So as the title says, I’m about to play in my first D&D campaign and I’m beyond excited. After DM’ing for so long, I’m really looking forward to getting to bring all that experience to a character, as I feel like I have a unique perspective and ideas for RP’ing coming from that side of things.

So I’m thinking I wanna play a character with magic. I’ve always played stealthy, assassin type characters or pet/summoner hunters/archers. I either would come in for the sneak attack damage and then eviscerate my foes or I’d sit back launching arrows while my companion did the heavy lifting.

However, I’ve been really in to the idea of the warcaster/battlemage. A frontline caster who’s infused with magic to get in to the fray and engage. I don’t wanna sit back and use control magic, I wanna come in and turn enemies to ash and dust. So I was thinking firstly of a Hexblade Warlock. Seemed like a pretty cool concept, summoning your weapon to go in and do damage (a la shard blades from Stormlight Archives which is why I’ve been so into this class idea, I’m loving that series).
I also know that there’s some war/battle based magic in Wizard and Sorcerer. I’m also a huge fan of the black tentacles spell and was thinking maybe a shadowy caster for that, but then I’m right back to stealth and shadows and I wanna try something new. Is there like an elemental infused fighting caster? I also considered Druid with polymorph into a tank-type animal, but I think I wanna stick to Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard.

I’m also open to suggestions of fun builds you’ve enjoyed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

PS We’re using point buy for scores, so I can build them pretty much however I want.

tl;dr Want to build a combat focused caster class. Warmage-type. Was thinking Warlock Hexblade but open to suggestions. Maybe some kind of elemental sorcerer that fights?