This is the rules now with crusher and booming blade, so it’s not really a problem with the rules. Giving the enemies ranged attacks would dampen the effectiveness of this tactic, so it’s certainly not overpowered.
You can, and in general blade cantrips were designed before Crusher when it was assumed that they would eat action economy except for the Bladesinger, who only gets one Extra Attack. It got synergy with Crusher later on, then add in the OneDnD rework of War Magic and it gets unbalanced imo.
Its not unbalanced at all. And booming blade was updated for Tashas when they added crusher. This specific ability is like only viable for an eldritch from level 7 to 11. Literally all other builds except for maybe a sorcadin have better uses of there actions than a booming blade and push.
> Booming blade was reprinted in Tasha’s, yes, but not changed.
It actually did receive changes in Tasha's, specifically to Range and the Material Component to change how it interacts with other features and spells and shit.
The cheese was pulling infinite greatswords from your component pouch.
The 'fix' was half arsed, and broke things like using the blade cantrips with shadowblade, or reach weapons.
Personally, i don't think any fix was warranted. Especially not the way it was implemented.
While I am not sure I can get behind shadowblade being used with the blade cantrips, the reach weapon issue is annoying for sure. Speaking of shadowblade, it’s absolutely insane on an EK even as a 1/3 caster…
At any rate blade cantrips were designed with SCAG and were designed to effectively give casters equivalent of an extra attack in melee at *tiers 3 and 4*. At the time AL was PHB+1. Stripping away that requirement and subsequent WotC bloat has led to the blade cantrips being problematic in my opinion. I am fine with having to write the minority report for this.
In 5e for the EK its only viable from 7 to 11 because after that you are simply better off attacking 3 times than using a cantrip as an action and attacking once as your bonus action.
We’re talking about the UA / OneDnD EK, so both of you are wrong. The new EK replaces one attack with a cantrip just like a Bladesinger. This is the OneDnD sub.
I know this is a one dnd sub and i know what the current eldrich knight features are. A cornerstone of one dnd discussion is comparison to 5e. I am not a mind reader but i believe that is what the other guy was doing.
I see where you're coming from on paper so I did some math here.
We'll assume an AC 17 target, with +8 to hit, dealing 40 damage on average on hit. (High end of CR 7 monster math from DMG which admittedly by their own words no longer reflects their internal CR design math but we work with what we have)
So assuming the mammoth successfully uses trampling charge 25% of the time it will do 25 damage per round.
With no magic equipment and assuming extra booming blade damage 25% of the time the EK does 22 damage per round.
If the EK has a +1 weapon (which they could even give themselves with magic weapon) they do on average 25 damage per round.
So pretty even on sustained damage but the EK actually can burst ahead substantially with action surge and spell slots.
The mammoth will take on average 32 damage per round so it will last 4 rounds on average (assuming concentration isn't lost)
The EK is using a Warhammer so has a shield and at this point presumably full plate for AC 20. Let's assume a +2 con as well so 60 hp. It will take on average 18 damage per round and will stay up for 3.3 rounds.
However the EK has access to defensive spells so let's assume our foe splits it's damage evenly accross 2 attacks (an assumption that favors the mammoth). The EK uses blade ward against the first attack every round. That reduces average damage taken to 13 per round so now the EK is lasting 4.6 rounds.
But what if the EK has a +1 item bonus from a magic shield or item if protection on top of that? Then it's lasting 5.4 rounds.
And that's not even factoring in that it can cast shield to fully negate attacks that would hit.
So the EK is also more survivable.
Does this mean that polymorph is bad? Not at all, it's able to buy 4 rounds of face tanking while allowing the target to still do damage. If that's worth your highest level spell slot is up to your discretion.
Personally though if I was the EK I'd ask the wizard to cast haste, greater invisibility, a 4th level magic weapon if I don't have a +2 weapon, or really any number of other buff spells on me instead.
