The Best Spellblade Class in D&D 

I kept saying sorcery and magic for whatever reason, I meant blade and magic, or blade and sorcery but my brain fried, apologies! At least in the subtitles it says the right thing ^^'

I think sorcerers should get a spell blade subclass. Imagine being able to melee and then using meta magic to cast fireball

This is why my favorite TTRPG class is the Pathfinder Magus. Spells go in the battle stick!

Bladesingers are really cool. At least concept wise

There is also Swords Bard, but it does suffer from some of these problems too. The best idea I can think of is probably a Hexblade paired with Bladesinger. Especially if you have the Warcaster feat

There was a dusk blade in 3.5 that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Meanwhile the PF2E Magus is just so elegant and rad dang. The whole idea of “if I hit you with my strike, I also hit you with magic Spell attack” is awesome. And then the idea of recharging it with another signature Strike is just I can’t even so good

They need a class that doesn't punish you for wanting to do magic and martials, like the hexblade where you can attack with your spellcasting ability. Then you also need to be instivized to use both in combat. Something like, if you successfully cast a spell, then tour next attack has bonus damage

What they're looking for, I think, is something like the Magus.

I hear 'with it's beginning in fifth edition' and am not sure if I want to scream in rage or just weep.

My favorite character I've ever played was a bladesinger. By the end of the campaign, when I had all my buffs up, I had 33 AC.

Or people could just be a Paladin. Often times, they routinely cast spells that boost their upcoming attacks (especially if you count Divine Smite as a spell, which it basically is) or they straight up cast spells alongside their attacks.

I think bladesinger actually was released before the hexblade. It was in the sword coast book while hexblade was released in xanathar's Personally I have seen good things from the Pathfinder Magus class

The Primal Magic wizard from DDAL00-13 "Knuckleheads & Other Such Curiousities" is a powerful alternative to the spell singer.

And that's why I homebrewed a proper Battlemage class - an intelligence half-caster with a balanced (I think) way to store a spell in their weapon and unleash it on attack. Also a subclass for each school of magic

5e needs to bring to life the Pathfinder 2e Magus. God I love that class. They are like Paladins of arcane, getting a form of Smite called spellstrike

I feel like the Magus from Pathfinder does this well, letting you cast spells by hitting people with your sword. Would be pretty broken in 5e so I dunno how you'd translate that over

I had to watch this video twice because i thought I saw you tealing a clip from She-ra for a brief second. It turns out you did, i was not expecting that.

We need more Melee attack Cantrips, maybe one that works with multi attack.

*Laughs in Arcane Trickster with Shadow Blade*

I hate how tanks in games aren’t given high burst damage potential. You know, like a tank.

I remember having to go through a ton of versions for my Spellsword homebrew class to warrent the use of both melee and magic. Got it eventually and it's been my favorite hb class of mine since.

Honestly they did a great job in 4e with the Swordmage. The class had a fantastic mix of magic that let them protect allies, punish enemies, and great mobility. Ton of fun to play

Clerics: "Am I a joke to you?"

Ah yes, Sorcery and Magic, two diametrically opposed styles of play, lol

I’m playing a blade singer right now and a large portion of the spells I have are the summon spells from tasha’s because bladesingers also get to a bonus to concentration saves, plus warcaster to basically guarantee I pass my concentration in battle. So it’s always me bladedancing with a spirit of some kind lol.

I homebrewed a sorcerer that pumped its spells into its weapon and the spells would go off on a hit with that weapon. The tradeoffs were it limited attacks if you did it in one turn, like a rogue with sneak attack, and there were very few ways to buff ac and hp. So I created a glass cannon fighter which I thought was pretty cool and actually worked very well.

3e dnd had a class in one of the supplemental books called battle mage. They were mages constantly training in heavy armor so that they could cast spells while armored

I mean that comes down to the problem of how DND is designed. Magic is so much more versatile than sword play and in the higher levels is very hard without magic items or some other thing to out damage a magic user. That's why I do like bladesinger wizard. With 3 lvls of fighter or artificer. That's the closest you can get.

Surprised they aren’t just condensing all these subclasses into a whole new class of Spellswordsmen.

