That's because it's one of the only Weapon Masteries purely for damage, but compared to the others in terms of practical use it's nowhere near as good at higher levels. In early game it is actually one of the better masteries as there isn't as many damage bonuses and most characters are only making a single attack each turn, so guaranteeing damage is much more important. As you go up in level though it gets progressively worse compared to all others masteries since enemies get more and more health and your characters are getting more damage bonuses that only apply when you actually hit the target. Dealing 5 damage at level 10 means literally jack the vast majority of the time. Personally I just make it a min roll hit for your weapon and allow a reroll if you do roll minimum damage with your weapon dice.
@malmasterson3890 Math doesn't lie. 5 damage is 5 damage. That's like saying GWM isn't worth it cuz at most it adds 6 damage when you reach 17th level. Dealing 5 damage even when you miss is huge. Which is why when you do that math it's really good. Even if it's not very exciting.
@@chrisg8989 Not the same thing at all. The fact is a replacement effect for missing means nothing when the damage is inconsequential. GWM is adding damage for actually hitting the target, compounding with other factors also increasing your damage when you hit the target. It's a comparison of apples to oranges, they're not even in the same classification. How, tell me how 5 damage is huge against a creature that has 200-300 hp in total. Wouldn't you rather a weapon Mastery that grants you adv to that attack giving you a better chance to hit & crit? How about a weapon Mastery that makes it easier to keep them in place, or combo with spells, or make them less likely to hit you. 5 damage is pitiful in comparison to what a lot of the other options give you. The Vex & Nick 2 handed weapon combo is the one being used by a lot of optimizer's right now because it scales incredibly well and applies in pretty much any situation.
@malmasterson3890 Why is it huge? Cuz 5 is better than 0. There isn't an argument here. Do the math yourself. The Graze Property, on average, deals more DPR than than Vex or Topple. It's not interesting, and only benefits you. But in a fight against a creature with high AC and is immune to Prone or Push, it's insanely good for a pure Martial character that can only make weapon attacks. Also, some class features activate when you deal damage to a creature, not when you hit them, which synergies with Graze extremely well. Such as Rage. That means your 17th level barbarian is dealing 9 damage when you miss an attack. There are more examples of this with other classes. "Rage Damage. When you make an attack using Strength-with either a weapon or an Unarmed Strike-and deal damage to the target, you gain a bonus to the damage that increases as you gain levels as a Barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian Features table." Says nothing about hitting the target, only that you deal damage to it.
Graze only does anything if you miss, and I don't know about you, but I generally do not plan on missing all the time. And the higher your hit chance gets (and taking in how easy it is to get advantage in 2024 d&d, your hit chance is usually really high) the less you get out of Graze. It's like a participation reward, basically saying, 'congratulations, you suck, here is a consolation prize'.
Turning every miss into 3-5 damage is excellent. Maybe you don’t have to suffer as many low rolls as anyone else😅. I am not half as mad if while missing twice I inflict 10 damage
I wasn't a fan of Graze when I first heard about it. Then I saw Treantmonk's video on the amount of additional DPR (damage-per-round) Graze adds on to a character. It may not be as exciting as other masteries, but it definitely helps!
Where Graze shines: Paladin/Pact of the Blade Warlock. Your Pact Weapon can have the normal damage type or be Necrotic/Radiant. So if you are fighting Vampires (for example) you could still hit with Radiant damage, which negates their Regen. Even though you missed with your Smite.
They blessed my boy! I'm still a little mad that tridents aren't included in the Polearm Master feat, though. One tiny "loophole" someone could use is insisting that since a trident is a _type_ of spear, and it doesn't specifically say that it has to use the spear _item,_ you could. Clearly not RAI, but still, it's still a polearm for pete's sake!
I have to disagree about graze. If you aren't into battlefield control and just want to hit stuff like the vast majority of Fighter, Barbarian, and Paladin players are, mathematically speaking Graze does the most damage. Having that assurance of always doing atleast 3-5 damage, especially in low magic item campaigns is beyond useful. Additionally, there are several ways to break the cap, speaking of magic items. However this one is dm dependent
I haven't seen the data but is Graze still good for a Barbarian using Reckless attack, since you are missing a lot less often (depending on AC of opponent of course).
From a mechanical standpoint, Graze is easily 4-star. Guaranteed damage significantly boosts DPR. From a thematic standpoint, Graze is a 2-star. It's little a boring.
It certainly has scenerios in which it could shine. Sentinel, mage slayer sweeping strike as a reaction from a battle master to break concentration on a greater invisibility shield spell and perhaps mirror image casted caster that is almost entirely out of your reach and prone on the ground requiring you to be within 5 ft and you don't have the last 5 ft necessary to close the distance, but happen to be a dwarf with activated stone sense/stone cunning/tremor sense to know where they are. (Might be a bit hyper specific 😅, but it involves all the different instances I could think of where graze would shine) I think I would bump it down to 3 stars, as there are legitimate uses, but they are of limited rarity.
Slow section: Also, if you are building a whip wielder you can slow wp & use Slasher feat to reduce speed by 20, so that build might be possible, depending on what you are looking for.
I made a barbarian that uses this and the hamstring brutal strike, with shield master. So with a single attack, they can reduce in enemy speed by 35 ft and knock them prone. Assuming they have 35 or less movement, they can't even stand up on their turn.
The math on paper creates a false perception of how it actually performs in actual combat. Graze is good in the early game, but it's almost useless past tier 2.
Math people can't calculate if that extra 5 hp made a difference Or the next 25 hp hit would have downed the creature anyways. There are a lot of assumptions in dps math, you can't just take it as is. Also as far as fun goes I'd say it's meh.
@@malmasterson3890 Not true. Graze auto-scales. People somehow don't understand scaling, sneak attack needs to increase in dice because it is only usable 1/turn. But Hex for example auto-scales as the number of attacks scale. Graze keeps up, you may have an argument past lvl 11, but even then with a fighter it always keeps up.
Just a thought. Using half stars makes your description of how your star rating system works completely irrelevant. Don’t be afraid to just pick a solid number and stick to that. It’s all subjective anyway.
Not sure how you justify ranking graze lower than cleave. Obviously, each table plays differently, so maybe some campaigns will have several enemies grouped together almost every combat. But from my experience, most of the time combat involves 2-4 enemies that spread out throughout the battlefield. Graze might do less damage each instance, but it is way more consistent than cleave. Treantmonk did the math on it; if you assume a 0.65 base chance to hit (which is reasonable at most levels of play, considering the scaling of players' chance-to-hit as they level up, and the scaling of the average AC of enemies as they increase in CR) graze will average about 1.75 damage each round with a strength modifier of +5. In a single instance, that's not very much, but for a fighter that's attacking 2-3 times every round, more with action surge, this will add up over time to a non-trivial amount. Of course graze will do great damage when you can use it, but those instances are generally few and far between, not every single combat.
If you imagine for a moment, that graze added ability score damage to every hit. I think you would call that pretty strong for a anyone making lots of attacks. Now conventional wisdom is, that you hit about 60% of your attacks, so it is not quite as good as that, but it is almost that good. Graze is also very consistent. Cleave requires the enemies to line up right, push can give huge benefits sometimes, but other times the enemy will just walk right back, or you will push them out of a bad situation. Sap doesn't do anything if the enemy causes saving throws, and very little if they have many attacks. A lot of that stuff is situational, Graze is going to do damage almost every encounter. And if you are lucky enough to hit every attack, then it is okay your weapon property doesn't do anything in that encounter, you will wreck the enemy regardless.
I use a Warhammer's Push Mastery with Booming Blade. Push the enemy 10 feet away and if they want to move to re-engage you, they're going to take 1d8 Thunder Damage.
Debilitating effects from magical abilities/spells do not stack with themselves, but they do stack with each other. And with the changes to eldritch invocations, all the invocations that used to only apply to eldritch blast (agonizing blast, repelling blast, etc.) can now apply to any attack cantrip. Additionally, with the changes to subclasses, Eldritch knight gets the bladesinger treatment, where you can replace one of your attacks with a cantrip, starting at 7th level. So, you can make a character that's eldritch knight fighter 7/warlock 1, carry a weapon with the slow mastery, take ray of frost as a warlock cantrip, and take lance of lethargy as an invocation and apply it to ray of frost, then when you take the attack action, attack once with a weapon with slow, then cast ray of frost with your second attack. If both attacks hit, the enemy's movement speed will be reduced by 30 feet, so if they have standard movement speed, they will be immobilized. Even better yet, you can at this point action surge to attack again, swapping out your weapon for something with topple, and then knocking your target prone, and they have no movement with which to stand up again.
Couple fun combo's Polo keep away= mount+lance+warhammer Chuck wagon=dagger+handaxe Gladiator=trident+net The goofiest goober= 11 eldritch knight+3 path of the beast+6 way of mercy Nick>vex>claw>claw>cleave>cleave bonus action heal and grapple and when you run out of rages swap the claw for a cantrip. You need 2 enemies ganging up on a downed ally but go ham. Or in hindsight probably a battle master is better.
Graze is a great workaround for nearly unhittable opponents. Watching players use crossbows to push a single target all over the battlefield was funny, but abuseable.
Interesting that you're so opposed to Graze... The number crunching channels say it's the most effective for increasing damage... In the 13th level boss battle I ran last night, the 30 or so damage that came from the Greatsword wielding Fighter missing across 4 rounds was the difference between a Vampire Lieutenant actually dying, and running away...
It's just a fact that characters will miss. If the damage added up amongst all a character's misses then those numbers are gonna be big. Add to that fighters and Barbarians making more attacks as they level up and it'll really add up The number of times an enemy in my games have lived on 1-5 HP and everyone started whiffing their attacks on it is insane. 4-5 dmg doesn't look like much until you're swinging at a high AC target and you have disadvantage because you're poisoned or it's invisible (I like to challenge my players sometimes 😗🎶...)
@@grantgarbour yeah, my goal is to drop at least one PC per major encounter... Even if you have +13 to hit, you're still gonna miss an AC 20 about one third the time. Last night, the enemy Sorcerer escaped with 3 hp left 😜
@guamae also it's not like the PC can't switch their weapon. If they're fighting someone with less AC or they have advantage they could easily switch to a different weapon, then switch back when they have a higher chance of missing
@@grantgarbour theoretically at least... My PCs tend to pick weapons based on what enchantment they have... Also, I kind of think the "weapon juggling" mechanics are a bit silly... Kinda wish each weapon had two mastery options...
