Grappler is definitely the worst feat. Pinning is almost always worse than just knocking them prone, and the errata has clarified that grappling higher size classes does not require the feat. It basically does nothing
When I DM I rule that restrained creatures can't perform somatic components of spells. That makes grappler a fairly good option for "mage killer" melee builds.
I think you are underrating Skulker. Darkvision only turns darkness into dim light and dim light imposes disadvantage on Perception rolls (-5 to passive Perception). Anyone who hopes to sneak around without a light source to signal their presence will therefore want something like the Skulker feat. Without it, you risk blundering into traps, overlooking hidden foes, and missing clues. Skulker is more versatile than Observant in conditions of total darkness because it also applies to active Perception checks. The only good alternative I've seen is the level 6 Eagle Totem Barbarian ability. Skulker also lets you hide in plain sight in total darkness even against creatures that have darkvision. This is great when combined with an ability that lets you kill light sources (e.g. Prestidigitation). I'm not saying that Skulker is a great feat, but for certain character types, it's highly desirable. Unless, of course, you are ignoring the rules about the interaction between darkvision and darkness, or simply aren't aware of them!
Well, I mean, the warlock gets to pick devil's sight "you can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet." as an invocation. The only negative is that you still do not see color. But it would not help you hide in darkness. And not everyone would want to take 2 levels of warlock. Freaks, but not everyone.
The perception-part of the feat is still quite circumstantial, imho. To get the most out of this feat, you would probably need to play a Rogue/Fighter multiclass with at least 5 levels in Fighter for the Extra Attack and 2 levels in Rogue for Cunning Action. You could then hide (sometimes easier with the feat) as a bonus action and get two good chances at a Sneak Attack hit per turn. Still far from the best feat in 5e, but it's something.
The fact that you cannot hide at all from someone can see you kills hiding in most circumstances. If you read this feat a certain way, then any low light situation (anything less than bright light is at least light obscurement) allows you to hide, even if they can see you. That's strong enough to be darn near required for any rogue.
@@BillWiltfong The whole thing is *very* DM dependent. Many DMs will allow sneaking *through* dim light in a non-combat situation. Many people will even argue that perceptions checks to detect them get disadvantage from dim light--- something I personally find insane, but DMs do that. But then: In a combat situation, hiding probably, usually, isn't your best action anyways. And in a non-combat situation, what are you doing sneaking behind enemy lines? The rest of your party doesn't have that feat. They can't follow you. You're jeopardizing all the scouting you've done up to this point by trying to go behind lines, and you're very, very vulnerable when you do.
Skulker can be amazing (especially to rogue and/or archer types) due to its ability to allow you to hide in lightly obscured areas. Keep in mind that even if a creature has dark vision, they treat dark areas as though it were lit with dim light instead, and thus, lightly obscured.
But you don't need a feat to do that. The rules stay you can attempt to hide when not clearly visible which includes lightly obscured. If you can only hide when heavily obscured that makes no sense as heavily obscured is when you cannot see anything, it's like pitch darkness, totally opaque fog or behind a solid wall so you're impossible to notice visibly. If the enemy isn't using the hide action then it's not going to be hard to notice them even with disadvantage on perception. With +2 wis and +3 proficiency, even with disadvantage on passive check you're consistently reaching the DC10 challenge which is an "easy" DC. Now it should be "easy" to spot someone who is not hiding and just somewhere in a dungeon standing guard or wandering around.
And one point about Elven Accuracy: a lot of high-end magical weapons have a bonus effect on a roll of 20. For example, the vorpal sword does its vorpal thing on a roll of 20, not on a crit. The only way to improve that is by throwing more dice at the problem. Thus, if you expect to pick up a vorpal or similar weapon at some point, you could do much worse than an Elven Accuracy Battlemaster Fighter using Trip Attack.
Those weapons seem really underwhelming... Even at a hypothetical 15% chance to trigger them on advantage and NEVER not having advantage, wouldn't a bog standard +1 almost always be better? Maybe the 15% chance to crit synergises well with certain class options to make it worthwhile there... but still, if my DM ever handed me a mace of smiting I'd probably throw it in the bag of holding and just use my +1 warhammer instead... It's doubly compounded by the fact that if you land that 20, chances are you weren't going to be struggling to be doing damage. I can think of a LOT of situations where I've lamented not being just a little bit more accurate, but I can't think of any where I've been in trouble because my crits weren't strong enough.
@Matt Yep, those are a rare case of such a weapon that's good both when critting and not critting. It's also super duper rare. I was thinking more along the lines of mace of disruption, sword of life stealing, sword of sharpness, vicious weapon. (bear in mind that they deal fixed damage on a crit, so it doesn't get amplified by the crit)
Props on repping Ritual Caster, Magic Initiate, and Inspiring Leader. Been playing a Bard with Magic Initiate for Find Familiar and Presti/Mage Hand. No regrets.
I've had a character in an underdark campaign that used skulker to great effect. Since darkvision turns darkness into dim light, it was very useful as the party's scout. I needed no light, everything (aside from creatures with blindsight or other alternate forms of perception) was rolling at disadvantage to see me, and I could see everything just fine. And since I am in darkness, I could even hide from creatures with darkvision in the middle of a room (barring those mentioned previously), so long as they don't bring any light nearby. I mean, sure, up top in the light, it's useless, but if your party opt to travel at night or in the underground, it's amazing. (And great for bad guys.) Yeah, my DM hated her. Also, about Crossbow Expert, I could care less about the crossbow related parts, but the fact that it nulls the disadvantage ranged attacks have while within 5 feet of an enemy. Any ranged attack, even spells. That was enough for me to take it on my hexblade and also go ahead and grab a hand crossbow for good measure every now and again. Sure, I didn't use the bonus action to fire it every round, but the fact that I could eldritch blast a guy in the back lines while keeping an enemy at bay from our healer and squishier wizard was worth it to me.
Regarding Crossbow Expert, its great on a fighter since they DON'T usually get a bonus action. Also, I think that the Xanathar halfling feat that lets them lend their lucky ability is fantastic. Also, most rogue builds are fantastic with magic initiate. Though it is really funny when the tier 4 monsters start using their reaction to counterspell a cantrip (booming blade).
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Paladins are proficient in shields and at my table that makes them proficient in all aspects of shield usage. I would allow a shield user with the duel weapon feat to make that bonus off hand attact with a shield using their proficiency bonus. They are trained to use a shield so this makes sense to me. They do not however get to add +1 to their AC for duel wielding with a shield since the shield itself already gains them a +2 to AC.
I'm using magic initiate wizard on my rogue for a pet owl, booming blade and firebolt. That advantage you get as long as the owl is alive is amazing for sneak attacks, the booming blade sneak attack does lots of damage, and then because I am a swashbuckler I can walk away and force them to take the booming blade damage
Loving your videos! I gotta disagree on Skulker, and most of its power comes from how darkvision works. Darkvision lets you see as if it's dim light in darkness. Dim light is disadvantage to perception checks (-5 for passive perception) and has a second effect with this feat, mentioned below. Now let's look at the feat again. Let's start with the Third Benefit: Every perception check you make while using your darkvision (because by definition you're in darkness to use it) is normally done at disadvantage (-5 to passive perception). Skulker effectively gives a +5 to your darkvision perception checks. I don't know about you, but for me, this comes up very often in our games. Scouting ahead through the darkness using your darkvision is a pretty important tool, particularly in a dungeon environment, and a +5 bonus is a big boost to that task. So many races have darkvision in 5e that an all-darkvision party isn't that uncommon. Now the First benefit is the corollary. You can hide when you are lightly obscured from the creature from which you are hiding. As detailed above, darkvision functions as dim light in darkness. Dim light is (drum roll please...) lightly obscured! This means you can hide from other creatures who are using their darkvision to try and see you. Unless they happen to also have this feat, or are using another form of senses like blindsight, you can now hide right out in the open while in darkness. This seems like a pretty handy ability to me. A rogue fighting in darkness can now move 5' in, attack, and move 5' away and hide as a bonus action, regardless of other cover available. And finally the Second benefit. Now that same rogue can snipe from darkness against darkvision-using foes, and they don't even risk being revealed if they miss with their attack. Which means they can use their bonus action from Cunning Action for something else other than re-hiding if they miss. It's a powerful feat. Some of it is situational of course, as rogues tend to benefit more than others from some of these elements. But that third benefit is pretty universal for anyone using darkvision, and in particular if that PC happens to be the one with the highest passive perception in the game who does a lot of the scouting. -Mistwell
Yep, I've underestimated that one. I think I've underestimated how many groups aren't using a light source. Also, glad you are enjoying the channel, you are a part of the reason it exists...
At my table, Proficiency in shields includes proficiency in slapping someone with them. Also, declaring you’re taking the attack action and being locked into the attack action is enough to trigger shield master. There’s no reason to nerf it like they did, it just wasn’t strong enough to warrant it. Take all it does, add +1 Str would be enough to justify the nerf.
Great insight! Personally would love to see more feats like Polearm master and crossbow expert put in 5e Feats that are building around specific martial weapons that give additional or unique benefits for using it. Something to make martial classes have a bit more martial flavor and variety with their weapons
Skulker doesn't belong on the worsts list. It allows a character with darkvision to operate in complete darkness without ever needing to light a torch and give away his or her position. Such a character makes perception checks in complete darkness as though in bright light--which also affects passive perception--and that character can hide anywhere against enemies relying on darkvision (without light) to see. A rogue can literally attack an enemy and bonus-action hide without even moving, which allows him or her to make an opportunity attack with sneak attack if that enemy moves on its turn. Also, as others have said, grappler is unambiguously the worst feat.
I'm pretty sure a friend I played with picked the Mobile feat after I put it to work with my winged Tiefling. It straight up makes you a swashbuckler without being one and I love it. Booming Blade, move a little bits away so the threat has to move if they want to smack you so that's extra damage. Repeat.
Good call on Inspiring Leader; it’s sort of the centerpiece of my Battle Master 8/Hexblade 2. Crazy bastard is just a walking dispenser of temporary hitpoints.
Happy to see my pet feat Magic Initiate up here. Not only is it fantastic for general purposes like you set out, but it also turns Arcana and Nature clerics into probably the best Gish class in the game. With Arcana, your domain skill should include SCAG cantrips. Pick Initiate Druid for Shillelagh and Absorb Elements. With Nature, pick Wizard and Shield or Find Familiar, along with the SCAG cantrips. You're now a medium or heavy armored full caster with very respectable damage output tied to cantrips, where any other cleric is going to have to spend spell slots to put out the hurt you put out on the regular.
We've recently found the power of Inspiring Leader in a game I'm playing in. It was my first pick at level 4 with my Half-Elf Paladin (Note we rolled stats so I had a 20 charisma). Not only have I given the party a truly massive amount of hp over the last four levels, I have absolute proof that it has saved party members from dropping, myself included. Additionally, there is a really really fun interaction if you are playing the right type of game. The limit on Inspiring Leader is that you can only give a particular creature temp hp 1/per rest. However, nothing says you can't use it again on new creatures. For our werewolf castle raid our DM gave us some low-level (and very high level) aid against nearly 100 lycans. I personally doubled the hp of every guard, wardog with silver fangs, my mount, ect. You can use this on some familiars to give them massive increases in survivability. This feat is honestly a competitor for one of the best feats in the game, I think, at least in terms of its ability to keep a party on their feet.
Great video once again! Small nitpick: At 26:00 you say that 3 dice does not triple your chance at a crit. That's technically true, but not really relevant: 3*1/20 = 0.15 ; 1-(19/20)^3 = 0.143. So while the diminishing returns for hits are important to mention, they are negligible for crits.
Was about to comment on this. For a regular hit he is probably right, but regarding crit fishing the third die is basically as good as the first and second. This makes the feat pretty good on rogues and paladins for instance. I would say it is probably still overrated in most cases though.
Michael Barnes it is very good. An often missed thing is it applies to “creatures” who can understand you. If you are a Paladin that means it understands you and gets the benefit of the feat. Familiars understand you, summons, people you hire, etc.
When I eventually play the Barbarian I've got planned out, I'm going to take, and apply, the Great Weapon Master feat in combination with Reckless Attack, every time. This character is extremely overzealous, and cares far more about dealing as much damage as possible than being precise or staying safe, at least at the start. Perhaps, later down the line, that could change, but in the beginning, vicious and unrelenting offensive potential is the only way this character will fight.
