Video suggestion for the future: take all of the subclasses that get a D tier across the classes, rework them in detail with the goal of hitting B/low A in power level while keeping the flavour/ideas those subclasses started off with. Its a good thought experiment at least, would also help those who like to try to homebrew things of that scale to hear thoughts on what does and doesn't work in a subclass and what sort of tweaks can be made to things.
Better idea. Take all of the D tier subclasses in this series and try to run a campaign where each player is one of them. Forget the A team, you just hired the D team!
the thing about playing samurai for me is that combo. using both fighting spirit + action surge, spending both resources at once is one of my favorite scenes i can think of. “Master forgive me, but I’ll have to go all out... just this once.”
Also you can multiclass into the feat that gives you battle master maneuvers, and something like polearm master or great weapon master. Just destructive levels of damage. I think they are a great multiclass option as well. Sure you only get the 3 a day, but imagine being a swashbuckler rogue and a samurai fighter that can use a few maneuvers a day to increase the damage again. I'd rank It at B since multiclassing improves it a good bit.
It can also be a really strong ranged blaster. You can go elven accuracy and sharpshooter and then explode people with 4 shots with triple advantage. Extremely good burst damage for a lvl 5 character. It lags behind multiclass gloomstalker fighter at higher levels of you are in the dark but it's good reliable damage with no thought required. Just look at a guy and watch them stop being a problem.
Don't forget though, Wisdom Saving Throw Proficiency on Samurai! That is the damn BEST, Wisdom saves are the most common besides Con and Dex, you will resist SO many fears and charms and holds and mind control and madness effects, it's the bomb.
agreed - i feel they have underrated samurai quite a bit by *barely* giving it B. Also just because Battlemaster exists, that doesnt mean that subclasses can't be looked at for their own merit.
@@lordkosta926 "Also just because Battlemaster exists, that doesnt mean that subclasses can't be looked at for their own merit." Unfortunately in a world where you can only pick one (and rightfully so) subclasses have to be compared against eachother. Advantage is so easy to come by, that the samurai's feature is redundant most of the time. Wisdom saves are okay but not a life saver since you can just get resilient wisdom with one of your 7 asi's
I got to play a character with a backstory that she was a rogue, so that was her starting class -- but she got caught and conscripted into a war. There she gained the favor of a local warlord and that's where she became a fighter, and then a samurai. They ended up losing that war, and she lost her lord, and now she's ronin. Two levels of rogue, five of fighter, and she's powering up her own sneak attacks with the Fighting Spirit. It might not be that fun if I had to actually play through the levels to get there, but it was fun for a situational character that just got to be that way.
@@The_Yukki I wouldn't scoff at free advantage. I mean, what are the most common ways of getting advantage? Flanking? That's a variant rule. Knocking things prone? Never gonna work on the real big 'uns like Giants and Dragons. Stunning, Paralyzing, Sleeping (Sophoricing?), Restraining? All have a chance of failure from the monster saving. Fighting Spirit cuts out the middle man. Also, yes, both Fighting Spirit and Superiority Die are limited and come back on a Short Rest, but SD have a chance of failing to work and therefore only granting extra damage (which is still S-Tier, don't get me wrong), while Fighting Spirit NEVER NOT WORKS. And what if you play in a game without feats or multiclassing? You will never have proficiency in Wisdom saves as a fighter without taking Samurai. Also, Resilient is (personal opinion) such a dead level feeling, unless you're taking Dexterity. With Samurai, it's free, and comes with social interaction benefit.
Mechanically the echo has more in common with a spiritual weapon. It's not a creature, it's not bound by physics. It just lets you use YOUR attacks elsewhere.
@@tk98998988 Swap places is good, yes. But besides that, spiritual weapon is superior in almost any way beside that. Better action economy, higher uptime and more reliable.
Now you've got me wondering how an Echo Knight/Cleric combo would be, it'd be chaotic. Attacks everywhere. But I think it'd tangle up the bonus actions too much.
Getting proficiency in Wisdom saves for the Samurai is underlooked in this video imo. As a fighter, having proficiency on CON and WIS saving throws is huge. Spend one of those many ASI levels on Resilient DEX and you're the BOSS.
It exists so you can meet NPC PDKs. It's just not a sensible player option. Just play a Battle Master, Cavalier or whatever else you desire, wear Purple and ask if you can join their order - if they have any sense they'll be glad to have you.
@@nicka3697 I play as a banneret (Purple dragon knight's name outside of the original setting) so I don't have access to more NPC's because of it but it allows my fighter to be way more diplomatic and because my team lacks good healers, I fill that gap. My character lead to great story buidling in our group with his leader features. I really don't get the hate to that subclass... I have a tendency to enjoy less powerfull builds though so that might just be me. But why does everyone wants to play the same subclasses over and over? I feel like I'd get bored.
I got to thinking about the Purple Dragon Knight and thought that it had such a good chance to be good given the main theme of the Subclass. I took some time and came up with a re-envisioned Purple Dragon Knight class. Purple Dragon Knight- Level 3: Loyal Ally- You gain Rallying Cry. You may choose another feature from this list at 10th and 15th level: Rallying Cry When you use your Second Wind feature, choose up to three allies that can see or hear you. Each of them gets a number of Hit Points equal to your Fighter level. Inspiring Surge When you use your Action Surge feature, choose one ally that can see or hear you. They may make one weapon attack with their reaction. At level 18 you may target an additional ally. Bulwark When you use your Indomitable feature, choose one ally that can see or hear you who also failed their saving throw against the same effect. They can reroll their saving throw and use the new roll. Royal Envoy- Choose a Skill Proficiency to gain from Persuasion, Animal Handling, Insight, Intimidation or Performance. You now have this Skill Proficiency. You may apply twice your proficiency bonus when making checks with any Skill Proficiency chosen from this feature. Choose another Skill Proficiency from this list at Level 10. Level 7: Commanding Influence- You gain the use of a number of Command Points equal to half your fighter level, which restore on a long rest. You may expend one Command Point to give an ally who can see or hear you one of the following benefits: Protect As a bonus action you may add your Charisma Modifier to an ally's AC until the end of their next turn. Enhance Aim As your reaction you may add your Charisma Modifier to an ally's Attack a Roll. Rushing Command As your bonus action you may direct a willing ally to use their reaction to move half of their movement speed. Find Opening As your bonus action you may direct a willing ally to use their reaction to make a weapon attack. Level 10: Forceful Soul- When you roll Initiative and have no Command Points, you gain a number of Command Points equal to your Charisma Modifier. Level 15: Irresistible Force- As a bonus action, you may expend a Command Point to cast the Command spell. As a Bonus Action, you may expend three Command Points to cast the Hold Person spell. The save DC for this feature is 8+Proficiency Bonus+Charisma Modifier Level 18: Unrelenting Commander- Your Command Points restore on a short rest. Proclamation- You expend any number of Command Points and make a Declaration against a number of enemies equal to your Charisma Modifier plus the number of Command Points you spend. You and your allies have Advantage against those declared enemies for one minute, or until you become incapacitated.
Yup and so far every game I've played. The team needs, honestly needs something else. So the current game were playing is a twisted version of curse of strand. So I'm playing a UA twilight cleric that is going to dip 3 to 6 levels into fighter to get the initial echo knight subclass and abilities.
Reading the champion was the first time I wanted to play the fighter. 6 months later and I'm asking my DM to switch subclass to echo knight bc now I know how to play the game 😅
@@badnewsbears9358 I like how they vary though, like some are simplistic and extensions of the core class while others add more unique abilities so people have options. After playing a battle master in Baldurs gate 3 even with the limited amount of available maneuvers I have enjoyed the experience a lot for the clutch uses of their abilities.
@@connorkearns6028 I definitely agree. I also like how fighters can be flavored in multiple different ways roleplay-wise, even just based on the subclasses. Fighters are far from boring or bad
Anyone else notice that Kelly's audio is louder in the right ear and Monty's audio is louder in the left ear? I love the added immersion, but you got it switched!
As someone who has seen a Samurai GWM use action surge and fighting spirit together and just completely melt a boss, you are underestimating them... I think Samurai is easily "A".
I find Fighting Spirit surprisingly more useful for a Archer Fighter - because your normal methods of gaining advantage are very melee focused (optional flanking, prone targets). Sharpshooter + Fighting Spirit is a very deadly assassination combo.
Absolutely. With Great Weapon Master, at 5th level, you can stack Fighting Spirit with Action Surge to get more accuracy to really hit GWM attacks, which with Action Surge and Extra Attack amounts to +40 damage if everything lands, which it has a good chance to. That's a ton of damage. If you pick up a bow and Sharpshooter, you can even do this at range, and with how much Kelly seems to like the idea of using a bow, I wonder what he'd think of this kind of build. Proficiency with Wisdom saves doesn't hurt either, especially with how the Samurai (and Fighter in general) encourages you to use Wisdom as a tertiary stat anyways. I'm planning on playing a Samurai sometime in the future, and I think and hope I'll have a blast doing so.
I mean, the purple dragon knight has a few advantages. For one, purple is a great color, dragons are also really cool, and knights are awesome as well. In addition, you can get expertise! In one skill! As your 7th level ability! Seems like a great class, right?
I mean, it doesn't make the Fighter worse like some of the other Subclasses (Berserker, Way of The Four Elements) but it's abilities are kinda underwhelming.
@@curnott6051 wait how does berserker make the class - worse-? Immunity to fear and charm. Free attack as reaction. 'option' to get a bonus attack for one fight per day without risking lingering exhaustion. I understand its not - great-, but calling it a detriment? Really?
Unfortunately, it's only called Purple Dragon Knight in Sword Coast campaigns (elsewhere it’s "Banneret"), so that eliminates your first three advantages.
@@Anegor Well, maybe "Worse" is a bit of an over statement. It makes it worse if you're a new player who doesn't know what they're doing, that's for sure. Frenzy can really screw up new players who don't know how crippling exhaustion can be. If you know what you're doing, yeah, you can make the archetype work, but still, Frenzy's Bonus Action attack can be compared with a Zealot Barbarians Lv.3 Ability of an additional 1d6+1/2 your Barb level in either Radiant or Necrotic damage on your first attack per round for free, and guess what? No exhaustion. Yeah, the immunity to Charm and Fear while Raging and a Free Reaction Attack is pretty good, but a Barbarian doesn't get those until Lv.7 & Lv.13 respectively, so your going to be waiting a while to get something without a significant drawback from your archetype. Plus, the Lv.10 ability is kinda...terrible, using your Action to try and Frighten an enemy and then having to keep using your Action every turn after to make it stay Frightened is just, bleh. 99.9% of the time you're better off just using your Action to attack. Plus, it runs off Charisma, what Barbarian is going to have a Charisma higher then 14 even at Lv.20? Plus, so many monsters at that level are immune to Fear you'd be hard pressed to find a situation that it's worth using. Again, I'll say that "Terrible" is a bit of an exaggeration, I've seen people make Berserker work, and you can completely nuke a single encounter if you build them right, but you gotta be really smart about how you play the character. I could see it being a fun challenge for a skilled player to undertake, but I wouldn't recommended playing Berserker, as written, to a newbie or even a first time Barbarian player. The potential of souring the class for them is just to high.
Dude, Kelly had me *dying* laughing when he started talking about the “pros” of the Purple Dragon Knight! His progression from “it sounds cool,” to “this subclass is terrible,” is hysterical. Edit: I also had an idea to improve the Samurai! What if for fighting spirit, instead of getting a set number of temp HP, you roll a dice (1d6, then it increases to 1d8, then it increases to 1d10) to see how much you get. To counter this, FS now comes back on short rests, instead of just long rests. Any thoughts?
I like the idea of rolling instead of using fixed HP, I think that having fighting spirit come back on short rests might be a bit too much of a powercreep though, I also remeber reading a homebrew rule that had fighting spirit be equal to your prof bonus instead of just three uses per long rest
I always prefer going back to the UA version. Resistance and the Advantage is this turn and the next. I can see that as being too powerful with also making it come back on a short rest though, so maybe it just lasts until the start of your next turn instead of the end, but it really feels like a poor choice for me atm
@@fenderslasher5538 Two weapon fighting will never shine for fighters imo, especially not samurais that can get advantage to pump heavy GWM or SS damage. Indeed, Crossbow Experts would appreciate fee use.
I've been excited for Part 2, especially since I'm trying to figure out what Fighter Subclass I want to take on a character I'm playing. This video helped me decide that I want to start talking with my DM to find a way to work in Echo Knight into our Eberron game!
@@captainthorrek262 I struck a deal with my DM. Since I already multiclassed once on this character (Barbarian into Rogue) I have to make my Fighter levels the last levels I take on the character. So I think it'll be pretty easy to work in the magic of the Echo Knight as a level 17 warforged. It could be my soul or some remnant of whatever caused The Mourning that I got exposed to. We'll see!
So, I am currently playing an echo knight and this is how we worked it in to my Eberron game. Basically, I am a goliath who at a young age tripped and fell while traversing the mountains down a deep chasm. I somehow survived, but right after I found out to have this ability. My echo is literally my skin markings sliding off myself (Goliath lore stuff here. Their skin markings are considered marks of fate and doing anything to change or alter them is considered taboo at best and straight up blasphemy at worst). And every time my echo is destroyed or returns to my body my skin markings change. Essentially my character believe he is cursed or is somehow changing his fate every time he uses his echo. And my DM is taking that information and created a unique reason for everything (that I have yet to find out).
Also, consider Barb 2 or 3 (if 3 go bear totem), with echo knight. Clear with DM first. This combo can be really really powerful. If you take barb to 3, you will lose out on having2 echos out at a time but you gain resistance to basically every damage type except psychic.
Didn't even mention that the echos can move in any direction including vertically. "Hmmm I could either throw a javalin at the harpy or make several greatsword swipes. decisions... decisions...."
@@taijutsumaster15 you could teleport. I don't think you can attack without line of sight. I could be wrong been a while since i have played it. The rules for echo knight are very complex and not well written. The class is super fun when figure them out.
The rules aren't well written it's really up to your DM. The fact that "The echo knight occupies it'd own space" suggests that it is a solid and can open doors or move objects. Idek why they suggested that it couldn't.
I feel like Samurai was a bit underrated here. The 3 Fighting Spirits per long rest may feel a little limiting if your DM is constantly throwing you into combat encounters, but otherwise 3/day should be more than enough. And as you said, you can always shove a creature prone anyway, and save Fighting Spirit for when you need to Action Surge for damage. Comparing it to Reckless Attack isn't really fair because Fighting Spirit has no drawback outside of a timing restriction. I always put high value on gaining skill proficiencies, and Insight and Persuasion are two of the best in social situations. I think this makes the Samurai pretty unique among Fighter subclasses which are all almost purely combat-based. And the additional bonus to Persuasion rolls at 7th level is great. Proficiency in Wisdom Saves is awesome for a Fighter. The only big downside to the Samurai is that it does a poor job of utilizing your bonus action/reaction in combat, which is where subclasses like the Battlemaster, Echo Knight, and even Rune Knight excel.