@@grantgarbour I love what I call the ''hide in obscurity'' builds where they use the hide action inside a heavy obscurement spell with the blink spell on them and 10 ft of blind sense. That'll start them thinking. Bonus points if the heavy obscurement spell is like stinking cloud or cloud kill and they have an immunity to poison damage.
One cool thing you didn't mention about cleave is that it doesn't have to be made as part of the Attack action. It can proc on any attack, the only restriction is that it's once per turn, meaning you could use it with reaction attacks, such as an attack of opportunity
This definitely is the buff that martial classes needed! I still think it's wild that the same people who were pleading for martial/magical class equality are banning weapon masteries. Oh, also, I suggest using a dagger and a _shortsword_ on your "Order of the Stabbity Stab" combo, since you would additionally apply the vex mastery with your extra Light attack instead of an additional nick mastery that you can't use on the same turn.
People are banning masteries? That weird martial classes fall so far behind full casters this was just barely getting them in the right direction. Martial still need some massive buffs. Wizard still gets Fireball to their 2nd attack at the same level, lol.
If you use a dagger in one hand and a short sword in the other can you use both properties? Like nick let's you do the 2nd light attack as the same action then use short sword for vex to give advantage to your next attack.
I love the video and I agree with the analysis... but man is your pronunciation of "mealy attacks" distracting :) At the risk of being *that guy*, melee is pronounced MAY-lay. Why is it spelled like that? The French.
I want to ask for some clarification on the Nick property with 2-weapon: the Nick mastery states "You can make this Extra Attack only once per turn". So with my shortsword i can make a first attack that imposes the Vex property to have advantage on my next attack, then as part of it's light property i can make a second attack using my dagger with the Nick mastery as part of that same action instead of as a bonus action, and add my damage bonus to both attacks. If i have Extra Attack then i can attack again with my shortsword, applying Vex, and because of the light property i can now have to attack using my Bonus Action with my dagger, because the Nick property was expended in the first turn of actions. And if I had 3 attacks on my turn I wouldn't be able to use my dagger at all on the third attack because i used the Nick single-turn limit, and i used my bonus action in the previous attack. I think people are forgetting that Nick can only apply to the action once on the players turn of combat, regardless of their number of attacks. Is this right or am i missing it?
Essentially, how it's intended (I believe Crawford confirmed this one) is that Nick REPLACES the bonus action option, UNLESS you have the Dual Wielder feat, which allows you to make both a Nick attack and a Bonus Action attack. So regardless of how many attacks your Extra Attack grants, you can make at most 2 more attacks on top of those, 1 from Nick (or from the light weapon rules WITHOUT using Nick, but using your bonus action), and 1 from Dual Wielder (if you're using Nick, too).
The only time Graze isn't one of the best weapon masteries is if your DM is running a game for children where enemy AC is always abysmal. If your fighting actual level appropriate enemies where you miss 25-40% (more if you don't always have advantage ect) of the time that 4-5 damage per missed attack adds up to be exceedingly high.
Slow is amazing with slasher. Even more so with stuff like Bladesinger or Eldritch Knight. Hitting ray of frost and a whip attack would mean 30ft movement reduction. Combine that with control options like slow and you will make melee enemies weep.
Combine that with shield master and you can knock somebody prone after reducing their speed, without any additional action use. They will likely not have any speed left to stand up from prone on their turn.
Barbarian making Reckless attacks may not want to use or have the opportunity to use a weapons Graze Mastery due to Advantage on attacks using their main Stat for To-Hit rolls Barbarian with SAP Mastery can help barbarian who is attacking recklessly. But only for one attack against the Barbarian. Barbarian with SLOW Mastery can be good. Especially if you can also PRONE the target. (1/2 move to stand and -10 Feet to move.) Barbarian with PRONE or VEX Mastery can allow attacking without going Reckless if you feel your initial To-Hit chance is high enough. "Why Yes. I do play a barbarian. How did you know?"
Two more interesting things about the Lance. It's less related to the masteries. But when you're mounted, you can use it with one hand. That means you can use the dueling fighting style. It also qualifies for great weapon Master. And it qualifies for polearm master. And, you can use a shield while wielding it while mounted.
Nick plus the Dual Wielder feat plus the Two Weapon Fighting feat would allow you to make 3 attacks at level four. Nick allows you to make an extra attack with the attack action when normally you would use your bonus action. Typically it would prevent you from using the light weapon attack bonus action, however, the Dual Wielder feat bonus action attack is NOT the light weapon attack bonus action, meaning you can still use it, if that makes any since. Further more, it can be argued that Two Weapon Fighting would allow you to add your ability modifier to every attack in question. At level 4 that is 1d6+3 (scimitar) + 1d6+3 (scimitar) + 1d10+3 (Longsword, two handed since Dual Wielder just requires it to not have the two-handed property, not that it is wielded in one hand) for a total of 21 average sustained damage.
If you read the Dual Wielder feat, it specifically says Enhanced Dual Wielding, which buffs Two weapon fighting which by default requires 2 light weapons. Using this in tandem with Nick allows you to apply the second weapon damage from a weapon that doesn't have the light property. It does not allow you to do Nick with 2 light weapons and then use your bonus action to attack with the third, non light property one-handed weapon.
@@shatnuh Well no, I HAVE read Dual Wielder and it states that if you use a weapon the with light property on your turn, you can make an attack as a bonus action with a weapon that didn't activate your ability to use the feature. It's not an upgrade, it's another feature that is supposed to compete with the bonus action attack from light weapons, but thanks to you making the attack using nick, it frees you up to make another attack with the Enhanced Dual Wielding. Lastly Two Weapon Fighting allows you to add you ability modifier to ANY attack caused by the light property. Enhanced Dual Wielder can only happen if you use a light weapon, thus it benefits from Two-Weapon fighting.
@@King_of_Clovers Dual Wielder specifically refers to the extra attack you get to make if your main hand is a light weapon. Instead of the second weapon having to be a light weapon as well, it can now be a weapon that does not have the two-handed requirement. Nick refers to the same bonus action extra attack. You do not get to stack it.
@@King_of_Clovers Furthermore, your weapon combo wouldn't work under your interpretation of the rules. Even if you could stack the extra attack you get to make as a part of two weapon fighting with light weapons, you bonus action couldn't be a long sword wielded with two hands. You can either draw or sheath a weapon on an attack action. If you sheath both weapons as a part of your Nick attack, you have now lost access to the, as you say, Enhanced Dual Wielder bonus action because you no longer have a light weapon in your hand. And the bonus action attack that you think you get would need you to have a light weapon, and if you draw your longsword on that action, you can't also sheath your light weapon, so it could only be the 1d8+mod that one handed longsword gives.
@@King_of_Clovers the only way that any of this is possible is if you make something like a 3rd level War Cleric. War Priest allows you to do an attack on your bonus action as a limited resource attached to your WIS modifier. Even then, you still would not get to attack with the longsword two handed because of the draw/sheath economy.
They have extra attack at level 5, so that's two attacks. If you're holding two light weapons and one has the Nick property, you can make another attack with your offhand weapon as part of the same action. That's three attacks. Then, they make their martial arts bonus action unarmed attack. That's four.
If we are a battle master with the pushing maneuver or utilise the charger feat and have a cleave mastery weapon equiped, do we have to figure out if the mastery property activates before or after the forced movement from charger?, because if it is flexible hunter STRanger/battlemaster or psi-knight starts to look very interesting! 😮😂😅😊
Hmmm. Interesting. I’d have to look real close at the wording on that one. I suspect it might be DMs choice. I’d be inclined to allow it at my table personally, but that’s without reading the RAW with a magnifying glass 🔍
Graze does scale beyond low level. The misses will scale with the number of attacks gained. While graze doesn’t directly get stronger because of the limitation to ability mod damage, it can proc separate damage or effects such as when poisons are applied. While graze does decent damage increases on average when attacking with a neutral roll, It becomes even more useful when you are at disadvantage. You will not be attacking with advantage all the time, regardless of how well you play. You will be struck prone, restrained, poisoned, blinded at some point.
I see the humble quarterstaff as a potential gimmick. Innately, it has the Topple mastery. It also qualifies for Crusher and Polearm Master feats. Now you have the potential to hit an enemy as they approach you, knock them Prone AND back 5ft. As a fun addition, the Quarterstaff is eligible for the Shillelagh buff, which could significantly increase its damage at higher levels, even when benefitting from a shield.
I've several times put together a "farmer" character who uses a humble quarterstaff to kick major backside. It's definitely looking super viable in dnd2024.
Something important that you failed to mention on Graze is that it, unlike basically all the other mastery effects, becomes not only less useful through enemy HP scaling, but also through bounded accuracy. As you level up, missing becomes less and less likely.
well listening to the devs talk and promote the game they said that they view the front ark being 3 frontal directions in a hexagon as i guess they want hexagons to be the reference to many rules in game.... cleave lets say you are holding a halberd you have a 10ft reach and you have an enemy to your max left range and you have an opponent to your max right. this can be a distance slightly over 20 ft apart and if you cleave through 1 you can reach the second opponent who is also in your visions front. this is a common place for me because i like to lock up as many enemies as i can .... a crafty DM may in the case of having an ally in between the 2 enemies either hit ally or decline the follow through because it makes sense it being a follow through tactic that you stop it for ally or hit 1st closest thing
7:13 Hardcore disagree. Graze isn’t dependent on enemy positioning as with Cleave, and it means even if you miss an enemy spellcaster they still take damage and are forced to make a concentration check. Graze is basically a must have for a mage slayer build.
Something curious for slow and sap, is that you can apply this in different enemies, for example is you are a full tank paladin, you know that your damage isnt important, so you attack twice to two different creatures to use your sap mastery twice
@@DM-Timothy So the "ability modifier you used for the attack roll" as mentioned in the descriptions of graze and topple is just STR. It could be replaced by CHA via true strike or pact of the blade. I think sacred weapon is the only feature that lets you add another ability modifier to the attack roll instead of replacing the primary ability modifier. Thats why I wondered whether this increase to the attack roll also boosts those masteries. Thanks you.
You are sleeping hard on graze. Check out the math, unless you have a high amount of advantage it is better mathmatically than straight up +2 to damage which increases to +3 after maxing out relevant stat in tier 2/3 play.
Perhaps later you could do a video on how the equipping weapon wording effects not only how one could attack with two weapons using a single hand but also allows multiple fighting styles to be used at once - Two-Weapon Fighting allowing you to add your ability modifier to the damage of the extra attack as well as getting a further +2 to damage because it's the only weapon in your hand from the Dueling fighting style.