Also, crossbow expert is still great on characters who don't have many other bonus action options, such as most fighters. It's just less useful for rogues and rangers generally, though there are many exceptions.
That's very true, but it also means it's less useful for some of the characters that would use it the most. A fighter has plenty of attacks for example. Heck, I even agree that Elven Accuracy is super overrated, even if a specific Hexblade Warlock build can take advantage of it by stacking with GWM.
Every "overrated" feat I list is a decent feat, including Crossbow Expert. The only reason I list it as overrated is the reasons I mention in the video. I agree that some fighters (depending on Subclass) don't have much to do with bonus actions, but that will change as levels increase and they start grabbing feats like magic initiate...
The most important part of crossbow expert is the one that hasn't been mentioned: "Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls." It's not even just for crossbows, its ANY ranged attack roll. A character who's entire kit is designed around ranged attacks can get good mileage out of this part of the feature when they're forced to fight in close quarters.
@@JenoPaciano I've also seen a fighter with crossbow expert use nets as a bonus action too. Since it's thrown with a range of 5ft you usually have disadvantage but the feat offsets that and creature caught in it is restrained and has to use an attack to cut it or full action to break it. Very effective and great roleplaying for a Bounty Hunter type character
Rule of thumb on -5 for +10 damage.. If you have an initial damage of 10 and a 50% to hit, you break even. The less damage you deal, the less you need to hit to break even. The more damage, the more to hit. So if you deal much less than 10 damage, USE IT, unless you have Disadvantage or a High AC target. If you deal much more than 10 damage, DON'T USE IT, unless you have Advantage or a Low AC target. #keepitsimple
I totally agree about Inspiring leader but you didn’t sell it enough! Inspiring leader takes 10 minutes and affects 6 Creatures! Not party members but creatures. You are trying to protect the hapless prince, the family of mom, dad and there 5 children. Well in 20 minutes you can give them and all the partyba temp HP boost. To be clear you can over a short rest of 60 minutes give 36 creatures this boost! Also heck you can even include your squishy familiar as it is a creature! The only reason it is not a common pick up is that it does not have 1) a PC attention grabbing die attached or 2) +1 character stat to Charisma. However Two Points : Skulker is not weak at all. the biggest thing is that attacking doesn’t reveal your position! The target knows they have been attacked! So they know they are under fire and are not able to return fire. Think it is weak- try it with an NPC vs PC. After they are in full freak you will get it. Also, Great Weapon master is less then Sharpshooter because of available stacking options with ranged weapons. Even the combat style Archery negates the negative on Sharpshooter. And crossbows ARE projectile weapons. You over-rated feats are all fine.
I love your videos and am learning a lot about the game I did not know before. In 5e they allow you to move, attack, move some more, attack again... so long as you have movements and attacks to make. The shield master feat doesn't say you have to make an attack, just take the attack action. On your turn you have an action to do many different things, you have to choose one of these things to do each turn. So if you choose to take the attack action, you are now committed to that action, at some time during your turn you have to attack but it doesn't have to be right away, you can move first to get closer to an enemy, or you can take your bonus action to shove a creature prone and then attack it (if you are a 5th level fighter with extra attacks) therefore you could decide to take the attack action on your turn, then use your bonus action granted from shield master to shield bash someone, hopefully getting them into a prone position, and then make your actual attack roll... couldn't you? it is all according to RAW
at 21:29 I play shield master as follows: If you attack you can, as a bonus action do the shield bash (for Shield Master). Now keep in mind most melee characters can and will have multiple attacks; so... say a Paladin has 2 attacks and has the Shield Master. The Paladin MUST do his first attack, Then can Shield Bash, then all other attacks can follow. If the Shield bash knocks the creature down, then all following attacks are at an advantage... SIMPLE!!!
Elven accuracy is fantastic - it virtually ensures you hit with GWM, and gives thee chances of crit, which gives you double dice. PLUS your starting character may have 17 CHA, so this puts you to 18 in one feat. And it's brilliant for those CHA-based multiclassers like myself who have dips in champion fighter and hexblade warlock to get crits on 19 and 20. I'll get a 19% chance to crit without it, and about 28% with it. Then because there is more chance to bring my adversary to 0hp, my Great Weapon Master gives me yet another attack beyond the extra crit dice. Plus when I rit, I can smite with pally or warlock too, for double damage on that... I went to the thinkDM page, and boy, his way of thinking is very wrong. Here's my reply to that:- "“You have a 55% chance of rolling a 10 or higher. With advantage, you have an 80% chance-a 25% boost! With “super advantage,” you have a 91% chance-only another 11%!” I think you’ve missing something here. Going from a 45% chance of missing to 20% chance of missing ins’t the measly 25% boost that it appears on paper, it means you will missing 1 in 5 attacks, as opposed to nearly half. and going from a 20% chance of missing to 9%, you can’t think of this in terms of 11% difference, it’s a colossal difference again, your chance of missing just went from 1 in 5 to about 1 in 11! Elven accuracy is fantastic, especially is you’re crit hunting."
23:09 Crossbow Expert Feat -- is great for spellcasters "Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls." which has been repeatedly clarified by the designers as intended for use with spellcasters. If you've ever had your caster smothered by enemies, you'd recognize how beneficial that single feature is.
2 years late, but would you really want to give up some other critical feats/ASIs for that one advantage? Wouldn't you rather just have a save spell/cantrip for those situations where you really want to do damage even if an enemy is breathing down your neck? Heck, I don't think there are many circumstances where the damage from a cantrip is going to turn the tide so much it's better than the dodge or disengage action for just staying alive/maintaining concentration. Heck, if you just want to occasionally have a better chance of hitting when you would otherwise have disadvantage, just lucky to turn it into super advantage 3 times a day.
@@josephdouglas5242 Eldrich Blast is one hell of a cantrip, it's better than longbow damage. Also, you automatically critical prone opponents if you attack from the adjacent square. And spellcasters have multiple ways of knocking people over.
@@LockSteady I'll admit I didn't consider warlocks and their position as a semi-martial cantrip blaster. At least you get the gunner feat to balance things out with a +1 dex. Not sure about that auto crit thing though, I think it's just auto advantage. To the best of my knowledge, auto crit is for paralyzed enemies.
@@josephdouglas5242 Gunner is new. Like you said this is an old comment. Still, if your DM bans firearms (common) or if you're playing in adventure league and don't want to use TCE as your expanded source, it's still a good feat since xbowexp is core rule book.
Eurgh, don't talk to me about normally hitting if you have advantage. Screw the statistics, I missed three times in a row rolling 3d20k1. Also Elven Accuracy was originally better when it worked with Strength, so you could easily use it with Reckless Attacker.
Regarding dungeon delver, in order to know to roll with advantage to detect a secret door, you have to know you're rolling to detect a secret door. That either means the player announces the roll each time they enter a room, or the DM has to remember you have that feat and tell you to roll with advantage, at which point you can't help but know there is one (even if your character doesn't). All the same, I've seen this feat work well in trap-heavy games where being careful didn't help much.
You do benefit from advantage on passive checks in the form of a +5 bonus. This is why Observant pairs so well with having advantage on Investigation and Perception checks as it gives you a separate +5 bonus.
@@AgeOfPwn Yes, but that does rely on your DM to actually use passive checks. DMs are supposed to do so, but I've rarely played with one that uses passives correctly. That said, that doesn't detract from your point. If you DM uses passives, Observant is a top tier feat.
There is something in the phb or dmg that talks about improvised weapons and how you can apply proficiency to one. Essentially the rule is, if an object can be similarly described as a weapon found in the phb, then the dm can allow you to have proficiency with it as long as you have proficiency with the actual weapon type. The example they give, I think, is a furniture leg can be used as a club. I would personally allow proficiency with shield attacks using the previously mentioned rule. This might not be AL legal, but it's all up to dm discretion.
I have a charismatic fighter with inspiring leader and its great for not only the party, but for NPCs that you escort. A cool RP part of the feat is that if you have time, you can give this to a whole village.
Another great video and as always very informative. A few personal opinions from me: the thing with Ritual Caster is that it has the prerequisite of a AS 13 for the class from which you're learning the rituals from - if I'm gonna invest into a AS 13 I might as well take level 1 and get all the rituals, spells and cantrips that it brings. That's me, at least. Also, looking at Mobile I think of how useful that would be for squishies, and it's plain ridiculous combined with Rogues Cunning Action. I totally agree with Moderately Armored being super underrated - I never see it ranked high, but when I read it, it's a huge buff for a Bard or a Warlock. Another one that seems good is Defensive Duelist - it essentially adds your proficiency bonus to your AC, I feel that that's a huge buff and it scales.
Additionally, I would note that a CBE + SS Fighter using a hand-crossbow is the best ranged damage martial in the game. 5 attacks per round with 75 damage before you even start rolling your damage die.
Everice Alternatively with a Fighter/Hexblade/Devotion Paladin MC you can completely nullify the SS attack penalty via Sacred Weapon, add Hex/Hexblade’s Curse damage to every attack, and still run around in Heavy Armor backed by the Shield spell.
@@M0ebius Any DM who catches you doing this is going to slap you over the head with the PHB for being an awful munchkin, though. Personally prefer Paladin 3 (Vengeance)/Warlock 12 (Hexblade)/Bard 5 (Whispers) for my awful munchkin build because when I crit something I can do 4d6 slashing + 12d8 radiant +12d8 force + 6d6 psychic + 2d6 necrotic + 5 (lifedrinker) + 5 (CHA mod) + 10 (GWM) + 1 (Magic weapon or Improved Pact Weapon) for an average total of 171 damage.
Everice What can I say? I play with a bunch of munchkins. My philosophy is to roleplay characters, not classes. And I like your build, though I run a similar one that’s Champion 3/Paladin 2/Hexblade 5/Whisper 10, Half Elf with Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master with 1-hand arcane focus staff, shield, and dueling/defense fighting style. It’s more of a pure crit fisher given that modifiers don’t double, with Divine Smite+Eldritch Smite (4d8)+Psychic Blade (5d6). 10 Bard levels gets me Holy Weapon, more spell slots, and more PsiBlade dice. I thought about Vow of Enmity over Improved Critical, but wanted the always on improved crit range since I mainly use Faerie Fire, Darkness/Devil’s Sight, and Greater Invisibility for advantage.
One good use for Weapon Master is gaining proficiency in Whips as a Rogue. Unique combination of Reach and Finesse, and a Rogue can surely make use of a Reach weapon. When attacking an isolated enemy, you can attack from Reach to avoid opportunity attacks and retire with your bonus action that now is not forced to be Disengage.The D4 damage is low but Rogues don't attack more than once per turn, so the most damage will come from sneak attack. But this is only viable because you can add +1 to Dexterity in the first place. As a VHuman Rogue, I'd consider this when building a Rogue, go make VHuman a +2 Dex +1 to anything else race (which is very good) AND gaining a good weapon proficiency. Can you gain proficiency in nets as well?
If your plan is to stay at range, why would you not use a ranged weapon? If you are going into melee, the benefit is from things like Booming Blade/GFB or a dual wield attack on a miss, both of which are invalid with whips. There are very rare circumstances where this is valid, but not enough for a build I think.
@@Oznerock you don't always have time to spend to learn a proficiency, and you also don't get a +1 to Dex for that. That's the whole point of my comment. Of course if you start at higher levels you have the time but not the +1 to Dex. If you have an odd score, the feat might be useful! That's the thing.
@@cyanidechimp An Arcane Trickster has innate access to Booming Blade so you don't need a feat. You still need to be 5ft near the target for Booming Blade but later in the levels you can pick Spell Sniper which doubles it to 10ft. By level 8 you should have +5 to Dex, so you can use the later ASIs for that. Rogues also get one more ASI than normal. By coincidence, high levels is where Booming Blade really shines, so having the chance to do so is pretty good. And I repeat, it's something you can pick at level 1 with your VHuman feat. And it increases your Dex by 1.
I play a halfling battle master with sharpshooter and crossbow expert and lucky. It's absolutely broken. There are so many battle maneuvers you can you use. You can knock enemies prone when if they get in your face. Unarm them at a distance. And you can taunt them and the have disadvantage from everyone. It's suck a good utility class. Trust me your team will love you.