I absolutely love my level 5 samurai. Don't knock the bonus hit points tied to fighting spirit. That mixed with the advantage on attacks has absolutely saved my character time and time again.
Yeah, I feel the Samurai is pretty good, they didn't really bring up the Wisdom Save Proficiency much (which also includes the option to pick either Intelligence or Charisma if you already have Wisdom Prof), as someone who plays a Fighter who picked up the Resilient: Wisdom Feat, Proficiency in Wisdom Saving Throws have saved her ass plenty of times!
I had a player change from a hard to hit illusion wizard to a hard hitting samurai. 19 Strength, a great sword, and great weapon master. He was able to do four attacks at advantage and put out so much damage per hit
@@curnott6051 that's a great point. I like combining it with the Resilient feat to gain saves in the three most important (Dex, Con, Wis). Any starting class grants you one of those three, but none grant you two.
Fighting Spirit seems insane when you combine it with action surge and eventually get more than 2 attacks. 1 bonus action to get 8 attacks with advantage at high levels. Someone else mentioned Great Weapon Master...
@@jthompson7175 actually you end up with 7 attacks with advantage and 2 attacks without advantage because you use rapid strikes to forgo one of your advantages for an additional attack so 9 total attacks 7 with advantage in 1 turn.
I believe Samurai's Fighting Spirit isn't actually lackluster at lower levels, specially because it also gives bonus hit points, which helps the Samurai survive a lot more. Being on the middle of the battle on lower levels, 5 extra hp is very valuable, specially being able to giving it to yourself 3 times a day.
The character I'm most excited to play is an echo knight X/hexblade 5 who uses shadow blade and elven accuracy, along with HBC to just teleport around the battlefield doing big single target damage/CC with Sentinel. From an RP perspective, I'd play him as an experiment gone wrong who's trying to regain his memories and his sense of self. Not sure what is real and what is just a dim reflection. Misty Visions is also great to take, as it'd make him a great infiltrator and adds to this RP.
There's a character in My Hero Academia who has the power to make duplicates of anyone (but he needs specific info: height, weight, etc.). [Backstory spoilers] he doesn't duplicate himself anymore because he and his clones had a huge argument and he's gone crazy, unsure if he is the original or merely a clone. I feel like you could really pull some inspiration from Twice
Elven Accuracy + Booming Blade + Shadow Blade is so much fun. Especially in an Underdark campaign. Dip 2 levels in Paladin to gain divine smite if you want to do even more single target damage!
@@JoviaI1 yeah, I have a really dumb build that expands on this with bard and paladin levels. It can get really ridiculous. I can get 6 attacks in a turn at level 11, each with 27% chance to crit and each dealing 3d8 damage.
I really like the EK, but I do run with them with a slightly different rule for their spell selection: instead of being limited to just Evocation and Abjuration, I let them pick 2 schools of magic to focus on instead (they can still choose Abjuration and Evocation, but they can also go Abjuration and Illusion or Necromancy and Divination. I personally like the combination of Abjuration and Transmutation/Conjuration).
I prefer they stay with their specialization in the two schools as written, since there's also Arcane Trickster with its own flavor of two schools. You don't really need more free choice than the few that get sprinkled in already. ...If it has any issues on spell selection, it's nowhere near as pronounced as it is for the single school based Wizard subclasses.
@@Shalakor But there is the issue of how Evocation does almost nothing to help the fighter in this case, since evocation is about blasty spells for the most part and by action economy, a fighter will almost always deal more damage with their weapons. Evocation just doesn't do much for the EK, which gets carried by receiving good abjuration spells like Absorb Elements and Shield. The only Evocation spells I can think of as being really useful for a fighter are Fire Shield and Melf's Minute Meteors, since Chromatic Orb, Burning Hands, Fireball, Scorching Ray, etc are all available levels after they were more relevant in gameplay. The EK gets Fireball when the actual wizard is doing so much more. The other issue is in comparing them to the Rogue on this, since the Rogue has a much more specific playstyle, one that works fairly well with the spells they get. As the rogue already focuses on misdirection, stealth, etc, and in general uses more or less similar playstyles and tactics across the board, they benefit from sticking to 2 schools of magic that fit with the playstyle of the rogue. The fighter on the other hand has much less of a defined class playstyle, instead having flexibility incorporated into the class, hence why it has so many options for armors, weapons, etc. I think that logically it would stand to reason that if the fighter is meant to be played/built more flexibly, its spell selection should be a bit more flexible. Tl;dr: The EK gets 1 school of spells that really helps them out and then 1 school of spells that sort of does nothing for them, which already isn't great, but it also doesn't compare too well to the rogue with the AT since the rogue already has area of specialization where the spells help them out, while the fighter as a class does not have a defined specialization and instead lets the player choose more of how they specialize, thus their spell selection should also be similarly flexible for specialization. Sorry for the long reply
@@gordonexperience4859 You undervalue Evocation's utility for a Fighter, especially at lower levels. It's all about having the option for some area of effect damage on hand to play crowd control. (If you can seriously tell me that an Eldritch Knight using something like Burning Hands at levels 3 through 6 has never come in handy for getting a larger group of minions off their back in any of the games you've seen one played in, I'd chalk that up to being more the DM's/campaign's fault than the subclass's.) But, even then, Abjuration is so blatantly good for for a Fighter that having the second school be more situational is totally justified. Something all that "freedom" with weapons and armor has in common with each other is that they're combat oriented, and Evocation is THE combat school of magic (that also has a couple of other tricks available). Regardless of how useful it ends up being, though, it's extremely within the thematics of the class. And, still, a third of the spells the EK can learn can come from any school and you can retrain those to other spells each time you level up in the class, while there's also the argument that could being made depending on the table you're playing at that Arcane Trickster's Enchantment spells never come into play, or even some groups where the Illusion spells never do (as weird of a thought that is)! I've actually seen multiple Arcane Tricksters take Burning Hands or another Evocation as their first "any school" spell, to great effect. But, on the note of how dubious the usability of Evocation spells for an EK can be at higher levels, I say the better homebrew would be to change the subclass in a way as to where it has more incentive to use them without interrupting the core class mechanics. Let's face it, what players really want is to be able to mix spell and sword in the same turn, so why not do that (note that what I'm about to mention is in the context of homebrew that includes tweaks to all the subclasses)? "Battle Evocation" at 15th level allows the EK to cast an evocation spell as a bonus action when they take the Attack action, once per initiative roll and not usable outside combat. This comes alongside "Battle Abjuration" at 7th level that works the same, the two features replacing Improved War Magic together. This homebrew also moves Arcane Charge to 18th level, adding to the base feature the ability to follow up a reaction with being able to use your Action Surge outside your own turn, and moves War Magic to 3rd level while changing it to where it's a long rest limited resource to cast a cantrip as a bonus action when you take the Attack action. Very powerful, but still balanced by the limited nature of long rest spell slots at 1/3 the rate of full casters. Mostly just gives the EK a reason to burn through spell slots more often.(Pending playtesting or request, could convinced to make Battle Evocation 10th level and move Eldritch Strike to 15th, but I highly doubt it.) (P.S. This is slightly off subject, but Bladesinger Wizard, instead of ever getting Extra Attack, gains an additional function to make a weapon attack as a bonus action after casting spells as an action, which improves to two attacks at high level, as a for instance of how other subclasses stack up. This homebrew isn't entirely complete or posted publicly anywhere, just mentioning my thought process of doubling down on the original concept of a subclass when homebrewing, since the point of many subclsses is to add specializations to a base class over complete freedom of choice within each subclass.)
When I heard about echo knight being a thing, I immediately thought of a rogue (arcane trickster maybe) multiclass. It's so perfect. Depending upon how you're DM rules certain things, it becomes a broken thief. If you disguise self and then summon an echo, is it also disguised? does it have to be the same disguise? (with the way it's written, I feel that the most appropriate is yes, disguised, but must be same disguise). When you "teleport" (switch places), do you take items with you or just have what you had on you when the echo was created? Because if you can teleport items with you, you have the best escape plan ever for stealing: make echo walk around behind a store (staying within 30 feet of you on the outside of the building), go inside, pick up anything you want, switch places, dismiss echo and you are now behind the store with whatever item you wanted (it's like shorter range misty step or dimension door that is free; costs no spell slots). To the storekeeper, a guy walked in grabbed an item and disappeared, and if disguises are an option, they don't even have a description of you meaning you can do it again in a different store with no repercussions or even the same store later on if you have that kind of guts. And if you can combine this with the dunamancy wrist pocket spell, it's even better. A DM might rule that items can't teleport (meaning that you get whatever you had on you when you summoned the echo), but that makes other things interesting on the other side of the coin: drop your sword off a cliff? just switch places and you've got your weapon back. You could even abuse that to have infinite ammo: summon echo, throw spear, switch places, dismiss echo, repeat. With spells and similar things you wouldn't be able to abuse this because it'd be your spell slots etc., but physical items would most likely have to fall into one of the above categories. Granted, if you abused it too much, it'd lose the fun for everyone and the DM could figure out SOME way of dealing with it, but within reason, you can have a few fun exploits that can be hilarious (probably still a good idea to run it by the DM to see what they'd be cool with before planning to break their game lol). Edit: mechanically, there might be some limits that I’ve not looked at, but this was just the brainstorm I had of something fun to do with this mechanic.
Thats great and all. But the shop keeper can always pay to locate object, or use scry to find you. So yes while its an easy way to steal, its pretty noticeable so, if the dm wants to, he could have a bounty on your head and many people hunting you down, knowing what you're capable of because of scry and locate object/person.
Matthew Woods Reminding you that all of these things you described don't use rogue abilities at all. You can do all of that just with fighter levels, there's no need to multiclass.
loved the discussion and reasoning behind each ranking! Worth the wait tbh. also in samurai's defense, the role play fun of fighting spirit is still up to how you role play it. Is your fighter steeling their resolve with a deep breath before unleashing a flurry of precise slashes they have trained all their lives to master? are they losing themselves in the trance and frenzy of battle to unleash a burst of unbridled brutality momentarily, as a barbarian would but retaining the finesse to not let their guard down. As for its use? it the temp hp does not conflict with your second wind should you find an opportunity to use both back to back, infact now you have more hp and some buffer temporary hp to boot! at low levels 5 x 3, for a 15 temp hp when needed here and there is great too, while 30 later on is still useful, probably not as great, but still useful. probably my bias of playing a samurai at the moment, but learning to flavour the abilities showed me how flexible they can be role play wise, which is key to playing a fighter imo. Would I give it an S? no, but a definite A in my opinion.
I quite like the fluff abilities as well like the free skill and the like, it makes my fighter easier to role play through non combat situations, or gives more utility to them
My idea for fixing the purple dragon knight: - Rallying Cry also gives a second use of second wind at level 3 - Royal envoy at level 3 - Inspiring Surge gives an additional use of action surge and you get it at level 7 - You get Bulwark at level 10, and you can choose to just use it on an ally, yourself, or both. - New ability at 15th level, maybe that adds on to the royal envoy theme?
There's a fighter subclass in solasta who fits so much better as the commander of the party: it let's you take a bonus action to inspire allies within 10 feet of you. They gain advantage on their next attack roll and this feature can be used a number of times equal to your proficiency per rest. Coupled with the protection fighting style, it makes really fun combat where positioning becomes key. A great way to spend your bonus action
I feel like the Samurai, weirdly enough, is better taken for an archer than for a melee build. Fighting spirit is one of the rare ways to reliably get advantage against ranged targets, and it combos exceedingly well with sharpshooter (and even better if you get elven accuracy). Makes for a very nice ranged dps build with huge nova potential.
Another thing about the Echo Knight is that the Echo is immune to all conditions, so if you're blinded, poisoned, restrained or Stage 3 Exhausted, you can attack without disadvantage. Also, ig=f you're grappled and have your Echo up, you can escape the grapple with a a bonus action. You can also use your echo to knock distant enemies prone or grapple them to help out your team. It's versatility and utility is insane.
Echo knight is great. So great, that when I played one, I never felt in danger for a second. It got boring. It is S tier for sure, but I don't wanna play it again.
I have a player using one now, and he agreed with me that the echo is too powerful so we have made it where he can only summon it = to his con mod per day.
I feel this is entirely dependent on how the DM handles combat Idk if you've played Balder's Gate 3 but its truly opened my eyes to the variety and level design combat can entail I'll avoid examples from the game to prevent any spoilers but even the Echo's ability to teleport and tank a hit for someone is limited to once per rest. Imagine attacks where a dragon rains lightning from the sky, and having to deal with opportunity attacks from minions as you try to escape instant death. Powerful for sure, but not boring unless combative encounters are not diverse
One great thing about the Samurai's Fighting Spirit is that they work very well with archers. A lot of the tools that fighters use to gain advantage (i.e. prone, optional flanking) isn't available to a ranged fighter. Comboing Action Surge, Fighting Spirit, Archery Style and Sharpshooter together is a pretty cool "delete that enemy" action.
"....So take that, Purple Dragon Knight." The salt. It is most powerful with this one. It also seems like he's had some absolutely terrible stories about that archetype, similar to a Vietnam vet.
It's weird that the one problem I have with the Wildemount classes is that they are too cool and powerful and make other subclasses feel irrelevant and weak.
@@jelte3754 ikr that subclass basically gets the war magic ability and portent at level 2 along with extra spells added to there list plus there other abilitys at higher levels that are also broken.
@Biggus Dickus Yeah same with Graviturgy. But the problem still exists. Then again they originated as homebrew I think so not being uber balanced is fine.
One of the awesome things about Samurai is that Strength before death offers some huuuge roleplay potential. I like that you get it so late because it feels like you're going to use it that one time against the BBEG and just Wow everyone with an amazing turn even if you end up dying. With Secind wind, you even have the ability to resurrect yourself!!
I was afaired u missread the rapid strike: Starting at 15th level, you learn to trade accuracy for swift strikes. If you take the Attack action on your turn and have advantage on an attack roll against against one of the targets, you can forgo the advantage for *that* roll to make an additional weapon attack against that target, as part of the same action. You can do so no more than once per turn. So basicly if u use action surge and fighting spirit with 2 atks make it 5 with 1!! Atk not having advantage... withs makes it better then u think. And its not limited to melee weapons free adv for a ranged fighter?
It's wonderful for the Arcane Trickster as well, and they don't have to sacrifice one of their few "any school" picks as it's an illusion spell. It kind of feels like the spell was introduced in Xanathar's just for these two subclasses.
