How to Play an Eldritch Knight in Dungeons & Dragons 5e

this week's episode is sponsored by easy roller dice and their new color spray dice kickstarter these affordable colorful and high quality dice are perfect for building a personalized dice collection on a lightweight budget the campaign aims to unlock 20 unique color and font combinations so you can have the perfect set to match your characters spells and monsters there's also add-ons available for easy roller dice companies trays and cases we've been using their dice trays for years now at our game table to keep all our dice all together in the same place visit easyrollerdice.com or follow the links in the description below to get in on their kickstarter and now on to this week's episode greetings my name is monty martin and i'm kelly mclaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything dungeons and dragons including advice for players and guides for dungeon masters we upload new videos on tuesdays and thursdays so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at how to play an eldritch knight in dungeons and dragons 5th edition the eldridge knight combines sword and sorcery in a way that not many other classes can and today we're going to look at some of the amazing class features and abilities and spell choices that can make your eldritch knights stand out on the battlefield there's a lot to discuss with this truly awesome and fun fighter subclass so let's get rolling the eldritch knight is a subclass option available for fighters when you reach third level so let's go over the abilities that you gain by choosing this amazing subclass so the iconic ability of the eldritch knight is that you will gain the spell casting class feature this class feature is extremely limited to compared to full spell casting classes like the sorcerer and wizard and even much more restricted than the spell casting available to the paladin and the ranger the eldritch knight over the course of its career gains a couple cantrips and will learn a handful of spells from the wizard spell list but largely restricted to the spells of the school of evocation and ad duration over the course of your career you will only learn up to fourth level spells and gain fourth level spell slots in fact only getting those very high level spell slots at the very very end of the game once you've reached very high levels as an eldridge knight your spellcasting ability modifier that you're using is intelligence which means that the fighters do have to make this decision on whether they want to focus on their strength or dexterity their constitution and now also adding intelligence into that of course the fighter is already such a strong combatant that even peppering in a little bit of magic can amplify them in a large way fighters are not always known for having particularly high intelligence scores so it can be very difficult to determine exactly how to balance your stats when you're playing an eldritch knight fortunately a lot of really fantastic spells available to eldritch knights don't rely on attack rolls and don't rely on your spell saving throat dc being very high particularly many of the defensive spells from the abduration school of magic so it is completely possible to build an eldritch knight with a middling intelligence score and simply choosing spells very carefully so you never have to really worry about your low attack bonus or spell savings from dc we will be going level by level and talking about the spells that we love for the elder tonight but first let's talk about the abilities you gain as you level up in this subclass at third level you gain weapon bond which allows you to magically bond with up to two weapons when you are bonded with a weapon you cannot be disarmed of that weapon and if you don't have the weapons in your hand you can summon them into them as a bonus action on your turn this is actually really cool for situations that can come up in a lot of d d campaigns where you might be without your weapons and things go south being able to summon these weapons into your hand or if somebody tries to steal them from you they just can't so you are never without an option to get ready for combat it also lets you feel a little bit like thor causing your throne weapon to fly right back into your hand and it's actually quite effective when used with thrown weapons such as hammers axes and javelins particularly magic ones that don't necessarily return to your hand automatically after you throw them you can throw the weapon and then use your weapon bond ability to call it right back to your hand at seventh level you gain war magic which means that if you cast a cantrip on your turn you can use your bonus action to make an attack this can be really helpful for the fact that you are going to have some awesome can trips at your disposal but you are also a fighter and being able to make attacks is pretty important yeah we'll talk about how to combine this feature with some of the great cantrips in the sword coast adventures guide once we get to our spells section at 10th level you're going to gain eldritch strike which allows you to if you hit a target with an attack they now have disadvantage against the next spell saving throw that they have to make against a spell that you cast before the end of your next turn this works really well if you decide to hit them with an attack and then action surge to cast a spell at them this makes a fantastic one-two punch whether you're slashing away your enemies and then slamming them with a fireball or being a little bit more crafty at higher levels of play where you attack a key foe and then use banishment against them at 15th level you're going to gain arcane charge which further enhances your action surge ability allowing you to teleport up to 30 feet before or after your action surge action this is an awesome ability because it actually allows you to add extra mobility to your eldritch knight finally at 18th level you gain improved war magic now when you cast a spell you can then use your bonus action to make an attack rather than being just a cantrip triggering this ability it's now any spell that you cast permits you to make another bonus action attack as a follow-up overall i think both war magic