But a scimitar lacks the heaviness of splitting your enemies head to toe and make a nice totem of their remains to inspire fear into the hearts of their comrades.
Would it? Shoving is specifically a 'special melee attack', and Reckless requires you to make your 'first attack', so it seems like Reckless could trigger off a shove.
But on the flip side, Reckless also says it gives benefits on 'melee weapon attack rolls'. So it would trigger, but not give you any benefit on the shove, since you're not making a weapon attack roll. I think? Hrrm.
So what you're saying is you wouldn't allow the bonus action shove until the Attack Action has already occurred? Certainly not how I would rule it. I don't do that for any bonus action triggered by an action type. The only thing I do is if you take a bonus action before the triggering action, you can't change the action to something else if it somehow becomes invalid, you simply lose the action.Well at least you got to the same place: You will have to reckless attack before you know if the shove worked...
That sounds even more unkillable! But I lose the iconic (in my mind) shield cuff to knock someone down. Hmmff. I'm now looking at the Grappler and Tavern Brawler feats but they don't seem to offer much that I couldn't already do.
Tavern Brawler has kind of a nice synergy for shield-based grappler builds in that if you're beating the other guy to death with your shield anyway, you might as well get proficiency on your attacks. It probably doesn't justify taking the feat in the first place, but it is kind of a nice fringe benefit. I have a paladin in one party who likes to grapple/prone enemies in chokepoints--as long as the party isn't outnumbered or anything, so novas aren't needed--to take an enemy out of the fight, and then he beats that enemy with his shield. The advantage from having a prone target offsets lack of proficiency with shield bashing, so it works out okay, but he'd benefit from having Tavern Brawler if he somehow magically had it.
It probably wouldn't be worth the feat cost though because the point of that tactic is to cheaply take an enemy out of the equation and also use that enemy to physically block an approach vector (i.e. chokepoint). The shield bashing is just to pass the time--most of the damage gets done by the ranged attackers in the party. The only time it would be really worthwhile to have shield bashing proficiency is in a solo scenario.
That's why in your case I'd recommend Defensive Duelist, if you have a spare ASI. You can grapple/prone with one hand and sneak attack with the other, while still gaining an AC benefit comparable to a shield (and sometimes better), plus have the option of going full-on rapier + shield for maximum defense against foes too large to push around.Does sound fun. I have never seen a brawler in play, and though it does intrigue me, it's probably not for me this time because of the sneak attack.
So what you're saying is you wouldn't allow the bonus action shove until the Attack Action has already occurred? Certainly not how I would rule it. I don't do that for any bonus action triggered by an action type. The only thing I do is if you take a bonus action before the triggering action, you can't change the action to something else if it somehow becomes invalid, you simply lose the action.