I find a more optimal use of Eldritch Knight is using the spells for defensive options while maximizing your offense with proficiency in big, heavy hitting weapons. Shield and Counter Spell are both hugely helpful in terms of avoiding or preventing damage. It helps them stay in the fray without really stopping them from swinging 2 to 4 times per turn with a 2d6 weapon that actually scales off your stats, something Shadow Blade won't do. Additionally, since Shadow Blade won't scale off any stats at all, unlike regular weapons, you're only getting your proficiency bonus when it comes to hitting an enemy. For comparison, a Great Sword is 2d6 with strength and proficiency. While the Shadow Blade starts with 2 more potential damage per die, the Great Sword gets the strength modifier on top which can be a straight 5. Last but not least, Shadow Blade is a level 2 spell that can't scale with higher level spell slots, further limiting its usefulness since it still requires an attack roll that doesn't benefit from your stats.
@@azuredragoon2054 There's nothing in the spell that states it doesn't scale off your Strength or Dex. It counts as a simple weapon with which you're proficient, has the light, finesse, and thrown properties, so you can add your Str/Dex to attack and damage rolls. It's basically treated as an actual weapon in the spell description, with the upside of getting advantage in dim light or darkness, and if for some reason you're disarmed of the weapon or you throw it, you can summon it back to your hand with a bonus action. It also does scale in damage by upcasting the spell, becoming 3d8 psychic damage with a third or fourth level slot, 4d8 using 5th or 6th level, up to a max of 5d8 using 7th or higher. This can do a ton of damage if you maintain concentration, and as a fighter, you have multiple attacks, especially with Action Surge. It can be used to make opportunity attacks as well, and you can even Booming Blade onto your Shadow Blade as a reaction if you have War Caster as a feat. I play a Bladesinger Wizard and run Shadow Blade, it's a great spell that gets the most value with Eldritch Knight just because of all the extra attacks you have.
@@thecamelftw1381 That is correct, you can dual wield as long as you have the free action economy to swap around between your spellcasting focus and your weapons or shield if you use one. If the Unearthed Arcana feats are allowed, there's a feat that solves this problem for the Eldritch Knight called Shield Training, which lets you use your shield as a spellcasting focus, though it won't let you dual wield unless you gave up using your shield or something.
To boost the samurai, I submit to you, the Eladrin (or any elf, but I really like the bonus action teleport) Samurai. Combined with Elven Accuracy, Fighting Spirit becomes *terrifying*
While I think that the subclass ranking is great, I think that it would be interesting to hear what you think the best combinations you would pick as a 2 character party, 3 character party, all the way up to 5 or 6. Even describing what subclass you choose.
I'd have been very interested to hear your opinion on the Gunslinger subclass. I know it's not strictly official in that it's published through the DM's Guild, but you can get it on DnD Beyond as part of the Critical Role content, soooo... But yeah, this was definitely illuminating, I personally never saw the allure of the Eldritch Knight, but it seems I need to have another read through it.
Gunslinger is so gimped by Misfire and Reload thst you're just better off going with a Battlemaster using a Dungeon Master's Guide Musket. I've honestly tried so hard to make Gunslinger work but it just finds another way to drag me down with its unreliability. While firearms give you bigger dice, the fact that you typically want to use Sharpshooter to give you that damage from ranged attacks and the fact that misfire and reload reduce your DPR by 20%... It just doesn't have that power and reliability that a martial needs to have. The trickshots though are nice but very niche as you aren't really going to be using them for anything aside from Deadeye, Piercing, Dazzing and Violent shots. While these provide you some advantage, more damage or party support, they're not nearly enough to offset the loss in DPR you take compared to a ranged battlemaster especially since Violent and Piercing shots increase your misfire score. In addition to this, the higer level abilities you get as a gunslinger are just sad. Improved critical for regaining grit points are nice but they're, again, unreliable. As for Lightning Reload, the ability doesn't do shit for you at all as you'll have too many attacks for lightning reload to prevent you from having to use one of your attacks to reload. Using together Lightning Reload and Quickdraw, you can make 3 attacks with 2 different Reload 1 guns. Thats enough for a pre-capstone fighter not using their action surge and its pretty damn good for 6d12 damage. Again though, we run into the issue of the terrible misfire score of 3 with the Bad News and Hand Mortar. Using Lightning Reload is unnecessary for the other guns too as if you use Gunslinger you *want* more than one firearm on you so that you can use the 7th level ability to Quickdraw during an action surge turn or ignore reloading completely with things like the basic Exandria Pistol. Overall: after days worth optimizing and min maxing, it just leads me to say that the Matt Mercer Gunslinger is a B tier at best if you min max the shit out of it and C tier overall. Too much unreliability for too little damage increase compared to a bow or musket.
I think Samurai pairs really well with War Cleric, surprisingly. Only need 1 level. With that first level of War cleric, that will let your Fighter make a choice every turn. "What will I use my bonus action on? An extra attack, or advantage?" And I think that will REALLY help this class for those first 10 levels.
Eldritch knight is my favorite, I do think it'd be way better if you could PICK the two classes of magic instead of having to go between evocation and abjuration.
@@natashasurvivallady8021 not too OP? I think Enchantment and Illusion are... Really strong defensive and offensive picks, a bit too much maybe? Blur, Shadow Blade, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Hypnotic Pattern and Fear. Hold Person is a monster, rest is OK. Conjuration, Transmutation and the other schools I do dig, those look great!
@@jelte3754 it hasn't been, largely due to the slow spell progression of the subclass. Along with that, a lot of enchantment spells require saving throws, and your spell save isn't often the highest. Illusion can be a beast, but it's often dependant on situation, DM, and the types of threats you have to deal with. Also worth remembering, the Arcane Trickster uses Enchantment and Illusion, and they aren't super busted. In my experience the more free range of spell school selection just means not every Eldritch Knight chooses the same spells, which I find more fun and interesting. :)
Y'all seriously underestimate Fighting Spirit Action Surge. That alone puts it at an A for me. I've had my Samurai player take bosses down to 1/3 HP in a single turn with two crits because they got four attacks in a round at level 6.
Samurai can put out 9 attacks on a turn, 7 with advantage. Use Great weapon Master and add a stupid amount of damage, with advantage to mitigate the accuracy down.
Never heard about the Echo Knight before. It sounds fucking awesome! Sounds like it's easy to reflavor those echos as well, if you want a different flavor. Summoning ghosts perhaps? Btw, why don't you mention the shadowblade spell as a good option for the Eldritch Knight?
If it came out more than two years ago, it is severely unlikely unfortunately. The Rune Knight does give me a good skeleton for one of my players homebrew classes though.
I am currently playing an Echo Knight Fighter, and I love to imagine my Echo as a shadow clone from Naruto. Mainly due to the fact that it can take one hit before dissipating. I am in love with this class and am struggling to think of something cooler for my next campaign. Any suggestions?
I would like to add something to the discussion of Echo Knight. According to Jeremy Crawford's Sage Advice, the Echo is not a creature. This gives the Echo a very powerful and unexpected side effect: being essentially immune to any spell that targets or damages creatures like Command, Lightning Bolt, or even the ever humble Magic Missile. Since most magic implicitly requires that they target a creature OR implicitly state that "creatures within the area of effect" to accomplish something, an Echo is completely immune to these effects. Any spell that states "Objects" as a valid target would still affect them.
When they said that, I immediately thought of Beast Master Ranger and then wondered what the other one was. Scrolled down through the comments to see if anyone pointed it out. Well played.
It is going to be interesting, when these tier lists are done, to compare the overall rankings *by sourcebook* . Not to poop on CR but I imagine both of the wizard subs are also going to end up as not only S tier but also (like Echo Knight) overwhelming favorites. Echo (esp. before the erratas started) were strong as heck.
With the Echo Knight, the echo can also move in 3D. Additionally, the teleport ability also works with the Echo Avatar up to 1000 feet away in any direction. The caveat with Echo Avatar is it can't attack or interact with anything since the character is using their action to maintain the echo.
The teleport ability does not work with the avatar ability. This was clarified in tweets and will be added to future printings. It CAN move on any direction, however, which is fun when you use Sentinel to stop a dragon from flying >.>
I hope to see how much the new EK would be rate by you. Weapon mastery, trading one attack for cantrip, no more spell limitation and etc. S Ranking after the PH2024?
They forgot to add that for the Samurai subclass the fighting spirit also works with ranged attacks which I think is a big deal. Also, some of us play with DMs who don't make encounters easy to control and getting advantage on monsters, including big ass ones, can be hard.
If i may add to that, the tougher huge and gargantuan creatures are usually hard to gain advantage on via prone, i think fighting spirit is great particularly with great weapon master/sharpshooter, as it is likely to add 60-120 damage (assuming 20 dex, and action surge is used) before dice are rolled, probably killing the thing before it gets set up in the fight or causing its strategy to change.
@@iansinclair2028 with help from strength before death, you're dealing out 12 attacks with advantage (and 2 without) with +10 damage each at 20 There's a solid chance you kill a CR20 monster alone in one turn with that I agree, Samurai is pretty invaluable against some of the big, tough fellas you'll run into Sharpshooter + Elven Accuracy on this setup gets outright disgusting Never miss your +10 damage attacks, crit like a madman, not have to worry about flight
Samurai is a 'C Class'? The class synch's extremely well with Sharpshooter or GWM. Adding ridiculous nova damage when coupled with Action Surge. In addition it shores up the Wisdom saving throw and then recycles Wisdom into Persuasion rolls, allowing it a fairly cheap way to handle social situations.It also throws in additional ways. At 10th level, every time you get initiative, you regain a use of Fighting Spirit. The use of losing an action to make someone prone isn't particularly inspiring unless you are all melee. Why risk this to gain advantage, when you have advantage anyway? Strength before death, allows you to use Action Surge, drink a healing potion, anything.
Totally agree about Eldritch knight and transmutation, in my 2E days I'd play fighter/mages that specialized in making the battlefield entirely different, spiderclim or jump on self, enlarge on self, attack from the ceiling or the walls... mirror image (illusion), etc
I played a ranged-focused Samurai with a level dip in Forge Cleric and it was one of the most OP characters I ever played. I absolutely loved it. Battle Master is great but Samurai is also a fantastic subclass.
It was great to hear your thoughts on the echo knight. I think you have missed a trick though by not pointing out the huge feature that the echo is not a creature, it is a magical object (go see Crawford's tweets). This makes the echo immune to more than 90% of spells. I made a post analysing which spells can even target the echo www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/fighter/83937-spells-that-can-target-an-echo-a-magical-object Fireball doesn't affect non-flammable objects. Eldritch blast only targets creatures. Disintegrate doesn't affect magical objects. Shatter only damages non-magical objects. Being an object it is also immune to poison and psychic damage. It also means that it does not provoke opportunity attacks. It can't be grappled or shoved. Manifest echo also states it is immune to all conditions. Edit: I would also add that not being a creature means it can't contribute to flanking or sneak attack. This in combination with an AC of 14+Prof means that a lot of NPCs will simply not be able to deal with the echo efficiently.
The Purple Dragon Knight is the only subclass in 5e that I’ve never seen anyone, anywhere, even online on forums claiming that they’ve played. I’ve seen plenty of Frenzy Barbarians, Beastmaster Rangers, and Way of Four Elements Monks. I’ve even seen the occasional Oath of the Crown Paladin, Undying Warlock, and Sun Soul Monk. But never a Purple Dragon Knight.
@@brandonkorolik701 That’s a good question. I may have seen one or two people over the years claim they’ve played one. Just like I’ve seen a few people play Way of the Long Death monks. Not many, that’s for sure.
@@gregoryfloriolli9031 My wife played a Battlerager, but she doesn't really care about mechanics and it was a one-shot. It just sounded cool and fit her character.
I love playing my Echo Knight. Since it's new I had to do research on its mechanics, but it's been a ton of fun. You can summon it in any area on the x,y OR z axis and it can just float there making it easy to hit flying creatures. Its immune to psychic damage (and I think necrotic, I would have to check what jeremy crawford said on that again). The echo cant open doors but I can try breaking it down or destroy traps. My party also got arrested and yes it's fun to nightcrawler you way through the cells.
Sumarai combining action surge with fighting spirit and the foregoing advantage for two attacks = 8 chances to hit in a single turn which can do massive damage. That being said.. I’m an echo knight.
yeah, why do anything else. mage armor is abjuration so it's basically free, +5 dex gives you the benefit of a plate armor. But also better initiative, better ability checks, no cost, no stealth disadvantage and no weight. and of course, shadow blade is a finesse weapon and ranged weapons are DEX based. the polearm mastery+ sentinel stuff is great, but i would leave that to the battlemaster
My first EK was dex based actually, he had a longbow and dual shortswords to swap to depending on the situation, he was basically a tank that could fit into any situation.
I tried that and couldn't make it work. Rapier and shield means you can't cast spells, so you need the Warcaster feat to do anything. Archer works, but then most of your spells become rubbish. Honestly, I don't like the class. By the Dudes' ranking system, I call it a D. It's a trap. The spells you have access to are mostly damaging ones and are strictly worse than just attacking with your sword. So you get less good at being a fighter. What would make it S tier is a curated spell list exclusive to the class. Maybe some smite spells, but also stuff like Longstrider and Jump. Utility stuff that makes you a better fighter instead of boomy stuff that makes you either a worse fighter, or a bad wizard, or both. Greatsword, then casting nothing but Shield is the best way to go with this mechanically, but I reckon that's a bit boring.
@@rossburton8775 So you are saying you would not score it based on having to get warcaster? I mean, most every other class has a feat it needs to get, so I'm not sure what you mean here. Warcaster is great because you get to use booming blade on an enemy as they retreat dealing massive damage. Granted its not as strong as bladesinger is now, but dex is still very strong if you are willing to learn how to play it.
An overlooked ability of the Samurai is the proficiency in Wisdom saves. The amazing flavor and the nice bit of reassurance that you won’t be charmed against your companions is very nice
I always do a 2 level dip into wizard (war magic) for my Eldritch Knight. That 2 AC boost and +4 spell save boost is great. Earth tremor drops everyone prone. Level 2 spells are eh. But just upcast your AOEs
Multiclassing Eldritch Knight with Wizard make it so much better than full Eldritch Knight. War Magic or Bladesinger work really well. It's the only weakness of this specialization, if you see it has a weakness...
@@Nyarlathoteps1 I thought about that with my EK but it just felt to me like...why not just play a wizard then? You get more spell slots which is nice for the EK but not as many as you have for a wizard.
