D&D 5E Battlemaster Maneuvers - only 3-4 good ones?

From what I remember, isn't parry basically a 1d8+Dex heal as a reaction? That's like getting a healing word put on you. I have used it to good effect just using it to tank an over-powered bad guy while everybody ran away. Early on, you only have 28HP or so, getting an extra 4 x 7HP per short rest is pretty great. Effectively your entire HP pool again every short rest, without spending actions.

A player in my campaign is currently playing a Scout fighter, they get a better version of parry that is Superior Dice to AC and half damage if the attack still hits. They have to be using light armor, but that is still amazing for tanking.
 

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Commander's strike:
I like the principle of this, but the problem is the action economy angle. So you are giving up one of our attacks *and* your bonus action (which you could have used for something else) to let someone use a reaction - which they might have been to use for an opportunity attack, or shield spell or whatever. If the action economy could be improved the maneuver would be better.

Suppose you're in a fight where another party member's attacks are significantly more effective than yours against the enemy, in which case the action economy might be worth it. Or maybe one of your allies is up against a target that is nearly dead, but letting that target get another turn could be devastating(a powerful caster, for example). You can use this to give your ally an extra attack, giving them the chance to finish that enemy off.

Disarming strike:
The real issue here is that the disarmed weapon is dropped at the opponent's feat... which they are then free to pick up on their turn with no penalty whatsoever, almost as if the disarming never happened! Boo. It is marginally useful if you do it then withdraw (your foe doesn't have his/her weapon to hit you with as a reaction) but appart from that... The maneuver would be *greatly* improved if the weapon was tossed 10 feet away... but it might be too powerful then?

Attack, disarm, kick the guy's sword away, PROFIT :) Or if one of your allies takes their turn before the target, your ally can deal with the dropped weapon. Keep in mind though that the maneuver lets you force the target to drop "one item of your choice", so it doesn't have to mean a weapon. Suppose the guy has a +2 shield and you can force him to drop it. Congrats, his AC has dropped by 4 until(or IF) he has a chance to pick it up again(I have no idea what the rules are for how shields are carried, if they're somehow secured to the arm and thus immune to this maneuver, probably up to your DM).

Distracting strike:
This one is basically adding the "help" action to your attack (and a bit of damage). Seems good to me

Yup, this one's pretty self-explanatory, and always useful. Especially if you're trying to set up a Sneak Attack for the Rogue in your party.

Evasive footwork:
The use scenario of this is a bit narrow - increase your AC when moving - ie vs attacks of opportunities. When you need it it's great, but it won't be in every fight. Still not bad.

If you have to wade through a crowd, this could be very helpful. Not a Disengage, so you can still make your attacks, your enemies just have to choose to either let you walk by, or risk wasting their reaction on you when you're extra-tanky.

Feinting attack:
You give yourself advantage. This is similar to distracting strike, but you need a bonus action to make it work, making it strictly worse than distracting strike unless you have non allies.

Basically True Strike with a little extra damage. Maybe not flashy or cool, but can still be quite useful.

Goading attack.
This is nice, because it is making yourself a bit "sticky" - it's a bit like a "taunt" effect.

Can be awesome when used by a couple of different Fighter types. The tank, who can soak up damage like a sponge can use this to stand in the middle of battle and force the enemy to focus on him. And the sneaky archer, attacking from an unassailable vantage point or behind good cover. The later works even better if the Battlemaster has taken a couple of Rogue levels so they can Hide as their Bonus Action.

Lunging attack:
You give yourself a bit more reach. Is this good? Seems a bit narrow in use... I can't tell.

Sure its use case is more limited, but it could let you make an attack without getting inside the target's reach, letting you walk away without drawing an OA. Or it could let you surprise an enemy who is trying to stay just outside YOUR reach.

Maneuvering attack:
The use case scenario is narrow, but in some specific situation this is *hugely* useful - cut off an escape route for example.

You pretty much nailed this one. Limited use, but when you need it, you'll be glad you took it. The ally you choose to move doesn't have to be anywhere near the target of your attack, and their movement isn't a "Disengage", so not even someone with Sentinel can take a swipe as they walk by. Get someone out of trouble, or help make up for the lower movement speed of the smaller races.