I'm commenting not because I think your assessment on the AC increase between light and medium vs. medium and heavy armor wrong, but because it's something for people to think about when considering an AC bump from a feat. +1 to AC is better if you have a high AC than if you have a low AC. For the increase to matter, the attack has to hit your old AC but miss your new AC. This means when one has an already high AC, a larger proportion of the attacks that would have hit now miss. That said, if you're never close to hitting 0 HP or your party's healing resources aren't stretched, then the AC increase won't change your group's effectiveness, even if it does keep your HP higher.
I think this video is very fair and on point, however: "It's not 3x the chance to get a critical" Isn't it, though? From a conceptual standpoint, you have a 5% chance to roll a critical (without factoring in class features), and you are rolling that 5% chance three times. From a mathematical standpoint, as I understand it it's best to calculate backwards since you only care about getting a single 20. Unless I'm doing this wrong, the chance of all three rolls being anything other than 20 is 85.7375%... which makes the chance of at least one 20 extremely close to 3x5%
Inspiring leader saved my party's sorcerer's life the last session. She got crit by a chasme... would have died outright if she didn't have the bonus hp from the Eldritch Knight who used the feat shortly before the fight.
Oath of conquest paladin is another subclass that can do the tanky lockdown thing. It's actually my favorite in that role from a flavor and gamefeel perspective, though some other lockdown tanks might come online faster, and can be a bit more reliable, since Conqueror requires failed saves and vulnerability to frighten to do its thing. However, in exchange Conqueror can lockdown multiple enemies at a time with aoes like fear or its channel divinity, and its lockdown is one of the most unforgiving once a target is successfully trapped. Anyway, just wanted to put forward aura of conquest as a class feature that makes at least a credible case for being a legitimate mechanical alternative to sentinel for a lockdown tank build. Maybe not flat out better. It's certainly a bit more conditional, but it more easily affects multiple enemies, and while some enemies are immune to frighten and thus to aura of conquest, there are also plenty of enemies that can move without provoking opportunity attacks and thus cant be trapped by sentinel but still can be trapped by the aura. Ideally a conqueror would still pick up sentinel, but split offensive stats with high dependance on failed saves in particular and heavy reliance on concentration effects despite not having proficiency in con saves rarely leaves asi's open for it. Certainly not before the late game, so usually it's kind of an either or.
Conquest Paladins are also pretty much the only build for which Shield Master under its new interpretation is still very useful. Knock down a feared enemy in your aura at the end of your turn, doesn't matter, they're still not getting up ever, still taking your auto-damage, still eating all your future melee attacks at advantage.
@@tiradegrandmarshal given how high the pressure is on a conqueror's asis, i'd argue shield master isnt even worth it for them. After all, you can still shove without it, at the cost of an attack, not even a whole action. And since, as you point out, the target can't get back up once proned, you're not going to be shoving round after round. It's not a bad feat for a conqueror, but imo there are always going to be more pressing options.
@@Malisteen I do play a Conquest Paladin with Shield Master and Sentinel. I took Shield Master as my Level 1 Vhuman Feat. In the early game, the bonus action shove was useful, and provided some battlefield control, but now as the character is high Tier 3, the no-damage on a successful Dex Save has been the premiere use of the feat. It's not the strongest feat, and I personally have a few reactions and bonus action that Shield Master competes with. I haven't had Sentinel for long enough to make a solid judgement on its performance thus far.
Well it’s not official interpretation and it isn’t in the new errata either. I am playing a Crown Paladin with SM and it’s great because of Spirit Guardians and other features.
Skulker is awesome for rogues. You can hide from any monster that relies on darkvision, anywhere it's dark. It's even better defensively than Gloomstalker's ability to be invisible in darkness, because you usually can't even be targeted while hidden.
Also an addition to Sharpshooter and GWM - many people play it with "mitigators". +1 Weapon and Bless halves the GWM penalty, while Archery almost halves Sharpshooter's penalty, +1 bow on top eats most of it and when Bless is on you might as well always use it. Oath of Devotion's Sacred Weapon gets a honorable mention here. A 14 Cha OoD Pal with a Fighter or Ranger dip fires at -1 under Sacred Weapon and strikes at only -3. And that's before magical weapons. And don't get me started on Darkness + Devil's Sight or the odd Wolf Barbarian backing you up.
Completely agree on Inspiring Leader. If i'm playing support I always go H. Variant to take this right from the start. Don't have to heal damage that wasn't taken.
Xbow Exp also allows for no Disadvantage in close quarters on both ranged attacks and ranged attack spells such as EB. It can be game-breaking in western/modern day/scifi campaigns with guns.
TM as addendum you could feat selection bases on party composition. If someone is planning on GWM, then a SM increases as you can give that party member advantage. If group has many ranged user then SM declines in value as they have disadvantage against prone. Sentinel works best if you have a melee friend to work with. Pole Arm Master and Sentinel is a good combo, but you need another melee PC to take hits as your AC will be lower (no shield) and you will be focused more. For a group that exploits OppAtt then magic adept works better since you can poach BB.
Chris, terrific video, superb content as always. I agree Magic Initiate is underrated - starting a new campaign with a (Twilight) cleric, Variant Human. Took Magic Initiate as the free feat (Wiz), but picked Booming Blade and Minor Illusion cantrips with Find Familiar as lvl 1 spell. Makes that cleric a melee force up front, esp with the added familiar to confer advantage. Great stuff
The reason Elven Accuracy is good isn't that the effect is so strong, it's not, the reason it's so good is that it's basically free, assuming you're attacking with Dex or Cha. Elves and Half-elves can both start with a 17 postracial, which means that Elven Accuracy gets them the same effect as an ASI to their primary ability score, while also giving them the reroll on attacks with advantage.
He didn't say it was bad just overrated. Its ok to crit fishing but not amazing. Its one of those awkward probability issues. If you crit on the first or second dice have a 3 chance was irrelevant. And if you don't crit its also irrelevant.
The reason to get Crossbow Expert feat is not the extra bonus action but the using ranged in melee without the disadvantage yeah you could just drop your ranged and pull your melee out or you can continue to use your ranged. Although you can say it is implied that it is meant for crossbows only because that’s what the feat is called but that’s not what is read and there was no errata for it saying otherwise.
Do you think a sorcerer or warlock would benefit from Inspiring Leader? On a completely unrelated question, is there any way, maybe through a Racial choice, for a Light Cleric to get Firebolt as a Cleric Spell? I want to be a fire-blasting cleric, but the bonus damage to cantrips only applies to Cleric cantrips.
Yes, Inspiring leader is a very good choice for either of those classes. No, there isn't any way for a Light Cleric to get Firebolt as a Cleric spell. You can get Firebolt through race or through a feat, but in neither case would it count as a Cleric Spell. The only way you could do it is with the Arcana Domain. I wouldn't worry about it too much, by level 8 when Potent Spellcasting comes into play, you will have lots of good level spells which you can use to cast fire spells.
Sad that tough wasn’t mentioned with my hill dwarf barbarian can get a average hp of 345 and if I was mean to my dm I would make him a totem bear barb but I made him storm sea aura barb
I find it strange that you would say that making a perception check in dim light is rare. Unless you are out in sunlight or a very lit location your probably going to be in dim light. And as someone what stated a light source only provided limited level of bright light. Dark vision in a dark environment is also dim light. Almost certainly if your going into an inside location like a dungeon your gonna have lots of dim light
Do we have a source on shields being considered melee weapons? Usually when I see an improvised weapon meeting the criteria for something like Divine Smite, it's because the feature in question only requires that you make a melee weapon attack with any weapon, which improvised weapons would count as - that is to say, they count as weapons *when used to make those attacks*, but aren't *themselves* "melee weapons", as I understand it. You could Smite with a shield, yes, but Two-Weapon Fighting and the Dual Wielder Feat have different requirements: that you be using two melee weapons, and I'm in the market for clarification on whether or not a shield is a melee weapon as an item itself, since the aforementioned features are looking for those flags rather than just you swinging them, like with Smite. As an example of how pedantic these things (and by extension, the people like me who discuss them) can get, when you throw a weapon, it leaves your hand and you're not "wielding" it any more, so when it makes contact with its target, the Dueling Fighting Style's bonus wouldn't apply to it - you no longer meet the criteria, of wielding it, or having it in your hand. I don't currently think you could make use of a shield for the purpose of two-weapon fighting due to it not being a one-handed melee weapon, but instead, armor. If there's a specification somewhere that anything can count as a melee weapon semantically and it doesn't need to follow the weapon categorisation system in the Equipment section et al, I'd love to see it, because that would open up some interesting possibilities, like with this Feat! In a system like Open Legend where armour is exclusively worn and hand-held items are exclusively hand-held, with shields falling within the weapons category and just having a special "defensive" property that provides you a Guard bonus like you would expect when holding one, I wouldn't doubt this interaction one bit... but since it's D&D, and I know these things get kind of noodly sometimes with what the designers intend, I just have to doubt a little that that could work. I want it to, though.
You could make a video in depth about Crossbow Expert and bonus actions. Which classes are the least hindered by this? AFAICTell, a fighter would have little other uses for bonus action but a hunter or rogue would hurt having to chose between their bonus abilities. But I don't know it all, far from it! You could make a succint video there! ;) Whether focused on (limited to) Crossbow Expert or just bonus action in general.
Personally, I was really surprised Grappler didn't make the worst list. That feat is so bad it's completely meaningless for the very builds it's theoretically meant for! A simple grapple + shove is just plain better control than the completely useless pin, and also gives you all the advantage you want after.
Grappler is a team strategy feat, not solo. That's why a lot of people don't seem to like it. The advantage is for you; the restrained is for your spellcasters targeting dex saves.
@@tiradegrandmarshal Well, you can hold down two baddies, give em both disadvantage on dex, and let your fireballs fly. Now four with the Simic grappler :D
i'm taking weapon master on my arcane trickster rogue with skulker and sentinel, that way i can use a whip for opportunity attacks to help enemy control! I plan to hide after each turn (skulker helps significantly with this) and then the enemy will inevitably move away because they can't see me. so then i'm almost guaranteed a reaction sneak attack each round, and the ability to shut down melee enemies!
skulker helps with hiding because even if an enemy has darkvision in darkness, you're still in dim light, so you're still lightly obscured! combine that with expertise on stealth and reliable talent, and you're looking at a floor of AT LEAST 20 for your stealth rolls.
I am so surprised that Polearm Master didn’t make the list. It adds a lot of damage early game, is solid mid game when adding more modifiers, and combos with Great Weapon Master, Sentinel, and War Caster late game. It also enables IMO the best multiclass gish setup of 1-handed arcane focus staff, shield, and dueling fighting style, which outputs equivalent or more damage than basic martial characters despite a delayed Extra Attack when you add Hex/Hunter’s Mark and cycle between Attack Action and Booming Blade/Greenflame Blade.
M0ebius It should be like Sentinel, if you use a Polearm it’s build defining so therefore doesn’t really need a rating. TM should have mentioned it that way.
Treant, i think you missed an important aspect of savage attacker. While i agree with your assessment as is, but if you consider that savage attacker is weapon dependent. IE Giant slayer adds extra dice, which are part of the weapon damage. I realize this is a niche, but takes savage attacker from not worth it to pretty good. That being said, its even better when you are able to take this feat after getting such a weapon, so its not a shot in the dark.
Better Lucky than good! Little nit pick, Lucky is usable 3 times per long rest, not session. If your session run multiple days, you can use it more than 3 times.
Christopher McKee I would ask why? You should have a group that prones people (advantage if 5’ melee) or OppATT them (use reactions to attack) or blocks enemy from using ranged attacks (fog cloud, etc) or polymorphs people to destroy them, in general small spaces (dungeons.). Iget what you are saying but it’s a 5th member of a group not your 4th member.
@@smbakeresq I know for me sharpshooter works a bit better because with archery that goes from minus five to minus 3. The lack of disadvantage and ignore g cover gives you a ton of freedom. I played on big maps sometimes fields forest or cities so it came into play. My Ranger loved the low risk high reward.
Ebonzai the feats are about equal, the play style with a martial PC isn’t. In a group with a tank and another Pc that can take hits no problem, if you are the only martial PC then you need to be in there. Too many people are terrified to use their HP pool, they want others to do all the work why they stay safe
@@smbakeresq my point is that Sharpshooter has better synergy with the matching fighting style. What is better overall doesn't really matter, because the same character isn't going to be looking at both of them and deciding which to take.
