Ok this comment is late and so will probably go unseen, but! As a self-proclaimed Martial Bladesinger Fanboy, I have to say two things! 1: I don't really disagree with anything you've said :). 2: I think that so much of how effective a Martial-Focused Bladesinger is depends a lot on your paradigm and intent. If my approach to the character is something like: "I want to be the best Wizard I can be," then my approach will be vastly different than if it were something akin to "I want to make a powerful melee attacker." With the latter, you're not thinking as much about your high level spells and your Spell Save DC. It's more like "well, I could be a Fighter/Barbarian and take GWM/PAM... bleh, boring. Hexblade? Done to death and too few spell slots. Hm... what about a Bladesinger? I could be a really powerful Melee character *and* have lots of spell slots to Blink, Shield, Misty Step, etc. etc. with... sounds awesome!" With *that* approach, you're comparing yourself not to other Wizards (heresy, I know), but instead to the other Martial Melee characters of the world. And so, of course you're going to focus on Dex over Int. And not worry so much about what else you could be doing instead of casting Shadow Blade (or Animate Objects) as a 5th level spell, right? It's not "I could have used Wall of Force!" it's "this about on par with other Martials, damage-wise, but with way better spells than an Eldritch Knight could've had!" And I truly do think that, under that paradigm, you end up being really competitive, damage-wise with the best Martials, but get to bring along a much better bag of tricks to boot. I appreciate that, as you've pointed out, there are drawbacks. Ramp up time due to Bonus Action bloat is perhaps the biggest. That said, it feels to me like many of the strongest Martial damage-dealers in game require some similar ramp: The Hexblade casting Darkness or Shadow of Moil... even Barbarians have to Rage. When I've played Bladesinger in game, I don't typically mind going something like: round 1 - Bladesong and an additional defensive buff like Mirror Image (at lower level) or Blink (at higher), or a nice little Fireball or something while we all try to get in range and to soften up a few targets, then round 2 - Shadow Blade and make a couple of attacks (with Booming Blade, since that's allowed at my table, which admittedly isn't RAW though from what I can tell is allowed by most). It feels really fun and dynamic and, yeah, powerful. :) Just my 2c! Loved the video! Can't wait for all the blowback our commenters are going to give us when we release Bladesinger videos right on top of each other :P (mine will be out Tuesday).
Im watching the video today, so your comment isn't unseen. I agree with your points. Really it comes down to that the Wizard is so strong, people keep saying stop whacking things with your sword. That's not a weakness of the sublcass, but show cases how strong Wizards are. Either way, play a melee Bladesinger, and get to have fun RP with your spells outside of combat like suggestion. One of my fav low level spells to really eek out that Jedi feel.
That's exactly it, even though the melee fighting bladinger isn't the most optimal way of playing the class (subclass) in the whole scheme of things, but it can definitely be a great way to play the enhanced magical warrior type of character many are going for. As shown by treantmonks temple, It's not optimal way in regards to the possibilities of the game, but it can still be the perfect way to play and not only viable but supreme compared to other choices representing the warrior / magical warrior (through flavourtexting, or other gishes, (Hexblade/Palladin/Sorcerer/Bard, Moondruid/Barbarian, SwordsBard) and can itself be adjusted by multiclassing to achieve the result you're striding for (Tank - Artificer, Spy - Arcane trickster Rogue, etc.).
Absolutely on #2. I AGREE. This is how most players see Bladesinger. Most players see Bladesinger as a hyper-flexible martial mutliclass. It is hella good with Rogue too, maybe even better than Trickster Rogue.
Basic tip: remember to cast spells. I have a blade singer who almost never does. It is tempting to pretend to just be a martial, but you’ve got the best spell list at your disposal and you need to use it to maximise your character.
Totally agree. I would just gently remind your player that a bladsinger is still a wizard first and foremost, and that wizard magic can end a fight faster and safer than running in with your sword.
@@CaitSith87 man wizards are soooo squishy. They have TWO less hit points a level than a fighter MASSIVE!!!!! Thats why blade singer needs double the fighter's ac
@@stevenyoung9738 have you seen the video treantmonk did a one shot with other optimizers. One had the strategy to get an incredible high AC. So if the dm would used the attack action that would maybe have been helpful. Sadly the dm used storm giants with lightning attacks. Witouth treanmonk who played a summoner tne optimized melees would have been toast. Also as a bladesinger you max dex and int which leaves you max with a 14 in con while as a normal melee you probably go 16 con.
@@CaitSith87 you're right ac doesn't ever matter and mssing that 2 hp a level really kept the wizard from relevant. Sadly there's no reaction spell that counters elemental attacks that effectively doubles your hp against elemental attacks. Just none. Nothing. Absorb Elements. Its just not possible. Wizard is just so squishy because of that 2 hp a level and have no spells to counter literally everything
The biggest benefit I've found is just being more useful in the turns or even combats where you don't want to use your spell slot resources - especially at lower levels (at least until 7th or so) until you have plenty of slots. It rounds out some of the weaker early levels where if you weren't a bladesinger you'd run out of spells and just be fire bolting... I love the way you said that melee just replaces your "firebolt" turns.
I remember in Tulok the Barbrarian's Sephiroth video the phrase, "Just think of weapon attacks as your strongest cantrip." And that makes a ton of sense to me.
I agree with your assessment. I think the biggest reason everyone wants this to be some spell blade attacker is that a lot of the options for this archetype in DND are very poor. GFB and Booming blade are weird circumstantial spells and the smite style (branding smite, etc) spells that come a little closer use up a lot of spell slots for very little impact and require you concentration. People want that anime style magic sword fighter or that Final Fantasy spell sword/ runic knight with a bunch of elemental sword attacks. Power up your sword and unleash fury etc. I think a trick to this that I haven’t seen a lot of people do is use flavor to full effect. Casting fireball? Your sword is your focus, you twirl and twist and slam your sword on the ground and a line of energy surges forward to a point and then explodes. Casting cone of cold? You breathe deep and blow out foggy frigid air from your lungs and sweep your sword on a wide arc in front of you sending a wave of ice out towards your enemies. It kind of sucks that you have to lean into flavor to get that spellsword feel a lot of people want, but it’s what we’ve got. We have a ton of classes that have swords and that can cast spells, but not a lot of support for a true meshing of the two ideas unless you read between the lines a fair bit.
honestly from a "spellsword" angle, going bladesinger is just as good as going literally any wizard subclass and just equipping a sword, just due to 5e's bad options for spellswords downside is for you to be able to do Blade as a focus, by RAW, you have to go a full 3 levels into Swords Bard, since as far as I'm aware, no other class explicitly gives you the ability to cast spells through your sword
"spell blade attacker is that a lot of the options for this archetype in DND are very poor" I disagree, there are some very strong options here. The problem mainly is that players want this archetype to be more powerful with a sword than a non-magical swordsman AND they want to be just as powerful with spells as a full spellcaster AND they want it to be SAD. This combo is impossible for very good reason: there would be no reason to ever play any other class - why would anyone play a Fighter if Bladesinger was better than Fighter at doing weapon damage and is a full Wizard at the same time? If you want to primarily be an attacker making magical attacks with your sword, then you should go Arcane Trickster Rogue. Sneak Attack + Booming Blade make you comparably deadly with a blade as fully martial build while giving you some spells to play with but primarily you'll be casting BB with the melee attack with it, at higher levels you can swap to Shadow Blade depending on the circumstance. Alternatively Hexblade gives you a special magical sword which you can and should flavour as something special, and competitive spellcasting progression with full casters. Since Warlock gets only 2 spell slots, you'll probably throw out one AoE spell then do exclusively weapon attacks or alternate between weapon attacks and casting EB. If you want a bunch of elemental spells that get applied to your weapon before you strike, then play a Paladin. They get all kinds of magical boosts that can be applied to their weapon - Smites of different elemental types, Divine Favor, and some Channel Divinities further boost your weapon. Really all that's missing here is an Oath focused on Arcane magic like the Arcane/Knowledge Cleric.
I'm in a campaign that's winding down playing a bladesinger. It's honestly exceeding my expectations, and is so fun. In a party of a lore cleric, moon druid, and a forge domain cleric, I get to be the frontliner with all the benefits of being a wizard. So much fun. If you have every even thought about being a gish, I cannot recommend being a bladesinger enough.
My ruling for Shadow Blade is that is turns your focus into a weapon - a wand basically turns into a lightsaber as you use the wand as the handle of the sword, a staff turns into a glaive or spear, etc. This way you are technically hitting with your focus, which has a value.
It's probably very rarely going to come up for anyone, but the one time I played a bladesinger I had a very forgiving GM and a ridiculous amount of luck. Not only did we roll our starting stats and I got incredibly lucky, starting with a strong INT, DEX and CON, my GM also alowed me to use booming blade and green-flame blade with my shadow blade. Finally I managed to get my hands on a set of Illusionists bracers (let's you re cast a cantrip as a bonus action after you've cast one on the current turn). In other words, I could get in with my attack and bonus action, three attacks with shadow blade, two of which where booming blades. I was effectively the primary front line fighter for much of the game and I could still pull out big spells like hypnotic pattern, wall of force and the like when a particularly tough fight came our way. By far the strongest character I've ever gotten to play. Also they where a silly kobold.
Anything can be strong with a DM that allows you to bend the rules and gives you strong magic items. Once that's on the table, a lot of optimization arguments go out the window.
I'm glad you mentioned the catch-22 in regards to Heavy Armor and Tensers Transformation. I had a player come to the table with the idea that he was going to put on Heavy Armor and cast Tenser's Transformation and he (and everyone else) had a good faceplam and 5 minute belly-laugh when this problem was explained to him. It was a 1shot so I let him do it anyway instead of sending him back to the drawing board. I don't think the designers realized this problem when making the spell, its reminiscent of the supremely knuckleheaded design of the net and how it basically always attacks with disadvantage.
The only way I know short of a magic summoning armor spell or item ability to instantly do this is having a cast-off armor item of that armor type (and good luck having the wizard lug their armor around as the weight it is or fishing it out in combat from a holding item.)
In my campaign i play an eldritch knight bladesigner focusing on melee. It may not be optimal, but its the most fun I've had playing dnd with them, just by amount of options i have with levelling up, and participating in combat
What i greatly love with your videos is that i always learn something new . This time thanks to you i learnt that a tenser's transformation eldritch tatoo would be a great reward for any martial class . Thanks
It would be even better to buff non-warriors! That little goblin you picked up to join your adventuring party? Dress him up in heavy plate, give him a couple short swords and send him out to do some damage!
My DM has a homebrew feat that lets you cast Tasha's Otherworldly Guise once a day + an ASI, so martial characters who don't use concentration anyway can cast it on themselves. Turns it from a useless spell into an incredible one. Flight, extra attack, and using a mental stat for your damage modifier is incredible for a rogue
I’m a huge fan of the bladesinger. There’s so much you can do and all the guides want you to take shadowblade which I consider suboptimal for a bladesinger.
I like getting utility spells then some aoe burst spells like fireball/erupting earth and using the shadowblade for signle target thargets as it does really high damage when upcast and it is of a damage on which resistances are very rare
I'm playing a bladesinger in a current campaign (level 5 currently). It's a blast. Using a rapier. Bladesong dance and Haste on round 1. Haste, bladesong, and Mobile feat gives me a 100 foot speed and no opportunity attacks from my victim. Combined with dancing rapier, owl familiar for Help action, other spell shenanigans including booming blade, and a 23 ac, I am a BEAST in combat.
TBH, level 5&6 are the best times for bladesinger. Yet, when leveling up, you will ultimately ended up making trade offs between: 1) two swings of swords, one in cantrip; or 2) using a powerful spell from the most fantastic spell list. Usually a spell like banishment\force wall\ploymorph is much stronger than your extra attacks. If you r familiar with the idea of opportunity cost, you could kinda see why bladesinger with the most powerful spell lists is forcing players to make consistent trade offs.
Great video 🙂. I like playing Bladesingers and get good results by casting a concentration spell and then taking the dodge action on subsequent rounds if I don't have another way to impose disadvantage on attacks against me.
Another great video! I am re-watching it and though I am not playing my bladesinger totally optimized I really enjoy your info break down and I always appreciate your style of information presentation. Keep up the videos I watch them all the time when I'm character and world building.
THANK YOU!! I mentor a number of GMs to help improve their skills and I have tried to warn them about Tenser’s Trap for months now. I didn’t run the math until after Halloween of this year when I played in a 15th level 1 shot and the Abjuration Wizard casted TT 3 times, once before a long rest and twice after. This used all of their high level slots, they did this while our COL Druid and Sorcerer both interchangeably cast Web (2nd) and flaming sphere (4th) on the enemy. I was working as the GMs hit point secretary and they outpaced the Wizard EVERY round. Not most rounds, EVERY ROUND.
One small thing to note is that a level 6 Bladesinger focussing on Shadow Blade would likely bump their Dexterity at level 4. I'm not saying that makes this the "optimal" way to play a Bladesinger, but it does boost the numbers should you choose to play this way.
Versatility is the name of the game with a Bladesinger. My Harengon Bladesinger owns a short sword and a rapier. When it makes sense to cast shadowblade he does and uses the short sword. When it makes sense to cast a bonus action spell during combat, out comes the rapier. I also have the hand crossbow for when I want to stay out of the way and that’s usually when I’m casting Ashardalon’s Stride too.
I also see a lot of fun builds listed here in the comments from tables that roll. I know this isn't optimal, but here's mine. I rolled some monster stats here: 13 str 18 dex 15 con 20 int 11 wis 14 cha Currently 8 levels of Bladesinger and 2 levels of Paladin(stats are reflective after ASIs) with tough as a feat(Currently 91 HP at level 10). It's allowed me to take a wide variety of spells and still bring big damage when I need it, all without sacrificing the ability to stay in melee even if I happen to get hit. Super effective character so far, and a lot of fun to play.
It does seem a tad... off to treat dex as 16 in the damage calculations. You said to pick intelligence because spellcasting is worth more but what you are analysing is a *weapon* focussed bladesinger. Those numbers would be higher if dex was focussed, and might well be at least more appealing. You started from 'focus spells' then went to prove that if we focus spells we are indeed bad at hitting with weapons, so... I mean, yeah, we focussed spells. Now you would still likely land at 'worse than a sharpshooter crossbow expert fighter;. But I do want to say- and I know this is an optimiser channel so this is sacriligious- do we have to be as good as one of the most damage optimised chassis? Like, we are still a spellcaster outside of combat! We have utility and mobility options, we have counterspell. I think it end up a pretty rad and potent character. Yes, it might have less value than a spellcaster focussed wizard, but so does pretty much everything. I would not choose bladesinger if I wanted to play a master of spells! I pick bladesinger because spellsword cool, and I want to see how far I can go with it, how good I can make it! Great video, but sometimes I feel we too easily dismiss the optimisation of specific aesthetics because they don't measure up. I know they don't, but man I have run out of ideas on how to feel cool playing someone who uses a fiddly little toy crossbow to fight dragons.