Some maths about Graze. Let’s say I’m a level 13+ Fighter with just my class features (not even subclass), a Greatsword with Graze and +5 Strength obviously. For the sake of simplicity, let’s not even consider GWM’s extra damage (even if mandatory in such a build). Assuming 65% to hit (5% crit), my first hit will do: (2d6 (7) + 5) x 0.60 + (4d6 (14) + 5) x 0.05 = 8.15 DPR Graze itself adds: 5 x 0.35 = 1.75 DPR, so basically a flat 21.5% increase. At low levels (5?) it would be 18.7% increase on any attack. This is valid for every attack on a martial class without Studied Attacks or any other way to get self-advantage. On each attack after the first one, Studied Attack gives me advantage on next attack if I miss the previous one: this means I have a 0.87 (advantage) x 0.35 (chance of previous miss) + 0.65 (base chance to hit) x 0.65 (previous hit) = 0.73 to hit, of which (after similar calcs) 0.07 to crit. Attack 2 (3 and 4 if Fighter): (2d6 + 5) x 0.66 + (4d6 + 5) x 0.07 = 9.25 DPR + Graze 5 x 0.27 = 10.6 So still a flat 14.6% damage increase. Of course this tends to matter less if you have other damage sources like GWM, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad Mastery, considering its purpose is to deal damage. Maybe it’s the least exciting to describe (pushing someone, giving them disadvantage, slowing them is more appealing), but it’s definitely not the worst ESPECIALLY at high levels.
Thanks for doing the math on that! I think the issue is the desire to simplify and thus drop off the extra damage. In that same example, a Barbarian with a GWM Greatsword is adding +8 damage to each successful hit, dropping the percentage down quite significantly. Any time that hitting deals solid damage, dealing 4-5 damage instead is likely less impactful than say toppling a foe to grant easy advantage for the rest of your team. I don't expect to see graze make a big difference at the table, but some of the others will change the fight in a single blow.
So you mentioned during the Cleave section your character has to be adjacent, but the Halberd allows for reach still, right? Which means your character doesn't have to be adjacent, unless you are dedicated to the highest die as your damage die.
Cleave is especially great for fighters, because of their Tactical Master ability which lets you swap your masteries, so if you have already used cleave that turn or don't have enemies lined up for it, you can swap your property for something else, such as push to manuever your opponent to a position where you can cleave on your next attack. It also comboes great with polearm master since cleave works on reaction attacks also.
Although graze doesn't seem like the most interesting property, there's more to it than this. (1) First, there are features that proc on _damaging_ a creature, without mentioning hitting them. Graze could potentially be very potent in combination with these. In fact, one example doesn't require a feature: a concentration save is required if the caster takes damage. So attacking a concentrating caster using graze property means 100% chance of triggering the save. The mage slayer feat makes this interaction more potent. (2) Second, it does stack with other features (at least in the relevant sense): other features may proc on success while graze does so on failure, but they're all adding their contribution statistically. (3) A final thing to note, although minor, is that graze fills a rather unusual niche. In contrast to most features, it's optimized for the failure of an attack. This means it may be useful in unusual situations where the chance to hit is abnormally low, such as a creature with very high AC (but fairly low HP), or a situation where attacks are debuffed.
How does your Battle Master example work? You push the target's weapon 10 Feet? So, target has to use their movement to get to their weapon. Since they used their movement THAT triggers opportunity attack.
I'm a fan of the weapon properties. I've read through lots of comments and people are all over Graze. Thinking its either useless or the best damage buff. I have two thoughts, the first is Graze now nullifies the Shield spell. Because no matter what you can force the target of the graze attack to make the concentration check. I think the real purpose of Graze is to finish off those pesky low hp targets. I know we have all played in games where things are getting tense, hp is getting low. Every creature on the map player and npc are looking rough. And then you miss your attack to finish off the berserker with 3 hp remaining, so he goes on to murder your pc. I think Graze is a good finisher. Mechanically speaking it can do well with that Fighting style. On a hit a greatsword would fo 6+str bonus, on a miss you do your str bonus. Throw in Savage attacker and you could have a character with the most consistent martial damage out there.
Okay this isn't much but Graze is really good with the new way poison works. Before anyone moans and complains about poison damage, Poison immunity does blank this and resistance does blunt the impact, it is something that has been made better by the new rules. Basic Poison A creature that takes Piercing or Slashing damage from the poisoned weapon or ammunition takes an extra 1d4 Poison damage. 1. It is now just a bonus action to apply the poison. 2. The poison no longer causes a saving throw so if they take damage then they will take the poison damage. 3. The graze would would because you aren't increasing the damage of the weapon or the modifier the poison is separate damage. 4. With graze that is damage dealt on every attack regardless of their AC Is it the best option? No. But if you are the type that constantly has bad luck and keeps missing you can still do damage. As of the MM 14 there are 3412 listed creatures. 966 of those have Immunity to Poison. 118 of those have Resistance to Poison. So that is 1,084 creatures that is strategy will be bad or useless but that is means there are sill 2,328 that would still take damage.
Your world tree barb build is similar to one I was thinking about. Only I was thinking all push. Versatile one handed weapon with push, barb feature push and shield master bonus action push.
I think the consistency of Graze is being underappreciated. I think on a Fighter that doesn't have a reliable way to get Advantage, it means you are guaranteed to deal 8 damage a round after level 5. And that's much better than dealing no damage. Plus it forces a spellcaster to always make Concentration saves.
Totally fair viewpoint. It’s one many people share! I don’t personally think the consolation prize damage is as impactful as the other options, but I’m cool with being wrong if I’m wrong, too. :D
Don't sleep on slow. If you slow someone with 30 ft movement then push them with the charger feat or with the push property then they essentially just lost 20 feet of movement trying to get back to you. If you take a 15 ft step backwards that enemy lost it's entire turn for the round trying to dash with no saving throw. And if you combine with the slasher feat or brutal strikes you can slow an enemy down to an immobile level in 1 turn. Slow can easily start turning into turn saving CC vs average mobility creatures with no saving throws. I've seen it, I dm it. The enemy will either need to dash, or use a projectile at that point. It really screws over low mobilty enemies
Graze is definitely good at lower levels, but can be switched out later. If a fighter has an attack mod of 4-5, and a Goblin only had 7 hp on average, the Gobbo is dying in two turns. Even if the dice are against the fighter. Also might work against spellcasters, forcing concentration saves every turn.
It’s true! As one viewer pointed out, at higher levels you can also trade graze on a hit as a fighter, making it a great backup for the occasional miss.
My favorite part of nick is that you don't need to actually use the nick weapon RAW you can instead dual wield vex and as long as the weapons are light you can still use the mastery
The Eldritch Knight plunges in, casts Shield, has an AC of 27, and feels invincible. "The five Hobgoblin Champions all miss their attacks, but Graze means you still take 15 points damage for the round." I think unavoidable damage is underappreciated.
Stars, Name, Short Description 4 Nick -- When making extra att of light property, it does not use Bonus Action (once/turn) 4 Topple -- If hit, creature CON save or prone (DC 8 + Ability Mod + Prof Bonus) 4 Vex -- If hit & dmg, ADV on next att vs creature (before end your next turn) 3½ Push -- If hit, push up to 10' (large or smaller) 3 Cleave -- If hit, make free 2nd melee att vs adj creature w/o Ab.mod 2½ Sap -- If hit, creature DISADV on next att (before start your next turn) 2 Slow -- If hit & dmg, reduce Speed 10' (before start your next turn) 1½ Graze -- If miss, deal dmg equal to Ability Mod Name, Weapons Capable, Long Description Cleave -- [ greataxe, halberd ] If you hit a creature with a melee attack roll using this weapon, you can make a melee attack roll with the weapon against a second creature within 5 feet of the first that is also within your reach. On a hit, the second creature takes the weapon’s damage, but don’t add your ability modifier to that damage unless that modifier is negative. You can make this extra attack only once per turn. Graze -- [ glaive, great sword ] If your attack roll with this weapon misses a creature, you can deal damage to that creature equal to the ability modifier you used to make the attack roll. This damage is the same type dealt by the weapon, and the damage can be increased only by increasing the ability modifier. Nick -- [ dagger, light hammer, sickle, scimitar ] When you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can make it as part of the Attack action instead of as a Bonus Action. You can make this extra attack only once per turn. Push -- [ great club, pike, warhammer, heavy crossbow ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from yourself if it is Large or smaller. Sap -- [ mace, spear, flail, longsword morningstar, war pick ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, that creature has Disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn. Slow -- [ club, javelin, light crossbow, sling, whip, longbow, musket ] If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to it, you can reduce its Speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn. If the creature is hit more than once by weapons that have this property, the Speed reduction doesn’t exceed 10 feet. Topple -- [ quarterstaff, battleaxe, lance, maul, trident ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 plus the ability modifier used to make the attack roll and your Proficiency Bonus). On a failed save, the creature has the Prone condition. Vex -- [ handaxe, dart, shortbow, rapier, shortsword, blowgun, hand crossbow, pistol ] If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to the creature, you have Advantage on your next attack roll against that creature before the end of your next turn.
I’m currently playing a wild magic barbarian with the crusher feat and a maul/topple. I was able to knock a golem back 5 feet and prone at the same time. It was awesome!
Thrikreen are the kings of the weapon mastery, a Thrikreen can take advantage of the Nick, push and cleave features every turn without having to switch weapons making the hunter ranger way more reliably getting two targets next to each other for cleave
Did you mean you don’t think you can use the daggers? If so, you use the daggers for the regular attacks and Nick property attack, then flurry for the two extra Unarmed Strikes.
@ yes, you’ll use your feet for the furry of blows while your regular attacks are the two weapons. Of course this is a 2 feet investment. That kicks in at 8th level. I rather do the grappler feet.
I hate this new weapon mastery system. They could have just used the Battle Master Fighter maneuvers system and reworked the subclass. I have no idea how something like topple passed playtest
RE: Topple - What would make this even better is WOTC introduced weapons with a "Launch" property and a "Smash" property, wherein all three synergized with each other. ;) RE: The Juggler - Not even for a Swords Bard?
Disagree with a few ratings: Cleave - 2 Stars: Very hard to meet the conditions to activate it, but when you do it, is good. Graze - 4 Stars: Mathematically amazing, and you can do some interesting combos with. Sap - 1 Star: Useless in many cases and underwhelming in the others. Vex - 5 Stars: OP free advantage. Outshines a few class abilities and feats.
This is broken, that is op, ugh!! All these alarmist reviews are just for views. Please stop with trying to create drama with all the use of these trigger words. Your content is compelling, and you do not need to lower yourself to that.
