Tunnel Fighter: You excel at defending narrow passages, doorways, and other tight spaces. As a bonus action, you can enter a defensive stance that lasts until the start of your next turn. While in your defensive stance, you can make opportunity attacks without using your reaction, and you can use your reaction to make a melee attack against a creature that moves more than 5 feet while within your reach.
So let's say my reach is 10ft and I have Polearm Master which lets me make OA when someone enters my reach...
Someone enters my reach...free OA (without using my reaction)?
Said person now moves a distance more than 5 feet (while still in my reach)...melee attack with my reaction?
ALSO: Tunnel Fighter never says anything about having to be in a narrow passage, doorway, or tight space to use this ability. Is this implied?
Tunnel Fighter was a new fighting style proposed in a 2015 Unearthed Arcana article and was fairly widely reviewed as being unbalanced/overpowered in combination with some other feats/abilities.
Unearthed Arcana articles represent playtest ideas from Wizards of the Coast. They are basically saying, "Hey, we came up with these ideas and are wondering whether the D&D community think they're any good?" - they shouldn't be taken as official rules in any capacity.
With regards to your question - you should note that the rules on reactions state: "When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn." - this means you can take an opportunity attack using your action, but then if something else happens that fulfills the trigger for an opportunity attack, your character is unable to make that opportunity attack, as they have already used their reaction for now.
The thing that was most "broken" about Tunnel Fighter was that it allowed characters to make infinite numbers of opportunity attacks.
To answer your question simply, you have read tunnel fighter correctly.
I think their line of thinking was "If we put these abilities in a 10-15' hallway, nobody can pass him." But of course it was found to be way unbalanced and abusable and that is why it was never put into an official rule book like XGE or SCAG.
I'm not so sure this was ever OP or it was just people theory craft the idea of infinity and jump to conclusions. In practice I don't think the situation comes up that often where holding down one area from very large numbers of melee attackers running towards/past you is the key to winning a battle. If the DM forced that situation it would certainly seem like way more value than a normal 5E thing. If it was changed to only allow certain number of extra Opportunity Attacks, like equal to you proficiency modifier or your dex/str modifier or just specifically 2 or 3 maybe increasing with your level in-line with fighter extra attacks, I don't think it functionally would be much of any nerf. However, people would not see "infinite" on it anymore and theorycraft it as sensible. Or, just not making the extra attacks tagged as Opportunity Attacks like lots other reaction extra attacks are left in other 5e content so it couldn't combine with other OA bonuses.
Has there been any decision with this Tunnel fighter UA? Does UA ever get discarded, or official updates on it besides it being released with an official add-on? Or does it just get ignored completely by WotC forever, seems like what's happened with Tunnel Fighter? I noticed it doesn't show up as an UA fighting style on dndbeyond while other UA are still listed within mainline content like the fighter page with Brute: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/classes/fighter
Bugbear range, like with many things, only applies to attacks on your turn, not your actual reach and certainly not range for attacks not during your turn. Reach weapons are the only way I know of to increase your range on OAs; however, this combined with polearm master's OAs that trigger based on your "reach" still have some debate. Based on a tweet from Crawford it's not so clear, there's a large discussion of this over here on RPG stackexchange: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/46352/does-a-reach-weapon-allow-you-to-threaten-squares-10-feet-away-or-not Crawford's tweet: "The reach property applies only when you attack with a weapon. Any use beyond that is up to the DM." https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/502520711395557376 Personally I think polearm master and reach weapons should allow 10ft OAs when creatures enter 10ft, RAI. Crawford made it very confusing with this tweet though.
