Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 22nd episode of our feat series. Today we are going to be taking a look at one of the most common min/max picked feats out there. Today we are taking a look at great weapon master 5e. This feat is found in the players handbook, so we should all have access to it and before we move on to the description i just want to take a brief moment here and tell you what feats are and kinda how they work.
So feats are the alternative to your ability score improvements. You can pick them usually every four levels, subclasses get them a little bit more frequently than others but for the most it’s every four levels. That being said, they are extra trades, skills and abilities your characters can gain access to, to make them a little bit more customized and to really complement your own personal playstyle. With that out of the way let’s look at the description for great weapon master.
Description
So it’s something i would really like to point out is that there is no prerequisite for this feat. Meaning anyone of any class, any skill set and any race can pick it. With that being said, let’s look at the full description.
You’ve learned to put the weight of a weapon to your advantage, letting its momentum empower your strikes. You gain the following benefits: On your turn, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one melee weapon attack as a bonus action. Before you make a melee attack with a heavy weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack’s damage.
Fantastic stuff! Let’s look at a walkthrough so we can kind of understand what’s going on here.
Walkthrough
So something i would like to point out and get a little bit of clarification on for you guys. Is the critical hit and finishing blows part equaling an attack as a bonus action. This does not have to be immediate. What i mean by that is you could get it do a finishing blow move use and then use your bonus action.
You know what i mean. It can move between when you have to use the bonus action attack it doesn’t have to be immediate. So i think that’s pretty interesting. In terms of the minus five to attack roll equals to the +10 to damage. That’s the component that makes this so gosh darn good for the min/max ters and heavy hitters out there. That is a huge chunk of damage on its own and then you add your damage die any modifiers you have to the weapon itself and then you add your personal modifier and it just it stacks up quite nicely and can be quite a good hit.
Another thing i would like to point out is because of the wording of this spell it implies that you can use this with melee spell attacks as well. So that’s like your green flame blade stuff like that so i think that’s a very interesting too. That being said, i mean let’s take a look at my personal thoughts for it.
Thoughts
I think it is a fairly obvious that the ones who stand the most to gain are the ones who missed the least. I could really see this comboing well if you were let’s say an elf fighter who is weilding dexterity based weapons and takes the elven accuracy feat.
That would essentially guarantee your odds of missing are incredibly low and your damage potential is incredibly high and i do think that is a fairly common build that’s out there. I’ve seen something close to it in one of my personal campaigns and it rocked it. It actually forced me to rescale the encounters to counteract that one party member.
Conclusion
That being said guys, if you have any ideas, any build concepts or any comments you’d like to make about great weapon master please take it down beneath in the comments i love reading and i know everyone else checking this article does as well. That being said guys happy adventuring and as always thank you so much for checking out today.