It's fine. I really enjoy discussions like this, it's very useful. Defending my original decision doesn't mean I'm not taking your words seriously and considering them. This is the sort of thing other folks who're thinking of modding Charger to not be godawful horrible might want to read about, as well. Anyone who aspires to writing the sort of homebrew other folks actually like and use would be well advised to carefully consider it when someone offers a passionate argument against their work.
I consider +5 damage to be a moderate bonus, useful but not overpowering, and further consider the movement requirement to be a significant limiter on that bonus given that in games I've both played and run, a fight where characters can freely engage and disengage to score that sort of movement bonus every round is quite rare. Typically, once you're stuck in in the sorts of fights I've seen/run, it's either difficult or counterproductive to get unstuck.
You consider the +5 bonus to be very significant, and the movement requirement to be so lax as to effectively be nonexistent. That's good feedback, tells me my own assumptions/experiences are not universal. I don't know yet how to act on it; Charger is one of those cases where the feat is either utter dogshit or wildly overpowered.
Expending your action, your bonus action, AND all of your movement to make one lousy attack with a moderate damage bonus, or a nondamaging shove with five rinky-dink extra feet of push, is easily a contender for Worst Feat In Game. I would legit rather have RAW Savage Attacker than RAW Charger on any character I build; RAW Savage Attacker will at least come up. If Weapon Master didn't exist, I'd honestly be willing to argue that RAW Charger is the worst, most useless, most poorly designed feat in 5e. I'd like it to not be dogshit and an absolute, utter waste of both an ASI and a turn, especially when wildly overpowered nonsense like PAM is allowed to exist freely.
The addition of "Increase your Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20" would elevate Charge into a very takeable feat. It wasn't quite enough to save Weapon Master, but I find myself taking Tavern Brawler quite often when I just need +1 Str or Con, even when I'm not particularly interested in grappling or improvised weapon fighting, just because it "might" come up. I think that's probably an easier fix for the feat that would leave it on the same level of "sure, why not?" as Tavern Brawler without making it quite so uniquely good.
Or, add a "your speed increases by 10 feet" bullet point instead. That would also make the feat very takeable for several sorts of character, without overloading its combat effectiveness.
TL;DR: Voting for Undiscovered Potential because it adds damage for crunch builds and mobility for melee builds. Also, fun combos for other feats and strategies!
I love this feat for a few reasons. If you are a melee-only build (like a paladin or a barbarian), this feat gets you into the ranged archer's or spellcaster's face pretty quickly, lol. The bonus +5 damage is really nice if you're into crunchy builds. For example, you could stack the dueling fighting style onto this for +7 damage on top of your normal bonuses. As a barbarian multiclass (since they don't get fighting styles), you tack on your rage bonus and that's looking pretty sweet.
A more recent combo I've thought about is how this works for protector aasimar paladins. So you pick up the dueling fighting style at level 2, get the wings at level 3, and by level 4 you can get this feat. While flying, you could dash to get 60 ft. of speed. When you attack with your bonus action, you'd be getting (dueling +2, aasimar +4, charger +5) plus 11 damage on that flying strike (which could add a smite on top). All of this while keeping the benefit of a shield. Assuming you wielded a d8 weapon with a +2 to Strength, your max damage would be 21, lol. That's an amazing amount of damage for a character that hasn't even hit level 5 yet (before crits or smites). If you added a 1st level smite onto that attack for zesty damage, you'd be averaging 26 damage on a normal attack or 34 damage on a crit. The stack of this build is really crunchy, lol.
Even a variant human at level 4 could have two feats, and this is where Charger can have some fun combos. There are not a lot of features in the game that give you flat bonuses to damage. This feat, rage, and the dueling fighting style come to mind. But you probably thought of Great Weapon Master right away. This combo, especially with a raging barbarian could net you (+3 Strength, +2 rage, +5 Charger, +10 GWM) plus 20 damage to a hit after dashing, lol. CHUNK. Assuming you maxed out a greataxe, you're dealing 32 damage to some poor bastard.
I think this feat is fantastic for mobile or damage builds, but not great for characters that can already get into the action quickly (like rogues or monks with their bonus action to dash). It's also great for melee builds that need to get to the front line to draw agro or to tank hits.
My last thought about this feat is the bonus distance to shove. I love this just like anything else in the game that can fling enemies around, lol. BUT - have you considered shoving friendly creatures or allies? Suppose you've got someone who really needs to run away, but if they disengage they won't have enough speed to outrun a monster. You shove them away (forced movement does not provoke opportunity attacks) and now they are free to use their own dash to get free! I understand this is much easier to do with a glamour bard or a battlemaster fighter, but it's not as heroic in flavor, lol.
Shoving allies is a great niche maneuver that I don't see used a lot at the table, and you're right that Charger potentially makes it more versatile than the usual 5 foot shove. A melee character sacrificing 2 or 3 attacks (or more!) to instead use their round to move another party member 10 feet is not going to be a common move, but I can certainly imagine some recent sessions where it might have been the right call... especially if they have PAM and Sentinel as well to be able to prevent the foe from just walking around them and getting back into melee with the party member.
The issue, Wordsmith, is the number of times where any of that actually matters compared to the number of times where just about literally anything else you could do with an ASI matters.