One day Duskblade will get the love it deserves.

Pathfinder Magus class is good fun for this exact purpose :)

Pathfinder's Magus comes to mind; specifically the sword saint.

Best way I've seen it done is a "Woundmancer". We modified most of the spells to fit into the theme, essentially the Woundmancer would build up stacks onto opponents they harm with their melee weapon and then their spells would cast on the wounds themselves. It made things interesting because the damage or effects of most spells scaled with the wound stacks they inflicted on their target before the cast. Some spells imbued the blade to autocast spells onto a target if their wound stacks hit a certain threshold, like inflicting chill touch when wounds hit 2. We did that because players tended to focus on just spells or just melee so we wanted to make magic feel a little more effortless

I created a funny melee spell character. Protector aasimar. Spore Druid with polearm master and crusher. The setup takes 2 rounds but after setting up Radiant Soul, Shillelagh, and Symbiotic Entity. You’re doing 1d8+Wis+lvl+1d6 at level 2 with only one hit. When you get polearm master you get a second hit with bonus action making it 1d4+Wis+lvl+1d6 and whenever a creature enters your range you get a free hit as a reaction. Then take crusher allows you to move enemies 5ft. Move them 5ft away. Free attack when they renter with polearm master. Add this with Druid spell list and throw down spike growth down and you’ve become a menace to all melee characters. Also if situation gets tough you can fly over spike growth as a aasimar.

I freaking love high elf blade singers their just so sick.

As a forever DM: challenge accepted

One of my favorite things about 4e was the swordmage

Pathfinder Magus: "Armatures..."

best way to play a spellblade is to run a hexblade warlock and a sorcerer multiclass and use quickened spell to cast haste on yourself. cast a spell and wack enemes with your sword in the same turn. use the haste action to spellcast because i think it only allows you to attack once even if you have multiattack. use your next bonus action to cast hexblade's curse and the enemy is gonna die

Blade singers can be front liners you just need toughness feat at 5th level then go find the amulet of Constitution to buff that con

Thats what i love about Mage, specially the akashic brotherhood tradition(similar to clan of sorts)... so much freedom for all kinds of martial/athletics magics possible... just hard making cool ones coincidental

I really love the rune knight, not really mechanically a spell blade,but appeal to the flavor of a character that dabs on the arcane on some way and kick ass on the field

"Since it's very beginning in 5th edition" Oh yeah 5, the first number...

This is one reason I think pathfinder is so cool it has a lot of classes like the Magus which actually blends the sword and magic really well

Honestly arcane trickster is probably the most useful swordcaster. Since they don’t lose out on their extra attacks if they use booming blade

My bladesinger hasted himself. Problem over

And the pf2e magus comes in from out of nowhere with a steel chair!

I think the smite and melee buff cantrips were meant to be the remedy. Like casting booming blade to augment your melee attack for a massive magical boost in damage.

Arcane trickster stealthed so hard they didn’t show up in this video.

A wizard just enchants a warriors blade with fire and boom

Man, the more I hear about this stuff, the more excited I get for my own system's reception. "Learn from the mistakes of others" is totally a viable information gathering tactic.

The best thing I came up with in our campaign was a Paladin with A LOT of spell and cantrip based feats. And yeah, it first sounds stupid but when you think about it, you don’t really get damage spells and being a wizard always lets you have bad HP and AC when you’re not bladesinging. The Paladin instead comes with Heavy Armor proficiency, great damage output in melee and with the oath of redemption you get amazing utility spells. Also many feats say that you can cast the spell with your spellslots you have available, additionally to letting you cast them for free once. You can ALSO get a ring of spell storing to even increase the number of spells you have available. There are so many great things you can do with the Paladin alone to get this „Sword and Magic“ style character you wanted.

I wrote a Sorcerer subclass for one of my settings that is designed as a spellblade, lorewise being the descendants of Hexblade Warlocks or cursed/sentient weapon wielders. They have features like gaining temporary hit points whenever they make a melee spell attack (or spell melee weapon attack) and being able to ‘attune’ to a master, gaining the ability to use some of their master’s statistics and being able to give the aforementioned temporary hit points to their master instead of themselves.