Make a lvl 10 Fighter (Eldritch Knight) and you'll become a 15 ft radius of "Haha you can't move no matter what, and when you try to I get to attack you with advantage (War Caster + War Magic allows you to cast Green Flame Blade as a reaction, with advantage)"
By far the most overpowered lvl 10 character i've ever seen
Make a lvl 10 Fighter (Eldritch Knight) and you'll become a 15 ft radius of "Haha you can't move no matter what, and when you try to I get to attack you with advantage (War Caster + War Magic allows you to cast Green Flame Blade as a reaction, with advantage)"
By far the most overpowered lvl 10 character i've ever seen
War Magic doesn't interact with Warcaster in regards to the OA replacement effect and doesn't grant advantage in any case, it grants a bonus action attack when you Action cast a cantrip. Bugbear only gets the +5 to reach on its turn, meaning the Bugbear in tur example would only have the normal 10 reach for OAs to begin with. Eldritch Strike (EK10) grants disadvantage against your spell save, which Green Flame Blade doesn't force
Tunnel Fighter will never see the light of day since so many aspects of the fighting style became various parts of the Cavalier subclass.
But PAM does allow for OAs when a creature enters your reach, Tunnel Fighter would compete with War Magic for the bonus action to trigger both, would allow you infinite OAs from PAM and normal circumstances, and one (and only one) OA against a creature moving within your range (which is huge because of reach) which uses your reaction. Sentinel would prevent the Disengage action from causing you to miss those OAs, but Swashbucklers, Mobile featists, teleporters, and other similar characters still get away. Sentinel also turns you into fly paper for possible maximum of 17 creatures, depending on whether a DM will let you get an OA against a creature entering your reach in a space where an immobilized creature already is and how many die. If none die, that would be one for each of the 16 squares around you at 10 feet, plus your reaction that you can use within 5 feet. If they let you draw a spear or quarterstaff after making one of the attacks, after filling in your outer perimeter, you could fill in the remaining 7 squares of the inner perimeter for the full maximum of 24, plus a number equal to however many died. With Green Flame Blade pegging an adjacent creature within 5 feet of the target, that could be quite potent.
Yeah, shortly after posting this I realized War Magic is sort of useless when using Tunnel Fighter. I opted to play with an Eldritch Knight 6 / Hexblade 4, acting as the party's fly paper. Spending my turn casting Shield or Eldritch Blast, and using the infinite OAs to deal damage when it isn't my turn. Also, dipping into Warlock allows access to Invocations, and Fiendish Vigor's 1d4+4 hitpoints every turn is great. Also, Darkness spell + Devil's Sight will make my fly paper even more efficient.
Also, my DM is allowing GFB to be cast at my melee range, not just 5 ft. It makes sense that way, since the spell states that you cast the spell with your melee weapon.
I could link you my character sheet in a bit once I'm done implementing the homebrew Tunnel Fighter.
Yeah, shortly after posting this I realized War Magic is sort of useless when using Tunnel Fighter. I opted to play with an Eldritch Knight 6 / Hexblade 4, acting as the party's fly paper. Spending my turn casting Shield or Eldritch Blast, and using the infinite OAs to deal damage when it isn't my turn. Also, dipping into Warlock allows access to Invocations, and Fiendish Vigor's 1d4+4 hitpoints every turn is great. Also, Darkness spell + Devil's Sight will make my fly paper even more efficient.
Also, my DM is allowing GFB to be cast at my melee range, not just 5 ft. It makes sense that way, since the spell states that you cast the spell with your melee weapon.
I could link you my character sheet in a bit once I'm done implementing the homebrew Tunnel Fighter.
Fiendish Vigor is an awesome invocation, particularly for this style of build. However, False Life still requires an action to cast it with Fiendish Vigor, which would mean that casting it every round would mean that a typical round for your would be Action:Cast False Life, Bonus Action:Trigger Defensive stance for my OA heaven, Movement: As needed to optimize positioning. Also, keep in mind that temporary HP don't stack. This means that if you roll a 2 on one roll and a 3 on another roll, you won't have 13 temporary HP, you'll have a choice between having 6 and 7 temporary HP (or whatever temp HP are left from whichever came first if you took damage). Usually, you'll want whichever amount is higher (if not always). Mixing in an Eldritch Blast cast or other options would probably be a much better use of the action, particularly if you had Repelling Blast (can be used with each beam), Grasp of Hadar (once per turn), and/or Lance of Lethargy (once per turn) to really mess with the positioning or speed of the group. You'd have to be a Warlock 9 to be able to have all 3 of those and Fiendish Vigor and Devil's Sight, so that's quite a bit to ask. You could drop it to 7 if you traded Hexblade to Fiend and got the temp HP from your kills, but you've got a pretty good thing going even without that extra bit.