Christopher McKee it has a better synergy only with the mechanics of the game. If your DM is smart and uses Fog Cloud (shuts down archers) or the like if the enemy has knowledge then it isn’t. It a well known hole. If Archery was +2 damage there wouldn’t be a conversation at all.
Re: moderately armor you make a good point but using only 3 classes can use it. Bard (minus valor) rogues and warlocks. Monks sorcerers & wizards don't have light armor and fail to meet the prerequisites everyone else already have medium or heavy. Also those 3 classes are probably gonna have good Dex
I honestly feel like wotc needs like, one more light armor option. Also, Heavy Armor Master is a pretty good feet, especially low to mid tier, because most things don't have magic weapons...though there are an almost staggering ammount of things with spells, so it's not great. ...so many enemies with spells bogging down combat.
Great video I only have one disagreement and that's with crossbow expert but im never taking it for the crossbow part just the range attacking someone close benefit
Case by case basis. Are you a gish (spell casting front line fighter), then the war caster is a must take immediately. Do you have two odd stats (17,15), then ASI is probably your best bet. The best thing you can do is preplan a build. Roll or buy your stats, plan out how you want to play the character and which classes you're going to level into, and when the ASI/Feats come up. And then see which feats you may want, and insert them when it feels appropriate. But make sure to be versatile. If you find you're always the last person to go in combat, maybe you'll want to take the Alert feat, so you'll have to sacrifice a feat or ASI.
The calculation would be a fair bit different between the two, because of the archery fighting style giving you a +2 to hit. Basically, all you need to do is figure out what you need to roll in order to obtain a hit for any given armor class. From there figure out your percent chance to hit. And then multiply that by the average damage per hit. Compare with and without sharpshooter or great weapon master.
Skulker + Control Flame cantrip = Invisible Arcane Trickster in just about any scenario apart from daylight operations. Skulker is broken on the right character. Being able to Hide in total darkness against creatures with Darkvision is awesome too. Not having disadvantage on Perception checks in the dark is a keen cherry on top.
Watched your trickery cleric on live stream (not live but replay because of time zones) and i agree with you, trickery is such a powerful and fun subclass to play with if you know its strengths. Waiting for next that guide, good job as always Chris!
I will absolutely do that at some point. I'm kind of letting my mood determine what guides I am making at the moment. That said, of all the Wizard subclasses, Blade Singer I think is the most challenging, so it may very well be the first Wizard guide I do.
Love your videos bro, been homebrewing a it and have been seeing on to the spells to maybe fix some and look at what for a template and though hard, your video gave me insight on some point of the spells to take not of.
I thought you might find it interesting in relation of the savage attacker feat-I did an analysis once of the best druid forms for wildshape with haste (i.e. 1 big attack) and found each form at each CR. Later, I used those forms and evaluated savage attacker. Optimally, it leads to around a 2 point increase in damage (on average, most are slightly higher, elementals are a bit lower). This increase in damage only looked at their extra damage on a hit- and although the giant scorpion, even with it's lower bonus to hit would tend to do the most damage when hasted, that +2 damage looks even less impressive when you're looking at
I like everything but your take on Inspiring Leader. In my experience, the DM within the first few times of using this feat they just adjust the encounters to account for the HP of the party.
I'd like some advice. My group is going to be doing a campaign soon where we start at level 8. Stats are 4d6 drop the low, I managed to get 2 18's. I'm playing a Yuan-Ti Bard (College of Lore). My Stats are Str 11 Dex 20 Con 14 Int 15 Wis 12 and Cha 20 maxed out Dex with my level 4 ability increase. For level 8 I want to take a feat and I am having trouble deciding if I want Lucky, Magic Initiate, or Inspiring Leadership. For the party I know we'll have a Rogue, and a multiclass Warlock/Paladin, the other two I don't know. What do you think?
I think Moderately Armored gets bad press because not many classes have just light armour. They either have none, requiring you take Lightly Armored too, or they already have it.
Ok, a slight bone to pick with you, Treantmonk. As for Crossbow expert, you called it overrated, and said a reason for that is the cost of a bonus action. Fair enough. But you overlooked the fact that you can shoot in melee without disadvantage when you are in melee, and even MORE amazing, the fact that casters can apply that feat to ranged spell attacks, and suffer no disadvantage shooting (for instance, Firebolt) while in melee. Rather versatile in my humble opinion.
You're assuming that you always have control over that. No ranged person WANTS to be in melee. But it happens. Not every battlefield is a 1000 sq foot open space.
I did forget to mentiont that, and you have my apology on one condition: NEVER take Crossbow Expert with a spellcaster so you can cast ranged cantrips in melee. You almost made my eyes bleed when I read that...
Treantmonk's Temple I think taking Crossbow Expert on casters is actually pretty good for Eldritch Blast builds, particularly when you have Repelling Blast. An EB Sorclock taking it at level 1 (v.human) for instance. Or an Eldritch Knight/Hexblade MC that runs the Eldritch Blast+War Magic combo in melee.
Hawkeye If you are a Warlock who is slinging Eldritch Blasts 90% of the time it might be worth it, especially if you’re either variant human or have maxed out charisma. In particular if you have the Repelling Blast invocation then Crossbow Expert basically grants you a free disengage on hit on top of dealing the highest cantrip damage in game.
Heavy Armor Master is an interesting feat to me, as a level 1 human Paladin or Fighter DR3 lets you wade through common threats like goblins and kobalds with near impunity but the higher level you get the less useful the feat gets. Once magic starts becoming commonplace on the battlefield the feat has more or less seen the end of its usefulness but despite that because of just how impactful it is at low levels I can’t give the feat a low mark.
HAM is still useful at higher levels, but it does kind of fall into the niche of dealing with hordes of weaker enemies. This shouldn't be taken lightly, however, given how Bounded Accuracy means that hordes of weak creatures can still overwhelm a much stronger creature. Most martial classes have few options for dealing with hordes, so the extra protection from HAM can allow them to survive long enough to cut them down one at a time.
It’s usage declines but never goes away. I tracked damages saved once but stopped as when I got to 5th level it was over 200. That’s only 70 hits, so I missed some I am sure.
smbakeresq But the flip side is if you got a feat that ups your damage, a lot of those hits wouldn’t have happened in the first place because the enemies would be dead.
When it comes to hordes, damage isn't usually the problem; the problem is that you can usually only attack them one at a time. If you're a fighter with three attacks, you can, at most, kill three enemies in one round, maybe four if you have a bonus action attack. If you're up against, say, 20 enemies, that's anywhere from 5 to 7 rounds to clear them all out. Boosting your damage stops helping when you are already killing them in one hit, so what you really need are ways to hit more than one at a time. Martial classes generally don't get many AoE options, and the ones they do get generally aren't that outstanding, certainly not comparable to a Fireball from the wizard.
I generally agree with you (and you gave me the idea of a Longbow wielding elf champion 5 /college of whispers 10(hello swift quiver) with elven accuracy and lucky xD) but I'm surprised you didn't include Resilient(particularly con) or War Caster, as I would have at least one of them on any mid-high level caster, and war caster is more or less essential for a lot of gish concepts. Even though I really like sentinel I feel like it's more niche than any of these feats. Also I completely agree with you on trickery cleric, their domain spell list is just so insanely good!!
Fair enough. Chris did address it in the video though, and I agree with him that polearm master only truly comes into its own when you also take sentinel. In my opinion polearm master is also even more niché, not that that makes it bad, but other feats are great for a lot more kinds of concepts.
Lomme Kroken Polearm Master enables IMO the best melee setup of 1-hand quarterstaff, shield, and dueling fighting style. It is also the most dominant feat early game for martials, the best modifier amplifier mid game (Hex/Hunter’s Mark/Divine Favor/Holy Weapon etc), and combos with Sentinel/Great Weapon Master/War Caster late game. It’s good at every stage of the game!
@@M0ebius I definetely agree that it's good, and that is a very good setup (i suppose you could use spear instead of quarterstaff now too, couldn't you?)! But I don't think it's clearly better than Great Weapon Master for instance, and you definetely need to build more around it if you want full benefits, wouldn't you agree?
Lomme Kroken Well against Great Weapon Master it’s definitely a matter of power vs consistency, but I would argue that Polearm Master is much stronger early to mid game when your bonuses are low. However given that those feats are not mutually exclusive, ideally you would take PAM early and later combo it with GWM. But then I wasn’t arguing for PAM over GWM, but rather PAM over Sentinel.
Hello! Discovered you through Giantitp. Big fan of your content already, you explain well. Will be playing my first DnD game in years this week and will certainly use the advice :)
Treantmonk's Temple How you are calculating temp hitpoints for Inspiring Leader? At level 1, even with a 20 CHA you would add 6 temp hit points to a character and temp hp never stacks, so you wouldn't have 12 temp by resting twice. You could have gotten temp hp, lost it , and then get it again, but not every player will have lost all of the temp hp and a renaged player may not have lost any, so they wouldn't be affected at all by the second application.
I've heard that the hidden benefit of a warlock taking Inspiring Leader is that it makes your party members want to SR.
This is brilliant, going to consider this on my fighter.
What is SR?
@@MrShdutchy Short rest.
Wait, he has a UA-cam channel? I've been using his guides for years!
Grappler is definitely the worst feat. Pinning is almost always worse than just knocking them prone, and the errata has clarified that grappling higher size classes does not require the feat. It basically does nothing
When I DM I rule that restrained creatures can't perform somatic components of spells. That makes grappler a fairly good option for "mage killer" melee builds.
I think you are underrating Skulker. Darkvision only turns darkness into dim light and dim light imposes disadvantage on Perception rolls (-5 to passive Perception). Anyone who hopes to sneak around without a light source to signal their presence will therefore want something like the Skulker feat. Without it, you risk blundering into traps, overlooking hidden foes, and missing clues. Skulker is more versatile than Observant in conditions of total darkness because it also applies to active Perception checks. The only good alternative I've seen is the level 6 Eagle Totem Barbarian ability.
Skulker also lets you hide in plain sight in total darkness even against creatures that have darkvision. This is great when combined with an ability that lets you kill light sources (e.g. Prestidigitation).
I'm not saying that Skulker is a great feat, but for certain character types, it's highly desirable. Unless, of course, you are ignoring the rules about the interaction between darkvision and darkness, or simply aren't aware of them!
Well, I mean, the warlock gets to pick devil's sight "you can see normally in darkness, both magical and nonmagical, to a distance of 120 feet." as an invocation. The only negative is that you still do not see color. But it would not help you hide in darkness. And not everyone would want to take 2 levels of warlock. Freaks, but not everyone.
Skulker turns your Gloomstalker Aarakocra into an owl.
The perception-part of the feat is still quite circumstantial, imho. To get the most out of this feat, you would probably need to play a Rogue/Fighter multiclass with at least 5 levels in Fighter for the Extra Attack and 2 levels in Rogue for Cunning Action. You could then hide (sometimes easier with the feat) as a bonus action and get two good chances at a Sneak Attack hit per turn. Still far from the best feat in 5e, but it's something.
The fact that you cannot hide at all from someone can see you kills hiding in most circumstances. If you read this feat a certain way, then any low light situation (anything less than bright light is at least light obscurement) allows you to hide, even if they can see you. That's strong enough to be darn near required for any rogue.
@@BillWiltfong The whole thing is *very* DM dependent. Many DMs will allow sneaking *through* dim light in a non-combat situation. Many people will even argue that perceptions checks to detect them get disadvantage from dim light--- something I personally find insane, but DMs do that. But then: In a combat situation, hiding probably, usually, isn't your best action anyways. And in a non-combat situation, what are you doing sneaking behind enemy lines? The rest of your party doesn't have that feat. They can't follow you. You're jeopardizing all the scouting you've done up to this point by trying to go behind lines, and you're very, very vulnerable when you do.
Skulker can be amazing (especially to rogue and/or archer types) due to its ability to allow you to hide in lightly obscured areas. Keep in mind that even if a creature has dark vision, they treat dark areas as though it were lit with dim light instead, and thus, lightly obscured.
But you don't need a feat to do that. The rules stay you can attempt to hide when not clearly visible which includes lightly obscured. If you can only hide when heavily obscured that makes no sense as heavily obscured is when you cannot see anything, it's like pitch darkness, totally opaque fog or behind a solid wall so you're impossible to notice visibly.
