what a big difference it makes just getting martial weapons, shields, heavy armor, second wind, and ESPECIALLY action surge. Action surge alone opens up so many ridiculous combos.
What specific combos does it open for a wizard? I'm not doubting the combo, just interested in specifics.
@@funny8781 actions surge gives an extra action so you can both cast a spell and make an attack, or cast multiple spells that take an action
@@elwynn9931 You can only cast one leveled spell per turn, even with action surge all you can cast is a spell then a cantrip
@@funny8781 2 levels of fighter means action surge, which means 3 spells in one turn (action, bonus action, and action surge), which can be DEVASTATING if you pick the right spells. Think about doing Finger of Death and Disintegrate in the same round, or something similar.
I think a better combo is fighter dip then blade singer the rest of the way that’ll give you duelist fighting style and make you pretty competent in melee you also get second attack and get to keep 9th level spells
I’ve always wanted to play a red mage
As long as we are talking FF and not Thay lol. The clockwork sorcadin, the artificer dipped wizard (of your favourite school), the palabard, a high level arcana cleric, bring the mixture of "white" and "black" magic. If you add the Ravnica backgrounds and the dragonmarked races (specially the healing halfling) you can make a really all rounded character
College of swords Bard 6, Divine Soul Sorcerer the rest of the way.
You're welcome friend.
Lemme tell you about bards...
@@antonlowe5370 yes but, it needs to be a lore for it to actually feel like so, those 2 extra spell secrets are BASIC need
@@thegoblin3629 And miss on all the 4+ level spells as most modules end at 12-13? No thanks
I’m surprised the Battlesmith Artificer wasn’t mentioned, it may not be a full caster or get necessarily “arcane” spells, but using your int stat to attack with magic weapons and getting armor proficiencies, higher hit dice, and all that allow for some more beefy giths. Plus you could say your steel defender looks like a drake, play a small race, and ride them into battle like the OG giths
I like how they couldn't really decide which one is the best, like me. They are all such wonderful subclasses!
I really feel like you didn't take the Warlock getting spells back on a short rest into true context, and there are insane things that can be done with Invocations. Devil's Sight grants advantage to the warlock and disadvantage to those attacking him, and the extra fishing for crits really ties in with smite.
Things like Relentless Hex, Tomb of Levistus, and Trickster's Escape can be game breaking
have you broken the game with them?
Devil's sight only gives the advantage you are talking about if you use a spell slot on Darkness. Another slot on hex and then no more magic for that combat.
@@jamesn3122 you could be a tiefling and cast darkness for free
Tbf they did specifically mention devils sight and darkness. I love hexblades ...but relentless hex is just basically 1 free Misty Step that only works after you've hexed/cursed your target, and since all 3 are bonus actions you can't do it until round 2.
At higher tiers of play Wizards become so powerful that staying on the frontline and hitting things with a sword just seems beneath them. Bladesingers are great gishes but high level wizards don't need to be a gish, and some of the other wizard subclasses offer better benefits in the long term.
This is exactly what I was thinking. The Hexblade will maintain a gish play style throughout a campaign, but the Bladesinger will end up benefitting more from just being a wizard. Which, to me, makes it less of a gish at higher tiers. It's still badass though.
I'd much rather have an abjurer in a party than a blade singer. But... Both are full arcane casters.
Until some mook tries to get up in a high level bladesinger's face and gets Rorschached.
I feel like it's less "magic is super powerful and op lol" and more "the bladesinger will be outscaled in damage and fucking die on the front lines past level 14" personally. Like, don't get me wrong, they're tough *for a wizard.* But they still have the lowest HD, they're still MAD so likely low con, and every single spell you cast for the sake of protecting yourself is a spell you aren't casting for the sake of helping the team.
Solved with real gishes, their queen sucks away their mind power and soul for herself at like lvl 16.
*nods enthusiastically in non-dnd playing agreement*
We stan the Valor bard at my table haha. This debate was great
I appreciate the Valor Bard of Swords for sure!
Eldritch smite can work with bows once you have improved pact weapon. It’s terrifying to have that plus sharpshooter.
Very effective if your campaign has a lot of young dragons or wyverns.
I am going to be honest, I am loving playing a Bladesinger and most of the cons aren't to bad for me. Sure its a risk to get knocked our but frankly I don't want my characters to be invulnerable.