Do keep in mind that Shield has a casting time of 1 Reaction, which means that you're probably not using that on your turn unless you provoke opportunity attacks. It would also remove the option to have the OA against the creatures moving within your reach. Darkness and Devil's Sight on that build is just evil. The only thing that would make it even more disgusting would be a Spirit Guardians. "You can't see me, so my attacks usually hit you. When they hit you, you can't move (at least the OAs). If you decide to leave my reach, I get to attack you. If you decide to attack me, you have a hard time doing it because A) you can't see me, and B) I'm hard to hit anyway. Meanwhile, every time that I attack you successfully, your buddy within 5 feet takes damage. And even if you don't attack me or try to flee, you're taking at least half of 3d8 damage and your speed is cut in half for at least 5 of those feet that you are trying to get out of my reach (depending on whether the DM rules that they spend 5 feet getting out of your reach and then another 5 feet getting out of Spirit Guardians, like they should, or just say that you only move 5 feet to get out of Spirit Guardians). Either way, it's 10-20 feet of their movement just to get out. But it would be 5 levels in Cleric to get it! Maybe a Cleric/Warlock hybrid to pull off the build? Life Cleric maybe? And if someone cast Warding Bond on you at the same time?
I completely spaced over the range issue for Green Flame Blade. Normally, you'd have to take spell sniper to be able to pull that off, but DM fiat is much better.
I like the idea to copple the feat with the profficiency modifier, this should be more than enough to balance it.
I also build a v-human warlock+cleric in that way, 2lvl cleric of twilight (UA) 6 lvl warlock of the undead (UA)
I am going for a combo with sanctuary, Darkness, Devils gaze(?) Polearm and tunnelfighter, and there are lots if weaknesses in this build.
I am the only one in the frontline, it it o works if i hold my ground against melee, if i dont move my spot, if they dont break my conzentration or dispell darkness with maybe Daylight, its only effektive on mobs, but wont make a reccognicable difference on bosses, if the enemy attack the other casters, ignoring me its also very weak...
Its like mending, only efficient on special occasions or if the dm let it be efficient. He controlls the mobs, not me, he makes the terrain, etc...
ranged enemies and dragons dont seem to mind this fighting style at all, I have this fighting style with PAM and the hordes of zombies coming in a narrow passage way does not come up often nor the army of guards trying to take your sweetrolls, its only broken if the dm makes it so, its a fun skill if the dm lets you feel its effects and potential now and again and slaying hordes of goblins or kobolds is alot of fun, but its not much use to bigger stronger monsters that you will face in your campaign most of the BBEG is smart enough not to fall for that obvious tactic, but its comical to think that the basis of it being OP is the notion of a horde of melee exclusive enemies comes up on your battle map on a regular basis, thats just bad dming..
ranged enemies and dragons dont seem to mind this fighting style at all, I have this fighting style with PAM and the hordes of zombies coming in a narrow passage way does not come up often nor the army of guards trying to take your sweetrolls, its only broken if the dm makes it so, its a fun skill if the dm lets you feel its effects and potential now and again and slaying hordes of goblins or kobolds is alot of fun, but its not much use to bigger stronger monsters that you will face in your campaign most of the BBEG is smart enough not to fall for that obvious tactic, but its comical to think that the basis of it being OP is the notion of a horde of melee exclusive enemies comes up on your battle map on a regular basis, thats just bad dming..
100%
We roleplay it with the proficiency modifyer as the number on how often to react, so it starts with 2 and gets stronger with the time.
You could also homebrew it for a distant fighter like with bow on the minimum range if you like, but you would need a homebrew feat like polarmmaster for opportunity atracks when enemys engage in a specific reach, also sentinel wont be a problem in that way.
For me i combine it also with the battlemaster feat on some ways, its lots of fun, and so much more if it realy works out like imagined! ^^
But happens not so often as i would want to xD
Like said before, it only happens depending on the dms choice at the most time.
