D&D 5E Sacrosant's sacrosanct guide to the most sacrosanct fighting styles

[Esker]

I don't understand why people say that Defense style doesn't scale. It scales with the damage coming your way. It scales better than Protection, which only scales with damage per attack coming your way, not number of attacks (protection, in turn, scales better than interception, though interception starts out higher --- seems like an odd way to fix protection, which is actually fine at low levels). Defense also subtly scales as you get upgrades to your armor, since each +1 is worth more than the one before, with the caveat that this only holds if you can upgrade your armor faster than monsters are upgrading their to-hit bonus, which is probably not true.

 

[Esker]

Blind Fighting may be better than archery style if you want to play an eldritch knight or ranger archer with fog cloud. Though granted that costs you an action to set up, so maybe not.

 

[CleverNickName]

In the long run, I think my character would get more mileage out of that +1 boost to armor class than a bonus to attack rolls. I probably won't be able to attack every monster on the field every round, but they are probably able to attack me all at once. And besides, there are many more ways to increase your attack bonus than there are to increase your armor class.

The Defense style isn't super-amazing, but it's not garbage either. I'd paint it blue or black.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The cantrip ones seem weak to me as Fighting Styles. I suppose if I had my choice of, say, Protection or 2 cantrips I‘d be likely to go cantrip unless I needed Protection for concept. But a cantrip which won’t add to my offense over Dueling, Two-Weapon, Archery, or even Great Weapon? Hard pass. And even if I were planning on Defense, I still think it would be a hard sell.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love cantrips. I’d take Magic Initiate for my own class to get more of them. But Fighting Styles are supposed to be an element of your combat effectivenes—they are assumed to be filling that role. Adding cantrips from the cleric/druid lists doesn‘t improve the combat abilities of a fighter, paladin, or ranger (with the possible exception of shillelagh for an unusual concept). Giving up that to get an essentially unrelated feature is like a Barbarian downgrading Rage Damage and HD size in order to get an extra skill or two. It feels like you are gimping the class.

What I’d rather see is that cantrip option available through some avenue other than Fighting Style.

 

[Horwath]

Disclaimer: Of course this is just my opinion. Feel free to disagree. You will. It's the internet. And I'm open to adjusting based on other arguments. But this is my evaluation of the fighting styles in the PHB and various UA. Rating system:

Great
Good
Mediocre
Poor
Garbage.

Archery: +2 to attack rolls with ranged weapons. A really good fighting style for the ranged PC. In fact, a must have for archers. Combined with sharpshooter feat, and it helps nullify the penalty to get massive increase in damage. Also applies to more than just bows. Would be great, but is pretty situational.

Blessed Warrior (UA): learn 2 cantrips from cleric spell list. Paladin only. Get two cantrips? A hugely powerful fighting style for the paladin. Guidance anyone?

Blind Fighting (UA): unable to see target no longer imposes disadvantage Sounds cool (Shades of 80s Rutger Hauer). But rarely used in actual game play

Close quarters shooter (UA): when making ranged attack within 5ft, do not have disadvantage. Ignore half cover and ¾ cover against targets within 30ft. +1 bonus to attack rolls on ranged attacks Kind of a cross between archery style and sharpshooter feat benefits without needing to take the feat, but at a lesser bonus to hit and obviously missing the -5/+10 feature of sharpshooter. Still pretty good, especially for those non humans who can't have the option of taking sharpshooter before level 4. Gloom stalkers should have a style like this as almost mandatory.

Defense: +1 to AC when wearing armor Yes, I'm rating this garbage. Why? Because it's one of the few styles that don't scale. As you gain attacks, the other styles that give bonuses to hit or damage or other features apply to all attacks. Your +1 bonus here never changes, and at higher levels, an extra +1 just isn't that much of a difference. Yes, it applies to every attack against you, but that's about it's only saving grace. I'd houserule this to be a +1 bonus to AC for every attack action you get.

Druidic order (UA): learn 2 cantrips from druid list. Ranger only Similar to blessed warrior. Cantrips have a ton of utility, and are used often.