Cleave on a Glaive with a Path of the Giant Barbarian Bugbear can target foes anywhere within 25 feat... 5 feet is not the limit, even just a Glaive is 10 feet, even just a Bugbear is 10 feet with the Greataxe, both is 15 feet.
@DM-Timothy in 5 combats I did high damage 3 of them, 1 was fairly average and 1 i was completely negated. In 1 round I did 183 damage, while taking 110 . It has its downsides, but when it crits oh boy lol. That single hit was 104, but again it was a level 15 1 shot
@@jaredrepass Thanks for the numbers! In that one round, you did more than a 9th level spell worth of damage at level 15, with an ongoing resource... I think the math raises eyebrows if nothing else!
@DM-Timothy using 5 attacks, I also had to make 11 concentration checks and the enemies had disadvantage in the one round. 🤷♂️ guess it'll be a table by table banning
I have a build ranger2/shadow monk 12 on a Goliath (hill giant background), once a day become large, knock a creature prone with attack equal to proficiency mod, have vex handaxe and nick dagger giving 3 attacks and 3 unarmed strikes with hunters mark, 6d10+30+6d6 to one target
People watching math channels saying Graze is the best are going purely for that dpr math not considering everything we have in a battle. As you said, Graze is good for early levels and also when you don't play optimally. When doing everything right, you most likely will have higher chance of hitting enemies and want anything to do that better and help your friends. Graze is just okay, even though in a vacuum it looks better
Great video, as always. What about the environmental implications of Dungeon Dreamer's Dungeons & Dragons AI Familiar? Is there such thing as an ethical AI system when they have such a negative impact on the environment? Shaolei Ren and Adam Wierman's Harvard Business Review article, The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts, highlight a lot of the issues when it comes to the toll AI takes on our planet. For a game largely about saving worlds (excluding evil campaigns, of course), maybe us TTRPG enthusiasts can do a small part to try to save the one we live in/on in real life as well.
@socialcommentary, first of all, thank you for your comment, your position, and for bringing up the article! I read it and found Ren and Wierman’s insights on the uneven environmental impacts of AI quite interesting. I've indeed always been more focused on the importance of measuring carbon emissions and striving for neutrality. The geographically unequal effects of AI, as they point out, were something I hadn't fully considered. At this stage, Dungeon Dreamer isn’t in a position to directly address these challenges. We don’t manage data centers or have substantial sway over larger tech companies’ environmental strategies. However, we’re open to supporting ecological initiatives, whether through financial backing or providing informational resources. It's something we're eager to explore as we grow. That said, I’m optimistic about the future. One of the key strategies to mitigate AI's environmental toll, as highlighted in Ren and Wierman's article, is developing highly geographically distributed AI training methods. This is an active area of research for major AI companies like Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI, initially driven by economic efficiency. Eventually, this technology could be leveraged to minimize the environmental footprint of AI training by better distributing workloads across low-carbon data centers. For example, research like "Sustainable AIGC Workload Scheduling of Geo-Distributed Data Centers: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach" ( ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2304.07948v1 ) explores how AI training tasks can be dynamically scheduled across global data centers to balance workload efficiency with environmental considerations, such as carbon emissions. Companies are starting to explore similar solutions, and the hope is that this could soon become a more common practice. I’d also like to mention few general points about Dungeon Dreamer’s current approach. We have an internal document outlining our AI policy, which touches on environmental issues alongside other ethical concerns. We currently share it with the influencers we work with and potential partners. It’s not publicly available just yet, but we plan to launch a dedicated page on our website to share it more widely. Here’s a example of relevant excerpt: "Example of unethical models: OpenAI models would be considered unethical according to many of these criteria (closed-source model and datasets, extensive use of copyrighted data during training, highly unstable infrastructure, low company credibility, *large environmental impact*)." Our policy currently focuses on moving toward the use of more ethical AI models. It's actually very common for lot of companies to track their environmental impact during AI training. For example, here are details that Meta shared about their LLaMA3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct ( huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct ) model: «Training Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimated total location-based greenhouse gas emissions were 584 tons CO2eq for training. Since 2020, Meta has maintained net zero greenhouse gas emissions in its global operations and matched 100% of its electricity use with renewable energy, therefore the total market-based greenhouse gas emissions for training were 0 tons CO2eq. The methodology used to determine training energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be found here ( arxiv.org/pdf/2204.05149 ). Since Meta is openly releasing these models, the training energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will not be incurred by others.» As Dungeon Dreamer grows and we start generating more revenue, we plan to support carbon extraction programs and explore other eco-friendly practices. At present, our contribution is modest (0.5% of our total revenue is donated to carbon extraction, which is the default option that Stripe provides), but we aim to expand this as our operations scale. We are optimistic about all the research big companies are doing to find more ecological approaches to AI training and usage. As we grow as a company, and finally switch to the last steps of our plan -- training our own foundational models, and fully complying with all our policies, we will take the experience and all the ideas shared by those companies. We also look closely at the low-budget methods of training big models, for example ( arxiv.org/abs/2407.15811 ), because that will both make it possible to train a model on fewer data (and allow only using 100% public domain/creative commons 0 data with no copyrighted materials) and spend less GPU power, thus less emission for our goal. I hope that covers some of your concerns regarding AI environmental issues. I will gladly ask any more specific questions you have on the matter!
A couple ideas: 1. Cleave works once per turn, so Polearm Master or Sentinel can be used to gain even more attacks. 2. With a level 5+ Hunter Ranger using Cleave and the Dual Wielder Feat, you could make six attacks on each of your turns. Greataxe attack, a Horde Breaker Greataxe attack, then a Cleave Greataxe attack, then stow it the Greataxe as part of that last attack. Then you can use your object interaction to draw two Light weapons thanks to Dual Wielder (one with Nick) and use Extra Attack to attack with one and stow it, then make the Nick attack and Dual Wielder Bonus Action attack. On the next round, attack with a Light Weapon, Dual Wielder Bonus Action Attack, then Nick Attack, then stow both Light weapons as part of that attack and use your object interaction to draw your Greataxe and attack, Horde Breaker Attack, and Cleave attack. Pretty ridiculous, but I think it's technically RAW.
I am eager to see Weapon Mastery with monsters when the new MM comes out next year. All the dumb monsters are going to be more interesting when they can Push or Cleave... I don't see an advantage to Knife Juggling, nor do I see how it's possible. What game advantage is there to using two weapons with the same hand? Rules Definitions for Attack [Action] regarding Equipping and Unequipping Weapons states that you can't draw any weapon except at the start or end of the Attack Action, not start or end of the first attack during the Attack Action. I suppose if you can't use your off-hand, and your main hand has a Light weapon, you could "attempt" to start your Attack Action by drawing a second weapon into your main hand, attack with the first Light weapon (throw it if it's a dart), and then use the Nick property to use the dagger. The second attack still is an "off-hand attack" that doesn't use your dexterity modifier. (Not even with the 2-weapon feat.) Also, it seems to me that the second draw of a weapon in the round is a Utilize Action (see Combat; Your Turn; Interacting With Things).
The Greataxe is fine, but the Halberd should be the Cleave weapon of choice. I don't have to tell you why you're wrong about Graze. Literally everyone else in the comments has that covered. 😂 Nick is an absolute must for Rogues. Especially when paired with the Vex property of the Shortsword, since that makes your Nick attack always have advantage.
Funny thing is, Statistically speaking, graze is one of the best damage dealing weapon mastery.
That's because it's one of the only Weapon Masteries purely for damage, but compared to the others in terms of practical use it's nowhere near as good at higher levels. In early game it is actually one of the better masteries as there isn't as many damage bonuses and most characters are only making a single attack each turn, so guaranteeing damage is much more important. As you go up in level though it gets progressively worse compared to all others masteries since enemies get more and more health and your characters are getting more damage bonuses that only apply when you actually hit the target. Dealing 5 damage at level 10 means literally jack the vast majority of the time. Personally I just make it a min roll hit for your weapon and allow a reroll if you do roll minimum damage with your weapon dice.
@malmasterson3890 Math doesn't lie. 5 damage is 5 damage. That's like saying GWM isn't worth it cuz at most it adds 6 damage when you reach 17th level.
Dealing 5 damage even when you miss is huge. Which is why when you do that math it's really good. Even if it's not very exciting.
@@chrisg8989 Not the same thing at all. The fact is a replacement effect for missing means nothing when the damage is inconsequential. GWM is adding damage for actually hitting the target, compounding with other factors also increasing your damage when you hit the target. It's a comparison of apples to oranges, they're not even in the same classification.
How, tell me how 5 damage is huge against a creature that has 200-300 hp in total. Wouldn't you rather a weapon Mastery that grants you adv to that attack giving you a better chance to hit & crit? How about a weapon Mastery that makes it easier to keep them in place, or combo with spells, or make them less likely to hit you. 5 damage is pitiful in comparison to what a lot of the other options give you. The Vex & Nick 2 handed weapon combo is the one being used by a lot of optimizer's right now because it scales incredibly well and applies in pretty much any situation.
@malmasterson3890 Why is it huge? Cuz 5 is better than 0. There isn't an argument here. Do the math yourself. The Graze Property, on average, deals more DPR than than Vex or Topple.
It's not interesting, and only benefits you. But in a fight against a creature with high AC and is immune to Prone or Push, it's insanely good for a pure Martial character that can only make weapon attacks.
Also, some class features activate when you deal damage to a creature, not when you hit them, which synergies with Graze extremely well. Such as Rage. That means your 17th level barbarian is dealing 9 damage when you miss an attack. There are more examples of this with other classes.
"Rage Damage. When you make an attack using Strength-with either a weapon or an Unarmed Strike-and deal damage to the target, you gain a bonus to the damage that increases as you gain levels as a Barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian Features table."
Says nothing about hitting the target, only that you deal damage to it.
Graze only does anything if you miss, and I don't know about you, but I generally do not plan on missing all the time. And the higher your hit chance gets (and taking in how easy it is to get advantage in 2024 d&d, your hit chance is usually really high) the less you get out of Graze. It's like a participation reward, basically saying, 'congratulations, you suck, here is a consolation prize'.
Grazing can also be great against spell casters because it forces a concentration roll every time.
Add Mage Slayer & it is even better
@@TxSonofLiberty Was about to write this
OUCH
As a fellow DM. I approve of this message.
Graze is good to combo with poisons. Also graze can be used to find invisible enemies by testing which squares they are in.
Turning every miss into 3-5 damage is excellent. Maybe you don’t have to suffer as many low rolls as anyone else😅. I am not half as mad if while missing twice I inflict 10 damage
I wasn't a fan of Graze when I first heard about it. Then I saw Treantmonk's video on the amount of additional DPR (damage-per-round) Graze adds on to a character. It may not be as exciting as other masteries, but it definitely helps!