I think it's more because of the polearm master and sentinel feats combined with this. It essentially allows one player to force every enemy within their reach to only attack them, or take an opportunity attack. That means one character can act as a brick wall and prevent all enemies from advancing as long as they hit the enemies AC. It's pretty broken
I think it's more because of the polearm master and sentinel feats combined with this. It essentially allows one player to force every enemy within their reach to only attack them, or take an opportunity attack. That means one character can act as a brick wall and prevent all enemies from advancing as long as they hit the enemies AC. It's pretty broken
Sentinel feat says:
When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.
So if an enemy within your reach attacks somebody else, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against them - but this is NOT an opportunity attack (since it doesn't say it is), so Tunnel Fighter OP text would not apply.
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Tunnel Fighter: You excel at defending narrow passages, doorways, and other tight spaces. As a bonus action, you can enter a defensive stance that lasts until the start of your next turn. While in your defensive stance, you can make opportunity attacks without using your reaction, and you can use your reaction to make a melee attack against a creature that moves more than 5 feet while within your reach.
So let's say my reach is 10ft and I have Polearm Master which lets me make OA when someone enters my reach...
Someone enters my reach...free OA (without using my reaction)?
Said person now moves a distance more than 5 feet (while still in my reach)...melee attack with my reaction?
ALSO: Tunnel Fighter never says anything about having to be in a narrow passage, doorway, or tight space to use this ability. Is this implied?
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D&D Beyond FoundersHi there SweenyTodd,
Tunnel Fighter was a new fighting style proposed in a 2015 Unearthed Arcana article and was fairly widely reviewed as being unbalanced/overpowered in combination with some other feats/abilities.
Unearthed Arcana articles represent playtest ideas from Wizards of the Coast. They are basically saying, "Hey, we came up with these ideas and are wondering whether the D&D community think they're any good?" - they shouldn't be taken as official rules in any capacity.
With regards to your question - you should note that the rules on reactions state: "When you take a reaction, you can't take another one until the start of your next turn." - this means you can take an opportunity attack using your action, but then if something else happens that fulfills the trigger for an opportunity attack, your character is unable to make that opportunity attack, as they have already used their reaction for now.
The thing that was most "broken" about Tunnel Fighter was that it allowed characters to make infinite numbers of opportunity attacks.
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To answer your question simply, you have read tunnel fighter correctly.
I think their line of thinking was "If we put these abilities in a 10-15' hallway, nobody can pass him." But of course it was found to be way unbalanced and abusable and that is why it was never put into an official rule book like XGE or SCAG.
Tunnel Fighter + Polearm Master Feat + Bugbear
I'm not so sure this was ever OP or it was just people theory craft the idea of infinity and jump to conclusions. In practice I don't think the situation comes up that often where holding down one area from very large numbers of melee attackers running towards/past you is the key to winning a battle. If the DM forced that situation it would certainly seem like way more value than a normal 5E thing. If it was changed to only allow certain number of extra Opportunity Attacks, like equal to you proficiency modifier or your dex/str modifier or just specifically 2 or 3 maybe increasing with your level in-line with fighter extra attacks, I don't think it functionally would be much of any nerf. However, people would not see "infinite" on it anymore and theorycraft it as sensible. Or, just not making the extra attacks tagged as Opportunity Attacks like lots other reaction extra attacks are left in other 5e content so it couldn't combine with other OA bonuses.
Has there been any decision with this Tunnel fighter UA? Does UA ever get discarded, or official updates on it besides it being released with an official add-on? Or does it just get ignored completely by WotC forever, seems like what's happened with Tunnel Fighter? I noticed it doesn't show up as an UA fighting style on dndbeyond while other UA are still listed within mainline content like the fighter page with Brute: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/classes/fighter
Bugbear range, like with many things, only applies to attacks on your turn, not your actual reach and certainly not range for attacks not during your turn. Reach weapons are the only way I know of to increase your range on OAs; however, this combined with polearm master's OAs that trigger based on your "reach" still have some debate. Based on a tweet from Crawford it's not so clear, there's a large discussion of this over here on RPG stackexchange:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/46352/does-a-reach-weapon-allow-you-to-threaten-squares-10-feet-away-or-not
Crawford's tweet: "The reach property applies only when you attack with a weapon. Any use beyond that is up to the DM."
https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/502520711395557376
Personally I think polearm master and reach weapons should allow 10ft OAs when creatures enter 10ft, RAI. Crawford made it very confusing with this tweet though.
add eldritch blast with repelling blast to this
Tunnel Fighter + Polearm Master + War Caster + Sentinel + Bugbear.