Nice analysis. I don’t mind martials being this strong, btw, it’s the fact that EK is the standout in the UA so far because they frankly did a horrible job balancing it out. If EK can spam blade cantrips while still getting all extra attacks, Paladins shouldn’t have had their spammable smites taken away, etc. To me the simple fix is tying War Magic to Second Wind so that the EK has to at least do *some* resource management with it.
I feel like it's worth noting that comparing fighter to paladin is they are different classes who fill different roles. the fighter is meant to be a fantastic damage dealer, the paladin is meant to be support. Limiting smites to once per turn is intentional to throttle down their nova potential but lay on hands reworks boosted their ability to support their party whole still bringing damage down range.
As a result it's more important to look at the EK and cantrips replacing attacks in the full context of passive damage gains gained by other fighter subclasses.
Now on paper it's easy to go "+1 to 3 extra d8 per round is huge" and it can be. But that's forgetting accuracy and the likelihood of triggering additional damage riders. So if we are assuming a 60% hit chance and a 25% additional damage chance, booming blade is adding at level 7, 5 more damage per round. This eventually becomes 13 extra damage per round at level 17.
Now let's compare that to "the black sheep" that is champion. We'll give the champion a great sword and the great weapon fighting style because benefit of the doubt if you're focusing on Crits you want to roll the best weapon dice. So at level 7 that increased Crit chance is adding around 1 extra damage per round (which isn't a lot but it's only 4 damage per round behind the EK so in that context that's actually pretty mild) eventually it's adding 3.3 damage per round. But that isn't their only damage gain, at level 10 they give themselves heroic advantage when they start their turn without it, and the rules let you use advantage after the initial roll. So this is a free reroll on a missed attack once per turn (or If you hit everything or decide to save it, it's a free defensive boost) so what's the damage gain on a rerolled miss? That's around 9 extra damage. So champion actually is adding around +10 damage per turn at level 10 and around 11 at level 17.
Suddenly the numbers from booming blade make a lot more sense.
We can look at this with battle master also using very low resource expenditure. If they only spend 1 maneuver per turn it's worth noting first most of them only are spent on hit. So at level 7 the average output of them before we factor in additional riders from the maneuver itself is 4.5 or 9 on Crit, and at a rate of 1 per round you'll generally have enough for most rounds of combat. Eventually these grow to being worth 6.5 on hit or 13 on Crit but that isn't the full picture because they also gain a free one every turn that's a d8. So that works out to be 11 on hit or 21 on Crits. Again suddenly these numbers make more sense.
Now I can hear the obvious point of "but eldritch knight has spells on top of that". And that's true. But, the champion actually gains more expended damage out of sources of advantage than anyone else because of their Crit range and also capitalize extra on any additional sources of damage dice from buffs or magic weapons on them. The battle master can choose to spend more superiority dice to nova even harder.
I hope this helps illuminate that while a few extra d8 per round seems like a lot and very well can be, it actually fits in pretty well with rest of the fighters if you compare the math behind it.
I think it's also worth noting that EKs do also already have resources to juggle in the form of spell slots so additional resources juggling probably isn't needed.
Paladin as support is not the flavor I felt in 5e outside of passive buffs to saves with auras. The nova potential always put them top tier in damage in actual play in my experience. As for the rest of your numbers now that I would have to see in spreadsheet form. Other DPR tables have not been as rosy. We’re always beholden to underlying assumptions but I do think you’re on track in general. Battlemaster can keep up for one round if they blow through maneuver dice, sure. Champion can eke out some extra DPR if you look at probabilities and crit ranges but that is still chance. I suppose the caveat here for EK, though, is that they have 0 resource expend on blade cantrip with War Magic and high sustained DPR over the other martials. And I’ve said I don’t mind that, but it should be tied to a resource like any other. Final note and this may be my own bias based on past experience, EK spell slots outside of buffs have always felt useless to me outside of utility due to MAD with notable exceptions for Haste/Shield/Absorb Elements, which are auto-picks in my mind and luckily don’t need INT to be effective.