I think baldurs gate has the perfect sword and sorcery class with the changes they made to pact of the blade. They made it so you can use your charisma for attacks and damage like the hexblade and can use any weapon as your pact weapon. This opens up so much versatility, you can play the fiend to get powerful fire spells and temp hp on kills, the great old one for fear on crits and imposed disadvantage as a reaction, or invisibility and other trickery with the archfey. It feels great to play, especially as a gith to get misty step and medium armor for extra tankiness and escapes

My favorite kind of character to make is "squishy caster turned party tank". I was gonna make my next one a bladesinger, but my last one who could sorta take some hits was a fiendish warlock who'd kill things fast enough they'd never run out of temp hp. Only fell a couple times through the entire campaign, which saw 6 character deaths.

Friends and I are homebrewing a Magus for our own personal "5.5e"

One thing I did, luckily when I rolled my stats I had pretty high stats so this worked wonderfully; Made a Drow, so proficiency with short and long swords, put my highest in int, second highest as con and dex since they were the same. Took a proficiency instead of an ability score modifier for light armor proficiency. Got my base ac up to 17 at lvl 4. Then later worked with our rogue who was working to turn dragon scales into a viable light armor/ cloak for protection. And got that ac up to 19. Along with the necromancy subclass that gave life leach, that wizard never had much trouble. Seeing as how you can always attack with the weapon in your free hand without bonuses, unless you have the feat, you can always cast a cantrip or a spell then use your bonus action for the second attack.

I had a campaign with a pair that found an effective way to do this. One fighter and one wizard. The wizard would create magic circles and symbols on the fighters armor and sword. Like a fireball spell attached to a shield for example. Once the enemy impacts the shield the spell would go off. I would allow this because one it took some prep time, so it prevented the party from jumping into battles Leon Jenkins style and it was fun to play out.

They could make it's so you have a limited number of times you can cast every spell and the only way to get it back is a long rest or to hit an enemy with a melee attack and have it replenish some slots it would force them to get closer to cast magic and force them to melee as well I think this would solve the bladesinger problem

Spellblade archetypes are my favorite types of characters to play lately. I like to mess around with different combos of martial classes and caster classes via multi classing, even at the cost of extra feats/higher lvl spells. It's a bit unorthodox in terms of what makes a Spell"Blade" a Spellblade but I just rececently played a Gold Dragonborn Pally, OoV. Crossed it with a Dragon Sorc (red) and got both to lvl 6. By lvl 12 I had access to mirror image, shield, haste, counterspell and fireball, on top of Divine Smite, AoP and the martial prowess of a Pally. I went with a fire flavored version, but you could easily swap it for any element or a mix. One of my favorite things to do in DnD tho is find ways to stack fire resist and have my tanky spellblade wade into a group of enemies and drop fireballs at his feet. And I definitely achieved that with this build. It's also a very good Red Mage from Final Fantasy type build. Which was an OG spellblade imo. Always fun finding ways to build different classes from other games in DnD

Eldeitch knight. Embues hammer with lightning, throws it with magic, retrieves it with magic. Strength Archer.

Pathfinder 2e Magus is the epitomy of a spellblade.

That's precisely how the original bladesinger multiclass from AD&D was intended to be implemented. Their proficiency with a blade and armor was intended to be mostly defensive, parrying incoming attacks with bladesong while blasting away with their spells.

As someone working on a custom sub class for sorcerers, called the armory sorcerer, it’s interesting to see where things have failed and succeeded. I definitely want to make a video explaining how it works when I get it fully fleshed out. At the moment I have level caps for one aspect, being the blessing or curse done by the gods at the birth of the hero. This allows them 3 items that they can draw from their hands, starting at level 5 they can only call one item, and only for an hour. This increases to 2 at level 10, and all 3 at level 15, with a slight increase in allotted time for the day. At level 20 they can used them almost indefinitely, with a limit of 12 hours of use. And definitely keep track of that time you have left, because once it runs out you will start taking damage. They can wear armor and can have weapon proficiencies, though this can be limited by the DM. The DM also has to approve the items, meaning my character who I’ve already built with this class will likely never get to see the light of day as a pc… as he has 3 op weapons…