It's a crime that Treantmonk has fewer than 100K subscribers. He is easily the best and most accurate D&D youtuber out there!
He is great! The math is there. Its a great feature.
Graze is amazing.
Some of us have the wheton curse and our average roll on a d20 is 4, despite the math saying otherwise.
Graze is the weapon equivalent of blastlocks dipping evocation wizard so that their blasts never miss.
Where Graze shines:
Paladin/Pact of the Blade Warlock. Your Pact Weapon can have the normal damage type or be Necrotic/Radiant. So if you are fighting Vampires (for example) you could still hit with Radiant damage, which negates their Regen. Even though you missed with your Smite.
This can also apply when your players all dipped into the shield spell. Now even if they shield I can Graze them and force that concentration check.
@LoreFoundry Well, Shield isn't concentrated, but yep, you could do that. 😈
@@Lrbearclaw No shield is a reaction. But if the spell caster has a concentration spell you can almost always force the check.
@@LoreFoundry I figured you were implying that. That's why it is evil and I love it.
Celestial's lvl 6 feature also adds another bit of radiant to it as well especially on a radiant damage smite spell.
Trident will see more action now with thrown and topple for knocking flying enemies out of the sky
That gives me an idea
They blessed my boy! I'm still a little mad that tridents aren't included in the Polearm Master feat, though. One tiny "loophole" someone could use is insisting that since a trident is a _type_ of spear, and it doesn't specifically say that it has to use the spear _item,_ you could. Clearly not RAI, but still, it's still a polearm for pete's sake!
@@shybread315 I feel the same about javelins, just let them count as polearms already!!!
@@JugglingAddict absolutely! javelins are a terrifically underrated simple weapon
@@shybread315 YMBA (You Might Be A ... DnD race/subclass etc) released a really great PDF that's worth taking a look at.
Nick is great if you're using hunter's mark, hex or divine favor. You're getting that d6 or d4 one extra time.
I have to disagree about graze. If you aren't into battlefield control and just want to hit stuff like the vast majority of Fighter, Barbarian, and Paladin players are, mathematically speaking Graze does the most damage. Having that assurance of always doing atleast 3-5 damage, especially in low magic item campaigns is beyond useful.
Additionally, there are several ways to break the cap, speaking of magic items. However this one is dm dependent
Also forcing creatures to make a concentration roll every time is pretty good, even if they use shield they still gotta make a concentration check.
I haven't seen the data but is Graze still good for a Barbarian using Reckless attack, since you are missing a lot less often (depending on AC of opponent of course).
I think the weapon masteries really helped the martial classes, and I am so happy two weapon fighting has finally been fixed too
From a mechanical standpoint, Graze is easily 4-star. Guaranteed damage significantly boosts DPR.
From a thematic standpoint, Graze is a 2-star. It's little a boring.
It certainly has scenerios in which it could shine. Sentinel, mage slayer sweeping strike as a reaction from a battle master to break concentration on a greater invisibility shield spell and perhaps mirror image casted caster that is almost entirely out of your reach and prone on the ground requiring you to be within 5 ft and you don't have the last 5 ft necessary to close the distance, but happen to be a dwarf with activated stone sense/stone cunning/tremor sense to know where they are. (Might be a bit hyper specific 😅, but it involves all the different instances I could think of where graze would shine)
I think I would bump it down to 3 stars, as there are legitimate uses, but they are of limited rarity.
Slow section: Also, if you are building a whip wielder you can slow wp & use Slasher feat to reduce speed by 20, so that build might be possible, depending on what you are looking for.
I made a barbarian that uses this and the hamstring brutal strike, with shield master. So with a single attack, they can reduce in enemy speed by 35 ft and knock them prone. Assuming they have 35 or less movement, they can't even stand up on their turn.
Graze is the worst?? It add a lot of dmg per turn! All the D&S math people use graze on lots of calculations
The math on paper creates a false perception of how it actually performs in actual combat. Graze is good in the early game, but it's almost useless past tier 2.
Math people can't calculate if that extra 5 hp made a difference
Or the next 25 hp hit would have downed the creature anyways.
There are a lot of assumptions in dps math, you can't just take it as is.
Also as far as fun goes I'd say it's meh.
You are correct. It is not worthless!
@@malmasterson3890 Not true. Graze auto-scales. People somehow don't understand scaling, sneak attack needs to increase in dice because it is only usable 1/turn. But Hex for example auto-scales as the number of attacks scale. Graze keeps up, you may have an argument past lvl 11, but even then with a fighter it always keeps up.
@@snakept69 Or a warlock, gloomstalker ranger using their dreadful strike, haste paladin (glory or vengeance) can also keep up.
Just a thought. Using half stars makes your description of how your star rating system works completely irrelevant. Don’t be afraid to just pick a solid number and stick to that. It’s all subjective anyway.
Man said Graze is the worst? 😂
Not sure how you justify ranking graze lower than cleave. Obviously, each table plays differently, so maybe some campaigns will have several enemies grouped together almost every combat. But from my experience, most of the time combat involves 2-4 enemies that spread out throughout the battlefield. Graze might do less damage each instance, but it is way more consistent than cleave. Treantmonk did the math on it; if you assume a 0.65 base chance to hit (which is reasonable at most levels of play, considering the scaling of players' chance-to-hit as they level up, and the scaling of the average AC of enemies as they increase in CR) graze will average about 1.75 damage each round with a strength modifier of +5. In a single instance, that's not very much, but for a fighter that's attacking 2-3 times every round, more with action surge, this will add up over time to a non-trivial amount. Of course graze will do great damage when you can use it, but those instances are generally few and far between, not every single combat.
If you imagine for a moment, that graze added ability score damage to every hit. I think you would call that pretty strong for a anyone making lots of attacks. Now conventional wisdom is, that you hit about 60% of your attacks, so it is not quite as good as that, but it is almost that good.
Graze is also very consistent. Cleave requires the enemies to line up right, push can give huge benefits sometimes, but other times the enemy will just walk right back, or you will push them out of a bad situation. Sap doesn't do anything if the enemy causes saving throws, and very little if they have many attacks.
A lot of that stuff is situational, Graze is going to do damage almost every encounter. And if you are lucky enough to hit every attack, then it is okay your weapon property doesn't do anything in that encounter, you will wreck the enemy regardless.
I use a Warhammer's Push Mastery with Booming Blade. Push the enemy 10 feet away and if they want to move to re-engage you, they're going to take 1d8 Thunder Damage.
Totally! Solid choice.
Debilitating effects from magical abilities/spells do not stack with themselves, but they do stack with each other. And with the changes to eldritch invocations, all the invocations that used to only apply to eldritch blast (agonizing blast, repelling blast, etc.) can now apply to any attack cantrip.
Additionally, with the changes to subclasses, Eldritch knight gets the bladesinger treatment, where you can replace one of your attacks with a cantrip, starting at 7th level. So, you can make a character that's eldritch knight fighter 7/warlock 1, carry a weapon with the slow mastery, take ray of frost as a warlock cantrip, and take lance of lethargy as an invocation and apply it to ray of frost, then when you take the attack action, attack once with a weapon with slow, then cast ray of frost with your second attack. If both attacks hit, the enemy's movement speed will be reduced by 30 feet, so if they have standard movement speed, they will be immobilized. Even better yet, you can at this point action surge to attack again, swapping out your weapon for something with topple, and then knocking your target prone, and they have no movement with which to stand up again.
Couple fun combo's
Polo keep away= mount+lance+warhammer
Chuck wagon=dagger+handaxe
Gladiator=trident+net
The goofiest goober=
11 eldritch knight+3 path of the beast+6 way of mercy
Nick>vex>claw>claw>cleave>cleave bonus action heal and grapple and when you run out of rages swap the claw for a cantrip. You need 2 enemies ganging up on a downed ally but go ham. Or in hindsight probably a battle master is better.
Graze is a great workaround for nearly unhittable opponents.
Watching players use crossbows to push a single target all over the battlefield was funny, but abuseable.
Interesting that you're so opposed to Graze... The number crunching channels say it's the most effective for increasing damage...
In the 13th level boss battle I ran last night, the 30 or so damage that came from the Greatsword wielding Fighter missing across 4 rounds was the difference between a Vampire Lieutenant actually dying, and running away...
It's just a fact that characters will miss. If the damage added up amongst all a character's misses then those numbers are gonna be big. Add to that fighters and Barbarians making more attacks as they level up and it'll really add up
The number of times an enemy in my games have lived on 1-5 HP and everyone started whiffing their attacks on it is insane. 4-5 dmg doesn't look like much until you're swinging at a high AC target and you have disadvantage because you're poisoned or it's invisible (I like to challenge my players sometimes 😗🎶...)
@@grantgarbour yeah, my goal is to drop at least one PC per major encounter... Even if you have +13 to hit, you're still gonna miss an AC 20 about one third the time.
Last night, the enemy Sorcerer escaped with 3 hp left 😜
@guamae also it's not like the PC can't switch their weapon. If they're fighting someone with less AC or they have advantage they could easily switch to a different weapon, then switch back when they have a higher chance of missing
@@grantgarbour theoretically at least... My PCs tend to pick weapons based on what enchantment they have... Also, I kind of think the "weapon juggling" mechanics are a bit silly... Kinda wish each weapon had two mastery options...
@@grantgarbour I love what I call the ''hide in obscurity'' builds where they use the hide action inside a heavy obscurement spell with the blink spell on them and 10 ft of blind sense. That'll start them thinking. Bonus points if the heavy obscurement spell is like stinking cloud or cloud kill and they have an immunity to poison damage.
One cool thing you didn't mention about cleave is that it doesn't have to be made as part of the Attack action. It can proc on any attack, the only restriction is that it's once per turn, meaning you could use it with reaction attacks, such as an attack of opportunity
This definitely is the buff that martial classes needed! I still think it's wild that the same people who were pleading for martial/magical class equality are banning weapon masteries.
Oh, also, I suggest using a dagger and a _shortsword_ on your "Order of the Stabbity Stab" combo, since you would additionally apply the vex mastery with your extra Light attack instead of an additional nick mastery that you can't use on the same turn.
People are banning masteries? That weird martial classes fall so far behind full casters this was just barely getting them in the right direction. Martial still need some massive buffs. Wizard still gets Fireball to their 2nd attack at the same level, lol.
Treantmonk did the math on Graze and was surprised how much DPR it adds. You are undervaluing it and should do the math on all the masteries.
Graze vs. single target high AC. Carry multiple weapons. You can always swap them for ideal conditions
Hot take: while fun, masteries are not as powerful or impactful as wizards think they are.
