Hello battle masters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the combat maneuvers category. I kind of screwed up, i was gonna write a one massive article at first but then i realized didn’t really make much sense for the blog so i kind of hoped myself by doing a day or so without really publishing anything.
In any case thank you so much for checking out i really do appreciate it and this category will be aimed at answering all of your combat maneuver related questions, as well as explaining to you each individual maneuver and how it works. In any case let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Superiority Dice
Before you dive into the rest of the category here i just wanted to go over a couple things in relation to the battle master. The first being superiority dice. The superiority dice are essentially the fuel for your maneuvers. You start out with four of them at the third level and you get one extra at seventh and fifteenth level.
For a maximum of six and the size also increases, so as a third level all of your superiority die will be a d8 and when it reaches 10th level it will turn into a d10 and then 18th level will be a d12. Really cool stuff there! And now let’s take a look at an overview for the battle master maneuvers.
Maneuvers
So how many maneuvers do battle masters get? as you can tell, there are quite a bit 16 to be exact, we’re going to go through all of them together.
The amount you select varies on your level. So you start out with 3 at third level, at 7th level you get 2 more for a total of five, at 10th level 2 more for a total of 10 and at fifteenth level a total of 9 and that is your maximum.
The maneuver save DC is calculated as followed; it is eight plus your proficiency bonus plus your strength or dexterity modifier and that’s up to you.
That should be enough of the an overview to understand how the combat battlemaster maneuvers work. In any case guys i’m looking forward to getting this play this started with you and i hope you enjoy the upcoming articles. If you have any questions related to superiority dice maneuvers please put it down beneath and myself or one of the fantastic community members here will get to you as soon as possible, with that in mind thank you for checking out and let’s get started.
What Are The Best Battlemaster Maneuvers?
As we already revealed the number in the above paragraph that there are quite a bit 16 to be exact dnd battle master maneuvers ranked. You can check out the list of battle master maneuvers from the below. So without any further ado let’s get started.
- commander’s strike
- disarming attack
- distracting strike
- evasive footwork
- feinting attack
- goading attack
- lunging attack
- maneuvering attack
- menacing attack
- parry
- precision attack
- pushing attack
- rally
- riposte
- sweeping attack
- trip attack
DnD Battle Master Maneuvers Ranked
It depends on your battle master multiclass so in this case i am talking about the superior technique fighting style for my all time favorite new fighter, so at this moment it is saying that i could take a battle master 5e technique. If you get this situation in your game then you might have got stucked at which is the best to pick one up? right! Here i am glad to be going to be an echo knight when I could select my subclass if that helps pick a suitable and best battle master maneuvers dnd 5e.
In my first and foremost view point the Trip attack would be the pretty good one. Why because someone to be gone through the prone hinders their movement and even they provide melee attacks opposite to them advantage (including your extra attack[s] if your first hit tripped them).
However all of the dnd battle master are the situational, there really is not the single best one, and even that’s design-intended. But in any case i would personally prefer Trip, Lunge, and Brace.
Why means here the trip adds an extra damage and even it lets you try knock your enemy prone and of course setting them up for follow-up melee attacks at a certain advantage.
Now the lunge does extra damage and even provides you with 5 feet of extra reach, that leads to the shenanigans such as the Bugbear with a Halberd suddenly being able to melee-attack you from the distance of 20 feet.
Finally the brace allow you to use your Opportunity Attack Reaction when an enemy moves into your reach, rather than get away from it, so again this pairs very well with a reach weapon build. All these would play very well with an Echo Knight build.
Now you may ask me what if i go with the battle master feat 5e. Like you can take any feat frm the list such as someone would like to take that I am going to get the sentinel feat, so is trip going to be somewhat redundant with that? and someone think of taking mobile feat or martial adept or Alert.
So whatever the battle master maneuvers feat you granted to take for but you must check out their initiative bonus. So in this case the alert would be a nice fit. I could also say the martial adept on your battle master would be fine to choose. The combination of this feat and maneuver fighting style are better to pick together.
So in any case if you have some more couple of dice before your short rest then it really feels to be significant such as using two more ki as a monk would. So does it mechanically as worth as a flat +2 damage on one-handed weapon attacks? I would be surprised to find that it was. But it feels pretty neat and good though.
Like being a caveat, my DM (and myself when I run games) rule that be like a Battlemaster automatically raises your Adept dice to d8s, which is controversial at best as a ruling. That being said guys! Now let’s take a look at some fun feats that i was looking at for my battle master maneuvers dc.
- Tavern Brawler – If you use a shield and would like to attack with it, it’s an improvised weapon, and this feat makes you proficient with improvised weapons. You can also punch better and bonus action grapple if you shield bash or punch first.
- Athlete – for mobility
- Grappler
- Mage Slayer
- Sentinel
- Martial Adept
- Skilled
- Shield Master
- Defensive Duelist – provides a nice parry-like ability, I would like to choose abilities like these more than passive buffs cuz they make combat more engaging and dynamic
- Blade Mastery – Alternative to Defensive Duelist. Gives you more advantage on attacks of opportunity among other things
Here we can also provide you with some of great half feats like Slasher/Piercer/Crusher Even though the fighting initiate (combo sword and board with defense fighting style or interception fighting style etc.) dual wielder (want to wield 2 rapiers or long swords, or war hammers, take this and get half the AC of shield.
Battle Master Maneuvers Ranged
They’ve actually done a very good work at making sure there is no “Best” maneuver. There’s mainly going to be a moment where the one you select shall not be the best one, but you can decide the best option for what it is you would like to do.
As per our knowledge you are going to chose focus on melee, as an Echo knight gets the best use out of that. You are also going to want to reserve your bonus actions and reactions for your Echo features. So for that…
- Distracting Strike: If you have an another physical damage dealer in your party (melee or ranged), or even a mage with firebolt, this would be a great choice to help line up your allies.
- Goading Attack. This may help giving a bit of tankiness, as this could force an attack to be made oppose you that may go to an ally. And if your DM interested to play dumb characters dumb-ly, this may be a perfect excuse to force an enemy to swing at your echo.
- Maneuvering Attack: I like this as a thematic option which also allows you even more positioning plays that you already have with an echo, now involving your friends.
- Menacing Attack: Fear gives allies benefit and the target drawback. Always good, but it can be resisted.
- Precision Attack: Always good to help make up for bad attack rolls.
- Pushing Attack. Great for enemy positioning, and could be even better when mixed with your echo, allowing you to set up different angles for your shove. Can be resisted though again.
Conclusion
That being said guys! We hope the dnd 5e battle master maneuvers guide has been helped you so much. If you have any cool stories or any other ideas about this topic then we welcome you to let us know in the below comment section. In any case we also like you to read this what is the brace maneuver in battle master? article too.