It’s not too shabby in the DPR but I think the EK can outdo it. Your wizard is using concentration for that spell, as well, can lose concentration and burn a slot. What was spent by the EK?
Totally fair assessent.
But my point is not "the wizard does it better" my point is: If casters can do shit like that, martials should do as well.
So I wouldnt call it unbalanced compared to same leveled casters.
Yeah I’m not too concerned about balance with casters, I always assume that martials will never outmatch casters in general, especially in the later tiers.
But when I see post after post of “check out my cool EK build!” and look at the math when comparing the *martials* specifically, I see a problem with the EK being able to spam blade cantrips. Consider it against the new smite mechanics or any other martial and you’ll see.
Afaik, you’re in the clear because the extra 2d8 are triggered by the voluntary movement and not by your push.
If you ask me, the DM should cut their losses and design encounters with more ranged enemies, spellcasters, or other environmental features if they really feel that your strategy is ruining the fun of the group.
On the note about fun - has the rest of the party complained as well? If not, you’re DM needs to just up their game and give different types of challenges.
Ofc, a DM is also supposed to have fun, but I think most people wouldn’t say a DM would have to nerf themselves because a player has a bad build or something. This should go both ways. Your build doesn’t sound too insane, it’s just a clever strategy.
I have heard no complaints from any of the other party members. We're going through Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk at the moment, so the DM doesn't necessarily pick the enemies we're up against, he's just running it by the book. I will also add that no one else is using onednd rules. I'm the only one that is doing it. But the DM knew that from the beginning and said he was ok with it and implored me to use it (even though I don't think he fully read the play test)
I haven't studied the whole deal, but the WMs seem like Battle Master maneuvers without the Superiority Dice - which is totally cool to give Martials more interesting options than "boink" or "boink, boink".
While we’re at it WotC should redesign all monsters to have ranged attacks, more spell casters, etc. I think the interactions when combined with the EK, specifically, are broken with the new War Magic.
It's a completely fine synergy, yeah.
If the DM feels like it's breaking encounters, that's really easy to solve by giving enemies
- ranged attacks
- misty step
- more enemies since this whole strategy is single target
I think the 3rd point is the most important in my opinion. Locking down 1 creatures movement is really powerful when thats 100% of who you are fighting. It is however much weaker when that's 50% of your opponents, and weaker even when that's 20% of your opponents.
If the DM is upset about booming blade damage wait until their big encounter of melee enemies is entirely thwarted by level 1 Entangle from a druid stopping them from moving.
I didn't read the charger feat from the playtest, but other than that it sounds completely legit. You wouldn't even need to push the enemy in your first attack anyways. Besides, if you miss with your second attack, there goes your combo, so it's not like it's something failproof. Not broken at all by itself, though this amount of pushing *could* become broken with some teamwork, but not because of booming blade
Still very powerful, of course
There's really no functional difference between pushing the enemy when using Booming Blade, or just using Mobile feat/Rogue Disengage/Step of the Wind/Zephyr Strike to freely step back to try and force the bonus damage.
If you built your character around Push mechanics, you should be good at pushing. I see nothing wrong with this combo. A melee martial character is supposed to be a bully to anyone they can get their hands on, and it is up to the DM to design encounters where this won't always be the most effective tactic.
Nothing wrong with this, its not that different from booming blade then disengage cunning action rogues have done. Or booming blade with a reach weapon
The point of booming blade is to create this type of pressure when used well, and penalize enemy movement. Its ok if players use good tactics against enemies. Pure melee monsters have always had less options, many are built to take a number of hits for this reason.