The point I'm making is that our damage output compared to fighter is fairly decent at level 6 but at level 11 we are falling behind, we're just getting less out of our levels in this regard, and as you say, if you do prioritize Dex, that doesn't really change that comparison significantly. I have a build coming Friday, and I will discuss some ways we can contribute more if we want to make attacks at higher levels, but shadow blade and tenser's aren't the answer.
Agreed! Comparing Tenser's transformation against an optimized fighter is quite unfair against that spell. I'm happy that the spell doesn't allow a caster to outshine an optimized fighter! That would just make the fighter feel like total crap! It's a fun spell that allows you to fight shoulder to shoulder with the average fighter in melee, not a spell to make non-optimized fighters entirely obsolete. I had great fun with my war wizard (their features stack well with this spell) using two short swords and I had 20 dex (it was a high AC/saving throws defensive build)
@@TreantmonksTemple a Bladesinger stabbing things while using their concentration for animate objects isn’t falling behind on damage though. A Bladesinger can continue to stab things even while concentrating on a non-melee wizard spell so there’s really not as much of an either/or choice as you often seem to suggest there is.
@@VALUST17 I've become more and more disillusioned with animate objects as you aren't accessing it until level 9 and by that time, resistance or immunity to the damage has actually become the norm not the exception.
I made a bladesinger, because I wanted a character that used a blade and was able to teleport around the battlefield. I used blink and shadow blade and some multiclassing. It worked pretty well for what I wanted to accomplish. The DM did usually have one encounter days, which was important for my char to keep up. At higher levels my char also became more and more of a utility caster. Still I liked the character build and it was a fun puzzle to make my concept viable.
I’ve been thinking about playing a strength based tortle blade singer with pole arm master a spear and blade ward so you could make two attacks and blade wars in a round I think it’s interesting
A couple points for optimizing a weapon-based Bladesinger: I'm still not sure if this would outperform just playing like a normal wizard at higher levels, but it will definitely boost your damage some. The first thing is you can mitigate the damage loss at the start of combat by integrating normal spell casting. For example, instead of using shadow blade first round and singing second round, and then having your setup fully online by third round, you can instead start singing first round and cast a damage spell (something like steel wind strike if you still want to feel like you're a swordfighter) and then use shadow blade second round and play the rest of combat as outlined in the video. The next thing I would consider, if your stats allow it, is putting two levels in Paladin. Obviously you lose one casting level of spell slots, and you're lagging by two levels when it comes to unlocking new levels of spells, but it might be worth considering at midgame. Maybe put 9 levels in Wizard and then 2 in Paladin. Obviously you're missing out on 6th level spells which you would otherwise have by 11th level, but if you're trying to build around weapon attacks, we already determined that Tenser's is useless for that, and shadow blade is the same upcasted to 5th as it is to 6th, so you don't necessarily need that 6th level spell option. As far as Paladin, Divine smite doesn't require concentration or any actions, so you can just blow all your first and second level spell slots on a couple smites each round, substantially increasing your damage. At this point in the game, any 1st level damaging spells are going to get outperformed by a damage cantrip, so you wouldn't be using those low level spell slots in combat very much anyway. And since it doesn't involve your Paladin spellcasting modifier, you don't even need great Charisma to accomplish this.
I think you have a very specific way of playing Bladesinger that is quite different from the way many people play it. As far as I'm concerned the two ways to play bladesinger are disabler and damage. If you're in a party with a lot of save or suck spellcasters that wears down legendary resistance quickly, you want to build intelligence first and help get rid of legendary resistance with saving throw spells. If you are in a party with few ways to get rid of legendary resistance the last thing you want to do is cast save or suck spells. So in a party where you need to be damage the correct build is DEX first bladesinger. I think it's important to note that you often don't have a spare bonus action to bladesong at high levels (once you get animate objects) because you want to cast and use animate objects which takes an action to cast and a bonus action to use. A typical fight is three rounds and if you attack on turn 1 and use your bladesong and then don't cast animate objects till turn 2 (when you have a bonus action to use it) your damage drops by a very large amount. Towards this end I often go DEX first on bladesinger and pick up the Mobile Feat at character creation via custom lineage or variant human. If you go custom lineage for darkvision, your first ASI will even your 17/15 to 18/16. If you're going to be a disabler bladesinger then your typical spell selection allows you to have bonus action economy to bladesong as none of your spells will require action+bonus action the turn you cast them. This means you are far more capable of staying in melee, you want to build INT first and you don't want to take a feat like mobile. Which of these bladesingers is better comes down to party composition though. You should attack the boss resource the rest of your party attacks. Bosses in D&D have two HP bars (Legendary Resistance and Actual HP) and you want to focus on the same resource as the rest of the party for best results.
It's fun listen to you ranting about Tenser's Transformation whilst I am using this spell to body everything in combat. To be fair I am playing a modified version of dnd 5e in a special guild setting which allowed me as well as other to pick more feat's. This allowed me to pick up elven accuracy which means according to my own calculations I have around 90% hitchance in most encounters. To be fair these are just my own calculations, someone else might do them diffently. This does not, of course count for everyone but I think going elven accuracy for a bladesinger should increase your hitchance with tensers significantly even if you give up a ASI. Maybe to a point where you hit like 80% of the time. Which would further put in the numbers in favor of the bladesinger. I think most of your gripe with the damage and performance of the spell comes from how you calculate damage as your way of calculating damage factors in the standard enemy AC alot and well as the method of damage calculation was made by you alone there is a little bit of neutral ground lost. I agree that the armor proficiency is anti-useful, basically I am treating this spell as if only the first three lines exist and I can't cast any spells. Additionally you did not consider that you deal the most potent damage type in the game. Force damage which should at least give you more consistency in combat because you can realiably deal good damage as opposed a fighter might have to work around that. As for the missing defensive options you did not factor in that, altough you cannot cast spells, you can still use your magic power in fights. I am talking about the Song of Defense Feature. In general the most effective way of surving damage is not AC but Hitpoints. As most damage in fights ist not tanked by a single indiviual of the group it is reasonable to assume that, even in meele, you do not tank more than 50 damage per turn. Congratulations you can reduce this amount by about 15 HP per round, lets say 20 if you choose your slots wisely. You now have a greater HP pool than the fighter (around 178, 68 from your base HP when you have 14 CON, 50 from Tensers and 60 from 3 succesful uses of song of defense). With an AC of 20 even if you skipped one ASI for elven accuracy (16 DEX 18 INT) (21 if you have a +2 studded leather which you should get anyway, 22 when you reach level 12 as you can now pick an ASI, 22/23 if you have a Cloak of Protection) , and similar/better damage when you take my arguments into account. Yes you give up the ability to cast spells but there are instances where single target damage is more important then spell versatility, and for these fights tensers is perfect. You need one round of prep and you are set, which in my experience at least (yours can of course differ) happens more than 75% of the time if you are smart.) In conclusion, you kinda have to build around tensers to be effective but that would'nt dimish your potency as a spellcaster even if you do that, you just get better in meele, even without tenser's, even more with tenser's. The fun in playing a wizard for me is to figure out how to use spells effectively and tenser's was such a case for me. I am outperforming everyone in single target DPS when I use it and still am a terrifing threat when not. And It's fun to be able to go toe to toe with our barbarian at the same level, which I am in my round at least, thanks to tenser's, Best regards and have fun playing. A Tenser's enjoyer.
Maybe if we flip the script a bit: With one subclass, and the 'right' spells. The Wizard, an already very powerful class, can also 'nearly' compete in every other aspect of combat when compared to the other classes, even when ignoring many of the core aspects of being the wizard. XD
So my latest bladesinger just got a ring of spell storing, and now he’s got his familiar attuned to it. The DM ruled you can booming blade with shadow blade, and use your haste action to attack and swap that attack for a cantrip. I can have his owl cast haste on him while he casts shadow blade. I calculated his DPR at level 6 in dim light to 50 DPR, with two booming blade attacks and a normal attack. Things get weird when you add magic items, though I will admit that the item could be used just as well to boost other wizard spell casting.
While I agree Tensor's is not a great spell, I've been in a situation where it was useful. Surrounded by mummies where I couldn't effectively use AOEs and I happened to have a staff of striking (spare attunement slot and no one else wanted it). Killed a lot of mummies and soaked a lot of damage and made all my con saves. That's the only time I've cast it though, and haven't prepped it since.
Tenser's is good for a player who routinely saves their highest level spell for last, but still not optimal. You could also use it as a *contingency* triggered if you run out of spell slots, or a *glyph of warding* set to trigger if you don medium or heavy armor. It's situationally useful, but not a great spell for regular preparation.
@@CerealNommer Using something to bypass the don time for heavy armor cutting into the duration is pretty clever. And yeah it can be situational useful which is where the wizard shines with their massive spells known. A decent spell to have in your repertoire and get it ready when your foresee it coming in handy.
Honestly, range blade singer is just solid. I use mind sliver and light crossbow. Great when I'm not casting Spells. You can still duel daggers when you need to and attack with spirit shroud. Or just hang back and cast spells. I've noticed with most of my games my wizard ends up in melee so I might as well have some defenses and damage when needed.
It depends on the rules you are playing with. Not everyone plays with feats, some tables ban GWM/SS. I suspect in games where optimizing with feats isn't possible that Tenser's Transformation is rather good. In a game that allows feats, if a player wanted Tenser's Transformation, I'd probably change the last bullet point to, when you take the Attack action you attack an additional time. This stacks with Extra Attack. So, if you were using 2 weapons, that would give you 4 possible attacks. Also, being martial, I'd have a rider that bladesingers can still cast spells while under the transformation.
I feel like turn one you should be activating blade song with bonus action and casting a spell with your action. Especially if you're not up casting your shadow blade. Even if it is a concentration crowd control spell you'll have the enemies shut down for their first turn which can be huge
The thing is in my experience of playing wizards is that I will run out of spell slots before the rest of the party, so I tend to try to use catrips half the time. Having bladesong helps fill out options. Also, elven accuracy with shadow blade.
Treant, Tenser's is a spell that I think was not designed for player use. Where it shines is with some prep time that ordinarily gained if one is a BBEG. Tenser's does require concentration, and stipulate that you cant cast spells while the spell is active, however when combined with another (non) PC heavy spell it does combine a bit better. If you combine Tenser's with Glyph of Warding, we get more possible spell combinations, specifically because of the wording and duration on Glyph of Warding. " You can store a prepared spell of 3rd level or lower in the glyph by casting it as part of creating the glyph. The spell must target a single creature or an area. The spell being stored has no immediate effect when cast in this way. When the glyph is triggered, the stored spell is cast. If the spell has a target, it targets the creature that triggered the glyph. If the spell affects an area, the area is centered on that creature. If the spell summons hostile creatures or creates harmful objects or traps, they appear as close as possible to the intruder and attack it. If the spell requires concentration, it lasts until the end of its full duration." When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage of an glyph increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 3rd. If you create a , you can store any spell of up to the same level as the slot you use for the glyph of warding."The duration of Glyph of Warding is "Until Dispelled or Triggered"So while an "Optomizer's" dream scenario, because we know have options, Tenser's becomes more viable. You can already have your Heavy Armor equipped and the BBEG can deliver his
Bladesinger is this absolute versatile character with a lot of possibilities to do either damage or control, with a lot of defensive capability and a lot of options. This clas is an allrounder that in the right hands can be the best character on the tabble or a generic wizard or a bad fighter, all depends on gameplay.
I think it is forgot about too. However i think it is not that they dont know it exists but that they dont bother looking for it at all after seeing all the busted concentration spells that shut down entire combats at once as long as the caster doesnt lose concentration. Its hard to argue for further searches after mentioning Web at lv 2 one of the tasha summon spells at lv 3 polimorph at lv4 and animate objects at lv 5.
@@hansmuller8762 oh for sure. But what kind of character are you playing? I general if I'm a spell caster I'm a buffer and CC. Still if you wanted to be stabby m stabberson, Shadow blade is a great tool for that
@@cclark2021 I tend to play creature mages in combat while focussing on support or burst after turn 1. The oneshot i got to play a bladesinger in I didnt get to the point where 2 attacks +booming blade where a better option then lightningbolting whatever survived my frontline and summons. Especially since the enemy had an aura of confusion.
Variant human - warcaster Round 1: BA - Bladesong A - Any 3rd level spell (say fireball) = 8d6 dmg (1 of 3 slots) Round 2: BA - Shadowblade (2 of 3 slots) A - 2 attacks, 1 booming blade (assuming Dm allows you to use shadowblade) - 3d8+DEX+3d8+DEX+Boomingblade1d8+2d8... that's 7d8+2*DEX+Optional2d8 if they move, that's most than a fireball, every turn, from here on out.
I think the main problem with the Bladesinger is that, by its theme and nature, it is usually used for cases where you WANT to play a melee character, and thus the emphasis on melee tends to just be what we want to do with it. Personally I am a huge fan of grabbing one or two levels of Rogue with Bladesinger. This gives you the Hand Crossbow proficiency, so you can avoid the melee dangers of the class, and with Cunning Action you gain a whole lot of great utility for moving around and staying safe, whether you are shooting or slinging spells. I also like to split myself a bit more between dex and int for it, and generally put some emphasis on summoning spells. The summoning spells provide great value for damage, puts a body between us and the baddies, lets us trigger our little extra sneak attack damage, and keeps our spell slots largely in reserve for handy support things like counterspell, etc.
As a bladesong enthusiast, I have found that the best option to fulfill the fantasy comes from flavor and a bit of homebrew. Not homebrew that makes you consistently stronger than what the fighter can do in combat, but stuff that leaves you below the fighter without casting spells, and above on turns when you do - basically just good melee combat spells that are comparable to other good combat spells, whether they boost damage, enact control, or a little of both (my personal favorite). There's a lot of space here for expansion for the gish flavor - personally, I envision a separate system in 5e specifically for gishing that lays alongside spellcasting, as I think a comprehensive gish system should have its own rules that make it too clunky to just throw it all into spells.
