D&D (2024) Minigiant's Grandmastery Feats (Tier 3 Feat Discussion)

[Minigiant]

So I've asked for Tier 3 feats before and have asked what people what a Tier 3 warrior is.

I've done it myself and am sharing my some of ideas with you all rather than clogging up other discussions.
For no money.
I like the concept of Weapon Masteries. I'd prefer actual martial cantrips but we got what we got.
So what if you could upgrade them?


Grandmastery of the Axe
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Dash action and move at least 5 feet toward a creature while wielding a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe, you may make an attack against that creature. If you hit, roll one of the weapon’s damage dice two additional times and add it your damage roll.
• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Cleave and Topple mastery.
• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with which has the Cleave mastery, you may attack a third and 4th creature within 5 ft of the first.

Grandmastery of the Bow
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Ready action to make an attack with a longbow or shortbow on a trigger, you may make 2 attacks against the target instead.
• When you attack with a longbow or shortbow you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Slow and Vex mastery.
• When you attack with a longbow or shortbow you have mastery with which has the Slow property, the Speed reduction can be up to a number of feet equal to 5 plus your Dexterity score.

Grandmastery of the Bludgeon
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Attack action with a club, greatclub, flail, or morningstar, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add it to the damage roll.
• When you attack with a club, greatclub, flail, or morningstar you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Sap and Slow mastery.
• When you hit with a club, greatclub, flail, or morningstar you have mastery with which has the Sap mastery, the creature has disadvantage to their next 2 attacks.

Grandmastery of the Hammer
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Attack action with a light hammer, warhammer, or maul, you can add your Constitution modifier to your damage rolls.
• When you attack with a light hammer, warhammer, or maul you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Push and Topple mastery.
• When you attack with a light hammer, warhammer, or maul that you have mastery with, and apply the Topple mastery property, the creature you attacked has disadvantage on the Constitution saving throw to resist it.

Grandmastery of the Knife
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Disengage action while wielding a dagger, rapier, sickle, or shortsword, you can make one attack with these weapons as part of the action.
• When you attack with a a dagger, rapier, sickle, or shortsword, you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Nick and Vex mastery.
• When you take the Attack action with a dagger, rapier, sickle, or shortsword you have mastery with with the Nick Property, you can choose to make 2 extra attacks as a bonus action.

Grandmastery of the Spear
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Dodge action while wielding a javelin, pike, lance or spear, your AC increases by 3 until the start of your next turn.
• When you attack with a javelin, pike, lance or spear you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Push and Sap mastery
• When you attack with a javelin, pike, lance or spear you have mastery with which has the Push property, you can push them additional feet equal to your Strength score and there is no size limitation.

Grandmastery of the Sword
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Dodge action while wielding a longsword, glaive, greatsword, or scimitar you have mastery with, you may roll an attack roll and use it as your AC as long as you are wielding these weapons and not incapacitated
• When you attack with a longsword, glaive, greatsword, or scimitar you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Graze and Sap mastery.
• When you miss with a longsword, glaive, greatsword, or scimitar you have mastery with which has the Graze property, the damage from Graze is equal to 3 + your ability modifier

Should the feats require Extra Attack as well?

I tested it in two sessions with a Sword Grandmastery and Bow Grandmaster. The players had fun.

​

Let's Discuss the idea of Tier 3 Feats!​

 

[Kinematics]

Nitpicks and corrections:

Spoiler

When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with which has the Cleave mastery, you make an attack a third and 4th creature within 5 ft of the first.

you make → you may

When you take the Ready attack to make an attack with a longbow or shortbow on a trigger, you may make 2 attacks against instead.

Ready attack → Ready action
attacks against instead → attacks against the target instead

Not sure if the two attacks are limited to be against the same target (assumed to be the case for the above correction), or if this should remove 'against' entirely and just make it two attacks in general.

Creatures have disadvantage on the Constitution saving throw from a light hammer, warhammer, or maul you wield with the Topple mastery property that you have mastery with.

Could be better written. Perhaps:

When you attack with a light hammer, warhammer, or maul that you have mastery with, and apply the Topple mastery effect, the creature you attacked has disadvantage on the Constitution saving throw to resist it.

When you attack with a a dagger, rapier, sickle, or shortsowrd, you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Nick and Vex mastery.

shortsowrd → shortsword (applies to all three entries in Grandmastery of the Knife)
Remove the comma after "shortsword".