Are the abilities Charger provides occasionally useful? Certainly. Do they outweigh the opportunity costs of not taking one of the wildly overpowered melee feats (if we're doing what Champ seems to indicate and assuming that feats should trend closer to the power of base Charger rather than the power of Polearm Master), or just a regular ASI and gaining a +1 bump to hundreds of rolls? I would posit that the answer is "not in the slightest".
The action/abilities granted by RAW Charger are extraordinarily nichey and narrow - it works ONLY if you use your main action to Dash, ONLY if you then move directly towards an enemy for at least ten feet while taking no other action or movement, and then ONLY if you immediately use your bonus action to make one weak melee attack or shove attempt against the target. It consumes every single thing you can do on your turn to either add a damage bonus that is, in virtually all cases, less impactful than simply making a second weapon attack, or adding one Standard Combat Space to the game's default, weak Shove action.
Charger will work, at best, once per fight if the DM has positioned critters too far away to reach with a normal Move. In most fights it won't come up, and even in the ones where it does and you pull off a picture-perfect Charge, you still deal significantly less damage than simply swinging twice would have. To say nothing of swinging three or more times with Fighter levels, Two-Weapon Fighting, or a Scimitar of Speed - the latter of which renders the Charger feat 100% entirely superfluous.
Simply half-feating Charger, giving it a +1 to STR/DEX/CON, is functional but strikes me as an inelegant slap patch. It doesn't fix the fact that the thing Charger does is overly narrow and far too resource-intensive to ever be worth it save in the most unusual and contrived of circumstances. Even as a half-feat, Tavern brawler outperforms it in almost every way given how fond DMs are of the "you're suddenly caught unarmed and unawares!" scene, or how fond players themselves are of...well...tavern brawling.
Opening up those circumstances, making the feat less cripplingly narrow, doesn't seem to be the correct way, though. Hm. I don't know.
Tavern Brawler is useful in a tavern brawl (which while it may be a common encounter likely to come up at least once in a campaign, is certainly not every encounter every session), or for a character built to use unarmed strikes AND have decent athletics checks with which to grapple (which is not very common at all for monks, but might be useful for a fighter or barbarian so long as they use a one handed weapon and don't need a shield). It's also useful for anyone who plans to throw a lot of items like Alchemist's Fire (flask), or who for thematic reasons plans on using improvised weapons (like swinging around goblin corpses, or crude ice weapons created from Shape Water?). It's a very niche feat... but popular, since it gives you a +1 Str/Con, which is a very common thing to need.
Charger as written is useful in the first round of every combat in which a melee character starts more than 30 feet away from a target that they would like to attack (which may be common, if the fighter takes up the rear or middle of the marching order for whatever reason). It is also useful in the event that a melee character needs to chase down an enemy with a higher move speed than themselves that is kiting them from range, or an enemy of their same or lower speed that is using its full action to move+dash away. It's useful if the Fighter has a reduced move speed, either due to the campaign using the variant encumbrance rules, or when effected by an enemy ability, or when moving through rough terrain. Finally, it's also very useful for pushing enemies off of cliffs or into other dangerous terrain, since they're much more likely to be 10 feet away from such hazards than 5 feet. Or, shoving allies to safety, credit to Wordsmith! These are also niche applications, but honestly more common than Tavern Brawler for most melee characters. The only reason it isn't popular is because it does not give a +1 Str/Con/(Dex?), which is what most Tavern Brawler-takers are actually looking for.
The combat mechanics of Charger are just fine, they're equally as good as Tavern Brawler or better. It also works well to define a play style, since it creates an entirely new thing you can do on your round which you couldn't do before. It's just a less optimized thing to spend your feat on than maxing out your main stats would be, which is an issue for every martial character other than fighter. Adding the +1 stat onto Charger would fully address that.
I do think that Charger could be worded in a more interesting way, so that it synergized with other Charge abilities (like the racials of Centaur and Minotaur) or abilities that allow you to Dash as a Bonus Action (rogue Cunning Action, monk Step of the Wind) rather than competed with them. If one were to rewrite Charger to add a +1 stat, I would also use that opportunity to also rewrite it as:
When you use your action to Dash, you can use a bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to shove a creature.
On a round where you Dash and have moved at least 10 feet, you either gain a +5 bonus to a single melee attack's damage roll (if you chose to make a melee attack and hit), or push the target up to 10 feet away from you (if you chose to shove and you succeed).
Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Hm. Interesting. Also answers one of the huge red-elephant issues with the feat, i.e. the characters that are most likely to actually use the Dash ability are precluded from actually using Charger. In a way, you've arrived at the same general place I did, if a less comprehensive one - the actual damage/shove bonus portion of Charger needs to be decoupled from the bonus attack Charger provides in order for the feat to be worth taking. You retain the "must Dash" prerequisite where I didn't and half-feated it for jollies, but in both cases the overly restrictive, hyper-narrow damage bonus is opened up.
I can see it, and may well ask my table which version they like better as an experiment. I do find myself curious, though. In this instance, two levels of Rogue allows any other character to turn this Charger into, essentially, my original proposed change with the added benefit of a half-ASI to boot. I thought the intent was to gate the +5 damage/feet bonus behind a difficult to fulfill prerequisite?