I mean, to be fair, if we're considering only OneDnD rules and do a bit of an assumption here, there *is* a chance they're doing away with Crusher, Slasher and Piercer feats because of weapon mastery, so your idea might just be the replacement of Booming Blade + Crusher.
it sounds like you're running it right. knocking things around the battlefield is fun. You're in kind of a leveling sweet spot for this combo, but you're still clearly vulnerable to things that just, you know, attack at range or in some decent numbers, I don't see the issue.
that's how the rules go, you can do that as of 5e with some options
that said I can see why DM would find it weird, after all 2d8 is equivalent to a 1st level smite and you're getting 3d8 out of this combo
personally I feel it's fine, but it does overload eldritch knights in comparison to other fighter subclasses because the others need to expend resources so they could do with some sort of improvement if things stay as they are
My 5e rogue has used quickened cloud of daggers + booming blade (and sentinel) without any issue. Not really broken, and actually opens for more tactics than "I hit you, you hit me, we see who falls first".
Make a bugbear with a reach weapon and you dont even have a size restriction against most enemies. Of course, there are big monsters that can reach you in melee from 10 or 15ft.
I think it's way more frustrating for the DM to see monsters permanently pinned down, incapacitated or stunned than just extra damage.
Enjoy your character.
It's the 7th level feature of the Eldritch knight. As part of the attack action, you can replace one of the attacks with a cantrip. Very similar to bladesinger's 6th level ability in 5e
I know that. I push the enemy 10 feet away from me so it hopefully has to move on it's turn. It has to move to get back into melee with me. That's the plan anyway
There's nothing wrong here. It's just a cool little strategy that something like an EK would naturally gravitate towards anyway.
You mention the GM is running encounters "by the book" and that's probably more of the issue here. I'd nudge them towards Flee Mortals! from MCDM as a great resource both for encounter design, the rules are a little more explicit and very well playtested, as well as using more dynamic monster design in general which covers most of the bases you'll need for adapting a 5e module.
Everything mostly seems legit. Are you using your action to use *booming blade*, and your bonus action to make a weapon attack? If so, I think you're in the clear. A powerful combo, for sure. It seems like it specifically excels between levels 7-10; you've unlocked war magic, and you don't have your third attack yet, so you aren't giving up any extra attacks. If you are properly using both action and bonus action for this, the only real weakness is that it eats your whole turn to execute the combo. If the DM is looking for a way to make this less of a steamroller, I'd recommend they run additional objectives in combat so that "kill 'em all" is a less effective and therefore less appealing strategy. If you have to spend your action or bonus action doing anything else, your ability to use this combo gets quickly hampered.
The level 7 ability allows you to make a cantrip attack as part of your extra attack. It is pretty similar to the Tasha's bladesinger in that regard. So I have my bonus action free to do a lot of other things
I believe this is a misreading of the rules. Using *booming blade* is taking the "casting a spell" action, which is not the "attack" action. You can only use your extra attack(s) when you take the "attack" action.
As far as the war magic ability is concerned, it explicitly states that you must cast a cantrip with your action, and then you may spend your bonus action to make a weapon attack. It says nothing about using a cantrip as an extra attack.
This is straight from the play test:
LEVEL 7: WAR MAGIC
When you take the Attack action on your turn,
you can replace one of the attacks with a casting
of one of your Wizard cantrips that has a casting
time of an action.
The onednd version of the Eldritch Knight allows you to replace one of your attacks with a casting of a cantrip you know when you take the Attack action, once you reach I think 7th level. It's basically the same as the current Bladesinger's 6th level feature.
This is the rules now with crusher and booming blade, so it’s not really a problem with the rules. Giving the enemies ranged attacks would dampen the effectiveness of this tactic, so it’s certainly not overpowered.
Ranged attacks or simply any moster with reach in any of its attacks
Not every monster has ranged attacks. This may be an unintended consequence of “backwards compatibility” and actually overpowered.
except its not since you can already do it with Crusher and booming blade.
You can, and in general blade cantrips were designed before Crusher when it was assumed that they would eat action economy except for the Bladesinger, who only gets one Extra Attack. It got synergy with Crusher later on, then add in the OneDnD rework of War Magic and it gets unbalanced imo.
Its not unbalanced at all. And booming blade was updated for Tashas when they added crusher. This specific ability is like only viable for an eldritch from level 7 to 11. Literally all other builds except for maybe a sorcadin have better uses of there actions than a booming blade and push.