@@c.v.emmans It depend how you want to play your character. Sure both will be able to cast Wizard spells but they bring something different to the table. EK give you access to: lvl 0 => Heavy Armor & Constitution saving throw lvl 2 => Action Surge (being able to cast more than 1 spell per turn can be gamebreaking) lvl 6 => More ASI/Feat lvl 5-11 => Extra Attack lvl 7 => Use bonus action to attack after Cantrip lvl 10 => Eldritch Strike (Saving Throw with Disadvantage) Each 3 lvl => More Spellslots and/or Spell Level When Wizard give you: lvl 0 => Wisdom saving throw lvl 1 => Regain Spellslots per Wizard level Each lvl => More Spellslots and/or Spell Level And more depending you Wizard Subclass. Depending how you wanna play your character, those abilities can be more or less interesting. For me, the hardest choices is what abilities I want to drop for more wizards level and I never go beyond level 11 EK. It's even harder, if you know your campaign max level because the balance between the two became way harder. To help, I always ask this simple question: " Are you dealing damage with your Weapon Attack or with you Cantrip/spells?" If you choice weapon than you should get extra attack and EK is your only option until you get it. But with Cantrip/Spells it became easier to take plenty of Wizard level as soon as possible (EK level 3 or even level 2) if you didn't want War Magic and Eldritch Strike abilities.
@@ridgecabernet1933 Eldritch Strike is so good, giving disadvantage against your spells save DC is really strong. I really like Hold Person with Eldritch Strike. It became really hard for the Humanoid to succeed the Wisdom saving throw with disadvantage every turn. I really like the idea of whiping someone before casting Suggestion too. But I don't know how you get 20 Spell save DC ( 8 + 4 + 5 = 17 )? I really like the Abjuration Wizard too for is Arcane Ward that combo really well with all the defensive Abjuration spells you would use, the extra survivability it give and the concentration that became harder to break.
Under the right circumstances a Level 20 Samurai Fighter can attack 22 times in a single round. Attack Action (4) Bonus Action Attack (5) Rapid Strike (6) Haste Attack (7) Action Surge Attack (11) Drop to zero and Strength Beyond Death gives you a new turn repeat above (22)
25:50 Monty says that Fighters can get advantage on demand. Can anyone please explain how? I am not counting Flanking for now (solo frontline) and getting a feat like Find Familiar is an investment the Samurai doesn't have to make (and it can easily be killed) so i don't really get the first C ranking. I am also excluding spells from party members for now because i wouldn't say they are "on demand" for a Fighter.
Still hoping they add a tweaked general-use version of Echo Knight to Tasha's. They could nerf it, I just really enjoy the flavor and RP/Social utility on a fighter framework without adding spell slots and memorization like Eldritch Knight. It all flows together really well.
A few defences of the samurai: Proficiency in wisdom saves is wonderful and shores up a common weakness of fighters Action surge + tireless spirit +rapid strike = 9 attacks on a turn at highest level, 7 of them with advantage, that with a greatsword and great weapon master is nuts Saving second wind for your strength before death turn essentially means that after your free turn you won’t even drop unconscious Admittedly a lot of this is high level stuff but at lower levels you don’t have as many sources of advantage so tireless spirit is even more useful if anything
With the Samurai's fighting spirit it really depends on the encounter rate of your campaign. 3 uses per day seems like really poor, but the modern trend of more narrative games tends to have fewer encounters than what the DMG prescribes and even sometimes only one fight per day and in that context not only the 3 full turns with advantage that fighting spirit gives you are much more significant but also the wisdom saving throws proficiency and the wisdom addition to persuasion can be very handy. I agree with the B rating, in the right campaign it can very well outperform every other fighter
Sorry but no, True Strike is the worst cantrip and have no use. It's better to use a Offensive Cantrip like Booming Blade and swing again as bonus action.
While they didn't talk about true strike in the video, they did say, in general, it is better to attack twice than to get advantage with one attack when talking about the samurai subclass. It's mostly because you have the chance to deal damage twice rather than to just do damage once.
Only if you have something that means you really need to land the attack. Otherwise 2 attacks is still better than one attack with advantage. I had an EK with a homebrew magic sword with 100 d6 charges of lightning, you could spend these on your attack for extra damage with no cap (it was a high level game), but you had to spend them before rolling your attack and if you missed they were gone. So you could dish out 100d6 of extra damage on your swing but God forbid you miss if you choose to do that.
The thing you didn't mention about the echo knight is that it adds mobility to a class that is normally in heavy armor. That teleport feature alone is insane. Even if the echo couldn't attack.
First off great video as always guys I have been a long time fan. Second a word of warning about whoever is going to be the DM with an Echo Knight.....you are going to have a bad time they are so damn powerful and versatile. I am the DM in my game right now and I have an Echo Knight with the sentinel feat and pole arm expert they can pretty much just stop a creature from moving at all. They will come up with so many ways to get around pretty much anything in their way which is awesome to see players come up with clever solutions but it can be frustrating sometimes as a DM lol so just a friendly heads up! but the class itself looks like an absolute blast to play! I would love to see a game of one of you guys playing one!
I'm about to play dnd for my first time ever and our dm is apparently pretty experienced and good. hopefully he's ready for it lol. I looked into all sorts of characters but echo knight just sounded so cool I went with it
Why no discussion of shadow blade as an EK? Casting it with a 3rd level spell gives you a weapon that deals 3d8 having the option to deal 18d8 +30 at level 14 is sweet.
Loving the subclass rankings, watching these actually has me enticed to try and convince my group in doing a 1shot running the worst subclasses as something of a challenge and to change things up.
I've been playing an eldritch knight in one of our current games and I'd have to give it an S-Tier ranking. When we started out, for the first five levels or so, our Paladin and I were rolling for our hp, and of course, I rolled 2's and 3's until I couldn't take it and just started taking the flat rolls. Because of the lower HP I took spells like Absorb Elements, Shield and Misty Step just in case I needed to get myself out of a bad spot. Well, last session we were trying to get on a ship to leave and got into a fight with some local inquisitors, which lead to us getting ambushed by two from the BBEG's conclave. I decided, since my character's roleplay dictated it, that I would "hold the door" so to speak. I stood toe to toe with the big, bad, giant minotaur for four rounds while the rest of the party got safely to the ship then misty-stepped away to save my own ass... If I didn't have 4 uses of shield, and a 2nd level spell slot left, I wouldn't have made it away, he took half my hp in the first round. Instead of rolling another character (which I honestly thought would have been the case), I got to be the hero of the day.
I think you judged Samurai very harshly. Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter. Fighting Spirit paired with Action Surge and Rapid Strike, he can make 9 attacks, 8 of which will have advantage. This is 90+18d6+45 for a GWM build or 90+9d8+45 for a Sharpshooter build. He can repeat this next turn. And then, having no more action surges he can just take 5 attacks, 4 of which will have advantage. If half of these attacks hit, and more than half of them will, nothing will be left standing. Another great plus is a free built-in Wisdom save proficiency. Covers one of the fighter's greatest weaknesses and frees up the ASI or feat you'd give up on Resilient.
I’m playing a samurai in dungeon of the mad mage. I absolutely wreck. Fighting spirit is insanely good when paired with action surge and great weapon master.
4th ed =Warlord; 3.5 had Marshal; Literally the only niche reason I ever built a character w/PDK was making a 20th level Artificer Artillerist lv17, Fighter lv3 to be Barrett from FFVII, main reason to do fighter was for Action Surge and the UA Fighting Style Close Quarters Shooter, and since the whole build was about blasting w/spells and not even bothering w/weapon attacks Banneret was the best one just for the little bit of extra healing w/his 2nd Wind and that I'd already given him Martial Adept for Rally (Also for the pun of Barrett being a Banneret)
My only complaint with the name is that Eldritch to me makes me think of dark or unnatural magic like the Warlock. I’ve always thought a more appropriate name would be like Spellsword or Magus. Don’t get me wrong I love the name, I just always found it misleading. When I first read it I was like “Oh cool, a Fighter with Warlock abilities I love that!” Then I learned that’s not what it was.
@@countkingpen Haha, I hear you and agree the class name is a little misleading. Spellsword/Spellblade would've been great and they're my current favourite character archetype. But if you want a fighter with warlock abilities, I guess that's why Hexblade Warlock exists.
@@elsyfir7238 I disagree on that description of Hexblade. Hexblade isn’t fighter with warlock abilities, it’s a Warlock who got tired of getting murked in melee and learned to use a blade. If they wanted it to be more fighterish, the 6th level ability should have just been extra attack, rather than making extra attack into an invocation. Though I would love a Fighter subclass that is basically Eldritch Knight but for Warlocks, with Pact Magic and maybe even a few invocations. That could be dope.
@@countkingpen Well, I didn't mean that in quite the literal sense as you put it. I see your qualms with it, but in a sense it's also good that their extra attack came from an invocation, which frees up their 6th level feature. But Hexblade's 6th level feature is rather situational and lackluster too, I guess it's because invocations are generally good and players would want to not feel forced to take an invocation just to get extra attack. Honestly though, the main thing with fighter is extra attack, and having played martial classes enough in 5e myself, I'm content with other classes that have spells also having extra attack through whichever method, and making me feel like a fighter anyway. Of course you don't get Action Surge, but Hexblade is already frontloaded with a lot of strong features early on anyway, plus short rest spell slots. I suggest looking into getting COFSA(The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets Awakening), a home brew book with new spells and subclasses, catered mostly to Warlocks. There are some subclasses that also give extra attack through an invocation, but really, regardless of extra attack being a class feature or invocation, you take and lose something either way. I think it's fair to use an invocation for extra attack because at 5th level you also get access to 3rd level spells for pact magic, which is a huge power spike. I'd say that was for balance purposes if anything. Fighter's already a primarily short rest class; Warlock is too, and Hexblade just gets to do what Fighter does but with the addition of spells on short rest, where their slots aren't held back like half or one third casters. Hell, you can always multi class the two so you can get action surge as well.
@@elsyfir7238 I have heard of and read most of the CoFSA and I definitely get why you brought it up. The main reason I mentioned the 6th level should be extra attack is that as you so eloquently put, it is lackluster and very situational. Due to my personal play style, I often play either pure martials, or half-casters/Gishes. So while yeah, having Hexblade need to spare an invocation on extra attack ain’t the end of the world or anything, I still think it’s kinda dumb. But regardless. I definitely can see your point as well.
Tashas really opened up more uses for the EK. Taking Fey Touched gives access to Misty Step and Hex (in case you're worried about hitting creatures with spell saves). Alternatively (additionally?) you could take the Devil's Sight invocation and make the Darkness spell a viable choice.
Part 1, featuring the Arcane Archer, Battlemaster, Cavalier, and Champion is here: ua-cam.com/video/axFjiEO_WZo/v-deo.html
@@msp720 probably just after it comes out.
Will you cover the gunslinger?
I would love to see them talk about all of the s tier in one video and maybe try and come up with the most op band of adventurers
@@artimas_1288 There isn't an officially published "knight" subclass. We only cover subclasses which have appeared in a hardcover.
Is it Beast Master and Four Elements that are rated lowest?
Video suggestion for the future: take all of the subclasses that get a D tier across the classes, rework them in detail with the goal of hitting B/low A in power level while keeping the flavour/ideas those subclasses started off with. Its a good thought experiment at least, would also help those who like to try to homebrew things of that scale to hear thoughts on what does and doesn't work in a subclass and what sort of tweaks can be made to things.
Better idea. Take all of the D tier subclasses in this series and try to run a campaign where each player is one of them. Forget the A team, you just hired the D team!
@@daxterd7312
Lmao, I’d watch the shit out of that campaign.
ua-cam.com/video/LCHauoGPQpU/v-deo.html
@@daxterd7312 this isn’t Reddit but take my fake Gold. 🏅
@@daxterd7312 because the leader of the D team rolled 20 at deciet check
the thing about playing samurai for me is that combo. using both fighting spirit + action surge, spending both resources at once is one of my favorite scenes i can think of. “Master forgive me, but I’ll have to go all out... just this once.”
Getting those anime protagonist moments makes it a Tier SS for me
Also you can multiclass into the feat that gives you battle master maneuvers, and something like polearm master or great weapon master. Just destructive levels of damage. I think they are a great multiclass option as well. Sure you only get the 3 a day, but imagine being a swashbuckler rogue and a samurai fighter that can use a few maneuvers a day to increase the damage again. I'd rank It at B since multiclassing improves it a good bit.
It can also be a really strong ranged blaster. You can go elven accuracy and sharpshooter and then explode people with 4 shots with triple advantage. Extremely good burst damage for a lvl 5 character. It lags behind multiclass gloomstalker fighter at higher levels of you are in the dark but it's good reliable damage with no thought required. Just look at a guy and watch them stop being a problem.
Plus, if you are using barb reckless attack
@@goochdaddy98 wait, No you cant. Thats both fighter, right?
Don't forget though, Wisdom Saving Throw Proficiency on Samurai! That is the damn BEST, Wisdom saves are the most common besides Con and Dex, you will resist SO many fears and charms and holds and mind control and madness effects, it's the bomb.
agreed - i feel they have underrated samurai quite a bit by *barely* giving it B. Also just because Battlemaster exists, that doesnt mean that subclasses can't be looked at for their own merit.
@@lordkosta926 "Also just because Battlemaster exists, that doesnt mean that subclasses can't be looked at for their own merit." Unfortunately in a world where you can only pick one (and rightfully so) subclasses have to be compared against eachother. Advantage is so easy to come by, that the samurai's feature is redundant most of the time. Wisdom saves are okay but not a life saver since you can just get resilient wisdom with one of your 7 asi's
I got to play a character with a backstory that she was a rogue, so that was her starting class -- but she got caught and conscripted into a war. There she gained the favor of a local warlord and that's where she became a fighter, and then a samurai. They ended up losing that war, and she lost her lord, and now she's ronin. Two levels of rogue, five of fighter, and she's powering up her own sneak attacks with the Fighting Spirit. It might not be that fun if I had to actually play through the levels to get there, but it was fun for a situational character that just got to be that way.
@@mal2ksc Could be fun.
@@The_Yukki I wouldn't scoff at free advantage. I mean, what are the most common ways of getting advantage? Flanking? That's a variant rule. Knocking things prone? Never gonna work on the real big 'uns like Giants and Dragons. Stunning, Paralyzing, Sleeping (Sophoricing?), Restraining? All have a chance of failure from the monster saving. Fighting Spirit cuts out the middle man. Also, yes, both Fighting Spirit and Superiority Die are limited and come back on a Short Rest, but SD have a chance of failing to work and therefore only granting extra damage (which is still S-Tier, don't get me wrong), while Fighting Spirit NEVER NOT WORKS. And what if you play in a game without feats or multiclassing? You will never have proficiency in Wisdom saves as a fighter without taking Samurai. Also, Resilient is (personal opinion) such a dead level feeling, unless you're taking Dexterity. With Samurai, it's free, and comes with social interaction benefit.
Mechanically the echo has more in common with a spiritual weapon. It's not a creature, it's not bound by physics. It just lets you use YOUR attacks elsewhere.
plus you can switch places with it and use it to make more attacks in one turn.
@@tk98998988 Swap places is good, yes.
But besides that, spiritual weapon is superior in almost any way beside that. Better action economy, higher uptime and more reliable.
Plus attacks of opportunity including Sentinel
@@jelte3754 word of God confirms the echo cannot take an AoO, due to the fact that it's an object, not a creature.