That's true. But in that case, it's their class features allowing them to do it, not the feat itself. I did consider dropping it down to +2 damage, but was trying to rewrite as little as possible. I think that with the rewrites to fix it for minotaurs, centaurs, rogues, and monks, you probably don't even need the +1 stat any more.
Charger (Wordsmith's Edit) You learn to move swiftly in battle and to make your strikes count. You can take the Dashaction as a bonus action. When you take the Dash action and move at least 10 feet in a straight line immediately before making an attack or shove, you either gain a +5 bonus to your next attack’s damage roll (if you make a melee attack and hit) or push the target up to 10 feet away from you (if you shove and you succeed).
~
This is a simple edit and could use refining, but I think it solves a lot of the problems I'm hearing about the feat. I enjoy it as is - but I would be much more likely to pick up a feat if it gave me the ability to dash as a bonus action :D
Unlocking bonus Dash for all is too strong, Cunning Action and Step of the Wind are special class features, and should not be swallowed by a feat. Even if all the feat did was that, let alone the +5 damage/push enhancement, that would be too much.
Just take that part out. This still fixes the feat by allowing any action (bonus actions from Rogues included) to benefit the charge.
The really unfortunate part about this feat is the main shove benefit is outmatched by Shield Master if you get extra attack. Shove with both attacks and get a bonus shove. If all three succeed, you've knocked someone back 15 ft, or just shoved 3 different people. Plus all the defensive benefits. Ugh. I really want to like this feat, but it goes in the same drawer as the cantrips Blade Ward and True Strike for now :(
I’m playing a swashbuckler rogue with charger and it is actually super strong and funny. Let me explain : As a swasbuckler you gain fancy footwork (when you hit with a melee attack against someone, he lose his opportunity attacks against you for 1 turn) and rakish audacity (« you don't need advantage on the attack roll to use your Sneak Attack against a creature if you are within 5 feet of it, no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, and you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll. All the other rules for Sneak Attack still apply to you»). So, you can dash and then hit with a rapier, have sneak attack and a sweet + 5dmg or push your opponent and then continue to run far behind him because he can’t have an opportunity attack. With that, it makes my character being a sort of « cool » dps fighting ninja.
I’m playing a swashbuckler rogue with charger and it is actually super strong and funny. Let me explain : As a swasbuckler you gain fancy footwork (when you hit with a melee attack against someone, he lose his opportunity attacks against you for 1 turn) and rakish audacity (« you don't need advantage on the attack roll to use your Sneak Attack against a creature if you are within 5 feet of it, no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, and you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll. All the other rules for Sneak Attack still apply to you»). So, you can dash and then hit with a rapier, have sneak attack and a sweet + 5dmg or push your opponent and then continue to run far behind him because he can’t have an opportunity attack. With that, it makes my character being a sort of « cool » dps fighting ninja.
Or it makes you the fat kid in the movie Hook. Fighting the adult pirates by rolling up into a ball and barreling through them.
i picture that fat kid from Hook as a swashbuckler with charger feat now. Thanks.
I’m playing a swashbuckler rogue with charger and it is actually super strong and funny. Let me explain : As a swasbuckler you gain fancy footwork (when you hit with a melee attack against someone, he lose his opportunity attacks against you for 1 turn) and rakish audacity (« you don't need advantage on the attack roll to use your Sneak Attack against a creature if you are within 5 feet of it, no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, and you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll. All the other rules for Sneak Attack still apply to you»). So, you can dash and then hit with a rapier, have sneak attack and a sweet + 5dmg or push your opponent and then continue to run far behind him because he can’t have an opportunity attack. With that, it makes my character being a sort of « cool » dps fighting ninja.
Or it makes you the fat kid in the movie Hook. Fighting the adult pirates by rolling up into a ball and barreling through them.
i picture that fat kid from Hook as a swashbuckler with charger feat now. Thanks.
I just checked what you were talking about (i didn’t watch that movie) and you’re so right xD. That makes a funny character idea
Tavern Brawler is useful in a tavern brawl (which while it may be a common encounter likely to come up at least once in a campaign, is certainly not every encounter every session), or for a character built to use unarmed strikes AND have decent athletics checks with which to grapple (which is not very common at all for monks, but might be useful for a fighter or barbarian so long as they use a one handed weapon and don't need a shield). It's also useful for anyone who plans to throw a lot of items like Alchemist's Fire (flask), or who for thematic reasons plans on using improvised weapons (like swinging around goblin corpses, or crude ice weapons created from Shape Water?). It's a very niche feat... but popular, since it gives you a +1 Str/Con, which is a very common thing to need.
Charger as written is useful in the first round of every combat in which a melee character starts more than 30 feet away from a target that they would like to attack (which may be common, if the fighter takes up the rear or middle of the marching order for whatever reason). It is also useful in the event that a melee character needs to chase down an enemy with a higher move speed than themselves that is kiting them from range, or an enemy of their same or lower speed that is using its full action to move+dash away. It's useful if the Fighter has a reduced move speed, either due to the campaign using the variant encumbrance rules, or when effected by an enemy ability, or when moving through rough terrain. Finally, it's also very useful for pushing enemies off of cliffs or into other dangerous terrain, since they're much more likely to be 10 feet away from such hazards than 5 feet. Or, shoving allies to safety, credit to Wordsmith! These are also niche applications, but honestly more common than Tavern Brawler for most melee characters. The only reason it isn't popular is because it does not give a +1 Str/Con/(Dex?), which is what most Tavern Brawler-takers are actually looking for.
