Eldritch Knight Fighter: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Supplement swords with sorcery with this spellcasting fighter subclass, refreshed for D&D 2024.

What is the eldritch knight?

Some warriors are able to supplement martial mastery with a modest capacity in magic. Eldritch knights have both these capabilities allowing them to combine spellcasting with sweeping sword strikes in the same turn with some of their unique features.

This is similar to the arcane trickster for the rogue class who can also access magic alongside their martial main class. In some ways, the eldritch knight is also like the psi warrior. While the psi warrior doesn’t have access to spells, they are an intelligence based fighters with spell-like psionic abilities.

The likes of Geralt and Ciri from the Witcher series could both be classified as eldritch knights with their merging of swordsmanship and sorcery. Link from the Legend of Zelda and Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings both also combine some magical capabilities with a greater combat prowess.

Eldritch Knights existed in the 2014 Player’s Handbook and have been revised for the 2024 PHB. With that comes some important changes that not only make eldritch knights much more flexible, but also allow their features to scale better at higher levels.

My guide below will go through all these changes as well as how to build, optimise and play an eldritch knight in D&D 2024.

At a glance

Highly skilled martial warriors
Top damaging martial class with more attacks than most other classes
Supplement your swordsmanship with spellcasting, doing both in the same turn
Bond to your weapons so they are always a heartbeat away

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

Some subtle, but significant changes serve to keep the essence of the eldritch knight the same while making them function much better. These changes include:

War magic now allows you to replace an attack with a cantrip rather than allowing you to cast a cantrip and make an attack as a bonus action. This allows the feature to scale at higher levels while preserving your bonus action for other uses.
Improved war magic works in a similar way allowing you to replace 2 of your attacks with a 1st or 2nd level spell.
There’s no longer a restriction on the school of magic eldritch knights can use (the 2014 version only let you use abjuration and evocation spells). Now you can use any spell of an appropriate level from the wizard’s spell list.

These changes make a huge difference to the eldritch knight giving you loads of spells options to choose from now and making you even more deadly when using your magic and attacks.

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Eldritch knight features

Spellcasting – Lv3

How it works

Eldritch knights can cast spells, taking them from the wizard’s spell list and using intelligence as their spellcasting modifier. You get 2 cantrips to start with (eventually having 3 at lv10). You also start with 2 level 1 spell slots, eventually gaining access to level 4 spells.

Tactics

Spellcasting is interesting for an eldritch knight as you need to weigh up the effects of the spells you cast against the power of your standard attacks. This changes to some extent as you gain new features (like war magic). I’ll address how that might alter your tactics in those sections, but below are some things to consider.

Until level 7, your attacks will do more damage than your cantrips. Even something like toll the dead won’t do as much damage as a greatsword, especially as cantrip damage scaling matches when you gain extra attacks. You also don’t get the effects of weapon masteries with cantrips.
Damage dealing cantrips still have a place for tackling enemies that are resistant to non-magical attacks though.
You could opt for more utility spells in the time being, like mage hand or minor illusion for example.
You can also go for protective spells, especially those that avoid using your action (which should remain occupied by the attack action most of the time). This means the likes of shield and misty step.
Damage dealing spells of level 1+ can out perform your attacks for damage. The likes of chromatic orb can be a good option for this at low levels. You can also go for something like shatter for low level AoE damage, and as you hit higher levels, you gain fireball to chuck at enemies in the first round of combat, weakening them, before you charge in for the kill.

War bond – Lv3

How it works

You can bond up to 2 weapons. This means that you can’t be disarmed of these weapons (unless you’re incapacitated) and you can summon them using a bonus action, causing them to teleport into your hand.

Tactics

The circumstances in which this would be useful are rare. Disarming isn’t a common thing in D&D, nor is it overly debilitating. It’s also rare to be without your weapon. But for those times when you are, could make for a fun shock moment. Imagine Gandalf walking into king Theoden’s hall. He wouldn’t even need to trick the guard to let him keep his staff. He could have just summoned it to shock his enemies.

War magic – Lv7

How it works

You can replace one of the attacks you make with a cantrip when you use the attack action.

Tactics

This feature makes damage dealing cantrips hugely worthwhile for an eldritch knight.
A standard greatsword attack by a fighter with 18 strength (which is likely at this stage) will average 11 damage. In contrast, toll the dead will deal an average of 13 damage at this level. It will then average 19.5 damage at level 11 and 26 at level 17.
If you expect to be in melee range a bit more, consider something like thunderclap for it’s AoE property.
Thunderclap only uses d6s, but once you get 2 or more enemies affected, the damage output becomes the best of any cantrips. And as a fighter, you likely want to be on the front lines, battling the hordes making it one of your best options.