Having lots of fun with my Tabaxi BladeSinger.
I'm only at 6:42. This feels like you wanted to make a video to devote more time to your (odd) love of the hexblade subclass.
I don't think I agree with your requirements. According to what you've got an Eldritch Knight isn't a gish because they cannot cast 9th level spells. Even though, they can do an action with 8 greatsword attacks one round and cast polymorph the next round (and have access to fireball and counter spell as you mentioned in your intro).
I also don't agree that they need to be an arcane caster to be a gish. Any melee focused cleric and all paladins should be considered a gish. Rangers should be considered gish characters and even some druid builds that focus more on melee combat.
The true goal is to blend powerful magic and effective melee capabilities.
If you're going to discount a character that never gets level 5 spells, I think you should also have limitations on what counts as meaningful melee combat. 9th level spells put a character in line with the best level 20 offensive casters in the game. So, the melee capabilities should be equal to a level 20 barbarian or fighter? I mean, you don't value the spell casting ability of someone who maxs out with equivalent of 7th level spells, but you're on board with someone who maxes out in melee with a 5th level ability?
The melee damage output of a Hexblade and Bladesinger do indeed rival the outputs of fighters and barbarians, though.
@@DungeonDudes spoilers! I haven't gotten there yet! (kidding) Still watching. I got to the list of requirements and I felt like you were discounting a lot of character types that do fill the combination role. You called them out as honorable mentions (and then discounted them).
I do not think a Hexblade with a 5% extra crit chance, and a minor bonus to damage on ONE target ... three times per day is going to be anywhere near the output of a fighter or barbarian at the same level.
If you don't follow page 84 of the DMG and don't do anywhere near the 6-8 medium-hard encounters per day with 2 short rests to break that up you've wildly changed the balance of anything that recharges on a short rest.
Dramatically changing the intended balance of the player classes does run the risk of making the Hexblade more powerful than intended. But, I can't make guesses about what ways you play the game that aren't presented in the core rules.
@@zero11010 We needed to narrow the field, otherwise this video was going to be 2 hours long since there are so many ways to make a "gish" type character in D&D 5e, and the definition of what is and is not a "gish" is subject to debate. We wanted to acknowledge that and get to the meat of our comparison.
Hexblades have *considerably* more happening to influence their damage output than Hexblade's Curse. The complete package of spells, invocations, feats, and class features does indeed rival the round-over-round output of a Fighter or Barbarian even across an adventuring day.
You don't have to make guesses about the way we play the game at all! You can watch our campaigns here on RUclips :)
@@DungeonDudes I loved the self promotion! That was great. I would like to watch you guys play. I've been subscribed for a long time to your channel and I'm curious about how your games go!
I think the real test is how well the gish performs with only one part of their abilities and how they compare with others who are 100% that thing.
I did some quick napkin math (I've previously written a complex algorithm to determine average effectiveness to do comparisons and I did not use it for this).
I only compared level 10 eldritch knight and level 10 hexblade. then level 20 of each. The effectiveness of things like feats tend to even out with an edge going to the fighter who just gets more feat options as they level.
At level 10 the melee output of both is roughly the same. The big issue is that the curse won't amount for much until level 14 (most campaigns don't get that high). So, it's basically two people with the same main attribute swinging the same weapon the same number of times. The Hexblade has the curse (kinda) and the fighter has the action surge (which is big on burst damage). As far as spells go the Hexblade has roughly one spell to use in every other fight. Booming blade is about the same as not using booming blade and attacking twice. The fighter is able to use one spell in all 6-8 encounters in a day with 7 spell slots. The defenses are roughly the same with the fighter able to wear heavy armor and having a slight advantage but the hexblade able to negate 33% of attacks from one enemy in every other encounter for a boost in fights with big bads and almost nothing meaningful in mundane fights.
At level 10 it's roughly a draw without either clearly being ahead. Offensively they're about equal. Defensively the fighter will take less bursty damage with a slightly higher AC, and the Hexblade able to tank bosses more effectively.
At level 20 the two are still very close. Booming blade for this hexblade does about double what attacking twice does.
The level 20 fighter, however, does slightly more with their four attacks than the booming blade does, and this fighter also has one round in each fight of the day where they double that with action surge now possible twice per short rest with 2 fights per short rest). This also means that if for some reason the Hexblade cannot cast spells the Eldritch Knight is able to double the Hexblade melee output on most turns and quadruple it on a surge.