One way around the armor issues with Tenser's Transformation is to use it with an Illusionist. At 14th level they can cast disguise self to appear to wear heavy armor (no concentration), then cast Tenser's and finally as a bonus action make the illusory armor real. Other casters can instantly doff armor with a common magic item to not be trapped in their armor.
Tenser's Transformation is a fun RP trick to pull out of your sleeve. I can see a couple of really fun scenarios where the spell would make the whole table crack up. If I was playing a Wizard, and I found it in a spellbook at some point, I'd probably take the time to transscribe it to my spell book. Probably. Maybe.
First, thank you so much. You’ve well articulated something I have long suspected, that melee oriented spell casters aren’t as effective as fighter classes. That said, I’ve always liked the excitement and play style of being in close combat rather than always trying to stay on the outskirts of the battlefield. I also love the versatility of playing a full spell caster. So here is my question - what build might you recommend for a “close combat” full spell caster? And when I say “close combat”, I mean a caster who stays in close, but doesn’t use a melee weapon. I suspect there are a number of advantages to staying in close, and some spells that work better in close as well. I’d love to know your thoughts or recommendations on this if your time permits. Thank you!
Agree 100% with the notion that bladesingers are just as good of a spellcaster as any other wizard subclass, if not more so. A big part of why I decided to make my first character in 5e a bladesinger is because I wanted to play a pure wizard that 1) doesn't die (I figured this was likely a big risk in playing a wizard as a newbie), and 2) could get more leverage out of my INT score than just increased spell preparations/proficiency. So I started out as a high elf, took the Lucky feat at level 4 (I felt that negating enemy crits and increasing my odds of succeeding on saving throws was more important than having advantage on every concentration check), and am now level 6 planning on maxing out INT over the next two ASI's. Thus far, while I have been pleasantly surprised by this character's melee output, I find it takes a bit of a back seat relative to the wizard's spellcasting abilities (e.g., a well-placed fireball tends to be far more effective than spending a turn hitting things). Obviously, I still have a long way to go with this character. Though if the wizard spell list is anything to go by, then I see little reason to doubt my decision to prioritize INT over DEX (and, by extension, lucky over war caster).
I would say for wizards, only a one level dip into Artificer as lv 1 is needed in order to get that proficiency in Con saves, along with access to some 1st level spells that a wizard cannot get. It doesn't have much of a spell delay or sacrifice.
Your vid greatly shows the problem with Bladesinger design. I play Bladesinger to be a good melee fighter, not to cast spells like other wizards. So I need to have decent damage with a weapon. But to do this, you have to get three abilities quite high, so we are talking about serious MAD here (not even talking about the inability to use GWM/PAM/SS feats). You are jumping through loops and hoops to get a baseline vaibility (attack/AC/Damage) that other classes have out-of-the-box Frankly, if BS would get Int as attack/damage attribute (like Artificer or Hexblade), it would help the class greatly
I recently got the idea of wielding a Quarterstaff in one hand and a net in the other. With polearm master triggering an opportunity attack one could throw the net and restrain an incoming attacker, adding a defensive layer. Now, do I need to attack with my Quarterstaff? If so, can I get around this with warcaster, allowing me to cast booming blade instead and attack there with the net? And to make this work with booming blade or to mitigate the disadvantage of throwing a net in melee range, can I make an improvised melee weapon attack with the net and still get the on hit effect of restraining the enemy? Can I combine this with casting mending to restrain the enemy again if he slashed through the net (maybe with a prepared action as my reaction) and could I overcome the casting time of one minute via bladesingers extra attack?
I don't think Tensers is good for a bladesinger, but for other wizards it can have situational utility. Its a 6th level spell and you chose it so you probably have some way to build for it a bit, maybe magical armor or a shield. You may have a decent attack stat etc. You aren't going to cast it normally but you may be running low on spells or fighting a creature basically immune to your spells and then this comes in handy. So in campaigns with long adventuring days I can see it coming up. I did see a person who had taken crossbow expert with his level 1 variant human feat for the ability to make ranged attacks in melee get some use out of it with a hand crossbow. He had a ASI later with no real need to put it anywhere and took sharpshooter to double down on it, not the optimized choice but kind of funny when the wizard starting popping off crossbow bolts for heavy damage once in a while when he was down on spells.
The only solid use I have ever had for Tensers Transformation is as a 12th level bard taking it as a magical secret along with having find greater steed. Then use it combined with the steed. Admittedly this is a “fun” option more than a power option.
Long story short: full caster is the optimal way to play, IF POSSIBLE. While I agree, the basic assumption is "playing in an average, well rounded, group of 3-5". Something is widely overlook IMO, is the "locking" role of the front line, melee characters: Most of full casters are powerful, only when there is a front line. This means that someone must be there and lock the enemies if we want to maximize the group effectiveness. This means, that even if you are weaker in the front line, you are increasing more the group effectiveness.
Once your concentration is up, using Blade Ward can be an interesting option if you can punish a creature for attacking you while taking a shot with a ranged weapon. A few spells can do the trick. Tensei is also pretty good if you use Contingency to teleport (misty step or something else) as soon as the temp are gone. Not sure if Dimension Door can be used, but if so even better.
What people don't understand is the bladesinger is a generalist class. Instead of being strong at 1 thing they get weaker versions of things they can't normally do. Bladesong gives you AC and concentration buffs slightly worse then feats and multiclasses people preform for these benefits. Extra attack is not for main damage it is for resources conservation letting them do better damage than others wizard without spending resources. Song of defense gives you costly abilities to protect yourself but you are protecting your weakest resources your HP. dumping mid level slots gives you good survivability without crippling you power until you use your higher spells. Song of victory ish just thematic and makes you decent at melee combat being slightly sub par to material classes using no resources.
I have a player in my game who is a multiclass blade song and kensei monk. I think the main reason it works because we rolled for stats and he rolled well. He doesn’t have massive damage output like the fighter but he has an ac of 25 by level 9. I’m fine with this because they’re still weak to charisma and strength saves, and if they’re going to be front lining the big boss they have a high to hit anyway.
I'm tempted to get 2-6 Bladesinger levels on my Arcane Trickster. Extra cantrips, spell progression/preparation, bonus AC in a pinch, and proficiency with a Whip all seem very tempting. I feel like the extra cantrip attack at lvl 6 would scale nicely both in Melee and Ranged thanks to the extra damage from Sneak attack. I'd be able to use something like Mind Sliver or Ray of Frost alongside a deadly crossbow shot to enhance my damage/utility at a range, and get another chance to land a sneak attack when I'm in range for a Booming/Green Flame blade with either a rapier, shortsword, or even shadow blade. In terms of raw DPS, a single Sneak attack Shadowblade strike combined with a Toll the Dead might lead to a higher average DPS than making both attacks with the Blade itself at higher levels. The whip can seem like a minor thing to get, but if wielded with a rapier, it lets you increase your threat range for attacks of opportunity which is nice for synergizing with Sentinel and Mage Slayer to get extra sneak attacks from safety. I believe having a 5ft AND a 10ft reach weapon lets you make an AoO if someone leaves either weapons reach, but that might be me misreading the rules. In any case, it's quite a nice weapon for Rogues that they sadly don't always get without extra effort. Its also the only Finesse weapon a natural Rogue can even choose for this feature, since the extra weapon proficiency is restricted to one-handed melee weapons anyways.
D4s Colby makes a great bid for using Summon Fey instead of Shadow blade. I’ve been using a lvl 5 bladesinger that has been able to maintain sustain damage and tanking attacks over 5 encounters I had 3 first lvl spells left. Blur is an option to help you stay in melee and I luckily have a headband of intellect high elf with point buy at 17 Dex 16inT(19HBI) at lvl four took resilient Con to bring me to 14 con. It’s powerful as a melee dealer and still can bust out a fireball when the big groups arrive. It about situational awareness as with any party. No matter what type of class your playing if your not a bear barbarian you don’t want to just get hit a bunch in melee with the dragon anyways. It’s the intelligence of the wizard that can make them the tactical warrior that picks the right move in the moment. I just love how sustainable this wizard plays vs Evocation wizard that can blast in maybe 2 encounters then are toast.
tenser's transformation is great to cast on an item that other character can cast it on than, like 'ring of spellstoring' so an nom caster can benefit from it
I would like you to talk briefly about tashas otherworldly transformation. If not in the bladesinger video, then in something in the near future. Seems like tensers without the negatives. I took it on a warlock (tome) because I ended up being the primary meat shield in a party of casters where I had the most base health
So with the new bladesinger update, i would just use the the extra attack from it(it lets you cast a cantrip, and attack in one turn) so make a forcelance blast singer is what i called it. so PAM level 1 hexblade, another level of lock for agonzing blast and repelling, then 6 levels bladesinger. at level 4 wizard take warcaster and now we forcelance. then then at level 6 wizard our damage is as follows, 1d10+3+2d10+3+1d4+3 and enter 2d10+3 and this damage scales as thats what cantrips do. i would recomend two more levels into wizard giving our cha to 18 then the rest into warlock. this build get to, at some point grab the lifedrinker invocation 1d10+10+4d10+20+1d4+10 THEN when they enter 4d10+20 just destroying stuff...
Starting a bladesinger in a campaign tomorrow. It is not really an optimal build - starting with one level of fighter mostly for flavor but the con preficiency and extra hit points (incl. second wind) are welcome :-)
Great video. Only a couple things I disagree with. First that you DO want to hang out in melee. In bladesong you are the the ultimate tank with protection from good and evil or blur, shield, silvery barbs, absorb elements and most important upcast false life. The only subclass that is a better tank is a bear totem barbarian. As a bladesinger I don't want to disengage or hide, I want to draw those attacks. My weapon damage is low, but that is not what I am focusing on as a bladesinger, I am blocking the enemy so the strikers can go in and out and move around the battlefield. I want the enemy swinging at me so the Paladin doesn't go down and can smite instead of healing himself. So I camp out and make small damage attacks, occasionally throwing out a damaging or other non-concentration spell (because I am concentrating on blur or PEG). Wither and bloom is a particularly nice spell if they do get a sword past my defenses. Punish enemy movement with booming blade. If you have a choke point like a doorway or narrow hallway and the enemy can't get past me and has no ranged weapons then I can just dodge while my allies pepper him from range. My relatively high dexterity and advantage on acrobatics saves means they can't grapple me and move me out of the way easily (and if they do I misty step back in their way next turn). I also want high wisdom instead of high constitution, from experience it is the wisdom saves that have hurt my bladesingers the most. I get the intelligence boost for con saves, I don't get hit often and I can reduce damage from a lot of AOEs with absorb elements to make those saves easier. Sure I lose concentration occasionally, but I fail wisdom saves more often and with upcast false life, absorb elements and screaming high AC I effectively have more hit points that most of my allies. I can't argue this is the "most powerful" way to run a wizard or even a bladesinger and by concentrating on defensive spells I am giving up some of the best control spells available, but this character can stand toe-to-toe in melee longer than just about any class.
Bladesinger with Mage armor, and 20 dex, 20 Int, has 23 AC, and have shield in their back pocket to cast, putting them closer to 28. Most builds will likely utilize Haste, and push the base AC, to 25. This is factoring that you didnt get a protection ring or something.
Completely unrelated but when you as a wizard casts one of those fight ending spells (hypnotic pattern, wall of force, forcecage, etc), how do you deal with other players who are annoyed at you for "cheating" them out of a fun fight?
Consider the abilities of your party and build combos with them. For example, with Wall of Force, you can easily separate the battlefield in a way that puts your allies into a strategic position, for example you can lock the enemy in it with the cleric's Spiritual Weapon, swashbuckler, or a raging barbarian. When they're done with the first one, Vortex Warp them a new one to go nuts on. You can get the Hypnotic Pattern off safely only on the beginning of the combat, and only if you roll decent on your initiative, otherwise the enemies and your allies will be already mingled up and that means friendly fire. If you're not a war or chronurgy wizard, you won't have the highest initiative bonus, so that shouldn't happen so often for your allies to actually be mad. Many mid to high tier enemies will also be straight up immune to this, and legendary resistances will always save the top dogs. Forcecage is a high level spell, on that tier of play you're usually facing so powerful threats that removing few of them should get you praise, not annoyance from your mates.
One piece of practical advice is that even if you enjoy optimizing your characters and understand how to get the most out of them, that doesn't mean that you have to make the most powerful or optimal play in every situation. Some tables really like the tactical side of the game, and the DM is experienced enough to keep things challenging in combat even when most or all of the players are running strong characters and making very good decisions. Other tables just aren't like that. (Honestly, in my experience, most tables aren't.) The players and DM have a more casual approach, and making the best play in every situation is both completely unnecessary and possibly a bad fit for the style of the game at that table. This doesn't mean that you cannot, or should not, make optimized builds. Just be mindful of how you play them. In a lot of cases the "second-best" choice is still really impactful, without ending combat. Maybe sometimes you intentionally do the "second-best" choice, because you already single-handedly ended one combat that session, and making sure that the whole table is having fun is more important for the health of a campaign than getting to do the most awesome thing in every single situation where you are able to. Of course, that needs to go both ways. If other players are getting upset because you sometimes do very effective things, then that's poor behavior on their part (not yours). You really just need to get a feel for the table, and encourage people to communicate OOC after / in between sessions. I have a warlock player who has an imp familiar, and while I have tried (as DM) to make it so that the imp can usefully scout, without completely rendering exploration a "solved problem..." it can be a delicate balance. It has helped our game immensely that other players mentioned that the "auto-mapping" by the familiar has affected their enjoyment, and now the warlock always discusses with the party before sending out his imp. He still gets a great deal of value from the familiar, mind you, but he exercises a little bit of self-restraint, because other players sometimes want to interact with the environment before his familiar tries everything first.
I find these spells can give a win, but often don't end the fight. They most often allow for splitting up enemies allowing other characters to deal with them in stages rather than all at once.
That's exactly the same reason why I don't recommend shillelagh for nature clerics. 3-round setup is too long to get everything online and for suboptimal damage at the end of the day. However, as a DM I'd ignore the rule that shillelagh cannot be cast in the same turn of another leveled spell.
Question for Treantmonk: I'm with you that optimizing a spell-casting wizard is about the spells, so better not to worry about low cantrip/attack damage. But let's say the objective is to optimize a melee character. Yes, a build w/ wizard levels will need spells to get so-so damage, but viewed overall as a melee build, wizards get other very useful features, e.g. Shield, Mirror Image and Blink are great for defense. So a wizard with some level dips could be viewed as a very versatile melee character. How would this stack up against other melee builds?