Overall, I do like these feat ideas. It gives characters a degree of specialization that's more long term than weapon masteries, which can be swapped out every day, and the bonuses are pretty nice.

I also like that you tie in non-attack combat actions, and give benefits to different weapon types.

Comments on specific feats:

Grandmastery of the Axe:
Does the bonus attack given when you Dash combine with Cleave? Do the bonus damage dice apply to the Cleave attack as well?

Charging into the front line of the enemy and just nailing 3 or 4 creatures with that massive first strike with your greataxe, possibly knocking them down, is a great image.

Grandmastery of the Bludgeon:
It's not clear if the bonus damage die applies to every attack made during the Attack action, or only one attack. It won't apply to Readied actions or opportunity attacks, though I might consider it should apply to Readied attacks.

While I realize it doesn't quite fit with the naming, it does feel like the greatclub belongs more with the Hammer set than the Bludgeon set. Just first impressions, though.

Grandmastery of the Spear:
Maybe consider a "riposte" feature. If you use the Dodge action (and get the +3 AC), if a creature attacks and misses you, you can use your Reaction to counterattack. That also combines well with the Push mastery.

Grandmastery of the Sword:

When you take the Dodge action while wielding a longsword, glaive, greatsword, or scimitar you have mastery with, you may roll an attack roll and use it as your AC as long as you are wielding these weapons and not incapacitated

Does this mean that if you do it once, it lasts indefinitely? (Or at least to the end of combat?) It doesn't say it only lasts til the next turn. I can see this being intentional, but I want to be sure.

 

[bedir than]

I like these overall and would push for you to keep iterating on them more. There will obviously need some tweaks once the 2024 PHB is out as well.

On the Axe, the third point seems to feel that a character already gets two attacks and with this feat they get up to two more. But there's no requirement to have extra attack and the bullet point seems fuzzy.

I might go something like

-

• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with which has the Cleave mastery, you make use a bonus action to take the same number of attacks to any opponents within your reach. (So at 20th level this may be a bonus action of four attacks after already using four attacks)

 

[Quickleaf]

So I've asked for Tier 3 feats before and have asked what people what a Tier 3 warrior is.

I've done it myself and am sharing my some of ideas with you all rather than clogging up other discussions.
For no money.
I like the concept of Weapon Masteries. I'd prefer actual martial cantrips but we got what we got.
So what if you could upgrade them?


Grandmastery of the Axe
Prerequisite: Level 12, Weapon Mastery

• When you take the Dash action and move at least 5 feet toward a creature while wielding a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe, you may make an attack against that creature. If you hit, roll one of the weapon’s damage dice two additional times and add it your damage roll.
• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Cleave and Topple mastery.
• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with which has the Cleave mastery, you make an attack a third and 4th creature within 5 ft of the first.

I think it's a marvelous idea and worth hacking! But it also has a few pitfalls, foremost in my mind being increased handling time due to the force multiplier of high-level play.

The first bullet point seems well designed to me, it's the second and the third that give me pause.

Imagine a 12th level fighter making 3 attacks. Your Improved Cleave alone turns those 3 attack rolls in 6 attack rolls, and then any creature hit (probably at least 2) has to make a saving throw. So we've gone from 3 rolls to 8 (or more) rolls – that's increased handling time when high-level combats are already taking up a lot of table time (in my opinion).

Which is partially a problem with the UA Playtest material for 2024, but it's compounded by your approach here.

You also can't really say "but that's comparable to Action Surge", because Action Surge could be used on top of this. Imagine an extreme scenario where the fighter makes 6 attack rolls, hits enough to require 4 saving throws vs Topple, uses Action Surge to make another 3 attacks, which all hit, prompting 3 more saves vs Topple. That is 17 total rolls to resolve!

I don't have the playtest data to even anecdotally "prove" these sorts of changes increase handling time, but my GM gut instinct is this gets a big yellow flag "Watch Out" from me.

 

[Kinematics]

On the Axe, the third point seems to feel that a character already gets two attacks and with this feat they get up to two more. But there's no requirement to have extra attack and the bullet point seems fuzzy.

That bullet point was specifically about the extra attack granted by Cleave, so there's no requirement that you have the Extra Attack feature anywhere in there. Cleave lets you attack a second creature if it's next to your original target, and this feat would allow you to extend that to a third and fourth additional creatures.

It would be interesting to scale it to your base number of attacks, but since these feats are already level 12 I don't think that that's actually helpful. If you got it at level 1, then it would be nice to see it scaling as you went through level 5, and level 11 for fighters, but you're past the point where that matters by 12th level.