Menacing attack:
Making a creature frightened for a turn is a pretty good effect. This seems good

Frightened is good, it nerfs the target's attacks AND affects where they can move on the battlefield(shoot an arrow at the guy trying to close in with your melee allies, and he has to wait an extra turn to join the scrum). Less effective at higher levels where some monsters are immune to being frightened. In those cases, Goading Attack becomes better since it doesn't impose a condition that they might be immune to.

Parry:
I don't know what to think about this. It's dex dependent (so are battemasters dex fighters?). At first I was thinking "sweet, it's like casting shield!"... but then I realized I read it wrong - it's not AC, it's damage reduction. And it's only one attack. So now I don't know what to think of it.

Sure, it's kinda like a weaker form of Second Wind, but the damage is reduced before it can drop you to 0, unlike Second Wind which is after the fact. Sometimes that little bit of damage reduction is all you need to avoid a killing blow until the Cleric gets their turn.

Precision attack:
Could be pretty good, but the attack has to be one that counts - maybe combo this maneuver with another one so that one lands for sure?

Basically, use it when you pulled a Get Smart and "missed it by >that< much!" One of the most surefire ways to increase your average damage output is to increase your hit percentage. Obviously you'll want to have an idea of your target's AC so you know if it'd be worth burning the die. Another one that can be useful with a Battlemaster that's got some Rogue levels, so you can make sure you land that Sneak Attack damage. It works on Opportunity Attacks, and the attack rolls made during Booming/Green-Flame Blade.

Pushing attack:
Interesting. Does the creature trigger attacks of opportunity when it's pushed away? If so this maneuver is *awesome*. If not it's still good IMO

Forced movement doesn't draw Opportunity Attacks. But pushing a guy off a cliff, or away from your Wizard so they don't have to Disengage to get away? It definitely has uses.

Rally: Could be a nice way to save someone's bacon by giving them a bit of extra HP in a tight spot... is this good? If not, why not?

Can be a good emergency measure to bolster an ally who's near death. Though if you've got a good enough Charisma modifier to really exploit this, why aren't you a Paladin? :)

Riposte: Seems good to me!

Good way to potentially get extra hits against an enemy who isn't planning to walk away from you

Sweeping attack:
Meh... maybe for dealing with mobs?

If you're the tank who plans to be standing in the middle of all the bad guys, free damage against additional targets is always useful. This would make an interesting combo with Green-Flame Blade. You could potentially damage three targets with one swing.

Trip Attack:
This is a free shove added to an attack. I think this is good because then the foe is prone and thus you and others now have advantage to hit it. Depending on the timing of the creature's action, this is better than feint or distracting attack. It also allows a dex fighter to be good at shoving.

Good for melee fighters to knock a guy down and then basically ground & pound them. If you're an archer, it doesn't benefit you but you can use it to tee a guy up for your allies to wail on.


Overall, there are definitely some maneuvers that are more generically useful than others, but the more situational maneuvers let you add some flavor to your Fighter. Plus, extra damage is extra damage. Nice thing about them, when you gain additional maneuvers at higher levels, you can also swap one out that you've found less useful than you'd hoped.
 

Anything that forces any kind of save is great against legendary creatures, making them use up all their legendary saves so the casters can jump in and wreck havoc. I had a battlemaster fighter halfling, and after action surging against a white dragon, I had managed to force five saving throws on it on my single turn alone.

Commander's strike is another really great one if you have a rogue or paladin. I played a paladin, attacked with divine smite, got commander strike used for me, and divine smited again on that attack as well.
 

Disarming attack might start off with limited use, but you could always wait to pick it up at 7th level, where you can combine it with Pushing attack or shove actions from additional attacks or Shield feat.

Commander's Strike as pointed out can be huge if you have a Rogue in the party, but is also useful in any situation where someone else's attack will be more useful that your own. Such as they have the magic weapon and you don't, or their opponent could be taken down in just one more swing. Or that you can't reach anyone to attack them at the moment, but they can.
I'd say its extremely useful in some party setups. Obviously if you're the only martial-type in the group, its a lot less useful.