and improved war magic are difficult abilities to use i think that with the fighters bonus feats and the extra attacks that they make on their turn a lot of the time even an eldridge knight is going to want to be fighting and fighting hard with all their extra attacks the hard part is that as a fighter you're going to be gaining more and more ways to attack and to remove those with the option to cast a spell is a hard gamble that you're going to have to make sure is going to pay off in the right way there are lots of ways to do that as an eldritch knight but it is always weighing those options of getting multiple attacks or just landing a good spell and making one solid attack as your bonus action in general a damage dealing cantrip will deal less damage than the fighter can deal with their regular attacks particularly once they get the war magic ability you've already got extra attack so you're choosing am i gonna make two attacks or a cantrip and a bonus action attack well of course fighters might also want to take feats such as polar master and crossbow expert or be dual wielders and have lots of ways to be able to attack with their bonus actions anyways so it's a little bit of a trade-off as to whether or not this is the best strategy to use i like to think of it as a nice perk but i wouldn't necessarily always want to be taking advantage of war magic in every single round after round after round of attacking i think more often than not as an elders knight you want to find ways of using your actions and bonus actions to get some cool spells off and then still being able to make lots of attacks as a fighter because the fighter particularly once you get to 11th level and higher levels when you get that third and fourth attack it's really at a premium to use your main action to do that so i think that all of these abilities that the elders knight gains are just icing they complement the theme and style of an eldritch knight really well they implement this sort of diversity in being able to do magic and also attack but the real delicious cake of this class is being able to cast spells in general that's really why we're here and that's what's going to make this a standout option for a subclass one of the strategies though that i will always point out that is super important with the eldritch knight is that fighter's action surge ability the ability to make a full set of attacks with your action and then action surge to cast another spell is a really great one-two punch but there's another important rules note that we should mention with regards to the eldritch knight if you're an elders knight of say 14th level and you've got access to fireball on your turn if you want to you can cast fireball with your action action surge and fireball once again this is because there is not a restriction on casting more than one spell per turn as long as you're using actions to do so the restriction about spell casting only applies when you cast a spell using a bonus action so the elders knight doesn't have any way to cast a spell as a bonus action so as long as you're action surging you can in fact cast two spells on your turn one with your main action and one with your action surge action and this kind of double fireball nuke is a nice little strategy to have in your back pocket while we're discussing amazing strategies for the eldridge knight let's talk about all the great spell choices and how they can impact the way we play this subclass so first of all we want to pick our cantrips eldritch knights learn two cantrips at third level when they take the subclass and will gain only one more additional cantrip once you reach tent level so it's pretty limited here so you better pick some good ones the other hard part is that most can trips are once again not going to deliver on the damage output that just making a bunch of a tax will so using an action to cast a can't trip and then making a bonus action attack might not give you the same uh the same output that you were hoping for from a fighter class so the question becomes do you really want to look at damage dealing options or is this a better place to take utility can trips i don't think taking shocking grass or firebolt or array of frost are the best options for an elders knight i think that your melee and ranged attacks are better and more reliable than using your valuable and restricted cantrip slots on those spells specifically i'd think i'd be really tempted to take something like magehand but the real gold here are the cantrips from the sword coast adventurers guide it's really hard to ignore that the spells like green flame blade and booming blade are perfect for the eldritch knight and feel like they were in fact made for them they were actually made for the blade singer but they are just absolutely phenomenal for an eldritch knight to pick up it's important to know that you are still casting a spell not taking the attack action when you use these spells so that means that things like extra attack two weapon fighting polar master and crossbow expert that would let you make another attack as part of that action or an attack as your bonus action will not be triggered but you could say apply great weapon master to the attack that you make with that cantrip and of course once you reach seventh level casting these cantrips will trigger war magic and i think from seventh level to tenth level casting booming blade or green flame blade and then bonus action attacking is a really nice one-two punch you're getting the same number of attacks that you would with extra attack you're getting a little bit of bonus damage from the cantrip it's a nice little combo yeah it still does have that question of whether it's more worth it to dish out all of your attacks or cast one of these spells and you'll have to weigh those options from turn to turn but these are a really nice way to implement magic into the way that you're attacking and can give you some really cool options for per perhaps opportunity attacks if you were to take something like the war caster feat or the sentinel feat we'll come back to those when we talk about our feats after the spells as we move into the leveled spells we are now restricted from choosing not just spells from the wizard class