I do love the Sword Saint Magus from Pathfinder, any spell with a touch range can be cast via your sword as the thing to touch with, using a sword hit roll instead of a magic hit roll, and adding the sword damage and any modifiers your sword has. I particularly like using vampiric touch with this, it just makes you unstoppable with how much health you can steal from enemies

Thus why I love the Pathfinder and the Magus class. Getting to not only cast spells and attack in the same turn (due to the 3-Point Action Point system, as opposed to 5e’s set types of actions per turn… ie main action, bonus action, etc), not to mention the Magus’s Spellstrike ability that lets them cast a 1 or 2 action spell through their weapon’s attack (and even through unarmed attacks in 2e) Then you have Arcane Cascade, that lets you power up follow-up attacks, dealing further damage on your attacks based on your specialisation with the weapon you’re using. PF2e is definitely a more offensive fighter when it comes to being a Spellblade style character.

Pathfinder 1e has an archetype called the kinetic knight, which is basically a spellsword but with bending instead of magic, and it's a ton of fun

the hexblade in 3.5 says hi

My idea is a Magic Knight class that imbues magic to the blades by a technique unique to that class I like to call "Spell Blade" which will allow them to cast a bona fide spell while doing melee attacks. Ofc they would need an entire spell list of their own.

I saw the khorne lord of skulls and the inner warhammer fan in me screamed with joy

That's why I like the Magus in Pathfinder, where you can use a full attack to cast and attack with only a -2 penalty on the attack. And it's not limited to cantrips.

College of Valor bards, "Am I a joke to you?"

Still obsessed with the Zelda music in most of your videos

This is one of the things I love about SotDL It has both classes tailored for gish-playstyle and spells dedicated to gishes

I think multiclassing sorcerer makes hexblade or paladin actually pretty good at this because of quickened spell. It's not *a* class, but it does the job. Really what they need for it is a solid sorcerer subclass. Maybe make it kind of the offensive gish to bladesinger/eldritch knight's tank, and hexblade's more balanced option.

Druids: i bonk with my magic stick and i control the battlefield with magic

Pathfinder laughs. Magus go brrrr

An argument could be made for the Artificer.

Me, trying to do exactly this with playing a Blade singing wizard and a hexblade warlock back to back:

The best option for casting and attacking sorcerer with quickened spell. If you want more martial capability, you can combine it with Hexblade, Fighter, or Paladin. Action Surge and Quickened Spell are the best features for spellswords, followed by Bladesingers Extra Attack.

I have a bladesinger/swashbuckler tabaxi in RotFM campaign and it is ridiculously good when paired with stuff like haste, mirror image, shield, and silvery barbs.

The magus in Pathfinder is perfect imo. Their staple ability is that any single target spell can be cast as part of a melee attack

A dip into sorcerer, or even just the Metamagic Adept feat to gain Quickened Spell works wonders for the sword and sorcery build. Action extra attack plus bonus action spell feels incredible. Note that Metamagic Adept falls off super quickly as you level up, but it’s an amazing way to get a basic version of the build at level 1. If your DM gives you a free starting feat, you can go Fighter + Metamagic + Race with a combat cantrip.

"Since fifth edition" strong research there

Yet there is a ton of amazing homebrew of sword + magic classes. I even made one that casts a spell on its weapon, and uses a portion of its effects when you attack.

there was a spell balde prestige in 3.5 called litterly spell sword, that could sacrifie their movement to charge their weapon with a spell that would be unleashed on the next suscesful melee strike. the clase was great with touch and necromancy spells.

Loooove playing my current Bladesinger

- Whenever you cast a spell that targets a creature, add 1d4 + spell level to your damage roll on your next melee attack against that creature. This effect stacks. - Whenever you successfully attack a creature with a melee attack, you may disengage as a bonus action.

I’ve been using eldritch night to essentially replicate Steve from minecraft.

I once played a Spellblade Vampire in an Evil campaign set in the 'Doomed Forgotten Realms' system, and absolutely I was just so damn tanky I was outperforming the Dwarf Revenant Cleric in terms of AC and health regen. Absolutely glorious campaign though.