Make a lvl 10 Fighter (Eldritch Knight) and you'll become a 15 ft radius of "Haha you can't move no matter what, and when you try to I get to attack you with advantage (War Caster + War Magic allows you to cast Green Flame Blade as a reaction, with advantage)"
By far the most overpowered lvl 10 character i've ever seen
War Magic doesn't interact with Warcaster in regards to the OA replacement effect and doesn't grant advantage in any case, it grants a bonus action attack when you Action cast a cantrip. Bugbear only gets the +5 to reach on its turn, meaning the Bugbear in tur example would only have the normal 10 reach for OAs to begin with. Eldritch Strike (EK10) grants disadvantage against your spell save, which Green Flame Blade doesn't force
Tunnel Fighter will never see the light of day since so many aspects of the fighting style became various parts of the Cavalier subclass.
But PAM does allow for OAs when a creature enters your reach, Tunnel Fighter would compete with War Magic for the bonus action to trigger both, would allow you infinite OAs from PAM and normal circumstances, and one (and only one) OA against a creature moving within your range (which is huge because of reach) which uses your reaction. Sentinel would prevent the Disengage action from causing you to miss those OAs, but Swashbucklers, Mobile featists, teleporters, and other similar characters still get away. Sentinel also turns you into fly paper for possible maximum of 17 creatures, depending on whether a DM will let you get an OA against a creature entering your reach in a space where an immobilized creature already is and how many die. If none die, that would be one for each of the 16 squares around you at 10 feet, plus your reaction that you can use within 5 feet. If they let you draw a spear or quarterstaff after making one of the attacks, after filling in your outer perimeter, you could fill in the remaining 7 squares of the inner perimeter for the full maximum of 24, plus a number equal to however many died. With Green Flame Blade pegging an adjacent creature within 5 feet of the target, that could be quite potent.
Yeah, shortly after posting this I realized War Magic is sort of useless when using Tunnel Fighter. I opted to play with an Eldritch Knight 6 / Hexblade 4, acting as the party's fly paper. Spending my turn casting Shield or Eldritch Blast, and using the infinite OAs to deal damage when it isn't my turn. Also, dipping into Warlock allows access to Invocations, and Fiendish Vigor's 1d4+4 hitpoints every turn is great. Also, Darkness spell + Devil's Sight will make my fly paper even more efficient.
Also, my DM is allowing GFB to be cast at my melee range, not just 5 ft. It makes sense that way, since the spell states that you cast the spell with your melee weapon.
I could link you my character sheet in a bit once I'm done implementing the homebrew Tunnel Fighter.
Fiendish Vigor is an awesome invocation, particularly for this style of build. However, False Life still requires an action to cast it with Fiendish Vigor, which would mean that casting it every round would mean that a typical round for your would be Action:Cast False Life, Bonus Action:Trigger Defensive stance for my OA heaven, Movement: As needed to optimize positioning. Also, keep in mind that temporary HP don't stack. This means that if you roll a 2 on one roll and a 3 on another roll, you won't have 13 temporary HP, you'll have a choice between having 6 and 7 temporary HP (or whatever temp HP are left from whichever came first if you took damage). Usually, you'll want whichever amount is higher (if not always). Mixing in an Eldritch Blast cast or other options would probably be a much better use of the action, particularly if you had Repelling Blast (can be used with each beam), Grasp of Hadar (once per turn), and/or Lance of Lethargy (once per turn) to really mess with the positioning or speed of the group. You'd have to be a Warlock 9 to be able to have all 3 of those and Fiendish Vigor and Devil's Sight, so that's quite a bit to ask. You could drop it to 7 if you traded Hexblade to Fiend and got the temp HP from your kills, but you've got a pretty good thing going even without that extra bit.