I'm not saying the Eldritch Knight is better than your precious Hexblade. I'm saying it's worth leaving on your list and not dismissing outright. I think the Hexblade suffers from power creep and it does about as much damage as the Eldritch Knight in melee (not as much as a champion, or paladin, or barbarian).
I think the spell casting capabilities of the Hexblade are situationally better than what the Eldritch Knight can do, but that isn't the only thing that matters in a gish and what the Eldritch Knight can do without magic is much better than what the Hexblade can do without magic. When you combine it all together the two are about equal with each having areas where they excel.
Anyone want to champion the hexblade?
Any feats the hexblade can take the eldritch knight can also take (and the knight has two more feats they can take).
Most of the spells the hexblade can cast do not have ongoing benefits. Elemental weapon is minor. Wall of light has great potential, but better with eldritch blast push/pull.
It’s hard for those things to compete with haste potential giving the knight 8 attacks every round and 12 with a surge. Or bestow curse on a single target increasing damage by up to 8D8 in a round with a sustained damage increase of about 4D8 on top of regular melee attacks.
The ability to reduce the number of times you’re hit by one opponent at a time is huge for a hexblade. They won’t have as high of an armor class. So, they will get hit more. But, some percentage of the time that will get undone (starting at level 6 and massively picking up at level 14). With (at most) two spell slots to use per battle it will be harder for the hexblade to use defensive and reactive magic. At lower level the hexblade has one spell slot to use per fight and spending that on a shield would be pretty painful. It seems easier for the knight to just use one first level slot for that or absorb elements which the hexblade doesn’t get an option for. Both get counterspell which is good.
I don’t think the eldritch knight is that great. I see it to be about equal as the hexblade. I don’t understand why these guys love it so much. Would love if someone could help me see something I’m missing.
I'd say anywhere between 6 and 17 levels of War Mage plus your favorite martial class would be a good place to start answering this question.
Throw 2 lvls of paladin into a bladesinger... Enjoy GISH!
Darn skippity. Add smites into the already beastly Bladesinger and still get 9th level spells? Winner, winner, chicken dinner; you're now a god.
That's the worst MAD you can get in a character. If that's your plan your better off with Paladin2/College of Swords 18. Just remember you need intelligent spell choice and Bard has many of the most savage control spells in the game.
@@larstollefsen1236 already played sword Bard paladin with 3 lvls of assassin upcasting shadow blade. It's another charcater concept i don't think it as a pure GISH cuz Bard has more support oriented spells. U might think of lvl paladin at high levels Just as a cherry on the cake
@@Andre_Situation First, you already screwed the build when you took Rogue.
Second, have you _read_ the bard spell list? It has some of the most savage control spells in the game. You can easily shut down entire encounters and clean up with your weapon. Yes it has really good Buff options on it but Debuff is there in force too. Sure Shadow Blade will deliver good DPR but a Slow, Hypnotic Pattern, Confusion, or many of the other control spells allows you to finish encounters with either little or no damage taken.
Making your enemies helpless is far more powerful then just some damage.
Of course, when you open this up to multi-class builds, Pally/Sorc/Lock/Bard combos have been the go-to for Gishes for a while.
Lvl. 1 fighter, lvl. 2 up war wizard. Con prof, heavy armor, saving throw buffs, and all wizard spells. You DM will hate you.
Haha can confirm I did use shield the absolute most with my eldritch knight
Going into this I really really want hexblade to be the best because it's my favorite but I know you Dudrs are going to manage to change my mind
While I prefer the Blade Singer style wise, the Hexblade will give it a good run for its money especially if both are played right.
Ranger all the way lol.
@@chuckmoore7428 horizon Walker isn’t a bad choice with haste and misty step
Two levels of blade singer/ 18 levels of trickster rogue. Try it !
Clearly my next character needs to be a Bladesinger/hexblade.. I'll call it a 'Hexsinger'! 🤘
Also I now know what my heavy metal band name will be if I ever start one! 😂
They just called them “Fighter-Mage” more often than not back then and “Fighter-Magic User”.
While referring to the Bladesinger: "At the end of the day, you're still a Wizard." - Monty
The real debate in this video:
When you hear the phrase, "a Wizard", do you hear it in Gandalf's voice.. Or Hagrid's?