If the enemy isn't using the hide action then it's not going to be hard to notice them even with disadvantage on perception. With +2 wis and +3 proficiency, even with disadvantage on passive check you're consistently reaching the DC10 challenge which is an "easy" DC. Now it should be "easy" to spot someone who is not hiding and just somewhere in a dungeon standing guard or wandering around.
And one point about Elven Accuracy: a lot of high-end magical weapons have a bonus effect on a roll of 20. For example, the vorpal sword does its vorpal thing on a roll of 20, not on a crit. The only way to improve that is by throwing more dice at the problem. Thus, if you expect to pick up a vorpal or similar weapon at some point, you could do much worse than an Elven Accuracy Battlemaster Fighter using Trip Attack.
That's as circumstantial as a Champion Fighter wielding the artifact weapon 'Wave', which is probably the most broken martial build in the game.
@@everice3310 I'm unsure. There are many kinds of weapons that have the "on a roll of 20" schtick. Just take a look at the DMG.
Those weapons seem really underwhelming... Even at a hypothetical 15% chance to trigger them on advantage and NEVER not having advantage, wouldn't a bog standard +1 almost always be better? Maybe the 15% chance to crit synergises well with certain class options to make it worthwhile there... but still, if my DM ever handed me a mace of smiting I'd probably throw it in the bag of holding and just use my +1 warhammer instead...
It's doubly compounded by the fact that if you land that 20, chances are you weren't going to be struggling to be doing damage. I can think of a LOT of situations where I've lamented not being just a little bit more accurate, but I can't think of any where I've been in trouble because my crits weren't strong enough.
@@TheFirstLanx Keep in mind that vorpal swords are also +3 in addition to the extra crit effect.
@Matt Yep, those are a rare case of such a weapon that's good both when critting and not critting. It's also super duper rare. I was thinking more along the lines of mace of disruption, sword of life stealing, sword of sharpness, vicious weapon. (bear in mind that they deal fixed damage on a crit, so it doesn't get amplified by the crit)
Props on repping Ritual Caster, Magic Initiate, and Inspiring Leader. Been playing a Bard with Magic Initiate for Find Familiar and Presti/Mage Hand. No regrets.
I've had a character in an underdark campaign that used skulker to great effect. Since darkvision turns darkness into dim light, it was very useful as the party's scout. I needed no light, everything (aside from creatures with blindsight or other alternate forms of perception) was rolling at disadvantage to see me, and I could see everything just fine. And since I am in darkness, I could even hide from creatures with darkvision in the middle of a room (barring those mentioned previously), so long as they don't bring any light nearby.
I mean, sure, up top in the light, it's useless, but if your party opt to travel at night or in the underground, it's amazing. (And great for bad guys.)
Yeah, my DM hated her.
Also, about Crossbow Expert, I could care less about the crossbow related parts, but the fact that it nulls the disadvantage ranged attacks have while within 5 feet of an enemy. Any ranged attack, even spells. That was enough for me to take it on my hexblade and also go ahead and grab a hand crossbow for good measure every now and again. Sure, I didn't use the bonus action to fire it every round, but the fact that I could eldritch blast a guy in the back lines while keeping an enemy at bay from our healer and squishier wizard was worth it to me.
Moderately Armoured is a very good 1st Feat for a Human Variant Warlock, I found it especially good for my current Pact of the Blade build.
If someone makes the grave mistake of playing martial warlock without being Hexblade, then moderately armoured is close to mandatory.
Stephen Lipp why not take hexblade
Regarding Crossbow Expert, its great on a fighter since they DON'T usually get a bonus action. Also, I think that the Xanathar halfling feat that lets them lend their lucky ability is fantastic.
Also, most rogue builds are fantastic with magic initiate. Though it is really funny when the tier 4 monsters start using their reaction to counterspell a cantrip (booming blade).
Paladins are proficient in shields and at my table that makes them proficient in all aspects of shield usage. I would allow a shield user with the duel weapon feat to make that bonus off hand attact with a shield using their proficiency bonus. They are trained to use a shield so this makes sense to me. They do not however get to add +1 to their AC for duel wielding with a shield since the shield itself already gains them a +2 to AC.
I'm using magic initiate wizard on my rogue for a pet owl, booming blade and firebolt. That advantage you get as long as the owl is alive is amazing for sneak attacks, the booming blade sneak attack does lots of damage, and then because I am a swashbuckler I can walk away and force them to take the booming blade damage
Magic Initiate does a good third of what you'd want to go Arcane Trickster for. It definitely opens up some subclass options for Rogues.
Loving your videos!
I gotta disagree on Skulker, and most of its power comes from how darkvision works. Darkvision lets you see as if it's dim light in darkness. Dim light is disadvantage to perception checks (-5 for passive perception) and has a second effect with this feat, mentioned below. Now let's look at the feat again.
Let's start with the Third Benefit: Every perception check you make while using your darkvision (because by definition you're in darkness to use it) is normally done at disadvantage (-5 to passive perception). Skulker effectively gives a +5 to your darkvision perception checks. I don't know about you, but for me, this comes up very often in our games. Scouting ahead through the darkness using your darkvision is a pretty important tool, particularly in a dungeon environment, and a +5 bonus is a big boost to that task. So many races have darkvision in 5e that an all-darkvision party isn't that uncommon.
Now the First benefit is the corollary. You can hide when you are lightly obscured from the creature from which you are hiding. As detailed above, darkvision functions as dim light in darkness. Dim light is (drum roll please...) lightly obscured! This means you can hide from other creatures who are using their darkvision to try and see you. Unless they happen to also have this feat, or are using another form of senses like blindsight, you can now hide right out in the open while in darkness. This seems like a pretty handy ability to me. A rogue fighting in darkness can now move 5' in, attack, and move 5' away and hide as a bonus action, regardless of other cover available.
And finally the Second benefit. Now that same rogue can snipe from darkness against darkvision-using foes, and they don't even risk being revealed if they miss with their attack. Which means they can use their bonus action from Cunning Action for something else other than re-hiding if they miss.
It's a powerful feat. Some of it is situational of course, as rogues tend to benefit more than others from some of these elements. But that third benefit is pretty universal for anyone using darkvision, and in particular if that PC happens to be the one with the highest passive perception in the game who does a lot of the scouting.
-Mistwell
Yep, I've underestimated that one. I think I've underestimated how many groups aren't using a light source. Also, glad you are enjoying the channel, you are a part of the reason it exists...
At my table, Proficiency in shields includes proficiency in slapping someone with them.
Also, declaring you’re taking the attack action and being locked into the attack action is enough to trigger shield master. There’s no reason to nerf it like they did, it just wasn’t strong enough to warrant it. Take all it does, add +1 Str would be enough to justify the nerf.
Great insight! Personally would love to see more feats like Polearm master and crossbow expert put in 5e
Feats that are building around specific martial weapons that give additional or unique benefits for using it. Something to make martial classes have a bit more martial flavor and variety with their weapons
I would like to nominate "Mobile" as "The Feat literally everyone agrees is pretty great but no one ever takes"
Skulker doesn't belong on the worsts list. It allows a character with darkvision to operate in complete darkness without ever needing to light a torch and give away his or her position. Such a character makes perception checks in complete darkness as though in bright light--which also affects passive perception--and that character can hide anywhere against enemies relying on darkvision (without light) to see. A rogue can literally attack an enemy and bonus-action hide without even moving, which allows him or her to make an opportunity attack with sneak attack if that enemy moves on its turn.
Also, as others have said, grappler is unambiguously the worst feat.
How is Grappler better than those worst feats?
I'm pretty sure a friend I played with picked the Mobile feat after I put it to work with my winged Tiefling. It straight up makes you a swashbuckler without being one and I love it. Booming Blade, move a little bits away so the threat has to move if they want to smack you so that's extra damage. Repeat.
This is an excellent video! Thanks for pointing out the crit-fishing bit too, it’s great for Warlocks with Crown of Stars and Foresight.
Good call on Inspiring Leader; it’s sort of the centerpiece of my Battle Master 8/Hexblade 2. Crazy bastard is just a walking dispenser of temporary hitpoints.
Happy to see my pet feat Magic Initiate up here. Not only is it fantastic for general purposes like you set out, but it also turns Arcana and Nature clerics into probably the best Gish class in the game. With Arcana, your domain skill should include SCAG cantrips. Pick Initiate Druid for Shillelagh and Absorb Elements. With Nature, pick Wizard and Shield or Find Familiar, along with the SCAG cantrips. You're now a medium or heavy armored full caster with very respectable damage output tied to cantrips, where any other cleric is going to have to spend spell slots to put out the hurt you put out on the regular.
We've recently found the power of Inspiring Leader in a game I'm playing in. It was my first pick at level 4 with my Half-Elf Paladin (Note we rolled stats so I had a 20 charisma). Not only have I given the party a truly massive amount of hp over the last four levels, I have absolute proof that it has saved party members from dropping, myself included. Additionally, there is a really really fun interaction if you are playing the right type of game.
The limit on Inspiring Leader is that you can only give a particular creature temp hp 1/per rest. However, nothing says you can't use it again on new creatures. For our werewolf castle raid our DM gave us some low-level (and very high level) aid against nearly 100 lycans. I personally doubled the hp of every guard, wardog with silver fangs, my mount, ect. You can use this on some familiars to give them massive increases in survivability. This feat is honestly a competitor for one of the best feats in the game, I think, at least in terms of its ability to keep a party on their feet.
Chaosmancer7 I never thought about using it on familiars. Really good idea.
Wow, the wording on that is really not what they meant, is it? The cost is just 10 minutes/6 creatures. Not 1 rest/6 creatures.
Great video once again! Small nitpick: At 26:00 you say that 3 dice does not triple your chance at a crit. That's technically true, but not really relevant: 3*1/20 = 0.15 ; 1-(19/20)^3 = 0.143. So while the diminishing returns for hits are important to mention, they are negligible for crits.
Was about to comment on this. For a regular hit he is probably right, but regarding crit fishing the third die is basically as good as the first and second. This makes the feat pretty good on rogues and paladins for instance.
I would say it is probably still overrated in most cases though.
Inspiring leader is the best feat in the game. At 1st level I was giving out 24 temp hit points per rest. Simply insane.
Michael Barnes it is very good. An often missed thing is it applies to “creatures” who can understand you. If you are a Paladin that means it understands you and gets the benefit of the feat. Familiars understand you, summons, people you hire, etc.
great feat; I put Healer ahead of it because no one wants to be a dedicated healbot. this one is a close 2nd though
Oh yea, and in level 18, it adds... how much temporary hp again? :)
rr ww for healer I use Medicine skill instead of the flat +4 bonus.
When I eventually play the Barbarian I've got planned out, I'm going to take, and apply, the Great Weapon Master feat in combination with Reckless Attack, every time. This character is extremely overzealous, and cares far more about dealing as much damage as possible than being precise or staying safe, at least at the start. Perhaps, later down the line, that could change, but in the beginning, vicious and unrelenting offensive potential is the only way this character will fight.
You should worship you party's healer then :)
Treantmonk, I love your passon, man! Keep it up! The advice is outstanding.
Also, crossbow expert is still great on characters who don't have many other bonus action options, such as most fighters. It's just less useful for rogues and rangers generally, though there are many exceptions.
That's very true, but it also means it's less useful for some of the characters that would use it the most. A fighter has plenty of attacks for example.
Heck, I even agree that Elven Accuracy is super overrated, even if a specific Hexblade Warlock build can take advantage of it by stacking with GWM.
Every "overrated" feat I list is a decent feat, including Crossbow Expert. The only reason I list it as overrated is the reasons I mention in the video. I agree that some fighters (depending on Subclass) don't have much to do with bonus actions, but that will change as levels increase and they start grabbing feats like magic initiate...
The most important part of crossbow expert is the one that hasn't been mentioned: "Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls." It's not even just for crossbows, its ANY ranged attack roll. A character who's entire kit is designed around ranged attacks can get good mileage out of this part of the feature when they're forced to fight in close quarters.
@@Jellyhead9000 there are a few repelling agonizing eldritch blast builds that make use of that.