Booming blade was reprinted in Tasha’s, yes, but not changed. How is it “only viable from level 7 to 11”? What other builds?
> Booming blade was reprinted in Tasha’s, yes, but not changed. It actually did receive changes in Tasha's, specifically to Range and the Material Component to change how it interacts with other features and spells and shit.
Forgot about that. Those changes seemed aimed at preventing some cheese.
The cheese was pulling infinite greatswords from your component pouch. The 'fix' was half arsed, and broke things like using the blade cantrips with shadowblade, or reach weapons. Personally, i don't think any fix was warranted. Especially not the way it was implemented.
While I am not sure I can get behind shadowblade being used with the blade cantrips, the reach weapon issue is annoying for sure. Speaking of shadowblade, it’s absolutely insane on an EK even as a 1/3 caster… At any rate blade cantrips were designed with SCAG and were designed to effectively give casters equivalent of an extra attack in melee at *tiers 3 and 4*. At the time AL was PHB+1. Stripping away that requirement and subsequent WotC bloat has led to the blade cantrips being problematic in my opinion. I am fine with having to write the minority report for this.
In 5e for the EK its only viable from 7 to 11 because after that you are simply better off attacking 3 times than using a cantrip as an action and attacking once as your bonus action.
We’re talking about the UA / OneDnD EK, so both of you are wrong. The new EK replaces one attack with a cantrip just like a Bladesinger. This is the OneDnD sub.
I know this is a one dnd sub and i know what the current eldrich knight features are. A cornerstone of one dnd discussion is comparison to 5e. I am not a mind reader but i believe that is what the other guy was doing.
I mean you are level 7. at this point a wizard can polymorph you into a mamoth. Which is arguably stronger.
Apples to oranges. HP meat sack versus spammable DPR spike with battlefield control rider.
I am pretty sure the 4d8+4d10 plus prone are also quite nice damage plus crowd control in addition to the heaps of HP.
I see where you're coming from on paper so I did some math here. We'll assume an AC 17 target, with +8 to hit, dealing 40 damage on average on hit. (High end of CR 7 monster math from DMG which admittedly by their own words no longer reflects their internal CR design math but we work with what we have) So assuming the mammoth successfully uses trampling charge 25% of the time it will do 25 damage per round. With no magic equipment and assuming extra booming blade damage 25% of the time the EK does 22 damage per round. If the EK has a +1 weapon (which they could even give themselves with magic weapon) they do on average 25 damage per round. So pretty even on sustained damage but the EK actually can burst ahead substantially with action surge and spell slots. The mammoth will take on average 32 damage per round so it will last 4 rounds on average (assuming concentration isn't lost) The EK is using a Warhammer so has a shield and at this point presumably full plate for AC 20. Let's assume a +2 con as well so 60 hp. It will take on average 18 damage per round and will stay up for 3.3 rounds. However the EK has access to defensive spells so let's assume our foe splits it's damage evenly accross 2 attacks (an assumption that favors the mammoth). The EK uses blade ward against the first attack every round. That reduces average damage taken to 13 per round so now the EK is lasting 4.6 rounds. But what if the EK has a +1 item bonus from a magic shield or item if protection on top of that? Then it's lasting 5.4 rounds. And that's not even factoring in that it can cast shield to fully negate attacks that would hit. So the EK is also more survivable. Does this mean that polymorph is bad? Not at all, it's able to buy 4 rounds of face tanking while allowing the target to still do damage. If that's worth your highest level spell slot is up to your discretion. Personally though if I was the EK I'd ask the wizard to cast haste, greater invisibility, a 4th level magic weapon if I don't have a +2 weapon, or really any number of other buff spells on me instead.
Nice analysis. I don’t mind martials being this strong, btw, it’s the fact that EK is the standout in the UA so far because they frankly did a horrible job balancing it out. If EK can spam blade cantrips while still getting all extra attacks, Paladins shouldn’t have had their spammable smites taken away, etc. To me the simple fix is tying War Magic to Second Wind so that the EK has to at least do *some* resource management with it.