If you use a dagger in one hand and a short sword in the other can you use both properties? Like nick let's you do the 2nd light attack as the same action then use short sword for vex to give advantage to your next attack.
I love the video and I agree with the analysis... but man is your pronunciation of "mealy attacks" distracting :) At the risk of being *that guy*, melee is pronounced MAY-lay. Why is it spelled like that? The French.
I was thinking of making this a drinking game.
As a DM i amd finding it really fun to throw pairs of mob monsters at the fighter with a cleave greataxe. He loves them combos
wait doesnt the Weapon Mastery Properties only work with classes that have the feture in their base class (even if you take the feat )
I believe it’s you either have an in-class/subclass feature that grants it, or you take the feat to access it.
I want to ask for some clarification on the Nick property with 2-weapon: the Nick mastery states "You can make this Extra Attack only once per turn". So with my shortsword i can make a first attack that imposes the Vex property to have advantage on my next attack, then as part of it's light property i can make a second attack using my dagger with the Nick mastery as part of that same action instead of as a bonus action, and add my damage bonus to both attacks. If i have Extra Attack then i can attack again with my shortsword, applying Vex, and because of the light property i can now have to attack using my Bonus Action with my dagger, because the Nick property was expended in the first turn of actions. And if I had 3 attacks on my turn I wouldn't be able to use my dagger at all on the third attack because i used the Nick single-turn limit, and i used my bonus action in the previous attack. I think people are forgetting that Nick can only apply to the action once on the players turn of combat, regardless of their number of attacks. Is this right or am i missing it?
Essentially, how it's intended (I believe Crawford confirmed this one) is that Nick REPLACES the bonus action option, UNLESS you have the Dual Wielder feat, which allows you to make both a Nick attack and a Bonus Action attack. So regardless of how many attacks your Extra Attack grants, you can make at most 2 more attacks on top of those, 1 from Nick (or from the light weapon rules WITHOUT using Nick, but using your bonus action), and 1 from Dual Wielder (if you're using Nick, too).
The only time Graze isn't one of the best weapon masteries is if your DM is running a game for children where enemy AC is always abysmal. If your fighting actual level appropriate enemies where you miss 25-40% (more if you don't always have advantage ect) of the time that 4-5 damage per missed attack adds up to be exceedingly high.
If I were to DM high AC foes with a disadvantage to hit spell (and or invisibility) would be more likely the norm than the exception.
Slow is amazing with slasher.
Even more so with stuff like Bladesinger or Eldritch Knight.
Hitting ray of frost and a whip attack would mean 30ft movement reduction. Combine that with control options like slow and you will make melee enemies weep.
Combine that with shield master and you can knock somebody prone after reducing their speed, without any additional action use. They will likely not have any speed left to stand up from prone on their turn.
Barbarian making Reckless attacks may not want to use or have the opportunity to use a weapons Graze Mastery due to Advantage on attacks using their main Stat for To-Hit rolls
Barbarian with SAP Mastery can help barbarian who is attacking recklessly. But only for one attack against the Barbarian.
Barbarian with SLOW Mastery can be good. Especially if you can also PRONE the target. (1/2 move to stand and -10 Feet to move.)
Barbarian with PRONE or VEX Mastery can allow attacking without going Reckless if you feel your initial To-Hit chance is high enough.
"Why Yes. I do play a barbarian. How did you know?"
Two more interesting things about the Lance. It's less related to the masteries. But when you're mounted, you can use it with one hand. That means you can use the dueling fighting style. It also qualifies for great weapon Master. And it qualifies for polearm master. And, you can use a shield while wielding it while mounted.
Why not give 1-10 stars if you give half stars?
Nick plus the Dual Wielder feat plus the Two Weapon Fighting feat would allow you to make 3 attacks at level four.
Nick allows you to make an extra attack with the attack action when normally you would use your bonus action. Typically it would prevent you from using the light weapon attack bonus action, however, the Dual Wielder feat bonus action attack is NOT the light weapon attack bonus action, meaning you can still use it, if that makes any since. Further more, it can be argued that Two Weapon Fighting would allow you to add your ability modifier to every attack in question.
At level 4 that is 1d6+3 (scimitar) + 1d6+3 (scimitar) + 1d10+3 (Longsword, two handed since Dual Wielder just requires it to not have the two-handed property, not that it is wielded in one hand) for a total of 21 average sustained damage.
If you read the Dual Wielder feat, it specifically says Enhanced Dual Wielding, which buffs Two weapon fighting which by default requires 2 light weapons. Using this in tandem with Nick allows you to apply the second weapon damage from a weapon that doesn't have the light property. It does not allow you to do Nick with 2 light weapons and then use your bonus action to attack with the third, non light property one-handed weapon.
@@shatnuh Well no, I HAVE read Dual Wielder and it states that if you use a weapon the with light property on your turn, you can make an attack as a bonus action with a weapon that didn't activate your ability to use the feature.
It's not an upgrade, it's another feature that is supposed to compete with the bonus action attack from light weapons, but thanks to you making the attack using nick, it frees you up to make another attack with the Enhanced Dual Wielding.
Lastly Two Weapon Fighting allows you to add you ability modifier to ANY attack caused by the light property. Enhanced Dual Wielder can only happen if you use a light weapon, thus it benefits from Two-Weapon fighting.
@@King_of_Clovers Dual Wielder specifically refers to the extra attack you get to make if your main hand is a light weapon. Instead of the second weapon having to be a light weapon as well, it can now be a weapon that does not have the two-handed requirement. Nick refers to the same bonus action extra attack. You do not get to stack it.
@@King_of_Clovers Furthermore, your weapon combo wouldn't work under your interpretation of the rules. Even if you could stack the extra attack you get to make as a part of two weapon fighting with light weapons, you bonus action couldn't be a long sword wielded with two hands. You can either draw or sheath a weapon on an attack action. If you sheath both weapons as a part of your Nick attack, you have now lost access to the, as you say, Enhanced Dual Wielder bonus action because you no longer have a light weapon in your hand. And the bonus action attack that you think you get would need you to have a light weapon, and if you draw your longsword on that action, you can't also sheath your light weapon, so it could only be the 1d8+mod that one handed longsword gives.
@@King_of_Clovers the only way that any of this is possible is if you make something like a 3rd level War Cleric. War Priest allows you to do an attack on your bonus action as a limited resource attached to your WIS modifier. Even then, you still would not get to attack with the longsword two handed because of the draw/sheath economy.
How does the Dagger Monk get 4 attacks?
They have extra attack at level 5, so that's two attacks. If you're holding two light weapons and one has the Nick property, you can make another attack with your offhand weapon as part of the same action. That's three attacks. Then, they make their martial arts bonus action unarmed attack. That's four.
@@brynwtsn Ty
If we are a battle master with the pushing maneuver or utilise the charger feat and have a cleave mastery weapon equiped, do we have to figure out if the mastery property activates before or after the forced movement from charger?, because if it is flexible hunter STRanger/battlemaster or psi-knight starts to look very interesting! 😮😂😅😊
Hmmm. Interesting. I’d have to look real close at the wording on that one. I suspect it might be DMs choice. I’d be inclined to allow it at my table personally, but that’s without reading the RAW with a magnifying glass 🔍
Graze does scale beyond low level. The misses will scale with the number of attacks gained.
While graze doesn’t directly get stronger because of the limitation to ability mod damage, it can proc separate damage or effects such as when poisons are applied.
While graze does decent damage increases on average when attacking with a neutral roll, It becomes even more useful when you are at disadvantage. You will not be attacking with advantage all the time, regardless of how well you play. You will be struck prone, restrained, poisoned, blinded at some point.
I see the humble quarterstaff as a potential gimmick.
Innately, it has the Topple mastery.
It also qualifies for Crusher and Polearm Master feats.
Now you have the potential to hit an enemy as they approach you, knock them Prone AND back 5ft.
As a fun addition, the Quarterstaff is eligible for the Shillelagh buff, which could significantly increase its damage at higher levels, even when benefitting from a shield.
I've several times put together a "farmer" character who uses a humble quarterstaff to kick major backside. It's definitely looking super viable in dnd2024.
Something important that you failed to mention on Graze is that it, unlike basically all the other mastery effects, becomes not only less useful through enemy HP scaling, but also through bounded accuracy. As you level up, missing becomes less and less likely.
That's true. Thanks for pointing it out!
well listening to the devs talk and promote the game they said that they view the front ark being 3 frontal directions in a hexagon as i guess they want hexagons to be the reference to many rules in game.... cleave lets say you are holding a halberd you have a 10ft reach and you have an enemy to your max left range and you have an opponent to your max right. this can be a distance slightly over 20 ft apart and if you cleave through 1 you can reach the second opponent who is also in your visions front.
this is a common place for me because i like to lock up as many enemies as i can ....
a crafty DM may in the case of having an ally in between the 2 enemies either hit ally or decline the follow through because it makes sense it being a follow through tactic that you stop it for ally or hit 1st closest thing
Battle master has some of the most hilarious combinations when we combo sweeping strike on reactions and dual wielding.
7:13 Hardcore disagree. Graze isn’t dependent on enemy positioning as with Cleave, and it means even if you miss an enemy spellcaster they still take damage and are forced to make a concentration check. Graze is basically a must have for a mage slayer build.
I'm alright with disagreement, and I can definitely agree with you that if you're building around the mage-slayer feat, Graze is incredible.
Something curious for slow and sap, is that you can apply this in different enemies, for example is you are a full tank paladin, you know that your damage isnt important, so you attack twice to two different creatures to use your sap mastery twice
Does sacred weapon from the oath of devotion paladin increase the damage of graze and the dc of topple?
No to both, I'm afraid. Sacred weapon requires a hit, and topple is only based on the primary ability score used.
@@DM-Timothy So the "ability modifier you used for the attack roll" as mentioned in the descriptions of graze and topple is just STR. It could be replaced by CHA via true strike or pact of the blade. I think sacred weapon is the only feature that lets you add another ability modifier to the attack roll instead of replacing the primary ability modifier. Thats why I wondered whether this increase to the attack roll also boosts those masteries. Thanks you.
I'm just dropping in to ask if the video thumbnail weapons resemble the Fire Emblem weapon triangle (backwards) on purpose.
You can't add your attribute bonus to cleave, BUT it still adds GWM prof bonus. So if you have GWM it's another rider for that bonus damage.
You are sleeping hard on graze. Check out the math, unless you have a high amount of advantage it is better mathmatically than straight up +2 to damage which increases to +3 after maxing out relevant stat in tier 2/3 play.