Gandalf. Ian McKellan’s voice is indelibly imprinted in my head.
First things first..... Gandalf is a Paladin
@@tiagopedrosa6746 According to the rules of bladesinging, as long as you don't use 2 hands on a weapon, you can have staff in one hand, sword in the other. Bladesinger delivers a Gandalf with 9th level spells.
@@thegoblin3629 And if that staff is a Staff of Power, now you're really cranking the AC. Don't sleep on the dual wielder feat! =)
@@thegoblin3629 They can, but Paladin, specifically Sorcadins can do it better... and also Gandalf is a serve of the Valar, a paladin one could say. Fits more in Lore and Powerplay
Would like to shout out my fav gish class-4 elements monk
just a random note my hexblade/paladin multiclass dealt my most insane single hit damage ever {with some help} in a game saving tpk situation of 437. he was warlock 11 paladin 3 with a crit on a GWM glaive strike powered up by banishing smite and 2 level 5 smites which was all doubled by a grave cleric. the kill was on Demogorgon after a party member summoned him {accidently of course} who was a round from killing off the last members of the party
Bard, don't even need the subclass, just bard.
best gish is 2 lvl fighetr 1 lvl cleric (peace gorge or twilight) and 17 lvl war mage - it is the best tank gish
I'm really enjoying my gish Fathomles warlock right now, taking medium armor master as an extra feat from the dm gave me the chance to really go ham
My Celestial Bladelock is pretty broken. I personally like it better than the hexblade because I think it has objectively better class features. I’m planning on taking 17 levels in warlock (lvl 10 rn) and then 3 levels of Devotion Paladin for dueling and their channel divinity. At level 20 you have a +14 to hit and assuming spirit shroud is up and both attacks hitting you deal 2d8(rapier)+10(Dex)+10(Life Drinker)+10(Oath of Devotion)+5(Radiant Soul)+6(Ultimate Pact Weapon, UA)+4(Dueling)+4d8(spirit shroud)
Which comes out to 1 round of damage dealing 6d8+45 with damage types being piercing, necrotic, and radiant.
Plus you’ll have 18d6 you can use to heal on a bonus action (5d6 at a time), 22 temp hp per short rest (your party gets 14 too), and Searing Vengeance which lets you revive at half health when you hit 0hp while dealing 2d8 against enemies within 30 feet and blinding all of said enemies should you need to make an escape.
It’s my favorite possible build in the game :)
I have been waiting forever you guys to talk on this topic! So I am playing in a campaign that I wanted to play a Gish character. I was very close to using a Bladesinger. Ultimately what I decided on is a multi class character that pairs a Kensei Monk and an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. I will get extra attack at 5th level with the monk as well as the ability to use two hands on a longsword (Kensei only) for a d10 weapon attack at 3rd. Not to mention unarmored defense right out the gate. And the A.M. Sorcerer I will get metamagic and a ton of extra spells. I also took the telekinetic feat. My character, Atticus Greywood, has been extremely effective thus far and I am only at level 3 so not much has come online yet. I play him very much like a Jedi. His catch phrase is,”the Weave gives me strength.” Lol. He is an amazing multi class option for the Gish category. Thank you both so much! I listen to every episode!! Congrats on the successful launch!
The smaller hit die is just glossed over and ignored. What good is a high AC when you get oneshotted by a nat 20 to hit? Most wizards don't get over 100 hit points by level 15. Caleb Widowgast being a prime example of this. Being squishy for a martial feature sucks. And assuming they aren't a race that has inherently a Higher AC like a Tortuga they will have to be at the mercy of a DMs gift of magic items for armor class. Shield can only do so much. And if your DM doesn't ask "Does a *Insert number* hit" or roll in front of the players, it's a reaction that can be wasted and subsequently a spell slot. Blade song is cool but I can't stress enough that wizards are squishier than Warlocks.
So when are we getting the best gunslinging x spell-casting potential
bladesinger with proficinency in firearms
Wizard With A Gun
Good to see they finally admitted that they were sleeping on Swords bard.
My comment from 8 months ago before April 5ths Swords bard video.
