The Eldritch Knight is going to be bad if you try to play it like a Battlemaster or a Wizard, but they're neither so you probably shouldn't play them like that.
The main draw of this class is that they're Fighters (Action Surge, bonus feat) that has access to a small, but strong selection of defensive spells (like Shield) that doesn't have a lot of compeition for spellslots (unlike Wizards and Sorcerers). They are also the class that has the best synergy with the Bladeward cantrip (War Magic, little reliance on concentration spells), letting them swap freely in and out of Barbarian levels of tanking without having to worry about how many Rage uses you have left.
In BG3, their defensive utility will slowly, but surely fall behind as various items can make up for that, but they got access to a different type of build; throwing weapons. Bound Weapon makes every weapon a returning weapon, so slap that feature on a throwing weapon of your choice and pick up the Tavern Brawler feat for double strength to dmg on thrown attacks. Because Bound Weapon returns the weapon to you with every attack and automatically equips it, this lets you multiattack with double strength at range and swap to melee without any action economy issues. You can go for the 3 attacks per turn, or class into Rogue for 2 attacks +Sneak Attack (use daggers).
Are EKs a good build? Eh, I wouldn't necessarily say they're good in the grand scheme of things. Fighters (and Rogues for that matter) aren't very strong classes and you usually only want them for specific subclasses in multiclass builds (Battlemaster for Fighter, Assassin for Rogue). This is a recurring problem with classes who aren't dedicated spellcasters or Paladins.
Last edited by TomReneth; 05/10/23 11:02 AM.
