D&D General What is your favorite Fighting Style in 5e?

Minigiant · Apr 2, 2026

Basic Expert said:
I agree. And I dislike fighting styles so much it's pretty much a deal-breaker for me running 5E.

I loathe design that forces characters into one-trick pony silos. Fighting styles compound that problem of being limiting by also being boring. And, in some cases, like great weapon fighting, actually annoying ("oh wait, Bob has to roll his greatsword damage again....").

Deal breaker is much.

Its easy to alter fighting style to making them not solo and more generalist.

Outside of DNDBeyond, its minor and fixable.

Basic Expert · Apr 2, 2026

Minigiant said:
Deal breaker is much.

Its easy to alter fighting style to making them not solo and more generalist.

Outside of DNDBeyond, its minor and fixable.

I agree. My problem with fixing D&D is that I'm inclined to fix everything I don't like about it. At that point, I'm pretty much playing a different system. Therefore, I just start and end with my own bespoke system and don't bother with D&D at all.

Gorg · Monday at 2:10 AM

I ususally go for Defense, as a +1 to AC is always useful!

Though my Paladin took Protection. He took the traditional oath, and really leans into the protector thing. He and his battle axe and smite/ smite spells, dish out a lot of damage, too. Dwarf Paladin of Clangeddin Silverbeard.

ECMO3 · Monday at 2:49 AM

Blind Fighting by far. It totally changes your PC.

I will say, usually when I DM and in one of the games I play there is a houserule that every PC regardless of class gets Two Weapon Fighting at 1st level (I stole the idea from the other DM).

For some reason it is impossible to get players to follow the rules on light weapons and just giving them all Two Weapon Fighting fixes it (well it doesn't fix nick, but it fixes the errors in damage and the slowed gameplay). Without this you are in a combat and a player hits with his dagger using nick or using a bonus action and does 4 damage, then next turn he does 3, then 4 turns later he does 7 and I'm like 'wait how can you do 7 with a normal dagger using a light attack' ..... 'oh I forgot and I was adding my strength' ....'did you add it those other rounds too?'......'yes' Or they are using D&D beyond or a VTT and they can't figure out how to roll the light attack instead of the regular attack.

Easier just to let everyone add their strength/dex all the time with the bonus attack. It buffs Rogues a bit and lets Paladins, Fighters and Rangers that fight with 2 weapons choose another style but other than that it has little effect on play other than players not screwing it up consistently and having to correct them.

Bill Zebub · Monday at 3:26 AM

I really love Protection because it gives me a cool thing to do, but Defensive is probably better statistically and doesn't tie you to an actual weapon style.

Horwath · Tuesday at 7:01 AM

ECMO3 said:
Blind Fighting by far. It totally changes your PC.

I will say, usually when I DM and in one of the games I play there is a houserule that every PC regardless of class gets Two Weapon Fighting at 1st level (I stole the idea from the other DM).

For some reason it is impossible to get players to follow the rules on light weapons and just giving them all Two Weapon Fighting fixes it (well it doesn't fix nick, but it fixes the errors in damage and the slowed gameplay). Without this you are in a combat and a player hits with his dagger using nick or using a bonus action and does 4 damage, then next turn he does 3, then 4 turns later he does 7 and I'm like 'wait how can you do 7 with a normal dagger using a light attack' ..... 'oh I forgot and I was adding my strength' ....'did you add it those other rounds too?'......'yes' Or they are using D&D beyond or a VTT and they can't figure out how to roll the light attack instead of the regular attack.

Easier just to let everyone add their strength/dex all the time with the bonus attack. It buffs Rogues a bit and lets Paladins, Fighters and Rangers that fight with 2 weapons choose another style but other than that it has little effect on play other than players not screwing it up consistently and having to correct them.

agree.

TWF style should be default.

then if you take the style you can fight with non-light 1Handed weapons and treat any off hand weapon as you have Nick mastery on it instead of it's default mastery.