The combat mechanics of Charger are just fine, they're equally as good as Tavern Brawler or better. It also works well to define a play style, since it creates an entirely new thing you can do on your round which you couldn't do before. It's just a less optimized thing to spend your feat on than maxing out your main stats would be, which is an issue for every martial character other than fighter. Adding the +1 stat onto Charger would fully address that.
I do think that Charger could be worded in a more interesting way, so that it synergized with other Charge abilities (like the racials of Centaur and Minotaur) or abilities that allow you to Dash as a Bonus Action (rogue Cunning Action, monk Step of the Wind) rather than competed with them. If one were to rewrite Charger to add a +1 stat, I would also use that opportunity to also rewrite it as:
When you use your action to Dash, you can use a bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to shove a creature.
On a round where you Dash and have moved at least 10 feet, you either gain a +5 bonus to a single melee attack's damage roll (if you chose to make a melee attack and hit), or push the target up to 10 feet away from you (if you chose to shove and you succeed).
Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
This is also missing the 10 ft immediately before attacking clause, meaning a character could move 5 ft, turn, move 5 more feet, and then bonus action attack. This opens up the opportunities for charger to be more useful by taking out the cost of moving 10 feet straight immediately before the attack.
The potential cost that clause adds is to limit available targets due to terrain and/or the threat of Attacks of Opportunity. That cost doesn't exist in an open area with enemies spread far apart. But in an area with lots of difficult terrain, trees, walls, other barriers, and/or pepper with traps or enemies, it could be very difficult to find a target that won't draw an AoO, leave you cut off from retreat, or otherwise disadvantaged. Using a reach weapon, helps to open up options in some of those instances, but also quasi requires a 15 ft straight shot at the target.
Adding Mobile gives you an extra 20 ft of movement to take care of the 10 ft lead up and removes the difficult terrain concern. It also removes the AoO concern from your target, but not any other creatures that might get an AoO from your approach. If your goal is to charge and retreat in the same turn, you'd almost have to get skirmisher from rogue3 scout to match up with lots of movement bonuses. You'd need something like Drunken Technique to get the disengage effect, except it would have to work with a weapon attack, not trigger off of a specific type of action other than Dash, and have to be in effect prior to the attack. Action surge could allow a preemptive disengage, but that would only be available once per rest until fighter 17.
The charge in to get defensive position plus causing damage to open up abilities and spells that deal more damage to an already damaged enemy like Toll the Dead or give someone less damage to cause in order to trigger another benefit (Great Weapon Master's bonus attack or Hexblade's Curse ability to heal when the target dies or later to switch targets when the cursed creature is retreating and not worth pursuing for the majority of the party). Of course, the scenario where the creature retreats to trigger an alarm, is not in a position to be attacked by anyone else, and the alarm would complicate matters significantly is always a niche where Charger will shine.
It's value as RAW is more utility with bonus damage than damage with bonus utility.
Someone mentioned flight with an Aasimar in a post. Certainly, flight strengthens charger in open air circumstances with enough terrain complications to muddy the approach aspect and opens up a divebombing playstyle. This would probably be strongest on a rogue Aarakocra that is either a swashbuckler, has mobile, or some other way to disengage without an action. Perhaps using a rapier with a 1 level fighter dip for dueling fighting style and second wind. 1d8 + 7 damage + xd6 sneak attack isn't bad, particularly if there is support in range to give you advantage on your attack and possibly to impose disadvantage on any allies of your target within range that might take an AoO. But the detail that was needed for those shining moments reinforces how niche the feat is. You either have to build specifically for it or have stats that are so good that you can afford flavorful perks without invoking heavy penalties from the opportunity cost that taking the feat represents.
Edit: Had an interesting idea involving Spirit Guardians and other passive aura damage that would incorporate charger to add a little oomph at the end. It's probably better as a Dodge action bonus action dash through rogue, but an Aarakocra monk 2+/Rogue 7+ (or at minimum 1+ to get sneak attack) /Cleric 5+ (hmm 8 levels spoken for with only one ASI, definitely a niche build) would get unarmored defense (wisdom version) to give some AC above light armor, be able to fly at 60 feet per round (120 with dash), deal 3d8 damage with Spirit Guardians to quite a few, if not all, of the enemies while remaining 15 above them in the air. That overcomes the AoO issue. At some point, the character lines up on a character and dive bombs it, dealing 1d8 (rapier) +5 (charger) + attack mod (probably dex) + 3d8 (spirit guardians)+ at least 1d6 (sneak attack, if applicable). An Aarakocra could start with 16 AC on 16 dex and 16 wis giving a +3 to both and bumping which ever offensive stat that they felt more comfortable with for alternate attacks. That would mean that attack would deal 4d8 +1d6+8 at minimum with sneak attack for 29.5 average damage while dealing 14.5 average damage to every other creature that it could get in range.