Dueling: +2 damage with melee weapon when only wielding one weapon in one hand I really like this feat. It's a must have for sword and board. One of my PCs has a spear and shield, using polearm mastery, and this fighting style. Very effective at dealing out damage on a consistent basis, and it applies to every attack.

Great Weapon Fighting: reroll 1 or 2 with 2-handed weapons On it's own, it's comparable to dueling. IIRC, the math I've seen comes out to an extra 1.1 points of damage per attack or something similar.

Interception (UA): When a creature you see within 5ft of you hits a target, use reaction to reduce damage by 1d10+prof bonus I like this much better than protection fighting style. Even at low levels, you're still reducing an average of 7.5 points of damage per round, and you can impact every attack this way. With protection, the attacker can still hit even with the disadvantage, and that would be full damage.

Mariner (UA): as long as not wearing heavy armor or shield, swim speed and climb speed equals normal speed and +1 bonus to AC Gives the same bonus as defense, and additional benefits. So it's an improvement, but still not a really good fighting style. Highly situational dependent. Good if you're a monk multiclass I suppose.

Protection: impose disadvantage on attacker attacking ally within 5ft of you, using reaction Similar to Interception, but less utility and not as effective. It's decent, but if you had the choice of either, I'd always choose Interception instead. I haven't run the math, but I'm guessing that this only begins to outpace Interception as far as damage reduction goes at high levels. Seeing as how most game play is not at high level, it's not as good.

Superior Technique (UA): Learn a battlemaster maneuver. D6 superiority die. Short rest recharge. Fighter only Gain a battlemaster maneuver as a champion that gets bonus crits? yes please. And since you can choose which maneuver to learn, a ton of flexibility with this one fighting style. If you haven't noticed, options that give you flexibility rate pretty high on my list.

Thrown Weapon Fighting (UA): +1 damage to thrown weapons +1 damage might not seem like a lot, but you also draw the weapon as part of an attack, and you can attack more than just once. For example, dueling is +2 damage, but that's just one attack while you can throw 2 daggers in the same round (1 attack, 1 bonus). The drawback is you are limited to ammunition carried.

Tunnel Fighter (UA): as bonus action, enter stance where you can make opportunity attack without using reaction, and use reaction to make melee attack against target that moves more than 5ft while within reach of you I know this can be situational, but I think it happens pretty often when combat has you close to more than one opponent. Being able to have unlimited attacks of opportunity would be enough for great as it is, but then you also can make an extra melee attack once per round as well? Pair this with polearm mastery and....ouch.

Two-weapon fighting: add ability modifier to bonus off hand attack Basically, getting a +3 bonus to damage for one attack per round on average (assuming your stat is decent; some will have only +2, others a +4, etc). That's not insignificant. It's more than dueling, but it's only ever to one attack per round.

Unarmed Fighting (UA): unarmed strikes do 1d6+str modifier. If both hands are free, damage is 1d8. When you start a grapple, deal 1d4 dmg and 1d4 added to each attack while grappled. For the record, I'm a fan of niche protection so I totally buy into the reason why they did this feat they way they did, not wanting to overshadow the monk, who is supposed to be the best an unarmed attacks. That said, this is still so situational I don't really see much value. If you're a fighter, why would you skip one of the above styles in favor for this? If you want to be good at unarmed combat, be a monk. Then you factor that this isn't finesse, so it eliminated all of those DEX based fighters. Who in their right mind, as a STR based fighter, would skip GWF or dueling in order to get this? Bueller? It would have to be highly situational and a very specific build (like a boxer).


Feel free to tear my arguments apart

Archery.
agree, with Sharpshooter and crossbow expert in might be even great.

Blessed warrior, as this is just a fix for a flaw in a class design that should be payed with class resource cost, I rate it as garbage. Even if getting 2 cantrips is great

Blind fighting, agree. it is too circumstantial to have a higher mark,

Close quarter shooting, I would not rate it at all as it was from earlier UAs and it looks like they didn't know what to do with ranged attacks without feats and they didn't want to eat their own foot and say that feats are more or less mandatory not optional by game design.