In my opinion the sorcerer with metamagic and sorcery points is the most powerful class in the game. It may be a little less versatile but you can cast your spells more often and control the damage/effects more often.
13:10 RAW you can't make the bonus action attack with shadowblade. The bonus action attack you get from two weapon fighting is allways made with the offhand weapon which in this case would be the shortsword, unless you have your shadowblade in your offhand and shortsword in your main hand but in this case then the first attack you make (your main action attack) is made with the shortsword instead so we come to the same result of one attack with your shadowblade and two with the shortsword (one of which has booming blade or green flame blade on it). If you want to make 2 attacks with your shadowblade you have skip booming blade (or green flame blade) and make both those attacks as part of your (multi)attack action followed by a non enhanced bonus action hit with your shortsword.
Have you considered a Barbarian dip for a Str Wizard and Contingency Tenser’s Transformation “when I rage”? Then, you Rage only when out of spells? I realize a lot of people would prefer a better contingency, like Resilient sphere or dimension door etc. but imagine the beefy Wizard whose blasted all day and when he’s out of blast and control just goes crazy with “100” extra HP and hits that deal an extra 2d12 force?
So am I misunderstanding Booming Blade? I thought the damage was only inflicted if the target moves of their own will. If I hit the target and then move away (to force them to close and trigger the BB), I'll likely provoke an attack of opportunity, right? Am I missing something?
I do have a question though, say you have a level 12 blade singer wizard and you have the dual wielder feat and elven accuracy, so you have 2 rapiers, both magical with a 19/20 crit range, would the damage from tensers transformation be worth it? Because of the three attacks all at super advantage with a double crit chance? With blade song, war caster and proficiency in con save you most likely wont loose the concentration, basically I am either looking for a better spell to use for damage, because on average it seems like you have a decently high chance of at least one crit every turn and this would then also double the spells damage as well
Depending on how plentiful magical items are in your campaign, gauntlets of ogre power are a quick fix to needing str or dex to attack. Once you are getting better magic items you probably don't want to keep the attunement slot in use, but you also probably don't want to be stabbing too much anyway at that point.
This makes me curious: if someone wanted to make a spell-sword style character, would you recommend bladesinger? If not, what would you recommend? I'm sorry to hear about the diminishing returns at higher levels, as I was hoping the bladesinger would be the thing to feel that niche. Thank you for saving me the disappointment.
As someone who has played several Bladesingers from level 1 to T3 or even T4 and even wrote a guide for them -- it's IMO the best all-around gish except for the post-Tasha's Sorceradin. And even then it's only very slightly behind. However, the subclass is only good if you know the in's and out's of the Wizard spell list but are also good at keeping the list in mind while doing gish stuff. If you can't immediately tell me what level Fly, Misty Step, Transmute Rock, and Greater Invis are at then you're not going to enjoy this class. In that case: play a pure paladin. They work as spell-sword style characters starting from level 2 and don't need to do weird and counterintuitive things like reserving 6th/7th-level spell slots open for a Contingency fast-cast to keep their damage relevant. There are a ton of directions you can take their combat in, as opposed to Bladesinger, who can't really do combat that's not a high-AC speedster that relies on their Batman Utility Belt to cover the holes in their offense and defense.
@@maltheopia Good to know! I guess I was looking for a more frontline melee option, which it seems the bladesinger can do that well at lower levels but gets outperformed later compared to other martial melee classes. Sorcadin would probably be my first choice. I've had an idea for a Conquest Paladin/Shadow Sorcerer build I've been wanting to try in particular. Also, would you look at that, Treantmonk has a spellsword build that is a sorcadin. Huh.
@@wayward_soul9663 I would absolutely not say that the Bladesinger gets performed by the other martial melee classes. Bladesingers are legit overpowered, but it's not obvious because: A) Most of the Bladesinger's best tricks are not obvious. People go on and on about having an always-on AC of 21+. And while that's good, that won't just win you the battle like a well-timed Fly or Greater Invis or Investiture of Stone would or could. This is further muddied by how none of the Bladesinger's tricks will individually (unlike the Illusionist or Chronurgist) just let them effortlessly win more than 10% of battles. You have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of wizard spells and a willingness to brainstorm extensive backup plans if you want your Bladesinger to be anything but a low-damage, high-AC martial that can sometimes cast spells. B) Going with A, the Bladesinger always has an 'out' to an unfavorable matchup. There are plenty of bad situations that will screw over a wizard but not a Bladesinger. There are plenty of bad situations that will screw over a martial but not a Bladesinger. There are zero situations that would screw over a Bladesinger but wouldn't screw over a martial or pure wizard.
@@maltheopia To be clear, I was not saying it got outperformed overall - far from it - but as a frontline melee damage dealer, it doesn't perform as well in that particular roll as, say, a sorcadin or a PAMlock. At low levels it can do that well, but at higher levels this video shows you are better off just falling back on spellcasting, and using the melee options every now and again. Still very powerful, still very effective, but not for the things I was looking for.
@@wayward_soul9663 What range of levels, how many encounters per day, and what was the magical item situation like? Bladesingers have straight-up some of the best melee DPR in T2 and T4. And even in T3, they only fall behind if the DM doesn't drop enough of and the right kind of magical items. A Flametongue will instantly make you hit all of the damage benchmarks in T3+ -- and you can enhance it even further with stuff like Contingency: Haste, Simulacrum, and Spirit Shroud.
There could be a debate that you vould cast a cantrip with haste's action as a bladesinger because of replacing your only weapon attavk with a cantrip as it is another attack action, but it's up to the DM to allow something that powerful even if it could be arguably ok RAW
With a flame tongue at level 5 my personal average is almost 100 damage a round. I always keep four skeletons and a tiny servant with me, summon fey, and a phantom steed for free disengage
Fun thing you can do with a Bladesinger: Barbarian 1 for Unarmored Defense, Wizard 2 for Bladesinger. Focus on Con, Dex, and Int, and you can have a 25 AC (30 w/ Shield). I call it a Naked Bladesinger.
Lol I like how the biggest chunk of the bladesinger video is actually about how bad tenser's transformation is. That said, the best thing I can possibly imagine with tenser's transformation Is for a swords or valor bard to take it as a 14th level magical secrets. Mix in crossbow expert and sharpshooter, and you're putting out good damage every round with guaranteed advantage. And for defenses, also take find greater steed. Ride your pegasus, who also gets many of tenser's benefits now, and just keep out of the enemy's range while you pepper them with force imbued crossbow bolts.
Something about listening to Chris absolutely SEETHE when talking about Tenser’s brings me so much joy. I wish you the absolute best of luck in your never ending crusade to convince people of just how shit that spell is
Oh no, you and Colby aren't going to be friends after this one. Jest aside, I'm sure he'll be checking out your completed build, as will I. Great topic, breakdowns and video.
I don't see why people think bladesinger should be as good at fighting as a fighter. The main appeal of Gish'ing in a spell slot system is that stabbing things doesn't eat up slots. A fight where you can preserve resources by popping your song and spending most rounds stabbing things means your next fight you have some spare slots to throw around.
i'm trying to theorycraft a CyberNinja like GrayFox from metal gear, and even though i'm fully aware is NOT the the optimal i'm liking the 3 lvl dip in Armourer Artificer, using both types of Arcane Armour for roleplay The two weapons we get Thunder Gauntlets and Lightning Launcher works with intelligence, and it seems fun to Booming Blade + Gauntlet or Fire Bolt + Launcher, not a bad turn is you want to save some spells If you need/want to get close use the guardian model or the infiltrator on 'stealths missions' giving permanent advantage on stealth checks while using light armour gives a camouflage feeling to the character
I’m playing 3d6 down the line and rolled no stat higher than a 12. We get a free feat at our table so I went custom lineage and took 2 int half feats so I have 16 int but only 12 in con and 9 in Dex. I decided to go bladesong just for the improved con and ac. I will eventually throw spears (12 str and only 9 dex) just to supplement my cantrip damage in a round when I was just going to cast a damage cantrip. I’m thinking of extra attack as a small chance to increase my cantrip damage.
Just as a thought experiment: Dump all stats except for dex, paladin 2, draconic sorceror 4 (for twinned+quickened and the asi's you'll likely need) + bladesinger wizard 14
I really like the flavor of this subclass, but sadly you are right - bladesinger is a great wizard, but not very great melee fighter with spells to enchance your attacks. And I really wish to play the opposite. For that a paladin, hex, or some multiclass like pal+sorc works better. I also really hate the idea to have low CHA on character like that, because everything in subclass description, arts and performance skill suggest that you have it above average. But mechanically it's very difficult to get 4th stat high.
This just gave me an idea: What if Bladesingers had a similar feature to the Paladin’s Divine Smite, something like an Arcane Smite, so as to keep their melee prowess on par with other martial classes?
You can take a 2 level dip in paladin to make this happen. It's not actually the worst thing honestly, and is, IMO, one of the only ways to optimize a bladesinger for martial combat. The problem is that you are MAD, MAD, MAD. You need three high Ability scores for Bladesinger, and also somehow to get a 13 in Str and Cha? You can do it if you point buy as a Tortle, and dump Dex and Wis and focus on strength instead. This should give you 16/8/13/16/8/13. It works ok. Your Con is pretty low for a bladesinger, though you do get a few extra points for the paladin levels. Realistically, this multiclass is for when you roll for stats and get only one score below 13 (wis).
@@insertphrasehere15 must have either rolled well or struggled with ability scores with the 13 cha, int, str prerequisites whilst also wanting dex and con to survive. Bladesinger definitely can be a power class if you have great stats and doesn't even need smite to do really well.
They shouldn’t be on par with Martials, since Martials don’t get full casting. Anyhow, Bladesinger gets a unique “defensive smite” where they can spend a spell slot to reduce damage taken as a reaction. Paladins and Warlocks can’t get anything like that.
I think in general you tend to overvalue two things: (1) CC and spell slot spells over sustained damage; and (2) higher level play. What works best is always going to be dictated by the kinds of encounters that you have in your campaigns. It sounds to me that you're used to designing and playing in campaigns where lots of CC is very useful and where you're used to getting lots of rests so that you can restore your spell slots. That hasn't been my experience. In most of the games I've played, sustained damage has been more useful for my games than heavy CC and using lots of spell slots. Plus, it seems like you're used to higher level play, and that's just not the way most DND players play today. I tend to play in the official published campaigns which end around level 10. If you go on sites like Roll 20, you see official campaigns everywhere- DND rules "officially" go up to level 20, but in the real world, most of us are playing to around level 10. That's just the world the average DND player lives in. I took some of your advice for wizard and bard builds, and I just found that the very heavy CC/spell focus you seem to advocate for was just not useful for my games because in my encounters, sustained damage was more useful for encounters because stuff died in a few rounds- a lot of DMs I've been playing with design encounters to involve lots of encounters with few rounds of fighting. When I ditched designing for CC and spells for more sustained damage in general, I found it to be much more effective. So I think your advice is pointed towards a specific DM encounter philosophy that I just haven't come across that often. So I think the "best" builds are going to depend on your campaign level cap and DM encounter philosophy.
I think the idea is doing CC is what wizard does the best. If you are focusing on doing melee damage with your wizard you are always going to feel worse than the fighter in your group who gets to add fun effects to their weapon attacks, do more damage and have big action surge turns. Unless you are using your spells in a way that makes you stand out from that, the player tends to feel bad. You shouldn't take this to mean don't make a bladesinger if you want a gish in melee, it's saying bladesinger isn't suited to that playstyle as much as you think. If all your spells need to do are enhance your combat you can get a better experience with some flavor adjusted Paladin or Eldritch Knight. Bladesinger is the class where you want to have a sword in your hand while casting powerful spells and be confident in your abilities to use that sword if it's ever needed. Now if you made this comment over spell ranking videos or any other video about how TM undervalues genuinely fun and useful spells I would agree but when it comes to Bladesinger the arguments seem clear to me.
In your "shadow blade at level 6" segment you are forgetting three things. One, cantrips scale at level 5, 11, and 17, so that booming blade cast as a level 6 character scales up to +1d8 thunder on hit, +2d8 if the target moves. This bumps your damage by about ~5 if we assume 55% chance to hit and 50% chance of getting that movement bonus damage. Not huge, but it's something. Two, Shadowblade and booming blade deal damage types that are very rarely resisted and even if the shortsword damage is resisted due to the weapon being non-magical, the vast majority of your damage output is unlikely to be resisted, which automatically makes you that much better than any martial who does not have a magic weapon at this point. Three, during your first round setup activating your bladesong, there's nothing stopping you from tossing out an actual spell with your action rather than attacking. You could use Mirror Image for some serious survivability, toss out a Tasha's Mind Whip to shut down a strong but stupid opponent's next turn, maybe use See Invisibility if you know there's an invisible opponent.
THANK YOU! The fact that he wasn't accounting for cantrip scaling or higher level upcasting was driving me nuts throughout this video. This whole thing seemed like an hour long video on why you shouldn't fight in melee combat as a Bladesinger.
Ok this comment is late and so will probably go unseen, but! As a self-proclaimed Martial Bladesinger Fanboy, I have to say two things!
1: I don't really disagree with anything you've said :).
2: I think that so much of how effective a Martial-Focused Bladesinger is depends a lot on your paradigm and intent. If my approach to the character is something like: "I want to be the best Wizard I can be," then my approach will be vastly different than if it were something akin to "I want to make a powerful melee attacker." With the latter, you're not thinking as much about your high level spells and your Spell Save DC. It's more like "well, I could be a Fighter/Barbarian and take GWM/PAM... bleh, boring. Hexblade? Done to death and too few spell slots. Hm... what about a Bladesinger? I could be a really powerful Melee character *and* have lots of spell slots to Blink, Shield, Misty Step, etc. etc. with... sounds awesome!" With *that* approach, you're comparing yourself not to other Wizards (heresy, I know), but instead to the other Martial Melee characters of the world. And so, of course you're going to focus on Dex over Int. And not worry so much about what else you could be doing instead of casting Shadow Blade (or Animate Objects) as a 5th level spell, right? It's not "I could have used Wall of Force!" it's "this about on par with other Martials, damage-wise, but with way better spells than an Eldritch Knight could've had!" And I truly do think that, under that paradigm, you end up being really competitive, damage-wise with the best Martials, but get to bring along a much better bag of tricks to boot.
