Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 50th ever episode of our feet series. We’re on the home stretch now guys let’s keep going through them. Today we’re gonna be taking a look at shield master dnd 5e feat now this is perfect for those characters with ludicrously high AC who just want to help out the party and attract as much aggro as possible.
That being said, it has found in the players handbook and you know honestly if you’re carrying a shield regularly. I would recommend just taking a look at this in general, it’s really cool! That being said, let’s take a look at the description to better understand what this feat all about.
Table of Contents
Description
First and foremost it might be worth noting that although there is technically no prerequisite here. You should probably be carrying a shield if you want to take advantage to almost any of this. The description reads as followed.
You use shields not just for protection but also for offense. You gain the following benefits while you are wielding a shield: If you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use a bonus action to try to shove a creature within 5 feet of you with your shield. If you aren’t incapacitated, you can add your shield’s AC bonus to any Dexterity saving throw you make against a spell or other harmful effect that targets only you. If you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you can use your reaction to take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, interposing your shield between yourself and the source of the effect.
Super interesting stuff there! Honestly i really like the way this is worded and you do need a shield to take advantage of any of that so just bear that in mind in the back of your head. That being said, let’s take a look at the walkthrough and just break this down a little bit further.
Walkthrough
So i got to clarify real quick here a couple things. Firstly this can only be done after you make an attack, what i mean by that is you got to make the attack action first it doesn’t matter if you hit or if you miss it doesn’t have to be a successful attack, you just have to take the attack action before you use your bonus action to shove.
Now shoving and 5E works a little bit differently. Shoving essentially gives you the choice to knock them back five feet or knock them prone and it is not guaranteed to be an automatic success it’s actually your athletics versus their atheltics or acrobatics. So bear that in the back your mom we’re using this as well but that’s more of a note for DMs out there a lot of times players assume it’s an automatic success but as worded it says you try to shove a creature that try implies that’s not a guaranteed success and then you got to go through this rule.
Would you get advantage you know circumstantially i’d allowed my games but it’s ultimately your DMs call. Secondly your shield AC bonus is applied to any dexterity saving throws you make. So long as they’re only targeting you, what that means is things like fireball that target more than one enemy…you can’t use it there. That’s kind of a DM call as written that’s correct although it doesn’t make a whole ton of sense to me personally.
In any case just something to think about and then the third proponent there when you’re first roll dex save for half damage this would apply to fireball. So you can burn your reaction and should you succeed take zero damage. I think that is probably the most beneficial part of this feat and if you are trying to build a tank your character that is 1000% the way to go.
There’s a lot of times your AC can be ludicrously high but if you have poor dex you’re gonna find it very hard to avoid most high damaging spells. In any case let’s take a look at my personal thoughts for this.
Thoughts
I really could see this being used by someone like let’s say the swashbuckler or the bard for sure could really gain a lot of use out of this. Those would probably be the two best classes i could really see taking advantage of this. That being said i mean any class with shield proficiency could really get a lot of bang for their buck, if you really plan on going this route i might actually suggest taking a one level dip into forged cleric.
Reason being they can apply a +1 bonus to anything really. So make a plus one shield or any piece of equipment i should say so make a plus one shield with that and you’ll find that it’ll be quite worth it.
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any builds, combo ideas, comments or cool stories involving shield master i’d really like to hear them down in the comments beneath, i love reading them i know everyone checking this article does as well. That being said, guys thank you so much once again for checking in i really do appreciate it. Have a great day and as always happy adventuring.