Eldritch strike – Lv10

How it works

When you hit an enemy with a weapon attack, they have disadvantage against saving throws from spells you cast until the end of your next turn.

Tactics

Sacrificing your whole action away from attacks at this level is difficult and is usually not worth the cost. This means that you probably still want to be making attacks this turn and on your next turn too but you also want to impose a spell saving throw as well.
The best way to tackle this is to use saving throw based cantrips as you can use these in place of an attack rather than taking up your whole action with a levelled spell. Fortunately, toll the dead and thunderclap are not only 2 of your best options for an eldritch knight, they’re saving throw spells as well. This means that it’s now easier for you to hit (and deal damage) than before with these types of cantrips.
You could choose to use a levelled spell on your next turn instead, especially something that’s likely to be a major save or suck spell. But, you’ll need to weigh this up against what you could achieve with your attacks at this point (which is considerable).

Arcane charge – Lv15

How it works

When you use action surge, you can also teleport up to 30ft either before or after the extra action.

Tactics

You’ll only get to do this once per encounter at most (twice once you hit level 17).
You’ll probably want to use this when you need to switch between foes and deal some mega damage in a turn. Perhaps you need the extra action to finish off your current target then teleport to occupy another target.
You can’t use action surge for a magic action now, but you can use the attack action and replace an attack with a cantrip. The action you’ve taken is the attack action even though you then involve a spell, so I’d rule that you can use 2 cantrips in a turn when doing this.

Improved war magic – Lv18

How it works

You can now cast a level 1 or 2 spell in place of 2 of your attacks when using the attack action.

Tactics

You’ll need to make sure that whatever spell you cast, accomplishes more than 2 of your attacks would have to make this a worthwhile cost. It will also need to be more worthwhile than casting a cantrip and an attack (4d12 with toll the dead at this level plus a weapon attack). Add into the mix weapon mastery effects and this actually becomes a little tricky but there are a few spells that could be worthwhile here.
Mainly, we’re looking at AoE spells or saving throw spells to knock enemies out of the battle.
The likes of burning hands, thunderwave and shatter could be great for handling hordes of enemies.
Tasha’s hideous laughter, sleep, crown of madness, hold person, shatter and web could all be used nicely to hinder enemies in significant ways.
Darkness could be an interesting option if you take the blindfighting fighting style feat allowing you to attack with advantage and others to have disadvantage on attacks against you. Obviously this is a lot of preparation to wait for level 18, but you can change your fighting style at level 18 once you can do this. Alternatively, work in tandem with a friendly spellcaster to cast darkness for you.

Building an eldritch knight

Eldritch knights are a little unique among pure martial classes as they have access to spells and use intelligence as a core ability. This makes them a little trickier to build, with some competing requirements to make them effective. Below I’ve put together some advice for just this though:

Ability scores

Recommended options

Strength or dexterity: You need to invest in one of these but can’t afford to invest in both. Either go dexterity for ranged weapons and light armor, or strength for heavy armor and melee weapons.
Intelligence: The effectiveness of your spellcasting relies on this so you’ll need to get it high. Especially as you’ll likely plan on supplementing weapon attacks with cantrips most turns from level 7 onwards.
Constitution: You’ll need the resilience from this as a frontline warrior. It’ll also help you maintain concentration on certain spells.

Options to avoid

Wisdom: Only useful for skills and saving throws but you’ve got too much else to focus on.
Charisma: Only useful for face skills and saving throws but you’ve got too much else to focus on.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	15	15
Dexterity	8	12
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	15	14
Wisdom	8	8
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

Acrobatics/athletics: Take this or athletics but not both as they tend to overlap. Go with whichever one you have the best ability score for.
History: You should have a good intelligence score and this is a decent knowledge skill.
Intimidation: Talk to your DM. They may let you use your strength for intimidation checks (the rules do allow for flexibility in ability checks like this).
Insight: A good skill for social situations. You may pick up on things your companions don’t.
Perception: Important for anyone in the party and highly used.

Options to avoid

Survival: Used far too little to be of much use.
Animal handling: Used far too little to be of much use.

