D&D 5E Whip Feat

[Elon Tusk]

I have seen a few whip feats, but none quite did what several players who were asking to play Indiana Jones-type characters for ToA wanted so I made this one.

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
· In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.
· You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.
· You can use your whip to extend your grasp.
- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner.
- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

 

[Hillsy7]

I have seen a few whip feats, but none quite did what several players who were asking to play Indiana Jones-type characters for ToA wanted so I made this one.

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
· In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.
· You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.
· You can use your whip to extend your grasp.
- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner.
- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

When you unpick all the features of the various weapons in the weapon table, you can just about find the rules to determine where the weapon balance lies. The whip is a dice underpowered, and so making it a d6 would bring it into line with 90% of the other weapons.

So the problem you've got here is that you have a feat that gives a short sword with a 10ft reach significant bonuses (including yet another DEX perk of a DEX grapple!), and nothing for other weapons that are now balanced with the whip, but have no amazing feat to go with it. At which point you're making a feat mandatory for a weapon, but because of that feat support, anyone with an ASI to spare is going to switch to this superior weapon.

Personally, I would say a much better option is to ask your GM to upgrade a whip to a d6 (fixing the balance in the PHB table) and ask for some latitude when narratively using your whip in the exploration pillar. It's much simpler, and you don't have to worry about the issue of balance at all. (Also note - you can do a tonne of incredible stuff with a whip if you are a Battle Master!)

 

[jaelis]

· In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.

I'm not a fan of straight damage boosts, but it won't break anything.

· You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.

I think it would be better to tie into the standard shoving rules. How about:
· You can use a whip to shove a creature within the whip's reach. You can make either a Strength (Athletics) check or a Dexterity (Actrobatics) check, opposed by your opponent's choice between the same. If you win, you can either knock the target prone or pull it 5 feet towards you.

· You can use your whip to extend your grasp.

I'd try to define that better.

- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner.

I'd add that you can't attack with the whip while you have a creature grapple in this way, and also that you don't require a free hand. Maybe also something about escaping by damaging the whip.

- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

That seems more like what you were after with the 3rd point? I feel like a feat shouldn't be necessary for this sort of thing.

If it was me, I'd drop the damage bonus and the grasping bits, but add +1 Dex or +1 Str.

 

[Elon Tusk]

Here is some background and thoughts.

I used the 2016 UA: Feats (Weapon Master Feats) as a model.
So here's the one WotC created:

Fell Handed
You master the handaxe, battleaxe, greataxe, warhammer, and maul. You gain the following benefits when using any of them:
• You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls you make with the weapon.
• Whenever you have advantage on a melee attack roll you make with the weapon and hit, you can knock the target prone if the lower of the two d20 rolls would also hit the target.
• Whenever you have disadvantage on a melee attack roll you make with the weapon, the target takes bludgeoning damage equal to your Strength modifier (minimum of 0) if the attack misses but the higher of the two d20 rolls would have hit.
• If you use the Help action to aid an ally’s melee attack while you’re wielding the weapon, you knock the target’s shield aside momentarily. In addition to the ally gaining advantage on the attack roll, the ally gains a +2 bonus to the roll if the target is using a shield.

Instead of giving a bonus to attack, I thought increasing an underpowered 1d4 damage to 1d6.

I thought the knocking prone would be similar to Fell Handed; I also didn't want the save DC to be static so used the attacker's attack roll.

I'm not sure how a whip would shove or why I'd want to change it to that; that doesn't seem to fit the zeitgeist of a whip master.
Allowing Dexterity for only the initial Grapple I didn't think was too much, and it seemed fitting since it is a finesse weapon.
Adding that the whip can't attack while it is grappling is a good idea and that you can escape by damaging the whip.

The 2 points under the statement that the whip extends your grasp are meant to explain what that means: grappling and as a grappling hook.

 

[jaelis]

I'm not sure how a whip would shove or why I'd want to change it to that; that doesn't seem to fit the zeitgeist of a whip master.

What I was trying to say is that you could use the whip to pull a creature towards you, as a modification of the usual shove rules. That seems logical to me; I agree it wouldn't make sense to push a creature away. And of course the normal tripping mechanism is a shove prone.