I appreciate that, as you've pointed out, there are drawbacks. Ramp up time due to Bonus Action bloat is perhaps the biggest. That said, it feels to me like many of the strongest Martial damage-dealers in game require some similar ramp: The Hexblade casting Darkness or Shadow of Moil... even Barbarians have to Rage. When I've played Bladesinger in game, I don't typically mind going something like: round 1 - Bladesong and an additional defensive buff like Mirror Image (at lower level) or Blink (at higher), or a nice little Fireball or something while we all try to get in range and to soften up a few targets, then round 2 - Shadow Blade and make a couple of attacks (with Booming Blade, since that's allowed at my table, which admittedly isn't RAW though from what I can tell is allowed by most). It feels really fun and dynamic and, yeah, powerful. :)
Just my 2c! Loved the video! Can't wait for all the blowback our commenters are going to give us when we release Bladesinger videos right on top of each other :P (mine will be out Tuesday).
Im watching the video today, so your comment isn't unseen. I agree with your points.
Really it comes down to that the Wizard is so strong, people keep saying stop whacking things with your sword. That's not a weakness of the sublcass, but show cases how strong Wizards are. Either way, play a melee Bladesinger, and get to have fun RP with your spells outside of combat like suggestion. One of my fav low level spells to really eek out that Jedi feel.
@@Jk-zv6tz yay! :)
That's exactly it, even though the melee fighting bladinger isn't the most optimal way of playing the class (subclass) in the whole scheme of things, but it can definitely be a great way to play the enhanced magical warrior type of character many are going for. As shown by treantmonks temple, It's not optimal way in regards to the possibilities of the game, but it can still be the perfect way to play and not only viable but supreme compared to other choices representing the warrior / magical warrior (through flavourtexting, or other gishes, (Hexblade/Palladin/Sorcerer/Bard, Moondruid/Barbarian, SwordsBard) and can itself be adjusted by multiclassing to achieve the result you're striding for (Tank - Artificer, Spy - Arcane trickster Rogue, etc.).
Absolutely on #2. I AGREE. This is how most players see Bladesinger. Most players see Bladesinger as a hyper-flexible martial mutliclass. It is hella good with Rogue too, maybe even better than Trickster Rogue.
PIN THIS
Basic tip: remember to cast spells. I have a blade singer who almost never does. It is tempting to pretend to just be a martial, but you’ve got the best spell list at your disposal and you need to use it to maximise your character.
Totally agree. I would just gently remind your player that a bladsinger is still a wizard first and foremost, and that wizard magic can end a fight faster and safer than running in with your sword.
Just sneeze in his general direction. I imagine after constantly going down he should get the hint? ;)
@@CaitSith87 man wizards are soooo squishy. They have TWO less hit points a level than a fighter MASSIVE!!!!! Thats why blade singer needs double the fighter's ac
@@stevenyoung9738 have you seen the video treantmonk did a one shot with other optimizers. One had the strategy to get an incredible high AC. So if the dm would used the attack action that would maybe have been helpful. Sadly the dm used storm giants with lightning attacks. Witouth treanmonk who played a summoner tne optimized melees would have been toast.
Also as a bladesinger you max dex and int which leaves you max with a 14 in con while as a normal melee you probably go 16 con.
@@CaitSith87 you're right ac doesn't ever matter and mssing that 2 hp a level really kept the wizard from relevant. Sadly there's no reaction spell that counters elemental attacks that effectively doubles your hp against elemental attacks. Just none. Nothing. Absorb Elements. Its just not possible. Wizard is just so squishy because of that 2 hp a level and have no spells to counter literally everything
The biggest benefit I've found is just being more useful in the turns or even combats where you don't want to use your spell slot resources - especially at lower levels (at least until 7th or so) until you have plenty of slots.
It rounds out some of the weaker early levels where if you weren't a bladesinger you'd run out of spells and just be fire bolting...
I love the way you said that melee just replaces your "firebolt" turns.
I remember in Tulok the Barbrarian's Sephiroth video the phrase, "Just think of weapon attacks as your strongest cantrip." And that makes a ton of sense to me.
I agree with your assessment. I think the biggest reason everyone wants this to be some spell blade attacker is that a lot of the options for this archetype in DND are very poor. GFB and Booming blade are weird circumstantial spells and the smite style (branding smite, etc) spells that come a little closer use up a lot of spell slots for very little impact and require you concentration. People want that anime style magic sword fighter or that Final Fantasy spell sword/ runic knight with a bunch of elemental sword attacks. Power up your sword and unleash fury etc.
I think a trick to this that I haven’t seen a lot of people do is use flavor to full effect. Casting fireball? Your sword is your focus, you twirl and twist and slam your sword on the ground and a line of energy surges forward to a point and then explodes. Casting cone of cold? You breathe deep and blow out foggy frigid air from your lungs and sweep your sword on a wide arc in front of you sending a wave of ice out towards your enemies.
It kind of sucks that you have to lean into flavor to get that spellsword feel a lot of people want, but it’s what we’ve got. We have a ton of classes that have swords and that can cast spells, but not a lot of support for a true meshing of the two ideas unless you read between the lines a fair bit.
honestly from a "spellsword" angle, going bladesinger is just as good as going literally any wizard subclass and just equipping a sword, just due to 5e's bad options for spellswords
downside is for you to be able to do Blade as a focus, by RAW, you have to go a full 3 levels into Swords Bard, since as far as I'm aware, no other class explicitly gives you the ability to cast spells through your sword
@@GoblinLord pact of the blade with improved pact weapon let you use it as a focus
@@GoblinLord you can get a ruby of the war mage
"spell blade attacker is that a lot of the options for this archetype in DND are very poor"
I disagree, there are some very strong options here. The problem mainly is that players want this archetype to be more powerful with a sword than a non-magical swordsman AND they want to be just as powerful with spells as a full spellcaster AND they want it to be SAD. This combo is impossible for very good reason: there would be no reason to ever play any other class - why would anyone play a Fighter if Bladesinger was better than Fighter at doing weapon damage and is a full Wizard at the same time?
If you want to primarily be an attacker making magical attacks with your sword, then you should go Arcane Trickster Rogue. Sneak Attack + Booming Blade make you comparably deadly with a blade as fully martial build while giving you some spells to play with but primarily you'll be casting BB with the melee attack with it, at higher levels you can swap to Shadow Blade depending on the circumstance.
Alternatively Hexblade gives you a special magical sword which you can and should flavour as something special, and competitive spellcasting progression with full casters. Since Warlock gets only 2 spell slots, you'll probably throw out one AoE spell then do exclusively weapon attacks or alternate between weapon attacks and casting EB.
If you want a bunch of elemental spells that get applied to your weapon before you strike, then play a Paladin. They get all kinds of magical boosts that can be applied to their weapon - Smites of different elemental types, Divine Favor, and some Channel Divinities further boost your weapon. Really all that's missing here is an Oath focused on Arcane magic like the Arcane/Knowledge Cleric.
You hit the nail on the head!
I'm in a campaign that's winding down playing a bladesinger. It's honestly exceeding my expectations, and is so fun. In a party of a lore cleric, moon druid, and a forge domain cleric, I get to be the frontliner with all the benefits of being a wizard. So much fun. If you have every even thought about being a gish, I cannot recommend being a bladesinger enough.
My ruling for Shadow Blade is that is turns your focus into a weapon - a wand basically turns into a lightsaber as you use the wand as the handle of the sword, a staff turns into a glaive or spear, etc. This way you are technically hitting with your focus, which has a value.
It's probably very rarely going to come up for anyone, but the one time I played a bladesinger I had a very forgiving GM and a ridiculous amount of luck. Not only did we roll our starting stats and I got incredibly lucky, starting with a strong INT, DEX and CON, my GM also alowed me to use booming blade and green-flame blade with my shadow blade. Finally I managed to get my hands on a set of Illusionists bracers (let's you re cast a cantrip as a bonus action after you've cast one on the current turn). In other words, I could get in with my attack and bonus action, three attacks with shadow blade, two of which where booming blades. I was effectively the primary front line fighter for much of the game and I could still pull out big spells like hypnotic pattern, wall of force and the like when a particularly tough fight came our way. By far the strongest character I've ever gotten to play. Also they where a silly kobold.
Anything can be strong with a DM that allows you to bend the rules and gives you strong magic items. Once that's on the table, a lot of optimization arguments go out the window.
@@jayme0227 you always should optimize for your table and not for the game
I'm glad you mentioned the catch-22 in regards to Heavy Armor and Tensers Transformation. I had a player come to the table with the idea that he was going to put on Heavy Armor and cast Tenser's Transformation and he (and everyone else) had a good faceplam and 5 minute belly-laugh when this problem was explained to him. It was a 1shot so I let him do it anyway instead of sending him back to the drawing board. I don't think the designers realized this problem when making the spell, its reminiscent of the supremely knuckleheaded design of the net and how it basically always attacks with disadvantage.
The only way I know short of a magic summoning armor spell or item ability to instantly do this is having a cast-off armor item of that armor type (and good luck having the wizard lug their armor around as the weight it is or fishing it out in combat from a holding item.)
re: net unless you are a bugbear :)
@@joshuacr A 3 level dip into Artificer can let you do that with Arcane Armor.
In my campaign i play an eldritch knight bladesigner focusing on melee. It may not be optimal, but its the most fun I've had playing dnd with them, just by amount of options i have with levelling up, and participating in combat
What i greatly love with your videos is that i always learn something new . This time thanks to you i learnt that a tenser's transformation eldritch tatoo would be a great reward for any martial class . Thanks
Tenser’s sounds like a spell you should be able to cast on someone else..
Like to buff the Warrior and turn him into a super hero
That change would totally reverse my opinion on the spell. As a buff you hand out it would be awesome!
@@TreantmonksTemple I didn't realize until now it didn't work that way. I though It was a good spell to cast on others.
It would be even better to buff non-warriors! That little goblin you picked up to join your adventuring party? Dress him up in heavy plate, give him a couple short swords and send him out to do some damage!
@@nicholassteele1367 They way it has been (mistakenly) used at my table is as a NPC buff, but it is surprisingly good on Rogues as well.
My DM has a homebrew feat that lets you cast Tasha's Otherworldly Guise once a day + an ASI, so martial characters who don't use concentration anyway can cast it on themselves. Turns it from a useless spell into an incredible one. Flight, extra attack, and using a mental stat for your damage modifier is incredible for a rogue
I’m a huge fan of the bladesinger. There’s so
much you can do and all the guides want you to take shadowblade which I consider suboptimal for a bladesinger.
I like getting utility spells then some aoe burst spells like fireball/erupting earth and using the shadowblade for signle target thargets as it does really high damage when upcast and it is of a damage on which resistances are very rare
I'm playing a bladesinger in a current campaign (level 5 currently). It's a blast. Using a rapier. Bladesong dance and Haste on round 1. Haste, bladesong, and Mobile feat gives me a 100 foot speed and no opportunity attacks from my victim. Combined with dancing rapier, owl familiar for Help action, other spell shenanigans including booming blade, and a 23 ac, I am a BEAST in combat.
TBH, level 5&6 are the best times for bladesinger. Yet, when leveling up, you will ultimately ended up making trade offs between: 1) two swings of swords, one in cantrip; or 2) using a powerful spell from the most fantastic spell list. Usually a spell like banishment\force wall\ploymorph is much stronger than your extra attacks. If you r familiar with the idea of opportunity cost, you could kinda see why bladesinger with the most powerful spell lists is forcing players to make consistent trade offs.
Great video 🙂. I like playing Bladesingers and get good results by casting a concentration spell and then taking the dodge action on subsequent rounds if I don't have another way to impose disadvantage on attacks against me.
Another great video! I am re-watching it and though I am not playing my bladesinger totally optimized I really enjoy your info break down and I always appreciate your style of information presentation. Keep up the videos I watch them all the time when I'm character and world building.
THANK YOU!! I mentor a number of GMs to help improve their skills and I have tried to warn them about Tenser’s Trap for months now. I didn’t run the math until after Halloween of this year when I played in a 15th level 1 shot and the Abjuration Wizard casted TT 3 times, once before a long rest and twice after. This used all of their high level slots, they did this while our COL Druid and Sorcerer both interchangeably cast Web (2nd) and flaming sphere (4th) on the enemy. I was working as the GMs hit point secretary and they outpaced the Wizard EVERY round. Not most rounds, EVERY ROUND.
One small thing to note is that a level 6 Bladesinger focussing on Shadow Blade would likely bump their Dexterity at level 4. I'm not saying that makes this the "optimal" way to play a Bladesinger, but it does boost the numbers should you choose to play this way.
Versatility is the name of the game with a Bladesinger. My Harengon Bladesinger owns a short sword and a rapier. When it makes sense to cast shadowblade he does and uses the short sword. When it makes sense to cast a bonus action spell during combat, out comes the rapier. I also have the hand crossbow for when I want to stay out of the way and that’s usually when I’m casting Ashardalon’s Stride too.
I also see a lot of fun builds listed here in the comments from tables that roll. I know this isn't optimal, but here's mine. I rolled some monster stats here:
13 str
18 dex
15 con
20 int
11 wis
14 cha
Currently 8 levels of Bladesinger and 2 levels of Paladin(stats are reflective after ASIs) with tough as a feat(Currently 91 HP at level 10). It's allowed me to take a wide variety of spells and still bring big damage when I need it, all without sacrificing the ability to stay in melee even if I happen to get hit. Super effective character so far, and a lot of fun to play.
It does seem a tad... off to treat dex as 16 in the damage calculations. You said to pick intelligence because spellcasting is worth more but what you are analysing is a *weapon* focussed bladesinger. Those numbers would be higher if dex was focussed, and might well be at least more appealing. You started from 'focus spells' then went to prove that if we focus spells we are indeed bad at hitting with weapons, so... I mean, yeah, we focussed spells.
Now you would still likely land at 'worse than a sharpshooter crossbow expert fighter;. But I do want to say- and I know this is an optimiser channel so this is sacriligious- do we have to be as good as one of the most damage optimised chassis? Like, we are still a spellcaster outside of combat! We have utility and mobility options, we have counterspell. I think it end up a pretty rad and potent character. Yes, it might have less value than a spellcaster focussed wizard, but so does pretty much everything. I would not choose bladesinger if I wanted to play a master of spells! I pick bladesinger because spellsword cool, and I want to see how far I can go with it, how good I can make it!
Great video, but sometimes I feel we too easily dismiss the optimisation of specific aesthetics because they don't measure up. I know they don't, but man I have run out of ideas on how to feel cool playing someone who uses a fiddly little toy crossbow to fight dragons.
The point I'm making is that our damage output compared to fighter is fairly decent at level 6 but at level 11 we are falling behind, we're just getting less out of our levels in this regard, and as you say, if you do prioritize Dex, that doesn't really change that comparison significantly. I have a build coming Friday, and I will discuss some ways we can contribute more if we want to make attacks at higher levels, but shadow blade and tenser's aren't the answer.