Species/race

There are a couple of things to consider when choosing a species for a eldritch knight:

Resilience: Fighters often take a beating so any resilience traits are going to help you out, especially as it can be challenging to focus as much on constitution when it’s competing with intelligence too.
Innate spellcasting: As a Spellcaster, you can repeat cast spells and have the intelligence to back them up. You can also cast some spells as part of your attack action and with a limited repertoire of spells, having more available will help you be more flexible.
Damage dealing: You’re primarily there to deal a lot of damage to your targets making it handy to find more ways to deal damage.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Resistance to necrotic and radiant damage increases your hardiness. For celestial revelation, I’d lean on inner radiance for the extra damage. Necrotic shroud requires decent charisma which you’ll struggle for. However, temporary flight is always useful. Expect to use this for accessing hard to reach places or enemies. A bit of healing is a decent emergency option too.
Dragonborn (2024): You don’t get many spells as an eldritch knight so a Dragonborn makes a good option with their breath weapon granting extra, free, AoE damage. You can use it in place of one of your attacks too. Imagine unleashing dragon’s breath and thunderclap in the same turn for some major crowd control. Temporary flight again lets you get to hard to reach enemies. Plus there’s a resistance for better durability.
Dwarf (2024): An extra hit point per level is great for a frontline warrior. And for even more resilience, you have resistance against poison and advantage on saving throws against the poisoned condition.
Elf (2024): A skill and some resilience to things like the charmed condition is useful. The main thing here though is the extra spells. A High Elf can get you another cantrip of your choice and the likes of misty step, while Drow gets you darkness and faerie fire. Wood Elf is more about stealth which is likely less useful for you.
Goliath (2024): Faster movement makes you even better at traversing the battlefield. Your giant ancestry grants some very useful options too. For an eldritch knight, the durability of the stone giants, knocking enemies prone with hill giant and extra damage from fire giants are all great options.
Orc (2024): A couple of great endurance features here with temporary hit points and relentless endurance to save you when knocked to 0HP. Great for a frontline melee warrior.
Tiefling (2024): A choice of decent spells to add to your repertoire is good plus a resistance for extra resilience.

Options to avoid

Any race can work well for an eldritch knight so there are no bad options.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 as the ability score increases previously tied to your race/species are now linked to your background. Remember that you can either choose to increase one of the ability score options from a background by 2 and the other by 1, or you can choose to increase all 3 ability scores by 1.

You also get an origin feat linked to your background too.

Primarily, you want to focus on increasing key ability scores with the associated origin feat being your next priority. As such, I’d suggest the below are your best backgrounds for an eldritch knight:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Artisan	Strength, dexterity, intelligence	Crafter	Investigation, persuasion	One kind of artisan’s tools
Criminal	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Alert	Sleight of hand, stealth	Thieves tools
Farmer	Strength, constitution, wisdom	Tough	Animal handling, nature	Carpenter’s tools
Guard	Strength, intelligence, wisdom	Alert	Athletics, perception	One kind of gaming set
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Noble	Strength, intelligence, charisma	Skilled	History, persuasion	One kind of gamin set
Soldier	Strength, dexterity, constitution	Savage attacker	Athletics, intimidation	One kind of gaming set

Guard and merchant offer some of the better origin feat choices so likely make some of your best options for a background.

Weapons

The weapons you choose will depend largely on how you want to fight and what weapon mastery properties you want to be using:

Pure damage: Go for two-handed weapons like a greatsword, greataxe, glaive, halberd or maul.
Sword and shield: If you want to go heavier on defense, you’ll need a one handed weapon like a longsword, battleaxe, morningstar or warhammer.
Two weapon fighting: If you want to fight with two weapons for the extra offhand attack, you’ll need to use light weapons. Handaxes and scimitars are best for this. To maximise on this, you’ll want to grab a weapon with the nick weapon mastery property and grab the dual wielder feat for 2 offhand attacks instead of just one.
Ranged: Tridents and javelins can be thrown allowing you to make ranged attacks with your strength. If you’re a dexterity build, a longbow is your best option.

A big part of your decision-making around weapons should come down to the weapon mastery properties you want to use too. This mainly depends on the tactics you want to employ, but you can check out my weapon mastery guide to work out how best to utilise these properties.

Armor

You’ll either want to invest in strength and go with heavy armor (plate mail is best when you can afford it). Or invest in dexterity and go for light armor (studded leather is best). Going halfway with medium armor is too much of an investment in dexterity for this build when you also need to focus on strength, constitution and intelligence.

If you want some extra protection, a shield is a good option but it will diminish your damage output.