Lv 19 now. In my second life, decided to play as a pale master/eldritch knight. Some enemies, mainly beholders uses anti magic ray. In my first life, I had to let my skeleton knight damage then. Now, I can just attack him, I have medium armor, an scepter in the right hand and a large shield in the left, my AC is almost 40 with almost no optimization, and my death aura provide healing, meaning that I can have a barbarian hireling dishing a lot of damage instead of a cleric, so if I can't cast, I am attacking with my skeleton hitting easily for 60 damage + the hireling + I, with the feats allowing using INT to hit + 6d10 damage from spellsword and this not counting with magical buffs. If I fall under 50% hp, a arcane barrier appears soaking 25% of the damage and the discorporation form PM too. My melee attacks also has a tiny chance of casting dominate on my enemies.
Amazing build, is a necromancer first and a death knight second, but having some melee capabilities to when you can't cast spells is amazing. Also, constructs, before I had to use expensive spells like disintegrate or meteor swarm to deal with then. Now I can just mash then and use my aura and armor to survive while my pet, hireling and I keep damaging then. I have way more durability which is amazing for squishy casters.
Now I probably can do ToEE part 2 without worrying about running out of spells.
Anyone tested Eldritch Knight as primary or secondary tree? The greatest downside is that armor is much rarer drop for wiz and that I deal way more elemental damage even on melee than physical damage.