Foxhound438
2016-04-25, 11:17 PM
The premise of the build here is to take spells that can gainfully employ an Eldritch Knight's bonus action if your base features don't give you much to do with it.
There's really not a ton to work with in published books, as far as I can see, but here's the options that stand out to me:
L1: :/ nothing, really. Here you take the standard "shield, absorb, utility" layout. Closest thing here would probably be expeditious retreat to close distance, but you have cantrips to fill time on the way to a target...
L2: Flaming Sphere. Unfortunately, this spell isn't evocation, so you're stuck using up one of your precious non-school specific spell options. Otherwise it's a fine choice, adding 2d6 to your DPR and doubling as minor area control; with semi-decent positioning you can force an enemy to chose between risking OA or risking damage from this.
L3: Melf's Minute Meteors. This one doesn't give you a lot of extended use, but its cumulative damage for single targets out-matches fireball once you've expended your 3 turns worth of gas with it. The small AOE can hit maybe 2 targets, so there's room to argue that this spell holds up even with only 3 turns of gas.
L4: Storm Sphere. By far my favorite spell from the EEPC, this spell differs from the others in that it deals damage with both the action that you use to cast it and your bonus action that turn. The small area inside deals continuous damage, so perhaps with some help and a proper gridlock you can use this to clear out mooks on the DOT while burning the highest value target with lightning. You can even stand in this yourself, considering you probably have +10 to concentration saves, so you only speed up the fight with this in a gridlock, as you actually literally can't lose the spell to its own damage (nat 1 doesn't auto fail saves, ya know).
The big issue with the idea is that everything competes with Haste at level 13. There's very little chance that you would rather cast melf's meteors when you could instead make a fourth Great Weapon Master attack, so the idea has a pretty niche space: either you want a different out-of-school spell at 3rd level despite the obvious power of haste, or you're going sword and board tanky style. The latter case is far more likely, and is quite justifiable as the extra AC from a shield and defense style can save your skin, and melf's meteors/storm sphere will give you more damage than one longsword attack.
So what thoughts have ye? any other spells that can gainfully employ a bonus action for an EK? or is someone just going to come and not read the whole thing and say "haste is better if you power attack" even though I covered that point?
There's really not a ton to work with in published books, as far as I can see, but here's the options that stand out to me:
L1: :/ nothing, really. Here you take the standard "shield, absorb, utility" layout. Closest thing here would probably be expeditious retreat to close distance, but you have cantrips to fill time on the way to a target...
L2: Flaming Sphere. Unfortunately, this spell isn't evocation, so you're stuck using up one of your precious non-school specific spell options. Otherwise it's a fine choice, adding 2d6 to your DPR and doubling as minor area control; with semi-decent positioning you can force an enemy to chose between risking OA or risking damage from this.
L3: Melf's Minute Meteors. This one doesn't give you a lot of extended use, but its cumulative damage for single targets out-matches fireball once you've expended your 3 turns worth of gas with it. The small AOE can hit maybe 2 targets, so there's room to argue that this spell holds up even with only 3 turns of gas.
L4: Storm Sphere. By far my favorite spell from the EEPC, this spell differs from the others in that it deals damage with both the action that you use to cast it and your bonus action that turn. The small area inside deals continuous damage, so perhaps with some help and a proper gridlock you can use this to clear out mooks on the DOT while burning the highest value target with lightning. You can even stand in this yourself, considering you probably have +10 to concentration saves, so you only speed up the fight with this in a gridlock, as you actually literally can't lose the spell to its own damage (nat 1 doesn't auto fail saves, ya know).
The big issue with the idea is that everything competes with Haste at level 13. There's very little chance that you would rather cast melf's meteors when you could instead make a fourth Great Weapon Master attack, so the idea has a pretty niche space: either you want a different out-of-school spell at 3rd level despite the obvious power of haste, or you're going sword and board tanky style. The latter case is far more likely, and is quite justifiable as the extra AC from a shield and defense style can save your skin, and melf's meteors/storm sphere will give you more damage than one longsword attack.
So what thoughts have ye? any other spells that can gainfully employ a bonus action for an EK? or is someone just going to come and not read the whole thing and say "haste is better if you power attack" even though I covered that point?