Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the eighth episode of our feats 5e series. Is your character addicted to AC or in need of it at the very least, if so i recommend taking a look at this feat. Today we’re talking about defensive duelist feat dnd 5e found in the players handbook and if you’re unfamiliar with how feats work? when you get them? stuff like that, i’ll give you a brief kind of summarization here.
So feats usually get every four levels, some classes get them a little bit more frequently than others and you get them instead of your ability score increases. They’re essentially extra abilities and traits you can give your characters. That being said, let’s take a look at the description for this feat and we also get to know how does defensive duelist work 5e.
Description
Firstly and there is a prerequisite for this one. Your dexterity has to be at least 13 or higher. Assuming that conditions met though there’s nothing else like there’s no race prerequisite or class pure who said it’s just the 13 or higher dex.
When you are wielding a finesse weapon with which you are proficient and another creature hits you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to add your proficiency bonus to your AC for that attack, potentially causing the attack to miss you.
Pretty cool stuff! Pretty straightforward but let’s go through a quick walk-through and break it down just a little bit. Also check out 5e defensive duelist monk.
Walkthrough
So as long as the weapon in one of your hands is finesse meaning you can pick either your dex or your strengths for it.
You can burn a reaction and add your proficiency bonus to your AC after you know whether or not the attack hit you. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how incredibly useful this is. It can really quite literally save your life and there’s ways to make your AC ludicrously high and if that’s what you’re trying to do then this is definitely worth looking into.
It also kind of scales up with your level which is really nice to have an any feature or class ability. So yeah this is a great solid choice. That being said, let’s take a look at my personal thoughts on it. In case if you’ve missed our article regarding dual wielder feat 5e then make sure to check it now.
Thoughts
I could really see any melee fighter benefiting from this, especially if you are for example a gish character that’s using a deck space weapon or you are a rogue that would be super useful if you’re doing a lot of close quarters combat and you can stack it with a shield as well and if you are a warforged rogue with the shield you can do ludicrously high AC. It is quite frankly ridiculous. As you read whole article you may got to know the answer for how often can i use defensive duelist!
Here is our most frequently asked question from our community is does defensive duelist work with dual wield? then this is our answer for this…Yes, of course it’s applicable. You can have a weapon in each of your hand, or a weapon and shield even. So long as you meet these requirements for the feat (a finesse weapon) then you can have whatever you want in your other hand. Do not miss our article about duelist 5e fighting style.
Conclusion
That being said, i mean outside of frontline fighters i can’t really see anyone else picking this, i might be wrong. That being said, if you have any crazy ideas for it, any alternative uses, any stories or any build ideas please put them down below in the comments i love giving them a read and i know everyone checking this article does as well and with that out of the way i hope everyone has a great and as always happy adventuring guys. Also read 5e defense vs dueling.