The Tabaxi could do something similar in a ground based mode, wouldn't be limited to light armor (flight requirement for Aarakocra) meaning the monk wouldn't be required for AC and opening up some options from a build perspective while losing the flight flexibility. The extra movement wouldn't be as sustainable either.
Presumably, the intent of the Charger feat is to function like monster abilities that give you extra damage when they attack. How about just changing it so the damage/shove distance bonus applies to any attack made after you move at least 10' in a straight line, rather than just attacks granted by the feat. Thus it would read:
Charger
When you use your action to Dash, you can use a bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to shove a creature.
If you move at least 10' in a straight line immediately before making an attack or shove (including those granted by this feature), add +5 damage or +5' to shove distance, no more than once per turn.
Again, just giving melee characters +5 to damage with no action cost at all is quite a bit stronger than other feats. GWM and Sharpshooter require you to give up quite a lot of hit chance for +10 damage, so you get a buff to your dpr and a debuff to your dpr at the same time. Moving 10 feet in no way balances against more dpr, and would catapult Charger into a must-take for all melee builds that care about damage. Too strong.
Again, just giving melee characters +5 to damage with no action cost at all is quite a bit stronger than other feats.
Could boost the distance requirement to 20', or add a requirement that the motion must be towards your target. It's not that easy to get more than 1x/combat.
The main virtue of GWM isn't the +10 damage, it's the ability to make a bonus action attack when you crit or defeat a foe.
Again, just giving melee characters +5 to damage with no action cost at all is quite a bit stronger than other feats.
Could boost the distance requirement to 20', or add a requirement that the motion must be towards your target. It's not that easy to get more than 1x/combat.
The main virtue of GWM isn't the +10 damage, it's the ability to make a bonus action attack when you crit or defeat a foe.
The 10 ft clause on the PHB does require the last 10 feet of movement be straight towards the target, and it looks like your version had it anyway.
I'm always reading about the -5 to hit/+10 to damage aspect of GWM (and sharpshooter). I'll occasionally see something about the bonus action. The +10 damage certainly helps get the bonus action. If a build can reliably get advantage, GWM can really tack on the damage. This is especially true of crit fishers and extra attacks. Champion rides that intersection pretty well.
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It's fine. I really enjoy discussions like this, it's very useful. Defending my original decision doesn't mean I'm not taking your words seriously and considering them. This is the sort of thing other folks who're thinking of modding Charger to not be godawful horrible might want to read about, as well. Anyone who aspires to writing the sort of homebrew other folks actually like and use would be well advised to carefully consider it when someone offers a passionate argument against their work.
I consider +5 damage to be a moderate bonus, useful but not overpowering, and further consider the movement requirement to be a significant limiter on that bonus given that in games I've both played and run, a fight where characters can freely engage and disengage to score that sort of movement bonus every round is quite rare. Typically, once you're stuck in in the sorts of fights I've seen/run, it's either difficult or counterproductive to get unstuck.
You consider the +5 bonus to be very significant, and the movement requirement to be so lax as to effectively be nonexistent. That's good feedback, tells me my own assumptions/experiences are not universal. I don't know yet how to act on it; Charger is one of those cases where the feat is either utter dogshit or wildly overpowered.
Expending your action, your bonus action, AND all of your movement to make one lousy attack with a moderate damage bonus, or a nondamaging shove with five rinky-dink extra feet of push, is easily a contender for Worst Feat In Game. I would legit rather have RAW Savage Attacker than RAW Charger on any character I build; RAW Savage Attacker will at least come up. If Weapon Master didn't exist, I'd honestly be willing to argue that RAW Charger is the worst, most useless, most poorly designed feat in 5e. I'd like it to not be dogshit and an absolute, utter waste of both an ASI and a turn, especially when wildly overpowered nonsense like PAM is allowed to exist freely.
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The addition of "Increase your Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20" would elevate Charge into a very takeable feat. It wasn't quite enough to save Weapon Master, but I find myself taking Tavern Brawler quite often when I just need +1 Str or Con, even when I'm not particularly interested in grappling or improvised weapon fighting, just because it "might" come up. I think that's probably an easier fix for the feat that would leave it on the same level of "sure, why not?" as Tavern Brawler without making it quite so uniquely good.
Or, add a "your speed increases by 10 feet" bullet point instead. That would also make the feat very takeable for several sorts of character, without overloading its combat effectiveness.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
TL;DR: Voting for Undiscovered Potential because it adds damage for crunch builds and mobility for melee builds. Also, fun combos for other feats and strategies!
I love this feat for a few reasons. If you are a melee-only build (like a paladin or a barbarian), this feat gets you into the ranged archer's or spellcaster's face pretty quickly, lol. The bonus +5 damage is really nice if you're into crunchy builds. For example, you could stack the dueling fighting style onto this for +7 damage on top of your normal bonuses. As a barbarian multiclass (since they don't get fighting styles), you tack on your rage bonus and that's looking pretty sweet.
