Foxhound438
2017-11-20, 05:29 PM
ve bladesinger magical tradition".
So with the title out of the way, here's the build:
Point buy (post racial) 15/10/17/15/10/8
roll for starting gold rather than taking default equipment, and take noble as your background. This should put you at about 125 gold on average, or 65 at worst. buy scale mail for 50GP to have 14AC out the gate, all the time, no mage armor required, and use a cheapo 5GP staff, and of course you'll need to shell out another 50GP for the spellbook. If you roll poorly on gold, you can take hide armor for 12 AC, which is poor, but you just have to survive long enough to get through your first job to get decent armor.
At level 4, you should have cash for half plate to make your AC 15 for the time, and you can use your ASI to get con/int up to even numbers. Level 8 pick up heavily armored for AC 18, and even off strength to 16. ASI's at 12 and 16 max int, and 19 probably is taking war caster or something.
War mage gives you the neat free mini-shield, which puts your AC at a pretty good spot. You do have the downside of not being able to cast levelled spells on the turn after, but the war wizard is in fact all about having long duration, concentration spells active rather than throwing a new fireball ever 6 seconds. So fill your spell list with things like flaming sphere and storm sphere, and cast booming blades and green flame blades with your action.
So how does this compare to bladesinger, you may ask?
Well, first off, your AC is actually probably a bit worse most of the time. You start out with 14 and can pump to 16 for one attack every round, while the singer starts with 16 (probably) and can boost to 19 twice per day. Moving up in levels a bunch here, at level 8 you can have an AC of 18 all the time, and can go to 20 once per round, while the bladesinger is at 18 all the time and can boost to 21 twice per day. You do gain the edge at level 10, where singers are at the same AC and you have an extra +2 if you have a concentration spell up.
Note that both can boost by another 2 if they want with haste, but neither would most of the time. Even with the boosts to concentration that both can get from their abilities, losing a turn is a very big disincentive for classes that go into melee with no native con save proficiency.
Also note that while the bladesinger can cast shield, so can the war wizard. Anything you can do I can do... about the same, honestly.
Damage wise, both get damage boosts at level 6 and 14. Bladesinger's is arguably a better feature, since it's free and resource independant, but war wizard can still get a slight at-will boost by using SCAG cantrips (so long as you aren't in PHB+1 land), and while the increase in damage from power surge is both resource dependant and initially pretty minimal, it can do a lot of extra work if you have plenty of opportunities to get charges. At 14th level, the bladesinger gets + int mod to damage (+4 on at most 3 attacks), while war wizard gets to do damage=lvl against up to 3 targets, no roll required.
In addition to those features, both are probably pretty eager to use tenser's transformation, and we're already going over PHB+1 on the war wizard, so we'll give transform to bladesinger as well.
So just for comparison, let's look at a level 14 comparison of these two's damage output:
Bladesinger: attack, extra attack, bonus action 2wf, using shortswords or scimitars; weapon, dex mod, int mod, transform die:
1d6+5+4+2d12+1d6+5+4+2d12+1d6+4+2d12 = 71.5 DPR
War wizard: attack, transform attack, bonus action 2wf, using hand axes from dwarven proficiencies, deflecting shroud vs. 1 target; weapon, str mod, transform.
1d6+3+2d12+1d6+3+2d12+1d6+2d12+14 = 69.5 DPR, or 76.5 with a surge
Very comparable already, add an extra target for deflecting shroud and you get much more damage off the dwarf.
and for another comparison, at level 7, since a lot of campaigns end well before L14. Give both a spell to cast to boost their damage.
bladesinger: 3rd level shadow blade, extra attack, bonus action 2wf with shortsword:
3d8+4+3d8+4+1d6 = 38.5
war wizard: green flame blade, storm sphere bolt, storm sphere on turn hit:
1d6+2+1d8+4d6+2d6 = 31, or 34 if you use a surge; single target in both cases, so no extra 2d8 from GFB.
In that case the bladesinger is quite a lot ahead, mostly on the back of shadow blade being so good. Note that I ran the calc at level 6 as well, and... let's just say flaming sphere is pretty bad by comparison, at least if you don't have an enemy trapped such that it takes damage at the end of its turn in addition to when you ram it.
Anyways, so the AC is pretty comparable, the damage is pretty comparable, the con save for concentration is much better for war wizard mostly due to the higher starting con, and war wizard's HP is a lot better for the same reason. It's possibly a little bit of a rocky road starting with +2 in both of your primary stats, but in 5e that's pretty acceptable.
As an added note, it's probably slightly mechanically better to start with like 15 dex, 16 con, 15 int and using medium armor forever, saving you a feat to get heavy armor, but a 10 str mountain dwarf is a bit... odd, and the point is that a dwarven war wizard would probably be giving bladesingers crap about how dainty they are, so high str+high con just seems to fit the bill a little better.