Eldritch knight can also attack and cantrip at the same time, and a spell from outside aberration and evocation* every few levels. They also get a trait that lets them lower their opponents saves since their int is bound to be lower than normal.

I had much success with a Hexblade rogue multiclass build. Green Flame on every turn and opportunity to wear a thematically appropriate medium armor.

Funny thing, Pathfinder showed them how to do this with the "magus" class almost fifteen years ago. You'd think they'd take notes.

This is why my group plays 1e Pathfinder. They have the Magus.

Abjuration wizard dwarf who swings a hammer with greenflame blade.

I just started an even split between Fighter and Sorcerer and honestly it’s pretty fun. Use your normal action to attack and then Quickened Metamagic to cast a leveled spell as a Bonus Action. It couples nicely with a 1st level Fighter gets both Heavy Armor AND Con save proficiency. It’s not a perfect all in 1 but it’s pretty fun.

It’s probably not the “blade swinging spellcaster” that people imagine when thinking of a spellblade, but Paladin does fit fairly well ento the idea of a character swinging spells and magic together. With the different types of smites empowering your weapon with some kind of elemental or glowing phenomena, plus plenty of other magical abilities that mix with your martial powers, it’s very solid pick for someone that wants to mix martials and magics

Pact of the blade warlock with a hexblade weapon patron is my favourite build for this idea. They were an amnesiac time. Traveller who came from a doomed future, and while seen mostly as a charismatic and senile middle aged man at first, it was later revealed I was the paladin in the party from a future where we failed. We lost. Our families burned and our friends skewered. My faith was tested and I became an oath broken paladin, sought the power for vengeance against the bbeg who became a God. Acquired a cursed blade that constantly tried to take over my mind, and was sent back in time by a rival God to ensure the bbeg would not ascend to such power. In response the bbeg went back in time as well. And because I used to be a paladin, I never took Eldritch blast, my cantrips and spells were about protecting others and enhancing my blade further. And the payoff was very satisfying when I gave my life to protect the party when the bbeg sent their past self at us early. I insisted that they retreat while I hold the line, because there is no future without them. (obviously getting my memories back prior). They tried to move past me so I used an attack of opportunity to bind them. In place, and as the party fled, I gave myself to the blade, getting cloaked in a cursed armor (armor of hades), and the last the party saw of me was a madman getting skewered, demonic laughter reverberating in their heads as the bbeg teleported away and cast fireball. The real. Fun was both of our rolls were screened (dm ruled it that if the rest of the party is not in combat they cannot see combat rolls). I actually succeeded on enough saving throws and dealt enough damage to this nerfed bbeg that instead of dying I was captured, but the party assumed I was dead since I rolled a new character at the DM's request. My tarnished warlock was used as a magical battery when he wasn't being tortured. When the party made it there, and freed my old pc with great joy in their hearts, the rogue I was playing revealed they were an assassin contracted to kill the party, and that he only tagged along thus far because there were too many witnesses until now (the party usually travelled as a detached squadron of an army, so there was constant communication with a large force prior to the final conflict) and while the rogue was gloating, I rolled a back attack on my own character and because of the advantage, hit despite my level difference inflicting a curse on him, and allowing the party the opportunity to shred him. This was a 1st to 20th level campaign that took a long time, and my warlock was only 12th level so I was going into the final boss with a massive debuff from the torture and a really low level. (I did gain a level from the encounters on the way), however I was able to somewhat compensate because I had so many spells focused on support. I would just spam debuff in the back while. Leaning on my sword for balance. When the bbeg was defeated, my timeline ceased to exist and so I walked into a bright light where my wife and kids were waiting, and embraced my death with open arms. My vengeance completed and my life redeemed. Edit: fixed some autocorrect garbage

I'll take note, i have a few new subclasses coming (minimum of one per class) I already thought of doing ranged based bonuses, so maybe a Barb that gets to cast a cantrip on a target within 5ft whenever it lands a hit, or buffing its spell damage while close (they do have casting, but what level can be cast at during rage scales with level, but it's slow) Beyond that, I have a few mobility based ones, so them getting in close and zipping out works good too