A more recent combo I've thought about is how this works for protector aasimar paladins. So you pick up the dueling fighting style at level 2, get the wings at level 3, and by level 4 you can get this feat. While flying, you could dash to get 60 ft. of speed. When you attack with your bonus action, you'd be getting (dueling +2, aasimar +4, charger +5) plus 11 damage on that flying strike (which could add a smite on top). All of this while keeping the benefit of a shield. Assuming you wielded a d8 weapon with a +2 to Strength, your max damage would be 21, lol. That's an amazing amount of damage for a character that hasn't even hit level 5 yet (before crits or smites). If you added a 1st level smite onto that attack for zesty damage, you'd be averaging 26 damage on a normal attack or 34 damage on a crit. The stack of this build is really crunchy, lol.
Even a variant human at level 4 could have two feats, and this is where Charger can have some fun combos. There are not a lot of features in the game that give you flat bonuses to damage. This feat, rage, and the dueling fighting style come to mind. But you probably thought of Great Weapon Master right away. This combo, especially with a raging barbarian could net you (+3 Strength, +2 rage, +5 Charger, +10 GWM) plus 20 damage to a hit after dashing, lol. CHUNK. Assuming you maxed out a greataxe, you're dealing 32 damage to some poor bastard.
I think this feat is fantastic for mobile or damage builds, but not great for characters that can already get into the action quickly (like rogues or monks with their bonus action to dash). It's also great for melee builds that need to get to the front line to draw agro or to tank hits.
My last thought about this feat is the bonus distance to shove. I love this just like anything else in the game that can fling enemies around, lol. BUT - have you considered shoving friendly creatures or allies? Suppose you've got someone who really needs to run away, but if they disengage they won't have enough speed to outrun a monster. You shove them away (forced movement does not provoke opportunity attacks) and now they are free to use their own dash to get free! I understand this is much easier to do with a glamour bard or a battlemaster fighter, but it's not as heroic in flavor, lol.
Shoving allies is a great niche maneuver that I don't see used a lot at the table, and you're right that Charger potentially makes it more versatile than the usual 5 foot shove. A melee character sacrificing 2 or 3 attacks (or more!) to instead use their round to move another party member 10 feet is not going to be a common move, but I can certainly imagine some recent sessions where it might have been the right call... especially if they have PAM and Sentinel as well to be able to prevent the foe from just walking around them and getting back into melee with the party member.
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The issue, Wordsmith, is the number of times where any of that actually matters compared to the number of times where just about literally anything else you could do with an ASI matters.
Are the abilities Charger provides occasionally useful? Certainly. Do they outweigh the opportunity costs of not taking one of the wildly overpowered melee feats (if we're doing what Champ seems to indicate and assuming that feats should trend closer to the power of base Charger rather than the power of Polearm Master), or just a regular ASI and gaining a +1 bump to hundreds of rolls? I would posit that the answer is "not in the slightest".
The action/abilities granted by RAW Charger are extraordinarily nichey and narrow - it works ONLY if you use your main action to Dash, ONLY if you then move directly towards an enemy for at least ten feet while taking no other action or movement, and then ONLY if you immediately use your bonus action to make one weak melee attack or shove attempt against the target. It consumes every single thing you can do on your turn to either add a damage bonus that is, in virtually all cases, less impactful than simply making a second weapon attack, or adding one Standard Combat Space to the game's default, weak Shove action.
Charger will work, at best, once per fight if the DM has positioned critters too far away to reach with a normal Move. In most fights it won't come up, and even in the ones where it does and you pull off a picture-perfect Charge, you still deal significantly less damage than simply swinging twice would have. To say nothing of swinging three or more times with Fighter levels, Two-Weapon Fighting, or a Scimitar of Speed - the latter of which renders the Charger feat 100% entirely superfluous.
Simply half-feating Charger, giving it a +1 to STR/DEX/CON, is functional but strikes me as an inelegant slap patch. It doesn't fix the fact that the thing Charger does is overly narrow and far too resource-intensive to ever be worth it save in the most unusual and contrived of circumstances. Even as a half-feat, Tavern brawler outperforms it in almost every way given how fond DMs are of the "you're suddenly caught unarmed and unawares!" scene, or how fond players themselves are of...well...tavern brawling.
Opening up those circumstances, making the feat less cripplingly narrow, doesn't seem to be the correct way, though. Hm. I don't know.
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Tavern Brawler is useful in a tavern brawl (which while it may be a common encounter likely to come up at least once in a campaign, is certainly not every encounter every session), or for a character built to use unarmed strikes AND have decent athletics checks with which to grapple (which is not very common at all for monks, but might be useful for a fighter or barbarian so long as they use a one handed weapon and don't need a shield). It's also useful for anyone who plans to throw a lot of items like Alchemist's Fire (flask), or who for thematic reasons plans on using improvised weapons (like swinging around goblin corpses, or crude ice weapons created from Shape Water?). It's a very niche feat... but popular, since it gives you a +1 Str/Con, which is a very common thing to need.