Perhaps later you could do a video on how the equipping weapon wording effects not only how one could attack with two weapons using a single hand but also allows multiple fighting styles to be used at once - Two-Weapon Fighting allowing you to add your ability modifier to the damage of the extra attack as well as getting a further +2 to damage because it's the only weapon in your hand from the Dueling fighting style.
Some maths about Graze.
Let’s say I’m a level 13+ Fighter with just my class features (not even subclass), a Greatsword with Graze and +5 Strength obviously.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s not even consider GWM’s extra damage (even if mandatory in such a build).
Assuming 65% to hit (5% crit), my first hit will do:
(2d6 (7) + 5) x 0.60 +
(4d6 (14) + 5) x 0.05 =
8.15 DPR
Graze itself adds:
5 x 0.35 = 1.75 DPR, so basically a flat 21.5% increase.
At low levels (5?) it would be 18.7% increase on any attack.
This is valid for every attack on a martial class without Studied Attacks or any other way to get self-advantage.
On each attack after the first one, Studied Attack gives me advantage on next attack if I miss the previous one: this means I have a 0.87 (advantage) x 0.35 (chance of previous miss) + 0.65 (base chance to hit) x 0.65 (previous hit) = 0.73 to hit, of which (after similar calcs) 0.07 to crit.
Attack 2 (3 and 4 if Fighter):
(2d6 + 5) x 0.66 +
(4d6 + 5) x 0.07 =
9.25 DPR
+ Graze 5 x 0.27 = 10.6
So still a flat 14.6% damage increase.
Of course this tends to matter less if you have other damage sources like GWM, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad Mastery, considering its purpose is to deal damage.
Maybe it’s the least exciting to describe (pushing someone, giving them disadvantage, slowing them is more appealing), but it’s definitely not the worst ESPECIALLY at high levels.
Thanks for doing the math on that! I think the issue is the desire to simplify and thus drop off the extra damage. In that same example, a Barbarian with a GWM Greatsword is adding +8 damage to each successful hit, dropping the percentage down quite significantly. Any time that hitting deals solid damage, dealing 4-5 damage instead is likely less impactful than say toppling a foe to grant easy advantage for the rest of your team. I don't expect to see graze make a big difference at the table, but some of the others will change the fight in a single blow.
So you mentioned during the Cleave section your character has to be adjacent, but the Halberd allows for reach still, right? Which means your character doesn't have to be adjacent, unless you are dedicated to the highest die as your damage die.
Cleave is especially great for fighters, because of their Tactical Master ability which lets you swap your masteries, so if you have already used cleave that turn or don't have enemies lined up for it, you can swap your property for something else, such as push to manuever your opponent to a position where you can cleave on your next attack. It also comboes great with polearm master since cleave works on reaction attacks also.
Although graze doesn't seem like the most interesting property, there's more to it than this. (1) First, there are features that proc on _damaging_ a creature, without mentioning hitting them. Graze could potentially be very potent in combination with these. In fact, one example doesn't require a feature: a concentration save is required if the caster takes damage. So attacking a concentrating caster using graze property means 100% chance of triggering the save. The mage slayer feat makes this interaction more potent. (2) Second, it does stack with other features (at least in the relevant sense): other features may proc on success while graze does so on failure, but they're all adding their contribution statistically. (3) A final thing to note, although minor, is that graze fills a rather unusual niche. In contrast to most features, it's optimized for the failure of an attack. This means it may be useful in unusual situations where the chance to hit is abnormally low, such as a creature with very high AC (but fairly low HP), or a situation where attacks are debuffed.
Solid points all. Especially love the idea of a mage-slayer using graze to hunt concentration checks.
How does your Battle Master example work? You push the target's weapon 10 Feet? So, target has to use their movement to get to their weapon. Since they used their movement THAT triggers opportunity attack.
I'm a fan of the weapon properties. I've read through lots of comments and people are all over Graze. Thinking its either useless or the best damage buff.
I have two thoughts, the first is Graze now nullifies the Shield spell. Because no matter what you can force the target of the graze attack to make the concentration check.
I think the real purpose of Graze is to finish off those pesky low hp targets. I know we have all played in games where things are getting tense, hp is getting low. Every creature on the map player and npc are looking rough. And then you miss your attack to finish off the berserker with 3 hp remaining, so he goes on to murder your pc.
I think Graze is a good finisher. Mechanically speaking it can do well with that Fighting style. On a hit a greatsword would fo 6+str bonus, on a miss you do your str bonus. Throw in Savage attacker and you could have a character with the most consistent martial damage out there.
Okay this isn't much but Graze is really good with the new way poison works. Before anyone moans and complains about poison damage, Poison immunity does blank this and resistance does blunt the impact, it is something that has been made better by the new rules.
Basic Poison
A creature that takes Piercing or Slashing damage from the poisoned weapon or ammunition takes an extra 1d4 Poison damage.
1. It is now just a bonus action to apply the poison.
2. The poison no longer causes a saving throw so if they take damage then they will take the poison damage.
3. The graze would would because you aren't increasing the damage of the weapon or the modifier the poison is separate damage.
4. With graze that is damage dealt on every attack regardless of their AC
Is it the best option? No. But if you are the type that constantly has bad luck and keeps missing you can still do damage. As of the MM 14 there are 3412 listed creatures. 966 of those have Immunity to Poison. 118 of those have Resistance to Poison. So that is 1,084 creatures that is strategy will be bad or useless but that is means there are sill 2,328 that would still take damage.
This is officially the second argument for Graze that I agree with. Very cool!
Your world tree barb build is similar to one I was thinking about. Only I was thinking all push. Versatile one handed weapon with push, barb feature push and shield master bonus action push.
I think the consistency of Graze is being underappreciated. I think on a Fighter that doesn't have a reliable way to get Advantage, it means you are guaranteed to deal 8 damage a round after level 5. And that's much better than dealing no damage. Plus it forces a spellcaster to always make Concentration saves.
Totally fair viewpoint. It’s one many people share! I don’t personally think the consolation prize damage is as impactful as the other options, but I’m cool with being wrong if I’m wrong, too. :D
Don't sleep on slow. If you slow someone with 30 ft movement then push them with the charger feat or with the push property then they essentially just lost 20 feet of movement trying to get back to you. If you take a 15 ft step backwards that enemy lost it's entire turn for the round trying to dash with no saving throw. And if you combine with the slasher feat or brutal strikes you can slow an enemy down to an immobile level in 1 turn.
Slow can easily start turning into turn saving CC vs average mobility creatures with no saving throws. I've seen it, I dm it. The enemy will either need to dash, or use a projectile at that point. It really screws over low mobilty enemies
Graze is definitely good at lower levels, but can be switched out later. If a fighter has an attack mod of 4-5, and a Goblin only had 7 hp on average, the Gobbo is dying in two turns. Even if the dice are against the fighter. Also might work against spellcasters, forcing concentration saves every turn.
It’s true! As one viewer pointed out, at higher levels you can also trade graze on a hit as a fighter, making it a great backup for the occasional miss.
Does graze trigger rogue sneak attack?
Sadly it does not. Sneak attack requires a hit.
@ 👍👍
My favorite part of nick is that you don't need to actually use the nick weapon RAW you can instead dual wield vex and as long as the weapons are light you can still use the mastery
The Eldritch Knight plunges in, casts Shield, has an AC of 27, and feels invincible. "The five Hobgoblin Champions all miss their attacks, but Graze means you still take 15 points damage for the round." I think unavoidable damage is underappreciated.
Potentially so! Though, admittedly, we don't know if/when monsters will get access to masteries, yet.
I'm giving everyone Storm Giant Belts just so they have uber damage when they miss with nick! :P
Push with a shield bash attack would be thematic.
For a Rogue, would Graze prod Sneak Attack?
No, sneak attack specifically calls out the need to “hit” to deal the extra damage. :)
Stars, Name, Short Description
4 Nick -- When making extra att of light property, it does not use Bonus Action (once/turn)
4 Topple -- If hit, creature CON save or prone (DC 8 + Ability Mod + Prof Bonus)
4 Vex -- If hit & dmg, ADV on next att vs creature (before end your next turn)
3½ Push -- If hit, push up to 10' (large or smaller)
3 Cleave -- If hit, make free 2nd melee att vs adj creature w/o Ab.mod
2½ Sap -- If hit, creature DISADV on next att (before start your next turn)
2 Slow -- If hit & dmg, reduce Speed 10' (before start your next turn)
1½ Graze -- If miss, deal dmg equal to Ability Mod
Name, Weapons Capable, Long Description
Cleave -- [ greataxe, halberd ] If you hit a creature with a melee attack roll using this weapon, you can make a melee attack roll with the weapon against a second creature within 5 feet of the first that is also within your reach. On a hit, the second creature takes the weapon’s damage, but don’t add your ability modifier to that damage unless that modifier is negative. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.
Graze -- [ glaive, great sword ] If your attack roll with this weapon misses a creature, you can deal damage to that creature equal to the ability modifier you used to make the attack roll. This damage is the same type dealt by the weapon, and the damage can be increased only by increasing the ability modifier.
Nick -- [ dagger, light hammer, sickle, scimitar ] When you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can make it as part of the Attack action instead of as a Bonus Action. You can make this extra attack only once per turn.
Push -- [ great club, pike, warhammer, heavy crossbow ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can push the creature up to 10 feet straight away from yourself if it is Large or smaller.
Sap -- [ mace, spear, flail, longsword morningstar, war pick ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, that creature has Disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn.
Slow -- [ club, javelin, light crossbow, sling, whip, longbow, musket ] If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to it, you can reduce its Speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn. If the creature is hit more than once by weapons that have this property, the Speed reduction doesn’t exceed 10 feet.
Topple -- [ quarterstaff, battleaxe, lance, maul, trident ] If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can force the creature to make a Constitution saving throw (DC 8 plus the ability modifier used to make the attack roll and your Proficiency Bonus). On a failed save, the creature has the Prone condition.
Vex -- [ handaxe, dart, shortbow, rapier, shortsword, blowgun, hand crossbow, pistol ] If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to the creature, you have Advantage on your next attack roll against that creature before the end of your next turn.
I’m currently playing a wild magic barbarian with the crusher feat and a maul/topple. I was able to knock a golem back 5 feet and prone at the same time. It was awesome!
It's not broken, but a barb using a sap weapon would negate the target's advantage against them when using reckless attack...
Personally I think Vex is really over-rated, it's so easy to get advantage in 2024 rules that it's lot of the time completely redundant.
