Gish Bard Help

[Chimora]

I am making a character for an upcoming campaign. We will be starting at level 6, and I plan on playing a warlock 1/Bard 5, and focusing on melee spells. On the Warlock side I'm going hexblade, and on the bard side I am going college of lore. Probably going to pick up some paladin spells early on, and at higher levels I plan on leaning into the combination of find greater steed and tensers transformation on a dire wolf. Any tips that may be offered by the merciful gods of the forum, or problems you see with this strategy?

[Ganryu]

I am making a character for an upcoming campaign. We will be starting at level 6, and I plan on playing a warlock 1/Bard 5, and focusing on melee spells. On the Warlock side I'm going hexblade, and on the bard side I am going college of lore. Probably going to pick up some paladin spells early on, and at higher levels I plan on leaning into the combination of find greater steed and tensers transformation on a dire wolf. Any tips that may be offered by the merciful gods of the forum, or problems you see with this strategy?

If youre going Lore, probably not too much of a Gish. I would grab Armor of Agythis and Hellish from Warlock, and use your Cutting Words on DAmage, to keep that temp HP up. Paladin spells, Spam melee cantrips, maybe Green Flame Blade (I never see the use of Booming Blade personally.) Everyone who attacks you suffers from it. Bonus points if you play a masochist. This makes a surprisingly good tank build.

If you really want to go insane with Bard, always the Bardcher build:
https://mythcreants.com/blog/four-fun-dd-character-builds-for-power-gaming/

What are you looking for for tips exactly? What do you want to do? Bard is jack of all trades in a class, they can do anything.

[Chimora]

Honestly just better ways to be a gish. I went with lore bard because swords gives extra attack, and I'll already get that from tensers. I wanna keep tensers up as much as possible to help my wolf, so I was really just looking for other spells to take with my secrets.

[Keravath]

Honestly just better ways to be a gish. I went with lore bard because swords gives extra attack, and I'll already get that from tensers. I wanna keep tensers up as much as possible to help my wolf, so I was really just looking for other spells to take with my secrets.

Honestly, you may end up taking two levels of hexblade and finding that agonizing blast is the more useful choice.

Tenser's transformation is a level 6 spell - you won't get it until level 14 bard magical secrets since it isn't a bard spell. This means a minimum of level 15 ... possibly 16 if you take two levels of hexblade.

Once you do have it, it is concentration and lasts 10 minutes. At level 14 bard with 7th level spells there are likely far better choices for your concentration during combat. In addition, you will have one 6th and one 7th level spell slot so you'll be able to use tenser's twice/day for 10 minutes each.

Anyway, if you are planning on being any sort of "gish" you probably need a plan for levels 7-14 since you won't have Tenser's until level 15.

[king_steve]

So, if your going to build a gish then you want to see if you can pick up some helpful spells along the way.

For a gish you'd likely be interested in:

Cantrips: Green-Flame Blade, Booming Blade, Sword Burst
1st lvl: False Life (great boost to survivability), Shield (again if your in melee this helps), Hex (if you dipped into warlock), Divine Favor (if you dip into Warpriest cleric)
2nd lvl: Magic Weapon, Shadow blade, Mirror Image, Blur
3rd lvl: Elemental Weapon (solid spell choice for a gish), Haste

Many of those are warlock spells, and if you're starting with 1 in hexblade, well... you might want to stick with Warlock. That or a 1 cleric (warpriest)/x wizard (almost any works, if you go bladesinger then maybe skip the cleric level) would be my suggestion.

College of Swords and College of Valor can be good for a party buffing build that still holds its own in melee, but I actually don't think the bard spell list is a great gish spell list. Magic Secret comes online so late, and by that level, there are enough other powerful spells that I'm not sure its worth building a character around a concept that doesn't work until lvl 15 or so.

[Gtdead]

Pick spirit guardians at lvl 7. Also get BB from warlock and warcaster.

You will be a cleric with identity crisis for the most part but I don't see how you can do better than that as a lore bard in melee.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Why does every gish with Cha casting need to dip Hexblade? Go Cleric 1/ Lore Bard 5+, take Shield Master and put expertise in Athletics. Go with a Cleric domain that gets heavy armor proficiency, Life or Forge is ideal, but Order is best if you have a Rogue in the party.

I'd use Loxodon for your race since it doesn't need to use a hand to grapple an opponent, Str 15, Dex 8, Con 12+2, Int 8, Wis 13+1, Cha 15, your next ASI increases Str and Cha. You can grapple someone with your trunk and shove them prone, then drag them to another opponent the next round to grapple them with your hand and shove them prone as well. Or grapple someone with your trunk, shove them prone, then beat on them with your weapon at advantage for the rest of the fight. The grapple and shove prone maneuver is one of the strongest debuffs you can use in the early to mid levels and it doesn't cost you any daily resources. Lore Bard is especially good at it due to Expertise and Cutting Words.

You'll still do fairly well with your hands full with grapples and a shield, since you've got plenty of verbal-only spells: Vicious Mockery, Dissonant Whispers, Healing Word, Command, Faerie Fire, Blindness/Deafness, etc. Your Cleric cantrips can be Guidance, Light, and probably Spare the Dying, and include Bless and Healing Word in your prepared spells.

[Evaar]

Why does every gish with Cha casting need to dip Hexblade?

Because it's extremely efficient and effective, and it opens up room for arguably necessary feats like Warcaster.

Anyhow, I will side with the others and say that if you want to be a real gish, you can't just rely on Tenser's Transformation. You aren't going to have that for the majority of your adventuring career, and when you do have it you won't be able to use it in most fights. And when you do use it, you're not really a gish because you can't cast spells with it running - you convert yourself into a fighter. It's a niche spell that has its uses, but it isn't character defining. Don't look at its Extra Attack feature as redundant. The real benefit you're getting from it is the advantage, the extra force damage, and the temporary hit points. The Extra Attack part is just there to make it usable by those who don't otherwise devote any focus to martial ability.

As such, you'll want to make sure you DO get Extra Attack somewhere. So that means either Valor or Swords Bard, or you're getting it somewhere else. You can choose to rely on scaling cantrip damage from Booming Blade or Greenflame Blade, too, but for general use you'd be better off getting Extra Attack. Another way you can accomplish this is via Paladin. You need at least 13 Strength to multiclass with that, so you're either doing a Strength build or you're going to have to dig up those stats elsewhere. But this gets you the ability to Smite using your Bard spell slots. If you're going Paladin 2/Swords X, you'll get two Fighting Styles, Smite, and eventually Extra Attack. If you go Paladin 5/Bard X, you can go with Lore, but your spell progression will be held back pretty substantially. And also if you're going Paladin 5, you really might as well go Paladin 6 because Aura of Protection is right there. This is still a strong character, you're just playing more of a Paladin with some Bard options that come in later.

And of course you can Paladin 2/Hexblade 1/Bard X if you want. Keep in mind you can only use one weapon with your Charisma stat if you do that. If you go Hexblade 3 and get Pact of the Blade, that enables dual wielding with Charisma for both weapons (one being your pact weapon, the other being the weapon you use in your Hexblade ritual).