Now you've got me wondering how an Echo Knight/Cleric combo would be, it'd be chaotic. Attacks everywhere. But I think it'd tangle up the bonus actions too much.
Getting proficiency in Wisdom saves for the Samurai is underlooked in this video imo. As a fighter, having proficiency on CON and WIS saving throws is huge. Spend one of those many ASI levels on Resilient DEX and you're the BOSS.
Ye, being immune to mind control sounds super important for a class that can obliterate its own wizard in a single turn.
I often forget that the Purple Dragon Knight even exists. It's *so* bad.
I think we should forget it exists just like how we all know no live action DragonBall or The Last Airbender movies exist.
It exists so you can meet NPC PDKs. It's just not a sensible player option. Just play a Battle Master, Cavalier or whatever else you desire, wear Purple and ask if you can join their order - if they have any sense they'll be glad to have you.
I didn't know it existed until now...
@@nicka3697 I play as a banneret (Purple dragon knight's name outside of the original setting) so I don't have access to more NPC's because of it but it allows my fighter to be way more diplomatic and because my team lacks good healers, I fill that gap. My character lead to great story buidling in our group with his leader features. I really don't get the hate to that subclass... I have a tendency to enjoy less powerfull builds though so that might just be me. But why does everyone wants to play the same subclasses over and over? I feel like I'd get bored.
I got to thinking about the Purple Dragon Knight and thought that it had such a good chance to be good given the main theme of the Subclass. I took some time and came up with a re-envisioned Purple Dragon Knight class.
Purple Dragon Knight-
Level 3:
Loyal Ally-
You gain Rallying Cry. You may choose another feature from this list at 10th and 15th level:
Rallying Cry
When you use your Second Wind feature, choose up to three allies that can see or hear you. Each of them gets a number of Hit Points equal to your Fighter level.
Inspiring Surge
When you use your Action Surge feature, choose one ally that can see or hear you. They may make one weapon attack with their reaction. At level 18 you may target an additional ally.
Bulwark
When you use your Indomitable feature, choose one ally that can see or hear you who also failed their saving throw against the same effect. They can reroll their saving throw and use the new roll.
Royal Envoy-
Choose a Skill Proficiency to gain from Persuasion, Animal Handling, Insight, Intimidation or Performance. You now have this Skill Proficiency. You may apply twice your proficiency bonus when making checks with any Skill Proficiency chosen from this feature. Choose another Skill Proficiency from this list at Level 10.
Level 7:
Commanding Influence-
You gain the use of a number of Command Points equal to half your fighter level, which restore on a long rest. You may expend one Command Point to give an ally who can see or hear you one of the following benefits:
Protect
As a bonus action you may add your Charisma Modifier to an ally's AC until the end of their next turn.
Enhance Aim
As your reaction you may add your Charisma Modifier to an ally's Attack a Roll.
Rushing Command
As your bonus action you may direct a willing ally to use their reaction to move half of their movement speed.
Find Opening
As your bonus action you may direct a willing ally to use their reaction to make a weapon attack.
Level 10:
Forceful Soul-
When you roll Initiative and have no Command Points, you gain a number of Command Points equal to your Charisma Modifier.
Level 15:
Irresistible Force-
As a bonus action, you may expend a Command Point to cast the Command spell.
As a Bonus Action, you may expend three Command Points to cast the Hold Person spell.
The save DC for this feature is 8+Proficiency Bonus+Charisma Modifier
Level 18:
Unrelenting Commander-
Your Command Points restore on a short rest.
Proclamation-
You expend any number of Command Points and make a Declaration against a number of enemies equal to your Charisma Modifier plus the number of Command Points you spend. You and your allies have Advantage against those declared enemies for one minute, or until you become incapacitated.
Reading the abilities of the Echo Knight was the first time I've ever wanted to play a Fighter
Yup and so far every game I've played. The team needs, honestly needs something else. So the current game were playing is a twisted version of curse of strand. So I'm playing a UA twilight cleric that is going to dip 3 to 6 levels into fighter to get the initial echo knight subclass and abilities.
I played one briefly and they definitely are interesting.
Reading the champion was the first time I wanted to play the fighter.
6 months later and I'm asking my DM to switch subclass to echo knight bc now I know how to play the game 😅
@@badnewsbears9358 I like how they vary though, like some are simplistic and extensions of the core class while others add more unique abilities so people have options. After playing a battle master in Baldurs gate 3 even with the limited amount of available maneuvers I have enjoyed the experience a lot for the clutch uses of their abilities.
@@connorkearns6028 I definitely agree. I also like how fighters can be flavored in multiple different ways roleplay-wise, even just based on the subclasses. Fighters are far from boring or bad
Anyone else notice that Kelly's audio is louder in the right ear and Monty's audio is louder in the left ear? I love the added immersion, but you got it switched!
Right? I flipped my headphones to rectify it lol
Their mic is probably upside down
I think they are roleplaying as an Echo Knight
I thought my audio broke again. But.. yeah.
I thought I was losing my mind!
Kelly is trying *so hard* to say nice things about the Purple Dragon Knight! I feel like he needs a hug? Or possibly hot cocoa?
I enjoy both those things!
@@DungeonDudes I hope you got both of them for trying so hard. :D
@@DungeonDudes I also like hugs and hot cocoa
@Herald of dissonance all I said that I like hugs and hot cocoa. Don’t know where you coming from.
@Herald of dissonance Then why you tag me to the comment? If it wasn’t directed towards me and thank you for the clarification.
As someone who has seen a Samurai GWM use action surge and fighting spirit together and just completely melt a boss, you are underestimating them... I think Samurai is easily "A".
If you want magic, consider a Hexblade multiclass for Hex and Eldritch Blast turn 1, then GWM + FS + AS on turn 2.
I find Fighting Spirit surprisingly more useful for a Archer Fighter - because your normal methods of gaining advantage are very melee focused (optional flanking, prone targets). Sharpshooter + Fighting Spirit is a very deadly assassination combo.
@@8684LYFE doing that in my game rn looking for vids for help lmfaooo
Absolutely. With Great Weapon Master, at 5th level, you can stack Fighting Spirit with Action Surge to get more accuracy to really hit GWM attacks, which with Action Surge and Extra Attack amounts to +40 damage if everything lands, which it has a good chance to. That's a ton of damage.
If you pick up a bow and Sharpshooter, you can even do this at range, and with how much Kelly seems to like the idea of using a bow, I wonder what he'd think of this kind of build.
Proficiency with Wisdom saves doesn't hurt either, especially with how the Samurai (and Fighter in general) encourages you to use Wisdom as a tertiary stat anyways.
I'm planning on playing a Samurai sometime in the future, and I think and hope I'll have a blast doing so.
Or class two lvls in barb and get reckless attack
Kelly is looking sharp af
Royal lumberjack looking a$$! In a good way.
Lumberjack artificer vibes.
He’s a very good looking man
I want to hire this man
I mean, the purple dragon knight has a few advantages. For one, purple is a great color, dragons are also really cool, and knights are awesome as well.
In addition, you can get expertise! In one skill! As your 7th level ability!
Seems like a great class, right?
Beeg thonk
I mean, it doesn't make the Fighter worse like some of the other Subclasses (Berserker, Way of The Four Elements) but it's abilities are kinda underwhelming.
@@curnott6051 wait how does berserker make the class - worse-? Immunity to fear and charm. Free attack as reaction. 'option' to get a bonus attack for one fight per day without risking lingering exhaustion. I understand its not - great-, but calling it a detriment? Really?
Unfortunately, it's only called Purple Dragon Knight in Sword Coast campaigns (elsewhere it’s "Banneret"), so that eliminates your first three advantages.
@@Anegor Well, maybe "Worse" is a bit of an over statement. It makes it worse if you're a new player who doesn't know what they're doing, that's for sure.
Frenzy can really screw up new players who don't know how crippling exhaustion can be. If you know what you're doing, yeah, you can make the archetype work, but still, Frenzy's Bonus Action attack can be compared with a Zealot Barbarians Lv.3 Ability of an additional 1d6+1/2 your Barb level in either Radiant or Necrotic damage on your first attack per round for free, and guess what?
No exhaustion.
Yeah, the immunity to Charm and Fear while Raging and a Free Reaction Attack is pretty good, but a Barbarian doesn't get those until Lv.7 & Lv.13 respectively, so your going to be waiting a while to get something without a significant drawback from your archetype. Plus, the Lv.10 ability is kinda...terrible, using your Action to try and Frighten an enemy and then having to keep using your Action every turn after to make it stay Frightened is just, bleh. 99.9% of the time you're better off just using your Action to attack. Plus, it runs off Charisma, what Barbarian is going to have a Charisma higher then 14 even at Lv.20? Plus, so many monsters at that level are immune to Fear you'd be hard pressed to find a situation that it's worth using.
Again, I'll say that "Terrible" is a bit of an exaggeration, I've seen people make Berserker work, and you can completely nuke a single encounter if you build them right, but you gotta be really smart about how you play the character. I could see it being a fun challenge for a skilled player to undertake, but I wouldn't recommended playing Berserker, as written, to a newbie or even a first time Barbarian player. The potential of souring the class for them is just to high.
Monty... Monty, Monty, Monty - Dimension Door is ALWAYS sexy
Dude, Kelly had me *dying* laughing when he started talking about the “pros” of the Purple Dragon Knight! His progression from “it sounds cool,” to “this subclass is terrible,” is hysterical.
Edit: I also had an idea to improve the Samurai! What if for fighting spirit, instead of getting a set number of temp HP, you roll a dice (1d6, then it increases to 1d8, then it increases to 1d10) to see how much you get. To counter this, FS now comes back on short rests, instead of just long rests.
Any thoughts?
I like the idea of rolling instead of using fixed HP, I think that having fighting spirit come back on short rests might be a bit too much of a powercreep though, I also remeber reading a homebrew rule that had fighting spirit be equal to your prof bonus instead of just three uses per long rest
Temp hp is just the gravy on top of the advantage, not the main thing about it.
Playing a level 12 PDK/2 War Wizard right now and absolutely love it. By far my favourite Fighter.
I always prefer going back to the UA version. Resistance and the Advantage is this turn and the next.
I can see that as being too powerful with also making it come back on a short rest though, so maybe it just lasts until the start of your next turn instead of the end, but it really feels like a poor choice for me atm
@@fenderslasher5538 Two weapon fighting will never shine for fighters imo, especially not samurais that can get advantage to pump heavy GWM or SS damage. Indeed, Crossbow Experts would appreciate fee use.
I've been excited for Part 2, especially since I'm trying to figure out what Fighter Subclass I want to take on a character I'm playing. This video helped me decide that I want to start talking with my DM to find a way to work in Echo Knight into our Eberron game!
Also the shade thrown at PDK was fantastic. I miss Warlords, too! Good work, Dudes!
That sounds like a real fun concept!
@@captainthorrek262 I struck a deal with my DM. Since I already multiclassed once on this character (Barbarian into Rogue) I have to make my Fighter levels the last levels I take on the character. So I think it'll be pretty easy to work in the magic of the Echo Knight as a level 17 warforged. It could be my soul or some remnant of whatever caused The Mourning that I got exposed to. We'll see!
So, I am currently playing an echo knight and this is how we worked it in to my Eberron game. Basically, I am a goliath who at a young age tripped and fell while traversing the mountains down a deep chasm. I somehow survived, but right after I found out to have this ability. My echo is literally my skin markings sliding off myself (Goliath lore stuff here. Their skin markings are considered marks of fate and doing anything to change or alter them is considered taboo at best and straight up blasphemy at worst). And every time my echo is destroyed or returns to my body my skin markings change. Essentially my character believe he is cursed or is somehow changing his fate every time he uses his echo.
And my DM is taking that information and created a unique reason for everything (that I have yet to find out).
Also, consider Barb 2 or 3 (if 3 go bear totem), with echo knight. Clear with DM first. This combo can be really really powerful. If you take barb to 3, you will lose out on having2 echos out at a time but you gain resistance to basically every damage type except psychic.
Didn't even mention that the echos can move in any direction including vertically. "Hmmm I could either throw a javalin at the harpy or make several greatsword swipes. decisions... decisions...."
Also useful on boat trips to melee attack a submerged adversary with your spear without getting your feet wet.
@@nicka3697 i think you need line of sight.
@@rothgartheviking858 Couldn't you use the Echo Avatar feat they mentioned to gain that line of sight?
@@taijutsumaster15 you could teleport. I don't think you can attack without line of sight. I could be wrong been a while since i have played it. The rules for echo knight are very complex and not well written. The class is super fun when figure them out.
The rules aren't well written it's really up to your DM. The fact that "The echo knight occupies it'd own space" suggests that it is a solid and can open doors or move objects. Idek why they suggested that it couldn't.
I feel like Samurai was a bit underrated here. The 3 Fighting Spirits per long rest may feel a little limiting if your DM is constantly throwing you into combat encounters, but otherwise 3/day should be more than enough. And as you said, you can always shove a creature prone anyway, and save Fighting Spirit for when you need to Action Surge for damage. Comparing it to Reckless Attack isn't really fair because Fighting Spirit has no drawback outside of a timing restriction.
I always put high value on gaining skill proficiencies, and Insight and Persuasion are two of the best in social situations. I think this makes the Samurai pretty unique among Fighter subclasses which are all almost purely combat-based. And the additional bonus to Persuasion rolls at 7th level is great.
Proficiency in Wisdom Saves is awesome for a Fighter.
The only big downside to the Samurai is that it does a poor job of utilizing your bonus action/reaction in combat, which is where subclasses like the Battlemaster, Echo Knight, and even Rune Knight excel.
I absolutely love my level 5 samurai. Don't knock the bonus hit points tied to fighting spirit. That mixed with the advantage on attacks has absolutely saved my character time and time again.
Yeah, I feel the Samurai is pretty good, they didn't really bring up the Wisdom Save Proficiency much (which also includes the option to pick either Intelligence or Charisma if you already have Wisdom Prof), as someone who plays a Fighter who picked up the Resilient: Wisdom Feat, Proficiency in Wisdom Saving Throws have saved her ass plenty of times!
I had a player change from a hard to hit illusion wizard to a hard hitting samurai. 19 Strength, a great sword, and great weapon master. He was able to do four attacks at advantage and put out so much damage per hit
@@curnott6051 that's a great point. I like combining it with the Resilient feat to gain saves in the three most important (Dex, Con, Wis). Any starting class grants you one of those three, but none grant you two.
Fighting Spirit seems insane when you combine it with action surge and eventually get more than 2 attacks. 1 bonus action to get 8 attacks with advantage at high levels. Someone else mentioned Great Weapon Master...
@@jthompson7175 actually you end up with 7 attacks with advantage and 2 attacks without advantage because you use rapid strikes to forgo one of your advantages for an additional attack so 9 total attacks 7 with advantage in 1 turn.
