Diving into how good they are and which you should take.
Battle Masters are the most technically adept of the fighter subclasses, possessing intricate combat techniques known as battle maneuvers. These cause additional effects like tripping, taunting and dodging to your attacks as well as often providing additional damage, and sometimes, defensive or out of combat bonuses.
But not all battle maneuvers are made equally, and with a whopping 20 options to choose from and only 3-9 maneuvers known (depending on your level), choosing which to take can be a challenge. Fortunately, I’ve dissected and analysed each battle maneuver for you to give recommendations on which are really the “superior” maneuvers.
How do battle maneuvers work?
Battle maneuvers are unique to the battle master subclass. You choose the options you want to use and then you can expend superiority dice to use them as part of your attack. You have 4-6 superiority dice (depending on your level) and they start as d8s, but eventually become d10s at level 10 and d12s at level 18.
When you perform a battle maneuver, you roll one of your superiority die using the score to add to an aspect of the maneuver. Often this means extra damage, but it can add to a stealth check, grant temporary hit points, reduce incoming damage or several other things.
With superiority dice recovered on a short or long rest, they aren’t too precious so you should find you can use them fairly plentifully. At level 15, you have a permanent supply of d8s you can use for your superiority dice for when you’ve run out of your better, more limited dice.
Analysing the battle maneuvers
Different battle maneuvers tend to be good for different things. While most of them tend to be more aggressive in nature by enhancing attacks, others will enhance your defence or provide our of combat utility. The Player’s Handbook doesn’t separate these out, but I have below to help you with your choices.
Aggressive battle maneuvers
Commander’s strike – 4/5
Ability: Replace one of your attacks with the attack of an ally who uses their reaction and adds a roll of your superiority die to the damage.
Tactics: Fighters deal a lot of damage by having more attacks than most other martials. For the sake of balance, this can mean that other martials have stronger single attacks. Leveraging that can mean more damage dealt in total.
This is most effective for someone like a rogue who can use their sneak attack on a reaction attack (even if it was used on their turn). Barbarians and rangers will also find that one of their attacks deals more damage than a single attack from a fighter (especially with hunter’s mark in play).
The only drawback is you do expend the ally’s reaction in the process. With careful planning and the right party, this can be quite good, but without that, it can be a little pointless.
Disarming attack – 2/5
Ability: Potentially cause something the target is holding to be dropped and add a roll of your superiority die to the damage.
Tactics: Pointless against creatures like beasts and monstrosities that don’t use weapons. Can be useful against weapon-wielding creatures, but the object drops in their space so it’s easy enough to just pick it up. The best way to make this work is to combine it with the push mastery and then block the target’s route to their dropped weapon. Without this though, it can be a little pointless.
Distracting strike – 3/5
Ability: Next attack not made by you has advantage against that creature and damage is increased by a roll of your superiority die.
Tactics: This is only useful if you’re teaming up with allies to attack the same foe. Fortunately, this is a common and useful tactic. There are many other ways to gains advantage on attacks, but this is one of the more reliable ways.
Feinting attack – 1/5
Ability: Use a bonus action to gain advantage on your next attack roll and deal extra damage equal to a roll of your superiority die if you hit.
Tactics: Advantage is decent, but there’s 2 drawbacks to this battle maneuvers. First is that it occupies your bonus action, which most other battle maneuvers don’t do. Second, the extra damage only occurs if you hit on that attack. Most battle maneuvers let you choose to activate it on a hit, but this means there’s a chance of failure here and a wasted superiority die making this a weak maneuver.
Goading attack – 3/5
Ability: Add a superiority die to your damage and potentially cause the target to have disadvantage on attack rolls on anyone other than you for a round.
Tactics: You either use this to ensure an enemy focuses their attacks on you, or to tactically maneuver away giving the creature problems trying to attack you or anyone else. I like the idea of combining this with evasive footwork so you can maneuver away forcing the creature to potentially take attacks of opportunity from allies, or attack allies with disadvantage. Plus if it reaches you, you have extra AC making no good options for the target. It takes effort to really maximise on this though.
Lunging attack – 4/5
Ability: Take the dash action as a bonus action and add a roll of your superiority die to an attack.
Tactics: Unlike feinting attack, you’re only reliant on any attack roll to succeed, not just one. Dashing as a bonus action is very useful for closing down enemies, especially in that first round of combat.
Maneuvering attack – 3/5
Ability: Deal extra damage equal to a roll of your superiority die and let an ally use their reaction to move half their speed without provoking opportunity attacks from the target of your attack.
Tactics: This is a bit situational. It only protects against the target of your attack and relies on the need to have an ally maneuver around. In those moments, it can be quite useful. The movement is better than bait and switch, and it has the extra damage, but lacks the AC bonus.
Menacing attack – 4/5
Ability: Add a roll of your superiority die to your damage and a chance to make the target frightened for a round.
Tactics: A maneuver like distracting strike will give one attack advantage but this will give all attacks from the target disadvantage for a turn. This is equally as potent against a foe with one attack and more potent against creatures with the multi-attack feature. There’s also the added issue of struggling to move towards you. The only drawback here is that unlike distracting strike, there’s a chance this won’t work.
Precision attack – 4/5
Ability: When you miss an attack, roll your superiority die and add the value to the attack roll, potentially turning the miss into a hit.
Tactics: While you don’t get the extra damage of a superiority die roll, this damage will average 4.5-6.5 (depending on the size of your superiority die). A missed attack from a greatsword is a loss of on average 10-12 damage (not including any extra bells and whistles like a fighting style, magic weapons etc). So the extra damage is more profound, but you don’t gain any extra benefits of a battle maneuver (though you might argue that you get the benefit of a weapon mastery that would otherwise have gone unused). It’s also worth noting that the extra damage here is diminished if you’re wielding a sword and shield or using two weapon fighting for example.