Lunging Attack can be useful, but situational. Again, it can depend upon your party makeup. If there are several other melee-types and you're not fighting in an open field, you can sometimes end up stuck behind one of the others for a round. Note that if you already have a reach weapon, it extends your attack out to 15ft. Can be useful to attack enemy 2nd-rankers.
Its not what I would regard as the better ones, but can certainly be useful.

Rally can be useful. Its basically close to a preemptive second wind to someone else. If you're awash with healing from your other party members then it might be less useful, and there is always the risk that your ally won't get hit until the next rest. However in a group where you're not the only tanky-type and/or you have more limited healing resources, its great. Although its action makes it useful in combat, you could also use it outside combat if someone is about to go do something risky.
Really good at 3rd level even if you end up swapping it out later.
 

Hmmm... Parry is a bit weak compared to the defensive duelist feat.

My very first 5E PC was a battlemaster, based on my joy at finally being able to play a Dex-based swashbuckler straight out of the box!

I chose my first three maneuvers to match that concept: Parry, Riposte and Precision Attack. I planned to get the Defensive Duelist feat later, and how this would combine with my maneuvers went like this:-

* if the baddy missed me - Riposte
* if the baddy hit me, but adding my proficiency bonus to my AC would turn that hit into a miss - Defensive Duellist
* if the baddy hit me by more than that - Parry

The only trouble was that I had no maneuver that would add to my damage that I could choose to add after I rolled a crit (so I could get two dice instead of one; maximising the use of my dice), but that was easily rectified at 7th level.
 

The problem with Parry and Rally is their scaling or lack thereof.
At level 3, 1d8+0/+5 damage once/round can mean a lot.
By the time you're level 11+, wasting both your reaction and a limited resource on what, 10 HP if you've maxxed out your dex score? isn't that hot, especially when rogues are routinely (uncannily) dodging stuff without any resource expenditure whatsoever.
 

Commander's Strike is decent enough - as the foundation of an as yet unpublished improved version.

That is, basic actions available to "everybody" (all BM fighters at least) can be unspectacular as that leaves design space for improved versions later.

As written, CS is generally to expensive to see continual use. As you learn the game you realize a major component of charop is to utilize all your available actions every round. What I mean is; you want to pick options that enable you to use a bonus action and a reaction on your every combat turn.

This means the cost of CS only increases with level, since the reaction of character only becomes more valuable as you level up.

The way CS costs *your own action* is of less concern, since a maximized build around the maneuver presumably goes for static improvements; i.e. since the idea is to sacrifice your action for somebody else's, don't waste effort making your action better.

But this idea for a build will simply have to wait. Preferably you want a class feature mimicking CS but without its two core limitations:

* CS has a fairly limited number of uses. Ideally an optimized commander *never* takes actions of her own, which is to say: unlimited commander's strikes.
* The concept needs to make allies take extra actions as free actions. This is pretty much a deal-breaker. What's the point of only being able to grant allies actions that they are about to use anyway (assuming optimal play)? Then the sole benefit is letting them take one action instead of another action. But the cost of that (in paying with your own actions) is far far too steep. And I can't very well demand that you'd be able to CS for free...
 

I think that the maneuvers you choose should reflect the style of fighting you want for your character. Some choices are not good for some characters.

I am playing a wood elf scout type of fighter. High DEX, good with a bow, two weapon fighting style, and dual wielder feat, so I chose maneuvers that would be useful in the broadest way for that style of fighting.

Menacing Attack- I chose this because, as a skirmish fighter in light armor, I want to keep foes away at times. This maneuver is useful when using melee weapons OR with a bow.

Trip Attack- Knocking foes prone to give allies advantage is very useful. Also, it can be used in melee OR with a bow, making well suited for this type of fighter.

Riposte- Having an opportunity to get in a reaction attack without the foe needing to move away is really good. This one is melee only but I really like it.


If I were playing a heavy fighter then I would re-think my choices.
 

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