@@JenoPaciano I've also seen a fighter with crossbow expert use nets as a bonus action too. Since it's thrown with a range of 5ft you usually have disadvantage but the feat offsets that and creature caught in it is restrained and has to use an attack to cut it or full action to break it. Very effective and great roleplaying for a Bounty Hunter type character
Rule of thumb on -5 for +10 damage..
If you have an initial damage of 10 and a 50% to hit, you break even.
The less damage you deal, the less you need to hit to break even. The more damage, the more to hit.
So if you deal much less than 10 damage, USE IT, unless you have Disadvantage or a High AC target.
If you deal much more than 10 damage, DON'T USE IT, unless you have Advantage or a Low AC target.
#keepitsimple
Archery on a Fighter is +2 to hit. A Bard can inspire you, a Cleric can cast Bless. Hard to say no to Sharpshooter then :)
I totally agree about Inspiring leader but you didn’t sell it enough! Inspiring leader takes 10 minutes and affects 6 Creatures! Not party members but creatures. You are trying to protect the hapless prince, the family of mom, dad and there 5 children. Well in 20 minutes you can give them and all the partyba temp HP boost. To be clear you can over a short rest of 60 minutes give 36 creatures this boost! Also heck you can even include your squishy familiar as it is a creature! The only reason it is not a common pick up is that it does not have 1) a PC attention grabbing die attached or 2) +1 character stat to Charisma.
However Two Points :
Skulker is not weak at all. the biggest thing is that attacking doesn’t reveal your position! The target knows they have been attacked! So they know they are under fire and are not able to return fire. Think it is weak- try it with an NPC vs PC. After they are in full freak you will get it.
Also, Great Weapon master is less then Sharpshooter because of available stacking options with ranged weapons. Even the combat style Archery negates the negative on Sharpshooter. And crossbows ARE projectile weapons.
You over-rated feats are all fine.
Great to see and hear you, TreantMonk. I've been reading your guides for years. aka Magda Luckbender.
Magda Luckbender is definitely a familiar name from my Pathfinder time. Great to hear from you and welcome!
@@TreantmonksTemple You are welcome.
Why don’t you include a picture of the feat description?
Dual Wielder is hilarious because you can have some bloke running arround with two goddamn warhammers.
I love your videos and am learning a lot about the game I did not know before. In 5e they allow you to move, attack, move some more, attack again... so long as you have movements and attacks to make. The shield master feat doesn't say you have to make an attack, just take the attack action. On your turn you have an action to do many different things, you have to choose one of these things to do each turn. So if you choose to take the attack action, you are now committed to that action, at some time during your turn you have to attack but it doesn't have to be right away, you can move first to get closer to an enemy, or you can take your bonus action to shove a creature prone and then attack it (if you are a 5th level fighter with extra attacks)
therefore you could decide to take the attack action on your turn, then use your bonus action granted from shield master to shield bash someone, hopefully getting them into a prone position, and then make your actual attack roll... couldn't you? it is all according to RAW
I love your vids. Really helps me as a new player
Thank you! That is exactly what I love to hear.
at 21:29 I play shield master as follows: If you attack you can, as a bonus action do the shield bash (for Shield Master). Now keep in mind most melee characters can and will have multiple attacks; so... say a Paladin has 2 attacks and has the Shield Master. The Paladin MUST do his first attack, Then can Shield Bash, then all other attacks can follow. If the Shield bash knocks the creature down, then all following attacks are at an advantage... SIMPLE!!!
I’m sure that the class guide everyone is waiting for is the Wizard class guide.
Elven accuracy is fantastic - it virtually ensures you hit with GWM, and gives thee chances of crit, which gives you double dice. PLUS your starting character may have 17 CHA, so this puts you to 18 in one feat. And it's brilliant for those CHA-based multiclassers like myself who have dips in champion fighter and hexblade warlock to get crits on 19 and 20. I'll get a 19% chance to crit without it, and about 28% with it. Then because there is more chance to bring my adversary to 0hp, my Great Weapon Master gives me yet another attack beyond the extra crit dice. Plus when I rit, I can smite with pally or warlock too, for double damage on that...
I went to the thinkDM page, and boy, his way of thinking is very wrong. Here's my reply to that:-
"“You have a 55% chance of rolling a 10 or higher. With advantage, you have an 80% chance-a 25% boost! With “super advantage,” you have a 91% chance-only another 11%!”
I think you’ve missing something here. Going from a 45% chance of missing to 20% chance of missing ins’t the measly 25% boost that it appears on paper, it means you will missing 1 in 5 attacks, as opposed to nearly half.
and going from a 20% chance of missing to 9%, you can’t think of this in terms of 11% difference, it’s a colossal difference again, your chance of missing just went from 1 in 5 to about 1 in 11!
Elven accuracy is fantastic, especially is you’re crit hunting."
23:09 Crossbow Expert Feat -- is great for spellcasters "Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls." which has been repeatedly clarified by the designers as intended for use with spellcasters. If you've ever had your caster smothered by enemies, you'd recognize how beneficial that single feature is.
2 years late, but would you really want to give up some other critical feats/ASIs for that one advantage? Wouldn't you rather just have a save spell/cantrip for those situations where you really want to do damage even if an enemy is breathing down your neck? Heck, I don't think there are many circumstances where the damage from a cantrip is going to turn the tide so much it's better than the dodge or disengage action for just staying alive/maintaining concentration. Heck, if you just want to occasionally have a better chance of hitting when you would otherwise have disadvantage, just lucky to turn it into super advantage 3 times a day.
@@josephdouglas5242 Eldrich Blast is one hell of a cantrip, it's better than longbow damage. Also, you automatically critical prone opponents if you attack from the adjacent square. And spellcasters have multiple ways of knocking people over.
@@LockSteady I'll admit I didn't consider warlocks and their position as a semi-martial cantrip blaster. At least you get the gunner feat to balance things out with a +1 dex.
Not sure about that auto crit thing though, I think it's just auto advantage. To the best of my knowledge, auto crit is for paralyzed enemies.
@@josephdouglas5242 Gunner is new. Like you said this is an old comment. Still, if your DM bans firearms (common) or if you're playing in adventure league and don't want to use TCE as your expanded source, it's still a good feat since xbowexp is core rule book.
Can't wait for the trickery cleric and Valor Bard videos
Bonus like for lifting up trickery cleric!
Hadn't I been playing a cleric now (Light domain, I like it), I'd go for a trickery cleric next.
Eurgh, don't talk to me about normally hitting if you have advantage. Screw the statistics, I missed three times in a row rolling 3d20k1. Also Elven Accuracy was originally better when it worked with Strength, so you could easily use it with Reckless Attacker.
LOL - I've been there my friend.
Regarding dungeon delver, in order to know to roll with advantage to detect a secret door, you have to know you're rolling to detect a secret door. That either means the player announces the roll each time they enter a room, or the DM has to remember you have that feat and tell you to roll with advantage, at which point you can't help but know there is one (even if your character doesn't).
All the same, I've seen this feat work well in trap-heavy games where being careful didn't help much.
You do benefit from advantage on passive checks in the form of a +5 bonus. This is why Observant pairs so well with having advantage on Investigation and Perception checks as it gives you a separate +5 bonus.
@@AgeOfPwn Yes, but that does rely on your DM to actually use passive checks. DMs are supposed to do so, but I've rarely played with one that uses passives correctly. That said, that doesn't detract from your point. If you DM uses passives, Observant is a top tier feat.
There is something in the phb or dmg that talks about improvised weapons and how you can apply proficiency to one. Essentially the rule is, if an object can be similarly described as a weapon found in the phb, then the dm can allow you to have proficiency with it as long as you have proficiency with the actual weapon type. The example they give, I think, is a furniture leg can be used as a club. I would personally allow proficiency with shield attacks using the previously mentioned rule. This might not be AL legal, but it's all up to dm discretion.
Dustin Smith Yeah this is how I am able to use my arcane focus staff as a quarterstaff on my Gish.
I have a charismatic fighter with inspiring leader and its great for not only the party, but for NPCs that you escort. A cool RP part of the feat is that if you have time, you can give this to a whole village.
Another great video and as always very informative. A few personal opinions from me: the thing with Ritual Caster is that it has the prerequisite of a AS 13 for the class from which you're learning the rituals from - if I'm gonna invest into a AS 13 I might as well take level 1 and get all the rituals, spells and cantrips that it brings. That's me, at least. Also, looking at Mobile I think of how useful that would be for squishies, and it's plain ridiculous combined with Rogues Cunning Action. I totally agree with Moderately Armored being super underrated - I never see it ranked high, but when I read it, it's a huge buff for a Bard or a Warlock. Another one that seems good is Defensive Duelist - it essentially adds your proficiency bonus to your AC, I feel that that's a huge buff and it scales.
You said Oath of Ancients Barbarian when you meant Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian. I got your back.
Additionally, I would note that a CBE + SS Fighter using a hand-crossbow is the best ranged damage martial in the game. 5 attacks per round with 75 damage before you even start rolling your damage die.
Everice Alternatively with a Fighter/Hexblade/Devotion Paladin MC you can completely nullify the SS attack penalty via Sacred Weapon, add Hex/Hexblade’s Curse damage to every attack, and still run around in Heavy Armor backed by the Shield spell.
@@M0ebius Any DM who catches you doing this is going to slap you over the head with the PHB for being an awful munchkin, though.
Personally prefer Paladin 3 (Vengeance)/Warlock 12 (Hexblade)/Bard 5 (Whispers) for my awful munchkin build because when I crit something I can do 4d6 slashing + 12d8 radiant +12d8 force + 6d6 psychic + 2d6 necrotic + 5 (lifedrinker) + 5 (CHA mod) + 10 (GWM) + 1 (Magic weapon or Improved Pact Weapon) for an average total of 171 damage.
Everice What can I say? I play with a bunch of munchkins. My philosophy is to roleplay characters, not classes. And I like your build, though I run a similar one that’s Champion 3/Paladin 2/Hexblade 5/Whisper 10, Half Elf with Elven Accuracy, Polearm Master with 1-hand arcane focus staff, shield, and dueling/defense fighting style. It’s more of a pure crit fisher given that modifiers don’t double, with Divine Smite+Eldritch Smite (4d8)+Psychic Blade (5d6). 10 Bard levels gets me Holy Weapon, more spell slots, and more PsiBlade dice. I thought about Vow of Enmity over Improved Critical, but wanted the always on improved crit range since I mainly use Faerie Fire, Darkness/Devil’s Sight, and Greater Invisibility for advantage.
bard (valor) 17/fighter 2/hexblade 1. With CBE/SS, simulacrum and tenser transformation. And that's a full caster
One good use for Weapon Master is gaining proficiency in Whips as a Rogue. Unique combination of Reach and Finesse, and a Rogue can surely make use of a Reach weapon. When attacking an isolated enemy, you can attack from Reach to avoid opportunity attacks and retire with your bonus action that now is not forced to be Disengage.The D4 damage is low but Rogues don't attack more than once per turn, so the most damage will come from sneak attack. But this is only viable because you can add +1 to Dexterity in the first place. As a VHuman Rogue, I'd consider this when building a Rogue, go make VHuman a +2 Dex +1 to anything else race (which is very good) AND gaining a good weapon proficiency. Can you gain proficiency in nets as well?
But you can just throw gold and some time to get proficiency. There are rules for that crap in the DMG.
If your plan is to stay at range, why would you not use a ranged weapon? If you are going into melee, the benefit is from things like Booming Blade/GFB or a dual wield attack on a miss, both of which are invalid with whips. There are very rare circumstances where this is valid, but not enough for a build I think.
@@cyanidechimp I've made an arcane trickster with booming blade and spell sniper with whips from weapon master. It was really fun!
@@Oznerock you don't always have time to spend to learn a proficiency, and you also don't get a +1 to Dex for that. That's the whole point of my comment. Of course if you start at higher levels you have the time but not the +1 to Dex.
If you have an odd score, the feat might be useful! That's the thing.
@@cyanidechimp An Arcane Trickster has innate access to Booming Blade so you don't need a feat. You still need to be 5ft near the target for Booming Blade but later in the levels you can pick Spell Sniper which doubles it to 10ft. By level 8 you should have +5 to Dex, so you can use the later ASIs for that. Rogues also get one more ASI than normal. By coincidence, high levels is where Booming Blade really shines, so having the chance to do so is pretty good. And I repeat, it's something you can pick at level 1 with your VHuman feat. And it increases your Dex by 1.