I believe Samurai's Fighting Spirit isn't actually lackluster at lower levels, specially because it also gives bonus hit points, which helps the Samurai survive a lot more. Being on the middle of the battle on lower levels, 5 extra hp is very valuable, specially being able to giving it to yourself 3 times a day.
Imagine combing that with mountain dwarf shenanigans
Ripping on the Purple Dragon Knight never gets old... But it does make me sad.
That seems contradictory.
The character I'm most excited to play is an echo knight X/hexblade 5 who uses shadow blade and elven accuracy, along with HBC to just teleport around the battlefield doing big single target damage/CC with Sentinel. From an RP perspective, I'd play him as an experiment gone wrong who's trying to regain his memories and his sense of self. Not sure what is real and what is just a dim reflection. Misty Visions is also great to take, as it'd make him a great infiltrator and adds to this RP.
There's a character in My Hero Academia who has the power to make duplicates of anyone (but he needs specific info: height, weight, etc.). [Backstory spoilers] he doesn't duplicate himself anymore because he and his clones had a huge argument and he's gone crazy, unsure if he is the original or merely a clone.
I feel like you could really pull some inspiration from Twice
Elven Accuracy + Booming Blade + Shadow Blade is so much fun. Especially in an Underdark campaign. Dip 2 levels in Paladin to gain divine smite if you want to do even more single target damage!
@@JoviaI1 yeah, I have a really dumb build that expands on this with bard and paladin levels. It can get really ridiculous. I can get 6 attacks in a turn at level 11, each with 27% chance to crit and each dealing 3d8 damage.
An Echo Knight Hexblade with Darkness/Devil's Sight would also have a lot of options for battle field control
What do you mean with "HBC"? I never heard that before.
"The Purple Dragon Knight or the Banneret.......ugh"
I don't think I've ever seen a subclass be described so succinctly and accurately before.
When you say "pet subclass" what you mean is subclasses with STANDOH POWAH
@Nicholas Brown nah dude, there's a bunch of 'em, like swarmkeeper, ancestral guardian, wildfire
@@superblobfish2567 I've seen an Astral Monk/Echo Knight multiclass that is basically a massive Jojo's reference in one game...was glorious
@@luketfer that's awful and wonderful
I really like the EK, but I do run with them with a slightly different rule for their spell selection: instead of being limited to just Evocation and Abjuration, I let them pick 2 schools of magic to focus on instead (they can still choose Abjuration and Evocation, but they can also go Abjuration and Illusion or Necromancy and Divination. I personally like the combination of Abjuration and Transmutation/Conjuration).
With RAR EKS can look a bit "samey", but it's a strong samey imo.
It should be changed to pick two schools of magic for the rest of the game.
I prefer they stay with their specialization in the two schools as written, since there's also Arcane Trickster with its own flavor of two schools. You don't really need more free choice than the few that get sprinkled in already. ...If it has any issues on spell selection, it's nowhere near as pronounced as it is for the single school based Wizard subclasses.
@@Shalakor But there is the issue of how Evocation does almost nothing to help the fighter in this case, since evocation is about blasty spells for the most part and by action economy, a fighter will almost always deal more damage with their weapons. Evocation just doesn't do much for the EK, which gets carried by receiving good abjuration spells like Absorb Elements and Shield. The only Evocation spells I can think of as being really useful for a fighter are Fire Shield and Melf's Minute Meteors, since Chromatic Orb, Burning Hands, Fireball, Scorching Ray, etc are all available levels after they were more relevant in gameplay. The EK gets Fireball when the actual wizard is doing so much more.
The other issue is in comparing them to the Rogue on this, since the Rogue has a much more specific playstyle, one that works fairly well with the spells they get. As the rogue already focuses on misdirection, stealth, etc, and in general uses more or less similar playstyles and tactics across the board, they benefit from sticking to 2 schools of magic that fit with the playstyle of the rogue. The fighter on the other hand has much less of a defined class playstyle, instead having flexibility incorporated into the class, hence why it has so many options for armors, weapons, etc. I think that logically it would stand to reason that if the fighter is meant to be played/built more flexibly, its spell selection should be a bit more flexible.
Tl;dr: The EK gets 1 school of spells that really helps them out and then 1 school of spells that sort of does nothing for them, which already isn't great, but it also doesn't compare too well to the rogue with the AT since the rogue already has area of specialization where the spells help them out, while the fighter as a class does not have a defined specialization and instead lets the player choose more of how they specialize, thus their spell selection should also be similarly flexible for specialization.
Sorry for the long reply
@@gordonexperience4859 You undervalue Evocation's utility for a Fighter, especially at lower levels. It's all about having the option for some area of effect damage on hand to play crowd control. (If you can seriously tell me that an Eldritch Knight using something like Burning Hands at levels 3 through 6 has never come in handy for getting a larger group of minions off their back in any of the games you've seen one played in, I'd chalk that up to being more the DM's/campaign's fault than the subclass's.) But, even then, Abjuration is so blatantly good for for a Fighter that having the second school be more situational is totally justified. Something all that "freedom" with weapons and armor has in common with each other is that they're combat oriented, and Evocation is THE combat school of magic (that also has a couple of other tricks available). Regardless of how useful it ends up being, though, it's extremely within the thematics of the class. And, still, a third of the spells the EK can learn can come from any school and you can retrain those to other spells each time you level up in the class, while there's also the argument that could being made depending on the table you're playing at that Arcane Trickster's Enchantment spells never come into play, or even some groups where the Illusion spells never do (as weird of a thought that is)! I've actually seen multiple Arcane Tricksters take Burning Hands or another Evocation as their first "any school" spell, to great effect.
But, on the note of how dubious the usability of Evocation spells for an EK can be at higher levels, I say the better homebrew would be to change the subclass in a way as to where it has more incentive to use them without interrupting the core class mechanics. Let's face it, what players really want is to be able to mix spell and sword in the same turn, so why not do that (note that what I'm about to mention is in the context of homebrew that includes tweaks to all the subclasses)? "Battle Evocation" at 15th level allows the EK to cast an evocation spell as a bonus action when they take the Attack action, once per initiative roll and not usable outside combat. This comes alongside "Battle Abjuration" at 7th level that works the same, the two features replacing Improved War Magic together. This homebrew also moves Arcane Charge to 18th level, adding to the base feature the ability to follow up a reaction with being able to use your Action Surge outside your own turn, and moves War Magic to 3rd level while changing it to where it's a long rest limited resource to cast a cantrip as a bonus action when you take the Attack action. Very powerful, but still balanced by the limited nature of long rest spell slots at 1/3 the rate of full casters. Mostly just gives the EK a reason to burn through spell slots more often.(Pending playtesting or request, could convinced to make Battle Evocation 10th level and move Eldritch Strike to 15th, but I highly doubt it.)
(P.S. This is slightly off subject, but Bladesinger Wizard, instead of ever getting Extra Attack, gains an additional function to make a weapon attack as a bonus action after casting spells as an action, which improves to two attacks at high level, as a for instance of how other subclasses stack up. This homebrew isn't entirely complete or posted publicly anywhere, just mentioning my thought process of doubling down on the original concept of a subclass when homebrewing, since the point of many subclsses is to add specializations to a base class over complete freedom of choice within each subclass.)
When I heard about echo knight being a thing, I immediately thought of a rogue (arcane trickster maybe) multiclass.
It's so perfect. Depending upon how you're DM rules certain things, it becomes a broken thief.
If you disguise self and then summon an echo, is it also disguised? does it have to be the same disguise? (with the way it's written, I feel that the most appropriate is yes, disguised, but must be same disguise). When you "teleport" (switch places), do you take items with you or just have what you had on you when the echo was created? Because if you can teleport items with you, you have the best escape plan ever for stealing: make echo walk around behind a store (staying within 30 feet of you on the outside of the building), go inside, pick up anything you want, switch places, dismiss echo and you are now behind the store with whatever item you wanted (it's like shorter range misty step or dimension door that is free; costs no spell slots). To the storekeeper, a guy walked in grabbed an item and disappeared, and if disguises are an option, they don't even have a description of you meaning you can do it again in a different store with no repercussions or even the same store later on if you have that kind of guts. And if you can combine this with the dunamancy wrist pocket spell, it's even better.
A DM might rule that items can't teleport (meaning that you get whatever you had on you when you summoned the echo), but that makes other things interesting on the other side of the coin: drop your sword off a cliff? just switch places and you've got your weapon back. You could even abuse that to have infinite ammo: summon echo, throw spear, switch places, dismiss echo, repeat. With spells and similar things you wouldn't be able to abuse this because it'd be your spell slots etc., but physical items would most likely have to fall into one of the above categories. Granted, if you abused it too much, it'd lose the fun for everyone and the DM could figure out SOME way of dealing with it, but within reason, you can have a few fun exploits that can be hilarious (probably still a good idea to run it by the DM to see what they'd be cool with before planning to break their game lol).
Edit: mechanically, there might be some limits that I’ve not looked at, but this was just the brainstorm I had of something fun to do with this mechanic.
Echo Knight/Trickery Cleric: have your echo, duplicate and mirror image up. Tell your enemies: "good luck finding the real me".
Thats great and all. But the shop keeper can always pay to locate object, or use scry to find you. So yes while its an easy way to steal, its pretty noticeable so, if the dm wants to, he could have a bounty on your head and many people hunting you down, knowing what you're capable of because of scry and locate object/person.
Matthew Woods Reminding you that all of these things you described don't use rogue abilities at all. You can do all of that just with fighter levels, there's no need to multiclass.
Did you consider that the echo is translucent and thus obviously a magical apparition?
The echo is a shadowy echo of your person rather than a clone.
loved the discussion and reasoning behind each ranking! Worth the wait tbh.
also in samurai's defense, the role play fun of fighting spirit is still up to how you role play it. Is your fighter steeling their resolve with a deep breath before unleashing a flurry of precise slashes they have trained all their lives to master? are they losing themselves in the trance and frenzy of battle to unleash a burst of unbridled brutality momentarily, as a barbarian would but retaining the finesse to not let their guard down.
As for its use? it the temp hp does not conflict with your second wind should you find an opportunity to use both back to back, infact now you have more hp and some buffer temporary hp to boot! at low levels 5 x 3, for a 15 temp hp when needed here and there is great too, while 30 later on is still useful, probably not as great, but still useful.
probably my bias of playing a samurai at the moment, but learning to flavour the abilities showed me how flexible they can be role play wise, which is key to playing a fighter imo. Would I give it an S? no, but a definite A in my opinion.
I quite like the fluff abilities as well like the free skill and the like, it makes my fighter easier to role play through non combat situations, or gives more utility to them
My idea for fixing the purple dragon knight:
- Rallying Cry also gives a second use of second wind at level 3
- Royal envoy at level 3
- Inspiring Surge gives an additional use of action surge and you get it at level 7
- You get Bulwark at level 10, and you can choose to just use it on an ally, yourself, or both.
- New ability at 15th level, maybe that adds on to the royal envoy theme?
Looking at this it sounds like it’s maybe C?
There's a fighter subclass in solasta who fits so much better as the commander of the party: it let's you take a bonus action to inspire allies within 10 feet of you. They gain advantage on their next attack roll and this feature can be used a number of times equal to your proficiency per rest. Coupled with the protection fighting style, it makes really fun combat where positioning becomes key. A great way to spend your bonus action
I feel like the Samurai, weirdly enough, is better taken for an archer than for a melee build. Fighting spirit is one of the rare ways to reliably get advantage against ranged targets, and it combos exceedingly well with sharpshooter (and even better if you get elven accuracy). Makes for a very nice ranged dps build with huge nova potential.
Another thing about the Echo Knight is that the Echo is immune to all conditions, so if you're blinded, poisoned, restrained or Stage 3 Exhausted, you can attack without disadvantage. Also, ig=f you're grappled and have your Echo up, you can escape the grapple with a a bonus action. You can also use your echo to knock distant enemies prone or grapple them to help out your team. It's versatility and utility is insane.
It breaks my heart to see someone truly upset that his favourite colour is used on a subclass that is so badly put together...
Wearing purple while badmouthing the purple dragon knight.
@Herald of dissonance I wasn't implying that the class didn't deserve it or that they thought any differently.
Echo knight is great. So great, that when I played one, I never felt in danger for a second. It got boring. It is S tier for sure, but I don't wanna play it again.
Yeah, echo knight seems cool but I would probably play a oneshot or a short campaign with it, not a full campaign
I have a player using one now, and he agreed with me that the echo is too powerful so we have made it where he can only summon it = to his con mod per day.
Not only is it grossly op, it's completely lame from a thematic standpoint. "Let me summon my shadow to attack you"
I feel this is entirely dependent on how the DM handles combat
Idk if you've played Balder's Gate 3 but its truly opened my eyes to the variety and level design combat can entail
I'll avoid examples from the game to prevent any spoilers but even the Echo's ability to teleport and tank a hit for someone is limited to once per rest. Imagine attacks where a dragon rains lightning from the sky, and having to deal with opportunity attacks from minions as you try to escape instant death.
Powerful for sure, but not boring unless combative encounters are not diverse
One great thing about the Samurai's Fighting Spirit is that they work very well with archers. A lot of the tools that fighters use to gain advantage (i.e. prone, optional flanking) isn't available to a ranged fighter. Comboing Action Surge, Fighting Spirit, Archery Style and Sharpshooter together is a pretty cool "delete that enemy" action.
"....So take that, Purple Dragon Knight."
The salt.
It is most powerful with this one.
It also seems like he's had some absolutely terrible stories about that archetype, similar to a Vietnam vet.
Friends don't let friends play Purple Dragon Knight.
Hey, it's those guys!
The dungeon guys?
@@andrellnogueira the vault dudes.
Them dudes!
The Gaming Guys?
The Familiar Folks?
It's weird that the one problem I have with the Wildemount classes is that they are too cool and powerful and make other subclasses feel irrelevant and weak.
Yes! Stupid chronomancer too
@@jelte3754 ikr that subclass basically gets the war magic ability and portent at level 2 along with extra spells added to there list plus there other abilitys at higher levels that are also broken.
@Biggus Dickus Yeah same with Graviturgy. But the problem still exists. Then again they originated as homebrew I think so not being uber balanced is fine.
i agree with this.
Yeah, because they're broken edgelord classes that would be made fun of as homebrew wiki garbage if people didn't suck off CR so hard.
Kalashtar echo knight who manifests his ghost friend and just chills with it
One of the awesome things about Samurai is that Strength before death offers some huuuge roleplay potential. I like that you get it so late because it feels like you're going to use it that one time against the BBEG and just Wow everyone with an amazing turn even if you end up dying. With Secind wind, you even have the ability to resurrect yourself!!
Kelly is looking *sharp*
Thank you!