Agreed! Comparing Tenser's transformation against an optimized fighter is quite unfair against that spell.
I'm happy that the spell doesn't allow a caster to outshine an optimized fighter! That would just make the fighter feel like total crap!
It's a fun spell that allows you to fight shoulder to shoulder with the average fighter in melee, not a spell to make non-optimized fighters entirely obsolete.
I had great fun with my war wizard (their features stack well with this spell) using two short swords and I had 20 dex (it was a high AC/saving throws defensive build)
@@TreantmonksTemple a Bladesinger stabbing things while using their concentration for animate objects isn’t falling behind on damage though. A Bladesinger can continue to stab things even while concentrating on a non-melee wizard spell so there’s really not as much of an either/or choice as you often seem to suggest there is.
@@VALUST17 I've become more and more disillusioned with animate objects as you aren't accessing it until level 9 and by that time, resistance or immunity to the damage has actually become the norm not the exception.
I made a bladesinger, because I wanted a character that used a blade and was able to teleport around the battlefield. I used blink and shadow blade and some multiclassing. It worked pretty well for what I wanted to accomplish.
The DM did usually have one encounter days, which was important for my char to keep up. At higher levels my char also became more and more of a utility caster.
Still I liked the character build and it was a fun puzzle to make my concept viable.
I’ve been thinking about playing a strength based tortle blade singer with pole arm master a spear and blade ward so you could make two attacks and blade wars in a round I think it’s interesting
A couple points for optimizing a weapon-based Bladesinger: I'm still not sure if this would outperform just playing like a normal wizard at higher levels, but it will definitely boost your damage some.
The first thing is you can mitigate the damage loss at the start of combat by integrating normal spell casting. For example, instead of using shadow blade first round and singing second round, and then having your setup fully online by third round, you can instead start singing first round and cast a damage spell (something like steel wind strike if you still want to feel like you're a swordfighter) and then use shadow blade second round and play the rest of combat as outlined in the video.
The next thing I would consider, if your stats allow it, is putting two levels in Paladin. Obviously you lose one casting level of spell slots, and you're lagging by two levels when it comes to unlocking new levels of spells, but it might be worth considering at midgame. Maybe put 9 levels in Wizard and then 2 in Paladin. Obviously you're missing out on 6th level spells which you would otherwise have by 11th level, but if you're trying to build around weapon attacks, we already determined that Tenser's is useless for that, and shadow blade is the same upcasted to 5th as it is to 6th, so you don't necessarily need that 6th level spell option. As far as Paladin, Divine smite doesn't require concentration or any actions, so you can just blow all your first and second level spell slots on a couple smites each round, substantially increasing your damage. At this point in the game, any 1st level damaging spells are going to get outperformed by a damage cantrip, so you wouldn't be using those low level spell slots in combat very much anyway. And since it doesn't involve your Paladin spellcasting modifier, you don't even need great Charisma to accomplish this.
OMG. I was midway through the video and I realized you're Treantmonk! THE Tratmonk. The wizard from pf1e. HOLY MOLY! I missed you!
Genuinely love how much of the video was against tensors transformation
I think you have a very specific way of playing Bladesinger that is quite different from the way many people play it. As far as I'm concerned the two ways to play bladesinger are disabler and damage. If you're in a party with a lot of save or suck spellcasters that wears down legendary resistance quickly, you want to build intelligence first and help get rid of legendary resistance with saving throw spells. If you are in a party with few ways to get rid of legendary resistance the last thing you want to do is cast save or suck spells. So in a party where you need to be damage the correct build is DEX first bladesinger. I think it's important to note that you often don't have a spare bonus action to bladesong at high levels (once you get animate objects) because you want to cast and use animate objects which takes an action to cast and a bonus action to use. A typical fight is three rounds and if you attack on turn 1 and use your bladesong and then don't cast animate objects till turn 2 (when you have a bonus action to use it) your damage drops by a very large amount. Towards this end I often go DEX first on bladesinger and pick up the Mobile Feat at character creation via custom lineage or variant human. If you go custom lineage for darkvision, your first ASI will even your 17/15 to 18/16. If you're going to be a disabler bladesinger then your typical spell selection allows you to have bonus action economy to bladesong as none of your spells will require action+bonus action the turn you cast them. This means you are far more capable of staying in melee, you want to build INT first and you don't want to take a feat like mobile. Which of these bladesingers is better comes down to party composition though. You should attack the boss resource the rest of your party attacks. Bosses in D&D have two HP bars (Legendary Resistance and Actual HP) and you want to focus on the same resource as the rest of the party for best results.
It's fun listen to you ranting about Tenser's Transformation whilst I am using this spell to body everything in combat. To be fair I am playing a modified version of dnd 5e in a special guild setting which allowed me as well as other to pick more feat's. This allowed me to pick up elven accuracy which means according to my own calculations I have around 90% hitchance in most encounters. To be fair these are just my own calculations, someone else might do them diffently. This does not, of course count for everyone but I think going elven accuracy for a bladesinger should increase your hitchance with tensers significantly even if you give up a ASI. Maybe to a point where you hit like 80% of the time. Which would further put in the numbers in favor of the bladesinger.
I think most of your gripe with the damage and performance of the spell comes from how you calculate damage as your way of calculating damage factors in the standard enemy AC alot and well as the method of damage calculation was made by you alone there is a little bit of neutral ground lost. I agree that the armor proficiency is anti-useful, basically I am treating this spell as if only the first three lines exist and I can't cast any spells. Additionally you did not consider that you deal the most potent damage type in the game. Force damage which should at least give you more consistency in combat because you can realiably deal good damage as opposed a fighter might have to work around that.
As for the missing defensive options you did not factor in that, altough you cannot cast spells, you can still use your magic power in fights. I am talking about the Song of Defense Feature. In general the most effective way of surving damage is not AC but Hitpoints. As most damage in fights ist not tanked by a single indiviual of the group it is reasonable to assume that, even in meele, you do not tank more than 50 damage per turn. Congratulations you can reduce this amount by about 15 HP per round, lets say 20 if you choose your slots wisely. You now have a greater HP pool than the fighter (around 178, 68 from your base HP when you have 14 CON, 50 from Tensers and 60 from 3 succesful uses of song of defense). With an AC of 20 even if you skipped one ASI for elven accuracy (16 DEX 18 INT) (21 if you have a +2 studded leather which you should get anyway, 22 when you reach level 12 as you can now pick an ASI, 22/23 if you have a Cloak of Protection) , and similar/better damage when you take my arguments into account. Yes you give up the ability to cast spells but there are instances where single target damage is more important then spell versatility, and for these fights tensers is perfect. You need one round of prep and you are set, which in my experience at least (yours can of course differ) happens more than 75% of the time if you are smart.)
In conclusion, you kinda have to build around tensers to be effective but that would'nt dimish your potency as a spellcaster even if you do that, you just get better in meele, even without tenser's, even more with tenser's. The fun in playing a wizard for me is to figure out how to use spells effectively and tenser's was such a case for me. I am outperforming everyone in single target DPS when I use it and still am a terrifing threat when not. And It's fun to be able to go toe to toe with our barbarian at the same level, which I am in my round at least, thanks to tenser's,
Best regards and have fun playing.
A Tenser's enjoyer.
Maybe if we flip the script a bit:
With one subclass, and the 'right' spells. The Wizard, an already very powerful class, can also 'nearly' compete in every other aspect of combat when compared to the other classes, even when ignoring many of the core aspects of being the wizard. XD
So my latest bladesinger just got a ring of spell storing, and now he’s got his familiar attuned to it.
The DM ruled you can booming blade with shadow blade, and use your haste action to attack and swap that attack for a cantrip.
I can have his owl cast haste on him while he casts shadow blade.
I calculated his DPR at level 6 in dim light to 50 DPR, with two booming blade attacks and a normal attack.
Things get weird when you add magic items, though I will admit that the item could be used just as well to boost other wizard spell casting.
While I agree Tensor's is not a great spell, I've been in a situation where it was useful. Surrounded by mummies where I couldn't effectively use AOEs and I happened to have a staff of striking (spare attunement slot and no one else wanted it). Killed a lot of mummies and soaked a lot of damage and made all my con saves. That's the only time I've cast it though, and haven't prepped it since.
Tenser's is good for a player who routinely saves their highest level spell for last, but still not optimal. You could also use it as a *contingency* triggered if you run out of spell slots, or a *glyph of warding* set to trigger if you don medium or heavy armor. It's situationally useful, but not a great spell for regular preparation.
@@CerealNommer Using something to bypass the don time for heavy armor cutting into the duration is pretty clever. And yeah it can be situational useful which is where the wizard shines with their massive spells known. A decent spell to have in your repertoire and get it ready when your foresee it coming in handy.
Honestly, range blade singer is just solid. I use mind sliver and light crossbow. Great when I'm not casting Spells. You can still duel daggers when you need to and attack with spirit shroud. Or just hang back and cast spells.
I've noticed with most of my games my wizard ends up in melee so I might as well have some defenses and damage when needed.
It depends on the rules you are playing with. Not everyone plays with feats, some tables ban GWM/SS. I suspect in games where optimizing with feats isn't possible that Tenser's Transformation is rather good. In a game that allows feats, if a player wanted Tenser's Transformation, I'd probably change the last bullet point to, when you take the Attack action you attack an additional time. This stacks with Extra Attack. So, if you were using 2 weapons, that would give you 4 possible attacks. Also, being martial, I'd have a rider that bladesingers can still cast spells while under the transformation.
I feel like turn one you should be activating blade song with bonus action and casting a spell with your action. Especially if you're not up casting your shadow blade. Even if it is a concentration crowd control spell you'll have the enemies shut down for their first turn which can be huge
The thing is in my experience of playing wizards is that I will run out of spell slots before the rest of the party, so I tend to try to use catrips half the time. Having bladesong helps fill out options. Also, elven accuracy with shadow blade.
Treant,
Tenser's is a spell that I think was not designed for player use. Where it shines is with some prep time that ordinarily gained if one is a BBEG. Tenser's does require concentration, and stipulate that you cant cast spells while the spell is active, however when combined with another (non) PC heavy spell it does combine a bit better. If you combine Tenser's with Glyph of Warding, we get more possible spell combinations, specifically because of the wording and duration on Glyph of Warding.
" You can store a prepared spell of 3rd level or lower in the glyph by casting it as part of creating the glyph. The spell must target a single creature or an area. The spell being stored has no immediate effect when cast in this way. When the glyph is triggered, the stored spell is cast. If the spell has a target, it targets the creature that triggered the glyph. If the spell affects an area, the area is centered on that creature. If the spell summons hostile creatures or creates harmful objects or traps, they appear as close as possible to the intruder and attack it. If the spell requires concentration, it lasts until the end of its full duration."
When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage of an glyph increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 3rd. If you create a , you can store any spell of up to the same level as the slot you use for the glyph of warding."The duration of Glyph of Warding is "Until Dispelled or Triggered"So while an "Optomizer's" dream scenario, because we know have options, Tenser's becomes more viable. You can already have your Heavy Armor equipped and the BBEG can deliver his
Bladesinger is this absolute versatile character with a lot of possibilities to do either damage or control, with a lot of defensive capability and a lot of options. This clas is an allrounder that in the right hands can be the best character on the tabble or a generic wizard or a bad fighter, all depends on gameplay.
The thing I think keep getting missed is, the sustained DMG of shadow blade. Compared to a fire and forget spell
I think it is forgot about too. However i think it is not that they dont know it exists but that they dont bother looking for it at all after seeing all the busted concentration spells that shut down entire combats at once as long as the caster doesnt lose concentration. Its hard to argue for further searches after mentioning Web at lv 2 one of the tasha summon spells at lv
3 polimorph at lv4 and animate objects at lv 5.
@@hansmuller8762 oh for sure. But what kind of character are you playing? I general if I'm a spell caster I'm a buffer and CC. Still if you wanted to be stabby m stabberson, Shadow blade is a great tool for that
@@cclark2021 I tend to play creature mages in combat while focussing on support or burst after turn 1. The oneshot i got to play a bladesinger in I didnt get to the point where 2 attacks +booming blade where a better option then lightningbolting whatever survived my frontline and summons. Especially since the enemy had an aura of confusion.
Hey quick heads up that this video is unlisted!
It isn't anymore, I found the bladesinger video, for a minute anyway before it wouldn't let me watch it anymore
Quick Heads up, this video is FIRE
Variant human - warcaster
Round 1:
BA - Bladesong
A - Any 3rd level spell (say fireball) = 8d6 dmg (1 of 3 slots)
Round 2:
BA - Shadowblade (2 of 3 slots)
A - 2 attacks, 1 booming blade (assuming Dm allows you to use shadowblade) - 3d8+DEX+3d8+DEX+Boomingblade1d8+2d8... that's 7d8+2*DEX+Optional2d8 if they move, that's most than a fireball, every turn, from here on out.
I think the main problem with the Bladesinger is that, by its theme and nature, it is usually used for cases where you WANT to play a melee character, and thus the emphasis on melee tends to just be what we want to do with it.
Personally I am a huge fan of grabbing one or two levels of Rogue with Bladesinger. This gives you the Hand Crossbow proficiency, so you can avoid the melee dangers of the class, and with Cunning Action you gain a whole lot of great utility for moving around and staying safe, whether you are shooting or slinging spells. I also like to split myself a bit more between dex and int for it, and generally put some emphasis on summoning spells. The summoning spells provide great value for damage, puts a body between us and the baddies, lets us trigger our little extra sneak attack damage, and keeps our spell slots largely in reserve for handy support things like counterspell, etc.
As a bladesong enthusiast, I have found that the best option to fulfill the fantasy comes from flavor and a bit of homebrew. Not homebrew that makes you consistently stronger than what the fighter can do in combat, but stuff that leaves you below the fighter without casting spells, and above on turns when you do - basically just good melee combat spells that are comparable to other good combat spells, whether they boost damage, enact control, or a little of both (my personal favorite).
There's a lot of space here for expansion for the gish flavor - personally, I envision a separate system in 5e specifically for gishing that lays alongside spellcasting, as I think a comprehensive gish system should have its own rules that make it too clunky to just throw it all into spells.
One way around the armor issues with Tenser's Transformation is to use it with an Illusionist. At 14th level they can cast disguise self to appear to wear heavy armor (no concentration), then cast Tenser's and finally as a bonus action make the illusory armor real.