I play a halfling battle master with sharpshooter and crossbow expert and lucky. It's absolutely broken. There are so many battle maneuvers you can you use. You can knock enemies prone when if they get in your face. Unarm them at a distance. And you can taunt them and the have disadvantage from everyone. It's suck a good utility class. Trust me your team will love you.
I'm commenting not because I think your assessment on the AC increase between light and medium vs. medium and heavy armor wrong, but because it's something for people to think about when considering an AC bump from a feat.
+1 to AC is better if you have a high AC than if you have a low AC. For the increase to matter, the attack has to hit your old AC but miss your new AC. This means when one has an already high AC, a larger proportion of the attacks that would have hit now miss.
That said, if you're never close to hitting 0 HP or your party's healing resources aren't stretched, then the AC increase won't change your group's effectiveness, even if it does keep your HP higher.
I think this video is very fair and on point, however:
"It's not 3x the chance to get a critical"
Isn't it, though? From a conceptual standpoint, you have a 5% chance to roll a critical (without factoring in class features), and you are rolling that 5% chance three times. From a mathematical standpoint, as I understand it it's best to calculate backwards since you only care about getting a single 20. Unless I'm doing this wrong, the chance of all three rolls being anything other than 20 is 85.7375%... which makes the chance of at least one 20 extremely close to 3x5%
Inspiring leader saved my party's sorcerer's life the last session. She got crit by a chasme... would have died outright if she didn't have the bonus hp from the Eldritch Knight who used the feat shortly before the fight.
Re: Savage Attacker: It *might* be good if you're a Arcane Trickster that takes Shadow Blade (and then multiclasses). But generally, yeah, pretty bad.
1 of my favorite Feat Combos is Polearm Master & Sentinel
Oath of conquest paladin is another subclass that can do the tanky lockdown thing. It's actually my favorite in that role from a flavor and gamefeel perspective, though some other lockdown tanks might come online faster, and can be a bit more reliable, since Conqueror requires failed saves and vulnerability to frighten to do its thing. However, in exchange Conqueror can lockdown multiple enemies at a time with aoes like fear or its channel divinity, and its lockdown is one of the most unforgiving once a target is successfully trapped.
Anyway, just wanted to put forward aura of conquest as a class feature that makes at least a credible case for being a legitimate mechanical alternative to sentinel for a lockdown tank build. Maybe not flat out better. It's certainly a bit more conditional, but it more easily affects multiple enemies, and while some enemies are immune to frighten and thus to aura of conquest, there are also plenty of enemies that can move without provoking opportunity attacks and thus cant be trapped by sentinel but still can be trapped by the aura.
Ideally a conqueror would still pick up sentinel, but split offensive stats with high dependance on failed saves in particular and heavy reliance on concentration effects despite not having proficiency in con saves rarely leaves asi's open for it. Certainly not before the late game, so usually it's kind of an either or.
Conquest Paladins are also pretty much the only build for which Shield Master under its new interpretation is still very useful. Knock down a feared enemy in your aura at the end of your turn, doesn't matter, they're still not getting up ever, still taking your auto-damage, still eating all your future melee attacks at advantage.
@@tiradegrandmarshal given how high the pressure is on a conqueror's asis, i'd argue shield master isnt even worth it for them. After all, you can still shove without it, at the cost of an attack, not even a whole action. And since, as you point out, the target can't get back up once proned, you're not going to be shoving round after round. It's not a bad feat for a conqueror, but imo there are always going to be more pressing options.
@@Malisteen I do play a Conquest Paladin with Shield Master and Sentinel. I took Shield Master as my Level 1 Vhuman Feat.
In the early game, the bonus action shove was useful, and provided some battlefield control, but now as the character is high Tier 3, the no-damage on a successful Dex Save has been the premiere use of the feat.
It's not the strongest feat, and I personally have a few reactions and bonus action that Shield Master competes with.
I haven't had Sentinel for long enough to make a solid judgement on its performance thus far.
Well it’s not official interpretation and it isn’t in the new errata either. I am playing a Crown Paladin with SM and it’s great because of Spirit Guardians and other features.
Conquest looks so fun. I've been waiting a good six months trying to find an opportunity to play it.
Skulker is awesome for rogues. You can hide from any monster that relies on darkvision, anywhere it's dark. It's even better defensively than Gloomstalker's ability to be invisible in darkness, because you usually can't even be targeted while hidden.
Also an addition to Sharpshooter and GWM - many people play it with "mitigators". +1 Weapon and Bless halves the GWM penalty, while Archery almost halves Sharpshooter's penalty, +1 bow on top eats most of it and when Bless is on you might as well always use it. Oath of Devotion's Sacred Weapon gets a honorable mention here. A 14 Cha OoD Pal with a Fighter or Ranger dip fires at -1 under Sacred Weapon and strikes at only -3. And that's before magical weapons. And don't get me started on Darkness + Devil's Sight or the odd Wolf Barbarian backing you up.
Completely agree on Inspiring Leader. If i'm playing support I always go H. Variant to take this right from the start. Don't have to heal damage that wasn't taken.
Xbow Exp also allows for no Disadvantage in close quarters on both ranged attacks and ranged attack spells such as EB. It can be game-breaking in western/modern day/scifi campaigns with guns.
TM as addendum you could feat selection bases on party composition. If someone is planning on GWM, then a SM increases as you can give that party member advantage. If group has many ranged user then SM declines in value as they have disadvantage against prone.
Sentinel works best if you have a melee friend to work with. Pole Arm Master and Sentinel is a good combo, but you need another melee PC to take hits as your AC will be lower (no shield) and you will be focused more.
For a group that exploits OppAtt then magic adept works better since you can poach BB.
A character with Polearm Master + Sentinel can still use Spear and Shield, as spears are one-handed and still qualify as a polearm.
Chris, terrific video, superb content as always. I agree Magic Initiate is underrated - starting a new campaign with a (Twilight) cleric, Variant Human. Took Magic Initiate as the free feat (Wiz), but picked Booming Blade and Minor Illusion cantrips with Find Familiar as lvl 1 spell. Makes that cleric a melee force up front, esp with the added familiar to confer advantage. Great stuff
The reason Elven Accuracy is good isn't that the effect is so strong, it's not, the reason it's so good is that it's basically free, assuming you're attacking with Dex or Cha. Elves and Half-elves can both start with a 17 postracial, which means that Elven Accuracy gets them the same effect as an ASI to their primary ability score, while also giving them the reroll on attacks with advantage.
The effect is very strong for niche builds like crit fishers, sharp shooters, and great weapon masters (Hexblade 3+).
He didn't say it was bad just overrated. Its ok to crit fishing but not amazing. Its one of those awkward probability issues. If you crit on the first or second dice have a 3 chance was irrelevant. And if you don't crit its also irrelevant.
The reason to get Crossbow Expert feat is not the extra bonus action but the using ranged in melee without the disadvantage yeah you could just drop your ranged and pull your melee out or you can continue to use your ranged. Although you can say it is implied that it is meant for crossbows only because that’s what the feat is called but that’s not what is read and there was no errata for it saying otherwise.
Interesting feat combo for Eldritch knight: war caster, spell sniper, and pole arm master. Booming blade as soon as they enter your reach.
Do you think a sorcerer or warlock would benefit from Inspiring Leader?
On a completely unrelated question, is there any way, maybe through a Racial choice, for a Light Cleric to get Firebolt as a Cleric Spell? I want to be a fire-blasting cleric, but the bonus damage to cantrips only applies to Cleric cantrips.
Yes, Inspiring leader is a very good choice for either of those classes. No, there isn't any way for a Light Cleric to get Firebolt as a Cleric spell. You can get Firebolt through race or through a feat, but in neither case would it count as a Cleric Spell. The only way you could do it is with the Arcana Domain. I wouldn't worry about it too much, by level 8 when Potent Spellcasting comes into play, you will have lots of good level spells which you can use to cast fire spells.
Sad that tough wasn’t mentioned with my hill dwarf barbarian can get a average hp of 345 and if I was mean to my dm I would make him a totem bear barb but I made him storm sea aura barb
Toughness is a good feat. There are a lot of good feats that didn't make top 3 though, as there are a lot of feats!
I find it strange that you would say that making a perception check in dim light is rare. Unless you are out in sunlight or a very lit location your probably going to be in dim light. And as someone what stated a light source only provided limited level of bright light. Dark vision in a dark environment is also dim light. Almost certainly if your going into an inside location like a dungeon your gonna have lots of dim light
I am not sure but I think stalker would remove the disadvantage from dark vision on perception checks as well
Do we have a source on shields being considered melee weapons? Usually when I see an improvised weapon meeting the criteria for something like Divine Smite, it's because the feature in question only requires that you make a melee weapon attack with any weapon, which improvised weapons would count as - that is to say, they count as weapons *when used to make those attacks*, but aren't *themselves* "melee weapons", as I understand it. You could Smite with a shield, yes, but Two-Weapon Fighting and the Dual Wielder Feat have different requirements: that you be using two melee weapons, and I'm in the market for clarification on whether or not a shield is a melee weapon as an item itself, since the aforementioned features are looking for those flags rather than just you swinging them, like with Smite. As an example of how pedantic these things (and by extension, the people like me who discuss them) can get, when you throw a weapon, it leaves your hand and you're not "wielding" it any more, so when it makes contact with its target, the Dueling Fighting Style's bonus wouldn't apply to it - you no longer meet the criteria, of wielding it, or having it in your hand. I don't currently think you could make use of a shield for the purpose of two-weapon fighting due to it not being a one-handed melee weapon, but instead, armor. If there's a specification somewhere that anything can count as a melee weapon semantically and it doesn't need to follow the weapon categorisation system in the Equipment section et al, I'd love to see it, because that would open up some interesting possibilities, like with this Feat!
In a system like Open Legend where armour is exclusively worn and hand-held items are exclusively hand-held, with shields falling within the weapons category and just having a special "defensive" property that provides you a Guard bonus like you would expect when holding one, I wouldn't doubt this interaction one bit... but since it's D&D, and I know these things get kind of noodly sometimes with what the designers intend, I just have to doubt a little that that could work. I want it to, though.
You could make a video in depth about Crossbow Expert and bonus actions. Which classes are the least hindered by this? AFAICTell, a fighter would have little other uses for bonus action but a hunter or rogue would hurt having to chose between their bonus abilities.
But I don't know it all, far from it! You could make a succint video there! ;) Whether focused on (limited to) Crossbow Expert or just bonus action in general.
Personally, I was really surprised Grappler didn't make the worst list. That feat is so bad it's completely meaningless for the very builds it's theoretically meant for! A simple grapple + shove is just plain better control than the completely useless pin, and also gives you all the advantage you want after.
Grappler is a team strategy feat, not solo. That's why a lot of people don't seem to like it. The advantage is for you; the restrained is for your spellcasters targeting dex saves.
tiradegrandmarshal Grappler builds are extremely niche but very good at what it does.
@@M0ebius Grappling builds are good, yes. But you don't need this feat to make one effective, in fact, just the opposite, taking this feat is a waste.
@@BrickInTheHead , you have to make yourself restrained to inflict restraining with this feat. So, that doesn't help anyone.
@@tiradegrandmarshal Well, you can hold down two baddies, give em both disadvantage on dex, and let your fireballs fly. Now four with the Simic grappler :D
i'm taking weapon master on my arcane trickster rogue with skulker and sentinel, that way i can use a whip for opportunity attacks to help enemy control! I plan to hide after each turn (skulker helps significantly with this) and then the enemy will inevitably move away because they can't see me. so then i'm almost guaranteed a reaction sneak attack each round, and the ability to shut down melee enemies!
skulker helps with hiding because even if an enemy has darkvision in darkness, you're still in dim light, so you're still lightly obscured! combine that with expertise on stealth and reliable talent, and you're looking at a floor of AT LEAST 20 for your stealth rolls.
I am so surprised that Polearm Master didn’t make the list. It adds a lot of damage early game, is solid mid game when adding more modifiers, and combos with Great Weapon Master, Sentinel, and War Caster late game.
It also enables IMO the best multiclass gish setup of 1-handed arcane focus staff, shield, and dueling fighting style, which outputs equivalent or more damage than basic martial characters despite a delayed Extra Attack when you add Hex/Hunter’s Mark and cycle between Attack Action and Booming Blade/Greenflame Blade.