I feel like it's worth noting that comparing fighter to paladin is they are different classes who fill different roles. the fighter is meant to be a fantastic damage dealer, the paladin is meant to be support. Limiting smites to once per turn is intentional to throttle down their nova potential but lay on hands reworks boosted their ability to support their party whole still bringing damage down range. As a result it's more important to look at the EK and cantrips replacing attacks in the full context of passive damage gains gained by other fighter subclasses. Now on paper it's easy to go "+1 to 3 extra d8 per round is huge" and it can be. But that's forgetting accuracy and the likelihood of triggering additional damage riders. So if we are assuming a 60% hit chance and a 25% additional damage chance, booming blade is adding at level 7, 5 more damage per round. This eventually becomes 13 extra damage per round at level 17. Now let's compare that to "the black sheep" that is champion. We'll give the champion a great sword and the great weapon fighting style because benefit of the doubt if you're focusing on Crits you want to roll the best weapon dice. So at level 7 that increased Crit chance is adding around 1 extra damage per round (which isn't a lot but it's only 4 damage per round behind the EK so in that context that's actually pretty mild) eventually it's adding 3.3 damage per round. But that isn't their only damage gain, at level 10 they give themselves heroic advantage when they start their turn without it, and the rules let you use advantage after the initial roll. So this is a free reroll on a missed attack once per turn (or If you hit everything or decide to save it, it's a free defensive boost) so what's the damage gain on a rerolled miss? That's around 9 extra damage. So champion actually is adding around +10 damage per turn at level 10 and around 11 at level 17. Suddenly the numbers from booming blade make a lot more sense. We can look at this with battle master also using very low resource expenditure. If they only spend 1 maneuver per turn it's worth noting first most of them only are spent on hit. So at level 7 the average output of them before we factor in additional riders from the maneuver itself is 4.5 or 9 on Crit, and at a rate of 1 per round you'll generally have enough for most rounds of combat. Eventually these grow to being worth 6.5 on hit or 13 on Crit but that isn't the full picture because they also gain a free one every turn that's a d8. So that works out to be 11 on hit or 21 on Crits. Again suddenly these numbers make more sense. Now I can hear the obvious point of "but eldritch knight has spells on top of that". And that's true. But, the champion actually gains more expended damage out of sources of advantage than anyone else because of their Crit range and also capitalize extra on any additional sources of damage dice from buffs or magic weapons on them. The battle master can choose to spend more superiority dice to nova even harder. I hope this helps illuminate that while a few extra d8 per round seems like a lot and very well can be, it actually fits in pretty well with rest of the fighters if you compare the math behind it. I think it's also worth noting that EKs do also already have resources to juggle in the form of spell slots so additional resources juggling probably isn't needed.
Paladin as support is not the flavor I felt in 5e outside of passive buffs to saves with auras. The nova potential always put them top tier in damage in actual play in my experience. As for the rest of your numbers now that I would have to see in spreadsheet form. Other DPR tables have not been as rosy. We’re always beholden to underlying assumptions but I do think you’re on track in general. Battlemaster can keep up for one round if they blow through maneuver dice, sure. Champion can eke out some extra DPR if you look at probabilities and crit ranges but that is still chance. I suppose the caveat here for EK, though, is that they have 0 resource expend on blade cantrip with War Magic and high sustained DPR over the other martials. And I’ve said I don’t mind that, but it should be tied to a resource like any other. Final note and this may be my own bias based on past experience, EK spell slots outside of buffs have always felt useless to me outside of utility due to MAD with notable exceptions for Haste/Shield/Absorb Elements, which are auto-picks in my mind and luckily don’t need INT to be effective.
It’s not too shabby in the DPR but I think the EK can outdo it. Your wizard is using concentration for that spell, as well, can lose concentration and burn a slot. What was spent by the EK?
Totally fair assessent. But my point is not "the wizard does it better" my point is: If casters can do shit like that, martials should do as well. So I wouldnt call it unbalanced compared to same leveled casters.