Other casters can instantly doff armor with a common magic item to not be trapped in their armor.
Found you through Dungeon Dudes and I think you are awesome. Dennis Hopper was bad ass!!!
Thanks so much, and welcome!
Tenser's Transformation is a fun RP trick to pull out of your sleeve. I can see a couple of really fun scenarios where the spell would make the whole table crack up.
If I was playing a Wizard, and I found it in a spellbook at some point, I'd probably take the time to transscribe it to my spell book. Probably. Maybe.
First, thank you so much. You’ve well articulated something I have long suspected, that melee oriented spell casters aren’t as effective as fighter classes. That said, I’ve always liked the excitement and play style of being in close combat rather than always trying to stay on the outskirts of the battlefield. I also love the versatility of playing a full spell caster. So here is my question - what build might you recommend for a “close combat” full spell caster? And when I say “close combat”, I mean a caster who stays in close, but doesn’t use a melee weapon.
I suspect there are a number of advantages to staying in close, and some spells that work better in close as well. I’d love to know your thoughts or recommendations on this if your time permits. Thank you!
Chris has a few vids on wiz subclasses, try watch abjurer.
Agree 100% with the notion that bladesingers are just as good of a spellcaster as any other wizard subclass, if not more so. A big part of why I decided to make my first character in 5e a bladesinger is because I wanted to play a pure wizard that 1) doesn't die (I figured this was likely a big risk in playing a wizard as a newbie), and 2) could get more leverage out of my INT score than just increased spell preparations/proficiency.
So I started out as a high elf, took the Lucky feat at level 4 (I felt that negating enemy crits and increasing my odds of succeeding on saving throws was more important than having advantage on every concentration check), and am now level 6 planning on maxing out INT over the next two ASI's. Thus far, while I have been pleasantly surprised by this character's melee output, I find it takes a bit of a back seat relative to the wizard's spellcasting abilities (e.g., a well-placed fireball tends to be far more effective than spending a turn hitting things).
Obviously, I still have a long way to go with this character. Though if the wizard spell list is anything to go by, then I see little reason to doubt my decision to prioritize INT over DEX (and, by extension, lucky over war caster).
You know when I describe my amount of games people look at me like I am crazy. Glad to know...There is always a bigger fish.
I would say for wizards, only a one level dip into Artificer as lv 1 is needed in order to get that proficiency in Con saves, along with access to some 1st level spells that a wizard cannot get. It doesn't have much of a spell delay or sacrifice.
Your vid greatly shows the problem with Bladesinger design.
I play Bladesinger to be a good melee fighter, not to cast spells like other wizards. So I need to have decent damage with a weapon. But to do this, you have to get three abilities quite high, so we are talking about serious MAD here (not even talking about the inability to use GWM/PAM/SS feats).
You are jumping through loops and hoops to get a baseline vaibility (attack/AC/Damage) that other classes have out-of-the-box
Frankly, if BS would get Int as attack/damage attribute (like Artificer or Hexblade), it would help the class greatly
I recently got the idea of wielding a Quarterstaff in one hand and a net in the other. With polearm master triggering an opportunity attack one could throw the net and restrain an incoming attacker, adding a defensive layer. Now, do I need to attack with my Quarterstaff? If so, can I get around this with warcaster, allowing me to cast booming blade instead and attack there with the net? And to make this work with booming blade or to mitigate the disadvantage of throwing a net in melee range, can I make an improvised melee weapon attack with the net and still get the on hit effect of restraining the enemy? Can I combine this with casting mending to restrain the enemy again if he slashed through the net (maybe with a prepared action as my reaction) and could I overcome the casting time of one minute via bladesingers extra attack?
I don't think Tensers is good for a bladesinger, but for other wizards it can have situational utility. Its a 6th level spell and you chose it so you probably have some way to build for it a bit, maybe magical armor or a shield. You may have a decent attack stat etc. You aren't going to cast it normally but you may be running low on spells or fighting a creature basically immune to your spells and then this comes in handy. So in campaigns with long adventuring days I can see it coming up.
I did see a person who had taken crossbow expert with his level 1 variant human feat for the ability to make ranged attacks in melee get some use out of it with a hand crossbow. He had a ASI later with no real need to put it anywhere and took sharpshooter to double down on it, not the optimized choice but kind of funny when the wizard starting popping off crossbow bolts for heavy damage once in a while when he was down on spells.
The only solid use I have ever had for Tensers Transformation is as a 12th level bard taking it as a magical secret along with having find greater steed. Then use it combined with the steed.
Admittedly this is a “fun” option more than a power option.
Lol. The armor proficiency thing in tensor's transformation seems like a massive oversight.
Long story short: full caster is the optimal way to play, IF POSSIBLE.
While I agree, the basic assumption is "playing in an average, well rounded, group of 3-5".
Something is widely overlook IMO, is the "locking" role of the front line, melee characters:
Most of full casters are powerful, only when there is a front line. This means that someone must be there and lock the enemies if we want to maximize the group effectiveness. This means, that even if you are weaker in the front line, you are increasing more the group effectiveness.
Once your concentration is up, using Blade Ward can be an interesting option if you can punish a creature for attacking you while taking a shot with a ranged weapon. A few spells can do the trick. Tensei is also pretty good if you use Contingency to teleport (misty step or something else) as soon as the temp are gone. Not sure if Dimension Door can be used, but if so even better.
One mechanic with booming blade is to take crusher feat and you force people to throw a weapon or move taking 2nd damage
What people don't understand is the bladesinger is a generalist class. Instead of being strong at 1 thing they get weaker versions of things they can't normally do.
Bladesong gives you AC and concentration buffs slightly worse then feats and multiclasses people preform for these benefits.
Extra attack is not for main damage it is for resources conservation letting them do better damage than others wizard without spending resources.
Song of defense gives you costly abilities to protect yourself but you are protecting your weakest resources your HP. dumping mid level slots gives you good survivability without crippling you power until you use your higher spells.
Song of victory ish just thematic and makes you decent at melee combat being slightly sub par to material classes using no resources.
I have a player in my game who is a multiclass blade song and kensei monk. I think the main reason it works because we rolled for stats and he rolled well. He doesn’t have massive damage output like the fighter but he has an ac of 25 by level 9. I’m fine with this because they’re still weak to charisma and strength saves, and if they’re going to be front lining the big boss they have a high to hit anyway.
I'm tempted to get 2-6 Bladesinger levels on my Arcane Trickster. Extra cantrips, spell progression/preparation, bonus AC in a pinch, and proficiency with a Whip all seem very tempting.
I feel like the extra cantrip attack at lvl 6 would scale nicely both in Melee and Ranged thanks to the extra damage from Sneak attack. I'd be able to use something like Mind Sliver or Ray of Frost alongside a deadly crossbow shot to enhance my damage/utility at a range, and get another chance to land a sneak attack when I'm in range for a Booming/Green Flame blade with either a rapier, shortsword, or even shadow blade. In terms of raw DPS, a single Sneak attack Shadowblade strike combined with a Toll the Dead might lead to a higher average DPS than making both attacks with the Blade itself at higher levels.
The whip can seem like a minor thing to get, but if wielded with a rapier, it lets you increase your threat range for attacks of opportunity which is nice for synergizing with Sentinel and Mage Slayer to get extra sneak attacks from safety. I believe having a 5ft AND a 10ft reach weapon lets you make an AoO if someone leaves either weapons reach, but that might be me misreading the rules. In any case, it's quite a nice weapon for Rogues that they sadly don't always get without extra effort. Its also the only Finesse weapon a natural Rogue can even choose for this feature, since the extra weapon proficiency is restricted
to one-handed melee weapons anyways.
D4s Colby makes a great bid for using Summon Fey instead of Shadow blade. I’ve been using a lvl 5 bladesinger that has been able to maintain sustain damage and tanking attacks over 5 encounters I had 3 first lvl spells left. Blur is an option to help you stay in melee and I luckily have a headband of intellect high elf with point buy at 17 Dex 16inT(19HBI) at lvl four took resilient Con to bring me to 14 con. It’s powerful as a melee dealer and still can bust out a fireball when the big groups arrive. It about situational awareness as with any party. No matter what type of class your playing if your not a bear barbarian you don’t want to just get hit a bunch in melee with the dragon anyways. It’s the intelligence of the wizard that can make them the tactical warrior that picks the right move in the moment. I just love how sustainable this wizard plays vs Evocation wizard that can blast in maybe 2 encounters then are toast.
tenser's transformation is great to cast on an item that other character can cast it on than, like 'ring of spellstoring' so an nom caster can benefit from it
Woot! Thank you for the video I'm definitely going to play one!
I would like you to talk briefly about tashas otherworldly transformation. If not in the bladesinger video, then in something in the near future. Seems like tensers without the negatives. I took it on a warlock (tome) because I ended up being the primary meat shield in a party of casters where I had the most base health
So with the new bladesinger update, i would just use the the extra attack from it(it lets you cast a cantrip, and attack in one turn) so make a forcelance blast singer is what i called it. so PAM level 1 hexblade, another level of lock for agonzing blast and repelling, then 6 levels bladesinger. at level 4 wizard take warcaster and now we forcelance. then then at level 6 wizard our damage is as follows, 1d10+3+2d10+3+1d4+3 and enter 2d10+3 and this damage scales as thats what cantrips do. i would recomend two more levels into wizard giving our cha to 18 then the rest into warlock. this build get to, at some point grab the lifedrinker invocation 1d10+10+4d10+20+1d4+10 THEN when they enter 4d10+20 just destroying stuff...
Starting a bladesinger in a campaign tomorrow. It is not really an optimal build - starting with one level of fighter mostly for flavor but the con preficiency and extra hit points (incl. second wind) are welcome :-)
Tenser's Transformation would be great on an Eldritch Knight. Too bad they can't get 6th level spells.
My motto for bladesingers basically boils down to: weapons! They are better than dodging (sometimes).
Spirit shroud. Ideally have your familiar cast haste through a ring of spell storing... that makes melee very powerful.
Great video. Only a couple things I disagree with. First that you DO want to hang out in melee. In bladesong you are the the ultimate tank with protection from good and evil or blur, shield, silvery barbs, absorb elements and most important upcast false life. The only subclass that is a better tank is a bear totem barbarian. As a bladesinger I don't want to disengage or hide, I want to draw those attacks.
My weapon damage is low, but that is not what I am focusing on as a bladesinger, I am blocking the enemy so the strikers can go in and out and move around the battlefield. I want the enemy swinging at me so the Paladin doesn't go down and can smite instead of healing himself. So I camp out and make small damage attacks, occasionally throwing out a damaging or other non-concentration spell (because I am concentrating on blur or PEG). Wither and bloom is a particularly nice spell if they do get a sword past my defenses. Punish enemy movement with booming blade. If you have a choke point like a doorway or narrow hallway and the enemy can't get past me and has no ranged weapons then I can just dodge while my allies pepper him from range. My relatively high dexterity and advantage on acrobatics saves means they can't grapple me and move me out of the way easily (and if they do I misty step back in their way next turn).
I also want high wisdom instead of high constitution, from experience it is the wisdom saves that have hurt my bladesingers the most. I get the intelligence boost for con saves, I don't get hit often and I can reduce damage from a lot of AOEs with absorb elements to make those saves easier. Sure I lose concentration occasionally, but I fail wisdom saves more often and with upcast false life, absorb elements and screaming high AC I effectively have more hit points that most of my allies.
I can't argue this is the "most powerful" way to run a wizard or even a bladesinger and by concentrating on defensive spells I am giving up some of the best control spells available, but this character can stand toe-to-toe in melee longer than just about any class.
Bladesinger with Mage armor, and 20 dex, 20 Int, has 23 AC, and have shield in their back pocket to cast, putting them closer to 28.
Most builds will likely utilize Haste, and push the base AC, to 25.
This is factoring that you didnt get a protection ring or something.
Completely unrelated but when you as a wizard casts one of those fight ending spells (hypnotic pattern, wall of force, forcecage, etc), how do you deal with other players who are annoyed at you for "cheating" them out of a fun fight?
tell them to reroll another toon🤣
Consider the abilities of your party and build combos with them. For example, with Wall of Force, you can easily separate the battlefield in a way that puts your allies into a strategic position, for example you can lock the enemy in it with the cleric's Spiritual Weapon, swashbuckler, or a raging barbarian. When they're done with the first one, Vortex Warp them a new one to go nuts on.
You can get the Hypnotic Pattern off safely only on the beginning of the combat, and only if you roll decent on your initiative, otherwise the enemies and your allies will be already mingled up and that means friendly fire. If you're not a war or chronurgy wizard, you won't have the highest initiative bonus, so that shouldn't happen so often for your allies to actually be mad. Many mid to high tier enemies will also be straight up immune to this, and legendary resistances will always save the top dogs.
Forcecage is a high level spell, on that tier of play you're usually facing so powerful threats that removing few of them should get you praise, not annoyance from your mates.
One piece of practical advice is that even if you enjoy optimizing your characters and understand how to get the most out of them, that doesn't mean that you have to make the most powerful or optimal play in every situation.
Some tables really like the tactical side of the game, and the DM is experienced enough to keep things challenging in combat even when most or all of the players are running strong characters and making very good decisions.
Other tables just aren't like that. (Honestly, in my experience, most tables aren't.) The players and DM have a more casual approach, and making the best play in every situation is both completely unnecessary and possibly a bad fit for the style of the game at that table.
This doesn't mean that you cannot, or should not, make optimized builds. Just be mindful of how you play them.
In a lot of cases the "second-best" choice is still really impactful, without ending combat. Maybe sometimes you intentionally do the "second-best" choice, because you already single-handedly ended one combat that session, and making sure that the whole table is having fun is more important for the health of a campaign than getting to do the most awesome thing in every single situation where you are able to.
Of course, that needs to go both ways. If other players are getting upset because you sometimes do very effective things, then that's poor behavior on their part (not yours). You really just need to get a feel for the table, and encourage people to communicate OOC after / in between sessions.
I have a warlock player who has an imp familiar, and while I have tried (as DM) to make it so that the imp can usefully scout, without completely rendering exploration a "solved problem..." it can be a delicate balance. It has helped our game immensely that other players mentioned that the "auto-mapping" by the familiar has affected their enjoyment, and now the warlock always discusses with the party before sending out his imp.
He still gets a great deal of value from the familiar, mind you, but he exercises a little bit of self-restraint, because other players sometimes want to interact with the environment before his familiar tries everything first.
I find these spells can give a win, but often don't end the fight. They most often allow for splitting up enemies allowing other characters to deal with them in stages rather than all at once.