M0ebius It should be like Sentinel, if you use a Polearm it’s build defining so therefore doesn’t really need a rating. TM should have mentioned it that way.
smbakeresq Build defining, good way to put it.
Treant, i think you missed an important aspect of savage attacker. While i agree with your assessment as is, but if you consider that savage attacker is weapon dependent. IE Giant slayer adds extra dice, which are part of the weapon damage. I realize this is a niche, but takes savage attacker from not worth it to pretty good.
That being said, its even better when you are able to take this feat after getting such a weapon, so its not a shot in the dark.
U know what else is for everyone? That's right - the Lucky feat!
Better Lucky than good! Little nit pick, Lucky is usable 3 times per long rest, not session. If your session run multiple days, you can use it more than 3 times.
Assuming you have a fighting style, sharpshooter in my experience tends to be a bit better than GWM due to the bump in base accuracy.
Christopher McKee I would ask why? You should have a group that prones people (advantage if 5’ melee) or OppATT them (use reactions to attack) or blocks enemy from using ranged attacks (fog cloud, etc) or polymorphs people to destroy them, in general small spaces (dungeons.). Iget what you are saying but it’s a 5th member of a group not your 4th member.
@@smbakeresq I know for me sharpshooter works a bit better because with archery that goes from minus five to minus 3. The lack of disadvantage and ignore g cover gives you a ton of freedom. I played on big maps sometimes fields forest or cities so it came into play. My Ranger loved the low risk high reward.
Ebonzai the feats are about equal, the play style with a martial PC isn’t. In a group with a tank and another Pc that can take hits no problem, if you are the only martial PC then you need to be in there. Too many people are terrified to use their HP pool, they want others to do all the work why they stay safe
@@smbakeresq my point is that Sharpshooter has better synergy with the matching fighting style. What is better overall doesn't really matter, because the same character isn't going to be looking at both of them and deciding which to take.
Christopher McKee it has a better synergy only with the mechanics of the game. If your DM is smart and uses Fog Cloud (shuts down archers) or the like if the enemy has knowledge then it isn’t. It a well known hole. If Archery was +2 damage there wouldn’t be a conversation at all.
Re: moderately armor you make a good point but using only 3 classes can use it. Bard (minus valor) rogues and warlocks. Monks sorcerers & wizards don't have light armor and fail to meet the prerequisites everyone else already have medium or heavy. Also those 3 classes are probably gonna have good Dex
I honestly feel like wotc needs like, one more light armor option.
Also, Heavy Armor Master is a pretty good feet, especially low to mid tier, because most things don't have magic weapons...though there are an almost staggering ammount of things with spells, so it's not great.
...so many enemies with spells bogging down combat.
Yeah, HAM can actually destabalize some low level adventures if taken by a Variant Human at lvl 1
Great video I only have one disagreement and that's with crossbow expert but im never taking it for the crossbow part just the range attacking someone close benefit
Great video, any guidelines on when to take ASI vs a feat? I've searched and haven't seen any decent rule of thumbs, maybe future video idea? :)
Case by case basis. Are you a gish (spell casting front line fighter), then the war caster is a must take immediately.
Do you have two odd stats (17,15), then ASI is probably your best bet.
The best thing you can do is preplan a build. Roll or buy your stats, plan out how you want to play the character and which classes you're going to level into, and when the ASI/Feats come up. And then see which feats you may want, and insert them when it feels appropriate.
But make sure to be versatile. If you find you're always the last person to go in combat, maybe you'll want to take the Alert feat, so you'll have to sacrifice a feat or ASI.
The calculation would be a fair bit different between the two, because of the archery fighting style giving you a +2 to hit.
Basically, all you need to do is figure out what you need to roll in order to obtain a hit for any given armor class. From there figure out your percent chance to hit. And then multiply that by the average damage per hit. Compare with and without sharpshooter or great weapon master.
Any standout feats for a Drow Wild Magic Sorcerer?
Warcaster or Lucky. After you get your Cha to 20.
Skulker + Control Flame cantrip = Invisible Arcane Trickster in just about any scenario apart from daylight operations. Skulker is broken on the right character. Being able to Hide in total darkness against creatures with Darkvision is awesome too. Not having disadvantage on Perception checks in the dark is a keen cherry on top.
Watched your trickery cleric on live stream (not live but replay because of time zones) and i agree with you, trickery is such a powerful and fun subclass to play with if you know its strengths. Waiting for next that guide, good job as always Chris!
Trickery cleric is the worst cleric, and the worse trickster caster. :p
One subclass i love is the Cleric of the Forge, let's see how it holds up :p
You should make a blade singer guide!! Seems like a hard shot at it
I will absolutely do that at some point. I'm kind of letting my mood determine what guides I am making at the moment. That said, of all the Wizard subclasses, Blade Singer I think is the most challenging, so it may very well be the first Wizard guide I do.
Love your videos bro, been homebrewing a it and have been seeing on to the spells to maybe fix some and look at what for a template and though hard, your video gave me insight on some point of the spells to take not of.
I thought you might find it interesting in relation of the savage attacker feat-I did an analysis once of the best druid forms for wildshape with haste (i.e. 1 big attack) and found each form at each CR. Later, I used those forms and evaluated savage attacker. Optimally, it leads to around a 2 point increase in damage (on average, most are slightly higher, elementals are a bit lower).
This increase in damage only looked at their extra damage on a hit- and although the giant scorpion, even with it's lower bonus to hit would tend to do the most damage when hasted, that +2 damage looks even less impressive when you're looking at
I like everything but your take on Inspiring Leader. In my experience, the DM within the first few times of using this feat they just adjust the encounters to account for the HP of the party.
I'd like some advice. My group is going to be doing a campaign soon where we start at level 8. Stats are 4d6 drop the low, I managed to get 2 18's. I'm playing a Yuan-Ti Bard (College of Lore). My Stats are Str 11 Dex 20 Con 14 Int 15 Wis 12 and Cha 20 maxed out Dex with my level 4 ability increase. For level 8 I want to take a feat and I am having trouble deciding if I want Lucky, Magic Initiate, or Inspiring Leadership. For the party I know we'll have a Rogue, and a multiclass Warlock/Paladin, the other two I don't know. What do you think?
20 Cha? Yeah, that screams Inspiring Leadership to me. That's 13 Temps all around.
@@TreantmonksTemple, Thank you for the quick reply!
Inspiring leader is dependent on how often you short rest. Some groups don't short rest often
crossbow expert also lets you attack without disadvantage with someone within 5' of you
It sure does. That part of the feat is not overrated.
I think Moderately Armored gets bad press because not many classes have just light armour. They either have none, requiring you take Lightly Armored too, or they already have it.
Warlock. Though hexblades to get medium armor and shields
@@TheRodentMastermind Yeah but if you take MAM that means you get +3. But even then I would probably just take it for the shields.
I play a lvl 6 bladesinger, i took alert at lvl 4, gives me the upper hand in many fights, especially since i have a semi high dex aswell
What do you think about Medium Armor Master?
Ok, a slight bone to pick with you, Treantmonk. As for Crossbow expert, you called it overrated, and said a reason for that is the cost of a bonus action. Fair enough. But you overlooked the fact that you can shoot in melee without disadvantage when you are in melee, and even MORE amazing, the fact that casters can apply that feat to ranged spell attacks, and suffer no disadvantage shooting (for instance, Firebolt) while in melee. Rather versatile in my humble opinion.
You're assuming that you always have control over that. No ranged person WANTS to be in melee. But it happens. Not every battlefield is a 1000 sq foot open space.
I did forget to mentiont that, and you have my apology on one condition: NEVER take Crossbow Expert with a spellcaster so you can cast ranged cantrips in melee. You almost made my eyes bleed when I read that...
I solemnly swear I will never take Crossbow Expert with a spellcaster. Just pointing out the versatility.
Treantmonk's Temple I think taking Crossbow Expert on casters is actually pretty good for Eldritch Blast builds, particularly when you have Repelling Blast. An EB Sorclock taking it at level 1 (v.human) for instance. Or an Eldritch Knight/Hexblade MC that runs the Eldritch Blast+War Magic combo in melee.
Hawkeye If you are a Warlock who is slinging Eldritch Blasts 90% of the time it might be worth it, especially if you’re either variant human or have maxed out charisma. In particular if you have the Repelling Blast invocation then Crossbow Expert basically grants you a free disengage on hit on top of dealing the highest cantrip damage in game.
Heavy Armor Master is an interesting feat to me, as a level 1 human Paladin or Fighter DR3 lets you wade through common threats like goblins and kobalds with near impunity but the higher level you get the less useful the feat gets. Once magic starts becoming commonplace on the battlefield the feat has more or less seen the end of its usefulness but despite that because of just how impactful it is at low levels I can’t give the feat a low mark.
HAM is still useful at higher levels, but it does kind of fall into the niche of dealing with hordes of weaker enemies. This shouldn't be taken lightly, however, given how Bounded Accuracy means that hordes of weak creatures can still overwhelm a much stronger creature. Most martial classes have few options for dealing with hordes, so the extra protection from HAM can allow them to survive long enough to cut them down one at a time.
It’s usage declines but never goes away. I tracked damages saved once but stopped as when I got to 5th level it was over 200. That’s only 70 hits, so I missed some I am sure.
smbakeresq But the flip side is if you got a feat that ups your damage, a lot of those hits wouldn’t have happened in the first place because the enemies would be dead.
When it comes to hordes, damage isn't usually the problem; the problem is that you can usually only attack them one at a time. If you're a fighter with three attacks, you can, at most, kill three enemies in one round, maybe four if you have a bonus action attack. If you're up against, say, 20 enemies, that's anywhere from 5 to 7 rounds to clear them all out. Boosting your damage stops helping when you are already killing them in one hit, so what you really need are ways to hit more than one at a time. Martial classes generally don't get many AoE options, and the ones they do get generally aren't that outstanding, certainly not comparable to a Fireball from the wizard.
I generally agree with you (and you gave me the idea of a Longbow wielding elf champion 5 /college of whispers 10(hello swift quiver) with elven accuracy and lucky xD) but I'm surprised you didn't include Resilient(particularly con) or War Caster, as I would have at least one of them on any mid-high level caster, and war caster is more or less essential for a lot of gish concepts. Even though I really like sentinel I feel like it's more niche than any of these feats.
Also I completely agree with you on trickery cleric, their domain spell list is just so insanely good!!
Lomme Kroken Personally I would have put Polearm Master in place of Sentinel.
Fair enough. Chris did address it in the video though, and I agree with him that polearm master only truly comes into its own when you also take sentinel. In my opinion polearm master is also even more niché, not that that makes it bad, but other feats are great for a lot more kinds of concepts.
Lomme Kroken Polearm Master enables IMO the best melee setup of 1-hand quarterstaff, shield, and dueling fighting style. It is also the most dominant feat early game for martials, the best modifier amplifier mid game (Hex/Hunter’s Mark/Divine Favor/Holy Weapon etc), and combos with Sentinel/Great Weapon Master/War Caster late game. It’s good at every stage of the game!
@@M0ebius I definetely agree that it's good, and that is a very good setup (i suppose you could use spear instead of quarterstaff now too, couldn't you?)! But I don't think it's clearly better than Great Weapon Master for instance, and you definetely need to build more around it if you want full benefits, wouldn't you agree?
Lomme Kroken Well against Great Weapon Master it’s definitely a matter of power vs consistency, but I would argue that Polearm Master is much stronger early to mid game when your bonuses are low. However given that those feats are not mutually exclusive, ideally you would take PAM early and later combo it with GWM.
But then I wasn’t arguing for PAM over GWM, but rather PAM over Sentinel.
Hello! Discovered you through Giantitp. Big fan of your content already, you explain well. Will be playing my first DnD game in years this week and will certainly use the advice :)
Treantmonk's Temple How you are calculating temp hitpoints for Inspiring Leader? At level 1, even with a 20 CHA you would add 6 temp hit points to a character and temp hp never stacks, so you wouldn't have 12 temp by resting twice. You could have gotten temp hp, lost it , and then get it again, but not every player will have lost all of the temp hp and a renaged player may not have lost any, so they wouldn't be affected at all by the second application.
I am assuming they are being replaced. You are correct that if you haven't lost them, a rest won't allow stacking.
There are some classes that don't get many bonus actions