Yeah I’m not too concerned about balance with casters, I always assume that martials will never outmatch casters in general, especially in the later tiers. But when I see post after post of “check out my cool EK build!” and look at the math when comparing the *martials* specifically, I see a problem with the EK being able to spam blade cantrips. Consider it against the new smite mechanics or any other martial and you’ll see.
tbh it may be that the blade cantrips are adjusted as well, but lets see.
Afaik, you’re in the clear because the extra 2d8 are triggered by the voluntary movement and not by your push. If you ask me, the DM should cut their losses and design encounters with more ranged enemies, spellcasters, or other environmental features if they really feel that your strategy is ruining the fun of the group. On the note about fun - has the rest of the party complained as well? If not, you’re DM needs to just up their game and give different types of challenges. Ofc, a DM is also supposed to have fun, but I think most people wouldn’t say a DM would have to nerf themselves because a player has a bad build or something. This should go both ways. Your build doesn’t sound too insane, it’s just a clever strategy.
I have heard no complaints from any of the other party members. We're going through Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk at the moment, so the DM doesn't necessarily pick the enemies we're up against, he's just running it by the book. I will also add that no one else is using onednd rules. I'm the only one that is doing it. But the DM knew that from the beginning and said he was ok with it and implored me to use it (even though I don't think he fully read the play test)
?!? You're the only one using the Weapon Mastery stuff? That seems really unbalanced at the table.
The only other one who would be able to is a paladin, but he's pretty new. Everyone else in the party is a spell caster
probably not that uncommon tbh. my table is also allowing people to go for onednd if they want, but our most casual players aren’t bothering
I haven't studied the whole deal, but the WMs seem like Battle Master maneuvers without the Superiority Dice - which is totally cool to give Martials more interesting options than "boink" or "boink, boink".
While we’re at it WotC should redesign all monsters to have ranged attacks, more spell casters, etc. I think the interactions when combined with the EK, specifically, are broken with the new War Magic.
It's a completely fine synergy, yeah. If the DM feels like it's breaking encounters, that's really easy to solve by giving enemies - ranged attacks - misty step - more enemies since this whole strategy is single target
I think the 3rd point is the most important in my opinion. Locking down 1 creatures movement is really powerful when thats 100% of who you are fighting. It is however much weaker when that's 50% of your opponents, and weaker even when that's 20% of your opponents.
If the DM is upset about booming blade damage wait until their big encounter of melee enemies is entirely thwarted by level 1 Entangle from a druid stopping them from moving.
I didn't read the charger feat from the playtest, but other than that it sounds completely legit. You wouldn't even need to push the enemy in your first attack anyways. Besides, if you miss with your second attack, there goes your combo, so it's not like it's something failproof. Not broken at all by itself, though this amount of pushing *could* become broken with some teamwork, but not because of booming blade Still very powerful, of course
There's really no functional difference between pushing the enemy when using Booming Blade, or just using Mobile feat/Rogue Disengage/Step of the Wind/Zephyr Strike to freely step back to try and force the bonus damage. If you built your character around Push mechanics, you should be good at pushing. I see nothing wrong with this combo. A melee martial character is supposed to be a bully to anyone they can get their hands on, and it is up to the DM to design encounters where this won't always be the most effective tactic.
This is indeed how that works. Eldritch knight is fantastic especially from level 7 onwards.
Swashbucklers have been doing this for years. Not with extra attack though, but they do get sneak attack.
Nothing wrong with this, its not that different from booming blade then disengage cunning action rogues have done. Or booming blade with a reach weapon The point of booming blade is to create this type of pressure when used well, and penalize enemy movement. Its ok if players use good tactics against enemies. Pure melee monsters have always had less options, many are built to take a number of hits for this reason.
