Fighter - Knight-Invoker
Rowan Kenrith (Throne of Eldraine Key Art), by Magali Villenueve © Wizards of the Coast LLC
The Knight-Invoker fighter archetype is a true spellsword, a warrior able to call in powerful evocation magic and alternate spellcasting with empowered blows.
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The Knight-Invoker is honestly part 1 of a two-part experiment, an attempt to redesign the Eldritch Knight in a way that actually succeeds at its goals. I'll talk about the Knight-Invoker a bit, then circle back to the EK further down.
Design-wise: The Knight-Invoker's core concept is a 1/3-fighter that only gets offensive magic. (And, uh, Sending I guess, but that's WotC's fault.) They get standard 1/3 casting at level 3 (and also the ability to use a weapon as a focus, which TBH I think most DMs let EKs get away with even though it's not written into their features). Imbued Weapon is their distinctive feature - their weapon attacks hit harder after they cast offensive spells, giving them an incentive to alternate spellcasts and sword blows. Thaumic Shielding kicks in at level 7, giving them a reliable defensive feature which also supplies a slight offensive boost. Magical Might also starts to apply at 7, giving a slow-paced solution if they're struggling to raise their Intelligence to support their spellcasting properly. Rapid Casting at 10 copies the EK's War Magic feature, but in this case, it mostly provides some flexibility and serves as a quality-of-life feature. The main goodie at 10 is Lasting Imbuement, which dramatically ups the ultimate damage they can get out of Imbued Weapon. Invoker's Recovery at 15 is just baby Arcane Recovery, helping stretch their slots further, and at 18 Evocation Expertise buffs up all their spell damage.
On Eldritch Knights: EK is a fine subclass, but it doesn't really function at all intuitively. For one, played optimally, it gets a really weird pattern - attacking at levels 1-2, cantrips at 3-4, attacking at 5-6, War Magic at 7-10, and back to attacking for 11-20. For another, a new player might assume that it does a great job blasting enemies with evocation spells - but they're almost always a worse choice than self-buffing and then relying on swords and cantrips. The problem's partly that they don't have any reason to cast spells before level 7, but also structural. With access to abjuration and evocation, EKs almost always want to focus on abjuration (or on the few spells they get to learn from any school they want). Evocation spells just scale really poorly if you don't have high Int, and even with a fighter's extra ASIs, they can't afford high Int. So my solution is to split them in two, creating a blaster-fighter in the Knight-Invoker and an abjuration warrior (not written yet, WIP name Fortress Knight). I'll whip up the second subclass at a later date, but the first one's ready to go, so let me know what you think!
If you like this, come tell me what you think in discord!