So with the title out of the way, here's the build:
Point buy (post racial) 15/10/17/15/10/8
roll for starting gold rather than taking default equipment, and take noble as your background. This should put you at about 125 gold on average, or 65 at worst. buy scale mail for 50GP to have 14AC out the gate, all the time, no mage armor required, and use a cheapo 5GP staff, and of course you'll need to shell out another 50GP for the spellbook. If you roll poorly on gold, you can take hide armor for 12 AC, which is poor, but you just have to survive long enough to get through your first job to get decent armor.
At level 4, you should have cash for half plate to make your AC 15 for the time, and you can use your ASI to get con/int up to even numbers. Level 8 pick up heavily armored for AC 18, and even off strength to 16. ASI's at 12 and 16 max int, and 19 probably is taking war caster or something.
War mage gives you the neat free mini-shield, which puts your AC at a pretty good spot. You do have the downside of not being able to cast levelled spells on the turn after, but the war wizard is in fact all about having long duration, concentration spells active rather than throwing a new fireball ever 6 seconds. So fill your spell list with things like flaming sphere and storm sphere, and cast booming blades and green flame blades with your action.
So how does this compare to bladesinger, you may ask?
Well, first off, your AC is actually probably a bit worse most of the time. You start out with 14 and can pump to 16 for one attack every round, while the singer starts with 16 (probably) and can boost to 19 twice per day. Moving up in levels a bunch here, at level 8 you can have an AC of 18 all the time, and can go to 20 once per round, while the bladesinger is at 18 all the time and can boost to 21 twice per day. You do gain the edge at level 10, where singers are at the same AC and you have an extra +2 if you have a concentration spell up.
Note that both can boost by another 2 if they want with haste, but neither would most of the time. Even with the boosts to concentration that both can get from their abilities, losing a turn is a very big disincentive for classes that go into melee with no native con save proficiency.
Also note that while the bladesinger can cast shield, so can the war wizard. Anything you can do I can do... about the same, honestly.
Damage wise, both get damage boosts at level 6 and 14. Bladesinger's is arguably a better feature, since it's free and resource independant, but war wizard can still get a slight at-will boost by using SCAG cantrips (so long as you aren't in PHB+1 land), and while the increase in damage from power surge is both resource dependant and initially pretty minimal, it can do a lot of extra work if you have plenty of opportunities to get charges. At 14th level, the bladesinger gets + int mod to damage (+4 on at most 3 attacks), while war wizard gets to do damage=lvl against up to 3 targets, no roll required.
In addition to those features, both are probably pretty eager to use tenser's transformation, and we're already going over PHB+1 on the war wizard, so we'll give transform to bladesinger as well.
So just for comparison, let's look at a level 14 comparison of these two's damage output:
Bladesinger: attack, extra attack, bonus action 2wf, using shortswords or scimitars; weapon, dex mod, int mod, transform die:
1d6+5+4+2d12+1d6+5+4+2d12+1d6+4+2d12 = 71.5 DPR
War wizard: attack, transform attack, bonus action 2wf, using hand axes from dwarven proficiencies, deflecting shroud vs. 1 target; weapon, str mod, transform.
1d6+3+2d12+1d6+3+2d12+1d6+2d12+14 = 69.5 DPR, or 76.5 with a surge
Very comparable already, add an extra target for deflecting shroud and you get much more damage off the dwarf.
and for another comparison, at level 7, since a lot of campaigns end well before L14. Give both a spell to cast to boost their damage.
bladesinger: 3rd level shadow blade, extra attack, bonus action 2wf with shortsword:
3d8+4+3d8+4+1d6 = 38.5
war wizard: green flame blade, storm sphere bolt, storm sphere on turn hit:
1d6+2+1d8+4d6+2d6 = 31, or 34 if you use a surge; single target in both cases, so no extra 2d8 from GFB.
In that case the bladesinger is quite a lot ahead, mostly on the back of shadow blade being so good. Note that I ran the calc at level 6 as well, and... let's just say flaming sphere is pretty bad by comparison, at least if you don't have an enemy trapped such that it takes damage at the end of its turn in addition to when you ram it.
Anyways, so the AC is pretty comparable, the damage is pretty comparable, the con save for concentration is much better for war wizard mostly due to the higher starting con, and war wizard's HP is a lot better for the same reason. It's possibly a little bit of a rocky road starting with +2 in both of your primary stats, but in 5e that's pretty acceptable.
As an added note, it's probably slightly mechanically better to start with like 15 dex, 16 con, 15 int and using medium armor forever, saving you a feat to get heavy armor, but a 10 str mountain dwarf is a bit... odd, and the point is that a dwarven war wizard would probably be giving bladesingers crap about how dainty they are, so high str+high con just seems to fit the bill a little better.