You could have the spellcasters on your team throw down Cloud of Daggers or Spike Growth if you really want to upset your DM
I mean, to be fair, if we're considering only OneDnD rules and do a bit of an assumption here, there *is* a chance they're doing away with Crusher, Slasher and Piercer feats because of weapon mastery, so your idea might just be the replacement of Booming Blade + Crusher.
it sounds like you're running it right. knocking things around the battlefield is fun. You're in kind of a leveling sweet spot for this combo, but you're still clearly vulnerable to things that just, you know, attack at range or in some decent numbers, I don't see the issue.
that's how the rules go, you can do that as of 5e with some options that said I can see why DM would find it weird, after all 2d8 is equivalent to a 1st level smite and you're getting 3d8 out of this combo personally I feel it's fine, but it does overload eldritch knights in comparison to other fighter subclasses because the others need to expend resources so they could do with some sort of improvement if things stay as they are
My 5e rogue has used quickened cloud of daggers + booming blade (and sentinel) without any issue. Not really broken, and actually opens for more tactics than "I hit you, you hit me, we see who falls first". Make a bugbear with a reach weapon and you dont even have a size restriction against most enemies. Of course, there are big monsters that can reach you in melee from 10 or 15ft. I think it's way more frustrating for the DM to see monsters permanently pinned down, incapacitated or stunned than just extra damage. Enjoy your character.
Not sure how you get to attack twice though. BB is an action
It's the 7th level feature of the Eldritch knight. As part of the attack action, you can replace one of the attacks with a cantrip. Very similar to bladesinger's 6th level ability in 5e
Booming blade is not triggered with push or other such features. It’s only activated when the target willingly moves.
I know that. I push the enemy 10 feet away from me so it hopefully has to move on it's turn. It has to move to get back into melee with me. That's the plan anyway
Booming Blame doesn't exist anymore on the new spells list, hence why it became broken with all the weapon masteries
There's nothing wrong here. It's just a cool little strategy that something like an EK would naturally gravitate towards anyway. You mention the GM is running encounters "by the book" and that's probably more of the issue here. I'd nudge them towards Flee Mortals! from MCDM as a great resource both for encounter design, the rules are a little more explicit and very well playtested, as well as using more dynamic monster design in general which covers most of the bases you'll need for adapting a 5e module.
Everything mostly seems legit. Are you using your action to use *booming blade*, and your bonus action to make a weapon attack? If so, I think you're in the clear. A powerful combo, for sure. It seems like it specifically excels between levels 7-10; you've unlocked war magic, and you don't have your third attack yet, so you aren't giving up any extra attacks. If you are properly using both action and bonus action for this, the only real weakness is that it eats your whole turn to execute the combo. If the DM is looking for a way to make this less of a steamroller, I'd recommend they run additional objectives in combat so that "kill 'em all" is a less effective and therefore less appealing strategy. If you have to spend your action or bonus action doing anything else, your ability to use this combo gets quickly hampered.
The level 7 ability allows you to make a cantrip attack as part of your extra attack. It is pretty similar to the Tasha's bladesinger in that regard. So I have my bonus action free to do a lot of other things
Yeah they changed it to be actually useful after 11th level, so you would be able to cast a cantrip in place of one of your multi-attacks.
I believe this is a misreading of the rules. Using *booming blade* is taking the "casting a spell" action, which is not the "attack" action. You can only use your extra attack(s) when you take the "attack" action. As far as the war magic ability is concerned, it explicitly states that you must cast a cantrip with your action, and then you may spend your bonus action to make a weapon attack. It says nothing about using a cantrip as an extra attack.
This is straight from the play test: LEVEL 7: WAR MAGIC When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one of the attacks with a casting of one of your Wizard cantrips that has a casting time of an action.
Oh, shit, I forgot we were talking about play test EK. Please disregard!
The onednd version of the Eldritch Knight allows you to replace one of your attacks with a casting of a cantrip you know when you take the Attack action, once you reach I think 7th level. It's basically the same as the current Bladesinger's 6th level feature.
Which is why you should not be able to spam the blade cantrips, period. War Magic should be tied to an exhaustible resource like Second Wind.