Battle Master is a Classic in Dnd 5e! - Advanced guide to Battle Master

at level 3 fighters get to choose their subclass today I'll be talking about the Battle Master subclass welcome to pack tactics to start off the video I will quote Sun Tzu's Art of War Sun Tzu said like comment and subscribe to pack tactics right at level 3 Battle Master gets two features one of which will be upgraded over the rest of their career and will be their main features so to say but first they get student of War at third level you gain proficiency with one type of Artisans tools of your choice without the optional rules about tools and xanathars this is not too exciting it's just a bit of fluff however if your game does make use of xanathars you have all the more reason to put in some extra thought about what these proficiencies might allow you to do tabletop builds made an article talking about all the tools in great detail with those rules which I'll link below but I'll quickly mention which tools I would look at when playing a Battle Master namely Mason's tools Carpenters tools Smiths or Tinkers tools and cobblers tools kind of in order of most useful to least useful the first two are useful because they give you advantage to perception and investigation in stone structures and wooden structures respectfully which surprise surprise is a lot of structures it is especially nice that this means you get a plus five bonus to those passives for when it comes up Smith's and Tinkers tools allow you to quickly rack up a sum of money because you can fix the gear of your enemies and sell it off lastly cobbler's tools allow you to hide away some of what you're carrying in people's shoes next up is combat superiority it is the feature that makes me like this subclass it basically gives you choices to make for your character besides Feats as a marshall it's a bit too much to go over everything here so I'll try my best to explain how this feature Works how it changes over time and what I believe is the best options it's like picking spells it's really exciting I love stuff like that that is actually a good comparison you get to pick Maneuvers out of a list which can be used by expending superiority dice basically every maneuver makes you roll a superiority dice which starts off as a d8 and makes you do something with that number every time you get to learn new maneuvers you get to swap one you have as well some Maneuvers may require the enemy to roll a saving throw the DC for that is eight plus your proficiency bonus plus your choice of your strength or dexterity modifier right from the get-go we get four superiority dice which we get back on any rest even short rests four people new to 5e those are like long rests but instead of being long they're shorts as for Maneuvers we get three so obviously we can use the same options multiple times if we wanted to both the amount of superiority dice you get and the amount of maneuvers you get to pick will grow in the future even the size of the superiority dice increases level 15 is a bit special because you don't gain an additional superiority die you also always get one if you start combat with zero left over in practice that just means you always use your last superiority die in combat even if you don't expect that you'll rest afterwards it's not insane or anything of course this is not all Battle Masters gets but I'll finish off everything I want to say about Maneuvers until we continue on with the features that aren't related to them also because I might as well I'll talk about some of the option Maneuvers from tashes my general advice would be pick the strongest combat options first as you'll have plenty of space later on to pick some you might want to use out of combat at level 3 I would look at menacing attack Precision attack and trip attack menacing attack is best used against enemies that do not have ranged options while you are at range if your allies don't walk up to them either frightened enemies will be stuck without anything to do on their turns that is pretty good Precision attack is the I need damage now Nova option this is a huge amount of damage if you use Power Attack Feats like Sharpshooter something like menacing attack adds 1d8's damage on a hit for an average of 4.5 Precision attack can add about 16.5 if you make a powerful hand crossbow shot hit which would have barely missed otherwise that is not to say the second Dairy effect of menacing is useless it is really quite useful but I'm just using it to show how good Precision attacks damage is just in case you misunderstand me somehow with menacing attack yes you add the attacks damage on a hit as well final tip don't use it against targets that don't matter or when you miss by a lot ideally you use Precision attack when you miss by an average of the die or less but if you need the damage to survive you should probably just pump those dice as much as you can trip attack is useful to not creatures out of the sky but it's also the most damage efficient option you have if you hit someone with the first attack on your turn you can trip them and if that is successful you can walk up to five feet range and use all your attacks maybe even with action surge with everything at Advantage this is also viable for ranged attack hackers if you have crossbow experts be warned though being within melee range is dangerous so don't get too greedy with damage later on you have stuff like disarming strike to steal spell casting Focus or magic items which may not come up a lot but the three methods above should be useful in any situation other Maneuvers aren't and rally which should be used at the start of your day before short resting afterwards for some extra temporary hit points Ambush allows you to take out targets before they are a problem like the spellcasters if you have Assassin levels this will add even more damage maneuvering attack can be used to maneuver your allies if needed at this point you should take a look at bait and switch and tactical assessment and if that isn't enough pushing strike distracting strike goading strike or maybe Perry there are a lot of options that are at least half decent if you want to see builds using some of these features check out the basic build fighter or gloomstocker Ranger Flagship from tabletop builds I'll link them in the comments of links are you struggling with ideas well I've got the tool you need this video is sponsored by describe where you can get professionally written box descriptions of basically everything thousands of scenes they also write a Maps Mouse over points of interest and read them for your players they do map collabs all the time I see there are nine new maps available and you get them if you subscribe I really like the newest map here called adventurers Guild Hall this is perfect for a quest Hub area and you can put in rival adventuring parties and stuff they've already detailed every room for me so now it's just to throw a bunch of NPCs and stuff like they've done more than half the work for me as a DM some of you might be wondering how good are they well some of them have written books themselves and even worked for wizards of the ghosts basically these guys are experts they'll help you up optimize your words to make fantastic stories you and your players will remember for years I highly recommend you check them out and if you do please press the link in the description that helps me too descript.com pack tactics and if you like what you see they hope to earn your subscription use the code pack tactics at the checkout to get 10 off your first subscription payments the remaining feature that doesn't have to do with Maneuvers is not crazy it is know your enemy starting at seventh level if you spend at least one minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combats you can learn certain information about its capabilities compared to your own the DM tells you if the creatures are equal Superior or inferior in regards of two of the following characteristics of your choice and while you can see the options personally I don't think this is enough information it takes a minute it and you can only use this outside of combat if I was your DM I would just let you use this in combat it would take six seconds and it would be a bonus action why not well that was it for all the features the other ones I already mentioned before Battle Master fighter is pretty cool and is actually a pretty good multi-class for a lot of builds just getting three levels in Fighter for this subclass gives you action search and some really good Maneuvers that you get back on the short rest I especially like this on my Gloom stalker Ranger because big damage goes anyways end of video me and describe hope to earn your subscription thank you for watching bye-bye

Channel: Pack Tactics

Views: 88,764

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Id: 1jzkcppW388

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022