Do keep in mind that Shield has a casting time of 1 Reaction, which means that you're probably not using that on your turn unless you provoke opportunity attacks. It would also remove the option to have the OA against the creatures moving within your reach. Darkness and Devil's Sight on that build is just evil. The only thing that would make it even more disgusting would be a Spirit Guardians. "You can't see me, so my attacks usually hit you. When they hit you, you can't move (at least the OAs). If you decide to leave my reach, I get to attack you. If you decide to attack me, you have a hard time doing it because A) you can't see me, and B) I'm hard to hit anyway. Meanwhile, every time that I attack you successfully, your buddy within 5 feet takes damage. And even if you don't attack me or try to flee, you're taking at least half of 3d8 damage and your speed is cut in half for at least 5 of those feet that you are trying to get out of my reach (depending on whether the DM rules that they spend 5 feet getting out of your reach and then another 5 feet getting out of Spirit Guardians, like they should, or just say that you only move 5 feet to get out of Spirit Guardians). Either way, it's 10-20 feet of their movement just to get out. But it would be 5 levels in Cleric to get it! Maybe a Cleric/Warlock hybrid to pull off the build? Life Cleric maybe? And if someone cast Warding Bond on you at the same time?
I completely spaced over the range issue for Green Flame Blade. Normally, you'd have to take spell sniper to be able to pull that off, but DM fiat is much better.
I like the idea to copple the feat with the profficiency modifier, this should be more than enough to balance it.
I also build a v-human warlock+cleric in that way, 2lvl cleric of twilight (UA) 6 lvl warlock of the undead (UA)
I am going for a combo with sanctuary, Darkness, Devils gaze(?) Polearm and tunnelfighter, and there are lots if weaknesses in this build.
I am the only one in the frontline, it it o works if i hold my ground against melee, if i dont move my spot, if they dont break my conzentration or dispell darkness with maybe Daylight, its only effektive on mobs, but wont make a reccognicable difference on bosses, if the enemy attack the other casters, ignoring me its also very weak...
Its like mending, only efficient on special occasions or if the dm let it be efficient. He controlls the mobs, not me, he makes the terrain, etc...
Sorry german autocorrection works against me xD
ranged enemies and dragons dont seem to mind this fighting style at all, I have this fighting style with PAM and the hordes of zombies coming in a narrow passage way does not come up often nor the army of guards trying to take your sweetrolls, its only broken if the dm makes it so, its a fun skill if the dm lets you feel its effects and potential now and again and slaying hordes of goblins or kobolds is alot of fun, but its not much use to bigger stronger monsters that you will face in your campaign most of the BBEG is smart enough not to fall for that obvious tactic, but its comical to think that the basis of it being OP is the notion of a horde of melee exclusive enemies comes up on your battle map on a regular basis, thats just bad dming..
+sentinel
100%
We roleplay it with the proficiency modifyer as the number on how often to react, so it starts with 2 and gets stronger with the time.
You could also homebrew it for a distant fighter like with bow on the minimum range if you like, but you would need a homebrew feat like polarmmaster for opportunity atracks when enemys engage in a specific reach, also sentinel wont be a problem in that way.
For me i combine it also with the battlemaster feat on some ways, its lots of fun, and so much more if it realy works out like imagined! ^^
But happens not so often as i would want to xD
Like said before, it only happens depending on the dms choice at the most time.
It’s broken because of the spell compulsion.
It was broken way before that. But yeah, potentially forcing 3-5 opportunity attacks doesn't make it any fairer.
Bugbear reach only applys on your turn
I think it's more because of the polearm master and sentinel feats combined with this. It essentially allows one player to force every enemy within their reach to only attack them, or take an opportunity attack. That means one character can act as a brick wall and prevent all enemies from advancing as long as they hit the enemies AC. It's pretty broken
Sentinel feat says:
So if an enemy within your reach attacks somebody else, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against them - but this is NOT an opportunity attack (since it doesn't say it is), so Tunnel Fighter OP text would not apply.