"Yall sleeping on Swords Bard. They brought up multiclass but didn't mention that 1 level dip from bard to hexblade make swords bard better than Hexblade in every way... There's plenty spells in there to increase your attack damage or make you more accurate as a swords bard... Faerie Fire works with both spells and attacks... Hold person... auto crits?? You aren't using every spell in the bard list... just the ones that you need to make you Gish. Then with a HB dip they get armor of agathys, hex, shield, hellish rebuke, etc... .
Bard is D8, has Dueling and Two-Weapons fighting style (unlike bladesinger or hexblade), Flourish is an actual feature that increases damage and adds a melee feature and can increase your AC by a LOT, and has access to great Gish spells through Ranger and Paladin magical secrets (steel wind strike, destructive wave, smites, aoe attacks..)... Yall sleeping. The only thing Bladesinger has over Swords Bard is the new extra attack feature (but with a one level dip in hexblade that is mostly mitigated)."
Hexblade + Shadow monk. I'm having a ton of fun.
Dope ninja build
The more I look into this the less I like your list logic. You're considering the Bladesinger one of the best gish characters in the game and you've discounted the eldritch knight entirely. You (intentionally) discounted the eldritch knight because of the spells levels they don't get, without taking the incredible combat ability they have as a fighter ... somehow.
I just built out a gish using a design from a power gamer channel talking about how awesome the Bladesinger is (great content on their channel). I'm comparing it and a hexblade and an eldritch knight at level 5 and at level 12.
The level 12 Eldritch Knight has 50% more hit points than the level 12 Bladesinger (standard array for attributes on both 74HP with 16AC vs 112HP with 18AC). That is a HUGE difference for anyone who is on the front lines. The Bladesinger is walking around 10% easier to hit than the Eldritch Knight and with 38 additional hit points. The bladesong helps immensely, without a doubt. But, you've got 6-8 encounters each day (page 84 DMG) and you have 4 uses of bladesong. That means for 2-4 fights per day you'll have the lower AC. You can use spell slots to enhance that ... that's what the spells are for. The Bladesinger will have roughly 15 spell slots available (give or take what exactly you do with arcane recovery). So, they will have roughly two spell slots to use in each encounter. Shield is outstanding and it lasts for a 1 round. Mirror image is the clear winner for the defensive benefit without using concentration, but even that won't always be an option. You can assume combat lasts about 5 rounds in each encounter. That's 30-40 rounds of combat each day. And, if you use one of your two spell slots on shield you're back to the low resting armor class for the other 4 rounds of combat in that fight. In fights without bladesong you may be forced use use a powerhouse defensive spell that requires concentration which will destroy the class' ability to deal damage.
I'm NOT saying the Bladesinger is bad. I'm NOT saying the Eldritch Knight is better overall. Factually, the Eldritch Knight is better defensively. What makes a gish separate from a pure spellcaster is their ability to avoid hits and take hits and also dish out some pain with weapons. You guys seem to not be thinking about the defensive part very much.
What I think you should have done is build out each at a couple different levels. I'd suggest 5, 12 and 20 (I hate level 20 stuff because games don't get there ... but children will want to hear about it). Then simulate a 7 combat encounter day at each level. Assume there are other player characters (so selfish tricks like darkness and devil's sight are usable in every encounter because in the real world there are other players too). Assume the key class has to deal damage to kill 2-5 opponents in each of those 7 encounters. Assume the key class has to receive attacks in each round which may hit and may break the key character's concentration. How many rounds does it take for the key class to complete all 7 encounters?
When you look at things over the course of a whole day suddenly ... I can do "a bajillion damage in one action" matters a lot less because that's one enemy ... there are more ... and you have lots of encounters to get through. Burning all your resources for one nova action doesn't always make for the best solution to a problem.
Additionally steady reliable damage, and steady reliable defensive capacity starts to really shine as you're looking at a full day of adventuring rather than a theoretical nova round of offensive and some general thoughts about the spells outside of combat.
I put 6 levels into college of swords bard before putting in warlock levels. This gives access to some of the really good combat spells and invocations with a healthy reserve of lower level spell slots to use for utility. Being able to drop an eldritch smite without sacrificing too much casting ability is really nice.
You're way overstating the importance of 9th level spellcasting. And in reality, someone that has to train martial skills and magic knowledge is NEVER going to be an expert of both. Paladins might only get 5th level spells but they have endurance that your bladesinger wizard or swords bard will never have!! Higher AC potential, More HP, Self Healing, Magic and Deadly Melee. And you dismiss them out of hand!