Defense: I disagree, to an extent. If you are in light armor with 14-16 dex without shield this will not help much. But in full plate and shield? It is Great. More AC you have, more that +1 gives in effective HPs.

Druidic order; see Blessed warrior.

Dueling: simple, nice bonus, Good.

Great weapon fighting; worts of the styles, even with greatsword it gives pathetic 1,33 damage per attack

Interception: best of "defense" fighting styles

Mariner: this is mostly rangers style. Does not work with heavy armor and shields and that is a lot of paladin and fighters picks. Very good of you want to MC one fighter level with your barbarian, monk, rogue. Best style for a forward scout of an army.

Protection: as you mentioned, it is outclassed by interception.

Superior technique: IMO, this is terrible, one trick per short rest? can I get a bonus tool proficiency instead? If it were 2 maneuvers and 2 dice then yes. Like this, it is worse that greatweapon style.

Thrown weapon fighting: still not enough to bump up thrown weapon even close to ranged combat WITHOUT the archery style.

Tunnel fighter: might be most broken style. Great.

Two weapon fighting: costs bonus action to get the bonus, but with 20 str/dex it takes 4 attacks with GWS to get more Extra damage from style alone.

Unarmed: I would rate it a little higher. Simpy as I would take it instead of GWS if I would use 2handed weapons. They should have added that it increases monks and Tavern brawler damage by a die category if you have that also.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tunnel Fighter should be flashing Colour-Out-Of-Space pink, for completely broken.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Great Weapon Fighting: reroll 1 or 2 with 2-handed weapons On it's own, it's comparable to dueling. IIRC, the math I've seen comes out to an extra 1.1 points of damage per attack or something similar.

Actually, it varies depending on what weapon you are using, from +1.3 for a two handed sword or maul, +1 for a double bladed scimitar, +0.83 for a great axe, +0.8 for most pole arms and versatile weapons, +0.53 for a greatclub or staff, +0.5 for a PAM or DBS bonus attack.

However, unlike a flat bonus (e.g. duelling) it is multiplied by critical hits, so a build which increases the chance of a critical hit (e.g. Champion) gains more benefit from this style.

[Great weapon fighting + Revenant Blade + Elven Accuracy = full of goodness]

Defense: +1 to AC when wearing armor Yes, I'm rating this garbage. Why? Because it's one of the few styles that don't scale.

As others have already alluded to, the benefit of +1 AC also "depends". In this case, the higher your AC is to start with, the greater the benefit of +1 is. It does scale in the sense that as your character progresses they are likely to acquire better armour, so the base AC +1 is being added to increases.

It's also a very flexible style. If you want to play the kind of fighter who switches weapon types depending on the situation you will always benefit from this. And if your build gives you a second fighting style it's one of the few (in core rules) that stack.

 

[Coroc]

High AC starts getting a little bit painful for me as a DM in my current campaign. You cannot value AC high enough. It is basically the only thing you have against mobs with a high + to hit (which are also most often the mobs who dish out a pack)
Two of my players now have AC19 whic his tough already and AC23 (with parry dagger for +1)
The second one gave ma headache in melee already when he had Dex18, now he is at 20.
It seems i need to introduce loads of mobs who get advantage some how, have multiple attacks or clerical aid in form of bless. The other method would be to shift a bit to the magic side of things.

But not to derail this thread i really have to agree with @dnd4vr here.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Druidic order; see Blessed warrior.

Shillelagh: Opening up the option of a wisdom attack stat ranger without feats or MCing makes it better than Blessed Warrior.

Superior technique: IMO, this is terrible, one trick per short rest?

It's a lot better if you are a Battlemaster or have the Martial Adept feat. One extra trick.

 

[Horwath]

It's a lot better if you are a Battlemaster or have the Martial Adept feat. One extra trick.

As an Archer, would you take that instead of permanent +2 attack?

Or as a tank instead of +1 AC?

Or as a TWF instead of +3 to +5 damage per round?

Also martial adept feat is terrible. It would be a OKish feat as a half feat. At best.