spell list but for the most part we can only select spells of the schools of ab duration and evocation at first level eighth level 14th level and again at 20th level we can choose one spell from any school of magic that's still on the wizard class spell list so we want to keep in mind that we're mostly restricted to these two schools of magic as we choose our spells but also be thinking about the exceptions that can really add to our arsenal so while we look at first level spells keep in mind again that damage dealing spells might not be the greatest option because you already have great ways to deal damage as a fighter but instead looking for ways to augment or change your position on the battlefield or your or what you can do on your turn with your attacks is the really interesting thing we want to look at and some of my favorite options are spells like shield or absorb elements shield will allow you to be able to stand up to tougher foes and increase that ac in a pinch when needed making you more robust on the battlefield and absorb elements again both of these being reactionary spells allows you to take in incoming damage and then dish it out furthermore when you deal damage on your turn both of these work really well with an eldridge knight and they're both abduration spells so they're perfect picks i don't know if i would take burning hands or chromatic orb or other attack based spells with my eldritch knight i think probably i'm going to gravitate towards taking those two and then loading up my first level spell with find familiar much like the arcane trickster i think you gain so much as an elders knight from having a familiar if you're curious as to all the amazing things that you can do with your familiar check out our dedicated video on that right up over here but suffice to say a familiar adds so much role-playing opportunities and utility both in and out of combat that it's really hard to not make this your outside school spell that you choose right away at third level when we move on to second level spells this is a pretty sad area for the eldritch knight the only abduration spell available at second level to the wizard school is going to be arcane lock which is not going to help you in pretty much any circumstances on the evocation side of things they don't look too much better you're a seventh level character at this point which means the damage of spells like scorching ray shatter and mels acid arrow really just aren't that impressive compared to the damage that you can already do with your melee and ranged attacks and while darkness is an evocation spell the eldritch knight doesn't have any ability to see in the area of their own darkness i think that you can get a little bit of utility out of a spell like warding wind which is a pretty interesting evocation spell that can protect you against ranged attacks and then you got to make the really hard choice of what your out of school second level spell is going to be which is going to be pretty agonizing because there's a lot of really good options here they're just not from ab duration and evocation i do think that maybe if you are playing a strictly melee version of the eldritch knight it might be nice to have something like scorching rey in those cases where you're fighting a flying foe and can't get to them there are reasons why having a ranged attack that is maybe better than just shooting it with a bow could be a good option here but again it's it's a pretty tough call and a lot of these don't necessarily augment the eldritch knight in a way that really benefits them beyond what they can already do that said i think one of the best choices for an elders knight to take for their second level spell out of school is misty step to give you a bonus action teleport and you can pretty comfortably use all your second level spell slots on misty step and come out far ahead you might also want to consider something like mirror image if you're on the front lines because that gives you a great defensive buff as well those would be my top two picks it's a really hard choice of which to take though as we move on to third level we come back with some great spell options here like fireball and counterspell now we have mentioned that maybe damage dealing spells aren't the forte of an eldritch knight but having an aoe spell like fireball can take care of a lot of little enemies very quickly which is something that you may have a challenge doing with other options and not to mention counterspell just being to able to undo enemy wizards will save your party time and time again but the real gold here is the 14th level pick for haste you want to take this because it just gives you so much to cast it on yourself you're going to get bonuses to your speed you're going to get bonuses to your armor class and best of all you're going to be able to make an additional melee or ranged attack when you take the attack action it is so phenomenal to have this it comes online at 14th level which is a fantastic augmentation because you're really going to make yourself into a damage dealing powerhouse by bringing your own haste spell most fighters are going to have good constitution which means that you can hopefully make those concentration checks because casting haste on yourself is phenomenal but also puts you in the danger zone because you're the one who's going to be in close combat with the enemies and finally we come to the fourth level spell slot eldritch knights do not get their fourth level spell slot until they reach 19th level and they only get one spell slot although you can learn more than one fourth level spell so you better make it a critical pick because it's going to have to be a powerful spell to have an impact at this level of play one of the best options here for a fourth level spell might be banishment if you pair that with the eldritch strike ability this means that you're going to give disadvantage on the saving throw giving you a good chance to end a combat encounter now i think you might also be tempted to take a spell like dimension door to get a nice teleport in the mix or you might even consider a spell like fire shield which is a spell that doesn't require concentration but lasts an hour but will give you resistance to cold