 

[Elon Tusk]

I updated it based on feedback above:

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
• In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.
• You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.
• You can use your whip to extend your grasp.
- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. Dealing 5 slashing damage to the whip (AC = 10 + Dexterity modifier of wielder) also frees the creature and destroys the whip. A whip cannot be used to attack while it is being used to grapple.
- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I updated it based on feedback above:

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
• In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.

Fair, but boring.

• You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.

ie - you can make a shove attack to prone a target with weird mechanics. This basically just makes the game more complex, since now there's twice as many rules governing the exact same outcome.

Oh, except now you can dump strength, since this can be dex-based.

Note that fell handed is a thing that happens as well as dealing damage, it doesn't replace the attack. If you want to replicate that, either copy the mechanics of fell handed OR add a bonus-action trip attempt a-la shield expert.

• You can use your whip to extend your grasp.
- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. Dealing 5 slashing damage to the whip (AC = 10 + Dexterity modifier of wielder) also frees the creature and destroys the whip. A whip cannot be used to attack while it is being used to grapple.

This just seems like you are going to end up with a constantly broken whip. The only creatures who will ever escape any other way are those that lack the ability to deal 5 slashing damage, and as a DM, I would probably let many creatures improvise slashing damage with the weapons they have, because it makes no sense that (for instance) you couldn't cut your way out of this with a dagger.

Of course if you fix that... then suddenly this is the mandatory path for a rogue grappler (who, as everyone knows, are the best grapplers!) because now he can dump strength.

- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

Not necessary, and including it in the feat suggests that it cannot be done without the feat.

All in all... this feat does 2 things: it lets you play a grappler/tripper while dumping strength, and it gives you +1 damage with whips.

That seems like a poor deal.

But most of all, it doesn't match the original premise. If you want an indiana-jones style character, then he almost never uses his whip in combat. It's an exploration tool. All you have to do is let characters gain a benefit from that and you are done.

The base whip is already MOAR WHIP than indy. That's not to say that a feat to use a whip more effectively in combat would be a bad thing... it's just that saying "I want a character more like Indy" is not going to lead to a feat that improves combat with whips.

 

[Elon Tusk]

Okay, I'm trying to incorporate feedback...

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
• In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.
• You can use a shove attack with your whip using its reach. If you succeed, you can either knock the creature prone or pull it 5 feet toward you.
• Before you hit a creature with a whip attack, you can choose to attempt to disarm the target instead, forcing it to drop one item of your choice that it’s holding. The target must make a Strength saving throw against your attack roll. On a failed save, it drops the object you choose. You can pull the object 5 feet toward you.
• You have advantage when you attempt to use your whip to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Lasher
You master the whip as both a weapon and a tool. You gain the following benefits when using it:
• In your hands, a whip does 1d6 instead of 1d4 slashing damage.

I just have trouble envisioning a whip doing more damage than a dagger, and as much as a mace or short sword. (What is with the constant power creep in weapon damage? Every time people start homebrewing weapons the damage dice just get bigger and bigger.)

Perhaps more importantly, though, if what you are trying to accomplish is letting whip-wielders be more Indiana Jonesy, then I don't see how damage accomplishes that. It's not like Indy used his whip to mow down ranks of enemies; he did it to do cool stuff. And if you use up some of your "Feat quota" (however large that might be) boosting damage, that's less "cool stuff" you can include.

I'd leave the damage alone, and just put a +1 whip somewhere in your game.

• You can choose before attacking to try to knock a creature prone instead of doing damage. A large or smaller creature’s Strength saving throw must beat your whip attack roll or it is knocked prone.

As someone above suggested, call it the Shove action. You could specify that it can only be to knock Prone, not to move them. Alternately, you could specify that if you are going to move the target, it can only be toward you, not away from you.

• You can use your whip to extend your grasp.

I'm not sure what this means in terms of game rules. I mean, I get what you are describing, but there is no mechanic (that I know of?) that this would apply to.

- You can attempt to grapple a creature within your whip’s reach. You can use your Dexterity (acrobatics) or Strength (athletics). If successful, the creature is grappled except their movement is only restricted in moving more than 10 feet from you. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. It can try to escape the grapple in the normal manner. Dealing 5 slashing damage to the whip (AC = 10 + Dexterity modifier of wielder) also frees the creature and destroys the whip. A whip cannot be used to attack while it is being used to grapple.