I was afaired u missread the rapid strike:
Starting at 15th level, you learn to trade accuracy for swift strikes. If you take the Attack action on your turn and have advantage on an attack roll against against one of the targets, you can forgo the advantage for *that* roll to make an additional weapon attack against that target, as part of the same action. You can do so no more than once per turn.
So basicly if u use action surge and fighting spirit with 2 atks make it 5 with 1!! Atk not having advantage... withs makes it better then u think.
And its not limited to melee weapons free adv for a ranged fighter?
For my Eldritch Knight i recommend Shadowblade, a 2d8 light weapon is fantastic.
It's wonderful for the Arcane Trickster as well, and they don't have to sacrifice one of their few "any school" picks as it's an illusion spell. It kind of feels like the spell was introduced in Xanathar's just for these two subclasses.
I find a more optimal use of Eldritch Knight is using the spells for defensive options while maximizing your offense with proficiency in big, heavy hitting weapons. Shield and Counter Spell are both hugely helpful in terms of avoiding or preventing damage. It helps them stay in the fray without really stopping them from swinging 2 to 4 times per turn with a 2d6 weapon that actually scales off your stats, something Shadow Blade won't do.
Additionally, since Shadow Blade won't scale off any stats at all, unlike regular weapons, you're only getting your proficiency bonus when it comes to hitting an enemy. For comparison, a Great Sword is 2d6 with strength and proficiency. While the Shadow Blade starts with 2 more potential damage per die, the Great Sword gets the strength modifier on top which can be a straight 5. Last but not least, Shadow Blade is a level 2 spell that can't scale with higher level spell slots, further limiting its usefulness since it still requires an attack roll that doesn't benefit from your stats.
@@azuredragoon2054 There's nothing in the spell that states it doesn't scale off your Strength or Dex. It counts as a simple weapon with which you're proficient, has the light, finesse, and thrown properties, so you can add your Str/Dex to attack and damage rolls. It's basically treated as an actual weapon in the spell description, with the upside of getting advantage in dim light or darkness, and if for some reason you're disarmed of the weapon or you throw it, you can summon it back to your hand with a bonus action. It also does scale in damage by upcasting the spell, becoming 3d8 psychic damage with a third or fourth level slot, 4d8 using 5th or 6th level, up to a max of 5d8 using 7th or higher.
This can do a ton of damage if you maintain concentration, and as a fighter, you have multiple attacks, especially with Action Surge. It can be used to make opportunity attacks as well, and you can even Booming Blade onto your Shadow Blade as a reaction if you have War Caster as a feat. I play a Bladesinger Wizard and run Shadow Blade, it's a great spell that gets the most value with Eldritch Knight just because of all the extra attacks you have.
A light weapon that means you can offhand a shortsword if you wanted to.
@@thecamelftw1381 That is correct, you can dual wield as long as you have the free action economy to swap around between your spellcasting focus and your weapons or shield if you use one. If the Unearthed Arcana feats are allowed, there's a feat that solves this problem for the Eldritch Knight called Shield Training, which lets you use your shield as a spellcasting focus, though it won't let you dual wield unless you gave up using your shield or something.
You can just see the light fade from their eyes when the bring up the Purple Dragon Knight
Monty's reaction to saying its name pretty much says it all.
Why?
To boost the samurai, I submit to you, the Eladrin (or any elf, but I really like the bonus action teleport) Samurai. Combined with Elven Accuracy, Fighting Spirit becomes *terrifying*
While I think that the subclass ranking is great, I think that it would be interesting to hear what you think the best combinations you would pick as a 2 character party, 3 character party, all the way up to 5 or 6. Even describing what subclass you choose.
Gunslingers in the chat : 😟
I'd have been very interested to hear your opinion on the Gunslinger subclass. I know it's not strictly official in that it's published through the DM's Guild, but you can get it on DnD Beyond as part of the Critical Role content, soooo... But yeah, this was definitely illuminating, I personally never saw the allure of the Eldritch Knight, but it seems I need to have another read through it.
Gunslinger is so gimped by Misfire and Reload thst you're just better off going with a Battlemaster using a Dungeon Master's Guide Musket.
I've honestly tried so hard to make Gunslinger work but it just finds another way to drag me down with its unreliability. While firearms give you bigger dice, the fact that you typically want to use Sharpshooter to give you that damage from ranged attacks and the fact that misfire and reload reduce your DPR by 20%... It just doesn't have that power and reliability that a martial needs to have.
The trickshots though are nice but very niche as you aren't really going to be using them for anything aside from Deadeye, Piercing, Dazzing and Violent shots. While these provide you some advantage, more damage or party support, they're not nearly enough to offset the loss in DPR you take compared to a ranged battlemaster especially since Violent and Piercing shots increase your misfire score.
In addition to this, the higer level abilities you get as a gunslinger are just sad. Improved critical for regaining grit points are nice but they're, again, unreliable. As for Lightning Reload, the ability doesn't do shit for you at all as you'll have too many attacks for lightning reload to prevent you from having to use one of your attacks to reload. Using together Lightning Reload and Quickdraw, you can make 3 attacks with 2 different Reload 1 guns. Thats enough for a pre-capstone fighter not using their action surge and its pretty damn good for 6d12 damage. Again though, we run into the issue of the terrible misfire score of 3 with the Bad News and Hand Mortar.
Using Lightning Reload is unnecessary for the other guns too as if you use Gunslinger you *want* more than one firearm on you so that you can use the 7th level ability to Quickdraw during an action surge turn or ignore reloading completely with things like the basic Exandria Pistol.
Overall: after days worth optimizing and min maxing, it just leads me to say that the Matt Mercer Gunslinger is a B tier at best if you min max the shit out of it and C tier overall. Too much unreliability for too little damage increase compared to a bow or musket.
DD be like...
Echo Knight: 🤩🤩🤩
Purple Dragon Knight: 😬😬😬
But seriously...
I think Samurai pairs really well with War Cleric, surprisingly. Only need 1 level. With that first level of War cleric, that will let your Fighter make a choice every turn. "What will I use my bonus action on? An extra attack, or advantage?" And I think that will REALLY help this class for those first 10 levels.
Eldritch knight is my favorite, I do think it'd be way better if you could PICK the two classes of magic instead of having to go between evocation and abjuration.
That's how I run it at my table, and it makes for much more unique options
@@natashasurvivallady8021 not too OP? I think Enchantment and Illusion are... Really strong defensive and offensive picks, a bit too much maybe? Blur, Shadow Blade, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Hypnotic Pattern and Fear. Hold Person is a monster, rest is OK. Conjuration, Transmutation and the other schools I do dig, those look great!
@@jelte3754 it hasn't been, largely due to the slow spell progression of the subclass. Along with that, a lot of enchantment spells require saving throws, and your spell save isn't often the highest. Illusion can be a beast, but it's often dependant on situation, DM, and the types of threats you have to deal with. Also worth remembering, the Arcane Trickster uses Enchantment and Illusion, and they aren't super busted. In my experience the more free range of spell school selection just means not every Eldritch Knight chooses the same spells, which I find more fun and interesting. :)
i lift the spell restrictions as well, for both the EK and Arcane Trickster.
Y'all seriously underestimate Fighting Spirit Action Surge. That alone puts it at an A for me. I've had my Samurai player take bosses down to 1/3 HP in a single turn with two crits because they got four attacks in a round at level 6.
Samurai can put out 9 attacks on a turn, 7 with advantage. Use Great weapon Master and add a stupid amount of damage, with advantage to mitigate the accuracy down.
i found it kinda funny how your voices are switched in my headphones
Ok, good! It wasn’t just me! 😅
@@rhylin26 OK, good to know it wasn't just me
Never heard about the Echo Knight before. It sounds fucking awesome! Sounds like it's easy to reflavor those echos as well, if you want a different flavor. Summoning ghosts perhaps?
Btw, why don't you mention the shadowblade spell as a good option for the Eldritch Knight?
They had a separate video for EK and AT builds
@@jelte3754 And they didn't mention shadowblade on the EK video either. Only the AT.
C'mon boys I'm waiting for that sweet Paladin Subclass tier list!
Aside from the obvious edgy top spot that is.
Really looking forward to the Rune Knight (hopefully) coming out in Tasha's
I’ve been playing a Rune Knight for almost a year now and I couldn’t love it more. I so hope it’s in Tasha’s
If it came out more than two years ago, it is severely unlikely unfortunately. The Rune Knight does give me a good skeleton for one of my players homebrew classes though.
@@xSilentStrangerx it was a 2019 UA so hopeful.
@@itsang4364 It IS coming for Tasha, but it's been nerfed bad, so beware
I am currently playing an Echo Knight Fighter, and I love to imagine my Echo as a shadow clone from Naruto. Mainly due to the fact that it can take one hit before dissipating. I am in love with this class and am struggling to think of something cooler for my next campaign. Any suggestions?
I would like to add something to the discussion of Echo Knight.
According to Jeremy Crawford's Sage Advice, the Echo is not a creature. This gives the Echo a very powerful and unexpected side effect: being essentially immune to any spell that targets or damages creatures like Command, Lightning Bolt, or even the ever humble Magic Missile. Since most magic implicitly requires that they target a creature OR implicitly state that "creatures within the area of effect" to accomplish something, an Echo is completely immune to these effects. Any spell that states "Objects" as a valid target would still affect them.
“There are only two subtypes that were worse... I think you know what they were.”
Beast master ranger. Twice.
When they said that, I immediately thought of Beast Master Ranger and then wondered what the other one was. Scrolled down through the comments to see if anyone pointed it out. Well played.
I think berserker barbarian is the second
@@avichaid6021 I think the second is Four Elements monk. They already covered the Berserker, and the polls were surprisingly friendly to it.
@@TheStephenation same
I would like an echo knight type subclass for monks.
I would just go 3 lvlv echo knight and then shadow monk. It would have the feel and you could say that the echo was your shadow.
You just want to go full Jojo, weren't you?
Stando Powah
So Astral Self Monk?
@@GSSAGE7 More like Naruto Shadow Clones.
It is going to be interesting, when these tier lists are done, to compare the overall rankings *by sourcebook* . Not to poop on CR but I imagine both of the wizard subs are also going to end up as not only S tier but also (like Echo Knight) overwhelming favorites. Echo (esp. before the erratas started) were strong as heck.
With the Echo Knight, the echo can also move in 3D. Additionally, the teleport ability also works with the Echo Avatar up to 1000 feet away in any direction. The caveat with Echo Avatar is it can't attack or interact with anything since the character is using their action to maintain the echo.
The teleport ability does not work with the avatar ability. This was clarified in tweets and will be added to future printings. It CAN move on any direction, however, which is fun when you use Sentinel to stop a dragon from flying >.>
I hope to see how much the new EK would be rate by you. Weapon mastery, trading one attack for cantrip, no more spell limitation and etc. S Ranking after the PH2024?
Can someone please grab "not quite as sexy" for unlimited replay from the end of the Eldritch Knight segment? 😂
They forgot to add that for the Samurai subclass the fighting spirit also works with ranged attacks which I think is a big deal. Also, some of us play with DMs who don't make encounters easy to control and getting advantage on monsters, including big ass ones, can be hard.
If i may add to that, the tougher huge and gargantuan creatures are usually hard to gain advantage on via prone, i think fighting spirit is great particularly with great weapon master/sharpshooter, as it is likely to add 60-120 damage (assuming 20 dex, and action surge is used) before dice are rolled, probably killing the thing before it gets set up in the fight or causing its strategy to change.
@@iansinclair2028 with help from strength before death, you're dealing out 12 attacks with advantage (and 2 without) with +10 damage each at 20
There's a solid chance you kill a CR20 monster alone in one turn with that
I agree, Samurai is pretty invaluable against some of the big, tough fellas you'll run into
Sharpshooter + Elven Accuracy on this setup gets outright disgusting
Never miss your +10 damage attacks, crit like a madman, not have to worry about flight
All I’m going to say is that a Samurai fighter cross classing into a war domain cleric, would be awesome.
Samurai is a 'C Class'?
The class synch's extremely well with Sharpshooter or GWM. Adding ridiculous nova damage when coupled with Action Surge.
In addition it shores up the Wisdom saving throw and then recycles Wisdom into Persuasion rolls, allowing it a fairly cheap way to handle social situations.It also throws in additional ways.
At 10th level, every time you get initiative, you regain a use of Fighting Spirit.
The use of losing an action to make someone prone isn't particularly inspiring unless you are all melee. Why risk this to gain advantage, when you have advantage anyway?
Strength before death, allows you to use Action Surge, drink a healing potion, anything.
Totally agree about Eldritch knight and transmutation, in my 2E days I'd play fighter/mages that specialized in making the battlefield entirely different, spiderclim or jump on self, enlarge on self, attack from the ceiling or the walls... mirror image (illusion), etc
I played a ranged-focused Samurai with a level dip in Forge Cleric and it was one of the most OP characters I ever played. I absolutely loved it. Battle Master is great but Samurai is also a fantastic subclass.
It was great to hear your thoughts on the echo knight. I think you have missed a trick though by not pointing out the huge feature that the echo is not a creature, it is a magical object (go see Crawford's tweets). This makes the echo immune to more than 90% of spells. I made a post analysing which spells can even target the echo www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/fighter/83937-spells-that-can-target-an-echo-a-magical-object
Fireball doesn't affect non-flammable objects. Eldritch blast only targets creatures. Disintegrate doesn't affect magical objects. Shatter only damages non-magical objects.
Being an object it is also immune to poison and psychic damage. It also means that it does not provoke opportunity attacks. It can't be grappled or shoved. Manifest echo also states it is immune to all conditions.
Edit: I would also add that not being a creature means it can't contribute to flanking or sneak attack.
This in combination with an AC of 14+Prof means that a lot of NPCs will simply not be able to deal with the echo efficiently.
The Purple Dragon Knight is the only subclass in 5e that I’ve never seen anyone, anywhere, even online on forums claiming that they’ve played. I’ve seen plenty of Frenzy Barbarians, Beastmaster Rangers, and Way of Four Elements Monks. I’ve even seen the occasional Oath of the Crown Paladin, Undying Warlock, and Sun Soul Monk. But never a Purple Dragon Knight.
What about Battleragers?
@@brandonkorolik701 That’s a good question. I may have seen one or two people over the years claim they’ve played one. Just like I’ve seen a few people play Way of the Long Death monks. Not many, that’s for sure.
@@gregoryfloriolli9031 My wife played a Battlerager, but she doesn't really care about mechanics and it was a one-shot. It just sounded cool and fit her character.
I love playing my Echo Knight. Since it's new I had to do research on its mechanics, but it's been a ton of fun. You can summon it in any area on the x,y OR z axis and it can just float there making it easy to hit flying creatures. Its immune to psychic damage (and I think necrotic, I would have to check what jeremy crawford said on that again). The echo cant open doors but I can try breaking it down or destroy traps. My party also got arrested and yes it's fun to nightcrawler you way through the cells.