Charger as written is useful in the first round of every combat in which a melee character starts more than 30 feet away from a target that they would like to attack (which may be common, if the fighter takes up the rear or middle of the marching order for whatever reason). It is also useful in the event that a melee character needs to chase down an enemy with a higher move speed than themselves that is kiting them from range, or an enemy of their same or lower speed that is using its full action to move+dash away. It's useful if the Fighter has a reduced move speed, either due to the campaign using the variant encumbrance rules, or when effected by an enemy ability, or when moving through rough terrain. Finally, it's also very useful for pushing enemies off of cliffs or into other dangerous terrain, since they're much more likely to be 10 feet away from such hazards than 5 feet. Or, shoving allies to safety, credit to Wordsmith! These are also niche applications, but honestly more common than Tavern Brawler for most melee characters. The only reason it isn't popular is because it does not give a +1 Str/Con/(Dex?), which is what most Tavern Brawler-takers are actually looking for.
The combat mechanics of Charger are just fine, they're equally as good as Tavern Brawler or better. It also works well to define a play style, since it creates an entirely new thing you can do on your round which you couldn't do before. It's just a less optimized thing to spend your feat on than maxing out your main stats would be, which is an issue for every martial character other than fighter. Adding the +1 stat onto Charger would fully address that.
I do think that Charger could be worded in a more interesting way, so that it synergized with other Charge abilities (like the racials of Centaur and Minotaur) or abilities that allow you to Dash as a Bonus Action (rogue Cunning Action, monk Step of the Wind) rather than competed with them. If one were to rewrite Charger to add a +1 stat, I would also use that opportunity to also rewrite it as:
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Hm. Interesting. Also answers one of the huge red-elephant issues with the feat, i.e. the characters that are most likely to actually use the Dash ability are precluded from actually using Charger. In a way, you've arrived at the same general place I did, if a less comprehensive one - the actual damage/shove bonus portion of Charger needs to be decoupled from the bonus attack Charger provides in order for the feat to be worth taking. You retain the "must Dash" prerequisite where I didn't and half-feated it for jollies, but in both cases the overly restrictive, hyper-narrow damage bonus is opened up.
I can see it, and may well ask my table which version they like better as an experiment. I do find myself curious, though. In this instance, two levels of Rogue allows any other character to turn this Charger into, essentially, my original proposed change with the added benefit of a half-ASI to boot. I thought the intent was to gate the +5 damage/feet bonus behind a difficult to fulfill prerequisite?
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That's true. But in that case, it's their class features allowing them to do it, not the feat itself. I did consider dropping it down to +2 damage, but was trying to rewrite as little as possible. I think that with the rewrites to fix it for minotaurs, centaurs, rogues, and monks, you probably don't even need the +1 stat any more.
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Charger (Wordsmith's Edit)
You learn to move swiftly in battle and to make your strikes count. You can take the Dash action as a bonus action. When you take the Dash action and move at least 10 feet in a straight line immediately before making an attack or shove, you either gain a +5 bonus to your next attack’s damage roll (if you make a melee attack and hit) or push the target up to 10 feet away from you (if you shove and you succeed).
~
This is a simple edit and could use refining, but I think it solves a lot of the problems I'm hearing about the feat. I enjoy it as is - but I would be much more likely to pick up a feat if it gave me the ability to dash as a bonus action :D
Unlocking bonus Dash for all is too strong, Cunning Action and Step of the Wind are special class features, and should not be swallowed by a feat. Even if all the feat did was that, let alone the +5 damage/push enhancement, that would be too much.
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Just take that part out. This still fixes the feat by allowing any action (bonus actions from Rogues included) to benefit the charge.
The really unfortunate part about this feat is the main shove benefit is outmatched by Shield Master if you get extra attack. Shove with both attacks and get a bonus shove. If all three succeed, you've knocked someone back 15 ft, or just shoved 3 different people. Plus all the defensive benefits. Ugh. I really want to like this feat, but it goes in the same drawer as the cantrips Blade Ward and True Strike for now :(
Changing my vote to Useless.
Okay, without that, you've removed the ability to dash and make an attack using a bonus action, and actually made the feat quite a bit weaker.
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I’m playing a swashbuckler rogue with charger and it is actually super strong and funny. Let me explain : As a swasbuckler you gain fancy footwork (when you hit with a melee attack against someone, he lose his opportunity attacks against you for 1 turn) and rakish audacity (« you don't need advantage on the attack roll to use your Sneak Attack against a creature if you are within 5 feet of it, no other creatures are within 5 feet of you, and you don't have disadvantage on the attack roll. All the other rules for Sneak Attack still apply to you»). So, you can dash and then hit with a rapier, have sneak attack and a sweet + 5dmg or push your opponent and then continue to run far behind him because he can’t have an opportunity attack. With that, it makes my character being a sort of « cool » dps fighting ninja.
Or it makes you the fat kid in the movie Hook. Fighting the adult pirates by rolling up into a ball and barreling through them.
i picture that fat kid from Hook as a swashbuckler with charger feat now. Thanks.
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I just checked what you were talking about (i didn’t watch that movie) and you’re so right xD. That makes a funny character idea
And you’re welcome for that
This is also missing the 10 ft immediately before attacking clause, meaning a character could move 5 ft, turn, move 5 more feet, and then bonus action attack. This opens up the opportunities for charger to be more useful by taking out the cost of moving 10 feet straight immediately before the attack.