Thrikreen are the kings of the weapon mastery, a Thrikreen can take advantage of the Nick, push and cleave features every turn without having to switch weapons making the hunter ranger way more reliably getting two targets next to each other for cleave
Sentinel plus topple is a good combo, because you knock someone down and they cannot stand back up until their next turn.
Very true. Adding disadvantage to whatever they do after they fail to leave you is pretty gnarly.
I have never that the vex mastery was that good because their is so many ways to get advantage in 2024.
What about Blooming Blade and push? Sounds like an awesome combination.
Definitely! Most of my tables have dropped pre-2024 spells, but if you’re using both then that’s a killer combo.
Flurry of Blows. You can expend 1 Focus Point to make two Unarmed Strikes as a Bonus Action.
I don't think you can use your unarmed strikes
Did you mean you don’t think you can use the daggers? If so, you use the daggers for the regular attacks and Nick property attack, then flurry for the two extra Unarmed Strikes.
@ yes, you’ll use your feet for the furry of blows while your regular attacks are the two weapons. Of course this is a 2 feet investment. That kicks in at 8th level. I rather do the grappler feet.
Unfortunately, Monks do not get weapon mastery, even though they should.
I know that's not currently available, but: a tri-kreen monk with four daggers, using nick...
Graze is probably the best weapon mastery for optmizing. Any damage is better than no damage.
I hate this new weapon mastery system. They could have just used the Battle Master Fighter maneuvers system and reworked the subclass. I have no idea how something like topple passed playtest
RE: Topple - What would make this even better is WOTC introduced weapons with a "Launch" property and a "Smash" property, wherein all three synergized with each other. ;)
RE: The Juggler - Not even for a Swords Bard?
Disagree with a few ratings:
Cleave - 2 Stars: Very hard to meet the conditions to activate it, but when you do it, is good.
Graze - 4 Stars: Mathematically amazing, and you can do some interesting combos with.
Sap - 1 Star: Useless in many cases and underwhelming in the others.
Vex - 5 Stars: OP free advantage. Outshines a few class abilities and feats.
Fair stance, thanks for sharing your thoughts! :)
slow can be used more than once if you target more than one enemy
This is broken, that is op, ugh!! All these alarmist reviews are just for views. Please stop with trying to create drama with all the use of these trigger words. Your content is compelling, and you do not need to lower yourself to that.
I'm wondering what the cat is thinking while sitting there watching you record. Maybe some thought bubbles in post-production to enlighten us?
i like graze on fighter because you get push and topple anyway so you can just graze when you miss
That is actually one of the best arguments for graze I’ve heard. I quite like that! Thanks for your comment.
Cleave on a Glaive with a Path of the Giant Barbarian Bugbear can target foes anywhere within 25 feat... 5 feet is not the limit, even just a Glaive is 10 feet, even just a Bugbear is 10 feet with the Greataxe, both is 15 feet.
Has anyone tried CME in a high level campaign? My dm ran a level 15 one shot and said he has no problems with the spell
Just theory for me at the moment. Looking forward to seeing how broke it is or isn't.
@DM-Timothy in 5 combats I did high damage 3 of them, 1 was fairly average and 1 i was completely negated. In 1 round I did 183 damage, while taking 110 . It has its downsides, but when it crits oh boy lol. That single hit was 104, but again it was a level 15 1 shot
@@jaredrepass Thanks for the numbers! In that one round, you did more than a 9th level spell worth of damage at level 15, with an ongoing resource... I think the math raises eyebrows if nothing else!
@DM-Timothy using 5 attacks, I also had to make 11 concentration checks and the enemies had disadvantage in the one round. 🤷♂️ guess it'll be a table by table banning
The Juggler can't exist in RAW. You can only use the nick property once per turn, regardless of how many weapons you have with the property.
The juggler is more about hand-management than getting extra attacks.
I have a build ranger2/shadow monk 12 on a Goliath (hill giant background), once a day become large, knock a creature prone with attack equal to proficiency mod, have vex handaxe and nick dagger giving 3 attacks and 3 unarmed strikes with hunters mark, 6d10+30+6d6 to one target
People watching math channels saying Graze is the best are going purely for that dpr math not considering everything we have in a battle. As you said, Graze is good for early levels and also when you don't play optimally.
When doing everything right, you most likely will have higher chance of hitting enemies and want anything to do that better and help your friends. Graze is just okay, even though in a vacuum it looks better
Great video, as always.
What about the environmental implications of Dungeon Dreamer's Dungeons & Dragons AI Familiar? Is there such thing as an ethical AI system when they have such a negative impact on the environment?
Shaolei Ren and Adam Wierman's Harvard Business Review article, The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts, highlight a lot of the issues when it comes to the toll AI takes on our planet.
For a game largely about saving worlds (excluding evil campaigns, of course), maybe us TTRPG enthusiasts can do a small part to try to save the one we live in/on in real life as well.
@socialcommentary, first of all, thank you for your comment, your position, and for bringing up the article! I read it and found Ren and Wierman’s insights on the uneven environmental impacts of AI quite interesting. I've indeed always been more focused on the importance of measuring carbon emissions and striving for neutrality. The geographically unequal effects of AI, as they point out, were something I hadn't fully considered.
At this stage, Dungeon Dreamer isn’t in a position to directly address these challenges. We don’t manage data centers or have substantial sway over larger tech companies’ environmental strategies. However, we’re open to supporting ecological initiatives, whether through financial backing or providing informational resources. It's something we're eager to explore as we grow. That said, I’m optimistic about the future. One of the key strategies to mitigate AI's environmental toll, as highlighted in Ren and Wierman's article, is developing highly geographically distributed AI training methods. This is an active area of research for major AI companies like Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI, initially driven by economic efficiency. Eventually, this technology could be leveraged to minimize the environmental footprint of AI training by better distributing workloads across low-carbon data centers.
For example, research like "Sustainable AIGC Workload Scheduling of Geo-Distributed Data Centers: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach" ( ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2304.07948v1 ) explores how AI training tasks can be dynamically scheduled across global data centers to balance workload efficiency with environmental considerations, such as carbon emissions. Companies are starting to explore similar solutions, and the hope is that this could soon become a more common practice.
I’d also like to mention few general points about Dungeon Dreamer’s current approach. We have an internal document outlining our AI policy, which touches on environmental issues alongside other ethical concerns. We currently share it with the influencers we work with and potential partners. It’s not publicly available just yet, but we plan to launch a dedicated page on our website to share it more widely. Here’s a example of relevant excerpt:
"Example of unethical models: OpenAI models would be considered unethical according to many of these criteria (closed-source model and datasets, extensive use of copyrighted data during training, highly unstable infrastructure, low company credibility, *large environmental impact*)."
Our policy currently focuses on moving toward the use of more ethical AI models. It's actually very common for lot of companies to track their environmental impact during AI training. For example, here are details that Meta shared about their LLaMA3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct ( huggingface.co/meta-llama/Llama-3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct ) model:
«Training Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimated total location-based greenhouse gas emissions were 584 tons CO2eq for training. Since 2020, Meta has maintained net zero greenhouse gas emissions in its global operations and matched 100% of its electricity use with renewable energy, therefore the total market-based greenhouse gas emissions for training were 0 tons CO2eq.
The methodology used to determine training energy use and greenhouse gas emissions can be found here ( arxiv.org/pdf/2204.05149 ). Since Meta is openly releasing these models, the training energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will not be incurred by others.»
As Dungeon Dreamer grows and we start generating more revenue, we plan to support carbon extraction programs and explore other eco-friendly practices. At present, our contribution is modest (0.5% of our total revenue is donated to carbon extraction, which is the default option that Stripe provides), but we aim to expand this as our operations scale. We are optimistic about all the research big companies are doing to find more ecological approaches to AI training and usage. As we grow as a company, and finally switch to the last steps of our plan -- training our own foundational models, and fully complying with all our policies, we will take the experience and all the ideas shared by those companies. We also look closely at the low-budget methods of training big models, for example ( arxiv.org/abs/2407.15811 ), because that will both make it possible to train a model on fewer data (and allow only using 100% public domain/creative commons 0 data with no copyrighted materials) and spend less GPU power, thus less emission for our goal.
I hope that covers some of your concerns regarding AI environmental issues. I will gladly ask any more specific questions you have on the matter!
A couple ideas:
1. Cleave works once per turn, so Polearm Master or Sentinel can be used to gain even more attacks.
2. With a level 5+ Hunter Ranger using Cleave and the Dual Wielder Feat, you could make six attacks on each of your turns. Greataxe attack, a Horde Breaker Greataxe attack, then a Cleave Greataxe attack, then stow it the Greataxe as part of that last attack. Then you can use your object interaction to draw two Light weapons thanks to Dual Wielder (one with Nick) and use Extra Attack to attack with one and stow it, then make the Nick attack and Dual Wielder Bonus Action attack.
On the next round, attack with a Light Weapon, Dual Wielder Bonus Action Attack, then Nick Attack, then stow both Light weapons as part of that attack and use your object interaction to draw your Greataxe and attack, Horde Breaker Attack, and Cleave attack.
Pretty ridiculous, but I think it's technically RAW.
I am eager to see Weapon Mastery with monsters when the new MM comes out next year. All the dumb monsters are going to be more interesting when they can Push or Cleave...
I don't see an advantage to Knife Juggling, nor do I see how it's possible. What game advantage is there to using two weapons with the same hand? Rules Definitions for Attack [Action] regarding Equipping and Unequipping Weapons states that you can't draw any weapon except at the start or end of the Attack Action, not start or end of the first attack during the Attack Action. I suppose if you can't use your off-hand, and your main hand has a Light weapon, you could "attempt" to start your Attack Action by drawing a second weapon into your main hand, attack with the first Light weapon (throw it if it's a dart), and then use the Nick property to use the dagger. The second attack still is an "off-hand attack" that doesn't use your dexterity modifier. (Not even with the 2-weapon feat.) Also, it seems to me that the second draw of a weapon in the round is a Utilize Action (see Combat; Your Turn; Interacting With Things).
"Yea this sword is nice, but I can't stab anyone 100 ft away, so it's useless. 1 star"
The Greataxe is fine, but the Halberd should be the Cleave weapon of choice.
I don't have to tell you why you're wrong about Graze. Literally everyone else in the comments has that covered. 😂
Nick is an absolute must for Rogues. Especially when paired with the Vex property of the Shortsword, since that makes your Nick attack always have advantage.
Treantmonk did the math on graze and its seems to ve surprisingly strong.
Interesting, I'll have to look for his thoughts on it!
1:47 Did you say edible character sheets? That would be a novelty.
lol! editable was definitely the goal... But who knows, my mouth sometimes goes wild!