I’d say this is best to use when you barely miss an attack so the chances of still missing are minimised.
Pushing attack – 2/5
Ability: Add the superiority die to the damage dealt and potentially push the target back 15ft.
Tactics: My problem with this maneuver is it requires a saving throw to work, but the push weapon mastery pushes just 5ft less with no saving throw required. If I just want to use small amounts of pushing, this feels a little redundant, especially because at level 9, you can use push mastery on any weapon attack you like. It does stack with your push mastery though, so if you want to do mega pushes, or both a push and something else, then this has its place. It just feels a shame that it’s only slightly better, but might fail a decent amount of the time.
Riposte – 4/5
Ability: If you’re missed by a melee attack, then you can use your reaction to make an attack and add your superiority die to the damage.
Tactics: This is another one where the damage of the superiority die could go wasted as you’re spending the die before you hit. However, it’s a chance at another attack that you might not ordinarily have had (opportunity attacks don’t come up all that often).
I think this makes it worthwhile as the extra potential damage is much higher, especially if you have high attack modifiers and have worked advantage into your next attack too.
Sweeping attack – 1/5
Ability: Potentially hit a second target with damage from your superiority die.
Tactics: I think this is worse than other options. There’s a slight chance of failure here which could be wasted. It also means spreading damage between targets which is usually less optimal unless you’ve killed the first target and you only get the extra damage of the superiority die roll, there are no other effects from this maneuver. For me, this makes it a weak option.
Trip attack – 4/5
Ability: Add damage from a superiority die roll and potential knock the target prone.
Tactics: Prone can be really useful to aid subsequent attacks and melee attacks from allies. It’s best to do this against enemies that aren’t soon after you in initiative order and when you’ve got plenty of allies in melee range so they can benefit from the advantage provided. This doesn’t work automatically like distracting strike, but the effects can affect multiple attacks if used wisely so I think the risk is worth the reward. You can grapple the target after to keep them prone too.
Defensive battle maneuvers
Bait and switch – 3/5
Ability: swap places with a willing creature within 5ft of you. You or the other creature gain a bonus to AC equal to a roll of your superiority die.
Tactics: This can be useful, but the times at which it is are going to be really limited due to the short distances here. Really you want to use this to get a weaker ally out of melee range of an enemy, but a scenario where you’re not in melee range and a weak ally is are going to be rare. I just think this is far too situational.
Fortunately, a round of higher AC is universally great and this will average about as much extra AC as the shield spell. This will be universally useful. Just be aware that whoever gets the extra AC will probably be avoided for attacks.
Evasive footwork – 4/5
Ability: As a bonus action, you can take the disengage action and add a roll of your superiority die to your AC for a round.
Tactics: Using this does consume your bonus action, but it is going to be really useful to either maneuver to different targets, or get away when you look worse for wear. It allows you to do all of this while letting you take your attacks for the turn.
Parry – 4/5
Ability: Use a reaction to reduce damage from an attack equal to a roll of your superiority die + your strength or dexterity modifier.
Tactics: You’ll often have chances to use this. I’d perhaps argue that something like riposte, which uses your reaction to make an attack, is potentially more potent as the damage will be higher than the damage reduction here. However, this works automatically and has the potential to spare you for extra turns (which would mean more attacks), whereas riposte can lead to a miss.
Rally – 4/5
Ability: Use your bonus action to grant temporary hit points to an ally equal to a roll of your superiority die + half your fighter level (rounded down).
Tactics: Parry will protect from an average of about 8.5-11.5 damage per use. This will provide anywhere from 5.5-16.5 temporary hit points depending on your level. Essentially, parry is more potent at low levels because ability scores are easier to get high at low levels, but is outperformed by rally at about level 12 when half your level is higher than your maximum strength/dexterity (and they’re about equal at level 10).
Utility battle maneuvers
Ambush – 3/5
Ability: Add a roll of your superiority die to a roll for initiative or stealth.
Tactics: Stealth checks can be really important to perform well on. Fighters don’t tend to be your go to option for stealth, but can be built that way. Higher initiative is often useful though to get some attacks in early.
Commanding presence – 2/5
Ability: Add a roll of your superiority die to an intimidation, performance or persuasion check.
Tactics: It’s handy having a way to use superiority dice outside of combat. However, fighters are rarely built for social skills. I wouldn’t bother with this if you have a party face already (a bard, paladin, warlock or sorcerer will fit the bill). Even then, I’d only go this route if you’ve opted to build into charisma a bit.
Tactical assessment – 1/5
Ability: Add a roll of your superiority die to a history, investigation or insight check.
Tactics: It’s good to have out of combat options for your battle maneuvers, but fighters are rarely the best option for these types of checks making this potentially, very redundant. Some fighters do have a moderate intelligence, but battle master isn’t one of these and this is a somewhat high price to pay for an ability check that you’re likely quite poor at already.
Which battle maneuvers should you take?
Largely, that decision is down to you and the tactics you want to employ. I’ve given my own opinion on how good each maneuver is with a score to guide your decision.
Personally, I’d avoid maneuvers like disarming attack, feinting attack, sweeping attack, commanding presence and tactical assessment. I’d also only take pushing attack if you want to be making mega pushes, otherwise, push mastery should be sufficient. For me these are all subpar options.
For the maneuvers you do take, I’d grab a variety of options that can be useful in different situations. For example, you might want at least one defensive options and one aggressive option. I’d also avoid taking too many options that rely on a reaction or a bonus action as you can only use one of these per round and they’ll compete with one another for uses.
Which battle maneuvers do you prefer to take? Let me know about them in the comments below.
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