Why not just say that you can forego damage with a whip attack to initiate a ranged Grapple? And then you could roll it into the above feature and just make it: "When making a successful whip attack, you can forego damage to attempt to either Grapple or Shove. If using Shove, you can attempt to move your target 5' toward you, rather than away from you. A Grapple can be broken, and the whip destroyed, by doing 5 points of slashing damage to the whip (AC 10)." (I'd just leave the AC at 10 for simplicity.)

- You can also use your whip as a short grappling hook to grasp onto an object within its reach in order to hold yourself to it, climb toward it, or pull it toward you.

Again, I get what you're going for here but I think you need to be specific in your wording and tie it to pre-existing mechanics. You seem to be describing two things mechanically here. One I would say is something along the lines of, "If, at the DM's discretion, there is an appropriate anchor point for your whip, you can use your bonus action to gain Advantage when using your action to make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check." Then the other one is sorta like Mage Hand; this maybe can be left a bit more vague. Sort of a ribbon.

One other possibility you didn't address is using the whip to disarm an opponent. You could use the optional disarm rule from the DMG (pg 271 I believe) but:
- Allow it at 10' range
- Instead of merely causing the weapon to be dropped, the whip wielder can fling it 1d6 * 5 feet behind him.

Oh, and not to pile on the criticism, but I really don't like the name "Lasher", either....

 

[Elon Tusk]

I just have trouble envisioning a whip doing more damage than a dagger, and as much as a mace or short sword. (What is with the constant power creep in weapon damage? Every time people start homebrewing weapons the damage dice just get bigger and bigger.)

Perhaps more importantly, though, if what you are trying to accomplish is letting whip-wielders be more Indiana Jonesy, then I don't see how damage accomplishes that. It's not like Indy used his whip to mow down ranks of enemies; he did it to do cool stuff. And if you use up some of your "Feat quota" (however large that might be) boosting damage, that's less "cool stuff" you can include.

I don't think a potential 2 points of extra damage is going to mow down anything.
A whip can make long slashes across an opponent's body; making a whip in the hand of someone who spends extra training in it do more damage than a dart doesn't account to a power creep - you're spending a feat to get it.

I'd leave the damage alone, and just put a +1 whip somewhere in your game.

So place a magic whip somewhere in the campaign, hope a player finds it and decides to then make it a signature for their character so they eventually take the whip feat? No thanks.

As someone above suggested, call it the Shove action. You could specify that it can only be to knock Prone, not to move them. Alternately, you could specify that if you are going to move the target, it can only be toward you, not away from you.

Why not just say that you can forego damage with a whip attack to initiate a ranged Grapple? And then you could roll it into the above feature and just make it: "When making a successful whip attack, you can forego damage to attempt to either Grapple or Shove. If using Shove, you can attempt to move your target 5' toward you, rather than away from you. A Grapple can be broken, and the whip destroyed, by doing 5 points of slashing damage to the whip (AC 10)." (I'd just leave the AC at 10 for simplicity.)

It seems you missed the post directly before yours, probably because you were writing me such detailed feedback. I do appreciate you taking the time.

I'm not sure what this means in terms of game rules. I mean, I get what you are describing, but there is no mechanic (that I know of?) that this would apply to.

This is fluff, not mechanics, like most feats have - a introductory sentence. Anyway, it was already removed.

Again, I get what you're going for here but I think you need to be specific in your wording and tie it to pre-existing mechanics. You seem to be describing two things mechanically here. One I would say is something along the lines of, "If, at the DM's discretion, there is an appropriate anchor point for your whip, you can use your bonus action to gain Advantage when using your action to make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check." Then the other one is sorta like Mage Hand; this maybe can be left a bit more vague. Sort of a ribbon.

That's why added words like "advantage" and "attempt."

One other possibility you didn't address is using the whip to disarm an opponent. You could use the optional disarm rule from the DMG (pg 271 I believe) but:
- Allow it at 10' range
- Instead of merely causing the weapon to be dropped, the whip wielder can fling it 1d6 * 5 feet behind him.

That's very close to what I changed.

Oh, and not to pile on the criticism, but I really don't like the name "Lasher", either....

To lash is to strike with a whip. How is that worse than Fell Handed?