 

[bedir than]

That bullet point was specifically about the extra attack granted by Cleave, so there's no requirement that you have the Extra Attack feature anywhere in there. Cleave lets you attack a second creature if it's next to your original target, and this feat would allow you to extend that to a third and fourth additional creatures.

It would be interesting to scale it to your base number of attacks, but since these feats are already level 12 I don't think that that's actually helpful. If you got it at level 1, then it would be nice to see it scaling as you went through level 5, and level 11 for fighters, but you're past the point where that matters by 12th level.

oh, thank you!

Maybe "you can Cleave up to two more opponents within reach"
I would definitely include reach because there's a few PC options that give you longer reach and it feels like that should be relevant.

 

[mellored]

When you take the Ready attack to make an attack with a longbow or shortbow on a trigger, you may make 2 attacks against instead.

I feel this should just be its own thing.

Ambush
prerequisite: extra attack.
*When you Ready an attack on a trigger, you may make 2 attacks against instead of 1.
*you gain advantage on initiative rolls.

I also kind of want the "use 2 masteries at once" to be a fighter exclusive feature.

Upgrading the Mastery seems fine though. Probably with +1 Stat.

 

[Minigiant]

Nitpicks and corrections:

Spoiler: nitpick

you make → you may

Ready attack → Ready action
attacks against instead → attacks against the target instead

Not sure if the two attacks are limited to be against the same target (assumed to be the case for the above correction), or if this should remove 'against' entirely and just make it two attacks in general.

Could be better written. Perhaps:

When you attack with a light hammer, warhammer, or maul that you have mastery with, and apply the Topple mastery effect, the creature you attacked has disadvantage on the Constitution saving throw to resist it.

shortsowrd → shortsword (applies to all three entries in Grandmastery of the Knife)
Remove the comma after "shortsword".

I haven't gone through editing yet. I just C&P the rough transcribe of paper homebrew waiting for the PHB release to see final rules.

Grandmastery of the Axe:
Does the bonus attack given when you Dash combine with Cleave? Do the bonus damage dice apply to the Cleave attack as well?

Charging into the front line of the enemy and just nailing 3 or 4 creatures with that massive first strike with your greataxe, possibly knocking them down, is a great image.

Onlythe first attack because I don't know how to word it to include following attacks without sounding clunky.

Grandmastery of the Bludgeon:
It's not clear if the bonus damage die applies to every attack made during the Attack action, or only one attack. It won't apply to Readied actions or opportunity attacks, though I might consider it should apply to Readied attacks.

While I realize it doesn't quite fit with the naming, it does feel like the greatclub belongs more with the Hammer set than the Bludgeon set. Just first impressions, though.

Every attack on the Attack action only.

Greatclub is a bigger club. Club is a bludgeon.

Grandmastery of the Spear:
Maybe consider a "riposte" feature. If you use the Dodge action (and get the +3 AC), if a creature attacks and misses you, you can use your Reaction to counterattack. That also combines well with the Push mastery.

That was the original and it got stinky cheesy.

Grandmastery of the Sword:
Does this mean that if you do it once, it lasts indefinitely? (Or at least to the end of combat?) It doesn't say it only lasts til the next turn. I can see this being intentional, but I want to be sure.

Until start of your turn went missing. It's on the paper version.

 

[Kobold Stew]

These are really interesting ideas, and cool!

First off: you need something for quarterstaff and something for crossbows!

Possibly for qstaff -- you could use it as a finesse weapon? It would come late, admittedly.

• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with, you can treat them as if they have both the Cleave and Topple mastery.
• When you attack with a battleaxe, halberd, handaxe, or greataxe you have mastery with which has the Cleave mastery, you may attack a third and 4th creature within 5 ft of the first.

So for the second and third bullet points (as above, and for each feat): what work is "with which you have Cleave mastery" doing in the third bullet point? Isn't it always available given the second bullet? I feel I am missing something.

Should the feats require Extra Attack as well?

Yes! Make it available to a cleric or rogue if they want -- anyone. Most builds won't take it and will have something better to choose, but there's no reason to require extra attack -- if they can access weapon mastery, it should be available. Makes things much more flexible.

 

[Minigiant]

So for the second and third bullet points (as above, and for each feat): what work is "with which you have Cleave mastery" doing in the third bullet point? Isn't it always available given the second bullet? I feel I am missing something.

The weapon might not have Cleave at first.

Battleaxes in the UA don't have Cleave.