What about Tenser's Transformation, whilst mounted on a Find Greater Steed? Would that make it worth it?
That's exactly the same reason why I don't recommend shillelagh for nature clerics. 3-round setup is too long to get everything online and for suboptimal damage at the end of the day. However, as a DM I'd ignore the rule that shillelagh cannot be cast in the same turn of another leveled spell.
Question for Treantmonk: I'm with you that optimizing a spell-casting wizard is about the spells, so better not to worry about low cantrip/attack damage. But let's say the objective is to optimize a melee character. Yes, a build w/ wizard levels will need spells to get so-so damage, but viewed overall as a melee build, wizards get other very useful features, e.g. Shield, Mirror Image and Blink are great for defense. So a wizard with some level dips could be viewed as a very versatile melee character. How would this stack up against other melee builds?
In my opinion the sorcerer with metamagic and sorcery points is the most powerful class in the game. It may be a little less versatile but you can cast your spells more often and control the damage/effects more often.
13:10 RAW you can't make the bonus action attack with shadowblade. The bonus action attack you get from two weapon fighting is allways made with the offhand weapon which in this case would be the shortsword, unless you have your shadowblade in your offhand and shortsword in your main hand but in this case then the first attack you make (your main action attack) is made with the shortsword instead so we come to the same result of one attack with your shadowblade and two with the shortsword (one of which has booming blade or green flame blade on it). If you want to make 2 attacks with your shadowblade you have skip booming blade (or green flame blade) and make both those attacks as part of your (multi)attack action followed by a non enhanced bonus action hit with your shortsword.
Have you considered a Barbarian dip for a Str Wizard and Contingency Tenser’s Transformation “when I rage”?
Then, you Rage only when out of spells?
I realize a lot of people would prefer a better contingency, like Resilient sphere or dimension door etc. but imagine the beefy Wizard whose blasted all day and when he’s out of blast and control just goes crazy with “100” extra HP and hits that deal an extra 2d12 force?
Ah, nvm. Contingency doesn’t have the upcast option I thought it did.
So am I misunderstanding Booming Blade? I thought the damage was only inflicted if the target moves of their own will. If I hit the target and then move away (to force them to close and trigger the BB), I'll likely provoke an attack of opportunity, right? Am I missing something?
I do have a question though, say you have a level 12 blade singer wizard and you have the dual wielder feat and elven accuracy, so you have 2 rapiers, both magical with a 19/20 crit range, would the damage from tensers transformation be worth it? Because of the three attacks all at super advantage with a double crit chance? With blade song, war caster and proficiency in con save you most likely wont loose the concentration, basically I am either looking for a better spell to use for damage, because on average it seems like you have a decently high chance of at least one crit every turn and this would then also double the spells damage as well
Depending on how plentiful magical items are in your campaign, gauntlets of ogre power are a quick fix to needing str or dex to attack. Once you are getting better magic items you probably don't want to keep the attunement slot in use, but you also probably don't want to be stabbing too much anyway at that point.
This makes me curious: if someone wanted to make a spell-sword style character, would you recommend bladesinger? If not, what would you recommend?
I'm sorry to hear about the diminishing returns at higher levels, as I was hoping the bladesinger would be the thing to feel that niche.
Thank you for saving me the disappointment.
As someone who has played several Bladesingers from level 1 to T3 or even T4 and even wrote a guide for them -- it's IMO the best all-around gish except for the post-Tasha's Sorceradin. And even then it's only very slightly behind. However, the subclass is only good if you know the in's and out's of the Wizard spell list but are also good at keeping the list in mind while doing gish stuff. If you can't immediately tell me what level Fly, Misty Step, Transmute Rock, and Greater Invis are at then you're not going to enjoy this class.
In that case: play a pure paladin. They work as spell-sword style characters starting from level 2 and don't need to do weird and counterintuitive things like reserving 6th/7th-level spell slots open for a Contingency fast-cast to keep their damage relevant. There are a ton of directions you can take their combat in, as opposed to Bladesinger, who can't really do combat that's not a high-AC speedster that relies on their Batman Utility Belt to cover the holes in their offense and defense.
@@maltheopia Good to know! I guess I was looking for a more frontline melee option, which it seems the bladesinger can do that well at lower levels but gets outperformed later compared to other martial melee classes.
Sorcadin would probably be my first choice. I've had an idea for a Conquest Paladin/Shadow Sorcerer build I've been wanting to try in particular.
Also, would you look at that, Treantmonk has a spellsword build that is a sorcadin. Huh.
@@wayward_soul9663 I would absolutely not say that the Bladesinger gets performed by the other martial melee classes. Bladesingers are legit overpowered, but it's not obvious because:
A) Most of the Bladesinger's best tricks are not obvious. People go on and on about having an always-on AC of 21+. And while that's good, that won't just win you the battle like a well-timed Fly or Greater Invis or Investiture of Stone would or could. This is further muddied by how none of the Bladesinger's tricks will individually (unlike the Illusionist or Chronurgist) just let them effortlessly win more than 10% of battles. You have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of wizard spells and a willingness to brainstorm extensive backup plans if you want your Bladesinger to be anything but a low-damage, high-AC martial that can sometimes cast spells.
B) Going with A, the Bladesinger always has an 'out' to an unfavorable matchup. There are plenty of bad situations that will screw over a wizard but not a Bladesinger. There are plenty of bad situations that will screw over a martial but not a Bladesinger. There are zero situations that would screw over a Bladesinger but wouldn't screw over a martial or pure wizard.
@@maltheopia To be clear, I was not saying it got outperformed overall - far from it - but as a frontline melee damage dealer, it doesn't perform as well in that particular roll as, say, a sorcadin or a PAMlock.
At low levels it can do that well, but at higher levels this video shows you are better off just falling back on spellcasting, and using the melee options every now and again. Still very powerful, still very effective, but not for the things I was looking for.
@@wayward_soul9663 What range of levels, how many encounters per day, and what was the magical item situation like? Bladesingers have straight-up some of the best melee DPR in T2 and T4. And even in T3, they only fall behind if the DM doesn't drop enough of and the right kind of magical items. A Flametongue will instantly make you hit all of the damage benchmarks in T3+ -- and you can enhance it even further with stuff like Contingency: Haste, Simulacrum, and Spirit Shroud.
There could be a debate that you vould cast a cantrip with haste's action as a bladesinger because of replacing your only weapon attavk with a cantrip as it is another attack action, but it's up to the DM to allow something that powerful even if it could be arguably ok RAW
Good rolled and optimize bladesinger is awsome this is my favorite
With a flame tongue at level 5 my personal average is almost 100 damage a round. I always keep four skeletons and a tiny servant with me, summon fey, and a phantom steed for free disengage
Bladesinger Echo knight with War Caster is a lot of fun.
Fun thing you can do with a Bladesinger: Barbarian 1 for Unarmored Defense, Wizard 2 for Bladesinger. Focus on Con, Dex, and Int, and you can have a 25 AC (30 w/ Shield). I call it a Naked Bladesinger.
This is all really really excellent advice!
Tensers is amazing on monsters! Its a great 2ns phashe mechanic. (Not on classic spellcaster type monsters, on more Gish monsters)
Lol I like how the biggest chunk of the bladesinger video is actually about how bad tenser's transformation is.
That said, the best thing I can possibly imagine with tenser's transformation Is for a swords or valor bard to take it as a 14th level magical secrets. Mix in crossbow expert and sharpshooter, and you're putting out good damage every round with guaranteed advantage. And for defenses, also take find greater steed. Ride your pegasus, who also gets many of tenser's benefits now, and just keep out of the enemy's range while you pepper them with force imbued crossbow bolts.
Something about listening to Chris absolutely SEETHE when talking about Tenser’s brings me so much joy.
I wish you the absolute best of luck in your never ending crusade to convince people of just how shit that spell is
Oh no, you and Colby aren't going to be friends after this one. Jest aside, I'm sure he'll be checking out your completed build, as will I. Great topic, breakdowns and video.
Im going to be playing a blade singer on a campaign starting later this year. Waiting to see your build and other recommendations.
I don't see why people think bladesinger should be as good at fighting as a fighter.
The main appeal of Gish'ing in a spell slot system is that stabbing things doesn't eat up slots. A fight where you can preserve resources by popping your song and spending most rounds stabbing things means your next fight you have some spare slots to throw around.
i'm trying to theorycraft a CyberNinja like GrayFox from metal gear, and even though i'm fully aware is NOT the the optimal i'm liking the 3 lvl dip in Armourer Artificer, using both types of Arcane Armour for roleplay
The two weapons we get Thunder Gauntlets and Lightning Launcher works with intelligence, and it seems fun to Booming Blade + Gauntlet or Fire Bolt + Launcher, not a bad turn is you want to save some spells
If you need/want to get close use the guardian model or the infiltrator on 'stealths missions' giving permanent advantage on stealth checks while using light armour gives a camouflage feeling to the character
I’m playing 3d6 down the line and rolled no stat higher than a 12. We get a free feat at our table so I went custom lineage and took 2 int half feats so I have 16 int but only 12 in con and 9 in Dex. I decided to go bladesong just for the improved con and ac. I will eventually throw spears (12 str and only 9 dex) just to supplement my cantrip damage in a round when I was just going to cast a damage cantrip. I’m thinking of extra attack as a small chance to increase my cantrip damage.
Just as a thought experiment: Dump all stats except for dex, paladin 2, draconic sorceror 4 (for twinned+quickened and the asi's you'll likely need) + bladesinger wizard 14
Yikes. You know that a 20th level wizard can cast 9th level spells right?
I really like the flavor of this subclass, but sadly you are right - bladesinger is a great wizard, but not very great melee fighter with spells to enchance your attacks. And I really wish to play the opposite. For that a paladin, hex, or some multiclass like pal+sorc works better. I also really hate the idea to have low CHA on character like that, because everything in subclass description, arts and performance skill suggest that you have it above average. But mechanically it's very difficult to get 4th stat high.
This just gave me an idea: What if Bladesingers had a similar feature to the Paladin’s Divine Smite, something like an Arcane Smite, so as to keep their melee prowess on par with other martial classes?
I actually had a bladesinger player who out 2evels into paladin for that. I wouldn't say it was great minmax wise but it made for very cool battles
You can take a 2 level dip in paladin to make this happen. It's not actually the worst thing honestly, and is, IMO, one of the only ways to optimize a bladesinger for martial combat. The problem is that you are MAD, MAD, MAD. You need three high Ability scores for Bladesinger, and also somehow to get a 13 in Str and Cha?
You can do it if you point buy as a Tortle, and dump Dex and Wis and focus on strength instead. This should give you 16/8/13/16/8/13. It works ok. Your Con is pretty low for a bladesinger, though you do get a few extra points for the paladin levels.
Realistically, this multiclass is for when you roll for stats and get only one score below 13 (wis).
@@insertphrasehere15 must have either rolled well or struggled with ability scores with the 13 cha, int, str prerequisites whilst also wanting dex and con to survive.
Bladesinger definitely can be a power class if you have great stats and doesn't even need smite to do really well.
That's a very hard MC to pull off because of the Str/Cha requirements for multiclassing.
They shouldn’t be on par with Martials, since Martials don’t get full casting.
Anyhow, Bladesinger gets a unique “defensive smite” where they can spend a spell slot to reduce damage taken as a reaction. Paladins and Warlocks can’t get anything like that.
I think in general you tend to overvalue two things: (1) CC and spell slot spells over sustained damage; and (2) higher level play. What works best is always going to be dictated by the kinds of encounters that you have in your campaigns. It sounds to me that you're used to designing and playing in campaigns where lots of CC is very useful and where you're used to getting lots of rests so that you can restore your spell slots. That hasn't been my experience. In most of the games I've played, sustained damage has been more useful for my games than heavy CC and using lots of spell slots. Plus, it seems like you're used to higher level play, and that's just not the way most DND players play today. I tend to play in the official published campaigns which end around level 10. If you go on sites like Roll 20, you see official campaigns everywhere- DND rules "officially" go up to level 20, but in the real world, most of us are playing to around level 10. That's just the world the average DND player lives in.
I took some of your advice for wizard and bard builds, and I just found that the very heavy CC/spell focus you seem to advocate for was just not useful for my games because in my encounters, sustained damage was more useful for encounters because stuff died in a few rounds- a lot of DMs I've been playing with design encounters to involve lots of encounters with few rounds of fighting. When I ditched designing for CC and spells for more sustained damage in general, I found it to be much more effective. So I think your advice is pointed towards a specific DM encounter philosophy that I just haven't come across that often. So I think the "best" builds are going to depend on your campaign level cap and DM encounter philosophy.
I think the idea is doing CC is what wizard does the best. If you are focusing on doing melee damage with your wizard you are always going to feel worse than the fighter in your group who gets to add fun effects to their weapon attacks, do more damage and have big action surge turns. Unless you are using your spells in a way that makes you stand out from that, the player tends to feel bad. You shouldn't take this to mean don't make a bladesinger if you want a gish in melee, it's saying bladesinger isn't suited to that playstyle as much as you think. If all your spells need to do are enhance your combat you can get a better experience with some flavor adjusted Paladin or Eldritch Knight. Bladesinger is the class where you want to have a sword in your hand while casting powerful spells and be confident in your abilities to use that sword if it's ever needed.
Now if you made this comment over spell ranking videos or any other video about how TM undervalues genuinely fun and useful spells I would agree but when it comes to Bladesinger the arguments seem clear to me.
In your "shadow blade at level 6" segment you are forgetting three things.
One, cantrips scale at level 5, 11, and 17, so that booming blade cast as a level 6 character scales up to +1d8 thunder on hit, +2d8 if the target moves. This bumps your damage by about ~5 if we assume 55% chance to hit and 50% chance of getting that movement bonus damage. Not huge, but it's something.
Two, Shadowblade and booming blade deal damage types that are very rarely resisted and even if the shortsword damage is resisted due to the weapon being non-magical, the vast majority of your damage output is unlikely to be resisted, which automatically makes you that much better than any martial who does not have a magic weapon at this point.
Three, during your first round setup activating your bladesong, there's nothing stopping you from tossing out an actual spell with your action rather than attacking. You could use Mirror Image for some serious survivability, toss out a Tasha's Mind Whip to shut down a strong but stupid opponent's next turn, maybe use See Invisibility if you know there's an invisible opponent.
THANK YOU! The fact that he wasn't accounting for cantrip scaling or higher level upcasting was driving me nuts throughout this video. This whole thing seemed like an hour long video on why you shouldn't fight in melee combat as a Bladesinger.