Sumarai combining action surge with fighting spirit and the foregoing advantage for two attacks = 8 chances to hit in a single turn which can do massive damage. That being said.. I’m an echo knight.
I recommend those that try Eldritch Knight to try a Dex version at some point. I had so much fun with it.
yeah, why do anything else. mage armor is abjuration so it's basically free, +5 dex gives you the benefit of a plate armor. But also better initiative, better ability checks, no cost, no stealth disadvantage and no weight. and of course, shadow blade is a finesse weapon and ranged weapons are DEX based. the polearm mastery+ sentinel stuff is great, but i would leave that to the battlemaster
My first EK was dex based actually, he had a longbow and dual shortswords to swap to depending on the situation, he was basically a tank that could fit into any situation.
I tried that and couldn't make it work.
Rapier and shield means you can't cast spells, so you need the Warcaster feat to do anything. Archer works, but then most of your spells become rubbish.
Honestly, I don't like the class. By the Dudes' ranking system, I call it a D. It's a trap. The spells you have access to are mostly damaging ones and are strictly worse than just attacking with your sword. So you get less good at being a fighter.
What would make it S tier is a curated spell list exclusive to the class. Maybe some smite spells, but also stuff like Longstrider and Jump. Utility stuff that makes you a better fighter instead of boomy stuff that makes you either a worse fighter, or a bad wizard, or both.
Greatsword, then casting nothing but Shield is the best way to go with this mechanically, but I reckon that's a bit boring.
@@rossburton8775 So you are saying you would not score it based on having to get warcaster? I mean, most every other class has a feat it needs to get, so I'm not sure what you mean here. Warcaster is great because you get to use booming blade on an enemy as they retreat dealing massive damage. Granted its not as strong as bladesinger is now, but dex is still very strong if you are willing to learn how to play it.
An overlooked ability of the Samurai is the proficiency in Wisdom saves. The amazing flavor and the nice bit of reassurance that you won’t be charmed against your companions is very nice
The dislikes are from all the 48 *purple dragon knights* who inhabit the world.
I feel like the Echo Knight would add some very cool and thematic tools to a Rogue multi-class, especially the Assassin.
16:32 Apparently the Purple dragon is Monty's favourite subclass
That's because Monty is the DM.
I always do a 2 level dip into wizard (war magic) for my Eldritch Knight. That 2 AC boost and +4 spell save boost is great. Earth tremor drops everyone prone. Level 2 spells are eh. But just upcast your AOEs
Multiclassing Eldritch Knight with Wizard make it so much better than full Eldritch Knight. War Magic or Bladesinger work really well. It's the only weakness of this specialization, if you see it has a weakness...
@@Nyarlathoteps1 I thought about that with my EK but it just felt to me like...why not just play a wizard then? You get more spell slots which is nice for the EK but not as many as you have for a wizard.
I like it for the additional save bonus. I mean having a spell save of 20 at 12th level. 10-EK/2-WMW. Not to bad i believe
@@c.v.emmans It depend how you want to play your character. Sure both will be able to cast Wizard spells but they bring something different to the table.
EK give you access to:
lvl 0 => Heavy Armor & Constitution saving throw
lvl 2 => Action Surge (being able to cast more than 1 spell per turn can be gamebreaking)
lvl 6 => More ASI/Feat
lvl 5-11 => Extra Attack
lvl 7 => Use bonus action to attack after Cantrip
lvl 10 => Eldritch Strike (Saving Throw with Disadvantage)
Each 3 lvl => More Spellslots and/or Spell Level
When Wizard give you:
lvl 0 => Wisdom saving throw
lvl 1 => Regain Spellslots per Wizard level
Each lvl => More Spellslots and/or Spell Level
And more depending you Wizard Subclass.
Depending how you wanna play your character, those abilities can be more or less interesting. For me, the hardest choices is what abilities I want to drop for more wizards level and I never go beyond level 11 EK. It's even harder, if you know your campaign max level because the balance between the two became way harder. To help, I always ask this simple question: " Are you dealing damage with your Weapon Attack or with you Cantrip/spells?" If you choice weapon than you should get extra attack and EK is your only option until you get it. But with Cantrip/Spells it became easier to take plenty of Wizard level as soon as possible (EK level 3 or even level 2) if you didn't want War Magic and Eldritch Strike abilities.
@@ridgecabernet1933 Eldritch Strike is so good, giving disadvantage against your spells save DC is really strong. I really like Hold Person with Eldritch Strike. It became really hard for the Humanoid to succeed the Wisdom saving throw with disadvantage every turn. I really like the idea of whiping someone before casting Suggestion too. But I don't know how you get 20 Spell save DC ( 8 + 4 + 5 = 17 )?
I really like the Abjuration Wizard too for is Arcane Ward that combo really well with all the defensive Abjuration spells you would use, the extra survivability it give and the concentration that became harder to break.
Monty’s sigh said it all... PDK.
Under the right circumstances a Level 20 Samurai Fighter can attack 22 times in a single round.
Attack Action (4)
Bonus Action Attack (5)
Rapid Strike (6)
Haste Attack (7)
Action Surge Attack (11)
Drop to zero and Strength Beyond Death gives you a new turn repeat above (22)
Really embodies the anime protagonist idea of slashing 30 times a second
23 if you get to use your opportunity attack
I’d hoped you would include Gunslinger. Great lists. Keep em coming
25:50 Monty says that Fighters can get advantage on demand. Can anyone please explain how? I am not counting Flanking for now (solo frontline) and getting a feat like Find Familiar is an investment the Samurai doesn't have to make (and it can easily be killed) so i don't really get the first C ranking. I am also excluding spells from party members for now because i wouldn't say they are "on demand" for a Fighter.
I'm also curious to know what he meant
Still hoping they add a tweaked general-use version of Echo Knight to Tasha's.
They could nerf it, I just really enjoy the flavor and RP/Social utility on a fighter framework without adding spell slots and memorization like Eldritch Knight. It all flows together really well.
The Rune Knight should be coming in Tasha's, it sounds like pretty much what you describe
A few defences of the samurai:
Proficiency in wisdom saves is wonderful and shores up a common weakness of fighters
Action surge + tireless spirit +rapid strike = 9 attacks on a turn at highest level, 7 of them with advantage, that with a greatsword and great weapon master is nuts
Saving second wind for your strength before death turn essentially means that after your free turn you won’t even drop unconscious
Admittedly a lot of this is high level stuff but at lower levels you don’t have as many sources of advantage so tireless spirit is even more useful if anything
A B rating is a good rating. It's S-tier in the right campaign, it's just not on the same level as the Battlemaster.
Love the summary: "Take that, Purple Dragon Knight."
With the Samurai's fighting spirit it really depends on the encounter rate of your campaign. 3 uses per day seems like really poor, but the modern trend of more narrative games tends to have fewer encounters than what the DMG prescribes and even sometimes only one fight per day and in that context not only the 3 full turns with advantage that fighting spirit gives you are much more significant but also the wisdom saving throws proficiency and the wisdom addition to persuasion can be very handy. I agree with the B rating, in the right campaign it can very well outperform every other fighter
10:55 eldritch knight
Casting a cantrip makes it so they can use a bonus action to make an attack.
A use for true strike perhaps?
Sorry but no, True Strike is the worst cantrip and have no use. It's better to use a Offensive Cantrip like Booming Blade and swing again as bonus action.
While they didn't talk about true strike in the video, they did say, in general, it is better to attack twice than to get advantage with one attack when talking about the samurai subclass. It's mostly because you have the chance to deal damage twice rather than to just do damage once.
Only if you have something that means you really need to land the attack. Otherwise 2 attacks is still better than one attack with advantage.
I had an EK with a homebrew magic sword with 100 d6 charges of lightning, you could spend these on your attack for extra damage with no cap (it was a high level game), but you had to spend them before rolling your attack and if you missed they were gone. So you could dish out 100d6 of extra damage on your swing but God forbid you miss if you choose to do that.
The thing you didn't mention about the echo knight is that it adds mobility to a class that is normally in heavy armor. That teleport feature alone is insane. Even if the echo couldn't attack.
Samurai is one of my favorite flavors The fighting spirit feels so good when you attack as a fighter
First off great video as always guys I have been a long time fan. Second a word of warning about whoever is going to be the DM with an Echo Knight.....you are going to have a bad time they are so damn powerful and versatile. I am the DM in my game right now and I have an Echo Knight with the sentinel feat and pole arm expert they can pretty much just stop a creature from moving at all. They will come up with so many ways to get around pretty much anything in their way which is awesome to see players come up with clever solutions but it can be frustrating sometimes as a DM lol so just a friendly heads up! but the class itself looks like an absolute blast to play! I would love to see a game of one of you guys playing one!
I'm about to play dnd for my first time ever and our dm is apparently pretty experienced and good. hopefully he's ready for it lol. I looked into all sorts of characters but echo knight just sounded so cool I went with it
Why no discussion of shadow blade as an EK? Casting it with a 3rd level spell gives you a weapon that deals 3d8 having the option to deal 18d8 +30 at level 14 is sweet.
How do you figure 18d8? I figure at 20th level you've got 4 attacks with a max 3d8 weapon, which is 12d8. So where does the 18 come from?
@@Nurk0m0rath action surge?
@@vincentvangoo7078 Hmm, maybe, if the OP was talking about an
@@Nurk0m0rath he meant as soon as you can have 3lvl spellslots. Propably
There's battle master, arcane archer (battle master lite) and purple dragon Knight (diet combat king/knockoff battle master)
Loving the subclass rankings, watching these actually has me enticed to try and convince my group in doing a 1shot running the worst subclasses as something of a challenge and to change things up.
I've been playing an eldritch knight in one of our current games and I'd have to give it an S-Tier ranking. When we started out, for the first five levels or so, our Paladin and I were rolling for our hp, and of course, I rolled 2's and 3's until I couldn't take it and just started taking the flat rolls. Because of the lower HP I took spells like Absorb Elements, Shield and Misty Step just in case I needed to get myself out of a bad spot. Well, last session we were trying to get on a ship to leave and got into a fight with some local inquisitors, which lead to us getting ambushed by two from the BBEG's conclave. I decided, since my character's roleplay dictated it, that I would "hold the door" so to speak. I stood toe to toe with the big, bad, giant minotaur for four rounds while the rest of the party got safely to the ship then misty-stepped away to save my own ass... If I didn't have 4 uses of shield, and a 2nd level spell slot left, I wouldn't have made it away, he took half my hp in the first round. Instead of rolling another character (which I honestly thought would have been the case), I got to be the hero of the day.
Player one month into the campaign: So what level do I get my purple dragon?
I think you judged Samurai very harshly.
Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter.
Fighting Spirit paired with Action Surge and Rapid Strike, he can make 9 attacks, 8 of which will have advantage.
This is 90+18d6+45 for a GWM build or 90+9d8+45 for a Sharpshooter build.
He can repeat this next turn.
And then, having no more action surges he can just take 5 attacks, 4 of which will have advantage.
If half of these attacks hit, and more than half of them will, nothing will be left standing.
Another great plus is a free built-in Wisdom save proficiency. Covers one of the fighter's greatest weaknesses and frees up the ASI or feat you'd give up on Resilient.
I’m playing a samurai in dungeon of the mad mage. I absolutely wreck. Fighting spirit is insanely good when paired with action surge and great weapon master.
DotMM is a huge dungeon crawl too. How much encounters do you have per Long Rest?
4th ed =Warlord; 3.5 had Marshal;
Literally the only niche reason I ever built a character w/PDK was making a 20th level Artificer Artillerist lv17, Fighter lv3 to be Barrett from FFVII, main reason to do fighter was for Action Surge and the UA Fighting Style Close Quarters Shooter, and since the whole build was about blasting w/spells and not even bothering w/weapon attacks Banneret was the best one just for the little bit of extra healing w/his 2nd Wind and that I'd already given him Martial Adept for Rally (Also for the pun of Barrett being a Banneret)
I really like the Eldritch Knight and agree with the A classing. Great name of the class as well.
My only complaint with the name is that Eldritch to me makes me think of dark or unnatural magic like the Warlock. I’ve always thought a more appropriate name would be like Spellsword or Magus. Don’t get me wrong I love the name, I just always found it misleading. When I first read it I was like “Oh cool, a Fighter with Warlock abilities I love that!” Then I learned that’s not what it was.
@@countkingpen Haha, I hear you and agree the class name is a little misleading. Spellsword/Spellblade would've been great and they're my current favourite character archetype. But if you want a fighter with warlock abilities, I guess that's why Hexblade Warlock exists.
@@elsyfir7238 I disagree on that description of Hexblade. Hexblade isn’t fighter with warlock abilities, it’s a Warlock who got tired of getting murked in melee and learned to use a blade. If they wanted it to be more fighterish, the 6th level ability should have just been extra attack, rather than making extra attack into an invocation. Though I would love a Fighter subclass that is basically Eldritch Knight but for Warlocks, with Pact Magic and maybe even a few invocations. That could be dope.
@@countkingpen Well, I didn't mean that in quite the literal sense as you put it. I see your qualms with it, but in a sense it's also good that their extra attack came from an invocation, which frees up their 6th level feature. But Hexblade's 6th level feature is rather situational and lackluster too, I guess it's because invocations are generally good and players would want to not feel forced to take an invocation just to get extra attack.
Honestly though, the main thing with fighter is extra attack, and having played martial classes enough in 5e myself, I'm content with other classes that have spells also having extra attack through whichever method, and making me feel like a fighter anyway. Of course you don't get Action Surge, but Hexblade is already frontloaded with a lot of strong features early on anyway, plus short rest spell slots.
I suggest looking into getting COFSA(The Compendium of Forgotten Secrets Awakening), a home brew book with new spells and subclasses, catered mostly to Warlocks. There are some subclasses that also give extra attack through an invocation, but really, regardless of extra attack being a class feature or invocation, you take and lose something either way. I think it's fair to use an invocation for extra attack because at 5th level you also get access to 3rd level spells for pact magic, which is a huge power spike. I'd say that was for balance purposes if anything. Fighter's already a primarily short rest class; Warlock is too, and Hexblade just gets to do what Fighter does but with the addition of spells on short rest, where their slots aren't held back like half or one third casters. Hell, you can always multi class the two so you can get action surge as well.
@@elsyfir7238 I have heard of and read most of the CoFSA and I definitely get why you brought it up. The main reason I mentioned the 6th level should be extra attack is that as you so eloquently put, it is lackluster and very situational. Due to my personal play style, I often play either pure martials, or half-casters/Gishes. So while yeah, having Hexblade need to spare an invocation on extra attack ain’t the end of the world or anything, I still think it’s kinda dumb. But regardless. I definitely can see your point as well.
Tashas really opened up more uses for the EK. Taking Fey Touched gives access to Misty Step and Hex (in case you're worried about hitting creatures with spell saves).
Alternatively (additionally?) you could take the Devil's Sight invocation and make the Darkness spell a viable choice.