The potential cost that clause adds is to limit available targets due to terrain and/or the threat of Attacks of Opportunity. That cost doesn't exist in an open area with enemies spread far apart. But in an area with lots of difficult terrain, trees, walls, other barriers, and/or pepper with traps or enemies, it could be very difficult to find a target that won't draw an AoO, leave you cut off from retreat, or otherwise disadvantaged. Using a reach weapon, helps to open up options in some of those instances, but also quasi requires a 15 ft straight shot at the target.
Adding Mobile gives you an extra 20 ft of movement to take care of the 10 ft lead up and removes the difficult terrain concern. It also removes the AoO concern from your target, but not any other creatures that might get an AoO from your approach. If your goal is to charge and retreat in the same turn, you'd almost have to get skirmisher from rogue3 scout to match up with lots of movement bonuses. You'd need something like Drunken Technique to get the disengage effect, except it would have to work with a weapon attack, not trigger off of a specific type of action other than Dash, and have to be in effect prior to the attack. Action surge could allow a preemptive disengage, but that would only be available once per rest until fighter 17.
The charge in to get defensive position plus causing damage to open up abilities and spells that deal more damage to an already damaged enemy like Toll the Dead or give someone less damage to cause in order to trigger another benefit (Great Weapon Master's bonus attack or Hexblade's Curse ability to heal when the target dies or later to switch targets when the cursed creature is retreating and not worth pursuing for the majority of the party). Of course, the scenario where the creature retreats to trigger an alarm, is not in a position to be attacked by anyone else, and the alarm would complicate matters significantly is always a niche where Charger will shine.
It's value as RAW is more utility with bonus damage than damage with bonus utility.
Someone mentioned flight with an Aasimar in a post. Certainly, flight strengthens charger in open air circumstances with enough terrain complications to muddy the approach aspect and opens up a divebombing playstyle. This would probably be strongest on a rogue Aarakocra that is either a swashbuckler, has mobile, or some other way to disengage without an action. Perhaps using a rapier with a 1 level fighter dip for dueling fighting style and second wind. 1d8 + 7 damage + xd6 sneak attack isn't bad, particularly if there is support in range to give you advantage on your attack and possibly to impose disadvantage on any allies of your target within range that might take an AoO. But the detail that was needed for those shining moments reinforces how niche the feat is. You either have to build specifically for it or have stats that are so good that you can afford flavorful perks without invoking heavy penalties from the opportunity cost that taking the feat represents.
Edit: Had an interesting idea involving Spirit Guardians and other passive aura damage that would incorporate charger to add a little oomph at the end. It's probably better as a Dodge action bonus action dash through rogue, but an Aarakocra monk 2+/Rogue 7+ (or at minimum 1+ to get sneak attack) /Cleric 5+ (hmm 8 levels spoken for with only one ASI, definitely a niche build) would get unarmored defense (wisdom version) to give some AC above light armor, be able to fly at 60 feet per round (120 with dash), deal 3d8 damage with Spirit Guardians to quite a few, if not all, of the enemies while remaining 15 above them in the air. That overcomes the AoO issue. At some point, the character lines up on a character and dive bombs it, dealing 1d8 (rapier) +5 (charger) + attack mod (probably dex) + 3d8 (spirit guardians)+ at least 1d6 (sneak attack, if applicable). An Aarakocra could start with 16 AC on 16 dex and 16 wis giving a +3 to both and bumping which ever offensive stat that they felt more comfortable with for alternate attacks. That would mean that attack would deal 4d8 +1d6+8 at minimum with sneak attack for 29.5 average damage while dealing 14.5 average damage to every other creature that it could get in range.
The Tabaxi could do something similar in a ground based mode, wouldn't be limited to light armor (flight requirement for Aarakocra) meaning the monk wouldn't be required for AC and opening up some options from a build perspective while losing the flight flexibility. The extra movement wouldn't be as sustainable either.
Presumably, the intent of the Charger feat is to function like monster abilities that give you extra damage when they attack. How about just changing it so the damage/shove distance bonus applies to any attack made after you move at least 10' in a straight line, rather than just attacks granted by the feat. Thus it would read:
Charger
When you use your action to Dash, you can use a bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to shove a creature.
If you move at least 10' in a straight line immediately before making an attack or shove (including those granted by this feature), add +5 damage or +5' to shove distance, no more than once per turn.
Again, just giving melee characters +5 to damage with no action cost at all is quite a bit stronger than other feats. GWM and Sharpshooter require you to give up quite a lot of hit chance for +10 damage, so you get a buff to your dpr and a debuff to your dpr at the same time. Moving 10 feet in no way balances against more dpr, and would catapult Charger into a must-take for all melee builds that care about damage. Too strong.
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Could boost the distance requirement to 20', or add a requirement that the motion must be towards your target. It's not that easy to get more than 1x/combat.
The main virtue of GWM isn't the +10 damage, it's the ability to make a bonus action attack when you crit or defeat a foe.
The 10 ft clause on the PHB does require the last 10 feet of movement be straight towards the target, and it looks like your version had it anyway.
I'm always reading about the -5 to hit/+10 to damage aspect of GWM (and sharpshooter). I'll occasionally see something about the bonus action. The +10 damage certainly helps get the bonus action. If a build can reliably get advantage, GWM can really tack on the damage. This is especially true of crit fishers and extra attacks. Champion rides that intersection pretty well.