D&D Character Concept - The All 18s Eldritch Knight in life stuff and misc.

Imagine you roll six 18s, honest, in character generation.

STR 18
CON 18
INT 18
DEX 18
WIS 18
CHA 18

Now, you could just enjoy playing a Multi Attribute Dependent class as if they were a better balanced class, like Paladin, Monk, whatever. Which I guess would be fun. But I would want to double down on it, playing a MAD subclass of a generally balanced class that leans into being able to take a shit-load of feats, mostly half-feats:

SIR QUENTIN QUISP THE EIGHTEENTH, THE VARIANT HUMAN ELDRITCH KNIGHT, MASTER OF FEATS!

He likes feats! He don’t know why.

(As for background and proficiency, I dunno. Gladiator? He seems like a gladiator. Performer or a Gladiator. Or you wanna go crazy, go Celebrity Adventurer’s Scion. He’s the 18th, after all. That gets Perception and Performance. Get Intimidation and Insight from fighter. As your variant human proficiency, I dunno, Athletics? Dude’s gonna be 20 Strength first level, spoilers, maybe lean into it. An intelligence caster with no INT proficiencies? Gotta love it.)

So his two plus ones go to STR and CON, naturally. Then.

Eight. Fuckin’. Feats.

LVL 1: Heavy Armor Master. +1 STR (supreme early game tank, STARTING at STR 20)

LVL 4: Warcaster. (This isn’t a half-feat but leaning into spells with the EK demands it.)

LVL 6: Fey Touched. +1 INT (Misty Step and Bless expand your utility and support. Or Gift of Alacrity if you nasty. YOU GET INITIATIVE AND YOU GET INITIATIVE AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU, THIS WHOLE AUDIENCE GETS INITIATIVE!)

LVL 8: Shadow Touched. +1 INT (Invisibility and give Inflict Wounds to your familiar as EKs are legally obligated to take Find Familiar somewhere. Though Disguise Self or Silent Image are great for utility. Depends if you got a Bard, Wizard, Warlock or magic-subclass Rogue who wants the limelight in those situations. Being the All-Eighteens Master of Feats isn’t about stepping on other party members, it’s about being an all-around bad-ass melee-leaning gish who can do a little bit of everything magically.)

LVL 12: Chef. +1 CON (More utility and support to let your Bard and Cleric blast more.)

Now look at ya! Level 12 and you are maxed out in the three most important stats for
the Eldritch Knight subclass of fighter!

STR 20
CON 20
INT 20
DEX 18
WIS 18
CHA 18

And you got three more feats to play with as you keep busting your way up toward the twentieth level and three attacks like a boss. AND you have four more spells than the
base EK… AND you can play the poor-man’s Inspiring Leader / Song of Rest bard with
your Chef feat. AND… if you got yourself Mirthal or Adamantine heavy plate along
with, oh, a Sentinel Shield, you’re a tank that usually goes first… if you swapped
out Bless for Gift of Alacrity, you always go first, depends if there’s more than one
person in the party rocking Bless. If you would’a been the third person who could cast
that solid buff, sure, Alacrity yourself up instead, buddy, live the go-first dream.

I dunno what your melee weapon is. Something with magic to beat resistances that’s
one handed. As for attunement slots, shit, I dunno, depends how nice your DM is about
magic items. Attuning to a magic sword then just rocking the Cloak of Protection and
the Ring of Protection for AC and saves at Level 12 probably isn’t that huge of an ask
for a nice DM. A Luck Blade or a Luck Stone or both? Fuck yeah, luck yeah.

You know what isn’t attunement that leans into the short range teleportation options of
a higher level EK and a melee fighter with Fey Touched? Cape of the Mountebank. If you
can swing that, you just bounce all over the place with magic and with initiative bonus.

Hey, speaking of initiative bonus, the FOURTH most important stat for a heavy-armor EK
would be dexterity, yeah? Lean into the fact we can make this boyo as Multi Attribute
Dependent as we want. Three more feats to go!

LVL 14: Resilient DEX. +1 Dex (And all your physical saves are juiced. You’re welcome.)

LVL 16: Skill Master. +1 Dex (Whatever out of combat proficiency you’ve been using the
most in this game? Congratulations, now you got yourself an expertise. And another proficiency. There’s probably something your team would love having a second person
with a proficiency on, to gain help in skill checks if you got a GM who is in the “you can only help on the skill check if your character is also proficient” thing. Your Bard, Rogue or Wizard will love you. There’s a good chance your Bard put her or his expertise into Persuasion and Deception, after all, maybe skipped Intimidation even as a proficiency. You can be The Scary
Motherfucker with expertise in Intimidation, the barbarian probably only has normal proficiency in it and you, Quentin, you got the 18 Charisma to back that shit up! Intimidate them with your mad love of feats! Demand your enemy wear open-toed sandals! They’ll run to the hills! And for your other skill with Skill Master, Acrobatics or Deception both seem like Quentin’s thing? You got a 20 in Dex, if Acrobatics draws up. Again, see what the team needs. He’s a show-off but he’s not a selfish show off.)

Okay! You’ve now got 20s in strength, dexterity, constitution and intelligence, everything
that could possibly be core to your class and subclass. You could do a lot with your level
19 ASI/Feat. You could just, you know, if you’ve got God help us that one expertise in Perception or Insight instead of Intimidation, just bump WIS to 20 before becoming a whirring blender of stabs at level 20. But that wouldn’t be in Quentin Quisp’s character. He likes feats, he don’t know why. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut a half-feat doesn’t do a lot of good here.

If you hadn’t gone Warcaster, you could’ve gone Telekinetic then and Telepathic here, for a few more spells, a bit more utility and bumped your Wisdom up between the two. But an EK without Warcaster is like McDonalds without crippling diabetes so we can’t go there. So…

LVL 19: Lucky. (Because fuck you, that’s why!)

Now, of course, you could’ve used that stat array to finally have a Monk or Paladin that almost
kind of worked but where’s the fun in that? If your DM was kind in magic item dispersal, both
attunement or non-attunement, you’re a physical god of hitting stuff, barely getting a scratch
when they hit you, pinballing around the field with multiple forms of teleportation, having a
smattering of ranged spell attacks for when melee won’t cut it, hitting first in any event and
backing the Bard Rogue and Cleric up in out-of-combat utility on a pretty frequent basis,
allowing them to focus a little more tightly on their own biggest strengths.

You’re everything good about a melee bard other than the opportunity to be a back-up healer
(which isn’t always fun anyway) but then you’re also a walking tank and get three attacks!

And you also like feats. You don’t know why.