or fire damage and cause damage to anybody that hits you with a melee attack while the spell is active overall the fourth level spell slots are not super impactful um and they come online pretty pretty late that i would just take the fourth level spell that you think is the coolest one and hopefully you get to do something super cool like banishing the enemy with your eldritch strike or managing to have that nice defensive bull work with fire shield so now that we've talked about some of the great spells to choose let's mention some of the feats that are going to help augment the spell choices even further and i think we have to say that warcaster is almost essential for an eldritch knight because eldridge knights do have the problem of having weapons in their hands or if you want to carry a shield it might be difficult to cast some of your spells but adding warcaster into the mix not only allows you to do this but it also allows you to do some lovely things like being able to cast spells as an opportunity attack which does pair really well with some of the core class abilities that you gain as an eldritch knight most spellcasters take warcaster simply because they want to get advantage on their concentration checks and as an elder's knight you might pick up a few key concentration spells but there's actually not too many for you to choose at all the last ability of warcaster which allows you to cast a spell instead of making an opportunity attack is something that a fighter eldritch knight can really take advantage of because you're right at the front lines and enemies are often going to be provoking opportunity attacks one of my favorite ways and simplest ways to use this is simply with booming blade if an enemy is provoking an opportunity attack from you it usually means that they're moving away from you so you hit them with booming blade and not only do they take the additional damage from your attack but they also move from their space so they take the extra damage immediately from booming blade two it's a nice really solid hit and we can do a little bit better than that too because once we have warcaster and booming blade together we can also take other feats like sentinel and polar master that give us different ways to make opportunity attacks and then use booming blade in place of that as well it's important to know that booming blade does have a five foot range so if you are using it with polar master you still have to be aware of the range because if the enemy's 10 feet away it's not going to work with the other features you get a really really nice battlefield tactic that you can use honestly the pairing of sentinel and warcaster alone is great it just gives the eldritch knight a lot of other opportunities to not only cast spells but also dish out attacks both of which are powerful points for the eldritch knight so just by combining those two you're going to have a lot more options on the battlefield sentinel also allows you to reduce a creature speed to zero if you hit them with an opportunity attack but again if you choose to cast a spell because you have warcaster instead of making an opportunity attack you've now not made an opportunity attack you've cast a spell so it won't reduce their speed to zero which is actually something that you want them to be able to continue moving if you're going to hit them with booming blade so just be aware that there's a lot of really weird rules interactions and a whole slew of exceptions that happen if you are taking warcaster sentinel and polar master and it's really worthwhile just talking about it as a group with your dungeon master and making sure that everybody's on the same page about how all this stuff works because we get confused by it eldritch knights have the benefits of really working well with any sort of weapon combination that suits your style whether you want to be a sword and board or have a great weapon or fight as an archer there are a lot of options to help augment that as well when we look at feats like sharpshooter or great weapon master these might be awesome pickups depending on the play style you are going in for at the end of the day the elders knight adds so many great options of mixing the spell casting and the combat prowess that already exists in the fighter by adding the spell casting into that you're just going to change and shape the way that the fighter works on the battlefield in new and interesting ways and with the versatility of spells that you can take and the way that they can play with some of the core features of this class is just really exciting and fun to experiment with when you're playing dungeons and dragons the eldritch knights features build on the fantastic core that the fighter class offers and so whether you're choosing spells to give you new options in battle like throwing fireballs and casting counter spells or you're just using a couple well-chosen spells like shield and absorb elements to give you some extra defensive tricks the elders knight really augments what the fighter is capable of and is a really fun class to play that lets you break out of the monotony of the fighter and do a lot more than just swing your sword shoot your bow and hold up your big old shield so this has been a look at the eldridge knight in dungeons and dragons 5th edition if you've played an elder tonight tell us about how that went in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the generosity of our incredible patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we're doing here please consider checking us out on patreon by following the links in the description below or at patreon.com dungeon underscore dudes and if you want to see an eldritch knight in play make sure to check out the campaigns that we run in the worlds of drakenheim live on twitch tuesday nights at 6pm eastern you can find those at twitch.tv dungeon underscore dudes and you can see all the previous episodes of those shows right up over here and we have plenty more guides to the classes and subclasses in dungeons and dragons 5th edition right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 350,402

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: AOQ2G647Pe4

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020